Ponderings from the Perch

Little Bird Marketing & C-Suite Radio

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Conversations with Priscilla McKinney, founder and President of Little Bird Marketing, an award-winning agency specializing in content marketing, lead generation, branding and design. As a CEO and serial entrepreneur, Priscilla's topics range from marketing best practices, the "stunning discomfort" of entrepreneurship, market research, her love of the autoharp, and other marketing oddities.

20 MAR

The Mental Fitness Practice of a World Champion Freediver

The gap between surviving and performing is not a mindset shift. It is a physiological one. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney sits down with Helena Bourdillon, four-time World Champion freediver and four-time World Record holder, whose path from the depths of depression to the depths of the ocean reframes what it actually means to perform under pressure. Bourdillon's work spans elite sport, clinical mental health recovery, and professional breathwork instruction, and what she brings to high-stakes sector audiences is not a wellness program. It is something far more comprehensive than that. Most organizations address stress at the surface. They offer flexibility perks, mental health days, and well-intentioned check-ins that treat symptoms while the root system goes untouched. But mental fitness is different from mental wellness. The architecture of the practice is built on science-backed tools that retrain the nervous system rather than soothe it. The distinction matters because leaders and teams that skip this foundation do not plateau. They erode. And no marketing performance metrics or customer insights dashboard will surface the real reason why. What freediving reveals is that the body and the mind must be in alignment, or performance becomes friction. Bourdillon speaks to a state she calls "quiet clarity," and what she says next is worth sitting with. "When we can do it from that place we are so much more present for ourselves," Bourdillon explains, "for what we're doing, so we actually get it done a lot faster and a lot better and more importantly we are there for the people around us, some who might really need us." The tools that produce quiet clarity are not complex. That is precisely what makes them easy to dismiss and costly to ignore. Bourdillon's five science-backed tools are the kind of thing a 15-year-old could learn and a seasoned executive has likely never tried. Watch her award-winning documentary Light Beams for Helena and connect with her at helenabourdillon.com. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today!

33 min
13 MAR

Stop Posting, Start Distributing

*This episode of Ponderings from the Perch is brought to you by PatientSight, an agile primary research service providing timely medical insights of interest to your organization.* For most B2B companies, the problem is not creating content. The problem, instead, is distributing content. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing content marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney draws a hard line between two things that are not interchangeable and not even close to the same thing. B2B teams that have published well-researched, well-written, and genuinely useful content only to hear nothing back will recognize the gap most people are too uncomfortable to admit exists in their own organization. Posting and distributing are not the same thing, and the difference between them is not subtle. Most b2b digital marketing efforts are built backwards, and the real weight of a social media marketing strategy has very little to do with what gets published and everything to do with what happens next. Earning the right to ask before ever making an ask sounds like common sense until you look at how few teams actually operate that way. "Content creation is about 30% of the work and distribution is about 70%," McKinney explains. "And honestly, most people are doing it absolutely backwards." Good content and a good audience are not enough if the two never actually meet. That tension sits at the center of every B2B marketing conversation worth having, and it is the one that most teams keep deferring. The content is not the problem. The question is what happens to it after it exists. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Ever feel like your marketing plan is just... meh? You've got the pieces, but are they really working together? We often find that even when companies are doing the right things, they may not be doing them in the right order. The results are, well, no results. Curious how you can effectively evaluate your marketing efforts? Want clarity on your next best strategic move? Take our Marketing Assessment Quiz and in just minutes, discover exactly where you stand – and where you could be going. Click here and take the quiz today and don’t leave success to chance. Ever feel like your company is sitting on a goldmine of opportunities, but they keep slipping away? Most companies already have their next big win hiding in their database. Little Bird Marketing's Revenue Sprint is a proven system that works backward from your revenue goals to create a focused plan for building a sales pipeline and predictable growth. No massive budget required—just strategic execution that delivers measurable results. Ready to turn missed opportunities into new wins? Click here and build a predictable pipeline for sustainable growth.

