Call To Action

We took a trip in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies, to catch two girls with kaleidoscope eyes, Stefana Bosse and Jennifer Tessler, this week.  Stefana and Jennifer’s own personal experiences with psychedelics and inner work inspired them to found Alalaho, a series of psilocybin-assisted retreats offering a safe, legal environment for a psychedelic journey. Join us in the sky with diamonds as we explore tasty topics like mushrooms or truffles, their favourite Beatle, what Stefana’s dad thought of her taking a job in psychedelics, Alalaho and their psilocybin-assisted retreats, the benefits of doing inner work, the restorative role of psychedelics, being in a group versus a solo journey, the quick fix mentality, creativity, and a whole load more.     ///// Follow Stefana and Jennifer on LinkedIn  Check out Alalaho’s website for more on their safe and legal psychedelic retreats  And sign up to their newsletter here  Stefana dedicates this episode to Rafia Morgan and Turiya Hanover

Life’s a peach, this week, as we soak up the sun in South Carolina to snare a man who can sniff out agency B.S. a mile away. Here to vent eloquent fire, it’s Derek Walker.  Chief instigator, janitor, secretary, and mailroom person for his tiny agency brown and browner, Derek is a stellar copywriter and a loud, proud critic (and lover) of the ad industry.  He talks to us on his “late start” in advertising, agencies flat-out refusing to hire him because he’s black, what he learned from Pizza Hut, going agency side, why you should always read the employee manual, what agencies fear most, why there’s a problem with so many DE&I roles, the confidence crisis in advertising, and a ton more.  This episode is so good it's ridiculous. In fact, we should charge you for it. But we aren't going to. Partly because we can't work out how to. And partly cos you couldn't afford what it's worth. ///// Follow Derek on Twitter and LinkedIn  Watch The Advertising Industry Is Working Scared And This Isn’t A Winning Strateg

We picked a card, any card, and drew the econometrics Ace and Founder of magic numbers, Dr. Grace Kite.  Grace has over 20 years of number crunching experience across all the main advertising buying categories and is dead set on helping marketers make the most of their data. Tune in as we pull a ton of topics out of a hat, including her first job at a bingo hall, her fascination with real people, why data people need people skills, explaining analytics to clients like they’re a mate in the pub, whether ROI is higher when advertisers commit more budget, strategies for marketing effectiveness in a recession, and loads more.   Open sesame your ears and let the smarts pour in.  ///// Follow Grace on Twitter and LinkedIn   Check out magic numbers  And follow them on Twitter and LinkedIn too Read all Grace’s Marketing Week articles This episode talks about these two in particular: When it comes to marketing payback, words matter just as much as numbers Advertisers need to get over their fear of commitment    T

This week all it took was a tasty tipple of classic TV ads to trap tenor turned top strategist, and alliteration aficionado, Tom Roach.  Currently VP of Brand Planning at Jellyfish, Tom has worked at some brilliant acronyms agencies like AMV BBDO, Leo Burnett, BBH, and adam&eveDDB, creating pitch-perfect campaigns for McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, and the BBC to name a few.  He gets vocal on a ton of topics, including his early days as a choral scholar, his first agency job, what account people and snow ploughs have in common, The Guardian Points of View ad, why funnels getting flack is unfair, whether advertising will ever die, freedom within a framework, why media, strategy and creative shouldn’t be siloed, a dedication to Les Binet, and more.  ///// Follow Tom on Twitter and LinkedIn  Here’s his blog Make sure to read:  Most marketing is bad because it ignores the most basic data Why advertising will never die The sales funnel is wrong but it’s here to stay, so let’s fix it. And his Marketing Week colum

Lots of girls and lots of boys, lots of smells and lots of noise, playing football in the park, we caught baggy trousered Marc. We’ve snared the Dean of the world’s most awarded ad school, Marc Lewis, for an hour of masterly Madness. A seriously impressive creative mind perched atop the industry’s finest pantaloons, Marc is the man at the helm of School of Communication Arts. He’s dead set on delivering the very best creative education to the very best talent, endeavouring to have at least one third of their students on scholarships.        Point your ears this way as Marc talks Tango Orange Man, getting expelled and fired, his scholarship to SCA, Ferraris, reciprocity, reopening SCA, an exclusive scoop on the future of SCA, social mobility, stopping charity shop shoplifters, unpacking diversity, inspiring creativity, self-tanning chocolate bars, gratitude, why Steve Harrison is our industry’s Plato and a whole lot more.   ///// Follow Marc on Twitter  Check out School of Communication Arts  And book a ca

