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- [00:04]
Ray
How are you, Anna?
- [00:05]
Anna Angelic
I'm well. How was yourself? How was your trip?
- [00:08]
Ray
My trip was fun. It was only for a few days, but I was in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
- [00:13]
Anna Angelic
I know. You went all the way across the world. How was that? How was the weather?
- [00:16]
Ray
It was supposed to be raining three days straight, but after the first half day it cleared up and it was sunny, but did manage to take a couple of walks, a tour of the city.
- [00:29]
Anna Angelic
Did you like it?
- [00:31]
Ray
I loved it. Yeah. I've been there twice. This one, you know, this time was for work. The first time was a couple years with my wife and really, really beautiful place. Beautiful place, Great seafood. Great people too. Welcome to Heat Makers How Brands Influence Culture. Where every other week Anna and I explore cultural influence and how brands can create it.
- [00:58]
Anna Angelic
I'm Anna Angelic. I'm a brand executive, author of the Business of Aspiration and Hit Makers, and writer of the Sociology of Business. With us we have Anya Arsenov, who is our producer and makes sure that we look and sound great. Welcome to the final episode of season one of Hitmakers. Ray, I cannot thank you enough, but for being such an amazing interlocutor.
- [01:24]
Ray
Thank you. And I'm Reina Moro. I'm a creative entrepreneur and a founding partner of an innovation firm called Ionco, based in New York, Tokyo and Singapore, as Anna mentioned. So this is the 12th episode of season one of Hitmakers. And starting with the next episode, you have a different partner that you'll be spotting with Ana. And then I have a different platform. I have a podcast called the Creative Mindset, which also releases every two weeks. I also have a newsletter called the Intersection, so you can find me at those locations.
- [01:55]
Anna Angelic
So with that said, like, Ray, you and I started this back in October. We are like, it's six months ago.
- [02:02]
Ray
Well, I mean, even to go back, I think we started talking about this, I think last spring, because remember, you and I met in Cannes in June of 2024 and we did kind of like a test run and then we massaged a little bit and then we officially started in the fall of 2024. And yeah, 12 episodes, but yeah, it's been almost six months.
- [02:25]
Anna Angelic
Six months. I know, you're absolutely right. And so how was the judging? Did you see any good stuff?
- [02:30]
Ray
You know, like, I. I have mixed feelings, to be completely honest, about these types of judging opportunities because it may not be an accurate reflection of what's going on in the industry. And it's a very skewed, one dimensional view of what's going on however, putting my sneaker hat aside, it's a great way to look at a volume of work in such a short, concentrated amount of time. And also just to talk about the work with fellow marketers and creatives. And when it comes to these types of creative and marketing endeavors, there are no right or wrong answer. And different people have different perspectives and different opinions, so. And then, yeah, the. The debate got pretty heated, but in a good way. It was never mean, but it was. It was a healthy, healthy disagreement.
- [03:23]
Anna Angelic
I see. I see. Yeah, yeah. You see, I have no patience for that. I did that like, God bless you. No, Ray is really nice. He's known as a nice guy in the industry and I mean, he's all about the next generation. He created like young lions, you know, like, thank you. I never had I. Patience as a stepping stone, like, selfishly early in my career.
- [03:45]
Ray
Yeah.
- [03:46]
Anna Angelic
And then I was like, there is nothing for me in this.
- [03:48]
Ray
No, it does. It does take patience.
- [03:51]
Anna Angelic
I was like, bye.
- [03:52]
Ray
Oh, so you did Effies?
- [03:54]
Anna Angelic
I did. I did when I was still at agencies, when I was at Havas Lux Hub, so.
- [03:59]
Ray
Oh, okay. Okay.
- [04:00]
Anna Angelic
In 2000, I guess 17, maybe. And after that I was.
- [04:04]
Ray
No, no, it is.
- [04:05]
Anna Angelic
And also then they don't.
- [04:07]
Ray
No, we. We had people from the brand side. It wasn't just any. No.
- [04:11]
Anna Angelic
But I don't know if I usually just. Because then. Then they. They invite you for some other stuff. Like the book, like luxury, something like that. Yeah, I did go once when it was in Courchevel, so it was some luxury. And it was like one afternoon and the rest of the day it was just fun and games. In Courchevel. It was good.
