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Creativity is essential for businesses to thrive, both In the creative industries and beyond. Innovation is driven by creativity, in turn driving growth and profit. So how can you create an environment in which creativity flourishes? What should we look to do in our teams, or look for in the agencies we work with, to get the broadest and best ideas to solve business challenges? And, how does diversity relate to and enable creativity?
In this episode, host Sam Floy speaks to Lucy Doolan, Global Creative Director at Hill and Knowlton Strategies. Lucy is a champion of diversity in the creative industries and recently launched Spark, a global community for female and non-binary creatives.
If you've listened to the episode and would like to find out more, follow Lucy Doolan on LinkedIn or visit hkstrategies.com.
Lucy suggested reading We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and following Cindy Gallop for inspiration.
EPISODE SUMMARRY
Lucy Doolan, the creative director at Hill and Knowlton Strategies, discusses the value of diversity in creative industries and how it relates to innovation and success. She explains that their agency focuses on creativity and agility to innovate the future of PR. Lucy works with a team of specialists from various backgrounds to come up with unique ideas for clients' projects. She emphasizes the importance of giving creatives space and time to develop their ideas while also providing a clear brief. Additionally, Lucy highlights her role in ensuring that their work aligns with the client's strategy and problem statement. She also talks about Spark, an employee representative group at H&K that celebrates women and nonbinary creatives globally by amplifying their voices and fostering a safer work environment.
The Spark wrap helps facilitate conversations and build personal relationships among a diverse group of people.
Diversity is crucial in creative roles to ensure a broad range of ideas and resonate with target audiences.
Finding diverse talent is challenging, but investing time and money, as well as exploring unconventional hiring methods, can help.
Creating a safe space for sharing ideas requires vulnerability, humor, and encouraging out-of-the-box thinking.
While there may be some hierarchy in decision-making, the creative process should feel flat and collaborative.
The future of PR and Comms is focused on diversity, earned first creativity (earning media attention), and measurable results compared to advertising.
Lucy Doolan discusses the impact of creative advertising campaigns and the importance of authenticity in pitching to journalists. She emphasizes the need for creative decisions to solve problems and mentions Cindy Gallup as an inspiring figure in the industry. Lucy recommends the book "We Should All Be Feminists" and provides her LinkedIn profile for more information about her work at H&K strategies. The episode concludes with a call to subscribe for more insights on business growth.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Sam Floy
For those of you familiar with Better Business Radar, you'll know that I've hadseveral really interesting conversations recently which revolve around thebenefits of diversity in the workplace and how to facilitate it. Today, we'reagain exploring diversity, but this time through the lens of creativity. Why isdiversity so valuable in creative industries and indeed, in any organizationthat relies on innovation and creativity for success? You, this is BetterBusiness Radar, a practical and, dare we say, inspiring podcast about smartways to grow better businesses. And I'm Sam Floy, the B2B entrepreneur andfounder, Cofruition.com company behind this podcast, bringing you insights frominteresting thinkers, doers leaders, and experts. Today's guest Lucy Doolan iscreative director at Hill and Knowlton Strategies. Lucy is a championof diversity in the creative industries and recently launched Spark the GlobalCommunity for Female and Nonbinary Creatives. At Hill and KnowltonStrategies, I was curious to learn more about how diversity relates to andhelps creativity.
Sam Floy
We started our conversation with a quick overview of H&K's work and howLucy sees the sector's relationship to diversity now.
Lucy Doolan
We focus on creativity and also agility, and we look to sort of innovate thefuture of PR. My focus really is largely on creative. So I'm a creativedirector in our London office. I'm really lucky to work across the fullspectrum of sort of clients and sectors day to day.
Sam Floy
So creativity specifically in the PR space?
Lucy Doolan
Yes, that's right.
Sam Floy
So where does PR need innovating?
Lucy Doolan
It's a really good question, I think in terms of the kind of creative ideasthat we come up with, it's how we come up with those ideas. So we've gotsomething called the Innovation and Creativity Hub here, and that's a reallyunique blend of people. So we've got people in data, we've got behavioralscientists that work alongside publishing and content strategists andcreatives. So it's a really sort of unique way of coming up with ideas. And Ithink that's something that means that we can get the best ideas for commswork.
