Category: My Media Life

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/U7cVv5Pfgl0″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]As part of our My Media Life series, the World Media Group’s Chief Executive, Belinda Barker chats to Amir Malik, Managing Director of Digital Transformation at Accenture Song. Amir worked at Google, the Mail and the Mirror newspapers before moving into consulting. Below are extracts from our conversation – you can watch the full interview in the video above or listen to the podcast here.

What does the media industry mean to you?

The media industry is, from a broader view, the most important industry, because it’s the basis of how we acquire information as a society, as a community. The publishers and media entities that exist are all, effectively, responsible for how people, get information. I think that that is super important.  The quality of media and the ethics behind how information is shared, the watershed times and what information is shared and to which audience – all these themes are massively important.

On a personal level, media is a very accessible, welcoming industry. It’s a wonderful place to begin your career. There’s always job flow in the media industry – it’s changing. Because people need information and interact with content, in an open content economy,  media is everywhere. If you’re looking to get into a professional career and you don’t know what you want to do, you can try media.

Do you still consider yourself to be part of the media industry?

I had to upskill and diversify my industry expertise beyond media, and that was important in terms of taking my personal ambition and my career interest to the next level. I still believe I’d be considered a media professional, but I definitely work beyond media in my Accenture role.

You took a Masters in social anthropology at Oxford so what was the stepping stone across?

I studied humanities – English and history and politics – and I majored in history, then I went on to do social anthropology and the study of religions. Academically, I’ve always been attracted to the humanities and the arts.

Personally, I was, an early adopter of the internet in the early nineties, when not many people, especially teenagers, were using the internet. I started building websites and I was generating income through web development, through using digital tools.

Anthropology, in terms of understanding social phenomenon, understanding societies, leant itself really well to my marketing industry move. I started to be able to draw links between how brands want to impact people and how advertising works.

When you add the technology layer in there, that’s what gave me my edge. It was also a bit of ‘right place, right time’, around the pivot to digital and the historical research methods analysis that I could apply to any given situation in business.

Can you tell us more about your current role and what you like best about it?

I work in digital transformation – I run marketing transformation. I lead an organisation or a business with multiple partners, and a whole practice of far more intelligent and far more talented people than me who can go in and advise clients how to bring their business up to speed, [to become] future facing, state-of-the-art in terms of customer communications, marketing communications, use of technology, use of data etc. and how we work more broadly across their organisation.

What I’m most attracted to in my Accenture role is I have the opportunity to drive the digital transformation, customer transformation, marketing transformation. We are looking at the problem in a positive way. The business case around change is critical to any successful client engagement or client we work with.

Companies form, they rise, they do well, then they decline and disappear. And it’s not that their industry disappears; they disappear within an industry because they lose relevancy. They fail to adapt and evolve their operating model in a way which is fit for purpose. What we try and do is transform that. How can we engineer change evidence through value realisation? That’s the purpose of transformation and consulting. And it’s highly addictive; it’s difficult, but it’s also very fun at the same time.

Where do you get your news from?

So, that has changed over time. Ten years ago, I’d have one to two publications that I’d frequently read. Over the last 10 to 12 years, the quality of information, particularly in literary form, written form, is just so varied on all publications that it’s very difficult to curate.

I will read almost all the industry body publications. I tend to curate that reading around real business engagement – business articles where companies are profiled, evidence through company referencing; evidence through individuals/ professionals; rather than opinion oriented. I look to hear from the companies themselves and see that credibility within those industry publications.

When it comes to personal news, we are in a very strange time. I remember when user generated content (UGC) was a no-go – you couldn’t even dream of advertising on it. It was considered low quality, unreliable, not verified, and that was a huge problem. Now, how many people spin up podcasts, gain millions of views, go viral? They could believe that aliens control governments, but they have millions of views and suddenly and they get big sponsorship programmes around their content.

What I used to watch on TV has moved to subscription VOD. Amazon Prime’s a big platform for me – I’ll watch documentaries through Prime. I watch a lot of history documentaries on YouTube. There are certain business podcasts I like to listen to – I like Bloomberg, for instance. The New York Times and Bloomberg are two of my core media publishers, but I read a bit of everything.

Do you largely listen to their podcasts, or do you also read their content?

I read their content. If I look at the New York Times, for me – someone who’s studied that – the quality of the writing is still much better than many of the broader publications. There’s an element where they’ve invested in journalism, which works. Whether that’s sustainable, I don’t know. If you look at Vice, I’d have argued that Vice was a popular online streaming news source, but they’re gone. So, we’re in an interesting time.

But the New York Times, the FT, Bloomberg – that’s what I like to read. And then I read a bit of everything else.

For people who might be looking to join the media industry, what piece of advice would you offer?

The media industry will get you engaged quickly. There are so many industry bodies, like the World Media Group, that you can get involved in that. There are so many themes and topics that are emerging, across data to creative, to technology.

You’re picking an amazing industry. A few things were very important for my personal success and my personal enjoyment of the industry: you don’t necessarily join companies and leave companies. You join bosses and leave bosses. So, if you’re joining the industry and you have the luxury of choosing where you want to work, work for someone that you admire; someone that you feel you can learn from, that you can trust. That’s one of my key pieces of advice.

Also, commit to whatever you do whilst you start to build up your knowledge base. Knowledge will sell you. If you think about everything you want to attain from your career – and I know if it’s early, you won’t know some of those things yet; I didn’t – but what I can tell you is the more knowledge you acquire, the more that the quality of your decisions will improve. Whatever role you take, try to be the best at it; try to learn all you can about it.

And don’t just leave that job for another job because the other job sounds good. One of my mentors gave me advice which said, ‘Don’t think about your next job. Think about your job after your next job.” That was really important. You then hit the transition point where you land in a role which you can grow, you can own. The company needs you and you offer that impact to the company at scale, and you’re rewarded for it. That’s important as well.

You have a pretty full-on job and three quite young children. What what do you do to switch off?

Yes, I’ve recently joined the three-children club and I’m still trying to adjust! But I think the more that you drive impact through your experience and the quality of your decisions, the less your job should be burdensome on you. That’s been a big factor in me trying to get that balance right.

If I look at the energy I had before my three children in terms of my career, even if I had the same energy, I just didn’t know what I know now. You just can’t know unless you get the experience, and that would’ve been tough.

I empathize massively with people that have families. I’ve developed and taken on mentoring and advice from people around how to leave work with work, and to understand that for any issue you face at work, the best response is to have a problem resolution mindset. We can sometimes become quite inward looking in any profession, and can lose sight of the bigger picture.

Has your mentoring all been with within Accenture and do you ever do mentoring?

I had really good advice at an early stage of my career. To those who are starting their careers, I advise you to identify mentors and approach them for mentoring. As you graduate through your career, the impact and the type of mentor you need will evolve and change. But you could also retain a mentor because they’re so experienced that they help you at every junction.

I’ve always had mentors – I believe in it massively. I have a limited view of how I see the world around me and how I understand events that are directed at me. If somebody else outside of me can give me a view that I can’t see, there is so much value in that because we do suffer with reality distortion at times.

If I didn’t have those mentors, I may not have made the best decisions. My dad used to say “Intelligence isn’t about what you know; you can’t know everything. It’s about the quality of your decision, so sometimes when you don’t know, ask those who do know, and you’ll make a better decision.” I think that’s really important in your career.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/HTrJv7m8TBo”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]CHRISTOPH WOERMANN IN CONVERSATION WITH THE WORLD MEDIA GROUP’S BELINDA BARKER

Welcome to My Media Life, where we chat with the movers and shakers in the worlds of business and marketing to find out what the media industry means to them. They share their advice for those starting out today and personal insights into their sources of inspiration and motivations.

This month, we’re delighted to be joined by Christoph Woermann, CMO of Corporate Banking for Deutsche Bank.

Below are extracts from our conversation – you can watch the full interview in the video above or listen to the podcast here.

How does marketing for a large bank differ from marketing in other industries?

Banking means different things to different people. Most people usually have a notion of banks in their capacity as a private retail customer. Of course, banks have other facets as they are also conducting capital markets business, or business with larger corporate clients, or in the asset management space, so marketing is multifaceted.

The challenging and fascinating thing about marketing for banks, and in marketing to business audiences, corporates and large multinational institutions, is that you’re not marketing any physical products. You’re marketing the capacity of an institution to foster economic growth by supporting corporates in various aspects of their day-to-day activity by processing their payments or funding their business.

As such, marketing is super inspiring because one day you may be involved in talking about a project in a developing country. Another day you may be talking about how you can support a client in growing into different regions in Asia Pacific and the challenges they may have. And on the third day, you’re involved in issues about supply chain management. Marketing, therefore, is the conveyance of the intellectual capabilities of a financial provider or their expertise, as opposed to pure product and getting rid of something you have on your shelves. That is not disrespectful to anyone who has that – it’s just a different mechanic.

