Inspiring Futures - Lessons from the Worlds of Marketing and Advertising

Rob Walker is a writer, teacher, and journalist. He studied journalism and started his career working for trade magazines.  In the early 2000s, he worked for Slate under the leadership of Michael Kinsley who suggested he should write a weekly column about advertising. Kinsley's perspective was advertising was a key cultural force but it wasn't understood or appreciated as such.  Rob foun...

Nick is one of the creative leaders over at design and strategy company- COLLINS. We had a very interesting, but somewhat rambling conversation where we covered his background in music, his work for record companies, and the magazine Frank. To be honest, I talked a little too much - Nick was either interviewing me or I was interviewing myself. We did manage to talk about some of the work and proce...

Design is tough to understand and that makes design strategy even tougher. In this episode, Paul Collins the Strategy Director of Elmwood does a brilliant job of explaining how strategy works in a design agency. What is there to do? How it inspires and how it works with clients.  We also talk about boundaries, like- where design ends and advertising begins. Elmwood and Paul have a lot of interesti...

David is the Founding Partner at HUSH.  Hush is a unique experience design practice where they create experiences designed for physical environments that use digital technology and data. Think of a space like the lobby at Uber's HQ and HUSH are the folks that bring that experience to life. This requires a really interesting set of skills from architecture through to coding and finding the tal...

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with John Graham- Head of Strategy at Cartwright. John has had an amazing strategy career - starting off working on Dos Equis at Havas,  going to BBH and getting to work on the Axe account and the famous "Susan Glenn" campaign, and then 7 years at 72 and Sunny where he rose through the strategy ranks and worked on numerous acc...

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures is an interview with John Roescher- the CEO and co-founder of handsome in Austin, Texas.  We got to talk about the genesis of the company, what designing experiences mean and are, how to manage to combine the advertising and design discipline under one roof, and we also talked about the future of a company that operates without an HQ.

Nathan Phillips is the co-founder of the NY agency Technology Humans and Taste.  Prior to becoming a copywriter, he worked in the performance art world, starting out in the world of improv. These are the experiences he brings to his agency where strategy is all about opening up possibilities, rather than the traditional approach of a finely tuned focus and creativity is something that is always on...

Frank Rose started his career as a beat reporter on the NY music scene for the Village Voice and went on to write for Fortune and Wired covering the worlds of business and technology.  Now he's a Senior Fellow at Columbia School of the Arts  and faculty director of the executive education program Strategic Storytelling, Frank has just authored a new book - "The Sea We Swim In- How Storie...

The longer one spends in the industry, it seems it gets easier to get more skeptical and cynical about the ad business. However, if you want a different take- talk to people who are just embarking on their careers in the business and see nothing but positivity and hope. I recently interviewed Payal Pereira and  Shannon Gerety who are recent strategy graduates from the VCU Brandcenter.  I was taken...

Greg Hahn left the world of big agency advertising for what basically was a start-up and has kicked off with quite an incredible first year.  The agency was recently awarded Ad Age's "Newcomer of the Year" with the following soundbite " “Since Mischief officially hung out its shingle on June 1 of 2020, its ascent has been swift and storied, with each campaign living up to the a...

Design is a phrase that's often used as a catchall for a lot of different disciplines.  This podcast is focused on the world of brand design- meaning crafting and creating the identity and look of a brand new brand or updating an old one. To help me navigate through this complex world, the podcast features two guests- Christina Falzano - Managing Director of Conran Design US, and Ben Solomon-...

Lesley Bielby was part of the second wave of account planners who landed on US shores.  She is currently the CSO of Hill Holliday- her second time in this role and has spent time at Digitas, Di Massimo Goldstein. MMB and a number of London shops.  She has just written a book - Super Strategist- The Art and Science of Modern Account Planning. It is designed to be a guide to Account Planning today,...

Mo Said heads up the creative shop Mojo Supermarket which includes the likes of Adidas, Fenty, and Netflix as its clients.. Mo's story is an inspiring one- he literally clawed his way to the top of the creative tree in advertising after arriving in the US from Lahore, Pakistan as a 17-year-old.  He has worked on some of the biggest brands and created a number of award-winning campaigns during...

