Inspiring Futures - Lessons from the Worlds of Marketing and Advertising

Alexander Rea and Christian Colasuonno are the partners of Aux- a company that brings together Alex's tech process and Christian's production savvy. For the past decade or so, ad agencies have grappled to find a place for technology in their output understanding its power and relevance, but unsure how to get it made and done. Aux are the guys who do that stuff- quite simply- they get the complex stuff done. They are not tinkerers, theorists, academics, but doers who love nothing better than making a creative team's brilliant idea come to life.  Alex was an integral part of the Framestore team that helped make McCann's schoolbus for Lockhead/Martin become a believable mars mission. The rest of the story is history with this idea cleaning up in various awards shows across the globe. In our conversation, we talk about their backgrounds, the proposition of Aux as a business, how they like to work, their passion for the creative process and what new technology excites them.  Aux can be found at https://www.aux.works/ 

Global nomads since 2013, Faris and Rosie Yakob are a creative and strategic duo- who have served their time as creatives and strategic thinkers with the likes of MDC, McCann, and 360i. In a conversation that covers a lot of ground, we talk about a shrinking world- one that appears ever more similar, but how you need to dig deeper to unlock local differences, the rise of creativity as a response to the growth hacking plateau, tourism and the idea that the world is getting full because everyone wants to go to the same places, trashvertising, banks making money but making brands less interesting, brand safety, the future of the agency and buying avocados. 

Gary is a visual artist and an improv performer. For the past 21 years, he has been the leader and co-founder of a company called On Your Feet. As he explains in the podcast, this company helps companies find their humanity by using the dramatic arts as a tool for catharsis. In a world where wooly and fluffy language dominates the corporate world, he helps executives find their truth and the difference in the stories that lie beyond the language. In the podcast, we talk about the importance of parsing language, collaboration, and how the arts can help commerce. 

Chris Riley is a planner who had senior roles at two of the most culturally significant brands of the past 50 years; Wieden and Kennedy and Apple. In the podcast, Chris talks about his experiences inside of these two fascinating companies and his thoughts on why at his company Studio Riley, he believes ethics are the most potent and vital thing corporations need to consider right now. Also, he shares ideas on how the other key piece in the puzzle is understanding the new majority- consumers in what we mistakenly call the developing world and understanding them taking a planning approach, which is about learning from, not talking to. 

Bree has been an actress, teacher, innovation consultant, a researcher at E-Harmony, the CEO of NOBL and is now a principal at SYP. She has spent most of her working life involved in change- as a leader in the innovation wing of a school where she first came across people's resistance to change, to her studies at North Western in organizational culture and change, to her recent work at NOBL and SYP. I had the benefit of using SYPs podcast studio, so the production is top-notch. for a conversation where we talk about Bree's journey into the world of change and discuss how organizations think about and approach change. 

Dave has worked as a planner at some of the best shops in the business-Leo, Crispin and W&K. In this episode, he takes us on his career journey which starts at his family paint and body shop in Wisconsin and ends up at his business venture Shepherd. It is a story of understanding how the agency and creative business is evolving and the new role data can play in the daily life of a planner. At Shepherd, Dave and his partners are helping clients to grow their business by finding new audiences, but also to better understand those audiences by zeroing-in on their passions.  

Heidi has been a copywriter, a planner and a business owner. She has done her time in places like FCB and BBH. She has worked as a planner in London and New York and most recently was with the Zuckerberg Chan Foundation in the Bay Area.  Prior to her trip to The Bay, she established Wolf & Wilhelmine - a brand strategy firm with a unique perspective on business culture and strategy.In this conversation we talk about her career trajectory, the impact of working with Obama and where she sees her future headed. This interview was conducted before she launched her new venture- So We Hunt - which is designed to help people lead braver lives. 

Michael Fanuele started his career in the political world in DC and shocked at what he saw and heard, moved to the advertising industry and Madison Avenue. Michael rose through the ranks as an Account Planner working for a range of different shops including- Mad Dogs and Englishmen, JWT, Havas and Fallon. A few years ago, he took on a major client role as the Chief Creative Officer of General Mills which was on a transformative mission to be a new kind of food company. He has spent the past 18 months working on a book on what it takes to be Inspirational. The book -Stop Making Sense is published by Simon and Schuster today - July 9th, 2019. The podcast episode is a discussion I had with Michael a few weeks ago about the book- its contents, the process and the genesis of the whole project.  

Lawrence is one of the iconic Bay Area thinkers and investors and helped to create- Oxygen Network, Wired Magazine, and Design Within Reach. He was President of Colossal Pictures which included oversight of Pixar. In 1988, he  co-founded Global Business Network (GBN), a strategic consulting firm (now part of Deloitte), in 1987 and served as President through 1998. Lawrence and GBN have been central to the development and spread of the Scenario Planning technique, an approach to addressing very large decisions and very long time horizons.In the podcast, we spend the bulk of the time talking about Scenario Planning- how it came into being and even how to do it (so grab paper and a pen!). We talk about some likely futures or the forces on the future and why companies are thinking less about it than they should.   

Katy is a UX and Product Designer based in Boulder, Colorado where she runs her company Two's Complement.  Katy double-majored in  Industrial/Interaction Design and Computer Technology at Syracuse. Her first job out of school was with NASA where she worked on a wide range of projects including the International Space Apps Challenge and Random Hacks of Kindness. She went on to form a 3-D printing company, funded by several high-profile Kickstarter campaigns. In our conversation, we discuss many different topics, from the power of openness, based on her experiences with NASA and her printing company- how these open systems create possibilities that would not have been possible if the software is owned and its use restricted and limited.  We talk about how Design Fiction is a powerful tool to help us imagine and design for a potential future. The new level of importance for thinking and a consciousness about the design and engineering choices that are made - with the arrival of AI, but also the environment as a new and vital consideration for digital designers.We discuss, her Five-Step Process for design thinking, that includes workshopping based on likely potential futures to find new solutions. Throughout the conversation, we talk about the process of innovation, how big companies need to embrace the small and how the US has had a history of waves of change and is probably due for another Moon Shot-like wave to help solve the urgent environmental crisis.