Inspiring Futures - Lessons from the Worlds of Marketing and Advertising

Kaye Symington has spent 20 years in marketing, and right now she's working to keep one of the oldest media formats alive — the printed newspaper. As head of marketing at Newspaper Club, she's on the front lines of a quiet cultural shift: people are choosing ink and paper not out of nostalgia, but because something about it just hits differently. In this conversation, we dig into what's really driving that, and what it says about how we want to connect right now.Kaye shares the story of a photographer who sent a physical seasonal newsletter to creative directors instead of another email and landed a $50,000 campaign from it. The math on cutting through digital noise is more interesting than you'd think.Newspaper Club has been growing since 2009, and Kaye's colleagues laugh every time the trend cycle rediscovers print. She explains why newsprint keeps finding new audiences.People and organizations making newspapers include Ariana Grande. A Scottish anarchist gardening club. A symphony orchestra. A dating site for 30-somethings running classifieds. The range of people printing newspapers reveals something genuinely interesting about what people are hungry for right now.

James Nord didn’t just build an influencer marketing company. He lived through the birth of internet culture from the inside. In this episode of Inspiring Futures, the founder and CEO of FohrIt traces the path from early Tumblr obsession to building one of the most influential creator marketing companies in the world. What makes this conversation compelling is that it’s really about much more than influencer marketing. It’s about the transformation of culture itself.James explains what it felt like to be one of the first people to understand that “following” would become a new kind of currency, long before brands, agencies, or investors took the idea seriously. He talks candidly about the brutal early years of educating clients, surviving on almost no money, paying employees with photography income, and slowly realizing that the internet was no longer a sideshow. It had become the main stage. The discussion moves from Tumblr and Instagram’s early days into the modern creator economy, unpacking why brands still misunderstand creators, why legacy marketers struggle with internet-native culture, and why companies like Nike can lose relevance while brands like Skims instinctively understand the new rules of influence. Along the way, James shares sharp insights on: Why internet culture fractured the monoculture  How algorithms changed influence forever  Why “momentum” matters more than total reach  The hidden tension between marketers and creators  Why great creators often outperform traditional advertising  How influencer marketing evolved from experimentation into one of the most powerful forces in business and politics There’s also a fascinating thread running through the entire conversation about “internet natives” versus traditional institutions. James argues that people who grew up deeply embedded online developed an instinctive understanding of digital communities that many large organizations still lack today. If you care about culture, marketing, creators, the internet, or how influence actually works in 2026, this is a rich and revealing listen. It’s part founder story, part history of the social internet, and part field guide to how modern attention really moves.

This episode is really about how agencies evolve under pressure.Ammunition began with deep expertise in home and building, a category defined by complicated purchase journeys, multiple decision-makers, long sales cycles, and considered decisions.That gave the agency an early advantage.But the more interesting part is how it learned from that advantage.The lesson was not simply “we know this category.” The lesson was: “we know how to solve complex growth problems.”That shift matters.Because agencies are operating in a difficult market. Clients are under pressure. CMOs are being asked to do more with less. AI is changing the production layer. Channels keep multiplying. And there is more marketing activity than ever, but not always more progress.In that context, Ammunition’s proposition, Growth, no matter what, becomes more than a line. It becomes a way of thinking about agency value.Kelly and Chris describe an agency trying to stay useful by learning continuously: from clients, from research, from AI, from category complexity, from international expansion, and from the changing pressures facing CMOs.It is a story about an agency growing not because times are easy, but because hard times force it to get clearer about what it is really good at.

AI and The Marketing Department For a recent Inspiring Futures podcast, I had the opportunity to spend time with Mixtape Partners' Nirm Shanbhag, Andy Bateman, and Sarah Lent/Mixtape is a management consultancy designed specifically for marketers navigating the AI era. Between them, they've spent careers inside the big agency networks (Omnicom, WPP, IPG, Interbrand, R/GA), led innovation and customer strategy at Deloitte, and sat on the client side as senior marketers and CMOs. They've been the consultants, they've been the clients, and they've run the agencies. They started Mixtape because they kept noticing the same thing: most strategy work gets shelved, and the work that actually matters is the work that gets adopted.In the past year, they spent some time researching what was happening with AI and marketing departments. They spent an hour each with thirty CMOs working across twelve industries.Their main conclusion is the one nobody wants to say out loud: nobody has figured this out yet. Not the consultancies. Not the holdcos. Not the platforms.What they did find is a set of moves leading marketers are quietly making while everyone else is still arguing about prompts.Four core findings...The customer you're designing for isn't one person anymore. It's three. Almost no marketer interviewed is ready for what that means.There's a single decision a CMO can make in the next six months that quietly kills their AI transformation before it starts, and most of them are about to make it.As AI takes over execution, the entire value of human work collapses onto one thing. Companies that aren't training for it are about to discover a capability gap that no amount of AI throughput can fix.Your brand is now an iceberg. The part everyone's been optimising for is the part above the water. 

Amy Carvajal grew up in New York, and when she was a kid she ran a little rock painting business. She'd grab rocks from the park, take orders from the neighbors, paint whatever they wanted, and deliver them herself. That's basically how she's worked ever since. Find the material, listen to the person, and care about how it turns out.She spent the next twenty years in the big agencies. DDB, Ogilvy, the global brand world. She built campaigns for clients like IBM, learned how to hold an idea together across thirty different markets, and saw firsthand how often great work gets watered down by the time it ships. Eventually she wanted to be closer to the work again, so she started Full Tank.We get into all of it. Creativity, New York, what it takes to build something independent right now, and why she thinks the smaller shops are about to come out ahead. 

For thirty years, the rules of branding felt settled. Find a story. Tell it loudly. Make people feel something. Repeat.That era is over.On the latest Inspiring Futures, Todd Irwin and Craig Bagno of Fazer walked through what's actually replacing it — and the sequence is what makes it land.It starts with a flip. Brand used to be say, then do. Now it's do, then say. Customers experience the brand five times before they ever encounter the marketing, so the story has to be downstream of the truth.Which means storytelling isn't the currency anymore. Solutions are. The brands winning right now aren't the ones with the best narrative; they're the ones identifying a real customer pain point and solving it better than anyone else. Todd calls this depositioning, and once you see it, you can't unsee it. It's how Apple beat IBM. How the iPhone beat BlackBerry. How Blank Street is quietly eating Starbucks while Howard Schultz keeps trying to rebuild a world that no longer exists.And then AI enters the picture and accelerates everything. Buyers are starting decisions inside ChatGPT and Claude, not Google. The funnel is collapsing. The brand that shows up as the problem solver wins — and the brand that's just well-dressed gets skipped.Underneath all of it is Craig's bigger theory: that marketing has only ever had three eras, defined not by marketers but by infrastructure. We're in the third one now, and most of the industry is still operating like it's the second.The whole conversation reframes what brand work actually is in 2026. 

