April 10, 2025 • 46 mins
In this season finale of Future Legends of Advertising, host Tim Natividad is joined by Linda Kaplan Thaler, the force behind iconic campaigns like “Kodak Moment” and Aflac’s duck, and Sanja Komljenovic, founder of ONA Creative and a trailblazer in inclusive storytelling. With laughter, candid insights, and shared values around kindness, grit, and giving others a shot, this episode is a powerful reminder of how advertising can move culture—and people—forward.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, Welcome to season three of the Future Legends of
Advertising podcast on iHeart, featuring the hottest up and coming
stars and advertising as well as the biggest legends in
the game.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
In this series, we explore the future of the advertising
industry through never before heard conversations between those who created
it and those who are shaping its future. I'm your host,
Tim Natividad.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And I'm your host Christina Pile.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And with that, let's meet the legends. Welcome, Welcome back
to the Future Legends of Advertising podcast. My name is
Tim Natividad, and we're here with the final episode of
this season, and I assure you we are going out
(00:53):
with a bang. Joining us today are two of the
most influential and innovative women in the industry who have
paved the way for creatives to own their work and
careers by launching their own agencies. Our first guest is
a brilliant creative, an inspirational leader, savvy entrepreneur, and also
a generous philanthropist. She has made countless contributions over many
(01:17):
decades to advertising, media, publishing as well as her own community,
which is why the Linda Kaplan Thaylor was inducted into
the American Advertising Federations Advertising Hall of Fame in twenty fifteen.
Much of Linda's portfolio of work has become woven into
the fabric of America's pop culture landscape. This podcast is
(01:40):
not about myself, but to share a little bit about
how your work has inspired me.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Linda.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
You know, I'm in my thirties and to this day,
I still don't want to grow up to use the
catch phrase because I still feel like, you know, I
grew up as a Toys Rs.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Kid.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
And then, of course for every Codek moment in my life,
I think about the birth of my daughter getting married,
I can thank you, Linda for that, because you are
the reason that that phrase, the Kodak moment exists in
our vernacular, and I'm sure a lot of other parents
and families say the same thing without further ado, Linda,
Welcome to the podcast. It's so great to have you
(02:15):
here with us.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
How have you been?
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Oh? Well, I love that introduction.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
You know, the next time I go to the supermarket
at Dagostino's, can you please introduce me and if you
they'll give me a ten percent senior discount. It's amazing
that you were in your thirties and I've had this
career and I'm still in my incredibly late twenties. Yeah,
it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
It's funny how time works like that.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
It's what works, very funny. No, that thank you so much.
I'm just honored to be here and to talk to Sonia,
who I had the pleasure of reading all about you
and going to your website and you are just amazing
and brilliant and glad glad to be speaking with you today.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Well, you bring me to my next guest, Tanya.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Our next guest, As you mentioned Linda, she is also
a brilliant creative, an inspirational leader, savvy entrepreneur, and generous philanthropists. Goodness,
it's almost like we thought you two would have a
good conversation.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Again.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I'm happy to introduce our audience here to our next guest,
Sonya Kamlnovich, the founder, CEO, and executive creative director of
Ona Creative. Sonya has an incredible origin story. She began
her journey as a ten year old refugee escaping war
tor in Bosnia with her family to pursue the American dream.
Her career began by working for the Los Angeles Clippers
(03:34):
as the only woman in the team office. After smashing
all kinds of metrics like audience growth, ticket sales and
revenue and establishing a successful digital strategy. Of course, Nike
came knocking and Sonya then joined the team in Portland,
where she set the precedent for sponsorship deals and established
best practices for athlete channel content that are still used
to this day. She's launched successful campaigns for the likes
(03:57):
of Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, and Kyrie Irving,
and also became one of the first and strongest advocates
to include women's basketball in Nike's portfolio, which is now
their standard practice. Sonya set it out to prove that
a woman could make it in a man's world, and
boy did she. She felt that she could use her
success to build up other women and people who have
(04:19):
been left out of the industry for so long, and that,
of course, is how Ona Creative was born. Sonya works
tirelessly to put together an agency team that focuses on
promoting women, sports, culture, and social good.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Sonya, Hello, so good to see you again.
Speaker 6 (04:36):
Hello, I feel like you did a really great job
introing us both but man Linda is a hard act
to follow. I gotta say, when I found out I
was on with you, I had major inferiority complex.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
I was like, oh, my goodness, you're incredible, Like this
is I feel not deserving of being here.
Speaker 6 (04:56):
So I can't wait to have a conversation and you
get to know you even on a more personal level,
because the work you've done and the philosophies you have
are a lot of the same philosophies that I've come
to learn over time. And so I felt like a
little bit like kindred Spirits, just learning a little bit
more about you, but also just like what an incredible career.
Speaker 7 (05:19):
I just got to give you a huge shout out.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Well, thank you very much, and.
Speaker 6 (05:25):
Tim, thank you, thank you for having me, and again
I'll try to keep up over here do my best.
Speaker 5 (05:31):
Well, first of all, just reading about you and seeing
so much of your belief in giving a voice to women,
and also the idea of grit and tenacity, which is
Robin Colevell and I who started you Know, the Agency together,
and we've written all our books together, but our last one,
Gritcha Great. It reminded me so much of sort of
(05:53):
your philosophy too, because At the end of the day,
what grew our company was the fact that, well, number one,
we weren't smarter than anybody else. We weren't necessarily more creative.
We just hated the agencies we were at and the
tirole run by men, and had a feeling that we
could probably do things lead instead of with fear and intimidation.
(06:15):
Why not lead with flowers and chocolates. Why don't we
share ideas rather than steal ideas? Why don't we you know,
Harry Truman once said, you can accomplish anything in your
lifetime as long as you're willing to take credit for
none of it, And so we loved that philosophy, and
I see so much of that in what you were doing.
In the beginning, we were just women. We used to
(06:37):
say we had enough estrogen in our place to make
Arnold Schwarzenegger ovulate. And we eventually did hire guys. You know,
they're too and they're great too, tim but women just
had a different philosophy. And it was an enathma at
the time because basically, if you asked anybody how our
(06:58):
agency would do, they would say going to crash and
burn within a year, because they don't have that cutthrow mentality.
And what they didn't realize is and it's interesting because
Google did a study on this a few years ago
called its Pace to Be Nice. They've tried to figure
out the most successful and profitable groups at Google, and
it turned out to be the ones where there were
(07:19):
psychological safety, where people listened to each other, and we
espoused that same philosophy, and so the agency, what happened
was everybody just started working harder than they had worked
at any place else because they were really feeling good,
you know. And so that's how we grew, you know,
by being nice and that sort of work ethic. And
(07:40):
then we realized, wow, there are these amazing people who
were very ordinary growing up. Steven Spielberg couldn't get into
film school, and Colin Powell was a C minus student,
and Michael Jordan, as you know, couldn't qualify for his
high school varsity basketball team. And what we realized is
that the one thing they all had in common was grit.
(08:01):
As we defined as grit as gut's resilience initiative of tenacity,
and so that was really the secret.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Sauce.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
But I'm so enamored of what you're doing now Sonya
and how you're moving the ball forward. Not to have
a sports metaphor, because I was terrible in sports. I
couldn't eat. I was always the last person picked to
be on any team. So I'm kind of in all
of your rugby talents.
Speaker 6 (08:24):
Well, so here's what I'll say. I was never very
good at any of those sports. I just played a
lot of them. So speaking to grit, right, Like, I
think so much of what you say is so true.
I think both internally and externally. Internally, one of the
things that I'm really really big on is ensuring that
we give people a shot who don't often get a shot, right, right,
(08:47):
I have gone into local neighborhoods, or we have gone,
i should say, into local neighborhoods, and instead of like
going and hiring the hot shot photographer, we find, especially
with you know, all the social media tools, you can
find amazing videographers, DPS photographers going to local communities and
picking someone that represents that community well from behind a
(09:10):
camera to tell that story, and then oftentimes taking somebody
like that, Like just the other day, I had an
amazing photographer and I've done this in the past, and
I'm like, you should come work for us full time.
Speaker 7 (09:22):
Right, and finding that raw talent.
Speaker 6 (09:26):
So it's partially it's like, yes, be kind, be nice,
but also like when you see something in people that
they don't even see in themselves, I think they pay
it full or ten times back to you absolutely because
they're like, oh my god, you saw me, like the
amount of times right, someone's like, oh my god, you
saw me. Whereas you know, most other agencies maybe would
(09:47):
not give you a shot without the art degree or
the you know, so I think that's really big part
of this too. And then kind to your clients right,
like you're having an empathy and understanding.
Speaker 7 (10:02):
I think being on the brand side really helped me.
Speaker 6 (10:04):
With that that you know, it's teamwork, your partnership right
at the end of the day, and sometimes they can't
help the feedback that they're giving you. Sometimes they can't
help the budget they have, Sometimes they can't help the
situation they're in.
Speaker 7 (10:19):
So just being kind back and being good partners.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Yeah, it's also and I got chills when you were
telling me that because I just so espouse that way
of thinking. We A few years back, I was asked
to work on an egg freezing clinic that was in
New York called Extend Fertility and they're advertising and they
were company sort of run by men. The doctors couldn't
(10:44):
understand why they weren't getting enough patients.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
But they had this very clinical.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
Approach to the advertising, right, And it was fascinating because
I said, you know, we had this philosophy of put
your head on their shoulders, and whether it's a client
or somebody who works for you or a brand, you know,
it's like, well, wait a second. The women who were
coming here, they're really nervous. The reason they're getting freezing
their eggs is maybe they're having cancer treatments, or maybe
(11:12):
they don't know what they're want to do with their lives,
or maybe they haven't found a partner, or maybe they
don't even know when they want to raise a family,
or maybe they're gonna they're going to med school. And
I said, you need to tell these women it's going
to be okay, right, And so the campaign we came up.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
With was was these two.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
Pink eggs in a freezer and the line was live
your life, will just chill?
