I don’t seek the spotlight and I never felt held back by my identity. Yet I am still reminded every day of the harsh reality of prejudice and discrimination our community continues to face post-pandemic. This has changed how I view my own identity and the importance of visibility and representation. It’s why I’m sharing my journey. I hope it can inspire future Asians in advertising and others from diverse backgrounds to benefit from the opportunities this industry can bring, whether you like the spotlight or not.

And, what’s so bad about a little shine?

It’s a rarity in today’s landscape to be at an agency network for a long period, and yet, I’m reaching 17 years at McCann. During my tenure, I have embraced challenges and opportunities alike, gone where needed (literally). It has sparked a profound shift in my perception of self and how I lean on the strength of my cultural values and more actively embrace my roots to show up.

As we close out another Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Month, here are reflections and learnings from my time in advertising.

Find a workplace that works for you

There is no creativity without individuality. Individuality and your worldview make the work unique, interesting and exciting. If every piece were made without personal influences, it would all be the same. And in the workplace, that’s important for us business folks working with our creative and strategic partners and finding unique ways to sell and present to our clients.

Individuality, and being in an organization that encourages that, is crucial.

There’s an empowerment that comes with embracing individuality. It’s allowed me to build my path and lean into what brings me joy and purpose, even if it means moving across the world to take on an opportunity and new role I didn’t see coming.

Enjoy the ride

Have a point of view. Have a genuine passion for what you do, whatever that might be. It will show and everything will become more enjoyable as a result. 

Having been at an organization for a long time, while it may seem almost against the zeitgeist, it’s where I’ve found the most support. People chase a quick hit or a quick promotion, but you’re missing the support system, the advocacy and mentorship needed for professional growth.

It’s funny. My true self is direct. Some people read into that a lot but it’s just me trying to get the job done. If I were to fully change that, I am sure people would consider it disingenuous and that is not a great foundation to start any relationship, professional or personal.

Do great work, get it done with people you like and enjoy the ride. Embracing your individuality is equally important to bringing your true self to work every day and giving it your all.

Hang on to your cheerleaders

At each stage of my career, I’ve been fortunate to have advocates who championed me, allowing me to deliver against any challenge set before me, quietly and with my head down.

Find your advocate but know they will also seek you out – that one person who you know has your best interest at heart, the one who champions you for what you deliver, respects you for who you are and pushes you to be better. It will make all the difference in your growth. And when you have that, hang on to it as long as you can. Happiness and fulfillment are essential to survive in this industry as it is a demanding job with many ups and downs.

it’s important to pave the way for inclusivity and empower the next gen of not just AANHPI trailblazers, but all underrepresented and marginalized groups. My journey has been different, and I’m inspired by the visibility and representation I see.

And to those who made this space for me—thank you. You know who you are.

Adcolor, the trade organization that celebrates and promotes creative industry diversity, will host its 2024 conference and awards from Nov. 14 through Nov. 16 in Los Angeles. This year, the event’s theme is “Off Mute,” which refers to Adcolor’s broader goal to encourage industry employees to speak out and take action to defend racial equity initiatives.

The Adcolor Awards launched in 2007 and recognize diverse communities who embody Adcolor’s mission, “Rise Up, Reach Back.”

In partnership with ADWEEK, Adcolor will honor Dany Garcia, founder and chairwoman of The Garcia Companies, as its 2024 Adcolor | ADWEEK Beacon Honoree.

With the Beacon Award, Adcolor recognizes leaders who leverage their platform to advance diversity, equity and inclusion. Garcia, who is Cuban American and whose parents are immigrants, said in a statement that she hopes to lead by example. Garcia invests in hiring and partnering with a diverse group of people.

“It’s an honor to be recognized by Adcolor and ADWEEK as the 2024 Beacon Award Recipient. My mission has been, and continues to be, about making impactful decisions that shape workplaces and cultures across industries while creating opportunities for others. By redefining the very essence of “success”—with fiduciary responsibility as guiding the execution and emphasis on equity in the process—success becomes symptomatic of the work and a tangible, actionable reality,” said Garcia, in a statement to ADWEEK.

