“Modern life is making people sick.”

With his trademark honesty, Kevin Chesters is getting to the heart of how marketing leaders can rise to the sharp edges of 2025. A journey which starts with getting real about the impact of the thousand tiny paper cuts of modern life on marketing professionals. 

The growing industry-wide focus on burnout is not a sign of negativity, but a response to the real challenges of going further, not just endlessly faster, in an industry that is built on being ‘always on’.

“How to create a pace that is sustainable in a fast moving industry is all about redefining our relationship with time,” he explains. With precision, Chesters gets straight to the heart of the issue: “People are overwhelmed because they are not in control.”

As a Public Speaker, Strategy Consultant and Trainer, Chester's role means that he has a unique insight into the genuine challenges and creative opportunities facing marketing leaders today.

A combination of relentless curiosity and genuine empathy gives him a unique ability to consider the big picture, while getting under the skin of what is holding brands and the people running them back. 

With stints as Strategy Director at a range of the world’s best agencies, including Wieden + Kennedy, Ogilvy and Dentsu, to earning his entrepreneurial stripes as a Founding Partner at Harbour Collective. He departed the group last July to focus on his own business.

Having walked in many marketing leaders' shoes, Chesters is well-versed in the challenges and creative opportunities of building modern brands. His people-first approach is evident. For Chesters, most marketing challenges lead back to human behaviour, rather than the seemingly never-ending generic headlines surrounding AI. 

Assessing the unique challenges of 2025 is forever a work in progress. In a year where many marketing leaders are facing economic and emotional uncertainty, Chesters urges the industry to get back to the simple truth that everyone you talk to is, in fact, a human being. Put simply, at a time of seemingly unending polarisation, the personal has never been more important. People should not be confused with operating systems.

“The thing with 2025 is that many people are personally optimistic, despite the fact that the world itself isn’t encouraging good behaviour, good vibes or good mental health,” he explains. 

Embracing stubborn optimism

The power of this personal lens is particularly important at a time when it is increasingly clear that while we are five years post-pandemic, many leaders are still adjusting to the shifting demands of an ongoing workplace revolution. 

Chesters advocates for more mindful decision making. He studiously avoids wellness washing. In essence, his approach is rooted in ensuring that you don’t become a passenger in your life or your career.

Rather than endlessly doom-scrolling the news, Chesters urges marketers to prioritise taking control. “It is not about stopping reading or watching the news just because it's tough, it is about being more mindful,” he explains.

Social media and the 24-hour news cycle encourages the glorification of the much-used marketing buzzword ‘always on’. Yet Chesters challenges the ethos that for progressive marketers always on is never wrong.

“It used to be that you would read your news through a filter at specific times; whether a Sunday supplement or an evening news bulletin at 6 pm or 10 pm,” he shares. Noting that this structure can help to engage with news less, but more mindfully. Structures can set you free.

Overcoming overwhelm

Being more mindful of where, when and how marketers consume content might seem obvious. Yet the truth remains that when you scratch the surface of many large-matrixed organisations, bad habits abound. 

Most organisations and individuals have a significant opportunity to improve their working conditions. Whether back-to-back Teams calls now consumed in the upright coffins otherwise known as ‘Zoom booths’ to dead-scrolling LinkedIn, the wider marketing industry continues to treat time as if it is not a finite and precious resource. Is it any wonder that so many marketing leaders are asking how to create a pace that is more sustainable and supportive of nurturing more creative and curious cultures?

For Chesters, the core question for modern marketing leaders is rooted in reappraising the relationship between marketing leaders and their time. 

Pointing to research showing that 76% of people in the UK say they are ‘unable to cope’ due to stress, he is clear that there is a genuine problem. “Working in advertising, we are in an oversubscribed industry which is a buyers' market,” he shares. “There are far too many agencies chasing fewer briefs. Something’s got to give, and most often that is humans,” he adds.

The lost of art of control in an era of chaos

The notion that no one has enough time has gained significant traction. It has become something of a comfort blanket for leaders who feel the pressure of stretching themselves too thin is omnipresent.

While acknowledging the scale of the challenge, Chesters also digs into the belief that we need to embrace a more nuanced approach to our relationship with time. “Time is entirely based on your perspective,” he shares, pointing to the difference between a double German lesson and a weekend with a loved one. One feels like it lasts a lifetime, while the other can feel like it is over in 20 minutes.

It is an interesting lens to view our relationship with time in a workplace context; if you are in endless Teams calls or suffering from the slow death of creativity from a thousand rounds of amends, is there a chance your relationship with time becomes more elastic?

For Chesters, this sense of never having enough time is also rooted in how secure individuals feel in their working lives and how much autonomy they have. “People are overwhelmed because they are not in control. What you have to do is grasp control on a personal level,” he explains.

