When he launched his Substack blog Provoke six months ago, strategist Ed Cotton had a clear goal. He decided to post excerpts from and links to his favorite LinkedIn articles.

But he didn't stop there. When a topic struck his fancy, he looked beyond LinkedIn and created a curio box of goodies. Most are strategy related. But his interests reflect the curiosity of a good strategist. Attention, demographics, insights, AI, writing. And then there's the Arctic and food. He even posted on spies and spying. And of course the creative brief.

For brief nerds like Henry Gomez and me, this particular post was catnip. And its links to the writing of others with similar interests piqued our interest. We've reached out to some of them. A few will be guests in the coming weeks and months.

Today, we probe the curious mind of Ed Cotton, a British transplant with tenure at McCann-Erickson and Lowe. And on major brands like Converse, MINI and Priceline.

Reminder: For a 90-minute live webinar on writing the single-minded proposition contact Howard Ibach at creativebriefworkshops.com.