Goodby Silverstein & Partners’ Bonnie Wan on embracing fear and thinking about life as a brief

As partner and head of brand strategy at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Bonnie Wan has been a consistent force for the agency. She is the architect of the shop’s Brand Camp, a six-week accelerated strategy workshop for brands and the fastest-growing part of the agency’s business. Last year it helped pick up business with Blackstone, Frito-Lay and Kraft Heinz. Brand Camp also spawned the idea for “Lunchabuilds,” which allow children to build items such as cheese-and-cracker buses from boxes of Lunchables. Wan has also been at the center of many of Goodby’s campaigns, including Super Bowl spots this year for Doritos and Sam Adams, which helped earn a 100% increase in press attention despite a 40% decrease in ad spend from last year. Wan is also continuing to follow the principles contained in “The Life Brief,” which she created as a way to live with intention, creativity and joy. She recently signed a seven-figure deal to publish “The Life Brief” as a book in 2024. See all of Ad Age's 2023 Leading Women here What advice would you give your younger self? Less self-doubt and self-harming narratives. Embracing the fuel that comes from not knowing. It took me so many years to realize that the terror that I have at the beginning of any project as a strategist is the terror that always exists at the beginning of any project, and it’s a terror that is universally shared by everyone who does this. But I didn’t know that. I thought it was my own fallibility, my own weakness that I was scared—that I was gripped by fear of the unknown at the start of any project. And now I’ve come to really embrace and lean into that fear and translate that fear into excitement. What’s the biggest risk you’ve ever taken? Some people might think staying with one agency for this long is a risk. I haven’t moved around and I haven’t jumped to the client side or tasted more experiences. And I have to say betting on this place has been the best decision I have ever made, and I’ve had so many chapters in this place that have stretched me and challenged me and really pushed me to my limits. So while some might see it as a risk, I see it as an investment and a bet on the right place. If you weren’t doing your current job, what would you be doing and why? I’d be teaching “The Life Brief,” which is my joy hustle. It came to me during a moment of despair when I hit a real rough spot in my personal life. My first reflex in my darkest hour was to write a brief for myself and that turned into a practice—that was in 2010. I like to say it saved my marriage, not once, but twice. It really helped skyrocket my career and center my parenting. It’s amazing how the practice that we have as strategists and in creativity and in advertising applies to how we live our lives. And clarity is the key, right? Clarity and brevity. It is the springboard for action. So I’d like to say action is a byproduct of clarity. That’s why we write briefs. What should the industry do to encourage more women and people of color into its ranks? The industry has to take a hard look in the mirror. The industry needs to create more brave spaces to get feedback about why women and underrepresented groups don’t feel safe giving their best ideas and their best selves to this industry. We have to look at it in deeper, more nuanced ways than five or 10 years ago. The early discussions about it were broad strokes or counting numbers. Then we moved to retention, not just new hires, but we’re still counting numbers. How do you expect emerging tech like Web3 and AI to impact your job in the future? AI is going to transform the inside of agencies radically. It’s going to transform our ideas. It’s going to make entrepreneurship faster and more efficient, but it’ll never replace creative thinking. It will make our processes more efficient so that we can be more creative and effective. That’s what I’m excited about. What I’m terrified by is the impact on trust when it comes to our creations. How will we know who is talking to us? Is this a real source or a fake source? I think those are the most terrifying parts of AI. See all of Ad Age's 2023 Leading Women here

Goodby Silverstein & Partners’ Bonnie Wan on embracing fear and thinking about life as a brief

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