My latest Inspiring Futures podcast episode features an interview with Dr. Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel.Anastasia is a cultural theorist, writer, social critic, and strategist specializing in inclusivity within marketing, media, and tech. She earned her doctorate in cultural studies from Duke University and is now using her expertise to help brands ignite cultural innovation and leverage the power of media for good. Dr. Gabriel is the author of Cultural Intelligence for Marketers, published by ...

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with Julianna Katrancha- Group Strategy Director at Johannes Leonardo. This is one of my favorite interviews because Julianna dives into the learnings from her journey from a media planner to a senior strategist. She talks about her periods and moments of doubt, and how committed and focused she is on carrying the practices and principles that deliver strategies with impact. We talk about what those are. How you cope with the chall...

The latest Inspiring Futures episode features an interview with Allen Adamson of Metaforce. Allen is a seasoned executive with experience client side at Unilever and in the agency world with the likes of Landor, Y&R, and Ogilvy. He has taken his extensive experience in both worlds to build his own consulting company that's focused on helping clients solve their problems but does it in a very different way to the classic ad agency model.

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast is a discussion with Joe Nash and Patrick Kizny about the current and future state of creative services and creative studios. Joe was formerly the Director of Business Strategy at Buck and the co-founder of Slate. Patrick runs Futurecrafting which provides strategic advisory services to brands and companies and has an extensive background as a creative director, art director, and technical/software specialist. In our chat, we talk about the evolution/revol...

The latest episode of the Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Lori Bartle of Cultivagency. Lori has over two decades of experience in Account Management although she much prefers to call it Account Leadership.In our conversation, we discuss some of the challenges the discipline faces and the critical importance of a role that brings a deep understanding and knowledge of a client's business to the table. As you will hear, Lori is an extremely passionate advocate of t...

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with Tom Suharto, Global Strategy Lead at Forsman & Bodenfors. Tom started in market research (quant) worked with Hall and Partners and helped to establish their office in Shanghai and then on to Wieden in Shanghai to work on Nike, Disneyland, and then to the Portland office to work on Nike and Samsung.He's been at Forsman & Bodenfors for four years. In our conversation, we talked about his learning journey; his e...

When Hyphenated was awarded Silver, West Coast in Ad Age's Small Agency of the Year Awards the publication wrote the following introduction."When William Esparza and Kelli Robertson left their roles at R/GA in 2019 to establish their own creative agency, they chose the name Hyphenated to reflect the agency’s aim of bridging the gap between brands and the multicultural audiences whose spending power continues to climb in today’s “fiercely hyphenated world.” I first talked to Will and Kell...

Lego is a brand we all love and would love to work on and in this episode of Inspiring Futures, I interview Ross Cidlowski, Director of Strategy at Lego's in-house agency for the Americas. In the chat, we talk about his background, career, extensive agency experience, some of the contemporary challenges facing strategists and ad agencies today, what inspires him about working for Lego, and how brands should think about and navigate the complexities of marketing today.

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Jonathan Wise one of the co-founders of the non-profit Purpose Disruptors.Jonathan was once a strategist at JWT, but quit his job to study for an MBA in Sustainability.In the episode, we discuss his journey and transformation, what Purpose Disruptors is, and how it is trying to impact and create change in. behaviors, mindset, and business models in the UK ad industry. https://www.purposedisruptors.org/

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with Dr. Grace Kite, the founder of Magic Numbers and Magic Works, an analytics-focused consultancy that helps companies and brands understand how they grow.In our conversation, we discussed the challenges and importance of being strategic when understanding the factors behind growth, the difficulty of brand-building for performance-focused brands, the compounding impact of "brand patience," and more.We also talked about the import...

The latest Inspiring Futures episode features an interview with Beth Bentley the co-founder of consultancy Tomorrowism. Beth's experience includes- Deputy Head of Strategy- Adam & Eve, LondonExecutive Head of Strategy- at Wieden&Kennedy- LondonSVP Strategy Virtue at Vice. She is also the author of a best-selling book, was the Chief Strategy Officer of Portas retail consultancy, and a Communication Strategy Advisor to the Secretary of State in Whitehall. In the pod,...

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Caroline Johnson- Co-Founder of The Business Model Company. Caroline worked at Grey but then worked at KPMG as a consultant. The Business Model Company advises agencies on how to evolve their business models to generate value for their clients and increase revenues and profitability for themselves. She was called in to help with the transformation of IPG's Huge, a process that has been documented in Michael Farmer's book "M...

