Inspiring Futures Podcast

Edward Cotton is a seasoned strategist working in New York and runs an excellent podcast called 'Inspiring Futures'. For our second appearance on the show - listen to the first one here - we wanted to do things a bit differently and bring in a client and an agency. 

So in this 57-minute 'Inspiring Futures' podcast episode, marketer Tom Noble (Nike, adidas, BMW, MINI, AFL, Jeep, Alfa Romeo, and Fiat) and Jeremy Diamond (co-founder of Distillery,  a brand strategy consultancy) join us for a panel discussion.    

We discuss what good looks like. Key pointers: 

• - Run pre-brief conversations to align expectations;
• - Give one owner clear decision rights;
• - Define the problem crisply, set clear objective, and state constraints upfront;
• - Replace opinion-led feedback with structured evaluation criteria and pre-agreed success metrics;
• - Use practical tools—checklists, templates, and training—to raise baseline capability across teams.

Some of our favourite sound bites: 

Matt Davies: Strategy first, creative brief second. Mixing them is the fastest way to waste time and money.

Pieter-Paul von Weiler: Decide who decides. Clear ownership beats endless consensus every time.

Tom Noble: Brave ideas are efficient ideas—when the brief is sharp, you need fewer rounds.

Jeremy Diamond: Swap opinion for criteria. Evaluate ideas against agreed outcomes, not personal taste.

Matt Davies is the co-founder of BetterBriefs, an advisory and training business that helps marketers write better briefs and deliver more impactful ideas. A highly awarded former agency strategist, having worked at Clemenger BBDO, Design Bridge, Arnold Worldwide, AJF Partnership, as well as running his own agency. 

Together with co-founder Pieter-Paul von Weiler, he wrote the BetterBriefs Project and The Best Way for a Client to Brief an Agency, a practical guide for marketers to improve the quality of briefs, co-authored by Mark Ritson and published in partnership with the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA). Matt (together with Pieter-Paul) also led the BetterIdeas Project, a global study exposing the poor state of the creative evaluation process. The study aims to improve the creative decision-making and evaluation practices and was launched in partnership with the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and the IPA.