You’ve been within the media industry for a number of years – what does it mean to you?

When you have decades of experience in one industry, you witness how the industry has developed through various cycles, and the same is true for the media industry. Whilst in the past, the media industry had a so-called monopoly on the content creation, nowadays, everybody is their own content creator.

There is information overload – people suffering from information fatigue, from information burnout. In a very fast and easy-consume media world, quality is key. The media that can provide well-researched, balanced quality has a lot to say, for that will be where, in my view, the tendency will go.

You can get confirmation for every weird opinion from left, right, and centre and feel perfectly entitled to continue with that thought. At that time, a balanced media offer can help you navigate on the right path again, and that’s why I feel media has an even more important place in this world that gets increasingly polarized, than ever before.

What’s the one piece of advice that has helped you in your career?

There’s one piece of advice that was given to me before I even started in banking by a banker that I met on a private occasion. At that time, I had no intentions whatsoever to join banking. In fact, I was poised to go into the FMCG business in a marketing role. This person said to me, “Why don’t you join the banking industry?” to which I responded, “Oh, I’m not too sure whether I’m the right person for it.” And he then said, “Look, what you know can come in very handy at some point in life. What you don’t know should be your constant quest. So please venture into unchartered territories. That will make you stronger.”

He went on to say, “If you join our company, at some point your knowledge about marketing can come in very handy because they’re all bankers, not marketeers.” And now I’m sitting here speaking to you as a Chief Marketing Officer of Deutsche Bank’s corporate bank as a trained banker, but also as a marketeer. That is the advice I would give somebody: Always tackle the unknown. The reward is much bigger than the risk!

What’s your favourite thing about your current role?

Banking, in the true sense, is about enabling customers to make a difference to the worlds in which they operate – to their markets, to their customers. You can foster innovation by providing financing, and you can foster innovation by providing the right advice.

That is what I absolutely love in my job because if you have the privilege to sit together with highly intelligent people that are all subject matter experts, then you can draw the knowledge out of them, package this in an unbiased, non-product-led way, and offer the gift of knowledge to your audiences, be it existing customers or the wider market.

It is very rewarding if you see that the responses of those who read your content result in an activity that makes a difference in the market. It sounds very heroic, but at the end of the day, that’s what it boils down to, and that’s why it is a privilege to do what I do.

It sounds like you still get excited about your role?

Absolutely. I mean, I would say the moment you’re losing your passion for something, you have to move on. It’s almost like cancer that eats you up from the inside if you’re not doing what you love. Not every day for me is a day where I say, “Wow! I’ve just moved the world”. There’s a lot of lot of mundane stuff that we all have to do, but in essence, you’ve got to really love what you’re doing. You’ve got to be positive.

What’s your secret talent?

I think the secret, is to see your role as a leader of a team almost like an inverse triangle, that you turn it on its head and you are at the bottom of it, supporting the careers and the success of every single member of your team. You are only as good as the weakest link in your team. And it’s not about identifying weaknesses and giving them the grandfatherly help. It’s about showing good leadership by rolling up your sleeves, not being too precious to do something super mundane; doing things that surprise people.

When we’re at conferences, for example, I’m not just running around having senior meetings. I am reporting from the conference myself on our corporate LinkedIn channel. I write, I produce the videos myself with my own camera, all within the confines of guidance that our company gives us. You’re only a credible leader when you show that you can do everything that your team can do, and you’re curious and helpful to those who do things much better than you to lead the path.

Where do you get your daily news from?

Living in the UK, I wake up and listen to Radio 4. I know there are people who have different views about certain radio shows or news outlets, but I think it’s good enough for me to know what’s currently cooking. I know that there isn’t any such thing as a completely unbiased news provision.

I’m an ardent fan of the Economist. When the very contentious and heated debate on Brexit happened, this magazine made clear where they stood, but they allowed everyone to voice their side of the view. And that is what I feel every adult can expect or can demand from media. Provide them with data points and let them form their own opinion.

What about social media?

I was very active on Twitter a couple of years ago and I know Twitter is here to stay, but I find it increasingly hard to pick out a good gold nugget. It’s a lot of chatter. I feel that LinkedIn is my online supplement to the news and I value the professional approach, generally, that this medium offers.

What media brands do you trust the most?

This is a blatant plug for the World Media Group and I’m very pleased to be involved. I can wholeheartedly say that every single member listed on the World Media Group’s participants – I don’t want to single out anyone – has stood the test of time in terms of their approach to journalism; their approach to research.

Nowadays, it’s so important that there is a collective force for the good, for quality journalism. And we as recipients of that need to willingly pay for it and support it by making sure we cite those quality sources whenever there’s an opportunity to do so. It is important, in my view, that we maintain the integrity of those outlets.

What do you do to switch off?  

As somebody who’s very interested in and passionate about wellbeing, I feel that we shouldn’t dismiss the fact that we are all part of nature and the connectivity with nature via things like the food that we eat. I love cooking for my family, and I love preparing food. Not in the microwave, wait for the ping and take it out. Prepare fresh stuff if you can take the time.

Time is the biggest thing you can gift to members of your family. I also go for walks with my little dog – these are the mundane things that I do. I’m a gardener of a little London garden patch – in two hours I can manicure my garden so that it looks spic and span!

When or where do you get your inspiration?

When my brain is idle. Mowing the lawn doesn’t require a lot of brain attention – the only sensory experience is the wonderful smell of freshly cut grass. This is usually when I get my inspiration, and in the morning in the shower, or sometimes when I’m riding my scooter to work (although increasingly less so because of the traffic).

That’s the source of my creativity, and, as with so many other people, when you talk about gardening or when you talk about London, or mundane things like preparing food, you can have hours of conversation with people who have the same interest.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and time with us today, Christoph. Your thirst for creativity and your ongoing passion in your role is inspirational!  [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/Fv8hiQONxBQ”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]ELLA SOLOMON IN CONVERSATION WITH THE WORLD MEDIA GROUP’S BELINDA BARKER

Welcome to My Media Life, where we chat with the movers and shakers in the worlds of business and marketing to find out what the media industry means to them. They share their advice for those starting out today and personal insights into their sources of inspiration and motivations.

This month, we’re delighted to be joined by Ella Solomon, Growth Director at Initiative Media and the recipient of our very first World Media Award for the Rising Star of the industry.

Below are extracts from our conversation – you can watch the full interview in the video above or listen to the podcast here.

Why did you join the media industry? What was your motivation?

I studied biochemistry at university but finished knowing that I didn’t want to work in that field. A lot of it is very technical and very in-depth and I knew that I liked to speak to people rather than sit in a lab all day.

I worked in recruitment and recruited somebody into a media agency. They loved it and told me a bit about the culture, then I got a job at a media agency myself! I went into a trading role – some companies called it investment. I did that for three years, before moving over to a global growth role. I’ve always worked in global or regional business. And then recently, I joined Initiative as an EMEA Growth Director – I’m in my fifth week now. We help drive new business pitches or retention pitches.

What does the media industry mean to you?

I think it’s the timeline of how society has evolved. It provides landmarks for us to look back on and show how society has developed.

A good example of that is when the Queen died a few weeks ago. Within minutes of the BBC releasing that she had passed away everyone across the globe knew, and that was due to the power of social media that probably wouldn’t have been there 20 years ago. I thought that was really interesting.

It’s also interesting to see how everybody – I think it’s something crazy, like 37 million people in the UK – tuned in on TV to watch the Queen’s funeral. It shows the power of the old media types, as well as the newer media channels, and it’s a good way to see how society has evolved.

What’s the one piece of advice that’s helped you in your career?

Sometimes I get a bit consumed in my work, so somebody once said to me, “Remember, there is a life outside of work.” And for anybody that’s young and ambitious, I think that’s really important.

Sometimes I get frustrated with small things; you need to look at the bigger picture and realise that sometimes that’s not a huge deal in the context of the world. It’s also true, I think, that to be good at your job, you need to stay creative in your thinking. And you need to be at your most productive. Don’t feel resentment towards your role.

To do that, it’s important to make sure that you’re doing things outside of your job that you absolutely love and don’t spend all of your time working. Especially as we’re in the post-Covid world where home and work life have really blurred, and people are contactable 24 hours a day.

How are you finding that work/life balance now we’re coming out of Covid?

Everybody’s used to doing their washing or going to the post office on their lunch break. You have to do that at the weekend now. I used to get more free time at the weekend than now that I’m going into the office two or three days a week.

At Initiative we have a 50 percent rule that people are trying to adhere to. I think it’s a difficult transition, but if we can go from being in the office five days a week to working at home for years, I think this is easier than the other way around, where we just went cold turkey and had to work at home 100 percent of the time. It wasn’t what I was used to or what any of the world were used to.

What is your favourite thing about where you are at now in your career?

