The What's Next Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

ABOUT EPISODE

On this episode of The What's Next Podcast, Karim speaks with Donna Speciale about her background and passion for the media landscape. Donna is the President of U.S. Advertising Sales and Marketing, TelevisaUnivision.

ABOUT DONNA SPECIALE

As President of U.S. Advertising Sales and Marketing at TelevisaUnivision, the world’s leading Spanish-language media and content company, Donna Speciale leads advertising sales and marketing across the company's portfolio of broadcast, cable, digital, audio and live event platforms in the U.S. – including its renowned entertainment, news and sports properties as well as its ad-supported streaming service, ViX. Since joining the company in January 2021, Speciale has transformed and modernized TelevisaUnivision’s U.S. ad sales business to deliver record ad revenue growth.

An industry trailblazer, Speciale has extensive knowledge of sales optimization spanning over two decades. Prior to this role, she served as President of Advertising Sales at WarnerMedia where she oversaw advertising revenue for the company’s domestic entertainment, news and kids multimedia brands. During her tenure, Speciale played a critical role in the groundbreaking launch of OpenAP, the first open platform for TV advertisers to reach audiences across publishers. Before WarnerMedia, she was President of Investment, Activation and Agency operations at MediaVest Worldwide, overseeing the agency’s integrated digital, broadcast, print, and out-of-home practice. Speciale also held senior roles at WPP's Mediacom earlier in her career.

Speciale has been recognized with numerous accolades throughout her career, including Multichannel News’ “Wonder Women,” Adweek50, Variety’s “New York Impact Report” and Broadcasting & Cable’s Hall of Fame as well as the “Advertising Woman of the Year,” “Impact Award” and “Working Woman Award” from SheRunsIt. She received the “Reisenbach Award for Distinguished Citizenship” by the John A. Reisenbach Foundation in 2014.

On this episode of the What's Next Podcast, we speak with Shonel Morrison. Shonel is the Head of Media Strategy at AstraZeneca.

ABOUT SHONEL MORRISON

Shonel has over 10 years of experience in the healthcare marketing industry focused on paid media strategy, planning, and buying. She has expertise in designing media enablement frameworks focused on driving growth in media investment and business impact.  In her current role at AstraZeneca, she leads the Global Media Strategy practice and is responsible for creating the vision to shape the future of how AstraZeneca creates key moments with customers utilizing integrated cross-channel experiences.

Visit activeinternational.com to learn more about asset solutions.

ABOUT CHRIS STEPHENSON

Chris is Chief Marketing Officer for PHD Worldwide His role is to globally amplify PHD’s vision of enabling marketers to ‘Make the Leap’ – a call to action and reference to how the agency prioritises creativity to drive disproportionate growth for marketers, backed by its proprietary planning platform Omni Studio.

Chris is a passionate believer in the mutual benefits of brands engaging people in positive and constructive ways; he believes that considered, creative, integrated, innovative communications create value for audiences, brands and businesses; that reach is not an objective; and that hope is not a strategy.

His background is in strategic media and communications planning, and has delivered thought leadership for a range of clients across both Europe and APAC, working on global and regional projects for brands including Singapore Airlines, Unilever, ANZ Bank, Google, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Ferrero, HSBC, Ebay, LG and The Guardian.

An industry thought-leader, Chris has co-written three books on the future of the media industry and the impact of machine learning on marketing. A regular and respected commentator on the communications industry, he has presented on stages including Cannes, Spikes Asia and Mumbrella360.

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The podcast is brought to you by Active International, a global leader in Corporate Trade within the Media & Advertising industry.

Chair, board director, business advisor and marketing thought leader, Andrew is the Chair of Australian Pork, and a Non-Executive Director at Foresters Financial, GrowthOps, BirdDog, Hypetap, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and OzHarvest. He is also a Senior Advisor at BGH Capital and the Adjunct Professor of Marketing at the University of Sydney, and has been the Senior Advisor to KPMG's Customer, Brand and Marketing business. Prior to this he was the CEO of two of the country's largest communications agencies, Publicis, and Ogilvy, where he was a trusted counsel to many of Australia's most iconic brands.

Andrew regularly writes and speaks about the future of marketing, in a world where both consumers and technology are ever-evolving. He has been named as one of LinkedIn's Top 40 Australian influencers, recognised by Campaign magazine as one of the Top 5 Agency Leaders in Australia and New Zealand, and the winner of Australian Marketing Institute's Sir Charles McGrath Award for his significant contribution to the field of marketing.

Andrew is a Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and holds a Bachelor of Business (Marketing) from Monash University

Rishad Tobaccowala is the Chief Growth Officer at Publicis Groupe, an advertising and communications firm whose 80,000 employees worldwide are dedicated to delivering marketing and business transformation. He is responsible for supporting the leaders of Publicis Groupe's largest global clients, to help these organizations grow in a revolutionary time for all businesses. For his pioneering innovation, BusinessWeek named Tobaccowala one of the top business leaders, and he also was dubbed one of five marketing innovators by TIME magazine. He regularly presents keynotes at industry conferences and speaks at well-known global organizations, such as Kellogg's, IBM, Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

Imagine having a job where your mission every day was to encourage people to GROW!  To go outside in the backyard, walk barefoot in the grass, and sink their hands in the soil to plant a garden.  That is exactly what John gets to do as VP, Chief Creative Officer for the incredible lawn and garden brands at Scotts Miracle-Gro.

