S4 E1: Zoe Scaman - How to build brands for the future, without the bulls#!t

[Music] Hello and welcome to Good Girls Eat Dinner, the podcast. Serving up conversations with incredible women to leave you full of inspiration. I'm your host, Joe Wallace, globally CD by day, founder and host of Good Girls Eat Dinner by night. My guest today is a strategist, writer and advisor working at the intersection of creativity, technology and organizational transformation. With over two decades in advertising and innovation, she helps organizations reimagine how they create and operate. She's offered influential pieces, including the new fandom formula and the multiplayer brand. Her viral essay, "Mad Men, Furious Women" exposed her harassment in advertising and was featured in the Times, the Guardian and Fast Company. In May 2025, she was inducted into Beamer's Hall of Fame. She's currently CSO at 77X, a youth culture studio founded by NBA star Luca Doncic. Zoe Scamon, welcome to Good Girls Eat Dinner, the podcast. I'm delighted to be here, thank you very much. So happy to have you on the pod. Before we get into the main section, as is the custom on this podcast, I always ask guests to share an amuse bouche. So could you tell us a small lesson on fact about yourself? Fact about myself. When I was 11, I was a Whitney Houston superfan, to the point that I applied over 12 times to play Whitney Houston on stars in their eyes and got rejected, which is very sad. But I know every single word to every single song on the bodyguards soundtrack. That is impressive. Thank you. She was such an incredible singer. It was very tragic the way that her career and life ended, but what an amazing star. Absolutely, I love to. I still had life quite a few times. Amazing. So next on the menu, a few quick fire questions to break the ice. All you have to do is answer with a one or two word answer. Are you ready? I am ready. Let's go for it. I love to cook or hate to cook. Love to cook. Cookbook or TikTok. Probably TikTok. Eat first or Instagram first. Definitely eat first. Study the menu ahead or wait and see. I'd like to say wait and see, but the reality is I study. Catch up or may I mix them together? Starter or dessert? Definitely dessert. What kind of start did you have in life? Where did you grow up and what significant events took place that have shaped who you are today? I grew up in the British countryside. So on the border of Surrey and West Sussex and had a pretty idyllic childhood. And it was really academic. Up until probably I moved to secondary school and then my sort of rebellious nature came out. Got expelled the first time when I was 12, second time when I was 15. And just kind of wasn't interested in structure anymore sort of higher education. And I really wanted just to go and kind of explore the world, which is what I did. And then I got my first job in advertising by answering an ad in the back of a local paper because that was the thing at the time. That's how old I am now, unfortunately. And then I decided to disappear off to Australia when I was 22. So I literally packed my bags. I'd never been to Sydney before in my life and yet moved my entire existence there. Wow. And then yeah, just kind of took lots of different weird and wonderful roots into the sort of work that I'm in now. But I've never really stuck to a particular trajectory. I've always wanted to absorb and explore. And I was almost kind of leaning into the portfolio career before it became a thing. But I think it's been really beneficial for me over time. So I've just kind of soaked in lots and lots of different experiences, lots of different types of work, everything from obviously kind of brand strategy work all the way through to innovation all the way through to international development when I was in Ethiopia for a while with Nike foundation. And I've always just wanted to kind of connect lots of different dots rather than kind of stay in one narrow space. Yeah, I definitely wouldn't have you down as being expelled. Yes. Yes, twice. Not once but twice. Yeah. And how long were you in Australia for? About five years in total. So I went out there, obviously super young 22, didn't really have much in the way of life experienced at that stage. And I went out as a, I guess a kind of manager within advertising. So it was when paper click advertising was big, when digital advertising was quite nascent. And I was terrible at it. I had zero emotional maturity. I was managing a team that had zero respect for me and I didn't blame them. And I just wasn't really interested. And then they see OK, Mover from the UK embedded himself in Australia. And so I think you're a strategist. And I didn't know what that was. There wasn't really a strategy department and I was at media comm at the time. And I just said, that's fine. You know, put me wherever you want to put me. I just really want to stay here. I really want to keep my visa. And he was the one that sort of pushed me into that as a space for me to kind of expand into. And the minute I started wrapping my head around, would it entail? I loved it. That's so interesting. It takes that kind of sometimes that person to give you that little nudge in the right direction. Do you sometimes wonder where you'd be now if you hadn't had that person say that? I don't know where I would be. I think I always had the itchy feet, regardless of the position that I was in. I probably would have stayed in and around advertising in some way. I would have been a really, really shit account director or account manager. But I was terrible at that stuff. I wasn't very good at managing teams. I'm still not very good at managing teams. I wasn't good at the admin side of things or diplomacy or client relations or any of that stuff. So I probably would have caught stuck, I think, in that realm and not really known what else to do. But I got so lucky, you know, being pushed into it so early and just having the trust of people along the way to be able to kind of explore at my own pace. Yeah, that's brilliant. So if you did have to describe what you do now in a bite-sized portion, what would you say? I think the only word that I could use to describe all of it is navigation. And I feel like everything that I'm doing is kind of navigating a nascent space and trying to figure out where to take it. And that could be AI strategy for a gigantic organization. It could be the work that I'm doing with Luca leading the foundation and all of the programs that we're doing with that, which again, most of the time, the stuff has not been done before. It's kind of brand new. And so that navigation piece of what is the next right step? What is the kind of vision for where we want to take this and how the hell do we get there? I think that's probably the vast majority of what I'm doing today. A lot of futurism stuff as well, which again is kind of speculative, but it's drawing on lots of data, lots of research, and then trying to extrapolate that out into a future that nobody's really mapped yet. And so I think navigation is probably the best way to anchor it all. Yeah, I think the future piece is such a, well, I mean, I guess for the whole of time, but it feels like very specific right now. Everyone's kind of working out where are we going? Like what is next? And we'll talk about that a little bit more because I know you're very much on the front foot in that space. Let's go on to the main course. You kind of slightly touched on this. But what made you apply for that ad at the back of the paper? When did you first get the taste for wanting to do what you do now? I don't think I had a taste for it when I applied