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- [00:00]
Fergus O'Carroll
Welcome to OnStrategy Showcase. I'm Fergus O'Carroll in Chicago. Today's show is part of our live tour series sponsored by our friends at Tracksuit, Wark and the Effie's. We started this tour in Dublin, Today's show was recorded in London and we just finished a live show recording this past week in New York City at Wyden and Kennedy. Next up is Los Angeles on November 7th at TBWA Chiat offices. Tickets go on sale this week, the week of October 21st under the Live Tour tab on our website at onstrategyshowcase.com being that it is Los Angeles, the theme is brands and entertainment and we've got a great lineup that we'll be talking about this coming week. Be sure to follow me on LinkedIn and you can catch up on all of the posts. Next city in the tour will be Chicago, followed by Toronto and hopefully Austin by the end of the year year. And then early in the new year we plan on Sydney and Singapore to kick off the year. So super excited about that. Now here's a clip from today's Live from London episode.
- [01:17]
Lucy Jameson
I'm very optimistic about it in the sense that I think advertising may have an issue, but brands don't. And I think if we stop thinking endlessly about advertising and start thinking about brands, then you're looking at all the different places, all the different touch points. So whether it is design, whether it's experiential, I mean the work we do on British Airways impacts stuff like what goes on the in flight entertainment system, the menus. We've done projects with them, looking at the lounges, looking at what does this look like from a kind of brand perspective. Because what's really fascinating is there are incredible architecture firms or brilliant people doing really innovative seats for planes, but they will give you the same answer if you're British Airways or Virgin or Emirates or whoever. And we sit at that brilliant intersection of being able to go, yeah, okay, you know how to get a trolley from A to B and what the logistics might need to be. But have you thought about what this particular brand, the experience, the feeling we want to create with those things and that's where we're really great.
- [02:39]
Fergus O'Carroll
That's Lucy Jameson, a founder at Uncommon. She's joined by Martin Beverly, chief strategy officer at Adam and Eve ddb, and Martin Weigel, chief strategy officer at AMV bbdo. We're going to hear about how having a planner at the top table in agencies made London the hot planning community it became and how that's lacking in the us. We're also going to hear about how advertising might have an issue, but brands don't, and about the opportunity that exists in the unloved surface areas of brands. We're also going to hear about the way planning needs to steer out of AI's lane and about the people who professionally inspired each of these three great planning talents. This was recorded in front of a live audience at OnCommons offices in London. I hope you enjoy it. And because we certainly did Enjoy.
- [03:37]
I'm Fergus O'Carroll in London.
- [03:45]
I wanted this to sort of be.
- [03:47]
A reflection on great work in the uk, because an awful lot of great work comes out of here. But I didn't want you guys to only just talk about your own or feel an obligation to talk about your own work. So what we said was, we'll ask these guys to give us examples of great British work that they did not do. And they can't reference each other's agencies in doing that. Okay, so we want to talk about what you guys are admiring. You think has been really good recently. And the most important thing is why.
- [04:25]
Martin Beverly
Yeah. So, I mean, I immediately thought maybe I need to pick some sort of Discord thread or an AI generated TikTok or something that made it look like I was ahead of the curve. But then I just thought, actually, which advertising campaign do I just kind of love? And it's the Uber work from Mother. And so there's a few people from Mother here, so hopefully be popular with the crowd. So I love a couple of those campaigns for a few reasons. So I'm talking about Uber trains and also the one with Robert De Niro and the guy out of sex education.
- [04:58]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah.
- [05:01]
Martin Beverly
They're so strategically simple. I love the fact that they've gone, it's Uber. But trains, it's so simple. And I love the fact that probably the panels thought, you know what, that's it. And we'll get out the way and we'll let the creatives entertain with that as a proposition. And it's really entertaining work. I think it's like Emmy nominated as a commercial. You watch it and you smile and you laugh and you think, yeah, this is fun. It's a bit of showmanship. And also I think it does this thing where it's kind of a lot of the best work does this. It's sort of familiar, but fresh. So it's the tropes of getting an Uber that we might all recognise. But trains. Hi, pick up from Mark.
