The Ad World Is Obsessed With Industry News Videos From Two 27-Year-Old Guys
The latest must-see news for the advertising industry doesn’t come from the usual suspects in the business press or record in a typical studio.
Every weekday morning, Geno Schellenberger and Jack Westerkamp, both 27 years old, gather in a tiny Madison Avenue office to run down a whiteboard of headlines on “60 Seconds of Advertising News,” their low-fi, high-energy series for Instagram, LinkedIn and an email newsletter.
Each episode features the hosts racing through industry news—the winner of a competitive agency pitch for a big marketer’s business, perhaps, or a funny new commercial or major executive move—punctuated by high kicks and other acrobatics.
“This whiteboard is broken. We keep throwing it around,” said Westerkamp, who co-founded the fledgling Breaking and Entering Media with Schellenberger, during an interview at the Regus office they call headquarters. “We’ve gotta stop throwing it around…Oh, I also knocked over this light yesterday, and I was bleeding because it fell on me.”
“60 Seconds” has since its January debut become vital morning viewing for many agency executives, creative leaders and up-and-comers, quickly taking its place in their media diets alongside more serious ad trade publications and broader business sources.
“Advertising is the most fun part of business,” said Frances Webster, chief executive of the New York ad agency Walrus and a fan of Breaking and Entering. “This is nothing against the other trades, who are fantastic, but they breathe fresh air into industry reporting.”
Schellenberger and Westerkamp say they are striving to emulate the quick and digestible reports from business news site Morning Brew—and then some. “Their whole thing was like, ‘You can get all the news you need in five minutes.’ Now, five minutes seems like an eternity,” Westerkamp said. “I want us to be, ‘Get all the news you need in 60 seconds.’ And maybe it’s less in the future.”
They see the directive as simple: Make business-to-business news “really fun.”
Dooley Tombras, president of Tennessee-based ad agency Tombras, likened Breaking and Entering to Barstool Sports, the irreverent media company founded by Dave Portnoy, in its ability to tap in to the industry zeitgeist.
“Advertising content is very traditional,” Tombras said. Breaking and Entering “structurally aligns with how young people like to consume content. And I think that’s part of the magic of how they’ve taken off.”
This week the duo is making themselves seen and heard in the south of France at Cannes Lions, the advertising’s biggest annual gathering, taking one more step toward industry ubiquity.
Watching AMC’s “Mad Men” in high school convinced Schellenberger he needed to go into advertising.
“My dad told me I should be an accountant. I said, ‘I want to be an account manager,’ ” Schellenberger said.
Though the co-founders come from the same suburban Chicago hometown and met while they were in high school, the friendship didn’t blossom until they were both at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Schellenberger’s planned postgraduation rotational program at public relations giant Edelman was delayed by pandemic restrictions in 2020. He started recording a podcast in between bingeing episodes of “Tiger King” in his parents’ basement in the Chicago suburb of Lombard. It was meant to provide advice, teach industry fundamentals and give young listeners a leg up on getting into the ad agency world.
He was far from an industry veteran himself, but he tapped other people’s networks to land increasingly well-known guests.
“Every time I got done with an interview, I would say, ‘If you know Greg Hahn [co-founder of the buzzy agency Mischief], can you hook it up?’” Schellenberger said. “And they would always say yes. That’s a testament to this industry.”
He called the podcast “Breaking and Entering” because “breaking into the industry and thriving in it feels like pulling off the ultimate heist,” he said.
When Schellenberger two years later got his first sponsorship opportunity for the podcast, he sought help hammering out the details from Westerkamp, who was pursuing a career in finance and living in Chicago. Westerkamp soon became a regular accomplice on the business side of Breaking and Entering, and eventually the content creation side as well.
“Geno maybe didn’t realize how big of an effect he was having on the industry,” Westerkamp said. “For someone like me, who was in the finance and consulting route, who never got real big-time exposure to the people that are running our companies, I came in there and I was like, ‘They’re chumming it up with my buddy Geno.’”
Schellenberger continued recording the podcast as he navigated his own early career in advertising, briefly working at Edelman as an account executive before moving to Havas North America, where he eventually took on the role of associate director of growth and communications in Chicago. Westerkamp worked in commercial banking and then consulting.
But the podcast business and the brand were picking up steam. They recorded episodes with agency heavyweights like Erich & Kallman founder Eric Kallman and TBWA’s Rob Schwartz, along with trade reporters and content creators covering the industry.
“I’ve been on podcasts with industry veterans where they have the same five questions that they ask……and they’re checking their phones while they’re doing it, and you’re like, ‘Hello?’” said Jaime Robinson, chief creative officer and co-founder of New York-based agency Joan Creative, and a guest on Breaking and Entering’s podcast in April.
Breaking and Entering by comparison shows both deep respect for the industry’s work and “a lack of taking anybody or themselves so seriously that is, I think, very needed right now in 2025,” Robinson said. “It’s why they’re so much fun to watch.”
Westerkamp and Schellenberger took a leap of faith last September, when they raised $50,000 from their friends, family and advisers and decided to give themselves six months to focus on the business. They quit their jobs in Chicago and moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s East Village.
The duo introduced new types of content, like the morning news hits as well as industry event coverage. (At the One Show advertising awards in New York recently, 72andSunny co-founder Glenn Cole put Westerkamp in a playful headlock.) “60 seconds” takes sponsorships too: Companies can pay to have their logo printed on office paper and taped above the whiteboard in videos.
Breaking and Entering’s founders say they are earning enough to cover their business and personal expenses—noting that they have low overhead.
The company also has kicked off a service to make content with ad agencies.
That could be helpful for agencies, which have a poor track record at selling themselves, according to Robinson. “It’s almost like when agencies talk about themselves, they feel such a need to be responsible business people that they suck,” she said.
Schellenberger and Westerkamp announced their excursion to the French Riviera for Cannes by wearing pink and blue water wings in a video shot on a scrap of sand on the East River.
The trip comes courtesy of Raven Public Relations, with which Schellenberger and Westerkamp are traveling as content creators and interviewing executives for videos called “Tiny Terrace Talks.”
“We’re giving them a lot of creative license,” said Hollie Rapello, co-founder of Raven.
Write to Megan Graham at megan.graham@wsj.com
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