Dare to build a world, not just a brand - Mike Perry (Tavern Agency)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Daring Creativity – “Dare to Build a World, Not Just a Brand”

Host: Radim Malinic
Guest: Mike Perry (Founder, Tavern Agency)
Release Date: March 2, 2026

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Overview

This episode of Daring Creativity features a candid, wide-ranging discussion between host Radim Malinic and creative leader Mike Perry, founder of Brooklyn’s Tavern Agency. The conversation dives deep into what it means to build brands—with a focus on creating immersive worlds rather than just surface identities. Mike shares his career journey, agency philosophy, and thoughts on timelessness in branding, the value of chaos and subculture, and the balance between trends and authenticity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Career Journey: Chaos, Craft, and World-Building

• Background: Mike Perry describes his upbringing with parents in education and hospitality, blending “service and creativity” in his outlook ([06:11]).
• After art school at Tyler School of Art (Philadelphia), Mike’s path traversed NBC Sports, various agencies (Quaker City Mercantile, JKR, Designbridge), and a stint as a creative strategist at TikTok before founding Tavern Agency.
• Emphasis on learning skills at every stop—design, branding, leadership, and team management ([14:47], [18:38]).
• Hospitality is a thread throughout: “The string between all of it is hospitality. And that comes from my parents ... and myself bartending and serving in country clubs and hotels. That’s the connective tissue.” ([22:14])

2. Between Chaos and Craft: The Role of Subculture

• Mike draws on his early love for punk posters and music design, seeing “chaos” as essential for creative spark ([09:10]).
• “You need the chaos. You need the subculture of it all to really make the corporate brand-led of it all. Without subculture, we wouldn’t have icons.” ([09:10])
• The importance of lived, analog, and serendipitous experiences instead of just algorithm-driven Pinterest boards ([10:48], [11:51]).

“We have a Pinterest rule in our studio where it’s like, absolutely not ... because of algorithms, because we’re all looking at the same thing.”
—Mike Perry [11:51]

3. Tension as Source of Timelessness

• Timelessness isn’t static or magic; it’s built on ongoing effort and the right kind of conflict:

  “It’s the point of the graph that keeps flattening out ... you keep going to not get it, but that’s what gets you to that level, right? Timelessness doesn’t just happen.” ([00:08], [27:25])

• Mike’s process (“modern heritage”) is about uncovering and updating the DNA of brands:

  • Deep research, including physical archives and even eBay sleuthing for historic brand artifacts ([27:25]).
  • Avoiding nostalgia or retro for its own sake; focus on translating brand heritage for today and tomorrow ([31:16]).

“The deep secret is not Pinterest, it’s actually eBay. You find stuff on eBay from heritage brands ... menus, matchbooks, a weird clock that was made in the ‘70s.”
—Mike Perry [27:25]

4. Trends vs. Transcendence

• Mike laments the velocity of trend cycles in a digital world and the lure they present to brands ([45:08]).
• Preference for grounding work in “brand at the heart” rather than in passing trends ([45:50]).
• Short-term, trend-driven branding is contrasted with the aspiration to create platforms and worlds robust enough for long-term growth.

“Good design doesn’t just survive trend cycles, it transcends them.”
—Mike Perry, paraphrased by Radim Malinic [45:08]

• Analogy to music: The difference between a timeless classic and a fad is in foundation, execution, and authenticity ([32:33], [36:04]).

5. Brand Guardianship & Creative Endurance

• On why so many rebrands happen: high staff turnover on brand-side leads to short-term thinking ([40:57]).
• The designer/agency’s role is to act as long-term guardian, resisting unnecessary overhauls and protecting the integrity of the brand world ([39:32], [41:58]).
• New leadership should innovate, but upon solid, enduring platforms—not dismantle them needlessly.

“If you’re good at branding, you’ll create a brand that is impenetrable ... it should last a minimum of five years. It should last a lot longer.”
—Mike Perry [41:58]

• Brands should strive for a world that is expandable—ultimately, “the brand world becomes a universe” ([45:08]).

6. Optimism for the Future of Branding

• Despite acknowledging the challenges posed by formulaic trends, Mike is “weirdly optimistic” for the future ([50:51]).
• Predicts a shift back to more tactile, analog, and human encounters post-pandemic, enabled but not defined by technology ([50:51]).
• IRL (“in real life”) connections are seen as the true foundation for exciting, resonant brands ([50:51], [53:24]).

“We’ve been in this stagnant phase ... of branding that’s just strip it all out, make it all clean ... but I’m wildly optimistic ... technology is going to push us back to analog, human experiences.”
—Mike Perry [50:51]

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Chaos & Creative Fuel:
  “You need the chaos. You need the subculture ... without subculture, we wouldn’t have icons.”
  —Mike Perry [09:10]

• Against Pinterest Overreliance:
  “Algorithms, because we’re all looking at the same thing ... you need to breathe in the chaos.”
  —Mike Perry [11:51]

• Defining Timelessness:
  “Timelessness doesn’t just happen... It’s built on tension and ongoing push.”
  —Mike Perry [00:08], [27:25]

• eBay as a Design Secret:
  “The deep secret is not Pinterest, it’s actually eBay. You find stuff on eBay from heritage brands.”
  —Mike Perry [27:25]

• Trends: Allure and Danger:
  “Trends grow by exposure and die by exposure. They’re alluring ... But it doesn’t make sense.”
  —Mike Perry [45:50]

• Music & Timelessness Analogy:
  “All you need is three chords and a truth. You need three things off eBay and the truth.”
  —Radim Malinic & Mike Perry [49:53]

• On Building Worlds, Not Just Brands:
  “The goal is ... expand the brand world into a universe. That should be ... with everyone who comes on.”
  —Mike Perry [45:08]

• Creative Endurance:
  “We as designers and creative agencies are literally on these brands most of the time, far longer than the brand managers.”
  —Mike Perry [39:32]

• Optimism for Branding’s Future:
  “I’m wildly optimistic now ... people are wanting more of back to what things used to be, which felt more real and more human.”
  —Mike Perry [50:51]

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Important Segments (Quick Reference)

• [00:08] – Timelessness, heritage brands, and the difficulty of achieving it
• [09:10] – Chaos, subculture, and the roots of creative innovation
• [11:51] – The pitfalls of surface-level online inspiration
• [14:47]-[18:38] – Career progression, learning leadership, launching Tavern Agency
• [22:14] – Blending hospitality, experience, and world-building in branding
• [27:25] – Modern heritage methodology; eBay for design research
• [32:33] – Music as an analogy for timeless brand-building
• [39:32]-[41:58] – Brand guardianship and fighting against short-termism
• [45:08]-[45:50] – Trend cycles vs. transcending trends
• [50:51]-[53:24] – Optimism for more authentic, IRL branding

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Final Thoughts

Radim and Mike provide a refreshingly honest, detailed exploration of what makes brands—and the people behind them—truly daring and creative. Their insistence on chaos, tension, and the messy, lived reality of creative work stands as a rallying cry against formulaic, purely trend-driven design. Listeners are left with practical insights into research, leadership, and authenticity—as well as a contagious optimism for returning to more human, immersive branding experiences.