- [05:44]
Lucy Jameson
Going to Portsmouth.
- [05:47]
Martin Beverly
This is going To Portsmouth. Yeah, you can drop me anywhere near the station. Well, drop you at the station.
- [05:55]
Fergus O'Carroll
Perfect.
- [05:56]
Martin Beverly
Just one more coming and then we're ready to go.
- [05:58]
Martin Weigel
All right.
- [06:02]
Lucy Jameson
Ready Trains now on Uber.
- [06:08]
Fergus O'Carroll
So, Lucy, how about you?
- [06:11]
Lucy Jameson
I was going to choose channel four, actually, so there's lots of the stuff that they've done I absolutely love. One of the things I think was great was their quite recent rebrand, so what we call idents. But the show kind of the channel's identity and they've done that beautifully for years. But I thought the way they redid it this time felt very populist, felt really interesting, really beautiful. Just made me want to watch it and look at it and kind of admire its artfulness.
- [06:54]
Unknown
Once a man, twice a boy in this life you'll be. I used to look up to my dad now he looks up to me. Roberto Baggio, Golazio. Cross my heart and dash the key Durdle door Channel four. We're all mates from here on in with Deansgate, Queen's Gate, Dundee, Kate, the Village Fate, Scratch the pattern off the plate and everything in between.
- [07:20]
Lucy Jameson
But I love the fact that, you know that it's those quite unloved surface areas of a brand that actually injecting something beautiful into those, because in most channels it's just a kind of quite a boring thing. And theirs are just so crafted that makes you think, oh, wow, Everything they must do must be as crafted as that.
- [07:43]
Fergus O'Carroll
So, Mr. Weigel, how about for you? What do you. What do you respect or admire?
- [07:48]
Martin Weigel
The work that I actually remember noticing, which is a rare occurrence, was the work for Yorkshire Tea. It's Ibiza Anthem.
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Unknown
Get up flat to catch Plans to hatch Clean my teeth yeah, we're going. I beat there. Seven days a holiday with all the amigos Only problem, I can only pack 10 kilos. Some crew cream. Check. Song Hat, check. 10 box of Yorkshire tea Let's get lightly caffeinated.
- [08:23]
Martin Weigel
And what I loved about it, I can't intellectualize it or strategize about it. God knows what the insight was, but it seemed to sort of mainline an aspect of, I think, English. English culture reveled in its populism, the acceptable version of that word, so married it with sort of subversiveness. Lightly caffeinated. So borrowing from the tropes of music videos and all the rest of it, it felt like it was birthed in popular culture, not in an agency's creative department, but it felt like it was having a sounds potential. It felt like it was having a dialogue with Its audience. And because it was treating its audience as knowing accomplices in it, treating them as, gasp. Intelligence, which is a rarity.
- [09:20]
Martin Beverly
I did actually ask Loz Horner about it because the proper campaign is where that's been running for years. And it's really simple, it's really effective. They've gone from three to number one in the market. And I said, but that's a bit different. And he just said, well, we just found this lovely thing about people packing tea and going on holiday with it. We thought, why not have a appeal to that younger audience? I think it was just. They were trying to be.
- [09:47]
Martin Weigel
Yeah, yeah, totally breaks off, see what happens.
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Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah, that's cool. Very cool. So, you know, one of the things coming here, coming here from the us, we sort of. I think we sort of fetishize English planners. And for. For me, when I do episodes that are US based, the odds are that I get an English planner coming on the show to talk about the work they're doing in the us. So the question is, why? Why do you think English planners are playing such a critical leadership role internationally? Do you have a sense of that?
- [10:23]
Martin Beverly
I can have a go.
- [10:25]
Fergus O'Carroll
Give me a shot.
- [10:27]
Martin Beverly
I think.
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Fergus O'Carroll
I mean, we're in the home of planning.
