Uncensored CMO

Kate joined ITV in 2019 in the newly created role of Director of Client Strategy and Planning, with a remit to help ITV Commercial build broader and deeper relationships with advertisers. A creative strategist by background and a highly respected and well known strategic leader with twenty years’ experience across a range of communications disciplines from advertising, to PR to digital, Kate has worked across sectors as diverse as automotive, retail, government and public sector, FMCG and financial services. Kate has written / contributed to award winning IPA Effectiveness entries for Co-op Food Retail, Public Health England Tobacco Control and Stoptober.

In this episode we covered:

• What is the impact on the team with remote working?
• How has TV and ITV in particular changed (programs/advertising/production etc)
• I see viewing figures up so isn’t this a good thing?
• Clap for Carers – well done! What was the idea behind that
• People’s Ad break – tell me more …
• Are you seeing Advertising changing?
• Any sign of Advertisers coming back?
• What advice would you give brands now?

Ian Millner is global CEO and co-founder of Iris - one of the most successful independent agencies in the UK. He set the agency up 20 years ago as a partnership with his co-founders and it now boasts some of the world’s most famous brands such as Samsung and Adidas. A genuine multi-disciplinary agency with offices around the World iris have successfully moved with the times.

In this episode we cover

• Introduction – how Ian is doing!
• Impact – how the virus affected business
• Challenges – what have been the biggest challenges this crisis has created for the agency, given the budget cuts
• Opportunities – have there been any opportunities arise from the pandemic?
• Team – what has been the impact on the team? How should you lead others remotely?
• Future – how do we look to the future and stay positive?

Follow me:

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Contact me:

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]

Orlando Wood is the chief innovation officer at System1, and author of the IPA's best-selling book, Lemon. He also happens to be my colleague.

What we cover:

• What is Lemon all about?
• How right-brained attributes in advertising can help long term brand building
• What impact will the Coronavirus have on the left-right brained way we think of the world?
• Should you continue doing the 'Covid-Ads' or should you stick to what you know?
• Can old Ads really be effective? Should brands go into the archives?

Follow me:

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Contact me:

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]

About the guests:

Simon Dent
Simon Dent is a former sports lawyer and founder of Dark Horses, a sports marketing agency. Simon had experience of mental health problems in his 20s and after launching a couple of failed businesses he finally got it right with Dark Horses. Dark Horses, the sports creative agency, is the fifth fastest-growing creative agency in the world.

Ben Bidwell
Ben, otherwise known as The Naked Professor, is a mindset coach, writer & public speaker who is pioneering a revolution to change the stigma about mental health. He invites his audience to connect more with their emotions whilst empowering the men in the room to retain their authentic masculinity.

What we discussed

• Introduction – who are our guests and how did they get to where they are
• Impact – how has COVID impacted on a fast-growing agency?
• Challenges – what have been the biggest challenges this crisis has created for the agency?
• Opportunities – have there been any opportunities arise from the pandemic?
• Team – what has been the impact on the team? How should you lead others remotely?
• Future – how do we look to the future and stay positive?

Follow me:

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Contact me:

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]

Mark Evans is the Managing Director, Marketing & Digital at Direct Line and has been at the company for over 8 years. He's seen some ups and downs but has never seen a challenge such as the Coronavirus. How has the company been impacted, what challenges have they faced and what opportunities can come from this?

What do we cover in this episode?

• Introduction – who is Mark Evans and how did he end up in this position
• Impact – how has COVID impacted on DLG? It happened on the tail end of a major relaunch of the Direct Line brand
• Challenges – what have been the biggest challenges this crisis has created for Direct Line? How are they responding to these?
• Opportunities – what opportunities have emerged through this? Are people taking insurance more seriously?
• Media – will Direct Line continue to Advertise? Wil the message change?
• Team – what has been the impact on the team? How should you lead others remotely?
• Future – what's the outlook for the economy and their sector? Short v Long term

Follow me:

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Contact me:

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]

Welcome back everybody to the Uncensored CMO in rather different circumstances this time. So we were nicely underway with recording season 2 and we had interviews with Rory Sutherland, we had Mark Borkowski on there, Nils Leonard from Uncommon.

But you know what? It just didn't seem right to go out there with season 2 as planned when we're all in the middle of a crisis and our minds quite frankly or are elsewhere.

So what I thought I'd do instead was bring you some Covid-related catch-ups with industry leaders from different sectors. PR experts, CMOs running businesses with big P+Ls and thought leaders in the industry people like Orlando Wood, author of Lemon. I really want to hear their perspective on how should we be responding to this crisis?

What advice can they give us about how they are managing through what is unprecedented times with high level of uncertainty about what the future is going to hold? 

So rather than give you the whole hour as I did in season 1 these are going to be tight 20-30 minute interviews with people that can offer their perspective advice.

Another thing you'll probably notice is a slightly different sound because we're recording from home, so bear with us this season. It might not be quite the rich experience that you're used to if you listened to season 1, but we'll be doing our very best and producer James will be working his considerable magic from his home office. And on the other side will bring you season 2.