- [04:28]
Ray
No, this was like leading up to the. Leading up to the in person judging. Like it was weeks of judging online and literally like hundreds of entries. So, like I was clicking through case studies. Case. Case study after case study, endlessly.
- [04:41]
Anna Angelic
But then you have that sort of education mindset, which is admirable, honestly. And, you know, pushing. I think there are different ways, actually. I don't want to sell myself too short because I think there are different ways to put discipline forward.
- [04:55]
Ray
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [04:56]
Anna Angelic
And educate. And I see my newsletter is that. And you know, like, based on subscribers, drivers and so on. That's number one. Number two is actually bigger picture. And I think that maybe that's a nice segue into our three main takeaways, which is.
- [05:11]
Ray
That's right.
- [05:12]
Anna Angelic
Every time I was like looking and judging that work, I was always like, but what does it have to do with the real world in a sense business, you know, especially when event brand side and you see how much of decision making is actually not that front end creativity, it's actually creativity as a mindset, the so called back end. So that's a good way maybe to introduce our first topic as you and I discussed and what we want to share with our listeners as in lie of summary for this season was like the themes that emerged and the first one was related to what we were just talking just now about judging about work and about what creativity is and how often creativity actually comes at the end.
- [05:58]
Ray
Yeah.
- [05:59]
Anna Angelic
Of the process. No matter what industry you are, you can be cpg, you can be hospitality, you can be automotive, you can be fashion. No matter what creativity is something that is considered something for judging a product. An output that comes at the end of that helps marketing sell things. And I think both of us in our work, you with I and co and your clients in my work with my clients and my brand work on on the brand side as she brand officer is that creativity is actually a mindset and what rather than that being like a marketing catchphrase, it is actually solving problems in a creative way throughout the entire value chain.
- [06:44]
Ray
Yeah.
- [06:44]
Anna Angelic
And I would like to hear your input and then I'll share examples.
- [06:48]
Ray
One of the things that when I started my company nine years ago that I didn't do was to have a creative department or call a group of people creatives or you know, creative creative department. Because the minute that you label a person or a team or department creative, it implies whether intentionally or not, that other people aren't creative. So it's kind of ironic to for me to say because I grew up being a quote unquote creative throughout my career I stopped my. My background is design by trade. But as I grew up in this industry I always belonged to the creative department. But I always felt guilty about that label because like I said, it implied that other people couldn't be creatives or creative. I was talking to, I don't know if you know this guy Stephan Sagmeister, who's a really influential graphic designer and he was talking about Apple and how much dedication that they have to creativity and quality. Jonathan I've, when he was still at Apple, he was designing a new generation of imac which didn't have a body, it was just a screen. And then there was a stand behind it and the manufacturer that they were using in China. In order to create that stand, it had to be done in two pieces. But what he requested all the Way through the company and the manufacturing team, the operations team and the finance team was to change the factory so that they can manufacture the stand in one piece. So there was no scene in the back of the monitor. Now, had they stayed with the original manufacturer that was making the stand in two pieces, financially it would have been much better. Customer would not even realize because it was on the back of the stand that you couldn't even see it. But he convinced other people in the company in other functions and then the other functions. Of course it was going to be expensive and it was going to be such a hassle to change the factory from factory A to factory B. But it's that kind of commitment that business functions had. Because the creative creativity as a business mindset, not just a business function or business operation, but business mindset is shared across functions. Because if it's not shared, it makes absolutely no sense.
