Inspiring Futures - Lessons from the Worlds of Marketing and Advertising
Inspiring Futures pulls back the curtain on the minds reshaping advertising and marketing today. Host Ed Cotton, former Chief Strategy Officer at Butler Shine and Stern & Partners, engages industry visionaries in raw, unfiltered conversations about their career pivots, creative breakthroughs, and strategic innovations. No canned responses. No PR filters. Just honest insights about navigating the complex world of brands, creativity, and agency life. Each episode delivers actionable wisdom from those who've mastered the craft and aren't afraid to share their failures alongside their successes.
Episodes
Christine Olivas began her career by hand-delivering 50 resumes to San Francisco startups, which resulted in one startup hiring her.
Her entry into agency work came when an owner heard a webinar she produced and was impressed enough to bring her aboard.
At this agency, she excelled by running two departments and contributing to significant growth.
After years of success there, she transitioned to a strategy role at a New York agenc...
Tara is the Chief Creative Officer at Rethink NY.
She has extensive creative experience from agencies including Y&R, BBH, Mother, and Droga (x2).
In our conversation, we discussed her experience at Miami Ad School, where she was forced to think seriously about funny- to an approach and perspective on being sensitive enough to find funny in the world around you.
We discussed her experiences and challenges at the different agencies ...
The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Pip Bingemann- the co-founder of Springboards.ai
As strategy departments grapple with how to use AI, this podcast seems timely.
Pip is an agency strategist who embraced AI from the early days, learned basic code, and built a model that attracted the attention of several agencies.
Fast-forward two and a half years, and Springboards.ai has funding, sales, and customer ser...
The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Michael Miller and Chris Nobile- two of the three founders of consulting group Consiglieri.
Before the founding of the consultancy, Michael and Chris worked together and helped build T-Mobile's in-house capabilities.
In our conversation, we talk about what they learned from the T-Mobile experience and how it informed the development of their consultancy.
We discuss...
The latest Inspiring Futures podcast features an interview with Ali Burton.
Ali is Head of Incubator at Gate One in London, which is a Havas-owned start-up incubator.
He's also in the process of growing his own start-up Catch.
https://catchcameras.co.uk/
The idea of Catch is to lean into the movement for people to appreciate the analog, enjoy waiting, learn new skills, and build IRL communities.
In our conversation, we talked a...
The latest Inspiring Futures episode is all about "Futures".
My guest is Donna Dupont, Chief Strategist, Foresight and Design at Purple Compass.
As the Founder and Chief Strategist in Foresight & Design for Purple Compass, Donna Dupont brings skills and insights developed over 20 years working with leaders in healthcare, emergency management, government public policy, strategic planning and program design. She has facil...
The latest episode of Inspiring Futures features an excerpt from a webinar I hosted with Brent Vartan of Bullish. Brent began his career as a strategist at shops that included- BBDO and Deutsch.
Bullish was founded in 2016 with the promise of bringing ad agency expertise, including strategy, to the start-up world.
The company describes its approach as "blending capital, consulting, and creation to design th...
Mark is the co-founder of Squint Consulting.
Before Squint, Mark was an experienced Head of Strategy working with clients like Nike, Netflix, Samsung, and Diageo. His career spanned New York, London, and Amsterdam and he spent his formative years at R/GA, the world’s leading digital innovation firm.
In our conversation, we talked about his experience at R/GA, why he wants to be a "brand," not just a &qu...
YAMA Group was founded in 2009 and has steadily built a reputation as one of the leading small, independent pharma shops in the world.
It has worked on brands including Botox, Humira, and Keytruda and works with Takeda, AbbVie, and Pfizer.
It's a highly creative agency that works across all aspects of pharma marketing including efforts to reach specialists and has developed its unique products for these int...
My latest Inspiring Futures podcast episode features an interview with Dr. Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel.
Anastasia is a cultural theorist, writer, social critic, and strategist specializing in inclusivity within marketing, media, and tech.
She earned her doctorate in cultural studies from Duke University and is now using her expertise to help brands ignite cultural innovation and leverage the power of media for goo...
The 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 imp...
The 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 w...
The 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/softw...
The 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 ...
The 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...
When 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 ...
The 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 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...
The 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, London
Executive Head of Strategy- at Wieden&Kennedy- London
SVP Strategy Virtue at Vice.
She is also the author of a best-selling book, was the Chief Strategy Officer of Portas retail cons...
The 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 ...
Popular Podcasts
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.