Bartle Bogle Hegarty

So anyway, the lecturer said, oh, we're going to watch this video, right? Presses play.

And it's this sociologist who goes to interview Sir John Hegarty of BBH fame.

And, you know, he's walking through all of these incredible famous campaigns from the U.K., um, you know, whether it was, um, you know, whether I'm trying to think which campaigns it was at the time, but everything was like Levi's jeans and, um, you know, all these multi-award winning famous, famous campaigns, which were all television at that point.

Um, and I literally turned to her at the end of this, again, I've known her for a year, And I said, you know, I'd love to do that.

The client has to begin by basically sit thinking that Dominic Monkhouse is a sort of aspirational character who is ahead of us in some domain and can lead us forwards into that domain.

If we flip over to something like, you know, back in the days of those like sexy advertising agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi and BBH, why were they successful? Because again, the clients had a belief that these people could lead them.

The pe- the c- the, the businesses.

If you get your non-discretionary purchase, there's no leadership involved there, in there.

Cindy Gallop, my guest today, graduated from Oxford.

She launched the New York office of global ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty in '98, and was named Advertising Woman of the Year in 2003.

Business Insider named her one of the 15 most important marketing strategy thinkers today, alongside Malcolm Gladwell and Seth Godin.

She's spoken twice at TED Talks, and both times said something that made audiences sit up straight and rethink everything.

Um, but in the couple of years running up to my 45th birthday, I'd thought, on one's 45th birthday is the moment when you should pause, take stock, reflect and review, where have I been, where am I going? All that good stuff.

So on February 1, 2005, my 45th birthday, I duly did that, and that was the point at which I went, "Oh my God, I've just worked 16 years for the same advertising agency." And absolutely wonderful advertising agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, BBH.

I'd worked for them in London.

I'd gone out to Singapore to help start and run the Asia Pacific office.

I think it might be time to do something different." And then the issue was I hadn't the faintest idea what.

Because, you know, I had said to people over the years, "I don't plan to work in advertising forever.

I don't plan to work at BBH forever," but advertising is a really great industry to work in to come across what you want to do next.

Because when you work in advertising, you come into contact with so many different industries, so many different companies, people, brands, organizations.