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“If you do it right, the brand world becomes the universe.”
—Mike Perry [45:08]

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Listen for More

Tune into the episode for more on Mike Perry’s agency philosophy, radical optimism, stories of floating giant pigeons on the Hudson, and much more about creativity, identity, and the future of branding.

Transcript

[Mike Perry]

I think like within heritage brands is the realm because they've existed for so long. They may or may not be timeless already. Most likely they are not. And it's timelessness is. It's that thing you can never get right. It's the point of the graph that keeps flattening out for some reason, but it's also something you have to constantly work and build towards. You keep going to not get it, but that's what gets you to that level, right? It's not a thing. Timelessness doesn't just happen. JFK or Carolyn Bessette Kennedy are timeless icons. They just didn't happen over time. Right? I'm trying to pick people, not brands, on purpose, right. But there is an aesthetic. There is like a world in which like they pushed and that kind of came out.

[Radim Malinej]

Foreign.

[Podcast Host]

Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, a show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are.

[Radim Malinej]

My name is Radim Malinej.

[Podcast Host]

I'm a designer, author and Italian curious human being. I am talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that spark lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a Are you ready to discover what happens

[Radim Malinej]

when you dare to create?

[Mike Perry]

Foreign.

[Podcast Host]

Speaking with Mike Perry, founder and chief creative officer of Tavern, a Brooklyn based branding and packaging agency. Mike has gone from designing pang posters and dreaming of working for sabfob to now leading global brand work from Catholic school corridors and bartending shifts with his parents. Through NBC Sports, five major agencies and strategic detour through TikTok, he's chastened subculture to become a guardian of the brands that shape it. He never chooses between the chaos and the craft because we need both. In this conversation, Mike shares why timelessness is built on tension, why ebay leads Pinterest every time, and why he's widely optimistic about the future of branding. It's my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Mike Perry. Hey Mike, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

[Mike Perry]

Thank you so much. Yeah, good. Stoked to be here.

[Radim Malinej]

Exciting times. You are a person in the branding world with opinions and I like that.

[Podcast Host]

So today, I mean, we're definitely gonna

[Radim Malinej]

go and see if we can sort out the world of branding in the next hour or so. But as you know from the show, I always ask people for those who might have not heard of Them. How would you introduce yourself? Who's Mike Perry? What you do? Where are you?

[Mike Perry]

Yeah. So thank you. We're going to get some hot opinions, I'm pretty sure by the end of this. Some controversial ones, we hope, but yeah. I'm Mike Perry. I am the founder and creative officer of Tavern, a branding and packaging agency focusing on food, dev, hospitality and sports. All the things that make up a great tavern. And right now we are in Brooklyn and coming very soon, potentially London. But more on that later.

[Radim Malinej]

More on that later. Exciting times. Okay, Mike, I want to know what's

[Podcast Host]

it like to be a branding designer

[Radim Malinej]

in the year of 2026?

[Mike Perry]

A lot different from when I started. I feel like I love it. I mean, personally, I think it's challenging. I think in a world where everyone thinks that they're a branding expert or marketeer, I think that definitely adds to the challenge and adds to, you know, hopefully some things we'll solve in this conversation of just a lot more education to people, to brands, to marketers, to consumers. So it's definitely a challenge. It's different world than I think when we started, when I started at least, and definitely a different world, you know, two, three decades ago.

[Radim Malinej]

I like your answer when you said I love it and then you say it's challenging. It gets real, real quick. So walk me through where you are today and how you got here, because you've been in the industry for about 15 plus years and you've been running Tavern for the last sort of four plus years. So talk to me, what got you into it? Because you said it's a lot harder, it's more challenging to when you started. So let's go back those 15 years and see what we can find.

[Mike Perry]

All right, we'll go back. We'll go right. When I graduated, I went to Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. Not many people know that, but of Paula Share fame. So it's a little shout out there. But, yeah, my first job was really at NBC Sports where I worked on basically all of their properties. It was really cool. It was sports. It was. I could really explain that to my parents, which was quite nice. They knew exactly what I was doing after a few months, finally, after all of these years of wanting to be a graphic designer, they could wrap their heads around it because I could say, hey, it's on tv and I made that. But yeah, we were working on properties like it was the Tour de France 150th anniversary, which is really cool. We did this whole thing where you would track the Bikers on a website, which it was groundbreaking stuff back then that didn't really happen. It sounds so rudimentary now. Wednesday night rivalry for the NHL, Sunday Night Football. Really designing the kind of look and feels for the properties. And then I was low man on the totem pole. Obviously, I was the junior. So just doing everything that everyone asked me for, asking for more.

[Radim Malinej]

Ultimately, I need to step in because you just said that your parents got to finally find out what you do, what was their background, and what did you grow up to see creatively that got you tempted to go to Philly to, you know, design school.

[Mike Perry]

