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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 President Kat Ott. 

Our conversation was wide-ranging and covered their approach to thinking about the new duality of marketing today- a concept they call "High/Low", the importance of building brand, treating talent with kindness, and recognizing the power and the limitations of AI. 

1. The Leadership Triad 

In 2025, Frank Dattalo joined President Kat Ott and Chief Strategy Officer Chase Cornett to rebuild Havas Chicago's creative, strategic, and cultural core. 

Together, they're positioning the agency as a modern, independent, culture-driven hub within the Havas network.

Chase: "It's been great to come back to Chicago and reimagine what Havas Chicago can be, a modern agency with the freedom to build what's needed without red tape.

Frank: "We knew what we didn't want to be, slow or rigid. We wanted a nimble, modern marketing approach with culture at the forefront.

2. The 'High–Low' Model — Think Like a Brand, Act Like an Influencer

Havas Chicago's creative philosophy pairs strategic brand thinking ("high") with the speed, fluency, and emotional immediacy of creators ("low"). Inspired by fashion's high–low aesthetic, it merges rigor and agility to create culturally resonant brands.

Frank: "Our north star is thinking like a brand but acting like an influencer or content creator.

Chase: "This isn't agency fluff. It changes how we hire, how we make, and how we operate."

3. Breaking Down Silos — The Feed as the New Brand Canvas

Havas Chicago rejects the traditional divide between social, brand, and performance teams. Culture, not channel, drives brand growth, and the feed is where that happens.

Chase: "Brand building starts and ends in the feed. If it's not in the feed, people aren't talking about it.

Frank: "Networks separate social and strategy, we're building an agency that does both."

4. Reclaiming Brand Building — Escaping the Performance Trap

Cornett frames the 2010s as the "gold-rush era of performance marketing," where brands traded long-term equity for short-term metrics. The new Havas model rebuilds meaning, pricing power, and emotional value.

Chase: "Performance became the buzzword, and brand was painted into a corner as arts and crafts." "If you follow the efficiency train, you're racing yourself to the bottom."

5. Culture, Kindness, and Creativity — Building a Human-Centered Agency

The trio's internal philosophy blends high creative standards with genuine humanity. They aim to make Havas Chicago a place where talent thrives, not just performs.

Frank: "It's not about being nice; it's about being kind. Be hard on the work, kind to people."

Chase: "We've created mandatory maker hours; no meetings, just making."

6. AI as Tool, Not Savior — Protecting Creativity's Human Core

Both leaders embrace AI for speed and efficiency but reject its overuse. For them, imagination remains the irreplaceable differentiator.

Frank: "AI is like a bionic arm; powerful, but it doesn't have a creative point of view."

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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 story.

Nick's journalism career started at the Washington Monthly when he was around 24 or 25, working as a political journalist. From there, he moved to Wired magazine as an editor, then to the New Yorker, where he eventually ran the website, learning the business side of journalism. This led to his role as editor-in-chief of Wired before becoming CEO of The Atlantic, which was founded in 1857.

But Nick is also a serious runner. In his mid-40s, Nike reached out to him as part of a program pairing non-elite runners with elite coaches. Through this process, he discovered he had talent he hadn't tapped into—his coaches realized that part of his problem was a fear of running fast, a mental block about what he could achieve. They had to "trick" him into going faster. The result was dramatic: he dropped his marathon time from 2:43 to 2:29, and eventually set an American record in the 50K at age 45, running 3:04.

The book was originally going to be structured like a marathon and, of course, it was going to have 26 chapters, but then the chronology made no sense. The advice he got from a writer friend is that he needed to take the reader "deep inside the mind of the runner," and importantly, another bit of advice: "you have to make us care" and "you have to make us care about you." Where he ended up is an original and intriguing concept where he manages to weave his life, his father's life, and five other running characters together into a story. Once he had something, there was a process of editing out the unimportant stuff to focus on what mattered.

The spark for the book was his father's death—on a plane back from his funeral, he wrote a 5,000-word letter to his three kids telling the story of their grandfather. This became the starting point, but he ended up telling his dad's story, his story, and also the stories of the first woman to run the Boston Marathon, his coach who had a story of addiction and recovery, his running partner who was homeless at one point in pursuit of her dream, a runner who developed Parkinson's, and another runner who has won a 3,100-mile race nine years in a row.

As the Washington Monthly wrote in its review: "The Running Ground crackles with big ideas about intergenerational inheritance, the power of love and forgiveness, the inevitability of aging, the mind-body connection, and the value of hard work. The memoir's intertwined stories—Thompson's relationship with his father alongside Thompson's own journey as a marathon runner hitting his stride midlife—are compelling narratives."

