Build What Outlasts You

Tiffany Pham

Hi Mark, it's such a pleasure to see you. Thank you so much for joining us on Chief Officer.

Mark Miller

Thanks for having me Tiffany, nice to see you.

Tiffany Pham

It's a huge pleasure as you know and the listeners should know, Mark and I go way back in over a decade and it's such a pleasure because Mark is just an incredible leader and friend and someone who's been so supportive and a champion of others, including myself. So to be able to spotlight him today and his career and his incredible journey and inspiring leadership is a real honor. So I'm delighted to have you and to be able to share with our listeners all that you've done and how you got to where you are today. It's awesome.

Mark Miller

Really excited to be here. It's early. We're recording this when I'm in Los Angeles and it's a little bit after seven in the morning and there are a few things that would bring me in to do that and this is definitely one of them. So thank you, Tiffany.

Tiffany Pham

Absolutely. Also, Mark, I'm excited for you to be able to share with everyone where you are today as chief officer at Team One, under Publicis, excited for you to be able to share your journey and where you grew up the years before. And then we'll dive in into the role itself and how you got there.

Mark Miller

Fantastic. You want to start at the start?

Tiffany Pham

Exactly, yes.

Mark Miller

All right. If it sounds like I have a Canadian accent, do not be fooled. It's only because I'm originally from Toronto, Canada, and that's where my story begins. And I have what for some people is a less usual story. And it's because maybe I didn't know where my career would end or evolve to so early on. But I had actually figured out the start of my career quite early and it was happenstance. I was taking a course in high school and the premise of the course was that we were allowed to work at a company or an industry that we thought we'd be interested in. We were responsible for securing our own employment. But if you could find the job, you could work for a semester and get credit for doing it and learn something about a skill or an occupation that you thought you might be great at. So because I grew up in Toronto, Canada, there were very few things that we were sort of famous or known for. One of them was comedy and comedy writing. And for that reason, growing up as a young kid, I thought I might be interested in being a comedy writer and I called a place called...

Tiffany Pham

Oh, wow.

Mark Miller

Yeah, yeah. I guess a through line for me, like for many people, is I've had role models in my life and early on, it was people working in comedy and comedy writing. So I called a place called The Second City. They were most famous for their group in Chicago. But they actually had a pretty big and well-established group in Toronto. And a number of people who came from there went on to work at Saturday Night Live. And that was a big deal to me as a kid growing up. So I thought this was the greatest thing ever. I called them and I explained I was a high school student. We had the opportunity to go work for credit, and they talked to me. And they kind of had, metaphorically, a smile on their voice, which is probably to say that they were laughing in a polite way, but they said, yeah, sure, why don't you come down? And it went like this. They got to the end of the interview, or what was sort of an interview, and they said, you know, when you called us and said that you want to take this, we did think it was really funny that a high school student wanted to do it. We've never had a high school student call and say they would do it for credit before. We were just curious to meet you and figure out what this was all about.

Tiffany Pham

Wow.

Mark Miller

They said the thing is, as fun as you think this might be, the people who work in the industry take it really seriously. And they wouldn't actually think it was fun or interesting to have a high school student who was doing this for fun and for credit to work alongside of them because this was their livelihood. And they said, but we really like you. And they said, we're surprised. We just thought this would be fun or funny, but as it turns out, you want to work here and we really like you. And they said, what do you think you want to do for a living? And I said, well, I think I either maybe want to be a comedy writer, or I've seen filmmakers come from Canada and use the writing to make film, maybe be a filmmaker, or I thought maybe about working in advertising. And they said, you should do that. And they said, here's the thing. We have an agency, they're a small Canadian national. We're going to call them on your behalf and see if we can help get you an internship there. And they did. They called. Same scenario. They never had a high school student work with them before. They thought it was fun or funny. They let me do it. I worked as a copywriter. I had the best time. I had wonderful mentors. They were selling my writing. Clients were buying the writing. And they'd asked if I wanted to not return to high school and stay on full-time and work in the industry as a copywriter. And the funny thing, of course, is in my family, I'm the youngest of three, family was working class. It was very important to my mom and dad that their kids all had a good education. Not finishing high school wasn't an option. Going on to college or university was a priority. And so I did, I went to university, I went to business school, studied marketing, consumer behavior, marketing research, and the same place that hired me when I was in high school, gave me my first full-time job after I graduated from business school.