Dan was one of the original team who helped established Innocent Drinks.  A brand born in 1998 on the whim of four friends who maxed out their credit cards and found a couple of investors to back them making fruit smoothies.  The company sold a majority stake to Coca-Cola in 2010.  Dan headed up all things brand at Innocent from its inception to 2018 when he left for Apple.  In the podcast, we tal...

The episode features an interview with Tracey Follows who is a professional futurist. Since the future is what the podcast is supposed to cover, it was fantastic to have Tracey on the show. Tracey started her career in advertising and then moved client-side before taking on senior strategy roles at VCCP and JWT. Most recently she has been working as a futurist and running her own consultancy. Trac...

Aaron Duffy is a director and the co-founder of the agency Special Guest. In the podcast, we talk about his journey from art school into the world of commercials and film direction.  Getting his first break with BBH London who let him loose on an Audi ad that happened to win a Lion in Cannes. He is also one of the creative forces by the iconic Parisian Love spot for Google as well as the highly aw...

Alex Benett-Grant founded Amsterdam shop "We are Pi" when he was 28 and now 10 years later the agency is firmly part of the establishment of indy creative shops- especially after winning the Ad Age International Small Agency of the Year in 2019. Mark Lester is the agency's head of strategy- having joined the shop from R/GA-NY - also in 2019. Our conversation covered many topics from...

Bree Groff is a partner at SYPartners and an expert in change. We first talked on this podcast in August 2019 where Bree talked extensively about her background in the world of change management and what it takes to get people to do the difficult thing and change.  Fast forward to February 2021 and it seemed like an opportune moment to reconnect with Bree to understand what she was both seeing and...

Alexander Rae and I had the opportunity to interview Carolyn who is the executive creative director at Young & Laramore in Indianapolis. We talked about Indianapolis, the new rules and definitions of creativity, why she loves strategy, and more. Sadly, she never told us she was also a podcaster. I guess we aren't getting invited onto any of her shows. 

Craig Mawdsley and Bridget Angear are two of the biggest names globally in the world of Account Planning. They have not only won every significant strategy award going- including multiple IPA Effectiveness Awards, but their day job was to co-managing the Planning Department at AMV-BBDO in London. Interestingly, I learned that Craig majored in business and Bridget in economics- which is an interest...

Chuck and Nandi Welch run Rupture Studio a consultancy that helps brands and corporations navigate the complex world the exists across the worlds of business, marketing, culture, and lifestyle.  They bring over 30 years of combined experience to the table- Nandi in brand management and Chuck from his work with media and creative agencies ranging from Mediavest and Naked to McCann and Wieden &...

Rishad is one of the smartest minds in the ad business. He moved from Bombay to Chicago to do an MBA in Marketing and Finance at the University of Chicago, got hired at Leo Burnett and stayed for his entire career. That's not entirely correct- he worked his way across and up to the very top of the Publicis Group becoming Chief Strategist and Member of the Directoire. He spent his career think...

This was a pod recorded almost a year ago- right before COVID hit and somehow this recording got lost in the mix. Brent Vartan left his high-powered strategy job at Deutsch to join a former colleague Mike Duda and created Bullish. Bullish is a hybrid company that brings together a PE/VC company and a creative agency- the remit is as an early stage/angel.  The vision is to "own what they make&...

Jason Harris is the CEO and Co-Founder of Mekanism.  In our conversation, we discussed the evolution of the agency in the past 15-years from a digital shop, to a viral agency, a production house, and now a full-service shop with 4 offices and 200 employees.  Jason is a firm believer in the importance of relationships and understands that at its essence, advertising is a people business. It's...

Seven years ago, Rob Baird, Seth Gaffney, and Krystle Loyland left Mother NY to set up their own shop- Preacher. I got the chance to sit down and have a chat with Rob and Seth. I learned they made a deliberate decision to locate to Austin- partly because Rob wanted to head back to Texas, but also because they wanted to impact, connect, and contribute to a place with a diverse artistic culture. The...