Call To Action

This week, we twiddled our Poirot-Esque moustache and put our egg-shaped heads together to track down and catch ad industry titan, Sara Tate, for a chinwag.   Sara is former CEO of TBWA London and, alongside Anna Vogt, penned The Rebuilders, a guide to building resilience and turning obstacles into opportunities. She talks to us on TV detectives, working in a teabag factory, being a nosy ninny, st...

This week, we’re up all night to get Lucky General, Andy Nairn.   One of the world’s most respected brand strategists, Andy is a founder of one of the UK’s most successful agencies, Lucky Generals, and author of Go Luck Yourself. Boasting a client roster including Amazon, Virgin Atlantic and Yorkshire Tea, they’ve been shortlisted for Campaign’s Agency of the Year five years in a row.  Andy chats...

We laid traps of tactics before strategy to lure Mark Ritson (and Ritdad) as he was reintroduced to mainland UK to unleash his Tasmanian devilish take on the industry, for Call to Action’s 100th episode.   He’s spent 25 years working as a marketing professor, has been a columnist at Marketing Week for over a decade, is a world-class speaker and has built, presented, and demolished marketing plans...

Ahead of our 100th episode next week, one of the most outspoken and brilliant voices in ad land, Steve Harrison, dropped by …Gasp! HQ and tore up our usual script for a special bonus episode of Call to Action.   Copywriter, author, and great friend of the agency, Steve stuck the boot very much on the other foot and snared Giles to shoot the breeze on all things …Gasp!, with an extra dose of eloque...

Let’s get ready to rumble! Grab your ringside seat for the second episode in our battle royale-style heavyweight series; They Might Be Right. It’s the boisterous brother of Call To Action that breaks up bundles in the pithy playground of Twitter.   Named in honour of Bill Bernbach’s famed jacket pocket card, we invite our challengers into the octagon of debate for a verbal slugfest, whilst being m...

We took a trip in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies, to catch two girls with kaleidoscope eyes, Stefana Bosse and Jennifer Tessler, this week.  Stefana and Jennifer’s own personal experiences with psychedelics and inner work inspired them to found Alalaho, a series of psilocybin-assisted retreats offering a safe, legal environment for a psychedelic journey. Join us in the...

Life’s a peach, this week, as we soak up the sun in South Carolina to snare a man who can sniff out agency B.S. a mile away. Here to vent eloquent fire, it’s Derek Walker.  Chief instigator, janitor, secretary, and mailroom person for his tiny agency brown and browner, Derek is a stellar copywriter and a loud, proud critic (and lover) of the ad industry.  He talks to us on his “late start” in adve...

We picked a card, any card, and drew the econometrics Ace and Founder of magic numbers, Dr. Grace Kite.  Grace has over 20 years of number crunching experience across all the main advertising buying categories and is dead set on helping marketers make the most of their data. Tune in as we pull a ton of topics out of a hat, including her first job at a bingo hall, her fascination with real people,...

This week all it took was a tasty tipple of classic TV ads to trap tenor turned top strategist, and alliteration aficionado, Tom Roach.  Currently VP of Brand Planning at Jellyfish, Tom has worked at some brilliant acronyms agencies like AMV BBDO, Leo Burnett, BBH, and adam&eveDDB, creating pitch-perfect campaigns for McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, and the BBC to name a few.  He gets vocal on a ton...

Lots of girls and lots of boys, lots of smells and lots of noise, playing football in the park, we caught baggy trousered Marc. We’ve snared the Dean of the world’s most awarded ad school, Marc Lewis, for an hour of masterly Madness. A seriously impressive creative mind perched atop the industry’s finest pantaloons, Marc is the man at the helm of School of Communication Arts. He’s dead set on deli...

Carpe Diem. Seize the day. The Cameron Day. This week we’ve snared industry legend, author, and birthday boy, Cameron Day, for a chinwag.  Creative Director, writer, and chainsaw enthusiast, Cameron has been crafting ads and shape-shifting brands for over thirty laps around the sun. Pile your paper plate high with topics including the influence of his father Guy Day (of Chiat/Day), writing his Adv...

We flagged down a Big Yellow Taxi and rode it all the way to Melbourne to catch copywriter and Joni Mitchell mega-fan, Carolyn Barclay, this week.  A stubbornly strategy-first copywriter, Carolyn helps brands sound like actual humans instead of soulless robots sent from the future to bore us to death. She’s also co-founder of Kingswood & Palmerston, a creative consultancy solving marketing puz...

This week, we laid out hordes of Humbugs* to catch the Bah-rilliant Bristol-based strategist and Paul Feldwick fan, Alex Murrell.  He is currently Strategy Director at brand agency Epoch. Supplying strategic simplicity to the world’s biggest FMCG brands. Alex talks to us on tonnes of topics, including making the jump from graphic design to strategy, efficiency vs effectiveness, why an ad being exp...

