Sweathead, A Strategy Podcast

Rebecca Rowntree hosts the podcast This Way Up and is a freelance Creative Director. She's judged D&AD and Cannes. She's worked at BBDO, R/GA, and The Elephant Room. And, at the time we spoke back in March, Rebecca was contemplating her freelance life. So that's what we discussed. You can find Rebecca https://www.rebeccarowntree.com/ And here https://twitter.com/rebeccarowntree * This episode was...

Greg Hahn is one of the world's most prolific and best known creative leaders. Chances are that if you've lived in America–yet alone worked in the advertising industry here–you've seen his work. Or his team's work. Greg started at Fallon in Minneapolis then moved to BBDO in New York where he rose to Chief Creative Officer. He spent fourteen years at BBDO. But he's not there now. In this interview,...

Join hundreds of strategists from around the world as a Founding Member of Sweathead. You'll get access to the Sweathead Strategy Summer Camp. It will be weird.  http://courses.sweathead.co/

Nathan Young is Group Strategy Director at Periscope in Minneapolis. Like the rest of us, he used to make a rap blog and, like the rest of us who've made rap blogs, at some point Nathann realized he had bills to pay. So again, like the rest of us who've faced these turbulent rap blog decisions, he moved into advertising. In this chat, we discuss research that he and his team at Periscope have just...

Ci En Lee is a media strategist at PHD Media in Singapore. With the help of friends, Lee has been gathering reports about COVID-19 and storing them in a Google Drive for others to access. He first started coming across reports in group chat with friends in China. We discuss how these reports have worked their way around China and then what's stuck with him having read many of them.  You can find C...

Tom Goodwin is Head of Futures at Publicis. We live-streamed this chat into Sweathead on Facebook on Saturday, 11 April, 2020.  We mostly discuss sharing ideas in public - the privilege that often enables it, the perils of doing it, and what the point of it is anyway.  You can find Tom here: https://twitter.com/tomfgoodwin  Sweathead strategy classes are in session: http://courses.sweathead.co

Lucy Jameson has had massive roles - CEO, CSO, and ESD. And she's had these roles at massive London agencies - Grey and DDB. But, despite these massive roles in these massive places, in 2017 she founded Uncommon with Nils Leonard and Natalie Graeme. In this interview, we discuss the different ways creative agencies can make money and what really matters once you're out of the holding company beast...

In this episode, I run through what strategists are sharing about their lives and emotions in the Sweathead Facebook group.  Sweathead strategy classes are in session: http://courses.sweathead.co

@ me -> http://www.instagram.com/markpollard Sweathead strategy classes are in session: http://courses.sweathead.co

This might surprise some of you but there are experienced marketers out there who really love creativity. Josh Dean is one of them.  He's been the CMO at S'well (post-plastic bottles and containers), he's CMO'd Tommy John, he had a ten-year stint at Unilever, and he was VP of Brand Communications at Chobani.   I've sat in meeting rooms with him wondering, "What's he doing here?" I've wondered that...

Tim Burrowes is an editor, a journalist, and an entrepreneur. Having helped to launch Campaign in the Middle East and edited B&T in Sydney, Tim co-founded Mumbrella in 2008. Chances are that if you work in marketing, media, or advertising in Australia, you know Tim.  In this chat, we discuss what it's like to be a journalist covering the advertising industry, how trade publications choose their st...

Derek Walker runs Brown & Browner Advertising. He enjoys cooking, writing, and taking public pot-shots at the things in the advertising industry that don't make sense. We've spoken on Sweathead before but I wanted to speak to Derek about what's happening right now.  *For COVID-19 context, we live-streamed this to the Sweathead Facebook Group on March 31, 2020 You can find Derek here: https://twitt...

Christina Aventi is Executive Planning Director at BMF Australia. She's probably won more strategy awards than you've had strategy dreams. We discuss her approach to strategy.  You can find Christina here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina-aventi-5442b414  Sweathead strategy classes are in session: http://courses.sweathead.co

Tina Yip and Darien LaBeach (with many friends) run strtgst, a community that brings together strategy folk to learn together. By day, Tina is Director of Marketing & Culture at Berlin Cameron in Manhattan, and Darien is Director, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategy at Huge in Brooklyn.  This is an edited chat from a livestream to the Sweathead Facebook group (streamed Wednesday, 25 March 20...

