Ben Dietz led commercial partnerships at VICE Media and is now a consultant for media and consumer brands. He publishes the [SIC] Weekly newsletter and is the co-host of the Culture Club Show on Clubhouse on Wednesday nights. 

Ben has spent time advising brands on how to reach into unfamiliar and potentially risky spaces through his work with VICE and youth culture.

In the podcast, we discuss his experience and what we learned from it, and how it applies to understanding the new worlds that are forming the foundational building blocks of the metaverse- as in bitcoin, digital currency and NFTs 

Connor Moore and Paul Amitai are the Executive Creative Director and Executive Strategy Director of Listen. Listen is a sound agency that helps companies and brands create and build audio and sound strategies. 

Connor designed the sound of  Tesla's Model 3  engine tone to a family of alerts and notifications for Uber's Drivers App.  He helped define Google’s audio design language for Google Glass, Waymo, and Google Pay

In the podcast, we talk about both their backgrounds, the types of work they are engaged in, and the process and approach behind the work.

In a world where every marketeer is talking about purpose, it is interesting to find an agency that has been working in this domain for over a decade.

In this episode, I talk with Rob Holzer- the founder and CEO of Matter Unlimited.

Rob is something of a digital pioneer and was the co-founder of Syrup- a digital agency that worked with the likes of Puma and GE and got acquired by LBI.

Matter Unlimited works with a mix of non-for-profits, foundations and large clients and it's the experience they have on the ground with the non-profits that helps inform how they advise and the strategies they create and build for brands.

In a world of short-term projects, Rob is especially proud of his long-term client relationships including one that spans over a decade with Merck.

Proto is a consultancy that was founded just over a year ago by some of the leadership of R/GA.'s business transformation unit. 

In the episode, I talk with Rachel Mercer- the Chief Experience Officer, and Mike Rigby- Chief Design Officer.

The conversation covers their background and experience, the types of work that Proto is involved with, and the importance of clearly defining your own brand and living its values.

It's a fascinating conversation that shows how creativity can move upstream in the world of consulting and how a valuable mix of skills and experience can help clients shift and transform their businesses for the digital age and beyond. 

Lidiya is currently in Lviv and up until a week before the war began was working as a strategist at TBWA in Kyiv.

In the conversation, we talk a little about her background and where her attention is focused right now- on the "Information War"- most advertising and marketing professionals who are not fighting are now working on the Information War and working together on specific assignments and issues relating to this war. 

In addition, to this work, Lidiya mentions the constant barrage of requests for contacts that she receives on social media be this help for refugees in Warsaw or transportation help for people in Ukraine. 

We talked about the help that those overseas can give she feels that obviously giving to help humanitarian efforts is critical, but she believes the biggest problem that needs the smartest strategic and creative minds to solve is communicating the real story to Russians. 

She even mentions the challenge within her own family which has cut ties with their relatives over the war.

Mark is the founder of Mighty Jungle- he is a writer and a strategist and basically believes in the importance of the two things going hand in hand. He wrote a piece for VICE on hip-hop when he was in his teens and drifted in the Sydney agency world as a digital producer- who also wrote and produced. He moved in the US- 9 years ago and had strategy roles in a variety of different NY shops. In this conversation, we focus on the skills planners need to be good and devote a lot of time to discussing the challenges of  being a risk-taker inside US corporate culture. 

Frank started his career with the Village Voice covering the emerging mid-1970s New York music scene centered around CBGBs. He has written numerous articles for the likes of Rolling Stone, Fortune, Vanity Fair and Wired. He has written books about Apple and in his book the Art of Immersion, he explored the changing nature of storytelling in Hollywood and Madison Avenue. Currently he is a senior fellow at the Columbia University School of the Arts, he is faculty director of the executive education program Strategic Storytelling, presented in partnership with Columbia Business School.

In this conversation, instead of looking forward to the future, we look back at past futures. A future proposed by the punk movement and the likes of Brian Eno and Malcolm McLaren and trace a trajectory outlined by advances in technology that transformed the media and entertainment industry despite their best intentions. We end looking at the present day world of Google, Facebook and Amazon and suggest we have reached an inflection point, where it might be time to take a look at what has been created and where we might all be headed. 

Thomas Kolster is a former ad agency copywriter who when the climate conference came to his hometown, Copenhagen- asked himself some serious questions and went off to investigate how advertising could do more good. 

The result was the book "Goodadvertising" which was a bold attempt to change the role of advertising from just selling to being able to promote good. In 2020, 

Thomas wrote another book "The Hero Trap" which argues that brands need to understand how they can motivate people to change and become better versions of themselves. 

Thomas is a globally recognized keynote speaker featured at events like SXSW, TEDx, Eurobest, D&AD, Epica, ad:tech & Sustainable Brands, a columnist for publications including- Adweek, The Drum, The Guardian and several other publications and a regular judge at international award shows. 

Wayne Chang is the General Manager of Saatchi Art. Wayne is an emerging artist himself but also has significant experience in the web and e-commerce space- starting with Newsweek and with stints at Photobucket and DogVacay. 

Saatchi Art is the world's largest platform for emerging artists with 1.4 million artworks, from 94k artists, representing 110 countries. 

In our conversation, we talk about what emerging art and art are exactly, how the site functions and works with both collectors and artists,  the emerging NFT space, and Saatchi Art's efforts, and how Saatchi Art connects with its live event brand 'The Other Art Fair" to bring new collectors to the art market.

The podcast episode features an interview with Thomas Papadopoulos who is the CEO and co-founder of the Paris-based innovation consultancy Possible Future.

Thomas spent 16 years in the consultancy industry, first at Accenture, leading the Accenture Interactive Digital practice in France, then as a Partner in charge of Digital Transformation at Infosys and finally as Managing Partner at Weave, developing the digital business practice to support the digital transformation of large corporations. His field of expertise covers multiple industries including FMCG & Retail.

Possible Future is a consulting company dedicated to bringing innovation to market by harnessing the skills of engineers, designers, and business strategists. 

Its client roster includes- Richemont. Intermarche, Société Générale and it's part of the Cap-Gemini group. 

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with Nikita Walia- the founder and CEO of Blank.

Nikita studied at NYU and went straight to work as a "digital native" on the coalface of social media. 

She's done stints at We are Social, Matte Projects,, King &Partners- before setting up her own agency. 

Our conversation takes on the ambitious challenge of exploring the current state of social media from a variety of different angles and perspectives. 

From the challenge of working in social media today, to the unrealistic demands and expectations of clients, to influencers and their current status, the emergence of new social channels, and the potential for new collaborative communities like DAOs.

Nick Steel is the co-founder of the creative independent agency HarrimanSteel. 

The shop has worked with the likes of Uber, Seedlip, Tom's, Nike, Girl Effect, FootLocker, Patagonia and more. 

Nick founded the agency straight out of art school at 27 and was lucky enough to get Nike as his first client. 

In our conversation, we talk about his approach to the business, the importance of agency culture, and how the pandemic has shaped his thinking and that of the agency. 

Kierstin De West is the Chief Marketing Officer of Alpha Foods.

This podcast is the story of Kierstin's journey from ad agency strategist to brand marketer to running her consulting business and on to senior brand roles at Lululemon and Alpha Foods.

In the episode, we talk about what she learned along the way,  what agency folks need to know about working client-side, why strategists make great marketers, and even how to market plant-based foods. 

This podcast episode features an interview with Stevie Archer- ECD and Kevin Skobac-Managing Director, Strategy- SS+K

SS+K is part of the M&C Saatchi network and has been around for 30 years. 

It has a history of working in the political arena - including working for Obama in 2008. That political experience translates into a philosophy they describe as "thinking politically and acting creatively". 

In the conversation, we talk about the agency and how its philosophy manifests itself in the work and the discipline of strategy, how creative and strategy work together and discuss in detail their work for Icelandic Tourism. 

Bonnie Wan has been working at Goodby since 1998.  

In 2022, she was named Advertising Age/Creativity Chief Strategy Officer of the Year.

She started her career at Weiss, Whitten, and Stagliano in NY before becoming Adam Morgan's first hire at TBWA Chiat Day LA followed by stints at FCB and Hal Riney before joining GSP to work with Jon Steel. 

In the conversation, we talk about the shifts and changes in the strategy discipline with leaders moving from gurus to guides.  Higher stakes for clients and a wider remit in terms of media expansion. 

She describes her approach to strategy is to work and think as a "team"- "it's not about being the smartest person in the room", but "making the whole room smart" and that requires a spirit of generosity.  

The department culture is key for Bonnie- it's all about her bench and her team and making alchemy happen between the members of the team.  