We’ve gone bar crawling in Washington DC and laid bait of Tanqueray & tonic to lure and lubricate the writer, teacher, speaker and “Revenue Architect” Dave Wakeman this week. Clients call him a “shot of adrenaline”, and his work has taken him around the world working with some of the world’s biggest brands like American Express, Google, Coca-Cola, Nike, and the Boston Red Sox. He’s also the ho...

Health and Safety went ballistic when they got wind of this week’s guest being both a Blades fan and one of the sharpest strategic minds in media. Safety goggles on folks, it’s Rich Kirk.   Rich is currently Chief Strategy Officer at Zenith UK. Named the UK’s second-best media planner in 2021 by Campaign, Rich, like Avis, clearly tries harder, contributing to Zenith winning work from Lloyds, Halif...

This week, we’ve laid 57 varieties of bait to snare Salad Cream sommelier and TikTok star, Rob Mayhew, for a chinwag. Currently Head of Influence at Fleishman Hillard, Rob has over 20 years’ experience working at some of London’s top agencies with big brands like McVities, Krispy Kreme, and Lacoste. His sketches send Jenny’s, Gavin’s, and Tara’s across agency land into hysterics by holding up a mi...

This week, we’ve masqueraded as a cartoon tiger and talked our way into Kellogg to catch truly gr-r-reat marketer, Keerti Nair, for a chinwag.  Hell-bent on bridging the gap between commerce and creativity, she’s Marketing Effectiveness and Digital Transformation Lead at Kellogg and has cut her teeth in the industry over 16 years, 4 continents and 2 recessions.  She talks to us on going from engin...

This week, armed with duty-free’s finest Yo Ho Ho’s and a bottle of rum, we’re in the Big Apple to rub shoulders with the pirates at TBWA\Chiat\Day New York and catch their Chief Creative Officer, Amy Ferguson, for a chinwag. Amy describes herself as a chronic exaggerator. Yet, her reputation as a creative renegade and rule rewriter needs none of that. She’s got the pencils, Lions, Clios and piece...

Fix up, Look Sharp* because this week we’ve lured Lincolnshire lad and the Rascal of professional services marketing, Lee Grunnell, for a chinwag. A top marketing director and fellow Ritson fanboy, Lee is obsessed with applying the latest thinking from marketing leaders like Binet, Field, and Sharp to professional services. He talks to us on picking brussels sprouts, the Grunnéll vs Grunnell debat...

This week, we whizzed back to the 90s and stuck out our thumb on the side of the information superhighway, hoping to catch a ride with award-winning creative and digital pioneer, Laura Jordan Bambach.   Currently President and Chief Creative Officer at Grey London, Laura is a total ad land powerhouse, dishing out truly creative work for some of the world’s biggest brands.  Topics covered in this e...

This week, we laid bait of lofty vision statements and years of intricate tax dodging, to lure one of Britain’s most-awarded copywriters from the shadows. Locked and loaded to lob a few volleys at brand purpose, he’s Nick Asbury.   A brilliant writer and a thoroughly good bloke to boot, Nick crafts witty and charming words for branding and design.  Pile your plate high as Nick talks to us on how a...

We stuck a fake shark fin on our back and lurked in the waters off Adelaide to catch the attention of one of the industry’s most respected researchers, Prof. Karen Nelson-Field, this week. Hell-bent on fighting the broken media ecosystem as founder and CEO at Amplified Intelligence, Karen is also an author and alumni of the world-renowned Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. When she’s not binge-watching Hom...

Let’s get ready to rumble! Grab your ringside seat for the first episode in a new special heavyweight series; They Might Be Right. It’s the boisterous brother of Call To Action that breaks up bundles in the pithy playground of Twitter. Named in honour of Bill Bernbach’s famed jacket pocket card, we invite our challengers into the octagon of debate for a verbal slugfest, whilst being mindful and we...

We’ve sailed on the waters of the U.S coast to catch the Moby Dick of advertising this week; the one and only Luke Sullivan. A man whose book ‘Hey Whipple, Squeeze This’ is so iconic it’s coined by many as the creative bible, Luke is one of the most talented blokes in the business, having spent 33 years in adland at shops like Fallon and The Martin Agency. Join us for a raucous and riotous voyage...

We’ve commandeered a (now) irate New Zealander’s fishing trawler to poach the strategy and risk expert Andrey Ivanov for a right royal chit chat this week. A podcast host in his own right, Andrey fronts the popular and educational Business Games podcast, where he applies game theory to help leaders overcome uncertainty. Go press play and unleash a huge catch of informative piranhas, including why...