Inspiring Futures - Lessons from the Worlds of Marketing and Advertising
Inspiring Futures pulls back the curtain on the minds reshaping advertising and marketing today. Host Ed Cotton, former Chief Strategy Officer at Butler Shine and Stern & Partners, engages industry visionaries in raw, unfiltered conversations about their career pivots, creative breakthroughs, and strategic innovations. No canned responses. No PR filters. Just honest insights about navigating the complex world of brands, creativity, and agency life. Each episode delivers actionable wisdom from those who've mastered the craft and aren't afraid to share their failures alongside their successes.
Inspiring Futures - Lessons from the Worlds of Marketing and Advertising
What's to Be Done About Misaligned Briefs And a Broken Creative Process?
The latest Inspiring Futures podcast on better briefs and creative development featured a different format - instead of a typical one-on-one conversation, I gathered together an expert panel to examine and explore the issue.
Matt Davies and Pieter-Paul von Weiler - From Better Briefs. Former creative agency strategists with two decades of experience working on thousands of briefs. They've published studies on brief writing and idea assessment, and now work with BetterBriefs, helping major brands create more effective briefs.
Jeremy Diamond - Worked at major London agencies before moving to New York in 2000 to join Ogilvy & Mather. In 2004, he founded Distillery, a brand strategy consultancy, and has worked on a myriad of clients, including Diageo, Campbell's, Cox Communications, IHG, Holiday Inn, American Express, and AON.
Tom Noble - A highly experienced global marketer and advertising strategist with extensive experience as a senior marketer and agency exec. Tom's experience includes Nike, adidas, BMW, MINI, AFL, Jeep, Alfa Romeo, and Fiat.
Why this particular group?
Matt and Pieter-Paul don't just theorize about brief problems - their research for the World Advertising Federation exposes the serious disconnect between clients and agencies, and they're in the trenches helping brands fix it. Tom and Jeremy have felt this pain firsthand across agency, client, and consulting roles.
The combination gives us both the data on what's wrong and the real-world knowledge on how things could be better.