When it comes to philosophy around the process of strategy, she highlights the need for always-on, constant monitoring of culture and of consumers and the practice of always asking the smartest questions to ensure you arrive at a really interesting place. 

Bonnie talks about her development of "Brand Camp" which is a 6-week strategy sprint that gets clients to an "organizing idea" and involves workshops with GSP strategists and the client C-Suites.  This has served to bring new non-advertising clients to the agency and codified in detail the strategic process. 

For emerging talent- she's created a 15-week training camp that teaches the fundamentals of Strategy.

We also talk about her upcoming book- "The Life Brief" - where she applies the strategic thinking and framing used for brands to life. Which is something she applied successfully in her life, Bonnie has just signed a book deal with Simon and Schuster 





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A few weeks back I was fortunate to chat with Neel Williams - Group Creative Director at the Martin Agency. 

Neel runs all things creative on the massive GEICO account. 

I couldn't beat the brilliant intro Neel has on his website, so I decided it was simplest to just cut and paste it.

"I am a copywriter by trade, Group Creative Director by title and gumbo-lover by birth. I graduated from Yale University, majoring in Art History. After attending The Creative Circus and working in Atlanta & New York, my wife and I moved to Richmond, Virginia.

Since then I’ve made a lot of fun stuff at The Martin Agency, helped write two nationally published books, invented a high-five machine, grown two mediocre moustaches, fathered two outstanding children, founded a modern fairytale podcast, and sang lyrics about Irritable Bowel Syndrome with Boyz II Men."

In the episode- we discuss Neel's early motivations to be a strategist, how he shifted into the creative domain, the importance of inspiration, improvisation with boundaries, the importance and role of strategy on the GEICO account, and the challenge of finding new ideas when you've already done most of the ones that are available. 

Vasanth is a polymath- he's a creative director, but he's also an author, he has an engineering background is a graduate of computer engineering and started his career as a digital consultant. 

Somehow he saw the light, transitioned to copywriting, and has held numerous jobs with JWT, Wunderman, Edelman, and Sapient-Razorfish.  Vasanth also spent time in the halls of one of the most respected creative departments on the planet- BBDO NY. He worked on the likes of  P&G (Gillette), J&J (Splenda, Lactaid), GE, Mars, and Emirates Airlines.

For the past four years, he's been running his shop, The Sunny Side, which aims to disrupt large agencies and make the combination of quality, speed, and price work. 

It seems to be paying dividends as the agency has picked up business from Sephora, Castrol, Novartis, and P&G.  

In our conversation, we talk about his background, career, his work at BBDO, the similarities and differences between Asian markets, and bringing speed and skill to some of the biggest clients in the world. 

The Inspiring Futures podcast has been on hiatus for the past few months. In that period, a few recordings made last year never made it out into the public airwaves, which is an absolute disgrace. One such recording was an interview I did with Sophie Ozouz, the co-founder of Kin. 

Kin is a purpose-focused agency with offices in NY and Los Angeles. Sophie founded the agency with a former colleague Kwame Taylor Hayford. 

In the interview, I discuss Sophie's background as a strategist,  her experiences working at Sid Lee, their motivations for starting her own shop, their work at Kin, and some general discussion on brands and purpose. 

Kin was named Ad Age's Purpose Agency of the Year in 2022

Craig Mawdsley and Bridget Angear are Craig and Bridget - brand strategy consultants based in London. They started a couple of years after spending time as joint Planning heads at AMV BBDO, where they worked on a portfolio of impressive brands and picked up a trophy case full of awards. They were named top strategists by Campaign Magazine six years out of eight. This podcast is a follow-up to one I did when they had just started their business. Two years on, we discuss how their business has evolved and developed, why strategy is still fundamental to brand and business, how they work, the importance of words, and much more. It's an essential listen for those thinking of starting their strategy practice and for those who need reminding how essential strategy is to business and brand. 

Katy is a UX and Product Designer based in Boulder, Colorado where she runs her company Two's Complement.  Katy double-majored in  Industrial/Interaction Design and Computer Technology at Syracuse. Her first job out of school was with NASA where she worked on a wide range of projects including the International Space Apps Challenge and Random Hacks of Kindness. She went on to form a 3-D printing company, funded by several high-profile Kickstarter campaigns. 

In our conversation, we discuss many different topics, from the power of openness, based on her experiences with NASA and her printing company- how these open systems create possibilities that would not have been possible if the software is owned and its use restricted and limited.  

We talk about how Design Fiction is a powerful tool to help us imagine and design for a potential future. The new level of importance for thinking and a consciousness about the design and engineering choices that are made - with the arrival of AI, but also the environment as a new and vital consideration for digital designers.

We discuss, her Five-Step Process for design thinking, that includes workshopping based on likely potential futures to find new solutions. 

Throughout the conversation, we talk about the process of innovation, how big companies need to embrace the small and how the US has had a history of waves of change and is probably due for another Moon Shot-like wave to help solve the urgent environmental crisis.  

Lawrence is one of the iconic Bay Area thinkers and investors and helped to create- Oxygen Network, Wired Magazine, and Design Within Reach. He was President of Colossal Pictures which included oversight of Pixar. 

In 1988, he  co-founded Global Business Network (GBN), a strategic consulting firm (now part of Deloitte), in 1987 and served as President through 1998. Lawrence and GBN have been central to the development and spread of the Scenario Planning technique, an approach to addressing very large decisions and very long time horizons.

In the podcast, we spend the bulk of the time talking about Scenario Planning- how it came into being and even how to do it (so grab paper and a pen!). We talk about some likely futures or the forces on the future and why companies are thinking less about it than they should.   

Way too many months back, I had the chance to speak to Evie and Tyler at the Escape Pod in Chicago. It was an excellent opportunity to talk to members of a strategy team at a small agency. Tyler runs the department and Evie is a brand strategist on the team. Since Evie came into the industry from academia, we had an interesting discussion about what she brought to the team from her learnings on personal branding and entertainment. As a student, her dissertation was 350 pages on "Real Housewives." Tyler's experience includes Wieden, 72, and R/GA, and he has been at the shop for four years and was brought in as part of a team to create version 2.0 of the agency. We discussed the importance of building a strategy team and an overall agency culture where everyone can contribute and feels comfortable doing so. We also talked about golf grips. 

Kyle is the Strategy Director of BBH Singapore, where he works on a roster of great brands, including; Heineken, Nike, and Riot Games. 

The podcast discusses his background, including his time at BBDO in Germany and his award-winning work for the WWF (World Wildlife Fund). 

We also talk about the importance of how work gets developed that's culturally resonant and is likely to capture attention and go into some detail on the sneaker idea BBH created for Heineken. 

In many ways, Kyle represents a breed of strategists at creative agencies where their understanding of culture and, importantly, how word gets out in culture plays an integral role in helping to develop great work.

Ivan heads up Redscout and is the CEO of the consulting company. Founded over 20 years ago, Redscout focuses on "making change real," using strategists and designers to make this happen. Ivan has a strategy background and has been with Redscout since 2015. His client experience includes- Best Buy, Google, PepsiCo, and ADP.  Our conversation was wide-ranging, covering his career progression, the state of marketing and brands today, brand and performance marketing. talent, skills, and what it takes to succeed at Red Scout. 

In the latest Inspiring Futures podcast, I spoke with Dan Gardner, the co-founder of Code and Theory.

A 22-year-old- digital-first agency that states its philosophy as   "Our intent is to be unclassifiable in a cluttered agency landscape.

We discussed the origins and evolutions of Code and Theory, how to think about technology correctly, the importance of discourse, what keeps him inspired, the power of the internet giants, why all websites look the same these days, and many other things. 

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with Sophie Ayles. Sophie is one of Australia's most experienced strategists. 

She started her career in the Disruption group at TBWA Paris and has spent time at JWT, BBDO, co: collective, and M&C Saatchi (where she had several different roles, including Regional Chief Strategy Officer -APAC).

In the episode, we discussed Sophie's journey and experience along that journey- what makes for a good strategist, how strategists can make an impact, and what specific aspects of strategy she most enjoys. 

Most of our conversation is focused on her recent work at M&C Saatchi/Greenhouse, a unique client: agency transformation unit and team established to help transform one of Australia's biggest retailers, Woolworths.

Woolworths operates over 2,000 stores in Australia and has a 36% share of the Australian grocery market. 

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with George Prest.

George started his career in the creative department of BBH and moved on to creative director roles at Lowe. 

He was early to understand the power of digital transformation and was Global Executive Creative Director at R/GA and, most recently, a partner at the Brandtech Group.

In the podcast, we discuss his career trajectory, embrace of digital, and fondness for strategy and creative problem-solving. 

His most recent experience as a consultant has included thinking about the issues around brand purpose, which we discuss in the episode, and how it became a springboard to his involvement in local politics in the UK.

