The Lead by Emily K Thomas

Why this conversation matteredWhen a leader moves on, what can the team still do because she was there?I thought about that question when Oriane Canfrin described what she wanted for her marketing team at Ecobank Côte d’Ivoire. She had put work into building the function and wanted the people who came after her to inherit the tools to keep it useful. She gave her team a way to decide what deserved their time. Their work should add value or build legacy.Oriane gave her team three principles: add value, build legacy, and lead by example. The first two tell them which work is worth doing. The third asks whether the standard she wants from the team is visible in how she works.Oriane leads marketing and communications at Ecobank Côte d’Ivoire. She began her career through Unilever’s graduate program, and Cannes Lions named her to its 2026 Creative Commerce awarding jury. That combination matters here. She has had to make the case for marketing inside a business and assess creative work alongside people who bring very different market perspectives. Ecobank leadership · Cannes Lions jury profileIn the interview, she described wanting marketing to become what she calls a “profitability trigger.” I heard a question for anyone who leads a function that gets brought in late. How early do you need to be in the room to change the decision? If marketing first sees an offer when it needs a campaign, it has limited room to shape what customers are actually being asked to buy.The distinction shows up in the brief. Communications can help people understand an offer and measure whether the message reached them. Oriane wants marketing in the earlier discussion about what customers need, how the product works and what it costs. She also points out that connecting marketing spend to bank revenue takes trained people, tools and a way to trace what happened. A team can own that question only if it has a way to answer it.Her written follow-up took me to the other side of that question. Who gave her room to shape the work in the first place?The LEAD Signals from the conversationOpportunity · Give someone a chance to show you what they can doOriane was looking for an internship in Abidjan when Unilever’s Africa talent team called about its graduate program. Years later, at Ecobank, a different kind of recognition mattered. Oriane wrote that her confidence had taken a hit and she was considering leaving. Then Korédé Odjo-Bella arrived and saw abilities Oriane was struggling to see in herself. Her trust gave Oriane room to rebuild her confidence. Staying became one of the most consequential decisions of her career.Oriane also recalls meeting an unnamed mentor in Kigali in 2023. A few conversations there gave her advice she still uses when making decisions. Both stories made me think about what it takes to help someone see a possibility. Sometimes a conversation changes how they think. Sometimes the person with influence can also put them in the room or give them work that lets others see what they can do.Trust · Tell people what they need to know while they can still use itThe idea Oriane most wanted people to remember was the difference between being nice and being kind. In her written answer, she described niceness as making an interaction pleasant. Kindness asks for attention, a willingness to listen and, sometimes, a difficult conversation. She ended with two words I kept coming back to. “Kindness compounds.”Think of a colleague preparing for a meeting that could change their remit. Telling them the presentation looks great may make the conversation easy. If you can see that the decision they need is buried on slide twelve, telling them now gives them a chance to fix it. You can be direct about the issue and still make it clear you want them to succeed.In the interview, Oriane gave two more signals she looks for when the results are still unknown. She watches whether people put in the work even when a shortcut is available, and whether they’re genuinely curious about how things are done elsewhere. If I’m choosing a partner, I’d ask for one decision they changed after hearing something they hadn’t expected. The details tell me how they listen and what they do with what they learn.Oriane wrote me after the interview and provided additional answers that give us five ways a person, brand or idea earns confidence:1. What they do consistently matches what they say.2. They remain curious enough to listen before assuming they know.3. They tell the truth, including when it is uncomfortable.4. They show genuine interest in people, not only in what those people can do for them.5. They deliver consistently, especially when nobody is watching.Momentum · Bring back something your team can useOriane started Thinkle Creative Talks after asking how to share what she learned as a juror. The sessions began inside her team, with international case studies, guest perspectives and conversations about how to apply those ideas. Her written answer captures the premise in three words. “Knowledge should circulate.” Oriane’s account of Thinkle Creative TalksMy test for whether the knowledge has travelled is what someone can do with it a month later. Could a colleague use an example from the session to make a better case in a meeting? Could they adapt it to a different customer problem? The format matters less than whether it changes a decision.The 5K framework for making finance funIn one Thinkle session, Oriane and a teammate used award-winning financial services work to explore how to make finance more engaging. They shared the case films, then asked what Ecobank could actually apply. Their 5K framework gives the discussion a structure.1. Know your audience. Pick one group and name what they’re trying to do in the moment.2. Kick the category rules. Identify one industry convention that makes the experience harder than it needs to be.3. Keep them playing. Give people something useful to try, compare or decide for themselves.4. Keep it simple. Ask someone unfamiliar with the offer to explain it back in their own words.5. Keep it relevant. Test whether the idea helps this audience with a decision they actually face.Try it on a first-time savings flow. Replace a screen full of product terms with a simple tool that lets someone choose a goal, see what a weekly deposit would add up to, and decide what fits their budget. Ask them to explain what happens next. That’s where you find out whether the creative idea made the product easier to understand.My favorite partOriane’s account of Korédé really touched me because it showed what sponsorship can look like when someone is questioning their own ability. In the interview, she described being trusted with work and brought into executive rooms. In writing, she explained how close she had come to leaving.I asked Oriane what Korédé saw in her then. She said passion and hard work. She had spent months away from presentations and doubted abilities she’d already demonstrated. Korédé gave her major launches to work on and brought her to executive meetings. Those were chances to use her judgment again and have other people see it at work.Hearing those two pieces together made me think about the people whose work we value but rarely put in front of a decision-maker. The next time I tell someone I see potential in them, I want to be able to say where I’ve seen it and give them a chance to build on it.Oriane’s Chosen FiveA person more people should know · Thebe IkalafengOriane values how he connects brand building with African identity and economic value. His work raises a question about ownership as well as visibility. Who builds the brands and participates in the value they create? Brand AfricaA book that shaped her thinking · Atomic Habits by James ClearThe book sharpened her focus on the small actions people can repeat. She applies that thinking to learning, leadership and building teams, where a workable routine has more chances to change behaviour than a single d… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emilykthomas.substack.com/subscribe

How to Lead by Your DesignWhy this conversation matteredA capable person can spend years becoming more useful to a team without becoming more visible in its definition of leadership.They make a difficult conversation possible. They notice when a plan will fail in practice. They help someone recover enough confidence to contribute.The organization benefits. But when a bigger opportunity appears, it may still look for the person who most resembles its existing leaders.I keep thinking about the cost of that gap: the distance between the value someone creates and the value a decision-maker knows how to recognise.That is what I wanted to explore with Jaleh Zandieh.Jaleh is the founder of the Leadership Design Training Program. Her path began in physical therapy in Pennsylvania and expanded through international work and leadership consulting. Her official biography describes a career shaped by mentors, clients and colleagues who recognised capacities she had not yet claimed for herself.Read Jaleh’s biography.That experience matters to this conversation. She brings the perspective of someone who helped people recover their ability to participate, then began asking what happened when they returned to their working lives.She remembers patients celebrating their recovery and later returning while struggling with work demands. Some described increased responsibilities or doing several people’s jobs. She was careful about the limits of what she knew: she was treating them in a clinic, not observing their offices.Their accounts changed the question she wanted to investigate. What would it take to build a workplace where people can do meaningful work without exhausting themselves?That question runs through the mission behind her forthcoming book, Harmonize and Rise. Jaleh describes it as a collection of stories about how people build culture around the world. In our conversation, she brought that mission down to the decisions leaders make