Amar Chohan is the founder of Department of Creative Affairs (DCA), a venture built to map and champion the independent creative agency sector. A near-accidental entrant to the industry, he trained as a lawyer before walking away from it, then spent almost 12 years at Contagious across two stints, rising to global commercial director. In this conversation, he reflects on that formative period, the thinking behind DCA, and why he believes the independent sector is the real future of creativity.Six themes from the conversation.1. An accidental path into the industryAmmar didn't plan a career in advertising. He trained as a lawyer before making what he calls "the brave decision" to walk away, a move his parents struggled to understand. What pulled him toward Contagious wasn't the sector but the stage of company: "I just wanted to go in somewhere where I could make my mark… be the master of my own destiny."2. Contagious as the defining chapterHe describes his 12 years at Contagious as "the defining stage of my career" before launching DCA. The experience gave him a rare vantage point, working with both agencies and brands. "There's no better place to understand the importance and the power of creativity in our industry," he says, crediting it with "a knack for seeing what's happening in our industry and what that evolution means."3. The holding company distortionThis is the conviction underpinning DCA. Ammar's frustration is that trade press, awards, and search consultants remain anchored to holding companies that represent a sliver of the global market: "The holding company agencies represent 1%, a fraction of the entire agency market around the world. So why is that anchoring the mood and the coverage?" The downstream effect, he argues, is an ambient pessimism that paints the whole sector as struggling, when in reality the independent world contains "everything you could possibly need, whether it's a two-person studio or a 200-person global media planning and buying shop."4. Editorial DNA carried forwardDCA inherits something essential from Contagious. Ammar calls the original print magazine "the most expensive business card on the planet," not profitable alone but the product that opened every door. What made Contagious trusted was editorial authority and curation, and that's the posture DCA takes toward a noisier market: "We've got to be the signal in a world of just overwhelming amounts of information."5. Curation as the core productHe's firm that DCA isn't an open directory. "99% of creative businesses are independent, not all can and should be on the map. So our job is to discover and curate, and invest." A quality threshold matters because DCA's claim that clients should prioritise independents only holds up if every match produces great work. It also solves a real marketer pain point: "They know what they need is out there, but they don't know where to find it."6. Visibility as the agencies' real problemAmmar is blunt about why most independent agencies plateau. Word of mouth takes them only so far. "If a client doesn't know you exist, how do you possibly make your way into the consideration set?" He has no patience for agencies that neglect their own marketing: "The whole cobbler's sons' shoes thing is inexcusable today. We can't keep on using that as an excuse."https://www.thedca.co/

Chuck McBride founded Cutwater in San Francisco. Before that he ran Nike at Wieden+Kennedy, sat alongside Lee Clow at TBWA\Chiat\Day North America, and was on the inaugural team that launched Got Milk? at Goodby, Silverstein. Levi's. adidas. Ray-Ban. Fox Sports. Hoka. Lexus. Feeding America. The work is in MoMA. The shelf has Cannes Lions, Emmys, Clios, D&AD pencils.But the résumé isn't why you should listen. The ideas are — and the stories he uses to get to them.Three things from the conversation I haven't been able to stop thinking about:1. The idea is usually already in the room. Chuck describes himself not as a creative director but as "more of an archaeologist." The point of view is almost always already there — buried in the founder, the product, the way people talk about the thing without noticing they're doing it. He explains it through a dinner with a tech founder who didn't yet have a story for his own company, until the founder said one sentence and Chuck cut him off mid-thought: "Stop. You just said it." The line that ran for years was already in the room.2. Risk is the price of memorable work. Chuck tells the story behind one of the most famous spots of the era — the one where the brief said, in plain English, don't kill the guy. The director killed him anyway. The spot ran. A client walked up to Chuck outside the building afterward and said something he has clearly never forgotten. The flip side, he says, is what kills most work in this business: "the death of a thousand cuts." The clients who freeze in the face of anything risky are the ones who guarantee the work nobody remembers.3. The real story behind the work is rarely the public one. Chuck talks about one of the most beloved American campaigns of the last 30 years — and reveals the private nickname the team used for the spots, a nickname that would have horrified the client if they'd ever heard it. It reframes the campaign as something much darker and much funnier than the version everyone grew up with. And it shows how the real idea was never about the product at all.There's also the moment that pushed him to open his own shop — which wasn't ambition, but the realization that once you do, the risk is entirely on you. "When you open your shop, it's your word now. There's nobody to bail you out."He closes the conversation with a piece of advice from his very first boss — six words he's carried his whole career, and the closest thing he offers to a philosophy of the work: "Wear them out with good work."

Ace of Hearts is one of those rare new agencies that arrives with real heat around it. Not just because the founders come from serious places, but because it seems to answer a feeling a lot of people have right now: that creative companies have become too managed, too tired, too airless, and that something more alive is needed. Martin Beverly has come through AMV, Wieden+Kennedy and Adam & Eve, so he has seen three very different versions of creative excellence up close: the discipline of simplicity, the blur between strategy and creative, the power of pace, momentum and a distinctive creative handwriting.What makes this conversation worth hearing is that it is not just another founder story. It is about belief. Belief in creativity. Belief in the people making it. Belief that a company can be ambitious without grinding everyone into dust. Martin talks about building Ace of Hearts around care, energy, shared success and a wider idea of what creativity can do, not as polish at the end, but as a force inside the business itself. He is very good on simplicity, on earning the trust of creatives, on what made John Lewis so powerful, and on why people do better work when they do not feel anxious, disposable or burnt out.This is a must-listen because it feels like a small signal of something bigger: the return of hope, energy and creative belief in an industry that badly needs all three.

Australia’s indie agency scene feels on fire right now, and Hellions feels like part of that new wave.With new work already out in the world for Figma and a fresh win with BISSELL, this is more than a start-up story. In this episode, Hellions co-founder Mike Donman shares his story, and in our conversation, five lessons emerged that could be valuable for anyone thinking of starting a new shop.Create value, don’t extract itMake the client better, not just busier.Lose the grand revealTransparency and collaboration build trust faster than theatre.Build a team with different strengthsThe best founding groups are not clones. They’re combinations.Make work that does somethingAttention is easy. Consequence is harder and far more valuable.Protect optimismCynicism drains creative businesses. Energy builds them.This podcast is created and produced by Ed Cotton https://invernessconsult.com/

Nike's stock dropped 15% yesterday. Greater China is down for the sixth consecutive quarter. Their CEO told staff he's "so tired of talking about fixing this business."This isn't a tariff problem. It's an identity crisis.I sat down with Falk Fuhrmann, who has led strategy at TBWA, DDB, and Saatchi's for 25 years. Ran P&G's strategy across Asia and Greater China. Now runs Huí//Lüè, a brand consultancy in Shanghai with over a decade spent on the ground.His take: Western brands learned all the right tactics in China — the platforms, the KOLs, the e-commerce playbook. But they optimised their way into meaninglessness. They can execute in the ecosystem but they've lost the thing that made anyone care.Chinese brands aren't winning on national pride. They're winning because they understand their consumers better. BYD doesn't beat Mercedes because of patriotism. It beats it because it builds what consumers actually want.And the deeper shift nobody's discussing on earnings calls: the psychological contract that powered Chinese consumption is broken. Before COVID, every middle-class consumer assumed luxury was inevitable. That assumption is gone. No Western brand has figured out what to say to a consumer who no longer believes tomorrow will be better than today.The trade war makes headlines. The real war is for relevance.

