Global Brand And Marketing Leader, Navigating Clients, The Myth Of Martini Lunches

Tough loss against Duke. I left my voice in Charlotte, but thankfully my keyboard didn’t go with it. At least we got some snow.

This week I spoke with Peter Dailey, 2018 UVA grad who’s now the Global Director of Brand & Marketing Strategy at Ogilvy, a legacy advertising, marketing, and public relations agency, cited as a major inspiration for the TV series Mad Men.

The Rundown:

In the summers between UVA, I worked at CNN International in Atlanta on the news gathering desk.

I loved research, finding out the truth, telling stories, and having conversations with people. I thought journalism was the path. I was wrong.

At CNN, I had a great boss and mentor. One day, he sat me down and said, “This job goes two ways. You either sit in a newsroom, rise up the ranks, and maybe make it to TV. Or, you go to a war zone and prove you’re crazier than anyone else.”

After he said that, I realized it wasn't for me, and maybe I need to explore something else.

I loved art and design from a young age. I remember studying “illegally” with my friends in the A School and loving the environment. I knew vaguely that I wanted to do something that combined the best of journalism and creativity. Advertising seemed like a great place to start.

I started at Ogilvy through their Associate Program. David Ogilvy, the founder, set the whole program up with the idea that the agency should do two things:

The interview process was confusing and strange, but in an intriguing way. It's not at all like any other job interview – you can’t prepare for it like a case study.

From that point, everything else unfurled. Currently, I work as the Global Director of Brand & Marketing Strategy at Ogilvy.

I was sitting around a table discussing an advertising campaign, and at one point, we realized the only reason the client wasn’t aligned with our research, data, and work was political and emotional reasons.

We had to rethink our approach, from less of “here are the facts” to more of “how do we fit this into their worldview?” We framed it as not just how it would work within the client’s division, but also how it would make them look good to their bosses.

The lesson is that client service is about doing what's right, but it’s also doing what’s right for the client within their context.

It’s challenging because for 4 years in school, you're taught to show up, ask questions, work hard, and everything will kind of take care of itself.

That’s not how the real world works. But if you keep going, persist, and treat it as a learning environment, it’ll be liberating. At least it was for me.

I love asking people “why?”

Understanding different proximate causes is the source of all good strategic thinking.

For example, we assume there certain fact of life, about the way the world works and who you should be. If you ask “why?” you get closer to realizing that “everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you.” Steve Jobs said that.

You’ll find people don't say what they mean, and they don't mean what they say. So asking “why?” gets you a clearer understanding of the truth.

Don’t be annoying about it, but don’t be afraid to be constructive and challenge assumptions.

My controversial statement is that marketing is the only function a business has. Making a great product is marketing; getting the buyer to want it, on time, at the right price, is also marketing.

There are 3 misconceptions about it:

Finance has a legitimate role in business, but it shouldn’t lead strategic decisions about the future of business in the way it currently does.

If you’ve ever been on an airline and had a terrible customer experience, that’s probably because someone is making a short-term financial decision rather than thinking long-term about how to actually serve the client, get them to keep coming back, and tell others about it.

Finance’s role is to capture value to sustain the enterprise — it’s the score keeper, not the captain.

There's a lot of craft and sweat that goes into being creative. People think it's just dreamed up, and you either have it or you don't.

Creativity is a skill that you can hone and make better over time. 

Selling the idea is almost as important, if not more important, than actually coming up with it.

I’m going to quote Thomas Jefferson: “learning never ends.”

Observation is crucial. If you look around and see how people 5, 10, 20 years above you operate at work, you’re gonna figure out what you want to do a lot faster.

I honestly don’t believe anyone figures out exactly what the best fit is, but it’s important not to get stuck somewhere you’re not happy, and do it just because it's a job.

Find the people you admire, observe them, take notes, and follow their lead.

Reading is great — but putting yourself out there, meeting new people, and finding opportunities is what this is all about.

4 things to do right now:

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