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Martin Beverly
Yeah, exactly. It starts with the fact that London was the home of planning, Stephen King and Stanley Pollitt, and I'm lucky enough to work at 12 Bishops Bridge Road, as Lucy did, and you feel the sort of history in the building and that was kind of one of the places that planning started. We also have the APG and the IPA that are out of London and do a great job of kind of training planners and making sure everyone's really aware of the latest papers and research and ways of doing things. And also, I think when you look at the most successful startups over the last few decades out of the uk, they often have a planner at the top table. So there was John Bartle at bbh, there was MT Rainey at Rainy Kelly, there was David Golding at Adam and Eve, there was Lucy at Uncommon. She's done all right. When we went up to the terrace, I did say, why did you leave Gray? So I think there's that kind of history of the planners being there at the top table. I don't know if that is the case in the States. I think of some of the most famous brand kind of agency brands in the States and they don't necessarily have a planner in the. In the name Wyman Kennedy, for example, two creatives. So maybe there's a Little bit of just that history and that heritage that has kind of continues.
- [11:48]
Fergus O'Carroll
What do you think, Lucy?
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Lucy Jameson
I mean, I think similarly, some of the same stuff, some of it was kind of first mover advantage. And the story always goes that, you know, part of the reason that BNP could afford planning was that it was in Paddington, which at the time was a dump. So the lower rent meant that they could afford to hire strategists.
- [12:13]
Martin Beverly
Slightly better now, Slightly better. But my planners were looking at this going, oh, this is nice.
- [12:20]
Lucy Jameson
So I think there's definitely a heritage, but I also think there's a bit of a Goldilocks thing in London in the sense that it is a small enough city that you kind of actually get to come and meet each other and hang out, but it's big enough to have a proper community. So when you go around the world to, I don't know, other markets where I've done training in, they're so small, some of the local markets that they just never get a critical mass. And by comparison with the us, where it's so spread around in different cities and different places, whereas it's, I hate to say it is pretty much all in London. Yes, there are some other agencies outside London, but the planning community is very, very strongly based here. There's one other. Two other things you probably should add to this as well. One, I think there were a lot of the very first strategists in the U.S. so you've got people like lovely John Steele as well, who wrote some of the first books and Goodbye's was a great example and they did go on a phenomenal new business, you know, Blitz, when he joined that agency. So I do think they looked at it and went, oh, okay, these guys can help us open up a conversation that we're not having.
- [13:44]
Fergus O'Carroll
I mean, there's no doubt that British planners, I think, have a different perspective on American culture. And I think for us, maybe we.
- [13:50]
Don'T see that as clearly as somebody.
- [13:53]
Coming in from the outside. So I don't know. Martin, what do you think about that?
- [13:57]
Martin Weigel
What makes me slightly anxious is sort of encouraging some sort of sense of British exceptionalism. But at the time there was a sense of, you know, whether it's the culture, the educational system, the legacy gave the British flander an advantage because after all, it was still relatively nascent back then. So a 50 year advantage is a pretty bad start that's hard to make up. And I think there was a time when being a British planner out of the uk, did you give you the Pick of some of the best jobs, particularly on global businesses around the world. I tell you, that's not the case now. It used to be a easy passport. It was a sort of intellectual colonialism.
- [14:52]
Lucy Jameson
And it's an interesting thing that I think there's the marketing academics, which has nothing to do with us, really. But you've got the Mark Ritsons and the same is true in Australia. You know, obviously you've got Ehrenberg, Bass and all those guys. There doesn't seem to be the same academics who study marketing in the U.S. absolutely true.
- [15:15]
Martin Weigel
Yeah.
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Lucy Jameson
So that I don't understand. But that is definitely a thing that we have more of them here and in Australia.
- [15:22]
Fergus O'Carroll
One of the last point on this I wanted to make was, I think what I always see in British planners that I see in great planners elsewhere too, is this willingness to dwell on the simple things. The idea that you guys can articulate so well these everyday moments that people have in their lives. I think there's a tendency in not so good planners to skip over a lot of that. But I love to listen to great planners talk about the depth of the personal experience, that consumer experience. And does that come from the training? I'm not sure. Does it come from better understanding human behavior?
