Attention Is Not Enough: Creative Marketing That Drives Growth | Terry Seitz | The Leadership Match

1. Creativity Meets Business: Terry Seitz on Marketing That Drives Growth
2. Why Attention Alone Is Not Enough in Leadership and Marketing
3. From Artist to Marketing Leader: Terry Seitz on Creativity, Strategy and Growth

What happens when creativity is paired with discipline, strategy, and measurable growth?

In this episode of The Leadership Match, Martin Rowinski sits down with Terry Seitz, Partner and Chief Operating Officer at The Nuance Collective, board advisor, and marketing executive with more than 20 years of experience driving brand transformation, digital growth, partnerships, revenue, margin, and measurable marketing impact.

Terry’s leadership story starts in an unexpected place: art. After college, he wanted to become a painter and was inspired by artists like Jackson Pollock. That creative foundation eventually led him into advertising, brand strategy, major partnerships, and business leadership.

We talk about:

• Why constraints can unlock creativity
• How mistakes can lead leaders into better ideas
• The difference between creative marketing and marketing that drives business
• Why attention alone is not enough
• How brands build memory, trust, and long-term value
• What marketing teaches leaders about storytelling, frequency, and numbers
• Why perspective may be one of the most important leadership lessons
• How leaders can use AI tools to understand what the market sees in their brand

Terry’s action for leaders is simple: ask AI what it knows about your company, your brand, your product, and yourself. What it plays back may show you where your message is clear and where it needs work.

Leadership is built one conversation, one connection, and one action at a time.

Subscribe for more quick leadership conversations on The Leadership Match with Martin Rowinski.

Guest

Terry Seitz
Partner & Chief Operating Officer, The Nuance Collective
Board Advisor | Brand Transformation | Digital Growth | Marketing Measurement

#TheLeadershipMatch #MartinRowinski #TerrySeitz #Leadership #MarketingLeadership #BrandStrategy #CreativeLeadership #DigitalTransformation #ExecutiveLeadership #BusinessGrowth #MarketingStrategy #AI #PersonalBranding #BoardAdvisor #TheNuanceCollective

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the leadership match. I'm Martin Ravinsky, and today my guest is Terry Seitz, Chief Marketing and Operating Officer, partner at the Nunce Collective, and a board advisor with more than 20 years of experience driving brand transformation, digital growth, partnerships, revenue, margin, and measurable marketing impact. But what I loved about Terry's story is where it all started. After college, he wanted to be an artist. He admired people like Jackson Polak and saw creativity as a path. His parents basically said, good luck with that. So Terry took that creative passion and put it into advertising, brand strategy, marketing, and ultimately business leadership. That is what this show is about. Beyond the title, there is always a story that shaped the leader. Terry, welcome to the leadership match. Martin, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Thank you for having me. The amazing introduction. We probably should have stopped midway through it. I don't know if I can live up to the billing. And I um and I know we we we spoke uh a couple of days ago, but your origin story, E.G., your story behind the story is the one we should be telling today. Again, I don't know if your audience or listeners have heard it, but it is amazing. So um Thank you, Terry.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

I'm I'm blushing. I appreciate that. Um so let's let's get into it. Before the titles, before Visa, before Nounce Collective, you wanted to be an artist. And I just told the story a little bit. What did that dream teach you about creativity and leadership?

