Inspiring Futures - Lessons from the Worlds of Marketing and Advertising

Send us a textThe 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 challenges agencies face today and some thoughts on what it means to manage teams. 

Send us a textThe 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. 

Send us a textThe 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/revolution that is taking place and how companies need to think about and prepare for the future. 

Send us a textThe 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 the discipline. 

Send us a textThe 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 experience working in China, the culture and DNA of Forsman, and how he's developed the strategy practice at the agency. 

Send us a textWhen 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 Kelli four years ago when they were just a baby and now they are growing up, evolving and responding to the dynamic changes in the marketplace. We got to talk about the changes, the challenges, their beliefs, what makes them tick, and what makes them different. 

Send us a textThe 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/

Send us a textThe 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 importance of training, and Magic Numbers offers a couple of courses: "Scaling Up," which is all about helping marketers balance their performance and brand marketing efforts, and "Data Works," which focuses on using data compellingly and persuasively.Both courses can be found here. https://magicworks.training/

Send us a textThe 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, we talk about how her experience as a journalist gave her the right tools to think about brand strategy, the issues that brands face today, why culture matters to brands, why strong brands are more important than ever, the transformation of the ad biz, and more. 

Send us a textThe 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 "Madison Avenue Makeover" https://www.amazon.com/Madison-Avenue-Makeover-transformation-redefinition/dp/1911687646Here are a few of the highlights from my conversation with Caroline. How Do You Define a Business Model?"A business model is very simply three parts. If you think about three corners of a triangle, those three points are completely codependent. At the top, you've got how you create value for your customers in the market, for your clients, that is your positioning, your proposition, how you tell the story of your capability. But critically, it's also the neighborhood that you live in."Why is "Neighborhood" an Important Concept? "We're not thinking about the neighborhood that we live in. And we're also not thinking about innovation and applying creativity to the operating model and the commercial model. So as a creative industry, we have creative sophistication and sometimes confidence. But we are really critically underdeveloped and have a lack of sophistication in our ability to adapt our operating systems and also to develop any form of commercial model for the whole industry."The Advantages of Moving and Upgrading Your Neighborhood"If you're building your house and investing in your house in the service industry in that neighborhood, which has been commoditized, then you're likely to suffer from bad landlords, declining property prices, noisy neighbors. And from a corporate advisory point of view, the multiple that's applied to those types of commoditized service businesses is sort of between six and nine. But if you repackage those businesses into a program business, a product business, and a more consultative offering or a platform business, then the multiples that are used to value the EBITDA of those businesses start at 12 and go up to 24. So you can double, if not triple." The Future of the Agency Network"The classic traditional network agency model of being a one-stop shop. Not only a one-stop shop for all services and capabilities, but also for every market and locality in the world has been a very successful model. But I think it's gone now. The idea that classic advertising and traditional communications are going to take the lion's share of a marketing director's yearly budget is just not going to happen. Its significance and its ROI are rapidly declining. There are much smarter ways of being able to sustain and promote brands and scale brands. So I think the bricks and mortar traditional agency network that you refer to is over."