Dany Garcia is Adcolor’s 2024 Beacon Honoree

Garcia’s ventures include Seven Bucks Productions—the entity behind the Jumanji franchise, Hobbs & Shaw, Rampage and the Netflix hit, Red Notice. She also works across companies including UFL, GSTQ, ZOA, Tequila, Under Armour’s Project Rock line, Acorns, Atom Tickets and Salt & Straw. In 2020, when Garcia acquired UFL (formerly XFL), she became the first woman with a co-equal or majority ownership stake in a U.S. major professional sports league.

“Dany Garcia, through her visionary leadership and trailblazing accomplishments as a Cuban American icon, has consistently championed diversity and inclusion in a wide span of industries. Her unwavering commitment to amplifying underrepresented voices and creating opportunities for diverse talent makes her the most deserving recipient of the 2024 Adcolor | ADWEEK Beacon Award,” said Tiffany Warren, Adcolor’s founder and president, in a statement to ADWEEK

Adcolor will recognize Garcia at its Nov. 16 award show. Following the recognition, ADWEEK will publish an in-depth interview with Garcia in December.

In December, the marketing technology firm Epsilon named Jeff Smith its new chief marketing officer. Smith succeeds the company’s former marketing leader, Jon Beebe, who stepped down last year to found the consultancy, QuirkWerk.

For more than 25 years before joining Epsilon, Smith worked in marketing or data-adjacent roles at companies including Oracle, Nielsen, LiveRamp and several high-growth startups.

“I can say that I am old enough to have seen what marketing and advertising looked like before the whole digital revolution took hold, and really been a part of that journey since it did,” Smith told ADWEEK. “The common thread? It’s always been focused on servicing the CMO and helping marketers better wield data.”

In 2019, Publicis Groupe acquired Epsilon and now relies on it to power its PeopleCloud audience management platform—media planning and activation software that guides clients’ investment strategies. For its holding company, Epsilon plays a crucial role as an in-house data asset and opens new revenue streams with its product offering, since technology assets like PeopleCloud often sway media agency review outcomes. Now, holding companies are competing for the most comprehensive dataset and technology platform interface. By the end of 2022, Epsilon was rolling out a PeopleCloud rebrand that simplified its product by comparing data to building blocks.

Before accepting the CMO role last year, Smith was a senior advisor at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and an independent consultant to brand marketers. In both roles, he noted chief marketers’ pressing challenges. After exploring Epsilon’s offering, he realized its product suite provided solutions to common problems his former clients flagged.

“There’s some low-hanging fruit with Epsilon, in the sense that the company has invested very little in marketing historically,” Smith said.

He spoke further with ADWEEK about what drew him to the CMO role and marketers’ biggest tech stack challenges.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

ADWEEK: What about Epsilon, specifically, was attractive to you?

Smith: When Epsilon first reached out to me, I had not thought a lot about the company since the Publicis acquisition. When I started doing a little bit of due diligence, I saw all the things my clients were telling me that they needed. I saw a CDP; I saw a cleanroom; I saw a DSP; I saw a retail media network; I saw an SSP … Everything that marketers are asking about right now, this company has.

You’ve spent a lot of time in your career advising CMOs, and now you are a CMO. Talk me through some of the advice that you have given that you’re going to employ for Epsilon.

As a consultant, there were broad-based challenges that I would hear from marketers very consistently when it came to marketing technology, advertising technology, identity resolution and their tech stack in total.

One, the tech stack is not doing what it needs to do—cost-effectively delivering sales in the near term while at the same time building the brand relationships that ensure sales continue in the long term. If you spend enough money on either branding or performance, you can drive the needle up. But the point is, you’ve got to do that cost-effectively and in a way that makes sense.

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Why do marketers think their tech stacks aren’t doing what they need to do? What is missing?

