Explore every episode of the podcast Elephant in the Boardroom - Presented by Supo.
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| THE PEOPLE PRETENCE - Hilary Gray, Emily Cousins & Jana Garous | 27 août 2026 | 00:34:44 | |
People are our greatest asset. It's in every agency pitch deck, printed in bold, framed on the wall by reception. This roundtable was about what it actually takes to mean it. Three guests, three different agencies, three different sizes. Hilary Gray has kept culture structural through years of growth at Propeller Group, twice named a Sunday Times Best Place to Work. Emily Cousins started as employee number one at Realtime. and watched the business grow to nearly 90 people before its acquisition, tracking exactly where the culture starts to strain. Jana Garous has built teams across sectors and sees the same failure pattern everywhere: the moment a business starts treating people as a line item instead of an asset. Culture Is a Policy, Not a Party Hilary joined her agency 15 years ago, when culture largely meant organised drinking. What's changed isn't the fun, it's what sits underneath it. "If you don't have policies that truly care about people, it doesn't matter how many team nights out you have, your people aren't going to be happy." Propeller Group runs a hybrid policy of eight office days a month, deliberately built around flexibility rather than headcount presence for its own sake. One of the clearest examples came almost by accident: a post-Covid policy letting staff work from anywhere for a month evolved, once the team noticed who was and wasn't using it, into an official policy covering all school holidays. No client impact, real impact on people's lives. That's the test Hilary applies to every policy: does it cost the business anything real, and does it make someone's life meaningfully easier. About Supo: Supo provides people-first intelligence software for professional services firms, helping businesses maximize profit and motivate their people through powerful, AI-enabled business intelligence dashboards. By connecting over 500+ platforms and providing real-time data analysis, Supo helps firms make better data-driven decisions about their profit, projects, and people. For more information about Supo: www.supo.co.uk About Hilary Gray, Propeller Group: Hilary Gray is Associate Director - Group Operations at Propeller Group, a global PR agency specialising in advertising, media and technology clients. She joined as one of five people in the PR team in 2010 and has grown with the agency to over 50, now responsible for people and processes across the group. Hilary also serves as Head of Marketing at Bloom UK, a professional network championing women in advertising and communications. For more information about Propeller Group: https://www.propellergroup.com/ About Emily Cousins, Realtime.: Emily Cousins is Senior Vice President of Operations at Realtime., a digital marketing agency she joined as employee number one and helped scale from a boutique social advertising startup to an 80-person global business, through to its acquisition by Pixis AI in 2024. She built the agency's operational infrastructure from the ground up, including profitability reporting, performance management and international expansion into New York, Denver and the Philippines. For more information about Realtime.: https://realtimeagency.com/ About Jana Garous, DG Solutions: Jana Garous led DG Solutions, an IT consultancy she built from close to the ground up into a £20 million business advising major UK firms in retail, finance and healthcare. Across nearly two decades she has founded multiple ventures spanning sustainability, digital education and technology consulting, and now serves as COO in Residence at Canopy Community, supporting founders and collaborating with Bayes Business School on programmes for emerging business leaders. For more information about DG Solutions: https://www.dgsolutions.io/ | |||
| GROWTH WITHOUT EXPANSION - Guy Wieynk, Michael Semp, Oliver Bradley & Lara Ballard | 31 juil. 2026 | 00:33:43 | |
Bigger teams, more offices, higher headcount. For decades, that's been the agency scoreboard. This roundtable started by putting that scoreboard on the table and asking whether any of it actually counts as growth. Four guests, four different answers. Guy Wieynk bet half his agency's revenue on licensing instead of services. Michael Semp is defending quarterly numbers to private equity in a flat market. Oliver Bradley hit hypergrowth and admitted it pulled him away from his own founding values. Lara Ballard built her agency's entire commercial strategy around refusing to grow that way in the first place. Four Agencies, One Question None of the four are running the same business anymore, and none of them are chasing the same definition of success. Guy restructured around licensing because services alone stopped being the growth engine. Michael is learning to defend a business quarter by quarter without losing sight of the three-year plan underneath it. Oliver rebuilt his agency's values from the inside once growth had already outpaced them. Lara has spent years proving that saying no to the wrong client can be a growth strategy in its own right. About Supo: Supo provides people-first intelligence software for professional services firms, helping businesses maximize profit and motivate their people through powerful, AI-enabled business intelligence dashboards. By connecting over 500+ platforms and providing real-time data analysis, Supo helps firms make better data-driven decisions about their profit, projects, and people. For more information about Supo: www.supo.co.uk About Guy Wieynk, AnalogFolk: Guy Wieynk was Global CEO of AnalogFolk Group for six years, where he pivoted the traditional agency into a technology platform builder. Within three years the business had two platform companies operating at commercial scale: Untold Fable, a content production platform working with over 8,000 creators for clients including L'Oréal and Monzo, and Otomo, an AI-powered creative automation SaaS business used by 45 brands globally. Guy has since moved into a board advisory role and co-founded the UK arm of 24 Hour Business Plan, a growth advisory that has delivered value creation work across more than 200 companies in 14 countries. For more information about AnalogFolk: https://www.analogfolk.com/
About Michael Semp, Sassy+: Michael Semp is CEO of Sassy+, an award-winning production powerhouse of over 80 storytellers and technology specialists delivering content solutions to brands and businesses globally. Built on more than 30 years of experience across live streaming, hybrid events, branded content and broadcast PR, Sassy+ has delivered work for clients including Honda, ABB Robotics, Audible and Zeekr, operating its own studios and post-production facilities to run the full production process in one place.
