Lucy Glaser is the Head of Growth at Unconquered, an independent creative agency. She has spent a career “crafting and stewarding bespoke, strategic marketing solutions to grow her clients’ business.”
Before Unconquered, Lucy Glaser worked at “large, traditional advertising shops,” where she worked on brands such as DISH, Citibank, Hefty-Reynolds, and Marriott.
She joined Unconquered in October 2019. At the agency, Lucy Glaser found work that was created “with a sense of purpose beyond itself, using commerce and creative problem solving to make positive change in the world.”
At Unconquered, Lucy Glaser scales the “agency’s brand values & purpose into tangible impact through both client and agency work.”
Lucy Glaser works on Unconquered’s initiatives like “1% for the Planet membership, sharing stories of CMO & VPs that connect personal passions to brand values in agency podcast, ‘Conquer the Nose.’”
Likewise, Lucy Glaser and Unconquered champion “equity and inclusion as a founding partner of The Humanity Lab.”
Lucy Glaser describes herself as “one of the lucky people that not only had the opportunity to go to college, but knew exactly what I wanted to do upon graduating.”
Upon leaving college, Lucy Glaser set out to do what she wanted to do: “work at an advertising agency on household-name brands.”
Check out more interviews with creative leaders here.
Grounding myself in my personal “why” puts day-to-day imperfection and challenges in perspective. Lucy Glaser, Unconquered
Jerome Knyszewski: Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
Lucy Glaser: I’m one of the lucky people that not only had the opportunity to go to college, but knew exactly what I wanted to do upon graduating: work at an advertising agency on household-name brands.
To get my foot in the door, I held a number of internships.
At one point I cold-called every agency in the city to try and pivot into the creative space — I finally secured one at a small branding shop that led me to Havas Chicago and ultimately to my current role on Unconquered’s leadership team.
Jerome Knyszewski: Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?
Lucy Glaser: Most of my hard times are rooted in something I think most professionals go through at some point — imposter syndrome.
It’s an internal narrative along the lines of, “who am I to be in this role? Who will ever think I’m good enough?”
Any time I’ve ever made a major career move — new company, new title, new level of responsibility — that narrative picks back up in my mind.
This especially was the case joining Unconquered. What a sense of responsibility to not only grow a business, but do so in a way that realizes it’s goal to change the world through commerce.
To combat the train of self-doubt, I realized I needed to change my focus from “what else (new, impactful, standout thing) can I be doing?” to “why am I doing this?”
Grounding myself in my personal “why” puts day-to-day imperfection and challenges in perspective.
Jerome Knyszewski: Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
Lucy Glaser: It was a Friday evening and I was shipping out materials for a major presentation on Monday — I accidentally put the FedEx package into a UPS drop box.
To make matters worse, I failed to write down the tracking number.
I spent all day Saturday at the UPS shipyard in the cold November rain begging staff to, essentially, help me find a needle in a haystack.
Ultimately I was able to find the tracking number and discover that the package somehow made it to its destination.
The obvious learning is to always double check your work.
The deeper takeaway is that at the end of the day, even if this circumstance hadn’t worked out positively, I could truthfully say I did everything I could to fix it.
For any mistake, put yourself in a position that you’re able to honestly answer that.
Talk the talk, walk the walk, then talk about the walk.
Jerome Knyszewski: Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to lead a company from Good to Great? Please share a story or an example for each.
Lucy Glaser:
- Growth starts with incremental decisions in support of the overall mission
Unconquered’s purpose framework started small: we eliminated single-use plastic on production sets.
From there it’s blossomed into a 1% For the Planet membership and participation with other sustainably-minded, mission-driven organizations
- Talk the talk, walk the walk, then talk about the walk
The idea that brands are now expected to act on their stated values is becoming increasingly standard.
The next evolution is for them to reflect and report on their brand value initiatives and assess points of success and room for improvement.
