The PO Show!

Derek Walker opened an ad agency in the teeth of the 2008 financial crisis, got banished from a Fortune 500 client for telling the truth, and still thinks the most useful thing an agency can say is “there’s a hole in the boat.”

He’s the founder of brown and browner in Columbia, South Carolina. Before that, he spent seven years as a Pizza Hut “fixer,” learned leadership from a CEO who walked out on a bully client, and worked inside some of the industry’s biggest shops. Along the way, he coined the “Gunfighter Effect,” his theory of why hungry small agencies clean up the town and then get shown the door once it’s safe.

Bonus material: the pitch American Airlines passed on, a chair thrown in a client meeting, and why Derek says agencies should be the coach, not the cheerleader.

Give a listen, and let’s go build something worth remembering.

Short on time? Here are my favorite nuggets from my conversation with Joe Welstead, co-founder of Oshun and JAW Studios, and a former Commonwealth Games swimmer who traded the pool for building brands people actually talk about.

In about 15 minutes, Joe makes the case that boring is expensive, and why a product people talk about makes every ad cheaper. Why Oshun's pump bottle was never meant to be chaos packaging, and why it can never be a gimmick. Why he'd trade a 12-month metric for ten-year customers, and why tricking people into subscriptions gets you paid twice, but never fifty times. And the dartboard he learned with Team Scotland for staying cool, calm, and collected, before closing on his one message for all of us: opt in, because it's going to be all right.

Want the full story, like how a broke, homesick first-year student who didn't make his university team ended up swimming for Scotland, or what happened when an influencer launched an Oshun knockoff?

Check out The Brand Builder version of this episode on your favorite podcast platform.

Give a listen. And let's go build something worth remembering

Joe Welstead put electrolytes in a pump bottle because it was convenient, not to cause a stir, and the internet called it chaos packaging anyway. He’s a former Commonwealth Games swimmer for Scotland, co-founded and sold Motion Nutrition, then bootstrapped Oshun past 10,000 subscribers, after launching it without a single ad for its first three and a half months.

His big idea is that boring is expensive. Make something people talk about, and every dollar you spend on marketing works harder. It runs through everything from the stock photos he snuck into the world for free, to why he never pays an influencer for the first post, to the square olive oil bottle JAW Studios designed for Amazon’s square listing tiles.

It’s not just a marketing conversation, though. Joe grew up between Scottish and French cultures and took a gap year in Australia. He survived a broke, homesick first year at university that turned into a Games team spot, and now he works hard, just not for long, with a hard stop at 6pm when his kids get home.

Give a listen, and let’s go build something worth remembering.

Short on time? Here are my favorite nuggets from my conversation with Vanessa Toro, a strategist and speaker who once put “Give all the damns” on a clothing line, after nearly twenty years inside the advertising machine learning what makes people care, and what happens to a good idea when too many people get a vote.

In about 15 minutes, Vanessa makes the case that a framework is a visual receipt of the work done, not the input. The definition of culture everyone’s been missing, and why it’s the water we all swim in, plus the good words advertising keeps beating into the ground. Why she thinks the inevitability of AI is as much marketing as anything else. What to do about return-to-office mandates, and why a company can bring everyone back and still leave them alone together in a row. And her one message for the whole industry: there’s not a single self-made person, and you are part of someone else’s constellation too.

Want the full story, like why she cuts her own hair with a razor, why we should leave Carl Jung alone, and why Cannes is like Disney World without a fast pass?

Check out The Brand Builder version of this episode on your favorite podcast platform.

Give a listen. And let’s go build something worth remembering.

Vanessa Toro once put "Give all the damns" on a clothing line, and after nearly twenty years in advertising she's still giving them. She's just got less patience for jargon, for decks mistaken for thinking, and for anyone who says AI is inevitable.

She’s a strategist, a speaker, and a public observer of the strange things we all do while chasing attention, approval, and belonging. Stop polishing the receipt. Go do the thinking.

Give a listen, and let's go build something worth remembering.

Short on time? Here are my favorite nuggets from my conversation with Theo Erasmus, founder of Rare Beast, and a strategist who's spent his career trying to make marketing serve people instead of squeezing them, after a road that's run through the army, a courtroom, a crime beat, and some of the biggest agencies in the world.

