CP’s team of senior strategists and anthropologists regularly release insights on cultural, economic, and social shifts that can impact our clients. Here are their most recent observations.

1. People still dream, the scale is just getting smaller.

In the U.S., purchase decisions are shifting as people adjust to their shrinking disposable incomes. With inflation at heights unseen in four decades, cost of living has become a major concern. Although costs like driving to work and buying groceries are impacting people most, attitude and behavior changes are the most dramatic when it comes to larger expenditures like home improvement and remodeling. Even with home values soaring today, consumers fear embarking on bigger home projects due to higher cost of materials and a shrinking contractors universe. But we expect homeowners will still aspire to improve their homes, and will reframe those dreams with more scaled-back, practical approaches.

Sources: Bloomberg, CNBC, IPSOS

2. A reawakening for ‘accessible luxuries.’

Inflation in Q2 and beyond will affect household finances. People are most concerned about energy and agricultural markets and their associated rising costs. Over the past two decades, luxuries and indulgences have evolved in perception from a human want to a human right, perceived to be reward necessities to counter stress and depression. As such, when it comes to tightening the budget belt, we expect consumers to trim their spending on essentials in order to still afford their ‘new need’ indulgences.

Sources: Mintel, Financial Review, Retail Detail

3. She-flation is real and it’s being felt in a big way.

The recent spikes in goods and services is disproportionately affecting women (referred to as “she-flation”). Women tend to do most of the household purchasing of goods and thus are more often reminded of inflation in their everyday lives. People’s individual experiences with inflation depend on their purchasing habits and gender. But brands can identify customer sentiments like optimism or pessimism based on these factors and, in this case, account for the heightened emotional toll of the “pink tax” women feel right now. Brands should assess who’s most affected by inflation and do something about it.

Sources: NBC News, WNYC, UChicago

4. Treats and rewards as today’s self help. 

People are re-evaluating what is a necessity and what is an indulgence. Many people are turning to treats and indulgences as a form of reward and coping or self-help. COVID and lockdown heightened our consciousness on the importance of mental wellness and self care. A brand who encourages people to put their well-being first and encourages treating one’s self is destined to earn affinity.

Sources: Financial Times, The Baffler, AFR, Financial Times, Happiness By Design, Adobe

5. Standing up for something means defying something else.

Alignment against Russia is one of the most extreme alignments among consumers in recent history. People don’t want companies selling to Russia, buying from Russia or maintaining operations in Russia. Younger generations in particular are contributing to effectively canceling a whole country. People want brands to act on their values in ways that may be risky in the short-term, but represent a commitment to personal and organizational human values and equity. Any imaginative brand can find a way to do something similar to create natural affinity.

Sources: Yale, The Hill, The Atlantic, The New York Times, eMarketer

6. People don’t save for a rainy day when it’s raining.

Lockdown and the pandemic provided the chance for many people to consider what was a priority in the short and longer term. Inflation has now made a lot of our longer term goals seem derailed or unattainable in the present day. Consumers need to be reassured by credible sources that they shouldn’t let go of longer term goals. The economic ebbs and flows are normal and in every environment, there are opportunities to take, and plans to be made or to stick with. Reassurance from a bank to go forth with goals and plans can be very inspiring and reinforce those discovered priorities established during lockdown.

Sources: Fidelity, PR Newswire, CNBC, The New York Times, Forbes, Accenture

All good things expire. Look out for more trends coming soon.

Andrea Pappin, Corporate Affairs & Communications, ZOO Digital 

Right beside the Connelly Partners Dublin offices is an incredible place, called the Fair Play Cafe. It makes great coffee, superb sandwiches and opens early, baking its own range of fruit scones. Bliss. Yet it does so much more to help the local community here, as we found out recently. 

How the Fair Play Cafe, ZOO, Connelly Partners, Google and a whole range of local businesses all ended up working together to help (in a small way) the Ukrainian community here, all started with a decaf Americano and a leaflet. See, the Fair Play Cafe regularly runs a hospitality and barista training course for the local Ringsend community – where, over an intense two-week period, students learn coffee making, pint pulling, cocktail shaking, food preparation, top customer service skills and all the other elements you need to work in a cafe, restaurant or hotel in Ireland.   

