Linda Yaccarino & Josh Feldman, NBCUniversal

Today’s guest needs no introduction. And yet, over the past 21 months, the financial wizard who built WPP into the world’s largest advertising holding company has been busy reintroducing himself as the executive chairman of S4 capital. Days before his 75th birthday, we discuss everything from what motivates him today, why the holding company model he helped create is an “albatross,” what the game plan is for S4 and why he bristles at the old criticism that he is not a creative person.

6 Feb 202057min

Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein, founders of Goodby Silverstein & Partners, worked on four Super Bowl brands this year, including Pepsi, Cheetos, Doritos and SodaStream. The team who created the infamous “Got, Milk?” slogan is taking their advertising expertise to the MasterClass platform where they will lead a series of classes, including one on Super Bowl advertising. In the podcast, the duo discuss some of their Big Game top hits, such as the E-Trade monkey and the Budweiser lizards. They also talk about Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg advertising in the game, the inclusionary nature of many of the spots, the boundaries of taste in Super Bowl spots and the demise of Mr. Peanut.

30 Jan 202040min

In 2016 Astley, a Condé Nast lifer, inherited a stodgy brand and was tasked with brining a fresh voice and new vision to it. Architectural Digest, which turns 100 this month, had hardly any digital presence to speak of: No video footprint, fewer than a million followers on Instagram. Today it is coming up on 5 million Instagram followers and has more than 2.5 million subscribers on YouTube. Astley joins the podcast today to talk about modernizing the mag without losing touch with its DNA. And the ads. All those beautiful ads.

21 Jan 202035min

In a wide-ranging conversation on all things WPP, Read discusses his early moves, including merging agency brands VML with Y&R and JWT with Wunderman. In the past 18 months, WPP has shared more than 40 assets in a bid to become more streamlined. Read, the chief executive of the world's largest advertising holding company, talks about creativity, and examines what’s holding WPP back in North America, the companies data play, his response to his feisty predecessor’s potshots and more.

13 Jan 202045min

The founding Fugee has in recent years become a fixture at CES and at Cannes Lions, where he will be the president of the music jury this year. Here, he describes what brands can better understand about working with music and musicians. We talk about his childhood in Haiti, where he lived until he was 9 before emigrating to Brooklyn. He also shares a bit about his relationships with two very different mentors: Quincy Jones and, uh, Gary Vaynerchuk.

6 Jan 202057min

The industry’s collective mind was blown when David Droga announced in April that his namesake agency, Droga5, would be acquired by Accenture Interactive. The consultants are coming for the creatives, the narrative went. Not so fast, says Droga. In this conversation, recorded in July, he discusses the three-year journey toward acquisition—and what comes next.

26 Dec 201927min

Andrew Robertson is by all accounts the longest-running agency CEO working today. And he's got a track record to back it up:  Renowned for its creativity, you've seen BBDO Worldwide’s imprint on work for Ford, for which it is the lead agency, Snickers, Macy's, M&Ms, Sandy Hook Promise, Avocados from Mexico and more. It's been named network of the year at the International Festival of Creativity in Cannes seven times in the last 12 years, including in 2017 and 2018. We discuss BBDO, the work, parent company Omnicom, Ford as a client and more.

16 Dec 201935min

In a conversation that ranges from the upcoming streaming wars to the ongoing direct-to-consumer trend to a look ahead at next month’s CES, Terence Kawaja gives a general sense of the state of things from his vantage point of an investment banker obsessed with digital media and marketing. Oh, he is also, pretty funny. For an investment banker.

5 Dec 201942min