29 min
6 MAR

Deeper, Richer Customer Insights through Conversation

The research industry has a data quality problem it keeps politely talking around. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney sits down with Matt Kleinschmit, founder and CEO of Reach3 Insights and part of the broader Rival Group family of companies. With nearly 30 years in the research industry, Matt brings a rare combination of entrepreneurial range and deep methodological conviction to a conversation about what the insights industry keeps getting wrong and why fixing it requires owning the problem from the ground up. Most quantitative research still runs through email. That single fact, unremarkable to many and alarming to few, sits at the center of a much larger tension between how research has always been done and how people actually live, communicate, and share. The gap between a clinical survey experience and a genuine human response is not a design preference. It is a data integrity issue. And in a world where customer insights drive high-stakes business decisions, the cost of that gap compounds quietly until it doesn't. Owning the human source data layer is not a common commitment in this industry right now. Aggregation is easier. Subcontracting is cheaper. And the downstream consequences of river sampling, bot contamination, and unvalidated respondents are someone else's problem until they aren't. "Leaning into the future, but not losing touch with the past," Kleinschmit explains. "[This] is the notion that a lot of the client researchers that we work with, [that] they want to be innovative. They want to bring new things into the organization, but they also have to have trust and credibility that what they're bringing into the organization is legitimate." The brands drowning in AI options, synthetic data promises, and methodology noise are not asking the wrong questions. They are asking them to the wrong partners. What it actually takes to guide a Fortune 100 client through that landscape, with transparency, calibration, and something worth trusting, is a much harder thing to build than a platform or a panel alone. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Tired of generic marketing firms that don't get market research? Say hello to Little Bird Marketing, the revenue generation company of choice for the market research industry. Our "peeps" understand market research inside and out. We know your buyers, craft meaningful messages that move them to buy, understand the competitive landscape and where you fit in the market. We get the industry - from qual/quant to emerging technologies. Why settle for getting the job done when you can soar with marketing that drives real revenue? Click here to get started. Ever feel like your marketing plan is just... meh? You've got the pieces, but are they really working together? We often find that even when companies are doing the right things, they may not be doing them in the right order. The results are, well, no results. Curious how you can effectively evaluate your marketing efforts? Want clarity on your next best strategic move? Take our Marketing Assessment Quiz and in just minutes, discover exactly where you stand – and where you could be going. Click here and take the quiz today and don’t leave success to chance.

33 min
27 FEB

Customer Insights on Shopping Trends

*This episode of Ponderings from the Perch is brought to you by Rival Technologies. Ranked among the world's most innovative insights suppliers in Greenbook’s 2025 GRIT Report, Rival Technologies uses AI-powered video analysis to unlock deeper meaning from unstructured data.* Shopping online and shopping in-store are two different animals. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney sits down with Vesna Fuiorea, Senior Consultant at Next Level Trends, to examine why shopper behavior operates on an entirely different frequency than consumer behavior. Vesna brings over 20 years of experience in consumer goods to a conversation that challenges assumptions about how people make purchasing decisions when time, emotion, and mission collide at the point of sale. The gap between how brands communicate and how shoppers actually process information in-store represents one of the most expensive blind spots in retail strategy. Packaging redesigns that seem like progress can obliterate brand recognition. Promotional displays positioned outside the mental map shoppers carry into stores might as well be invisible. The autopilot mode that makes shopping efficient for consumers creates a fortress that most marketing performance metrics fail to penetrate. Fuiorea points to cultural differences that complicate global retail strategies, convenience trends reshaping store formats across continents, and the reality that an aging population demands fundamentally different approaches to shelf arrangement, flavor differentiation, and package design. "Making sure that your brand is visible and accessible in the store are two things that sound silly when we are talking about," Fuiorea explains. "But brand owners need to make everything possible to differentiate their brand." But the relationship between online and offline retail continues to defy predictions of brick-and-mortar extinction. E-commerce growth patterns vary dramatically by geography and culture, with southern European markets maintaining strong preferences for fresh food purchased in physical stores while northern countries adopt digital grocery shopping at higher rates. The real disruption may come not from the channel itself but from AI agents that intercept purchase decisions before shoppers even enter stores or open apps, creating an entirely new battlefield for customer insights and brand visibility. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Tired of generic marketing firms that don't get market research? Say hello to Little Bird Marketing, the revenue generation company of choice for the market research industry. Our "peeps" understand market research inside and out. We know your buyers, craft meaningful messages that move them to buy, understand the competitive landscape and where you fit in the market. We get the industry - from qual/quant to emerging technologies. Why settle for getting the job done when you can soar with marketing that drives real revenue? Click here to get started. Ever feel like your marketing plan is just... meh? You've got the pieces, but are they really working together? We often find that even when companies are doing the right things, they may not be doing them in the right order. The results are, well, no results. Curious how you can effectively evaluate your marketing efforts? Want clarity on your next best strategic move? Take our Marketing Assessment Quiz and in just minutes, discover exactly where you stand – and where you could be going. Click here and take the quiz today and don’t leave success to chance.