every day, from whose strengths they recognise to the support they give someone taking on more responsibility.My takeaway is that recognising potential creates a responsibility. Once we see what someone can contribute, we have to consider the conditions that would let them contribute well. Thank you for being here and I truly hope you enjoy meeting my dear friend, Jaleh!Emily K ThomasSignals from the conversationOpportunity Signal: someone can recognise a contribution before you have a title for itAmong the patients Jaleh worked with were military officers from different countries. She recalls their conversations extending beyond physical recovery to culture, understanding and leadership.Some suggested that the contribution she was making could become consulting work.They had encountered something specific. Their encouragement helped her consider a professional possibility that her existing job title did not contain.For someone in corporate life, I would ask: what do people repeatedly seek your help with that is missing from your formal description of your role?Then look for evidence. A colleague saying you are wonderful is encouraging. A colleague identifying the decision you helped improve gives you something you can explain and develop.Trust Signal: being curious about someone includes allowing them to surprise youJaleh describes nine leadership styles in her framework. But when I asked whether she could identify someone’s style simply by observing them, she acknowledged that she can get it wrong.A serious outward manner does not tell her everything about what that person finds meaningful. Someone who appears reserved may care deeply about creating joyful experiences.That is a useful reminder for anyone assessing talent. How much of our confidence comes from the person’s contribution, and how much comes from how familiar their presentation feels?Ask someone to describe a moment when they felt useful. Listen for what they noticed, what they did and what changed. Keep your first impression available for revision.Momentum Signal: develop the capacity the next opportunity will requireJaleh distinguishes leadership style from leadership stage. In her framework, the first concerns how someone contributes; the second concerns the capacity they are developing.“So it’s better to run a 5K before you run a marathon,” she says.My application is to get specific about the next step. A person can be ready for a bounded project while still needing support before taking responsibility for an entire function.What experience would help them grow? What support would make that experience useful? What would tell both of you that they are ready for more?My favorite partJaleh’s willingness to say she sometimes gets it wrong stayed with me.She has developed a language for understanding leadership differences, yet she leaves room for the person to tell her something the outward signals do not reveal.That matters because the appeal of any framework is speed. It helps us organise what we see. The responsibility is to notice when the framework has started replacing the person.I want to bring that discipline into my own work: be precise about the contribution I recognise, and curious about what I have missed.The deeper recordThe question I am taking forward is how recognition becomes a consequential opportunity.Being appreciated can feel good while leaving a person’s scope, influence and prospects unchanged. There needs to be a next decision.Here are three ways I would apply this conversation at work.1. Describe the contribution before describing the personInstead of stopping at “she is empathetic,” describe the moment.She noticed that the client had not understood the recommendation. She asked a question that made the uncertainty safe to express. The team changed the brief before spending another week on the wrong work.That example gives a decision-maker something to assess. It also helps the person understand what to repeat.Try three lines:• In this situation, you noticed…• You did…• That helped the team…Keep the result proportionate to what you can observe. You do not need to turn every thoughtful action into a claim about revenue.2. Give potential a supported next stepOnce you have recognised a strength, ask where it should have more influence.Perhaps the person who consistently clarifies customer confusion should help shape the next briefing process. Perhaps the colleague who makes disagreement productive should help design a difficult workshop.Define the assignment, the time available, the support and the review point. Make room by changing existing priorities where needed. Recognition should not quietly become an extra job added to someone’s full workload.A useful opportunity lets both sides learn whether the contribution travels into a larger responsibility.3. Look for the action inside a supportive relationshipJaleh tells a story about meeting someone again at a conference. They remembered her book, returned with tea because they recalled that preference, and connected her with an event organiser. A few weeks later, she was on a panel in Italy.The tea is a lovely detail. The introduction is the consequential action.It made me think about what it means to support someone’s work. Can you describe their contribution accurately? Can you introduce them to a relevant person? Can you give their idea a meaningful place in a decision?Jaleh also makes room for generosity without expecting the same person to repay it. Support becomes less useful when every interaction has to settle an invisible account.A tool to take into your next meetingChoose one contribution you think your team is overlooking. Write down four things.The contributionWhat does this person help us understand, decide or do? Name an actual example.The conditionsWhat time, access, support or permission helped it happen? What currently gets in the way?The next opportunityWhat bounded responsibility would let the person develop that contribution further? What will come off their plate?The … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emilykthomas.substack.com/subscribe

Why this conversation matteredA brief can be clear, polished and built on an incomplete understanding of the audience.The team has agreed on the idea. The presentation is ready. Then someone who spends every day talking to the people you want to reach joins the project.How much can they still change?That was the question I kept returning to with Austin Null.Austin is the founder and Chief Creator Officer of We Get It. He has worked as a full-time YouTube creator and on the brand and agency side of creator marketing. His official Cannes Lions speaker biography documents more than 15 years in the field, and his 2026 session explored building a creator-led campaign.That experience matters because he understands both the responsibility of making content for an audience and the commercial decisions behind choosing a creator.He has seen the friction when a brand arrives with a finished answer and asks a creator to deliver it to a community they know much better.His approach brings creators into strategy and creative development, where their knowledge can still change the work.I think there is an important lesson here for anyone building a brand or leading a team. Expertise becomes more useful when it arrives with enough time and authority to affect the decision.Our conversation also went somewhere more personal: the years of learning, publishing, reaching out and connecting people that preceded Austin’s visible momentum.Those two threads belong together. Understanding people takes time. So does becoming someone they remember when an opportunity appears.-EmilyMy favorite partMy favorite part was Austin’s reminder that the visible outcome leaves out much of the effort.He described two years of publishing on YouTube before reaching 4,000 subscribers. In the following year, he says that audience grew to 100,000.He also described building his agency behind the scenes and spending roughly two years having introductory conversations with people. Later, some of those connections returned with work.“These things take time.”I loved the simplicity of that line because I recognise the uncertainty behind it. In our conversation, I talked about the late nights and the questions that come with building something before there is much evidence that it is working.That is part of the work people rarely see.But Austin also added something important when I spoke about creating your own luck. Luck still plays a part. So do societal barriers and unequal responses to different people.I want to hold both ideas together.We can practise, learn, build relationships and improve our readiness. We cannot promise ourselves that effort will produce the same result, on the same timeline, for everyone.The useful question is what the effort is helping us build, and what we are learning along the way.