Just how quickly a group of strangers can move to work together is simply incredible. Two days after one of the ZOO team inquired if this course could be adapted for the Ukrainian community, three people met in a room – Teresa from Google, Joe from Fair Play Cafe and Andrea from ZOO. The first question put to the group was so telling – “so, what roadblocks do we need to move to make this happen?” And happen it did, three weeks later. 

It was a real community effort to turn this initiative around with the ZOO and Connelly Partner teams giving so much. Hours of organisation were contributed, team members met our Ukrainian students on their first day at their bus stops to walk them to the Cafe so they didn’t get lost – and so many of the team contributed €10s to help pay for a lunch for the students, so there was one less thing for them to have to worry about. Thanks to the Ukrainian Matching Fund at Connelly Partners, as well as our team knocking on the doors of other local businesses in our office block, every lunch, coffee and cake our Ukrainian students needed during their course was taken care of. Other local funds help to pay for transport, and many of the trainers of the course (including baristas just back from the World Championships) all waived their fees. 

And it wasn’t just lunch or just a walk. Joe, the main organiser of the Fair Play Cafe, captured it so well in his thank you message to us: “After everyone left the building [after graduation] except for my wife and I, we just sat with them all and chatted with them for over an hour. It slowly dawned on us that they were reluctant to say goodbye to each other as they had formed a special bond of friendship and mutual encouragement, with the older ones acting as big sisters/mothers to the younger ones. There were a lot of tears among them when they finally said goodbye to each other and went their separate ways. Before they left, we assured them that we will organise a BBQ for them all again in a few weeks time when the weather improves.”

It’s the power of a coffee. And a cafe. And a community. And if you’re ever in the Dublin office, make sure to visit the Fair Play Cafe. You never know what could happen.

Brian Kastelein, Director of Data & Analytics 

So it’s official. On March 16, 2022, Google announced their intention to sunset the current version of Google Analytics, called Universal Analytics (UA), that has been the go-to web analytics tool for more than 30 million websites for the past 10 years. It will be replaced by a completely new Google Analytics environment, called Google Analytics 4 (GA4), by July 1, 2023. 

Should you care? Absolutely! Google Analytics 4 will usher in an entirely new era of web analytics that moves away from a dependence on cookies, a tracking mechanism that has come under scrutiny in recent years as concerns over consumer privacy, along with corresponding legislation, have gained traction. In Google’s own words, GA4 is “privacy-centric by design, so you can rely on Analytics even as industry changes like restrictions on cookies and identifiers create gaps in your data.”

In my August blog post, “10 Things to Know About Google Analytics 4 (GA4),” I said the launch of GA4 was a BIG deal. Now with the deadline of July 1, 2023 clearly in view, it is an even BIGGER deal and organizations need to begin to prepare for what will be a major shift in website measurement and marketing campaign tracking.

Start using Google Analytics 4 immediately

Google is making every effort to ensure that no one is caught off guard. For anyone using Google Analytics with some regularity, you’ve no doubt received multiple emails, in addition to the now persistent reminder of the approaching deadline in the blue alert bar across the top of your Google Analytics account every time you log in. 

Now is the time to heed that alert bar. There are ample technical considerations in planning the migration from UA to GA4. Everything from how to best export, store, and reference historical UA data to determining how to most effectively leverage new GA4 standards and functionality for event tagging, UTM conventions, and attribution models will need to be reviewed and configured in order to adapt to the new environment.

If you haven’t done so already, I strongly recommend setting up your GA4 property and running it in parallel to your existing UA account(s). This will allow data to begin to be collected in GA4 and provide a launching point for gaining familiarity with the new environment and exploring the many differences when comparing it to UA.

Begin to climb the steep learning curve

Beyond the technical considerations of GA4, one of the biggest challenges to be faced over the coming months is to effectively communicate to a more general and non-technical marketing audience the various impacts and implications of the shift from UA to GA4.

Complicating factors abound – and it’s going to require dedicated time, as well as a concerted effort, to navigate the UA to GA4 transition.

For instance, there is a “session” metric in both UA and GA4, however, the methodology for calculating a session in the two platforms is completely different making any year-over-year comparisons of “sessions” a bit like apples and oranges. By contrast, other standard metrics in UA, such as “bounce rate,” go the way of the dinosaurs and are replaced by new metrics, in this case “engagement rate,” in GA4.