- [09:23]
Anna Angelic
It has to be. Exactly. So that's when I talk. I usually say, hey, creativity in my presentations is the approach, not the output. And I say, doesn't mean that everyone. You don't need financial controllers to know PowerPoint or whatnot, keynote or Figma or what. It's not the point because the tools then what you said, box you in. It's sharing that vision that is also financial vision, which means that you have a CFO and CEO on your side. Then you're trying to put forward a specific plan, a specific promise and deliver on that promise. And what does it take and what the compromises are, they are unbelievably important. That alignment with the cfo, that's why I sort of brought that up. And it's not about, oh, you need to be creative with your accounting. Like no, it's not about that. It's about bringing them in the process from a get go and saying very clearly, hey, look, we're going to do this, maybe brand marketing, this cultural influence program. You're not going to see results for the first six months, the first year, but then you can expect XYZ. So there are always KPIs and there's always return on investment. But a lot of people make a mistake of sort of adhering to that Excel spreadsheet year on year, that's basically finest dream. Because there is not that alignment. And obviously if you have a good rapport, good relationship with the CEO, CFO as Chief Creative officer, chief Marketing Officer, chief Brand Officer, then you say, hey, in the first month you can see xyz, that's how you're going to know if you're on the right track, second month, third month. And you can course correct. That's how trust is built in that sense. And I. That's absolutely what you said. That alignment towards the common vision, which in your example was Apple, is all about credit creativity, tools for creativity innovation one step ahead.
- [11:30]
Ray
Have you in your, in your either direct experience working within brands or working with brands, or have you seen a recent case where creativity was a business mindset and then that manifested in a positive result? What would be an example? Like one example that I mentioned is one. But what would be an example that you may.
- [11:51]
Anna Angelic
The example is also like that we've been doing at Banana at three, which is like you start product design with product desirability and discoverability in mind. You always think how is that this going to look on Instagram? How is this going to look as a campaign? How is this going to be presented to customers in terms of styling? What is the image that we want to project? Because traditionally sort of like look what sold best last year.
- [12:21]
Ray
Yeah.
- [12:22]
Anna Angelic
And you need more of it like this. You're proactive, you're putting forward the vision but with the end customer in mind. How are they gonna find about this on Instagram? Do you need specific colors? Do you need specific way art direction? What models? Like, that's why you sort of have to have the discipline from the beginning of the process and say, hey, these are signature products, which means we need to repeat them season after season after season. So when that conversations starts, marketing conversation starts. Creative conversations start before anything was even online. You can really embed the, the marketing, the creative, the cultural influence from. From a get go. And merchandising is obviously super important. But then you say, hey, what is their wholesale marketing? What is their V, what is their social like you go from the same starting point, it's almost the opposite. CFO and marketing or creative goes towards the vision. And this is the same starting point. All departments have the same creative springboard. You want. You have that sort of playing field that is maybe seasoned or annual. So that is the process that I can attest you was introduced at Banana at Esprit. So that's a process as an example of that. And you see more and more brands doing things that are good for Instagram. That would be an example like you know, food packaging, for example.
- [13:51]
Ray
Yeah.
- [13:51]
Anna Angelic
Or those little like chains that I was just playing with. Like now chains for brands or. Or Jacquemus, that little bag that's like anything that's very Instagramal retail.
- [14:03]
Ray
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [14:04]
Anna Angelic
Well you're already thinking. So I do think there is sort of that kind of shortcuts between create creative departments, quotation marks for those who can't see us, and other departments. But process is the most important. Everyone needs to sit in the room at the beginning. It's not sequential.
- [14:22]
Ray
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. As you and I were talking about at the beginning. So I just came off of a few days of pretty intense creative judging process. So I was judging an award show called Andy Awards. And in the past few weeks or so I had to look at like literally hundreds of case studies and examples of creative output over the past year, year and a half or so. And one company that kept coming up multiple times wasn't necessarily the company that I would have expected to be creative, but it was a French car company, Renault. They had multiple pieces that were getting recognized. And what that said to me was that they had, you know, different campaigns and different initiatives that they entered into an award show and award show or not, that's not the important part, but the, what was notable about that was that one company consciously putting effort in creativity. And a lot of the initiatives that were getting highlighted, they were not typical like campaigns or marketing initiatives, but it was a company initiative. And everything that they, they did, you could see that it wasn't a function that owned it and that they just executed it independent of other functions. You could tell. So for instance, I'll just give you an example. There was a. And it's, it's again, it's not even a campaign by initiative called a plugin for business. And basically it's Renault getting behind small businesses across the country and working with small business owners to install plug in power stations at local, local stores. And then if a driver goes to that power station and uses that power station, they get a coupon from that small business. So it's an infrastructure. Right. And it's not a small investment that they made. They had to make a fairly significant investment to do it. And it was a small idea, but like a very big vision for them. And you could tell that multiple functions had to collaborate to make something like that happen. And that's just one example. But they had an initiative like that multiple times like other initiatives. And you could tell that the company embraced that creative mindset as opposed to, hey, this is just a functional thing.
