Explore every episode of the podcast Inspiring Futures - Lessons from the Worlds of Marketing and Advertising
Dive into the complete episode list for Inspiring Futures - Lessons from the Worlds of Marketing and Advertising. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.
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Tom Suharto - Global Strategy Lead - Forsman & Bodenfors
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.
Hyphenated- 4 Years On- William Esparza and Kelli Roberston
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 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."
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.
The Future is Swedish- Niclas Norstrom- Acne- Stockholm
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.
The Future of Your Neighborhood- Chloe Saintilan, Zach Roif and Matt Woodward- R/GA
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.
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.
The Future is Expansive Creativity- Shaun McIlrath- Iris Worldwide
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.
Terry Young- Founder Sparks and Honey on the Business of the Future
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.
The Future of the Agency is Virtual and Digital - Matt Walsh- Greenstone
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.
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
Adweek's Doug Zanger - The Current and Future State of -Communication, Advertising and Agencies
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.
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.
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 Future is Bold and Uncomfortable - Lucy von Sturmer
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.
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.
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.
The Future is Strategy as a Team Sport- Amelia Torode
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.
Thas Naseemuddeen- Omelet- The Future is the Strategist as CEO
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.
The Future is Aux -Bringing Ideas to Life Through Technology
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Gerard Crichlow- Global Strategist- Axe/Lynx/Unilever- IPG
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Colin Nagy is currently Head of Strategy for Fred Farid, an agency based in NYC, Paris, Shanghai and LA. Previously he was Chief Media and Strategy officer at The Barbarian Group. In this conversation, we talk about the souring of the tech boom and the arrival of a new questioning culture and the debate about the impact of tech on humanity. We talk about the push towards the real and how that is impacting physical spaces and our human desire for connection. We explore the growing importance of wellness, the challenges for global brands and how the short-term, quick-hit seeking CMO might be getting in the way of more profound business transformation.
The guest for Episode 2 of Inspiring Futures is Gareth Kay. and touches upon many things, including the future of advertising and the agency.
Gareth is the founder of Chapter-SF- which describes itself as a new type of creative studio focused on designing soulful brands that thrive in today's world of unreasonable expectations.
Our wide-ranging conversation-includes a discussion about Gareth’s background and experience, what he is trying to do with Chapter SF- versus the typical creative agency, the curse of specialization, the challenge of short-term thinking and pressures, the best client brief ever, our lack of human understanding, how he thinks about the future and the importance of timeless ideas and where we stand with digital technology in the communication and marketing space.
A conversation with Ana Andjelic. Named to Forbes CMO Next list, Ana is a strategy executive, writer, and doctor of sociology who specializes in the modern luxury brands. In this wide-ranging conversation- we covered the challenges of companies grabbling with the future, the importance of adaptability, whats is happening to brands, Tik-Tok and the challenges of the algorithm.
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.
Tass Tsitsopoulos- Global Strategy Director, McDonald's at Wieden + Kennedy
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Keely Adler- VP, Cultural Futurist- Dentsu Creative and Core Team, RADAR
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?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
George Prest- From BBH Copywriter to Local Politician
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 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.
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.