Yeah. So my parent, my mom is a Catholic school teacher and my dad is a mailman. And they were both bartenders, so that that kind of comes in later. So the old tavern of it all. But, you know, second jobs are always bartenders and service was kind of half of the equation, I would say. And in kind of their influence on me and my mom being a teacher, obviously, like, they understood creativity and really pushed it. I mean, I feel like I was constantly in art camps since I was a toddler of sorts. Right. So it was very much there in middle school. I knew I wanted to go to art school. I was the kid that just hung out in the art classroom, like, during free periods. And at the end of the day, as I'm sure, like, everyone listening to this probably was in some way, and they were like, nope, absolutely not. You're gonna get a real degree. It's like, art is a real degree. Nope. So that was just, you know, the constant, like, middle school, high school battle of that. And that's why I actually went to Temple University and Tyler School of Art was the art school within the university. And unlike risd, unlike kind of like specific art schools, art schools, only you got a. What they perceived as a college degree. And so, like, if I had to fall back, I had a university degree, not just Bachelor of Fine Arts, even though that's literally what I got either way. But, you know, it made them feel good. And it's a wonderful school, so it was awesome. But that kind of led me into the design world. I always knew I wanted to design. And honestly, branding, I don't think I would have called it that then, but I wanted to really pump posters and flyers for shows and album art. I definitely, for a long period of time, I wanted to be the art director at Sub Pop, who I actually ended up working for. Dusty Summers. He was great, but, yeah, like, wanted to do that. Whole world didn't know what it Was as. I think a lot of us, at least in my era of design, thought. And then you went to art school, and then you're in art school and you start thinking, maybe I should be a sculptor. That's a lot of fun over there. But then it's like, no, keep your eye on the prize. We want to be doing, you know, not fine arts design. And that's really. It was nice because you got. In art school, we got this kind of full world experience. We had to take the sculpture classes, we had to take the woodworking classes. We had to take the painting and the drawing, which did really inform your design really well, I know it was forced in our first year, but so, yeah, it was really like knowing I wanted to do something like this and just ick. The through line was area.

[Radim Malinej]

I'm liking it as two different worlds. It's like, okay, I'm going to be official. I'm going to have a degree from something proper. But then you talked about the punk rock posters and that kind of stuff, because it's almost like, dare to embrace the chaos. I mean, I came through music and design, like, this was my initial connection. This was my step in. And I was totally immersed in that world. So what was it like for you that I kind of feel like, was that dissonance? Like, did you. I mean, you're not the first person, by the way, to say that they were considering to be a sculptor and didn't become a sculptor. Because I'm thinking, there's a punk rock and there's a sculpture.

[Mike Perry]

There was like a week of that, you know, I was like, oh, we're going to do that. We're going to be a painter. One week. It was exploratory early art school for sure. But yeah, yeah, the two. I don't know. I still kind of find that to be relevant today. I think that you need the chaos. You need the subculture of it all to really make the corporate brand led of it all. I mean, without subculture, we wouldn't have icons. I was actually just listening to a podcast. I forget what it's called, but it's with Lee Mashmeyer Collins and the woman who. I'm forgetting her name. I follow her substack. The business of sociology. But they were talking about, like, what makes an icon. And it was all about, like, subcultures and bootlegs. And I was like, yes, exactly. That. That actually, like, rationalizes those two worlds, right? We need to have all this punk rock being in bands, making posters shit that has no Purely creative, negative dollar effect on my life. It's costing me money ultimately to do. And then you also need the like, big brand. At least I do the big brand of it all, which is paying the bills. But also that's enforcing IT culture, enforcing brand and vice versa. So I think you need it both. And I think that's ultimately source material, which I'm obsessed with in general. I think many designers have said this. I'm by no means my thing, but like, I don't think designers even still with the computers and Internet and whatever, like, we're not getting enough source material in general. We need to be out exploring. We need to be, you know, you were saying, do you go to books? I don't know if you go to bookstores. That's insane. I hope every designer you talk to is like, I'm constantly at a different bookstore looking at new things. Right. And you need that material. You need that source material.

[Radim Malinej]

It's really interesting what you're saying, because to you and I, that makes perfect sense. You need to go there. In fact, like, you go to the bookstore, you turn left and you see, you go to other places to find some source materials. The younger generation, they'd be like, I've done my Pinterest board. This is, this is what I've got. This is their source material. And there's nothing wrong with it apart from the fact that you need that lived in experience, that firsthand experience of something feral, something physical, like how dramatic makes you feel because you get, first and foremost, you get taken out of your natural environment to actually say, you know what? I'm feeling something different. Rather than saying, I'm focused on exactly what I need to solve right now with the help of Pinterest or whatever, LLM machine, trying to now formulate an idea. So I mean, what you describe and I think is awesome because, yeah, those firsthand experiences from gigs, posters, all of that stuff, when we talk about chaos, that was the main essence. That was the main ingredient. There was no rules per se, as long as it was semi eligible. Here we go. You know, done.

[Mike Perry]

Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, the Pinterest, Yes. I will say, to be fair, I feel like my teachers beat that into me in college, in art school, where they're like, you get out of here. Get out of the computer lab. I feel like they definitely beat that into us. I'm closer to this current generation. I feel like of being one of those people who maybe I wasn't getting enough source material. And I remember getting reprimanded for it. So even though I was in all the bands doing all the shit, still like, yo, you need more constantly. And I agree with it. And. But to the Pinterest thing, we have a Pinterest rule in our studio where it's like, absolutely not. Yeah, sure, you can use Pinterest, but making your mood boards or making a Pinterest board and acting like that's like, cool, or even doing like all of your research purely on that, I am so utterly against. And I think it's not to get into the weeds, but it's because of algorithms, because we're all looking at the same thing. I saw a talk from Ragged Edge somewhat recently. He had a image of someone holding a smoothie in a clear cup into the sky with the blue background. And I'm saying that, and I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. I'm sure everyone listening to this has that on one of their Pinterest boards or one of their mood boards for some route somewhere. And I think it's. Yeah, there's something nice about the shared experience, but I think it's. If it's a shared experience in real life, IRL versus URL, then I find it interesting that is, is what's really resonating with culture, not what's resonating in our little heads and our little boxes on our little Pinterest boards. It's not enough. You gotta go deeper. Anyone can do that now, right? You have to go deeper. And I do think you have to live in the chaos. You have to breathe in the chaos. You have to go to the bookstore and something's gonna happen on the way there or the way home, right? Like maybe they'll find a new store along the way, I don't know, but I can't that you need to, I think, open your mind to the unknowing and experience different things and force yourself to experience those things.

[Radim Malinej]

We'll be back after a quick break.

[Podcast Host]

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[Mike Perry]

Versus typing it in.

[Radim Malinej]

So we know that you went to Philly to School. Let's sort of fast forward a little bit. Like how did you get to starting your own show just more than four years ago? Where did you find yourself for that? Time in the middle.