- [16:05]
Lucy Jameson
When I started, I did 92 groups in my first year, and I probably knew everything there was to know about British attitudes to meat during the Meat and Livestock Commission, during mad cow disease, because that was my client. And we learned all of that stuff. So, you know, it was a running joke. I was a posh Southerner who'd been to Oxford, and the first thing BNP did was to send me to every focus group in the north of England.
- [16:37]
Martin Beverly
For a year, which nobody does anymore. Nobody does.
- [16:41]
Fergus O'Carroll
People don't. We've talked about that in the show, Martin. People aren't getting exposed. Today's planners are not getting exposed to real people. It's this sort of reports are becoming proxies for understanding. And you brought to me in the show because that word that we. I think most of us hate, insight. You brought the term understanding to me and I was like, you know, that's so clear and so obvious. It's what you're bringing is understanding. But you can't get understanding from a report.
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Martin Beverly
Yeah, yeah. So I am lucky enough to talk to Sarah Carter, Adam, quite a lot. And she will talk about BNP back in the day. And every week they went to people's homes and they showed them the work. And that was how it developed with John Webster. And it Was loose and it was chatty and it was in people's homes and on their sofas and with a cup of tea. Yeah. And so they're spending hundreds, thousands of hours just with real people. And that has got smaller over time. When I started at amd, I did used to run more groups and there was more ethnographic research. And it's really important to keep doing that. I think a lot of our best campaigns have come from that. When we look back is that when we went and saw something that we wouldn't otherwise have seen or felt something that we might not otherwise have felt by going and doing it for real. So I think your friend Rob Campbell talks about the jungle, not the zoo, which I quite like. So actually out there in the real world, sort of feeling everything and not behind the glass with the box of celebrations.
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Lucy Jameson
I do think there are really, you know, obvious ways out of the bubble.
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Martin Beverly
Yeah.
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Lucy Jameson
Which is just kind of wandering around with your eyes and ears open and having those informal conversations, you know, which. Which don't necessarily take that long. But actually it is, you know, just have a chat with some real people.
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Fergus O'Carroll
And is it. Is it easy to sell that anecdotal feedback to a client? Is there a skepticism to it or.
- [18:46]
Lucy Jameson
No, No, I don't. I mean, yeah, of course you're going to pair it with. I've done some social listening and I've got some data, and I've done all of that, too. But then to add to it, to be able to use somebody's actual words, I mean, it's like a great playwright writing dialogue, you know, the actual words that sound like they have a ring of truth about them.
- [19:11]
Fergus O'Carroll
And Martin, you started off doing primary, right?
- [19:14]
Martin Weigel
I did five years of quality, so I did about like 90,000. And I'm grateful because that opportunity is that for many planners, is now closed on this.
- [19:26]
Martin Beverly
One thing I'd say is that it doesn't take that much time or money to go and do that real world research.
- [19:32]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah.
- [19:33]
Martin Beverly
So if everyone in this room decided, we're going to go and do something next week, we're going to go and do some field work, it will just open your eyes to things and we should bring some of that back.
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Martin Weigel
Your agency could submit its work for one less award category and use that to get closer to reality. I bet you probably win more awards are following you because the work would be better.
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Fergus O'Carroll
And the reality is that it takes two or three hours of field work done. And even in a compressed timeline, you can make time for that.
- [20:04]
I think we just have to believe in it.
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I don't think we believe in it anymore.
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We'll be right back. We're thrilled to be supported by the Effie's. For over 55 years, Effie has been the global authority on marketing effectiveness. They lead the way with the largest, most prestigious marketing effectiveness awards across 125 markets worldwide. And their coveted EFFIE index ranks the most effective brands, marketers and agencies globally. But EFFIE is more than awards. They're dedicated to helping all marketers, from seasoned CMOs to those just getting started, understand what makes marketing effective by equipping them with insights, tools and inspiration they need to succeed. Learn more@effie.org that's e f-fie.org this series is brought to you by Tracksuit, a beautiful, affordable and always on brand tracking tool that helps you answer the question is what we're doing working? A not so secret fact is that companies pay 100,000 or more for brand tracking, which is out of the question for modern brands whose budgets are under pressure. Tracksuit has been built by marketers for marketers and makes brand tracking 10 times easier and 10 times more affordable. Their research experts do the heavy lifting by using best in class practices to craft the questions and get your survey live. Tracksuit surveys thousands of people each week from panels of millions around the world to give you full visibility of your brand health in 30 days. With insights updated for your brand daily, Tracksuit is fast becoming the common language for marketers and agencies to measure, understand and communicate the value of brand building. Check them out@gotracksuit.com that's gotracksuit.com now back to the show.
