Sweathead, A Strategy Podcast

When you respond to thousands of briefs in a year, how do you not start from scratch every day? Nick Susi is Head of Strategy at Complex Collective, a group that sits in the Complex media organization that is owned by Hearst and Verizon. His team often has 24 to 72 hours to help their sales team pitch ideas capable of winning budget.   We discuss over 7 ingredients that help strategy and crea...

Side projects don't have to be side hustles - but what's the point of them? Jesse Nicely is a Group Strategy Director at Cashmere in Los Angeles.  After studying psychology and journalism at NYU and editing the subculture magazine Frank 151, Jesse has found a place in the advertising world but he keeps one hand in a side project called Puffington's Golf. Puffington's Golf is a brand for golfers wh...

Why is it so uncomfortable for marketers and agencies to delve into dark emotions? Lindsey Wehking is an Associate Director of Strategy at Nonfiction Research. She recently led research into the way people use music playlists on Spotify to identify and process dark emotions. Nonfiction published this research under the title "America's Secret Playlist Report".   We discuss how the team approa...

Black, indigenous, and racialized minorities are barely visible in the advertising industries in North America, which is where we are going to situate this conversation. We’ll situate it here because Derek Walker (USA) and Gavin Barrett (Canada) are on a mission to help more people become visible to and in the industry and North America is where they’re plying their trade. Gavin Barrett is Chief C...

Ever been hired to a strategy or account planning job only to arrive in the company and they don't know what it is, they aren't sure they want it, and they make you justify your existence every day? Ilana Bryant was one of two American planners in London in the 1990s. Read that again. It's not the premise of your next Netflix binge-watch but it could be. Ilana finished her postgraduate studies in...

Dear advertising agencies, mental wellness is not an initiative you can use to wish away cultures and processes that are not mentally healthy. What makes an agency culture mentally healthy? 1. A sense of meaning 2. Autonomy 3. Psychological safety 4. Reasonable hours 5. Work getting made 6. Small, focused teams 7. Gentle hierarchy Mental health in an agency starts with doing meaningful work in a 
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If you hunger to solve toothy problems, where can you even do that work right now? Many agencies talk a good game when it comes to solving problems only to put the brains fiending to do such work on social media calendars and hashtags and into inter-agency meetings gone wild. MJ Alexander-Scott is Group Director at Fjord, which is part of Accenture Interactive. He leads the strategy and insights p...

How does it feel to leave a 5-year-career but then to flare out of the new agency that you join in a matter of months? And what if the flaring out really helps you work out what you want in life? Brinn Phillips is a strategist in Detroit. After a long run in one agency in which she grew in responsibility and in titles, had a mentor she enjoyed, and started to mentor other strategists, she left. Sh...

You're about to interview your first potential hire, how on earth do you feel right now? In this chat with Nicole Rajesky, we discuss the journey from not hiring to hiring. Nicole is a Senior Brand Planner at Rethink in Toronto, Canada. They do good work. Very good work. Nicole is 18 months into hiring and was kind enough to talk about the guilt she feels when interviewing people, feeling like a f...

If you're a freelancer exchanging time for money, and chasing invoices while trying to explain to people what value you can really bring, how could setting up a company help you? Brandon Williams runs 55 Media Group in Los Angeles. We were going to talk about what it's like to freelance–to go in and out of companies that aren't always functional–but we ended up discussing Brandon's journey from ar...

Ever worked in a company that fusses with process and organizational charts but never makes good work? Yeah. The question houses the truth, doesn't it? Genevieve Grandsen, Selma Ahmed, and Will Grundy work at one of the world's best agencies (although, now I've interviewed six people from adam&eveDDB, it sounds like "the world's best agency" is the "key message" but this is very un-British so...

How does one of the world's best agencies–adam&eveDDB-work? The teams of Chief Creative Officer Rick Brim and Chief Strategy Officer Martin Beverley are responsible for some of the UK's most famous advertising. Their John Lewis Christmas campaigns are what all other Christmas campaigns are compared to. So how does the magic happen?   In this interview, we discuss: - How the account planners work w...

