Radio and PodcastRadio and PodcastLive Radio & Podcasts
The Overthinkers cover
Business

The Overthinkers

The Overthinkers

From big strategy questions to everyday marketing life realities, The Overthinkers is a weekly, 20 min conversation between two ex-marketing strategists: Rachel Mercer (@rachelmercer - co-fo...

Episodes

20 of 219 episodes

Is Ageism Hurting The Ad Industry? With George Tannenbaum

Ageism in advertising is really we-don't-want-to-pay-ism. That's George Tannenbaum's diagnosis, and he has standing to make it: he writes Ad...

00:44:28Oct 19, 2026

What Does It Take To Win As A Challenger?

Winning as a challenger means accepting that the odds are poor and going anyway. This episode works through what separates the ones who pull...

00:26:38Oct 7, 2026

What Makes Reframes So Powerful For Brands?

The oldest trick in strategy is telling you that it's not X, it's Y — worn enough by now that AI produces it on autopilot, and still one of...

00:22:29Sep 28, 2026

What Is The Worth Of Superfans?

Super fans are where every conversation about belonging eventually lands, and where marketers most reliably fool themselves. This episode we...

00:28:32Sep 23, 2026

How Do Brands Foster Belonging?

Belonging is one of the oldest drivers there is: the tribal brain sorts us from them in under a tenth of a second, and will do it on the str...

00:27:48Sep 14, 2026

Why can't AI create a brand’s voice? With Vikki Ross

Vikki Ross spent most of last year believing the headlines that said AI was coming for copywriters, pondering whether what she loved doing m...

00:42:51Sep 10, 2026

What Universal Human Truths Can Marketers Tap Into?

David Rock's SCARF model says five drivers shape behavior from childhood onward — status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness — and L...

00:31:10Aug 31, 2026

Is AI Showing Us We're Optimizing The Wrong Things? With Jennifer Fuqua

Jennifer Fuqua has spent twenty years inside innovation — at frog, at Fjord, at Ogilvy Consulting, and now as Senior Director of Innovation...

00:44:03Aug 25, 2026

What Should Marketers Learn From History? With Mark Rukman

Mark Rukman joins Shann and Lynette to argue that marketing keeps overlooking its most useful lens: history. Drawing on cultural topography,...

00:45:02Aug 12, 2026

Why Are We Still Debating Distinctiveness Vs Differentiation?

Why is the marketing industry still arguing about differentiation versus distinctiveness, a decade after Sharp and Ritson first drew the lin...

00:31:00Aug 4, 2026

How Do You Get Better At Changing Behavior? With Heather Watson

Heather Watson has spent her career walking backwards through the behavioral funnel: attention and consideration at Ogilvy, the use phase at...

00:45:16Jul 29, 2026

What's Worth Changing, And What Changes Us? With Tom Goodwin

Tom Goodwin joins the show, and for someone who's built a career as a "futurist," he spends most of the hour arguing for the things that ref...

00:52:06Jul 22, 2026

What Does a Pastor Know About Desire That Marketers Don't? With Michael Rudzena

This week we sit down with a very atypical guest: Michael Rudzena, founding pastor of The Good Shepherd in Gramercy Park. The conversation w...

00:48:26Jul 16, 2026

Should Strategists Be Generalists?

Shann has a strong take on this one: strategists should never specialize by channel, and why a "TikTok strategist" makes him wince. Lynette...

00:25:42Jul 10, 2026

Should Marketers Cultivate Their Personal Brand?

Jonathan Mildenhall, former CMO of Airbnb, recently argued that your personal brand is your proof of concept — if you can't market yourself,...

00:23:35Jul 1, 2026

Should Marketing Lean More Into Reality To Sell Nowadays?

Most marketing is still selling the SUV driver racing across open terrain, while the actual buyer is dodging potholes in Brooklyn. In this e...

00:23:56Jun 23, 2026

Does The Ad Industry Have A White Savior Problem? With Marvin Miranda

Marvin Miranda — Global Head of Brand and Creative Strategy at Accenture Song — joins Shann and Lynette to ask a question the industry doesn...

00:44:24Jun 17, 2026

Why Should Marketers Favor Storytelling Over Statistics? With Dali Adekunle

Dali Adekunle — SVP Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi Health, Stella Adler conservatory graduate, and former director of patient relati...

00:48:16Jun 10, 2026

What Weird Skills Can Help You Be A Better Marketer?

Acting, screenwriting, gaming, dance, gardening, running a volunteer website nobody got paid for. Shann and Lynette swap notes on the side-o...

00:23:35Jun 3, 2026

Startup vs Big Brand: What Did Katya Kotlyar Learn Switching Sides?

Katya Kotlyar has moved through this industry in ways most people don't from small to big agency, some freelance, co-founding a cross-border...

00:40:35May 28, 2026