Tiffany Pham

Oh, wow, amazing, wow.

Mark Miller

I knew early on that advertising could be a career for me. And it took finding sort of the right people and working myself into the right place and putting in the work at school to advance it. But I found people who encouraged and nurtured my passion from very early on. So I knew the career choice pretty early.

Tiffany Pham

Yeah. And I can see why you would pinpoint it and you would go with the flow of what they suggested early on, since advertising does so beautifully combine all the elements that you're so talented at, with humor and art and creative and filmmaking and all of that combined into one. And so where did that take you after, when you joined their agency, did you work your way up or what happened then?

Mark Miller

Yeah, it started, it was really interesting. Most of my peers at school, it was intentional. The school that I went to actually had a nice relationship with a large ad community. So it was very plausible that upon graduation that I could go to a large global company. But I loved that I knew these folks from when I started in high school. And what they had offered was a bit unusual. They said because of their size and scale, that if I wanted to come and write ads there, they knew that I had skill and fluency and they encouraged that. But they were also aware that I spent years learning more rigorous disciplines, consumer research. They said, we're small enough that versus a large agency where you would have to go down a track, you can kind of come here and explore all of that. And so I did, I started with the small Canadian national. I knew my passion and interest and I started putting my skill to use and I had good mentors and people who encouraged me. And then what I found was just other role models, I think as many of us do as we go along, that I see other people doing other things and kind of learning from them and possibilities were opening up. I began to feel that my career would have a long tail. I wasn't interested in just the next job, and I wasn't interested in just the next title. I knew that I wanted to do something that was meaningful in the industry and I started to seek out and find other people who were doing it. So my next move was to go from a small Canadian national to a large global company, though still based in Toronto at the time. And it was true, they required not experimentation across disciplines. They said, we know you have a creative side and we know you have a research side. And at the time in a large organization, they wanted to know where the specialty would lie. So I went down more of the business, the research and the strategy track. And that too began to open up possibilities for me. I then had the opportunity to move from my role in Toronto, Canada to being recruited by a company in Los Angeles. And because I grew up in the extreme, maybe not extreme, I grew up in very cold weather. There was something very delightful about being not in the cold weather. I came to LA and I began as a senior strategist out here and quickly moved into a director role. And sort of like my path to this point, I was exposed to really good mentors and people who were doing interesting things.

Tiffany Pham

Where was the senior strategist role? Was it here?

Mark Miller

The first role was a place called Rubin Postaer and Associates, which at the time was based in Santa Monica on Third Street, and the strategists sat overlooking the promenade. So I went from a formal office building in Toronto with a view of the snow to a lovely space overseeing the promenade with wonderful weather and a very different sort of vibe and energy. It was a wonderful opportunity. It was primarily a research department that was converted into a strategy department. It was using all my skill and fluency. It was the chance to experience something different, but most importantly, it exposed me to some people who were doing a different kind of work. So I had all the functional skills to participate, but the range of output was very different than what I was doing from where I came from. And it wasn't a deterrent. It was actually, I would say it sort of unboxed and unleashed something in me, which is from close proximity, I saw amazing people doing some really interesting things that allowed me to believe that my career could go to places far beyond where I had been. And that really motivated something in me. It brought out the best of my skills. It showed me how to have not only good ideas, but to persuade people of why they were good ideas. Over time, I learned how to inspire that in other people as well. And after a short amount of time, I moved to my current agency, a place called Team One. And the lovely thing about the practice of strategic planning here is in a world where companies want a silo of business thinkers or creative thinkers, Team One desired and required that rigorous business thinking, analytical thinking and strategic thinking would drive creative thinking. And so, you know, it's a full circle moment for me. I began as a high school student wanting to be a writer. I developed all these skills in the areas of research and analytics, very rigorous sort of discipline thinking. And here I was being given the opportunity to say you can apply all those skills in one agency.

Tiffany Pham

I love that. I love that. And when you joined Team One, what was that moment like? And was it then that you joined as a chief officer, chief strategy officer? Or was it ultimately at a later time that you became the chief officer?

