Curiosity, conviction, and a desire to get out of one’s comfort zone - these are just a few of the characteristics that Seth Gaffney and Marika Wiggan look for in strategic candidates at Preacher, and it’s this non-traditional approach to finding talent and building campaigns that has led to Preacher’s continued success, winning them Small Agency of the Year for four of the last five years.

Some of my favorite aha moments from our conversation include:

• Discovering the very different ways Seth and Marika broke into the world of advertising
• Scrappy techniques for learning about customer pain points and mapping out the customer journey
• The way Preacher is leveraging AI in their strategic work
• Funny and insightful stories from their work on Tommy John, Tecovas, Favor, WeTransfer, Sport Clips, and Foot Locker
• The personal advice from parents that have shaped their approach to the work they do every day

Show Notes:

Below are links to campaigns, books, and other inspiring ideas that came up during our conversation.

Clipper Confessions - Tashanee Williams and Zachary Stubblefield understand from first hand experience with focus groups that bad research environments lead to bad answers which result in bad learnings and bad representation. So they took focus groups out of the focus group facility and into the Barbershop with Rich “Smash” Payne. Questions include: “What’s the dopest thing about black culture?” and “If a CEO was sitting in the shop right now, what advice would you give them to better support black people?” The answers are nuanced, rich, and revealing.

A few campaigns from Preacher:

Tommy John Campaign - No Adjustment Needed

Vital Farms Campaign - Bullsh*t Free Eggs

Tecovas Campaign - Don’t Go Gently

Favor Campaign - How Texas Orders In

Foot Locker - The Heart of Sneakers

A few campaigns that Seth and Marika admire:

IKEA - Proudly Second Best

Amazon - Spend Less on Your Kids

Capri Sun - Wireless Kid-Noise Canceling Technology

Favorite Books

Marika’s favorite recent book - Big Swiss

Seth’s favorite recent book - Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest