Sir John Hegarty, awarded a Knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to advertising and Creative industries, Founder, Creative Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) and The Garage Soho, now adds to his title, ‘The Imposterous First Birthday Edition Season Two Finale and Episode 50 Guest’. It’s a lot. Welcome to the big time SJH. John Hegarty has been central to the global advertising scene over six decades working with brands such as Levi's, Audi, Boddingtons, Lynx, British Airways and Johnnie...

Dan Nelken is a Creative’s Creative. Saying this exposes the fact we haven’t read Dan’s book, ‘A Self-Help Guide for Copywriters’. If we had we would have written something far more original and spent a lot less time sweating the unavoidable mediocrity of it. Anyway, Dan Nelken is an active advertising creative who works on the world's biggest brands and up-and-coming start-ups. His work has appeared in award shows nationally, internationally, and on his mother's fridge. He's spent many...

Here we are, back with the second installment of SAW IT. AM IT. A series of conversations hosted by Shannon Crowe featuring some of the brilliant creative leaders Shannon met at Cannes Lions SEE IT BE IT program in 2017. Today’s guest is Lizi Hamer. The Drum named Lizi as one of the world's most creative women, Cannes Lions selected her in the top 15 female creative directors globally, she co-Authored Creative Super Powers, Co-founded SisuGirls, and continues to build the SheSays Community....

Welcome to the first episode of SAW IT. AM IT. A series of conversations hosted by Shannon Crowe featuring some of the wonderful creative leaders Shannon met at Cannes Lions SEE IT BE IT program in 2017. Today’s guest is Maria Milusheva. Maria is Creative Director & Partner at Noble Graphics. Working in advertising since 2005 (17 years and counting!) Maria joins us on The Imposterous as she prepares to head off on maternity leave. We’re so thankful to be talking to Maria today. For the...

In his uniquely brilliant laconic style, a way of speaking and thinking that we’ve quickly come to love here at The Imposterous Alvin says, “It feels like forever, but I am still new at this job. I've been ECD for some years now and I feel I need another 200 more to fully understand what the heck I am doing. I like the work, can't say I love the job. Been working on an array of Brands from Telco to Paint, from Insurance to Cable TV. I’ve had experience doing work for Banks, Tourism, Milk,...

Anouk Jans creates creative concepts, brand identities, campaigns, social media strategies and digital content to help define, establish and build international love brands that shape culture. Driven by a pioneering spirit, Anouk gives brands an opportunity to rethink marketing by creating dynamic campaigns for today’s audience, with stories about purpose, values and human nature. At The Imposterous Head Office Anouk Jans’ name has featured at pretty much every all-staff meeting and we’ve...

David Smith is a creative thinker of international standing. Founded Blood UTD in 2016 - an agency that began life with a focus on doing the best work in the space of sport and fitness. But has since evolved to focus on good companies - by good, we mean companies that are focused on generating profit in a manner that is fair and sustainable. This is not about strident wokeness or ardent moralising, but rather the belief that profit and decency don't need to be divergent forces, that there is...

You know it’s a good day when Natalie Lam joins us on The Imposterous. Natalie is Chief Creative Officer, Publicis Groupe Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. She’s responsible for overseeing the creative output of more than 60 agency brands including Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi, Publicis, Razorfish, Sapient, Digitas with integrated creative, data, media and tech offerings in some of the world’s most dynamic markets. With her roots in design, a strong digital background and being a...

Much loved Australian television and radio host, and passionate mental fitness advocate Gus Worland founded Gotcha4Life in 2017, following the success of the ABC series Man Up and losing a very close friend and life mentor to suicide, as he realised he had the ability and networks to make a real difference. Gus simply does not accept the alarming statistics surrounding suicide in Australia and that eight people take their life every day. Gotcha4Life believes in the power of prevention...

Veronica Beach is the original founder and now partner of the poolhouse (www.the-poolhouse.com), a social network for Producers in TV, Film & Advertising. Previously Veronica was the Director of Production at Pereira O'Dell from 2020 - July 2022 overseeing the San Francisco & New York offices from the Agency side and their In-House production department, Barrelhouse. Prior to that, Head of Global Production at DAVID and was a founding member of DAVID and even moved to Brazil to open...

Paul Middleditch has directed four feature films and is regarded as one of the top performance/action TV Commercial Directors in the world. He is Australasia's most awarded commercials Director, having over 300, with 8 Cannes Lions, 4 of which are gold, and numerous International and National awards to his credit. He was recently ranked 8th Best Commercial Director of all time, based on Lüzer's Archive. He has continually upheld a Number One Director World Ranking on Best Ads on TV, with...

Pum Lefebure is a co-founder and chief creative officer of Design Army in Washington, DC, where she oversees all creative coming through the agency's doors. The Thailand native brings a global sensibility to American design - a creative point of view that draws from different cultures and resonates with diverse audiences. In this episode of The Imposterous Pum brings savvy street smarts, an undeniable entrepreneurial edge and a caliber of confidence born from years of incredible world leading...