Speaker 7 (11:37):
I love that?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
And and it was you know, it resonated with women.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
It was like talk teleclinical stuff afterwards, but you've got
to first sort of be in their headspace, you know.
And so and that's been sort of the mantra of
me in terms of the way I advertise, and also
the idea of breaking the bear year with women using humor,
like we did for herbal Escences, where the client. By
(12:07):
the way, I love working on brands that are very
desperate because the clients will let me do anything. Herbal
Lessons was about to go off the shelves, you know,
they were just a dying brand, and I said, well,
don't concentrate on the end benefit, because Pantings got that
in spades. And I said, what about taking a shower,
you know, lathering up your hair. That's nice, And of
course we thought of the movie Harry n Sally and
(12:28):
I said, instead of her having a nice time in
the shower, what if she had an extraordinary nice time
in the shower. And basically nobody would go with me
to the client because they were all men. And I
went up to them and send, gentlemen, only an orgasm
can save this brand. And they were so desperate they
let me run the advertising. And you know, within a
(12:49):
year it was a second leading I mean, and in
Procter Gable actually ended up buying us, you know, buying
urbal lessenses, all because we were trying to put our
headset into women.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
You know, we did that with dawn.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Everybody practice was always talking about, you know, it's all
about efficacious and doing dishes, and I said, well, you
know what, women want to do a lot more than dishes.
We found out that they when there was an oil slick,
Venarians only wanted to use dawn to wash the feathers
off because there's efficacious and a yeah. And so we
(13:21):
came up with the you know, the whole Dawn Saving wildlife,
and it, you know, basically put PALMLO basically out of
business because we understood it's about moving the spotlight away
from you, away from what you want to say to
what the consumer wants and needs.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
It's all about people. First.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
First of all, what a what an impressive rap sheet?
And what I hear as you walk through some of
your work, you know, your background.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
In theater and music I think comes.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Through and I wanted to ask, you know, you do
have that background in theater and music, including up your
degree from City College of New York, and you know,
how did you cross that bridge from theater and music
into advertising.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Was that intentional or was it actually?
Speaker 3 (14:05):
No, it was starvation. I was.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
I was in theater and comedy and doing studying, improv
and writing songs, and I always wanted to write children's songs.
Wrot a lot of children's songs. Never thought that I'd
actually sell one. But I was really hungry. And I
was in an off off Broadway show that was just
for women. And I met this other woman and I said,
(14:31):
fifty dollars a show. There's got to be some way
to make some money. She suggested, you know, we go
into advertising. But I one of the things that I
love and I've gone back to it is improv. And
I've done I do improv with my company. I've done
improv at all over the place, studied at UCB with
(14:55):
which is the organization, the Improv Organization of Our Citizens
Brigade that Tina Fan started, and I have felt like
it's opened up a whole world. And I suggest whenever
I do speaking engagements, which is basically what my career
is now, always I always start with an improv exersise
and then I say, you must have somebody come in
and do some improv with you because and son, you
(15:19):
probably know this already, but in improv, we have something
called the yes and theory, which is, if you're doing
a scene with somebody and he tells you you're a
two top slab, that's what you are. And so we
would start at the agency by having certain days where
you weren't allowed to say no to anybody's idea and
because no shuts everything down, and yes and gives you
(15:43):
a whole new way of lateral creativity. And it was
amazing the ideas people come up with when a they're
not thinking that hard and they're not trying to screen
what they do and they don't say no. And also
it was a tremendous amount of fun. I think every
every congressional session should start with the Republicans and Democrats
(16:04):
doing improv and uh, you know, we need a good left.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
It does feel like that.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Sometimes I will say it does feel like that, and
I will story for another time.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
I too, am a graduate of the UCB four O one.
Are you really yes? Yes?
Speaker 7 (16:19):
Oh my god.
Speaker 5 (16:22):
You know I started some workshops on my own with
sort of people in my age group. But if you
ever want to continue it, it's the best, Sonya I
want to ask you a question in the current not
getting too political, although I've worked on many president you know,
presidential I'm a Democrat, worked on presidential campaigns. Yeah, in
(16:43):
this current climate, and just looking at your incredible website
and all that you're doing that empowers women, and I
love the idea of women telling their own stories. It
just makes me teary eyed seeing what you're doing. How
does this affect what you're doing now? I mean, how
does this affect what Nike's doing? Nil?
Speaker 7 (17:04):
So let me say we're not just women.
Speaker 6 (17:07):
We are obviously have men as well, but we're also
I think sixty to seventy five percent BIPOC as well. Like,
we are fully diverse across the board. So for us,
it's not just it is about its advantage communities as well.
It's not just about supporting women. It's like literally anybody
who's kind of been left out of the conversation, right,
I'll tell you this, Almost every single room I sit
(17:28):
in is mostly women and diverse, like almost every single
one across the board. It doesn't have to just be
a woman's product, because we work on men's stuff too.
We do men's lifestyle actually for Nike, that's what I'm
working on the shoot for the next two days is
and you know where we have been with brands, because
we write strategy as well, is we have been encouraging
brands not to step away from the idea of diversity
(17:52):
and inclusion. We have been really big on continuing to
beat the drum, not being like you know, I think, Linda,
you spoke about some of the campaigns you've done, and
we really talk about like trends come and go, but
human truths are here to stay at the end of
the day, that there is like human insights that everyone
(18:12):
can get around and wrap their mind around.
Speaker 7 (18:15):
That are here to stay.
Speaker 6 (18:16):
And I think the idea of a more inclusive, more diverse,
more like kind environment isn't going away. So yeah, not
to get to political, but even in the social sphere
right we're seeing this like regurgitation of masculinity and what
it means.
Speaker 7 (18:33):
And I think the idea.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
That women are people of color in any way aren't
deserving of roles or that somehow, you know, companies have
become quote unquote too soft. We kind of denounce that
idea and we try to hold strong. In fact, one
of the companies we work with the strategy we gave them.
It's like, this is this new age is all about
(18:57):
connection and what your consumers are telling you. Look at
what's happening with Target, and look at what's happening with Costco. Like,
look at companies that are making a firm stand in
the ground and saying we're here for the people, for
the humans. Those are the companies that are starting to thrive.
People are still voting with their dollars. They're not easily forgetting.
(19:19):
So we're just saying, hey, if if the world is
about connection, if you move away from this these initiatives,
you are disconnecting from your.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
Consumer, that's great.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
So it's great.
Speaker 6 (19:29):
Yeah, very very big on like even subliminal messaging in
that way. Now, I will say that I agree with
you can be like tough but kind, clearest, kind, right like.
You don't have to be this idea that like everyone's
a pushover. I'm not into right like, but the like
the quote unquote softness or whatever. You can still be
(19:50):
tough and be a very very a tough boss and
a very kind boss. Right You can stand up for people,
you can hold them accountable, and it's okay. I don't
think that that is not okay, because I do think
that I sometimes see it slip in that way too,
where I don't know if I kind of got into
a convoluted space. But really big on sticking to what
(20:11):
we started, and I think it's going to continue to pay.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Yeah. Absolutely. You know.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
So interesting you say that because we talk in one
of our books about making a yes sandwich.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
I had a team that came.
Speaker 5 (20:22):
In and they were late on their creative assignments with
the client, and the client was really upset. And so
one one way of doing it is threatening, right, Oh,
here's a pink slip. You know, you don't want this, guys,
you know whatever. But we did things differently, and so
we always we called it a yes sandwich. We started
with something very affirmative and true. I'm always believer in
(20:45):
being truthful. I said, you know, the client, the highlight
of their day is listening to your scripts because it
was a proctor and cable client. The rest of their
day is pretty dull, and they just love your scripts.
I mean, you guys are hilarious and wonderful. And they
were like really really, I said, yeah, I said, and
then you put in, you know, the negative thing. I said,
(21:07):
But you've been laid on your assignments and they're very frustrated.
And I'll tell you something, if we lose this account,
I don't have another place.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
To put you yep, which was also true. Which is
also true.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
Yeah, And then I said, but guess what, I know
you're never going to be late again, and I know
you're going to continue to have great ideas because I
know how brilliant you are.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
That's why you were hired.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
Do you know, Sonia not only did would they never
late again on an assignment, but we won two more
huge products. Is the business they sat and of course
then and it all trickles down right, It's like and
so the people working for them, they instilled that whole thing.
And that was what happened in our agency, was this
(21:53):
thing of like it all starts from the top, and
how you disseminate it is how these people will bring
it down. And the only thing that can really get
you fired at our place, of course you have to
come in and do your job, is if you yelled
at you know, and you know this tim the term
punching down. If you are insult a messenger, if you
(22:14):
say something nasty to your assistant or whatever. Somebody who
does not have the power does not feel ahead the power,
and I have fired people for that. I give them
a warning and said, I don't care how brilliant you were,
because once you do that, you deflate the creativity of
the whole agency. It's just like a balloon. And so
we cannot have any of those bad apples here. Yeah,
(22:37):
but you have to you have to be tough at
the same time.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
So you know, listen, I'm not a woman in the field.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
I'm more I'm a person of color in the field
than what I will say, just to kind of riff
with you there, Linda. Sometimes I find myself in a
lot of rooms that I candidly didn't think I would
be in right, And one of my early I think
the first time I took a management position, one of
my mentors and boss has said, you know, there's some
really insightful literature from the prophet and philosopher Snoop Dogg,
(23:09):
where he had once said, you know, once he realized
he was in a position to influence the way people
see the world, maneuver the world, and work through the world.
