The Creative Leverage Podcast
This Podcast is about creative marketing and communication, its development, implementation, and those involved in the process. The topics we will cover will benefit you whether you are a marketing director, a creative in a firm, a business owner, or someone looking to understand the creative process. We believe everyone is creative and that unlocking your potential by examining how you think or by a better approach will benefit your life and the lives of those around you.The host, Todd Kinley, is an ad guy. He started his career in communications when he was 17. He caught the communication bug early in life, inspired by a Cracker Jack television commercial when he was nine years old. After that, something just clicked in his mind, and by the time he was a freshman in college, he had begun his career as a graphic designer. Since then, he has worked in large and small advertising agencies from Ohio to Florida, finally settling in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he purchased a partnership at a local agency. Then Crobar | Creative Leverage was founded in 2004. Todd has evolved and expanded professionally over the years, morphing from graphic designer to art director, creative director, writer, photographer, director, and strategist to agency founder. Throughout it all, he has pursued one continuous quest: to uncover the best creative process and develop creative solutions at the highest level. Todd witnessed plenty of businesses succeeding at creative problem solving, and others tied themselves in knots by constant internal struggles. He has analyzed every one of these stories from multiple perspectives. This Podcast is the distillment of those experiences. Although Todd fills the rest of his time making dining room tables, painting oil portraits, and winning the occasional golf tournament, he shares one of his greatest joys in life with his wife: spending time with his two dogs plus her two dogs (which we think is the city’s legal dog limit).
The Creative Leverage Podcast
How to be a Creative Marketing Director: A Conversation with Senior Vice President and Marketing Director Neil MacKenzie
My guest today is Universal Furniture’s Senior Vice President and Marketing Director Neil Mackenzie. Neil and I have worked together now for nearly 8 years and over that period of time, our teams have accomplished many goals together — including fully rebranding their company and all communication vehicles, growing their designer business, and starting a magazine — to name a few. Neil has been instrumental in Universal’s success in the last decade, and he is someone who I truly admire as a creative and effective marketing director. Today, I want to talk to Neil about what he has learned over the years that helps keep Universal (and himself, for that matter) growing in new and enticing ways.