- [16:51]
Anna Angelic
I love that, I love that. And that reminds me of ikea. And probably a good segue into X team is because you know how IKEA really quickly responds what's happening in culture with their spoofs but then also they have those like I think three departments. One is like innovation, the other is sustainability and the third consumer products or something. And they have a lot of collaborations and you can't do those collaborations like scent collaboration with Vallardo for example, or light collaboration with, with lighting brands or off white back in the day 10 years ago. Like if that doesn't happen or the level of supply, production, marketing, creative distribution, it just won't happen. So I think that IKEA is sort of unified and has a sort of holistic approach. Whereas each one of those verticals, even sustainability, how embedded they are in providing sustainable energy to communities in Africa and so on. So it's kind of like having multiple legs and being very connected with culture is also showing flat organization or organization that has a process that can respond very quickly. Which is again the easiest way to see that is like how nimble they are in this, how quickly they catch what's happening in culture. But that's mostly, that's also a reflection of how their entire organization is nimble and changeable because they figured out in order to stay relevant with. I mean because their products are almost cpg, they're so cheap how you know, in order to get more people to buy, they need to collaborate. There's something always needs to here to be new, otherwise they're in mature market. How do you grow in mature market?
- [18:46]
Ray
Another thing that now that you mentioned Ikea, is that their way of behaving as a company, whether it's product centric or marketing centric, it's always linked to or rooted in their products. You know, they don't do a lot of like brand marketing. Yeah, but it's very much about the product. Which is the second point that you know, products are what builds brands. It's not just market like brand marketing, but it's product led, to use your words, you know, product led marketing is the new brand building. Basically.
- [19:21]
Anna Angelic
Yes. And I would like to add aesthetics because product needs to be good. You can't build, you know, like which is. But then again, I do believe that the most iconic brands of today, as we talked in a very early episodes, are those that spun the entire brand around them. Levi's, Doc Martens, Nike, even ikea. Because the innovation, the value innovation that the founder of Ikea did was like, oh, the most expensive part of the value chain with furniture is its shipment. It's like how do you transport the fully assembled furniture for him is like I'm going to slash prices and I'm going to make that up with making, but putting the cost of assembly on customers. But that's again, product innovation because you make products such that it can be assembled at home. And I do think that Ikea does have brand market. You know those print ads that are always funny and so. But it's kind of that tone of voice that is very humble, doesn't take itself seriously. It's always cheeky.
- [20:33]
Ray
Yeah, yeah.
- [20:33]
Anna Angelic
They don't pretend to be something they're not. They're in sync with their product.
- [20:37]
Ray
Speaking of which, and this is another thing that I saw in the last couple days at the award show, but did you see this text messaging campaign that Ikea did last year?
- [20:49]
Anna Angelic
No.
- [20:49]
Ray
So, you know, like at 1am in the morning, you know, you have your Instagram up just scrolling and they created this super simple campaign. So last year their product focus was sleep. Like a lot of it was about sleep. You know, how do we, how does Ikea as a brand, as a company help people sleep better? So it's mattress, it's the beds, it's, you know, the duvet and the sound. Yeah, exactly. All products that are sleep. So that was their product focus. So last year they did this really simple, smart and cheeky thing. Imagine you're up at 1am, 2am and you get a DM and it's from Ikea and it just says you up you as in like you and up question mark, that's it. And then if you respond, it will send you a link with a coupon to buy a mattress.
- [21:50]
Anna Angelic
Oh, I didn't know that. But UOP is a famous pickup line.
- [21:56]
Ray
Perhaps that's another cultural.
- [21:58]
Anna Angelic
For many, many generations.