for the ad. I was 18. I didn't want to go to university because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I would have done something like business studies, but it's because I just had no concept of what lay ahead and where I wanted to direct myself. So I tried doing kind of babysitting in childmiding and I lasted two and a half weeks and I hated it. And I was like, "Well, what the hell am I going to do? I'm 18. I've got no experience. I don't want to go to university, as I said." And I looked in the back of the paper and it literally just said, "Young enthusiastic person wanted for advertising start up." And I didn't really understand advertising, despite the fact that both of my parents were in marketing. My mum was a marketing director. My dad was a CMO. And I just answered the ad and I ended up in the right place at the right time. So it was a really tiny agency in Surrey. And they were essentially a paper click agency in the first instance. So you know, when Google very first started allowing ads and extra search results and that was kind of groundbreaking at the time. And it just kind of went from there. I just kept moving and I seemed to move just before something was about to hit. So I got really lucky on that front. I said, "I did it with paper click. Did it when digital marketing started to grow? I did it at the advent of social media and I just kept on going." And so I think there's been a lot of luck in those moves as well that's kind of helped me. And so when I made the jump from MediaCom as a strategist to the very first social media agency in Australia and everyone thought I was mad, you know, why would I leave a kind of sure thing, you know, and a defined career path to go and start an agency for a space that many people didn't believe was ever going to be big. And I just had a feeling about it. And so I just kind of kept doing that over and over again. And so I think that there's never necessarily been a kind of singular thing that I wanted to achieve. It's always been constant changing, constantly adding to the portfolio of skills and experience that I'm building. And I'm still doing it now. Yeah, it's brilliant to have that gut feeling of what's next and where are you going next. And I've had a couple of moments in my career where I know some people. like why she gone there, but you think, well, this feels like where things are going and, you know, obviously, you're not necessarily going to be right, but it turns out that you have been, and I think I have been. But yeah, it's interesting to follow that feeling sometimes. Yeah, I think so. And I think it gives you more ability to kind of do things on your own path, at your own pace, as opposed to trusting someone else's judgment. It just gives you a little bit more, you know, autonomy and agency and how your career comes about. And I think two few people really follow that gut. And instead, they kind of listen to the rules of what they think they should do. And I think a lot of time at least in traps. Now, you've worked with everyone from Enrique and Glasius and DJ Khaled to major brands across decades of change. What would you say is your secret ingredient that one quality or skill that's been essential to your success? I think it's just having a very pragmatic, no nonsense conversation, whether it be with a major celebrity, and, you know, maybe they're looking at building out their investment portfolio and how they kind of build the businesses and brands around that, all the way through to, you know, the work with Khaled on what he does, nights with his career, all the way through to, you know, the stuff that I'm doing with very different organizations in different moments. It's just about being able to kind of sit with it and sometimes say, I don't know what the answer is right now. And I do actually have any experience in this field. I haven't kind of done this work before, but I'm really confident that I can get that. So you just need to give me the space to kind of explore it a little bit. And I think that level of honesty really helps in that moment because they're really nervous. You know, I'm not going to sell them a solution that I don't think is necessarily going to work. And I'm not going to tell them that I know stuff when I don't. And so I think that's always been something that I've kind of held really close is just that real kind of intellectual honesty of what I do know and what I don't know. But also, as I said, you know, with their kind of navigation lens is, I'm confident I can get there. You know, you just need to give me the trust to be able to go and explore it. We mentioned in your intro, you're currently working at 77X alongside your own consultancy. So what's cooking in your world right now that you're most excited about? I think from a 77X perspective, I am loving the work that I'm able to do with Lucas Foundation at the moment. And I won't share too much about it. There's some stuff that's public and some stuff that's not, but it really feels like true impact work. And it feels like, you know, philanthropy with teeth. And I'm really enjoying seeing where that goes and kind of bringing that to life. And then I think in my own work, I'm loving the role that I seem to have found myself in, which is this kind of, as I said, sort of futurist, you know, gays are, but with a very pragmatic edge. And I'm starting to see much more in terms of projects coming in where clients are saying, you know, will you come and be a futurist in residence? Will you help explore, you know, what the possibilities are, even from a kind of speculative fiction perspective, and use that as a way to start really important conversations internally, which can then turn into bigger strategic initiatives. So I'm kind of loving that role as kind of internal catalyst, I suppose. And also the writing side of things I've always loved. And I think the more that I've lent into it publicly, the more I'm now being hired to do it privately. I loved that thought of like a future gays or versus a naval gays. That's kind of a good way forward. Yeah. We can gays without all of the bullshit. I think there's a lot in terms of, you know, people theorizing around what futures are. And I think instead I'm looking at kind of near-term futures. But really, you know, baked into the pragmatism of what is actually possible right now. What are the trajectories of these technologies? You know, what is the data telling us from sort of a cultural and societal perspective? What can you actually do realistically with a new organisation in the next 12 months? You're not going to be able to, you know, turn around an oil tanker of hundreds of thousands of employees. It's not going to happen. So just kind of pulling some of those aspects in and then really grounding in sort of the future gazing side of things, as I said, in the realities and in the kind of practicalities. So this industry can sometimes feel like a pressure cooker. And you're balancing a globally recognised career with raising two small children. You've always been brilliantly honest about the challenges and describe yourself as passionate, prolific, and perpetually exhausted. How do you avoid burnout and stay fresh when you're constantly juggling so many different projects, ideas and lots of LinkedIn posts? I am the fairethest thing from fresh. You could possibly imagine. I am fucking shattered on a daily basis. I don't sleep enough. I barely wash my hair anymore. So it is a constant juggle of logistics and prioritisation and time. And I have by no means cracked it. I still have massive amounts of guilt, you know, if I'm on work calls and I'm looking