In this episode Adam explores what it takes to use surprise effectively as an integral part of a challenger’s strategy. His guest is Kyrsten Halley, the former Marketing Director of Aldi UK, part of a team that for years has been putting the purposefully unexpected into the drudgery of the weekly grocery shop. One of the key ways Aldi has grown to become one of the Big Four in the UK.

Adam and Kyrsten unpack how and why a discount supermarket came to offer the world's best champagne for £14.99, restaurant-quality lobster tails at Christmas, and a kayak in the middle aisle: where the real value lies for them in being consistently surprising, and the ‘share of heart’ they look to build through it. And why none of that worked without a real rigour and discipline across the business underpinning it.

The conversation explores:

• How ‘delighting the customer with surprise’ can create that ‘chink of open-mindedness’ Aldi needs to grow
• How the origin of so much of what Aldi does lies in its challenger roots as a Democratiser – making goods available that many UK shoppers would have historically felt they couldn’t afford
• How the constraints of Aldi’s discount format stimulated the thinking around their famous ‘Special Buys’
• The strong relationships between the different areas of the business, and why they are so important.
• The codes of premium private label they felt they could and couldn’t break
• Why being consistently surprising, week in week out, really helps find the right boundaries with your audience
• Why Aldi maintains a challenger mindset even though they are now the fourth biggest UK supermarket
• What it really means to make a brave idea feel obvious to the rest of the business.

This conversation also formed part of the research for eatbigfish's Cannes Lions 2026 session, "The Startling Power of Surprise" with The Uncensored CMO Jon Evans— the latest chapter in the multi-year Cost of Dull project. For more on the Cost of Dull and the effective strategic use of Surprise, visit eatbigfish.com.

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Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish: the strategic consultancy that helps ambitious Challengers to grow.

Follow Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/

Thanks to our editor Ruth and our producer Rachael.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Let’s Make This More Interesting from eatbigfish, Adam explores what it takes to be more interesting in a very different medium: stop frame animation. Madga Osinska, today’s guest, is a director of short films and commercials for the world-famous Aardman Animations, besides her own projects, and a winner of jury prizes throughout Europe for her work.

Adam and Magda unpack what it takes to really deliver Aardman’s four principles – comedy, story, character and craft – alongside the value of constraints in forcing you to find better ways to tell your story. And what it really means to explore the human condition in plasticine.

The conversation explores:

• The combination of heartwarming and heartbreaking in creating audience engagement
• How to give a character depth – and why flaws matter
• The real value of details and easter eggs
• Visual storytelling – using colour and shape to tell the story in parallel to the words

…And why you should be very, very careful never to win an Oscar

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Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish: the strategic consultancy that helps ambitious Challengers to grow.

Follow Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/

Thanks to our editor Ruth and our producer Rachael.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it take to be interesting enough for people to brave the New York City subway to come and join you on a cold, wet, Tuesday night? Every Tuesday night? For two years?

In this episode, Adam Morgan is joined by Jeffrey Robb, professional Dungeon Master, actor, and educator, who runs paid games of Dungeons and Dragons up to eleven times a week across the five boroughs of New York. And what starts as a masterclass in epic, layered storytelling turns into something rather different. Because as Jeffrey explains, a great dungeon master isn't in fact there to tell an epic story; they're there to make it possible for a disparate group of people –– with different motivations, different expectations, different levels of commitment –– to create an epic story for themselves.

There's a lot here for anyone trying to hold a room. Jeffrey and Adam explore:

• The importance of choices in storytelling experiences: why giving people agency over the narrative creates ownership (- and why the best choices always leave room for a secret third option)
• Why it’s key to see the experience as ‘carefully managed chaos’: how the most inventive moments come from building a system flexible enough to be surprised by its own players
• Where you do and don’t want surprise , and why it has to work in two very different ways here
• The lessons Jeffrey learned from superhero comics and Shakespearean drama that he brings to the experiences he curates
• The primacy of trust, and what a "Session Zero" can teach anyone who needs to unlock a group's imagination fast
• What it means for good drama asks a question of its audience

Along the way, there's a squeaky goblin, why it’s unexpectedly dull to play a villain, and what increasing consumer expectations mean in D&D: why so many people now seem to want a burned village to avenge…

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Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish: the strategic consultancy that helps ambitious Challengers to grow.

Follow Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/

Thanks to our editor Ruth and our producer Rachael.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.