When I started my career, marketers debated how to best "connect with millennials," and I was the millennial. Now, marketers are debating how to best "connect with Gen Z." Funny how that happens, right? After 10 years as a CEO and Creative Director at Bokeh—a global creative consultancy and agency that I co-founded—neither the question nor the answer has changed. The advice I give to brands is not altogether different than the advice I give to friends looking for love: be yourself. Remember...1. Context is king, not content.2. Focus on the 15° that matter to your audience.3. Think in spaces, not platforms.Successful marketing organizations balance imagination with business practicality to empower internal teams, and efficiently deliver captivating stories that inspire consumers and propel brands forward. In my early 20s, I discovered that traditional agencies tend to over-index on either the "imagination" or the "practicality" part. A lot of internal marketers do too. It can be difficult to avoid hubris when developing a brand campaign. Everyone—internal creatives, marketing executives, and external agencies alike—gravitate towards the expensive, flashy, PR-worthy showpieces that they can share as self-aggrandizing posts to their peers on LinkedIn. To quote a great American philosopher, Kendrick Lamar Duckworth: "Bitch, be humble."I never studied marketing or advertising, and I never worked in an agency before starting one. I learned about brand and product marketing as an in-house content producer with Google Maps where I built a content team and established a global production strategy to cover iconic landmarks and locations around the world. I got to observe how briefs are written, budgets are wrangled, partners are vetted, pitches are pitched, creative is developed, and production is executed i.e. how campaigns come together from every side of the table: client-side, agency-side, and production-side. I've also been fortunate to benefit over the years from so many connections on LinkedIn who were openly altruistic to lend me their time and advice.From these insights, I set forth to start my own business that was guided by empathy, placed emphasis on agility, valued collaboration over creative control, and always focussed on outcomes over outputs. That's Bokeh. On the side, I'm learning to navigate Hollywood as I work to achieve my childhood dream of producing a film I wrote. I'm also always open to pay-it-forward so don't hesitate to drop a line.