[Mike Perry]

Yeah, so the time in the middle. So after that, after NBC Sports, I went to this place in Philly called Quaker City Mercantile where I led Hendrix Gin along with a few other William Grant brands. And some Diageo work as well. We did that's the top line of it. Guinness while with Diageo which was really fun. New to world innovation stuff for Guinness Brewers Project Tophouse 13. It's the UK full cool. I believe it's still over there. It's not here anymore unfortunately. And then I left there, went to stranger and stranger for a brief period of time which got me to New York and then quickly left after that and went to JKR because it was a little, just too pack focused for me. I came from Hendrix which was like deep immersive brand world. We were 360 AOR to just pack, pack, pack every day, which I love. But really it's not really brand building, it's purely packaging in my opinion. So when I went to the jkr, I was hired to lead Budweiser US and global, so worked on Bud along with tons of other Anheuser Busch products. A lot of Diageo work. So we did some whiskeys, some new world innovation type stuff along with a few fast food, fast casual restaurants left there. Went to designbridge purely because my time was kind of up, grew and learned and wanted something different. But I purely left at the end of the day just because I knew they had Pabst Blue Ribbon as a client and I'm obsessed with old beer brands and I knew they had all these old trademarks for under the Pabst brand. And I was like I need to just get on a Pabst project. And so I went over there. They also had Diageo so it kind of made sense from a category shift. Why would they bring me on? So I led the beer and spirits there, worked on some inventory which carried over to today and then worked there for a while. I learned a lot. Learned how to grow a team and really foster a team. So much so that I had no one's ever fired or quit under me on that team, which was is incredible. I actually haven't thought about that for a very long time. But yeah, so retention rate was a hundred percent. And everyone when I left I made sure that everyone grew into their roles almost rapidly. So I when I left I had succession plan for all of them which think creative directors do this. I don't think many people think of it but I felt so strongly about the team where I had two DDs and kind of it split off and I left and made sure that they were creative director when immediately when I left. So kind of everyone elevated their roles and cause they were already doing it right. So I kind of purposely did that. It's important because I think you learn a lot at all these different places throughout your career. The ending was very much learning how to manage correctly which isn't taught most of the time. And I don't know if I was really taught it but I think you gotta learn the hard way and that was the bulk of it. I left, I went to TikTok, kind of bookended my career at In House. I started in inhouse at NBC Sports. I went agency side and then I finished at TikTok which was a completely different role. I was hired as a creative strategist. So purely like kind of big ideas, connecting the brands to the platform and creating work within that. This partly to burn some non competes as well, but so that I could actually start my agency. But it was really interesting to kind of step sideways and really dip my toe and like grind it out in like more strategy work and writing work which did really help. So kind of using every step that I talked about in like learning a different skill or upskilling or trying to do something different so that I had a better grasp on starting an agency. And so after that I started Tavern. We focus on food, bev, hospitality like I said and really we're deep within kind of the spirits, spirits and Bev alk space and hospitality and you know, small part of it is sports which is more the big brand activation type stuff.

[Radim Malinej]

I mean everything that you've described is like you've literally gone and trained yourself into becoming who you needed to become to open your agency. I mean it just sounds amazing because you even having a succession plans for your DD's learning to be a good leader and it's learning like no one teaches you that unless you really go and spend time on yourself. It's a school of hard knocks to actually understand like how all of this works. So this sounds quite, absolutely amazing like in the way how you put it all together and go now I'm ready. As you were talking through this, apart From NBC and TikTok obviously everything's about packaging, everything's about branding. Where did the love for products and brands and FMB and FMCGs come through.

[Mike Perry]

I don't know. And I've tried to think about this many times. I think it came with my second job where I was like, punk posters, punk flyers, album art of any kind is the coolest thing you can do. Or at least to me I thought was the coolest thing you could possibly do. And then that's not. We're not gonna no more. At least when we were starting. Are you gonna totally make a career out of that? You kind of have to do some other things. And then I really feel like, what do I want to work on all day? Is alcohol was the coolest second thing? And now I think it's the coolest thing. I do think like that kind of opened my eyes when I fumbled into working in alcohol where I was like, oh, this is sick. This is honestly, it's such a spirit specific spirits and beer are just such a different category than most other categories that we all work on. It's truly. There's like a wild west component to it where, like, it has to behave differently than most brands. I think spirits needs, no matter what the price point is to act more like a luxury brand or a fashion brand than any other brand in the world, than a CPG brand ultimately in the world. I think there's crossover and we can get into the details of that, but like, it needs to behave differently. And the brands I was working on and the brands that Quaker City Mercantile, the agency I joined, was on was Hendrix Gin. It was Sailor Jerry, which was like literally rock and roll. You know, we were throwing parties at south by Southwest when there was still music there. And they were cool, right? Like, and I'm blanking on the other ones, but every. Everyone like kind of had this subculture esque world. And I think a good spirit has to have that. A good brand has to have that in general. But alcohol really felt the coolest. And I don't know why I love chain restaurants, but I'm sure it's the same thing. Like chain restaurants is kind of like the other category. Passion. It's the experience. It's the hospitality of it all. It's the like something else. It's not just what the brand is. It's kind of what else the brand does that goes into it that make that I find most interesting. And maybe I'm just describing brand worlds here. I don't know, but it's. I don't know, it's like that extra

[Radim Malinej]

little bit you mentioned your parents were bartenders and that was the reason why you started Tavern Because I'm thinking in the world of agencies named after the adjective these days, you know, like forever and fruitful and something. You got tavern. I'm thinking. Okay, it's good now to know how we can join those dots because when you talk about spirits and when you talk about that world, it's like it's world building within each brand. Like there's so many layers. Even though an angle product is just one thing.

[Mike Perry]

What?

[Radim Malinej]

Everything that comes around the 360World is so intricate and especially if it's done right, it's so intricate and so interesting and so immersive that the bottle sometimes, even though it's the main product, becomes the almost the supporting actor to the hero of the campaign and all of the stuff. So obviously you said like you find yourself working on spirits, but how did you feel that change going from NBC and all of those roles into something which is so immersive and so intricate?

