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Donna takes us inside BBDO and her work on Pepsi's Super Bowl campaigns β revealing how she led young creative teams, shared credit generously, and learned that production experience is one of the most underrated skills in advertising.
In this video, Donna Weinheim takes us inside her years at BBDO β one of advertising's most storied agencies β and shares what it really takes to lead creative teams, produce work at the highest level, and bring ideas to life on the biggest stage in advertising: the Super Bowl.
Donna's move to BBDO came after her celebrated run at Cliff Freeman and Partners, where she helped create cultural touchstones like "Where's the Beef?" and the Little Caesars campaigns. At BBDO, she found herself working on Pepsi's international campaigns and Super Bowl spots β and leading a new generation of hungry young creatives.
When Donna arrived at BBDO, she noticed something: there were a lot of brilliant young teams who weren't getting real opportunities. So she invented a structure she called "Bob" β three young creative teams, six people total, all working on the same Pepsi brief simultaneously.
The rules were simple: everyone brings their best ideas. Only one or two spots will get made. But whoever wins, everyone shares the credit.
This wasn't charity β it was strategy. When talented people compete on the same brief with shared stakes, the ideas get sharper. Nobody phones it in. And when the work wins, the whole team owns it. That kind of generosity from a creative leader doesn't diminish the work β it elevates the culture around it.
"Whatever wins, you guys are all going to share the credit. And that's what we did."
One of Donna's most emphatic lessons in this video is about something that gets overlooked in creative education: production.
It's easy to fall in love with the idea on paper. But understanding what actually gets shot β what the camera angle communicates, how a director builds a story frame by frame, what's physically possible on set β that's where great ideas either survive or fall apart.
Young creatives who've been through production know things you simply can't learn in a brief or a brainstorm. They know why a wide shot feels epic and a close-up feels intimate. They know what a director can do with a single look. They know the difference between an idea that reads well in a deck and one that lives on screen.
If you want to make Super Bowl-level work, you have to understand the medium at that level.
Super Bowl advertising isn't just a bigger media buy β it's a different creative challenge entirely. The audience is enormous, distracted, and watching with a critical eye. The ideas have to be cinematic, emotional, and instantly memorable.
There's no room for subtlety that doesn't land in the first five seconds. There's no second chance to explain the joke. The work has to operate at scale β visually bold, emotionally resonant, and built to be talked about the next morning.
Donna's Pepsi work understood this. The "boy in the bottle" spot wasn't just a product demo β it was a piece of visual storytelling designed to travel across cultures and stick in memory.
Donna has been told β many times, by many people β to think inside the box. Just once. Just try it.
Her answer is always the same.
She doesn't think so.
That refusal isn't stubbornness. It's the core creative philosophy that runs through everything she's built β from a St. Bernard with cold capsules around his neck to Clara Peller demanding to know where the beef is. The box is where safe ideas live. The work that changes culture lives somewhere else entirely.
Donna created a group called 'Bob' β three young teams of two β and had all six people work on the same Pepsi International brief. She told them upfront that only one or two spots would be chosen, but whoever won, everyone would share the credit. It was a masterclass in collaborative leadership.
Donna believes that understanding the production process β what gets shot, what the director does, how angles tell stories β is one of the most important and underrated skills a young creative can develop. You can't write great TV if you don't understand how TV is made.