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
It's always interesting to see what a network agency in a local market is capable of, especially at a moment in advertising history when geography matters less than it ever has.
A few weeks back, I got a chance to sit down with Havas Chicago's Chief Strategy Officer, Chase Cornett, and Chief Creative Officer Frank Dattalo to talk about the change they're implementing as a leadership team that includes P...
A few months ago, in the middle of summer, I got a chance to sit down with Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, to talk about his brand new book, "The Running Ground." We got to talk about the book—what inspired it, how he approached it, and how he managed to create a compelling narrative. So this is a podcast episode about running, but it's also about writing and about the challenges of telling a good s...
Brandon runs strategy at Trade School which is the creative agency which was born out of 22squared in 2020.
The agency's clients include- Makita, Home Depot, Shark Ninja, Publix and Advent Health.
Brandon's experience includes time at Campbell-Ewald/Detroit after which he joined West Wayne in Atlanta, which became 22 Squared.
In our conversation, we talked about the evolving role...
5 Things I learned from talking to Kelsey Hodgkin- CEO-Special US
In my conversation for the Inspiring Futures podcasts that spans London, Buenos Aires, and Los Angeles, Kelsey Hodgkin — CEO and Partner at Special U.S. — maps out how a strategist becomes a leader without losing her strategic soul.
Founded in 2007 in Auckland, New Zealand, Special Group began in an old cinema and is now an independent global netwo...
While most of us are obsessed with the creative and strategy side of the business, the harsh reality is that agencies succeed or fail based on their operational competence.
For this recent episode of Inspiring Futures, I spent time talking to Nick Avaria.
Nick has owned his own agency, and he also buys agencies and consults with them to help them improve operations.
Here are some of the highlights of our conversation....
The latest Inspiring Futures podcast on better briefs and creative development featured a different format - instead of a typical one-on-one conversation, I gathered together an expert panel to examine and explore the issue.
Matt Davies and Pieter-Paul von Weiler - From Better Briefs. Former creative agency strategists with two decades of experience working on thousands of briefs. They've published studies on brie...
Mary Lou Bunn is the CEO and founder of the agency Flower Shop.
This is how the agency describes itself on its website.
"Ad Age’s Small Agency 2024 Newcomer of the Year. That’s right, we’re a creative agency. We may be based out of a former florist’s on the Lower East Side of New York City, but we sell sneakers (or spirits, or non-alcoholic beer, or women’s sports teams, or energy drinks for athletes, or trading ...
From digital media planner to Chief Strategy Officer - and now she's on a mission to democratize strategy for everyone.
This is a podcast interview I did with Lucy Barbor, a strategy consultant and educator who's flipping the script on how we think about strategic thinking.
After rising through the ranks to become CSO at PHD UK and Global Strategy Partner at Dentsu, Lucy made a bold move: she decided to take s...
David Aaker is widely regarded as the father of modern branding. Over a five-decade career, he transformed brand from a communications tool into a strategic asset. His groundbreaking concept of brand equity, introduced in Managing Brand Equity (1991), reframed how businesses understand value — not just through products, but through perception, loyalty, and meaning. He followed with Building Strong Brands (1996), which...
Rachel has spent over a decade at Work&Co. In the episode, we discuss the company's unique origin story and how it has evolved alongside the transformative changes in the world of technology.
We talk about..
1. The importance of carving out space for creative risk, which clients demand because they find it challenging to accomplish in their environment.
2. How constraints increase the odds of innovation.
3. Wh...
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 ...
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 diffe...
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, an...
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 consultan...
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 conversatio...
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....
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 creatio...
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," ...
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...
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...
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