The Imposterous – Details, episodes & analysis

Greg Hahn is the Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Mischief@No Fixed Address. Greg is going to go rogue and move this missive to first person. I started Mischief because I wanted to create a place where people- both employees and clients- could come and do the best work of their lives, with less layers, pretense and other unnecessary complications. Just more of the good stuff. Previous to Mischief, I was the CCO of BBDO NY. During that time BBDO was recognized as the most awarded agency in the world by the Gunn Report. It was also named Agency of the Year at The One Show, ADC and The Webbys multiple times. I could go on and talk more about awards I’ve won, such as two Emmy's and multiple Cannes Grand Prix, but honestly, it feels really weird in first person. Starting to rethink that choice so The Imposterous will jump in and complete this story. Greg joined The Imposterous for a chat about his lack of linkedin recommendations, having a multicoloured palette, ambient anxiety and why trust just might be the most important measure of client relations. 

Sir John Hegarty, awarded a Knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to advertising and Creative industries, Founder, Creative Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) and The Garage Soho, now adds to his title, ‘The Imposterous First Birthday Edition Season Two Finale and Episode 50 Guest’. It’s a lot. Welcome to the big time  SJH.

John Hegarty has been central to the global advertising scene over six decades working with brands such as Levi's, Audi, Boddingtons, Lynx, British Airways and Johnnie Walker. He was a founding partner of Saatchi and Saatchi in 1970.  He founded Bartle Bogle Hegarty in 1982 with John Bartle and Nigel Bogle. The Agency now has offices in London, New York, Singapore, Stockholm, Shanghai, Mumbai and Los Angeles. John’s creative awards are numerous. He has been given the D&AD President's Award for outstanding achievement and in 2014 was admitted to the US AAF Hall of Fame. John was knighted in 2007 and was the recipient of the first Lion of St Mark award at the Cannes Festival of Creativity in 2011. John wrote his first book ‘Hegarty on Advertising – Turning Intelligence into Magic’ in 2011 and his book "Hegarty on Creativity - there are no rules" was published in 2014. 

In 2014 John Co-founded The Garage Soho, an early stage investor company that believes in 

building brands, not just businesses. 

John has just launched a new online 8-week course, entitled The Business of Creativity, aimed to equip people with tangible tools to help win through the application of creativity.

Veronica Beach is the original founder and now partner of the poolhouse (www.the-poolhouse.com), a social network for Producers in TV, Film & Advertising. Previously Veronica  was the Director of Production at Pereira O'Dell from 2020 - July 2022 overseeing the San Francisco & New York offices from the Agency side and their In-House production department, Barrelhouse. Prior to that, Head of Global Production at DAVID and was a founding member of DAVID and even moved to Brazil to open the São Paulo and Buenos Aires production departments. While living in Brazil, Veronica  served a dual role leading Global Production for Ogilvy Brazil. In Veronica’s  first year at Ogilvy Brazil they won Agency of the Year in Cannes through the projects she produced, Dove, Real Beauty Sketches and Coca Cola’s, Crazy for Good. That year winning 29 Lions, including the Titanium Grand Prix as well as previously mentioned, Agency of the Year. To date, Veronica has won over 100 Lions, and multiple other prestigious awards. Veronica was recognized by Business Insider as one of the top Creative Influencers in Advertising while being part of the team to globally launch the Miami office as one of the top 5 agencies in the world at Cannes. 

Paul Middleditch has directed four feature films and is regarded as one of the top performance/action TV Commercial Directors in the world. He is Australasia's most awarded commercials Director, having over 300, with 8 Cannes Lions, 4 of which are gold, and numerous International and National awards to his credit. He was recently ranked 8th Best Commercial Director of all time, based on Lüzer's Archive. He has continually upheld a Number One Director World Ranking on Best Ads on TV, with Carlton Draught's 'Big Ad' being awarded the Best Beer Ad of All Time. His work has featured at the Super Bowl for 6 consecutive years and he is one of the few Australian creatives to have appeared on the cover of Shots Magazine. At the age of 19, Middleditch's first short film 'Light of the Blade' won Best Direction at the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival. His first feature film, Terra Nova, won the first film prize in Montreal in 1999, won Best of Festival at the Edinburgh Film Festival and went on to screen at over thirty festivals worldwide. His second feature, A Cold Summer, premiered in competition at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and earned him an Australian Film Institute nomination for Best Director. In 2009, Middleditch completed his third feature, Separation City, a dramatic comedy starring Joel Edgerton, Rhona Mitra and Thomas Kretschmann, which was nominated for 4 QANTAS Awards. His first American feature film for Lionsgate titled Rapture Palooza was released in 2013, starring Anna Kendrick and Craig Robinson. Paul is the first guest on The Imposterous whose bio has been directly lifted from IMDb. This is something we’re sure he’ll never mention but we will be a #humblebrag in social posts of ours to come.

Pum Lefebure is a co-founder and chief creative officer of Design Army in Washington, DC, where she oversees all creative coming through the agency's doors. The Thailand native brings a global sensibility to American design - a creative point of view that draws from different cultures and resonates with diverse audiences. In this episode of The Imposterous Pum brings savvy street smarts, an undeniable entrepreneurial edge and a caliber of confidence born from years of incredible world leading creative work.

Guided by an international eye, Pum has helped expand the agency's client base and elevate its reputation as a trend-setter. Pum's hallmark is a distinctive union of the artistic and the commercial. With a rare balance of creativity, strategic thinking and industry know-how, she has proven that good design is the cornerstone of good business. Another good imposter indeed.

The Imposterous, Peter Nankervis is Founder and CEO of Lighthouse Group and a passionate corporate coach working with CEO’s and guiding leadership teams to identify the right people and performance solutions to accelerate business transformation and growth. He brings to this episode a history of partnering with companies that have successfully accelerated their enterprise value, in many cases leading to acquisition.