A great recent example of this is Chipotle’s Real Foodprint tracker.
From day one they stated their purpose to sustainably provide “real food” to change the world.
Over the years they’ve told this story in all brand touchpoints, and now they’re measuring and reporting on it.
- You cannot be all things to all people
You need to be honest with who & what you are, and who & what you are not.
Understanding — and accepting — the role your company plays in peoples’ lives will help define the way you can authentically connect.
For instance, if you lead a plunger company, you inherently aren’t top of mind for most people until the need presents itself.
That said, in that moment of need, how can your company best express itself?
- Prioritize long term vision over short-term gains
There will be moments in the day-to-day grind that you might want to take a shortcut that conflicts with your overall brand values and vision.
This could be making a hire you’re leery about, but doing anyway due to workload, or taking an investment that compromises some of your decision-making authority.
While these stop-gaps might alleviate some form of short term tension, they’ll ultimately come back around and produce more — bigger — challenges down the road.
- There’s no one “right” way to do it
Sometimes you need to build the ship while you’re sailing it.
It’s ok to not have the road ahead 100% planned out; it’s actually better for this not to be the case.
Know the end destination and have a general sense of available resources and milestones.
Unconquered has a podcast, Conquer the Noise, that launched in June 2020. It was originally supposed to be a panel series.
The pivot still delivers the vision of telling outstanding individuals’ stories, and ultimately worked out better in our favor.
Jerome Knyszewski: Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. Can you help articulate for our readers a few reasons why a business should consider becoming a purpose driven business, or consider having a social impact angle?
Lucy Glaser: Business ultimately exists to service human needs. Without humans, there is no business.
Moreover, the “what” of business is constantly changing because human needs are constantly changing. Horse and buggy became cars.
Travel agents (mostly) evolved to self-service online booking platforms.
For a company to successfully evolve its product with the times, it needs to have a clearly defined perspective for how and, more importantly WHY, it services the people who consume its products.
The how and the why are rooted in people, and without people, there isn’t business.
Without humans, there is no business.
Jerome Knyszewski: As you know, “conversion” means to convert a visit into a sale. In your experience what are the best strategies a business should use to increase conversion rates?
Lucy Glaser:
- Ensuring off-site marketing is aligned to on-site experience. Often ads and on-site experience are thought of in silos.A well-crafted ad or promotion drives to a site that doesn’t consistently transition the user will result in drop-off.
Breaks in transition might be from anything such as disjointed imagery & design, unclear site navigation or lack of product/service information.
- Incorporating data collection. Sometimes consumers will convert to your site, but drop off.Use this as a learning opportunity — deliver an on-site survey question before they go asking why they’re not making the purchase.
This information will help you optimize the experience for the next sale opportunity.
- Deliver a strong Customer relationship management (CRM) system.Most of your sales will come from repeat customers. Ensure you’re constantly giving them a reason to keep your brand top of mind after they’ve made a purchase.
Regular email updates, exclusive sales, loyalty programs and brand experiences are all tactics to consider incorporating.
Jerome Knyszewski: Of course, the main way to increase conversion rates is to create a trusted and beloved brand. Can you share a few ways that a business can earn a reputation as a trusted and beloved brand?
Lucy Glaser: Beloved brands consistently deliver an excellent customer experience at ALL parts of their journey — discovery, consideration, conversion and, most importantly, post-purchase retention.
Making consumers feel valued and validated once they’ve invested in you is key to an outcome even more important than purchase: consumer advocacy.
Retention programming can include everything from post-purchase product receipt (“unboxing”), an engagement-driven social media community, email and loyalty programs.
The how and the why are rooted in people, and without people, there isn’t business. Lucy Glaser
Jerome Knyszewski: How can our readers further follow you online?
Lucy Glaser: Keep in touch with Unconquered at our website or on Instagram, @weareunconquered.
To connect with me personally, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn!
Jerome Knyszewski: This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!