One of the main reasons that I moved over to Initiative is because I really believe in their proposal in helping clients create cultural velocity with their key audiences, which is essentially connecting with people based on their cultural behaviours rather than just their demographics, which I find super interesting.

And they’ve also had a great amount of growth over the last few years. But when I think about my role in general, as a growth person, the thing I love most about growth is that you see the best and you see the worst of people.

You learn so much about different cultures working in a global regional role. You get to meet the most incredible people and find out about the whole business. You don’t just work in one small area – you literally touch every single part of the business, which I find super interesting.

You’re coming across quite a people person. Has the move back into the office worked to your strengths?

Yes, in building relationships, which is completely vital to my role, and especially as a new starter. When I managed new starters in my previous role at Wavemaker, onboarding them during Covid was really challenging because they didn’t know anybody. When I joined Initiative, for my first two weeks I went in every day. I tried to meet as many new people as possible because you need to meet in person to get a real feel for what they’re like..

What would you say your personal secret talent is?

This question really made me laugh. I feel like if it’s personal, it’s a secret – I definitely shouldn’t tell you!

You’re being a little modest. One of the reasons you were made a Rising Star was for the sustainability project in your previous role, which says a lot about you. Perhaps you could describe how that came about and the context of it.

It started off as a grassroots project with me asking why we were using plastic cutlery in the office and snowballed from there. I started helping out on some sustainability events. I was quite lucky that my manager at the time allowed me to pursue my passion because I feel like not everyone does get that opportunity. I ended up being the main person that would speak to clients about sustainability.

We had a great lead who would help ensure that everything we were doing on sustainability actually fed into clients as well. And I ended up developing the internal and external offering for Wavemaker on sustainability with the help of some amazing people at GroupM.

GroupM have recently released an immediate decarbonisation programme that I helped work on. A lot of support from the network enabled me to do that. And I also did a course on business sustainability management that meant I could get all my crazy thoughts and focus them a bit more towards the business.

It was great to work on and is something that I’m also doing at Initiative. We are working on lots of different sustainability projects and bringing them all together to take to our clients, and also to make sure that we are being as sustainable as possible.

What media is important to you and where do you get your daily news from?

I think we live in a world of misinformation. And as Heinrich Böll quoted – I think in it was in the 1970s – I also believe that you need to read at least five sources of news / media before getting a well-rounded answer and actually understanding what the truth is. This book was published pre-internet but I still think that’s completely true in this day and age.

The standard place I get my news from, like a lot of people in the UK, is the BBC. But then I try to make sure I’m fact checking it with as many other things as possible.

Even going to the likes of Twitter to see what people are saying I think is actually quite important to make sure that you can make your own judgment on certain things.

And thinking about media brands, which are the most important to you?

I think it’d be wrong as a millennial to say anything apart from a social platform! So, Instagram’s the platform that I use the most. Potentially not the most educational, but definitely the one that I find myself aimlessly scrolling, or finding house inspo, or talking to my friends on.

I’ve also recently got into a new platform that doesn’t take advertising yet. I’m hoping they’re going to start taking it. It’s called Be Real. The idea is that you take a photo of yourself face-on from your front camera, and then it also shows what’s in front of you, It asks you to do that once a day. There are no filters – it’s meant to be real; that’s the whole idea of it. I think it’s quite nice to see a snippet of people’s real life and often mine is, “Oh, I’m working again,” But it’s quite interesting to see it more honest and natural.

What do you do to switch off?

This is something I found really difficult during a massive pitch. But more recently, I’ve got a lot better. I think it’s something a lot of people do find difficult, especially if you’re an ambitious person.

It sounds quite cliché but things like exercising – I absolutely love boxing and I love spinning. They’re so difficult, they just take me into another world that really helps me relax. And then I love a good podcast. I listen to one called “My Therapist Ghosted Me” by Vogue Williams and Joanne McNally and they’re just hilarious. They just chat about life and stuff that’s not important. I love them – I’ll find myself laughing down the street and looking slightly strange, but it’s that’s the kind of thing that really makes me switch off from work.

Who or what inspires you?

There are so many inspirational people in the media industry. Professionally, there are many people I’ve worked with that I’ve absolutely loved and people I haven’t worked with and just read about. However, I think my mum’s the person that’s inspired me the most and has given me the drive that I have today.

She was an absolute superwoman and a hero. She has three children all quite young and she was a single mom. She completed her PhD in that time. She also had a terminal illness and worked full time. She just did everything you could ever imagine.

She really taught me and my other siblings how to handle stress and never to give up. For my job today especially, having tenacity is absolutely everything. That’s definitely something I learned from my mum.

Your mum sounds like an awesome woman. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and time with us. We can’t wait to watch what you do in the rest of your career. Watch out Sir Martin Sorrell here comes Ella![/vc_column_text][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/xbnbRGb9K7I”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]ALLY OWEN IN CONVERSATION WITH THE WORLD MEDIA GROUP’S BELINDA BARKER

Welcome to My Media Life, where we chat with the movers and shakers in the worlds of business and marketing to find out what the media industry means to them. They share their advice for those starting out today and personal insights into their sources of inspiration and motivations.

This month, we’re thrilled to be joined by Ally Owen, the founder of ADcademy and the Brixton Finishing School, which provides programmes for talent from communities currently underrepresented by employers in the adverting industry.

Below are extracts from our conversation – you can watch the full interview in the video above or listen to the podcast here.

What does the media industry mean to you?

I find it fascinating. It’s like a repository for the world’s opinions, thoughts, feelings and positions. It’s all humanity’s views on the world in one place and, how that all connects, and how it all mixes together, and how ideas and concepts can travel within that massive ecosystem. I’ve just loved it since I fell into it nearly 30 years ago.

What’s the one piece of advice that’s helped you in your career?

Give less fucks, especially as a female. When I was younger, I used to give far too much credence to being concerned about what other people thought of me, trying to keep the peace. Classic people pleasing!

I would say I’ve been a lot more successful, well, a lot more relentlessly unstoppable, since I just focused on the thing I needed to do, which is to make change, make the industry more equitable, and stopped listening or concerning myself with stuff out of my control.

You can’t control what people think of you. Obviously not being a twat is an important part of that, but if you’ve done your best every day to be the least twatty human you can be, that’s pretty much as good as it’s going to get. People are going to think what they’re going to think anyway.

What do you enjoy most about your current job?

What’s my favourite thing about the dream job I’ve created for myself? Well, in a real Oscar-winning way, I’m going to say I can’t thank all the bits of my job enough, because they’re all equal for me. It’s just the fact that I’m part of something bigger than myself that’s working.

I’ve always been really passionate about equity, and change, and talent reaching its potential. And now we’ve got this amazing alliance of partners like yourselves, and talent, and it’s just this big change-making engine. And every day you actually feel as if you are doing something worthwhile.

We’re very lucky in the sense that we see the fruits of our labours all around us in the industry now. I had a lovely chat with my community manager this morning and she’s just been doing some work in our mentorship area. And she said the best bit about mentorship is she gets to actually see where she makes a difference.

She came through our programme, but she gets to see in quite a short term, that she’s had a positive effect – hopefully positive – on that person’s outcome. That’s just gold dust.

Was there a single light bulb that started the Brixton Finishing School?

It was in 2016 (but the first Brixton was in 2018) and I was at a very big media company. And they employed a right-wing agitator. Nothing wrong with being right wing – politics has nothing to do with it – but not being nice to people and deliberately being hating towards certain communities pisses me off.

You’ve got your right to an opinion, but you haven’t got a right to put other people down. And this particular commentator – it was Katie Hopkins – because of the work I was doing, I was contributing towards paying her salary through my labours. A strongly opinionated person who doesn’t like the communities I care for. This was not a personal crusade, but she doesn’t even like ginger babies!  So, thanks Katie. Thanks for making me angry, because out of that anger came this wonderful thing!

I just had a moment where I was like, if I’m going to work this hard – and I am, as we say relentless – then I want to put all my talent, all my relentlessness into something that makes the world a more equitable place and improves the industry.

I love the industry. It’s fed me. It’s clothed me. It’s kept me interested for the three decades, but it’s never really involved all the voices we need to make it as brilliant as it could be. We tend to be very lopsided. And this was the kind of touch paper – I just thought, no, not again. We’re not going to have somebody who always gets breaks, getting a break. Why can’t we hear other people’s points of view? Why is it always just one type of person?

What piece of advice you would give somebody considering entering this industry today?

Probably from a safety point of view, I would let them know that they’re going to be a pioneer if they come from communities that aren’t well represented. I think it’s really important that we let our talent know that it is going to be challenging coming into spaces where they aren’t represented.

And interestingly, the people we work with, aren’t actually a minority. They are the majority of people in the UK, is just, they’re a minority in our spaces. Our spaces are actually run by a minority. We’re very unrepresentative. It’s really interesting that we, the majority, are not the majority in places that communicate to the mass market.