The ability to pull the different pieces together.

Marketers have to engage through channels in order to engage at scale, and channels materially limit their ability to engage in those natural types of conversations that help them build a strong relationship with the consumer. They have the ability to build consumer profiles. They have the ability to engage with consumers in different channels. They have all the pieces, but they can’t pull that all together so that the brand is speaking to the consumer with a single, harmonized voice across all those channels.

The second challenge is that the tech stack is overly complex. Marketers want to invest their energy working with a limited number of vendors who don’t just bring point solutions to the table but bring everything they need to accomplish that goal of building a brand while driving sales.

That may lead you to think, ‘Oh, okay, you’re saying everyone should be using a marketing cloud or wants to use a marketing cloud.’ But the issue there, is that it usually precludes marketers from being able to do something else they want to do, which is work with cutting-edge new technologies that greatly improve their ability to hit objectives.

So, they’re caught in this ‘in-between’ space, thinking, ‘I’ve got to go all-in with the marketing cloud; I’ve got to stitch together a bunch of point solutions—ID resolution; DSP; CDP; cleanroom, etc…—to make this work.

Three is, this is all changing ahead of cookie deprecation. Marketers have already got tech stacks they don’t think are working ideally. The tech stacks are about to start working a lot less ideally.

In this episode of The Speed of Culture podcast, host Matt Britton welcomes Jill Cress, chief marketing and experience officer at H&R Block, to discuss the tax preparer’s strategic pivot toward digital and mobile experiences, the impact of AI on consumer financial interactions, and insights into career longevity in the rapidly evolving tech landscape.

The financial services industry is rapidly evolving, with technology at the forefront of this transformation. As more consumers migrate toward digital solutions for their financial needs, companies like H&R Block are pivoting to meet these new demands with innovative products and services.

Cress has witnessed and contributed to the seismic shifts in this sector through her extensive career at companies like MasterCard and PayPal.

“H&R Block built the tax category, and we’re here working to continue to energize it and revitalize our brand as the best way to facilitate that tax experience, and do other things like provide those financial solutions through our mobile banking app and do more jobs for small businesses,” she says.

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Cress is a seasoned marketing executive with over 30 years of experience shaping consumer behavior and business strategy in the financial services, media and technology sectors. She has demonstrated her prowess in roles across several Fortune 500 companies.

Before her current role at H&R Block, Cress was vp of brand marketing for PayPal. She also served as chief marketing and communications officer at National Geographic, and had a transformative 20-year career at MasterCard Worldwide.

Listen to Jill Cress on the Speed of Culture podcast for engaging marketing strategies and insights into digital transformation in the finance sector.

Key takeaways:

00:50-04:30 Career Longevity in a Rapidly Changing Industry — Reflecting on her over two decades at MasterCard, Cress shares insights on the importance of career longevity and the benefits of deeply understanding one’s industry. She credits her varied roles and geographical moves within the company as key to her professional growth and adaptability. Brands can foster employee loyalty and institutional knowledge by creating environments that encourage internal growth and provide diverse opportunities.

09:20-14:40 Digital Transformation and Customer Experience — H&R Block’s strategic shift toward enhancing digital and mobile experiences for customers is paramount. Cress highlights the launch of a mobile banking app designed to offer comprehensive financial solutions at a lower cost than traditional banking. This shift not only meets the growing consumer demand for digital services, but also strengthens H&R Block’s relationship with its customers. Embracing digital transformation to meet contemporary consumers can help brands strengthen customer relationships.

17:30-22:00 Integrating AI in Financial Services — Cress discusses the role of AI in transforming financial services at H&R Block, particularly through the development of an AI tax assistant. This tool leverages large language models to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of services offered to H&R Block’s clients. Brands should invest in AI technologies to enhance service, improve customer satisfaction, and maintain a competitive edge in their industry.

