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At BBDO, Donna stepped into the world of Super Bowl advertising and blockbuster Pepsi campaigns β and discovered that leading young creative teams was as important as the work itself. This lesson covers her 'Bob' group experiment, the lessons of production experience, and why getting paid to use your imagination is the best job in the world.
Video coming soon
By the time Donna Weinheim landed at BBDO, she had already helped create some of the most iconic campaigns in advertising history. But a new chapter was waiting β one that would put her in the world of Super Bowl advertising, blockbuster Pepsi campaigns, and something she cared about just as deeply: developing the next generation of creative talent.
This lesson is about what happens when ambition meets scale, and what great creative leadership actually looks like in practice.
When Donna arrived at BBDO, she noticed something right away: there were a lot of incredibly smart young creatives around her. Rather than hoard the best assignments or work in isolation, she did something unusual. She created a group β she called it "Bob" β made up of three young teams, six people total.
The assignment was Pepsi International. The brief was real. The stakes were real. And Donna's approach was simple and generous: all six of you work on it. Whatever wins, you all share the credit.
"We'll only get one or two spots in," she told them. "They're not going to pick six. You come up with the most brilliant ones you can."
This is what great creative leadership looks like. Not protecting your own ideas, but creating the conditions for other people to do their best work β and then making sure they get recognized for it. The "Bob" experiment wasn't just a nice gesture. It was a deliberate investment in the people around her, and a signal that the work matters more than the credit.
One of the most important things Donna emphasizes β and it's something that gets overlooked in an era of decks and digital mockups β is the irreplaceable value of being on set.
"TV commercials are visual," she says. "How much you get shot, what the director does, what the angle is, how you're telling the story."
Young creatives who have never been through a production don't fully understand what they're actually making. They can write a script or sketch a storyboard, but until you've watched a director make decisions in real time β until you've seen how a single camera angle changes the emotional weight of a scene β you're working with an incomplete picture.
Production experience teaches you what's possible. It teaches you the gap between what you imagine and what actually gets captured on camera. And it teaches you to think visually in a way that no classroom or brief can replicate.
If you're early in your career, fight to be on set. Every time.
Working on Pepsi and Super Bowl spots at BBDO meant operating at a completely different scale. The Super Bowl isn't just a media buy β it's a cultural moment. The entire country is watching. The bar for what constitutes a "good idea" is raised dramatically.
Super Bowl advertising demands cinematic scale. It demands emotional impact. It demands ideas that can hold the attention of an entire country for 30 or 60 seconds and still be talked about the next morning. There's no room for "pretty good." You're either memorable or you're forgotten.
That pressure is clarifying. It forces you to ask harder questions about your ideas and to push past the first, second, and third executions until you find something that genuinely earns its place.
Donna has a way of describing what advertising is, at its best, that cuts through all the strategy decks and KPI conversations:
"It's like getting paid for having fun. It's artistic. You're using your imagination. You're creating things that have never been created before. It's the most wonderful job you could ever have. It's art."
That's not naivety. That's someone who has spent decades doing the work at the highest level and still believes in it completely. The best advertising β the kind that makes people laugh, cry, or see the world differently β deserves to be treated with the same seriousness and ambition as any other creative discipline.
Donna assembled three young creative teams β six people total β and gave them all the same Pepsi International brief. She told them only one or two spots would be produced, but that whoever's idea won, all six would share the credit. It was a way of giving young talent real production experience while building a collaborative culture.
Because the idea on paper and the idea on screen are two different things. Understanding how a director interprets a script, what gets captured in a shot, and how visual storytelling actually works on set is knowledge you can only get by being there β and it makes every idea you have afterward better.