Lauren Richards is currently principal at Pollin8, but is also a former media agency CEO, two time Cannes Media Lions judge, strategy Media Leader of the Year and founder of the Media Innovation Awards. This is the beginning a new editorial series for MiC, where she will sit down for in-depth conversations with the leaders who have taken on new roles plotting the course for their agencies since the start of the pandemic.

I’d hazard to say that the media planning and buying industry has had it pretty hard during the pandemic. There were a lot of things to cause stress: clients clamouring to shut everything down at the beginning, late nights and weekends begging to get out of commitments, replanning and rebuying activity due to new strategies, pitches being delayed and then coming back all at once. It all caused tremendous pressure that disillusioned staff, especially the important younger crew who help fuel the machine, who no longer had the benefit of an industry social scene to help make up for the extra hours. And now the industry suffers through uncertainty and layoffs due to media spend declines.

Leaders have never been more challenged. How do they support and motivate their people when they don’t see them as often? Can you imagine becoming a new leader of a large, struggling team during this time?

I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but I do find it extremely fascinating.

Who are these people? Who are those leaders that represent the new media establishment? We don’t know them very well, given there’s been little social interaction, public speaking, conference attending or interviewing.

So I am going to help the industry get to know some of our “newer” media agency leaders. Some of them rose to the top during the pandemic, while others came from other industries and are relatively unknown. Why are they choosing to lead a media agency through this challenging time, with at least some of their time still from their kitchen table? What are their secrets to continuing to motivate people in our still-unusual working scenarios? What do they stand for? How are they redirecting their media decisions? How do they propose to “win”? And who are they as people? After all, the most interesting thing about the world of advertising and media are the people behind the brands.

And given we have all been deprived of social interaction, and the fact that it will be easier to weasel juicy information out of them, I’m going to chat to them over a good, old-school advertising martini lunch.

Nobody can do that better than a media person. It was one of my specialties.

Check back on Thursday for Lauren’s first interview with Havas Media Group president Noah Vardon.