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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 of marketing, the importance of brands and brand meaning, and how AI is shifting and re-shaping the shopping journey.

Here are some of Brandon's soundbites from the podcast. 

“We are a dopamine-driven ephemeral society. That is very difficult for brands. And I think that's why you see a lot of brands chasing attention.”

“Brands are having a hard time creating memory structures because they're chasing attention. People just don't remember any ads at all. I think only 4% of ads are recalled three days later.”

“Our agency spends a lot of time, and it's probably because we've, we, we work with a bunch of complicated, multiple-location, retail-type brands, but from hospitals to banks to grocery stores to home improvement stores. We spend so much time doing the internal work, the alignment, the branding campaigns internally, getting people rallied around the heart of the brand and how they live it.”

“The whole product and brand discovery process is getting completely changed by AI. We're going to have to re-engineer our journeys and what we invest in and our technology in terms of it's no longer about search engine optimization. It's about content. It's about making things discoverable for AI, all these things, right? But the thing that I think will matter more than anything is going to be the brand meaning.”

“For a long time, we've associated brand with frivolous type advertising and communications that are a luxury to have. Brand is an operating system for companies. It’s not a new thought, but it's a true thought. A mental organizing form for action, which is how people think about the world and about the category you're in and about the actions that they take and what it means for them.”

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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 network with offices in Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles, New York, and London. 

Below are the 5 things I learned from our conversation. 

1. Working in Turmoil Teaches Resourcefulness

Working in Buenos Aires during Argentina’s economic turmoil taught Hodgkin a counterintuitive truth: when money becomes meaningless, creative output becomes everything.

“It’s sort of this two-year experience of what it’s like to actually live somewhere where money and capitalism isn't the driving force. It’s much more about the creative output. You have to be really resourceful.”

2. She Reframes Strategy as Living Beyond The Brief-Writing Machine

While some agencies treat strategy as a creative-brief factory, Hodgkin articulates a more ambitious vision.

“Strategy at its best is either upstream — really understanding the commercial side of the business — or downstream in the media complexity… being able to turn a big idea into an even bigger idea.”

3. She Named the Real Challenge: ‘

Our clients are in a "washing machine"

Instead of complaining about client chaos, Hodgkin sees opportunity in the turbulence.

“The unpredictability, the uncertainty… having strategists that can really understand that commercial reality… being able to be in there with them every day.”

4. She Makes The Case For Agencies As Counter-Culture

At a time when agencies increasingly mirror their corporate clients, Hodgkin argues for resistance.

“The job of agencies is to be countercultural — questioning of the mainstream and contrarian… if it becomes part of the machine it’s trying to change, then it’s less valuable in being able to change.”

5. She Redefines Leadership As Creative Curation

Hodgkin sees the planner’s superpower — pattern recognition, empathy, orchestration — as the foundation for modern leadership.

“As a planner, my strength was more curation than creation — helping greatness happen through others. That’s what leading an agency is.”

In a challenged ad agency world, Hodgkin offers a roadmap: be resourceful, stay close to the chaos, protect creativity from corporatization, and lead by shaping the conditions for others to do their best work.

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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 agency landscape has transformed. 

Where generalist agencies once dominated through geographic proximity, today's winners are specialized, systematized, and financially disciplined.

The Numbers that Matter 

Agency finances are simple: Revenue minus pass-through costs equals Agency Gross Income (AGI). 

People costs should consume maximum 45% of AGI (30% billable, 15% admin). 

SG&A should range 20-25%. 

This formula yields 30-35% profit margins—increasingly achievable in today's remote-first environment.

According to Nick, most agencies fail by providing "Michelin star service at McDonald's prices." 

The solution isn't cutting quality but is all about being able to align price with value.

Specialization to Survive 

In 2012, only 20% of agencies were specialized; today it's 70%. 

Specialists command premium pricing because they deliver results in weeks, not months. 

They skip expensive discovery phases, leveraging "institutional knowledge"—accumulated expertise that becomes an unassailable moat.

The agency handling only Google Ads for personal injury lawyers doesn't need three months of strategy. 

They know what works. This expertise enables premium pricing while reducing delivery time.

The Operations Gap 

Most agencies are "relationship driven, not systems driven." 

Every handoff fails.

Every project reinvents wheels. Results: inconsistent quality, evaporating margins.

The fix requires two feedback loops: systematized client experience (onboarding, expectations, education) and standardized delivery (dashboards, SOPs, training). 

These unglamorous systems separate scalable agencies from those that implode.

What It Takes to Be Sold 

For maximum valuation: maintain 30-35% profit margins while growing AGI 30-35% annually. 

Achieve $1M+ EBITDA for 6-9x multiples.

Build 2+ year client retention. Create owner-independent systems.