SPEAKER_01 1:42

I did. Um my my passion for for for painting um was really cre was really started in in college. And when I graduated college, um, to your to your earlier point, you know, I went to my parents and said, Mom, dad, I want to be an artist. Um and they said, Yeah, you can absolutely be a starving artist uh in New York City, where I I I grew up. Um But what painting um taught me about creativity and leadership is the following. One is um a lot of the work starts with a brief. Um and that is a topic, a story, a point of view that you that you want to to tell. Um knowing where you want to go is a great is a great starter. And I say that within the context of uh the painting that that I do and and and that I've been doing for the last 20 years is what they call from sort of like the New York school. It's an abstract expressionist. It's exactly Jackson Pollock and Rothko and De Koenig and like all of these amazing. And there's some discussion about did they have briefs or did they let sort of their consciousness take over and just paint. For me, having a brief, having a story, a specific story, a topic, a point of view to to work on um makes me more efficient and actually makes me more creative. It's the idea of sort of constraints unlock creativity. Um I think the second thing is, um, and this was a cautionary tale from from university, was the the professors tried to get you to sort of like paint within the boxes and sort of divide the canvas into you know boxes of 12, and then you paint one. You know, it was almost like paint paint by numbers. Um, and and I found that incredibly stifling from a creative perspective, a leadership perspective. And um the wonderful thing about the New York school of of painting, the Pollocks, the Tacunics, the uh the Rothgos of the world is um you gotta sort of embrace mistakes. If you're not gonna be painting in those squares, then mistakes are gonna happen when you're you're you're applying paint to canvas. And you got to embrace that um because it it unlocks these exciting uh spaces and places and ideas to go that you wouldn't have got to if you were just finishing in sequential order um uh sort of the boxes. And then I think the last piece is um you gotta give yourself agency to do a lot of nonlinear thinking, right? And that's this the canvas is in front of you and allowing the brush strokes to take form or the action to take form is freeing because it leads you into new spaces that you wouldn't normally have gotten into. So so the agency to to really sort of do nonlinear thinking and let yourself sort of explore is fundamental, I think, to creativity and to and the leadership.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

So that's funny. I never really thought about it that way, but the way you just described it, apparently I'm an artist since I specialize in branding for executives. Because that also all begins with a story. So yeah. I just thought I'd say that because you were just describing, I'm like, that's what I do. Absolutely. Absolutely. So when your parents pushed back on the artist path, how did your how did you redirect that passion into advertising and marketing?

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Yeah, I mean, essentially after college they cut me off and they said, you know, we've we've done all we can with you. Um good luck. And um, you know, I again wanted to be a a a painter in New York City, which um which is a hard thing, which is a hard thing to do. And so um I needed to practically pay the bills, but wanted to do something um that utilized that part of the brain coupled with the other side of the brain, which was, you know, I studied economics in college and um, you know, I had I had sort of had a business mind. And so the the the the intersection, the the concentric circle of creativity and business led me to advertising. Um now again, I'm I'm gating myself, but you know, 20 Sama years ago, we were viewed, or I would view the industry as as uh populated with a bunch of commercial artists. And that is the people that comprise the agency world that lived on marketing teams were writers and philosophers and photographers and animators and producers and actors and actresses, and um, everyone had sort of a creative, or many people had a sort of a creative bent, but they too had to pay the bills, and so that's why they were sort of in advertising. But back then, uh it was a different world where you you hark into the the line of John Wanamaker going, I'm I'm wasting 50% of my budget and I just don't know, or 50% of my advertising, and I just don't know which. And that was true because back then the accountability, the structure, the discipline of marketing and advertising was different. Like the we just weren't held um account accountable for for our actions to the degree that we are now. It's not that people weren't evaluating and trying to measure marketing, but there was less correlation and uh causation, um, tools, methodologies, um, and expectations back then. Fast forward, 20 years on. The discipline, my journey has arced and pivoted to one of what I would call sort of a mad scientist. And it and it it's all of those things. It's trying to rectify the John Wanamaker 50% of my advertising is wasted. I just don't know what or or or or where. To we are much more structured. There's a discipline, there's a, there's a, there's a almost a scientific approach to how we do advertising and marketing that is very, that is very good. And it more aligns to um this notion of trying to get better at probabilistic outcomes such that we are generating bottom line business outcomes for the business, and we can um, if not prove it, uh, be more highly correlated to it. And and I think we're gonna get into some of this a little a little bit later. But that's been one of the footfaults um in advertising and marketing is huge investment, right? OpEx and everyone now going, we can measure everything under the sun. What are you, how are you generating um enterprise value for the business? Um and it's incumbent upon us in the in the vertical and in the discipline to sort of go figure that out. But being a mad scientist is about a systematic approach to go do that, right? So you establish hypotheses, you then test, test, test your way in or out of those hypotheses, um, you then uh communicate your findings, you optimize, and then you test, test, test again to sort of establish patterns, right? We're all in sort of like the search for uh in science, right? The search for truth, which it sounds very esoteric and um uh you know sort of amorphous, but the truth in marketing is about driving enterprise value. And if we can't do that, then I don't know why we're in the I don't know why we're in the business. And that goes back to this notion of we're no longer a bunch of like commercial artists who like to make advert, you know, TV ads and you know, move pixels around. It's about what am I doing with these things that's actually going to generate a return on the business?

