TRENDSETTERS

Lisette Arsuaga, Co-Founder of AIMM, ANA's Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing, has long been an advocate for demonstrating how high-growth brands are also those with strong diversity and inclusion attributes or “cultural relevance” that is embedded throughout all marketing touchpoints. Recently, AIMM conducted a survey through the Cultural Inclusion Accelerator (CIA) to better unde...

Rogier Vijverberg founded the agency SuperHeroes in Amsterdam in 2009 with an ambitious mission to save the world from boring advertising. Nearly 15 years later, SuperHeroes is still an independent agency, but now with offices in New York (or Williamsburg Brooklyn to be precise) and most recently Singapore… driven by that same mission. A self-described “digitalist,” with the title of Chief Creativ...

Michel Quintas has the rare title of Director for Global Digital Strategy and Execution at Biogen, the Cambridge, Massachusetts multinational biotech company specializing in the treatment of neurological diseases. Not only has he helped lead an enterprise-wide transformation of Biogen’s digital customer engagement, but he has been instrumental in advocating omni-channel programs and a Digital Cent...

Jared Belsky , Founder & CEO of Acadia, the recently launched and highly successful Atlanta-based agency, has been on both the client and agency sides during his career. He believes that marketers often are trained in every aspect of their business except managing their ad agencies. His latest book, You Get the Agency You Deserve , offers both practical and emotional lessons on how to improve...

Conversation with Leela Srinivasan, CEO of Parity Parity was created in 2020 to close the pay gap in women’s sports, benefitting elite women athletes and their fans, as well as brands. Founded by former leaders on Wall Street, the company drives revenue to pro women athletes by curating sponsorship opportunities, as well as other aspects of brand ambassadorship, content creation and in-person appe...

Phil Rowley, Head of Futures for Omnicom Media Group UK, admits that the Metaverse is both overhyped and underappreciated. While a lot of marketer attention is now on the “shiny objects” of AI with products like ChatGPT, he has recently focused on “Avoiding the Regretaverse” or, perhaps better said, “how not to mess up in the Metaverse.” Beginning with definitions, we discuss how brands can best t...

Few would disagree that an agency’s greatest asset is its people. Tim Ringel, ad veteran, serial entrepreneur, and one of the founders of agency group-- Meet The People, is on a mission to ensure that an improved work culture is front and center for ad agency employees. He describes Meet the People as the world’s first people-centric agency group, based on a better work/life balance, no glass ceil...

Kate Goodall has spent a good portion of her adult life supporting women and women-led companies. As Co-Founder and CEO of Halcyon, an incubator for early-stage impact ventures, she has formed several strong opinions about business. Kate often talks about “the inevitable impact-driven future of business” and “the rise of values-driven consumer behavior.” An advocate for startup accountability thro...

Eric Feinberg is a leading expert on cyber information warfare and is Vice President of content moderation for the Washington, DC based nonprofit, Coalition for a Safer Web. There, he works alongside former Ambassador to Morocco, Marc Ginsberg, to shed light on terrorist extremist content, hate speech, violent activity, and illegal drug sales on social media. Eric has also invented a unique cyber...

Joanne Davis of Joanne Davis Consulting has a reputation for helping to find a still point in the constantly churning world of client – ​​agency relationships. From concepts like Can This Agency-Client Marriage Be Saved to specific ideas on how to repair relationships, she has proven that while change may be constant, it doesn't have to break industry partnerships. We asked her to make sense of th...

A well-known drinks marketer for much of his career, Colin Westcott-Pitt turned his attention several years ago to the global development of the Glanbia Performance Nutrition Brand Portfolio, which includes Optimum Nutrition, Slimfast, Body & Fit, Isopure, among others. Its flagship global brand, Optimum Nutrition, has just been certified as the world’s #1 sports nutrition brand, according to...

The WFA, with Kantar Research, Offers Imperatives on Marketers’ Role in Sustainable Actions. Özlem Şentürk Explains… The World Federation of Advertisers has been proactive in linking sustainability with marketing imperatives. At their annual Global Marketer Week Conference in late April, they presented new research in partnership with Kantar’s Sustainable Transformation Practice. Entitled Sustaina...

