“Failure is a gift,” Ro Patrick from the Ad Council

Meet Ro Patrick, SVP, Group Campaign Director at the Ad Council, where she leads the development, implementation, and evaluation of national public service campaigns. Over the past two decades, Ro has collaborated with some of the best creative and marketing minds in the country, tackling critical issues like gun violence and the overdose crisis. With over 20 years of campaign development experience, Ro has a proven ability in evolving campaign models and working with external partners to drive innovation and bold changes on America’s most pressing needs. She channels her passion into making our world a better, safer, and more inclusive place, and she believes that her job makes her a better human. She is currently the executive sponsor of the Mosaic ERG at the Ad Council, and she also serves on the board of Metro Savannah Rotary.

Jocelyn Hudak, Senior Director, Content and Digital Marketing sat down with Ro for a chat in our Pass the Mic booth at Cannes Lions where they talked about the importance of learning from your failures, treating everyone like a human, and trying new things, even when they scare you. Get ready to take action and tune in to the full interview below. 

Failure is a gift. 

Highlight: “It's important, especially in front of your team, if you know you made, or the team made a decision, and it just wasn't the right thing, you've got to own it. You just got to take responsibility and say, ‘That's on me.’ And show a little bit of that moment of vulnerability to your team. Use that as a moment of modeling, and then you learn. You move on. You do the next thing. I think failure is a gift that we can all learn from.” - Ro Patrick

Look at everyone as human. 

Highlight: “Daisy Auger-Dominguez, who spoke at our leadership team, said, ‘You can be kind and empathetic, but demand excellence.’ I believe in the bar being high because it's important. This is a business. We have clients. We have our organization to live up to. But you don't have to do it in a way that's obnoxious. We can look at everybody as a whole human. We can be kind, empathetic, and meet people where they are. And rolling up your sleeves with them, showing and modeling hard work and modeling that we can be a team, we can have a really good product, but we can also have a lot of fun is super important.” - Ro Patrick

Mentors are important. 

Highlight: “Mentors and champions are so important because they say, ‘Hey, come here, go meet this person, come here, go do this hard thing.’ And I try to do that to my mentees that I have 'collected,' but there's so many incredible, incredible young people that I want to impart some of what I've learned to them so that they get the same incredible experience that I've had.” - Ro Patrick

If it scares you, do it. 

Highlight: “Don't be scared of the hard things. If it scares you, do it. One example that I have is, when I first started the Ad Council, two weeks in, I was told you're going to give a presentation externally to 200 people… And Heidi Arthur, who is our Chief Campaign Development Officer at the Ad Council, she was my boss back then, she goes, ‘I will prepare you.’ And we rehearsed and rehearsed. She gave me a pep talk. I mean, it was like two weeks of, ‘You got this girl,’ and it went well… She pushed me, but she made sure I was prepared. And that was such a gift. I honestly was like, 'Thank you for that, because now I'm going to raise my hand to do these types of things.'... But absolutely do the hard things because you may surprise yourself, and you're stronger and way more resilient than you think you are.”

Ro’s story is a great example of the importance of finding people to rally around and support you through the hard things and the power behind admitting your failures and growing from them. If you’re ready for more content like this, check out the Pass the Mic page.