Carpe Diem. Seize the day. The Cameron Day. This week we’ve snared industry legend, author, and birthday boy, Cameron Day, for a chinwag.  Creative Director, writer, and chainsaw enthusiast, Cameron has been crafting ads and shape-shifting brands for over thirty laps around the sun. Pile your paper plate high with topics including the influence of his father Guy Day (of Chiat/Day), writing his Advertising Survival Guides, hiring the quietest person in the room, patience, jargon, trying to pitch a naked lady ad, and tons more.   And the icing on the cake is a side-splitting story involving a power cut, an unfinished joke, winning the Land Rover account, too much sushi, and a fart that nearly brought down a plane. Party on.    ///// Follow Cameron on Twitter and LinkedIn  Check out his website  Here’s his interview with Luke Sullivan, David Baldwin, Thomas Kemeny and Nancy Vonk  Cameron’s Advertising Survival Guides  Chew With Your Mind Open  Spittin’ Chiclets  Timestamps (02:06) - Quick fire question

We flagged down a Big Yellow Taxi and rode it all the way to Melbourne to catch copywriter and Joni Mitchell mega-fan, Carolyn Barclay, this week.  A stubbornly strategy-first copywriter, Carolyn helps brands sound like actual humans instead of soulless robots sent from the future to bore us to death. She’s also co-founder of Kingswood & Palmerston, a creative consultancy solving marketing puzzles for B2B and making ads for ad agencies. She talks to us on selling cheap suits to men who call them straitjackets, Bob Dylan, writing great copy by studying song writing, outspending versus outsmarting, why ordering ten blogs with a side of social is rarely the right thing to do, Eaon Pritchard, making ads for ad agencies, why rappers are good copywriters, whether AI robots really will take our jobs and a shed load more.  ///// Follow Carolyn on Twitter and LinkedIn  Check out her website  And Kingswood & Palmerston  Follow K&P on Twitter and LinkedIn too  Here’s David Moore’s collection of Ads for A

This week, we laid out hordes of Humbugs* to catch the Bah-rilliant Bristol-based strategist and Paul Feldwick fan, Alex Murrell.  He is currently Strategy Director at brand agency Epoch. Supplying strategic simplicity to the world’s biggest FMCG brands. Alex talks to us on tonnes of topics, including making the jump from graphic design to strategy, efficiency vs effectiveness, why an ad being expensive and ignored is a good thing, what the Superbowl and a peacock’s plumage have in common, Darwin, Derren Brown, the pitfalls of purpose, Eastern European dystopian fiction, and a whole lot more.  *The book, not the mint. But we have those too if you’d like one.    ///// Here’s Alex’s website  Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn  You’ve got to read his articles “Errors of Efficiency” and “The Pitfalls of Purpose” Here’s a baby-faced Derren Brown tricking ad-people with adverts  Ads Don’t Work That Way by Kevin Simler  And listen to our #CTAPod chinwags with the ridiculously smart Prof. Karen Nelson Field

We’ve gone bar crawling in Washington DC and laid bait of Tanqueray & tonic to lure and lubricate the writer, teacher, speaker and “Revenue Architect” Dave Wakeman this week. Clients call him a “shot of adrenaline”, and his work has taken him around the world working with some of the world’s biggest brands like American Express, Google, Coca-Cola, Nike, and the Boston Red Sox. He’s also the host of the number 1 podcast in the world for folks marketing and selling sport, theatre, and experiences: The Business of Fun.    Join us for a proper session that takes us through his unique route into marketing via nightclubs, how gin taught him about customer experience and pricing (hic), leveraging Eddie Vedder, the vital choices faced when considering your strategy, The key P pricing, why discounts destroy brands, the meh metaverse and loads more. ///// Follow Dave on Twitter and LinkedIn. Check out his website, which is also a good place to see his upcoming events around the world. Here’s the amazing EB R

Health and Safety went ballistic when they got wind of this week’s guest being both a Blades fan and one of the sharpest strategic minds in media. Safety goggles on folks, it’s Rich Kirk.   Rich is currently Chief Strategy Officer at Zenith UK. Named the UK’s second-best media planner in 2021 by Campaign, Rich, like Avis, clearly tries harder, contributing to Zenith winning work from Lloyds, Halifax, Uswitch, Confused, Zoopla, and Nestle last year.  This episode covers a sharp showdown (Billy vs Byron), his early interest in how stuff got sold, the volatile and ever-changing media market, media planning’s pandemic shake-up, how on earth you quantify reach, risk, the world cup, corporate inertia, word soup, and more. Open your ears and let the smarts pour in. ///// Follow Rich on Twitter and LinkedIn Or pop into The Broadcaster at White City Listen to us talk attention metrics with Prof. Karen Nelson-Field here Timestamps (01:53) - Quick-fire questions (03:37) - First-ever job & getting into Goog