Ask branding expert Allen Adamson his perspective on the most important shift in contemporary marketing, and he’ll tell you it’s the need to focus on the consumer’s experience, rather than stressing product differentiation. His new book, Seeing the How: Transforming what people do, not buy, to gain market advantage explores why today’s most successful businesses are those that have significantly t...

It’s not every day that someone champions a global redesign of an iconic brand. PepsiCo’s Chief Design Officer Mauro Porcini led the process to refresh Pepsi’s logo and visual identity to make it more relevant for today and tomorrow. Most of the marketing world has now had a glimpse of the new logo, revealed earlier this month with new colors—electric blue and black, a bolder, all-caps font, and a...

Nick Bayer, Founder and CEO of Saxbys®, a certified B Corp with a mission to “Make Life Better,” has always been in the business of bringing people together. When he created Saxbys in 2005, he never considered it to be just a chain of coffee cafes, but rather a social impact company fueled by great food, beverage, and hospitality. Ever driven by his company’s mission, Nick Bayer introduced Saxbys’...

Martyn Etherington is CMO of BMC Software, which specializes in designing software for today’s digital enterprise-- including products used for multiple functions like automation, service management, operations, workflow orchestration, and security. Martyn in a believer in the importance of being a “Growth CMO,” and often attributes success as being “fearless” in that role. He views marketing not...

Brian Wieser has spent his career understanding trends in media spending, its overall effect on advertising budgets, and what this means not only to marketers, but to investors. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Brian has now branched out with his own consulting company called Madison and Wall . Today we talk about better interpreting the nuances of global digital media growth versus...

Tim Love is the former Vice Chairman of Omnicom Group, and a man who has devoted a lifetime to loving advertising, marketing, and thinking differently. When he saw storm clouds on the horizon of his chosen profession. he responded by questioning those with the greatest vision. The result is a new book entitled, Discovering Truth: How to Navigate Between Fact & Fiction in an Overwhelming Social...

Stephan Loerke, CEO of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), sees several opportunities ahead for marketers to have broader influence in those issues of greatest concern to consumers. Despite a turbulent 2022 and worries about economic uncertainty in 2023, he is adamant that marketers are now able to drive sustainable growth for their brands and for their businesses. In fact, Stephan Loerke o...

There’s no better person to understand what’s on the minds of marketers than Bob Liodice, chief executive officer of the ANA, one of the world’s oldest and largest marketing associations. Today we talk about the trends that emerged from the organization’s annual Masters of Marketing conference, as well as look ahead to 2023. While Bob admits that he does not have crystal ball, he does share a long...

According to Dave Knox, “the leaders of yesterday have to learn the rules of an entirely new game of business in order to maintain their position as the leaders of tomorrow.” He combines his marketing talent with an entrepreneurial instinct to continually rethink today’s fast-changing business world. A Procter & Gamble alum, a brand builder, an investor, an entrepreneur, and author, he is now the...

Pete Blackshaw operates that the heady nexus of marketing innovation, digital transformation, and entrepreneurial thinking. Throughout his career, Pete has been a marketer at Procter & Gamble and Nestle, an entrepreneur, a digital guru, an author, a data analyst, and a community service leader. He now serves as CEO of Cintrifuse, the Cincinnati-based startup community and investment fund that boas...

Katherine Freeley has worked for major agencies as well as large multinational marketers—from Colgate Palmolive to now Novartis… as Global Head Media & Digital Procurement. While she’s always been a driver of digital transformation in Global Marketing and Media, she is also a passionate believer that marketing procurement can play a far more meaningful role in both achieving brand goals and enabli...

Ulli Appelbaum often views himself as a contrarian in today’s transactional world of digital marketing.  A true Internationalist, who has lived on several continents and has worked on numerous global brands, he held senior strategy roles at BBDO, Leo Burnett, Fallon Worldwide, and SapientNitro before founding his boutique brand strategy shop, First The Trousers Then The Shoes, Inc. in Minneapolis....

Anthony Farina is no stranger to transformation, as he leads the Communications, Brand and Corporate Affairs functions at one of the world’s top biotech companies-- that has grown from 12,000 to 30,000 employees in 100 countries in less than a decade.  He created CSL’s first-ever global Communications function, launched its first global brand positioning and employer brand, and transformed its dig...