The latest episode of the Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Katie Dreke. 

Katie has spent time with the likes of 180, Wieden Kennedy, Droga5, and Nike (7 years), and three years ago, she embarked on her journey as a consultant, which was when we last spoke.  

We talked about her biggest learnings over the three years- such as unpacking and understanding her skills and capabilities and what she can offer her clients. 

Her fascination and interest in "futures" work and how it's become more relevant these days. Understanding that the future will be complex, we must look to the positives, technological advances, and the opportunities it presents.  

How can brands navigate their way to this new future?

How can they be the authors of their narratives?

It also took us into the world of "Unknown- Unknowns" as the place to think about and where you can explore the most exciting questions and opportunities. 

And how a strategist has the power to look and poke through the system/ecosystem of pieces to find the "lightbulb that needs to be changed to make the world brighter."

We also touched upon awards shows and how agencies should think beyond them to offer their core capabilities to solve problems meaningfully, and perhaps it means competitive agencies working together. 

There was also some discussion around the analogy of the contemporary brand as "the body"..........

....some parts need to move past, some parts need to move slowly, some parts need fixing, and some weak empathy muscles, etc...

All in all, it was an inspiring and fascinating conversation with lots of food for thought. 

Michael Fanuele started his career in the political world in DC and shocked at what he saw and heard, moved to the advertising industry and Madison Avenue. Michael rose through the ranks as an Account Planner working for a range of different shops including- Mad Dogs and Englishmen, JWT, Havas and Fallon. 

A few years ago, he took on a major client role as the Chief Creative Officer of General Mills which was on a transformative mission to be a new kind of food company. 

He has spent the past 18 months working on a book on what it takes to be Inspirational. The book -Stop Making Sense is published by Simon and Schuster today - July 9th, 2019. 

The podcast episode is a discussion I had with Michael a few weeks ago about the book- its contents, the process and the genesis of the whole project.  

Joe Carter spent time working in independent ad agencies in the UK, landed a sales job at Contagious, became enamored with Colenso BBDO,  arranged to have lunch with the agency MD, brought a one-way ticket to Auckland,  got a job in new biz at Colenso and then went on to be a co-founder of a company that makes cast pans- The Ironclad Pan Company.

In the podcast, I talk to Joe about his journey, what he's learned, and his plans for the future.

It's a required listen for anyone working in advertising who wants to take a shot at building a brand and business from scratch. 

A few weeks back, I got to talk to Neal Mann.

Neal has had a fascinating career. Working in the literal frontlines of journalism, he got to experience the pressures and realities of getting stories out to the world before your competitors. He was an early advocate and power user of digital platforms like Twitter and understood the transformations happening to news and journalism. He spent time helping News Corp and Dow Jones with their digital transformations and at Anomaly, where he was Director of Content and Global Head of Transformation. 

Neal has recently relocated from the US to Portugal, where he now works as the co-founder of NOAN, a start-up that uses AI to empower millions of small business owners to compete with the big guys. 

Heidi has been a copywriter, a planner and a business owner. She has done her time in places like FCB and BBH. 

She has worked as a planner in London and New York and most recently was with the Zuckerberg Chan Foundation in the Bay Area.  

Prior to her trip to The Bay, she established Wolf & Wilhelmine - a brand strategy firm with a unique perspective on business culture and strategy.

In this conversation we talk about her career trajectory, the impact of working with Obama and where she sees her future headed. 

This interview was conducted before she launched her new venture- So We Hunt - which is designed to help people lead braver lives. 

Back in November, I had a fascinating conversation with Laura Hutlfess, the co-founder of FlyteVu. 

FlyteVu is an entertainment marketing agency based in Nashville. 

Laura has a talent management background and worked for CAA before branching out independently. 

In our conversation, we talked about her background, the type of work the agency does, the importance of agility and nimbleness, her perspective on talent, working with start-ups, and what it means to lead as a founder. 

FlyteVu's clients include- Amazon, Jack Daniels, Bumble, and Victoria's Secret. 

Last December, I recorded a podcast with Keely Adler, who heads up Futures at Dentsu Creative. 

This was before the agency's huge T-Mobile win, in which Keely played a huge part. In this conversation, we talked about how she sees the discipline of "Futures" (what it is and what it isn't) and its role in strategy and for clients. Keely is also on the core team of the RADAR group, which is a fascinating group of futurists and those interested in the future. It's a DAO, which makes it somewhat unique as an organization, and its purpose is to promote "futures" thinking and to create reports on the topic. 

The most recent RADAR report is "Our Centaur Future" which RADAR describe as..... "At the convergence of man and machine lies Our Centaur Future. But what shape should that convergence take? Yes, this is about AI... but we’re going well beyond that. In the now, the near, and the next, it’s clear that we’ll be living (working, playing, learning, and creating) with more human-like technology than we’ve ever dealt with before. What does this mean for our relationship with technology? For our relationship with our humanity? For how we think about the physical, the digital, and the spaces in between?"

Peter Spear started his career at Tattoo in San Francisco, where he fell in love with qualitative research and has been a practitioner ever since. We discussed the importance of talking to people to learn the hows and whys that data can't explain. How, in recent times, talking to strangers has become a challenge, and how to overcome those challenges.  

In short, this episode celebrates the art of qualitative research and advocates for it in a world that is seemingly becoming more data and machine-obsessed with less time and interest in understanding people and their thoughts, values, ideas, and motivations. 

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Amy Daroukakis, a cultural strategist. Our conversation stretched far and wide from the creative emergence of crisis to the importance of curiosity as a lifestyle to get you out of your comfort zone. The idea is that Cultural Strategy is a more significant thing than understanding Youth Culture. The fact is the future is now and isn't passive, but it's about trying to answer the big question, "Where are we and where is the headed?" which is a question most people would love to know the answer to, even if they have no idea what cultural strategy is.  The importance of being human in a world of increasing AI, when all people want to do is to replace their juniors by loading 200 trend reports into an AI and pressing a button. But with no one with any judgment or experience holding the wheel- how do you know the value of the output?  In short- how to live and be a cultural strategist. 

Jae Goodman is unique. He worked on Madison Avenue. He has a deep understanding of brands. He knows Hollywood, and he understands the power of culture and celebrity.  Jae has experienced these worlds throughout his career, which spanned the likes of Wieden and Kennedy, CAA, and the creation of his agency- Observatory, and now his consulting company, Superconnector Studios.

In our conversation, we discussed the similarities between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the importance of relationships and community in Hollywood, the changing landscape for brands and communication, and what creatives and strategists need to focus their efforts on today. 

We also briefly touch on proprietary tools that allow his clients to see the intersection of brands, culture, and celebrity. 

Last month, I sat down for a conversation with Ian Murray- the co-founder of Burst Your Bubble. Ian has no shortage of contrarian views on everything from media and the current vogues in marketing to what strategists need to be doing in their work.

To give you a flavor of the conversation- here are some soundbites.

On Media

 "TV still produces the strongest signals in terms of what we call fitness, which is things like signaling a brand's quality, reliability, financial strength, and success."

"Young people have the same response pattern on signaling as older generations. So they're watching less TV, but it has no lesser cultural impact for them."

Findings from research conducted for Essence   

The Problem with Niches

 "How do you build culture through these incredibly fragmented, personalized niches? You've no idea if anybody else is seeing the same thing you."

People Want to Conform

"It's not driven necessarily by niches. People aren't always looking to stand out and define themselves as different from others. They are, but it's not necessarily the dominant thing they're doing. A lot about what the mainstream are doing is they want to belong, they want to be the same as other people.”

Strategists- Look More Closely at What's Around You

"You are stepping over the stuff, you know, that you're ignoring on your way to the agency in the morning, you know when you're waiting for your street food at lunchtime in the market. You don't have to go 500 miles to see it's right in front of your eyes."

The conversation is full of interesting perspectives on what the industry should be doing and how we can do our strategy jobs with a level of integrity. 

In this episode, I talk with Tass Tsitsopoulos, the Global Strategy Director of McDonald's at Wieden + Kennedy. We discuss his early life in London, studying politics at LSE, his accidental journey into advertising thanks to Jeremy Bullmore, his life as an Account Guy at BBH, and his leap into planning. We also get to talk about his journey in the US with BBDO and McDonald's at Wieden + Kennedy. 

This latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with the CMO of Depop. 

Depop is one of the most interesting brands in the fashion space since it's all about reselling and ultimately about transforming the way we shop for fashion. 

Peter has a fascinating background with experience on the agency side with both Anomaly(where he worked on the Converse brand) and VCCP and client side at Google in Creative Lab. 