• • •The LEAD Signals from the conversationOpportunity Signal: build relationships with room for an unexpected outcomeAustin describes reaching out because he wanted to understand what someone was doing. A conversation might last half an hour. There might be no immediate next step.Much later, someone could return with work. Or he might remember that person’s expertise when another connection needed help.What interests me is the specificity of that memory.A useful conversation can leave you knowing what someone understands, what they care about and which problem they are particularly good at solving.That gives an introduction substance.For someone inside a company, the application could be a conversation with a colleague in another function before you need their approval. What are they responsible for? Where does the work get difficult? What do they wish other teams understood?Keep enough context to remember them accurately. Ask permission before making an introduction. Let the relationship have value even if it never becomes a transaction.Trust Signal: examine what the numbers leave unresolvedAustin considers engagement, audience location and performance. He then looks at the storytelling and the quality of the audience conversation.A creator can meet the numerical requirements while producing something poorly matched to the brand’s purpose.He also describes looking for signs that comments might be coordinated among creators.I would treat that as a reason to investigate, rather than a reliable way to pronounce a community authentic or fake. Comments are one source of evidence. They cannot, by themselves, prove influence, identify AI or establish commercial value.The useful discipline is to connect the scorecard to the actual work.What are people responding to? What questions do they ask? Does the creator understand the situation the brand wants to enter? Can they explain why a particular piece of content worked?A number can help narrow the field. Judgment still has work to do.Momentum Signal: look for learning inside the repetitionAustin’s consistency story includes asking other creators how they made an edit, proposing collaborations, reading about the industry and talking to people.Those details matter. Repeating an activity and improving through it are different things.If you are building a practice, a reputation or a business, ask what your repetitions are teaching you.Are your questions getting better?Can you describe the problem more clearly?Are people beginning to associate you with a particular kind of contribution?What evidence suggests you should change the approach?His subscriber timeline is his own account, rather than a growth formula. I take it as a reminder to examine progress over a useful period while remaining willing to adapt.• • •What Austin brought to the Cannes stageAustin describes a session with Einstein Bros. Bagels’ CMO, a parent creator and a food creator.The brief concerned on-the-go parents. He asked the creators about their experience and the content their audiences respond to, then demonstrated how those insights could inform a campaign.He is clear in our conversation that the session was prepared and rehearsed. It was a demonstration of the process, rather than an entirely spontaneous campaign build.The distinction I find useful is what the creators were being selected to contribute.Their distribution mattered, but so did their knowledge.Austin says he may bring a creator into strategic development without needing that person to publish the final content.That expands the way we think about expertise. Someone’s value can include what their ongoing relationship with an audience helps them notice.It also changes the brief. The question becomes what the team needs to learn before it decides what to make.• • •The deeper record (to make this practical for you)1. Run an audience conversation before finalising the briefStart with a live business objective and a specific audience. Invite someone with relevant, direct experience while the recommendation can still change.Austin’s example is a brand trying to reach parents. Inside a company, you might involve a customer-support colleague, an account manager or someone who uses the process you are redesigning.Prepare three kinds of question:Experience: when does this situation occur, and what makes it difficult?Observed response: what have people actually asked, shared or responded to?Implication: which part of our current approach might need to change?Keep anecdotes and broader evidence separate. A creator’s experience can reveal a useful question without representing every parent or customer.Finish by naming one assumption to test and one decision the conversation may affect.2. Give connection somewhere useful to goAustin’s description of the first few minutes of a meeting was another part I loved.He wants to know the person before moving into the assignment. Then he arrives with prepared questions about the work.For me, that combination is the lesson: warmth and preparation.You do not need to manufacture intimacy. Ask a question you care about, listen to the answer and respect the person’s boundaries.Then connect the conv… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emilykthomas.substack.com/subscribe

Why this conversation matteredA business can become very good at speaking to people who are ready to buy and still leave a much larger question unanswered.What are we doing for the people who will need us later?That was the question I wanted to explore with James Hurman.James is a co-founder of Tracksuit, founder and chair of Previously Unavailable, and a partner at New+Improved. He is also the author of Future Demand and The Case for Creativity, and has produced effectiveness research with Cannes Lions and WARC.Those credentials matter because he has worked on both sides of the argument: studying how marketing contributes to growth and helping build businesses that depend on it.What interested me was how often the conversation returned to something beyond marketing.We ask people to appreciate our work at the moment we need a decision. A purchase. A budget. A promotion. An introduction.But how much familiarity, understanding and evidence have we created before that moment?My point of view is that a reputation needs a longer horizon than the request it eventually supports. That applies to a brand, but it also applies to how we make our judgment visible at work.The opportunity is to give someone a reason to remember what we can contribute before they are under pressure to choose.-EmilyTHE LEAD by Emily K Thomas is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The LEAD Signals from the conversationOpportunity: Consider the people who are not ready yetJames described an exercise he uses with audiences.First, he asks who is buying a smartphone now. Then he asks who expects to buy one over the next couple of years.The second group is much larger.It is an illustration, rather than a market-size study, but it makes his distinction between current and future demand easy to see.People can be outside a buying moment without being outside your future market.That changes the brief.A person considering a purchase may need pricing, availability or a clear reason to act. Someone who does not need the product yet may need a memorable idea, a useful association or an experience that gives the brand a place in their mind.For me, the corporate application is just as interesting.If you want to contribute to a strategic project six months from now, are you waiting for someone to open the role? Or are you already sharing useful observations, demonstrating judgment and helping people understand the problems you are good at solving?That does not guarantee an invitation. It gives other people more than a last-minute claim to base the decision on.Trust: Make your thinking understandableJames talked about the challenge of explaining brand investment to people outside marketing.As he described it, asking a business leader whether they want “brand” can produce uncertainty. Asking whether they want demand in the future gives the conversation a clearer commercial purpose.The underlying work still needs evidence. Changing the name does not prove that a particular budget will work.What changes is the listener’s ability to understand what the work is intended to achieve.This is something I think we underestimate inside companies.People may reject a proposal because they cannot see how it connects to a decision they own. They may be protecting cash, managing risk or trying to understand a trade-off we have not explained.Before making the presentation more elaborate, try finishing this sentence:“This work helps us achieve ___ by changing ___, and we will look for ___ to understand whether it is working.”If you cannot complete that plainly, another slide may not solve the problem.Momentum: Judge what a person can build, then how they can grow with itWhen I asked James what he looks for in founders, he began with an important qualification: choosing successful businesses is difficult. There is no reliable shortcut to a portfolio full of winners.He then described looking beyond an attractive idea.Is there a meaningful market? Are customers already demonstrating demand? Can the founder bring people together and create forward movement?And can that person eventually grow beyond the early hustle into the leadership a larger company requires?That last distinction matters.The behaviour that helps someone start something may not be enough to help them lead it at the next stage.For anyone leading a team, the practical question is:Am I assessing the capability this person needs now, and the support they will need as the responsibility changes?Being familiar is not the same as earning confidenceJames challenged the idea that every brand choice is a careful comparison.His account emphasises familiarity, feeling and associations that people may not consciously examine.I think that deserves attention precisely because those signals are not always reliable.A name can feel familiar without the company being capable. A person can feel like a natural fit because their background resembles ours.The conversation included a second-hand hiring anecdote about parents’ occupations and school sports. I would treat that as a prompt to examine the filter, rather than a hiring rule.If the quality we want is collaboration, ask for an example of collaboration. If it is resilience, ask what happened when a plan failed and what changed afterwards.People can develop those abilities through many different lives.The useful discipline is to recognise how familiarity affects us, then ask what evidence supports the confidence it creates.That is a distinction I want to keep examining across these conversations: the signals that make something easy to choose, and the signals that make the choice well founded.