Chrissie Hanson is on gardening leave, the strategic pause between her last chapter and her next one as incoming CEO of Dentsu. ATM sat down with her to find out what she's reading, thinking, and planting (literally) before she steps into one of the biggest roles in the industry. The Gardening Leave: Chrissie is in the rare space between roles. She's spending it reading, listening to AI podcasts, learning the difference between confabulation and hallucination, and spending time with her daughter, husband, and mother. She calls it an incredible privilege. 🌱 Brick Brain or Bubblegum Brain: A concept from her daughter's preschool that stuck. The idea that even when something feels hard, your brain is always soft enough to move and shift. Chrissie applies it to leadership: recognize the mistake, act on it, and keep going. 🧠 The 400 Tulips: Chrissie planted 400 tulip bulbs last November. 330 of them bloomed beautifully. One patch didn't. Her takeaway: you cannot outwork everything in life. Sometimes you have to let nature do its part. 🌷 The Digital Detox Experiment: Inspired by Deepak Chopra's approach to going fully offline, Chrissie is planning a full week in May with no phone, no TV, no Wi-Fi. She believes days one and two will be hard, but by day seven, clarity and euphoria will follow. 📵 Opening Doors at the AAF: As chair of the AAF Hall of Achievements, Chrissie is helping recognize leaders under 40 who aren't just hitting personal milestones but improving the ecosystem around them. Watching the applications come in has been humbling and energizing. ✨ The Question She Asks Everyone: What was the last mistake you made, and what did you do as a result? Chrissie believes the answer tells you everything about a person's flexibility, self-awareness, and kindness toward themselves and others. 💬

Vinny Rinaldi went from building data systems for P&G in the wild west of ad tech to leading new frontiers at one of the world's most beloved CPG brands. Now he's modernizing a 130-year-old chocolate company with an always-on, AI-powered media mix model that most legacy CPG brands haven't touched yet. The Ad Tech Wild West: Vinny came out of college and landed in audience science startups when the data side of the industry was still being built. Every stop gave him a front-row seat to how technology was reshaping how brands reach people. 📊 Sell Side to Buy Side: After three years inside Google, Vinny made the jump to the agency world and helped lead the Merkle acquisition at Dentsu. Then Hershey called. Bringing everything he learned to a 130-year-old chocolate company felt like the right next chapter. 🍫 Always-On Measurement: Hershey is launching an AI-based media mix model with a real-time data warehouse and monthly lookbacks. For a legacy CPG company managing demand capture and demand generation at the same time, that kind of measurement infrastructure is a first. 🔬 40 Brands Across Every Screen: From augmented reality to dual-screen environments, Vinny is figuring out how to modernize legacy brands so they show up on every platform in a way that feels native. Doing that across 40 brands at once takes new capabilities and serious scale. 📱 The Hershey Movie: The founder's story is heading to the big screen. Vinny calls it one of the best stories never told, and for the entire company, watching it come to life is a dream. 🎬 The Curious George Rule: Vinny's eighth grade teacher gave him a Curious George book and told him he was the most curious kid in the class. His career advice hasn't changed since: listen more than you speak, take everything in, and be a sponge. 🧽

POSSIBLE brought brands, agencies, platforms, and publishers to Miami for one of the industry's can't-miss weeks. ATM was on the ground capturing the conversations, the connections, and the moments in between. Behind the Curtain: The real value at POSSIBLE wasn't just the main stage. It was the innovation stage, the hallway conversations, and the moments between sessions where new partnerships started to take shape. 🌴 What's Now and What's Next: From current partners getting a grounding on where things are headed to new voices introducing what's coming, POSSIBLE became the place to see the full picture of the industry in real time. 🔭 The Whole Room Was There: Brands, agencies, platforms, publishers, data companies, and technology companies all under one roof. The quality of conversations is what keeps making this event impossible to skip. 🤝 Stimulus, Conversation, Exchange: The leaders on the ground shared what keeps bringing them back. It's the relationships that get built, the ideas that spark between sessions, and the kind of exchange you can't replicate on a screen. 💡 The Duty of Care Moment: Showing up at moments like POSSIBLE isn't just about business development. It's about being present for your partners, your community, and the conversations that move the industry forward.