- [22:01]
So let's talk about your ambitions for your planning groups. I know Toby is running your planning group here now, Toby Duncan. And so what do you guys think.
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About where is Toby?
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Martin Beverly
Here is he's hiding, he's run away. I don't know, he doesn't want to do it anymore. He's out.
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Fergus O'Carroll
But let's talk about the ambitions for planning. Where do you see the planning function going? Does it expand out from where it currently is or does it need to just do what it does? Better me to go.
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Lucy Jameson
Go. We've all got a point of view on that.
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Martin Beverly
So I used to have one of my first bosses was this just brilliant lunatic who had, he'd worked on orange in the 90s and reinvented it when it was like the amazing, the telecom company, like the future's bright, future's orange. And he used to talk about the Fact that the best brands had both their head in the clouds and their feet on the ground. And it always stuck with me. And I think it would be quite good for planners to think about that. So by head in the clouds, we've got to be more imaginative, we've got to be more inventive, we've got to be more expansive, we've got to have more influence. And the things that we work on can be as big as we want them to be. They don't have to be small. We can imagine things which are much bigger and work through entire organizations or have an impact on something much bigger than the category. I think the business model that we often have sometimes gets in the way, but we should be more imaginative and more expansive and then at the same time have feet on the ground, which is.
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Fergus O'Carroll
What does it mean to be more expansive?
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Martin Beverly
Well, so often we might go, okay, the problem here is advertising awareness, because that's what we've been told. And we're very quickly going to. Because we've only got advertising here, we're going to solve that problem. It's like when you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so we might not be as big and as expansive as we might be. We just kind of channel it down and maybe we do something which is a particularly agency thing to do, but the best stuff that we do is far bigger than that. And I would just love the planning community to be doing more imaginative thinking that just goes beyond advertising. Yes, we can do advertising, but we can affect things far beyond that too. A lot of people in this room could become consultant like, but with a real creativity to it. It's not necessarily that we're going to advise on a supply chain efficiency, but we might be able to advise on what's amazing about that brand and the other spaces it could play and define its role more clearly or also create ideas which are kind of inside out. And actually we've just done the pitch where the idea we're hoping will run through absolutely everything they do, not just advertising. And I feel like if we get back to that level of influence more often, we'll be kind of in better stead.
- [24:59]
Lucy Jameson
I'm very optimistic about it in the sense that I think advertising may have an issue, but brands don't. And I think if we stop thinking endlessly about advertising and start thinking about brands, then you're looking at all the different places, all the different touch points, you know, so whether it is design, whether it's experiential, I mean, the Work we do on British Airways impacts, stuff like what goes on the in flight entertainment system, the menus. We've done projects with them. Looking at the lounges, looking at, what does this look like from a kind of brand perspective? Because what's really fascinating is there are incredible, you know, architects, firms or brilliant people doing, you know, really innovative seats for planes. But they will give you the same answer if you're British Airways or Virgin or Emirates or whoever. And we sit at that brilliant intersection of being able to go, yeah, okay, you know, how to get a trolley from A to B and what the logistics might need to be. But have you thought about what this particular brand, the experience, the feeling we want to create with those things, and that's where we're really great.
- [26:22]
Fergus O'Carroll
But you had to create on common in order to get that altitude of relationship. Was it not possible in the other agencies?
