The So What…

Insight is nothing without Action

recent posts

Curious about the crossover between agency and client life?
This space shares real talk, lessons, and strategy takes from someone who’s sat on both sides. Always with a clear So what? at the end.

Category: Uncategorized

  • AI isn’t the problem. Forgetting your value is.

    Everywhere I look this weekend I am reading the same headline: ‘Agency shareholder value is wobbling because of AI.’ Despite great quarterly performance, Automation is still coming.Headcount is still framed as risk. And the agency model is being challenged.So the conclusion follows neatly: AI is eroding agency value. I don’t think that’s quite right. In fact,…

  • Black Friday 2025: The Year Many Failed The Brand Stress Test

    Black Friday is meant to be a win-win.For brands, it’s a surge in demand and for customers, it’s permission to finally buy. But this year — for a lot of retailers — it became something else entirely:a very public stress test they weren’t ready for. Yes there were big discounts and a lot of big…

  • Is Your Strategy a To-do List in Disguise?

    Boards love a strategic plan.It sounds important. Serious. Like something that will finally give shape to the chaos. But more often than not, a “strategic plan” is just a very long to-do list in disguise.And we don’t call it out, that’s a problem. Strategy and Planning Are Not the Same Thing A strategy sets direction. It defines where we’re going…

  • A Super-wide Cinematic Instagram: Broken or Brilliant?

    When Instagram launched its new super wide, cinematic lens, my first reaction was… meh.In-feed? Fine. But click through to a brand’s actual page, and the big voids of black felt broken, wasted even. My OCD went a little off the charts. I wasn’t convinced it would catch on — unless someone found a truly creative way…

  • The Funnel is Broken. Enter ‘The Loop’

    “The funnel is broken.” It’s a line I’ve read more than once this year, hell a few times this week — but it’s not just provocation. It’s a reflection of a very real shift. Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll have probably felt it too. You type in a question into Google like:…

  • Urgent for Who? Rethinking Time Across the Client–Agency Divide

    When I worked agency-side, I couldn’t understand it. We’d send work to clients for review… nothing for days.We’d try to book a meeting about something urgent… and get the reply: “How’s a week on Tuesday? And yet if a client used the word urgent, we’d drop everything. Work weekends, late nights, Christmas Eve if we had to.…

  • “What a Croc of Sht”* — And Other Things I Imagine Were Said in the Columbia Briefing

    You can almost picture the meeting. The strategy team walk in with a deck full of “category conventions” — and everyone in the room knows what’s coming. Or they think they do. Slide after slide of spotless tent setups.Hikers grinning like they’ve just had their teeth whitened.Someone standing victorious at the top of a mountain…

  • The Power of Walking the Wall — And Why We Still Need It

    Before hybrid. Before Teams.Before Slack folders and Mira boards and campaign assets with names like final_FINAL_v8ONLYUSETHISONE_CCAmends.pdf… There was the wall. A real one. With actual work printed out. Held up with Blu Tack or bulldog clips. (Although Blue Tack officially got banned in one agency I worked in) A wall full of ads, headlines, scripts,…

  • Likeable? Or Just Unforgettable?

    There’s a line from a Cannes panel this year that’s stuck with me: “Your job is not to be universally loved. It is to be memorable.” It came during a session titled “DEI Didn’t Die”, and while the conversation centred on purpose-led work, the insight applies far more widely — especially in marketing and advertising.…

  • The Dangerous Woman at Work: Why Perimenopause Might Be the Ultimate Leadership Upgrade

    There’s something happening to women in their late 30s and 40s —and it’s not just hot flashes or hormone charts. It’s a vibe shift. A neurological rewiring. A f*ck-it power that’s as biological as it is behavioural. And I am totally here for it. You may have already witnessed it: women in midlife no longer…