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━My favorite partOne of the passages I highlighted was James describing how he asked his planning team to explain a strategy in words a child could understand.That connected two parts of his work for me: making a commercial argument accessible and writing The Boy and the Lemon.A simpler explanation can expose whether we understand the idea well enough ourselves.It is a demanding test. Can we make the thinking clear without leaning on language that only our own profession recognises?I would use it before an important meeting.Explain the proposal in three sentences:What is happening?What do you recommend?Why should it help?Then add the necessary complexity: the evidence, the limits and the trade-offs.Clarity should make scrutiny easier.The habits behind opportunityJames said The Boy and the Lemon grew out of reading Richard Wiseman’s The Luck Factor.He was interested in bringing its ideas to children through a story.The four themes he discussed were openness to opportunities, optimism, listening to intuition and finding something useful in setbacks. Wiseman’s own account describes a research programme with self-described lucky and unlucky people and sets out those four principles.I would use them as practices to consider, rather than a promise that the right mindset controls what happens to us.Access, resources and circumstances still matter. And intuition deserves a question: what experience is this feeling drawing on, and what might I be missing?The useful application is specific.Talk to someone outside your usual circle.Give a promising idea a fair test.Notice a concern before explaining it away.After a setback, write down what will change in the next attempt.James made the final point more concrete by describing a venture that had gone badly. His team spent time identifying what they had learned and what they would avoid next time.He did not pretend that failure felt good.The distinction I took from that is between describing a failure as a lesson and changing a decision because of it.The second one is where the value becomes visible.The deeper record (to make this practical for you)Here is a review I would use before asking for a bigger budget, an important opportunity or more visibility.1. Name the future decisionWho might nee… This is a public episode. 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Why this conversation matteredA project is cancelled after months of work.A proposal you believed in goes nowhere.A decision changes above you, and the thing you helped build never reaches the people it was meant for.It is easy to carry the whole outcome into the next room as a judgment about your ability.Before doing that, I think we owe the work a more precise question:What actually failed?That was one of the most useful parts of my conversation with Ruxandra Papuc.Ruxandra is Global Executive Creative Director and Partner at AIN’T and a Cannes Lions Creative Commerce juror. Her Cannes biography includes work for Vodafone, Coca-Cola and Mastercard.Those credentials matter because she brings experience of developing ambitious creative work for major brands, alongside the judgment required to assess other people’s ideas.She described a campaign that had been filmed and prepared for release, then cancelled on the day of its press announcement because of internal legal and ownership issues.The disappointment was real. So was the need to understand where the breakdown had happened.Ruxandra spoke about the value of someone outside that disappointment helping you see the situation clearly:“You did your thing very well, and your thing didn’t fail.”That is the distinction I wanted to stay with.A professional setback can contain several different stories: the quality of the work, the conditions around it, and what we do after it ends. Collapsing those into one verdict makes the next decision harder.We also talked about how responsibility is earned through a succession of opportunities, and why the material for fresh thinking often comes from outside our professional bubble.Together, those ideas give us something more useful than an instruction to keep going. They give us a way to decide what to carry forward.-EmilyThe LEAD Signals from the conversationMomentum Signal: diagnose the loss before making it your identityRuxandra’s cancelled campaign is a useful example because the work never reached its intended public test.Its likely performance remained unknown. The cancellation itself could not settle that question.For someone inside a company, that distinction matters.A project can stop because the budget changes, an owner leaves or an approval process breaks down. It can also stop because the idea is weak, the execution missed the brief or the team overlooked a serious constraint.The response depends on which explanation the evidence supports.My application is to separate three things:The work: what can we assess about its quality and usefulness?The conditions: what allowed or prevented it from reaching its intended test?The response: what should we now change, preserve or stop?You might need to improve the work. You might need a different decision process. You might need to close the project and make something else.The point is to reach that conclusion deliberately, rather than letting disappointment answer every question at once.Trust Signal: responsibility is built through a processI asked Ruxandra how she had converted being chosen into greater ownership, influence or freedom.She brought the answer back to trust.Her account of judging creative competitions was a progression through different responsibilities, including shortlisting and later being in the jury room. The visible invitation sat within a longer history of participation.What I take from that is a practical question about professional ambition:What is the next responsibility someone has a reason to trust me with?Inside a company, wanting greater influence might mean seeking the opportunity to own a recommendation, lead a defined phase of a project or present the reasoning behind a decision.Then make the judgment visible. Explain what you noticed, what you chose, what happened and what you would change.An invitation creates access. What you do with the responsibility helps others assess where your judgment belongs next.That process does not make access equal or recognition inevitable. It does make the next step more concrete than waiting to be discovered.Opportunity Signal: go where your usual references cannot supply the answerRuxandra’s closing advice was to look outside the industry bubble.Ordinary life, she said, is a source of inspiration, insight and relevance.Her follow-on distinction made the advice more useful: looking needs to be active.You can walk through a street and notice almost nothing. Or you can pay attention to the people, colours, movement and behaviour around you.I would apply that to a stalled brief before opening another folder of competitor work.Observe the situation the work is supposed to serve.Where does someone hesitate?What do they explain to a friend?What workaround have they invented?Which part of the experience demands more effort than we realised?An observation becomes strategically useful when it changes a question, an assumption or a decision.Bring that change back to the brief.My favorite partRuxandra recalled posters from Rob Reilly’s arrival at McCann. One line stayed with her:“When one dies, bring another.”What I love about that line in the context of this conversation is the reminder that one idea does not contain the whole of a person’s creative capacity.A lost project can matter deeply without becoming the only work you are able to imagine.I highlighted her reflection that creative people are there to renew, to keep bringing something out of themselves.That feels especially useful in a working culture where we are asked to attach so much of our identity to the outcome.I would add one condition: learn before repeating.Making the next thing gives us an opportunity to use what the last experience revealed. Sometimes that means a new idea. Sometimes it means a clearer agreement, a smaller test or a more realistic boundary.The next project should benefit from the last one without being made responsible for repairing your entire sense of worth.The deeper record (to make this practical for you)Here is the review I would bring into a team meeting after an important piece of work stops or disappoints.Give the team one page with three columns: Work, Conditions and Next Decision.1. Assess the work against the briefWhat problem were we trying to solve?What evidence suggested the idea could help?What did the execution demonstrate?What remains untested?Which criticism is specific enough to act on?Keep praise, disappointment and evidence distinct. A team’s belief in an idea is worth understanding, but it cannot tell us how customers would have responded to work they never encountered.2. Identify the conditions that shaped the outcomeWho held the decision?Were ownership, budget, approvals and constraints clear?What changed, and when did we learn about it?Which risks could we have identified earlier?Which factors were genuinely outside the team’s control?The aim is to locate responsibility accurately.A constraint outside one person’s control may still be something the organisation needs to address. A legal or operational issue deserves attention even when the creative work was strong.3. Make one consequential decisionChoose what the evidence now supports:Improve: keep the problem, revise the approach and define the next test.Reconfigure: preserve useful work but change the ownership, process, timing or route.Close: stop this version, retain the learning and release the resources.Name an owner and a review point.The discussion should change what happens next.Let me give you an example…A team prepares a new customer-onboarding experience, but the project is halted after a budget change.The team can still assess the clarity of the proposed journey and the quality of any prototype feedback. It may not know whether the new experience would improve retention.Its next decision could be a smaller test of one step, provided the business can support it.That is a more useful conclusion than either assuming the whole idea was a failure or insisting the idea was unquestionably ri… This is a public episode. 