“As everything spins out of control in the industry from the pressure, to production going in-house and the rise of consultants, it is easy to lose that grasp,” he adds. Pointing to the analogy of trying to get a scared cat out of the back of a shed, to the stress and lack of control leaders are facing. “Scared cornered creatures don’t react rationally,” he explains.

So what can we do to unravel the overwhelm and take back control? For Chesters, the answer lies in both choice and compromise. 

“There are some very simple things you can do,” he shares, adding: “As an agency, you should approach fewer, better opportunities.”

Do fewer things, better, is a simple yet effective mantra. It is an approach that Chesters applies to ensuring we embrace the often forgotten truth that being present is crucial to productivity.

The art and science of applied attention

On a personal level, this drive to control your time better demands letting go of the toxic myth of multitasking. Giving one thing your full attention is a lost art.

Chesters advocates for simple changes. “Drop your phone and pick up a pen,” he says. A truth that also applies in the age of AI-dictation tools. While no two brains are the same, for many people, writing your own notes helps to distil thoughts with greater clarity.

Maintaining clarity is not easy in a market where many are scared about their ever-decreasing margins. “Scopes are doubling and fees are halving, we are in a perfect shitsor, which is conspiring to make everyone feel stressed,” he adds.

“Nobody should spend time in a workshop unless they are a woodwork teacher, don’t do them,” says Chesters. Nor should anyone be spending all day in meetings. “If you work on a till, you work for 4 hours, then you get a 15-minute break. If you aren’t taking breaks, you aren’t productive.”

While recognising the privilege of spending the last fifteen years with the word ‘Chief’ in front of his job title and being white, male and Oxbridge-educated, Chesters is passionate about the individual power we all hold. “Be in control of the things you can control,” he says. Noting that agencies have a track record of using clients as an excuse for every given challenge.

“Virtually everyone in an advertising agency has the greatest gift of all, the gift of choice,” he explains. “If you work in a place that is making you unhappy, then go. Go get a better boss, or go get a better company.”

He believes that the challenge for marketing and creative leaders is to recognise what you are using as a reason to stay at an organisation or in a role, versus what you are using as an excuse. “If it is impossible to be your best you then leave, even in a difficult market,” he urges.

It is not just empty words. Chesters himself has successfully made the leap from working at established agencies to launching his own company.

“I realised I love my work, but I didn’t love my job,” he says. A realisation that left him with the challenge of working out how to get paid for doing the work that he loved. A journey which has led him to live his creative life on his own terms as his own boss in his own expansive business.

Going further, not faster, by embracing a Squiggly Career

“Increasingly, work is what you do. Not where you do it, or who you do it for,” he explains. Five years on from lockdown, how and where you work is still arguably facing more scrutiny than the work itself. Chesters is mercifully bullshit free. “Anything that you have to mandate is shit,” he says.

Noting that while it is still rare to be expected in an office five days a week, he urges choosing to work at organisations that prioritise outputs rather than one-size-fits-all mandates. 

Chesters is passionate about creating the conditions where creativity can thrive beyond a PowerPoint presentation. “Good leaders are like good farmers,” he explains, adding: “If you ask a child what a farmer does they would usually answer that a farmer grows crops. What a farmer actually does is create the conditions where crops can thrive and grow.” An approach that he also applies to creative leadership. 

“Creativity is the key to profitability,” he explains. Noting that rather than being a department or job title, creativity is the relentless pursuit of the new. “You have to create the conditions where humans can thrive, not lean on the lazy accepted wisdom of ‘best practice’ to produce six out of ten work,” he continues. 

The danger of placing process before people

For someone who so effortlessly delivers soundbite after soundbite, Chesters is consistent in checking his own privilege. He explains: “It is easy for me to talk about creativity and chaos and making choices, but if you are a young Black kid who has worked twice as hard for that job, it is different. If you have applied for 200 jobs and heard nothing, your experience is different.”

As an autistic individual Chesters’ storytelling is punctuated with precision by his exceptional memory of specific dates. He recalls his first day of work (5th June) turning up an hour early in a pressed Burton suit. As he waited for his boss to arrive, he thumbed a copy of Marketing Week, which featured the alarmist headline that ‘advertising is dead.’

Yet the truth is the industry is still standing. While alarmist headlines have evolved to focus on the existential threat AI poses to our jobs, the soundtrack of doom is in itself nothing new. As Chesters points out, the industry is in fact still growing as the recent Advertising Pays report successfully underlines.

It is a growth driven by leaders like Chesters who successfully embrace the career squiggles that successfully stop creativity’s kryptonite: cynicism, from creeping in.

“The reason most people don’t do things is because they are scared,” he explains. Sharing that people can fear the judgement of their peers, or equally be held back by the conservative nature of the company they work for. “The thing that stops people from reaching their full potential the most is perceived wisdom,” he explains. In essence, an unwavering belief in the power of a process holds us back as individuals.

It is possible to do things differently. “The number one thing you can do to win is creativity,” he explains. Creativity, which Chesters' career underlines, can be utilised on entirely your own terms.