April was a month of celebrating what's been built and previewing what's next. From the AAF Hall of Fame to travel hacks from execs who live on planes, interview moments you didn't see the first time, and the social clips that stopped the scroll, here's your highlight reel. The Month In Review: Hall of Fame legends on one stage. Does Data really outweigh humans? An NFL CMO building brands like blockbusters. 78 emails that became 4.8 million subscribers. Travel tips from execs always on the go. And the outtakes that didn't make the cut but probably should have. April delivered. 🎬

After having her daughter in 2018, Emily Seal walked away from the Clios to reevaluate her why. She came back and built the Women's Health Platform from scratch, turning a single awards category into a movement connecting brands, investors, and startups around one of the most underfunded spaces in healthcare. The Reset: Emily was VP of Operations at the Clios when she had her first child in 2018. She stepped away with no plan, just a feeling that she needed a deeper reason to show up every day. Simon Sinek's "Start with the Why" became the spark. The James Beard Blueprint: While working with the James Beard Foundation during the pandemic, Emily watched a community rally around its people in real time. That became the model for everything she'd build next. Building the Women's Health Platform: What started as a new Clio Health category highlighting creative work that broke down stigma around women's health became a full platform in partnership with the World's Women Foundation. Not just awards. A movement. From Underfunded to Funded: Women's health spent years under-researched and overlooked. Emily stepped in at the moment that started to shift, and built the infrastructure to accelerate it through creativity, partnerships, and investment. All Ships Rise: The Women's Health community runs on a rising tide mentality. Know one person, they connect you to the next. Brands, investors, startups, government agencies, all in the same room with a shared mission. The Bigger Picture: Clio Health is expanding beyond pharma and wellness into consumer brands running purpose-driven health campaigns. The Clios on Culture event launches in September. And the Clio Creators program is diving into the creator economy. Emily is building at the center of all of it.

ATM was on the ground at Cipriani's on Wall Street for the 75th AAF Advertising Hall of Fame, celebrating the Class of 2026. It was one unforgettable night and the industry showed up to celebrate the people who shaped it. Cipriani's and the Class of 2026: The 75th AAF Advertising Hall of Fame honored David Droga, Esi Eggleston Bracey, Tim Ellis, Jim Stengel, Gordon Bowen, Susan Credle, and Barry Manilow for lifetime contributions to the industry. 🏆 Not Just a Campaign. A Career: This is not an award for one great ad. It is an induction for a lifetime of work. The room felt it, and the inductees did too. One called it the sweetest moment of their career. Another said 25 years of attending this night still feels like nothing else. 👑 A Force for Good: Tim Ellis was called a force for good, not just in advertising but in mentoring young people through Big Brothers Big Sisters. Susan Credle was called a towering creative talent by the people who know her best. The tributes were personal, specific, and emotional. 🤝 The Industry at an Inflection Point: The night carried a bigger message. The world is changing fast, and creativity, advertising, and marketing still have the power to change lives, improve livelihoods, and build bridges. As one speaker put it: you do not have to save the world. You can just teach a little kid to count. 🌍

Meredith Klein watched reporters she had known for 20 years leave legacy newsrooms and start building on their own. So she texted a few of them, launched a Substack, and turned it into the media industry's go-to publication for the people behind the stories. Introducing Meredith and Meredith & The Media. Every Career Move Led Here: Meredith cut her teeth at Golin, stood up comms at Jet.com before it got absorbed into Walmart, and spent four years leading consumer and product comms at Pinterest. When she left in 2024, she finally had time to do her favorite part of PR full time: building real relationships with reporters. 🏆 Born Out of Curiosity: Meredith & The Media started because Meredith kept noticing the same thing. Reporters were leaving legacy outlets, launching newsletters, starting podcasts, and nobody was covering the story of the storytellers. She figured she would figure it out on the way and started texting. 💡 Twenty Years of Relationships, One Text at a Time: The first interviews came from a text to a friend at the Wall Street Journal and a message to a reporter at Forbes. Twenty years of building trust with journalists meant that when Meredith asked, the answer was always yes. Now chief communications officers at major publications are reaching out to her. 📱 Spotlighting the Personality Behind the Pen: Media gets a tough rap, and Meredith thinks it deserves better. Her publication is built on a simple belief: the people writing the stories are just as interesting as the stories they cover. Live from the Newsroom, her newest series, takes that idea even further by going inside actual newsrooms. 🎙️ Failure Is the Strategy: Meredith's approach to building something new is refreshingly simple. No one else is trying it, so who gets to say if she is failing? If it works, keep going. If it does not, move on. That mindset has turned a curious side project into one of the most exciting media publications in the space. 🔥

Bloomberg Media brought its global newsroom, 10 Emmy nominations, and the largest B2B video network in the world to one stage in New York last Thursday to unveil a whole new era of insights. ATM was there to hear how the company is helping brands cut through a landscape that has never been noisier. The Look Ahead: Bloomberg Media's presentation brought together voices from every corner of its global newsroom, from live market opens in Sydney and San Francisco to entertainment deals and the next wave of tech IPOs. Christine Cook, Global Chief Commercial Officer, on why the brands paying attention right now are the ones that will still be standing later. 🌍 Standing Out in the Age of Invisibility: It has never been harder to be discovered as a brand. Ashish Verma, Global Head of Bloomberg Media Studios, on what two years of working with clients has taught him about fighting commoditization and why blending live events with global news coverage is where the real opportunities are opening up. 💡 From Gummy Bears to Semiconductors: Allison Stransky, CMO of Samsung Electronics America, on why Bloomberg is where her team goes to understand the full picture. When your job is bringing AI to consumers, you need a platform that covers the intersection of every industry, not just yours. The range of a single day's coverage reminded her exactly why. 🧠

