Why I left EssenceMediacom after 34 years: Sue Unerman interview

Sue Unerman, global chief strategy officer at Brainlabs, joins Omar Oakes to discuss leaving WPP's EssenceMediacom after 34 years and "reinventing" herself at a very different agency.

Unerman is well-known across the industry and beyond as a progressive thinker and media strategist, thanks to the books she has written as an author about workplace culture and inclusion.

She is a Cannes Lions Creativity for Good winner and 2024 Glass Lions judge, a fellow of the IPA and has co-authored three bestselling books: Belonging, The Glass Wall and Tell the Truth. A fourth book, A Year of Creativity, is due to be released next month.

Highlights

Unerman on… AI: "Businesses that are built on AI, rather than businesses that are kind of importing AI as a last-minute thing, are going to have some advantages."

Unerman on… strategy: "What has changed is the ability to gather signals and understanding and intelligence about the right time, the right place, the right message, the right person, has gone up exponentially, and finding a way to digest and see the signals in all of that data and all of that noise. That's the task of the strategist."

Unerman on… her new book: "There has been a lot more promotion of both people and techniques that fall within the left-brain bucket, the analytical bucket. And the right-brain techniques and ideas around creativity tend to get a bit squashed by left-brain thinkers."

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Why I left EssenceMediacom after 34 years: Sue Unerman interview

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