The Marketing Week Podcast

As Pearson vice-president of global brand Rachel Exton points out, a lack of ambition is not the reason 44.6% of mothers responding to the 2026 Career & Salary Survey say being a parent has harmed their progression.

The reason is a system failing to embrace flexibility, which discounts the value parents bring and isn’t prioritising building a pipeline of future leaders.

To discuss what must change to stop parents leaving the industry, Marketing Week deputy managing editor and head of insight, Charlotte Rogers, is joined on The Marketing Week Podcast by Exton and Alex Lloyd Hunter, co-founder of campaign group The Dad Shift.

In this episode we analyse Marketing Week’s new data exposing the progression crisis facing working parents and explore why the UK’s two-week paternity leave is a major contributing factor to the gender pay gap – which within marketing has hit a five-year high.

We also discuss the impact of new day one paternity leave rights, why six weeks statutory paternity leave would be a good starting point for change and why flexibility should never be positioned as a favour.
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Social media advertising continues to grow, with spend increasingly concentrated among a handful of dominant media owners.

Now, as certain social media platforms face claims that their algorithms are intentionally designed to be addictive, fail to adequately protect children and allow high levels of ad scams, we are questioning the role brands should play in holding tech platforms to account.

In this edition of the podcast, Marketing Week reporter Grace Gollasch is joined by Jake Dubbins, co-chair of the Conscious Advertising Network and managing director at Media Bounty, and Alex Tait, founder of marketing and MMM consultancy Entropy and co-founder of Reform Political Advertising, to discuss accountability and transparency in digital advertising.

The episode explores recent court cases involving Meta and YouTube, examines claims social media platforms are designed to be addictive and unpacks who holds the power in making change. The conversation also covers the dissolution of GARM and outlines the key questions brands should be asking about their advertising supply chains and the content their ads appear alongside.
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As brands continue to ramp up investment in influencer marketing, it’s more important than ever to ensure the brand-influencer relationship is solid.

In this edition of the podcast, we delve into topics around creator gifting, education and creativity covered in the recent edition of our Influencers Explored series. Host Amrit Virdi, reporter at Marketing Week, is joined by Ross Farquhar, CMO at Little Moons, and Cerys Gardiner, marketing manager at Medichecks and a freelance content creator.

We discuss how the influencer strategy of both brands has evolved, covering everything from creator selection and briefing, to measuring effectiveness and where they see the industry heading.

How both brands fully onboard influencers to work within regulations and what makes a good brand-creator relationship is also discussed, with Gardiner offering the influencer view as a content creator herself.
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Marketers are navigating a lot of changes, from a proliferation of channels, to the rise of AI, to changing consumer habits, but creativity remains a distinct advantage, according to System1’s Andrew Tindall.

In the latest episode of The Marketing Week Podcast, Niamh Carroll, senior reporter for effectiveness and growth, speaks to Andrew Tindall, chief growth officer at System1 about his new book, The Creative Dividend. The book, a collaboration between Effie Worldwide and System1, is designed as a practical guide for using advertising to drive growth in businesses, drawing on Effie data to inform the writing.

Even in what Tindall terms the “desolate wasteland” of modern marketing, creative effectiveness drives real business impact. Most effectiveness research that marketers lean on is around a decade old, he says, stating that this book aims to update it.

While the book centres on creativity, it is also important to define what creativity that drives business results actually looks like, he says. At its worst, people can see creativity as being akin to “uniqueness”, when actually, it is the tried and tested, repeatable creative ideas that often drive the most impact.

In this episode, we discuss the merits of distinctiveness and differentiation, how smaller brands can drive large impact with their advertising, and System1’s growth journey.
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In partnership with Google, Google’s Head of Search Scott Sinclair and generational historian and bestselling author Eliza Filby join senior reporter Molly Innes to explore how generational change, shifting media habits and AI-powered Search are reshaping how people discover, research and make decisions.

As discovery becomes more fragmented and younger generations adopt new ways of searching, the conversation examines what these behavioural shifts mean for marketers and why showing up in moments of intent matters more than ever.
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