This week, we’ve laid 57 varieties of bait to snare Salad Cream sommelier and TikTok star, Rob Mayhew, for a chinwag. Currently Head of Influence at Fleishman Hillard, Rob has over 20 years’ experience working at some of London’s top agencies with big brands like McVities, Krispy Kreme, and Lacoste. His sketches send Jenny’s, Gavin’s, and Tara’s across agency land into hysterics by holding up a mirror to our decidedly dumb behaviours. Rob talks to us on a ton of topics, including being a salad cream superfan, the comedian Jessica Kirson, booking a meeting room to nap, what he loves about TikTok, how to grow on LinkedIn, his sketches as a love letter to the industry, enthusiasm, why every workplace needs a Becky and a whole lot more. Get stuck in. *Seriously Heinz. Give this man the pale, yellow, emulsified brand deal he deserves, pronto. ///// Follow Rob on TikTok, LinkedIn, and Instagram He gets his awesome jumpers from Rowing Blazers Check out comedian Jessica Kirson And hold onto your spag

This week, we’ve masqueraded as a cartoon tiger and talked our way into Kellogg to catch truly gr-r-reat marketer, Keerti Nair, for a chinwag.  Hell-bent on bridging the gap between commerce and creativity, she’s Marketing Effectiveness and Digital Transformation Lead at Kellogg and has cut her teeth in the industry over 16 years, 4 continents and 2 recessions.  She talks to us on going from engineering to marketing, selling Coca Cola products door-to-door, relentless learning, why selling tea bags wouldn’t work in Sudan (and other lessons from a career spanning four continents!), tips to take advantage of the golden age of media planning, KFC, tacos, why we should be proud to be marketers and tons more.  You’d be a fool not to snap, crackle and pop it in your ears, pronto.    /////   Follow Keerti on Twitter Here’s KFC’s FCK campaign And check out Keerti’s side of the debate around consumer habits & demands since the start of the pandemic Listen Up by Andy Nairn on ISOLATED Talks Timestamps (

This week, armed with duty-free’s finest Yo Ho Ho’s and a bottle of rum, we’re in the Big Apple to rub shoulders with the pirates at TBWA\Chiat\Day New York and catch their Chief Creative Officer, Amy Ferguson, for a chinwag. Amy describes herself as a chronic exaggerator. Yet, her reputation as a creative renegade and rule rewriter needs none of that. She’s got the pencils, Lions, Clios and pieces of eight to prove it. So, listen up landlubbers as Amy chats to us on a treasure trove of topics including her favourite pirate, melting things, leaning into humour in recent Mountain Dew ads with Charlie Day, the trick to get punters to forgive the giant logo at the end of your ad, cracking TikTok, hacking the Super Bowl, why pitches are bananas, why agencies should hire more mums, and more.  Follow Amy on Instagram  Here’s an old blog we wrote on Allstate’s Mayhem ads    This is the second Call to Action episode dedicated to Captain Rob Schwartz, George Tannenbaum got there first here in a cracking 2-parter (P

Fix up, Look Sharp* because this week we’ve lured Lincolnshire lad and the Rascal of professional services marketing, Lee Grunnell, for a chinwag. A top marketing director and fellow Ritson fanboy, Lee is obsessed with applying the latest thinking from marketing leaders like Binet, Field, and Sharp to professional services. He talks to us on picking brussels sprouts, the Grunnéll vs Grunnell debate, why advertising is like Voldemort, how marketing in law firms isn’t as different as you’d think, and tons more. Plus, he’s got practical pointers for adopting a two-speed strategy, getting buy-in from skeptical partners, and applying the work of Ritson, Sharp, and Wiemer Snijder's banana to professional services. *A copy of How Brands Grow is compulsory ///// Follow Lee on Twitter See his smarts on Medium Read his article On Bananas (or Why Professional Services isn’t as Different as You Think) And check this out to see how we somehow got 30-odd partners in a law firm to agree on an advertising camp

This week, we whizzed back to the 90s and stuck out our thumb on the side of the information superhighway, hoping to catch a ride with award-winning creative and digital pioneer, Laura Jordan Bambach.  Currently President and Chief Creative Officer at Grey London, Laura is a total ad land powerhouse, dishing out truly creative work for some of the world’s biggest brands.  Topics covered in this episode somehow span; zombies, Nine Inch Nails, industrial quantities of chicken breast, fixing tractors, the “Geekgirl” hyperzine, the early days of the net, how we can prevent agencies from becoming the least creative places on earth, an infinite robotic knitting machine, a deep dive into service stations, and why her mum has a pixelated clitoris hung on the wall. Dial-up the World Wide Web and listen. Bee-bee-bee-dsshhhh. ///// You can find Laura on Twitter   Check out She Says    Find out more about Grey   Laura will be speaking very soon at TBD Conference    Spot the #SheepMask in the Macmillan Infi-Knit cam