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Why this conversation matteredA strategy can look coherent at headquarters and feel strangely irrelevant to the people it hopes to reach.The words have been translated. The visuals have been adapted. The presentation explains the opportunity. Yet the team closest to the customer can see something important that the original plan never considered.What happens next is a leadership decision. Does that knowledge get to change the strategy, or is the local team expected to make an existing answer work?That was the question I kept returning to with Siew Ting Foo.Siew Ting is CEO of Soul for Profit Advisory, former Global Chief Brand and Insights Officer at HP, and author of Building Brands with Soul. Her career spans HP, Unilever, Mars, Diageo and Fonterra. Cannes Lions’ speaker biography documents that experience across global and Asian markets.Those credentials matter because she has worked where a global ambition has to become a decision in a particular market. She brings an operator’s perspective to questions about culture, brand meaning and commercial value.In our conversation, she challenges the habit of treating Asia as the place where a strategy arrives to be adapted. Asian markets can also originate ideas that shape global thinking. The insight should be allowed to travel in both directions.We talked about the repeated “why” behind a useful cultural insight, the difference between attracting attention and earning trust, and the judgment required to balance immediate demands with a longer-term direction.Her written follow-up adds a revealing career choice: accepting an assignment in China, which she identifies as the decision that most changed her trajectory. She dates it to almost 15 years before our conversation. We did not establish an exact calendar year.What I find useful is the connection between proximity and judgment. Some opportunities change what other people see on your résumé. Others change what you are able to see.Listen for the choices beneath her language about soul: whose life the brand aims to improve, what the promise asks the business to deliver, and what evidence would show that it mattered. These are questions a founder or corporate leader can use well beyond a market-entry brief.-EmilySiew Ting’s Chosen FiveHer written follow-up includes a book, a brand, an idea and a practice. The person recommendation was not supplied.1. A person more people should knowNo recommendation was provided for this prompt.2. A book: Building Brands with SoulSiew Ting selected her own book, which brings together her experience of leadership, purpose and brand building. It extends the question behind this conversation: how does the human meaning of a brand connect to the way a business grows?Explore the book through Soul for Profit Advisory.3. A brand: e.l.f. CosmeticsShe highlighted the connection between shared ownership, growth and accountability. There is a concrete policy behind that interest: e.l.f. Beauty’s 2024 proxy statement describes full-time employees receiving stock awards and being eligible for the same company-performance bonus plan.I would take this as a useful leadership question: what does your organisation ask people to care about, and how does its structure let them share in the outcome? The policy is one example to examine, rather than proof that ownership alone creates a particular culture.Source: e.l.f. Beauty 2024 proxy statement.4. An idea: human-centred culture in the era of AISiew Ting wants more attention on the human environment in which decisions are made. My application is to look at what your team actually rewards: curiosity, useful disagreement, attention to customers and responsibility for the outcome. Tools can change quickly. Those behaviours still need room in the working week.5. A practice: “Learning how to unlearn constantly.”This is her direct written answer. It asks something demanding of experienced people: remain willing to revise an assumption that once helped you succeed.The LEAD Signals from the conversationOpportunity Signal: choose proximity that improves your judgmentSiew Ting identifies the China assignment as a turning point. The useful question is what a move will let you learn that you cannot learn from your current position.For someone inside a company, that could mean spending time with customers, working alongside a different function or taking responsibility for a market you have only seen in reports. Those are my applications of her story. The value comes from what the experience changes in your understanding.Ask: which opportunity would make me better at seeing the problem?Trust Signal: attention opens the conversation; delivery gives it substanceSiew Ting distinguishes the first moment of attention from the relationship that follows. She looks for an exchange of value and alignment of values. A brand also has to deliver through its products and services.That gives us a practical review question. After someone notices us, what do they encounter that gives them a reason to trust us?A founder’s strong point of view may earn a meeting. A clear recommendation, an honest scope and a reliable handoff give the other person something more concrete to assess.Momentum Signal: protect the ability to chooseSiew Ting describes momentum as balancing what is needed in the short term with what must be preserved for the long term. She also talks about separating distraction from signals with meaningful business consequences.The application is to examine the decision before adding another task. What does this make possible? What does it interrupt? What evidence suggests that it deserves attention now?A busy team needs a way to answer those questions together.Emily’s (my) favorite momentI loved Siew Ting’s admission that slowing down did not come naturally. She describes herself as a type A achiever who likes to move. Over time, she built rituals such as journaling, meditation and breaks in her diary to create some distance from reactive work.That makes her advice more useful to me. She is describing a discipline she had to develop. A leader who wants better judgment has to make some room to exercise it. This is something I actively have to work on, so it resonated deeply. How about for you? The deeper record (to make this practical for you)The question I am taking forward is how an organisation turns local understanding into authority to change a decision.Here are four ways I would apply the conversation.1. Give local knowledge a consequential jobWhen a team enters a market, it can ask local colleagues for two very different things.One request is: help us adapt this campaign.Another is: tell us which assumptions in the strategy need to change.Both may be necessary. They require different levels of influence. If the team is only allowed to change language and imagery, its understanding of the customer has limited room to affect the answer.Before the next regional brief, write down three things:• What is fixed, and why?• What can the local team challenge?• Who can authorise a change when new evidence appears?This applies within a company too. Customer-support teams can hear a recurring concern long before it appears in a leadership presentation. Their knowledge becomes more useful when someone is responsible for bringing it into a decision.2. Ask “why” until the answer changes the briefSiew Ting describes the discipline of asking why repeatedly to reach a cultural tension beneath a visible preference.My addition is to test the answer with evidence, rather than treating the fifth explanation as automatically true.Suppose customers repeatedly delay a decision. A team might describe that as a lack of interest. Further conversations could reveal uncertainty about implementation, concern about appearing inexperienced or a buying process the team has misunderstood. Those are possible explanations to investigate, not conclusions to assume.The insight should affect a choice. Would it change the offer, the inform… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emilykthomas.substack.com/subscribe

Why this conversation matteredA brand can spend a great deal of money explaining what makes it different, then give people an experience that feels exactly like everyone else’s.The language says thoughtful. The onboarding feels rushed. The campaign says distinctive. The product could belong to any competitor. Somewhere between the promise and the experience, the meaning disappears.My conversation with Anselmo Tumpić kept bringing me back to that gap. What would change if we asked every important detail of a business to carry part of its story?Anselmo is the co-founder and Executive Creative Director of Studio Tumpić/Prenc in Rovinj, Croatia, and served on the 2026 Cannes Lions Design shortlisting jury. Before founding the studio in 2017, he worked at Fabrica, Benetton’s communications research centre, and at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi in Milan. His studio’s work has received recognition from Cannes Lions, D&AD and the European Design Awards.Those credentials matter because he has worked on both sides of a consequential creative decision: making an idea strong enough to stand out, and evaluating whether someone else’s work deserves a closer look.Source: Cannes Lions biography and 2026 shortlisting jury announcement.We talked about the two years he spent preparing for Fabrica, what he gained from working across disciplines and cultures, and why he eventually chose his hometown over a major creative capital. We also explored two packaging projects that make his thinking unusually clear: olive-oil bottles that become a miniature town, and a wine box designed to stay closed until the right moment.Then he sent me a principle from his late high school teacher, Ivan Obrovac: “Express the maximum with minimum means.”It gave me a way to connect the whole conversation. Simplicity takes work. A small number of details can carry a great