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Lucy Jameson
I think it's harder. And I think also we had an invaluable year out where I went and worked with accelerator programs who did lots and lots of startup brands or stuff like that. That was well beyond the sphere of advertising. And so Martin Sorrell actually did us a big favor by locking us out of the industry for a year because it meant we didn't then go and create, you know, another ad agency. We make our own films, we do design. We're kind of going, oh, maybe we should be doing more architecture. That's really interesting. You know, how does a shop feel? Completely different. So I'm very excited about all of those things, which I think we have a right to play in, and that combination of really understanding creative and understanding people and being able to bring those two things together. Because I've spent time with people like McKinsey, they're not good at understanding people and they're not very creative. They're great at spreadsheets.
- [27:49]
Fergus O'Carroll
Right. So you, you and Rob talked at Cannes, that incredible presentation about. And your point was, we need to get out of sort of little tweaks and we need to get back to leaps. It's tough to get there. I think we've always wanted to be that.
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Are we getting there?
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Do you see a way to get there or is it just the luck of the draw in the client?
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Martin Weigel
We should remember that our role is to create change in the world. And that's the first thing I'd ask of all planners, is be agents of change, not agents of complicity. And the sort of the tractor beam, the gravitational force that demands that planners become agents of complicity, of post rationalizing or Post rationalizing garbage of not being the grist in the mill, but smoothing things over is really, really powerful, really, really potent when there's five days to ship a campaign. But your point about brands? I think once we start thinking about brands, the surface area for strategy and creativity becomes almost infinite. And I wonder whether it begins there that we stop thinking about shipping campaigns and start embracing what we all tell ourselves we do, which is we build brands. And perhaps it begins there because there are far more people involved in building brands than there are involved in buying ad campaigns. And there's far more pockets of money and opportunity, both strategic and creative. If you think of yourself as adding to brand expression of the future rather.
- [29:42]
Lucy Jameson
Than just ship, you also look at the budgets. You know, when you're. I look at, okay, BA are going, British Airways have got to kind of buy a whole suite of new planes. I mean, the amount they spend with us is a rounding error compared to that. And the same would be true if you're talking about a retailer and their property. So I do think there are those things to start kind of thinking about. And I genuinely think that applying that creativity to those places that are not normally very lovable can just make you feel so different about a brand. And that is critical because that then translates through to more money.
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Fergus O'Carroll
So I wonder if it's, I wonder if it's startups that we're going to get the chance to play that role in, because we've got to demonstrate that business case in order to get other brands to sort of buy into it. Or else it's got to be great clients who share that same vision because otherwise it's like pushing the ball up.
- [30:45]
Lucy Jameson
The hill, isn't it? You probably need some of those great clients and then some startups, but I do see a larger number of clients being chief customer officers rather than just marketing people. And when you've got one of those, that's where you start to be able to have wider and more interesting conversations. I think quite often we also have to remember we're really naive about a load of stuff. So it's figuring out where we can genuinely add value in that.
- [31:15]
Martin Weigel
Well, that's where our. I think that naivety is where our power and potency lies. Put things differently, we ask the dumb questions that the balls to ask. I think we're far too fearful of those big box management concerns. Because the truth of that, I mean, I was really the other day, Roger Martin, who you all probably know is highly influential in regard to business thinking, writer who has direct exposure to that world will point to the likes of Bain and Boston Consulting. Begins here. They don't do strategy, don't worry about. They do a lot of what they do. M&As, you know, they post rationale firing people and all that garbage. They don't do what you and I would recognize as a strategy. And they wouldn't know creativity had slapped them in the face anyway. So we've got a leg up on them anyway. Perhaps we should feel good about that.
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Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah.
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Martin Beverly
I like the idea of thinking beyond advertising into brand. Not because I want to bash advertising, I love advertising, I love making great ads. But it, but, but it's a subset of brand and there are other pockets of money. And I also think, I think about my 11 year old Beth. She's lovely, she's not here today but she's great. She, if I said to talk to her about advertising she goes the pop up crap on your phone. She wouldn't go oh Guinness surfer. And but if I talk to her about brands she'll go this is my Stanley, this is my drunk elephant set. This is, you know, she, she's into brands. So maybe there's a sort of image problem that we have but I don't want to disadvertizing because that is what we do most of the time. I just think we need to be more expansive with the other spaces we can play.
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Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah. So let's talk about the thing that everybody's talking about which is AI. And what role do you think AI will play in strategy or in the practice of strategy going forward? Lucy?