And that could be anything. It could be age, it could be race, it could be ability. It could be location. It could be neurodiversity. Class is a massive one. There are so many intersections. It could be that you’re a carer or a parent.

I think [it’s important to] recognise that half the time, it’s not you, it’s the system that’s stopped you succeeding. The system is designed very carefully to let certain people succeed and certain people to support those people to succeed. And it’s going to take a while for us to all work together to make it an equitable system.

We know that’s the best thing that could happen because from a profiteering point of view, as well as a social justice point of view, we would be a lot more shipshape and make a lot more money if we include everybody in the system.

What is your secret talent?

Being ginger! It’s not very secret, but I think being born ginger gives you a series of natural advantages and disadvantages in life. You can never hide. You get a lot of attention, and you very quickly learn to stand your ground. I’m used to being the only one in a room. It’s very rare but yesterday, I think I saw three people that looked like me in the street and I was really excited that I’d passed somebody a bit like me. You’re memorable, so I think you have an innate advantage, I’m going to always stand out whether I wish to, or not. And you get mistaken for other people! My worst fear is to get mistaken for another redhead who’s committed a serious crime!

Where do you get your daily news from?

I’m careful about what I read. I think I’ve got ADHD so I can get really over-interested in stuff. That’s not necessarily going to help me to get into what I need to do that day. So, I have some rules around when and how I consume my news.

I read a bit of The Guardian, but I did this thing that was recommended after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, which was to have a multiple system of news sources. So, I have a Muslim news channel that I read every day. And I’ve signed up to a black news channel in the States, which is really interesting. It’s called The Root. I don’t know who the celebrities are but it’s given me such a better understanding of a massive part of the world’s population’s news and views that I as a white female from Britain would never have. So that’s really interesting.

And I hate to say it, but a bit of Vice and Refinery 29. I’m not going to lie. And I do like a bit of Love Island news, which is really embarrassing.

Although I love Forbes. I love The New York Times. I love a bit of a meaty article as well, so I do have some of your partners on my list. I tend to avoid anything too sensationalist apart from Love Island.

That’s the beauty of the media. On one tablet or phone, I can literally be a thousand different versions of myself. And I think that’s what the internet has gifted us. I used to work in print, and I still love print, but the ability for me to have so many different voices in one place, from different parts of the world and with really different views – I think that’s an incredible richness that we can have as a daily media consumption, if we choose to be that varied.

And I would say to anybody, please fiddle with your settings, go find some stuff you don’t normally listen to. You never know – you may like it!

What other media do you consume?

My daughter and me are true crime fans. If you’ve got a teenage girl, that is true crime territory. I also love docudramas. I’ve been really into the BBC – Crypto Currency; The Heiress That Disappeared; all that kind of stuff.

In terms of news podcasts, because the current news agenda is really depressing for the audiences I care about, I have to be careful how much of that I take on board, so it doesn’t knock the optimism out of me at the beginning of the day. So, I’ll say, today I’m just going to get on with the work rather than listen to yet more austerity measures, because it just brings you down.

I’m on a mission to try and improve people’s outcomes and try and level people up. And obviously the news is a lot about policies and experiences which are narrowing people’s potential, or even the ability to feed themselves in this country. I find it quite stressing.

If you were stuck on a desert island and had to pick two or three media brands, what would they be?

I’m going to go with The Guardian. I worked there for seven years, so it’s Stockholm Syndrome! And also because it’s a nice mix of everything and it’s independently owned. It’s supposed to be a balance of views.

I’m also going to go with Refinery 29 and Vice, because even though I’m 50 next week, in my head I’m still 27, and it’s really nice to see the trends. There’s something really optimistic and hopeful about all the progress that generation are making.

When I think about when I was their age and even things like genders, LGBTQA progress – obviously there’s lots of parts of the world where that’s not happening, but I do feel there’s just so much nice, hopeful, equitable stuff in that generation.

How do you switch off?

I would say I’m either on, off, or in the gym. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of in between. I do a lot of physical stuff to switch my brain off. And I do a lot of lying very still, looking at a tree or a bird or a flower. It’s kind of like all out, then the battery runs down and I’m like, ugh, no more humans for a while please, I’m done for a couple of hours.

I’ll go somewhere quiet and I’ll just look at nature or I’ll do something really physical like box or lift something heavy. And that generally will switch off the doing bit. I’m yet to perfect the art of relaxing. Maybe when I’m 60 or 75, I’ll finally get the idea of downtime right!

Who or what inspires you?  

I mean, there’s a lot of people that have really inspired me in the industry. There are amazing females, and I think as I’ve got older and as we’ve all woken up a bit more to the fact we need to change the stuff around us, the women that have come together in groups, the other activists I work with, especially a lot of the black females I work with, that’s a constant inspiration.

Certainly, I felt from a white female class perspective, I was having a bit of a crap time at points. That is nothing in comparison to my black female colleagues. People like Maria McDowell who runs Lollipop Mentoring, which is a black female mentorship programme that’s amazing and Caroline Forbes at Clear Channel.

There’s a whole list of people that I’m constantly amazed at – how they’ve managed to be so successful. They deserve to be successful obviously, because they were more than talented. But they have not only done that but have brought their own brand of change-making within the industry to put the ladder down and also help everybody better understand what it is we need to move forward on.

I’m very lucky that a lot of people have partnered with us, and I get to spend time with brilliant people all the time. My trustee, Jenna Osler at Meta, my female trustees; my male trustees – they’re major and they’re all brilliant. My trustees are my most inspirational people.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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ALISON TYRRELL IN CONVERSATION WITH THE WORLD MEDIA GROUP’S BELINDA BARKER

Welcome to My Media Life, where we chat with the movers and shakers in the worlds of business and marketing to find out what the media industry means to them, their advice for those starting out today, and personal insights into their sources of inspiration and motivations.

This month, we’re thrilled to be joined by Alison Tyrrell, global head of marketing at SilverCloud Health, a digital mental health business breaking down barriers to enable more access to mental health support. Below are extracts from our conversation – you can listen to the podcast here.

What does the media industry mean to you as an individual?

If I look at my career, the media industry has taught me the most about uncovering what matters to an audience – ensuring you create value, knowledge exchange, the importance of context, trust and authority on topics. And the art of storytelling.

I’m looking at it from two perspectives, one from a career perspective, and then a personal perspective. From a societal view, quality journalism creates a knowledge-filled nation that can hold those who run our democracies accountable and drive awareness to help dismantle any systemic injustices. It can quite literally influence the zeitgeist.

That said, when talking about quality journalism, it’s becoming what feels like few and far between, whether it’s [because of] a questionable alliance of a publication to a government body or to a politician or to some billionaire, or whether you’re looking at social media journalism. Therefore, I think it’s so important that we’re contributing to our trusted brands; getting those subscriptions and keeping them running.

Do you miss any of that now that you’re in a broader client role?

I miss what I was able to learn from my peers from a media perspective. A lot of the people that I had the honour to work with at some of these amazing publications – they’re extremely intelligent people. They were coming to us with an editorial lens as to what was happening.

My clients as well – working with some amazing brands – they had a perspective on what their audiences perceived of some of these media agencies. So I was able to learn a lot more about the landscape. Now I’m [coming from] from a brand perspective, which is a little bit more laser focussed. I miss that element of education: just by having a meeting with them, you’re learning and absorbing so much information that you wouldn’t usually in your day-to-day.

What one piece of advice has helped you in your career?

This is so cliché because you hear it so much, but it’s so true: It’s asking why. Why are we creating a certain campaign or why are we creating a certain piece of content or why should our audience care? I think that’s probably one of the whys we forget to ask. Why are we executing this strategy on a particular format or a particular channel? Because when we stop asking ‘why?’ we lose the power to cut through and to actually be effective. And we become very samey, which I think a lot of brands can be guilty of.

What do you love about your current role?

We work in digital mental health. It’s so rare in any job that you get the opportunity to have purpose. We used to have a funny saying in nearly every job I’ve had: “We’re not saving lives, don’t worry about it.” We’re not saving lives. I now feel like I am.

Everything that we’re doing around campaigns is quite literally working with the likes of the NHS or the HSC, or US health systems to help them see more patients or to get better outcomes for patients, or to let the general public know that they can get this for free. The purpose behind it is the thing that I love the most about the job that I’m in now.

If you were trying to get into media and marketing today, what advice would you give to your younger self?

This is interesting. I don’t think I’d do anything differently because every job I’ve had, every leader I’ve had, every mistake I’ve made has got me to where I am today, but I would probably encourage myself, or anybody entering into the industry now, to really absorb themselves in the psychology or the behavioural economics and the culture of the audience.

I’m really passionate about anthropology for the reason of understanding people, understanding why we make choices, why we make the decisions we make and how culture plays a role in that. Because if you understand your audience to a better degree, you’re going to make a more intelligent campaign that means more to them, but also, creates better results. So rather than just going and listening to the same old marketing gurus, who I feel just say a lot of jargon and say the same thing over and over again, try and understand people, because essentially marketing is understanding people. So that would be my advice.