You know, when you're in a position of influencer power,
I say this as a counterweight to your comment on
punching down, Linda, you really have to ask yourself think
about all the people I could be bringing up with me,
right with that level of influence that I have, and
(23:31):
it's it's nice to hear. I will say, I think
the conversation on that as a little blurry. As you know,
you mentioned Sonya the culture on either accountability or tone
and softness, and that's something that I think in general
the workplace has started to explore over these last few months.
I will also say this and ask a question. You know,
we've defined some very close parallels between both you, Linda
(23:52):
and Sonya and your careers. The advertising and agency landscape
itself has also changed quite significantly if you look at
the amount of time between the launch of Kaplain Taylor
Group and today, or on a creative and today. So Linda,
you know, as you kind of look at and in
a lot of ways, although you're in your late.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Twenties, yes, miraculous.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, now, I think you know, when Sonya and I
get to sit down with you, we're looking into the
future in a lot of ways, and there's probably some
wisdom there. What are some of the biggest changes that
you've seen over your time in the industry, and is
there any advice you can give Sonya here on navigating
change maybe as another fellow CEO co founder in the field.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
Well, I mean, I would conversely say that I feel
like I can learn so much from Sonya and from you,
and I feel like if I was starting an agency now,
I would do exactly what Sonya. So first of all,
I would have a production company. It would all be
in house. And I don't even know, Sonya, do you
(24:56):
have a big office space. I don't even know if
I would have an office.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
We didn't used to until we got the studio and
now we go twice a week because I do think
that the studio part. I do think the office part
is a little important. We were remote, fully, but it
helps people grow and get to know each other better.
But we do have people who are all over the
world too, unfortunately get to miss out on that.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
Yeah, I do think that when you're always remote, you
miss out on you know, just those all these things
that happen in the hallways. You know, I can't tell
you how many great ideas happen because somebody who was
working on something else came into my office and had
a different point of view, and you don't get that
on a zoom call. You know, you're just not going
to get that spontaneity. But you know, I do think
(25:40):
if I was starting, I would be I guess, because
my background is in writing, and I have a master's
in music, and I of course I met my husband.
That's how I met my husband writing jingles. He was
award winning composer and so that's we started writing together.
But I do think that I probably would have started
(26:02):
as a production company, you know, doing creative and then
having someone like Robin, who's brilliant and amazing working on
strategies on you you do strategy. I'm not know if
I'm really good on strategy. I think I come from it.
Speaker 7 (26:17):
I'm sure you're way better than on what you've said today.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
I don't know, you know, I mean the whole with AFLAC,
it was like that was not in the strategy the
client gave us, you know, and we were competing against
fifteen other agencies, and we asked him because they had
three percent awareness at the time, affleck, nobody knew what
who the hell I were?
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I said, you know, after all the other agencies. I left.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
I said, your strategy is brilliant everything, but if somebody
wakes you up in the middle of the night, and
that's a great thing to ask clients, what is it
that you would worry about if somebody woke you? And
he said, what worries me the most is even my
own relatives cannot remamber the name of my company. I said, well, okay,
you know what do you all said? Eighty percent of
life is just showing up and you spend zillions of
(27:04):
dollars and nobody remembers the name of your company. So
the first thing we're going to do is we're going
to figure out a way to make Flack a household name.
We're going to say it over and over again in
the commercials. And he said, how are you going to
do that? I said, I don't have a clue. And
then somebody, this brilliant team at the agency, Tom Amiko
and Eric David, pinched my nose one day and said,
(27:25):
say the name of the company. I said, a Flack
And he said, you know, you sound like a duck.
That was it, you know, and that gives you an
idea of the brilliant intellectual knowledge you need to run
an ad agency.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
But it's true.
Speaker 7 (27:42):
It's knowing a little bit about everything, right.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Well, it's also the spontaneity, you know.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
Yeah, it's just going. I will tell you one thing
that's underused is humor. I don't think people realize how
valuable humor is. One of the things I talk about
in my speaking gigs is everybody should have a voice,
no matter what. They could be the messenger, they could
(28:07):
be your assistant, they could be.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
The guy in the mail room. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
Of course, there probably isn't a mail room anymore, but
that's beside the point. In Canada, there's this product called Shreddy's.
It's like it's shredded wheat, and it was the same
product for thirty something years and the client wanted it
to be made new and exciting because they couldn't get
the thing off the shelves and well, what are you
doing to the product? Are you making it bigger? Are
(28:33):
you making it adding more stuff to it? No, no,
it's not changed. And they were about to give up,
and then this one young guy who was just an
apprentice for the summer picked up the square and said,
apropos of nothing. And by the way, I've always hired
a lot of up and coming comics who have gone
on to great things because I believe that comedians see
things in such a nice, disparate lateral point of view.
(28:57):
He picks up the square and he goes, well, when
you look at this way, it's a square, but if
you turn it forty five degrees, it's diamond shape. And
everybody like fell silent, except the creative director, who said
that's genius. He said, what do you mean and she says,
here's how we're going to rebrand it. So they came
out with Diamond Shreddi's Oh Wow Wow and Diamond Treddi's
(29:21):
Look it Up on YouTube. On YouTube was the most
successful brand I think relaunch ever in the history of Canada. Uh,
and people swore that it tasted better.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
I mean, everybody was in on the joke.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
And then they even for people who like the original,
they came up with a combo pack. So, I mean,
it just shows you that you can get ideas from anywhere,
even if you feel like there's nothing there. And Sonya,
I'm sure that you you see that all the time
of like what am I going to do next?
Speaker 7 (29:51):
Yeah, it's some of the prep questions.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
I think one of the one of them was like,
you know what lessons you've learned from marketing? I literally
wrote down because I prep I have to I think
you're with your improv much better on your feet, which
sounds like I need to go to improv and sounds
like I need to hire something. So those are the
two things I'm definitely taking away from the action steps
for next But one of the things I wrote down
(30:13):
is ideas can come from anywhere and everyone, right and
again to your point of the amount of time someone
has walked, even to a point where I recently walked
in and said I have a great idea, or even
like people I've hired for a role before we started
doing production. I hired this girl as my executive assistant,
(30:37):
and she turned out to be a great producer, and
she started our entire production company because everyone was like
the first shoot, everyone was like, wait, Nick, he's your
executive assistant.
Speaker 7 (30:48):
She's not a producer.
Speaker 6 (30:50):
She was like doing all these things and it quite
literally launched an entire part of our business. My digital
strategist got us into motion right like it was really
good with video, so like he got us into motion
early on He's like, video is going to be the future.
Speaker 7 (31:07):
Got us into motion.
Speaker 6 (31:08):
So like these disciplines we have within the agency, we
wouldn't have them if it wasn't for them from hiring people,
giving them a shot, seeing what they're good at. And
in a small agency like mine, you.
Speaker 7 (31:21):
Have to wear many hats.
Speaker 6 (31:22):
Like my people got to be able to do multiple things,
Like I can't just have a creative be a creative.
I need a creative to produce. Creative produce as well,
and that's when you kind of they get to gain
other skills as they do that, but then you also
get to see their brilliance, whether it's in art direction,
whether it's in for some people in copywriting. I'll give
(31:44):
another example, the girl that's written most of our lines.
You've given a couple of brand examples, but we work
on a lot of Nike work. And for Black History Month,
we were asked to kind of tell the story of
these four athletes. Their campaigned, their major camp at the
time was never done. And we looked at the talent
(32:04):
and we said, well, these people are doing work year round.
So on March first, we dropped a billboard that said
making Black histories never done with their faces up.
Speaker 7 (32:13):
And that was the main tagline. But that girl came
from randomly.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
My best friend was doing a snapshot show that was
called Wild Black, and she said, I came across this
brilliant girl named Brodney, shout out to Rodney and sent
me an email. I happened to be going through my inbox.
Four or five years later saw the email. No, we
(32:39):
had another campaign for Meta for black and brown small
businesses coming up, asked her to submit some writing samples,
jumped on a call with her, hired her, and now
she's our lead copywriter.
Speaker 7 (32:53):
Oh my, she wrote that line and she's written multiple billboards.
Speaker 6 (32:57):
She's fixed senior writers work like senior writers will send
stuffing because we freelance a lot of work.
Speaker 7 (33:04):
She'll come in, she'll see it, she'll fix it.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
There's times me and her, somebody a creative has given
me a great idea, they weren't able to write it.
I get on an hour before pitch with her and
I'm like, Rodney, this is the idea. I need you
to write it. We walk into the pitch and it's
like the idea that wins. Literally, great ideas can come
from anywhere, and so we're home my remote. She lives
in Philadelphia, she's not even in La There you go.
(33:28):
You know, hopefully she'll be with me for a very
long time.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
But you know, it's a great story, great story.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
You know what I also hear both with that Affleck
story Linda and your EA story as well. The story
with your EA rather, Sonya, is just the fidelity to serendipity, right.
You know what I've noticed is that and you all
know this right as co founder CEOs, A lot of
times when you're looking at the profit margin, looking at
the spreadsheet, looking at the business, that can block out
(33:56):
access to creativity, right. But here what I'm hearing is fidelity, serendipity.
And you know that could come from anywhere or anyone, Sonya,
I will say, looking at your repertoire, some of your
work doesn't necessarily come from just any old person off
the street. But in reality, some of the folks that
you've been able to work with, I would say, are
so famous they don't even need last names.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
Kobe Lebron Rina. Yeah, I'll ask this.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
You know, what is it like working with those global
superstars and did a lot of that early work for
you and your time at Nike serve as input into
your existing projects today, like the focus groups or what
did you take from that experience?