deal of meaning when someone has thought carefully about what each one should do.If you lead a business, build a brand or present ideas inside a company, listen for the decisions behind the objects. Where does the promise become tangible? What does a person get to understand through the experience itself? There is a useful way to examine your own work here, even if you never design a bottle.EmilyTHE LEAD by Emily K Thomas is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Anselmo’s Chosen FiveI asked Anselmo to share five things that shape how he thinks. These selections come from his written follow-up.1. A person more people should know: Ivan ObrovacHis late high school teacher gave him, and generations of students in his region, a foundation in visual arts and design. Anselmo remembers his instruction: “Express the maximum with minimum means.” It is a precise standard for creative work: ask how much meaning an idea can carry with the fewest necessary elements.2. A book that shaped his thinking: no single bookAnselmo credits direct experience, practical work and his professional journey. I appreciate the specificity of that answer. His education continued through making things, encountering different disciplines and discovering what an idea required in practice.3. A brand getting something right: RimacHe chose the Croatian electric hypercar manufacturer for its ambition in helping build a new category. Rimac’s all-electric Nevera offers a concrete example of the work he admires. He also pointed to Mate Rimac’s broader ventures, including Verne in Zagreb. What interests me about this selection is the willingness to develop something consequential from a place people may overlook. Check this out to dive deeper: Rimac Nevera; Verne’s September 2026 Zagreb update.4. An idea deserving more attention: Eurythenes plasticusAnselmo highlighted the 2020 project that connected a scientific discovery with the problem of plastic pollution. Scientists found a plastic microfibre in an amphipod collected nearly 7,000 metres below the ocean’s surface in the Mariana Trench. They named the species Eurythenes plasticus in reference to the plastic it had ingested; WWF helped bring the discovery to wider attention.For Anselmo, the power is in the lasting reminder. The message lives in the scientific name itself. My takeaway is a question for communicators: could the idea live somewhere more meaningful and enduring than another campaign placement?Related reading: WWF on the discovery and naming.5. A practice that has helped his career: “To be persistent.”A short answer with a demanding implication. In the conversation, persistence meant working through the difficult distance between having an idea and finding the collaborators who could help make it real.Signals from the conversationOpportunity Signal: preparation before recognitionAnselmo describes spending two years preparing for Fabrica before being accepted. The useful question for the rest of us is specific: which opportunity matters enough to prepare for before anyone invites you? Identify what you would need to demonstrate, then make something that gives people a reason to take you seriously.Trust Signal: feeling, followed by fitWhen judging work, Anselmo first notices his emotional response. Then he examines the idea more rationally, including whether it belongs to that particular client. I would bring both questions into a creative review: does this make someone feel something, and is that feeling connected to what this business actually offers?Momentum Signal: give the work a route to peopleInternational competitions help his small studio put its work in front of people beyond Rovinj. They also create exchanges with peers. The broader lesson is to choose credible places where the right people can encounter and assess your work. A strong project still needs a route into a relevant room.Emily’s (MY) favorite momentThe wine box was my favorite example because it made patience part of the experience. For Franc Arman’s Teran Barrique project, the bottle sits inside a locked box. A QR-linked app shares information while the owner waits, then provides an opening code when the time is right. The design asks the customer to participate in the product’s story.I kept thinking about the difference between saying something deserves time and building an experience that gives time a purpose.Check out the youtube video on this project here!Croatian Designers Association, “It’s time for your time.”The deeper record: to make this conversation practical and useful for you!The question I am taking from this conversation is: how does a business make its positioning credible at the moment someone experiences it?Here are four ways I would use Anselmo’s thinking.1. Turn an important claim into a concrete experienceThe wine project begins with something specific about the product: this particular wine benefits from waiting. The packaging makes that idea consequential, and the accompanying information gives the customer something useful during the wait.That is a more demanding brief than “make it look premium.”For a service business promising clarity, the equivalent might be a proposal that makes the decision easier: a defined problem, a clear recommendation and an honest explanation of the trade-offs. For a corporate leader promising collaboration, it might be a decision process that lets colleagues contribute before the answer is settled.Those are my applications, rather than Anselmo’s examples. The useful move is to connect the promise to something a person can actually experience.Write one sentence: “We want people to trust us for ___.”Then finish another: “They experience that when ___.”If the second sentence only describes your marketing, look further into the business.2. Make your specific story do useful workFor Famìa, the studio drew on Rovinj’s architecture. The olive-oil bottles resemble small houses. Put several together and they form a miniature town.The local reference gives the design a distinctive source. It also offers an interac… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emilykthomas.substack.com/subscribe

Why this conversation matteredYou can spend years becoming good at your work and still hesitate when an opportunity appears. You want one more project, one more credential, or a little more certainty before you put your hand up. Meanwhile, the work stays where it is, known mainly to the people who already know you.Pooja Manek brought a useful challenge to that tension:“How do I make ignoring me feel like a mistake?”The rest of her answer matters as much as the line. She talked about the effort of producing consistently strong work, learning through failure, and building the judgment to recognize an idea with potential. The standard has to exist beyond the introduction.Pooja is a Creative and Founding Member at Talented Agency, a Cannes Lion winner, and a member of the 2026 Cannes Lions Outdoor awarding jury. She also judged Writing for Advertising at D&AD in 2025. Her experience connects making work, evaluating it, and developing the people behind it. That makes her a valuable person to ask how promise becomes credible: she has to recognize quality in other people’s ideas while creating conditions for her own team to deliver it.Our conversation moved between individual ambition and the conditions that sustain it. Pooja described taste as something developed through making, failure, and repetition. She spoke about people who bring out the best in others, employee ownership, and client relationships strong enough for an idea to move forward through a sketch and a conversation.I heard a connection between those subjects. A reputation grows through the work people can see and the experience of working with the person behind it. Visibility needs something substantial to carry. Substance also needs opportunities to travel.If you work inside a company, the question becomes concrete. What would help someone trust you with the next brief, account, promotion, or difficult decision? This conversation offers several places to look: the quality of your observations, what you do with feedback, the initiative you take, and the people whose work improves around you.-Emily THE LEAD by Emily K Thomas is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Five ideas I’m taking from this conversationThese are my interpretations and practical applications of the interview.1. Let your interests become evidence of judgment.When Pooja described choosing talent, she wanted to know what people cared about outside work. What could they talk about with real energy and specificity?I mentioned organizing, flipping furniture, and interior design. She immediately connected those interests to a furniture account. Someone who notices the difference between cobalt and periwinkle might bring relevant attention to a brief that another person would miss.That exchange made her hiring philosophy tangible. An interest becomes useful when you can show what it helps you notice.She also pointed to the detail in The Lead’s branding, including the type and words, as something she could recognize before meeting me. My takeaway is to audit the work someone encounters first. Do its details demonstrate the care you say you bring?In your next interview or internal presentation, go one step beyond naming a passion. Explain an observation it has given you, the choice it changed, and where that understanding could help the business. Give the other person something to assess.2. Build taste through practice you can learn from.Pooja talked about the gap between recognizing work you admire and being able to make work at that standard yourself. She referenced Ira Glass’s discussion of that gap and returned to the need to do the work.She also acknowledged that talking about this after earning recognition comes with privilege. There was a day zero. Failure was part of developing the resilience and instinct she now relies on.My application is to make repetition deliberate. Choose one part of your craft: writing a clearer brief, finding a stronger insight, or making a recommendation easier to understand. Compare what you made with a specific example you admire. Ask for feedback on the difference. Then make another attempt.