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
