In this episode of Sweathead, Penny Norman talks about her journey from working in account planning and startup strategy to focusing her strategy work in the niche of social good. She discusses how strategy can encourage individual behavioral change as well as government policy change. And Penny shares examples of her contributions to social impact campaigns in mental health, substance abuse, vaccine hesitancy, and child care.

Penny has worked in London (Publicis, AMV BBDO) and Vancouver (DARE, Pound & Grain), and is now a Senior Strategist at Rescue Agency, a social impact agency focused on health behavior change. She also founded APG Good Thinking, a strategy hack-a-thon created to tackle real life problems to give other strategists a head start.

You can connect with Penny at https://www.linkedin.com/in/pennynorman/

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Esther Wang is two years into her strategy career. We recently spoke in a Sweathead Happy Hour (online) about creative briefs–How do you make them good? How do make them better? How do make them something that creative teams will use? 

So, in this episode, we wanted to have that kind of conversation again. 

We talk about why talking about creative briefs is a much more complicated discussion than many people realize. We workshop a creative brief to get teachers to use an online learning system. And we discuss the 3 to 4 phases that brief writers tend to mature through.

There is a lot of thinking out loud in this episode but, without admitting the mess involved in our work, well, we'd be liars.

You can find Esther here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esther-wang7

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Find out about our strategy classes at http://www.sweathead.com

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Are marketers allergic to creativity? How do bold ideas thrive in huge international companies? How can creatives work within a systematic, data-driven company or agency? All these questions and a lot more are answered in this Sweathead episode with Karl Isaac, who also talks about his experience working on some of the most popular brands worldwide.

For over 20 years, Karl’s been giving brands chiropractic adjustments. He’s led some of the world’s best-known brands at Microsoft, Adobe, and Ebay and agency-side at Razorfish, Landor, and Hi It’s Us. Now, he’s a Fractional Chief Brand and Marketing Officer helping companies define, grow, and accelerate brands by better connecting to culture, embracing digital, and uniting through a common vision on a global scale.

He’s presented at SXSW, DMEXCO, AIGA National Conference, and Digiday events and been interviewed and published in Wall Street Journal, AdWeek, AdAge, Inc., Forrester, and CMO.com.

Karl has an MBA and Master of Architecture degree.

You can find Karl at @redglassesclub on Twitter and Instagram, and on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/brands.

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A brief word about resilience while walking Central Park. Plus a bunch of questions from Instagram answered: What's a creative strategist? What skills will a strategist need in the future? What are neglected strategy skills? Should you work in a network agency or an indie shop? And more.

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Find out about our Strategy Accelerator at http://www.sweathead.com

A quick episode about how strategists mature. But also a brief chat about sleep and exhaustion.

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In this Sweathead episode, Sara Tate talks about her experience as the CEO of TBWA\London and the valuable lessons that she learned from being the head of one of the top 10 marketing and communications companies in the UK. She also discusses how disruption, collaboration, and collective spirit can take a company to the next level.

Sara was most recently the CEO of TBWA London and had a very long stint as strategy director and managing director at Mother (almost a decade). She is currently writing a book on rebuilding things in life and work while currently doing an MSc in organizational consulting with a focus on executive coaching. 

You may connect with Sara at https://www.linkedin.com/in/saraktate/.

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In this Sweathead episode, Lydia Taylor talks about the many places where strategy lives -- may it be in agencies, within startups, on the client side, or at a social media platforms, to name a few. Lydia also lets us know what she thinks are the hottest places that a strategist can work at right now. 

Whilst Lydia has done her time at the big agencies, she's not a traditional agency strategist. Having spent the last few years growing a creative tech startup and then hopping around as a freelancer, she keeps strategy as simple as she can, solving problems with a human lens and avoiding overly complex frameworks.

You can find Lydia on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lydiataylor0/

And on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDcYQYjQlQ6BGA6wkZASBzg

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In this Sweathead episode, Ben Mburu takes us behind the scenes of several of his small businesses in Kenya. An account planner by profession, Ben believes that owning a small business helps him validate his ideas and gain insights he can use in his client work. He also shares his experiences of the ups and downs of being a small business owner during a global pandemic. 

After 14 years in account management in the advertising business, Ben is now building a life selling ideas that solve marketing and communications problems for businesses in East Africa. You can connect with him at www.linkedin.com/in/benmburu or [email protected]. 

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Find out about our Strategy Accelerator at http://www.sweathead.com 

Follow the fun on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/sweathead 

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How do you start a new job without showing your impostor syndrome?

How can you grow into a strategy director at an agency?

How can you work in another country without having to start from scratch?

These questions and more. From you. Answered. Right here. Right now.

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Don't forget to sweat that Subscribe button and share this episode with your strategy friends.

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For information about the Sweathead Strategy Accelerator, visit http://www.sweathead.com

You can find me on Instagram at http://www.instagram.com/markpollard