Jon Crowley: Marketers Are Addicted to Certainty

Jon Crowley is a Toronto-based brand strategist, Partner, Head of Strategy, and SVP at FUSE Create. He is also the writer behind A Benign Conspiracy and a founding editor of Rebrief, an independent Canadian journal of advertising. This conversation explores the realities of modern strategy, agency culture, and the tension between creativity, business, data, and measurement. Jon Crowley shares his perspective on what strategists often misunderstand about their role, why agencies need to better understand how clients make money, and how the pursuit of certainty has shaped marketing’s obsession with attribution, funnels, and performance metrics. The episode also covers the importance of writing as a way of thinking, the value of intentional friction in creative work, the role of print in a digital world, and why individual success in advertising is largely a myth. Jon argues that strategy is ultimately an elevated form of educated guessing, where the strategist’s job is to increase the probability of success by understanding the business, the audience, the market, and the creative problem clearly enough to point teams toward better decisions. Resources talked about in this episode: A Benign Conspiracy by Jon Crowley Rebrief The Walrus Monocle Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan How Humans Decide (Oxford Saïd Business School / WPP research on brand preference) Shoresy A Big Life In Advertising by Mary Wells Lawrence Follow Jon Crowley: LinkedIn A Benign Conspiracy Follow Pedro Porto Alegre: LinkedIn Join APG Canada to connect with, learn from, and support the country’s strategic planning community. Become a member at apgcanada.ca/join-us. Grow Your Brain is proudly sponsored by The Gathering, the award-winning yearly brand festival hosted in the Canadian Rockies. Learn more at thegatheringfestival.com. Timestamps: 00:00 The Indie Agency Experience 06:25 The Importance of Team Culture 11:59 The Journey into Writing and Strategy 17:12 Launching Rebrief: A New Perspective on Advertising 22:34 The Value of Print in a Digital World 22:57 Understanding Marketing in Business Context 28:00 The Importance of Clear Objectives in Briefs 33:25 The Shift Towards Performance Marketing 38:49 The Role of Media Mix Modeling 44:14 The Challenge of Teaching Young Strategists