“More” becomes useful when you can name what improved.When I asked for a logical test for a strong outdoor idea, Pooja could not offer a formula. She described a physical response, the feeling of recognizing potential. I would keep that honesty alongside the practice: experienced judgment can arrive before a tidy explanation. Then ask what the response is noticing and whether it holds for the intended audience.Pooja’s four talent criteria fit together here: obsession, high agency, her forceful refusal to accept mediocrity, and openness to feedback. Standards need that fourth part. Otherwise, devotion to the work can become devotion to defending your first version.3. Give opportunity a place in your calendar.Pooja described “luck surface area,” an idea she encountered through Sahil Bloom. Applying, meeting people, and putting work into the world create more opportunities for an unexpected connection to happen.Her own account includes applying for See It Be It and being willing to try again if she had not been selected. The possibility of rejection was part of the decision.I shared my own practice: half an hour on Mondays devoted to shooting my shot. Reaching out can still feel uncomfortable. Giving it time in the calendar means I act before I feel completely ready.You can make this useful without turning your week into constant self-promotion. Choose one relevant person, program, or internal opportunity. Decide why you are a fit. Share one piece of work or observation that makes the connection clear, then make a specific request.Track what you attempted and learned. You can control those actions even when you cannot control the response.4. Trust is visible in what people make possible for others.When I asked what turns attention into trust, Pooja spoke about secure people and David Brooks’s distinction between illuminators and diminishers in How to Know a Person. She values people who recognize what others can contribute and want to bring it forward.She connected that to developing internal talent and making Talented’s standards explicit through its handbook. We compared that with our own GAL Standard.For a manager, this is a practical question: does someone leave a conversation with you better able to contribute?That can mean a clearer brief, useful feedback, accurate credit, or responsibility matched with support. It can also mean explaining why an idea needs more work. Helping someone improve requires honesty as well as encouragement.Pooja’s description of pay and employee ownership adds another dimension. A workplace’s stated belief in people becomes more credible when its operating decisions give them security and a stake in what they help build. These were her accounts of Talented’s approach, and they deserve attention alongside the creative advice.5. Make something the audience can use.Pooja’s audience test was one of my favorite parts of the conversation: why will someone care?Her example went beyond attracting attention. A piece of work might help a woman begin a conversation about marriage or equality. Sharing it with a friend or partner could make something difficult easier to express.That is a useful standard for anyone working in communications. The audience gains language, understanding, or a way to act.Before approving your next post, campaign, or presentation, complete this sentence:“After seeing this, someone can…”Then be specific. Explain a decision to a colleague. Raise an issue with a partner. Recognize a problem. Compare two options. Take the next step.If the sentence only describes what they will know about your organization, keep working on what it gives them.Signals from the conversationOpportunity Signal: Show initiative with evidence.Pooja described high agency as a mindset that can exist at any level.… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emilykthomas.substack.com/subscribe

Why this conversation matteredWho gets heard in your workplace? The person with the strongest idea, the most confident delivery, or the most familiar way of presenting it?Those are different things. When we confuse them, we can give visibility to the wrong contribution and miss the person who understands the problem best.That is what stayed with me from my conversation with Felipe Braz Costa. Influence grows through the relationship between what we say, what we do, and how well we understand the people we hope to reach. For a brand or a leader, attention creates an opening. Our behavior determines whether people trust us with the next opportunity.Felipe is Executive Creative Director for EMEA at Edelman. His work has received recognition at Cannes Lions, the Clio Awards, and The One Show, and he served as a 2026 Cannes Lions PR Shortlisting Juror. That experience matters here: he develops creative work across markets and also evaluates other people’s ideas. He has to decide what deserves attention, support, and the chance to move forward. I wanted to understand the judgment behind those decisions.One of the most revealing stories began with a Spanish trainee describing the cute wild-animal content she consumed and shared. Felipe remembers the team recognizing that they were participating in the demand they wanted to challenge.That observation became part of his account of the work for AMPARA. We discussed the two connected campaigns, The Wild Algorithm and Ban This Profile, and the decision to use AI-generated wildlife content that people would be encouraged to report. Edelman’s published case describes Ban This Profile as an intervention aimed at reducing the circulation of wildlife-as-pet content.We also talked about the limits of certainty. Felipe said the team knew the campaign could fail. The client understood the risks and participated in the decision to proceed. That detail matters as much as the creative idea.For anyone building a career, leading a team, or growing a brand, the opportunity is practical: become more deliberate about what earns people’s confidence. Listen before making the recommendation. Look beyond the most polished contribution. Let a different perspective change the work.-Emily K ThomasTHE LEAD by Emily K Thomas is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Five ideas I’m taking from this conversationThese are my takeaways and applications of the conversation.1. Trust is built when there is nothing immediate to gain.Felipe connected credibility to consistency: what you say, what you do, and how you treat people when there is no immediate benefit to you.That last part matters. The junior colleague who cannot advance your career still experiences your leadership. So does the supplier whose proposal you decline. Each interaction gives someone evidence of whether your stated values hold when the incentives change.In corporate life, make your standards travel across seniority. Give credit accurately. Close the loop after asking for help. Explain a decision respectfully to the person it disappoints. Clear boundaries belong here too. Reliability means making commitments people can depend on.For a brand, apply the same test after the sale: is the customer getting the care the campaign promised?2. Listening should change the recommendation.Felipe’s experience across cultures and teams brought him back to understanding people before trying to influence them.My test for listening is simple: what did I hear that changed what I planned to do?Before your next proposal, ask the person affected what they are trying to achieve, what is getting in the way, and what an outsider might misunderstand. Then reflect that back before offering an answer.Imagine being asked to improve adoption of an internal tool. The brief says employees need more information. Conversations reveal that using it duplicates work. A better announcement cannot remove that friction. Listening has value because it can change the problem you agree to solve.3. Familiarity can hide the idea in front of you.In our wider conversation, Felipe recalled a Ghostbusters promotion in Madrid’s subway: the sound of an approaching train, with no train appearing, followed by the film reveal. Sony Pictures España’s 2016 promotional film shows the idea.A familiar sound became the premise. Felipe connected it to his own experience of hearing trains and wondering where they were. He speculated about an outsider noticing the opportunity; the creator’s background was not something he knew.The useful lesson is to bring fresh observation into contact with local knowledge. Someone new may notice the ritual. Someone familiar with it can explain its meaning and where an idea might fail.For your next project, ask a newcomer what surprised them and an experienced colleague what everyone takes for granted. Explore where their answers meet.4. Recognize the contribution across different working styles.I asked Felipe about recognizing creative signal across working styles. That question connects directly to his point about different backgrounds revealing possibilities a person might miss alone.My application for leaders: make it possible for people to contribute before the room establishes its preferred answer. Ask for a short written observation ahead of the meeting. Give people time to think. Invite the person closest to the customer or process to explain what the proposal misses.Then evaluate what each contribution changes: our understanding of the problem, the quality of the idea, or the risk we can now see. You can hold a high standard without requiring everyone to perform confidence the same way.5. Give the observation room to become consequential.The trainee’s comment about cute wildlife content mattered because the team allowed it to challenge their own behavior. In Felipe’s account, that observation helped inform the AMPARA work. AI later helped execute an intervention.For a brand team