Vanessa Toro once put "Give all the damns" on a clothing line, and after nearly twenty years in advertising she's still giving them. She's just got less patience for jargon, for decks mistaken for thinking, and for anyone who says AI is inevitable.

She’s a strategist, a speaker, and a public observer of the strange things we all do while chasing attention, approval, and belonging. Stop polishing the receipt. Go do the thinking.

Give a listen, and let's go build something worth remembering.

Short on time? Here are my favorite nuggets from my conversation with Theo Erasmus, founder of Rare Beast, and a strategist who's spent his career trying to make marketing serve people instead of squeezing them, after a road that's run through the army, a courtroom, a crime beat, and some of the biggest agencies in the world.

In under 15 minutes, Theo makes the case that you know a company has principles when it costs them something, and why Costco passed that test where Target folded. Why holding companies, CEO pay, and a Gen Z audience that can see right through it have the industry stuck in a vicious circle. What he told Cincinnati's bike share about winning over a car town: you won't persuade people on moral grounds, so make the better choice the more desirable one. And the medals he walked away from, a decision he almost never talks about, before closing on his one rule for all of us, which is to serve people as well as sell to them.

Want the full story, like how a crime reporter in apartheid-era South Africa ended up in advertising because friends told him they sat around all day thinking of cool ideas, or what it was like to meet Nelson Mandela?

Check out The Brand Builder version of this episode on your favorite podcast platform.

Give a listen. And let's go build something worth remembering.

Theo Erasmus has been a soldier and a conscientious objector, a crime reporter, and a strategist for Google and Johnnie Walker. Now he's here to make the case that marketing doesn't have to keep killing the patient it promised to cure.

He's spent more than 30 years inside the industry, at Ogilvy, DDB, TBWA, and Leo Burnett, and now runs Rare Beast, a strategy studio built around putting humans first. His test for spotting purpose-washing is simple. You know a company has principles when it costs them something. It's why Costco, AriZona Iced Tea, and Bob's Red Mill pass where so many brands fold, and why he'll never take a sports betting client.

The industry critique is only half the episode, though. Theo's road to strategy also ran through a job as a junior prosecutor and years as a crime reporter dodging Molotov cocktails in apartheid-era South Africa.

Give a listen, and let's go build something worth remembering.