In a wide-ranging conversation we talk about his early experience as a writer and how that's core to his work today, building a cohesive brand, the importance of culture for brands, how community needs to be balanced by the brand and some of the challenges of growing the brand beyond its core. 

This episode features an interview with Gerard Crichlow, who heads up Global Strategy on the Unilever brands- Axe/Lynx at IPG.

Gerard collaborates with several IPG entities worldwide to ensure the Axe/Lynx brands connect to their consumers and cultures. 

Some quotes from Gerard from the episode.

"And for me, if we're in the attention game, who does attention best, and that tends to be entertainment companies. And so I've always tried to look at how do we shift from interrupting people to providing entertaining content."

"There is no more monoculture, especially for younger people. So you have to be able to entertain in order to get people's attention."

"I kind of start from the premise that no one gives a shit about your brand. So I almost like take the brand hat off. Of course, we're doing it for brands. And so we. we then first look at what is the landscape, what are the signals, what are those conversations or topics. And then we then put our brand hat back on and then look at are any of these topics related to the brand's point of view.

 "If you fan like a fan, you almost take your brand hat off and you speak like the fan, you're interested in what they're talking about, you like the same songs, the same tracks, you know the backstories, all of those things."

"It's like a muscle. You post a lot. Some things will fly. Some things won't. But the things that do fly do really, really well. And from what we see is we keep a small team, meet every single day, post, get that muscle going. And then when things fly, and we think the engagement and the conversation is scaling. we begin to provide value. "

"It has so many more implications, not just social. It actually is trickling itself from the ground in the social conversations into bigger pieces of work, like the above the line work. So what are the sort of types of conversations that people are talking about What influencers or musicians do they relate to? Those are partnerships we then go after. What do they want because Axe as a fragrance brand? What do they want from fragrances? How do they react to each other?"

Warren Berger is an author and journalist who has spent the last 25 years writing about the worlds of design, advertising and innovation. Back in the day he got a feature story about Weiden and Kennedy into the NYT Magazine and he wrote the book "Advertising Today" that was published by Phaidon,. 

For the past 10 years, he's been focused on the world of questions and questioning- from which sprang the book "A More Beautiful Question"- which celebrated its tenth anniversary with a new updated edition.

Here are some quotes from my interview with Warren.

It was designer Bruce Mau who inspired him to think more deeply about questions.

“Bruce Mao had a thing about questioning where he said, one of the most important things a designer can do is be the person who's willing to ask stupid questions.”

"So I realized when you talk about how designers think, they often start with questions and that's kind of the, they're trying to figure out the right question to ask that will address a problem or a situation."

He also understood that it was questions that lay the foundations for the new disruptive startups.

"They're only ten years old or whatever and if you went back to the origin of them You could usually identify a question there was usually a question that Reed Hastings was trying to answer or that the three guys who started Airbnb."

Questions are everywhere

"I was there with the arts, of course it's there with science, you know, scientists are always working on questions.  So what I realized is it's, you know, it's everywhere. It's in basically any discipline that's trying to solve problems, is trying to do problem solving, is focused on questions because the question is how you articulate the problem."

In the updated edition of the book- he explores the idea of AI and questions

"Do we does it mean that this question become more important in the age of? AI, or does it mean that we really don't need to do any of this stuff anymore? Because AI is going to take care of all the thinking for us?"

"We have to get sharper with our questions to get more out of AI. But also, we have to use the questioning of a analytical questioning, critical thinking questioning, to question what comes back to us from AI."

https://amorebeautifulquestion.com/

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast is an interview with Eliza Yvette Esquivel.

Eliza has worked both on the agency and client side. She's had senior brand management roles at Mondelez and Microsoft and as a strategist and CSO at several different agencies, including Barbarian, Future Brand, DDB, JWT, Wieden and Kennedy Amsterdam, and TBWA.

In our conversation, we discuss what she's learned from her experiences on the agency and client sides and how she's applying that learning to her coaching, leadership, and consulting businesses, which are underpinned by protopian thinking.

Some quotes from Eliza from the interview.

Moving from Agency to Client

"The first thing when I went client side was I was surprised at how little they knew what they were doing. I had this perception when I was in the agency world that the clients were buttoned up and, you know, everything was very certain and, you know, they had it together, and we didn't understand."

Agency Understanding of Clients

"The other thing is just how little we know about our client's businesses on the agency side, how little we understand about how they make money and what the center of gravity of each organization is. And then, therefore, what role does marketing play as a consequence?

The Challenge for Marketers inside Corporations

"There's a fundamental lack of understanding, especially with marketing, of what marketing is and how it works. So if you're a good marketer and get into these organizations, you must sort of play along with some antiquated misconceptions while you''re trying to, you know, educate and persuade to a more sophisticated approach."

How to Make Brand Matter Inside the Corporation

"I did this while I was at Microsoft: I connected brand metrics to business metrics. And it was hugely impactful. All of a sudden, they paid attention to the brand, and I used my research budget to show the contribution that the brand made to the business when I restructured the way we collected the data about brand metrics. So I think that, you know, it's either having an evangelist or you yourself going in and creating the proof that has not existed up until that point. "

The Importance of Creativity

"if clients understood the value of constantly exercising that kind of creativity, and, and valuing advertising agencies' ability to sort of bring that to the table, their businesses would probably be thriving."

The Protopian Future

"Protopia is basically the understanding that we create the future incrementally by making it a little bit better and a little bit better in steps. But we're always pointing toward that better direction. And so that's really what protopianism is all about. It really has sort of like the pillars. It's got some pillars within it of sustainability, inclusivity, and these human-centric values. It's about a future where technology and ethics sort of walk hand in hand."

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with John Geletka

John is the owner and founder of Geletka + - a small agency located in the West Loop of Chicago

The agency started five years ago.

John's an artist by training but has done several different jobs in his career including corporate marketing, but he's also an entrepreneur at heart.

It was fascinating to talk to a small agency owner and get his thoughts on the market and the business today.

On Starting an Agency During COVID

"We had a, we had like a really good start. We looked at our engagements a little bit differently and it wasn't a big shift. A lot of people do it. So it's nothing innovative, but, during a time like COVID where there's rapid uncertainty, we would take up, let's call it a 50 to a hundred grand project and we turn it into a retainer and break it up over six and 12 months. So we were always, we're able to like run the discipline, help our clients out financially in uncertain times, and then run the business with a level of discipline."

What Clients Want

"What clients and complex industries don't want is something, you know some hotshot coming in and just telling them what to do and what's cool. They want somebody to sit down and learn the business. Empathize with them go all in and learn about their customers that they've known for 10, 20, or 30 years. And that takes like that takes time. They're also looking for that outside perspective I think a lot of folks are welcome to it as long as you sit down and understand them."

What He Wants from Talent

 "I mean, there's a sort of a roll your sleeves up graft aspect here that's required, there's a danger with a prima donna with the attitude of "that's kind of beyond me".

Why the Interest in Web 3?

"There's an awesome art culture in there, There is a gaming culture that's the next layer of the art. I call it a subculture because you have all these little mini-cultures. And they interact with each other a little bit."

Integrating AI into the Process

"We buy the big chunk of our organization seats on Mid-journey and GPT. And we give them access and range to use it as a tool.  AI, from my perspective, is a great accelerator. It is by no means a replacement for great creative. It is by no means this is the machine that we're going to produce AI-driven content or copy, but it can, it can help storyboard faster, it can help do research faster, it can help round out headlines, it can help they can help do things. But what it can't do, it's not a replacement for a writer. It's not a replacement for a designer."

Daniel Groh heads up brand at Satisfy Running.

In this interview, we discuss the transformed state of the running category and Satisfy's place within it.

How the brand leans into personal expression and appeals to those who want to express themselves beyond the traditional players and the traditional running silhouette.

How it's leading the charge in sustainability, recycling, and repair.

How runner insights matter to product development.

How the recent brand film shot in LA was made.

How the company thinks about distribution

Plans for loyalty

It's approach when it comes to athletes

And more....

Here's a key quote from the interview.

“I think the biggest difference is for people that look at performance, there are brands for that. I think for people who look at the pleasure of running in the purest form, we're a brand for them.  What's beautiful about where kind of running is today is that people are transforming it into what it means for them. There's a great crew out of Austin made up of restaurant workers. There's a crew in Paris that are all electronic musicians. It's nice because, you know, I think it's not cookie-cutter anymore. It feels like people are turning something that was once quite boring, into something a little bit more exciting and turning into themselves. I don't know why this happened, but there was always a dissociation between how you express yourself in daily life and how you express yourself in sports. I think that line is gone.”

Dave has worked as a planner at some of the best shops in the business-Leo, Crispin and W&K. In this episode, he takes us on his career journey which starts at his family paint and body shop in Wisconsin and ends up at his business venture Shepherd. 