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Lucy Jameson
I mean we inevitably use it. It's a tool, it helps, it speeds things up, it does lots of useful background research and all the rest of it. But I love. There was a piece of research that I think a thing that System one did, they looked at every single pizza ad and they did an AI generated pizza ad and then they put it through their textbook testing system. And I think most of you will know they have a kind of five star rating system. Now the average of the category was of every ad that they tested in. In the category for pizza was something like, I don't know, 3.2. They took their AI generated pizza ad and no great surprises. It got 3.2 in the test. I mean it makes sense, doesn't it? You're sucking in all the average and then you're creating something average and you're testing it. So for me I think we're going to be using all the tools to enhance everything. But where we win is by going, AI is just going to produce the average. So what am I going to do that is going to beat the average? And that's, I think, what creativity and great strategy can do.
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Fergus O'Carroll
So are clients talking about it from a financial perspective yet? Are they saying, well, can this be a tool that can reduce my costs?
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Martin Beverly
Oh, yeah, how is that?
- [34:42]
Fergus O'Carroll
What do you hear?
- [34:43]
Martin Beverly
Some of our clients are definitely talking about it.
- [34:45]
Lucy Jameson
I mean, I think you're seeing it more in the production end of the business sooner.
- [34:50]
Martin Beverly
Yeah. I mean, for me, like, it's exciting, but it's mostly terrifying. When it, when everyone first started talking about it, I kind of hoped it'd be like the metaverse when everyone was talking about that and then it went away. But it's not going to get, it's going to profoundly change.
- [35:08]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah.
- [35:08]
Martin Beverly
And when you look at most agencies business model, they're charging for the time it takes to create advertising. That time is going to be much shorter.
- [35:18]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah.
- [35:18]
Martin Beverly
So it's going to have a profound issue. But I also think if you are in the business of creating content, creating quickly to fill pipes, you're going to very quickly probably be out of business. You have to be creating the lateral, interesting, creative stuff because that may become more valuable over time, hopefully. Or at least you'll be at the top of the iceberg as it sinks. Because if you're in the middle, you're going to get, you'll get cut very quickly.
- [35:49]
Martin Weigel
Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah. Just to build on that. The middle's not the middle. The middle is 99% of the industry.
- [35:59]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah. That's. Yeah.
- [36:00]
Martin Weigel
Let's not delude ourselves. And so, yeah, I'm mostly terrified because you can't go. It's going to change everything but our jobs. It's going to change everything but I'm.
- [36:11]
Lucy Jameson
Glad I'm my age. But if you're in the business of helping a client reimagine where their brand could go and all the different places it could show up and you know, physical experiences, any, you know, design all of those sort of things, you're going to be fine.
- [36:30]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah. If you're great at what you do, it'll give you more time to focus on the great shit and less time on the mundane at minimum.
- [36:38]
Martin Weigel
So I think, yeah, get with getting great now. Right. And, and find that more expansive, high value surface area to paint on. And for the love of God, stop charging for your time and find a properly commercial model where you monetize the vast value that sits there for the taking. Not to make it sound Easy.
- [37:06]
Fergus O'Carroll
And that's been a conversation also for 20 years, decades. And it's like.
- [37:11]
Lucy Jameson
But very, I think, is. What is it about 40% of big brands use. Mmm. And I think a lot of the time, if you're working in a complicated arena, you need that in order to prove the value of what we do. It's the only way.
- [37:27]
Fergus O'Carroll
So I have one final question for you guys. Tell us about a person who made a significant impact on you professionally and why and how that made such a difference. Because I bring all of this up because I don't think people have enough mentors. I think great people who are doing great work, there's generally somebody in their life that, you know, kick them off in the right direction, because you can start if you're great and go in the wrong direction. For each of you, has there been somebody that you were like, okay, this person made a huge difference in my professional life.