Explaining these often nuanced differences to time-pressed and results-oriented marketing professionals, who don’t have a high tolerance for having caveats attached to their performance metrics, is going to have to be done methodically and incrementally. But the reality of a move to GA4 is that there are going to be inherent challenges to conducting cross-platform trend analysis and setting benchmarks based on historical performance levels. GA4 is truly a brand new world.

So with plenty of hurdles ahead, the upcoming months will be a true test of organizational fortitude. All marketers, from the more technical to the more creative, will need to collaborate and communicate to successfully navigate the transition to GA4. We are on the steep part of the learning curve, but the potential reward of mastering what will likely prove to be a more robust solution built for the impending cookie-less future must serve to motivate our efforts moving forward. 

It’s yet another interesting chapter for modern marketing.

Check out Brian’s article published in Siliconrepublic.com.

Image source

Neal Malone, PR and Social Media Management Supervisor

Four hours. That’s the average amount of time that Gen Z users spend on social media per day.

Once you layer in working, eating, and sleeping, there isn’t a whole lot of time to do much else.

This isn’t a generation that spends time reading articles in the morning, they don’t watch a ton of TV…and the shows or movies that they do watch are through streaming platforms or YouTube. Heck, there’s even data out there now that tells us members of Gen Z are ditching their email in favor of social DMs.

Talk about a hard advertising target, right?! Let’s put it this way…if you’re a brand trying to reach Gen Z – a generation that is already playing a big role in shaping our society and culture – investing in traditional ad formats would be like setting a pile of money on fire. Sorry, it just isn’t going to work.

So that brings us back to social media – quite literally the epicenter of all things Gen Z. There are plenty of ad formats across the various social media platforms, but the more traditional ones are quickly losing their luster. Gen Z users are experts at sniffing out ads and will quickly scroll past anything that feels too promotional. Instead, these users gravitate towards edgy, raw, authentic content featuring real people, real stories, and very little “sales speak.”

Because today, consumers are tired of being sold to. They’re over logos flashing everywhere, voiceovers that cram in talking points, and hired talent that isn’t representative of them or their communities. Consumers in 2022 are savvy and the expectations they have for brands are at an all-time high.

At Social Media Week – a three-day conference hosted by AdWeek in New York City – PepsiCo Chief Marketing Officer, Todd Kaplan, may have summed it up best when he said that “brands should make consumers feel invited, not chased.” Now, you could argue that a company with the history, scale, and brand recognition of PepsiCo doesn’t really need to sell itself to consumers anyway, but Todd’s point is an important one – and all brands should take note.

It’s not that Gen Z (and younger Millennial) consumers are allergic to all marketing and advertising – they just want brands to engage them in a different, more personalized way. The word “authentic” was mentioned more than any other word at Social Media Week (to the point where it started to generate some laughs from the crowd), but the reason why it came up so often is because consumers today demand authentic, relatable content. If it’s anything otherwise, it’s not worth their time.

So what does this mean for brands who want to reach Gen Z and other like-minded consumers?

It means engaging with influencers who can bring a trusted voice to their products, it means leveraging user-generated content to power their brand channels, and it means using social listening to identify trends and keep a pulse on evolving consumer conversations. In a general sense, it means rethinking and modernizing everything we’ve been taught as marketers over the years.

Speaking at Social Media Week, Hootsuite Chief Marketing Officer, Maggie Lower, encouraged brands to be “courageously creative” with their social media strategies and campaigns. She acknowledged that it isn’t easy for some companies to take this leap of faith into a more organic and less buttoned-up content world, but it’s a critical step that brands must take if they want to grab the attention of younger consumers.

If one thing was clear at Social Media Week across all the companies and brands that presented (you may have heard of a few: Google, Meta, Twitter, Snapchat, Glossier, Anheuser-Busch InBev, PepsiCo, and others), now is the time to dive head-first into the world of short-form video, influencers, and creator-driven marketing. After all, Gen Zers will soon be the key decision makers and content curators at our favorite brands, and this type of content won’t be a choice…it’ll be an expectation.

Now, onto the Metaverse and NFTs…just kidding! Next time, maybe.

 ZOO Digital

With the recent announcement of Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter, we looked into some of the consequences this may have for advertisers who rely on the platform.