out the window and the kids are playing in the garden and I just think, "Shit, I should be there." And at the same time when I'm playing with the kids in the garden, I'm thinking about deadlines. And so you just never have space, I guess. You're just constantly figuring out what to prioritise in the next five minutes and what's going to set the house the light if you don't pay attention to it right this very second. So I think it's just a mess and it's chaos. And I'm still trying to wade through it and figure out which ways up and when I might get eight hours of sleep every again. Yeah, it's very much that swan with seemingly gliding but lots of kicking going on underneath. Absolutely. I don't think it's necessarily going to get any easier. I've spoken to quite a few women now who are entrepreneurs but also mothers and you know, the problems never really go away. They just kind of shape shift over time. And at the point I'm living out at the moment is I've got two kids who are wholly reliant on me. I'm still in a kind of nappies phase where they can't dress themselves and they can't put their shoes on and you know, they're still kind of potty training and I still got a cook all of their meals and when that bits over, I might get like a five minute breather but then I'm just going to find you know new things that I'm probably going to stress about. Yeah, my mum's always said to me there's always something around the corner. No matter when you think you've kind of had a break. But I mean you're obviously handling that incredibly despite it being, as you say, chaotic. We shall see, post Easter holidays, I officially lost my nanny who has gone off to have a baby of her very exciting. So let's see if I can maintain an upright position. Not to that, or see. I was wondering what's the most valuable feedback you've ever digested even if it was hard to swallow at first? I think there are two bits of feedback that have always stayed with me. The first bit is that division and trust the process, which I loved it so much, even though I kind of hated it at the time. But actually when I was living in London, I had a big chalkboard in my kitchen and I wrote it on top of the fridge. I'm sorry, on top of the chalkboard, which is next to the fridge and I wrote, hold division, trust the process, which was, you know, I've got a vision of where I want to get to with my life and I have to understand that it's not going to be a straight shot to be able to get there and there's going to be lots of details and it's going to be messy and I'm going to get upset and things are not going to go my way. But I've just got to hold that vision and trust that I will get there, you know, eventually, which I absolutely have. You know, my vision was I want to have, you know, two kids and be married to the love of my life and have a lovely house in the countryside and have my own business and I've done all of that. You know, it's not easy by any means in terms of, you know, the path of getting there took a very long time. I had kids lot later than most people. And holding it all together is, as I said, far from easy. But I really kind of needed that at the time. And I think the second piece of feedback is kind of more work-centric, which is that I tend to think at 100 miles an hour and then I also speak at 100 miles an hour and I've definitely had that feedback over time. And one of the big bits of feedback that I've had consistently less so now because I think I've kind of finally integrated the lesson, which is you have to take people on the journey with you. You know, you can't just walk into a room and you know, spout this theory that you've been mulling over in your head and you've got to a level of clarity and you're just like, this is the answer. And you can't expect everyone in the room to be like, yeah, cool, let's go with that. You know, you have to talk them through the process. And when I was younger, I used to, I would roll my eyes at that and be like, "Oh, fuck, say, can't I just get people just to catch up?" Why can't they think and speak at the same level as me? Or they, you know, the same pace as me. And I realised that actually, you know, a lot of the work that I was so excited by and so, you know, inside out over, you know, I really, really wanted to do it. It would fall flat because I'd give them the answer and not give them the journey. And for a long time, I didn't understand why it wasn't landing. And then finally I started saying, well, you know, I start with this and then I got here and then it went over here and then I went over here, but that was wrong. And then I went over here instead and I would take them on that journey step by step and then finally arrive at my conclusion. And at that point, when I'd invested the time and energy to do that, even though my younger self was saying this was a waste of time, this is ridiculous, they would finally go, "Oh, okay, I get it. Yeah, let's go in that direction." And so it was a very hard one lesson that's been many, many years for me to really understand. And now I think, you know, I'm definitely acting on that in a much better way. Yeah, that's really interesting. I remember when I was, I think in my first job and perhaps my creative partner and I were a bit guilty of, "Here's the idea." And I remember one of the account needs saying to us, "Show us your workings." Like, "How did you get here?" Because we kind of want to be able to sell the story in. And a bit like you, you kind of realise, "Oh, okay, if I explain where I've gone on this journey, then that's going to help people come along." And even in presentations, we all like to be taken on that journey and have that storytelling and understand the thinking of course when it comes down to the crunch your idea has to work without the explanation. But I think in terms of like buying that idea or buying that strategy or thinking it really does help. So that's a brilliant bit of advice. Yeah. That's the hard one to swallow on a regular basis, which is why. I just got easy frustrated as that we know why isn't everyone on the same page that I am. Yeah. Who likes it? Because I'd gone on the journey on my own. You've done all of that working out. You're thinking no one needs to know that apart, the bit that matters is the answer, but actually they're like, no, I want to understand. Exactly. And I was just crap at the explanation side of it. So it's slightly better now. Good. So I started Good Girls It Dinner over 10 years ago now and it was always to bring more visible female role models to the fore. And I remember when I started it, only about 12% of creative directors were women, despite women accounting for more than 80% of purchasing decisions. And sadly, I've noticed that in recent times, those figures, they haven't improved. They've actually tumbled backwards. I'm sure you're aware. And I think now women only account for about 8% of creative directors. They've got a really strong voice when it comes to advocating for equality. So for example, as mentioned in the intro, your essay, "Mad Men, Furious Women" exposed harassment in advertising and went viral across various publications. What's your view on the way women continue to either leave or be pushed out of the advertising industry in increasing numbers? And why do we continue to fail to establish the equality across teams and leadership that's actually been proved to deliver better work and profit margins? I think it's a confluence of lots of different factors. But I think the dominant one right now is that the advertising industry as a whole is in a fucking mess from economic perspective, from a shareholder return, pressure