Winners have transformed from creative shops into operationally excellent businesses. 

They've chosen their lane—vertical, service, or both—and built expertise others can't match.

What it Takes

Today, rewards neither generalists nor operational chaos behind creative brilliance. Success requires specialized expertise, systematic delivery, positioning, and financial discipline.

Agencies can't thrive on talent alone. 

They need systems capturing talent's impact, positioning commanding appropriate pricing, and discipline ensuring every dollar builds a sellable asset. 

Creative magic still matters, but it has to be wrapped in a sound business model.

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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 of marketing, the importance of brands and brand meansing and how AI is shifting and re-shaping the shopping journey.

Here are some soundbites from Brandon from the podcast. 

“We are a dopamine-driven ephemeral society. That is very difficult for brands. And I think that's why you see a lot of brands chasing attention.”

“Brands are having a hard time creating memory structures because they're chasing attention. People just don't remember any ads at all. I think only 4% of ads are recalled three days later.”

“Our agency spends a lot of time and it's probably because we've, we, we work with a bunch o  complicated, multiple-location, retail type brands, but from hospitals to banks to grocery stores, to home improvement stores. We spend so much time doing the internal work, the alignment, the branding campaigns internally, getting people rallied around the heart of the brand and how they live it.”

“The whole product and brand discovery process is getting completely changed by AI. We're going to have to re-engineer our journeys and what we invest in and our technology in terms of it's no longer about search engine optimization. It's about content. It's about making things discoverable for AI, all these things, right? But the thing that I think will matter more than anything is going to be the brand meaning.”

“For a long time, we've associated brand with frivolous type advertising and communications that are a luxury to have. Brand is an operating system for companies. It’s not a new thought, but it's a true thought. A mental organizing form for action, which is how people think about the world and about the category you're in and about the actions that they take and what it means for them”

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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 brief writing and idea assessment, and now work with BetterBriefs, helping major brands create more effective briefs.

Jeremy Diamond - Worked at major London agencies before moving to New York in 2000 to join Ogilvy & Mather. In 2004, he founded Distillery, a brand strategy consultancy, and has worked on a myriad of clients, including Diageo, Campbell's, Cox Communications, IHG, Holiday Inn, American Express, and AON.

Tom Noble - A highly experienced global marketer and advertising strategist with extensive experience as a senior marketer and agency exec. Tom's experience includes Nike, adidas, BMW, MINI, AFL, Jeep, Alfa Romeo, and Fiat.

Why this particular group? 

Matt and Pieter-Paul don't just theorize about brief problems - their research for the World Advertising Federation exposes the serious disconnect between clients and agencies, and they're in the trenches helping brands fix it. Tom and Jeremy have felt this pain firsthand across agency, client, and consulting roles. 

The combination gives us both the data on what's wrong and the real-world knowledge on how things could be better.

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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 cards) rather than bouquets. We like to look at things from a fresh angle, with a twist. So we may not bring you flowers - sorry - but we can promise beautiful campaigns that are undeniably famous and will grow your brand."

In our conversation, we discussed her background in hospitality and architecture, and how it influenced her perspective on the agency. 

Her agency experience, the story behind the origins of Flower Shop, its philosophy, and the opportunity for a nimble small agency at this moment in time.  

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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 strategy out of the boardroom and into the hands of anyone hungry to learn.

Her philosophy? Strategy shouldn't be this mysterious, gatekept discipline that only a select few can master.

In our conversation, we dive into:

• How she approaches teaching strategy to make it truly accessible
• The biggest misconceptions people have about strategic thinking
• What she learned climbing the ladder in competitive agency environments
• Her framework for breaking down complex strategic problems

If you've ever felt intimidated by strategy or wondered how the best strategists think, this one's for you.

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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 introduced the Brand Identity System, and later with Brand Leadership (2000), co-authored with Erich Joachimsthaler, which cemented the idea of brand as a driver of business strategy.

Beyond his role as a professor at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Aaker has shaped practice as well as theory. As Vice Chairman of Prophet, he’s advised global brands on identity, portfolio strategy, and brand relevance. His frameworks — from signature stories to brand architecture — have become foundational tools for strategists around the world. In 2015, he was inducted into the American Marketing Association Hall of Fame for his lifetime contributions to marketing thought.

Among those deeply shaped by Aaker’s work is Scott Galloway, who studied under Aaker at Berkeley in the 1990s and later co-founded Prophet. Galloway has said, “There would be no me without David Aaker,” a testament to Aaker’s profound influence on the next generation of brand thinkers. What Aaker pioneered — brand as belief system, as organizing principle, as strategic lens — remains more relevant than ever in a time when differentiation is fleeting and cultural resonance is everything.