Here’s a quick summary some implications of his takeover that we know so far:

Likely changes to censorship rules to come

• Elon Musk has previously promised to reduce censorship on the platform.
• Describing himself as a “free speech absolutist”, Musk has spoken out against Twitter’s content-moderation practices designed to make the platform safer for advertisers, by keeping toxic and violent content off the social network.
• According to advertisers, Musk’s switch from the constraints of censorship to online free speech could mean ads are shown adjacent to controversial content that brands would not want to be associated with.
• However, the EU has just passed new digital content rules that will soften some of Musk’s cough when it comes to relaxing too many rules around hate speech or threats to violence. There are eye watering financial penalties for social media firms for failure to protect what is said online.

An unclear road for the role of advertising in the Twitter business model

• Musk has previously tweeted that under his new leadership, Twitter would have “no ads. The power of corporations to dictate policy is greatly enhanced if Twitter depends on advertising money to survive.” That tweet has since been deleted.
• Most of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising – in Q4, 2021, the company reported advertising revenue of $1.41 billion out of $1.57 billion in total revenue during that quarter.
• Ads account for nearly 90% of Twitter’s revenue now, while data licensing accounts for most of the rest.
• The $5 billion-a-year advertising business model is now under the leadership of someone whose current company, Tesla, buys no advertising.

Corporate reputations again to the fore when it comes to ad budgets

• Brian Wieser, the global president of business intelligence at ad-buying company GroupM, claims most advertisers who use the platform “strongly prefer content standards” on Twitter.
• Advertisers will likely be reluctant to have their message in the same timeline as anti-Semitism or violence again women.
• “The advertising industry is wary of Musk’s proposal to loosen speech rules on Twitter”, according to Mike Zaneis, co-founder of the Brand Safety Institute, a nonprofit organisation of digital advertisers concerned about objectionable material online.
• “Nobody wants to go back to the Wild, Wild West,” Zaneis said, referring to a time when forums and social media platforms had little-to-no content moderation. “It was painful. It was harmful to brands. It was harmful to citizens. We’ve made incredible strides, and I think a reversal would be unfortunate.”
• Ad agencies have expressed concern that Musk’s unconstrained approach to Twitter will make the social media platform less safe for brands.
• However, some don’t expect that there will be an immediate change in ad dollar spend until advertisers see a material change in the policies.

So….

So, what we do know is that changes are highly likely in the Twittersphere. What those changes actually mean when bottom lines and reputations come into play are yet to be seen. For now, your ad budgets are operating under the current rules of conduct and corporate reputation management. However, watch this space ad buyers. Don’t know about you, but we’re putting an alert on Elon Musk’s Twitter account.

Sources: BBC, Wall Street Journal, NBC News, Yahoo Finance, Politico Europe

Allie Pignataro, Associate Media Director

It’s early April in Palm Springs, it’s hot as hell in the desert, and media agencies, advertising agencies, and technology companies alike are strolling through the doors of the Miramonte Hotel, two years after the onset of COVID-19. Everyone is ready to embrace new and old faces, but more importantly, navigate this new era of change and uncertainty that has undoubtedly made its mark on the advertising industry.

I was lucky enough to attend this year’s Digiday Media Buying Summit where I listened in on many fireside chats and panels, as well as participated in town-halls and group discussions surrounding the hot topics in the media and marketing world. There were a lot of interesting conversations about new media channels, data privacy, etc., but there was one in particular that really struck home for me: the rise of the independent agency.

I know this idea isn’t necessarily a new phenomenon per-se. But although the pandemic has disrupted ad agencies of all sizes, it’s become clear that this ‘experience’ has really showcased the power of the independent agency model. I was very proud to be representing Connelly Partners prior to the summit, but I left feeling even more proud to be part of an organization that embodies and exhibits the unique value and strengths that independents can offer.

To highlight a few:

Agility

Surviving in the marketing industry means being able to quickly adapt to the needs of your consumer. As market demands continue to change at extremely high rates, there is an insane amount of value in the ability to be flexible. Every company knows that. Leaving wiggle room for innovation and change is a vital part of being successful. Simply put, ad agencies that are independent have less red tape. They’re free from agency network bureaucracy, allowing them to make quicker decisions and react at speed. 

Choice

Independent ad agencies make their own choices versus having them made for them. This is reflected in the talent that they hire, the various strategic business decisions they make, and having the privilege of seeking out prospective clients who are like-minded, demonstrate very similar passions, and exemplify the same philosophies and values.

