Coworking with Franke Rodriguez

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Franke Rodriguez is partner and CEO of the advertising agency Anomaly, where he leads teams across both New York and Toronto. He has also worked at FCB and Digitas.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in marketing?

I’d tell them that I work at the intersection of business, art, music, sports, technology, popular culture, and human behavior, and that I get to lead an incredible team of some of the smartest, most creative people I’ve ever met and have extreme amounts of fun (after the blood, sweat, and tears) creating things that go out into the world for some of the most iconic, famous brands.

Or else, I point at the TV in a packed room of family and friends during pretty much every Super Bowl and say, “We did that!” That works, too.

Favorite project you’ve worked on?

I’m coming up on year 18 at Anomaly, so I couldn’t possibly answer that question with one. So here’s three: something old, something new, and something in-between.

In the early days, I was lucky enough to help launch an entirely new airline—Virgin America. We did everything from designing the flight attendant uniforms, brokering content partnerships to fill their in-flight entertainment system, securing the celebrity talent to promote their new routes, and producing the first-ever fully illustrated airline safety video. It was thrilling to touch so many different aspects of their ecosystem and was a project that yielded invaluable learnings, many of which I still apply today.

Somewhere around the middle of my Anomaly career, our founder Carl Johnson asked me to move to Canada to open and lead an entirely new Anomaly office north of the border. While trying to make a name for ourselves there in Toronto, we developed a disruptive product innovation called the Budweiser Red Light. This was all about owning the most exciting moment in hockey, the moment a goal is scored, and we leveraged some first-of-its-kind technology to develop this internet-of-things physical product.

Most recently, one of my favorite projects has been an incredibly fresh, progressive global campaign for Don Julio called “Por Amor,” a visually stunning and stimulating creative platform that we shot and produced across Mexico exclusively with Mexican and Mexican American talent, from the wardrobe to the styling to the directors, photographers, cast, bartenders, and production crew. They helped us bring that beautiful culture, a culture which obviously has given the world tequila, to the global stage in a way that feels authentic, distinctive, and fresh.

What’s your favorite ad campaign?

The first that comes to mind for me is Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef” campaign. Growing up, I was the child of a McDonald’s franchisee, and we were all about the Golden Arches. At that time in the mid-’80s, most people would agree that Mickey D’s was far and away the best fast-food chain. So when this campaign came out, I remember being a young kid and watching that older woman comically deliver the iconic line “Where’s the beef?” over and over and thinking to myself, “Oh boy, this might change some things here. We might have a problem.”

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile:

As much as I love my job, and by the way I really do, my North Star in life is 100% my faith and my family. We’re really lucky to be part of an exciting church community, and through that I’ve discovered this amazing daddy and daughter adventure camp in Northern California called JH Ranch. Every summer I go with one of my children for a week off the grid where we enjoy hiking, horseback riding, white-water rafting, camping, meaningful discussion, prayer, and meditation—together. One of the highlights of my—and their (I hope!?)—entire year.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least?

Of course I am intrigued by the exploding landscape of AI tools that continue to evolve and become available to us in our industry. If I’m honest, I think I’m equal parts excited and nervous about what it means for the future of our work.

Beyond that, I’d really love to see the value of truly mutually beneficial agency-client partnerships more deeply realized in 2025. While I appreciate the macro financial context and uncertainty that exists for most clients, there seems to be a consistent trend of expecting more from agencies, lots more, and more quickly, but for less and with less commitment. So whenever I hear about the 10+ year agency-client partnerships that are growing and with world-class creativity at the center, I am thrilled.

What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend?

I definitely believe there’s a place for industry-specific media and platforms, especially for ambitious young folks. But for me, the type of media I gravitate to is all about switching gears and being entertained and learning from things adjacent to what we do.

Right now I am obsessed with a music podcast called Dissect. It’s a serialized music analysis where the host dedicates an entire season to deeply examining one single music album. Imagine that. On TikTok, we consume in seconds, and here they dissect one song over the course of an episode and one album across the season. It is fascinating to me and such a great reminder of the true power of storytelling.