[Mike Perry]

I feel like it all kind of pairs, right? Like it was sports and it was entertainment. But why I love entertainment in general is you kind of have to do that just in a different medium ultimately, because it's the medium is it still is out of home, it's still campaigns, it's still somewhat traditional, average above the line advertising, but you just have so much more motion and literal airtime for it, which I think is cool. I actually love and wish that you could do that almost with other brands. So there are interstitials, there's many more because it's like the brand NBC Sports is promoting their own properties. So they're advertising actually more than any other brand who's paying for advertisements. And they're shorter, they're quicker. You know, there's six, 10 seconds, there's actual 30s and 60s, whatever, and it's just more often more volume and you're trying to communicate and you have time. It's like weird that like that gives you more time. I don't know if people would agree with this nowadays, but in 2012 that was definitely the case. Like you had more time to be building your world. One of the projects we worked on was Formula One. When it came to the US in 2012, no one gave a fuck about Formula One and like even knew what it was, right? Which is funny to think about now. So we had to create the look and feel and then really drag out that story and like overtly tell consumers like why they need to be interested in it, why this is so incredibly cool. And then you have to do it in a cool way because it's not just you need to break the NASCAR of it all, which was perception. So you need to build these worlds and just different platforms. So I think building out a brand world for sports started me off. And then I think once I got into spirits, I was like, oh, this is cool. This is more like real life in the mix of it. We were doing Hendrick's Sailor Jerry, we were doing parties. Hendrix would be like a flying cucumber at one point, where we had multiple parties throughout the country and we did UK parties and stuff. So, like, it was more immersive. It was bringing everything physically to life, which was cool. And, yeah, it's like, I don't know, they all kind of make sense. I will say to rationalize the food, Bev, hospitality and sports. Like, you were mentioning tavern and the name when I was fishing this idea, everyone's like, oh, sounds dusty and old. You're gonna get pigeonholed. It's gonna be a miserable. And I was like, no. Like, if you literally look at what taverns were in the United States, they serve drinks, they serve food, full meals. And then up upstairs was literally a place to stay. It was. It's like full. Everything was offered that we offer in a tavern. So it's a bit on the nose there. And sports, too. You know, you talk about sports or you're watching sports, you know, in the more contemporary ones with televisions. But it all goes together and there's the string between. All of it is hospitality. And that comes from, I think we're. I'm gonna land this plane somehow. That comes from my parents working in hospitality myself. I was a caddy, and then I'd also would bartend and serve in the country club and also at some hotels and bars and restaurants and stuff. And I was brought into that. And it's both service, food and beverage service mixed with hospitality that I think is the connective tissue here. And I know we're talking about chaos plus hospitality plus big brand. I think that's the magic cocktail there, right? Like, of how it comes together. Why, when you do it correctly, it works.

[Radim Malinej]

When you talk about hospitality, it makes me think of my friends who work in hospitality, and it's chaos.

[Mike Perry]

There you go.

[Radim Malinej]

I know he listens to my podcast. He literally says he used to work in what he's been working hospitality for 15 plus years. And then he had kids, and it was like, I was always ready for kids. You know, you awake in the middle of the night, you know, dealing with chaos, with. Dealing with rowdy people, little people, I think the chaos part of it, I think is a sort of through line for this conversation so far. Because when you think about branding these days, it's easily formulated. I mean, we have been making the brands, the visual systems, you know, making them sort of more refined. They've been spreading faster and further than ever before. So it became a bit more formulaic. So I think that chaos element was slightly removed from it because it's easy to replicate something somewhere with small team rather than needing a big team and creators, sources of assets, animations, that kind of stuff. But the timelessness is vanishing. You'd be in a constant cycle, as you agree with, in a constant cycle of seeing new rebrands or satisfying the shareholders price. Because, you know, is there movement? Is there noise? Is that. Are we making enough noise around a brand? Because when you talk about Sailor Jerry or Hendrix, there was no rush anywhere. Like when you had a good idea, when you sort of settled on what it is, when you created that, that stayed what it was and it had to make incremental moves. Whereas we have worlds with a lot of heritage and we've got new brands with zero heritage, zero stories. And it was just like, how do you mix those two together? Because you can easily spot the Gen Z fermented drinks or as a gut health drinks with the little stickers on them. And then next to you got something which is more of a heritage. So we go clash of the worlds. But ultimately we play in the same game, almost mostly the same customers. So in your quest for chasing the timelessness and no trends, where do you start in your challenging journey?

[Mike Perry]

Now, it's very much our philosophy, which is modern heritage and we work on a lot, mostly heritage brands. We do new to world definitely applies. We do startup brands as well, and that absolutely applies. It'll get very confusing if we talk about all of them. I think like within heritage brands is the realm because they've existed for so long, they may or may not be timeless already. Most likely they are not. And it's timeless. This is. It's that thing you can never get right. It's the point of the graph that keeps flattening out for some reason, but it's also something you have to constantly work and build towards. You keep going to not get it, but that's what gets you to that level. Right? It's not a thing. Timelessness doesn't just happen. JFK or Carolyn Bessette Kennedy are timeless icons, but they just didn't happen over time. Right. I'm trying to pick people not brands on purpose. Right. But there's an aesthetic. There is like a world in which like they pushed and that kind of came out. That might be a bad example because they're no longer with us, but they've kind of grounded themselves in that because of that push. And I think brands need to do that as well. Right. Nike is timeless because they keep innovating, because they keep changing and because they keep pushing themselves forward. If they were just another stuffy shoe brand, we wouldn't be saying, we wouldn't be calling out Nike, we'd be calling out Adidas or Puma or whoever, Vans, Converse, it doesn't matter. It is like trying to get to that point and you have to constantly build into it. So how do we do it? Our philosophy is modern heritage, no matter who you are. Heritage brand. We have a three step process which really boils down to discovery, strategy and design. We have cute names for it, but I'll save that for this. But not step one is really the discovery phase where you dig deep and you go into the archives. You have to go to physical places like we were talking before. We often go to historical societies or libraries and microfiche and we physically build archives. And I keep saying our secret, but the deep secret is not Pinterest, it's actually ebay. So you find stuff on ebay from heritage brands that are sold because a lot of it is just like bottom of the barrel trade material. Some weird clock that was made in the 70s has some mark on it that doesn't match any of the other marks that they were, you know, I've been using for the last 40 years or old matchbooks or whatever, you know, menus, things that individual restaurants underneath of a chain may have done in the 60s and 70s that are different. So you just have the, it's like the source material is almost never ending. And so we go and dig deep to find those things, the quirks, the difference. And you know, that's the fun stuff, that's the real designer nerd stuff, which influences us a lot. But you also now start to have a full visual archeological timeline of the brand and you can really see what was happening, visually speaking at least. And we talk about verbal and strategy later. But like you could see what was happening and once you start to see what's happening, things obviously pop out. First of all, we know, you know, if it's a 100-year-old brand, we know that maybe they were famous in the mid century and then died out during the 2000s and they need to be brought back or whatever. And so you can kind of understand their dips and their peaks on, you know, how they were performing in the marketplace. But then you overlay that on top of this visual timeline and see what was working, what was coming to the top then and also what makes sense for now. Most of the stuff from the past does not make sense now. This isn't an exercise of retro or novelty by any means. It's very much identifying what makes sense. And so we take all of those things and use them as the starting point and modernize them and craft them for the current consumer, but also the future consumer.