Andy Nairn co-founded Lucky Generals- an ad agency with offices in London and New York. Beyond running an agency, Andy has written a best-selling business book "Go Luck Yourself" and has just completed his first novel- "Trail of Blood" a murder mystery set 500 years ago on the border between England and Scotland. Some quotes from our chat. On Pitching "Some agencies are good at going through the grind of pitching and winning things that they don't feel passionate about. B...

Maz Karimian heads up strategy at ustwo an employee-owned product design company that brings emotional game-inspired thinking to product design—some key quotes from our conversation below. About ustwo“Monument Valley is the game and the game series That was so successful that usTwo games was split off as a sort of a separate sister entity, still under the usTwoi umbrella. But yes, that's been something influential, I think, on, well, frankly, the type of talent that we attract. But...

Daniel Groh heads up brand at Satisfy Running.In this interview, we discuss the transformed state of the running category and Satisfy's place within it. How the brand leans into personal expression and appeals to those who want to express themselves beyond the traditional players and the traditional running silhouette. How it's leading the charge in sustainability, recycling, and repair.How runner insights matter to product development.How the recent brand film shot in LA was made.How the com...

The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with John GeletkaJohn is the owner and founder of Geletka + - a small agency located in the West Loop of ChicagoThe agency started five years ago.John's an artist by training but has done several different jobs in his career including corporate marketing, but he's also an entrepreneur at heart.It was fascinating to talk to a small agency owner and get his thoughts on the market and the business today.On Starting an Agency During CO...

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast is an interview with Eliza Yvette Esquivel. Eliza has worked both on the agency and client side. She's had senior brand management roles at Mondelez and Microsoft and as a strategist and CSO at several different agencies, including Barbarian, Future Brand, DDB, JWT, Wieden and Kennedy Amsterdam, and TBWA. In our conversation, we discuss what she's learned from her experiences on the agency and client sides and how she's applying that learning to her coachi...

Warren Berger is an author and journalist who has spent the last 25 years writing about the worlds of design, advertising and innovation. Back in the day he got a feature story about Weiden and Kennedy into the NYT Magazine and he wrote the book "Advertising Today" that was published by Phaidon,. For the past 10 years, he's been focused on the world of questions and questioning- from which sprang the book "A More Beautiful Question"- which celebrated its tenth anniversary with a new upda...

This episode features an interview with Gerard Crichlow, who heads up Global Strategy on the Unilever brands- Axe/Lynx at IPG.Gerard collaborates with several IPG entities worldwide to ensure the Axe/Lynx brands connect to their consumers and cultures. Some quotes from Gerard from the episode."And for me, if we're in the attention game, who does attention best, and that tends to be entertainment companies. And so I've always tried to look at how do we shift from interrupting people to p...

This latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an interview with the CMO of Depop.  Depop is one of the most interesting brands in the fashion space since it's all about reselling and ultimately about transforming the way we shop for fashion.  Peter has a fascinating background with experience on the agency side with both Anomaly(where he worked on the Converse brand) and VCCP and client side at Google in Creative Lab.  In a wide-ranging conversation we talk about his early experience...

In this episode, I talk with Tass Tsitsopoulos, the Global Strategy Director of McDonald's at Wieden + Kennedy. We discuss his early life in London, studying politics at LSE, his accidental journey into advertising thanks to Jeremy Bullmore, his life as an Account Guy at BBH, and his leap into planning. We also get to talk about his journey in the US with BBDO and McDonald's at Wieden + Kennedy. 

Last month, I sat down for a conversation with Ian Murray- the co-founder of Burst Your Bubble. Ian has no shortage of contrarian views on everything from media and the current vogues in marketing to what strategists need to be doing in their work. To give you a flavor of the conversation- here are some soundbites. On Media  "TV still produces the strongest signals in terms of what we call fitness, which is things like signaling a brand's quality, reliability, financial strength, and...

Jae Goodman is unique. He worked on Madison Avenue. He has a deep understanding of brands. He knows Hollywood, and he understands the power of culture and celebrity.  Jae has experienced these worlds throughout his career, which spanned the likes of Wieden and Kennedy, CAA, and the creation of his agency- Observatory, and now his consulting company, Superconnector Studios. In our conversation, we discussed the similarities between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the importance of relationships...

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Amy Daroukakis, a cultural strategist. Our conversation stretched far and wide from the creative emergence of crisis to the importance of curiosity as a lifestyle to get you out of your comfort zone. The idea is that Cultural Strategy is a more significant thing than understanding Youth Culture. The fact is the future is now and isn't passive, but it's about trying to answer the big question, "Where are we and where is the...