About Oliver Bradley, Words+Pixels:
For more information about Words+Pixels: https://www.wordsandpixels.co/
About Lara Ballard, Komodo:
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| AMBITIOUS AGENCIES: rebuilding confidence, risk and momentum - Sarah Vick, Simon Rhind-Tutt, Joanna Anthony | 26 juin 2026 | 00:31:53 | |
Agency leaders are built for optimism. It's in the DNA. Walk into any pitch presentation and you'll see it: the belief that this agency can solve anything. The energy. The hunger. The confidence that borders on audacity. But the last few years have worn that down in ways that aren't always visible. The roller coaster didn't just go higher and lower - the highs and lows became exceptional. Unprecedented. And somewhere in the middle, something shifted. Confidence took a hit. That's the reality Sarah Vick hears in every boardroom she sits in. Sarah is a chair and non-executive director who's spent 20+ years helping creative and technology businesses define and deliver growth strategies. She's seen what happens when the fundamentals crack. When boards stop planning for growth and start planning for survival. When ambition gets replaced by anxiety. But here's what Sarah is also seeing now, in early 2026: something is shifting again. Not back to where it was. Something different. More realistic. More grounded. "The highs and lows have been exceptional," she says. "We're used to living on the roller coaster now. Some things are getting better." That's not naive optimism. That's exhaustion turning into acceptance, which is often the first step toward genuine resilience. About Supo: Supo provides people-first intelligence software for professional services firms, helping businesses maximize profit and motivate their people through powerful, AI-enabled business intelligence dashboards. By connecting over 500+ platforms and providing real-time data analysis, Supo helps firms make better data-driven decisions about their profit, projects, and people. For more information about Supo: www.supo.co.uk About Sarah Vick: Sarah Vick is a chair and non-executive director specialising in supporting creative and technology businesses to define and deliver strategic growth plans. With more than 20 years of global leadership experience, she helps agencies navigate growth, scaling, operational improvement, international expansion, and M&A. She speaks regularly on finance for agencies, career development, and the role of gratitude in business success, and brings a sharp financial lens to the ambition conversation. For more information about Sarah Vick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahvick/ About Simon Rhind-Tutt: Simon Rhind-Tutt is co-founder of Relationship Audits, a consultancy that provides actionable intelligence on client-agency relationships built on millions of data points. Nearly three decades of experience have convinced him of one thing: business is built on relationships, and those relationships should be measured, understood, and continuously improved. His proprietary RADAR survey tool helps agencies and clients move beyond satisfaction scores to genuine mutual commitment. For more information about Relationship Audits: https://relationshipaudits.com/ About Joanna Anthony: Joanna Anthony is a fractional operations leader, strategic advisor, and co-founder of The Client Impact Awards, a recognition programme celebrating the account leaders and client service professionals who drive growth and build the partnerships that make great work possible. With over 30 years on agency boards, she specialises in designing the operational structures and relationship-building behaviours that make strategic partnerships actually work - and in proving that client service is a commercial asset, not a cost. For more information about Joanna Anthony: https://joannaanthony.com/ | |||
| AI, VALUE AN AMBITION: WHAT AGENCIES CHARGE FOR NEXT - James Holden, David Finch, Simon Douglass, Louis Wilkins | 21 juin 2026 | 00:31:37 | |
The question arrives quietly at first. Then it becomes deafening. Agencies are delivering work faster than ever. Not because they've hired more people or worked harder. Because AI has fundamentally changed how work gets done. A task that took three days now takes three hours. A brief that required a week of research now needs an afternoon. Efficiency has skyrocketed. But something else has happened alongside that acceleration. Vulnerability. Pressure. A creeping sense that speed isn't actually the answer - it's just made the problem more obvious. David Finch, who advises agencies at board level, calls it the mindset shift nobody's making. James Holden, who works on leadership and culture, calls it an identity crisis. Simon Douglas, who runs a performance marketing agency and lives with this tension daily, calls it a market that's fundamentally changed. Lewis Wilkins, who's building a model that leans into AI rather than resisting it, calls it an opportunity nobody's taking seriously enough. They all agree on one thing: the agencies that are hiding from this conversation are the agencies that are going to cease to exist. About Supo: Supo provides people-first intelligence software for professional services firms, helping businesses maximize profit and motivate their people through powerful, AI-enabled business intelligence dashboards. By connecting over 500+ platforms and providing real-time data analysis, Supo helps firms make better data-driven decisions about their profit, projects, and people. For more information about Supo: