In this episode, Caroline Pay (Ex. Headspace, Mother, BBH, Grey) discusses the creative layer that sits between a brief and the work that comes back, and why, in her experience, it is almost always missing.
The brief lands with a designer. The thinking that should happen in between — the strategic and conceptual work that turns a problem into something distinctive — gets skipped.
The result is work that looks like everything else, teams that can't move fast without losing quality, and brands that never quite compound.
Caroline spent 20 years at agencies including Mother and BBH before becoming CCO at Headspace, where she built a brand system tight enough to hold its own against Disney, Netflix, Nike, and Spotify.
She draws on that experience to explain what the missing layer is, how to build it, and why hiring a designer and calling it a creative team isn't the same.
This episode is for every senior marketer who suspects their creative process is the problem but hasn't been able to name why.
Caroline Pay on LinkedIn
BEYOND THE BRAND