Shiny New Object

Jerry Daykin is the Senior Media Director for EMEA and LatAm at GSK, where he looks after brands that help consumers live slightly better and healthier lives. After a roller coaster year during he COVID pandemic, Jerry has discovered more than ever the importance of staying active deliberately. One of his new behaviours is hopping on his Peloton bike every morning. His Shiny New Object is the 6 Ps of digital transformation, a new take on the 4 Ps of marketing looking at the importance of people and passion, measuring performance and running pilots. Listen to Jerry talk about all this and more on this latest Shiny New Object podcast episode.

David Byrne is the Brand Marketing Lead at Aviva, where he is responsible for above the line campaigns. In his career, he's worked for the likes of Diageo, BT, the BBC, start-ups and his own photography studio. David's Shiny New Object is Non Fungible Tokens aka NFTs, for their ability to keep you learning and refreshing the brain, and thus marketers' way of thinking. We talk about favourite marketing books, dealing with overwhelm, and staying curious to keep progressing in this brand new episode.

Bringing together all Havas creative agencies under one umbrella, Paul Ward works to make great ideas happen creatively, efficiently and effectively.  His Shiny New Object is leveraging the village: identifying and using each individual's specific skills across all the various Havas brands, to get the best results for clients. In a data-driven world, he's investigating how this can apply to data experts specifically. Listen to Paul talk about his career mistakes, marketing advice, and the future of leveraging the village, in this latest episode. 

Seb talks about balancing curiosity in new marketing tech whilst honing the skill of being a marketer. He tells us how we should stay focussed on the big picture and how Unilever employs a 80/15/5 model when it comes to Shiny New Objects. The discussion looks in detail at the world of D2C and how brands can win or get started in this space.

In our latest podcast episode, we meet Reckitt's Cicero Hennemann. As the company's Marketing Technology Lead for Western Europe, Cicero focuses on the benefits of technology and how it can drive effective marketing and results. However, he warns about not doing tech for tech's sake! Cicero's Shiny New Object is mobile - maybe not so new, but definitely ever changing. He's interested in how the rise of mobile apps and mobile marketing have had the potential for facilitating our lives and for enabling closer interaction between consumers and brands. Listen to Cicero's thoughts on the future of marketing and his best marketing tips in the full episode.

In our latest podcast episode, we interview Adam Palmer, the Director of Creative Production Ops at GoDaddy. Having worked at Viacom for MTV and VH1, Adam has a lot of experience being creative and working to challenge the status quo. He believes in always changing and evolving the way things are done. This is why his Shiny New Object is Loom - the visual platform where users can record themselves sharing their screens with audio and video messages.  Saving people time and boosting productivity is what using Loom is all about for Adam. Listen to him talk about his top marketing tips and favourite books, as well as the future of marketing, in the full episode.

Experian Marketing Services North America's VP for Strategy & Partnerships, Aimee Irwin works with brands to help them leverage technology to better enable their marketing efforts. In our latest episode, she talks about her Shiny New Object: the future state of identity in the marketing landscape. How can brands leverage multiple consumer identities to build a 360-degree view of customers and deliver them the best experience? Listen to the episode to find out Aimee's views.

On the latest episode of the Shiny New Object podcast, we speak to Shruti Samant, who is Digital Marketing Specialist at Procter & Gamble Health. Shruti's career has come together as a result of following her passion and combining her love of art with technology and engineering. She finds this to have prepared her the best for creating content, which is at the heart of digital marketing. Her top marketing tip is to follow the latest, be different and stay relevant. And Shruti's Shiny New Object is all about sonic branding and creating memorable audio content with the customer in mind. Listen to her tips and advice in the full episode. 

This week on the podcast, we cover Benni Lickfett's career from day 1 at a start-up to Global Head of Digital Innovation at Diageo. Benni's top marketing tips include focusing on the essentials, taking a look at the big picture and having empathy in advertising. His Shiny New Object is the unfulfilled promise of crowd wisdom and crowdsourcing. Listen to the full episode to find out why that's the case and what brands can do to tap into the hive mind resource.

When it comes to branding, perception is reality according to our latest guest, Falak Jalil. We're also talking about the future of marketing and how brands can stay locally relevant to boost their customer engagement.  Listen to Falak's top marketing tips, her favourite books and her advice for brands to get closer to customers in this latest episode.

Audio content is seeing a renaissance, from using smart speakers and sound sanctuaries to help us sleep better or keep noise out, to creating unique and engaging podcast content that influences consumers’ attitudes towards brands on a regular basis. This is fuelling a change from interruptive advertising to immersive experiences, and it’s the subject of our latest podcast episode, too.   Our latest guest is Jim Mollica, the CMO of Bose Corporation and a self-confessed music geek. His Shiny New Object is the renaissance of audio and he shares with us how Bose are capitalising on it, and how he sees it influencing the future of marketing. Listen to Jim’s marketing tips, his advice for immersive content creation and some of his best career stories, in the latest episode.