perspective. We are seeing massive, massive holding companies, hemorrhaging thousands and thousands of staff, as the model doesn't hold anymore. We've seen WPP do you list it, which is the first time that's happened in decades. We've seen, obviously, Omnicon laying off 4,000 people just before Christmas last year. And it's going to get worse. WPP have already said they're going to have even more layoffs on the calm. The mergers only just begun. And we're going to see more on that trend as well. So with all of these kind of economic pushes, the incentives within the agency world are even tighter and more of a chokehold than they've ever been previously. So we're now looking at every single person in that agency and we're talking about productivity, we're talking about can they be re-skilled, can their job be completely taken over and automated, either through AI or machine learning. And the first heads on that chopping block do tend to be women because when you're looking at it from a productivity perspective and purely churn, first of all, a lot of slightly older women who may have become mothers, for example, or who just want some level of balance and quality of life are not going to be able to stick to the hours that a 24-year-old could do, for example. They're also going to be demanding that they can leave to go and pick their kids up or do nursery rounds, which is just a fact of life and nature, but obviously disproportionately falls on women. And so again, their heads are going to be on the chopping block. They're also the proven time and time again when they get to a certain age in the industry so kind of early to mid-batteries, they start questioning the logic of the system in terms of, you know, the convey about churn of campaign thinking, you know, the way that we actually build brands, the product that we actually produce, how they're paid, you know, how our services are priced, that all of this stuff, they start getting kind of slightly more wise to it. And at that stage, we start being very kindly managed, you know, out of the equation. And so I think, as I said, all those economic factors, all of those things were basically more and more these holding companies, the tannin themselves into automation machines. It's going to be the needs of women that are going to be seen as an obstruction to being able to steamroll themselves in the direction that they want to go in the direction that the shareholders want them to go. And that's why we're seeing it getting worse and worse. And so from their perspective, equality and the studies that have come out that say, actually, you know, we're more creative, you know, when we've got more diverse thoughts, they don't really give a shit about that right now. Yeah. And that's why it's just getting tighter and tighter. And we can fight the good fight internally in the agencies. If you have the energy for it, I personally did not. And after a period of time, I just thought, actually, I feel like I could do better work and better thinking and build a life that I'm actually proud of and want to live outside of these wars. And I think one more women are starting to get to that point. Cindy, you and I had the pleasure of going for dinner with her a couple of years ago in London and her real push being have your own agency. And she doesn't even mean agency as in company, agency as in agency as a person. Yes, a lot of women are forced out and in some respects, they're almost choosing to not be a part of such a oppressive space. Yeah, absolutely. And I just think you have to get to a stage in your career where you've got to make a choice. Do you have the energy and also hopefully the mandate or the remit to build something that is better inside the agency machine or do you not? And if you don't, you have to decide what route you want to take. You can either suck it up and take the paycheck for as long as the paycheck are last. But again, more and more, people have been leaning into this idea that permanent employment is more secure than being independent. And I think what we're seeing right now is that's probably not the case. Yeah, my wife has her own consultancy and we talk about this a little bit. It is no more secure to have a paycheck because actually you're not in control of that. You're in control of it even less than if it's your own thing. Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, I'm not going to say that doing your own thing is easy. It's far from it. Yeah. It's so much harder than actually having a job. But at least you're doing it for yourself. And at least you're kind of paying yourself in a way that is kind of soothing. Hopefully you're lifestyle and hopefully you're kind of level of money that you want to earn. And you're not going to fire yourself anytime soon. And you're not relying. Anyone else can drive that career trajectory for you. You touched slightly on AI a second ago. And I know that you're exploring how to build new forms of creative intelligence in the AI era. So what is your take on AI? And what do you think is the one thing strategists and creative should be doing differently right now for the revolution that we are literally living in? My take on AI is nuanced. I think it's an incredibly powerful strategic and creative tool if wielded in the right way. I also have massive concerns and reservations about everything from power dynamics within who is actually building AI and who is setting the agenda and direction of these gigantic systems that are becoming almost our new portal into reality. I'm massively concerned about energy consumption. I'm massively concerned about investments going skew of and training data and all of that kind of started out. And I'm not negated by the fact that I do think it's an exceptionally powerful tool. And so I'm just trying to kind of navigate, I guess, what this means for how we could be doing things differently and better. Because I also think that despite all of those things, it's not a done deal. We don't have to continue on this path. There are different ways that we can explore it. And that's why I'm really excited by the arrival of things like sovereign AI projects in countries like Switzerland and Japan. And more and more open source models that Mr. Al, for example, in Paris, which is going gangbusters, especially in the corporate world at the moment. So that kind of stuff is stuff that I'm watching. And I think from a strategic perspective, the biggest mistake that I'm seeing is people either trying to use it like a Q&A box or like some sort of magic eight ball. And they shove a question in and the answer that comes out is obviously you're going to be shits because you haven't trained your model. You haven't talked about your preferences. You haven't built a kind of bad look of history. And then like, oh, this is crap. I'm not going to use it or they're always using it too much to the point that they're so over reliant on it. They can't even write an email on that anymore. And I think the way you need to get to is this kind of happy medium where you're using artificial intelligence as a cognitive prosthetic, which extends your ability to think in the way that you do it. But in order to be able to do that, you first, even first instance, you have to be able to define your individual practice. Like, how do you work? What are you interested in? What would your strategic process be if you were to write it down and articulate it as a protocol or as a set of kind of decision making processes? And a lot of people have never done that work. They can't actually describe their practice. And if you can't do that, you can't really wield AI