A 17-year veteran of SMG, John oversees the development, production and execution of all consumer facing messaging for the brands of Scotts, Miracle-Gro, Bonnie, Ortho, Tomcat and more.  Over the past couple years, the marketing world has taken notice of the campaigns and work coming out of SMG, recognized by AdAge in 2020 as one of America's Hottest Brands, taking top honors from iHeartMedia for the successful launch of a new gardening podcast (Humans Growing Stuff), and even stepped onto the world's biggest stage by airing the company's first ever Super Bowl commercial in February 2021.

Outside of Scotts, John loves to volunteer his time to serve on the Board of The 2nd & 7 Foundation, and recently as a member of the Upper Arlington Civic Association.  In 2017, he was recognized by Columbus Business First as one of the Top 40 Under 40 honorees.

About Erin Ewing

Erin Ewing is the CEO and co-founder of Greener Matters, a group of sustainability consultants firmly committed to helping businesses prepare themselves for the new economy of the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. Before becoming a sustainability professional, he had a 20-year career in media, starting out in classified sales for Dennis publishing then swiftly shifting into digital at CNET Networks, where he began his journey in digital and business transformation. Erin transferred all of his skills to sustainability after having the opportunity to help build Channel 4’s sustainability strategy in 2019. Once Covid hit he seized the opportunity to hit the reset button and launch Greener Matters with his business partner.

Erin is on a mission to help businesses understand that they can be profitable and equitable to society whilst also sustaining our planet for future generations. He believes that the urgent challenges that are now facing the world need a radically different way of doing business, which is why Greener Matters now exists, to help realise a vision of fair and just prosperity. He firmly believes that business can help solve the social and environmental challenges facing us today by working together in collaboration, by reprioritising our values and making planet and people as important as profit.  The old way of doing things is slowly dying and a new collective, caring and compassionate way of being is now within reach.

Originally from Buffalo, NY, Erin has lived and worked in the UK since 1998,with a 4-year stint in the Middle East between 2009-2013.

About Ivan Pehar

Ivan Pehar is the Head of Canada Ad Sales at Spotify. He is an accomplished strategic digital marketing professional with over 20 years’ experience in brand building, media innovation and technology for some of the world’s most respected brands.

Ivan is responsible for developing the Spotify Canada go-to-market strategy that assists brands to harness the power of audio. Audio is in the midst of a generational shift and its important that brands establish and showcase their voice in this storytelling medium with authenticity and purpose.

Prior to joining Spotify, Ivan spent seven years at Twitter with the launch of their new Canadian office in 2013. As Twitter’s Head of Revenue and Agency Partnerships, his focus was on educating the marketing and advertising world on the importance of being part of the conversation.

No stranger to global platforms in local markets, Ivan has held positions at Yahoo!, Microsoft and AOL, where he provided strategic solutions that helped brands blend their marketing initiatives from broadcast to web to social. Ivan started his career working at traditional media agencies crafting his skills. He had the opportunity to work on award-winning campaigns across North America that helped brands connect with their customers in unique ways at a time when the digital landscape was eager for change.

Ivan is a professor at Humber and Centennial College, where he helps prepare future advertising professionals.

We speak to Andrea Sampson, CEO and Founder of Talk Boutique on the importance of communication and she shares useful tips on how to be a compelling storyteller.

About Andrea Sampson

Invoking well defined listening skills and combining these with her skills in insight identification and human behaviour, Andrea helps her clients craft stories from facts and deliver talks that are compelling and engaging.

As the CEO and Founder of Talk Boutique, Andrea provides her expertise as an Executive Coach to senior leaders and professional speakers worldwide.

Having spent the first 20+ years of her career as a senior leader in marketing and advertising, Andrea regularly gave talks and presentations that deeply connected and impacted her audiences.

About Talk Boutique

We are experts in navigating and developing content, performance, subject matter, and technology, Talk Boutique has it all.

We transform experts and changemakers into thought leaders by helping them become storytellers that convey their ideas powerfully that create conversations that help to transform the world.

Talk Boutique is the catalyst for change-makers. We help individuals, teams and organizations communicate with clarity and authority.

We work with leaders, academics, scientists, technologists and artists helping to translate their knowledge into powerful ideas, transforming them into thought leaders.

talkboutique.com

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The podcast is brought to you by Active International, a global leader in Corporate Trade within the Media & Advertising industry.

What's Next for the internet? We talk metaverse, the decay of web 2.0, artificial intelligence, data ownership and more with Manal Siddiqui, CEO & Co-Founder of Transitional Forms.

About Manal Siddiqui

Manal Siddiqui is Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Transitional Forms, an interactive entertainment studio-lab in Toronto pioneering the future of intelligent content for the metaverse. She is committed to growing Canada’s position as a globally significant voice in the responsible stewardship of AI and digital technologies, and in progressing society’s understanding of how technological advancements can positively impact fairer, safer, and more inclusive global communities.

Prior to Transitional Forms, Manal built foundational operations and strategic partnerships in health for the Vector Institute, one of the premier machine learning and AI research institutes in the world and home to over 500 of Canada’s AI researchers. As a systems change strategist, she has successfully established and scaled innovation-based businesses across public and private sectors. Manal hails from Pakistan, lives in Toronto and holds graduate degrees with distinction from the Bayes Business School, City of London and from the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, in addition to an undergraduate degree in biotechnology from the University of Toronto.

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INSTAGRAM - www.instagram.com/activeintworld

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PODCAST WEBSITE - www.thewhatsnextpodcast.com

The podcast is brought to you by Active International, a global leader in Corporate Trade within the Media & Advertising industry.