Why are you so caught up in being accurate instead of compelling? And that 100-slide deck–can anybody even use it? Rachel Bateast is VP, Strategic Planning, at The Mars Agency in Detroit, Michigan. To the advertising industry on the coasts, the mid-west advertising scene can feel way more conservative so what does it even mean to call B.S. on work in Michigan? In this episode, we discuss and role-...

So, you've interviewed over 300 strategists from around the world and spoken with thousands more... what aren't we talking about enough? In this episode published on the third anniversary of the Sweathead podcast, I (Mark) run you through a stream-of-consciousness list of fifteen points that I feel are true but not in a science way. They're true in a "we need to pay more attention to this" way. Yo...

Let's say you have one hundred team members spread across the world. They work on thousands of briefs for massive brands every year. Often, they have to reach great ideas within a matter of days. They're doing well but you believe they can do ever better. Where do you start? Aly Baer is a Director at Twitter Next in New York and John Lee is a lead of the Twitter Next lab in San Francisco. Their te...

You have reams of research in your head but you need to whittle everything in your head into an insight fast–what do you do? In this episode of Sweathead, I share a few steps I like to use–especially in workshops–to take an observation and land on an insight. These steps–or "stumbles"–can work in customer interviews too.   You can read this episode on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com...

Advertising agencies have responded to pleas to open their doors to people from different backgrounds in different ways. Some have resisted the pleas, some have faltered in public, and others have managed to listen and make structural, policy, and cultural change happen.  In this episode of Sweathead, I speak with Tanya Brown who co-chairs the Equals Network and Simi Nijher who co-chairs the...

What's the point of all the trend reports? What's the point of trends? And how do you use trends anyway? Matt Klein is Director of Strategy at sparks & honey but he's also into cultural theory and cyber psychology. Recently, he rounded up nineteen trends from over thirty trend reports and I gave him nineteen minutes to discuss them while reminiscing about the incredible Japanese obstacle course te...

So, what did account planners make of this year's Super Bowl ads? #PlannerBowl is a hashtag that account planners and strategists use to talk to each other about Super Bowl ads as they watch them. Born in 2013, it has housed snark, wit, strategy analysis, and probably led to a friendship or two. In this episode, Megan Averell and Brian Wakabayashi discuss what they saw planners discussing as well...

Problems can fix creative briefs. But how can something broken make something else work?   In this mini lesson, I define the word "problem" as I use it in advertising strategy (or account planning), why you need to be careful when you use the word, and six examples of a problem statement being solve with a strategy statement to help greyhound dogs find new homes.   To listen to two of these strate...

How would you get people to adopt a greyhound? Cait Dorombozo is a graphic designer in Brisbane, Australia. She keeps house with two greyhounds and is trying to come up with ways to get more people to adopt greyhounds.  People associate greyhounds with racing, intensity, muzzles, and size yet many need caring homes. We come up with two possible campaign strategies in 45 minutes–but edited into 30...

What does it mean to do provocative thinking and why is it easier to do it for brands than for ourselves? Hugh Munro is Head of Planning at one of Australia's most prolific agencies The Monkeys, an agency that sells one thing - provocative thinking.  We discuss: - The positioning of The Monkeys   - Building brands for the long-term - Australia Day advertising - Working through the pandemic - Being...

How do you conduct useful research? Simple question, right? At Current Forward, a research and brand strategy consultancy in Austin, Texas, Ashley Lapin and Kaitlin Moon spend their working lives trying to answer this question.  With COVID-19 throwing everything up in the air and forcing even more research to happen through screens, we decided to discuss practical ways to conduct research in a pan...

What do you do when where you work is hurting you? This episode was a livestream within the Sweathead Facebook group.  We discuss working at toxic companies. - Is it you? - Is it the company? - What can you do about it? Our guests: 1. Emma Siu is a seasoned scientist who is currently working in the gaming industry in Seattle as an award-winning community manager. https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmasi...

What happens when you draw a card from a strategy card deck and apply it to your life? Jye Smith runs Double Star in Sydney. He recently made a deck of strategy cards called "Strategy Action Deck: Stupid Questions And Bad Ideas". I've known Jye for close on 15 years so I thought it would be interesting to use his cards on him as a sneaky way to get him to talk about mental health challenges, the u...