DDB Launches Industry Podcast Advent

What you love says a lot about you – but often what makes so many of us tick is what we don’t like. What we just know doesn’t work. What frustrates us and what we want to change. To explore what advertisers and marketers hate and love most about advertising, DDB’s head of social Alex Watts has embarked on a new podcast series called Advent featuring industry leaders from every side of the fence.

Created in collaboration with DDB Australia, Advent investigates important topics including what marketers and advertisers miss when it comes to understanding the consumer, the role of emotion in driving growth for a brand, the future of a more diverse communications industry. It’s also a chance to have a good healthy vent. Advent is a platform for honest, open and exciting conversations about advertising today, and tomorrow.

The first episode kicks off with Peter Sloterdyk, the chief marketing and technology 0fficer of Koala, who started his new role at the beginning of the pandemic. Since then, he has been leading the 150-strong Australian headquarters from the states as the direct-to-consumer brand navigates through its biggest sales period since being founded in 2015.

Sloterdyk commented: “One of marketing’s biggest problems is our obsession with measurement. We’re not doing enough to solve it. In fact, we’re going in the other direction and double down on our obsession. I believe this stems from the lack of trust we have; boardrooms and CEOs don’t trust their CMOs and CMOs don’t trust their teams to deliver on their expectations because they aren’t setting the right strategy. If there isn’t trust at the top, there won’t be trust in the middle and there certainly won’t be trust throughout the team.”

Watts said: “Over my career, I’ve realised advertising has a huge problem with talking about what we really feel – so we started Advent to create a platform to do that in a constructive way. Thank you to all our guests so far who have had great, open, conversations with a few rants along the way. Together, with DDB, we’re thrilled to be sharing the inspiring and challenging stories of some of the biggest legends in our industry.”

Weekly episodes will feature insights from a range of guests. Some early guests include Coles CMO Lisa Ronson, TikTok General Manager, Commercial Brett Armstrong, TRIBE Founder Jules Lund, Creative Consultant Karen Ferry, The Good Bits Co-founder Siobhan Fitzgerald, Junkee Media Co-founder Tim Duggan and many more.

Additional episodes will cover:

Watts talks to Brett Armstrong, TikTok General Manager, Commercial about how his journey from finance to one of the most talked about social media start-ups
Watts talks to Lisa Ronson, Coles CMO, about how the retailer is tackling Christmas and what drove its recent repositioning
Watts talks to Karen Ferry, Creative Consultant, about the need to educate future generations on the complexities of interpersonal relationships and the need for blind hiring

The first episode is now live now and is available wherever you get your podcasts. Google Podcasts, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.

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