What happens inside a $20 billion creative technology operation when AI changes the speed of everything? When designers start coding? When two-week sprints compress to one? And what does that mean for the clients who are trying to navigate the same transformation?Bill Shea has spent decades building digital products inside Accenture Song, larger than any agency holding company in the world. In my conversation for the Inspiring Futures podcast, he talks openly about both sides: how the operation is reorganising around AI, and what he's seeing across the enterprises they serve. The collapsing role boundaries. The compressed timelines. The unexpected flywheel where speed isn't shrinking the work but multiplying it.He also discusses where the real risk lies. The difference between human in the loop and human in the lead. Why brands are losing their own narrative to models they haven't engaged with. And why the companies that come through this won't be the ones that moved fastest, they'll be the ones that knew what to hold onto while everything else changed.

Lucinda is the founder and head of strategy at Sibling, a culture-led strategy studio.In this episode, we track Lucinda’s unconventional path into strategy. Originally an aspiring journalist, she spent her early career in the editorial departments of London fashion magazines—at one point completing six months of back-to-back internships while living on her sister’s floor. Her career progressed through brand-side roles at ASOS, Farfetch (during its startup phase), and Stella McCartney, with a three-year stint in Berlin’s luxury e-commerce scene in between.Lucinda explains why she eventually left the fashion world: a recurring tension where "the perfect image" was consistently prioritized over "the actual strategy."We discuss how this background gave her a unique lens for identifying brand blind spots and why she views her Substack and research-writing habit not as side projects, but as the core of how her strategy is made. Lucinda argues for a version of the craft that is more cultural, observant, and human, and significantly less reactive.

Barry LaBov started as a rock and roll musician, then accidentally fell into running a full-service ad agency when a client convinced him to buy their marketing department. That unlikely path led him to become one of the foremost experts on brand differentiation, what he calls "brand archaeology." On the Inspiring Futures podcast, he shared how he helps companies uncover the hidden genius they're already sitting on.DiscoveryLaBov's team doesn't create differentiation; they discover it. Through "technical immersions" in factories and labs, they routinely find innovations that companies take for granted. The Audi Quattro story is a perfect case — a $50 million technology that nobody in sales was even talking about.Where The Insight IsMarketing departments often have a surface-level understanding of what makes the product special. The real insights live with the people designing and building things. LaBov learned this the hard way when a head of sales gave him a useless plant tour; he now insists on having engineers and manufacturing leads present.Post-Founder CompaniesLaBov calls post-founder companies "sleeping giants", sitting on gold mines of differentiation but no longer leveraging them. Successors streamline away the very things that made the company special, while competitors quietly hope they never wake up.Different Isn't About Category NormsHarley-Davidson doesn't have the fastest bikes or the cheapest maintenance. But nobody else has their sound or their owner community. Differentiation is about character, not winning every category. LaBov uses the Cindy Crawford analogy — her mole was the thing that made her iconic, and removing it would have left a scar.Difference is Protection LaBov sees companies lazily accepting AI-generated messaging without asking if it sounds like them. The antidote isn't rejecting AI; it's knowing your differentiation so clearly that no algorithm can accidentally erase it.

This is an interview with Erin Emmerson, CEO, Founder, Kelsey Croos, President, Founder and David Young, Global Executive Creative Director of Tower28.This is how they describe themselves on their website. "Like the Santa Monica lifeguard tower we’re named after, we provide guardianship for our clients as they navigate the wondrous waters of localization. Founded by long-time international advertising executives, we set out to democratize the global agency network of creative industry professionals by offering all brands and agencies the opportunity to scale with high-caliber global and in-market talent by their side — without having to pay the premium for infrastructure and full time. To us, there are no foreign markets."Three major themes emerged from our conversation.1. Transcreation is far more than translation Tower28 positions itself not as a translation shop but as a full-service local agency in every market, with strategists, creatives, producers, and insight specialists on the ground. They emphasize understanding the creative and strategic intent behind work and adapting it culturally, not just linguistically. As Kelsey put it: "We're translating culture, we're not just translating language, we're transcreating a feeling." Erin reinforced this by noting that localization is often treated as an afterthought , "everything's done and dusted and baked, can you guys just translate this and ship it out?" and that Tower28 was built specifically to push against that mindset by getting involved upstream.2. Their AI tool "Gail" and curated global network are key differentiators.The agency built a proprietary AI-powered platform called Gail that can take in a brief and recommend the ideal team from their network, as well as run a first-pass cultural assessment on taglines, scripts, and content. That output then goes to local experts for human validation, creating what Erin described as "a flywheel of assessment, validation, assessment, validation and Gail gets better every single time we run it." Kelsey added that this proves "you don't have to choose between speed or scale or cultural nuance. We have it all in one place."3. The holding company model is fracturing, and independents like Tower 28 see a major opportunity.The team sees the current industry upheaval, what a colleague of theirs calls "the great unholding"  as a chance to offer brands a more flexible, effective alternative to traditional multinational agency networks. Erin noted: "You don't have to just go to one of the top four or five just because they have global presence. There's a different way to do things." Kelsey described their flexible retainer model as a selling point: "We build the ship for the client's needs, our client doesn't have to get on our specific ship."

This week on Inspiring Futures, we sit down with Justin Herber.He's a chief brand officer, consultant, and former screenwriter whose career has moved between Hollywood and the brand world. Justin got his start working for Michael Bay, spent five years helping scale Tom's, won a writing assignment to adapt Mario Puzo's final novel for television, built Hot Wheels into the number one boys' toy brand on YouTube, and led Tractor Beverage Company from a proof of concept to a national challenger.Justin thinks about brands the way showrunners think about television: start with a theme, build a world, and design systems that keep generating stories over time. Here are three ideas from the conversation that stayed with us.Start with theme, not positioning.Most brand strategy starts with how you're different from the competition. Justin starts with the deeper tension the brand exists to explore — the same way a great TV show is built on a dramatic question, not a plot summary."We didn't just pitch plot, we pitched theme. Succession is about generational power struggle. Breaking Bad is about moral decay. That's how I build brands too — what are we doing beyond product? What's the deeper theme that we're exploring?"Build story engines, not stories.Justin doesn't make one great piece of content and hope it travels. He builds repeatable systems that keep generating stories — the way a show format can run for seasons. At Hot Wheels, that meant a scalable content format. At Tom's, it meant employee giving trips that turned every team member into an advocate."A showrunner is like a chief brand officer. You're setting the conditions that teams can align to, creating the world you're playing in, and building the frameworks that keep you on message and moving the plot forward."Belief systems aren't messaging — they're operating systems.At Tractor, the belief in a cleaner food system wasn't a campaign line. It shaped supply chain decisions, partnerships, a foundation dedicating 1% of revenue to helping farmers go organic, and an employer brand built around soil health education. His test for whether a belief system is real is simple."If you take away the belief system from the company and the company still exists, you never had a belief system."

