Anna Cairns and Kerry Collinge on Delightful Disobedience

What if the biggest risk isn’t saying the wrong thing, but being dull? Why do so many conference panels feel pre-cooked? Why do organisations hire people for their brains and then make them nervous about saying what they think?

Episode summary
My guests on this episode are Anna Cairns and Kerry Collinge, co-founders of The Illuminari. They describe it as a collective of some of marketing’s sharpest minds, including Rory Sutherland, Les Binet, Orlando Wood, Margaret Heffernan and Dr Karen Nelson-Field. It’s built on a philosophy Rory calls “delightful disobedience.” We talk about why they call themselves Chief Connectors, how a mischievous dinner in Cannes became a business, and why they’d rather run a fire starter than a fireside chat. We also discuss open-plan offices that leave no room to be silly, why fun and serious work aren’t mutually exclusive, and why dull ideas cost far more than we think. Along the way we cover moths, pubs, Channel 4’s After Dark, careers that don’t follow a straight line, and why authenticity matters more than ever when people can’t trust what they see.

Guest bios
Anna Cairns is co-founder of The Illuminari. She spent years at Ogilvy, starting in its behavioural science unit (then Ogilvy Change) as its “Excellence Manager.” She later became Rory Sutherland’s talent manager and led Nudgestock, Ogilvy’s festival of behavioural science and creativity.

Kerry Collinge is the other co-founder of The Illuminari. She has more than 20 years of marketing leadership behind her, at Carlsberg, AB InBev and Cadbury/Mondelez as well as at fast-growing brands. Most recently she spent several years as the driving force behind the Uncensored CMO podcast and worked on the Cost of Dull project.

AI-Generated Timestamped Summary

• 00:00 — Introduction
• 02:33 — “Chief Connectors”, silly job titles and hierarchy
• 05:52 — How Illuminati became The Illuminari, and why the moth is their symbol
• 08:12 — A “concatenation of dissenters” and hiding behind data
• 11:16 — Killing the boring panel: fire starters, not fireside chats
• 13:23 — Building the collective, and plans for an Illuminari pub
• 17:45 — AI, efficiency culture and why creatives need to get out of the office
• 23:00 — Sneaking off to the cinema, Lemon and the problem with open-plan offices
• 29:18 — Fun as a core value, and why serious subjects need lightness
• 34:35 — No five-year plan: Margaret Heffernan and embracing uncertainty
• 37:15 — “Best practice”? Says who? And the Cost of Dull
• 40:03 — Long tenure, messy careers and why the “safe” path is the risky one
• 46:20 — Optimisation, doing nothing and the value of curiosity
• 49:51 — Unrehearsed debates, Cannes and Channel 4’s After Dark
• 55:23 — Performative fun, and changing your mind in public
• 1:00:02 — “Views my own”, command and control, and being asked to plug products

• The Illuminari: theilluminari.com
• Anna Cairns on LinkedIn
• Kerry Collinge on LinkedIn

• Rory Sutherland on LinkedIn
• Orlando Wood on LinkedIn, and his book Lemon
• Margaret Heffernan: mheffernan.com, including her book Embracing Uncertainty. You can also hear my earlier conversation with Margaret
• Les Binet: IPA profile
• Adam Morgan, eatbigfish: The Challenger Project
• Peter Field: profile
• Dr Karen Nelson-Field: Amplified Intelligence
• Greg Hahn: Mischief
• Mark Denton: COY! Communications
• Nir Eyal’s book Beyond Belief
• Greg James’s book All the Best for the Future
• Uncensored CMO podcast
• Stella Artois’s “Reassuringly Expensive” campaign
• Channel 4’s After Dark
• My episode with Annie Wagstaff on The Joy of Curiosity