Earned First

Vineet Handa, founder and CEO of Kaizzen, joins the Earned First podcast to discuss one of the more unusual independent agency stories in India. Founded in 2008, the firm sold a majority stake to Maven Corporate Advisors in 2023 and has grown sharply since, expanding into Dubai and Riyadh along the way. In conversation with Earned First’s Arun Sudhaman, the episode explores why Handa chose to monetise rather than sell to a global network, what this year’s Middle East conflict has cost the business, how Kaizzen holds onto its culture as it scales, and why public affairs and advocacy now matter so much in India. It also covers much more, including how AI went from “the enemy we can’t avoid” to a dedicated practice.

Jean-Leopold Schuybroek, chair of PROI’s International Development Group, joins the Earned First podcast to reflect on four decades in the consultancy business. The Interel founder and former ICCO chair has spent 20 years building PROI into a network of independent firms that now covers most of the world. In conversation with Earned First’s Arun Sudhaman, the episode explores:what he looks for in a firm before it is bigwhy clients now build their own rosters of independentshow public affairs outgrew its cosy lobbying originsthe silos agencies built for themselves.

Earned First's David Blecken and Arun Sudhaman look at the backlash over Singapore Airlines' stake in Air India, Chinese brands going global, and Mastercard's global PR pitch. They also discuss OpenAI's nine-month CCO search, and why only just over half of CCOs report to the CEO, according to Earned First's PR 2030 research.

GlobeScan CEO Chris Coulter joins the Earned First podcast to break down findings from the latest Oxford-GlobeScan Global Corporate Affairs Survey. Now in its seventh edition, the study draws on nearly 300 senior practitioners across 51 countries, and offers a wealth of insight into the opinions, trends, and challenges facing corporate affairs teams worldwide. In conversation with Earned First's Arun Sudhaman, the episode explores why corporate affairs heads want their functions revised — and why that appetite runs highest in Asia-Pacific — how geoeconomics is reshaping their priorities, the woeful state of corporate affairs measurement, and much more, including the latest on the ESG backlash.

Charlotte Mceleny returns to discuss Cannes Lions 2026: the creator economy's growing dominance, the industry's fixation on "culture," and renewed momentum behind CCOs and organisational trust. The conversation turns to GEO and AI search's parallels with early SEO, before closing on the Gen Z-led political movements reshaping communications across Asia.

Earned First's Cannes podcast series concludes with Omnicom PR CEO Chris Foster, who joins Arun Sudhaman for a wide-ranging conversation about creativity, culture, CCOs and consolidation. Foster reflects on what he sees as a shift in creativity toward influence, and what that means for earned media in an AI-driven landscape. He also examines the growing prominence of CCOs at Cannes, the relationship between geopolitics and market access, and what the best creative work of the week tells us. Seven months into the creation of the new Omnicom PR, he also opens up about the lessons of integration, on communication, culture and what it takes to make a network feel like more than the sum of its parts.

Craig Buchholz, US CEO of Burson, joins Earned First at Cannes Lions 2026 the day after the agency's Kit Kat Heist campaign won the PR Lions Grand Prix. He discusses what made it work: a crisis reframed as cultural opportunity, bravery as a prerequisite for award-winning ideas, and the "culture up" philosophy that sits at the heart of Burson's earned-first approach. The conversation also covered the CCO's evolving role in the C-suite: from brand protector to enterprise growth advisor, and the degree to which that elevation turns on individual relationships as much as institutional structure. Buchholz, a former CCO at both General Motors and Procter & Gamble, also addresses what it takes to keep a seat at the table once it's secured, the growing presence of investors and private equity at Cannes, and what it signals about where the communications industry is heading.

Recorded at Cannes Lions 2026, We.Communications Asia-Pacific president Nitin Mantri discusses how brands such as Adidas and ITC have built genuine community participation rather than advertising-driven attention, and why measuring community value means tracking behaviour change and outcomes rather than campaign activity.He also addresses why startups in India are especially crisis-prone, the uneven influence of the CCO role relative to other markets, and the pressure on comms fees despite rising demand for senior counsel. The conversation closes with a regional view across India, China, Singapore, Australia and Malaysia, and the geopolitical headwinds facing Brand India.

Newly-installed Penta gobal CEO Jim O'Leary joins the Earned First podcast at Cannes to argue that legacy agency models are buckling under client demands they weren't built for, and that most firms are far better at marketing AI than deploying it. He traces the disruption to three converging forces — AI transformation, geopolitical risk, and a fracturing media landscape — and explains why private equity is moving into PR just as some legacy networks pull back. The conversation closes on Cannes itself, which O'Leary describes as splitting into two festivals: a fading legacy version built around advertising, and a tech- and creator-economy-driven version steadily taking its place.

In the first our Cannes podcasts, Zeno global CEO Barby Siegel and chief client impact officer Thomas Bunn examine the firm's Clarity 2030 research, which studies CMO attitudes toward reputation, earned media, and AI discoverability. The duo discuss why marketing leaders acknowledge the value of reputation but struggle to embed it earlier in the growth process, or to fund the earned media strategies most likely to build it.The data points to another persistent structural problem: comms holds the broader stakeholder mandate, yet marketing claims more CEO influence on reputation and external positioning by a significant margin. Siegel and Bunn explore what it would take for communications to move from late-stage risk manager to early growth input, and where business acumen fits into that shift.