Rishad Tobaccowala, who has logged nearly four decades at Publicis, joins the podcast to discuss, well, a little bit of everything. In a conversation that kicks off by unpacking Publicis’s recent announcement that it will be acquiring data marketing juggernaut Epsilon, Rishad breaks down the industry from his own unique vantage point as someone who has spent time in creative, digital and media. We discuss how the holding company model is being forced to evolve and what it means to be a brand in 2019. And we get into what growth means to him both as a chief growth officer and as a human being. Stick around and you might pick up a few life hacks.

In this week’s Ad Age Ad Lib podcast, we interview the chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide, who tells us about his legendary 65-year history in advertising, including  why he pointed a cannon--literally--at Leo Burnett’s offices and the inside story of the “Big Bang” merger that created Omnicom (and why he had to keep changing rooms at The Palace Hotel.) Reinhard also discusses his admiration for Bill Bernbach, who he calls “the Picasso of the business," and tells us where he sees the ad industry going in the future.

Peter McGuinness wasn’t always a yogurt guy. Before joining Greek yogurt brand Chobani in 2013, he had a career in ad agencies. On this episode of the podcast, he discusses making the transition to the brand side, and the fresh self-awareness that brought him. He describes working for a brand with purpose and how Chobani is grappling with the current dip in U.S. yogurt sales as more alternatives come to market.

People are conducting more than a billion searches for GIFs on messaging apps a day. At the heart of their results is, usually, Giphy, a shareable online database of those short looping soundless videos. Giphy’s Alex Magnin who claims to net in the ballpark of 10 percent of the search traffic of Google, joins the podcast today to discuss all things GIF and messaging, what it looks like from an advertising and branded content perspective, plus what the most popular GIF search terms are. (Hint: They might just restore your faith in humanity!)

Our conversation with Shelly Lazarus, Ogilvy’s chairman emeritus, covered a lot of ground—from what it was like to be a woman ad exec in the 1970s to today’s #MeToo movement to where holding companies are going in the future.

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners are on a roll. The agency nabbed the number two spot on the Ad Age A-List, released this week. Its founders, Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein, will be in Cannes this summer to pick up the prestigious Lion of St. Mark, rewarding a career filled with creative triumphs, including, most famously, the “Got Milk?” campaign. Goodby joins the podcast to discuss career highs and lows, his philosophy of openness, his favorite David Ogilvy story, his next chapter and more. 

Tiffany R. Warren talks about the skin care tradition handed down through her family and the ways she’s improved upon it. “In a way, when I take care of my skin, it’s a connection to my grandmother,” she says. She also weighs in on her ideal breakfast, what to do with your privilege and the enduring legacy of New Edition.

Deloitte Digital is one of the world’s 10 biggest agency companies: In 2017 Ad Age ranked Deloitte Digital as the world’s second-largest digital network, behind rival Accenture Interactive. Hatch joins me today to explain what, exactly, it is Deloitte Digital does. “We exist to make old companies new again,” she says. She explains what that means, how data and tech like AI come into play and discuss her early career on a disease control project during an outbreak in West Africa.

Pete Favat talks about building useful things from scrap and renovating his home on “This Old House.” The C-suite leaves less time to get his hands dirty on the job, he says. “You’re using your brain, which is good, but there’s no physical gratification at all. We weren’t put on this earth to just bang keys on a keyboard.” So he creates on his own time, putting together whatever strikes his fancy: a dog sled, a chandelier, a garden.

When Nicolas Bidon talks about his business, he talks about becoming an “outcome” media company. As part of WPP and GroupM, Xaxis is a billion-dollar business — arguably the world's largest global programmatic media and technology platform — boasting some 3000 clients across 47 markets. The evolution to an outcome-based focus, Bidon says, represents a shift away from fairly crude metrics like CPMs to more real, specific business goals—with an assist from emerging tech like artificial intelligence. We get into all of that, plus some weedy topics like arbitrage, transparency and FBI investigations.