The world is changing at such a crazy rate that it is hard to keep up with changes in technology, marketing, media and consumers. Topics like marketing, creative and media effectiveness, transparency, AI and attention are just a sampling of the areas that are challenging for any one marketer or agency exec to master.
Luckily, there are a handful of people you can trust to keep you up to speed on these rapid changes!
Follow these folks and you can’t go wrong. Follow their LinkedIn posts, read what they write, check out their conference appearances, watch their videos and listen to their podcasts. You’ll be better informed and even more ready to succeed in your own business.
Some of the folks we follow closely at Mercer Island Group include:
Creative, Media and/or Marketing Effectiveness
Billy Ryan – Billy is CSO at UK media agency The 7Stars, one of the finest indie media agencies in the world. His posts are always thoughtful and his recent year end 7-part LinkedIn series on effectiveness is a must read.
Les Binet – Les is well known for groundbreaking work like The Long and Short of It (with Peter Field) and How Not to plan (with Sarah Carter).
Peter Field – In addition to his frequent collaborations with Les Binet, Peter also recently contributed to The Extraordinary Cost of Dull.
Dr. Grace Kite – Grace turns data into meaning and profit at her firm Magic Numbers and often shares her brilliance on social and at conferences.
Andrew Tindall – Andrew is an SVP at System1, a leading advertising testing platform. In his own words, he writes daily about “the world’s best ads & why they work”. Andrew is a “must follow” on LinkedIn if you work in our industry.
Ed Cotton – Ed has spent over three decades helping brands develop effective communication strategies. His agency experience includes Account Planning roles at McCann-Erickson, Lowe and BSSP. His posts cover a wide range of topics and often connect marketing to business goals and impact. He’s active on LinkedIn and substack.
Dr. Karen Nelson-Field – Dr. Nelson-Field is a globally acclaimed researcher in media science, researching and redefining how people deliver successful marketing and media outcomes through the guise of human attention. Her book, The Attention Economy and How Media Works, explains the stark reality of human attention to advertising. Her follow up, recently released book The Attention Economy: A Category Blueprint is essential reading for anyone involved in creating, evaluating or approving creative advertising or media plans.
Ian McGrath – Ian leverages a varied background across agencies, marketing and media to provide a compelling point of view on a variety of marketing topics that generally connect to the health of a business or brand. He’s a frequent poster on LinkedIn.
Marketing Strategy & Science
Mark Ritson – Ignore (or enjoy) all the f-bombs; the content is king.
Dale W. Harrison – B2B counsel that is disciplined, strategic, documented, and thought provoking.
Professor Dr. Koen Pauwels – One of the finest marketing academics in the world and a Distinguished Professor of Marketing at Northeastern University.
Transparency & Data Integrity
Nick Manning – Nick Manning is the co-founder of Manning Gottlieb OMD and was CSO at Ebiquity for over a decade. He now owns a mentoring business, Encyclomedia, offering strategic advice to companies in the media and advertising industry. He recently founded, with Brian Jacobs, Advertising Who Cares, a movement focused on fixing many of the ills of today’s advertising industry.
Arielle Garcia – A leading figure in privacy, data ethics, and responsible media, and former senior advertising agency executive, Arielle is Director of Intelligence at Check My Ads (Check My Ads exists to shine a spotlight into ad tech’s dark corners). She has been brutally honest about her struggles to reconcile her values with the imperatives of the large agency holding company model, a model “with competing interests and conflicting loyalties, shackled to the industry status quo by dysfunctional interdependencies.”
AI
Shelly Palmer – Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at the Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with tech strategy & solutions. Given the avalanche of change brought by AI, Shelly’s blog covers the topic daily in an easy to read and useful way.
The Business of Advertising
Brian Wieser – Brian founded Madison and Wall, an advisory and consulting firm as well as a provider of data and research to technology, media, retail and services businesses supported by advertising. Madison and Wall writes weekly about the industry, has a podcast and other free materials (in addition to serving as a paid consultant and analyst).
Podcasts
The Uncensored CMO, Jon Evans
Build a Better Agency, Drew McClellan
On Strategy Showcase, Fergus O’Caroll
The CMO Podcast, Jim Stengel
Soul & Science, Jason Harris
Sell with Authority, Stephen Woessner
Heart
Alan Quarry – Alan founded one of Canada’s finest agencies, Quarry Integrated Communications (now Marketbridge). Today, Alan focuses on making the world a better place, or as he says: “In a world where you can be anything, be KIND. And then, BE KINDER.” Alan recently founded the grassroots, global movement called Love Beats Hate, to encourage, engage and equip others to choose heart over hate.
But Wait, There’s More!
The above group is just a sample of folks worth following. There are many others! Please let us who you follow!
Steve Boehler, founder, and partner at Mercer Island Group has led consulting teams on behalf of clients as diverse as Ulta Beauty, Microsoft, UScellular, Nintendo, Kaiser Permanente, Holland America Line, Stop & Shop, Qualcomm, Brooks Running, and numerous others. He founded MIG after serving as a division president in a Fortune 100 when he was only 32. Earlier in his career, Steve Boehler cut his teeth with a decade in Brand Management at Procter & Gamble, leading brands like Tide, Pringles, and Jif.
Mercer Island Group helps marketers and agencies succeed. Company leadership is as much at home with marketers and their C-Suites as in an agency’s boardroom. With marketers, Mercer Island Group is a top 5 agency search consultancy covering all types of agency relationships (creative, media, web, PR, experiential) and assists marketers with marketing organization structure, workflow and critical skill development (briefing, creative evaluation & feedback, etc.). The company also supports leading and aspiring agencies with positioning, pitch and strategy training and pitch support.