He’s all about providing a clear roadmap for leaders and developed the leadership technology platform 6Ceed, for which Lighthouse was awarded the Westpac top 200 Business of Tomorrow. Priding himself on a very down to earth approach, being an active listener, and having the ability to develop practical and simple solutions to complex problems. Pete’s passionate about helping clients navigate tricky spots and accelerate when the winds blow fair.

Prior to founding Lighthouse, this episode’s imposter had a corporate background with state, national and regional leadership roles in management consulting with a global multinational company. In his younger years, he was a champion Whac-A-Mole player, but he’s not in that game anymore.

Two great guests, two episodes in one. Where to start?

Let’s begin with Steve Sammartino. Wikipedia tells us Steve is an Australian futurist, author and entrepreneur and according to Forbes, he launched Rentoid in 2007, one of the early sharing-economy, peer-to-peer online hire and rental marketplaces. Rentoid was featured in Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers’s book, What’s Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live. Rentoid was later sold to an ASX listed company in 2014. According to the World Records Academy, Steve collaborated with Raul Oiada in 2011 to launch the world’s first Lego Space Shuttle into space. Propelled by a helium-filled weather balloon, the Lego Space Shuttle model 3367 was launched from German airspace into the stratosphere to an altitude of about 35,000m (114,800 feet). According to Wired in 2013 Steve and Oaida developed the world's first life-sized, drive-able Lego car with a compressed air-powered Lego engine. According to TV Week however, Steve is the co-Host of Rebound TV with Tommy McCubbin, who co-creates and hosts the show that is  helping Australian businesses bounce back after the pandemic. Screening on Channel 9 on Saturdays at 12:30. Before being wooed to the screen Future Sandwich podcast host Tommy McCubbin co-founded WellAware with the mission to accelerate the world's transition into personalised, proactive and preventative health management where he works with some of Australia's top companies to help them manage and minimise the risk of Cancer, Heart Disease and Mental Illness striking down their workforce unnecessarily. Tommy’s podcast Future Sandwich is Winner of Australia's Best Tech Science and Gaming Podcast, and has expanded into multiple live events and content series. We have no idea how we convinced Tommy and Steve to join us for this chat, but they’re here now so let’s go for it. Ding, ding.

Meet the imposterous Elaine Li, creative director and photographer. Elaine was born and raised in Hong Kong, spent time in Melbourne, Chicago, San Francisco, and is now based in Sydney. So far in her advertising career, Elaine has planted a beer ad in people’s dreams; raised money for bushfire victims with a burnt Christmas tree; and made edible finger lickin’ good nail polish. Elaine competed in Cannes Young Lions in 2017, representing Hong Kong. Shortly after moving to Sydney, she tutored AWARD School, and won Young Lions Australia with her partner Jared. They competed in Cannes and came top 5 worldwide. Most recently Elaine judged AWARD Award. Elaine’s obsession with photography and social media has garnered over 260k+ followers on Instagram, work with various brands, and do public speaking engagements as a social influencer. Elaine’s work is killer! When Elaine’s not making ads or taking photos, she enjoys travelling and diving into the world of NFTs and metaverse. But somehow she found time to talk to us about the imposterous things that have happened along the way. Lucky you!

Brent Smart is a rare breed of marketer - equal parts creative and commercial. A brand builder who has taken NRMA to third strongest brand in Australia (it was 36th when he started) and is the strongest insurance brand in the world. With a track record of changing the fortunes of brands, leading NRMA to 3 years of customer growth after 7 years of decline, delivering Cheerios first quarter of sales growth after 13 quarters of decline and even helping Yellow Pages steal share of search from Google. Brent spent 20 years in the ad business, rising to CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi New York, having run New Zealand's Agency of the Decade Colenso BBDO. Without doubt this Imposterous guest knows how to build a creative culture on the inside that delivers more effective creative output on the outside. Brent has the honour of being the first CMO to join us for a chat on The Imposterous and we’re all the better for it. 

Mietta started her career in Sydney at Ogilvy and Droga5 working across brands KFC, QANTAS, Coca Cola and Sunbeam Appliances. Seven years ago Mietta made the move to New York where she’s since created influential campaigns for The New York Times, The Jed Foundation for Teen Suicide and Kraft. Her work has been featured on CNN, Buzzfeed, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Mashable and Creativity. Now a Creative Director at Squarespace, Mietta has been named One Show’s Next Creative Leader, top 3 global finalist for Ad Age’s Creative of the Year and most recently earned a place on Adweek’s Creative 100. In 2017, Mietta helped induct her dad Tom McFarlane into AWARD’s Hall of Fame. Tom was always Hall of Fame material. His career began in Melbourne as a despatch boy. Four years of part-time study at RMIT, and four agencies later he headed to London to hone his writing skills. At 34, he was appointed ECD at J Walter Thompson Melbourne, followed by several years in the same role at DDB Melbourne. A major turning point came in May 1996 when he received an offer from friend Tom Dery, his former MD at DDB, just a year after Dery had opened M&C Saatchi's first international office. Within a year of McFarlane taking the creative tiller, ‘the Toms’ had 14 clients, 39 staff and an Agency of the Year title. Crucial to McFarlane's copywriting gifts is an ability to cut right to the heart of any brief and a pitch perfect ear for the Australian vernacular. McFarlane has also been a prodigious identifier and nurturer of talent. Many young creatives blessed with his generous tutelage over the years have gone on to become huge players, both in Australia and overseas and guests on The Imposterous, such as Matt Eastwood and Ben Welsh. At the end of 2021, Tom announced his retirement and is widely regarded as one of Australia’s most influential and effective Creative leaders