because it's not going to be able to read your mind. You have to almost take what's in your mind, find a way to kind of turn that as I said into some level of kind of protocol and then feed that into the machine. And I think once you figure out your own practice, then you can wield it like a magic wand. You can extend it. You can work so much faster. You can maintain your own thinking, your own voice, your own cognitive sovereignty. But I don't think many people are at that level of usage. Yeah. And it's interesting what you were saying about. some people not even been able to write an email. And I think it's worth thinking about the fact that people around our age, we have already established critical thinking the way that we apply our thinking, we know from experience how we do our work, etc. And I am kind of concerned, I guess, for the younger generations of if they don't ever have to establish that critical thinking and the answers are within AI, it will just become AI bots talking to AI bots. Yeah, I wrote a piece about this recently called the pipeline problem. And I think it's a problem on two fronts, so it's a problem exactly, it has a how you're saying, you know, how do we train that kind of gut instinct and that knowledge of what good looks like into, yeah, well, if they're only, you know, if they're any exposure to advertising and to kind of knowledge modeling in the first instance, isn't AI system, that's going to be now impossible. And then the second problem is a lot of agencies right now are selling this concept of pay us a subscription fee or pay us based on, you know, senior hour head rates and we'll give you access to seasoned thinkers armed with a plethora of AI tools. And that's fine for like 10 years. But what happens when they see new people decide that they want to retire, whereas the pipeline being refilled and how we've been replenishing that, you know, these groups of seasoned thinkers. So I think there's kind of a real myopia about this on both of those fronts. And I think from a kind of a younger person perspective, we need to think about training in a very different way. We need to think about junior level investment in a very different way. And I don't have a perfect answer. You know, the piece that I wrote was exploring lots of different options for the pipeline based on everything from how football clubs manage their pipeline all the way through to how, you know, medical interns manage that side of things as well. I think there's kind of a range of different ideas in that. But I think we really need to think critically about it because this industry is already shrinking massively. If we cut the pipeline off completely or we cut that kind of knowledge generation and evolution off, we are going to be completely screwed, you know, in five to ten years. I think it also goes the other way as well, where a lot of experienced people, because they are naturally more expensive, they get shots and pushed out. And then you are left more with the younger of the moment people that are into AI even more so. But then they don't necessarily have that combination of the critical thinking, the experience, et cetera. So what we try to do is combine those things like you say, you're trying to combine that experience and passion and knowledge of AI with that fresh thinking and knowledge of AI and have that pipeline going and train people up in both directions. But I think it's always a bit of a danger when one is offset against the other and you don't have both. Yeah, I completely agree. So I think we've always had a co-ordinate with ageism in this industry. Apparently, by the time you get to 40, you're no longer down with the kids. And so they're going to kind of wow, or if you're kind of male and gray hair, you might go up into the upper echelons. But actually, that whole age range between 40 and 60 on the whole is kind of non-existent, which is a shame when you're right. Ageism is one factor, being too expensive is another factor. And so we just kind of continually fill this pipeline with young 20-somethings who will wipe themselves to the bone for a little bit of free beer and some pizza from a delivery on a Friday night. You know, and they're happy to go sleep on the sofa in the foyer. And we call that success. And then we just continue to kind of repeat the process. So we are losing a lot of institutional knowledge and a lot of wisdom that is hard learned wisdom over time. Whilst also navigating incredibly complex new terrain and new emerging technologies, without that wisdom is a lens, which just seems insane. When talking about the new fandom formula, you explore how power dynamics are shifting between audiences, creators and brands. What would you say is the most important ingredient that most brands are missing when it comes to understanding their audience? I think reciprocity is one of the biggest issues. I think that the way that advertising and brands approach campaign thinking on the whole tends to be very short, very sharp and quite extractive as a process, if they are working with others, if they're working with creators, influencers, communities, you know, even kind of corporate partnerships. It is very extractive by nature. And when you start to expand into, as I said, these new dynamics around passion-based communities or fandoms or, you know, interest-based communities, whatever you are diving into, that is a group of people who have come together to share an interest, to be generative in that interest in times of whether they're producing fan fiction or art or whatever it may be. There's a level of kind of ritual, there's a level of, you know, proven knowledge and love and passion of a particular IP. There's so much substance there. And so, and they have built that from scratch, you know, they've turned that into something kind of dynamic and energized and important. And so when a brand approaches them and basically says, you know, what can we get out of you for the course of like two to four weeks? That's a shitty starting point. And yet that's how the majority of brands and agencies approach these communities. And so they go in, they don't really give a shit about any of that depth, any of that substance, any of that kind of energy that they've put into build this thing. They just want to figure out what can they extract? What can they do in a kind of minimum amount of investment, minimum amount of time, and then they're out and then they forget it ever happened and they don't kind of build anything that has longevity. And so I think the most important way of thinking about this is a shift in kind of temporal responsibility, which is, you know, how are you building reciprocity and kind of mutual value here? How are you building a longer-term relationship? What could that look like beyond a campaign? Why does that matter? And I think that that's something that I really want more brands to be able to champion, but the challenge with that is from a skillset perspective, from an incentive perspective, from an output perspective, we are simply not set up to have those level of conversations or even have that level of thinking in the room. We are a conveyer about sausage factory of campaigns that we produce, which people squalp our snow about two seconds, and then we do the whole thing all over again, and we just keep doing it. Yeah, it is mad. That whole thing of why are we so throw away? Like, why would you not build and build and build on your community, on your voice, on your campaign? And the brands that do that, they are streets ahead. They have people locked in, they have a reason to have that relationship with them. And