The Imposterous, Peter Nankervis is Founder and CEO of Lighthouse Group and a passionate corporate coach working with CEO’s and guiding leadership teams to identify the right people and performance solutions to accelerate business transformation and growth. He brings to this episode a history of partnering with companies that have successfully accelerated their enterprise value, in many cases leading to acquisition. He’s all about providing a clear roadmap for leaders and developed the...

Two great guests, two episodes in one. Where to start? Let’s begin with Steve Sammartino. Wikipedia tells us Steve is an Australian futurist, author and entrepreneur and according to Forbes, he launched Rentoid in 2007, one of the early sharing-economy, peer-to-peer online hire and rental marketplaces. Rentoid was featured in Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers’s book, What’s Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live. Rentoid was later sold to an ASX listed company in...

Meet the imposterous Elaine Li, creative director and photographer. Elaine was born and raised in Hong Kong, spent time in Melbourne, Chicago, San Francisco, and is now based in Sydney. So far in her advertising career, Elaine has planted a beer ad in people’s dreams; raised money for bushfire victims with a burnt Christmas tree; and made edible finger lickin’ good nail polish. Elaine competed in Cannes Young Lions in 2017, representing Hong Kong. Shortly after moving to Sydney, she tutored...

Brent Smart is a rare breed of marketer - equal parts creative and commercial. A brand builder who has taken NRMA to third strongest brand in Australia (it was 36th when he started) and is the strongest insurance brand in the world. With a track record of changing the fortunes of brands, leading NRMA to 3 years of customer growth after 7 years of decline, delivering Cheerios first quarter of sales growth after 13 quarters of decline and even helping Yellow Pages steal share of search from...

Mietta started her career in Sydney at Ogilvy and Droga5 working across brands KFC, QANTAS, Coca Cola and Sunbeam Appliances. Seven years ago Mietta made the move to New York where she’s since created influential campaigns for The New York Times, The Jed Foundation for Teen Suicide and Kraft. Her work has been featured on CNN, Buzzfeed, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Mashable and Creativity. Now a Creative Director at Squarespace, Mietta has been named One Show’s Next Creative...

Damon is Chief Creative Officer and one of the founders of The Monkeys Aotearoa. Before that he was Regional Chief Creative Officer of DDB (New Zealand and Australia). He was formerly Chief Creative Officer of DDB New Zealand where he won over 20 Agency of the Year titles, including DDB New Zealand being named agency of the year in Australia. Before that he was Executive Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi Australia and TBWA Hunt Lascaris, which was voted South African agency of the...

The term “thought leader” is vastly overused. But when it comes to Valerie Young, she’s that — and more. Widely considered the world’s foremost expert on impostor syndrome, Valerie is uniquely qualified to help organisations, workshop facilitators, coaches, and individuals to stamp out impostor syndrome. Valerie earned her doctoral degree in education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1982. Her research sought to understand why so many bright, capable women (including herself)...

Season 2 - Here we go How we got Jeff Goodby on The Imposterous still baffles us. But then we remember Laura Petrucelli talked him into it so yeah, it had nothing to do with us. Back to feeling like imposters. Jeff, along with his friend Rich, started this whole Goodby Silverstein and Partner thing. Jeff grew up in Rhode Island and graduated from Harvard, where he wrote for the Harvard Lampoon. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Boston, and his illustrations have been published in TIME,...

Faker by Tom Spicer. Spoken by Rupert Degas. As Tom Spicer says, “If ever there was something in desperate need of a rebrand, it’s imposter syndrome. It definitely sounds bad. But so many amazingly talented people have encountered it and lived to tell the tale, how bad can it really be? In fact imposter syndrome might just be the reason for their amazingness in the first place. Maybe Charles Bukowski summed it up best when he said, “The problem with the world is that the intelligent...

Jane Caro AM spent 35 years as an award winning copywriter and 7 years teaching Advertising Creative in the School of Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. Jane is a Walkley Award winning Australian columnist, author, novelist, broadcaster, documentary maker, feminist and social commentator. These days Jane is a full time writer, speaker and broadcaster and is standing for the Australian Senate at the country’s May 21 Federal Election. Jane will stand as a candidate for Reason...

Not every conversation on The Imposterous ends with us looking at each other saying, ‘Well, she’d be good to work for’. But this one did. Emma’s career spans 25 years, from junior writer, to Group CD, through to Executive Creative Director and Board Member at Clemenger BBDO. Now ECD at M&C Saatchi Melbourne Emma has won multiple international awards, judged locally, nationally and internationally and mentored up and coming talent as a lecturer and tutor at Award School. Emma gives back to...

Claudia Cristovao is the Head of Google Brand Studio APAC. She studied Communication, Film and Fine Art between Lisbon, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and London and is an honors graduate at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and holds an MA from Saint Martins in London. Claudia has worked as a writer, brand developer and Creative Director for Nike, Google, Honda, Adidas, MINI, AMEX, at agencies like W+K, Sid Lee and AKQA. Her projects have included music videos, interior design, art...