Inspiring Futures - Lessons from the Worlds of Marketing and Advertising – Details, episodes & analysis

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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. 

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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. 

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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."

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.   

  

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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. 

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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.