JGA 7

Applying learning to the workplace is something that JGA apprentices are very familiar with. The final episode of The JGA 7 series explores what career paths look like from three people who have forged careers in the marketing sector and the routes that took them there. These paths are perhaps not as linear as you might think.

This week’s panel features Nichola Elgie, Senior Account Director for independent creative agency Drummond Central, Kathryn Wharton, Marketing Manager for digital experience consultancy, Monstarlab and Nicola Irving, Head of Strategic Marketing & Communications, Pearson Engineering which delivers proven combat engineering, battlefield mobility and counter-mobility equipment for armoured vehicles. 

This career-focused conversation looks at how these professionals have got to where they are today. The panel discuss roadblocks in careers and how to overcome them, what can hold you back, overcoming barriers, the impact of trusted mentors, where to begin in the marketing industry, exploring roles that are suited to your interests and establishing what your strengths are.  

Unconventional careers and non-linear paths are more common than we might think and the panel discuss changing career paths and how to go about making a significant change in your path, the power of network and feedback and how the community can help through challenges, spot you gaps and support you. 

Nichola, Kathryn and Nicola share their top tips on carving out a career path, how to follow your passion and leave you with really unique insights and ideas to take forward into your career pathway.

Unlocking the common denominators of Billionaires and lifting the lid on what it takes to scale and run successful businesses to reach major ambitious goals, this episode holds an abundance of lessons on thinking like a Billionaire.

Joining the JGA 7 panel this week is Susanna Lawson, Founder of OneFile, who after establishing the online business 17 years ago in a bedroom, scaled to build a multi-million pound company with a team of 80 and went on to sell the business in October 2021.

Graham Donoghue, CEO Sykes Holiday Cottages which takes 2.5 million people on holiday each year across 23000 properties in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand. Just one of his many impressive career accolades, Graham was responsible for the launch of the online holiday bookings for TUI, taking sales online from nothing to 3.5 Billion Euros, when many at the time didn’t believe he could do it.

The JGA 7 invites you to hear first-hand and real-world examples of tried and tested models of success from multimillion pound businesses and smaller scale projects, all instrumental in solving problems and working toward a bigger mission.

Digging into the methods, many are discussed, from how to understand a problem better through utilising a wide range of people for feedback, how starting with the “why” (Graham recommends the book “Start With Why" by Simon Sinek) followed by breaking down the vision into bite sized chunks to achieve and deliver the mission and the unfreeze - refreeze model.

The models they have used for success also encompass lessons on what to watch out for when problem solving, the element of luck, determination, mentorship, stepping outside of your comfort zone and more.

Sharing experiences of rising up and navigating their respective routes to success and where they are today, Graham and Susanna both detail their own paths of determination, lessons learnt, opportunity and graft. They discuss the importance of culture, failure and how a deep-rooted understanding of your ‘why’ are the fundamentals to thinking like a Billionaire. Prepare to make lots of notes.

Analysing the current standing of personalised marketing and asking the big ethical question – where to draw the line? The JGA 7 podcast host Owen Twidale is joined by Jacques Edeling, Head of Programmatic at Starcom UK, a world-renowned media communications agency within the Publicis Media Group.

This hugely informative episode helps us to better understand personalised marketing, what it is, differences between types of data from personally identifiable data to macro data signals and why respect for data is so crucial.

Jacques explains that major changes in recent years have been made from the likes of Apple introducing tracking prevention technology on Safari, opt-out functionality and that more major change is coming from the likes of Google.

As consumers are being given better functionality and power to make their own decisions and are moving away from sharing their data, how should brands and marketers respond?

Interesting change is coming and as the value of data becomes clearer and trackability is expected to significantly drop with further introduction of intelligence protection technology via Chrome, agencies and businesses will need to prepare to revise strategies and creativity will be required to reach and target desired audiences in order to remain competitive.

Jacques explains that we will need to reshape our expectations, asking; where is the value in data, what data are we collecting, why are we collecting it, how have we built an ecosystem that is built with privacy first and foremost at front of mind?

Jacques states that there’s a challenge and opportunity for responsible brands and marketers to improve the standard, be more specific in how they use and store first party data. Learn how in this informative and forward-thinking 30 minute conversation looking to the future of data and how it’s used in personalised marketing.

As data become more prominent in the business space, we pose the question 'Does Data Analysis Stifle Creativity' and are we becoming more or too reliant on data?

This week The JGA 7 podcast is joined by three industry panellists; Firas Khnaisser, Head of Decisioning at Standard Life/The Phoenix Group, Deenie Lee, Co-Founder of The Property Marketing Strategists and Ian Bates, Founder & Creative Partner, Firehaus to discuss and debate creativity within data.

The panel review the role of data as society becomes more reliant on it and consider the impact this is having on people’s creativity, problem solving and ideation. Big questions are posed; does data stifle creativity? Is data a good or bad force in business? Is data analysed at the expense of engagement and creativity in content creation?

The panel share unique and insightful examples that demonstrate points around how questioning can inform an interesting and innovative solution, how the right conditions and components support creativity, how you apply creativity within data to make a leap from one place to another to form a new idea and possibility and how stepping out of the comfort zone and taking risks and improvisation play a very important role in creativity and data.

The discussion also considers what brands and businesses need to focus on when it comes to the use of data, considering the role of value, purpose, storytelling, ethics and more and how anyone can be creative within the right conditions and the power of asking the question “why?” when problem solving.

In this bitesize 30 minute digest, Paul digs into his 20 + year career in the experiential marketing sector to highlight some of the key fundamentals of the discipline, how to successfully interact with audiences, how to better understand audience behaviours through psychology, the different types of experiences and the evolution of them in a post covid world, how success in experiential is measured and much more.

Learn how XZY designs experiences with the end in mind, pinpointing the behaviour it aims to affect and what success looks like to build the touch points & contexts, working toward that desired behaviour. Hear how value and purpose plays key roles in the work and better understand how the worlds of digital and live will interplay in the future of experience and how non-binary thinking is fundamental to this.

\the JGA 7 podcast meets with Paul Stanway, the Executive Creative Director and Co-Founder of XYZ. Paul has created and produced experiences globally for major cultural brands and in 2012, he co-founded XYZ, an award-winning independent brand experience agency based in London, which works with the likes of Gucci, Nike, Levi’s, Lego, Converse, Google, Apple and more.

In the first episode of JGA 7, Rachel Rapp, Futures Director and guru on trends, culture and strategic insights with global specialists Crowd DNA, joins host Owen Twidale and Richard Goodwin, Managing Director of The JGA Group to review the last 12 months and tell us how we can become aware of and spot trends. How to harness them and the realities and opportunities going through a universal behaviour shift can have on businesses.

Our new podcast series is designed to challenge, inspire and advise our learners. ​Over 7 weekly episodes, we will share knowledge, experience and provide insights through conversations and debates with business experts and industry leaders that will spark discussions, challenge mindsets and raise ambitions.  Discover creative ways to think more effectively about your organisation, your productivity and your career.