Podcast
The Overthinkers
Hosted by Lynette Wong & Shann Biglione · EN
From big strategy questions to everyday marketing life realities, The Overthinkers is a weekly conversation between two strategists: Lynette Wong (Brand consultant and ex-Head of Strategy / Principal Consultant at Ogilvy NY) and Shann Biglione (co-founder and product lead + ex CSO at Publicis).
It is for those who like to (over)think about business, marketing and strategic planning, with delightful guests occasionally joining.
PS: you might have followed us of heard of us when the podcast was co-hosted by Rachel Mercer! She will keep joining us occasionally, as we continue overthinking with Lynette and Shann.
Available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
22episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Should Marketing Lean More Into Reality To Sell Nowadays?
1w ago00:23:56Tap to summarizeMost marketing is still selling the SUV driver racing across open terrain, while the actual buyer is dodging potholes in Brooklyn. In this episode, Shann and Lynette dig into one of advertising's oldest questions: when does the fantasy work, and when does it backfire? They trace the line from menopause ads featuring 20-year-olds to period products using blue liquid, and argue that the answer has a lot to do with whether you're selling something that signals identity to others or something that just has to work. Plus: why one in two women still feel misunderstood by brands — despite a trillion dollars of advertising aimed at them.
Transcribe →Does The Ad Industry Have A White Savior Problem? With Marvin Miranda
2w ago00:44:24Tap to summarizeMarvin Miranda — Global Head of Brand and Creative Strategy at Accenture Song — joins Shann and Lynette to ask a question the industry doesn't love sitting with: is there a bit of a white savior syndrome in our industry? They trace how Western agencies spread across Asia, what the knowledge transfer got right and what it calcified into, and why Asia's most consequential marketing evolutions (creator economy, super apps, live commerce) haven't translated into more Asian voices running things in the West. The conversation moves into messier territory too — the deprivation mindset that can pit minority groups against each other, who gets to define what "excellence" means, and whether the ad industry has built the cultural fluency it keeps saying it values.
Transcribe →Why Should Marketers Favor Storytelling Over Statistics? With Dali Adekunle
3w ago00:48:16Tap to summarizeDali Adekunle — SVP Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi Health, Stella Adler conservatory graduate, and former director of patient relations at NYU Langone — joins Shann and Lynette to argue the case for storytelling over statistics. The conversation covers the griot tradition in sub-Saharan Africa, why twenty years of pharma advertising has barely changed its visual grammar, and years working in China can teach you about the limits of logic as a universal language.
Transcribe →What Weird Skills Can Help You Be A Better Marketer?
4w ago00:23:35Tap to summarizeActing, screenwriting, gaming, dance, gardening, running a volunteer website nobody got paid for. Shann and Lynette swap notes on the side-of-desk obsessions and unlikely hobbies that turned out to matter more in their marketing careers than a lot of formal training ever did. The conversation covers what an acting exercise about holding a cup reveals about observation, why Lynette sees every campaign as a piece of choreography, and how managing people who don't report to you — and aren't getting paid — is some of the most useful management practice available. Also: a brief detour into squash season in Vermont, and why you should lock your car.
Transcribe →Startup vs Big Brand: What Did Katya Kotlyar Learn Switching Sides?
May 2800:40:35Tap to summarizeKatya Kotlyar has moved through this industry in ways most people don't from small to big agency, some freelance, co-founding a cross-border donation startup with her sister (raising $2 million), and eventually winding it down before coming back to brand and startup strategy—often both at once. In this episode, she joins Lynette and Lynette to work through what big-brand thinking actually survives contact with startup reality, and what has to go. They get into burn rate as a creative constraint, the case for 80% and shipping, why brand can outlast a pivot, and why every marketer should probably try building something at least once.
Transcribe →Maxing: Danger Or Trend?
May 2000:25:24Tap to summarizeIs maxing just self-improvement with a rebrand — or something more sinister? Shann and Lynette unpack where the trend came from (hint: the manosphere), why the algorithm is partly to blame, and what it all means for brands trying to figure out which side to stand on. From jaw maxing to nona maxing to the very real possibility of couch maxing as an Olympic sport. Ok, maybe not that last one...
Transcribe →Can You Be A Marketer And Be "Anti-Capitalist"?
May 1400:32:25Tap to summarizeCan you work in marketing — a job literally built around driving demand — and honestly call yourself anti-capitalist? Shann and Lynette try to find out. They start with definitions: what capitalism actually is, where anti-capitalism begins, and what gets lost when people conflate the two. From there it gets messier: the degrowth debate, whether brands like Ursa Major offer a real alternative or just a nicer story about growth, whether market forces can actually push companies toward better behavior (China's EV shift makes a strange cameo), and what Rory Sutherland's NRA-at-Cannes provocation says about marketing's blind spots. No tidy resolution. But a clearer picture of where the real tension lives — and why marketers, of all people, might have more say in it than they admit.
Transcribe →What Makes People (And Us) Feel Significant?
May 600:29:48Tap to summarizeWe all want to matter. But in a world where the average person has 700 followers and every brand claims to be meaningful, what does significance actually look like — and can it scale? Shann and Lynette get personal about where they've genuinely felt it, some pushback on the idea that brands should chase it, and make a case for why going smaller might be one of the most powerful things you can do in your life.
Transcribe →Is AI Going To Kill Your Marketing Job?
Apr 2900:23:36Tap to summarizeAnthropic's latest report says 65% of marketing tasks are headed for AI replacement — making us the fifth most disrupted profession out of 800. Lynette came in hot with a confession: she literally built her own AI replacement in her last role at Ogilvy. Shann came in skeptical of the "AI won't replace you, someone using AI will" line — and called it, diplomatically, a bit of a myth.We get into why marketing's own love affair with mediocrity made it so easy to automate, the automotive company that replaced its entire research process with synthetic audiences (and why it was probably the right call), and why the real crisis isn't the jobs disappearing — it's the junior talent pipeline nobody's properly investing in.Plus: the one skill both of us think will matter more than any prompt engineering course. Hint: it involves knowing what you actually think.
Transcribe →How To Transition Out Of An Advertising Career? With Rachel and Lynette
Apr 2200:39:42Tap to summarizeNearly 200 episodes in, The Overthinkers is turning a page. This is Rachel Mercer's final episode as co-host — and the debut of Lynette, a former global strategy lead at Ogilvy, ethnographic researcher, insect farm co-founder, and current Vermont transplant who consults for small businesses at what she calls her "community rate" (sometimes paid in sausage).To mark the moment, the three of us tackle mid-career transitions out of advertising: how to actually make the jump, why transferable skills are almost too broad to be useful, and what question you should be asking yourself before any of the rest of it matters.Rachel shares how client relationships built over 20 years quietly become your best career infrastructure. Lynette makes the case for low-stakes pilots before big leaps. And Shann is, characteristically, the most pessimistic person in the room about where AI leaves the advertising industry — and what that means if you're thinking about waiting before making a move.A proper goodbye, a warm welcome, and genuinely useful career advice in between.
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