Sam Floy
Okay, so the idea is your customers come to you and they say, we would likesome publicity, some good public relations. And typically you're saying most alot of PR companies will sort of have a standard formula of, oh, we need towrite a press release, we need to send it out, et cetera. But you're sayingthat in your work, you sort of are a bit more blue sky thinking about it, andyou sort of think about a few different ways that you could do that. Is thatkind of it?
Lucy Doolan
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we also have the studio that is complete fullservice. So I think it's bringing together interesting specialists and a uniqueblend of specialists to sort of create the best outcomes.
Sam Floy
Got it. And so you work as a creative director within this ecosystem. So whatdoes your job entail?
Lucy Doolan
So I work broadly across our studio and our innovation and creative hub. So Iwork with designers and creatives strategists to sort of come up with the bestcreative responses to clients briefs. So I often work really closely with ourcreative strategists to sort of bridge that gap between strategy and creativity.
Sam Floy
Okay, so what's an example of a and you can sort of anonymize it if it makessense. Client comes to you and says, our strategy is X. What might X be?
Lucy Doolan
It's often a problem that they have. It could be that they want to target a specificaudience. More recently, we've had clients that want to target a youngeraudience, gen Z. So it's how they sort of attract and speak to that audience inparticular.
Sam Floy
I'm always curious about how this works. Do they come to you and they're like,we've already got some ideas, what do you think of them? Let's play around withit. Or does it really just work best when they say, here's what we want to do,and then do they just sort of shut up and just let you do it?
Lucy Doolan
Yeah, I mean, they often just come to us with a problem, and I think they relyon us to do our due diligence with research and form a strategy that's going tosolve their problem. And then from that's a sort of springboard that we canthen come up with ideas from that creative strategy that we've come up withbased on their problem. And we often produce multiple ideas that might doslightly different things, all sort of from that one strategy and that sort ofred thread that we've created. So we look at things like human insights,culture, as well as other things, and we'll from that form a strategy that sortof is based on those things that we've found. And then what we'll do is come upwith this problem statement and then a sort of get to buy is our strategy. Andthen from that, we come up with a sort of what we'd call a creative platform,which is kind of like an overarching rallying cry that all of our ideas thencome from.
Sam Floy
What does a rally and cry sound like?
Lucy Doolan
It's often very active and it's a lot of sort of word play. So you just write awhole load of different words down on the page coming from the creativestrategist has come up with, and you just play around with trying to put themtogether in different ways to create something that feels really compelling andinteresting that ideas are going to then come from.
Sam Floy
Got it. So you get this all gets distilled down into this sort of phrase, whichthen sort of then serves as the direction for the whole campaign.
Lucy Doolan
We call it our sort of cause or red thread.
Sam Floy
Okay. And then is it then campaigns, et cetera, then built off the back of it?It might then be, oh, we're going to do some billboards that do something, andthen we're also going to do some TikTok videos that do this, or is that sort ofhow it runs off?
Lucy Doolan
Kind of. I mean, it's kind of like I said, it gives us a cause. So we start tolook at bigger campaign ideas that might fit underneath that. And what we wantour campaign platform to do is to enable creatives to start thinking aboutbigger campaign ideas, less sort of specific about whether it's a billboard orit's going to live on TikTok. It's more about what's the big concept? What'sthe idea, and then how do we activate that in different ways. So it may be thatwe have a billboard that we create, or it may be that we have a TikTok video,but the fundamental idea is what we want to get from that red thread, and thatsort of cause.
Sam Floy
Okay, now, you've used the word creative as a noun here, a creative. Yes, Isort of get it. But how do you define a creative?
