Monica Tailor holds two roles at McCann: chief social marketing officer and global co-managing director of McCann Content Studios. Last year, the industry took notice — she was named Agency Executive of the Year at the 2025 Digiday Awards.

She recently spoke with Marketing Brew as part of its Coworking series, which spotlights Marketing Brew readers each week.

Explaining the job

Asked how she describes her work to people outside marketing, Tailor keeps it simple: "I'm responsible for all the ads that come up before the YouTube video you're trying to watch. And you can replace YouTube with Instagram, TikTok, etc."

A favorite recent campaign

Tailor points to "Expensive Sh*t," a campaign for Huggies from McCann New York and New Zealand. The stunt: a one-hour livestreamed event in which 18 babies — selected for their high-capacity pooping — crawled across nearly $500,000 worth of luxury items to test the product's blowout protection.

"I love a campaign where it seems too hard to pull off, and you've got to love a high-stakes livestream," Tailor said. "It was an incredible collaboration across so many people, which means it's all hands on deck and so amazing to see everyone come together and build a great community engagement moment."

The campaign she admires most

Nike's "Nothing Beats a Londoner" stands out to Tailor as a rule-breaking piece of work. Released at a time when short-form vertical video dominated, the film ran over three minutes, sound on, horizontal.

"And guess what? We all turned our phones to the side and watched to the end," she said. "It tapped into a community truth and bought the Nike brand into it. It might have looked like an accident, but it wasn't. It was a brilliant creative idea, executed with craft and a level of orchestration that was unprecedented."

She calls it a culture-defining moment.

The path from Manchester to New York

Tailor's LinkedIn profile shows a long tenure at McCann. She joined as a digital account director in Manchester, UK, and now leads the agency's global social and influencer capability from New York.

The "why and how" behind that trajectory, she says, comes down to building. "I love building, new opportunities, new capabilities. I've always worked in digital for this exact reason — there's always something new."

Tailor credits McCann's leadership with creating an environment where new opportunities can be born and take off. She argues that building startups inside corporate environments is undervalued and harder than it looks.

"Taking something from vision to reality needs skills in creating belief but also building the pipes," she said. "Being given the environment, space, and support to do that is something McCann has done well, not just now but throughout history."

The trend she backs

Tailor is optimistic about the focus on social media subcultures and micro-communities, a topic she says the industry has discussed for a few years. Rather than chasing a mono-culture approach or jumping on every trend, she says brands should find the right trends across multiple subcultures to create rich and authentic relationships.

What she's reading

Tailor counts herself among those enjoying the return of long-form writing via Substack. Her recommendation for social marketers: "Link in Bio" by Rachel Karten, which she calls one of the best and most recommended Substacks for social right now.

Source: Marketing Brew (https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/coworking-with-monica-tailor?utm_source=&utm_medium=syndication&utm_campaign=feed) / Source: campaignbrief.com (https://campaignbrief.com/huggies-shows-off-its-baby-blowout-protection-in-bold-expensive-sht-stunt-via-mccann-nz-ny/)