It is a story of understanding how the agency and creative business is evolving and the new role data can play in the daily life of a planner. 

At Shepherd, Dave and his partners are helping clients to grow their business by finding new audiences, but also to better understand those audiences by zeroing-in on their passions.  

Maz  Karimian heads up strategy at ustwo an employee-owned product design company that brings emotional game-inspired thinking to product design—some key quotes from our conversation below. 

About ustwo

“Monument Valley is the game and the game series That was so successful that usTwo games was split off as a sort of a separate sister entity, still under the usTwoi umbrella. But yes, that's been something influential, I think, on, well, frankly, the type of talent that we attract. But also the mindset we bring, that more playful, more emotion-centric approach to product design that has served us well.”

What He Does

“A lot of what I focused on has been the opportunities at the intersection of product design and game design thinking, what we call play thinking. And that's emphasizing the capacity and the importance of product design to incorporate a focus not just on functional outcomes, but emotional outcomes and explicitly target the certain ways that we want users to feel sort of before or during and after engaging with an experience that we've created.”

On Tech Overload

“We talk about ourselves as social creatures, which we are, but the society to which you belong, the community to which you belong, was never the entire world, and all the information in it. And I think that in many ways, we're seeing just various symptoms of overload.”

AI Transformation and Promise

“I don't think day-to-day transformation happens until it's usefully embedded in products and services that we already use and or integrated into products that we end up adopting.”

"The promise of AI, like all good technology, is to free up humans, time and energy, both physical, and especially mental energy, but to free up humans to be more human. "

Working with Clients 

We have a workshop, which we call “the user as player workshop”, where we essentially reimagine your product as a game, and your user as a player of that game, which is handy for cracking open and dusting off that emotional lens, 

In the case of iRobot and the workshop, it’s the opportunity to ask questions like..

How do we want people to feel about this robot in their homes 30 days after purchase? 

How do we want them to feel about it?

Andy Nairn co-founded Lucky Generals- an ad agency with offices in London and New York.  Beyond running an agency, Andy has written a best-selling business book "Go Luck Yourself" and has just completed his first novel- "Trail of Blood" a murder mystery set 500 years ago on the border between England and Scotland. 

Some quotes from our chat. 

On Pitching 

"Some agencies are good at going through the grind of pitching and winning things that they don't feel passionate about. But I think for whatever reason, the three of us realized that we're not good at, you know, we tend to all three of us, put our feelings on our sleeves and show whether we're interested."

Category Conventions

"Originality is incredibly important, but also think about category conventions as well. Well, sometimes we throw away the convention. people think I'll convince the boring but I mean for instance when you come to cover I found that really interesting briefing a designer on your book cover. In our world, you might want to be unlike any other cover in the market. The book designer just went "No you're mad my friend yes, of course, it's got to be unique and different and interesting but you've also got to tell very quickly what sort of genre this is."

What Makes a Strong Planner/Strategist 

"If you hone your skills at being interested and listening to and being curious about human behavior and all its weird illogicalities and quirks, then you won't go far wrong. You won't be beaten by a robot you'll be able to use technology to help you develop those insights."

“When someone says their favorite book is advertising-related. I'd sort of be a bit disappointed. I want you to sort of tell me about, you know, your amazing fashion sideline or your photography or, you know, sport or other stuff. It's so true."

The Lack of Storytelling Tension in Advertising 

"I feel like a lot of advertising is cats sitting on mats there's nothing nothing is happening there's no tension there's no through old Jeopardy, nothing can ever go wrong."

The Threat of AI

"I'm sort of genuinely optimistic about all of those sort of existential threats and challenges as long as we hang on to, you know, our creativity and our sort of, you know, just our open-mindedness and our curiosity,”

Pitching a Novel

"I used to joke that it's kind of like with Go Luck Yourself, it was almost like saying it's like Harry Potter meets the Bible, which I didn't do, but you've got to pick two things that are unbelievably successful and collide them together."

Building Novels from Worlds

"I started thinking of it as a little brand and I wanted to create a world, not just a one-off story. I feel like this is kind of an interesting world, this world of outlaws and warlords and an odd part of the world that people don't know exists, you know, this borderlands and this time, I feel could be my sort of place, my world where other authors are not really sort of in that sort of space."

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Caroline Johnson- Co-Founder of The Business Model Company.

Caroline worked at Grey but then worked at KPMG as a consultant.

The Business Model Company advises agencies on how to evolve their business models to generate value for their clients and increase revenues and profitability for themselves.  She was called in to help with the transformation of IPG's Huge, a process that has been documented in Michael Farmer's book "Madison Avenue Makeover" https://www.amazon.com/Madison-Avenue-Makeover-transformation-redefinition/dp/1911687646

Here are a few of the highlights from my conversation with Caroline.

How Do You Define a Business Model?

"A business model is very simply three parts. If you think about three corners of a triangle, those three points are completely codependent. At the top, you've got how you create value for your customers in the market, for your clients, that is your positioning, your proposition, how you tell the story of your capability. But critically, it's also the neighborhood that you live in."

Why is "Neighborhood" an Important Concept?

 "We're not thinking about the neighborhood that we live in. And we're also not thinking about innovation and applying creativity to the operating model and the commercial model. So as a creative industry, we have creative sophistication and sometimes confidence. But we are really critically underdeveloped and have a lack of sophistication in our ability to adapt our operating systems and also to develop any form of commercial model for the whole industry."

The Advantages of Moving and Upgrading Your Neighborhood

"If you're building your house and investing in your house in the service industry in that neighborhood, which has been commoditized, then you're likely to suffer from bad landlords, declining property prices, noisy neighbors. And from a corporate advisory point of view, the multiple that's applied to those types of commoditized service businesses is sort of between six and nine. But if you repackage those businesses into a program business, a product business, and a more consultative offering or a platform business, then the multiples that are used to value the EBITDA of those businesses start at 12 and go up to 24. So you can double, if not triple."

The Future of the Agency Network

"The classic traditional network agency model of being a one-stop shop. Not only a one-stop shop for all services and capabilities, but also for every market and locality in the world has been a very successful model. But I think it's gone now. The idea that classic advertising and traditional communications are going to take the lion's share of a marketing director's yearly budget is just not going to happen. Its significance and its ROI are rapidly declining. There are much smarter ways of being able to sustain and promote brands and scale brands. So I think the bricks and mortar traditional agency network that you refer to is over."


 

The latest Inspiring Futures episode features an interview with Beth Bentley the co-founder of consultancy Tomorrowism. 

Beth's experience includes- 

Deputy Head of Strategy- Adam & Eve, London

Executive Head of Strategy- at Wieden&Kennedy- London

SVP Strategy Virtue at Vice. 

She is also the author of a best-selling book, was the Chief Strategy Officer of Portas retail consultancy, and a Communication Strategy Advisor to the Secretary of State in Whitehall. 

In the pod, we talk about how her experience as a journalist gave her the right tools to think about brand strategy, the issues that brands face today, why culture matters to brands, why strong brands are more important than ever, the transformation of the ad biz, and more. 

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with Dr. Grace Kite, the founder of Magic Numbers and Magic Works, an analytics-focused consultancy that helps companies and brands understand how they grow.

In our conversation, we discussed the challenges and importance of being strategic when understanding the factors behind growth, the difficulty of brand-building for performance-focused brands, the compounding impact of "brand patience," and more.

We also talked about the importance of training, and Magic Numbers offers a couple of courses: "Scaling Up," which is all about helping marketers balance their performance and brand marketing efforts, and "Data Works," which focuses on using data compellingly and persuasively.

Both courses can be found here. 

https://magicworks.training/

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Jonathan Wise one of the co-founders of the non-profit Purpose Disruptors.

Jonathan was once a strategist at JWT, but quit his job to study for an MBA in Sustainability.

In the episode, we discuss his journey and transformation, what Purpose Disruptors is, and how it is trying to impact and create change in. behaviors, mindset, and business models in the UK ad industry. 

https://www.purposedisruptors.org/

Bree has been an actress, teacher, innovation consultant, a researcher at E-Harmony, the CEO of NOBL and is now a principal at SYP. She has spent most of her working life involved in change- as a leader in the innovation wing of a school where she first came across people's resistance to change, to her studies at North Western in organizational culture and change, to her recent work at NOBL and SYP. 

I had the benefit of using SYPs podcast studio, so the production is top-notch. for a conversation where we talk about Bree's journey into the world of change and discuss how organizations think about and approach change. 

When Hyphenated was awarded Silver, West Coast in Ad Age's Small Agency of the Year Awards the publication wrote the following introduction.