- [22:01]
Ray
Yes. Yeah. But what I, I love the simplicity of it. I love how it's directly tied to their product initiative. I also love subtle technical aspect of it. So like on those social media platforms, they know when people are using the app actively. Right. So they targeted people who are up and then sent that message. Yeah, I love it. And so simple. So technically sophisticated enough that it was contextually the right moment and then culturally also, you know, speaking their language, but very natural link to, to the, to the, to the product.
- [22:48]
Anna Angelic
Amazing. I mean, but they do that a lot.
- [22:51]
Ray
I love they do that a lot. It's just one example.
- [22:53]
Anna Angelic
I love that doesn't. I mean, that's amazing example because it's. Everything is tied up. You know, like when, when there was like last year at Met, Met Gala, which is like, you know, everyone is watching or everyone in fashion. And then Doja cat was like in a towel Immediately there was a replication of someone like, in the towel. And there is a price. And it's just so quick. And the way, again, going back to that synchronization on product and brand marketing is really how the language is saying. They know that their target audience is those who are furnishing their first apartment.
- [23:34]
Ray
College. College students or college grads.
- [23:36]
Anna Angelic
That's you up. That's it. That's. That's. You know, they speak that their. That language. They're not really pretending to be anything. They're not. And that's really refreshing.
- [23:46]
Ray
Yes.
- [23:47]
Anna Angelic
Because, you know, there is such thing as aspirational and so on, but IKEA dives into lifestyle and. And finds funny moments there. Have you seen today's April 1st joke? The. That IKEA decided, like, their stores are too confusing, so they decided to do one long store that's 2km long, and it has the departments one after another. And it just looked amazing and very real.
- [24:15]
Ray
Oh, that is. That is a real problem. I mean, the store is like a maze. And, you know, I mean, on purpose, it's kind of confusing because you have to go through pretty much every aisle to get to the. To the exit.
- [24:25]
Anna Angelic
Exactly. I'm pretty sure, like, that it's April's fault, but what do I know?
- [24:32]
Ray
It's really.
- [24:32]
Anna Angelic
I think. But it's very ikea. It's very IKEA to do that. I don't know. I'm just gonna leave that out for you guys.
- [24:38]
Ray
But no, I'm. I'm. I'm sure this is April 1st joke.
- [24:42]
Anna Angelic
I know. I like Pokemon. Imagine you park your car, like.
- [24:48]
Ray
Yeah, because, like, it's not realist. I mean, you can't, you know, if you park your call on this side, then what are you gonna do?
- [24:53]
Anna Angelic
You know, I'm not. It's like, long ways to go, but.
- [24:56]
Ray
You know, so on. On this note, products building brands or product. You know, we are in an era where products do build brands. This sounds like a contradiction to what I said, I think, in an episode, couple episodes ago, but I have a feeling that Apple is on a slow downhill slope as a brand. Yeah. And recently, I think like two or three weeks ago, they had an announcement with new product lineup, and it was so underwhelming. There was nothing new.
- [25:31]
Anna Angelic
Yeah, I think there hasn't been nothing. There hasn't been anything new in a while.
- [25:35]
Ray
I would say the biggest thing, biggest new product that they had was the Vision Pro two years ago, you know, and it got a lot of press back then, but, I mean, I don't I know a couple of people who own it, but I don't know who's using it regularly. I think that was the last product innovation that they had. They had a, an interesting and potentially smart announcement maybe six months ago with Apple intelligence and but when it came out a few weeks ago or a couple months ago, it was like you create AI emojis or you create an AI summary of your email.
- [26:17]
Anna Angelic
By the way, that's so annoying because the moment Grok acquired personality quotation marks, their chatgpt became cheeky. They all do like the same thing, you know what I mean? So I'm like, no, I don't need you to be funny, just tell me what, summarize what I need you to summarize. But I agree and I think that what you just mentioned is very important because Apple is late to AI and that's the company that was 10 steps ahead.
- [26:44]
Ray
Yeah. So you know Apple, I mean yeah, they, they do used to do a fair amount of brand marketing in the past, but in a good way. They haven't done a lot of brand marketing because their products were good, their products built their brand.
