Sweathead, A Strategy Podcast

It's not every day you get to hear two strategy leaders compare and contrast their agency's Gold IPA Effectiveness Papers. But Senior Planner at Brave Michael Kates suggested it on Twitter and Leo Burnett's London Head of Planning Tom Sussman and Wieden+Kennedy's Group Strategy Director Tass Tsitsopoulos said "yes". So here we are–a rare day. Tom takes us through a 15-year case study of disciplined brand building for McDonald's in the UK. Tass shares the “Famous Orders” campaign with us. It's a refreshing discussion that will help you understand how each agency approaches their work for McDonald's, attitudes towards celebrity, making a global brand work locally, and more. Big thanks to Michael for suggesting the chat. Links below: Tom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-sussman-59892719/ Tass: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tass-tsitsopoulos-ba44551/ Michael: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-kates-484b4843/ ** Sweathead celebrates its fifth anniversary on January 20, 2023 with a live event "The Sweathead Get-Ahead".  Join us for talks, case studies, and a chance to plan your year.  Details at http://www.sweathead.com.  ** 🔥 Strategy classes: http://www.sweathead.com ✉️ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dscjW5 📸 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/sweathead 🔊 Other links: https://znap.link/sweathead Sweathead is a support group for strategists and account planners around the world. We host conferences, online courses, live events, and podcasts. We also train companies.

Friends, Sweathead celebrates its fifth anniversary on January 20, 2023, with a live event called "The Sweathead Get-Ahead". RSVP at http://www.sweathead.com. It's free and open to all and it features... 1. Elizabeth Paul–CSO, The Martin Agency Adage CSO of the Year and Chair of the 4As Strategy Committee 2. Andy Nairn–Founding Partner, Lucky Generals The UK’s Planner Of The Year in 2021 3. Tahaab Rais–CSO MENAT, Publicis Groupe One of the world’s most awarded strategists 4. Ambika Pai–CSO, Mekanism Former Partner at Wolf & Wilhelmine and Adjunct Professor at Parsons 5. Aisha Hakim–ACD, 72andSunny Art director published in Sweeney’s…tasty 6. Rodrigo Maroni–CSO, Wunderman Thompson Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes and various Best Agency Awards Sign up to our weekly strategy newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dscjW5 ** In this episode I run through our plans for the year, 7 strategist affirmations you can use to talk back to your brain, and a list of first principles I'd encourage you to keep in mind as you do your work this year. We have big plans for 2023 and hope to see you in strategy class soon. ** Find out about our company training here: https://sweathead.com/teams/

Thom James is Head of Strategy at One Green Bean, part of the Havas network, in the UK. Recently, he was hospitalized due to deteriorating mental health. He Tweeted about his experience in a very frank and vulnerable way. Most people will directly or indirectly deal with a mental health crisis during their lifetimes. But it does seem like the creative industries are home to a lot of people with challenging mental health situations. Yet we rarely hear real talk about it. And this is why I wanted to speak with James.  We discuss depression, hospitalization, social anxiety, ADHD, agoraphobia, and how he went through this with his family–then Twitter–watching on. If you're going through tough times, please reach out to a specialist for help. Pandemics, war, recessions, and broken families are leading to a lot of challenges out there. Seek help if you need it. You can find Thom here: https://twitter.com/ThomJames ** 🔥 Strategy classes: http://www.sweathead.com ✉️ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dscjW5 📸 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/sweathead 🔊 Other links: https://znap.link/sweathead Sweathead is a support group for strategists and account planners around the world. We host conferences, online courses, live events, and podcasts. We also train companies.

Santi Pochat is Vice President of Marketing at LinkedIn and he believes that beautiful ideas can come from the worst ideas. And this is what we discuss in this episode. Santi has spent over ten years at Edelman across two stints. He's also worked at Verizon and Google. He's strategic but loves making things and I'm excited about what he's about to unleash for LinkedIn, a company he recently joined. You can find Santi here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spochat/ ** 🔥 Strategy classes: http://www.sweathead.com ✉️ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dscjW5 📸 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/sweathead 🔊 Other links: https://znap.link/sweathead Sweathead is a support group for strategists and account planners around the world. We host conferences, online courses, live events, and podcasts. We also train companies.

In this episode of Sweathead, James Hankins discusses two big topics: marketing concepts he's infatuated with and how he published his way through–then out of–a redundancy.  We discuss concepts such as market share, contribution margin, and incremental revenue. And we discuss how writing can provide a sense of rhythm and mission when life throws lemons at us. James is Global VP Marketing Strategy and Planning at SAGE. He's also Founder of Vizer Consulting and the Co-Chair of the IPA Share of Search ThinkTank. In the past, he's worked at Manning Gottlieb OMD, Vizeum, and MEC. He's worked on two of the most successful smoking cessation campaigns in the world (Quit Kit and Stoptober for the UK's NHS) as well as IKEA's "The Wonderful Everyday". He created the "Hankins Hexagon"–a new model of the path to purchase, and "digital availability"–an addition to the availability canon. He also works with JP Castlin writing about e-commerce, modern retail and corporate strategy implications. You can find James here: https://twitter.com/jcphankins ** 🔥 Strategy classes: http://www.sweathead.com ✉️ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dscjW5 📸 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/sweathead 🔊 Other links: https://znap.link/sweathead Sweathead is a support group for strategists and account planners around the world. We host conferences, online courses, live events, and podcasts. We also train companies.