Do you have a secret talent?

I don’t know if it’s a secret, but I’d say that I’m a creative problem-solver. When I think of being creative – painting or being amazing at guitar – none of those things I can do. But if you said to me, “You know, Alison, we need to get from A to B and we cannot see a way through it, that’s when I can shine. That’s when I come to life. So, yes, I’d say creative problem-solving is my secret talent.

What’s your daily media diet?

Currently, it would be the Irish Times, I enjoy the Atlantic, I enjoy my subscription of The Economist – they would be my current [outlets] for daily news.

I hadn’t heard of The Atlantic prior to working in media – it was working a lot with UBS, and the sheer expertise that they have for their audience. We were doing a lot of research and strategy around what their audience, which would be very intelligent people – would be consuming and The Atlantic came up time and time again.

As part of my job, I need to understand the journalism. I need to understand the narratives of each [publication]. So, I was delving in deep to understand it better for myself and I really enjoyed The Atlantic. I became a subscriber myself and the journalism of that say versus, the others that I’d read like the Irish Times or The Economist, feels to me personally, a lot more ‘lean back and enjoy it’. It’s real storytelling.

I enjoy it so much that I share it with my father who also loves it. And when we were getting paper copies, as soon as I’d finished it cover to cover, I’d give it to him, and then we’d talk about all the different articles. I actively enjoyed reading, as opposed to reading it to understand what was going on in the world.

What media brands are important to you?

I probably listen to podcasts more than I do any other type of media. I have been for many years now, but it seems to have become the standout media format for me. I like it because, you can have traditional brands on there, like The New York Times have The Daily, the FT have the News Briefing, The Economist, like a lot, have their own, which is great. And they’re a slightly different take on the publication. There’s a lot of independence as well and you get a different perspective from them in that they’re not being fuelled by any sort of advertising. But they’re also bringing in subject matter experts. You’re still getting a sense of expertise as opposed to finger to the wind opinions.

I really enjoy podcast for that reason recreationally as well. I’m borderline obsessed with The Armchair Expert at the moment. They have mini SOS within their series, so the variety is huge but there’s an expert on something all the time. The hosts are asking questions that nobody would want to ask, so it’s great. You feel like you are listening into a conversation with friends. Now I’ll listen to it on a long car journey or on a run or on a walk.

What else do you do to switch off?

I haven’t quite mastered the switching off, but during lockdown, myself and a group of friends committed to doing a daily practice of meditation. And we got through nearly a year and a half every single day doing it together and keeping each other accountable. Now, admittedly, that’s fallen off my radar a little bit, but I do try and take five minutes every now and again, whether it’s a meditation or some breath work. It’s something that I definitely need to put more attention on.

Who or what inspires you?

The story of entrepreneurs and how they hack through their success and find opportunities for themselves outside of the standard template of success.

I’m also finding a lot of inspiration in the little things. I spend a lot of time in nature or hiking, or just discussions with friends. A good hike could help me unlock the solution to an issue I’m having, whether it’s in work or in my personal life. And, again, a good podcast – they fuel a lot of my ideas.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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NATALIE LAM IN CONVERSATION WITH ARIF DURRANI, MEDIA CONSULTANT

Welcome to My Media Life, where we chat with the movers and shakers in the worlds of business and marketing to find out what the media industry means to them, their advice for those starting out today, and personal insights into their sources of inspiration and motivations.

This month, we’re delighted to be joined by Natalie Lam, Chief Creative Officer for Publicis Groupe across APAC and the Middle East. Based in Hong Kong, Natalie leads a creative community of 3000+ people across Publicis’s various agencies in markets across the world. Below are extracts from our longer conversation – you can watch the full interview above or listen to the podcast here.

What does the media industry mean to you?

It means everything. Even though I’ve been in Hong Kong for more than a year, I still go check out The New York Times – it’s still my ‘go to’ to get a more balanced perspective in the world.

What’s, what’s one piece of advice that has helped in your career?

There are so many, but that I got early on was ‘listen well’. I was just starting out and was wondering why [sometimes] my work would get recognized and [other times] it wouldn’t. There didn’t seem like there was rhyme or reason. Back then, it was very hierarchical and as a junior – you did everything your seniors told you and people rarely bothered to explain. Often, we’d try everything and then cross our fingers and hope something would work!

After a long time of this guessing, I got the advice ‘listen well’ in one of my reviews. I’ve learnt to really listen to every single word that every single person says, and then put what they say and what the outcome is together. ‘Listen well’ was really good advice for me.

What’s your favourite thing about your current job?

Cultural tourism. Every single market is so different, so diverse. Every team is so different, the personalities are different. Cultural tourism is how I describe my experience. You can basically travel around the world just by being on Teams calls. Over the last two years, every time I talked to a team from a different market, I learned something new; I learned a little bit more about the culture.

It’s not the same as being there, which is so much more multi-dimensional, but I’m talking to people and observing them, their mannerisms, their little jokes and then habits, their expressions. There are endless things to learn. It’s just fascinating.

What advice would you give to people starting a media or marketing career today?

I think they’re extremely blessed yet extremely challenged. Blessed because they have endless resources influences and tools at their disposal 24-7, on demand. That’s also a huge challenge because you don’t have time to make your own decision. So how do you have a strong point of view and see things with clarity. What’s your voice? What’s your thing?

Back in the day when we didn’t have any of these limitations, I thought it was quite helpful in having a focus and in making up your mind, making your decisions, your choices. It was up to you rather than all the infinite availabilities, which can be sort of like false signals out there.

What would you describe as your personal secret talent?

I can make very complicated things pretty simple. I think it ties into that advice of ‘listen well’.  Whenever there are a lot of conflicting opinions going in different directions, I’m pretty good at taking a step back and prioritising; I look at what is most important to start with, then focus and set some kind of clarity, rather than being overwhelmed.

Where do you get your daily news from?

Unfortunately, nowadays, everybody is stuck in echo chamber. So, my blend is The New York Times, local news, a little bit of BBC, a little bit of what all my friends and family are sharing – it’s a little bit of a mash up.

For me the headlines [from The New York Times and BBC] represent the western view. I think The New York Times does editorial in such a brilliant way. I go to the style section, T magazine, to try to keep up with the latest in terms of lifestyle and culture. With the BBC it’s a slightly more European way of looking at things; a non-US way of looking at things.

Where do you get your creative inspiration from?  

It’s everywhere. I’m such an observant person, so there are a lot of things from everywhere that trigger me. I’m someone who likes to find little anomalies in the world. Whether it’s a little fun habit of someone sitting next to me, a small joke or, a something a bit amusing in our daily lives, social media, my friends and family, my parents, my colleagues, or big world news. It’s everywhere – real life. There’s so much inspiration all around from people, from culture, from the physical world.

Which media brands are most important to you?

The New York Times, Instagram – I use Instagram for a lot of inspiration. I’m obsessed with style, design, fashion culture so I follow a lot of photographers, artists and filmmakers. Instagram’s that source for me. I also listen to a lot of podcasts – you get soundbites and little stories, news, a collection of different things, both global and local.

How do you switch off from the always on culture we have?

I improvise with making food. I like making things and getting my hands dirty. There are two things that I can’t live without – an air fryer and an instant pot. A good stew that usually take a long time, I can now make in 30 minutes. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I cook guilt-free, oil-free, crispy fried food. I also try to exercise – I do yoga and take walks. If I have time, I listen to audio books or watch a film, but those times are very hard to find nowadays!

Finally, who or what inspires you?

I always respect original thinkers, people who have a very strong point of view and very strong conviction in what they believe in, because I think that the world is so overwhelmed with choices, with influences, with voices and hype and trends. It doesn’t matter, what they do, it could be a creative, it could be a big name, it could be a performer, an author, or someone who doesn’t have a glamorous job. If they have strong convictions rather than following the trends, those people inspire me.

Film is one of my favourite pastimes. Some of the classic directors and filmmakers from the sixties, seventies, nineties – have that power, that creativity, that originality. It’s hard for the newer generation of directors to replicate that impact. How do you bring in something new? It’s really a big challenge nowadays.

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Daryl Lee, Global CEO of IPG Mediabrands and president of this year’s Cannes Media Lions

Welcome to My Media Life where business leaders chat to us about what the media industry means to them – from insights into their own career path and tips for those starting out today, to which media they personally connect with and why.

With the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity about to begin for the first time in three years, we’re thrilled to be joined by Daryl Lee, Global CEO of IPG Mediabrands and president of this year’s Cannes Media Lions.

Below are extracts from our longer conversation; you can watch the full interview above, or listen to the podcast here.

What does the media industry mean to you?

Change. I love change. I found my way into the media business from consulting and a creative agency, and they were both really focused on clients and brands and business. I love the business of our clients and building brands.

