Webby Winners, the Creative of the Year, & JCPenney's Comeback with Marisa Thalberg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-TcoEIFiqY&t=366s

The 30th Annual Webby Awards just dropped their winners. Google is Brand of the Year with 13 Webby wins and 18 People's Voice wins. DEPT took home Agency of the Year. iHeartMedia won Podcast Company of the Year. PBS took Media Company of the Year. And Claude Code won Best Product in AI. A big night for the internet — and a fun one to dig into.

In the WORLD FAMOUS TWO MINUTE DRILL: Starbucks and The Devil Wears Prada are back for a second collaboration. Miller Lite dropped a tea set. Gatorade turned their bottles into jerseys ahead of the sports season. Venmo launched "Between Friends" — a new campaign built around how friends actually use money together. And it's Earth Day — Miracle-Gro is out with a new campaign today.

First on the show: Jeph Burton and Hunter Hampton, co-founders of The Circle — the new independent studio launched by two former Executive Creative Directors at Johannes Leonardo. They built the adidas Originals and Instagram creative playbook. Now they're doing it their way — small team, senior talent, no traditional client model. They call it "Cultural Gravity." We get into it.

Then Marisa Thalberg, CMO of Catalyst Brands, joins us on Zoom. She oversees JCPenney, Aéropostale, Eddie Bauer, and Brooks Brothers and has been named to Forbes' World's Most Influential CMOs list five times. The "Yes, JCPenney" campaign from Mischief drove same-store traffic up 900 basis points, doubled Gen Z consideration, and just won Ad Age's Best ROI Campaign at the Creativity Awards. A genuine turnaround story.

And to close: Whitney Downing, Art Director at Wieden+Kennedy Portland and Ad Age's Creative of the Year. She led Nike "So Win" — the campaign that brought Nike back to the Super Bowl after nearly 30 years, centered on women athletes including Caitlin Clark, Sha'Carri Richardson, and A'ja Wilson. Five stars from Ad Age. We talk about the work.