Alan d'Escragnolle went from building Cash App to disrupting how film and TV get distributed, and the journey in between is worth every second. The Filmhub co-founder on why the creator economy is rewriting the rules and what that means for everyone in entertainment right now. From Square to Filmhub: Alan d'Escragnolle built his career at companies like Square and Cash App before co-founding Filmhub with a world-class film composer. It is one of the most exciting companies sitting at the intersection of tech and entertainment right now. 🎬 The Creator Economy Is Rewriting the Rules: A YouTuber with a $5000 budget is now creating content that reaches audiences a million-dollar production never could. Alan sees this as one of the greatest opportunities in the history of film and TV distribution. 📱 Revenue Share Is the Future: Filmhub is pioneering a merit-based revenue share model that rewards content for actually performing. Alan believes this is the model the entire industry is moving toward, and Filmhub is already building for it. 💡 Technology Is Teachable Relationships Are Not: Alan looks for one thing above everything else when building his team. The ability to build real relationships. San Francisco understands technology, and LA understands relationships, but the real power is knowing how to combine both. 🤝 Normalize Failure: Alan is the CEO of a venture-backed company, and he is proud to say that failure is part of the process. The leaders who embrace vulnerability with their teams get the best feedback and build the most resilient companies. 🚀

The 75th AAF Advertising Hall of Fame is honoring a class of inductees whose work shaped how the world sees, buys, and feels. ATM sat down with each of them before the celebration. You know the M&Ms characters. You have used Febreze. You have heard the Band Aid jingle without even trying. The people behind those ideas are being inducted into the 75th AAF Advertising Hall of Fame this week, and their careers hold more wisdom than any single campaign could capture. ATM had the privilege of sitting down with each inductee to hear how they got here, what drives them, and what they want the next generation to know. From a CMO who flew to Istanbul just to sit with a family and understand how they lived, to an executive who invented a billion dollar brand in her twenties because she brought a personal problem into a brainstorming session, to a songwriter whose jingles became the soundtrack of an entire industry. These are not just advertising legends. These are the people who proved that seeing people clearly is the most powerful strategy there is. Stay tuned all week as we share their stories, their wisdom, and the moments that defined their careers.

As the NFL's Chief Marketing Officer, Tim has spent nearly eight years transforming one of the most powerful sports brands in the world into something even bigger. A league that leads with humanity, inclusion, and cultural connection at every turn. For Tim, it has never been about the game alone. It has always been about the people who show up for it. Before the NFL came decades of global marketing leadership built on one unshakeable belief. That big human courageous ideas are the only ones worth building. Big, Courageous, Human Ideas Were Always the Goal: Tim Ellis got into marketing for one reason and has never lost sight of it. Finding the highest level of creativity on the biggest possible stage. Every career move has been in pursuit of that one thing. 🏆 The NFL is a Force for Unity: Tim joined the NFL because he believed in its power to bring people together, and that mission has never felt more important. In a divisive world, connecting millions around a shared passion is something worth leading with everything you have. 🏈 Technology Should Get You Closer to People: Tim has seen every major tech transformation in marketing, and his philosophy has never changed. Use technology to get closer to your audience, not further away. Mass intimacy is always the goal. 🤝 The People Are the Work: The campaigns get the attention, but the teams and agency relationships are what actually lasted. That is the part of a career that never makes the highlight reel, and it is the part that matters most when you look back. 👥 This Award Is for the Next Generation: Tim accepted his AAF 75th Hall of Fame induction with one thing on his mind. Less than 300 people have ever received this honor, and for Tim, it has always been about who he will inspire to do something even greater next. 💡

Charlotte Owen has a simple philosophy for building a media brand that lasts and Bustle is the proof. The EVP on keeping the human at the heart of everything while building content so singular that no algorithm could ever replicate it. From Vanity Fair to Bustle EVP: Charlotte Owen started as an assistant at Vanity Fair's London office and spent seven years learning everything about media from the ground up. Today, she oversees all of BDG's lifestyle and parenting brands, and the trajectory has been anything but ordinary. 🚀 Singular Is the New Strategy: In 2026, Bustle is focused on doing only what it can do better than anyone else. Exclusive talent access, deep editorial expertise, and content that surprises and delights the reader who wants to live a big life. 📱 People Want Realness, Not Polish: The biggest video trend Charlotte is seeing has nothing to do with production value. Audiences want authenticity, and real always beats perfect, no matter how beautiful the execution. 🎬 Your Content North Star Is What AI Cannot Do: Charlotte's philosophy is clear. If AI can generate it, it should not be in your editorial strategy. Personal stories, real reporting, and genuine access are what make content worth paying for. 🤖 Your Differences Are Your Superpowers: Charlotte spent her early career feeling like she did not fit into the London media world. Looking back, she would tell her younger self to lean into exactly those differences because they were what set her apart all along. 💡

