Jo Arden is the Chief Strategy Officer of Ogilvy UK, and she joins me on the podcast to talk all things strategy. What's involved, why it's important and how to make a career of it. Jo's experience is vast, not landing a "strategy" role until her 30's and since has had senior roles at Publicis•Poke and MullenLowe.

Here's what we covered in our chat:

• How Jo got into strategy
• Her winding path from PR through business development and into strategy
• What does a Chief Strategy Officer do?
• The role of generosity in being a great CSO
• The business case for involving your strategy team on a core business problem
• The one question you should always ask your customer
• “Making your thinking as funny as possible”
• Why the winning ads in technology don’t take themselves seriously
• The ‘good sense of humour’ approach to planning
• “If you aren’t having fun you aren’t doing great work”
• In praise of Dove and it’s purpose in advertising
• “If it didn’t sell it wasn’t creative”
• Why the industry loves a crisis narrative
• The crisis in creativity is more of a trend than a crisis
• Cannes Lions role in creative exploration rather than effectiveness
• Jon was left out of his own Cannes Lion winning party
• The one Campaign award no-one wants to win
• Why Turkeys eat Lions for breakfast
• “The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife”
• The challenge of bringing the consumer into the room
• The importance of doing normal things
• Spending the most time out of the office
• Rabbits in the office and other fun things at Ogilvy
• Generating borderless creativity
• Putting pressure on the task and not yourself
• How to create an environment for creativity to happen
• What Jo would advise her 21 year old self
• Jon share his almost unbelievable imposter syndrome story
• Using the power of your network