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Inspiring Futures - Lessons from the Worlds of Marketing and AdvertisingAuthor: Ed Cotton
Inspiring Futures pulls back the curtain on the minds reshaping advertising and marketing today. Host Ed Cotton, former Chief Strategy Officer at Butler Shine and Stern & Partners, engages industry visionaries in raw, unfiltered conversations about their career pivots, creative breakthroughs, and strategic innovations. No canned responses. No PR filters. Just honest insights about navigating the complex world of brands, creativity, and agency life. Each episode delivers actionable wisdom from those who've mastered the craft and aren't afraid to share their failures alongside their successes. Language: en-us Genres: Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Sean Akaks, Co-Founder and CEO of SonderCo, and Jessie Mash, Co-Founder and President.
Thursday, 10 September, 2026
In this episode, I talk to Sean Akaks, Co-Founder and CEO of SonderCo, and Jessie Mash, Co-Founder and President.SonderCo sits between brands and the increasingly complicated world of celebrities, athletes, creators, entertainment, and culture, helping companies work out not simply who they can get, but who actually makes sense.And both Sean and Jessie have unusually good backgrounds for doing it.Jessie began her career at The Oprah Winfrey Show, before moving through Edelman, television production, and the brand world, eventually leading partnerships at Monica + Andy. Sean came from a very different direction, moving from nonprofit work and recruiting into MasterClass, where he helped structure and negotiate more than 200 talent deals involving everyone from Serena Williams to former presidents. Together, those experiences became the foundation for SonderCo.The reason this conversation is worth listening to is that influence is being rewritten.A creator can matter more than a movie star. A celebrity can become a founder. A YouTuber can become a brand owner. Brands have more people, platforms, and cultural moments to choose from than ever before, while somehow everybody still seems to chase the same names and turn up in the same places.Sean and Jessie work right in the middle of that collision.So if you want to understand who actually has influence now, how brands decide who is worth betting on, and why the obvious choice may increasingly be the wrong one, this is a very useful conversation.Interesting story here about a recent program they did for HabitBurgerhttps://www.buzzfeed.com/business-news/habit-burger-sonderco-chef-residency-platform-jessie-mash-jack-lettenmair
