New Digital Age

In this podcast series, we’ll be talking to agency leaders to discover the stories behind their journey to the top of the industry and what lessons others can learn from them.Anne Stagg is the UK CEO of dentsu's Customer Experience Management Line of Business (CXM). Leading a business of 940 people, she was previously Head of Client Services at Merkle UK. "I started in the engine room of marketing, data. And who knew data would one day be cool," she says. "The pace of digital acceleration has been dramatic in recent years but prior to that it felt a gradual process getting into data. But now it's at the heart of the end-to-end customer experience."She may now be at the very top of the industry but in the conversation below, she is disarmingly frank and honest about her own challenges and how she overcome her own perceived failings, always putting people first, then and now. How to find mentors and coaches and the critical difference between the two is an area of huge importance to her. "It begins with self-reflection, we need to know and understand our own failings or limitations. You need a really good view of exactly what you want to get out of it. The best advice I was given was 'stop working like you have something to prove' as you'll be focussed on the wrong things. like pace or impressing the right people, rather than focussing your efforts in the right areas.Just do what you do best and the rest will follow."She also discusses how to step up into the role you don't think is rightfully yours but actually is perfect for you. "I always say to my managers, look around your team to identify the people that are diong a great job and make sure you pull them with you, rather than focus on the people who should loudest." 

In this 'Cannes special' episode of It's Always Media Thursday we discuss the highlights of the opening day at Cannes 2023 with Charlie Crowe of Crowe Advisory.We talk about the ANA (The Association of National Advertisers) and transparency in advertising plus why Cannes is still really important despite sometimes being seen as solely a networking event. Andy, Justin and Charlie discuss seeing business being transacted in front of their very eyes, proving that Cannes does offer ROI despite of (or because of?) the glitz and glamour.This year Cannes is bigger than ever, there are more yachts, more people and more Americans. CMOs and big agency leaders are in town and Cannes is buzzing.

NDA Editor Justin Pearse and Publisher Andy Oakes are back with yet another insightful discussion - or slightly-foggy chat - about a week in the digital media and marketing industry.This week we wonder why AI keeps dominating headlines in NDA and beyond, discuss the unfeasibly-large number of events beind run by ourselves and the industry ast large. We're joined by special guest Paul Coggins, CEO or Adludio to discuss the rising excitement around Cannes Lions 2023."The impression I'm getting this year is that it's back, back in a big way!," he sums up. We also discuss media optimisation, optimising for attention and why he sees such opportunity in the talent available in Africa today. 

CMO Confidential is a podcast series on NDA where we talk to CMOs who, while not digital in job title, have digital understanding and experience embedded in their DNA.In this episode, we sit down with Matt Barwell, CMO at Britvic. He talks about Britvic's fascinating digital in-housing journey. "If you can to our Infused studio, you wouldn't be able to tell who's a Britvic employee and who works for The & Partnership. They come together to create a muscle that is deeply embedded in the organisation. We're also doing a huge amount of work digitally upskilling our own employees." The conversation covers topics including why a CMO's role is inherently focused not just on growth but on long-term sustainable growth, how Britvic is growing its data literacy, the "massive opportunity" offered by social media in customer engagement and how it has made the fundamentals of marketing even more important. 

NDA Editor Justin Pearse and Publisher Andy Oakes are back with yet another unstructured and frankly often bewildering discussion of a week in the digital media and marketing industry.Alongside the unwelcome return of Andy's Train Chat, we talk about Justin's love for hotels over football, the retail media boom, the highs of thei year's London Advertising Week, and the rising excitement about next month's Cannes Lion festival.This week we are joined by special guest Emma Jensen, Regional Digital Director, PHD, fresh from the previous night;s NDA and Eyeo's Digital Women dinner focuses on sustainability in online advertising. 

NDA’s podcast series, Masters of Media talks to heads of media at brands to understand how advertisers are able to keep pace with the frenetic speed of development of media and its fragmentation across channels. In this episode we meet Teja Patel, Senior Director, Global Digital Media at Cisco.Teja Patel is a true digital veteran and is now bringing her years of experience to help the IT giant's own digital transformation to, in the words of COO Maria Martinez, Chief Operating Officer, "evolve to deliver complete as-a-service solutions for our customers to power the next digital transformation."The wide-ranging discussion covers areas including the benefits and perils of AI in marketing, the changing role of agencies,  the importance of communities to Cisco and the central role she sees Reddit playing in its interactions with its customers. "We have more than one million members of the Cisco community online and there’s a huge amount of peer-to-peer support. Community is hugely important to us. Over the next few years my vision is that a buyer shouldn’t have to leave the  platform they’re on to be able to find all they need." On media fragmentation: "I’ve seen so few example where companies have delivered a clear, seamless experience from touchpoint tp touchpoint for the end consumer. We’re not there yet and are on that journey now. It’s about educating internal stakeholders on the importance of that seamless consumer experience."

NDA Editor Justin Pearse and Publisher Andy Oakes return with another disorganised ramble through a week in the digital media and marketing industry.We discuss retail media, tacos, NDA and Newsworks' comedy quiz show in Manchester, time travel, and the success of the inaugural Possible industry event in Miami, where the likes of Elon Musk, Uber Advertising and Jon Bon Jovi wowed the crowds.And we're joined by special guest Amy Williams, Founder and CEO, Good-Loop, from New York to recap on Possible, discuss the differences between the New York and London media scene and find out impressed she is with the industry's moves towards sustainability. 

Innovation is perhaps one of the most commonly-used words in our industry. But what does it really mean in an industry based on, and fuelled by, tecnical innovation?In a new podcast series, Innovation Leaders, we're sitting down with heads of innovation at agencies and brands to find out. To launch the series, we met with Sarah Salter, Head of Applied Innovation, Wavemaker to discuss why an agency needs a Head of Innovation role in tne first place, what it means to clients, and what the demonstrable, tangible results are for brands like L'Oréal and Audible.

“I would rather do good work with great people than great work with assholes” is the personal motto of Beth Freedman, CEO, Dentsu X, who joins us in the inaugural episode of My Path to the Top, a new podcast series in partnership with Dentsu.In the series, we'll be talking to agency leaders to discover the stories behind their journey to the top of the industry and what lessons others can learn from them. In a disarmingly frank and forthright conversations, Freedman discusses how she manages to balance the demands of her own morality and desire for authenticity with the equally pressing demands of running a large network agency.Expanding on her "no assholes" motto, she says: "I use this as a principle for how I run my business. You never have 100% control but i can hold myself to account. The more senior you get, the more ability you have to behave badly and no one holds you to account but I refuse to ever let that be an excuse for me. I can do that in demonstrating to the people that work for me by, when bad behaviour happens, to call it out and work to make it go away. Most bad behaviour is momentary not endemic but if you let it continue it can become a habit. It's about not being afraid with clients to say we hold ourselves to a high standard, and to have difficult conversations." 

NDA Editor Justin Pearse and Publisher Andy Oakes are back with another easy ramble through the streets of a week in the digital media and marketing industry.In this week's episode, we review the trade press, looking at how the sector is flourishing and the strength of titles like The Drum, Campaign Ad Week and Media Leader, and discuss the latest developments in AI and attention. This week's special guest is Dan Brain, Co-Founder, Madfest. Joining us from a box in London Bridge, he gives us an insight into what's happening at this year's festival and why you should be involved, along with his views on The Elizabeth Line, a recurrent topic on IAMT.