Speaker 6 (34:36):
Yeah, I go back to the human centered approach. At
the end of the day, some of these athletes are
so big and so great they feel out of touch
to people. But as an example, Kobe is someone who
like he might be one of the greatest players to
have ever lived by the end of the day, his work, ethic,
his tenacity, Linda, his grit is something every to can
(35:00):
connect with. So really like learning those deep insights about
the athletes we work with and like I often part
of my process when I was writing strategy and I
was on the brand side, and even now, if I'm
working with a world class athlete, or if I'm working
with any athlete, I will spend so much time learning
their mentality, like what do they think, feel, do, and
(35:23):
then connecting that to the everyday consumer because that's really
where that beauty lies. Because not everyone can be Lebron
or Kobe or Serena, but what they can connect is
some aspect of them that they want to be like,
they want to aspire to be like. And I think
one of the things I also learned at Nike while
I was there, and Linda mentioned this a couple of times, is.
Speaker 7 (35:44):
Because Kobe is so.
Speaker 6 (35:47):
Serious and so like he has got that Manba mentality,
they had to always cut him with humor.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Yeap.
Speaker 6 (35:54):
That was like a way to make him not necessarily palatable,
but for the average human to kind of underst stand.
So when you think back to the Kobe system and
you think back to some of those like commercials that
he was on, they always try to give him a.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
Little more nuance through the humor.
Speaker 6 (36:12):
So that would be I would say, like one thing
when it came to you know, professional athletes, but one
thing again I really really want to impress upon especially
young marketers or.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
Anybody like listening to it.
Speaker 6 (36:23):
It really does truly come from like Linda you say,
like I don't know about strategy, but Linda, you know humans,
like you know people at their core, So like if
we can really get to that, like that's why all
briefs always start with who the consumer is, or at
least they should.
Speaker 7 (36:40):
Who's your consumer? Why do they care right?
Speaker 6 (36:42):
And how do you connect your product and its benefits
to what the consumer cares about? And Linda you mentioned
this a couple of times even with your aflex stories,
like what problem are you trying to solve for? Because
sometimes even the brand marketers that are sitting in the
companies don't know what problem they're trying to solve for exactly.
Speaker 5 (37:02):
Yeah, that isn't I mean, in the case of Athleck,
they had no idea that that was their problem until.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
We made them aware of it, you know.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
And I think that that is a problem because we
were so the advertisers, the brands are so focused on themselves,
you know. One of the people when we were doing
writing The Power of Nice, one of the other books
that Robin Cobell and I wrote, we wanted it among
our many interviews. He wanted to interview somebody in the
entertainment industry who was considered really nice. And at the time,
(37:33):
Jay Leno had the Tonight Show and he's considered one
of the nicest guys in show business. And so I
put a feeler out to somebody like in his press department,
thinking maybe i'd get a quote or something.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Do you know, the next day he calls me up.
He calls me directly on the phone.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
He said, Hi, this is Jay Leno, Like I wouldn't
know his voice, right, This is Jay Leno, have you
heard of me?
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Now?
Speaker 5 (37:55):
I heard you writing a book about being nice, and
I really want to I really want to tell you
some stories. And one of the things he told us
about was he said, you know, Letterman gets so pissed
off that I get guests back that he doesn't get back.
And the reason I get them back is because and
I learned Robin and I learned a valuable thing that
we put in our book, which is, he said, I
(38:17):
learned how to move the spotlight. What I do when
I interview a guest is and I get chills thinking
about this.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
He said.
Speaker 5 (38:24):
You'll see this when I interview somebody. I don't care
if their monosyllabic had no sense of humor. I will
always make them the funniest, smartest person in the room.
That's what my job is, he said. Where is the
other talk show hosts. It's all about let me show
you how cool I am, he said, And by moving
(38:47):
the spotlight on these people, they always came back because
I would always make them feel like a star.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Well, listen, I will say after that Jay Leno story,
f as your podcast host, I am shockingly insecure. But
I you know, I want to ask you both one
last question here because just you know, over this last
hour hearing both your story Linda, as well as yours Sonya,
it's clear that you all have a war chest of
(39:16):
really exciting accolades to point towards uh and and and
at the end of the night you look back and say,
you know what, I see success in my career here
here and here, and also a lot of that is
driven by your respective creative inspirations. Right now, I think
you two both know success really well on you know,
in the rear view mirror looks like up into the right,
(39:38):
up into the right, up into the right. In reality,
it maybe isn't the case. And so for the audience,
you know, and the folks listening on the podcast who
maybe running up against a wall, maybe hitting some kind
of creative block. You know, do you have any kind
of final words of advice or wisdom for maybe a
time when you yourself went through a period where you
(40:00):
and felt that your creativity ran out, and how did
you navigate that and anything else you'd like to share
with the audience as well along those lines.
Speaker 6 (40:08):
I think one thing that has helped me a lot
is being really true to myself and what makes me happy,
not the like accolades or like getting a certain job
or a title or any of those things. I think
I stopped change seeing that in my late twenties early
thirties and pivoted to and look, every job I've gotten
(40:32):
has almost been an accident. Like I didn't plan to
go into advertising, It just happened. I didn't want to
start an agency. It kind of I quit Nike. Nike
gave me an opportunity to freelance, which turned into another
gig into another gig before I found myself in a
position where I was like, Okay, well, I guess this
is a thing and I should make it a thing.
(40:52):
So I wasn't even like intentional necessarily about it for years.
And I think I could have been maybe a lot
more successful had I been, because in my mind I
was just trying to get to the next thing.
Speaker 7 (41:01):
At all times.
Speaker 6 (41:03):
But one of the things that I realized was very
very important to me was the belief in supporting people
who don't often get a shot, like and I didn't
know what that looked like. I realized when I was
working in Nike and Nike Basketball that was mostly supporting
men's product, men's dreams men's Like, so I really wanted
to make something not necessarily that necessarily spoke to women
(41:24):
at all times. That's what it's turned into. But where
we would hire like, it wasn't about me, It was
about giving other people a shot, right, Like it became
less about me becoming a CMO or a CEO or
of a major corporation and became more about, like, how
do I empower others through the work that I do?
And I think this is kind of nebulous, but I
(41:47):
always tell people, don't take a job you're going to
be miserable in to be working in sports, Like, if
you don't like that specific job, you're not going to
do a good job at it, and then you're not
going to succeed. Yes, there's a little bit of grid
and a little bit of rolling up your sleeves on everything,
and you're not gonna like everything about every job.
Speaker 7 (42:06):
But if you like the day to day work, I e.
Speaker 6 (42:10):
I love being creative, I love being like, I love
making things.
Speaker 7 (42:15):
I love like.
Speaker 6 (42:16):
I have people on my team who have worked at
Nike came to work with me and want to go
back to Nike. And then I'm the type of person
like I would never go back to a corporation. People
have asked, me, well, what if you got some really
really senior level position.
Speaker 7 (42:29):
I love what I do.
Speaker 6 (42:31):
When people ask me about selling my company, I'm like,
I don't, can't imagine because I love what I do
and I don't want to start over. So I think
that like that day to day love that's my biggest advice.
Love the thing you do every day and know that
there will be some hardships and some hard times. That
(42:51):
that would be how I define success. Do I love
what I do every day.
Speaker 5 (42:55):
I can't believe you're saying all this because it's basically
basically I believe too. I never set out. If you
knew me when I was growing up, I was never
the person who wanted to be class president.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
But I was always the person who wanted to.
Speaker 5 (43:09):
Write the skits those people so they could become class president.
I never wanted to run a company. I'd never thought
of myself as a business person. I still don't. I
only did it because I had this opportunity to. I
just hated where I was, and I said I'd rather
be selling pencils on the street than work for somebody.
And I had the opportunity with their blesses and I
(43:30):
basically I said to my husband, because we started on
our Brownstone, I said, I don't want to be big.
I just want to have this one account. And I said,
but what if I fail? He said, I'm not afraid
you're going to fail. He said, I'm afraid you're gonna
get too big and you're going to be really busy
because we had two little kids to write. But for me,
I honestly can say I never spent one day thinking
of like, oh, I want to get the agency bigger.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
It was always like, ooh do we have an idea
for this?
Speaker 5 (43:54):
We have the other thing I want to mention, which
you talked about, you know, I think and I always
talk about it when I do my talks, is and
I've heard this term goals of the soul. People who
have grit, and companies that are successful almost to a person,
are successful because they're working as something that is beyond
(44:18):
just themselves. Colin Powell is a SEA minus student. I'm
so glad to have had his friendship. We both went
to City College. I was on the board of his
school and he said, I was a C minus student
until I discovered the ROTC and I wanted to be
a soldier, not to wear a shiny uniform, because I
suddenly had this need to protect our country. And it
(44:40):
always just maybe well up with tears because I see
Nike doing that with empowerment. I see you doing that
with the brands, and as I go through each one,
I go, yeah, of course you're going to be successful
because you're doing this something that is bigger than you,
you know. And that's what I did in my company too.
(45:00):
It was like, I know, all these people are gonna
you know, they have they have mouse to feed and
kids to put through college. And and somebody asked me
why I want to win new business. I said, part
of the reason is because I don't want to fire anybody,
and I want you all to have to have work.
And they said, you know what best reason I've ever heard,
(45:23):
you know, sign me up for whatever's coming up. So
I'll end on that note of like just passionate goals
of the soul and just follow something that you love
and you're never going to feel like you work another day.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
Goals of the Soul. I love it.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Goals of the Soul.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Linda Sonya, thank you so much for joining us thank you,
Thank you out of the future legends of advertising. Sonya again,
congratulations on your induction into last year's Hall of Achievement.
Linda five years blated, congratulations.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
On your.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
AF Hall of Fame and this was an awesome discussion.
You're both to wonderful, lovely people, and thank you for
sharing your wisdom and your experience here on this podcast.