considering a new tool, start by describing the behavior you want to change and why it makes sense to the person doing it. Then assess the technology.And keep the uncertainty visible. Felipe said the client understood that the campaign could fail. A serious proposal makes room for that conversation: what are we assuming, what could go wrong, and what would make us reconsider?Signals from the conversationOpportunity Signal: Make your thinking visible in useful work.Felipe recalled creating proactive ideas during his early months at Ogilvy in Spain, with many reaching the agency’s wall of ideas even though most were never produced. My takeaway is to create a small, relevant piece of evidence of how you think. That might be a better brief, a well-framed experiment, or an observation that changes a team’s next decision. He explicitly qualified the story: he was not telling everyone to work as many hours as possible.Trust Signal: Consistency across differences in power.Watch whether someone’s care and follow-through depend on who is in the room. The practical implication for your own reputation is demanding: make the experience of working with you dependable for people at every level. Every promise creates a future moment when someone will compare your words with your actions.Momentum Signal: Match the ambition to the people backing it.Felipe described the mismatch between a conservative client and an agency hired for bold work. My interpretation is that a team needs agreement about the kind of work it is actually prepared to support. Ask that question before the presentation, while the project can still change.Emily’s (MY) favorite momentThe line about how we treat people when there is nothing immediate to gain is the one I most want to hold onto.From a PR perspective, visibility can help people discover you. Their experience of you gives them a reason to recommend you, involve you, and believe what you say next. Those decisions often happe… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emilykthomas.substack.com/subscribe

Why this conversation matteredA brand can have a beautiful campaign, a recognizable name, and a product people admire. It can still be missing from the shortlist when someone needs what it offers.That gap matters. From a PR perspective, we work hard to create visibility and credibility. But the next question is more demanding: what does that visibility help people remember, and when will that memory become useful?My conversation with Madita Brandhorst gave that question substance. We talked about how brands connect to buying situations, why growth can require a wider invitation, and how to protect the identity people already recognize.Madita (MSc Psychology) is the Associate Director of Tracking Solutions at quantilope, where she leverages over a decade of research expertise to transform consumer insights into a powerful engine for brand growth. By combining consumer psychology with AI-driven automation, she helps global brands master mental availability, fuelling high-stakes decisions from brand positioning to Super Bowl campaigns.At quantilope, Madita is on a mission to make insights fun and actionable by using AI to eliminate the manual grind, freeing humans to focus on what truly matters: deep strategic thinking. In a landscape increasingly saturated by AI, she champions a future where technology fosters real human connection. Madita believes that understanding our perfectly imperfect human nature is the only way to truly meet people where they are – and a strategy that will outlast the algorithm.That experience matters to this conversation because she connects consumer psychology, real human evidence, and AI-supported research to the brand decisions teams make every day.Her work also includes a Cannes Lions session with Planted co-founder Pascal Bieri, exploring how a plant-based brand can build relevance with people who eat meat. That gives us a concrete example of the tension we explored: how do you grow your audience while keeping your purpose intact?We moved from mental shortcuts to Coca-Cola’s recurring occasions, Lindt’s recognizable cues, Taylor Swift’s expanding audience, and the risks of stretching a familiar brand into unfamiliar territory. We also discussed mascots, AI, and a leadership lesson that deserves as much attention as the marketing science: bring the curiosity you use to understand customers into the relationships you work within.The useful thread is this: people need a reason to connect you to a moment in their lives. Your job is to make that connection clear, reinforce it consistently, and check whether it exists beyond the meeting room.If you are planning a campaign, considering a new product, or trying to make your work more meaningful to the people it serves, this conversation offers a better place to begin.Emily K ThomasTHE LEAD by Emily K Thomas is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Five ideas I’m taking into the next brand meeting1. Make the choice easierMadita described a brand as a bridge from a need to a choice. People do not start every purchase from scratch. A previous experience, a recommendation, or a recognizable cue can help them decide.The implication for brand work is practical. Tell people when your offer belongs in their lives, and make it easy to recognize when that moment arrives.2. Keep the identity. Expand the occasions.Coca-Cola came up as a brand Madita associates with Christmas, summer, friends, and shared enjoyment. Lindt came up through indulgence and its recognizable chocolatier.Those examples point to a useful distinction. A brand can carry several messages while keeping the cues that help people recognize who is speaking.3. Give more people a way inMadita described Planted widening its message from carbon reduction for a vegan audience toward taste for people who eat meat. In her account, the mission remained important; the customer invitation became broader.The question to borrow: which people could value what we offer, but do not recognize themselves in how we currently describe it?4. Let the story carry the brandMadita wants mascots to return. Tony the Tiger, the GEICO gecko, and the M&M’s characters were her examples of characters that can carry a story while identifying the brand.A mascot is one possibility. The wider lesson is to build recognizable cues into the work so the audience can connect the story to its source.5. Stay curious when your view is challengedThe phrase Madita returned to was “strong opinions loosely held.” She values people who have a point of view and remain willing to revise it.That matters in a brand meeting, a research review, and a conversation with a colleague. Confidence needs room for new evidence.THE LEAD: Signals from the conversationOpportunity SignalMadita described being trusted to move from a traditional research environment into a technology platform and help shape its development. Her opportunity came through people willing to see how her existing judgment could contribute in a new setting.Trust SignalShe gravitates toward people who question things, including her own advice. Openness to challenge is a behavior you can observe: does someone ask for evidence, acknowledge a gap, and adjust when they learn something?Momentum SignalMy interpretation of the brand examples is that expansion works best when new buyers and occasions can enter without losing the cues existing buyers recognize. This is a theme from the conversation, rather than a direct answer to our standard momentum question.Emily’s (MY) favorite momentOne of the most useful exchanges was about Nivea. Madita used its move into cosmetics to explore the distance between a product’s quality and what people associate with the brand.I immediately connected Nivea with cream and post-shower care. That response made the question tangible: does the next product make sense within the meaning people already carry?For anyone building a portfolio, there is a meeting worth having before launch. Ask what customers think the brand is for, and what they would need to understand before the extension feels natural.The deeper record (because I want this to be useful for you!)Here are four ways to turn these ideas into decisions. These are my applications of the conversation, designed to help you examine your own brand and work.1. Find the situation you want to be remembered forBeing known is an opening. Mental availability asks whether a brand comes to mind in a relevant buying situation.“Category Entry Points” sounds technical, but the starting question is familiar: what is happening in someone’s life when they begin to need this category?In the conversation, I asked why some launches make people willing to pay a premium, even when money feels tight. Madita answered through the role of mental shortcuts. That exchange is a starting point for understanding choice, rather than proof that one mechanism explains every premium purchase. Price, product experience, access, and the customer’s circumstances still matter.For a skincare brand, that could be dry skin after a shower. For a meal brand, it could be a late finish at work and an almost-empty fridge. For a PR partner, it might be an upcoming launch that needs a credible story and the right media relationships.Those are different situations, even when they involve the same customer.Try this in your next meeting:• Write five situations that could create a need for your offer.• Name the pressure, goal, or feeling in each situation.• Ask potential customers which brands or providers come to mind, without showing them your name first.• Notice where your brand appears, and where it is absent.• Choose one relevant situation to connect more clearly to your communications.A few conversations can expose assumptions and generate hypotheses. They cannot measure your market or prove that a campaign will work. Use what you learn to decide what deserves a more structured test.This is also why… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emilykthomas.substack.com/subscribe