In this episode of Sweathead, I discuss cross-culture kids with Sean Choi. Cross-culture kids are people who grow up between two or more cultures. These "kids" are fast becoming a large population in the USA and, because of this, they are increasingly working in advertising and the audiences of advertising. Sean currently calls The Martin Agency, AdWeek’s back-to-back Agency of the Year, home.  He takes pride in quite literally ‘breaking into’ strategy as a late bloomer but brings along his background in Talent and Culture from Apple and freelance photography.  Aside from fully believing “New York or nowhere,” Sean is a proud Korean-American committed to being a megaphone for the marginalized.  He’s spoken at events hosted by the likes of the 4As, AIA, and 3AF, crafted thought leadership picked up by Adweek, and is the the curator of an industry-wide cultural moments calendar. You can find Sean here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanrichardchoi/ ** 🔥 Strategy classes: http://www.sweathead.com ✉️ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dscjW5 📸 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/sweathead 🔊 Other links: https://znap.link/sweathead Sweathead is a support group for strategists and account planners around the world. We host conferences, online courses, live events, and podcasts. We also train companies.

Tahaab Rais has won over 750 top-tier regional and global awards across Cannes, Effies, One Show, D&AD, Jay Chiats, Andy's, Clios, LIA, New York Festivals, WARC, Loeries, Dubai Lynx, among others, including a record of 340+ Effies. He's the MENAT CSO of Publicis Groupe. That's Middle-East-North-Africa-and-Turkey, a region with hundreds of millions of people in it. Some conversations I feel at home in. And this is one of them. In this interview, we discuss the ingredients that go into an agency being able to do award-winning work. We discuss the obvious stuff (like working with exceptional people) as well as the stuff that's only obvious when you no longer have it (like agency leadership that will fight for your ideas). We also discuss a campaign his team and client have been winning awards for lately: “James Jefferson: A Fraudster, Created by a Bank, to Reduce Financial Fraud” for Emirates NBD. You can find Tahaab here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tahaab/ ** 🔥 Strategy classes: http://www.sweathead.com ✉️ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dscjW5 📸 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/sweathead 🔊 Other links: https://znap.link/sweathead Sweathead is a support group for strategists and account planners around the world. We host conferences, online courses, live events, and podcasts. We also train companies.

In this episode, we look at five insights about insight hunters as suggested by strategists. You can find the deck here: https://bit.ly/insighthunters ** THIS WEEK ONLY: You can the coupon code HOLIDAY22 on the Sweathead website to get 20% off plus free shipping of 2 or more copies of my book "Strategy Is Your Words". You can find out about our membership at http://www.sweathead.com. We'll be announcing tens of events and masterclasses in 2023 soon. If you enjoy this episode, please share it with a friend and give it a kind review. ** 🔥 Strategy classes: http://www.sweathead.com ✉️ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dscjW5 📸 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/sweathead 🔊 Other links: https://znap.link/sweathead Sweathead is a support group for strategists and account planners around the world. We host conferences, online courses, live events, and podcasts. We also train companies.

You can find this episodes on Instagram @markpollard. You can the coupon code HOLIDAY22 on the Sweathead website to get 20% off plus free shipping of 2 or more copies of my book "Strategy Is Your Words". You can find out about our membership at http://www.sweathead.com. We'll be announcing tens of events and masterclasses in 2023 soon. If you enjoy this episode, please share it with a friend and give it a kind review. ** 🔥 Strategy classes: http://www.sweathead.com ✉️ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dscjW5 📸 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/sweathead 🔊 Other links: https://znap.link/sweathead Sweathead is a support group for strategists and account planners around the world. We host conferences, online courses, live events, and podcasts. We also train companies.

Eden Swanson is Group Planning Director at Carmichael Lynch in Minneapolis. Her team picked up a Gold Effie in 2021 as well as a bronze in the Connection Strategy category of the 2022 Jay Chiat Awards. At its simple, communications planning (or, "connection planning"), seeks to reach its audience where they spend time and in ways that work for the channels in which they spend time as well as for the brand. However, where comms planning really comes to life is when the campaign idea and how the brand turn up rub off on each other, channeling the same theme. For instance, if a brand wants to talk about intimacy, it might choose places that desperately need it or that have a lot of it. This can make the campaign more effective. In this episode, Eden takes us through the handful of key decisions that led to this effective campaign. The decisions each pushed back on the original brief. They challenged the original audience focus, the message, and the channels the client expected to use. You can find Eden here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edenswanson/ ** 🔥 Strategy classes: http://www.sweathead.com ✉️ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dscjW5 📸 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/sweathead 🔊 Other links: https://znap.link/sweathead Sweathead is a support group for strategists and account planners around the world.  We host conferences, online courses, live events, and podcasts. We also train companies.