Gigi spent seven years at Google before leaving to start a research company.Pai isn't any old research company; it specializes in the creation of "digital twins". These are digital replicas based on real consumers.Pai interviews these consumers and builds digital versions of them. The real respondents get paid every time their digital twin is used, and the real consumers are interviewed regularly so the digital twin can be constantly updated.Gigi imagines a world where every marketer has their digital twins available to them 24/7, so they can be questioned as part of the overall workflow, vs. a separate and time-consuming exercise. In the conversation, we cover a ton of ground The "Say/Do" GapThe core business problem is not a lack of data. It is the gap between what people say in research and what they actually do in the market. That is framed as the founding problem Pi is trying to solve. Grounding in Truth Digital twins only work if they are grounded in real, high-quality data: interviews, category context, and purchase history. Without that, the whole machine turns into a cardboard dragon. The AI Needs to Apply Moderator Craft The AI interviewer who interviews the real respondents needs to replicate “the best interviewer we know” by probing, challenging, and reading for inconsistency. Research Reports Come Alive Instead of letting segmentations and old research rot in decks, turn them into something teams can query, simulate with, and use in day-to-day decisions. Static deck becomes a living customer base. The Challenges Bias, drift, memory limits, and context windows are real challenges that need to be solved. 

Elle is the perfect person to talk to if you want an understanding of strategy inside organizations. She started her work life selling punk fashions in London's Camden Market, but found her way into adland, landing strategy roles at Karmarama and BBH in London. Elle then moved over to the US with BBH, then onto BBDO- where she led the agency's pitch for the global Ford account. Her client experience includes time at EA, PayPal, Ford, and she's currently at McCaffe.Our conversation talked about her experience and her learnings on the agency side, and what it takes to bring strategy into an organization- how to operationalize it. Which often means handing it over to others to make it their own and action it in their own way. We also talked about removing the term brand from every deck. 

Japan has one of the world’s deepest running cultures and at the center of it sits Ekiden: the long-distance relay that becomes a national obsession every winter. In this episode, I’m joined by Jeremy Kuhles, a translator, writer, and runner who’s made it his mission to share Japanese running culture with the world through creative storytelling. Jeremy has lived in Japan for two decades and is immersing himself from the inside, training alongside the Tamagawa University women’s Ekiden team and running with RETO Running Club under Hakone Ekiden legend Daichi Kamino. We get into what Ekiden actually is, why it’s “beyond a race,” and why the outside world often collapses the entire culture into one event: Hakone Ekiden. Jeremy explains why that’s a problem, how it funnels talent geographically, and how it shapes the career path for runners across Japan. We also go where the conversation usually doesn’t: women’s Ekiden. Jeremy shares what he’s hearing directly from athletes, and why greater parity and awareness matter when sponsorship, media attention, and money disproportionately flow to the men despite equal work and sacrifice. About Jeremy Kuhles Jeremy is a translator, writer, and runner focused on bridging the language and cultural gap between Japan’s distance-running world and a global audience through interviews, essays, and social storytelling.

John is an ECD at Digitas and the author of a new book, "Zombie Brands."In our conversation, we talked about his book and the why, what, and how behind the rise of the Zombie Brand.Some of John's quotes from our chat.On the state of advertising:"No one went to, no one got into advertising to make a banner ad. No one got into advertising to make a Facebook ad."On the shift from craft to quantity:"The bragging rights have been we're working with Ridley Scott on this 60-second Super Bowl spot. Now it was we're spending five cents."On viral marketing's false lessons:"We spent zero in paid media and just gamed the system to draw lots of attention to this stunt that doesn't really have much to do with the brand itself... I think it was actually terrible for the industry in terms of the lessons taken away."On performance marketing:"I think a lot of this is hamsters on a wheel. I don't see the evidence that all this activity is leading to growth."On the attention span myth:"If people really did have no attention span, like every planes would be crashing all over the place... You just said no one pays attention anymore and then you watched like 37 hours of TV."On the zombie brand concept:"Zombies are not quite human, right? They kind of seem human, but they're not. They're hollowed out. They all kind of look alike. They all sound alike. They all grunt kind of the same few phrases. And yeah, they sort of maniacally roam the earth like looking for clicks."On Starbucks destroying its brand:"The whole brand, when I worked on Starbucks at Ogilvy, find the brand as fostering connections between human beings. It wasn't about coffee at all... they've completely killed the goose."On the data-driven optimization problem:"They had beta tested their way into basically a big subscribe button. That's all it was. It was a button for people who already had made up their mind to subscribe."On short-term thinking and performance marketing:"You're robbing future Peter to pay present Paul. I might not want you now, but maybe I do in a year, maybe I do in years."https://zombie-brands.com/books/zombie-brands

Tom Garland founded Edition Partners, a London-based creative growth studio, in January 2023. His career spans record labels (Sony, Warner, Universal), Red Bull's experiential marketing peak, and seven years at Highsnobiety where he became Senior Director and Head of Strategy, working with over 100 brands before the Zalando acquisition. Edition emerged from research with 52 brand founders struggling with growth strategy. The studio has worked with Lacoste, Marni, Nike, Burberry, and the Rolling Stones.Tom recently wrote this incredible piece where he goes into detail on the launch of Satisfy's first shoe. https://edition.partners/articles/satisfy-therocker-footwear-launch-interviewHere are some of the main themes and quotes from our conversation, 1. The Street as Pre-Institutional CultureTom reframes "the street" not as a place but as culture before commercialization — where hip-hop became luxury fashion, skate became brand language, and grime became generational uniform:"Instead of thinking of it as kind of low culture, which pre-Virgil Abloh was how it was viewed in certain spaces, it's better to think of it as pre-institutional culture, where new meaning is created before the world catches up and spins it into a meme."2. Sport as the New Cultural Operating SystemJust as streetwear defined the 2010s, Tom argues sport is now the dominant platform for identity-building — creating opportunities in micro-niches from desert running to golf:"Sport is the new streetwear... Sport is now the platform for people to create their own subcultures, their own identities. People are switching out this idea of being a pretty influencer for being a trail runner, or indeed just finding their own hero stories."3. Culture is Built, Not BorrowedBrands cannot parachute into communities and expect credibility. Tom points to Red Bull's sustained investment across music and extreme sports, and Nike and ASICS's multi-year journeys earning legitimacy in skate:"You can't just parachute into skate or music or anything and expect credibility. It's those who commit long term."4. Product as StrategyIn a world of infinite choice and AI-flattened creativity, Tom believes differentiation comes from restraint and proof — not more content or collabs:"In a world where we've got infinite choice, the most powerful brand signal is just to have the best products, and that requires no advertising."5. Ask What Still MattersHis framing for 2026: stop chasing trends, start building institutions with a genuine point of view:"We need to desperately stop asking what's next and start asking what still matters... the next few years won't reward the loudest. It will reward the clearest."