Accountability 

Independent ad agencies are able to take accountability for every action they take, both good and bad. But, they kind of have to as small shops as there’s no one else to pass the blame to. While it’s easy to bask in success, it’s equally important to own up to mistakes. This type of transparency works well for both clients and employees.

Creativity 

Independent ad agencies are typically smaller and have fewer resources. This can actually be perceived as quite a large advantage as it provides departments more clarity and encouragement to be resourceful in how to think about developing and communicating new ideas, strategies and insights. The notion of “less is more” is completely suitable in this case. Independents scratch the surface to find solutions that perhaps haven’t been contemplated by others previously.

It was rewarding to hear many people share the same perspective in that independent agencies know damn well how business is run. They are laser-focused on the well-being of the client, while also taking the time to understand their bottom line. Most importantly, independent ad agencies truly care about the impact their work and dedication has on the overall business, a priceless aspect that money can’t buy. 

 Ali Sayles, Media Supervisor 

This month, Connelly Partners gave me the opportunity to take a break from my day-to-day media planning responsibilities to attend the Digiday Media Buying Summit in Palm Springs, California. Along with enjoying the beautiful weather, I was able to learn from some of the top media executives in our industry. During our three days together, we covered a variety of topics ranging from emerging media and marketing trends, the cookieless future, and ways to evolve media strategies. I walked away with new connections, and a breadth of knowledge which I’m excited to share with my Connelly Partners colleagues and clients. Here are a few of the topics that stood out: 

Transparency is key. 

With the cookieless future upon us, it’s important, now more than ever, to ensure that we’re transparent with how we’re collecting and measuring media data. This impacts communication not only with marketing and advertising clients, but internal agency teams as well. 

Clean rooms are the new future. 

Clean Rooms are a must in order to ensure that media data is being used in a privacy compliant manner. Many media and technology vendors are offering their solution, but it’s important we align on which solution is the path moving forward. 2023 will be here before we know it.

Metaverse is emerging, but still too new.

There’s been a ton of conversations surrounding media and the Metaverse, but the hype outpaces the material value. There are still questions that need to be answered; Where does the Metaverse fall within the social and media landscape? Will there be advertising within the Metaverse? How will we do it? Can we measure it? It’s still too early to tell. 

Gone are the days of upfront media planning. 

The pandemic has increased the need for media teams to be nimble when it comes to our media strategies and tactics. We saw this with COVID-19, the Ukraine and Russia, as well as the chip in the auto industry. Events like these have forced us to have a plan A, B, C, and D ready to activate.

So, what’s next for media planning and buying? If there’s one thing that I learned, it’s that what’s next changes constantly. Tools, products, and technology are constantly evolving, but that’s the best part of our job; no day in media is the same. Stay hungry for knowledge, be a sponge, ask questions, and poke holes.

Oh, and stay hydrated, because it definitely gets hot in the desert.

Michelle Capasso, Partner & Director of Media Services at Connelly Partners, was recently a panelist at the Digiday Business of TV Forum. In her session, Michelle reflects on the major shift that the TV landscape has been experiencing. Transitioning from age-and-gender-based media buying to audience-based media buying, this change still appears to be ongoing. Through the lens of targeting capabilities vs actual scale to find audiences in this new space, Capasso explains the progress, shortcomings, and opportunities in this new space. Watch the full session below.

Andrew Velichansky, Brand Supervisor 

Most brands nowadays have defined their “Purpose.” Beautifully cast in size-64pt font on a cardstock hand-out given to everyone at the corporate office. Two weeks later, it ends up in a Waste Management truck and forgotten until the next annual company meeting where it shows up on the “agenda” slide. 

Box: Checked.

It’s not ill-intentioned. We’re busy, and accountable to hit numbers that are black, not red, no matter how we get there.

But, if an organization is solely focused on selling products or growing share, it’s leaving a lot of value on the table.

What is a brand’s purpose?

It’s its reason for being—the why it exists. A north star that guides the whole organization, inside and out.

We make decisions daily: Is the new product viable? Do we support the social cause? Will the job candidate drive us in the right direction? Having a north star focuses every decision, giving clarity and meaning for employees, customers and beyond. Think: Does the outcome of this decision align with our purpose?

Why do brands need a purpose?

Because without it, they sell commodities and employ uninspired people. 