I'm Tim Natividad. Thank you for listening. We'll be back
with another episode before you know it. And for more
information on the American Advertising Federation, go to AAF dot org.
Hello, Welcome to season three of the Future Legends of
Advertising podcast on iHeart, featuring the hottest up and coming
stars and advertising as well as the biggest legends in
the game.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
In this series, we explore the future of the advertising
industry through never before heard conversations between those who created
it and those who are shaping its future. I'm your host,
Tim Natividad.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And I'm your host Christina Pile.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And with that, let's meet the legends. Welcome, Welcome back
to the Future Legends of Advertising podcast. My name is
Tim Natividad, and we're here with the final episode of
this season, and I assure you we are going out
(00:53):
with a bang. Joining us today are two of the
most influential and innovative women in the industry who have
paved the way for creatives to own their work and
careers by launching their own agencies. Our first guest is
a brilliant creative, an inspirational leader, savvy entrepreneur, and also
a generous philanthropist. She has made countless contributions over many
(01:17):
decades to advertising, media, publishing as well as her own community,
which is why the Linda Kaplan Thaylor was inducted into
the American Advertising Federations Advertising Hall of Fame in twenty fifteen.
Much of Linda's portfolio of work has become woven into
the fabric of America's pop culture landscape. This podcast is
(01:40):
not about myself, but to share a little bit about
how your work has inspired me.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Linda.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
You know, I'm in my thirties and to this day,
I still don't want to grow up to use the
catch phrase because I still feel like, you know, I
grew up as a Toys Rs.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Kid.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
And then, of course for every Codek moment in my life,
I think about the birth of my daughter getting married,
I can thank you, Linda for that, because you are
the reason that that phrase, the Kodak moment exists in
our vernacular, and I'm sure a lot of other parents
and families say the same thing without further ado, Linda,
Welcome to the podcast. It's so great to have you
(02:15):
here with us.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
How have you been?
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Oh? Well, I love that introduction.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
You know, the next time I go to the supermarket
at Dagostino's, can you please introduce me and if you
they'll give me a ten percent senior discount. It's amazing
that you were in your thirties and I've had this
career and I'm still in my incredibly late twenties. Yeah,
it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
It's funny how time works like that.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
It's what works, very funny. No, that thank you so much.
I'm just honored to be here and to talk to Sonia,
who I had the pleasure of reading all about you
and going to your website and you are just amazing
and brilliant and glad glad to be speaking with you today.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Well, you bring me to my next guest, Tanya.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Our next guest, As you mentioned Linda, she is also
a brilliant creative, an inspirational leader, savvy entrepreneur, and generous philanthropists. Goodness,
it's almost like we thought you two would have a
good conversation.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Again.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I'm happy to introduce our audience here to our next guest,
Sonya Kamlnovich, the founder, CEO, and executive creative director of
Ona Creative. Sonya has an incredible origin story. She began
her journey as a ten year old refugee escaping war
tor in Bosnia with her family to pursue the American dream.
Her career began by working for the Los Angeles Clippers
(03:34):
as the only woman in the team office. After smashing
all kinds of metrics like audience growth, ticket sales and
revenue and establishing a successful digital strategy. Of course, Nike
came knocking and Sonya then joined the team in Portland,
where she set the precedent for sponsorship deals and established
best practices for athlete channel content that are still used
to this day. She's launched successful campaigns for the likes
(03:57):
of Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, and Kyrie Irving,
and also became one of the first and strongest advocates
to include women's basketball in Nike's portfolio, which is now
their standard practice. Sonya set it out to prove that
a woman could make it in a man's world, and
boy did she. She felt that she could use her
success to build up other women and people who have
(04:19):
been left out of the industry for so long, and that,
of course, is how Ona Creative was born. Sonya works
tirelessly to put together an agency team that focuses on
promoting women, sports, culture, and social good.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
Sonya, Hello, so good to see you again.
Speaker 6 (04:36):
Hello, I feel like you did a really great job
introing us both but man Linda is a hard act
to follow. I gotta say, when I found out I
was on with you, I had major inferiority complex.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
I was like, oh, my goodness, you're incredible, Like this
is I feel not deserving of being here.
Speaker 6 (04:56):
So I can't wait to have a conversation and you
get to know you even on a more personal level,
because the work you've done and the philosophies you have
are a lot of the same philosophies that I've come
to learn over time. And so I felt like a
little bit like kindred Spirits, just learning a little bit
more about you, but also just like what an incredible career.
Speaker 7 (05:19):
I just got to give you a huge shout out.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Well, thank you very much, and.
Speaker 6 (05:25):
Tim, thank you, thank you for having me, and again
I'll try to keep up over here do my best.
Speaker 5 (05:31):
Well, first of all, just reading about you and seeing
so much of your belief in giving a voice to women,
and also the idea of grit and tenacity, which is
Robin Colevell and I who started you Know, the Agency together,
and we've written all our books together, but our last one,
Gritcha Great. It reminded me so much of sort of
(05:53):
your philosophy too, because At the end of the day,
what grew our company was the fact that, well, number one,
we weren't smarter than anybody else. We weren't necessarily more creative.
We just hated the agencies we were at and the
tirole run by men, and had a feeling that we
could probably do things lead instead of with fear and intimidation.
(06:15):
Why not lead with flowers and chocolates. Why don't we
share ideas rather than steal ideas? Why don't we you know,
Harry Truman once said, you can accomplish anything in your
lifetime as long as you're willing to take credit for
none of it, And so we loved that philosophy, and
I see so much of that in what you were doing.
In the beginning, we were just women. We used to
(06:37):
say we had enough estrogen in our place to make
Arnold Schwarzenegger ovulate. And we eventually did hire guys. You know,
they're too and they're great too, tim but women just
had a different philosophy. And it was an enathma at
the time because basically, if you asked anybody how our
(06:58):
agency would do, they would say going to crash and
burn within a year, because they don't have that cutthrow mentality.
And what they didn't realize is and it's interesting because
Google did a study on this a few years ago
called its Pace to Be Nice. They've tried to figure
out the most successful and profitable groups at Google, and
it turned out to be the ones where there were
(07:19):
psychological safety, where people listened to each other, and we
espoused that same philosophy, and so the agency, what happened
was everybody just started working harder than they had worked
at any place else because they were really feeling good,
you know. And so that's how we grew, you know,
by being nice and that sort of work ethic. And
(07:40):
then we realized, wow, there are these amazing people who
were very ordinary growing up. Steven Spielberg couldn't get into
film school, and Colin Powell was a C minus student,
and Michael Jordan, as you know, couldn't qualify for his
high school varsity basketball team. And what we realized is
that the one thing they all had in common was grit.
(08:01):
As we defined as grit as gut's resilience initiative of tenacity,
and so that was really the secret.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Sauce.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
But I'm so enamored of what you're doing now Sonya
and how you're moving the ball forward. Not to have
a sports metaphor, because I was terrible in sports. I
couldn't eat. I was always the last person picked to
be on any team. So I'm kind of in all
of your rugby talents.
Speaker 6 (08:24):
Well, so here's what I'll say. I was never very
good at any of those sports. I just played a
lot of them. So speaking to grit, right, Like, I
think so much of what you say is so true.
I think both internally and externally. Internally, one of the
things that I'm really really big on is ensuring that
we give people a shot who don't often get a shot, right, right,
(08:47):
I have gone into local neighborhoods, or we have gone,
i should say, into local neighborhoods, and instead of like
going and hiring the hot shot photographer, we find, especially
with you know, all the social media tools, you can
find amazing videographers, DPS photographers going to local communities and
picking someone that represents that community well from behind a
(09:10):
camera to tell that story, and then oftentimes taking somebody
like that, Like just the other day, I had an
amazing photographer and I've done this in the past, and
I'm like, you should come work for us full time.
Speaker 7 (09:22):
Right, and finding that raw talent.
Speaker 6 (09:26):
So it's partially it's like, yes, be kind, be nice,
but also like when you see something in people that
they don't even see in themselves, I think they pay
it full or ten times back to you absolutely because
they're like, oh my god, you saw me, like the
amount of times right, someone's like, oh my god, you
saw me. Whereas you know, most other agencies maybe would
(09:47):
not give you a shot without the art degree or
the you know, so I think that's really big part
of this too. And then kind to your clients right,
like you're having an empathy and understanding.
Speaker 7 (10:02):
I think being on the brand side really helped me.
Speaker 6 (10:04):
With that that you know, it's teamwork, your partnership right
at the end of the day, and sometimes they can't
help the feedback that they're giving you. Sometimes they can't
help the budget they have, Sometimes they can't help the
situation they're in.
Speaker 7 (10:19):
So just being kind back and being good partners.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Yeah, it's also and I got chills when you were
telling me that because I just so espouse that way
of thinking. We A few years back, I was asked
to work on an egg freezing clinic that was in
New York called Extend Fertility and they're advertising and they
were company sort of run by men. The doctors couldn't
(10:44):
understand why they weren't getting enough patients.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
But they had this very clinical.
Speaker 5 (10:50):
Approach to the advertising, right, And it was fascinating because
I said, you know, we had this philosophy of put
your head on their shoulders, and whether it's a client
or somebody who works for you or a brand, you know,
it's like, well, wait a second. The women who were
coming here, they're really nervous. The reason they're getting freezing
their eggs is maybe they're having cancer treatments, or maybe
(11:12):
they don't know what they're want to do with their lives,
or maybe they haven't found a partner, or maybe they
don't even know when they want to raise a family,
or maybe they're gonna they're going to med school. And
I said, you need to tell these women it's going
to be okay, right, And so the campaign we came up.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
With was was these two.
Speaker 5 (11:31):
Pink eggs in a freezer and the line was live
your life, will just chill?
Speaker 7 (11:37):
I love that?