Lucy Doolan
It's really hard. And, I mean, my background actually comes from design, so Itrained as a graphic designer. I've also worked in advertising, and I've movedinto sort of PR and Cons. And my role now is much broader than just design. AndI think my design training has been really helpful because that was veryconceptual. But I work with designers, art directors, and also pure creatives.And I would say they are all creatives in their own way. But I think whenyou're looking at a creative, if someone's job title is creative, it's oftenbecause they think of much more sort of conceptual ideas. They sort of thinkabout the big idea rather than maybe how you execute or activate those things.I think a graphic designer is creative in a completely different way. I thinkthey will think of concepts, but they think in shapes and movement and howshapes can or might represent something and might communicate somethinggraphically.
Lucy Doolan
So they're just different types of creativity. And I think it's really hard tosort of pin down creative to one thing.
Sam Floy
Okay, and you are a creative director.
Lucy Doolan
Yes.
Sam Floy
And so your job is to direct these creative people.
Lucy Doolan
Yes. So how'd you do it's not easy, but I think what's really important,particularly with creative people, is to give them the space that they need tocome up with these ideas. I mean, working in PR, it's really fast paced, and wedon't often have the sort of luxury of time, but some people work betterbreaking off on their own, working in a booth somewhere. Some people like tosit and talk to other people. Some people might need to go for a walk or have ashower with a good idea. And I think it's allowing people the space and time towork the way they want to work because everybody's different. I think also areally good brief is helpful. I think the more you give them a really good,juicy creative platform and a really good creative strategy, the better theideas you're going to get.
Sam Floy
Therefore, when you're working on a project, you might say, okay, the bestthing I can do is to make sure that this brief that I give the creative team isas good as it can be. And so you would sort of focus your energy there. Andthen maybe you might also say, understand your team in a way that says, okay,we need to make sure that these three team members don't have any meetings inthe mornings. And so we're going to organize ourselves in a way that allowspeople to have this space, et cetera.
Lucy Doolan
Is that sort of how you yeah, kind of. I think giving them the time is reallyimportant, and I think everybody is different, and I think it's about gettingto know your team really well and asking them how they want to work and seeinghow they work best and asking the right questions often as well. I find thatquestions are incredibly helpful to sort of push ideas. And sometimes in myrole, I will ask questions. Not because I think that it's wrong and sometimes Imight even say I'm not sure if that's quite right, but it's challenging thecreatives even to think about their ideas and to come up with a response thatsort of sells it to me and makes sense from the brief. And then I can sort ofcommunicate that to the client. And I think it's important that you are alwaysgoing back to the strategy, always going back to the problem.
Lucy Doolan
And I think that's another part of my role is to make sure that we're answeringthat client's brief and that we're sort of aligning to the strategy that we'vecreated in that sort of red thread.
Sam Floy
Okay. And one of the big things that your company does is a focus on diversitywithin creativity. Now, if I write you started an organization called Spark. Idid sort of elaborate a bit on what Spark is and what it does.
Lucy Doolan
Spark is H&K's first global ERG employee representative group. And we're aglobal community for women and nonbinary people in creative roles in theagency. And we wanted this to be a really positive initiative. So were kind ofvery deliberate about the name, the idea of it being kind of lighting up, beingvery active. And also we like the fact that you can't spark alone. Like, youhave to have more than one, which is really nice. But really it's aboutcelebrating the work that particularly the women in our business are doingcreatively and to sort of amplify our voices and also celebrate that sort ofdiversity in the creative work that we're doing. Sharing our experiences andcreating a much sort of safer environment for us to work in.
Sam Floy
I've predominantly worked in relatively small organizations, so this concept ofan ERG is actually quite a new one. So employee representative group, so thatthis is within the broader organization, a platform, a way to celebrate thework that a particular group is doing.
Lucy Doolan
Yeah, we've got quite a few of them in London. In particular, we have a new onewhich is based around Neurodiversity in the workplace. We've got the ParentsNetwork. We have Roots, which is for black, Asian and minority groups. Sothere's quite a few different that we have. This is the first one that isglobal, which was necessary because there aren't many women in London that arecreatives. I think there was a handful of us, so we saw the need for it to goglobal and I think our global chief creative officer was really supportive ofthat, which was great. And so it's been really interesting going global. Youcan't sort of have the same interactions as you would with people in London,obviously, because it's often virtual and the time zones can be quitechallenging. But I think what's been so exciting is to meet these women allover the world, working in this industry at H&K and hearing their stories.