"When William Esparza and Kelli Robertson left their roles at R/GA in 2019 to establish their own creative agency, they chose the name Hyphenated to reflect the agency’s aim of bridging the gap between brands and the multicultural audiences whose spending power continues to climb in today’s “fiercely hyphenated world.” 

I first talked to Will and Kelli four years ago when they were just a baby and now they are growing up, evolving and responding to the dynamic changes in the marketplace. 

We got to talk about the changes, the challenges, their beliefs, what makes them tick, and what makes them different. 

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with Tom Suharto, Global Strategy Lead at Forsman & Bodenfors. 

Tom started in market research (quant) worked with Hall and Partners and helped to establish their office in Shanghai and then on to Wieden in Shanghai to work on Nike, Disneyland, and then to the Portland office to work on Nike and Samsung.

He's been at Forsman & Bodenfors for four years. 

In our conversation, we talked about his learning journey; his experience working in China, the culture and DNA of Forsman, and how he's developed the strategy practice at the agency. 

The latest episode of the Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Lori Bartle of Cultivagency. 

Lori has over two decades of experience in Account Management although she much prefers to call it Account Leadership.

In our conversation, we discuss some of the challenges the discipline faces and the critical importance of a role that brings a deep understanding and knowledge of a client's business to the table. 

As you will hear, Lori is an extremely passionate advocate of the discipline. 

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast is a discussion with Joe Nash and Patrick Kizny about the current and future state of creative services and creative studios. Joe was formerly the Director of Business Strategy at Buck and the co-founder of Slate. Patrick runs Futurecrafting which provides strategic advisory services to brands and companies and has an extensive background as a creative director, art director, and technical/software specialist. In our chat, we talk about the evolution/revolution that is taking place and how companies need to think about and prepare for the future. 

The latest Inspiring Futures episode features an interview with Allen Adamson of Metaforce. 

Allen is a seasoned executive with experience client side at Unilever and in the agency world with the likes of Landor, Y&R, and Ogilvy. 

He has taken his extensive experience in both worlds to build his own consulting company that's focused on helping clients solve their problems but does it in a very different way to the classic ad agency model. 

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with Julianna Katrancha- Group Strategy Director at Johannes Leonardo. This is one of my favorite interviews because Julianna dives into the learnings from her journey from a media planner to a senior strategist. She talks about her periods and moments of doubt, and how committed and focused she is on carrying the practices and principles that deliver strategies with impact. We talk about what those are. How you cope with the challenges agencies face today and some thoughts on what it means to manage teams. 

My latest Inspiring Futures podcast episode features an interview with Dr. Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel.

Anastasia is a cultural theorist, writer, social critic, and strategist specializing in inclusivity within marketing, media, and tech.

She earned her doctorate in cultural studies from Duke University and is now using her expertise to help brands ignite cultural innovation and leverage the power of media for good. Dr. Gabriel is the author of Cultural Intelligence for Marketers, published by Kogan Page in March 2024.

She has consulted for the world’s largest brands at research and creative agencies like Wieden+Kennedy, Dentsu Creative, McCann New York, Kantar, and Canvas8 and been featured by the American Marketing Association, the Association of National Advertisers, the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, Advertising Week, Campaign US, Teen Vogue, and others,

In our conversation, we talked about her early years and upbringing in Latvia and her school experience in Hong Kong. 

We talked about what culture means to her, how she thinks about it, and its importance. 

YAMA Group was founded in 2009 and has steadily built a reputation as one of the leading small, independent pharma shops in the world. 

It has worked on brands including Botox, Humira, and Keytruda and works with Takeda, AbbVie, and Pfizer. 

It's a highly creative agency that works across all aspects of pharma marketing including efforts to reach specialists and has developed its unique products for these interactions involving the creation of "digital patients.

In my conversation with Martin and Michelle- we discuss the world of pharma marketing, look at what matters in the space, and how the agency differentiates itself and has created its own unique culture. 

This is an agency that grew its revenue an astonishing 67% in 2023. 

Mark is the co-founder of Squint Consulting. 

Before Squint, Mark was an experienced Head of Strategy working with clients like Nike, Netflix, Samsung, and Diageo. His career spanned New York, London, and Amsterdam and he spent his formative years at R/GA, the world’s leading digital innovation firm.

In our conversation, we talked about his experience at R/GA, why he wants to be a "brand," not just a "freelancer," working with companies that, after 5-10 years, are finding they've reached the "plateau" with performance marketing and now need to think more deeply about their brand, his work with Olipop and how happiness is an important new space for brands today. 

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an excerpt from a webinar I hosted with Brent Vartan of Bullish. Brent began his career as a strategist at shops that included- BBDO and Deutsch. 

Bullish was founded in 2016 with the promise of bringing ad agency expertise, including strategy, to the start-up world. 

The company describes its approach as "blending capital, consulting, and creation to design the most remarkable businesses in the world."

In our conversation, I spoke with Brent about the pivotal role that strategy and strategists play in this space. 

It's a world where strategists work upstream, partnering with CEOs and founders to shape their brands in ways that are aligned with their vision and expedient to their needs and culture. 

We dive into what this entails and what it takes to get it right.

The latest Inspiring Futures episode is all about "Futures".

My guest is Donna Dupont, Chief Strategist, Foresight and Design at Purple Compass.

As the Founder and Chief Strategist in Foresight & Design for Purple Compass, Donna Dupont brings skills and insights developed over 20 years working with leaders in healthcare, emergency management, government public policy, strategic planning and program design. She has facilitated a range of foresight and design activities for clients in healthcare, emergency management and military.

In the conversation, we talk about the world of "Futures" what it is, what it isn't, the skills required, the approaches, and some of the challenges involved. 

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Ali Burton. 

Ali is Head of Incubator at Gate One in London, which is a Havas-owned start-up incubator. 

He's also in the process of growing his own start-up Catch. 

https://catchcameras.co.uk/

The idea of Catch is to lean into the movement for people to appreciate the analog, enjoy waiting, learn new skills, and build IRL communities. 

In our conversation, we talked about what he's learned from working with start-up founders, how he's thinking about and growing his business, and what it was that drove him to develop the company.

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Michael Miller and Chris Nobile- two of the three founders of consulting group Consiglieri.

Before the founding of the consultancy, Michael and Chris worked together and helped build T-Mobile's in-house capabilities. 

In our conversation, we talk about what they learned from the T-Mobile experience and how it informed the development of their consultancy. 

We discussed the pieces that matter, like the power of asking why certain things are happening, building operational competence, and doing things that help turn legacy marketing organizations into modern ones. 

In a complex and complicated marketing world, Consiglieri exists to help CMOs build and operationalize their marketing function, allowing the CMO to manage the day-to-day. 

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Pip Bingemann- the co-founder of Springboards.ai

As strategy departments grapple with how to use AI, this podcast seems timely.

Pip is an agency strategist who embraced AI from the early days, learned basic code, and built a model that attracted the attention of several agencies. 

Fast-forward two and a half years, and Springboards.ai has funding, sales,  and customer service teams in multiple countries, as well as a bench of tech talent that includes a 17-year-old math genius. 

Pip is doing something different with AI- recognizing that strategists need partners to help them bring their ideas to life, Springboards.ai is designed to be fun and creative. Its focus is on delivering variance vs. the typical AI model, where output is about conforming to an average.

Chris Riley is a planner who had senior roles at two of the most culturally significant brands of the past 50 years; Wieden and Kennedy and Apple. 

In the podcast, Chris talks about his experiences inside of these two fascinating companies and his thoughts on why at his company Studio Riley, he believes ethics are the most potent and vital thing corporations need to consider right now. 

Also, he shares ideas on how the other key piece in the puzzle is understanding the new majority- consumers in what we mistakenly call the developing world and understanding them taking a planning approach, which is about learning from, not talking to. 

Gary is a visual artist and an improv performer. For the past 21 years, he has been the leader and co-founder of a company called On Your Feet. As he explains in the podcast, this company helps companies find their humanity by using the dramatic arts as a tool for catharsis. In a world where wooly and fluffy language dominates the corporate world, he helps executives find their truth and the difference in the stories that lie beyond the language. In the podcast, we talk about the importance of parsing language, collaboration, and how the arts can help commerce. 

Global nomads since 2013, Faris and Rosie Yakob are a creative and strategic duo- who have served their time as creatives and strategic thinkers with the likes of MDC, McCann, and 360i. 

In a conversation that covers a lot of ground, we talk about a shrinking world- one that appears ever more similar, but how you need to dig deeper to unlock local differences, the rise of creativity as a response to the growth hacking plateau, tourism and the idea that the world is getting full because everyone wants to go to the same places, trashvertising, banks making money but making brands less interesting, brand safety, the future of the agency and buying avocados. 