Mark Miller

There was evolution here as well. So let's see. When I first came to Rubin Postaer in LA, I started as a senior strategist and pretty quickly became a director. When I came to Team One, I was a director and within a reasonable amount of time, I became an executive director. Two things happened here. One is, not just that I ran into, I was very fortunate to have another excellent mentor in the CSO role. Very good with the academics and the foundations, very good at inspiring each of us to achieve something exceptional within us, to develop our own wonderful ideas, and really good at working with talent and encouraging us to work with talent as well. So I had really good proximity to someone who was exceptional in the role. And within a short amount of time, not uncommon in advertising, that person went to work at another agency, it opened up a CSO role. They did not give that to me at first. They brought in another CSO. A friend of mine, someone I trusted and respected, admired. And so I was very fortunate again, because I went from a CSO who I trusted and respected to another one. And then when that person ended up leaving, also it wasn't that long a period of time, they also did not immediately give me the CSO role. There was a sense that the work was quite, if I remember correctly, there was respect and regard for the work that I'd contributed. But of course, being a CSO is more than just being exceptional at your craft. There's the ability to inspire and move people and lead an organization forward. And so there was a bit of a wearing-in or a trial process. So as an executive leader of the department, I was sort of forced into a situation. I picked up somebody else's work and was given the opportunity of necessity to show that I could shine in an important moment. We were working on a new business pitch. I was the next most senior person who could lead that pitch. I helped to do it. We won. And the outcome of that was eventually my role was elevated to a CSO. So I really had to work at it and earn it, but I was with people who supported me in that endeavor.

Tiffany Pham

I love that. I love that. And that's amazing. Are you able to share the client that you won or is that confidential?

Mark Miller

When the camera goes off, I will tell you exactly.

Tiffany Pham

Okay, perfect. Perfect. And so that's so exciting. So was it Team One leadership that then gave you the call and told you that you were now selected as Chief Strategy Officer, or was it Publicis leadership, or how did it work when you got the call?

Mark Miller

So Team One is a part of Publicis which is a very large global communications organization. Team One is an agency of about 400 some odd people within that organization and the balance of us, not exclusively, but the biggest hub is in LA, we have offices in Dallas, New York, Chicago, Boise, Atlanta. Our CEO, or the equivalent of our CEO at Team One, was the person who gave me the opportunity to move into that role. I think you asked me a very short and simple question and I found a way to integrate all our various offices and answer your question.

Tiffany Pham

That's why you're chief strategy officer, I love it. And so I'm guessing this is Julie.

Mark Miller

So it was actually someone by the name of Brian who was before Julie. Julie, who was our current CEO, who's another role model and mentor for me. Julie's been here of similar duration to me, actually a little bit longer than me. And Julie and I have had the opportunity to not only support one another in moving through the organization. We've also had the chance to see one another grow up in this organization, which is a pretty cool thing.

Tiffany Pham

Absolutely. You're giving me chills as you say that. It's really beautiful. You two have been there for over two decades or so, right?

Mark Miller

Well, I don't want to count decades, but we've been here for a while.

Tiffany Pham

Amazing. It's amazing. And so who was the first person you told when you got the Chief Strategy Officer role, after so many times over waiting and working hard and finally earning it and deserving it, feeling like you've earned it.

Mark Miller

Yeah, my mom and my dad. My parents sacrificed quite a bit for my brother, sister and me. I think like a lot of kids growing up, we probably don't appreciate all the things that our parents do for us, but they really took what they had and invested in the family, invested in our education. And not just when it was convenient to do, but even at the hardest of times. When I had the opportunity to come to the United States, my mom was going through some rather severe health realities. Instead of encouraging me to stay behind, they really motivated me to pursue something that was important to me. Whether it was when I was in high school and thought I wanted to be a writer, whether it was coming out of school and starting at a smaller Canadian national, whether it was moving to LA, my parents have always been supportive. I will say there was one moment in time when my mom and dad had called me aside. And it was when I was going from high school to university and they asked what I thought I wanted to study. And I said, I was choosing between something either creative, because I always enjoyed creativity, or something business oriented. And they said, I should do whatever I want to do, as long as what I want to do was go to business school. It was the one time where they were very specific about their motivation. Anyway, they've always been there for me. They were the first people that I called and shared that with.

Tiffany Pham

I love that. And they must be so proud. And so what was your first week like? How did it feel? And how did it change, that first week when you were elevated to the chief officer role?