then you have other brands that are failing to understand that it's like a friendship. You don't suddenly turn up to dinner one time, you're one person, you turn up to dinner another time, you're completely different. Like how are you going to form that relationship? I just find it crazy the way that there's this constant throw away. Like, oh, we did that idea last year, now we're going to pivot to a whole different one. You can, the whole point of having a good big platform is you can build on it and it can grow into totally different ways and still have that emotional connection. So yeah, I find it quite crazy. It goes back to the incentives, it goes back to the product, it goes back to how we should, you know, and what the output is expected to be. Yeah. And that longevity in terms of thinking whether it be about a brand platform, whether it be about a relationship with a community or an influencer or whoever it may be, is simply not something that we're set up to call success. I also find client side is part of the factor here though, because if you have a CMO who then moves on and another one wants to, you know, obviously assert their own take on everything, they don't want to carry on the previous campaign or platform, they want their own, I developed this with a different agency even sometimes. I can get you agree. So you've become a renowned speaker on a variety of subjects and you recently wrote a brilliant sub-stack piece where you shared your journey and your process, which includes taking a few minutes in a bathroom cubicle before you take the stage. And which talk in recent times have you most enjoyed delivering and why? Kind of enjoy most of my keynotes to be honest, because I think they're so varied. I rarely do the same keynote twice. So I'm always off down different rabbit holes, constructing different narratives. Even if I do do the same keynote twice, I normally change it. And I'll add on, you know, additional thinking now that I've had the chance to deliver it once, or sit with it for a bit, or maybe I want to go down a different route. So I'm constantly topping and changing things, which keeps it really interesting for me. But I think probably in most recent times the terror incognita piece. So I'm kind of writing that up on sub-stack at the moment. And terror incognita is basically, you know, unknown ground, unknown territory. And it's this idea of, you know, what becomes possible with artificial intelligence now that was not possible before that can actually really expand our practice both creatively and strategically. And with really stuck in this mindset of what can we do, what we've always done, but faster or cheaper? You know, how do I increase productivity? How do I increase margin? How do I reduce head count? That just feels really small in terms of potential of where we should be thinking. And with the terror incognita series, I'm kind of throwing out a bunch of big what-ifs in terms of actually, you know, what if we were to create artificial intelligence that could act like a kind of version of creative micellium, which had the ability to connect lots of people who are kind of working around similar problems in a way that almost engineers a level of serendipity that we are losing because of hybrid work and remote work and you know different ways of kind of people you know actually coming in and speaking to each other because we're all off down our own individual AI rabbit holes at the moment or you know what happens when we finally wake up to the fact that a PDF of brand guidelines is kind of dead in the water the minute you've pressed save and that you can't really use that to navigate this landscape because this landscape is bonkers you know there's kind of new things every five minutes there's kind of geopolitical issues you know there's kind of cultural shocks that come out of nowhere and brand guidelines don't help you know in many cases they actually hinder they kind of act as a kind of prison for your thinking as opposed to really creating a brand that feels expensive and flexible and so what if we were to create you know a brand that can think you know basically embedding it within an AI model feeding it all of the logic in between all of the decisions and outputs that we have and then speaking to it you know in a kind of dialogic way and asking how would you navigate this and actually creating a brand that is capable of evolving and you know pushing back and figuring out where the flexibility is but still bringing it back to an anchor point and that stuff just feels really exciting yeah as a new territory that we should all be exploring but again I just don't see many people bringing that kind of stuff up it's more here are 10 prompts that are going to change your life and here's the tool stack that you need to be using and you know here's the kind of perfect input into I don't know whatever it may be nano banana to kind of generate this image it's like that's not helpful that feels really small and tactical in terms of mentors and collaborators I was wondering who's the most important person at your table that mentor collaborator or supporter who helped you get where you are today I think it's been evolving you know just as my work has been evolving I think you know in the early years it was you know the media come CEO in Australia a guy called Toby Jana who kind of pushed me into strategy then you know it was people like Carla Pritchard at Naked who took me under her wing and kind of taught me everything she knows and she was absolutely phenomenal and then moving forward it's just been lots of different people at different times and I kind of have mentors that come and go I have a mentor who might be there for you know a really life-changing 15-minute conversation you know for us as someone who's kind of more a longer term but I think it's constantly shifting and changing and I'm kind of happy with that because again I feel like there are new gaps opening up in my knowledge and then I need to fill as I go I would say probably one of the most amazing mentors that I've had in recent times is Laura Beth Seger and she is the kind of chief business officer for LeCodon ships so she was you know she set up 77 actually kind of head on to me in the first instance many many moons ago and she's just a force of nature and just phenomenal and and her belief in me and in you know the wider team is just something that you couldn't even wish for it is it's amazing and the level of work that we're doing and how brave she is on the agenda that we're pushing is unlike anything I've been exposed to previously so I think some of the most incredible impact work of my career will come about because she created the space for it. That's brilliant I love leaders that lead with that kind of support versus right it makes a huge difference yeah um so what does success actually taste like to you now versus what you imagined it would when you started? I think that when I first started independently because again this the definition of success has changed quite a lot when I was younger it was all about the title and the money and all that kind of stuff and you know the clients and the remit and then I realized that that stuff didn't matter so much and so for me success was about being able to operate on my own terms yeah and being able to do the kind of work that I personally wanted to do and to be able to build my life you know around the work that I was doing and I think again that's kind of even evolved more so in recent times and now success to me is the space and time to dive down rabbit holes and to be paid to dive down rabbit holes and go