I had a wonderful conversation with Claire Atkin, co-founder of Check  My Ads, which helps firms examine where their media funds are sent by  their programmatic partners and software. Claire has an extremely  pragmatic approach that makes the work of determining where a brand's  ads are running, which can seem overwhelming, very simple. The hard part  in many cases is for the firm to decide what is in and out of bounds  for its customers, staff and brand.

Links: Check my ads - https://www.checkmyads.org/

Look at you. Desperate for a transcript. Okay you can read along on adampierno.com

I spoke with Nick Childs, who is also helping people better tell  their story. He’s a lifelong creative and leader putting together ads and communications on the biggest stages. He’s pretty much seen it all.

Now  he’s started DIRT, a new method for better understanding what works  about creative so we can get better at telling stories and driving  results (if that’s your thing). I am always interested in new  possibilities created by research, so I geeked out a little. FYI, I’ll be following up for more info on DIRT for my own projects.

Want the transcript? Head on over yonder and read it on up: https://www.adampierno.com/nick-childs-helps-tell-your-story/

All day long, you hear challenges and create plans to navigate through them. Briefs, decks whatever. You put in writing the plan for how to get from the place the organization or brand is in today to where it needs to be. Where are you today? Are you where you need to be? If not, how do you approach that challenge? Here's an idea for you: write a brief for you. Strategists are brilliant at framing a problem and mapping the way out, but often pretty terrible at doing this for themselves. I spent some time writing a brief for myself this spring and found it very helpful. I took a few hours to do what I do for brands and business, clarified the challenge, described the obstacles and charted some potential paths forward. This helped me reframe things I had been worrying about a little to much in the greater context of where I could potentially go, and helped me map the path to how to get there. Want help with yours? Find me on Twitter or email me and I'd be happy to see where you are. I'd be interested to see what sort of approach you take and how the briefs are shaped. I'll share interesting stuff with the group (and hide the personal information, obviously). This month, I was extremely lucky to spend an hour talking with Katie Dreke. She is working through a brief of her own and talked me through how she is considering what her next move should be. Listening to this episode, you'll hear audible pauses where I believe I was just trying to keep up. Katie thinks deeply and expresses those thoughts simply. 

Links: Katie Dreke on Twitter: https://twitter.com/katiedreke

Katie Dreke on the web: https://drke.co/ 

The Strategy Inside Everything is the podcast for people who think  for a  living. If you have an idea, a question or you want to push back on something you hear in this episode, go to https://thatsnotaninsight.com and leave a message or a voicemail for me. The best and most interesting messages will be added to future episodes. And I can't wait to hear from you. Host Adam Pierno is an author, speaker and strategy consultant. Learn more at adampierno.com.

How often do you look back at your old work? A funny thing happened during the recording of this episode. My guest, Ben Perreira began  describing something he had done earlier in his career and made an off-hand joke about a decision he made. But we continued to discuss, and he arrived at an insight about what he learned from that experience. I got the feeling he hadn't thought much about that before, as in, he hadn't consciously recognized the lesson that he had clearly internalized.

The Strategy Inside Everything is the podcast for people who think  for a  living. If you have an idea, a question or you want to push back on something you hear in this episode, go to https://thatsnotaninsight.com and leave a message or a voicemail for me. The best and most interesting messages will be added to future episodes. And I can't wait to hear from you. Host Adam Pierno is an author, speaker and strategy consultant. Learn more at adampierno.com.

I spoke with the author of Trustworthy, How The Smartest Brands Beat Cynicism and Bridge the Trust Gap,  Margot Bloomstein about how some brands design their communication and UX around building and maintaining trust, so their customers don't feel icky. In the book, she uses a collection of great examples to make her points, and goes pretty deep on the work they did to identify the point of trust and keep improving on that front.

Links:

Here is a transcript of the episode: http://adampierno.com/you-can-trust-margot-bloomstein/  

The Strategy Inside Everything is the podcast for people who think  for a  living. If you have an idea, a question or you want to push back on something you hear in this episode, go to https://thatsnotaninsight.com and leave a message or a voicemail for me. The best and most interesting messages will be added to future episodes. And I can't wait to hear from you. Host Adam Pierno is an author, speaker and strategy consultant. Learn more at adampierno.com.