27:50-32:15 Navigating Brand Transformation — H&R Block implemented a strategic pivot from a traditional tax service provider to a technology-forward, digitally equipped brand. During this change, Jill explains the necessity of maintaining core values like trust and reliability while innovatively meeting modern customer demands. For sustained relevance and growth, brands must continuously evolve and adapt their strategies to align with changing consumer preferences and technological advancements.

39:00-44:25 Innovative Marketing Strategies — Highlighting a unique campaign, Cress shares how H&R Block created a fake reality show called Responsibility Island to engage younger audiences, particularly Gen Z. This creative approach, inspired by the popular series Love Island, not only captured attention but also educated viewers about financial responsibility in an entertaining way. Brands should consider unconventional and engaging marketing strategies to capture the attention of younger demographics.

Kimberly-Clark’s incoming chief growth officer, Patricia Corsi, who will start the role on July 1, is in a good position.

Prior to the pandemic, the company’s chief executive, Michael Hsu, was reluctant to invest more money in marketing.

“Back in 2018, 2019, I did not feel we had all the capability we needed to spend that significantly,” Hsu told analysts during an April earnings call. “I wasn’t confident what the advertising was going to do.”

After years of testing, restructuring and pouring more money into digital channels, the Texas-based manufacturer behind Kleenex tissues, Huggies diapers and Cottonelle toilet paper has changed its tune. Last year, Kimberly-Clark’s advertising budget represented 5.3% of net sales, up from 4.5% in 2022. The difference amounted to a $174 million increase, and the company plans to increase ad spend again in 2024.

Besides marketing, Corsi will also be responsible for design, insights, analytics, innovation and revenue growth management — like other top marketers tasked with doing more in the current environment. She will succeed Alison Lewis, who is retiring after serving in the position for five years. Corsi declined to discuss which media channels she plans to invest the company’s ad budget, stating she still has yet to start the job.

One area she has earmarked for growth is Kimberly-Clark’s Depend and Poise brands, which offer incontinence products for adults. As the world’s population ages, demand for such products is bound to rise, she told ADWEEK.

Yet, these topics are not something everyone feels OK talking about, she noted.

“Not being able to get out of the house and have social connections because you have incontinence is something quite dreadful,” said Corsi, who is planning to get consumers comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Kimberly-Clark’s feminine care brand Kotex presents another opportunity: “Imagine a consumer being embarrassed to even be seen in front of some store shelves,” said Corsi.

Corsi has experience with trying to remove the taboo from certain categories. In her former role as chief marketing and information officer of Bayer’s consumer health division, Corsi and her team created the Vagina Academy. The educational online platform, which featured frank discussions and images about vaginal health, was a vehicle to promote the pharmaceutical giant’s dermatology brand Canesten, which treats vaginal yeast infections.

The power of brand

Corsi is aware she can drive sales by leveraging Kimberly-Clark’s 150-year history as a pioneer and authority in the marketplace.

She plans to use that brand value not just to market sensitive products, but also to give consumers a good reason to remain loyal to Kimberly-Clark, as years of inflation have tempted shoppers to find cheaper alternatives.

“In every single country I’ve lived and worked, if you deliver products that deliver an outstanding experience, consumers will stay with you,” said Corsi, who has held marketing positions at Unilever and Heineken. “And this is not something just for rich consumers.”

While the situation isn’t unique to Kimberly-Clark, the company has generated more revenue in recent years from charging higher prices than increasing the number of items sold. In 2023, for example, Kimberly-Clark’s $20.4 billion in net sales benefited from a 6% price increase amid a 2% decline in volume.

In this episode of Brave Commerce, Dan O’Leary, J.M. Smucker svp and general manager for sweet baked snacks and pet food, joins hosts Rachel Tipograph and Sarah Hofstetter to offer insights into growing into his leadership role by approaching everything from teams to strategy as a building exercise.

Early in his career, O’Leary realized that “if you don’t find some different paths, you’re not going to stand out at all.”