IntroductionJustin Rashidi is co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at SeedX, a data-driven marketing and business consultancy approaching its tenth year. In this episode of Inspiring Futures, he talks about his unlikely path from biochemistry student to entrepreneur, the tutoring company that taught him everything, and how SeedX grew from freelancing for a dairy farm to working with Fortune 500 clients.Key Themes1. The Tutoring Company: An Accidental MBA Waitlisted for medical school, Justin moved to New York, worked as a busser and bartender, and started tutoring affluent families. That side gig became his real education—lead generation, CRM, sales pipelines, hiring. He sold the company, which he now regrets: "I wish I never sold that company... that was a great company." Everything he does at SeedX traces back to what he learned there.2. Problem-Solving as Growth After selling, Justin and co-founder Jacqueline freelanced for anyone who'd pay—starting with a dairy farm. "It wasn't like I set out to start this company. You solve enough problems, and then I found myself here."3. Quality of Revenue He prefers longer sales cycles with larger clients who think in five to ten year terms. "The quality of the revenue is better. These people want to work together for five years."4. Lead Generation as Core Competency Unlike agencies that wait for the phone to ring, SeedX actively generates leads. "I love when referrals happen, but I don't rely on referrals... we're out here generating the next lead tomorrow."5. Systems Thinking Justin calls himself a "systems kind of dude." If it costs $20,000 to acquire a customer who pays $50,000 a month, the math works. "I don't care if it costs $2,000 to get a meeting."6. Hiring for Passion He looks for people who read about SEO on Saturdays because it makes them happy. "What you actually want to hire for is people who want to be there."7. AI Realism He pushes back on AI as a silver bullet. "You're going to save 50%? That's unrealistic. You still need people."

Neil Perkin is a consultant, author, and self-described polymath working at the intersection of strategy, digital transformation, emerging technology, and leadership. With roots in media transformation at Time Inc during the dot-com boom, Neil has spent the last 16 years helping organizations navigate change. He's authored three books on agility and transformation, and now writes extensively about how AI is reshaping the practice of strategy.In this conversation, Neil shares his perspective on what it really means to work with AI—not as a replacement for human thinking, but as something far more nuanced and powerful.Five Big Themes from Our Conversation1. AI as a Genuine Thought PartnerNeil argues that the real opportunity with AI isn't automation—it's augmentation of human thinking through continuous dialogue."How you can really use AI as a bit of a thought partner... it's like fully integrated into a strategy workflow, or any other kind of knowledge or thinking workflow, in ways where you're going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth between human and machine.""Ideally what you are aiming for here, of course, is you're getting to places that you couldn't have got to on your own. And that's the possibility with AI."2. The Danger of Cognitive OutsourcingNeil warns against the temptation to let AI do our thinking for us—what he calls "cognitive outsourcing"—and the hidden costs of "work slop.""This whole idea of cognitive outsourcing is a potentially big problem because if you are able to get the AI to do your thinking for you, you don't need to do any thinking, and thinking is hard.""It's a big temptation because it's good enough, but it's not good. And so the person, the recipient has to then redo the work and it takes longer to actually do that."3. Think, Prompt, ThinkBefore rushing to the AI, Neil advocates for starting with human clarity—a simple framework that changes everything."Think prompt think, basically. So the importance of actually just starting with humans. Before you go to the AI engine, just thinking about what it is you're trying to do, what good looks like... So you start basically with your perspective.""Starting with you and then you having clarity and much greater depth with how you're then going to the AI... means that you're actually integrating it in a way which is not cognitively outsourcing or not disengaging your brain."4. Five Roles AI Can PlayNeil offers a practical framework for understanding where AI fits—from full automation to human-led illumination."There's a model which I come back to a lot, which is just kind of like five sort of key roles that it can play... automator... decider... recommender... illuminator and evaluator. And they sort of balance human AI to different extent.""The illuminator part is where the AI is augmenting your thinking. It's illuminating things in a way that actually you hadn't seen things before."5. Don't View the New Through the Lens of the OldDrawing from his transformation experience, Neil cautions against the natural tendency to apply old mental models to revolutionary technology."I learned a lot about not looking at the new through the lens of the old, the need to kind of reinvent and redesign as well as use technology to optimize.""The first kind of versions of things were always kind of skeuomorphic... online magazines were like literally scans of pages of printed magazines. I think probably we're going to see a lot of that with AI."Find Neil:Substack: onlydeadfish.substack.comBlog: onlydeadfish.co.ukNamed after the Malcolm Muggeridge quote: "Only dead fish swim with the stream"

It's always interesting to see what a network agency in a local market is capable of, especially at a moment in advertising history when geography matters less than it ever has. A few weeks back, I got a chance to sit down with Havas Chicago's Chief Strategy Officer, Chase Cornett, and Chief Creative Officer Frank Dattalo to talk about the change they're implementing as a leadership team that includes President Kat Ott. Our conversation was wide-ranging and covered their approach to thinking about the new duality of marketing today- a concept they call "High/Low", the importance of building brand, treating talent with kindness, and recognizing the power and the limitations of AI. 1. The Leadership Triad In 2025, Frank Dattalo joined President Kat Ott and Chief Strategy Officer Chase Cornett to rebuild Havas Chicago's creative, strategic, and cultural core. Together, they're positioning the agency as a modern, independent, culture-driven hub within the Havas network.Chase: "It's been great to come back to Chicago and reimagine what Havas Chicago can be, a modern agency with the freedom to build what's needed without red tape.Frank: "We knew what we didn't want to be, slow or rigid. We wanted a nimble, modern marketing approach with culture at the forefront.2. The 'High–Low' Model — Think Like a Brand, Act Like an InfluencerHavas Chicago's creative philosophy pairs strategic brand thinking ("high") with the speed, fluency, and emotional immediacy of creators ("low"). Inspired by fashion's high–low aesthetic, it merges rigor and agility to create culturally resonant brands.Frank: "Our north star is thinking like a brand but acting like an influencer or content creator.Chase: "This isn't agency fluff. It changes how we hire, how we make, and how we operate."3. Breaking Down Silos — The Feed as the New Brand CanvasHavas Chicago rejects the traditional divide between social, brand, and performance teams. Culture, not channel, drives brand growth, and the feed is where that happens.Chase: "Brand building starts and ends in the feed. If it's not in the feed, people aren't talking about it.Frank: "Networks separate social and strategy, we're building an agency that does both."4. Reclaiming Brand Building — Escaping the Performance TrapCornett frames the 2010s as the "gold-rush era of performance marketing," where brands traded long-term equity for short-term metrics. The new Havas model rebuilds meaning, pricing power, and emotional value.Chase: "Performance became the buzzword, and brand was painted into a corner as arts and crafts." "If you follow the efficiency train, you're racing yourself to the bottom."5. Culture, Kindness, and Creativity — Building a Human-Centered AgencyThe trio's internal philosophy blends high creative standards with genuine humanity. They aim to make Havas Chicago a place where talent thrives, not just performs.Frank: "It's not about being nice; it's about being kind. Be hard on the work, kind to people."Chase: "We've created mandatory maker hours; no meetings, just making."6. AI as Tool, Not Savior — Protecting Creativity's Human CoreBoth leaders embrace AI for speed and efficiency but reject its overuse. For them, imagination remains the irreplaceable differentiator.Frank: "AI is like a bionic arm; powerful, but it doesn't have a creative point of view."