Speaker 3 (11:38):
And and it was you know, it resonated with women.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
It was like talk teleclinical stuff afterwards, but you've got
to first sort of be in their headspace, you know.
And so and that's been sort of the mantra of
me in terms of the way I advertise, and also
the idea of breaking the bear year with women using humor,
like we did for herbal Escences, where the client. By
(12:07):
the way, I love working on brands that are very
desperate because the clients will let me do anything. Herbal
Lessons was about to go off the shelves, you know,
they were just a dying brand, and I said, well,
don't concentrate on the end benefit, because Pantings got that
in spades. And I said, what about taking a shower,
you know, lathering up your hair. That's nice, And of
course we thought of the movie Harry n Sally and
(12:28):
I said, instead of her having a nice time in
the shower, what if she had an extraordinary nice time
in the shower. And basically nobody would go with me
to the client because they were all men. And I
went up to them and send, gentlemen, only an orgasm
can save this brand. And they were so desperate they
let me run the advertising. And you know, within a
(12:49):
year it was a second leading I mean, and in
Procter Gable actually ended up buying us, you know, buying
urbal lessenses, all because we were trying to put our
headset into women.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
You know, we did that with dawn.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Everybody practice was always talking about, you know, it's all
about efficacious and doing dishes, and I said, well, you
know what, women want to do a lot more than dishes.
We found out that they when there was an oil slick,
Venarians only wanted to use dawn to wash the feathers
off because there's efficacious and a yeah. And so we
(13:21):
came up with the you know, the whole Dawn Saving wildlife,
and it, you know, basically put PALMLO basically out of
business because we understood it's about moving the spotlight away
from you, away from what you want to say to
what the consumer wants and needs.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
It's all about people. First.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
First of all, what a what an impressive rap sheet?
And what I hear as you walk through some of
your work, you know, your background.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
In theater and music I think comes.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Through and I wanted to ask, you know, you do
have that background in theater and music, including up your
degree from City College of New York, and you know,
how did you cross that bridge from theater and music
into advertising.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Was that intentional or was it actually?
Speaker 3 (14:05):
No, it was starvation. I was.
Speaker 5 (14:09):
I was in theater and comedy and doing studying, improv
and writing songs, and I always wanted to write children's songs.
Wrot a lot of children's songs. Never thought that I'd
actually sell one. But I was really hungry. And I
was in an off off Broadway show that was just
for women. And I met this other woman and I said,
(14:31):
fifty dollars a show. There's got to be some way
to make some money. She suggested, you know, we go
into advertising. But I one of the things that I
love and I've gone back to it is improv. And
I've done I do improv with my company. I've done
improv at all over the place, studied at UCB with
(14:55):
which is the organization, the Improv Organization of Our Citizens
Brigade that Tina Fan started, and I have felt like
it's opened up a whole world. And I suggest whenever
I do speaking engagements, which is basically what my career
is now, always I always start with an improv exersise
and then I say, you must have somebody come in
and do some improv with you because and son, you
(15:19):
probably know this already, but in improv, we have something
called the yes and theory, which is, if you're doing
a scene with somebody and he tells you you're a
two top slab, that's what you are. And so we
would start at the agency by having certain days where
you weren't allowed to say no to anybody's idea and
because no shuts everything down, and yes and gives you
(15:43):
a whole new way of lateral creativity. And it was
amazing the ideas people come up with when a they're
not thinking that hard and they're not trying to screen
what they do and they don't say no. And also
it was a tremendous amount of fun. I think every
every congressional session should start with the Republicans and Democrats
(16:04):
doing improv and uh, you know, we need a good left.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
It does feel like that.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Sometimes I will say it does feel like that, and
I will story for another time.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
I too, am a graduate of the UCB four O one.
Are you really yes? Yes?
Speaker 7 (16:19):
Oh my god.
Speaker 5 (16:22):
You know I started some workshops on my own with
sort of people in my age group. But if you
ever want to continue it, it's the best, Sonya I
want to ask you a question in the current not
getting too political, although I've worked on many president you know,
presidential I'm a Democrat, worked on presidential campaigns. Yeah, in
(16:43):
this current climate, and just looking at your incredible website
and all that you're doing that empowers women, and I
love the idea of women telling their own stories. It
just makes me teary eyed seeing what you're doing. How
does this affect what you're doing now? I mean, how
does this affect what Nike's doing? Nil?
Speaker 7 (17:04):
So let me say we're not just women.
Speaker 6 (17:07):
We are obviously have men as well, but we're also
I think sixty to seventy five percent BIPOC as well. Like,
we are fully diverse across the board. So for us,
it's not just it is about its advantage communities as well.
It's not just about supporting women. It's like literally anybody
who's kind of been left out of the conversation, right,
I'll tell you this, Almost every single room I sit
(17:28):
in is mostly women and diverse, like almost every single
one across the board. It doesn't have to just be
a woman's product, because we work on men's stuff too.
We do men's lifestyle actually for Nike, that's what I'm
working on the shoot for the next two days is
and you know where we have been with brands, because
we write strategy as well, is we have been encouraging
brands not to step away from the idea of diversity
(17:52):
and inclusion. We have been really big on continuing to
beat the drum, not being like you know, I think, Linda,
you spoke about some of the campaigns you've done, and
we really talk about like trends come and go, but
human truths are here to stay at the end of
the day, that there is like human insights that everyone
(18:12):
can get around and wrap their mind around.
Speaker 7 (18:15):
That are here to stay.
Speaker 6 (18:16):
And I think the idea of a more inclusive, more diverse,
more like kind environment isn't going away. So yeah, not
to get to political, but even in the social sphere
right we're seeing this like regurgitation of masculinity and what
it means.
Speaker 7 (18:33):
And I think the idea.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
That women are people of color in any way aren't
deserving of roles or that somehow, you know, companies have
become quote unquote too soft. We kind of denounce that
idea and we try to hold strong. In fact, one
of the companies we work with the strategy we gave them.
It's like, this is this new age is all about
(18:57):
connection and what your consumers are telling you. Look at
what's happening with Target, and look at what's happening with Costco. Like,
look at companies that are making a firm stand in
the ground and saying we're here for the people, for
the humans. Those are the companies that are starting to thrive.
People are still voting with their dollars. They're not easily forgetting.
(19:19):
So we're just saying, hey, if if the world is
about connection, if you move away from this these initiatives,
you are disconnecting from your.
Speaker 7 (19:27):
Consumer, that's great.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
So it's great.
Speaker 6 (19:29):
Yeah, very very big on like even subliminal messaging in
that way. Now, I will say that I agree with
you can be like tough but kind, clearest, kind, right like.
You don't have to be this idea that like everyone's
a pushover. I'm not into right like, but the like
the quote unquote softness or whatever. You can still be
(19:50):
tough and be a very very a tough boss and
a very kind boss. Right You can stand up for people,
you can hold them accountable, and it's okay. I don't
think that that is not okay, because I do think
that I sometimes see it slip in that way too,
where I don't know if I kind of got into
a convoluted space. But really big on sticking to what
(20:11):
we started, and I think it's going to continue to pay.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Yeah. Absolutely. You know.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
So interesting you say that because we talk in one
of our books about making a yes sandwich.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
I had a team that came.
Speaker 5 (20:22):
In and they were late on their creative assignments with
the client, and the client was really upset. And so
one one way of doing it is threatening, right, Oh,
here's a pink slip. You know, you don't want this, guys,
you know whatever. But we did things differently, and so
we always we called it a yes sandwich. We started
with something very affirmative and true. I'm always believer in
(20:45):
being truthful. I said, you know, the client, the highlight
of their day is listening to your scripts because it
was a proctor and cable client. The rest of their
day is pretty dull, and they just love your scripts.
I mean, you guys are hilarious and wonderful. And they
were like really really, I said, yeah, I said, and
then you put in, you know, the negative thing. I said,
(21:07):
But you've been laid on your assignments and they're very frustrated.
And I'll tell you something, if we lose this account,
I don't have another place.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
To put you yep, which was also true. Which is
also true.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
Yeah, And then I said, but guess what, I know
you're never going to be late again, and I know
you're going to continue to have great ideas because I
know how brilliant you are.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
That's why you were hired.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
Do you know, Sonia not only did would they never
late again on an assignment, but we won two more
huge products. Is the business they sat and of course
then and it all trickles down right, It's like and
so the people working for them, they instilled that whole thing.
And that was what happened in our agency, was this
(21:53):
thing of like it all starts from the top, and
how you disseminate it is how these people will bring
it down. And the only thing that can really get
you fired at our place, of course you have to
come in and do your job, is if you yelled
at you know, and you know this tim the term
punching down. If you are insult a messenger, if you
(22:14):
say something nasty to your assistant or whatever. Somebody who
does not have the power does not feel ahead the power,
and I have fired people for that. I give them
a warning and said, I don't care how brilliant you were,
because once you do that, you deflate the creativity of
the whole agency. It's just like a balloon. And so
we cannot have any of those bad apples here. Yeah,
(22:37):
but you have to you have to be tough at
the same time.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
So you know, listen, I'm not a woman in the field.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
I'm more I'm a person of color in the field
than what I will say, just to kind of riff
with you there, Linda. Sometimes I find myself in a
lot of rooms that I candidly didn't think I would
be in right, And one of my early I think
the first time I took a management position, one of
my mentors and boss has said, you know, there's some
really insightful literature from the prophet and philosopher Snoop Dogg,
(23:09):
where he had once said, you know, once he realized
he was in a position to influence the way people
see the world, maneuver the world, and work through the world.
You know, when you're in a position of influencer power,
I say this as a counterweight to your comment on
punching down, Linda, you really have to ask yourself think
about all the people I could be bringing up with me,
right with that level of influence that I have, and
(23:31):
it's it's nice to hear. I will say, I think
the conversation on that as a little blurry. As you know,
you mentioned Sonya the culture on either accountability or tone
and softness, and that's something that I think in general
the workplace has started to explore over these last few months.
