Sweathead, A Strategy Podcast

Tony Effik is SVP, Client Strategy at NBCUniversal and an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University. Before, he ran Media & Connections at R/GA and he was CSO of Publicis. Big titles. The thing is, talking to Tony makes me think of this Dilated Peoples lyric: "I work the angles sharp and precise." Everything he has done in life is work the angles. From Nigeria to a housing estate in Londo...

Gareth Kay co-founded Chapter after a stint as CSO of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and leading planning at Modernista! in Boston. However, he's originally from England where he achieved a MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford. So his planning bonafides are well bonfided. In this 40-minute interrogation, I hit Gareth with 150 questions. OK. Maybe 30. It's fast-paced. We cover a lot...

Vikki Ross copywrites. That means she finds words for brands to help those brands express themselves in ways that are unique and compelling. Vikki Ross also trains, mentors, and judges. She does these things with the School of Communications Arts 2.0, SheSays, Creative Equals, Who’s Your Momma?, and D&AD. And she co-runs an event for copywriters in London called Copy Capital. Yes, she keeps busy....

Why have so few women progressed into senior roles within creative departments? Dr Kasey Windels has researched this. In 2008, she analyzed the 1984, 1994, and 2004 issues of the Communication Arts Advertising Annual, and learned that only 3% of the creative directors across those issues were women. She's also spoken to a lot of female creatives. This is an important discussion. We cover: - What t...

Know Vice? RG Logan works for their agency Virtue. He's worked in advertising, social, and digital agencies, but now spends his days helping brands to create content worth watching. We discuss: - What a publisher agency even does - Creating ideas of importance - "Branded content" - doing it good, doing it bad - Feeling comfortable doing something drastic Video: http://www.sweathead.co RG Logan on...

Jocelyn Lai has assembled teams at Droga5, R/GA, and GSD&M. She now does this for companies all over the place through her own consultancy in Pittsburgh, JSL Talent Consulting. We discuss: - Ways to re-energize your career - Reflecting on whether advertising is for you anymore - How to move beyond your advertising career Video: http://www.sweathead.co Jocelyn on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jocelyn...

The Drum's Bennett D. Bennett once worked as a copywriter inside a large New York agency but now writes about agencies and the media world in which they live. He's also hosting a free portfolio program over summer: https://www.theconceptingclass.org/ We discuss: - What's going on with agencies right now? - The Upfronts and New Fronts - Diversity in the key of "real talk" (The Pipeline Is Blocked,...

CSO Adam Pierno thinks you think too much, not too well. This was Hamlet's problem. Adam also thinks all your social media looks the same. Hamlet would have killed at social media. Straight out of Pheonix, Arizona, where Adam CSO's for Santy, podcasts 'The Strategy Inside Everything', and recently released his book 'Under Think It', we discuss: - Agency culture in NYC, Boston, Atlanta, and Arizona...

Meet Chelsea Coleman and Rachelle DiGregorio. They recently formed Flock, a community of women from the University of Oregon that helps each other get jobs, get paid, and shine. Flock is a gang and chances are that if you think for a living you spend too much time alone and you need a gang. Get a gang. In this interview we discuss: - Making that running jump from college to agency - Common problem...

Rachel Mercer is an Executive Strategy Director at R/GA in New York City. In fact, she just started the job. Three weeks ago. And we discuss this but we also discuss: - American culture shock in London - Finding a way into strategy - The short eras of digital agency work - Managing teams - Pressures on doing good work - And a lot of other stuff Video: http://www.sweathead.co Rachel on Twitter: htt...

Whenever someone working in strategy or marketing says, "I just want to do work that has more meaning," Malaka's face is one of the faces that rushes through my head as an example of someone who is building a life and career around meaning. After a flirtation with the music industry and the agency world, Malaka has spent much of her career writing about some of the most challenging topics our worl...