A few months ago, in the middle of summer, I got a chance to sit down with Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, to talk about his brand new book, "The Running Ground." We got to talk about the book—what inspired it, how he approached it, and how he managed to create a compelling narrative. So this is a podcast episode about running, but it's also about writing and about the challenges of telling a good story.Nick's journalism career started at the Washington Monthly when he was around 24 or 25, working as a political journalist. From there, he moved to Wired magazine as an editor, then to the New Yorker, where he eventually ran the website, learning the business side of journalism. This led to his role as editor-in-chief of Wired before becoming CEO of The Atlantic, which was founded in 1857.But Nick is also a serious runner. In his mid-40s, Nike reached out to him as part of a program pairing non-elite runners with elite coaches. Through this process, he discovered he had talent he hadn't tapped into—his coaches realized that part of his problem was a fear of running fast, a mental block about what he could achieve. They had to "trick" him into going faster. The result was dramatic: he dropped his marathon time from 2:43 to 2:29, and eventually set an American record in the 50K at age 45, running 3:04.The book was originally going to be structured like a marathon and, of course, it was going to have 26 chapters, but then the chronology made no sense. The advice he got from a writer friend is that he needed to take the reader "deep inside the mind of the runner," and importantly, another bit of advice: "you have to make us care" and "you have to make us care about you." Where he ended up is an original and intriguing concept where he manages to weave his life, his father's life, and five other running characters together into a story. Once he had something, there was a process of editing out the unimportant stuff to focus on what mattered.The spark for the book was his father's death—on a plane back from his funeral, he wrote a 5,000-word letter to his three kids telling the story of their grandfather. This became the starting point, but he ended up telling his dad's story, his story, and also the stories of the first woman to run the Boston Marathon, his coach who had a story of addiction and recovery, his running partner who was homeless at one point in pursuit of her dream, a runner who developed Parkinson's, and another runner who has won a 3,100-mile race nine years in a row.As the Washington Monthly wrote in its review: "The Running Ground crackles with big ideas about intergenerational inheritance, the power of love and forgiveness, the inevitability of aging, the mind-body connection, and the value of hard work. The memoir's intertwined stories—Thompson's relationship with his father alongside Thompson's own journey as a marathon runner hitting his stride midlife—are compelling narratives."

Brandon runs strategy at Trade School which is the creative agency which was born out of 22squared in 2020.The agency's clients include- Makita, Home Depot, Shark Ninja, Publix and Advent Health. Brandon's experience includes time at Campbell-Ewald/Detroit after which he joined West Wayne in Atlanta, which became 22 Squared. In our conversation, we talked about the evolving role of marketing, the importance of brands and brand meaning, and how AI is shifting and re-shaping the shopping journey.Here are some of Brandon's soundbites from the podcast. “We are a dopamine-driven ephemeral society. That is very difficult for brands. And I think that's why you see a lot of brands chasing attention.”“Brands are having a hard time creating memory structures because they're chasing attention. People just don't remember any ads at all. I think only 4% of ads are recalled three days later.”“Our agency spends a lot of time, and it's probably because we've, we, we work with a bunch of complicated, multiple-location, retail-type brands, but from hospitals to banks to grocery stores to home improvement stores. We spend so much time doing the internal work, the alignment, the branding campaigns internally, getting people rallied around the heart of the brand and how they live it.”“The whole product and brand discovery process is getting completely changed by AI. We're going to have to re-engineer our journeys and what we invest in and our technology in terms of it's no longer about search engine optimization. It's about content. It's about making things discoverable for AI, all these things, right? But the thing that I think will matter more than anything is going to be the brand meaning.”“For a long time, we've associated brand with frivolous type advertising and communications that are a luxury to have. Brand is an operating system for companies. It’s not a new thought, but it's a true thought. A mental organizing form for action, which is how people think about the world and about the category you're in and about the actions that they take and what it means for them.”

5 Things I learned from talking to Kelsey Hodgkin- CEO-Special US In my conversation for the Inspiring Futures podcasts that spans London, Buenos Aires, and Los Angeles, Kelsey Hodgkin — CEO and Partner at Special U.S. — maps out how a strategist becomes a leader without losing her strategic soul. Founded in 2007 in Auckland, New Zealand, Special Group began in an old cinema and is now an independent global network with offices in Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles, New York, and London. Below are the 5 things I learned from our conversation. 1. Working in Turmoil Teaches ResourcefulnessWorking in Buenos Aires during Argentina’s economic turmoil taught Hodgkin a counterintuitive truth: when money becomes meaningless, creative output becomes everything.“It’s sort of this two-year experience of what it’s like to actually live somewhere where money and capitalism isn't the driving force. It’s much more about the creative output. You have to be really resourceful.”2. She Reframes Strategy as Living Beyond The Brief-Writing MachineWhile some agencies treat strategy as a creative-brief factory, Hodgkin articulates a more ambitious vision.“Strategy at its best is either upstream — really understanding the commercial side of the business — or downstream in the media complexity… being able to turn a big idea into an even bigger idea.”3. She Named the Real Challenge: ‘Our clients are in a "washing machine"Instead of complaining about client chaos, Hodgkin sees opportunity in the turbulence.“The unpredictability, the uncertainty… having strategists that can really understand that commercial reality… being able to be in there with them every day.”4. She Makes The Case For Agencies As Counter-CultureAt a time when agencies increasingly mirror their corporate clients, Hodgkin argues for resistance.“The job of agencies is to be countercultural — questioning of the mainstream and contrarian… if it becomes part of the machine it’s trying to change, then it’s less valuable in being able to change.”5. She Redefines Leadership As Creative CurationHodgkin sees the planner’s superpower — pattern recognition, empathy, orchestration — as the foundation for modern leadership.“As a planner, my strength was more curation than creation — helping greatness happen through others. That’s what leading an agency is.”In a challenged ad agency world, Hodgkin offers a roadmap: be resourceful, stay close to the chaos, protect creativity from corporatization, and lead by shaping the conditions for others to do their best work.

