Schedule
8:30 - 9:30am
Breakfast
9:30 - 9:45am
Opening Remarks
10:00 - 11:00am
Room A
Take Cover: Your Confidence is Under Attack
When fear sets in, we not only lose our stride but we become worse creatives.
Creativity really thrives in an environment where we can be our best selves, bring our whole selves and feel safe to push our ideas into new and exciting places. When fear shows up on the scene, we look for ways to stay safe and make our ideas more pragmatic and small. Whether it’s the fear of a boss, what your peers think of you, the impending recession, business pressures or downsizing…ad school definitely didn’t teach you how to navigate all of this while still doing great work. In this session, we’ll talk about ways to turn fear from foe to friend.
Room B
What We Make Together
Brian Collins, co-founder of COLLINS, explores how the value we bring to the world is shaped by what we offer each other. In this session, he explores the lessons and aspirations behind their community and experience initiatives from recent years. Join him to discover how community, conversation, and collective creativity amplify the power of design.
Room C
Show, Don’t Tell
How Storytelling and Prototyping Win Over Clients
In creative tech, ideas reach their full potential when brought to life through the power of storytelling and prototyping. This talk focuses on how storytelling, paired with tangible prototypes, helps leaders connect with clients and inspire their teams to embrace innovative concepts. I'll share how story-driven narratives allow clients to emotionally connect with technology, moving beyond technical descriptions to envision a lived experience. By using prototypes and stories together, I can make abstract ideas real, relatable, and memorable, ensuring buy-in from even the most skeptical audiences. This session will demonstrate how storytelling not only enhances persuasive power but also empowers teams to feel a deeper connection to the work.
Key Takeaway for Attendees: Attendees will discover how to blend storytelling with prototypes to make complex ideas tangible and relatable, gaining tools to bring clients on board with innovation and deepen their team’s engagement with the creative process.
11:15 - 12:15pm
Room A
The Power of a Shared Mission:
How managing a team begins with Collective and Individual Purpose
I believe that advertising is all about creating ‘positive propaganda’—using the power of storytelling to shape perceptions and inspire meaningful action. As a creative leader, I see this as an opportunity not only for the brands we represent but also for the creative teams we manage. Aligning a team around a shared mission is essential to building strong team chemistry and producing impactful work. In this discussion, we’ll explore how defining a collective (and individual) purpose brings cohesion, empowerment, and innovation, ensuring that each team member feels invested in a larger narrative. By focusing on finding, sustaining, and achieving a shared mission, we’ll uncover practical strategies for managing teams that create lasting cultural influence—both within the organization and beyond.
Room B
What I Learned About Leadership From My Toddler
Toddlers are completely unreasonable. They change their minds every 5 minutes. They don't let you rest -- that's of no use to them. They loooove to talk without much regard for what anyone else might have to say. There’s never been a more irrational manifestation of humanity. Interacting with them, especially negotiating, is an artform. Sound familiar? It should, because we see toddlerhood all around us in the industry. Among creatives and clients alike. Both can be demanding with high expectations that aren’t always articulately defined, frustrating the process and stifling progress. Both can have outsized egos that are afraid of being outshined, getting in the way of collaboration and making a positive experience feel like a pipe dream. So, when is it time to call a time-out? What’s the best way to draw a difficult boundary? How do you move things forward with a moving target? The fact is that being a parent, more than any other relationship or role, has taught me to be a better, more able leader. Which is what this session is all about. No directing parenting experience necessary to benefit from its lessons, because toddler behavior is something we can all relate to.
Room C
Down with cool. Long live cool.
Driving business growth while still creating mind-blowing work is harder but core to the value of a creative team
12:30pm - 1:30pm
Lunch
1:45 - 2:45pm
Room A
Do You Really Want To Be a CCO?
If you ever wondered what it takes or what you'd need to know to be a CCO this is the talk for you. In baseball there's something called a Five Tool Player. The rare player who excels in all five phases of the game. In advertising it's the same - there's the rare Five Tool CCO. What does it mean to be a Five Tool CCO? What are the five tools in which you need to be proficient to be considered a true Five Tool Chief Creative Officer? It's not a matter of being perfect, it's about being able to perform at a level above the norm across the board. But it's also about understanding your motivations for wanting the gig and understanding what it will mean before you go down that road.
Room B
Leading At The Intersection of Wellness And Greatness
Prioritizing wellness has not historically been a priority for the Advertising world, from the industry's leadership styles to our creative agency cultures. But there is a wave of leadership out there who are doing great things in this business, by supporting their personal well-being and the well-being of their teams. They believe that when we are well, we make all the difference on creativity, company culture, talent retention and ultimately the business. Get inspired in this session themed around the lessons learned from a Chief Strategy Officer's wellness-first career journey and the emerging wellness at work landscape. Together, we will explore the difference a leader prioritizing their own personal health and wellness can make on their career, leading and the ways they show up for their teams, the organization and the work.
Room C
MOVING AT THE SPEED OF CULTURE
Did you know that the average consumer will spend almost 6 years of their life* on social media? It’s more than mindless scrolling, people are using it for search, shopping, inspiration, and connection. It’s become business critical with social first brands seeing a revenue increase of 10.2%** as a direct result. But with complex approval processes and legal hurdles, how do you build a team that can move at the speed of culture? Come listen to Kristine Kobe, who led the Molson Coors in-house Social Build, and Drew Donatelle, who led the Coca-Cola Social Center when he was at Havas, and who together are building the Keurig Dr Pepper Social center.
3:00 - 4:00pm
Room A
Disrupt Yourself
Many believe that once you take on a leadership role you can enjoy your seniority and start to lean back. But in an industry that’s changing faster than ever before, you must constantly be evolving. Hear from Tiff Rolfe, Chair and Global Chief Creative of R/GA on how she believes modern creative leaders must always be learning and unlearning and start to become more comfortable with the uncomfortable if they want to stay relevant and be respected.
Room B
Keeping it Funny
For Sean McBride, CCO of Arnold Worldwide, comedy never went anywhere. Arnold has continued to win awards for comedy work, during a period when funny work for mass audiences simply wasn’t getting recognized in judging rooms. In this session, Sean will share a few basic tips for how to arrive at and execute funny campaigns, as well as thoughts on how to give feedback on creative teams to maximize humor, and what processes in modern agencies most get in the way of executing funny work.
Room C
Speaker & Session To Follow
4:15 - 5:15pm
Roundtable Discussions
5:15 - 6:00pm
Open Networking Activities
6:00 - 10:00pm
Dinner