Alexander Rea and Christian Colasuonno are the partners of Aux- a company that brings together Alex's tech process and Christian's production savvy. For the past decade or so, ad agencies have grappled to find a place for technology in their output understanding its power and relevance, but unsure how to get it made and done. Aux are the guys who do that stuff- quite simply- they get the complex stuff done. They are not tinkerers, theorists, academics, but doers who love nothing better than making a creative team's brilliant idea come to life.  Alex was an integral part of the Framestore team that helped make McCann's schoolbus for Lockhead/Martin become a believable mars mission. The rest of the story is history with this idea cleaning up in various awards shows across the globe. In our conversation, we talk about their backgrounds, the proposition of Aux as a business, how they like to work, their passion for the creative process and what new technology excites them. 

Aux can be found at https://www.aux.works/ 

Thas worked in strategy roles at Chiat, BBH, and Deutsch. She joined Omelet 4 years ago as the CSO and six months ago was promoted to CEO- a rare thing for a Strategist since CEOs usually come from the ranks of client service. Omelet is a 15-year-old- LA-based independent agency with an impressive client roster that includes- Google. in a wide-ranging conversation, we talk about her transition from strategist to CEO, about the importance of culture and creating an environment where employees can thrive and how important it is for the leadership to have an honest dialog about agency direction and strategy.  

Amelia is one of England's sharpest strategic minds. Inspired to join the ad business by a personal response from a letter she wrote to Sir Martin Sorrell.

She joined the WPP fellowship program and worked directly with Jon Steel and from there built an amazing resume of experience including stints at Naked, TBWA, and VCCP where she was part of the team that won the ad account for the 2012 London Olympics. 

Today, she is the co-founder of the Fawnbrake collective- a network of strategic thinkers that are deployed on teams to work on client projects. In this episode, we cover her career trajectory and the evolution of strategy from a discipline that mainly existed inside of agencies to one that is now thriving outside of its traditional confines. 

This is the world of Fawnbrake,  a world where everything and everyone is a brand and they all need strategic thinking even if they do no advertising. 

Lindsey has spent the last 7 years on the frontlines of a changing marketing landscape. Through her work with Sunday Dinner, she has been helping clients navigate the complexities of modern marketing. Helping them with goal setting, measurement, organization and the orchestration and management of their agency and creative partners snd internal audiences. This work gives Lindsey unique visibility into this landscape and in the episode, she explains how she works, what she recommends to clients and what she feels are the new ways to work in this changing environment. 

Orlando Wood is the Chief Innovation Officer of System 1. System 1 is a research company that has built its reputation in advertising testing and has a proven methodology that links emotional response to marketplace impact. Orlando is also the author of Lemon- published by the IPA, the book examines the world from left and right brain perspective and takes that learning into an evaluation of television advertising which Orlando proves and demonstrates has become a lot more left-brained in recent years. Building on the work of Peter Field and Les Binet, Orlando argues that this is leading to less memorable and less impactful advertising. In the episode, we explore the genesis of the idea, the research work that went into the book and Orlando's thoughts on why we have ended up with more left brain work and some thoughts on where all this might be heading. Sadly, Orlando's talk with the ARF at SXSW was canceled, so I am hoping those who planned to attend can listen to this and get and a very good idea of the great work that Orlando has done. 

The book Lemon can be found here.

https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/lemon

Lucy Von Sturmer is a young entrepreneur based in Amsterdam. She runs, together with a partner,  Humblebrag; a media communications consultancy focused on corporate and individual leadership around purpose and sustainable change. 

Lucy has found her way to Amsterdam and this world via broadcast journalism, working as the head of digital communication for an NGO and was head of communication at MediaMonks in Amsterdam. 

Our conversation covers her career trajectory, how she and her company and clients are coping with the current situation, the work she has done setting up Creatives for Climate and how despite the terribleness of the Coronavirus, the silver lining could be how it serves as a catalyst to a new more sustainable economy.

Dave has been an expert in Asian consumer culture for the past 20 years. 

He was responsible for spearheading the development of McCann-Erickson's regional planning network for McCann and its processes and protocols. 

For the past five-plus years, he has been consulting and developing his own own businesses- one focused on AI for market research and the other is a small consulting company based in Bangladesh. 

In the conversation, we were focused on COVID-19 and discussed what we are currently seeing across the world overall, but Dave highlighted some of the specific nuances that are important to understand for the Asian market.

This podcast was recorded earlier in the week before Thailand went into broad lockdown. 

Doug is the Senior Editor at Adweek where he covers the world of ad agencies. He has a background in the world of radio as a producer and DJ and currently is offering VO talent for free to anyone who could use it for a good cause. Our conversation covers his dream of a copywriting job at Wieden and Kennedy and his career in radio and onwards to the state of creativity, advertising, and communication, against the backdrop of Covid-19.

Zoe Scaman is the founder of her own strategic consulting company Bodacious and Global Head of Strategy at Ridley Scott Creative Group. 

Zoe's experience includes Naked, Universal-McCann, Isobar, and Droga5.

In this episode, we discuss the current situation from a global and London perspective, focusing on how people and brands are responding and could be responding. 

We also discuss how Zoe approaches her consulting assignments and her work with Ridley Scott Creative Group 

Matt is the founder of Green Stone- a virtual or rather an officeless agency that helps design experiences for brands. Matt started his career at R/GA where he was part of the Nike team. He then spent 8 years at Crispin Porter Bogusky as EVP/Executive Experience Director where he led a team of 25 experience designers.

For the past six years, Matt has been running Green Stone which obsesses about the customer journey and builds experiences around those journeys which create greater brand love and loyalty. 

In our conversation, we talk about his 6 years of learning from building an agency that word and operates remotely. We talk about how you make up the physical distance and build things like culture. We also talk about companies and the digital experience and how there is still work to be done to get to true digital transformation and we also get to compare and contrast the work of experience design vs. advertising. 

Terry Young is the founder of Sparks and Honey an Omnicom owned company that specializes in helping clients understand potential futures. In this episode, I talk to Terry about his background and the development of Sparks and Honey as a company from the process to people. We talk about how the company combines people and machines to understand key trends and underlying themes. We also talk about what his clients are asking right now and what Sparks and Honey is telling them. 

Shaun is the global chief creative officer of Iris Worldwide. He has been at the agency since 2008 and took on his latest role in 2016. Shaun has worked with a number of interesting brands over the years including the likes of  Adidas, Guinness, Samsung, Domino's, Pizza Hut, Mini and Jeep.

In the episode, we cover his unique background which includes writing for theater and how his non-conventional career trajectory has served him well over the years. 

The bulk of the conversation centers on Shaun's expansive view of creativity. He believes that creativity needs to be in service of solving a client's business problems and that solutions shouldn't be confined or limited by media choices.   

  

13 years ago, Adrian Ho left his strategy job at Fallon to create a new offering for clients in the form of Zeus Jones. In this episode, I talk to Adrian about the evolution of the Zeus Jones business and what he has learned along the way. We also take a moment to discuss the Covid-19 situation, which given this was recorded a few weeks back, might be a little dated.

In March, creatives at R/GA Chloe Saintilan, Zach Roif, and Matt Woodward sold in an initiative to their agency leadership which was designed to help small businesses impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. The 

The initiative called Merch Aid, which went live in early April, helps local businesses by selling specifically designed merchandise created by designers. The initiative started in New York but is expected to roll out to other cities in the coming months.

In the podcast, I talk to the team about the genesis of the idea, how it works, the challenges of making it happen, and what they have learned along the way. 

Niclas is one of the most experienced strategic planners in Sweden. He began his career at Acne and had stints at the likes of TBWA, Naked and Grey, and in consulting. He now finds himself back at Acne- which is now owned by Deloitte UK. 

In this episode, we talk about his career, the history, the evolution of Sweden's ad agency landscape, and talk a little about COVID-19.

What emerges from the conversation is a perspective on an agency landscape driven by creative entrepreneurs, where the integration of multiple disciplines is expected and demanded by clients and the working style is very open, collaborative, and transparent. 

Jen Patterson is now a mom and a life-coach after spending over 20 years as a strategist. She started her career at Wieden and spent time at Deutsch in LA and at Wunderman in Seattle. 

In the episode, we talk about her career trajectory - growing up at Wieden and then moving to Deutsch. About agency cultures and her thoughts on the magic part of the culture that make Wieden, Wieden, and how different things were at Deutsch. We discussed her time in Miami with The Community and the challenges involved in getting clients to understand the importance of the Hispanic market. 

We also talk about her passion which is listening and learning from others. 

