On My Radar: Madison Wharton

Madison Wharton is the chief production officer at DDB New York, where she is responsible for creating a new operational model and new capabilities for the integrated needs of the agency.

Below, she tells us what's on her creative radar at the moment, including her favourite recent campaign, apps on her phone and her opinions on the creative ad industry.

What’s the best ad campaign you’ve seen recently?

McCain’s UGC spots from adam&eveDDB are so exciting from a production point of view. They collect user submitted videos of families’ teatimes daily and in less than two hours are able to edit, approve and air the spots at 8:45 pm each night. That’s an impressive process.

What website(s) do you use most regularly and why?

Producthunt.com – I’m rather obsessed with apps and this is the best place to keep up with what’s new.

What’s the most recent piece of tech that you’ve bought and why?

I’m holding out to refresh my apple TV for the new one that’s about to come out. I’m excited about the universal search tool and also interested in the siri integration.

I still want to get the Amazon Echo. I’ve got my whole house laced up in Amazon Dash buttons at this point. Pro-tip: place them higher than your kids can reach unless you want to order unfathomable amounts of 20 lb. bags of cat food.

Facebook, Instagram or Twitter?

Facebook for keeping up with friends and family, Instagram for sharing and storing beautiful life moments, Twitter for telling a company I’m mad as hell or for finding local micro-news, like “what’s on fire in Soho?”

What’s your favorite app on your phone and why?

I have an app for just about every business I interact with and I use them all. Dream Dry, JetBlue, Opentable, NY Waterway Ferry, Kayak, Gilt, you name it. I love Venmo for paying friends quickly, Scannable for high-quality scanning of documents from your phone and Charlie for reading through my calendar and giving me info on all of the people I’m meeting with that day.

What’s your favourite TV show and why?

Mr. Robot. The show creators put a lot of time and research into making sure it's authentic as possible. They get the hacker tone, the culture and even the on-screen code right. And somehow they shoot New York in a way that makes it feel like a dystopian tomorrow but then you realise they didn’t really do a single thing to the shot – it just IS THAT but in the most beautiful way.

What film do you think everyone should have seen?

Mr. Mom. Terry Garr was able to convince a boardroom full of suits to change the campaign from “Yum Yum Tuna Bits” to “Schooner Tuna, the tuna with a heart.”  This is why I went into advertising.

Where were you when inspiration last struck?

I’m inspired every day by watching the work of our global competitors. It keeps me up at night. I dissect how I think it was made. I find the partners that they worked with and bring them in. I find the producers that worked on it and sometimes I reach out to them. We’re all in it to win it, right?

What’s the most significant change you’ve witnessed in the industry since you started working in it?

It’s the reset of priorities. The clients that get it the most are spending more effort and dollars on earned media and are allowing their agency partners to spend true focus on service design and product development. Your service is your reputation. Your reputation is your review and your review is your social media.

If there was one thing you could change about the advertising industry, what would it be?

I would change the separation between media buying and advertising. It’s crazy that upfronts are still a thing and that creative slides into the buy. An example of how it’s not working is when the brand’s marketing budget is spent on a large sponsorship without leaving funds available to activate against the experience. We’ve got to figure out how to collaborate better despite the disparate timelines.

What or who has most influenced your career and why?

I’ve worked alongside some really brilliant people. I try to channel something from them every day. Dave Rolfe, Rob Reilly and Alex Bogusky, Sophie Kelley, Ben Palmer and Keith Butters, Simon Assaad, Dave Carson, my new heroes Chris Brown and Icaro Doria at DDB and my brilliant husband, Jason Marks.

Tell us one thing about yourself that most people won’t know…

I grew up inside Disney World. All of my family members worked there so I was there for every birthday and every day in the summer. My dream project is to build an experience like Epcot’s Test Track for Chevrolet or Hewlett-Packard’s Mission: SPACE.