and explore what's next and to have these big knotty problems put in front of me that even exact level leadership aren't quite sure how to navigate and to have the trust placed in me to be able to unpick it and to figure out the best way forward and so that's what success looks to me like right now it's that level of trust and freedom to just to go digging and I love it yeah like on your terms but with that knowledge that people are trusting you to do so yeah absolutely and I don't I don't feel like I have to prove myself so much anymore and I don't feel stuck in a particular space or I'm not producing the same work day in day out I think you know when I was doing brand strategy work it really did feel conveyor belt and I felt like oh here we go again we're doing annual planning here we go again I've got to write something to you know retrofit this creative idea and I would just sit in a lot of those meetings and at the time you know at my desk being like what the fuck am I doing this doesn't feel like I'm actually adding anything it doesn't really feel like I'm you know exploring stuff that feels strategic you know a lot of it just felt like sounding intellectually smart in a very tenuous way for five minutes before they joked into the creative work yeah and now it just feels like real depth and real substance and really big problems and real uncertainty and I think pulling on all of those threads on a daily basis is what keeps me so excited about what I do coming back to a theme of good girls eat dinner if you could share a meal with three people dead or alive who would that be and why so I've been thinking about this and I think they're all alive and I think they would be Marigis Whitaker Robin Wall Kimmerer and Mackenzie Scott and the reason for that is because I try to navigate what comes next after this mess that we're in right now it feels like and you know and I'm sure it feels like this for every single generation but it feels like we're at some sort of culmination point or we will be at a culmination point very soon and it feels like a convergence of rampant capitalism a complete degradation of the rule of law and ethics and morality and a lot of people running around talking about AI as being you know the answer to everything while we have a real spiritual impoverishment of what it means to be human at the same time and it just is like all of these pieces are kind of mush together and you know I feel like we're at the end of the disaster movie and so I'm trying to figure out what comes next and I think those three people I'd probably add a fourth into the mix of I was being cheeky I'd probably add Naomi Klein they feel like people who might be able to help me figure out what's next and so Meredith Whitaker is the CEO of Signal which is kind of like WhatsApp but completely private lockdown and she does a lot of speaking and thinking about the dangers of surveillance capitalism and how easily we've handed over the ability for every aspect of our behavior of our lives of our personhood to be surveilled there is a surveillance camera for every you know one in four people in the whole of the UK like that's one because we've let it get to that stage the level of data sharing that we don't even realize that we're doing on a regular basis the stuff that we're handing over to AI companies that could easily then just be handed over to governments and I don't think we've quite realized it I don't think we've sort of seen it coming when we should have and so I think you know her ability to kind of see this kind of surveillance state that we've created and what that means when that surveillance state is handed over to fascist regimes is I think really critical because she's done a real you know a huge amount of digging on what that means and how we kind of get around it yeah then I'd add Robin Wall Kimmeray into the mix she is a basically a botanist but she's also you know from an indigenous community and she wrote a beautiful beautiful book called Braiding Sweetgrass which is one of the most powerful books I've ever read and it was a mixture between botany logic but also indigenous wisdom and what we've lost when we've almost kind of pushed indigenous wisdom to one side called it provincial and then tried to educate it out of the communities from whence it came like generations and generations of just gorgeous understanding about our relationship to the earth and to our relationship to each other and you know what that should entail and what we own another and what those new agreements need to be because the old ones have been broken so badly and so fundamentally so I think I would love that level of richness to come to the table as well you know when we start talking about the mess that we've got ourselves into I think there's such a huge amount to learn from that indigenous wisdom side of things generational planning you know the way that they as I said they think about our relationship to the seasons to the soil you know to weather to community to you know how we show gratitude for what we've given in terms of food like all of it needs to come back in a really big way sorry to buy in makes me think of Jane Goodall who's a big hero of mine yeah it's just that understanding of the the world of animals and us as a part of that ecosystem. Yeah, I need to read that book you just mentioned. Oh, it's incredible. You will absolutely love it. Even better if you listen to it because then you can listen to it in her own voice, but it's just it's cool. And I think Mackenzie Scott, because obviously Mackenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, basically one of the richest women on the planet, post-a-horse, and the way that she's been going about giving away that fortune and the way that she has explored her version of philanthropy, I think has just been incredibly inspiring to watch. So, rather than going through the classic philanthropy positioning of doing all of your due diligence and making sure that your values as an individual are reflected in the philanthropic endeavour that you want to invest your money in and they're going to do it the way that you want them to do it. She's kind of said, look, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. You guys are on the front line. You are doing the hard work. You understand your communities. You understand your theory of change. You've already proven impact. Just take the cash, go and do more of it. And she wrote a beautiful piece at the end of last year about Starlings and about kind of basically sequences of Starlings as they're flying. They're all separate, but they're all flying in such beautiful, coordinated manners. And she described that as her approach to philanthropy, which is, you know, I want everybody to kind of run in their own direction, but together we can be such a difference. And that's why she's empowering thousands upon thousands of philanthropic endeavours with a huge range in terms of actually, you know, their area of focus. And I just think it's so refreshing, you know, and I think that her view of economic injection into change is just really refreshing and something that more of us should be paying attention to. And then I think as I, you know, if I was going to be super cheeky and out of fourth, it would be an Amy Klein. I've almost finished her book, The Shopped Doctrine, which is probably one of the most important books I've ever read. And one of the hardest to read as well. And she talks about, basically, shock-based capitalism and disaster capitalism. And she paints a picture from the early 60s all the way through to where we are now on how we have basically created