www.supo.co.uk About David Finch - The Thinking Field: David Finch advises agencies at board level through The Thinking Field, bringing 20+ years of experience helping agency leaders navigate strategic transformation. His expertise sits at the intersection of business strategy, digital transformation, and the changing agency model. David works with agencies on the fundamental question: where is your value going to come from in a world where your current value proposition is becoming commodified? For more information about The Thinking Field: https://www.thethinkingfield.com/ About James Holden - Holden Thinking: James Holden runs Holden Thinking, working with leadership teams on culture, identity, and navigating uncertainty. He specialises in helping leaders understand how their own identity shapes their agency, and how to evolve both when the world around them shifts fundamentally. His work addresses the psychological dimension of business transformation - the part most leaders avoid. For more information about Holden Thinking: https://www.linkedin.com/company/holden-thinking/ About Simon Douglas - Curated: Simon Douglas runs Curated, a performance marketing agency specialising in SEO, PPC, and content. With 12 years of direct experience watching AI change what agencies can charge for and what clients actually want, Simon is living the tension between the old delivery model and the new value model. His agency is actively pivoting from delivery-heavy work to strategic thinking and client outcomes. For more information about Curated: https://curated-digital.com/ About Lewis Wilkins - Future Strategy Club: Lewis Wilkins founded Future Strategy Club, building a model that leans into AI rather than resisting it. His perspective is that the opportunities created by AI adoption are far larger than the threats - but only if agencies are willing to rethink what they're actually building. He works with agencies on AI strategy and how to use AI to amplify human capability rather than replace it. For more information about Future Strategy Club: https://www.futurestrategy.club/ | |||
| THE SAMENESS TRAP - Jeremy Stern, Scott-Ashley Whiteley, Alona Malinovska | 11 juin 2026 | 00:29:53 | |
Most agencies look the same, pitch the same, and end up competing on price. This episode is about what you do instead. Jim Johnson is joined by Jeremy Stern, Scott Ashley Whiteley and Elena Malinowski for a conversation about standing out in a crowded market. Jeremy explains why he narrowed his niche while everyone else diversified - and how 20 years of sticking to it means over 60% of his income now comes from clients who've stayed more than a decade. Elena breaks down the affiliate model, where brands only pay when a sale actually happens. And Scott makes the case that "sexy is dead" - audiences see through celebrity endorsements, and relevance beats glamour every time. Along the way: why storytelling is really about emotion, whether the author of an advert even matters in the age of AI, treating AI as a sparring partner rather than a search engine, and why genuine curiosity might be the rarest skill in marketing. Because it turns out a tight niche is a better moat than a broad deck. Elephant in the Boardroom is presented by Supo - replace gut feel with true intelligence. About Supo: Supo provides people-first intelligence software for professional services firms, helping businesses maximize profit and motivate their people through powerful, AI-enabled business intelligence dashboards. By connecting over 500+ platforms and providing real-time data analysis, Supo helps firms make better data-driven decisions about their profit, projects, and people. For more information about Supo: www.supo.co.uk About PromoVeritas: Jeremy Stern founded PromoVeritas 25 years ago to become the specialist in international promotions, prize draws, and promotional compliance that the industry had abandoned. Working across 90 countries with 250 clients, he's built a business where retention drives growth and authority replaces pitching. Over 60% of PromoVeritas revenue comes from clients who've been with the agency for more than a decade. His philosophy is built on deep curiosity, genuine expertise, and the commercial clarity that comes from refusing to diversify. For more information about PromoVeritas: www.promoveritas.com About Blott: Scott-Ashley Whiteley founded Blott on the conviction that storytelling - the ability to take something complicated and make it felt - is the last truly differentiating skill agencies have. Working across GTM, digital experience, and innovation, Blott works with ambitious businesses in music, fintech, FMCG, and private equity. Scott is building an agentic operating system for his own agency - using Blott as the proof point that the capabilities he sells to clients actually work. His philosophy: 50 passionate specialists beat 200 indifferent ones every time. For more information about Blott: www.blott.com About Webgains Global: Alona Malinovska leads Webgains Global, a performance-based platform that connects brands with publishers across 80+ countries. Rather than operating as a traditional agency, Webgains charges brands on commission - they pay only when results happen. Alona watches consumer discovery shift in real time: from Google to social and influencers to AI tools. Her philosophy: accountability through measurement, and the belief that the commercial model should reflect reality rather than obscure it. For more information about Webgains Global: www.webgains.com | |||