- [26:59]
Anna Angelic
It is and honestly I think because they're like how many trillion dollar brand? So their customer, their market penetration is really high and I think what is important, the customer loyalty, that renewal is also really high. I'm not going to switch anytime soon. Something really bad needs to happen for me to switch. So I think they have, they calculated what is their customer lifetime value and they're like, you know what, we're fine, we can coast for next xyz.
- [27:30]
Ray
Yeah. So the good news to your point, the good news is that they, they are such a massive rich company that they can cruise control for the next several years. And yeah, but you know, you and I, we are older in terms of generation, the younger generation coming into the, into the market. You know what, Samsung is definitely cheaper. You know, they have more variations and if they're Samsung or other products are as good as Apple then why do they need to buy Apple? Why would they buy Apple?
- [27:59]
Anna Angelic
And I will say one thing, even though Apple as you said is, you know, yeah, it's still cool. Don't ask me why. It's maybe not as cool as it was 20 years ago, definitely. But at the same time is like you still want to have accessories that your friends have. So in a set like tech accessories. So you're going to still like for whatever reason that is still that equation is like oh, if you're a creative person going back to the first point, you're going to use Mac, not PC. So for better or for worse, I think there's a cache sort of if your parents use iPhones, you're going to have iPhone. If your friends have iPhone, you're going to ask for an iPhone. And when that changes like again it's like it is a product led branding. Because you see with Nike customers expect. Don't ask me why Zeitgeist is that they're not as innovative and groundbreaking as Hokka as own products and so on. So when you have that perception in culture, you start having expectations. When you start having expectations, the perception of product changes.
- [29:13]
Ray
I think another interesting company to watch is Nike, now that you mention it. And that's another brand that's on a slippery, that has been on a slippery slope for the past year, year and a half or so. And you know they've had some interesting announcements in the recent couple months or so. They had a Super bowl spot that I thought was great.
- [29:32]
Anna Angelic
Yeah.
- [29:33]
Ray
But then a week later they had this collaboration announcement with Skims which a lot. Yeah, exactly. A lot of people are questioning like is that the right thing for the brand?
- [29:44]
Anna Angelic
Well, it's a shortcut look, you know, if you want to, you know, cultural relevance can be both. They're trying to buy it. It's a cultural shortcut look, we don't know what's happening in the company and so on. At the end of the day my point is that they can have the, the schemes partnership, they can have the best brand marketing. Their product needs to become amazing again.
- [30:07]
Ray
Yeah.
- [30:07]
Anna Angelic
Do you want to go to Hit List? And I think that mentioning Nike is a great thing. They did something really, really well. How Nike trolled New Balance in the Cooper Flag. You know, Cooper Flag is this young guy and he had like unbelievable like last week, unbelievable scores and he's still wearing Nike although he signed, signed up with New Balance and Bas delivered by Swoosh just on social media and I love that. Such a simple example of brands being real people, you know, like calling each other in a really good humored way around an amazing young athlete.
- [30:48]
Ray
Yeah, yeah.
- [30:49]
Anna Angelic
So because until he gets to NBA he's under Nike's contract.
- [30:53]
Ray
Yeah. So like that sort of reaction to culture, what's happening in you know, in culture, real time and they, they've had some good moments recently. Being quick on the foot, on the feet and being part of the conversation. Real time. And has been a few small moves.
- [31:12]
Anna Angelic
Yeah. What's your hint?
- [31:13]
Ray
So I think that IKEA text messaging is Pretty high on the list. Another one or a couple other ones that I can think of. One is this product review for plant based mayonnaise. I mean, there are a lot of plant based mayonnaise products, but all of them, what they say is that it's as good as a real mayonnaise. Right. But this company, it's a company called Nacco. N O O T C O Naco, it's a joint venture with Kraft Heinz, they have a plant based mayonnaise. But in order to promote it, what they did was they went to Reddit and they found a bunch of male haters. You know, there are a lot of people who don't like mayonnaise. Right. They just like physically can't accept it. And then what they did was they created, they, they made sandwiches with this plant based mayonnaise and let these mayo haters eat those sandwiches that was made with plant based mayonnaise.
- [32:17]
Anna Angelic
Wait, how did they find them in real life?