[Radim Malinej]

That's a really interesting process. And like you don't always get with the hundred year old brands and having time to actually spend time on ebay, digging through stuff. That's a real good secret, that's a real good insight. But you said about timeless a few times and it's not always, for example, people like me when you say timeless always comes to music, I feel like, what is the definition of timeless? It's something that sounded or made you feel something in a really positive way and then you replicated by every contact with it over and over again. And when you mentioned Nike, because there's always an element of something that really worked and you see it, it was like, that still makes a connection. There's still something what they did, if it was a luck, if it was a strategy, if it was just a feeling, like it just works. And with music, like you listen to a track, you're like, yep, still sounds great, still makes me feel something. And it's just like, how do you replicate that? Because those are moments that are almost physical. Obviously you come to physical contact with something and you have that physical reaction. And in that sort of treadmill of brands, rebrands, retooling, like new launches, new campaigns, the world is much busy and much more noisy. Like, how do you make that moment? Because it'd be really interesting to see how much of the things that we create now will become timeless. Right?

[Mike Perry]

Definitely. And I like the music analogy. I started with, I don't know, American icons, which probably the worst example of timelessness. But like fashion music. Give me a musical track that you find timeless.

[Radim Malinej]

Oh, I just listened to Cowgirl by Underworld the other day. It's got that famous everything line and it just. It's from 2000. No, it's from like 91 and 92. And you can think of like how some of the things really sound of its time. I had a big discussion before purva Baksy about 1995, when they started Dixon Baksy. It was like in 1995, the music that came out was most amazing. And the albums that did something different, but rooted in heritage and sort of more traditional sounds or sampling something that was more jazz based or film scores survived, kind of stayed on and became timeless albums. Whereas some people who tried like the gimmicky, like the new machines or whatever, like the drums just sounded just a little bit of his time, they didn't really last. They didn't withstand it to the test of time, and they sound like 1994. Whereas some of the albums absolutely survived. And it's hard to say, like how you put your life and heart and soul into something like this, but that

[Mike Perry]

shines through the work definitely. And I think there's a lot there. But I love the fact that you said it was 2000 and then actually it was 1991. I think that proves the timeless. Like you just rationalize your timelessness argument that I can't even pinpoint it. It's always been there. That proves that a bit of time worth this. And then you were saying in 1994 with your cheesy drum machines and whatever. That's because the drum machine was trendy at the time, right? That was the trendy thing. That was what everyone was doing. And I think that falls into like the trend category. And it sticks to an aesthetic of a time period because that's what everyone's doing. And it's not because you're trying to make really great music. And really great music is built upon the past. Everything is built upon the past, whether we like it or not. We just have to make sure that we ditch the wrong parts of the past, obviously. But it goes to a principle where I love this and I forget who came up with it. Some architect in the mid century, I'm pretty sure. But it's called the Maya Principle. It's the most advanced yet acceptable. That's how he applied it to architecture and building commercial buildings for people or something. I think you can apply it to anything. Both music, branding, any creative endeavor where we're not trying to reinvent the wheel and throw the baby out with the bathwater. We're trying to take all of the good parts that everyone is familiar with collectively and then tweak them to where they still can be on board, but they're not gonna be. So, oh, this is left, completely left field. And I think that's where. That's the starting point of where you can really Create timelessness and timeless brands or even music. So music, for instance, right? Like, we can inch it up with some Midis or synthesizers or whatever. And if it was 1994. But it's when we go full bore into it, we're only using that and we're saying, this is our whole thing. It's not acceptable anymore. Right. It's too advanced. And I think balancing that tension of which is modern heritage, literally, it's like balancing the tension between heritage and modernity. You always need to. You need to be in conflict with that to get there. And I think that when you have that and there is tension, that should equal timelessness if done correctly, repeatedly, time and time again and protected. But that's the hard part, is the repetition of the tension.

[Radim Malinej]

It can paralyze you. Like when you think about creating something that's timeless, it becomes only timeless when it's proved it's time. It actually. It works. And whilst you were talking, I had to actually have to Google the release year. It was actually 1994, when that album came out. But I think it's all about putting the right effort into what you do. I think it's just that element, because so many things from longer ago still is absolutely amazing. Some of the music has come out, you know, 50, 60 years ago. Crikey. Now, you know, like, it still sounds good. Because it's about the idea, it's about the execution, is about people believing what they do. And the Maya principle he talks about was actually Raymond Louis. He was an industrial designer. Yeah. Because if someone is screaming or not screaming at their speakers, going, you know What? It was 1994 and it was Raymond lobby. We covered both now. But I like that you use the word tension. I like that your modern heritage is about tension. And tension is a strong word that makes the process sound quite serious, quite important. How do you deal with tension? How do you apply it? How do you invent it? And how do you keep it on

[Mike Perry]

when you say it? And when you're relaying it back to me in very calm, very serious voice, it gives me anxiety just thinking about it, which I think is good. It's like that nervous energy when you're like, have a project and you're like, I don't know. God, we're gonna do it. It's gonna be sick. But I don't know what the fucking answer is. We gotta get into it. It's that it should be that all of the time. Which sucks, right? Can't just do the project. That's it. Move on, we did a good job. It'll go sell, it'll be cool. Everyone's gonna love us in 10 years. We're timeless. No, this is all a grind, which I think took me a long time in design and branding and strategy, I suppose, to. To realize all of these things are never ending pursuits just because the project ends where we're going to have to apply to someone else and we're going to have to push. And I think what I like to do with our clients is we're quite young still, but like, we bring on our clients and we don't want them to leave. I believe in the brand guardianship approach to branding to clients. You want them to stay for decades. That's where the work doesn't happen in quarters, even though Wall street wants it to. Right? Yeah, it doesn't. It does take time. Branding takes time. Even though there's a rebrand every two years on most brands, which drives me crazy. It's a whole different podcast, probably, but it takes a lot of time to implement these things, to do it correctly, to really understand what's resonating. The tension is the litmus test, I suppose. Right. It should be happening all the time. And as you're developing new and pushing assets or campaigns or platform strategies, that you're kind of always making sure that tension is there and that you are forcing it. And I think that kind of, you know, litmus test, your barometer on. Is it working? It ain't easy. It's never over.

[Radim Malinej]

Yeah, it's not meant to be easy. That's the thing. Because when you said tension, it felt heavy on this side. I was like, yeah, you can have a perceived tension from a client side going, this needs to be something because it comes from some sort of premeditated, preformed or expectations. Some people think that's whatever they create and have to be. Absolutely. Most amazing thing. And then you get people with open mind. And I was like, okay, well, we see. Let's see what we can find out. But the tension always is like, if you give a shit about what you create, there will be tension because you will hold yourself to high standards to make sure that happens. So the T word is loaded, but it's necessary.