Nowadays Jen has channeled her passion into life-coaching and motherhood. We talk about these two roles and some of the challenges. We discuss the way in which agency life and corporate life in general squeeze the self out of people and how the best advice she gives people is about getting centered around who they are and what they want is.

Her life-coaching practice is about paying close attention to you and developing a program which is, in simple terms. a gym for the mind. 

George Olver is the co-founder of Movidiam.

Movidiam is all about changing how films get made. 

It is basically a global network of skilled practitioners in the world of film production. The network allows production to be more efficient at a time when clients are short on both time and money. It also ensures a level of quality because the experience of individuals is fully transparent. 

Think of it as a global production house at your fingertips which allows for both payment and project management.

In the episode, I talk to George about the evolution of the company and where it headed. 

Jay Chaney is a strategist and part of a crack team of Canadian advertising professionals who have gone and done something completely insane by launching an ad agency in the middle of the Covid 19 crisis. 

Chaney has teamed up with Beverley Hammond, Todd Mackie, Carlos Moreno, and Denise Rosetto to create Broken Heart Love Affair

Chaney is no stranger to challenges has been part of successful turnarounds at both DDB and Cossette. 

In the interview, we talked about Jay's interesting career that included time as a Canadian broadcaster, the inspiration for the new agency, the name, and what they are hoping to achieve. Plus, of course, the challenges and perhaps some of the advantages of launching during Covid. 

Justin Small is the founder and mastermind behind FSC- Future Strategy Club. Justin is determined to reinvent the agency model by creating teams for clients made up of the best talent possible,

FSC is not a no thrills remote network- it has an HQ, host parties, trains its members, and is even in the process of setting up a ventures arm.

Justin wants agencies to be great again and FSC is his attempt to make that happen.

https://futurestrategyclub.com/

Michael Arterberry is the Executive Director of the Youth Voices Center. His work involves working with high schoolers to get them to think beyond race and skin color and to understand their fellow schoolmates as people.

 In a wide-ranging conversation, we talk about his life experiences, the work he does and his observations on the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd.

It has been 15 years since David Charles and I worked together at BSSP. David has since gone on to jobs at AKQA, 72 and Sunny, and opening the Los Angeles outpost for KesselsKramer. He started off in Brazil writing comic books before making his way into advertising with the dreams of becoming a filmmaker. At AKQA and KesselsKramer he got the chance to direct spots and hone his skills. This all was put to good use when he came across an amazing opportunity while working with the team at Airbnb. Post the Trump election the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus announced it would be protesting by touring the South by Bus. After winning over the chorus and Airbnb David went on to make the documentary Gay Chorus Deep South which has picked up a ton of accolades on the festival circuit including the audience award at Tribeca. The film was recently purchased by MTV. In the episode, we talk about David's journey from advertising to filmmaking and the process involved in making his first documentary. We also talk about how the film served to explain the essence of the Airbnb brand and the power of long-form filmmaking to tell brand stories. 

Jeff Sweat runs his own ad agency PR and consulting shop (Sweat and Co) in Los Angeles.

Having started his career as a tech journalist he then moved to Yahoo where he got the chance to interact with a number of ad agencies.

He then went agency side and had stints leading new business efforts at 72 and Sunny and Deutsch in LA before setting up on his own.

My conversation with Jeff involved asking about his career trajectory and what he learned from his different experiences and inside agency cultures.

We went onto talking about agencies today - how they have a unique opportunity to be real advisors to their clients and how important it is for agencies to practice what they preach to their clients by building their own differentiated and distinctive brands and cultures.

Jeff is also a podcaster himself and has a very successful series- with Agencies under Quarantine

https://www.sweatandco.com/quarantine

He is also a novelist which will be the topic for our next conversation.

https://www.sweatandco.com/

Chas Edwards is one of the founders of Pop-Up Magazine.

The idea of Pop-Up Magazine started as an experiment with friends to turn a physical magazine into a live experience.

Word of mouth soon followed and Pop Up became something of a cultural phenom selling out venues like the Lincoln Center and rolling through the country on a national tour.

In the episode, I talk to Chas about his career trajectory- what took him into the magazine space and the secrets behind creating a compelling live experience for a generation who have a tough time putting their cellphones down.

Of course, we also talk about COVID and how Pop-Up has pivoted to creating its experience online and what the implications of this learning might be for the business in the future.

https://www.popupmagazine.com/

John Dempsey is one of the founders of the digital shop Road Trip.

John got to experience the contemporary world of brand marketing while working on the KFC team at Wieden and Kennedy in Portland.

In the episode, we discuss his thinking behind setting up Road Trip, the worlds of digital and brand marketing, and what he learned from his experience on the KFC account at W&K.

Ad agencies have lots of skills but they rarely use them for the benefit of those who really could use them outside of their paying clients.

Over in the UK, Akil Benjamin worked with M&C Saatchi to create Saturday School a program that helped provide mentoring for Black-owned businesses.

Blackbusiness.mcsaatchi.com 

He achieved a lot of success with that program and is now scaling it up on his own. 

In the UK- agencies signed an open letter of solidarity after George Floyd's death and Akil's program provides a chance for them to put transfer this intent into action. 

In the episode, we talk about his background, his work, and support from M&C and the idea behind his new program and the support it has generated. 

Donate, volunteer and sign- up for the mentoring scheme 

bit.ly/2XGHodm

Tracey Faux Pattani is the recently hired CEO of BSSP.

For Tracey, it is a return to an agency she last worked in 15 years ago.

This is also her first agency CEO job - she joined the agency from Digitas SF where she headed up client service.

To overuse, the cliche- these are unprecedented times, and certainly if you are a new CEO you want to be able to meet everyone in person both client and agency-side, but COVID has made this an impossibility. Instead, she only had the luxury of a week in the office before shutdown- making her a CEO who is forced to lead via Zoom.

In the episode, I talk to Tracey about her experiences leading up to this position and what she has learned along the way from agencies with a variety of diverse working styles, cultures, and leaders like Lintas, Ogilvy, FCB, and Digitas. 

We talk about leading during COVID - how she does it and how she has had to adapt and her plans for the agency moving forward. 

 

For the past 20 + years- Mark and Adam and the crew at Eat Big Fish have been helping brands to think like challengers, unlock the pirates inside and overcome constraints. They also happen to be the themes of the books that they have written about brands, internal cultures, and innovation.

This is a consulting company that believes in doing the research to back up and build its thinking, frameworks, and tools. 

In the episode, I talk to Adam and Mark about how EBF came into being, how it thinks and works, and the purpose and role of writing and publishing books.

Given the moment, we give some time to a discussion about a book they wrote 5 years ago - called A Beautiful Constraint which is all about achieving things against the odds when resources and barriers are put in the way of success. It seems like now is a time when companies will find a myriad of barriers that can in the way of progress. Through fascinating examples and tools- EBF shows how these barriers can be overcome. 

Lucy Jameson is one the best UK planners of her generation and has featured on Campaign's list of top 10 planners multiple times.

She started her career at one of the founding agencies of the account planning discipline- BMP- where she stayed rising through the ranks for 19 years.

She was one of a handful of leaders hired by Grey to transform the London office and operation, a task she succeeded in winning multiple new accounts, Campaign's Agency of the Year, and many creative and effectiveness awards. 

In 2015 she was made CEO of the shop.

Prior to starting her own agency Uncommon Creative Studio-in 2017 with Nils Leonard and Natalie Graeme- she worked as an intern at Facebook and spent time in a tech incubator. 

Uncommon Creative Studio has worked with the likes of the WWF, ITV, Habito, and many others and is all in the business of building its own brands like Halo- a more eco-friendly alternative to Nespresso and a candle company which donates money to COVID related causes.

In the episode, we talk about her career trajectory, her thoughts on planning, brands, and the approach Uncommon takes to clients and business. 

Rob Campbell is a planner who thrives on being in the thick of the creative process. When it comes to creative work he wants to enhance it, inspire it, and nurture it. 

In the episode, Rob shares his philosophy on Strategy and some stories from his experiences which includes time spent at agencies HHCL, Wieden, and R/GA. 

Rob started out as a session guitarist - so he knows the creative process first hand. He was working with leading artists when he was just 18 years old.

So, this is a must-listen if you are a strategist who is committed to inspiring better work and being intimately involved in the process. 

A few weeks ago Jeff was a guest on my podcast and we talked about his take on the agency landscape, through the lens of his role as a PR person and consultant to agencies. 

At the end of the chat, Jeff mentioned to me that he also wrote books and had, in fact, written a couple. 

Hence- the 2nd pod- where Jeff talks about the process of writing and we go into the weeds on how this stuff gets done- the late nights, the editors, the re-writes, dealing with publishers and the marketing piece of the puzzle.

It's a good listen for those who dream of writing the next great American novel or maybe just a book.