- [32:19]
Ray
So they, they actually, they, they bunch of threads on subreddits, right? Yeah. And then they, they asked for people to apply for it. You know, if you're a male hater, get in touch with us. Yeah. So they got a bunch of people. Yeah. And then they created these product review videos of male haters eating the sandwiches made with this plant based male. The reactions from these male haters are so they're like literally vomiting and it sounds disgusting, but it's actually really convincing. So it's sort of reverse psychology. Hey, you know what these male haters hate?
- [32:58]
Anna Angelic
This fake so real that they hate it with equal passion.
- [33:03]
Ray
Exactly.
- [33:03]
Anna Angelic
I love that. Yeah.
- [33:04]
Ray
So instead of saying, hey, you know, I, I'm a male lover and I love it, you know, this fan base mayonnaise, they actually took the opposite direction.
- [33:13]
Anna Angelic
I know, and I thought you were.
- [33:14]
Ray
Just so clever and so simple and very authentic.
- [33:20]
Anna Angelic
Yeah, definitely.
- [33:21]
Ray
Yeah, yeah. So the IKEA text message and just, you know, reaction films from male haters.
- [33:30]
Anna Angelic
And then what else do we want to like, what do we want on a very high level leave our audience with.
- [33:37]
Ray
I would say that there's still a lot of room for creativity and for fun, engaging and serious business opportunities for many, many brands. I think it's easy to be cynical. Everything has been done and yeah, true, everything has been done, but at the same time there's like that the IT example that I just mentioned, it's such a simple execution that nobody, I mean you could have done it 10 years ago if you wanted to, you know, but nobody thought of it until now. So I'm, and especially coming out of a recent experience of judging things, I felt quite encouraged that, you know what, it's kind of up to the individual, up to us, to think of creative, playful, fun ideas to impress the world. Yeah. And I think the other thing that I would say is, and this is something that I talked with my colleagues recently pretty intensely, you know, like, AI is everywhere these days. And the bad news about AI is that it's actually already having tangible negative impact, particularly for college graduates. So a lot of companies are hiring. If you look at the job labor market at large, it looks like the job market is actually pretty good. But if you actually look at particularly college graduates gain a really tough spot because especially big companies, they're not hiring. And you know, I teach graduate level college students and compared to say like five years ago, they have a lot more trouble getting a job. Like five years ago, before the graduation, 90% of my students had job offers from Google, Amazon, Facebook, what have you. Now it's the opposite. Like only 10, 20% of them have job offers and 80% of them are still looking for job.
- [35:37]
Anna Angelic
Wow.
- [35:38]
Ray
Yeah. So that's a bad news. That's a bad news. Right. But the good news is that just because you use AI doesn't mean that you are better. What, what matters is, do you care about what you do enough that you spend more time than the other people?
- [35:55]
Anna Angelic
That's it. That's it. It's a thoughtful use of AI.
- [35:59]
Ray
Yeah, yeah.
- [36:00]
Anna Angelic
AI to help you do your job better. If you care, you're going to use it in a way. Hey, do research on this. Save me the time. But you're still going to train it on your material, still going to give that imprint. Absolutely. I absolutely agree and I think it's great in that sense. And I do think it's great that those college graduates on a plus side have that AI literacy in that sense. But again, that is going to create a big difference among those who are very ambitious and driven and thoughtful and caring and those who are not necessarily necessarily that. Yet, you know, it's, it's, it's really what you see. You know, sometimes it's obvious and sometimes it's just your, your partner in kind of like distributed cognition, so to speak.
- [36:47]
Ray
So I would say, just as a final thought, I would say on that note, those who care more will win. Regardless of the age, regardless of the profession, regardless the expertise. Those who care more will win.
- [37:01]
Anna Angelic
I loved it. It's such a lovely note. So I'm not going to interrupt that. Let's just sit with it, because my thing was like. I agree. Like, mic drop. Mic drop for me.
- [37:13]
Ray
Mic job. Yes. Mic job. I have a mic right here.
- [37:16]
Anna Angelic
Because that's what that season one was really about, our conversation. And so thank you very much for being part of it. And thank you, everyone who listened to season one of hitmakers. And stay tuned for. For season two coming soon.
- [37:32]
Ray
All right, see you around, everybody.