Guest · Trust and brand safety
Lisa Morgan
Managing Director, Generation Media
More than two decades in specialist media, from global networks to an employee-owned independent, all built around understanding children, young people and families.
About
Lisa Morgan is Managing Director of Generation Media, an independent UK media agency specialising in children, young people and family audiences, which advises well-known brands on how to engage one of the most dynamic and fast-changing consumer groups. She sits on the agency's employee ownership trust board, is a qualified executive coach, and serves on the IPA council.
Morgan has spent more than two decades in specialist media, working across global agency networks and independent businesses. She has led Generation Media as managing director for around a decade, joining a business founded by CEO Dean Weller on the insight that agencies were treating children as a homogenous group and that generic insight tools started only at 16 plus. Under her tenure the agency built its own global insight capability with partner Giraffe Insights, grew to more than 60 people as it approaches its 20th year, and followed its first cohort into the video gaming market under what she calls a cradle to grave philosophy.
Morgan has overseen a run of expansion: the agency rebranded last year around the line powering brands generation by generation, acquired the creative agency Portal Studio last summer, and launched in North America this year, with further international growth planned. She became an employee ownership trust in November 2024, and treats talent development as the core of the culture, a stance recognised, by her account, through CPD Platinum, Best Places to Work listings and an Investors in People rating she says the agency lifted from Silver to Gold. A qualified coach, she leads by empowering her teams and staying, in her words, out of the weeds.
Career23 years
- 2021 to now IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) IPA Council Member
- 2015 to now Generation Media Managing Director
- 2010 to 2015 Generation Media Director of Client Services
- 2007 to 2010 ZenithOptimedia Client Account Manager
Show earlier roles: MindShare, Generation Media
- 2004 to 2007 MindShare Client Account Director
- 2003 Generation Media Media Account Executive
How Lisa thinks3 convictions
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Talent development as culture
Morgan places training and development at the heart of the agency, having seen its impact on her own career. She accepts it invites rivals to poach staff, but points to people who leave and return with fresh knowledge. It is a culture she is determined to preserve as headcount grows past 60.
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Empower, don't control
Morgan describes moving from a directive leader who controlled every element to one who empowers a team of more than 50. She admits, without ego, that her people sometimes do the job better than she would. The leader's task is then to refocus on what the business needs, and to stay out of the weeds.
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No one size fits all
Morgan warns against importing a single global playbook into every market. Her answer is glocal: local knowledge on the ground combined with a strategy that fits everyone. She points to the different timelines by which children in North America, the UK and the rest of Europe moved into digital as proof that context has to lead.