Even though he has worked at a series of CPG and food companies, O’Leary has made a point of raising his hand for the complicated and unpopular opportunities. These choices gave him the opportunity to stretch, feel uncomfortable, and thus differentiate himself. 

Roles at Mizkan and Hostess gave O’Leary the opportunity to lean into his passion for building. Whether it be building brands, building teams or building strategy, O’Leary considers himself a builder first. 

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One key to building brands is increasing household penetration, and O’Leary learned to have a maniacal focus on customer acquisition during his time at Digitas. He shares a story about taking a whole new approach to increase usage for Philadelphia Cream Cheese. He took the lead from the consumer and embraced learnings about how they were using the product to create a new marketing strategy.

As a leader, O’Leary prioritizes communication. Even when he thinks he’s communicating too much, he has often realized he could do a little more. Now at J.M. Smucker, O’Leary sends a weekly email to keep the team informed about progress, united around goals, and clear about their next steps and objectives. 

Mentorship both from his leaders and team has been key to helping O’Leary grow as a leader. One mentor, Jill Baskin, former CMO of Hershey’s, helped him realize that there are “a lot of times when good can be good enough, and a lot of times when great is not good enough and you have to strive for excellent.” Another mentor was someone who reports to O’Leary and whose example of balancing parenthood and career helped him think about how to make the right trade-offs when he became a father.

Key takeaways:

• Take opportunities to differentiate yourself and your resume.
• Listen to and learn from your consumer about how they use your product.
• Model balance to help your team make the right trade offs for themselves.

First, The Walking Dead. Later, the Oscars. Now, Star Wars. Design and make software brand Autodesk is tied to an embarrassment of intellectual property riches, and its marketing is leveraging this to reach potential customers.

Autodesk software is used to design elements of high-profile pieces of entertainment, including at Lucasfilm and Disney to bring the Star Wars universe to life. Now, Autodesk is telling that story in its latest campaign, which kicked off on May 4, the unofficial Star Wars holiday, and will run through the debut of Disney+’s new show The Acolyte.

As part of the 60-second ad, Autodesk released never-before-seen footage of the development of Pip, the newest droid that will appear in The Acolyte. Ads for the campaign will air across Disney and Hulu, and will be supported with programmatic buys and paid social content.

Additionally, fans can design their own droids using a free trial to enter into a contest to get their droids displayed at Lucasfilm in San Francisco or Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif.

It’s part of CMO Dara Treseder’s plan to bring the B2B brand to consumers by thinking like a B2C brand, making genuine connections with consumers using pieces of culture its target audience adores. But once a potential customer is hooked, Treseder’s team has potential customer journeys mapped out, with content designed to move people through the funnel.

Treseder spoke with ADWEEK about Autodesk’s full-funnel marketing plan and how to gain the trust of her company’s stakeholders in order to build a marketing organization that services the business’s needs.

“The emotional investment that people have in B2B products is massive. The impact, not only for them, but for their teams and their companies is massive,” Treseder said. “Deepening that emotional connection is very powerful, it’s very important, and that’s been a big part of our strategy.”

Tapping into Star Wars culture

Reaching fandoms that intersect with a marketer’s brand is an effective way of building brand loyalists. For Autodesk, which has numerous IPs it can tap into due to its penetration in entertainment, that meant figuring out which shows or movies engineers and designers gravitate toward.

Star Wars jumped out, giving Autodesk a chance to “celebrate this audience by giving Star Wars fans a chance to design their own droids,” Treseder said.

When Star Wars fans land on Autodesk’s website, Treseder’s team has built out a content plan to capture emails and other information to gauge where someone’s consideration for purchasing Autodesk’s software might be.

“We call it brand to demand,” Treseder said.

Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets.

Dara Treseder, CMO, Autodesk

The team has spent almost two years getting it “down to a science,” according to Treseder. The demand campaign contains elements of education, consideration and nurturing for those customers who aren’t ready to buy, but Autodesk wants to stay close to them via a content plan until they are ready to convert.