How much of our daily activity and current goals are dictated by assumptions we’ve simply inherited or bought into? Do we need to all go to uni, get office jobs, be promoted, have a family etc.? Or can we challenge some - or several - of these societal and professional assumptions? Our guest on this week’s SNO, Tom Goodwin, Co-founder of ALL WE HAVE IS NOW and seasoned marketer has picked the art of challenging assumptions as his Shiny New Object. Listen to his views on how this will influence the future of marketing, as well as his best advice for new starters and his top marketing tips, in the latest episode.

We’ve heard about augmented reality and virtual reality, but what’s the next step in marketing communications? Jordan McDowell, Lead Communications Planning & Media Optimisation Manager for the Co-op, talks to us about extended reality in the latest episode of the Shiny New Object podcast. The “X” in “XR” stands for what we don’t know yet, as technology continually evolves and offers marketeers more exciting opportunities to communicate with customers and create a more useful and convenient way to access their favourite brands online. Should this be prioritised in favour of “the basics” and how does it all work together? Jordan explains his experience of XR at the Co-op and shares his best marketing tips, too.

As more ex-agency marketers work in-house and brands become more assertive in how they approach their marketing plans, what’s the future of marketing agencies? Should they niche down into highly-specialised offerings or should they approach a consultative selling strategy? Quinn O’Brien, Vice President, Global Marketing at Lenovo, discusses the changing role of agencies as his Shiny New Object in this episode. We analyse the future of marketing from an agency and in-house perspective, as well as go through Quinn’s best advice for marketing students and his views on what makes “wow” marketing. 

If lockdowns around the world have brought us one good thing, it’s the benefit of limitless collaboration as workers at all levels of organisations and from offices worldwide have been able to engage in virtual collaboration more than ever. Moreover, working remotely means that teams can literally work around the clock, as collaborators in a different time zone pick up where you leave off at the end of the day.   This is why Mark Brown, Marketing Director for Northern Europe at General Mills, has picked boundary-less collaboration as his Shiny New Object in the latest podcast episode.   Mark thinks we’ll inevitably bounce back to some form of office life, but that virtual engagement with teams from all levels and from all over the globe has accelerated the production of great marketing work and will be here to stay. 

As Digital Transformation Leader for Consumer / Healthcare / Pharma at Sanofi, Caitlyn Nguyen oversees the whole APAC market as well as China, Eurasia, the Middle East and Africa, using “everything digital” to bring value in marketing and sales while catering to customers’ needs. Her Shiny New Object is the future of connections in the time of Covid, specifically the need for increasing data-led empathy with consumers.

Working through the pandemic and experiencing challenges in a different way as brands and as people, we’ve become more open to the concept of vulnerability and to communicating our struggles. According to Michelle Webb, Commercial Director at the NFL, this is a valuable change in the way brands communicate with people and in the way we present ourselves to the industry and those around us.   Michelle’s Shiny New Object is showing vulnerability as a brand and as a person. On the latest episode of our podcast, we talk about how the Covid-19 pandemic has made it more important than ever to acknowledge vulnerability, but also to show what brands are doing to support their customers and fans during this time.

Our latest guest on the podcast is Paul Szumilewicz, Head of Agile, Global Marketing at HSBC. His Shiny New Object is diversity and he talks to us about how he’s changed his mentoring habits to ensure he speaks to people who are not a “mirror image” of himself on a regular basis.

When Google launched the Google Glass a few years ago, augmented reality glasses didn’t catch on in the B2C market. However, there could be a rich future for them in B2B, according to Monika Schulze, Head of Customer & Innovation Management at Zurich Insurance. On the latest episode of the podcast, Monika tells us why her Shiny New Object is AR glasses. Thanks to how they enable specialised workers to make the most of their on-site or practical work whilst still being connected to additional data and even video-conferencing, AR glasses can become an extremely useful tool. They do, however, need to improve from a technical and user experience perspective first.

Do you ever feel that brands are following a script that was laid out a couple of years ago and just rolling it out now? Adapting to our current reality and developing a more meaningful connection with consumers in the present situation are elements that, according to our guest on this week’s podcast, are missing from a lot of today’s ads.    Atilla Cansun is the CMO of Alliance Healthcare and his Shiny New Object is digital empathy - re-exploring the notion of empathy in the digital era. While brands do more of the same with their ads, they will get a mediocre response at best. However, getting close to what customers need to hear and see today is what will increase engagement and bring about positive results.   To find out more about Atilla’s approach to digital empathy, as well as his advice on chasing big ideas, listen to the podcast or read the write-up on MAD//Fest. And is there a brand you want to commend for speaking in line with our new reality? Let us know in the comments!