Eliza Yvette Esquivel- Our Protopian Future

Inspiring Futures

The latest Inspiring Futures podcast is an interview with Eliza Yvette Esquivel.
Eliza has worked both on the agency and client side. She's had senior brand management roles at Mondelez and Microsoft and as a strategist and CSO at several different agencies, including Barbarian, Future Brand, DDB, JWT, Wieden and Kennedy Amsterdam, and TBWA.
In our conversation, we discuss what she's learned from her experiences on the agency and client sides and how she's applying that learning to her coaching, leadership, and consulting businesses, which are underpinned by protopian thinking.
Some quotes from Eliza from the interview.
Moving from Agency to Client
"The first thing when I went client side was I was surprised at how little they knew what they were doing. I had this perception when I was in the agency world that the clients were buttoned up and, you know, everything was very certain and, you know, they had it together, and we didn't understand."

Agency Understanding of Clients
"The other thing is just how little we know about our client's businesses on the agency side, how little we understand about how they make money and what the center of gravity of each organization is. And then, therefore, what role does marketing play as a consequence?
The Challenge for Marketers inside Corporations
"There's a fundamental lack of understanding, especially with marketing, of what marketing is and how it works. So if you're a good marketer and get into these organizations, you must sort of play along with some antiquated misconceptions while you''re trying to, you know, educate and persuade to a more sophisticated approach."
How to Make Brand Matter Inside the Corporation
"I did this while I was at Microsoft: I connected brand metrics to business metrics. And it was hugely impactful. All of a sudden, they paid attention to the brand, and I used my research budget to show the contribution that the brand made to the business when I restructured the way we collected the data about brand metrics. So I think that, you know, it's either having an evangelist or you yourself going in and creating the proof that has not existed up until that point. "
The Importance of Creativity
"if clients understood the value of constantly exercising that kind of creativity, and, and valuing advertising agencies' ability to sort of bring that to the table, their businesses would probably be thriving."
The Protopian Future
"Protopia is basically the understanding that we create the future incrementally by making it a little bit better and a little bit better in steps. But we're always pointing toward that better direction. And so that's really what protopianism is all about. It really has sort of like the pillars. It's got some pillars within it of sustainability, inclusivity, and these human-centric values. It's about a future where technology and ethics sort of walk hand in hand."