What media does is take all of that and smack it in the middle of wherever change is happening. I used to think that was accidental, but now I realise that’s the nature of media because it tracks culture – it tracks good and bad culture – it tracks entertainment, it tracks human beings’ changing views of what they’re interested in. That’s what media is; that’s how you attract audiences. So, the fact that you combine all these brands and businesses and all the things I love about the world in general, and then the pace of media, which is: Change, get ready for it, immerse yourself in it, be the first into it.

What’s the one piece of advice that has helped in your career?

I’m going to give you two. I’ve become a CEO, but I’m a strategist at heart and strategists love their lunchtimes because no-one schedules a meeting, and you can do some work, so the best advice somebody gave me is never lunch alone.

Make sure that every time there’s a lunch in your day – you’re going to talk to somebody new; you’re finding out something new. Somebody walked past my office once and said, “This is the third day in a row I’ve seen you hunched over your laptop over lunch. Get out, meet people.”

There’s always somebody who wants to have lunch with you, as a media agency leader. I get to meet people, but I also get to think new things – there’s going to be some new supply chain optimisation person, for example, who I only meet for lunch because I need to eat. And then you learn something new about the tech ecosystem. Or you meet somebody who’s looking at a new audience. Or you just meet somebody who’s got something interesting going on in their lives. Keeping your mind open to that is important.

The other thing I was told was to speak up. That’s my advice to people when they walk in here: Speak up; we can’t answer a question you don’t ask.

What’s your favourite thing about your current job?

I love being a coach. I use this metaphor a lot. I’m not a big sports fan. IPG Mediabrands has 13,000 people around the world. We have these two big brands, UM and Initiative, and then we have specialty brands that support them. So, we have a blue team (Initiative) and red a team (UM) that play different fields, play different games at different times.

This is not something as a strategist I expected to love because I love the analytics of business, I love the analytics of media, I love the idea of optimising your investments against business objectives. All that I love, but actually, people can’t be optimised in that way. People can only be inspired and led.

I love the opportunity I’ve been given, which is to think about what I need to do to be a leader, as opposed to a boss. And my model is coaches, because what coaches do – they bring out the best in people; they put them in the right position. They move them out of position into a new position. And there’s always a clear bias towards the team versus the star. Occasionally you get distracted by having the star on a team, but I think you always learn that the team is stronger than the stars.

What advice would you give to someone starting out in a media or marketing career today?

Well, I don’t need to give them advice to speak up because with this generation there’s no quietness! I think it’s ‘really be creative’ because the opportunity now, like never before in media and I think in business, is to find new connections, find new combinations.

I like to say creativity is everybody’s business, which wasn’t always the case. There’s no longer ‘there’s the science guy’, ‘there’s the art guy’, or ‘there are the people who do the hard analysis’ or ‘here’s the people who think conceptually and creatively’. I think we all have to be creative. The pace of change requires it, but the openness in business makes it possible. So, no matter where you are, no matter where you’re starting, if you see something that can be created, speak up, let’s do it.

What would you say your own personal secret talent is?

Optimism. I’m a very idealistic person. I grew up in South Africa, which was disaster into miracle. Somebody told me the other day I’m a strong optimist. People come and say: house on fire …client’s leaving…we didn’t win this…we didn’t run a campaign in the middle of December that was about holidays. And I’m like: “First of all, let’s acknowledged the pain, and secondly, we’ll find a way to make it a positive. We’ll find a way to make it up.” So, I’m very optimistic.

I was very easily bored [as a child] and so I did a lot of theatre – we called it ‘candlelight theatre’. We would go around to retirement homes and do a lot of Monty Python, which in South Africa was super weird, but I have a deep sense of performance. I don’t use it [everyday], but when I need to, it’s very helpful.

With media agencies, because we do so much pitching, we speak to CEOs and CFOs way more than creative agencies do now. There’s that sense of when there’s a performance, show up with a performance and make it a performance. People have come to see a show not a conversation. Because it can’t just be the work we do. They’re looking to an agency for something – it’s got to be an emotional experience otherwise they could just get it from looking at a report.

Where do you get your own daily news from?

I have my four, the big four, which is Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times and the Financial Times. Not in that order, actually in reverse order – I end with the Wall Street Journal. I sometimes start with the New York Times if something big is happening in the world, but usually the Financial Times… although, I don’t want to read any more about Boris Johnson. Can I say that I’m just done? It’s just enough!  And then Politico. I am a news junkie.

In terms of lifestyle, which media brands are most important to you?

I do a lot of streaming. I’m a big Prime video guy. I think HBO Max and Prime have managed to carve out a position of more interesting, more thoughtful content. Netflix does the great content spectrum. I do watch CNN. I have secret vices, like Below Deck – it’s a Bravo reality TV show about people who work on luxury yachts and they’re the team below deck, and it is just bad for you and unstoppably addictive. And a lot of sport – we saw the most amazing tennis in the last two weeks and I’m looking forward to some new tennis coming. It is interesting how you don’t say NBC / ABC anymore – you say HBO Max, Prime Video. Peacock is a great brand and Vudu, is a brand in my life.

How do you switch off from being always on?

Gardening! I have a garden, I go biking. We have a house that’s two hours north of New York City – it has a huge yard that I try to keep up, poorly, so I love that. I love being out. I’m not sure I’m ‘tree bathing’ or forest bathing but something like that happens to me when I’m out in nature.

The other day I was like, “My roses are not performing as I would like.” I remember thinking my grandfather spends an awful lot of time talking about roses. What is his problem? But this is what’s happened – I’ve now become someone who really cares about my roses.

Finally, who or what inspires you?

Nelson Mandela. To come from one of the first black lawyers in the country, then banned, then imprisoned 27 years, worked in a quarry in this awful jail cell and then came out and was a unifier and built a rainbow nation with warts and all, but still just this grace. To come out and have such grace. So, he inspires me, always. You read his writings and he was obviously raised in a particular way, which built a character. And he worked on his character.

It’s such an interesting thing. We had a meeting in Majorca the other day to get the global leadership team together and Tony Nadal was there, Rapha Nadal’s uncle and coach. He came to speak to us, and I asked him, what makes the difference from a good tennis to a great tennis player? And he said, “Someone who works on their character.” Not someone who has great character, but someone who works on their character to become better. And I think that’s what Mandela did that.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Nicky Owen in conversation with Arif Durrani, Media Consultant

Welcome to My Media Life, where we chat with the movers and shakers in the worlds of business and marketing to find out what the media industry means to them, their advice for those starting out today, and personal insights into their sources of inspiration and motivations.

This month, we’re delighted to be joined by Nicky Owen, Global Head of Marketing Initiatives at Credit Suisse. Below are extracts from our longer conversation – you can watch the full interview above or listen to the podcast here.

What does the media industry mean to you?

I think it’s a perfect combination to me. I was bullied at university into trying to have a career in accountancy and I had placements in my long summer breaks at accountancy firms, which I did enjoy, but realised my heart wasn’t really in it.

I think that the media industry is a perfect combination of creativity and bringing that sense of developing and creating, whether that’s advertising or planning or content, but also having all the numbers as well. So, to my mind, it was more creative than accountancy, but it also has some of that kind of rigour and analytics. I think it’s, it’s a fantastic industry to be in.

Storytelling itself, and (as I’ve always worked on the international side) being able to do that and understand different cultures and work with people from different cultures has been really stimulating. I can’t think of a better industry, regardless of what you’re studying at university, or if you’re early in your career. There will be an opportunity within this industry for you to find something that you can be passionate about.

What’s the one piece of advice that has helped during your career?

I started off at JWT (J Walter Thompson) and really wanted to work in planning. That’s how I started off, as a planner, because of the strategy and the creativity coming together.

My first boss said from day one: “Always take the meeting notes”. And I think that was really helpful because if you don’t have something to say, certainly starting out in your career, then you’ve got an excuse because you’re writing. You can clarify if someone’s made a point, so you have a role to play within the meeting, and then you’re then sending that to your clients afterwards. You have that contact; you start to build your relationship from day one. I think that’s really important.

I say it to people in my team now, in some ways contact reports and status notes might seem very dull, but they are your way of keeping track of projects and keeping you at the heart of them. So that was the first piece of advice, which I think still holds true today.

As a woman, I also had an interesting piece of advice from a WACL (Women in Advertising and Communications Leadership) event I attended fairly early on in my career. It was from women in the media industry who’ve been very successful, giving advice to other women. One of the pieces of advice, which sounds quite strange – and I can’t remember who said it, but it stuck with me – was, whistle!

Sometimes if you get frustrated, your throat closes up. So, if you’re on the back foot in a meeting or it’s not going how you want it to, or you’re in a negotiation and it’s getting a bit heated, if you can breathe out or, even better, leave the room and have a good whistle, your throat opens up and you get your voice back. And if you get your voice back, you get your confidence back and you start to get your control back. It sounds, really simple but it’s one that’s stuck in my mind.