37 min
20 FEB

Closing the Gap Between the CRO and the CMO

Most companies hand their CMO and CRO different scorecards and then act surprised when they fight over the same leads. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney examines why the relationship between chief marketing officers and chief revenue officers breaks down before a single lead changes hands. The tension isn't about incompatible personalities or departmental turf wars. It exists because bonuses are tied to different outcomes, "qualified" definitions remain unspoken, and timing expectations never align. When one executive optimizes for brand awareness while another chases quarterly closes, no amount of collaboration workshops will bridge the divide that the org chart itself has severed. The marketing qualified lead becomes the flashpoint. Marketing celebrates engagement metrics and demographic fit. Sales dismisses anything short of active intent. Neither side agrees on what distinguishes browsing from buying. Yet, both departments defend their interpretations as if revenue depended on being right rather than on alignment—the argument over lead quality masks a deeper issue. Nobody defined what sales qualification actually requires before the first campaign launched. "If marketing thought that was a marketing qualified lead, then instead of getting more of them to try and solve this problem by a numbers game, why don't we all get back in the room and talk about what a marketing qualified lead would actually look like?" McKinney asks. "The salesperson's job is to qualify them for sales, but there is a piece that marketing can do." Fixing the CMO-CRO relationship doesn't require new software or revised messaging. It requires rebuilding the foundation both roles stand on. Shared incentives, transparent data, and defined handoff criteria transform what feels like a personality clash into what it actually is. A solvable systems problem. Companies that treat b2b lead generation as a shared accountability rather than a departmental transaction stop arguing over who's responsible for failed conversions and start optimizing the entire revenue path together. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book: Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information. Tired of generic marketing firms that don't get market research? Say hello to Little Bird Marketing, the revenue generation company of choice for the market research industry. Our "peeps" understand market research inside and out. We know your buyers, craft meaningful messages that move them to buy, understand the competitive landscape and where you fit in the market. We get the industry - from qual/quant to emerging technologies. Why settle for getting the job done when you can soar with marketing that drives real revenue? Click here to get started.

26 min
6 FEB

A Novel Approach to Data Quality in Consumer Insights

The incentive at every layer of market research is to pass as many respondents through as possible, which means the behavior follows exactly as you'd expect. Priscilla McKinney, host of Ponderings from the Perch and CEO of Little Bird Marketing, welcomes Joey Maddox and Henry Legard, Chief Strategy Officer and CEO respectively at Verisoul, for a conversation about where fraud prevention in market research keeps missing the mark. A LinkedIn video, equal parts nerdy and genuine, sparked the connection that led to this episode about structural problems most people in the industry would rather not acknowledge and what they are doing about it!. It can be said that market researchers today inherited a volume problem disguised as a quality solution:Sample providers get paid per respondent. Aggregators get paid per completed survey. Every middleman in the chain benefits from passing bodies through, not from stopping to verify who those bodies actually are. The result is predictable. Data quality tools chase yesterday's fraud techniques while bad actors stay three steps ahead, and businesses make million-dollar decisions on compromised customer insights. The real kicker? A worst-case scenario is aA three-week diligence survey can collapsinge entirely when someone finally checks if the data makes sense, leaving clients without answers at the exact moment they need them most. But not all respondents are fake, bad or trying to cheat the system. So, how do you let those into your ecosystem while keeping the bad actors out? "One of the crusades that we've had at Verisoul is how do you block as much fraud as possible with essentially zero false positives," Joey Maddox explains. "We need to block as much fraud as possible, but we can't just go willy-nilly blocking a bunch of people." So, it’s about striking the right balance. And they discuss new technology in this episode and how they are collaborating with other data quality experts already in the industry to make everything ship shape and better than it was yesterday! They discuss how respondent integrity matters more than response integrity now that AI makes faking expertise trivially easy. They get specific about why trap questions alone don't work anymore, how IP deduplication blocks hospital workers from taking legitimate surveys from the same network, and more. Their technology is built around one important question, “What if respondents could own their verified identity across the industry instead, choosing what to share and earning more for providing greater certainty?” It's the kind of idea that makes some people uncomfortable, which is exactly why this conversation matters. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell Sponsors: Is your concept testing budget disappearing without driving better decisions? Most insights teams waste 30 to 40 percent of their research spend on preventable leaks. Socratic Technologies has created a free audit to help you identify what leak is costing you the most—and exactly how to fix it. Click here to download the audit today and start making concept testing that drives growth. Ever feel like your marketing plan is just... meh? You've got the pieces, but are they really working together? We often find that even when companies are doing the right things, they may not be doing them in the right order. The results are, well, no results. Curious how you can effectively evaluate your marketing efforts? Want clarity on your next best strategic move? Take our Marketing Assessment Quiz and in just minutes, discover exactly where you stand – and where you could be going. Click here and take the quiz today and don’t leave success to chance.