How do you grow your confidence? Meet Lexie Perez. She's lived and worked in New York, Seoul, and San Francisco. She's worked in TV production, digital agencies, and, now, she's the strategy lead at Agency Inside at Intel. In this episode, we focus on the idea of confidence - how it grows, how to build it off a base of expertise, the need for allies and pushing your comfort zone, and we discuss ho...

Yeah! Tom! Tom is the Head of Effectiveness at BBH London. He shares such good things on the Internet, things that will help you do more effective work for your clients. And guess what? We discuss this. We also discuss: - "All data is wrong but some is useful" - What makes advertising effective - Objectivity, confidence, and pride - How to shepherd good ideas - How to approach writing an effective...

How does a production company even work? Whether you live in an agency or not, it's so important to spend time understanding how your industry works. Especially right now as... well, hang on, is it working any more? Yeah yeah. Of course, it is. Meet JP (aka S Jason Prohaska). He is the Managing Director of MediaMonks in New York Fucking City. Great gentleman, great company. In this interview, we d...

Have you ever wanted to ask a recruiter... "Like, come on now, could you tell me what's really going on?" Well, I just did. And - BONUS - Erin Noel who's currently Director of Team Operations at Stink Studios was a strategist for 13 years before doing recruitment so she can speak to both sides. In this interview, we discuss: - How to honor yourself in your career - The 2 most common crossroads in...

Maura Tuohy is the Global Head of Social Content & Experiential Marketing at Mozilla (think the Firefox browser) in San Francisco. She has an MBA, she's studying law, she's worked in agencies and in brands, and she's done this in the USA as well as during a short stint in Australia. We discuss: - Mozilla and Firefox and being a not-for-profit tech company - How social media works at Mozilla - Work...

Mr Mark Cripps is CMO at The Economist in London. Mark grew up around advertising and direct marketing and then spent his career in agencies in roles that often involved working out how to help "digital" and all things data make sense to people who weren't as familiar as he. We discuss: - The evolution of data within agencies - Key data and direct marketing concepts (a great 101) - How The Economi...

Deb is a Shogun. A professor at the University of Oregon, she doesn't just teach, she doesn't just hold down a job, she gets people careers. She does this with how she teaches but she also takes a much deeper interest in students than any other professor I've met. In this chat, we talk: - What learning advertising is really learning - The role of portfolios - Which agencies students want to get it...

Group Think is a London-based strategy community that gets people together to think, drink, and discuss. They have 500+ members. Here's an interview with James Lees (strategist at Sword and Stone) and Arthur Perez (Head of marketing and brand strategy at Depop) from Group Think in which I share 9 or 10 generalizations of things I've been hearing to see how London feels about planning. Points I ask...

Philosophy is dope. Sure, some of the books are dense and the words longer than a giraffe, but we all have philosophies and can improve our lives by learning how to debate them with ourselves. Meet Rob Estreitinho, senior strategist at VCCP in London, and maker of Salmon Theory, a newsletter about the philosophy of strategy. We discuss: - Having A Thing - not just a CV - What philosophy is - The p...

Yo! It's Natalie Kim from We Are Next. After 10 years in the agency world with her last role being Director of Strategy at Firstborn, Natalie now runs We Are Next where she helps people new to the industry navigate how to get into it and thrive once they are there. We discuss: - Studying advertising in college - The most common question of new strategists - Informational interviews (what are they...

Eaon Pritchard recently published "Where Did It All Go Wrong? Adventures At The Dunning Kruger Peak of Advertising". Eaon is the Head of Strategy at Universal McCann in Melbourne, Australia. We discuss these things: - WTF is data anyway? - The Dunning-Kruger effect (where the incompetent think they're good and the competent do not) - Sturgeon's Law (output connecting to the quality of output) - Th...

Richard Shotton is the Deputy Head of Evidence at MG OMD over in London and has just released a book called "The Choice Factory: 25 behavioural biases that influence what we buy."  We discuss the power of flaws, mirror strengths, virtue signaling, the principal-agent problem, the decline in rhyme, and many other biases.  You can find Richard's book on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Choice-Factory...