Growth, Interrupted Podcast is a conversation series for senior leaders in DTC and paid media, exploring what drives real business impact today in the new era of AI and human judgment. Host Amy Tran is our Senior Director of Growth, bringing 9+ years of paid media expertise across North America, EMEA, and APAC.

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The Influence Gap: Why Communication Is the Most Underrated Growth Lever in Paid Media

In the last decade, the paid media industry has made enormous investments in data infrastructure, attribution technology, and AI-powered optimisation. What it has invested far less in is the skill that sits underneath all of it, the ability to communicate in a way that actually changes what people think, feel, and do.

This episode of Growth, Interrupted makes the case that communication isn't a soft skill. It's the one your growth depends on. Whether you're pitching a new budget to a risk-averse CFO, navigating a difficult client relationship, or trying to build the kind of leadership presence that people actually follow, the quality of your communication is doing more work than most performance marketers ever stop to measure.

Episode Themes: Persuasion, Storytelling, Negotiation & Leadership in the Age of AI

What does it mean to be genuinely influential, not just persuasive, in a high-pressure advertising environment? Where does storytelling still make the biggest difference to performance when data can already tell you everything about your audience? What's the single most important concept from negotiation research that every account manager and media buyer should know?

This conversation covers all of it and goes somewhere unexpected. We talk about why understanding your audience and moving them to action are two fundamentally different problems. Why Mont Blanc doesn't sell pens. Why the leaders who grow fastest aren't the ones with the sharpest elbows, and what they do instead. And what the biggest leadership communication mistake in advertising looks like right now, in an industry that is still figuring out how to talk about AI honestly.

The insights in this episode come from both sides of the table, the research and the practice, and they are specific enough to change how you approach your next pitch, your next difficult conversation, and your next performance review.

About the Guest: Leadership & Communication Research Meets Industry Practice

Our guest this episode, Jesse Scinto, brings a perspective that's genuinely rare in paid media conversations. With nearly 14 years at Columbia University, where he teaches graduate courses on leadership, influence, and critical conversations, and years before that advising organisations like Bloomberg, Coca-Cola, and Deloitte on communication and persuasion, he sits at the intersection of academic rigour and real-world practice.

He's also the founder of the Winter Symposium and runs an executive coaching practice helping senior leaders develop the kind of presence and storytelling ability that actually moves rooms.

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This episode is also available here on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

About Growth, Interrupted and Crealytics

Growth, Interrupted  Podcast is brought to you by Crealytics, available on  Spotify,  Apple Podcasts, and  YouTube.

Crealytics is an award-winning full-funnel digital marketing agency fueling the profitable growth of over 100 well-known B2C and B2B businesses, including ASOS, The Hut Group, Staples and Urban Outfitters. A global company with an inclusive team of 100+ international employees, we operate from our hubs in Berlin, New York, Chicago, London, and Mumbai.