And it’s working, based on several key metrics that Treseder stresses measure business results and not marketing results. In an age when traffic to webpages is dropping, Autodesk has sustained a 5% lift, with 90% of traffic to its campaign landing page coming from new visitors. This has translated to nearly 55,000 business leads.

Building Autodesk’s marketing culture

Marketing is in the DNA of Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost. He moved in and out of marketing at Autodesk during his 27 years at the company, and his final role before ascending to the CEO position was as chief marketer.

Treseder said Anagnost understands “what it means to be successful as a CMO. And so I have the autonomy and the decision making authority to do the job.”

Getting to this point meant laying out her vision from the start of her Autodesk tenure 20 months ago and immediately executing it. “I like to say I’m stubborn on the vision, but I’m flexible on the details.”

Within her first month, Treseder’s team launched a Walking Dead campaign as the first foray into connecting the brand to culture and entertainment.

Treseder has focused on speaking her stakeholders’ language. That’s getting on the same page as her CEO, COO and CFO, explaining “how marketing is in service of the business, not just marketing in service of marketing.”

She’s found it’s important to explain the full timetable of a campaign in order to avoid knee-jerk reactions when the results don’t immediately come (think Solo Stove’s assumption that a brand awareness campaign in December would immediately sell fire pits).

“What are your leading indicators and your lagging indicators, and you have to set that up front early because you don’t want things to be killed before the lagging indicators can show up,” Treseder added.

Ultimately, it’s also easier to get buy-in when the results are there. Autodesk’s most recent quarterly revenues are approximately 15% higher than the last quarter before Treseder started the role in October 2022.

Condé Nast chief revenue officer Pamela Drucker Mann announced her departure from the media company this morning, according to an internal memo shared by the company.

Mann, who joined Condé Nast as the sales director for beauty at Jane magazine in 2005, has served as the media company’s chief revenue officer since 2019. She is the first woman to have held that role at Condé Nast.

She will remain with Condé Nast through the summer as she transitions out of the organization and has no immediate plans for her next move. The company will soon begin the search for her replacement.

“I couldn’t be more proud to have spent 19 years working with the best brands and the most talented people in the world,” Mann said in a statement. 

“While I’m excited about what’s next, Condé is and will always be a part of me—it’s ingrained in my DNA, and I will always be here to support the company, its renowned brands and the incredibly talented global team, every step of the way,” she added.

Overseeing an era of change

During her tenure, Mann helped steer Condé Nast through an immense period of change in the media business. When she first joined the company, Instagram was five years from launching, few publishers had robust websites, and the specter of artificial intelligence remained the stuff of science fiction.

After starting at Jane, she went to Glamour and later Bon Appétit as publisher. She was appointed Condé Nast chief marketing and revenue officer in 2017, before assuming the sole role of CRO in 2019. 

Together with CEO Roger Lynch, who joined Condé Nast in 2019, the two guided the business through a period of unprecedented tumult. 

The company weathered a meltdown at Bon Appétit, a global pandemic, a sharp decline in social media traffic, a series of layoffs and, most recently, a protracted dispute with the labor union representing Condé Nast staff.

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Under Mann, Condé Nast also overhauled its sales infrastructure to operate as a global company, and it transitioned into a digitally native operation wherein the majority of its revenue comes from digital products. 

In 2021, the company said it generated its first profit in years. More recently, Condé Nast posted flat revenue gains in 2023, with losses in advertising offset by growth in its subscription, commerce and events businesses, according to Axios.

“[Mann] is leaving at a time when our commercial operations are better than ever because she’s built a tremendous team of leaders and experts around the globe,” Lynch said in a statement. “They have been resilient to the publishing industry’s headwinds, always pivoting and finding ways to over-deliver and put us on top.”

Her departure comes at a key juncture for the media industry, as generative AI threatens to undermine the landscape of search traffic, as well as core functions like the production of text, imagery and video.

“What started as a print magazine company now reaches over a billion consumers worldwide, and bringing in new audiences has unlocked creative and commercial opportunities never before imagined,” Mann said. 

