MWM EP. 55 - Move Fast and Make Things with Mike Rovner

About the episode

Mike Rovner has spent 30 years in New York advertising and now runs a successful independent shop. Whether he’s talking to his graduate students at City College or the junior creatives working alongside him at TiNY Ad Agency, he tells them the same thing semester after semester, year after year: an execution is not an idea.

A candid conversation on why most creative work fails the insight test, what AI gets right and wrong as a creative tool, and the open secret of influencer marketing (followers don’t mean what you think they do). Plus: how TiNY lives by “move fast and make things,” what running a beverage brand on the side taught Mike about the client’s chair, and why three veterans walked away from the holding companies to build a tiny shop on their own terms.

Chapters

0:00 – Cold Open: An Execution Is Not An Idea

2:21 – Welcome + 30 Years of Mike & Mike

4:19 – From Iowa to Healthcare PR

7:48 – Storytelling Brands vs Building Them

11:29 – Pitching Up: It’s All Sales

14:34 – AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement

16:07 – The Boomer Mascot Case Study

20:08 – Why He Teaches Idea Generation

22:18 – Every Idea Starts With an Insight

24:36 – Pepsi Social: When Planning Backfires

27:30 – Dr. Priestley and the Power of Story