Contestants Pitch Campaigns to Dunkin', Southwest Airlines and More on Jimmy Fallon's New Reality Series

Showrunner Pip Wells explains how it's all going down

Jimmy Fallon is running his own marketing agency in On Brand with Jimmy Fallon, a new reality competition series premiering Sept. 30 on NBC.

Bozoma Saint John, former global chief creative officer for Netflix and one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, serves as the CMO of Fallon’s agency on the series, which finds 10 contestants—including a creative director from New York, a full-time solo traveler/content creator and a former pastor who runs a digital marketing agency in Dallas—pitching campaigns to Dunkin’, KitchenAid, Pillsbury, Southwest Airlines and other brands.

The title of “Innovator of the Year” will be bestowed upon the winner of the show, who will also earn $100,000 and a trip to the Cannes Lions. Plus, they’ll get the feature treatment in Adweek.

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Here, Pip Wells, the showrunner and EP of On Brand with Jimmy Fallon, talks about casting the show and the pressure to please clients who are spending money to execute the winning campaigns:

MUSE: The contestants on this show need to have certain creative skills to pull off the challenges. During the casting process, how did you determine if they had the chops to do this?

Pip Wells: One of the things we love about this show is the idea that a good idea can truly come from anywhere. We weren’t just looking for professional ad execs—we wanted people from all walks of life who’ve had to sell or market something in their own worlds, whether that’s a realtor selling houses, a professor teaching big ideas to a classroom or even a toy designer selling the magic of play. When we put out the casting call, we were inundated with incredible applicants. To see their creative chops, we had them pitch fictional campaigns for real brands so we could watch not only the ideas they came up with but also how they sold them. And of course, Jimmy Fallon was heavily involved throughout. So it’s safe to say the cast is pretty special, and each creative has their own style. At the heart of it, our dream is for viewers to feel they can play along from their sofas and think, “What campaign would I pitch here?” Because in a way, everyone’s a marketer—whether it’s making a yard sale sign or trying to sell yourself on a first date.

Is pitching a skill that all the contestants came to the table with, or did you school them in the art of the pitch? 

Our creatives all came to the table with natural pitching talent and had such different techniques. We wanted to embrace the many different styles, so we opted not to host a pitch boot camp to ensure the pitches didn’t become exactly the same. When they arrived with us, they were given some thought starters on what makes a good pitch for TV—from adding personal stories, showmanship and using stats to help people understand why it’s relevant to the consumer and the brands.

In the first episode, Jimmy points out that the pressure for On Brand is to deliver real results because there are clients who are actually spending money on these campaigns. Can you talk about the stakes involved in making this show?

There was definitely a moment in pre-production where the penny dropped for all of us. One of the brands casually mentioned, “Well, we could be spending up to $5 million on this campaign,” and then 20 minutes later another brand said “This is part of our 2026 Super Bowl campaign.” That’s when it really hit home just how high the stakes were. These weren’t hypothetical campaigns. They were real brands putting real money on the line. So it wasn’t just the contestants who felt the pressure. The cast, the crew, all of us knew there was so much riding on getting it right. And honestly, that pressure brought out the best in everyone.

Why do you think the business of advertising is so fascinating to audiences? Why do we enjoy going behind the scenes and seeing the process?

Advertising is fascinating to watch because, in a way, everyone’s already a marketer whether you’re putting something for sale on Facebook Marketplace or convincing your kid to eat broccoli. So when you get to peek behind the curtain of big campaigns, it feels a bit like a Willy Wonka moment: this wild, colorful world where you finally see how it all gets made. Plus, we’re featuring beloved brands. It makes the process feel immediate, tangible and personal. That’s what makes the business of advertising so fun to watch unfold.

You’ve produced all kinds of shows. Why were you interested in taking on this project, and what did you learn from working on it?

When NBC, B17 and Jimmy came to me with this idea, it just sounded like too much fun to pass up. I love business shows, I love competition shows, and I honestly love a challenge. So it was the perfect fit. One of the things I found really interesting is how much the agency world mirrors TV producing. It’s all about coming up with ideas, problem-solving under pressure and then packaging it in a way that connects with an audience. Bozoma Saint John was an incredible mentor, and unpacking the psychology of how and why marketing works was fascinating. Our goal was to make something everyone could enjoy, where viewers could play along, pitch their own ideas from the sofa and then literally see the campaigns out in the real world. For me, the biggest takeaway is how practical the show is. My feed is full of entrepreneurs and people selling products, and this show is a crash course in how marketing can genuinely change the trajectory of a business. It’s entertaining, but it’s also something you can actually learn from no matter who you are.