“This incredible transformation would not have been possible without your dedication and hard work, and I’m honored to have been a part of it,” she added.

Growing up, I had little to no idea what I wanted to do when I got older. What I did know from a very young age, however, was that I needed to make money to buy the things I wanted that my parents couldn’t afford. That led me to my first job in the restaurant business at just 15 years old. 

From there, through college, I held almost every position there was to hold across the industry, front-of-house to back. I’ve done it all: barback to bartender, errand runner to delivery driver, long hours on my feet, double shifts into the wee hours of the morning, coming home smelling like grease… Little did I know it was shaping me to be gritty, tenacious, flexible and entrepreneurial in ways not many other jobs could have. 

After graduating with a marketing degree, I finally knew advertising was without a doubt what I wanted to pursue as a career. A couple months into my first agency gig, I started to pick up on things that felt reminiscent of my restaurant days: late nights preparing for pitches, keeping lots of plates spinning simultaneously, managing regular fire drills and juggling mile-long to-do lists. I felt right at home, even if I wasn’t exactly sure why at the time. And although advertising has changed a lot in the last 20 years, one thing hasn’t: The business is nothing short of organized chaos.

But that’s what we love about it, right? The thrill of the ups and downs. The late-night strategy sessions, balling up idea after idea until that magical concept rears its head. Getting to see our hard work manifest itself out in the world. It’s exhilarating and makes the nonstop frenetic pace tolerable, even, dare I say, enjoyable?

College students ask me all the time, “What’s the best way to prepare yourself for an ad job?” Some might answer, “Get an agency internship or two under your belt before you graduate,” or, “Be a student of advertising and build up a strong portfolio.” I’d consider both solid advice—but I answer that question by telling students that the absolute best preparation for a successful career in this industry is to start by cutting your teeth in the service industry, more specifically the restaurant business. And while you probably will never be expected to respond to a dehumanizing, cursing superior with “yes, ECD!”, the parallels and soft skills you will walk away with will perfectly match those required of you to become an incredible advertiser. 

Customer service = client service 

The first and probably most undeniable comparison is the customer-centric nature of both industries. Navigating the sometimes rigid expectations of a persnickety diner can be extremely challenging, requiring patience, tolerance and acceptance of the reality that, after all, they’re paying the bill. 

The same can be said for a tough client. Their expectation is that you will weather the storm of any request, large or small, even if by most definitions those requests could be deemed unrealistic. 

Mastering the art of customer service can be way more challenging to teach than some hard advertising-specific skills. So, this is a great place for any aspiring advertiser to start. 

Wearing many hats—and wearing them well 

Another critical and seamlessly transferable skill garnered in the chaos of a hospitality job is the ability to multitask. Fixing a broken ice machine, managing a slow kitchen that’s down one line cook, or explaining to one of your six tables why their steak is overcooked, all while in the weeds of a 7 o’clock dinner rush, is no small feat. 

In adland, especially in agency work, you’ll likely have a hand on projects across several clients with competing deadlines on a regular basis, and you’ll be prepared to handle it.

Attention to detail 

Even a small error or oversight in advertising work can result in significant consequences—both for your client or brand and for your company’s business. Attention to detail is another skill mastered in a restaurant environment where accuracy and precision are paramount for success. 

Think: taking and preparing orders correctly, perfecting plate presentation and remembering that a guest mentioned it’s their wife’s birthday. The little details matter. And it’s much easier to refine your eye for accuracy when the stakes are, well, steaks—not millions of dollars.

Thinking strategically on your feet

Restaurant work cultivates the ability to see three steps down the road and make strategic decisions quickly based on the information presented to you in real-time. In advertising, it serves you very well to anticipate and get ahead of a reaction or next request of your client or boss. 

If making thoughtful decisions under pressure is a challenge you face, take it from me: Go find yourself a kitchen job at a busy diner. Before long, you’ll be rewiring your brain to make calculated, split-second, strategic decisions on the fly with ease. 

