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
Lucinda Bounsall- Sibling Studios
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Lucinda is the founder and head of strategy at Sibling, a culture-led strategy studio.
In this episode, we track Lucinda’s unconventional path into strategy.
Originally an aspiring journalist, she spent her early career in the editorial departments of London fashion magazines—at one point completing six months of back-to-back internships while living on her sister’s floor.
Her career progressed through brand-side roles at ASOS, Farfetch (during its startup phase), and Stella McCartney, with a three-year stint in Berlin’s luxury e-commerce scene in between.
Lucinda explains why she eventually left the fashion world: a recurring tension where "the perfect image" was consistently prioritized over "the actual strategy."
We discuss how this background gave her a unique lens for identifying brand blind spots and why she views her Substack and research-writing habit not as side projects, but as the core of how her strategy is made.
Lucinda argues for a version of the craft that is more cultural, observant, and human, and significantly less reactive.