Jessica Butcher MBE is a tech entrepreneur, angel investor, speaker and mentor. She is perhaps most famous as one of the co-founders of Blippar, a pioneer in Augmented Reality which was once valued at over $1billion and described as one of the 20 most disruptive brands in the world. She is the recipient of numerous awards including BBC’s Top 100 women.

In this episode:

• How falling in love led to her big break as an entrepreneur
• How Blippar created Augmented Reality and what it was like on board a rocket ship that went from 4 to 350 employees and a valuation of $1billion.
• Why someone with a degree in history wanted to be a tech entrepreneur
• Which client inspired them to create Blippar enabled business cards
• Having 3 children in 4 years and how that changed her priorities
• The challenge of scaling a business and knowing your limits
• How social media is promoting polarisation, narcissism and infinite scroll time-wasting and how tech needs to become more humane
• We need to identify between healthy and junk technology and treat it as such
• Preparing the child for the road not the road for the child
• The inspiration behind Tick.Done and how it will help people learn how to do things without getting sucked into infinite scroll
• This is part 1 of the interview with Jess and we’ll be returning in Season2 to discuss what it's like being a woman in tech.

Follow me:

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Contact me:

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]

Jess Butcher:

• Twitter
• Tick Done
• Blippar
• The Coddling of the American Mind

Alex Myers is founder of Manifest who were recently awarded Agency of the Decade for their work making BrewDog famous. Having worked on BrewDog for most of the past 10 years they helped establish the brand as the UK’s most valuable Beer brand (source BrandZ top 75 UK brands) with virtually no paid for media. Manifest have a clear purpose of creating brands that change the world and put their money where their mouth is. 

In this episode:

• How Alex started a PR agency with no experience at all
• Never mind the bollocks here’s Brewdog was Alex’s opening pitch to work for them
• Its not what you stand for its what you stand up for that counts
• There is no such thing as a boring brief only boring creative
• Finding inspiration from roof tiles and why Alex believes his job is to find out why people get up in the morning
• Hello my name is Vladimir. Creating a protest beer to promote what BrewDog believe in.
• How to make brave the new safe
• How Twitter went from a platform for collaboration to a platform for outrage
• Having a public spat with James Watt over Punk AF and not getting credit
• Why pitching doesn’t work for brands and why CMO’s need to do their research
• Strategy should come from your belief and not a rationale
• Manifests vision to create brands that change the world
• Why Awards are easy to game but do provide a Sat Nav for CMO’s on who is doing good work
• Find out who Alex has a professional crush on
• Why doing good and having a positive impact should be synonymous with success
• Why the best work comes from making every channel amplify the other
• What Alex has never told anyone

Follow me:

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Contact me:

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]

Follow Alex:

• Alex on Twitter
• Manifest Twitter
• Manifest

Ian Millner is global CEO and co-founder of iris one of the most successful independent agencies in the UK. He set the agency up 20 years ago as a partnership with his co-founders and it now boasts some of the world’s most famous brands such as Samsung and Adidas. A genuine multi-disciplinary agency with offices around the World iris have successfully moved with the times.

In this episode

• Why agencies get the clients they deserve
• The importance of genuine diversity and how it contributes to innovation
• Why a good pitcher does not always make a good partner
• Finding sources of unfair advantage
• When clients make things they wouldn’t buy from an agency
• Why Ian can’t stand Ad industry awards
• When it makes sense to in-house your agency and out-source your agency
• Why Campaign should apologise for backing down on the Nigel Farage front cover
• The importance of creating cultural assets in today's social media driven age
• Ian reveals his plans to write a book about unspoken social behaviour

Follow me:

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Contact me:

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]

Ian Millner

• Ian's Twitter
• Iris' Twitter
• Iris Worldwide

Arron is co-founder of The Goat Agency which is the fastest-growing agency in Europe and one of the most successful influencer agencies in the World. He and his co-founders set up the agency 4 years ago with their own money and now employ 130 people around the world and manage around 90 social media campaigns at any one time. Arron has a wonderful personal story and a very compelling pitch for his agency.

In this episode

• Arron’s entrepreneurial roots and creating something out of nothing
• The fear of not trying is much greater than the fear of failure
• Why more people should realise how hard being an entrepreneur is
• How they generated 2,000 responses from a £10 investment in their first influencer 
• What you do when 80% of influencer campaigns don’t work
• Why Arron loves the procurement department and he proves the return on investment of an influencer campaign
• The benefit of having no experience in your sector
• The importance of recruiting talent without experience
• How an influencer campaign can make your TV campaign more impactful
• How Content & Collaboration are the key to any campaign including B2B
• Arron’s vision to build the world’s largest creative agency
• Arron reveals his secret new diet

Follow me:

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Contact me:

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]

Arron Shepherd

• Arron's Twitter
• The Goat Agency Twitter
• The Goat Agency