While most of us are obsessed with the creative and strategy side of the business, the harsh reality is that agencies succeed or fail based on their operational competence. For this recent episode of Inspiring Futures, I spent time talking to Nick Avaria. Nick has owned his own agency, and he also buys agencies and consults with them to help them improve operations. Here are some of the highlights of our conversation. The agency landscape has transformed. Where generalist agencies once dominated through geographic proximity, today's winners are specialized, systematized, and financially disciplined.The Numbers that Matter Agency finances are simple: Revenue minus pass-through costs equals Agency Gross Income (AGI). People costs should consume maximum 45% of AGI (30% billable, 15% admin). SG&A should range 20-25%. This formula yields 30-35% profit margins—increasingly achievable in today's remote-first environment.According to Nick, most agencies fail by providing "Michelin star service at McDonald's prices." The solution isn't cutting quality but is all about being able to align price with value.Specialization to Survive In 2012, only 20% of agencies were specialized; today it's 70%. Specialists command premium pricing because they deliver results in weeks, not months. They skip expensive discovery phases, leveraging "institutional knowledge"—accumulated expertise that becomes an unassailable moat.The agency handling only Google Ads for personal injury lawyers doesn't need three months of strategy. They know what works. This expertise enables premium pricing while reducing delivery time.The Operations Gap Most agencies are "relationship driven, not systems driven." Every handoff fails.Every project reinvents wheels. Results: inconsistent quality, evaporating margins.The fix requires two feedback loops: systematized client experience (onboarding, expectations, education) and standardized delivery (dashboards, SOPs, training). These unglamorous systems separate scalable agencies from those that implode.What It Takes to Be Sold For maximum valuation: maintain 30-35% profit margins while growing AGI 30-35% annually. Achieve $1M+ EBITDA for 6-9x multiples.Build 2+ year client retention. Create owner-independent systems.Winners have transformed from creative shops into operationally excellent businesses. They've chosen their lane—vertical, service, or both—and built expertise others can't match.What it TakesToday, rewards neither generalists nor operational chaos behind creative brilliance. Success requires specialized expertise, systematic delivery, positioning, and financial discipline.Agencies can't thrive on talent alone. They need systems capturing talent's impact, positioning commanding appropriate pricing, and discipline ensuring every dollar builds a sellable asset. Creative magic still matters, but it has to be wrapped in a sound business model.

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast on better briefs and creative development featured a different format - instead of a typical one-on-one conversation, I gathered together an expert panel to examine and explore the issue.Matt Davies and Pieter-Paul von Weiler - From Better Briefs. Former creative agency strategists with two decades of experience working on thousands of briefs. They've published studies on brief writing and idea assessment, and now work with BetterBriefs, helping major brands create more effective briefs.Jeremy Diamond - Worked at major London agencies before moving to New York in 2000 to join Ogilvy & Mather. In 2004, he founded Distillery, a brand strategy consultancy, and has worked on a myriad of clients, including Diageo, Campbell's, Cox Communications, IHG, Holiday Inn, American Express, and AON.Tom Noble - A highly experienced global marketer and advertising strategist with extensive experience as a senior marketer and agency exec. Tom's experience includes Nike, adidas, BMW, MINI, AFL, Jeep, Alfa Romeo, and Fiat.Why this particular group? Matt and Pieter-Paul don't just theorize about brief problems - their research for the World Advertising Federation exposes the serious disconnect between clients and agencies, and they're in the trenches helping brands fix it. Tom and Jeremy have felt this pain firsthand across agency, client, and consulting roles. The combination gives us both the data on what's wrong and the real-world knowledge on how things could be better.

Mary Lou Bunn is the CEO and founder of the agency Flower Shop. This is how the agency describes itself on its website. "Ad Age’s Small Agency 2024 Newcomer of the Year. That’s right, we’re a creative agency. We may be based out of a former florist’s on the Lower East Side of New York City, but we sell sneakers (or spirits, or non-alcoholic beer, or women’s sports teams, or energy drinks for athletes, or trading cards) rather than bouquets. We like to look at things from a fresh angle, with a twist. So we may not bring you flowers - sorry - but we can promise beautiful campaigns that are undeniably famous and will grow your brand."In our conversation, we discussed her background in hospitality and architecture, and how it influenced her perspective on the agency. Her agency experience, the story behind the origins of Flower Shop, its philosophy, and the opportunity for a nimble small agency at this moment in time.  

From digital media planner to Chief Strategy Officer - and now she's on a mission to democratize strategy for everyone.This is a podcast interview I did with Lucy Barbor, a strategy consultant and educator who's flipping the script on how we think about strategic thinking.After rising through the ranks to become CSO at PHD UK and Global Strategy Partner at Dentsu, Lucy made a bold move: she decided to take strategy out of the boardroom and into the hands of anyone hungry to learn.Her philosophy? Strategy shouldn't be this mysterious, gatekept discipline that only a select few can master.In our conversation, we dive into:How she approaches teaching strategy to make it truly accessibleThe biggest misconceptions people have about strategic thinkingWhat she learned climbing the ladder in competitive agency environmentsHer framework for breaking down complex strategic problemsIf you've ever felt intimidated by strategy or wondered how the best strategists think, this one's for you.

David Aaker is widely regarded as the father of modern branding. Over a five-decade career, he transformed brand from a communications tool into a strategic asset. His groundbreaking concept of brand equity, introduced in Managing Brand Equity (1991), reframed how businesses understand value — not just through products, but through perception, loyalty, and meaning. He followed with Building Strong Brands (1996), which introduced the Brand Identity System, and later with Brand Leadership (2000), co-authored with Erich Joachimsthaler, which cemented the idea of brand as a driver of business strategy.Beyond his role as a professor at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Aaker has shaped practice as well as theory. As Vice Chairman of Prophet, he’s advised global brands on identity, portfolio strategy, and brand relevance. His frameworks — from signature stories to brand architecture — have become foundational tools for strategists around the world. In 2015, he was inducted into the American Marketing Association Hall of Fame for his lifetime contributions to marketing thought.Among those deeply shaped by Aaker’s work is Scott Galloway, who studied under Aaker at Berkeley in the 1990s and later co-founded Prophet. Galloway has said, “There would be no me without David Aaker,” a testament to Aaker’s profound influence on the next generation of brand thinkers. What Aaker pioneered — brand as belief system, as organizing principle, as strategic lens — remains more relevant than ever in a time when differentiation is fleeting and cultural resonance is everything.

Rachel has spent over a decade at Work&Co. In the episode, we discuss the company's unique origin story and how it has evolved alongside the transformative changes in the world of technology. We talk about..1. The importance of carving out space for creative risk, which clients demand because they find it challenging to accomplish in their environment. 2. How constraints increase the odds of innovation. 3. Why is simplicity hard? Because it requires a combination of iteration and bravery.4. Experience matters- be a user, feel and find the frictions- go to the edge and experience those use cases because innovation comes from trial and immersion. 5. AI is transformative, but now is the time to get deep into the sandbox and play. 

Christine Olivas began her career by hand-delivering 50 resumes to San Francisco startups, which resulted in one startup hiring her. Her entry into agency work came when an owner heard a webinar she produced and was impressed enough to bring her aboard. At this agency, she excelled by running two departments and contributing to significant growth. After years of success there, she transitioned to a strategy role at a New York agency before going freelance. When client demand exceeded her capacity, she built a team, evolving into her current thriving business (No Single Individual) that provides agencies with talent across multiple disciplines. Christine's journey illustrates the power of hard work, risk-taking, entrepreneurship, and market understanding. Our hour together revealed not only her remarkable path but also her insights on how agencies have the opportunity to be more flexible and adaptable with talent in today's challenging environment.A shift that's creating new opportunities thanks to the breadth and depth of freelance talent. 

