Selling Uncommon, the death of advertising and a British original - Nils Leonard

Nils Leonard is returning to the Uncensored CMO podcast after selling his agency, Uncommon to Havas. We discuss what's next, why he feels it's an investment not an acquisition, what AI means for creativity, culture and more.

Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:11 - Selling Uncommon to Havas
00:02:10 - What does partnering with Havas allow them to do?
00:08:22 - How did the team react?
00:09:50 - Expanding to the US
00:12:22 - What’s changing?
00:14:42 - Part 2: What’s new with Uncommon?
00:16:33 - Keeping creativity alive
00:19:20 - Is advertising dead?
00:21:21 - Getting Chat GPT to write a new British Airways Strapline
00:22:49 - Chat GPT writes an ad for British Airways
00:24:46 - What car brand Nils would most like to work on
00:27:01 - The work Uncommon actually did for British Airways
00:28:52 - The importance of advertising internally
00:29:59 - Making 512 different productions for BA
00:32:13 - The power of simplicity
00:34:26 - Making out of home powerful
00:35:22 - What does AI mean for creativity?
00:38:09 - Do CMOs understand the value of creativity?
00:43:58 - Biggest problems we as an industry need to solve
00:47:27 - Demonstrating the value of creativity
00:50:57 - Creating culture in a growing agency
00:55:11 - Power of generosity
00:56:26 - Uncommon’s “faff tax”
00:58:45 - The world’s #1 podcast by Jon Evans
00:59:59 - 2 Uncommon stories
01:02:51 - What what Nils do if he wasn’t running Uncommon?