Big ideas. Passionately articulated. Hard won. The Battle of Big Thinking is a platform for nine of the advertising and communication industries&rsquo...
Battle of Big Thinking
Location:
Level 6 Terrace Entrance
2000 NSW
Australia
Access and Inclusion
Event Details
Big ideas. Passionately articulated. Hard won. The Battle of Big Thinking is a platform for nine of the advertising and communication industries’ most respected names to challenge and interrogate the conventions that underpin our industry, specifically in the areas of research, strategy and digital.
Why Battle?
To challenge the accepted wisdom that underpins the business of commercial creativity. To push our thinking further, beyond the day to day, to find new ground, new opportunities and new responsibilities for creative thinking. To give each attendee food for thought that shakes up the way they think and change the way they approach issues.
Our contestants
Ben Hourahine, Strategy Partner at Analog Folk
Ben has worked at the cutting edge of creative innovation and business transformation around the world. Over the years Ben has built a pub of the future for Guinness, podcasted for the Wall Street Journal and keynoted all over the globe — including on the future of content at the Edinburgh TV Festival and at Donald Trump’s Miami Beach Resort. Ben has advised Qantas, Foxtel, Australia Post and Google amongst others in Australia, where he also developed the digital strategy for the NSW Government. Recently Ben has been lecturing on strategic leadership at the University of Sydney and launching his own successful children’s play start-up. Last year Ben became strategy partner at AnalogFolk and in previous roles has worked as the chief futurist at Leo Burnett worldwide and as a global envoy for the Future Foundation. Ben has also DJed at the Ministry of Sound and hit a six at Lords.
Jay Morgan, Group Digital Creative Director, J. Walter Thompson
Jay is a creative director of product and experience design. He is currently group digital creative director at J.Walter Thompson Group Sydney across the J. Walter Thompson business and Webling digital agency. Previously he worked at Havas Worldwide as digital creative director and director of Innovation. Within his first six months he created the now famous Durex Fundawear product that has gone on to win at major shows including Cannes Lions, Spike Asia, New York Festivals, AWARD Awards and Internet Advertising Bureau. Continuing on with his passion for innovative marketing solutions he recently worked with Unilever’s OMO to release Peggy — the world’s first smart peg that helps families to wash better and make more time for the moments that matter.
Josie Brown, APAC Director of Digital, J. Walter Thompson
Josie has worked as a digital specialist in Europe and Asia for over 15 years. Her client-side experience at Lufthansa and later P&G focussed on maximising digital marketing to grow revenue and consumer engagement. Josie started working at JWT in 2011 and leads the digital function across the JWT APAC region to partner with clients on digital strategy and implementation.
She is passionate about the opportunities to embrace technology to connect brands with consumers. She thinks Asia is the best place to be right now, where ecommerce is changing shopping in China, where mobile connectivity is fuelling social interactions and where consumers are more positive about the impact of the internet than anywhere else in the world.
Linda McGregor, Founder and Owner, All About Eve
With almost 30 years’ experience in marketing, advertising and business strategy around the world, Linda has wide-ranging expertise across categories and industries, from government and not-for-profit, through retail, FMCG, pharmaceutical, financial services, automotive, travel and tourism to publishing, to mention just a few.
At All About Eve — the consultancy she established close to 15 years ago — her team unpack insight into gender differences impacting women. Uniquely examining both the conscious and subconscious, Linda has developed an actionable insight and strategy approach to allow her consultancy to truly claim they know this target and her clients to use this intelligence to go beyond surface knowledge of their audience to really understand, communicate more effectively and develop campaigns that build brand/customer bonds.
As founder of the leading and most credited female insights consultancy in Australia and New Zealand, Linda is an acknowledged pioneer and expert on applied understanding of insight. She also frequently keynotes at conferences, is a sought-after commentator in the media, an editorial board member and judge and mentor to many professionals. Her dynamic style and command of her subject, as well as breadth of first-hand client/agency/consultancy experience, makes her a compelling and yet grounded-in-application expert.
Howard Parry-Husbands, CEO, Pollinate
Howard is an experienced marketing researcher specialising in branding, innovations and communications development. Howard founded Pollinate, a strategic research consultancy, 11 years ago to better understand how ideas spread in order to manage consumer behaviour change and influence positive transformations for society. Howard is a director of leading advocacy agency Social Soup, a non-executive director of Planet Ark, one of Australia’s leading environmental organisations, and a frequently requested workshop facilitator and public speaker.
Mike Daniels, Founder, The Behavioural Architects
Mike is the founder of The Behavioural Architects — an insights and strategy consultancy that specialises in applying the latest thinking from the behavioural sciences to better understanding behaviour. Working with leading Australian and global businesses and brands, as well as extensively in the public sector, Mike and his team help organisations to design the behaviour they wish to see. As a leading planner in Australian, UK and US advertising agencies, Mike has always focused on behavioural change and now sees in the behavioural sciences, an incredible toolkit to be drawn upon.
Mike has a degree in psychology and conducted post-graduate research in family therapy before beginning his career as a qualitative researcher and strategist. Mike's belief is that the better we define business, brand and behavioural problems, the faster and more effective the solutions we create. The concepts and vocabulary now being developed by the behavioural sciences, afford us the opportunity to be ever more penetrating in our depth of insight and diagnosis of issues and opportunities.
He believes that with a deeper understanding of the underlying causes of behaviour can come far more effective thinking about how to influence it, which is increasingly vital as organisations everywhere are looking to find new and more effective ways to create behavioural change.
Moensie Rossier, Brand Planning Director BWMDentsu
Moensie is brand planning director at BWM Dentsu, where she co-authored and champions the Modern Masterbrand. Also head of Strategy at Haystac Public Relations, she lives between worlds and has more heads than Worzel Gummidge.
Carl Ratcliff, CEO One Green Bean
Carl has been working in marketing for over 20 years. At agency, as advertising planner in TBWA/London, then client, as head of marketing at Channel Five in the UK, before returning to the realm of agency to manage the likes of Naked Australia in Sydney. His experience includes a varied and vibrant mix of client, from high street lifestyle to digital retail; from myriad quests for youth, to universal appeal. His client side experience allowed him to see the worth that marketing can deliver in terms of net outcome, whilst his leadership of agencies has provided a new found respect for resourcefulness and a renewed evangelism for creativity.
His most recent role as CEO of One Green Bean — Australia's most awarded social and PR agency — has allowed him to reprise a former love for insight cracking, whilst harbouring fresh love for ideas that are designed to earn their own audience and media. Alex Bogusly most definitely got it right when he (almost) said, ‘You have to play to play…’. "
Kate Smither, Chief Strategy Officer, Saatchi & Saatchi
Kate is one of the world’s most awarded strategists, recognised by all the major creative and effectiveness awards. Whilst global planning director at Ogilvy in London, her strategic leadership on Dove contributed to the success of the Dove Real Beauty Sketches campaign. The campaign won over 40 awards, including Cannes Titanium Grand Prix and Cannes Effectiveness Lions as well as the Grand Prix at the North American Effies.
During her career Kate has been lucky enough to work on some of the biggest brands around, Dove, General Mills, Schweppes, the AFL, Cricket Australia, AGL, CommBank, Medibank, Defence Forces Recruiting and Cadbury in Australia and overseas. Now settled back into Australia, Kate is the chief strategy officer at Saatchi&Saatchi where she leads strategy across all the agency’s cleints.
This event is presented by The Account Planning Group (APG) and The Communications Council.