I will also say this and ask a question. You know,
we've defined some very close parallels between both you, Linda
(23:52):
and Sonya and your careers. The advertising and agency landscape
itself has also changed quite significantly if you look at
the amount of time between the launch of Kaplain Taylor
Group and today, or on a creative and today. So Linda,
you know, as you kind of look at and in
a lot of ways, although you're in your late.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Twenties, yes, miraculous.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, now, I think you know, when Sonya and I
get to sit down with you, we're looking into the
future in a lot of ways, and there's probably some
wisdom there. What are some of the biggest changes that
you've seen over your time in the industry, and is
there any advice you can give Sonya here on navigating
change maybe as another fellow CEO co founder in the field.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
Well, I mean, I would conversely say that I feel
like I can learn so much from Sonya and from you,
and I feel like if I was starting an agency now,
I would do exactly what Sonya. So first of all,
I would have a production company. It would all be
in house. And I don't even know, Sonya, do you
(24:56):
have a big office space. I don't even know if
I would have an office.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
We didn't used to until we got the studio and
now we go twice a week because I do think
that the studio part. I do think the office part
is a little important. We were remote, fully, but it
helps people grow and get to know each other better.
But we do have people who are all over the
world too, unfortunately get to miss out on that.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
Yeah, I do think that when you're always remote, you
miss out on you know, just those all these things
that happen in the hallways. You know, I can't tell
you how many great ideas happen because somebody who was
working on something else came into my office and had
a different point of view, and you don't get that
on a zoom call. You know, you're just not going
to get that spontaneity. But you know, I do think
(25:40):
if I was starting, I would be I guess, because
my background is in writing, and I have a master's
in music, and I of course I met my husband.
That's how I met my husband writing jingles. He was
award winning composer and so that's we started writing together.
But I do think that I probably would have started
(26:02):
as a production company, you know, doing creative and then
having someone like Robin, who's brilliant and amazing working on
strategies on you you do strategy. I'm not know if
I'm really good on strategy. I think I come from it.
Speaker 7 (26:17):
I'm sure you're way better than on what you've said today.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
I don't know, you know, I mean the whole with AFLAC,
it was like that was not in the strategy the
client gave us, you know, and we were competing against
fifteen other agencies, and we asked him because they had
three percent awareness at the time, affleck, nobody knew what
who the hell I were?
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I said, you know, after all the other agencies. I left.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
I said, your strategy is brilliant everything, but if somebody
wakes you up in the middle of the night, and
that's a great thing to ask clients, what is it
that you would worry about if somebody woke you? And
he said, what worries me the most is even my
own relatives cannot remamber the name of my company. I said, well, okay,
you know what do you all said? Eighty percent of
life is just showing up and you spend zillions of
(27:04):
dollars and nobody remembers the name of your company. So
the first thing we're going to do is we're going
to figure out a way to make Flack a household name.
We're going to say it over and over again in
the commercials. And he said, how are you going to
do that? I said, I don't have a clue. And
then somebody, this brilliant team at the agency, Tom Amiko
and Eric David, pinched my nose one day and said,
(27:25):
say the name of the company. I said, a Flack
And he said, you know, you sound like a duck.
That was it, you know, and that gives you an
idea of the brilliant intellectual knowledge you need to run
an ad agency.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
But it's true.
Speaker 7 (27:42):
It's knowing a little bit about everything, right.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Well, it's also the spontaneity, you know.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
Yeah, it's just going. I will tell you one thing
that's underused is humor. I don't think people realize how
valuable humor is. One of the things I talk about
in my speaking gigs is everybody should have a voice,
no matter what. They could be the messenger, they could
(28:07):
be your assistant, they could be.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
The guy in the mail room. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
Of course, there probably isn't a mail room anymore, but
that's beside the point. In Canada, there's this product called Shreddy's.
It's like it's shredded wheat, and it was the same
product for thirty something years and the client wanted it
to be made new and exciting because they couldn't get
the thing off the shelves and well, what are you
doing to the product? Are you making it bigger? Are
(28:33):
you making it adding more stuff to it? No, no,
it's not changed. And they were about to give up,
and then this one young guy who was just an
apprentice for the summer picked up the square and said,
apropos of nothing. And by the way, I've always hired
a lot of up and coming comics who have gone
on to great things because I believe that comedians see
things in such a nice, disparate lateral point of view.
(28:57):
He picks up the square and he goes, well, when
you look at this way, it's a square, but if
you turn it forty five degrees, it's diamond shape. And
everybody like fell silent, except the creative director, who said
that's genius. He said, what do you mean and she says,
here's how we're going to rebrand it. So they came
out with Diamond Shreddi's Oh Wow Wow and Diamond Treddi's
(29:21):
Look it Up on YouTube. On YouTube was the most
successful brand I think relaunch ever in the history of Canada. Uh,
and people swore that it tasted better.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
I mean, everybody was in on the joke.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
And then they even for people who like the original,
they came up with a combo pack. So, I mean,
it just shows you that you can get ideas from anywhere,
even if you feel like there's nothing there. And Sonya,
I'm sure that you you see that all the time
of like what am I going to do next?
Speaker 7 (29:51):
Yeah, it's some of the prep questions.
Speaker 6 (29:52):
I think one of the one of them was like,
you know what lessons you've learned from marketing? I literally
wrote down because I prep I have to I think
you're with your improv much better on your feet, which
sounds like I need to go to improv and sounds
like I need to hire something. So those are the
two things I'm definitely taking away from the action steps
for next But one of the things I wrote down
(30:13):
is ideas can come from anywhere and everyone, right and
again to your point of the amount of time someone
has walked, even to a point where I recently walked
in and said I have a great idea, or even
like people I've hired for a role before we started
doing production. I hired this girl as my executive assistant,
(30:37):
and she turned out to be a great producer, and
she started our entire production company because everyone was like
the first shoot, everyone was like, wait, Nick, he's your
executive assistant.
Speaker 7 (30:48):
She's not a producer.
Speaker 6 (30:50):
She was like doing all these things and it quite
literally launched an entire part of our business. My digital
strategist got us into motion right like it was really
good with video, so like he got us into motion
early on He's like, video is going to be the future.
Speaker 7 (31:07):
Got us into motion.
Speaker 6 (31:08):
So like these disciplines we have within the agency, we
wouldn't have them if it wasn't for them from hiring people,
giving them a shot, seeing what they're good at. And
in a small agency like mine, you.
Speaker 7 (31:21):
Have to wear many hats.
Speaker 6 (31:22):
Like my people got to be able to do multiple things,
Like I can't just have a creative be a creative.
I need a creative to produce. Creative produce as well,
and that's when you kind of they get to gain
other skills as they do that, but then you also
get to see their brilliance, whether it's in art direction,
whether it's in for some people in copywriting. I'll give
(31:44):
another example, the girl that's written most of our lines.
You've given a couple of brand examples, but we work
on a lot of Nike work. And for Black History Month,
we were asked to kind of tell the story of
these four athletes. Their campaigned, their major camp at the
time was never done. And we looked at the talent
(32:04):
and we said, well, these people are doing work year round.
So on March first, we dropped a billboard that said
making Black histories never done with their faces up.
Speaker 7 (32:13):
And that was the main tagline. But that girl came
from randomly.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
My best friend was doing a snapshot show that was
called Wild Black, and she said, I came across this
brilliant girl named Brodney, shout out to Rodney and sent
me an email. I happened to be going through my inbox.
Four or five years later saw the email. No, we
(32:39):
had another campaign for Meta for black and brown small
businesses coming up, asked her to submit some writing samples,
jumped on a call with her, hired her, and now
she's our lead copywriter.
Speaker 7 (32:53):
Oh my, she wrote that line and she's written multiple billboards.
Speaker 6 (32:57):
She's fixed senior writers work like senior writers will send
stuffing because we freelance a lot of work.
Speaker 7 (33:04):
She'll come in, she'll see it, she'll fix it.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
There's times me and her, somebody a creative has given
me a great idea, they weren't able to write it.
I get on an hour before pitch with her and
I'm like, Rodney, this is the idea. I need you
to write it. We walk into the pitch and it's
like the idea that wins. Literally, great ideas can come
from anywhere, and so we're home my remote. She lives
in Philadelphia, she's not even in La There you go.
(33:28):
You know, hopefully she'll be with me for a very
long time.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
But you know, it's a great story, great story.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
You know what I also hear both with that Affleck
story Linda and your EA story as well. The story
with your EA rather, Sonya, is just the fidelity to serendipity, right.
You know what I've noticed is that and you all
know this right as co founder CEOs, A lot of
times when you're looking at the profit margin, looking at
the spreadsheet, looking at the business, that can block out
(33:56):
access to creativity, right. But here what I'm hearing is fidelity, serendipity.
And you know that could come from anywhere or anyone, Sonya,
I will say, looking at your repertoire, some of your
work doesn't necessarily come from just any old person off
the street. But in reality, some of the folks that
you've been able to work with, I would say, are
so famous they don't even need last names.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
Kobe Lebron Rina. Yeah, I'll ask this.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
You know, what is it like working with those global
superstars and did a lot of that early work for
you and your time at Nike serve as input into
your existing projects today, like the focus groups or what
did you take from that experience?
