APG Sideways
About our guest: Spencer MacEachern
I’m Spencer, a strategist with Zulu Alpha Kilo, currently based in Brooklyn. If you’re a Canadian strategist there’s a good chance I’ve bothered you about the APG at some point.
Communities like this are so important. I’ve seen the APG give people the nudge to start new projects, find their next gig, and create an esprit de corps for what can be lonely work. Plus, you get a slack channel where saying esprit de corps doesn’t get eye rolls!
Previous Posts
Brilliant Weird Best
Planners are curious folks so we asked Spencer to tell us the most brilliant, weird, and best things he’s come across recently.
BRILLIANT: Terry Fox Foundation – Finish It
A few months old, but a favourite. Strategically razor-sharp: they’ve transformed an open-ended fight against cancer into a winnable story. Terry Fox’s unfinished mission is framed as something that we can complete, collectively. The stripped-down piano version of the Hip’s ‘Courage’ will give goosebumps to anyone who saw their 2016 tour.
This is mythic stuff. Feels like a story Canada needed to remember itself.
WEIRD: The Am Dash
An Australian agency has created a new symbol, the am dash, that identifies a piece of writing as unmistakably human. Inspired by Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” the am dash is a typographic protest against AI-generated prose. They’ve packaged it with two cleverly named typefaces, Times New Human and Areal.
AI is the live controversy within creative industries. Do you go all-in on vibe-writing or defiantly reclaim human effort? Here’s one vision of a potential future.
BEST: Joe Burns’ Strategy Flipbooks
Joe Burns' slide decks are a favourite on the APG slack. And for good reason. He's the Strategy Lead at Quality Meats, and one of the best at noticing the thing that everyone is feeling and giving it a name. The Sloppening (the rise of slop content), the WWE-ification of marketing, Dopamine Design.
But don’t let the slides deceive you, Joe’s doing more than most to move strategy away from deck-making and towards a new ‘meta’ of influence. Buckle up!
Top Guilty Pleasures
Not all of our consumption habits can be academic. That's why we asked Spencer to give us the sources to his creativity.
Feed Me (the substack)
I have a Substack problem. My subscription count recently passed 80 (with no end in sight). Feed Me’s a must-read. Billed as a newsletter about the “spirit of enterprise” Emily Sundberg does a great job of scratching that itch for industry gossip that Gawker and Succession filled. The community recos, like the best NYC sandwich, are also top tier.
Going to the movies by yourself.
Don Draper got one thing right: Going to the movies by yourself is the best. Inherited this guilty pleasure from my dad who sees everything that comes out. Doesn’t matter what’s on: sitting down, turning the phone off, and enjoying a diet Coke in the dark for two hours is one of life’s great luxuries.
This month on Slack
Been MIA on the APG's Slack Channel? No worries! Catch up on all the buzz with our latest and greatest links right here!
LLMs Are a Strategist’s Secret Weapon
Contributor – Ivan Chernopyatko
Strategists shouldn’t be afraid of language learning models. They aren’t a threat to strategy, they’re a power-up. They help pressure-test ideas, organize messy thinking, and give your work a sharper voice. The real advantage? Strategists know what to ask and how to judge the answers. And creatives are already building real businesses around it—blending craft with automation to move faster and smarter. This isn’t a side project. It’s the next major shift in where value—and money—flows in our industry.
The Influencer Trap: When Trends Overpower Authenticity
Contributor – Jon Crowley
Marketing folk have a tendency to find religion in trends & shifts, whether it's the “pivot to video” or the latest influencer craze. The issue with over-relying on influencers is producing work that feels disconnected from your brand and inauthentic. Fans might support their favorite influencers ‘getting the bag’ for a while, but once the novelty wears off, the mismatch between brand and influencer becomes clear. That’s why, for years, Western celebrities took their "sell-out" ads to Asia—they understood the limits of forced authenticity.
Contributor - Michelle Lee
In advertising, there’s a huge elephant no one talks about: at some point, most of us will face being laid off. There is an unwarranted shame tied to this truth. Being laid off is not a reflection of your performance, but rather a symptom of an industry in constant flux. That’s why ending the stigma is so crucial. We need to create a space for honest conversations about a reality that affects us all. It’s time we stopped pretending this isn’t part of the job.
Book Value: "I Can Do It Myself" by Emily Perl Kingsley
Contributor – Jeff George
Self-sufficiency is having a moment, and Emily Perl Kingsley’s I Can Do It Myself is the perfect mirror for this shift. However, in business, true success isn’t about doing it all alone. It’s about building teams that function as a collective. In this month's book value we discuss why the team mindset matters. Leaders need to shift from an “I” mentality to a “we” mentality, recognizing that success hinges not just on internal capabilities but on the contributions of everyone around them.