Dave McCaughan

Dave McCaughan has 35 years of experience as an advertising professional. Most of this time has been spent living in Asia. Now he lives in Bangkok but is stranded in Sydney after coming to visit his daughter. Currently, he works as a freelance consultant to companies all over Asia. His standard work practice involves a lot of business travel. For the last two years, the COVID pandemic has forced him to change the way he works. He has found that there is no change to the number of projects or the amount of work he has. All he needs is a keyboard and zoom. Dave is passionate about people and what matters to them. Once he understands this, he can determine what advertising needs they have or what will trigger them. The second passion for Dave is aging populations. He wants to understand what aging populations mean. The phenomenon is an opportunity. In the future, advertising will need data scientists to write algorithms and analyse data so that advertising can be better targeted and more effective. AI and systems are going to affect all boring jobs. The roles that will always be available are for people with imagination and an ability to think about more than the obvious. Leaders need to be more empathetic towards the people they lead and their customers. People love to be offended. Advertisers leverage this. However, senior managers work to alleviate this. Young people starting their careers to be broad thinking and be willing to take risks and experience a wide range of career opportunities and skills development. Gap years for young people are now encouraged rather than disparaged. Too many people in the advertising industry have only worked in that industry. Gather broad experiences.