A School of Thought: Gillian Rightford and Ahmed Tilly In Conversation: Talking Creativity in Advertising

In Conversation: Justin Gomes & Gillian Rightford on the Culture of Creativity

From Culture to Creativity: Making Great Work Happen Justin Gomes, founder of ad agency Bananas, interviewed Gillian Rightford about building a creative culture in an agency, building better relationships between agencies & marketers to create better commercial creativity - the whys and hows. Creativity isn’t just a spark—it’s a measurable business tool. Drawing on over three decades in advertising, Gillian Rightford shares lessons from helping to lead the transformation of Lintas into a creative powerhouse and her current work at Adtherapy bridging client-agency relationships. She highlights how cultural change requires both structural reform and symbolic acts, why emotional intelligence and mental health support are critical in creative environments, and how short-termism undermines long-term brand building. At the heart of her approach is the concept of “creative fitness”—helping clients and agencies build the skills, confidence, and trust needed to unlock stronger ideas and better outcomes. For agencies and marketers alike, the message is clear: treat creativity as a strategic asset, invest in people and relationships, and the results will follow.

A School of Thought: Gillian Rightford in Conversation with Neil Higgs

Neil Higgs is a veteran statistician, who has developed a new course and new framework to help marketers understand the why behind how people behave and what they do. Outline below. Link to the course: https://theschoolofthought.co/spaces/12645376?utm_source=manual Link to his book on Understanding Numbers: Ceteris Parabis; https://payhip.com/b/V9Ubi **** Marketers, advertisers, communicators and policy-makers use a fairly common set of descriptors of the people to whom they wish to appeal. These are loosely termed “demographics” and generally consist of some or all of age, gender (not necessarily, but possibly, sex), educational level, home and other languages, life-stage, occupation, location and some measure of wealth. Marketing strategies may be framed in these terms, or in combinations of these variables along with, sometimes, some attempt at “psychographics” (their attitudes, interests, personality, values, goals and lifestyles). Generally, marketing and communication outcomes are tracked mostly in terms of such demographics: but very seldom at a psychographic level and very seldom with any real understanding of the human being at the focus of this energy. Of course, this may not be true in the ad creative business (a well- known creative director once showed me how to walk in the moccasins of those to whom you wish to appeal) but it is certainly how things are tracked. This approach has been influenced by consumer models that posit rationality as the basis of communication processing and decision-making – a classic example is the AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) approach which sounds perfectly reasonable, but is now known to ignore the reality of how human-beings – not “consumers”- actually operate. This course seeks to outline a more appropriate approach to understanding how marketing and communicating works by moving from a consumer-led model to a people-led framework. This implicitly understands that people live in their own reality bubble (think a snow globe) which arises from their basic humanity, and their accident of birth in the first instance, and then explicitly notes how subsequent events and choices circle back and change what is in that bubble. In turn, this affects the way people interact with the outside world. The framework outlines a set of measures that are relevant, short and easy to implement in order to understand the people with whom one wishes to communicate. How to determine where people fall in terms of these measures is explicitly provided. An action outline is provided.

A School of Thought: Gillian Rightford in conversation with Dr Augustine Fou

Gillian Rightford, Founder of The School of Thought, a knowledge sharing talent building community for marketers and advertisers, sat down with Dr Augustine Fou, Digital Strategy and Integrated Marketing Thought Leader, Independent Cybersecurity & Ad Fraud Researcher to discuss all things digital ad fraud and how his analytics tool can help marketers & agencies audit & optimize their digital campaigns based on accurate analytics. To schedule an appointment to chat with Dr Fou, contact gillian@adtherapy.co.za, Jonathan.pigden@truthsetsonline.com or marc.dhalluin@truthetsonline.com.

A School of Thought: Gillian Rightford & Andre Vlok In Conversation: The Dangerous (&Essential) Magic of Conflict Resolution

Gillian Rightford, founder of Adtherapy and The School of Thought, an online knowledge-sharing talent-building community for marketing & advertising, sits down with Andre Vlok, a conflict resolution specialist, mediator, workplace conflict and disciplinary inquiry chair, author of Dangerous Magic and Hamlet's mirror, negotiator and all-round interesting human.

A School of Thought: Gillian Rightford and Ahmed Tilly In Conversation: Talking Creativity in Advertising

Gillian Rightford, founder Adtherapy and The School of Thought (a knowledge-sharing, talent-building community for marketing and advertising professionals), shoots the breeze with veteran Chief Creative Officer, founder of creative consultancy, Number 10, and self-confessed Creative Activist, Ahmed Tilly. We talk about the state of creativity, the Loeries awards, why clients don't buy better work when they know they should, the role of account management, and Ahmed shares a "secsi" framework to judge creative work.