Take socks and shoes. Common goods, and with too many known (and unknown) brands to count. How was Bombas able to surpass $100MM in revenue in 2018 selling socks in such a highly fragmented market? Their brand purpose is clearly and demonstratively rooted in helping to clothe those in need, donating one pair of socks for each sale. Toms shoes was an early leader in that business model. Comfortable and aesthetic socks and shoes were cost-of-entry. Rooting their commodities in a larger purpose let them break through and scale.

Brand purpose doesn’t end at philanthropy. CVS boldly stopped selling profitable tobacco products in 2014. Their redefined purpose to “Bring our heart to every moment of your health” led them to ditch tobacco products and launch their “Start to Stop” program to help people quit smoking. Weeding out products that didn’t support their purpose freed up space to innovate and sell ones that did. A short-term sacrifice, but long-term bottom-line driver.

Ask Unilever, which reported in 2019 that its purpose-led, sustainable brands (Ben & Jerry’s, Vaseline, Dove, among many others) grew 69% faster than the rest of their business. And a 2019 study by Deloitte uncovered that purpose-driven companies grow three times faster than their competitors. 

The bottom line is better for it, and so are the employees.

The Great Resignation agitated the labor market, sending companies scrambling to adapt their culture and benefits to be more talent-friendly. Businesses are still struggling with retention. Yes, we want money. But that’s not all.

According to a 2021 McKinsey study, employees are more than five times more likely to feel fulfilled when their purpose aligns with their employers’. Two-thirds of millennials consider an employer’s social and environmental commitments when deciding where to work.

Gen-z is already a core part of the workforce and realizes the power brands have in driving DE&I. They’ll orchestrate brand boycotts. They’ll spike viral sales. And they aren’t afraid to resign from purposeless product-driven companies. They want to feel they’re impacting people, and they want the companies they work for to use their position of financial strength to make peoples’ lives better.

How do we put it into action?

Building a purpose takes time. It’s an ongoing commitment from R&D, HR, marketing, finance, production, and operations. It takes months to develop a meaningful initiative. It takes years to build an authentic purpose backed by substance. And it takes leadership that recognizes the significance of embracing that purpose every day.

We’ve worked with clients to both lay the foundation, and also help those with established purposes find authenticity by crawling, walking and eventually running toward that north star. What does the Defiantly Human methodology look like?

Take our client, Liberty Bank, where we:

• Hosted a series of stakeholder interviews to uncover how their employees viewed the organization’s new mission/vision, and what role they saw the bank playing for customers and the broader community. 
• Landed on a positioning and tagline that embraced who they were at their core and addressed the larger purpose they needed to serve: Be Community Kind.
• Led a set of employee ideation groups to brainstorm products, services, events, hiring/onboarding programs, community relationship building, and much more, all through the lens of Be Community Kind.
• Concepted and helped execute surprise & delight initiatives, including a new brand ambassador program focused on rewarding and paying everyday kindness forward in spontaneous ways.

The secret to building lasting, institutional purpose in an organization? Involve everyone. The whole company–all levels, all departments. Workshops and ideation groups without guardrails–ignore budget, timing, and current products and services. That’s when the ideas really flow. It’s easier to take a big idea back down to earth than the other way around.

Most importantly: It’s not a project. Or a task force. Or CSR. It’s a philosophy that requires an ongoing, honest review to ensure everything we do points us toward that north star.

Ideate, evaluate, act. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This week marks the beginning of Women’s History Month, and to celebrate, we asked a few of our leaders to take a moment to reflect on some of the major influences in their lives that helped shape them into the people they are today. Here are some things we can all learn from these remarkable women. 

Find your people

If you were to ask me how I became the first female CCO in the city of Boston, I could mention the hard work, the campaigns I helped create, or my relationships with clients. But really what it comes down to is that I found my people early on. Probably the single most important piece of advice I could give to any aspiring creative director. You have to surround yourself with your personal Board of Directors. I am inspired by mine. The person who will ultimately be your boss of 25 years who sees you as a creative person regardless of gender. The person who develops concepts with you and will take the time to discuss mutual parenting strategies before heading toward an idea. The people surrounding you on a daily basis who are open-minded enough to hear all perspectives but opinionated enough to tell you theirs. And make you laugh. It’s so important that they make you laugh. Most importantly, I’m inspired by my family who lets me be my authentic self while simultaneously reminding me why it’s all worth it. I’m not sure I can pinpoint any one person or thing or event that has inspired me the most over the years, but I know this: I did not do this alone.