[Mike Perry]

Yes. And this is maybe a cliche, but we as designers and as creative agencies are literally on these brands most of the time, far longer than the brand managers. They kind of. They'll shift off one to three years. Three years is kind of a lot even. They shift off and they transition to brands and that's just How a lot of these brands, at least my entire branding experience has been. And I, again, maybe it's the cliche, but we are involved a lot more and we should care a lot more and we should be. We have to be the guardians because no one else is. The umbrella company that's holding all of these brands is not the guardian. In the same way, they want delivery, quarter delivery, fair enough. And the marketers want quarter to maybe a little bit longer because they're going to be on the brand, they want to do something, I want to make a name for themselves and they want to put their thumbprint on it. Again, all fair enough. I agree that they should be doing that. And us designers want all the same things, plus our full creative expression on it, plus we're gonna be on here, hopefully the relationship goes well, long after you all and the brand's gonna go on long after all of us, hopefully, if we all do our jobs correctly. And so we gotta keep that into consideration too. So. And that's where like that the heaviness, it's a never ending grind. Guardianship of it all needs to come. We need to be protecting brands as well. So we both need to be the innovators and the protectors.

[Radim Malinej]

I suppose this is something really important. You said as people that are working on a brand, they just shift off within a couple of years. And maybe that's part of the reason why we have so many rebrands, so many refreshes, because yeah, people show up, it's like, hey, this is what I think we should do. When you think about it, it's almost like a short term thinking, like politics. You got like people in charge for like four years, they fuck it all up. Then somebody else comes up and they try to fix it and then, and it's just, it's a short term thinking on a long term project. Sometimes when you scale it up, you know, humanity, society, and then you scale it back to brands. I didn't think about it, even though I've had that experience with my studio on situations where you get to the end and somebody new steps in. No, no, not yet. Let's change all of it.

[Podcast Host]

Why?

[Radim Malinej]

You've been here for five minutes. How do you keep that creative endurance and the guardianship and check that if you get new people on the other side that you almost stop them from making mistakes, changing things or is that input valuable at any time?

[Mike Perry]

The input is always valuable. I'm going to contradict myself, but there is a constant need to evolve is good. So having new Leadership shift onto a brand like this is good in theory because we do want to continually push the brand. The Nike example. You need to modernize consistently and by doing so, you need to be innovating and doing different things or doing things better or changing how you go. So I'm not Ehrenberg Bass here saying, this is your asset. Don't do anything by your asset and call me in 40 years. That's wrong. That's been disproven more recently. I do still believe in equities and key brand assets. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying do that. Short answer is I think it's good and I think it's healthy. But we as the guardians need to be very clear in developing the work. Let's say the project is a brand manager, number one, hires us, we rebrand them. Two years later, they shift off the brand. Someone comes on and says, we're going to rebrand again. I think it's really important to do that rebrand work the first time. You do it really well and make sure that it is set up for success. And if you are good at branding, you will create a brand that is impenetrable, because that's the goal. That doesn't need to be rebranded in two years. Because if you rebranded something that needs to be retooled in two years, that's a trendy brand. You follow trends, you stuck to the time period, it didn't work. If you did it correctly, it should last a minimum of five years. It really should last a lot longer than that, in my opinion. But I'm talking in the modern sense. And so if you do that, then everything else is iterative upon that platform you made. So in my opinion, why the hell are we just going to keep rebranding this beer brand over and over again every two years? Why can't we brand it once? Make a really great brand platform for it that is strong, that gives us room to play everywhere else, to expand the brand world and expand it from a brand world into a universe. That should be the goal with everyone who comes on. So when the new person comes on in two years, they say, great, this brand is ripping. It is working. There's nothing to change from a equity standpoint. We just need to build upon our equities. Nike Dunks. Nike Dunks was red, black and white because it was after Jordan or whatever. And Nike Dunks are now into skateboarding, right into drops, into everything. And this is old news now. I sound like an old man now talking about Nike dunks it expand beyond itself because it was good from the start. It had the assets, it had the brand, it knew exactly who it was. So the agency, the designers need to be the ones keeping the brand in check while still going wide. And again that's, I guess that's another point of tension. You need to be strict to your brand and your brand guidelines that you created. But at the same time you have to have room to play and go wide. So you gotta go get to go really wide and ex and do wild things within that brand. But then make sure that it's still tight so that you're not losing the plot. That's tough. That is really where brand guardianship from a design creative agency standpoint comes is really, I think the gold standard, if you get that right.

[Radim Malinej]

I love what you said about brand world becomes the universe. That beautifully summed up what the goal is. Yeah, I mean it just becomes the universe. You know that you can almost reach that timelessness. And actually thinking about our T words today, we got tension, we got timeless. Then you used another T word which was trends and you believe that good design doesn't just survive trend cycles, it transcends them. Trends and transcending, where do trends come from? Why do they exist and why do even trend? I mean that's a big question. Why does trend become a trend? Is it because too many people find it appealing? It's a big question to ask. Why do trends work for a while, I don't know.

[Mike Perry]