Speaker 6 (34:36):
Yeah, I go back to the human centered approach. At
the end of the day, some of these athletes are
so big and so great they feel out of touch
to people. But as an example, Kobe is someone who
like he might be one of the greatest players to
have ever lived by the end of the day, his work, ethic,
his tenacity, Linda, his grit is something every to can
(35:00):
connect with. So really like learning those deep insights about
the athletes we work with and like I often part
of my process when I was writing strategy and I
was on the brand side, and even now, if I'm
working with a world class athlete, or if I'm working
with any athlete, I will spend so much time learning
their mentality, like what do they think, feel, do, and
(35:23):
then connecting that to the everyday consumer because that's really
where that beauty lies. Because not everyone can be Lebron
or Kobe or Serena, but what they can connect is
some aspect of them that they want to be like,
they want to aspire to be like. And I think
one of the things I also learned at Nike while
I was there, and Linda mentioned this a couple of times, is.
Speaker 7 (35:44):
Because Kobe is so.
Speaker 6 (35:47):
Serious and so like he has got that Manba mentality,
they had to always cut him with humor.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Yeap.
Speaker 6 (35:54):
That was like a way to make him not necessarily palatable,
but for the average human to kind of underst stand.
So when you think back to the Kobe system and
you think back to some of those like commercials that
he was on, they always try to give him a.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
Little more nuance through the humor.
Speaker 6 (36:12):
So that would be I would say, like one thing
when it came to you know, professional athletes, but one
thing again I really really want to impress upon especially
young marketers or.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
Anybody like listening to it.
Speaker 6 (36:23):
It really does truly come from like Linda you say,
like I don't know about strategy, but Linda, you know humans,
like you know people at their core, So like if
we can really get to that, like that's why all
briefs always start with who the consumer is, or at
least they should.
Speaker 7 (36:40):
Who's your consumer? Why do they care right?
Speaker 6 (36:42):
And how do you connect your product and its benefits
to what the consumer cares about? And Linda you mentioned
this a couple of times even with your aflex stories,
like what problem are you trying to solve for? Because
sometimes even the brand marketers that are sitting in the
companies don't know what problem they're trying to solve for exactly.
Speaker 5 (37:02):
Yeah, that isn't I mean, in the case of Athleck,
they had no idea that that was their problem until.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
We made them aware of it, you know.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
And I think that that is a problem because we
were so the advertisers, the brands are so focused on themselves,
you know. One of the people when we were doing
writing The Power of Nice, one of the other books
that Robin Cobell and I wrote, we wanted it among
our many interviews. He wanted to interview somebody in the
entertainment industry who was considered really nice. And at the time,
(37:33):
Jay Leno had the Tonight Show and he's considered one
of the nicest guys in show business. And so I
put a feeler out to somebody like in his press department,
thinking maybe i'd get a quote or something.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Do you know, the next day he calls me up.
He calls me directly on the phone.
Speaker 5 (37:49):
He said, Hi, this is Jay Leno, Like I wouldn't
know his voice, right, This is Jay Leno, have you
heard of me?
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Now?
Speaker 5 (37:55):
I heard you writing a book about being nice, and
I really want to I really want to tell you
some stories. And one of the things he told us
about was he said, you know, Letterman gets so pissed
off that I get guests back that he doesn't get back.
And the reason I get them back is because and
I learned Robin and I learned a valuable thing that
we put in our book, which is, he said, I
(38:17):
learned how to move the spotlight. What I do when
I interview a guest is and I get chills thinking
about this.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
He said.
Speaker 5 (38:24):
You'll see this when I interview somebody. I don't care
if their monosyllabic had no sense of humor. I will
always make them the funniest, smartest person in the room.
That's what my job is, he said. Where is the
other talk show hosts. It's all about let me show
you how cool I am, he said, And by moving
(38:47):
the spotlight on these people, they always came back because
I would always make them feel like a star.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Well, listen, I will say after that Jay Leno story,
f as your podcast host, I am shockingly insecure. But
I you know, I want to ask you both one
last question here because just you know, over this last
hour hearing both your story Linda, as well as yours Sonya,
it's clear that you all have a war chest of
(39:16):
really exciting accolades to point towards uh and and and
at the end of the night you look back and say,
you know what, I see success in my career here
here and here, and also a lot of that is
driven by your respective creative inspirations. Right now, I think
you two both know success really well on you know,
in the rear view mirror looks like up into the right,
(39:38):
up into the right, up into the right. In reality,
it maybe isn't the case. And so for the audience,
you know, and the folks listening on the podcast who
maybe running up against a wall, maybe hitting some kind
of creative block. You know, do you have any kind
of final words of advice or wisdom for maybe a
time when you yourself went through a period where you
(40:00):
and felt that your creativity ran out, and how did
you navigate that and anything else you'd like to share
with the audience as well along those lines.
Speaker 6 (40:08):
I think one thing that has helped me a lot
is being really true to myself and what makes me happy,
not the like accolades or like getting a certain job
or a title or any of those things. I think
I stopped change seeing that in my late twenties early
thirties and pivoted to and look, every job I've gotten
(40:32):
has almost been an accident. Like I didn't plan to
go into advertising, It just happened. I didn't want to
start an agency. It kind of I quit Nike. Nike
gave me an opportunity to freelance, which turned into another
gig into another gig before I found myself in a
position where I was like, Okay, well, I guess this
is a thing and I should make it a thing.
(40:52):
So I wasn't even like intentional necessarily about it for years.
And I think I could have been maybe a lot
more successful had I been, because in my mind I
was just trying to get to the next thing.
Speaker 7 (41:01):
At all times.
Speaker 6 (41:03):
But one of the things that I realized was very
very important to me was the belief in supporting people
who don't often get a shot, like and I didn't
know what that looked like. I realized when I was
working in Nike and Nike Basketball that was mostly supporting
men's product, men's dreams men's Like, so I really wanted
to make something not necessarily that necessarily spoke to women
(41:24):
at all times. That's what it's turned into. But where
we would hire like, it wasn't about me, It was
about giving other people a shot, right, Like it became
less about me becoming a CMO or a CEO or
of a major corporation and became more about, like, how
do I empower others through the work that I do?
And I think this is kind of nebulous, but I
(41:47):
always tell people, don't take a job you're going to
be miserable in to be working in sports, Like, if
you don't like that specific job, you're not going to
do a good job at it, and then you're not
going to succeed. Yes, there's a little bit of grid
and a little bit of rolling up your sleeves on everything,
and you're not gonna like everything about every job.
Speaker 7 (42:06):
But if you like the day to day work, I e.
Speaker 6 (42:10):
I love being creative, I love being like, I love
making things.
Speaker 7 (42:15):
I love like.
Speaker 6 (42:16):
I have people on my team who have worked at
Nike came to work with me and want to go
back to Nike. And then I'm the type of person
like I would never go back to a corporation. People
have asked, me, well, what if you got some really
really senior level position.
Speaker 7 (42:29):
I love what I do.
Speaker 6 (42:31):
When people ask me about selling my company, I'm like,
I don't, can't imagine because I love what I do
and I don't want to start over. So I think
that like that day to day love that's my biggest advice.
Love the thing you do every day and know that
there will be some hardships and some hard times. That
(42:51):
that would be how I define success. Do I love
what I do every day.
Speaker 5 (42:55):
I can't believe you're saying all this because it's basically
basically I believe too. I never set out. If you
knew me when I was growing up, I was never
the person who wanted to be class president.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
But I was always the person who wanted to.
Speaker 5 (43:09):
Write the skits those people so they could become class president.
I never wanted to run a company. I'd never thought
of myself as a business person. I still don't. I
only did it because I had this opportunity to. I
just hated where I was, and I said I'd rather
be selling pencils on the street than work for somebody.
And I had the opportunity with their blesses and I
(43:30):
basically I said to my husband, because we started on
our Brownstone, I said, I don't want to be big.
I just want to have this one account. And I said,
but what if I fail? He said, I'm not afraid
you're going to fail. He said, I'm afraid you're gonna
get too big and you're going to be really busy
because we had two little kids to write. But for me,
I honestly can say I never spent one day thinking
of like, oh, I want to get the agency bigger.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
It was always like, ooh do we have an idea
for this?
Speaker 5 (43:54):
We have the other thing I want to mention, which
you talked about, you know, I think and I always
talk about it when I do my talks, is and
I've heard this term goals of the soul. People who
have grit, and companies that are successful almost to a person,
are successful because they're working as something that is beyond
(44:18):
just themselves. Colin Powell is a SEA minus student. I'm
so glad to have had his friendship. We both went
to City College. I was on the board of his
school and he said, I was a C minus student
until I discovered the ROTC and I wanted to be
a soldier, not to wear a shiny uniform, because I
suddenly had this need to protect our country. And it
(44:40):
always just maybe well up with tears because I see
Nike doing that with empowerment. I see you doing that
with the brands, and as I go through each one,
I go, yeah, of course you're going to be successful
because you're doing this something that is bigger than you,
you know. And that's what I did in my company too.
(45:00):
It was like, I know, all these people are gonna
you know, they have they have mouse to feed and
kids to put through college. And and somebody asked me
why I want to win new business. I said, part
of the reason is because I don't want to fire anybody,
and I want you all to have to have work.
And they said, you know what best reason I've ever heard,
(45:23):
you know, sign me up for whatever's coming up. So
I'll end on that note of like just passionate goals
of the soul and just follow something that you love
and you're never going to feel like you work another day.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
Goals of the Soul. I love it.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Goals of the Soul.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Linda Sonya, thank you so much for joining us thank you,
Thank you out of the future legends of advertising. Sonya again,
congratulations on your induction into last year's Hall of Achievement.
Linda five years blated, congratulations.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
On your.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
AF Hall of Fame and this was an awesome discussion.
You're both to wonderful, lovely people, and thank you for
sharing your wisdom and your experience here on this podcast.
I'm Tim Natividad. Thank you for listening. We'll be back
with another episode before you know it. And for more
information on the American Advertising Federation, go to AAF dot org.
Hosts And Creators
Ross Martin
Hayley Romer
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