– Alyssa Toro, Sr. Partner, Chief Creative Officer – CP Boston 

Don’t be afraid to fail

I have been the beneficiary of three incredible leaders in my career who all helped to shape me into the leader I am today. One who taught me the importance of pushing past comfort zones (by literally shoving me into a role that I didn’t think I was ready for), one that showed me the strength in being an empathetic leader (and how as women that is a huge advantage), and one that attuned me to listening – really listening (what isn’t being said, that you are hearing). However, in each and everyone of those leaders, never once was I made to feel like failure wasn’t acceptable. They collectively led from a spirit of encouragement and never fear. Fear-driven leaders can breed a toxicity that debilitates their staff and the damage often can be unrepairable, thus negatively impacting culture. My advice to any aspiring leader is to provide clear guidelines around expectations, offer all the support when they need it, then allow people the wiggle room to succeed and fail. Let them show you what they are capable of. And in the worst case that there is failure – this is where people will grow the most.   

– Nadine Cole, President, VRX Studios – Vancouver

Compassion and determination are the keys to success

My mom, Marian, has inspired me to lead with determination and compassion. As a divorced single mother, she fearlessly pursued her own career ambitions in education, which is something that I always admired. Beginning as a 5th grade teacher and ending her career as an Assistant Superintendent, she wore many different leadership hats, including Troop Leader for my Girl Scout group! My mom had high expectations for her students and fellow educators, but never let her firm approach affect the relationships she built with everyone she encountered. To this day, students she taught decades ago still keep in touch! That’s the kind of leader I strive to be. 

My advice for aspiring leaders is to strike a delicate balance between being assertive and direct, while still allowing your personality shine through. When it comes to team building, it’s important to create strong relationships with your peers. If you’re all business, all the time, it’s harder to foster those long-lasting connections. Instead, find a way to lead with empathy, as it will earn you respect, and ultimately help your team to achieve its collective goals. No one wants to work for a leader they fear and I’m a firm believer that compassion is the key to success. 

– Alyssa Stevens, Director of Public Relations and Social Media – CP Boston

Be fearless

I have been inspired by so many people in business. Each job I have done, no matter how random and unrelated to my current role, has taught me a skill that helps me today, taught to me by someone I admired. Most important for me, was how the task was done, and by that I mean how people were treated. Respect and kindness can never be overrated.

More than anything, I admire and am inspired by people who, through curiosity, sheer determination and tenacity, have achieved great success. Especially people who did not have support to guide them in their younger years. I firmly believe everyone has it in them to do well in whatever field they choose – extraordinary people are just ordinary people who go that extra mile, but having a mentor along the way helps.

I grew up in a family of successful entrepreneurs. I am one of six children, and am currently the only one not self-employed (though I did have my own business for 10 years – I had to!) My dad, although no longer on this earth, still inspires me. After he graduated with a degree in engineering, he, like so many Irish at the time, headed for the USA. As part of this programme to get his visa, he did training with the Marines. One of the key takeaways was something that stayed with him all his life, and influenced me as well. It was these four words: “Just one more step.” No matter how big a task seems or how overwhelmed you feel by the scale of it, just focus on one more step and you will get there – you don’t have to have everything figured out, just the next thing on your list. 

My current inspiration is a mantra I repeat daily as I strive to be more focussed and efficient in a world where we are pulled in so many directions each hour – it’s the following quote from Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

So many of us suffer from imposter syndrome, thinking we are not as bright or as gifted as others, when really it boils down to determination, being fearless and getting into good habits. 

– Vaunnie McDermott, Client Business Director – CP Dublin

Don’t give up, even when things are hard 

This may be cliche, but I owe so much of what I’ve been able to do throughout my career to my mother, who was from a generation of women caught in the middle of the working mom movement. She grew up in the late ’50s when women were schooled in homemaking, only to be told by society in the early ’80s that, not only could she have it all, she was expected to do it all. The issue was that the culture of pressure and expectation hadn’t yet shifted to be supportive of working moms. I watched her juggle those expectations – going back to college, starting a job with young kids, finding her voice – and the toll those expectations took on her, her family, and her marriage. Yet, I watched from the safety in knowing that I was blessed with so many options.  This taught me that doing hard things was not only possible, but so very important.

– Michelle Capasso, Partner, Director of Media Services – CP Boston