But they are short lived, right? Like just inherently a trend is by definition does not last. It is only a short period of time. And I think in our current culture those trends are burning brighter and faster as we go because of the Internet and social and whatever. I don't know why a trend exists, but I know that it's not something you should be chasing. As much as you want to look, in our own day to day lives, I'm sure we still do that. There is like, I don't know, the trendy new coat or jacket that you really want, but you know deep down you're gonna have to buy a new one next year because you don't wanna be caught dead in that. We inherently as humans know what a trend is, but they are so alluring that we convince ourselves that we need them, that we are going to follow them. And I think it's the same for branding. But the easiest way I have a one pager that we take clients through and I coach new hires and stuff on which is branded the heart. So it's branded. It says brand at the heart. And we have all of the projects we've worked on and all different types of outputs. That output can be branding, that output can be packaging, it can be experiential. It could be Hendricks gin flying cucumber activation or a giant pigeon that we floated down the Hudson river, which we literally did for New York City Football Club. But it doesn't matter. All of these outputs don't matter. They are purely outputs. And they're outputs that disrupt the brand within culture. If you put the brand at the heart of it, nothing you do is incorrect because you're staying true to the brand. Labubu. I'm just picking a random ass trend. It's no longer a trend. Labubu. Would it make sense for Sizzler to create a cheese toast? Labubu. That's really cool. I've connected it to the brand. Who doesn't want a plush piece of toast? I'm sure that that would disrupt quite a few weird Internet collectibles communities that's building upon what the brand is at the heart of things. The brand is a family steakhouse. Right. Hospitality, good food, accessible prices for families. Families are number one, is the case. So by doing that, yeah, that'll be a cool little giveaway. It's just a flash in the pan type thing. It's just a trendy little thing that you would do. You would hope to trade for clout or awareness or whatever. It's just dumb. It just is a flash in the pan. It's alluring. I'm saying this trying to convince myself that's a cool idea because it kind of is. That would be kind of sick and weird looking, right? But it doesn't make sense. It's gonna be too much time, effort for something to be also most likely dead. Going back to the trend cycles are faster and the boob is already dead for months now. And so even being able to put that into action, you're already late to the game. So now you're focusing all of your energy as a brand to do something that is perceived at the moment as trendy, but by the time it comes out and it'd be old news, which is, you know, double paint. Not only did you do that silly thing when everyone was doing that silly thing, you did that silly thing when everyone was not doing it, you're late to the party, which makes you look even worse and deteriorates your brand even further.

[Radim Malinej]

Whilst you were talking, I was thinking about trends. It's like they grow by exposure and they get killed by exposure. Literally, just like, they just go way too high up and then they die. But I had a quote the other day and it was about pop songs and it said, all you need is three chords and a truth. That's what you need. I mean, I used to call it three chord wonder, but someone. I mean, it was only the other day when I had a quote. It was like, you need three chords and a truth. And that truth part was what makes most sense to me. Because what you describe and what you do with your work and how you do it, you need zero trends and the truth. You need three things off eBay and the truth. And kind of find out, like, how do you connect those together? Because the things that survived, survive for the right reason because they didn't jump up against too much and too high from the trend or survived. And I think the way you're describing it makes perfect sense that you can go. You find that longevity?

[Mike Perry]

Yeah, I think you need three equities in a truth. Maybe.

[Radim Malinej]

Maybe that's what it is. Yeah, that's maybe what it is. So your work is varied. Obviously you coming from the world of spirits, but you know, as you said, you've been floating an inflatable pigeon on the river. And I'm never one to ask people for like, oh, how do you see your future? Or what you're doing next? Because you could ask people 15 years ago, 20 years ago, like, where do you see yourself in 10 years time? Now we've been talking about when you see yourself in 10 months time. You know, I think it's just everything changes so fast. But with your view on brands and with the view, you know, with your way of how you think about stuff, how you create stuff, how excited and how apprehensive are you about what's coming next? Because we're going to get more of the same. It's going to be a lot of work to actually make a meaningful change. In the world of branding that doesn't seem as formulaic. Is it something that people need to embrace or does it come from good strategy that people look to the past or is looking to the past? Not always for every brand looking to

[Mike Perry]

our past, I think the past informs the future. So I think for everything in anyone in human history and culture, I think it is beneficial you learn from your past. It should inform your future. Good, better or indifferent. Like it shouldn't inform how you then move forward. Because the goal is moving forward. Movement, ultimately, growth is always our goal. I'm excited by it. I honestly, I feel like in the last you talked to me two months ago, I'd be like, it's gonna be a grind, it's gonna be an uphill battle. I'm weirdly optimistic in the last few weeks and there is nothing, there's no data points and no proof of this optimism. But I feel in my bones that with AI, with social, with Internet and the getting back to Analog slightly, I understand that's a trend as well. I'm not talking about the trend of back to Analog. I truly believe that people are wanting that also this post Covid world people are wanting more of back to what things used to be, which felt more real and more human. I think it's probably going to take longer than I'm hoping, but I think we're going to get back there as a culture just naturally and I think technology is going to push us back there, which makes me massively optimistic on what we can do because that then opens up the act the world of honestly activations of brands coming to life. I wrote an article somewhat recently of IRL versus not URL. And that's how you build a brand and I believe it. That's how you build friendships. Yes. We were talking earlier before on the call, like I did build a friendship with a designer on Instagram, like we all do, but like that turned into a real life friendship. That's the goal. Right? Use the Internet to get to the real world or to expand your real world. Right. And I'm just like pining on the why you use the Internet now. But I'm optimistic we will get back to IRL more and more often, which will make brands more exciting and better purely because there's more touch points in which you can develop. And I think we've been in this stagnant phase of 10 to 15 years of branding that's just strip it all out, make it all clean. I know millennial branding's well over, but it's still this. It's this sterile millennial branding, Ehrenberg Bass stodgy ass way of doing branding. Then it's not the case anymore. And that's why I'm excited about every project we're working on. That's why we can do big ass pigeons and also store remodels, but still do fancy old booze. Right. Like it doesn't matter. And that's what I think is really cool. So I'm wildly optimistic, but really only in the last couple weeks.

[Radim Malinej]

I'm glad I found you in a wildly optimistic phase because when you said I'm optimistic but I don't know why and I was like, well you just killed my question. I thought of like why are you optimistic? But then you beautifully articulated why it all happens. Because I'm in agreement. I think what's happened through Covid and was the like the more tools, more apps. I mean everyone was on Clubhouse in, during COVID and all of that stuff, it just goes in waves, you know, it oscillates, it goes up and it goes down. I think what was magic in 15 years ago of having events to go to all the time gallery openings, like it was buzzing and a movement and connection and obviously have you made it convenient? But convenience is a lie because just because it's convenient it doesn't mean that it's actually getting us anywhere further. So the way you articulated was beautiful because I can feel that you're optimistic and as I'm excited where it's all going. So Mike, thanks for coming to chat to me today. It's been really good because I said I can feel your passion for what you do and I'm excited what's going to happen next. So yeah, thank you.

[Mike Perry]

Me too. Thank you so much.

[Podcast Host]

Thank you for listening to this episode of Daring Creativity Podcast. I'd love to know your thoughts, questions and suggestions, so please get in touch via the email in the show notes or social channels. This episode was produced and presented by me, Radim Malinage. The audio production was done by Neil Mackay from 7 Million Banks podcast. Thank you and I hope to see

[Radim Malinej]

you on the next episode.

[Podcast Host]

If you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity, you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity, creative business, branding and graphic design. Every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle, including an ebook and and audiobook to make the content accessible wherever you are and whatever you do. To get 10% of your order, visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the Code podcast. Have a look around and start living daringly.