Mark Miller

Well, there are a number of things that are visible to outsiders in terms of what's involved with the role. So what happens in a meeting, I could see that. There's the output, the writing and the contributing, I could see that. There's the interacting with people and I could see it. But one of the things that was at arm's length to me was some of the operational things involved in the role. And so in my first week, I was being given documents that had to do with approving department budgets and department spending. And if you've never seen that before, it all seemed like it was a lot of real time learning. I would say my very first week on the job, I was called into our CFO's office. And he smiled. I was easy game for him. He knew I was new in the role. And what he was trying to illustrate was, people are asking you to approve some budgets, aren't they? And I said, yeah. And he said, well, I see that you have approved them. And I said, yes, I have. And he said, there are some rules involved in that. There was a lot of operational learning that happened in that first week and continues to happen even now many years later.

Tiffany Pham

I love that. And what's the proudest accomplishment for you looking back on your journey and your inspiring career? What was the first one that came to mind when I asked that?

Mark Miller

Yeah, there are two things even though I should make it one. So the one is organizations need to evolve and change over time. And so I was very clear in what I was inheriting when I came into this role. Team One has a long standing established relationship, particularly with an iconic client in the affluent space, the luxury affluent and premium space. We knew how to do that kind of work, at least until that point in time. But I was never really interested, as I said earlier, in just the next title or the next career moment. I really wanted longevity, and to do that required changing things and shaping things. And so the first thing I'm particularly proud of is over many years, not just myself, but myself in combination with my team, have contributed some thought leadership that's become core to the way the organization does business, not for a moment in time, but for years and hopefully for years to come. It's everything from a proprietary global research study called the Global Affluent Collective, which looks at what the world's wealthy share in common, to a speaker series about how entrepreneurs are changing and shaping the game called Moonshot, and we were very fortunate years ago you came in to speak at that, so thank you for that. And then we've also been doing some work on a contribution called the Legacy Lab, which reframes legacy as something that's forward looking not backward looking. And all of these pieces hadn't existed before myself and my team over many years had taken on our roles, but they're building blocks we've put in place. I'm quite proud of the contributions, the body of work, but equally, if not more so, the range of people who've added to it. One of my favorite things, and it's always very hard when good people leave the team because it's not easy to replace exceptional people, but it's a moment of pride when some of those people have gone on to have senior roles at IDEO and senior roles at Amazon and senior roles at Meta. Our people are exhibiting the kind of talent that shows they have skill and ability within an ad agency environment, but far beyond it as well. So it's nice recognition for our team and those individuals to see that their skill is exceptional, not just in a small universe, but in a rather large universe.

Tiffany Pham

That's beautiful. And finally, my last question to you has been and will be always, what is the advice you would give to others, to myself, to other leaders who wish to be more like you, particularly leaders who are one step below the chief officer role? What would you advise them if they want to be the chief officer like you?

Mark Miller

The best advice I'd offer these days, recognizing that this afternoon it might be different and tomorrow might be different as well. I heard one of your previous guests talk about being a student and that really resonates with me. I think that's important. The best advice I'd give at the moment is, a little bit like, there's an app called Waze that I think most people are familiar with. And I feel that for that app to work, you really only need to know two things. You need to know where you're starting and you need to know where you're going. With those two pieces of information, you can constantly route and reroute to get you there in the most efficient way. It doesn't matter if there's traffic jam, if there's bad weather, if something unforeseen happens. If you know where you're starting and where you're going, you'll find a way to get there. For me, I was fortunate because early on, I did know my starting place. Like I said, I took the course in high school. I knew I wanted to be in advertising. But where I set my end destination early on would have been something like, I want to work at a larger organization. Eventually it became, it'd be nice to have the opportunity to work globally. Over time, it became, I'd like to have the authority and responsibility and the opportunity to succeed as a CSO. And over time, it grows beyond that. I think the more we're clear on where we are today, and the furthest out or as far out as we can dream and imagine, if you keep sort of focused on those two things, I think you'll find that you can get from A to B in the most effective and interesting way. And yeah, sometimes you have to reroute, sometimes it's not always a straight line, but that doesn't mean you have to deviate from getting to what's important to you. And I think sometimes people get too easily distracted from things that are less important. And you look back after three or four or five years and say, I was busy, I put in hard work. But because I was less clear on where I was going in the end, I'm not sure I spent that time as effectively as I would have liked. So I guess I would say be a little bit more like Waze. Strategic and flexible.

Tiffany Pham

I love it. Thank you so much. So beautifully said, and your journey has been so exemplary and exemplifying that final piece of advice. So inspiring to be spending time with you and such an honor.

Mark Miller

Thank you, Tiffany.