The Ad Podcast

Douglas "Doug" Zarkin is an award-winning brand architect, executive marketing leader, speaker, and author. He was most recently the Chief Marketing Officer at Take 5 Oil Change (under Driven Brands), overseeing brand strategy, customer experience, and retail growth across hundreds of franchise locations. Prior to his role at Take 5, Zarkin spent over a decade as the Chief Marketing Officer at Pea...

Chip Malt (Bradford "Chip" Malt) is an e-commerce entrepreneur, growth strategist, and the Co-Founder & CEO of Made In Cookware. Before founding Made In, Malt built his career in software engineering, data analytics, and performance marketing, leading digital strategy and customer acquisition efforts at companies like WeSpire and Culinary Concepts. In 2017, he teamed up with childhoo...

Shlomi Ron is an author, keynote speaker, and visual storytelling executive who operates at the intersection of brand narrative, cognitive AI, and strategic decision-making. He is the Co-Founder & CMO at Decision Advantage AI as well as the CEO & Founder of the Visual Storytelling Institute (VSI). At Decision Advantage AI, Ron leads brand strategy and go-to-market messaging for advanced AI...

Raymond 'Reigns' Tembo, Digital Marketing Specalist, Simply Black Media—one of the premier independent media, data, and communications networks operating across sub-Saharan Africa. Raymond is a pan-African media leader who has spent over 15 years building integrated, data-driven advertising infrastructure across emerging markets. From navigating fragmented local media ecosystems to executi...

Bill Harper, CEO and Chief Creative Officer at BrandBossHQ—a strategic branding and storytelling agency that has generated over $2.5 billion in net new revenue for more than 300 brands. Bill is a serial entrepreneur who has founded and built four successful agencies, winning over 100 industry awards for his work with category heavyweights like Denny’s, Carfax, Ryobi, Bosch, Michelin, and Delsey Lu...

Jason Mitchell is a social media strategy pioneer, agency executive, and the Co-Founder & CEO of Movement Strategy. Starting the agency from a college dorm room, he has scaled Movement Strategy into a premier 150+ person social-first marketing agency with major hubs in New York, Denver, and Los Angeles. Under his leadership, Movement Strategy crafts breakout social campaigns and community-firs...

Jason Rhoads is a digital marketing executive, AI innovator, and the CEO & Owner of Rhoads Creative, a full-service digital agency focused on high-performance strategy for homebuilders, remodelers, and construction brands. Taking over the business originally founded by his parents nearly 35 years ago, Rhoads leveraged his academic background in statistics and financial analytics to transition...

Edwin Choi is an e-commerce growth strategist, entrepreneur, and the Founder & CEO of Jetfuel Agency (jetfuel.agency). Founded in 2017 after years of working in-house as a DTC operator, Choi built Jetfuel to eliminate the inefficiency, wasted ad spend, and surface-level tactics common in traditional agency models. Under his leadership, Jetfuel Agency operates as a performance and growth engine...

As corporate data storage costs soar and cookie deprecation reshapes digital media, enterprise brands must shift from hoarding volume-based data to activating decision-led zero-party data. Dylan Conroy sits down with Emily Proctor, Managing Director of Technology & Data Solutions at OMD, to break down how top global agencies audit clients' technology stacks and eliminate ad-targeting waste...

Cindy Goodrich is an executive marketing leader, brand strategist, and the Chief Marketing Officer at Empathy—a technology platform dedicated to supporting families through the emotional and logistical burdens of loss, grief, and legacy planning. She holds a B.S. in Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering from Duke University and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Go...

Galina Shubik, Co-Founder at Affect Group—an international digital marketing agency with over two decades of performance growth experience. Galina is an Effie and Shorty Award-winning strategist who has led digital growth and client service transformation for global powerhouses like PepsiCo, MasterCard, LEGO, and Mercedes-Benz. Beyond agency leadership, she serves as an Effie Awards juror and a ma...

Nikki Lindgren is an e-commerce performance marketing leader, CEO, and the Founder & Managing Partner of Pennock (pennock.co). Starting her career in product development at Pottery Barn and joining the foundational e-commerce team at Cost Plus World Market, she moved agency-side to oversee digital marketing strategy across high-profile e-commerce accounts. She launched Pennock to bridge the ga...