As the list goes on, agency leaders would be hugely mistaken to overlook potential talent with experience rooted in the restaurant business. Advancing diversity in advertising includes creating space for people of all backgrounds who may not have the opportunity or resources to attend an expensive ad school or spend a summer or two on Madison Avenue. Up-and-coming talent should proudly tout these undeniably transferable skills when building a resume or moving through the interview process—it’s these very skills that will quickly catapult them up the advertising ladder. 

The good news is, while it’s certainly possible to have too many cooks in the kitchen, you never have to worry about having too many ideas or too many badass advertisers in the agency.

If you inherited your agency or have just won the Powerball and are thinking of starting up, you can stop reading right now. This is for the bootstrappers, the freelancers, the one-man-bands, the scrappy ones.

If you’re going to bootstrap your own thing, you’re going to have to learn to live with fear.

The big, obvious one is leaping from the comfort of a bimonthly paycheck, healthcare and a 401K match. And the further you are in age from the day of your birth, the scarier that leap is. Sometimes you choose to leap, sometimes you’re pushed. I’ve done both, and they’re equally scary.

So, that giant fear is behind you. But there are many less obvious fears you should know about if you are going to embark on this journey.

Straight off the bat, brand identity, company registration, legal contracts, company insurance, IT and banking are all on the very “front edge of your home office seat” stuff. But it’s new and exciting, so there’s a lot of good nervous energy.

Reaching out to your network is a different kind of fear. They loved you when you won those six Cannes Lions together and drank pink wine on the Croisette. But will they like you solo with no company credit card?

Turns out they do. Some of them. But they aren’t shifting their whole account to a one-person band, so you land a tiny project or two that might cover your daughter’s third semester in college, but definitely not your mortgage.

You need freelance help and make some calls. “How much do you charge a day!? OK, I guess. Crap, do you accept Venmo?”

Finding office space and signing a lease with no guaranteed income—that’s a lil scary. Co-working spaces like Industrious and WeWork make it slightly less so.

One expense I never trimmed was my weekly coaching session with Karen Crane; she was a huge help in talking me down when things inevitably got to be a lot and still is very valuable.

Trying to borrow money to make it through the startup months ain’t easy. Pro tip: Borrow money or take an extension on your home loan before you leave that paycheck behind. It’s impossible to borrow any money for your first two years in business.

Paying out all the money coming in for freelance and office space will get your pulse racing, but hiring your first person is truly terrifying. This is at the same time the scariest and most important thing you’ll ever do as a founder. It’ll happen before you can afford it or feel comfortable doing it. Way before.

Know that you cannot grow a successful advertising business alone.

Over 30 days, I interviewed more than 20 people at a local coffee shop, and then the Ad Gods delivered. Alexandra McInnis. A young, energetic, driven, smart woman with six years of experience who I would trust to run SpaceX, never mind a startup ad agency. Alex is the wind beneath our little Murder Hornet wings.

But knowing she had to give up a proper job at a real ad agency to join me—when I couldn’t afford to pay myself—was petrifying.

Together, Alex and I have been on a magical six-month run, doing big projects for global clients like Zoom and Bumble as well as Murder Hornet becoming the creative partner to Fortune 100 Company New York Life and Lipton Teas & Infusions’ Tazo brand.

And we did this while adding a few extremely special people to our “nest” and managing an enormous “swarm” of trusted and invaluable partners.

Everything gets easier with a little money coming in. After nine months, it feels like I no longer sit bolt upright in bed at 2 a.m. and think, “WTF have I done?” … as much.

Now it’s about trying to continually do great work, managing cash flow, choosing your pitches, growing efficiently and keeping the culture.

Thank God I hired Alex.

This article is part of an ongoing Voice series that takes a behind-the-scenes look at new agencies in their first year of business. For more on Murder Hornet, see the previous article, Why Would Anyone Name Their Ad Agency Murder Hornet?