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Yeah, yeah. And you've also had worked on major brands and global partnerships, which include Visa, NFL, FIFA, hey go World Cup, and the Olympics. What separates creative marketing from marketing that actually drives business?

SPEAKER_01 9:17

If there was like one point you can point to, yeah, I think um, and it's gonna sound strange, but it's about adopting an investment philosophy, and that is the notion of compound returns. And you're going, well, what the hell does that have to do with marketing? Well, in today's world, being consistently and constantly in market in a simplified way, where you are creating memories and associations in people's minds and then letting that work exist out in the ether is ultimately what drives enterprise value creation. The counter is too often, particularly in this world where we are all about attention and the hysteria and the hyperbole around the next shiny, glossy thing or person, is that everyone is fixated on one-offs and sort of stunts to generate attention. But attention in and of itself is sort of a false god. It's fleeting, it's vacuous, it can't be tied to this notion of driving enterprise value creation. It's important, but it is um, it is but sort of the first almost precursor step to all of these things. So being constantly and consistently in market in a simplified way where you, Martin, can make an association or a memory, we call it a heuristic, um is so critically important. And the reason why that is, um, and this is why it's uh so crazy that we're that I'm in the business that I'm in, is that when we buy toothpaste, when we buy mayonnaise, when we buy a car, when we buy uh a flat screen TV, um most of us have a predetermined set of brands or products that we're already considering. Like it's it's ingrained. And so you got to do the upfront work to try and even get into what is often a predetermined and um uh defined consideration set. So you better be simple, but you better be constant and you better be consistent. You know, there's this theory uh that comes out of that comes out of Europe from uh from a guy named John Dawes in the Ehrenberg Institute, and he talks about the 95.5 uh thesis. And that is 95% of a potential buying segment of a car, of a toothpaste, mayonnaise, et cetera, isn't actually in the market to buy that product or brand or service at any given time. It's only 5%. Now that doesn't mean we should ignore the 95% because it's all about priming the pump, you know, top funnel awareness consideration. Um, but it's just crucially important that driving business results isn't just about converting those down funnel already in the consideration set um, because that is a finite number of people. You got to think about it longitudinally and and and long term.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Makes a lot of sense. So I'm gonna get into a little bit of leadership because interesting enough, you obviously were gonna want to be a painter. You transformed that passion into advertising, marketing, creativity, which you stayed kind of coarse, but now you're at the intersection of marketing and operations, and you're a partner. So, what did marketing, what did that passion for for art teach you that made you a stronger operator slash partner?