Sandra Leung is an digital marketing executive and the VP, Search & Media Operations at Cosmo5. Cosmo5 is a digital agency and performance media partner that specializes in paid search, programmatic advertising, media strategy, and growth analytics for scaling brands. In her leadership role at Cosmo5, Sandra oversees search operations, campaign performance frameworks, and cross-channel media e...

Kevin DiLorenzo is the Partner & CEO of Rise and Shine and Partners, an award-winning independent creative, brand strategy, and advertising agency based in Minneapolis. With over 30 years of experience in advertising and communications, he has guided creative and brand strategies for major national and regional brands, including Target, Best Buy, BMW, McDonald's, Capital One, Andersen Wind...

Mary Knight is an advertising executive, creative director, and the President and Co-Owner of Hydrogen Advertising, an award-winning independent agency based in Seattle, Washington. With decades of industry experience, Knight spent years as an Executive Creative Director at major global agency networks—including FCB Global and DDB Worldwide—before stepping into leadership at independent shops. Hon...

John Dawson is VP Strategy at Jellyfish, with 15 years of experience working across Australia, Denmark, China and the United States. He brings an international perspective to developing strategies for global brands at a time of media convergence and disruption. He helps clients navigate the evolving landscape through AI, data and media innovation, and importantly, helps them understand and improve...

Christina Garnett is a fractional Chief Customer Officer, trust strategist, author, and keynote speaker. Operating through her venture Neuemotion (neuemotion.com), she advises executive teams and high-growth companies on building Customer Trust Infrastructure, scaling customer advocacy, and treating brand-customer relationships as emotional, high-leverage assets. She is the author of Transforming...

As search funnels compress and over 60% of digital queries end without a website click, enterprise leaders are forced to rethink how they monetize audience attention and maintain search visibility. Dylan Conroy sits down with Mark Mamber, CEO of Tiki, to break down the mechanics of monetizing lost web traffic and leveraging Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) to capture market share across AI platfor...

Priscilla McKinney is a CEO, serial entrepreneur, author, keynote speaker, and the founder (or "Momma Bird") of Little Bird Marketing. Known for her irreverent, no-nonsense approach to B2B growth and digital transformation, she has built Little Bird Marketing into an award-winning content marketing and lead generation agency. She is the author of Collaboration is the New Competition and...

Hawken Ritter is an AI engineer, product strategist, and tech leader specializing in agentic workflows and enterprise automation. He is the Head of Growth at Convey, an enterprise platform that enables non-technical teams—across publishers, agencies, and adtech platforms—to design, train, and deploy autonomous "digital teammates."Focus & PhilosophyThroughout his career in software en...

Steve Red is the Co-Chief Creative Officer at Mod Op and the founder of the renowned creative agency Red Tettemer O'Connell + Partners (RTO+P), which joined Mod Op. With decades of experience touching creative and strategic direction across industries, he leads brand identity, creative storytelling, and campaign strategy with a conviction that advertising should be as intelligent and engaging...

Alladan Flinn is an artist, musician, and entrepreneur who is fundamentally reshaping the physical collectibles market as the Founder and CEO of Based Trading Cards. Alladan’s mission sits right at the intersection of high-end physical art, Bitcoin philosophy, and hard-asset economics. By combining elite craftsmanship—using heat-receptive thermal inks, 3D holographic patterns, and physical securit...

Enterprise marketing teams face growing digital fatigue, as screen-based advertising alone struggles to capture deep customer loyalty. Don, Managing Partner at Salt & Pinch, breaks down how leading brands leverage experiential world-building and physical production to turn digital IP into high-converting real estate. Key tactical themes covered: - Scaling flexible production teams up to 240 me...

Sara Brooks is the Chief Growth Officer at BetterHelp, the world’s largest online therapy platform. In her role, she leads global marketing, growth transformation, international expansion, and member acquisition, scaling the network to serve millions worldwide. With over 18 years of marketing leadership experience, Brooks has a proven track record of scaling consumer tech brands from early-stage s...

Christian Jacobsen is an ad-industry entrepreneur, brand strategist, and the Co-Founder of The Many (formerly known as Mistress), an award-winning integrated advertising agency based in Santa Monica, California. A classically trained brand strategist who previously held roles at agencies like Ogilvy and Kastner & Partners (servicing brands like Red Bull), Jacobsen co-founded the agency in 2010...