Mark Jenson has worked in advertising for over three decades. Currently, he is a brand consultant and also a lecturer at the University of Minnesota Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication. In this episode, we discuss Minneapolis - the culture, the advertising scene - as well as how Mark approaches the teaching of advertising. You can find Mark here https://twitter.com/mjenson * This w...

Mara Lecocq is Brand and Community Director at Fishbowl, a semi-anonymous platform for people in industries such as ours to ask each other difficult questions. In this episode, we discuss what people in advertising talk about in public when people can't identify who's doing the talking. We live-streamed this to Sweathead on Facebook, hence the references to “watching” and “seeing”.  You can find M...

Payal Pereira is studying strategy at VCU Brand Center. We met in Bombay, India, last year but I came across her portfolio again in a spreadsheet compiled by Aisha Hakim. In this spreadsheet are over 300 people hoping someone with industry experience with review their portfolios. Payal's portfolio and the way she expresses her strategic thinking stood out to me. So, we decided to talk through her...

Noah Brier is Co-Founder of Variance, a relatively new company looking to help people work better together. His last venture was Percolate, a content marketing platform many of you will be familiar with. But these companies came after years in agencies such as Naked and Barbarian Group. In this episode, we discuss the shift from "coming up with things" to "coming up with systems for other people's...

Rob Estreitinho is a strategist at VCCP in London and he helps make strategy get-together machine Group Think happen. He also publishes Salmon Theory in which he discusses ways of seeing the world, often with a nod to working in advertising. We live-streamed this chat last week right into Sweathead on Facebook. Now it's here ... for your ears. You can find Rob here https://twitter.com/robistyping...

Darren Woolley is Co-founder and CEO of Trinity P3. He spent 15 years as a copywriter including working as a Creative Director at JWT. Then he decided to help marketers make smarter decisions with their marketing. A big part of his work focuses on helping marketers hire agencies and fix relationships with their existing agencies. In this chat, we ask whether procurement or pitch consultants have h...

Mary Buzbee is a creative at Lewis Communications in Birmingham, Alabama. Recently, she published an article about classism in advertising and how it prevents people who could work in advertising and who want to from doing so. And this is what we discuss. You can read Mary's article here: https://medium.com/@fellowcommunity/as-advertising-becomes-pay-to-play-creative-potential-is-wasted-2673638703...

Leo Nguyen is a strategist at Stink Studios in Brooklyn. He grew up in Portland, he graduated from the University of Oregon in 2015, he interned in Singapore, and he's wrestled with what it means to be American in a family that's from somewhere else. Initially, we intended to talk about the BBH Griffin Farley program but Leo talked about so much more and mesmerized me with how articulate he is. So...

In this episode, I share some thoughts about the past couple of weeks, some real talk from a recent Instagram story about your work life and WHAT ARE YOU DOING, as well as run you through 10 strategy exercises and answer a bunch of questions. Thanks for hanging out with me. You can find 10+ hours of training videos here for the next week or two: http://www.sweathead.co

Amy Charlotte Kean is Director of Innovation at &us in the UK. She's led teams in the UK and throughout Asia. But we don't talk too much about this. Instead, we discuss Amy's book "The Little Girl Who Gave Zero F**ks", her article on mental health "Don't Tell Me To Talk, Teach Me To Listen", and DICE - her attempt to improve the diversity of industry panels. You can find Amy here: https://twitter....

Gregory Duquesne leads planning at M&CSAATCHI.GAD in Paris having been Managing Partner of Naked. He published a book called "Oeil Neuf" a few years ago in which he demonstrates how a planner's fresh eyes can apply critical thinking to questions such as "Why don't we pay attention to fire extinguishers even though they are red and very visible?", "Why do some people have more luck than others?", a...