Tara is the Chief Creative Officer at Rethink NY.She has extensive creative experience from agencies including Y&R, BBH, Mother, and Droga (x2).In our conversation, we discussed her experience at Miami Ad School, where she was forced to think seriously about funny- to an approach and perspective on being sensitive enough to find funny in the world around you.We discussed her experiences and challenges at the different agencies she's worked at.How Rethink throws has a unique West-Coast culture that's designed to make working in a New York agency less like a hot house.How clients still want great workBut this all depends on the relationship and how Rethink has a unique way of making this work from the get-go. 

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Pip Bingemann- the co-founder of Springboards.aiAs strategy departments grapple with how to use AI, this podcast seems timely.Pip is an agency strategist who embraced AI from the early days, learned basic code, and built a model that attracted the attention of several agencies. Fast-forward two and a half years, and Springboards.ai has funding, sales,  and customer service teams in multiple countries, as well as a bench of tech talent that includes a 17-year-old math genius. Pip is doing something different with AI- recognizing that strategists need partners to help them bring their ideas to life, Springboards.ai is designed to be fun and creative. Its focus is on delivering variance vs. the typical AI model, where output is about conforming to an average.

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Michael Miller and Chris Nobile- two of the three founders of consulting group Consiglieri.Before the founding of the consultancy, Michael and Chris worked together and helped build T-Mobile's in-house capabilities. In our conversation, we talk about what they learned from the T-Mobile experience and how it informed the development of their consultancy. We discussed the pieces that matter, like the power of asking why certain things are happening, building operational competence, and doing things that help turn legacy marketing organizations into modern ones. In a complex and complicated marketing world, Consiglieri exists to help CMOs build and operationalize their marketing function, allowing the CMO to manage the day-to-day. 

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Ali Burton. Ali is Head of Incubator at Gate One in London, which is a Havas-owned start-up incubator. He's also in the process of growing his own start-up Catch. https://catchcameras.co.uk/The idea of Catch is to lean into the movement for people to appreciate the analog, enjoy waiting, learn new skills, and build IRL communities. In our conversation, we talked about what he's learned from working with start-up founders, how he's thinking about and growing his business, and what it was that drove him to develop the company.

The latest Inspiring Futures episode is all about "Futures".My guest is Donna Dupont, Chief Strategist, Foresight and Design at Purple Compass.As the Founder and Chief Strategist in Foresight & Design for Purple Compass, Donna Dupont brings skills and insights developed over 20 years working with leaders in healthcare, emergency management, government public policy, strategic planning and program design. She has facilitated a range of foresight and design activities for clients in healthcare, emergency management and military.In the conversation, we talk about the world of "Futures" what it is, what it isn't, the skills required, the approaches, and some of the challenges involved. 

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an excerpt from a webinar I hosted with Brent Vartan of Bullish. Brent began his career as a strategist at shops that included- BBDO and Deutsch. Bullish was founded in 2016 with the promise of bringing ad agency expertise, including strategy, to the start-up world. The company describes its approach as "blending capital, consulting, and creation to design the most remarkable businesses in the world."In our conversation, I spoke with Brent about the pivotal role that strategy and strategists play in this space. It's a world where strategists work upstream, partnering with CEOs and founders to shape their brands in ways that are aligned with their vision and expedient to their needs and culture. We dive into what this entails and what it takes to get it right.

Mark is the co-founder of Squint Consulting. Before Squint, Mark was an experienced Head of Strategy working with clients like Nike, Netflix, Samsung, and Diageo. His career spanned New York, London, and Amsterdam and he spent his formative years at R/GA, the world’s leading digital innovation firm.In our conversation, we talked about his experience at R/GA, why he wants to be a "brand," not just a "freelancer," working with companies that, after 5-10 years, are finding they've reached the "plateau" with performance marketing and now need to think more deeply about their brand, his work with Olipop and how happiness is an important new space for brands today. 

YAMA Group was founded in 2009 and has steadily built a reputation as one of the leading small, independent pharma shops in the world. It has worked on brands including Botox, Humira, and Keytruda and works with Takeda, AbbVie, and Pfizer. It's a highly creative agency that works across all aspects of pharma marketing including efforts to reach specialists and has developed its unique products for these interactions involving the creation of "digital patients.In my conversation with Martin and Michelle- we discuss the world of pharma marketing, look at what matters in the space, and how the agency differentiates itself and has created its own unique culture. This is an agency that grew its revenue an astonishing 67% in 2023. 

My latest Inspiring Futures podcast episode features an interview with Dr. Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel.Anastasia is a cultural theorist, writer, social critic, and strategist specializing in inclusivity within marketing, media, and tech. She earned her doctorate in cultural studies from Duke University and is now using her expertise to help brands ignite cultural innovation and leverage the power of media for good. Dr. Gabriel is the author of Cultural Intelligence for Marketers, published by Kogan Page in March 2024.She has consulted for the world’s largest brands at research and creative agencies like Wieden+Kennedy, Dentsu Creative, McCann New York, Kantar, and Canvas8 and been featured by the American Marketing Association, the Association of National Advertisers, the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, Advertising Week, Campaign US, Teen Vogue, and others,In our conversation, we talked about her early years and upbringing in Latvia and her school experience in Hong Kong. We talked about what culture means to her, how she thinks about it, and its importance. 

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with Julianna Katrancha- Group Strategy Director at Johannes Leonardo. This is one of my favorite interviews because Julianna dives into the learnings from her journey from a media planner to a senior strategist. She talks about her periods and moments of doubt, and how committed and focused she is on carrying the practices and principles that deliver strategies with impact. We talk about what those are. How you cope with the challenges agencies face today and some thoughts on what it means to manage teams. 

The latest Inspiring Futures episode features an interview with Allen Adamson of Metaforce. Allen is a seasoned executive with experience client side at Unilever and in the agency world with the likes of Landor, Y&R, and Ogilvy. He has taken his extensive experience in both worlds to build his own consulting company that's focused on helping clients solve their problems but does it in a very different way to the classic ad agency model. 

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast is a discussion with Joe Nash and Patrick Kizny about the current and future state of creative services and creative studios. Joe was formerly the Director of Business Strategy at Buck and the co-founder of Slate. Patrick runs Futurecrafting which provides strategic advisory services to brands and companies and has an extensive background as a creative director, art director, and technical/software specialist. In our chat, we talk about the evolution/revolution that is taking place and how companies need to think about and prepare for the future. 

The latest episode of the Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Lori Bartle of Cultivagency. Lori has over two decades of experience in Account Management although she much prefers to call it Account Leadership.In our conversation, we discuss some of the challenges the discipline faces and the critical importance of a role that brings a deep understanding and knowledge of a client's business to the table. As you will hear, Lori is an extremely passionate advocate of the discipline. 

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. 

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 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. https://www.purposedisruptors.org/