Lucy Doolan
Like, I've connected with women in Dubai, women in Canada, women in New York,and we all want the same thing. I think there are cultural nuances which isreally interesting. And I think in certain markets, like Canada is basicallyall women in their creative team, so it varies from market to market. But it'sbeen just fantastic to sort of connect with these women.
Sam Floy
Yeah. And being able to put the Spark wrap around it, so to speak, is whatgives you because I also get that you wouldn't necessarily just one day get upand say, oh, I'm going to email the guys, or do a call with the guys in Canada.It's useful to have these things to sort of create the framework around whichyou can have those conversations.
Lucy Doolan
Yeah, absolutely. I don't think we ever would have connected like that. We havethese sessions called craft sessions, where various studios and inc hubs aroundthe network will present some of the creative work that they're doing. But it'shundreds and hundreds of people on the call, so you never really get to knowpeople personally. So I think Spark is a really fantastic way of getting toknow women. You can build sort of personal relationships, and I have and a lotof these women I've never met in person, but we've talked about reallyinteresting things and built a connection that we otherwise wouldn't have.
Sam Floy
Yeah, awesome. And with a lot of the work that you do with H and K, as yousaid, this word diversity comes up quite a lot. Maybe you can sort of explain abit how from your perspective as creative director. Or maybe it sort of alsocomes from your work with Spark, sort of how you see the interplay betweendiversity and creativity.
Lucy Doolan
I think we are as creatives, we are coming up with the ideas that we want totake to market, and I think we need to make sure that we are seeing the fullpicture when we're thinking about solutions to these problems that I wastalking about. What we need to do is look at them from all angles. Andultimately, if we have a lack of diversity in creative roles, it can lead toreally disjointed work that doesn't really resonate with the audiences thatwe're targeting.
Sam Floy
We actually did an interview with a guy called Gov who was speaking aboutNeurodiversity and how he referenced this book, which was basically saying, ifyou've got ten people from the same background, they'll come up with basicallythe same idea. But if you get ten people from different backgrounds, you'll getexponentially more ideas just from the different perspectives, et cetera, thatcome from it. With that insight, how do you then set up your teams? Or withthat insight, how do you sort of organize or direct things in a way to get goodcreative outcomes?
Lucy Doolan
I think it is about having diverse group of people that you're working with.Even yesterday, I was working with a fantastic creative called George in ourteam, and he was telling me all about FIFA and it's an idea for a client thatwe're looking at the moment. And I have never played FIFA before, and he lovesFIFA and knows all about it. And he's managed to quit this fantastic ideabecause he knows about that game. That is not an idea that I ever would havecome up with. So I think if you have different people with differentbackgrounds, different experiences coming from different cultures, you get amuch broader, richer set of ideas. And I think that it's just about making surethat you have that diversity in your team. But it's really hard. It's reallyhard to find diverse talent, because it's quite hard, I think, to get into thisindustry.
Lucy Doolan
Often there are barriers. Financially, it's really difficult to be able to goand study. I don't think it's always accepted to sort of go into the arts. Invarious cultures. It's not seen as a real job. I think other young people don'teven know that these kind of jobs exist. And for me, personally, I think it'sabout getting into schools and speaking to young people and talking to them andenabling them to go on this journey to end up in this kind of job and makingsure that the people in leadership roles are also diverse, so that they'reseeing that there's a path that they can follow and they can ultimately get tothat leadership role if that's what they want.
Sam Floy
Is there anything more sort of short term that can be done.
Lucy Doolan
I think it's about time and money and I think that it's a real challenge foragencies but I think it's making a commitment to invest time and money intohiring and finding diverse talent. Also I think it's about going to places youmay not expect to find creative talent so you might not get people applying toa job that you've posted online. That may not be the best way to get diversetalent. It's being creative in how you hire people and how you find people andthat's not easy either but I think spending the time doing that is really theonly way that you can and that's a commitment that businesses need to make.
Sam Floy
Yeah, it almost sounds like one of your briefs.
