Humour, purpose & beating imposter syndrome - Jo Arden, Ogilvy UK

Jo Arden is the Chief Strategy Officer of Ogilvy UK, and she joins me on the podcast to talk all things strategy. What's involved, why it's important and how to make a career of it. Jo's experience is vast, not landing a "strategy" role until her 30's and since has had senior roles at Publicis•Poke and MullenLowe.

Here's what we covered in our chat:

• How Jo got into strategy
• Her winding path from PR through business development and into strategy
• What does a Chief Strategy Officer do?
• The role of generosity in being a great CSO
• The business case for involving your strategy team on a core business problem
• The one question you should always ask your customer
• “Making your thinking as funny as possible”
• Why the winning ads in technology don’t take themselves seriously
• The ‘good sense of humour’ approach to planning
• “If you aren’t having fun you aren’t doing great work”
• In praise of Dove and it’s purpose in advertising
• “If it didn’t sell it wasn’t creative”
• Why the industry loves a crisis narrative
• The crisis in creativity is more of a trend than a crisis
• Cannes Lions role in creative exploration rather than effectiveness
• Jon was left out of his own Cannes Lion winning party
• The one Campaign award no-one wants to win
• Why Turkeys eat Lions for breakfast
• “The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife”
• The challenge of bringing the consumer into the room
• The importance of doing normal things
• Spending the most time out of the office
• Rabbits in the office and other fun things at Ogilvy
• Generating borderless creativity
• Putting pressure on the task and not yourself
• How to create an environment for creativity to happen
• What Jo would advise her 21 year old self
• Jon share his almost unbelievable imposter syndrome story
• Using the power of your network