32 min
30 ENE

4 Pillars of Customer Insights

Most insights professionals are too busy completing studies to notice their reports end up in the trash. Dan Womack, president of KLC, joins Priscilla McKinney on Ponderings from the Perch to dismantle the "study mindset" that keeps research teams from driving real business outcomes. He brings over 20 years of corporate research experience from Fortune 500 firms, including GE Capital, Genworth Financial, and Aflac, plus a provocative take on why the industry needs to stop obsessing over executive access and start focusing on organizational action. Womack presents a four-pillar framework that redefines effective insights work. First, understand what customers know and believe, the baseline of primary research. Second, understand how they arrived at those beliefs, going beyond simple "why" questions. Third, translate those findings into business implications, which requires commercial literacy that most researchers never develop. Fourth, and most critical, ensure the organization actually acts on the market research insights. AI will likely automate the first three pillars within years, leaving the fourth as distinctly human territory and the future of the profession. "How do you ensure that the business actually does something? How do you ensure that they act on what you brought to them?" Womack explains. "If an insight falls to an empty room, nothing happens to it." The industry's decades-long fixation on "getting a seat at the table" misses the point entirely. Not everyone gets interviewed after the game, but that doesn't diminish their contribution to the win. Data-driven marketing decisions require commercial literacy, understanding P&Ls and business implications, more than proximity to executives. Gateway's willingness to scrap an expensive ad campaign in the mid 1990s after research revealed parents wanted complete computer packages demonstrates what true customer centricity looks like when combined with organizational courage to act on findings. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Ever feel like your marketing plan is just... meh? You've got the pieces, but are they really working together? We often find that even when companies are doing the right things, they may not be doing them in the right order. The results are, well, no results. Curious how you can effectively evaluate your marketing efforts? Want clarity on your next best strategic move? Take our Marketing Assessment Quiz and in just minutes, discover exactly where you stand – and where you could be going. Click here and take the quiz today and don’t leave success to chance. Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book: Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information.

27 min
23 ENE

What an Expert Recruiter Knows about Filling Top CPG Brand Manager and Marketing Director Roles

*This episode of Ponderings from the Perch is brought to you by Rival Technologies, using AI-powered video analysis to unlock deeper meaning from unstructured data.* Candidates are going through 200 interviews before landing offers, yet companies are still losing top talent because their hiring processes are too long. Diana Benedikt, executive recruiter at Newman Search Group, joins Priscilla McKinney on Ponderings from the Perch to discuss what it truly takes to land and thrive in top CPG brand and marketing roles. Benedikt brings over 20 years of startup and VC ecosystem experience, along with deep expertise in growth strategy and talent acquisition for companies ranging from early-stage ventures to established consumer packaged goods brands in the better-for-you segment. They explore the complex skill set required for brand strategy leadership, from stage-gate experience and cross-functional relationship building to the ability to execute data-driven decisions under pressure. Brand managers operate at the hub of organizational success, with spokes reaching into R&D, finance, sales, and operations. Beyond technical expertise in persona development and go-to-market strategy, the most successful candidates demonstrate genuine passion for the brand's mission, whether that's a B Corp commitment or a fast-paced product launch cycle. Companies in the high-growth, better-for-you space, which is expanding at roughly twice the rate of traditional CPG, need professionals who can move quickly without sacrificing strategic thinking, pulling insights from data they analyze themselves rather than delegating to analysts. "I always want to note, are you pulling the data? Are you analyzing the data yourself, or do you have a bunch of analysts doing it for you? And if you're pulling it, give me an example of where you've pulled the insights, made a move," Benedikt explains. "Whether it's a pivot or a new product or pricing or whatever you're doing, being able to pull the insights into strategies that drive a positive outcome." To fill a top CPG Brand Manager role, experience requirements remain strict in today's competitive market. Companies want candidates who have already succeeded as Senior Brand Managers, not those simply ready to step up. Her advice? Candidates should diversify their opportunities and demonstrate genuine listening skills in every interaction, while companies have compelling job descriptions that serve as sales documents. When hiring processes drag on too long, top talent gets lost to competitors who move with greater urgency. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Ever feel like your company is sitting on a goldmine of opportunities, but they keep slipping away? Most companies already have their next big win hiding in their database. Little Bird Marketing's Revenue Sprint is a proven system that works backward from your revenue goals to create a focused plan for building a sales pipeline and predictable growth. No massive budget required—just strategic execution that delivers measurable results. Ready to turn missed opportunities into new wins? Click here and build a predictable pipeline for sustainable growth. Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today!

30 min

Conversations with Priscilla McKinney, founder and President of Little Bird Marketing, an award-winning agency specializing in content marketing, lead generation, branding and design. As a CEO and serial entrepreneur, Priscilla's topics range from marketing best practices, the "stunning discomfort" of entrepreneurship, market research, her love of the autoharp, and other marketing oddities.

Creador

Little Bird Marketing & C-Suite Radio
Años de actividad

2014 - 2026
Episodios

443
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