Lucy Doolan
Yes.
Sam Floy
And then I think this is actually something which I think you'll be quite wellpositioned to speak about, is in our day job, we make podcasts and there'salways this sort of tension between things being very diverse and things sortof coming to a place where they are. Harmonized is probably the best way I canput it. And from working on a lot of these projects there is sometimes thistendency of that the loudest voice is the one that gets heard or even if youhave a diverse group of people in the room, the ideas don't always come out.There does need to be some direction that's given or some guidance or someframework that are done. I wonder if there's any examples of projects thatyou've worked on where you've really sort of consciously thought I need to notjust let this meeting or this process just run because otherwise it will leadoff in this particular direction where the loudest voices win and you'veactually sort of been quite tactical.
Sam Floy
Does that kind of make sense, what I'm trying to say?
Lucy Doolan
I think so, and I'd say that I do that kind of thing on a daily basis. I thinkthat people work in very different ways and I often ask my team to write downtheir ideas and then we have a sharing session and I think it's important togive people the chance to come up with those ideas and express them however theywant to. Some people might want to just send me a note on an email with an ideawhereas others might want to talk about it for half an hour and that might helpthem to understand.
Sam Floy
That different people might want to communicate with you in different ways.
Lucy Doolan
Yeah, exactly. I'd say that I'm still learning and I think it's important tosort of check yourself, particularly in this kind of role. So it's a process,getting the best out of your team and if your team is constantly changing, likeI said, everyone's got different strengths and weaknesses and you have to sortof over time learn what they are and then learn how to get the best out of themand that's always evolving and changing.
Sam Floy
Have you ever had it where the team have, just for whatever reason, not come upwith ideas that you can be good? And how do you sort of push a creative?
Lucy Doolan
Basically, yes, it's really tough and I think particularly with creativity,it's tough to give feedback where it's not necessarily positive, because beingcreative, it's quite a vulnerable thing, right? You're coming up with ideas,putting them out into the world, they've come from your soul and they'repotentially going to get shot down. And I think you have to be quite resilient,and I think that the way that you deliver feedback as a creative director, youhave to be sensitive to that to actually get the best out of your team, becauseyou want to create a really safe space for creatives to be like, here's a crazyidea. Here's another crazy idea. And maybe that one doesn't work, but actually,there's something in that. And I think you have to create safety to get thebest work out of people, but sometimes that can take time and sometimes youhave to deliver difficult feedback and that's really hard.
Lucy Doolan
But I think it's important for them to grow as creatives. I think it's part ofmy role. It's a mixed bag.
Sam Floy
Better Business Radar is a podcast made by us, the team at Cofarition. We offeran all in one solution for high value service companies looking for a simpleand effective way to grow. A lot of businesses don't need Facebook ads or tripfunnel campaigns. They need to have a systematic way to demonstrate thoughtleadership, expand their network, and have the consistent, high quality contentto stay on people's radar. This is what we offer with our fully managed companypodcast. If you're interested in hiring us for your business, then head EzdCofruition.com BBR, where you can learn more and get 10% off the setup of yourshow. The link is also in the episode description. Now back to the episode. Howdo you think about creating that safe space for people to share ideas that inanother context they might feel makes them look silly?
Lucy Doolan
I think vulnerability is really important and I try and be really vulnerablemyself and I try and show them that I'm also imperfect and come up with ideasthat don't work. Because I think that's just vital for them to feel like theycan sort of tell me anything or tell me an idea that they might think isrubbish but actually there might be something in it. So I think making it clearthat I'm not perfect either and I also come up with terrible ideas sometimes isreally key. And I think having a sense of humor can be really helpful andmaking sure that what we do is really it's a really fun job and we're reallylucky to work in this kind of industry. And I think it's okay to sort of have abad idea or an idea that doesn't necessarily work. It might work for someoneelse.
Lucy Doolan
I definitely encourage sort of wackiness where I can and thinking outside thebox, because that's where you get some gems.
Sam Floy
It strikes me that what you're describing in terms of creating the safe spaceand creating the creative collaborative approach is very much a flat hierarchy.Would you say that sort of feels about right?