This week, we laid bait of lofty vision statements and years of intricate tax dodging, to lure one of Britain’s most-awarded copywriters from the shadows. Locked and loaded to lob a few volleys at brand purpose, he’s Nick Asbury.   A brilliant writer and a thoroughly good bloke to boot, Nick crafts witty and charming words for branding and design.  Pile your plate high as Nick talks to us on how a poem about the England football team got him in real trouble, differentiating between writing for design versus writing for ads, Paul Newman’s salad dressing, using wit (properly), a Friends NFT, why the Innocent imitators in packaging copy need to cut it out, and his plans to dismantle brand purpose. You won’t be disappointed.  ///// Check out Nick’s Substack  Especially his blog Start with why, end with wire fraud     Follow him on Twitter   He’s one half of Asbury & Asbury   Alongside, Sue Asbury, whose ace paintings you should check out here   Read The Nations Prayer poem that got him in real trouble   

We stuck a fake shark fin on our back and lurked in the waters off Adelaide to catch the attention of one of the industry’s most respected researchers, Prof. Karen Nelson-Field, this week. Hell-bent on fighting the broken media ecosystem as founder and CEO at Amplified Intelligence, Karen is also an author and alumni of the world-renowned Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. When she’s not binge-watching Home & Away (yes, she’s still a fan), Karen’s research into the measurement of attention has made her a global authority on media effectiveness. Tune in to a show packed like sardines in a tin, as Karen talks on her 10 years at Ehrenberg-Bass, skateboarding cats, myth-busting Facebook likes, going viral, seeing dead people patterns, why attention is an important metric, how to measure it and more. And strap in as Karen finally answers the red-hot question of whether our attention spans really are becoming shorter than a goldfi- Oh, look, some links…  ///// Follow Karen on LinkedIn  And on Twitter  Here’s

Let’s get ready to rumble! Grab your ringside seat for the first episode in a new special heavyweight series; They Might Be Right. It’s the boisterous brother of Call To Action that breaks up bundles in the pithy playground of Twitter. Named in honour of Bill Bernbach’s famed jacket pocket card, we invite our challengers into the octagon of debate for a verbal slugfest, whilst being mindful and welcoming to the opinions of others. This week’s motion is ‘Loyalty programmes; a complete waste of time?’ And our challengers are: Jake Sanders. The man whose tweet started this particular brawl, and not content with only being a great marketer, Jake is also a Grammy-nominated musician and host of his own out-of-this-world marketing-sci-fi podcast show, Outbound. Derek Walker. A truly great copywriter who makes writing an art form, Derek runs the successful advertising agency brown & browner. Lee Woodard. One of the best Digital and Marketing consultants around, Lee is Founder of Nomi Digital

We’ve sailed on the waters of the U.S coast to catch the Moby Dick of advertising this week; the one and only Luke Sullivan. A man whose book ‘Hey Whipple, Squeeze This’ is so iconic it’s coined by many as the creative bible, Luke is one of the most talented blokes in the business, having spent 33 years in adland at shops like Fallon and The Martin Agency. Join us for a raucous and riotous voyage across topics including the importance of mentors, the soon-to-be-released and updated 6th edition of his book, the state of global creative education, how do you create and define a good idea, and the value of advertising awards. That’s not to mention finding out what he fervently sees as the bane of the advertising industry… ///// Follow Luke on LinkedIn And on Twitter Here’s his website And Luke’s video on conflict & tension Here are his books: Hey Whipple, Squeeze This Thirty Rooms to Hide In Luke’s book recommendations are:  Junior: Writing Your Way Ahead in Advertising by Thomas Kemeny Ch

We’ve commandeered a (now) irate New Zealander’s fishing trawler to poach the strategy and risk expert Andrey Ivanov for a right royal chit chat this week. A podcast host in his own right, Andrey fronts the popular and educational Business Games podcast, where he applies game theory to help leaders overcome uncertainty. Go press play and unleash a huge catch of informative piranhas, including why Andrey thinks business people should consider stand-up comedy, why poker is a good analogy for life, game theory, economics, how to make good decisions, and more. /////   Follow Andrey on LinkedIn And his podcast show on Twitter Andrey has a request if you have time; to complete his survey over on Business Games Check out Greenlamp marketing agency Here's the Togs or Undies ad we mention And this episode is dedicated to Alexei Domorev Andrey’s book recommendations are:  The Art of Strategy by Dixit, Avinash K., Nalebuff, Barry J.  The Rule of Benedict by Benedict   The Expanse Series by Corey, S. A.   /