Sarah Personette has navigated three completely different careers and landed exactly where she was always meant to be. The Puck CEO on why journalists are the original influencers and the modern media model changing the game. Three Careers One Common Thread: Sarah Personette has navigated agency life, platform technology, and now publishing as CEO of Puck. At every stop, she made it her mission to deeply understand every function around her, and that empathy has carried her all the way to the top. 🚀 Journalists Are the Original Influencers: Puck was built on one thesis that journalists who lead with perspective, personality, and insider access are the future of media. Five years ago, that was a contrarian bet. Today, the entire industry is catching up. 📰 Trust in Media Is at a Crossroads: In the 1970s, 72 percent of Americans trusted news institutions. By 2023, that number had dropped to 32 percent. Sarah sees deeply sourced analytical journalism led by real personalities as the path forward. 🤝 AI Cannot Compress Expertise: Sarah is clear about one thing. AI can compress effort, but it will never compress expertise. The leaders who understand that distinction are the ones building the most resilient teams right now. 🤖 Be the Master of Your Own Education: Sarah's advice to her younger self is simple. Use every tool and resource available to feed your curiosity and make yourself more informed. Nobody builds your career for you but you. 💡

Roku is the largest TV operating system in the US and Sarah Harms is the one making sure every advertiser knows exactly what that means. The VP of Marketing and Measurement on the streaming future every brand needs to be building for right now. Early to Programmatic, Early to Everything: Sarah Harms entered ad tech in 2010, right as programmatic was being dismissed as plumbing for publishers. That timing gave her a front-row seat to every major shift in digital buying, from WPP's buildout of Xaxis to running Microsoft's DSP and curation business after the Xandr acquisition. 🚀 Roku Is the TV You Want: Roku is the largest TV operating system in the US, and The Roku Channel is the number two ad-supported TV time spent publisher in the market. For advertisers, that combination of operating system scale, logged-in audiences, and addressable inventory is rare. For consumers, it is simply the interface they see every time they turn on the TV. 📺 All TV Will Be Streamed: The convergence of linear and streaming is no longer a prediction. Sarah sees CTV collapsing the barrier to entry for advertisers who were historically priced out of television, opening the TV buying ecosystem to millions of new entrants and fundamentally reshaping how inventory is negotiated and sold. 💡 AI Has a Trust Problem to Solve: The industry is moving faster on AI than consumers are ready for, and Sarah thinks the platforms that win will be the ones that treat AI-generated content as a quality question, not just an efficiency play. Roku's position is clear: be a safe, responsible destination for premium content, whether that content is AI-assisted or not. 🤖 Be Kind, Not Nice: One of Sarah's sharpest leadership beliefs came from someone on her own team. Real kindness in leadership means delivering honest, direct feedback that helps people grow, not softening everything until it loses its meaning. 🤝

Jim Stengel has spent 43 years proving that the best careers are built on curiosity, and the AAF 75th Hall of Fame just proved him right. The former P&G CMO on why saying yes and staying human has always been the only strategy worth having. P&G Was Never the Plan, and Then It Became Everything: Jim Stengel joined P&G planning to stay two years and spent twenty-five of them learning from the best leaders in the world. The people, the role models, and the curiosity they inspired in him have never left. 🏆 The CMO Job Was Serendipity: Jim never targeted the top marketing role at one of the world's largest companies. It found him, and he embraced it completely, and seven transformational years later, it became the launchpad for everything that came after. 👑 Stay Human in the Age of AI: Jim flew into Istanbul a weekend early just to spend time with a local family and understand how they lived. That is how he has always balanced data with humanity, and it is the same philosophy he brings to every leader he coaches today. 🌍 Curiosity Is the Answer Every Time: Nearly 400 episodes of the CMO Podcast and one consistent truth. The greatest marketing leaders in the world all share the same superpower. Curiosity. Keep learning from every person around you, and it will take you further than anything else. 🎙️ The Sweetest Moment of 43 Years: Jim called his AAF Hall of Fame induction the best day of his entire career and meant every word. Twenty letters from colleagues, clients, and childhood friends reminded him exactly why the work has always been about the people. 💡