governments who have then gone on to mandate wars and disasters and use those wars and disasters to then die then and basically privatize and push hardcore capitalism into these countries that were not prepared for it and just crashed and burned economies and populations. And we just keep fucking doing it. You know, and what is real are doing at the moment in Gaza is a classic example of that. So it's create an absolutely horrendous disaster, kill hundreds of thousands of people and then talk about building fucking condos. And this has been the pattern. You know, it's the pattern with 9/11, it's the pattern all the way back, you know, to Argentina, all the way back to, you know, Chile with Pinotje and she maps it all the way through and actually all of the thinking came from Milton Friedman, he was the godfather of capitalism and his Chicago boys ethos. But it is just such an important book because it starts to give you a real broad-ranging picture of the horrendous, dangerous economic vision of the people in power in the vast majority of the world and how it just keeps repeating itself. Yeah, that's really interesting and another one that I'll add to my reading list. Brilliant, brilliant guests. So that would definitely be an interesting dinner party. So moving on to desert quickly, what is your favourite dessert? Anything chocolate. So if I could get a double chocolate brownie with chocolate sauce and chocolate ice cream, I'd be very excited. And they have now said that it's good for you dark chocolate, so that's a bonus. Okay, that's okay. And you were inducted into Beamer's Hall of Fame in May 2025, congratulations. When you look at the full menu of your career, what achievements are you most proud of? I think I'm most proud of the achievements that are more impact led. So I'm most proud of the achievement of the work that I did in Ethiopia with Nike Foundation and the ability to help rebuild an organisation that essentially had been shut down overnight when pretty Patel went in and decided to cut all of the funding to keep that important work going around culture change for young girls who were subject to FGM and domestic slavery and a bunch of other massive issues. So I'm really proud of that. And I think the similar reasons I'm really proud of the work that's currently coming out of the foundation with Luca, as I mentioned, because that feels like lifetime defining change work that's going to impact potentially hundreds of thousands of children in a really positive way. And it's not just face value stuff, it's not just comms work, it's kind of fundamental programs, investments, ecosystem building, and that feels like stuff that I really want to get closer to. That's brilliant. And what's the icing on the cake for you? How could things get better? Any semblance of balance between my personal life and my personal life would be amazing, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. I think just to be honest, more of the same in terms of where I'm at now, in terms of the keynotes, the rabbit holes, the futurist and residents work that's coming through, you're thickened fast at the moment, and the ability to continue to have the range that I have. I'm not a specialist in any one category or any one genre or any one way of thinking. I've evolved from fandom through to AI, for example. And that's not because it's kind of flavor of the month, it's because all of these things are fundamentally interlinked. You're looking at new power dynamics and new economies between fandoms and IP. And that stuff then also stretches into AI when we're talking about new distribution methods, new creation tools, all of that kind of stuff. So I think it's all fundamentally interlinked, but I just love the ability to kind of stretch my thinking into lots of new areas. Yeah, that's great. Before I do this industry that evolving and different clients and different problems, it's to just be stuck on one thing, I think gets very tiring or boring. Yeah. Unto takeaways, if you could put one message in a fortune cookie for anyone starting out in this industry, what would it say? For your own past, I think that's the most important. I think it goes back to what we were talking about right at the very beginning about that gut instinct, and just knowing when something feels right for you in that moment. I think so many people push that instinct down and try and ignore it because it feels ad odds with what they've been told successes. And I would say don't ignore that impulse. You've got to listen to what you're going to say. Yeah, follow your own path, feels very fortune cookie, and also really, really true. So finally, the doggy bag of advice, what three pieces of advice would you give to anyone listening that they can take away? I think you've got to hone your own voice in this industry. I think it's really easy to parrots accepted wisdom and accepted knowledge, but I think you've got to do your own learning and your own discovery and exploration and really figure out what you think and what matters to you and the kind of work that you want to do. So I think that would be the first one. I think the second one is write your way in if you can. So a lot of people write to me and say, how the hell did you get into basketball or how did you get into AI or how did you get into impact work? And a lot of the time I wrote my way in. So I got really interested in a particular area or subject. I went and did a huge amount of kind of deep exploration in it. I wrote about it. I published it publicly and then someone in that industry has read it and reached out. And that's how a lot of projects have started. I've never had a cred stack. I've never done an RFP. I have never pitched for anything since I've been running Baudacious, which has been almost eight years now. And it's because my writing opens the doors for me. So I think that's a really kind of powerful way of making sure that again, you're kind of navigating your own path as well. Yeah, that's great advice. And I think the final thing is life is too short to work with Dickheads. That's been a huge lesson and I wish that I had learned it. But when you feel uncomfortable, when you feel like someone is being a class A to work, you don't have to suck that up. You can find a way of navigating around it. And in worst case scenario, just get the fuck out of there. And you might think at the time it's the worst thing ever when you've lost a sense of identity because you've moved on from a particular agency. With a minute, you are out of that space and out of that kind of head fuck of a situation, which I've been in too many times to count. You will still see it lesser. So I think that's a big thing as well. Avoid Dickheads, likely play. And I've got a really good Dickhead Brahmser now. I feel it in there. And even if it's a phone call, you know, over Zoom or something like that. And I avoid it. Yeah, that's definitely a winner. Thank you. Those are all brilliant bits of advice. Now, just at the end, where can people see more of what you do and get in touch with you? Mostly on LinkedIn. I deleted my Twitter a few years ago now and Mr. Maskeday Kova. And also Substack, because that's where I do a lot of my kind of long form writing and thinking as well. Perfect. Well, thank you so much. Really have enjoyed our chat. Great episode. Appreciate your time. So thank you, Zoe. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for listening to Good Girls It Dinner, the podcast. Please like, follow, or even better, share with your friends and family if you think they too would like to listen. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)