Lucy Doolan
I think so. Obviously, at the end of the day, the buck stops with me and it'son my head if it goes wrong and I'm the one that's often presenting it to theclient and I have to make the final decision. So there is some hierarchy inthat sense. But, yeah, I think particularly in that period of time where we'recoming up with creative ideas that should feel very flat.
Sam Floy
Yeah. If you look at the if you sort of begin to start thinking about thefuture of PR and Comms work and where the industry has been, where it iscurrently, where it might be going, what is it that excites you about thefuture of PR and Comms?
Lucy Doolan
I think there is progress being made and I think the diversity conversation isone that is getting louder. I know. Certainly at H and K there's been a hugeshift and these, ERGs, more are starting to sort of appear and it's aconversation that our CEO has with the wider agency on a regular basis. And Ithink that's really exciting, that it's something that is at the forefront.We've got a diversity and inclusion team at H&K that are employees. I thinkthat's incredibly positive and I think that the more diverse a team that wehave, particularly in the creative space, the more exciting the ideas are goingto be. And I think PR and creativity in particular is just growing this idea ofearned first creativity, and it's different from advertising and it's somethingthat, for me, is really exciting to be a part of.
Sam Floy
Yeah. So you said another interesting phrase there. Earned first creativity.What does that mean?
Lucy Doolan
So, earned first creativity is creative work that earns media attention insteadof us paying for media space. So the idea is that journalists would find it sointeresting or relevant that they would be writing and talking about it tocreate interest.
Sam Floy
This is the power of if you get a great idea. I remember one of these mattresscompanies did something, I think it was like they just did a party where youjust go and chill out on their mattresses and have cocktails or something likethis. And it was just like the most ridiculous concept. But then, because itwas ridiculous, all these newspapers started talking about it and now we'retalking about it.
Lucy Doolan
There you go.
Sam Floy
Although I don't actually remember the name of the mattress company. So maybethat's that basically so you're saying this is actually a trend, that you thinkthat more companies are going to look to be doing as opposed to traditionalperformance, marketing or other sorts.
Lucy Doolan
Yeah, because it's more affordable for businesses. Advertising is reallyexpensive to produce these beautiful campaigns and PR and paying for that mediaspace.
Sam Floy
What's the ROI? What's the pitch for this?
Lucy Doolan
It's really interesting because in PR, everything is measured. Like, resultsare measured, so they have targets. That because it's often on using socialmedia as well. And how many media outlets are writing about your creativecampaign? Like, it's really measurable, whereas advertising is a little bit lessso. So I think you can see the impact much clearer with PR than you can withadvertising.
Sam Floy
Oh, interesting. And how long does it typically take to do this with the intentthat a bunch of newspapers are going to start writing about it? And so you workbackwards from that?
Lucy Doolan
Absolutely, which is why we look at the creative strategy, is based on thingslike culture. So what is the media talking about at the moment? And how can wetap into that from this brand's perspective? And often when we're pitching, wewill come up with ideas, and for each idea, we will talk about the impact thatwill have. And part of that will be these are the headlines that you might seeand these are the titles that we'll be talking about.
Sam Floy
You do actually, on your presentations, do you sort of make a fake version ofthe Sunday Times and have it with the headline? Yeah.
Lucy Doolan
Oh, yeah. And there's also, like, a media asset, so you've got an image orsomething else that goes along with it. Yeah.
Sam Floy
Amazing. So fascinating. So I'd never thought of this as, like a product thatyou would sell almost. I mean, this is my sort of, like, slightly whatever, Ihave brain going on it. But, like, the fact you would go to companies and say,we will give you a very strong chance of appearing in these newspapers becausewe're going to do something so out there. Oh, I just remembered another one Idon't want to say, actually. Well, we'll maybe edit it out afterwards. So theydo an at home blood pin p**** test.
Lucy Doolan
Yeah.
