Mo Said is the co-founder and chief creative officer of Mojo Supermarket, an award-winning creative agency that has had an extraordinary run of acclaimed campaigns for the likes of Adidas, Netflix, and Savage x Fenty. That’s not a fluke. Said and Mojo Supermarket are selective. They work only with brands that are willing to go on a journey to address a few simple but potentially uncomfortable questions, the answers to which will determine how they can become distinctive.
In this episode, Mo tells us about:
Mojo’s unique approach to uncovering brand attributes that will ignite passion and attract diehard fans
Why he left a blue chip agency like Droga5 to start his own business
How his experience as a Pakistani immigrant has empowered him to question everything
Examples of the company’s best work
The top marketing trends that are likely to emerge over the next three-to-six months
If you’re between jobs and looking for work, focus first on becoming “un-unemployed.” Read on for more and for practical advice on finding a new job, even during the pandemic.
Unless you subscribe to This May Sting, a website and daily newsletter that analyzes Covid-19 data not as a medical doctor, virologist, or epidemiologist would, but with the rigor of a seasoned analyst, chances are you’re not getting the most useful data on the pandemic.
Matthew Scott Goldstein, or msg as he’s known in the media industry, is out to change that.
Covering Covid represents a pivot for msg, who has spent most of his career as an analyst in the world of advertising technology, or ad tech for short. As Covid-19 worsened in the spring, msg found himself naturally drawn to the pandemic’s data. That attraction was fueled in part by noticing big gaps in the data, as well as wanting to work on more consequential projects than wondering where the likes of Google, Facebook, and major media companies were headed. As a result, This May Sting was born.
In this episode, msg talks about:
The pandemic data most of us don’t get but should
The five key questions he has for Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House coronavirus task force
Why the country needs a Chief Data Officer to help improve the quality, availability, and the public’s understanding of Covid-19 data
The big questions facing the distribution and administration of Covid vaccines.
Marketers have more options than ever for how to spend their advertising budgets, including how they spend on premium video. With so many changes in audience size and composition among linear TV – the stuff that comes over cable and broadcast channels – and over-the-top (OTT), or the content you stream over the internet on […]
Andrew Heyward has had a career that I envy. The one-time president of CBS News now has two jobs in academia. He’s a Senior Research Professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. He’s also a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Media Lab’s Laboratory for Social Machines and a Senior Advisor at its non-profit spinoff Cortico, where he is working on artificial-intelligence-based tools to strengthen local journalism and civic engagement.
In this episode of the Pre-Made Podcast, Andrew reflects on his extraordinary career and offers advice on how to maximize professional happiness and satisfaction, including:
As you advance in your career, try to double down on the work you enjoy and seek to minimize if not eliminate the tasks you don’t like.
Don’t let the opinions of others impact what you do or don’t do.
Skills evolve as we age, so look for work that will reward these new skills you’re likely to acquire with experience.
Broaden your network beyond your field of work.
Consider the value of career breadth versus pure specialization.
Be prepared to let circumstances unfold and guide your path. You don’t need to have everything figured out in advance of a transition.
Find a mentor who can help you make better decisions.
Email Andrew at aheyward@asu.edu.
With Covid restricting so much of the way we work and relax, finding new ways to express our creativity can help make this time more bearable. In this episode of the Pre-Made Podcast, I talk to Meryl Draper, the CEO and co-founder of Quirk Creative, an award-winning agency that especially direct-to-consumer brands are hiring to help make their first big splash in TV advertising.
In this episode, Draper talks about how TV commercials get made, how Covid is reshaping that work, and what the rest of us can learn about how Quirk’s team keeps at peak creativity.
Some show notes:
We talked about a perfume brand that made a commercial starring Natalie Portman. The brand is Miss Dior.
KPIs refer to “key performance indicators,” a measure of business performance.
OTT refers to “over the top,” a term synonymous with streaming video such as Netflix.
Quirk’s website. findyourquirk.com
Meryl Draper’s email address is meryl@quirkcreative.com.
Saunas are a big part of Finnish business culture. Inside a boiling hot sauna back in 2014, I joined my Nokia colleagues – all of us fully naked – after having just met most of them for the first time earlier that day. While it was awkward and strange, I learned an important lesson. Watch for more.
A video interview with Red Antler co-founder Emily Heyward, who talks about the importance of branding at startups – and why almost all conversations about the customer problems that new brands solve leads to discussions about death.
Say you’re a founder, CEO, or a new CMO tasked with setting the strategy for your company’s marketing. Do you invest more heavily in brand marketing or performance? Peter Fields and Les Binet define performance, or sales activation marketing as “Any activity that aims to get an immediate response: usually a piece of information, an […]
For the last 14 years, I’ve been responsible for marketing either some significant part of a larger company’s offering or the entire company’s brands and products. One of the most effective tools I’ve used for this purpose has been content. In fact, I know from personal experience that over the course of just a few […]
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