Inspiring Futures - Lessons from the Worlds of Marketing and Advertising

Frank started his career with the Village Voice covering the emerging mid-1970s New York music scene centered around CBGBs. He has written numerous articles for the likes of Rolling Stone, Fortune, Vanity Fair and Wired. He has written books about Apple and in his book the Art of Immersion, he explored the changing nature of storytelling in Hollywood and Madison Avenue. Currently he is a senior fellow at the Columbia University School of the Arts, he is faculty director of the executive education program Strategic Storytelling, presented in partnership with Columbia Business School.In this conversation, instead of looking forward to the future, we look back at past futures. A future proposed by the punk movement and the likes of Brian Eno and Malcolm McLaren and trace a trajectory outlined by advances in technology that transformed the media and entertainment industry despite their best intentions. We end looking at the present day world of Google, Facebook and Amazon and suggest we have reached an inflection point, where it might be time to take a look at what has been created and where we might all be headed. 

Mark is the founder of Mighty Jungle- he is a writer and a strategist and basically believes in the importance of the two things going hand in hand. He wrote a piece for VICE on hip-hop when he was in his teens and drifted in the Sydney agency world as a digital producer- who also wrote and produced. He moved in the US- 9 years ago and had strategy roles in a variety of different NY shops. In this conversation, we focus on the skills planners need to be good and devote a lot of time to discussing the challenges of  being a risk-taker inside US corporate culture. 

Colin Nagy is currently Head of Strategy for Fred Farid, an agency based in NYC, Paris, Shanghai and LA. Previously he was Chief Media and Strategy officer at The Barbarian Group. In this conversation, we talk about the souring of the tech boom and the arrival of a new questioning culture and the debate about the impact of tech on humanity. We talk about the push towards the real and how that is impacting physical spaces and our human desire for connection. We explore the growing importance of wellness, the challenges for global brands and how the short-term, quick-hit seeking CMO might be getting in the way of more profound business transformation. 

The guest for Episode 2 of Inspiring Futures is Gareth Kay. and touches upon many things, including the future of advertising and the agency. Gareth is the founder of Chapter-SF- which describes itself as a new type of creative studio focused on designing soulful brands that thrive in today's world of unreasonable expectations. Our wide-ranging conversation-includes a discussion about Gareth’s background and experience, what he is trying to do with Chapter SF- versus the typical creative agency, the curse of specialization, the challenge of short-term thinking and pressures, the best client brief ever, our lack of human understanding, how he thinks about the future and the importance of timeless ideas and where we stand with digital technology in the communication and marketing space. 

A conversation with Ana Andjelic. Named to Forbes CMO Next list, Ana is a strategy executive, writer, and doctor of sociology who specializes in the modern luxury brands. In this wide-ranging conversation- we covered the challenges of companies grabbling with the future, the importance of adaptability, whats is happening to brands, Tik-Tok and the challenges of the algorithm.