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Um, I think first and foremost, and you referenced it um when I was talking about being a painter and you were talking about what you do for a living, is first and foremost, um, it's about storytelling, right? We we as human beings um learn and communicate through stories and have for thousands of years. It it hasn't it hasn't changed, right? And so storytelling is seminal to marketing, and importantly, it's seminal to how you run the operations and and and and and and are a leader at the organization. Um I think the second thing that that marketing sort of also teaches you is this notion of frequency. Um I'm gonna get academic for like 10 seconds, but um, there is from a in a marketing investment perspective, two notions. One is called reach, and how many, how many people do you reach with an advertising message? And then frequency, how frequent, how many times does somebody see it? The theory is you gotta you gotta reach somebody six times before they change their perception of a brand or product, or they act. They they buy something, they transact. Again, general, general guideline. But frequency is I think really important in in operations and this and and and how and how often we tell stories um in that you gotta tell somebody you're gonna tell them something, tell them, and then tell them what you what you just told them. Um we we often, and I fall prey to this as well, think that I've sent out an email, I've sent out a Slack, we were on a Zoom call, and therefore somebody knows exactly what um I need or expect out of them. And that's it's gotta be reinforced multiple times from a frequency perspective. Martin, I know you have kids, I have kids, and it's the same like, how many times do you tell them to brush their teeth or to put on socks or you know, don't forget their keys, or like whatever it is, right? Frequency, frequency. So storytelling, frequency, and then the last thing, and it's particular to uh where the learning is is is particular to advertising, which is an incredibly low margin business to be in, is that the devil is absolutely in the numbers. Um, right? Time is money. And so you either optimize it or you are wasting it. Um and so as we try and build the business at the Nuance Collective, and you know, I run BizDev and the and the operations and and and a and a lot of the bookkeeping, we are hawkish about how much time people spend, not only on existing business, uh, you know, to protect margin, but also in um right, the time value of money and how much we invest in in new business and um you know the the potential return on that. So storytelling, frequency, and the devil being in the numbers is just we live and die by that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Yeah, makes sense. All right, let's get into the match. What leadership lesson from your journey would you match with every leader listening? Pick one. Um perspective.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

And and that is perspective sort of gleaned through through time, right? If we think about perspective, well, let me take a sec back. If we think about the world we live in, there's so much hysteria and hyperbole around everything that we consume, particularly from social media, that it's really hard to separate uh fact from fiction, bias from not, um our our desire for understanding and our desire to act. And it's it's almost like we've gotten too fast in how we are supposed to live life. Perspective brings all of that stuff down, right? It's it's this tonic of taking emotion and not making it too high or too low. It's it's about the ability to use time to give us lessons about the right and the wrong and where to go and and where not to go. Um, it gives you a different point of view uh that you maybe wouldn't have had, and you get that perspective from others and you get that perspective um from from from yourself. So for me, perspective and this sort of slowing down of time um to get different points of view and to not make everything so real time is I think just, and by the way, I say this, and it's hard to do uh given the environment that we all live in, but is is just so critically important. It's it's the yin to the world that we live in, which is the yang.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yeah. And now to wrap it up, the action, yeah. What is one action leaders can take this week to connect creativity, strategy, and measurable growth? Um it's a it it's a it's a fun exercise.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Go to the LLMs, right? Go to Gemini, go to Claude, go to chat, right? Choose choose your choose your model and do two things. Plug in your your your company, your brand, the the product that you sell, the you know, the product that you lead, and see what those models play back about your brand. You will be surprised. Okay. That's one thing. Second thing, on a personal level, do it for yourself. And you will be and you will be surprised. No, because right, I know we didn't we we didn't really dive into sort of the perils and the promise and the potential of AI, but um stating the incredible, the incredibly obvious point of it's it's not only here to stay, but it is transforming you know nearly every facet of of our business and and and personal lives, um, knowing what the models and the machines play back about your business and about you is is incredibly important for two reasons. One is that's how people are searching for your product and and brand in increasingly, right? It's it's it's either a supplement and or it's replacing things like Google search. That that's like a fact. And then the second thing is um thinking about sort of movies like Total Recall in the Future and the notion that the machines um are increasingly cutting us out as the middle men, women in purchases, right? Like the machines are going to talk to each other, make purchases and make decisions based on our behalf and our preferences, mind you. But that then requires a level of understanding and a level of curation to go back to this notion of being an artist, about who you are as a person uh and then who you are as a company and brand. So the action is if you haven't done it, it'll be an eye-opening, illuminating experience to see what the machines are playing back to us.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

It is a fun experience. Terry, I really appreciate this conversation. Your story is a great reminder that creativity is not something leaders have to leave behind. When it is paired with discipline, measurement, and the right team, creativity can become a real business advantage. And for everyone listening here is the takeaway. Do not separate passion from performance. The best leaders find a way to bring both to the table. Leadership is built one conversation, one connection, and one action at a time. Thanks for listening to the leadership match. I'm your host, Martin Ravinsky, and I'll see you in the next match. Thanks, Terry. Thanks, Martin.