Zeina Khodr Sparked Up The Grill

Chief Spark at Paper + Spark, Zeina Khodr Sure Set The Grill Alight Alright

Last Thursday was the first Grill The Marketer of the year, and it went off with a bang.

Our first interstate guest, Zeina Khodr, Founder of Paper + Spark sat in the hot seat to chat to us about workplace culture, AI, silos, Indies and saying YES and then figuring it all out.

L-R: MC Jacqueline Baril, Chief Spark at Paper + Spark - Zeina Khodr, The Marketer's Carma Levene

I met Zeina via the AMI (Australian Marketing Institute) at a B&T 30 Under 30 Awards night 2 or 3 years ago (who can remember - time is weird). After a some planning conflicts, we managed to finally make it happen last week.

And it's funny because two marketing professionals debated how to position her expertise. Zeina wasn't sure that the workplace culture piece would be compelling enough - and yet we spent almost the entire first half of the session on that very topic.

What this says to me, isn't that I was right (I wasn't wrong though) but that it is so much a part of her everyday operating style that she doesn't realise she's doing it at lot of the time.

It's so woven into the fabric of P+S that she wasn't sure it was interesting.

Except we know better. We know that burnout is real. That WFH is declining. That both agencies and client-side roles can promote unrealistic deadlines, fail to make concessions for diverse workers to produce their best work, and generally not care about the individuality of their employees. Not to mention the ones that are straight-up toxic - full of misogyny, bigotry and entitlement.

I've seen first hand some of the room Zeina creates for her team to thrive in our workings together, and I know there's so much of that heart that goes unseen.

We talked about other stuff too - AI (of course), creativity, using external experts to supplement the team's expertise, the perks of being an Indie, and a range of other topics.

Here's what some in attendance said about the evening:

There's more but funny old LinkedIn won't let you embed a post with more than one photo. For reasons, obvs 🤷‍♀️

Thanks so much to everyone who came out, we had a few conflicts with the Oasis Sleepout and Perth Design Week, but we had a great crew in attendance with a mix of junior and senior marketers, first time attendees and returning faves.

More photos here.

Don't forget that we have student discount codes, and your marketing org might have their own deal - ACA and PADCs do, plus the AMI Emerging Marketers will have a special code when the program participants are announced later in the month. Thanks to our event partner the Australian Marketing Institute for their support. Thank you so much to Jacqueline Baril for being such a fantabulous MC, I'd be lost without you. Cheers to Keith, our mic man who's been with us from day one! And Peter, our amazing photographer who lets us boss him around. Check him out at Spoilt Photo Booths.

I'm so excited to be back running events and can't wait to share May's guest with you soon.

Save the date - May 29!