In under 15 minutes, Theo makes the case that you know a company has principles when it costs them something, and why Costco passed that test where Target folded. Why holding companies, CEO pay, and a Gen Z audience that can see right through it have the industry stuck in a vicious circle. What he told Cincinnati's bike share about winning over a car town: you won't persuade people on moral grounds, so make the better choice the more desirable one. And the medals he walked away from, a decision he almost never talks about, before closing on his one rule for all of us, which is to serve people as well as sell to them.

Want the full story, like how a crime reporter in apartheid-era South Africa ended up in advertising because friends told him they sat around all day thinking of cool ideas, or what it was like to meet Nelson Mandela?

Check out The Brand Builder version of this episode on your favorite podcast platform.

Give a listen. And let's go build something worth remembering.

Theo Erasmus has been a soldier and a conscientious objector, a crime reporter, and a strategist for Google and Johnnie Walker. Now he's here to make the case that marketing doesn't have to keep killing the patient it promised to cure.

He's spent more than 30 years inside the industry, at Ogilvy, DDB, TBWA, and Leo Burnett, and now runs Rare Beast, a strategy studio built around putting humans first. His test for spotting purpose-washing is simple. You know a company has principles when it costs them something. It's why Costco, AriZona Iced Tea, and Bob's Red Mill pass where so many brands fold, and why he'll never take a sports betting client.

The industry critique is only half the episode, though. Theo's road to strategy also ran through a job as a junior prosecutor and years as a crime reporter dodging Molotov cocktails in apartheid-era South Africa.

Give a listen, and let's go build something worth remembering.

Short on time? Here are my favorite nuggets from my conversation with Lisl Macdonald, founder of Spring and Atlas, and a woman who calls her own profession "perspective collecting" after a career that's run through law, marketing boardrooms, and multiple continents.

In about 15 minutes, Lisl makes the case for staying at what she calls the "crinkly edges" of any room instead of the center, because that's where the actual thinking happens. Why she thinks most founders aren't doing customer research at all, they're just recruiting supporters for a decision they've already made. Her back-of-envelope math on the "priest class" of the startup ecosystem, and just how little of that money actually reaches founders. Why she thinks a startup's biggest risk isn't the market, it's the small problem nobody dealt with in time, straight out of a lesson from competitive sailing: ignore one, and it can kill you.

Want the full story, like how a waitressing job through university turned into a seat on the management team during a billion-pound London Stock Exchange IPO, or how she went back to law school at 58, three decades after deciding it wasn't for her?

Check out The Brand Builder version of this episode on your favorite podcast platform.

Give a listen. And let's go build something worth remembering.

Lisl Macdonald spent a decade inside BT, Ogilvy, and Virgin's biggest brand machines, sat on the management team through a London Stock Exchange IPO, and just walked a graduation stage at 58 to collect an LLM, with Distinction. So when she talks about where the real insight in an ecosystem actually lives, she's speaking from decades inside the room, not a theory about it.

She calls herself a "perspective collector," someone who deliberately lives at what she calls the "crinkly edges" of communities instead of the center. It's a phrase she uses to describe everything from why disability gets left out of access conversations, to why founders mistake customer interviews for recruiting supporters, to how a "priest class" has quietly formed between startup founders and their investors.

Perspective collecting is only half the episode, though. Lisl's also currently researching conflict for a PhD, with a working theory that founder fallouts, not bad products, are what actually kill startups.

Bonus material: a poem from grade school that became her lifelong mission to age disgracefully, and a hard-won case for why curiosity travels better than confidence.

Give a watch, and let's go build something worth remembering.

Short on time? Here are my favorite nuggets from my conversation with Mark Hadfield, founder of Meet the 85%, co-founder of Dose of Reality, and the guy who quit a secure agency job to start knocking on strangers' doors across Britain instead.

In less than 15 minutes, Mark makes the case for "reality first, brand second," his rule for never letting a client's brand into the room until real life brings it up on its own. The actual moment a man got up and shut a door before answering a question about his pension, and why that told Mark more than his answer did. Why a photo inside someone's fridge can undercut a dashboard, and did, on one project. And the lesson behind "1.4 slices of pizza," why Mark still can't let go of the pizza brand that tried to average its own customers into nonsense.

Want the full story, like Mark's path from a working-class kid mocked for his accent in agency land to running planning across Asia, to quitting his job a week before his second child was born?

Check out The Brand Builder version of this episode on your favorite podcast platform.

Give a listen. And let's go build something worth remembering.