What happens when a radio comedian, a senior drinks marketer, and a 2,000-year-old Roman hydration recipe collide?

In this episode of That’s What I Call Marketing, Conor Byrne sits down with Merrick Watts and Ed Stening, co-founders of Posca Hydrate — a sugar-free, hypertonic hydration drink inspired by ancient Roman Posca.

Posca isn’t a nostalgia play. It’s a sugar-free, hypertonic drink inspired by a Roman solution to unsafe water — rebuilt for modern life, modern habits, and modern expectations. That means confronting everything from flavour and formulation to packaging, positioning, and retail resistance.

Along the way, Merrick and Ed unpack a set of ideas that matter far beyond drinks:

Why liquid still matters more than marketing.

Why category creation is harder than brand building.

Why refusing “me-too” formats can slow growth — but protect belief.

And why brands should aim for humour, not jokes.

Merrick explains why jokes age quickly, but a sense of humour travels across audiences, occasions, and time and how that thinking shapes Posca’s tone, creative decisions, and internal culture. It’s not about being funny. It’s about not taking yourself seriously while taking the product seriously.

They also discuss building brand in-house rather than outsourcing belief, measuring brand as a startup using Tracksuit, balancing mental and physical availability, and what it really takes to scale a challenger brand globally without losing the story that made it matter in the first place.

This is a conversation about founders, flavour, brand discipline, and the uncomfortable decisions that come with doing something genuinely different.

3:50 – From radio comedy to drinks founder

5:50 – Why the liquid comes first

7:50 – The Roman origin of Posca

10:50 – Turning history into a brand story

14:50 – Ancient wisdom meets modern science

16:20 – Building brand from the inside out

19:50 – Tone, humour, and taking the product seriously

23:50 – Building a category, not fitting one

29:50 – Brand vs physical availability

32:50 – Measuring

34:50 – Global expansion strategy

38:50 – The hypertonic breakthrough moment

44:50 – Risk and belief

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Kit Kats Global Head of Marketing Shares what it really takes to build and protect an iconic global brand?

In this season opener for Season 5 of That’s What I Call Marketing, Conor Byrne is joined by Wael Jabi, KitKats Global Head of Marketing at Nestlé, for a deep conversation about brand judgement, consistency, partnerships, and the decisions that quietly shape long-term growth.

Wael’s career spans Leo Burnett, Procter & Gamble, and Nestlé, and the discussion moves well beyond surface-level case studies. Together, they explore what KitKat teaches us about resisting reinvention, diagnosing the right marketing problems under pressure, and how major cultural platforms like Formula 1 can be used to express brand meaning rather than dilute it.

This is a practical, reflective conversation for CMOs, brand leaders, and senior marketers who care about building brands that last not just chasing short-term performance.

Topics covered include:

• Why most brands don’t need reinvention they need restraint
• The marketing failure that taught Wael when price becomes the wrong answer
• What KitKat gets right about consistency and memory structures
• How to think about F1 and major sponsorships without losing brand meaning
• Brand vs performance decisions under pressure
• Why judgement matters more than tactics at senior levels

01:55 – Wael’s career path: agency to P&G

05:50 – Why advertising isn’t the most important thing

09:40 – A pricing decision that went wrong

14:20 – Diagnosing the wrong marketing problem

18:40 – KitKat and brand consistency

23:15 – “Breaks are broken” insight

26:50 – Making iconic work at global scale

30:20 – Formula 1 and partnerships

34:50 – Showing up in your world vs theirs

38:20 – Judgement under pressure

41:00 – What’s next for KitKat

Thanks to Tracksuit for their partnership with this episode, check out https://www.gotracksuit.com to find out more about the always on brand tracking platform

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Don't Look Back In Anger - the episode where we look back at the biggest stories we covered on The Singles and see how those brands have gotten on this year. So What happens after the marketing headlines fade? Let's we revisit some of the biggest brand stories of 2025 — and test them against what actually changed over time. Using always-on brand health data from Tracksuit, Conor Byrne is joined by Dan and Jasper to look back at Tesla, American Eagle, Rhode, and Deliveroo, six to nine months after the noise. Not opinions. Not predictions. Just evidence of where attention turned into demand — and where it didn’t.

Across very different categories, a consistent pattern emerges: “The campaign didn’t hurt sales — but the brand is weaker than it was.”

In this episode, we explore:

• Why Tesla still dominates innovation perception but is leaking trust and preference in both the US and UK
• How American Eagle’s controversial campaign held short-term revenue while brand fundamentals quietly eroded
• What Rhode’s acquisition by e.l.f. gets right — and the brand risks that come with scaling distribution
• Why Deliveroo, post-DoorDash acquisition, faces a preference problem in a category defined by low loyalty and easy switching

This is a conversation is about thinking about long-term demand, pricing power, and resilience not just quarterly performance. If you care about the gap between being noticed and being chosen, this episode is for you.

02:40 – Tesla: innovation without reassurance

11:40 – American Eagle: sales hold, brand weakens

17:45 – Rhode: scaling without dilution

23:05 – Deliveroo: preference in a default-driven category

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