Sam Floy
So you have to, like, p**** your finger. And it's only a very little one. Okay.Don't judge me for telling the story, Lacey. They found the man with Britain'ssmallest p**** to go on and say there's nothing wrong with the small brick. Andthen they did a bunch of billboards of this guy saying it. But actually, no,it's even better because they actually bought the cheapest billboard possiblein London. And then they took pictures of it and then they said, our story is wehave made a billboard with Britain's mortgage p****. They didn't do billboardsin Leicester Square. They did it in, like, zone Five.
Lucy Doolan
Yeah. Probably where I live. Yeah.
Sam Floy
Industrial park for, like, no money. And then they got tons of stuff. Writtenabout.
Lucy Doolan
Totally. Yeah. That's what we do.
Sam Floy
Yeah. There you go. Sorted. Yeah. Amazing.
Lucy Doolan
But this was very new to me because I've come from design and from advertising.I actually think own creative is probably the hardest. Your audience, it'sbroad, but you want journalists to write about your story. It has to be reallyrich, has to be layered, has to sit within culture. And often some of the bestadvertising campaigns are kind of earned campaigns because they will end upgetting coverage, and they're often the sort of award winning campaigns inadvertising as well.
Sam Floy
Yeah, I guess the other thing is, it's got to really feel authentic. The thingthat I've always heard is when you're pitching to journalists, you say, this isthe big story, and this is, like, how we fit into it, as opposed to, this isus. Actually think back to the mattress cocktail party. It sort of was aboutthis company, but it was more broadly, like I think it's probably saying, like,Gen Z are so weird these days, like, what type of a company would do this? Andit kind of became a commentary on the new ways that companies are marketing toGen Z. But if you can sort of do those ones where it is a broader theme thatbecomes a headline, and then you sort of become the subline or whatever it'scalled.
Lucy Doolan
Exactly. And I think the reason why you're doing that, you have to have areason why you've made every creative decision, in my opinion. That's why Ipoke and prod at my creatives to say, why have you decided that? How is thatanswering the brief? Or how is that answering the client's problem? You cancome up with wacky ideas, and sometimes that's great because it's subversive orit's a bit weird and it's interesting, but you're answering a problem. Andthat's what our job is. We're problem solvers, but we're creative problemsolvers.
Sam Floy
Yeah. Very cool. All right, Lucy, with each interview that we do, we ask acouple of questions at the end. First question is, who inspires you in yourindustry?
Lucy Doolan
A lady called Cindy Gallup. She is incredibly feisty and very frank. She'sworked in advertising. She doesn't anymore, but she talks really honestly aboutwomen in the creative industry. And she's really funny. I really love her sortof energy. So yeah. Cindy Gallup.
Sam Floy
Awesome. And what is a book or resource or website or podcast or something thatpeople who are interested in this world should go to first?
Lucy Doolan
Well, I've actually picked a book that I think, for me, fits nicely with Spark,and it's We Should All Be Feminists, which it's super short, and it's a reallygood introduction to sort of feminism and gives this really brief insight intohow it can often go quite unnoticed in society.
Sam Floy
It's great. The example of was it when she tips the guy looking after the carand then the guy thanks the husband, she's like, what?
Lucy Doolan
Yeah, and it's happened to me with my partner. We'll be going to buy somethingand they're just talking to him and it's wild. So, yeah, I remember reading ittoo.
Sam Floy
And as soon as you read it, you then notice it. Well, Lucy, where can peoplelearn more about you?
Lucy Doolan
Learn more about H&K. Probably for me. LinkedIn. Also I have a website.Lucydoven.com and H&K we are HKstrategies.com.
Sam Floy
Great, sir. Cool. Alicia, thanks so much. That was great.
Lucy Doolan
Great. Thanks, Sam.
Sam Floy
Thank you for joining me for this episode of Better Business Radar. It's beengreat to speak with Lucy Doolan about diversity and creativity. If you'd liketo find out more about Lucy or Hill and Knowlton strategies, visithksrategies.com. You can also follow Lucy on LinkedIn. Links are in the episodedescription. If you enjoyed the episode and would like more insights fromleading thinkers and doers who can help you be smart and grow your business,please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sam Floy. This has beenBetter Business Radar. See you next time.
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