Another thing someone said is to focus on your people skills. If you have a client or a colleague and you see something that you think might be of interest to them, send it – be helpful to people. Remember names; smile; have conversations. People do business with people, so if things are going well, then that’s great. If they’re not going as well, if you’ve got a good, strong relationship to base negotiations on, you will be in a stronger position. So don’t forget the soft skills.

What’s your favourite thing about your current job?

The variety. I think one of the things that I was worried about when I went from agency side to client side was, would I still get that variety? Obviously in an agency you’re dealing with different accounts – I worked across several accounts at the same time – so you always have variety. I was a little bit worried, but I needn’t have been. My days are very varied.

The other thing that’s interesting is I don’t know all the answers, so I’m always learning. I find it very interesting and it’s lovely to be able to build and have a confidence that you know what you’re doing, but at the same time to not be arrogant and think that you know everything.

What’s your secret talent?

I would say one thing is to celebrate success in others. So, I like to think that I can not only celebrate success in my own career, but also celebrate it in others. I think if you have a generous spirit, then it pays back to you. I take time to mentor people. I take time to try and help understand the career path of others who may be at different stages in their career and try and support others. And it will always make me feel good as well, so that investment in other people pays back.

If you’re kind and you’re interested in others, then people tend to pay back to you. So, I would hope that my secret talent is that ability to celebrate success when you see it in other people, and to try and stimulate that as well.

What advice would you give to someone starting out in marketing or media today?

Don’t have preconceptions. Don’t make decisions on something. So, you could have an interesting sector or client that you’re working with, but the job might not be so interesting, or the job might be really interesting in what you think is a dull sector.

One of the biggest learnings that I made was don’t have an excuse. Don’t say “Oh, it’s okay for them because they’re in a really interesting industry” or “It’s okay for them because they’ve got a really good job”. Take ownership yourself.

A great example of this was when I worked on a project in consultancy, with a company that manufactured concrete slabs. Not what comes to mind when you’re thinking about innovation projects – it was an innovation task. However, they were probably one of the most openminded, forward thinking organisations I’d ever worked with.

Where do you get your daily news from?

I’m a bit of a news junkie. In the morning I have BBC News on, either the news channel itself, or Breakfast TV whilst getting the kids ready for school. I tend to steer towards BBC for news and Channel 4 as well in the evening. In terms of other publications that are slightly broader current affairs, The Economist definitely, Time, the Financial Times as well.

I’ve set up a lot of alerts. I think, like everyone, we don’t have enough hours in the day and it’d be lovely to just sit there and absorb news. I get alerts from WSJ, the FT, Moral Money. I spend a lot of time on sustainability so Moral Money is a really good one for me.

Wall Street Journal – I get their marketing. So again, picking different newsletters for different aspects of my role. The business staples like CNBC and Bloomberg – looking at those the ongoing and the real-time streaming.

Also, the more in-depth programmes. I listen to some of the CNBC podcasts if I’m doing my gardening. I tend to put a podcast on when I’m doing my relaxing things. I guess it’s having to be broad, but also curated, because I just don’t have the time to be scrolling through all the things; I need to cut to the headlines and then dive into things where I’m a bit more interested. So there are lots of alerts set up to try and manage that.

Which media brands are most important to you?

My Sunday Times. So The Sunday Times is my ritual. As a northerner, I have to drink lots of cups of tea or I fall over. So, I have a big pot of tea on a Sunday and sit there and [read] cover to cover. My children know not to disturb me whilst I’m reading The Sunday Times. My husband finds it very strange that I have the paper version of it delivered to the house. He keeps saying just do it on your iPad, but it’s not the same. It has to be laid out on the table with my tea and I’ve done that for many years. I find it’s a really good roundup of lifestyle recipes through to business, through to investments, etc.

The Sunday Times is probably the most enjoyable out of everything that I do. The other place I go to is Harvard Business Review. Every month I’ll have a coffee and have a look on it. And every single time I find something that I can learn and apply, which is quite rare these days. So, Harvard Business Review is another one that career-wise, and also in terms of people management, I find really helpful.

In addition Netflix. Certainly over the last few years, the ability to watch whenever, fits into lifestyles. Interestingly, even working from home, you certainly worked far more hours. So being able watch where and when just to get a bit of relaxation – it seems frivolous, but it’s actually an important part of that disconnection from your work in the evenings.

And then obviously social media, so LinkedIn daily, and Instagram tends to be for retail therapy and inspiration.

How do you switch off?

I’ll probably switch attention more than switch off. I get bored quite quickly. Someone once said to me that there are two types of people in this world: people who relax by being passive, sitting or lying down on a sunbed and reading a book; or you can relax through movement.

I find meditation through movement – so things like gardening or hiking, walking, or Pilates. I very much relax by doing something, so I’m getting the movement. If I sit down, I start looking around and thinking, oh, I should probably be doing something else. The idea about meditation through movement for me, and getting outside to get fresh air, is really important.

Who, or what, inspires you?

I find inspiration in lots of different places. I had some medical issues last year from Covid and I was so humbled and inspired by the medical people that I interacted with. I found that their patience and grace under pressure really made me think about when I’m having a slight tantrum moment! I find it very inspiring to see others who are really good at their job, and do it in a way where you think, that’s awesome.

I also find inspiration from people who are visionaries. I do a lot of holidays in places like the Lake District, outdoors, so people like Octavia Hill, who was one of the founders of the National Trust, along with a couple of other people in 1895. She had this quote, which says the need of quiet, the need of air, the sight of sky and things growing is basically a human need.

I still find that inspirational today. Every time I go somewhere, I think someone had that vision and set that in motion, so that there are places we can go to today and that carries on – I just think it’s extraordinary.

I’m also inspired by the work we do with One Young World and Kate Robertson. She was one of the founders of One Young World, which is an organisation predominantly for people under 30, basically for young leaders to get together. There’s an annual summit and every year we send a delegation from Credit Suisse, and lots of other organisations send them, and people get sponsored as well.

I find Kate’s energy, her vision, her desire to bring change in the world and to understand human nature, using social media, bringing people together, I find her fantastic. I can’t wait to attend the summit again this year in Manchester in September.

And one little personal story: I love the idea of ‘mini adventures.’ One weekend, we hired a boat and were sailing up the Thames towards Windsor. There was a loch where you can all come together, so there are very big boats, lots of lovely leisure cruisers, and we were tied up alongside this very small wooden boat with a little tiny cabin on it. Everything on it was bright green. It was called Sprout.

We were chatting to the guy, a quite elderly gentleman. And he explained he’d retired, and his wife had passed away, and he decided he needed to have an adventure in life. So, he bought this boat that was cheap, which is why he’d painted it all green because it obviously needed loads of work and it was easier to just coat it all in a thick layer of paint!

He’d navigated from the source of the Thames out to the mouth of the Thames and was going back up again. He was stopping and seeing whatever life brings on the way. And I thought, That’s amazing. It’s not a grand plan; it’s not impacting anyone else, but he’s doing something and having an incredible adventure along the way. One day I want a Sprout.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Josh Krichefski in conversation with Arif Durrani, Media Consultant

Welcome to My Media Life, where we chat with the movers and shakers in the world of business, marketing, and media to find out how they spend their days and what has influenced their lives. This week, we’re delighted to be joined by Josh Krichefski, Global COO & EMEA CEO, MediaCom.

You’re following Sir Martin Sorrell who you worked with for quite a few years and. Are you still in touch?

I’m not in contact with Martin anymore, not for any specific reason. Martin was a brilliant leader at WPP, and massively helpful when he was running the group. He’s quite famous for being always on and always available, and he was for people like me when we needed help on clients or pitches. He was excellent, but obviously we don’t work together anymore, and now we have a brilliant WPP CEO, Mark Read, who’s equally helpful, and WPP is doing well under his leadership. And S4 Capital’s doing really well too, so Martin’s doing great things in his new life.

What does the media industry mean to you?

I’ve worked in the media industry for 24 years now and I’ve always been on agency side. I’ve done all sorts of different roles within agencies. I had my own agency at one time; I’ve worked for independent agencies; I’ve worked for group agencies. I’ve always been grateful for all the different opportunities that I’ve had over the years.

I think the media industry is filled with brilliant, creatively minded people, who have got their feet on the ground. I think that’s quite a universal trait of media industry types – down to earth, smart people with small egos. And that’s what we look for at MediaCom when we’re hiring people. I think the industry is full of people like that. I feel I owe this industry quite a lot.

Is Global Chief Operating Officer an internal facing role or are you seeing clients as well?

I don’t think anyone in an agency doesn’t work with clients in this day and age. I know COO could mean so many different things for different people and in different types of companies. Really, I’ve got two jobs, I’m global COO and I’m a EMEA CEO.

The EMEA role is working with the local markets and all of the local market CEOs. I have a central team of specialist leaders, and together, we work with the local markets finding ways to surface all of the innovation and smarts and spread it across the region as much as possible.

We’ve got a very strong network culture. I speak to the local market CEOs together every two weeks. That’s a benefit of what happened in the pandemic – technology brought us all together and we’ve kept that going. We have a very open dialogue where we will talk to each other a lot. That creates a culture where everyone will do things for each other; nothing’s done through force. People genuinely want to help each other out. My role is to try and facilitate that and try to create a culture where people want to help each other out.

Obviously, I’m very competitive. My biggest KPI when I took over the CEO of EMEA role was always to make sure that MediaCom was the number one agency in EMEA, and we are! That’s about driving new business, both locally and at a regional level. I’m client facing, so I have a relationship with all our lead European clients.

My global COO role is about trying to balance global objectives with local realities. We have lots of important global clients, with global client needs, and those global clients execute in the 96 different markets we’re in across the world. Often, the objective of a global client and of MediaCom globally might be different from what a local market reality is. My job is about trying to harmonise that as much as possible, and particularly across the G12, our biggest 12 markets.

That’s a part of the COO role. The other part of it is making sure we’ve got strong global client hubs in London, New York, Paris, Dusseldorf, Amsterdam, Singapore. My job there is about making sure we’ve got strong leadership in all of those different places and that wherever they are, they’re going to get the same experience.

What’s your favourite thing about your current job?

I love working with local markets – I really do. I’m going to Madrid today. I love meeting people on the ground, our clients, our leaders and our teams – I really enjoy that. And I’ve missed it massively.

I also really love having a global footprint and being able to make decisions with the team, with Nick Lawson, my boss, and with the people around me that really impact the globe. That’s what I love about having a global job.

The media business has expanded significantly in the past 25 years. If you were starting out in the industry today, where would you like to begin?

The first job I ever had was as a TV buyer. I then went into planning, then I joined a strategy consultancy at St Luke’s, the ad agency, and then I went into digital. So, I did a few things that were really good grounding before going into digital.

In answer to your question, the great thing about our industry is you can do anything, and then you can move to something else, and all the experiences that you have in whatever specialism you do are valuable. So, it doesn’t really matter – there is no wrong decision – and that’s why it’s fun.

I was on a call earlier today with our UK team and over the last 12 months, they’ve established, quite quickly, a scaled e-commerce offering where they do everything in e-commerce and they’re doing it at pace and at scale. They’re starting to service some of our global clients out of the UK and other markets.

Now, what I love about that is it shows the entrepreneurialism of a scaled operation that we’ve already got at MediaCom, so that entrepreneurial spirit is still there. When you were asking where I’d like to begin nowadays, the first thing that popped into my head is that e-commerce is a great place to be right now. But it doesn’t have to be [a starting place]; you can move into that down the line as well. My advice for anyone coming into the industry would be to just try and find something that you think is interesting and get into in, and the world will open up for you to try different things.

What do you think your own superpower or special talent is?

Well, the thing I have always had, that’s been very consistent in my life for as long as I can remember, is I’m a pretty good judge of character. I have a pretty good feel for people. My wife and I joke about it quite a lot. She often comes to me to get my perspective on things, and that’s something that’s always been true to me and is true in my career as well. I think I just get people.

What’s the one piece of advice that has helped you in your career?

The thing that I learned quite early, and that I say to other people, is to take yourself out of your comfort zone as much as possible. It feels like quite an unnatural thing for people to do, but it’s the thing that I did. I always put my hand up for stuff that I naturally felt like I didn’t want to do.

If someone said, “Do you want to work on this pitch?’ for example, I’d say yes, even though I didn’t want to work on it, I wanted to hang out with my mates! But I’d put my hand up and say yes, to stretch myself, push myself and make myself feel uncomfortable.

I think that was the best thing that I could ever do. And it’s the thing that I still do now, actually. When I talk to Nick [Lawson, Global CEO of MediaCom], he will often say what he likes about working with me is that I throw myself into the stuff that’s really hard – I get a bit of a buzz off it. That’s what I encourage people to do as much as possible because that’s when you really learn what you’re about. When we’re growing, that’s when we’re at our best and we should always be growing.

Where do you get your daily news from?

I’d love to be more of an internationalist than I am but I’m all about UK media, honestly, when it comes to the media I get my news from. I occasionally read The Guardian and the FT online, particularly during the week, if I’m traveling.

I always read the Saturday Times and the Sunday Times, which come to my house at the weekends. I listen to Radio 4 in the mornings, less so if I’m traveling, but I like to listen on the way to work to the Today Programme. I’ve got Sky News on constantly and I often have Sky Sports news playing on the TV during the day. For industry news, I tend to read Campaign, The Drum and Ad Age.

In terms of media brands now, which are most important to you?

I think the US streamers are getting more important in everyday life. I watch TV and I watch drama a lot and it’s coming from all US-based streamers now. So that’s taking up an increasing amount of time in my day-to-day life.

The media brands that I’d call out are probably more UK ones where I live and where I consume my media. Sky is always the first one that comes to mind, partly because they’re my client and have been for over 10 years. I’ve got a very close relationship with them as a company and as brand, and I want them to be successful.

I’m also quite impressed by their culture. I talked about a scale of business that is innovative and entrepreneurial. I think they are a very innovative company and a disruptive company and yet they’re a scale company. I love them. They challenge us and reward us in equal measure so they’re an important media brand to me.

I come from a family of Lovies. My dad was a drama TV producer, my brother is an actor, and his wife is Abi Morgan, who’s a playwright / film writer. I can watch TV drama all day long and I love any kind of media broadcaster that creates good drama – and I’d say loads of them do now actually. I’m probably not loyal to one brand more than another, but I think all of the commercial broadcasters are doing fantastic work in drama right now.

Channel 4 is a company I admire. They’re very focused on inclusivity, now more than ever; it’s uncompromising and it’s incredibly impressive. I think some of the work that they’ve done over the past 12 months has been amazing.

I like Global. Like Sky, they’re a company that has quite a forensic approach to the customer experience and it’s always interesting to see how that, as a media brand, is evolving.

When I think about the digital brands, I probably spend more time with Google and YouTube than any of the other digital players. I don’t spend that much time on social media. Obviously, I recognise how important social is in the world of media now and what impact it has on people’s lives, both positive and negative, but personally, I don’t spend that much time on it.

How do you switch off from always being on?

I struggle if I’m honest. Like most people, I tend to think too much, and when things are stressful and I’ve got a lot going on with work and I’m feeling anxious, I suffer from insomnia. I get bouts where I can’t switch off in the middle of the night.

The US is quite big part of my role, and when I’m spending time with the US, I have to work quite late into the evening. I struggle with switching off at night and switching off for me in the evening is really important. I meditate, I practice yoga. I go to the gym, I read, I cook. I watch loads of TV – probably too much TV!

I really like podcasts – the ones that are just like chats. I’m not into true fiction stuff, but the podcast I’m loving at the moment is Smartless – it’s hilarious! I love things that make me laugh because things that make me laugh chill me out. I’d recommend the Smartless podcast to anybody. It’s three actors who hang out with each other. One of them invites an A-list celebrity onto the podcast and the other two don’t know who it’s going to be, then the three of them interview that person and rib each other while they’re doing it. It’s brilliant; really funny and I’d recommend it!

Who or what inspires you?

I’m surrounded by people who are smarter than me, both at home and at work. I’m inspired by everyone around me really. I work with all the specialist leaders who are world-class at what they do. I’m constantly surprised and inspired by them.

I also worked with all our local CEOs who are amazing, and we deal with some of the most innovative clients in the world. So again, I’m constantly learning when I’m dealing with people and I’ll often pinch myself and say, I can’t believe I’m talking to people like this, and I get to spend my days with them.

And then at home, my wife is a real inspiration for me. I talk about personal growth and I’m always growing with her. I’m very lucky to have her and my kids to keep me on my toes and keep me humble. I’m the least important person in the house and they make me realise that every day. I’m very lucky. I’m inspired by people, day in, day out.

Do you feel like a seasoned old timer now or are you still as passionate about the media business?

I feel like a pretender. I don’t feel like a seasoned old timer. I’m probably a little bit seasoned, but I feel like I’ve still got so much to learn, and I’ve still got a lot to give. I’m really excited about the future, genuinely. I think our industry is thriving right now and I think there’s so much change happening. And it’s incredibly exciting. And I think there’s a lot of stuff for us to do to be better. In terms of diversity and inclusion, there’s a long way to go. I think there’s a lot more that we, as an industry can be doing for society but I’m excited by that challenge. I feel really good about where we’re going.

If your children wanted to go into the media business, would you encourage it?

I would. I might not have always said that, but I definitely would say that now – it’s the land of opportunity!

Thanks so much for your time today, Josh, we appreciate how busy you are and it’s been great talking to you.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]