- [38:05]
Lucy Jameson
I mean, I don't think it's one person, but for me, I had the very great privilege of starting at bnp and it was replete with people like Les Burnett, Sarah Carter, Paul Feldwick, all of whom have written books, and incredibly wise, generous, lovely human beings. So I don't think it was one. It was just a brilliant, brilliant place to learn your trade. And, you know, also incredible creatives like John Webster and the old chairman there, James Best. I mean, they were just all fantastic. And so, yeah, I think I was lucky when Sarah leave, I got to take over all her stuff when I was still a baby planner and I suddenly got excited, exposed, really senior, really.
- [38:59]
Fergus O'Carroll
But was there something. Have you any sort of a memory where there's like. There was something about the way that they worked that influenced the way that you worked?
- [39:10]
Lucy Jameson
They're just funny, clever, nice human beings who think quite deeply about why people do what they do well.
- [39:23]
Martin Beverly
So I was. This is a bit awkward because the. One of the people is here and I did say, oh, God, I've got to talk about you. So I. I sort of started in planning at Abbott Mid Vickers, and I was very lucky that I got to work in Craig and Bridget's department.
- [39:38]
Fergus O'Carroll
Bridget is here tonight.
- [39:39]
Martin Beverly
Bridget is here somewhere. And Craig would always have his John Smedley done up to the top. And he would be so clear and so rigorous and precise. And he's just a proper, proper planner. He would constantly tell me off for tactics, not strategy. And I kind of learned how to do it properly. And then there was also Bridget, who you can't fail to love because she has this kindness and this loveliness. And I was a kind of problem child who was probably difficult to manage at times and bit overly ambitious. And I've chilled out now and she would constantly guide me and go, look, you, you've written all this, but really you're trying to say that should make it simple. And she showed me that it's a team sport and you have to bring people with you. And I remember her once saying to me that we embrace what we create. And it stuck with me that you have to have this gang of people that come with you. If you're like a lone wolf trying to be over clever people don't want to work with you. You've got to give people something to build and sort of work with. So I was extremely lucky to start with those guys. And then I went to Widening Kennedy and everyone there just taught me it's about the work. And I had the best time there for a couple of years. And when you get the work right, everything else is fine. Just start there. And then at Adam and Eve again, I've just been super lucky. David Golding hired me and his mind just slightly blew my mind because he was so quick and I was like, I'm not this quick, I need to get quicker.
- [41:09]
Fergus O'Carroll
Then David, was he running the show?
- [41:12]
Martin Beverly
Founder of Adam and Eve. Just super fast, super good. Not a surprise he's made even more millions recently. Yeah. And I also got to work with one of my mates at Adam and Eve is Rick Brim. He's our cco. We've been on the show together. He just makes every. He's like this bundle of energy. He's full of ideas, he's full of optimism and he makes it fun. And I think fun is so underrated. Like, fun's a serious business. Like, when you're having fun, things flow, people bounce around, they say silly things and you get to better stuff. And sometimes I feel like the fun is slightly insert out. And then also just my planning department, I introduced some of them earlier. They're somewhere here. Will runs it brilliantly and I think they're supposed to learn off me, but I actually learn off them. Like, I try to see what they're doing all the time so I can just sort of keep in touch. But they're. I mean, I've been very lucky with the people that I've worked with over the years.
- [42:10]
Fergus O'Carroll
Wonderful. Lastly, Mr. Weigel, it pains me to.
- [42:14]
Martin Weigel
Say this, I hate having to admit it, but probably the most influential on me is my friend Rob Campbell, who's my Counterpart at Colenso bbdo, strategic advisor to Metallica, other creative entities that we can't reveal. I arrived at Wyden Kennedy having worked at Leo Burnett and then for what felt like, well, what was several decades, the agency formerly known as J. Walter Thompson, may his brand rest in peace. And I met Rob very early on in that when he was in Shanghai. Rob and I probably talk seven times a week, every single week.
- [43:05]
Fergus O'Carroll
And what's happening during those conversations?
- [43:08]
Martin Weigel
It's mostly bitching, to be honest.
- [43:12]
Fergus O'Carroll
It's about work or it's about just a friendship.
- [43:15]
Martin Weigel
No, I mean it's the delay. It's a fringe benefit that he's taught me a lot about planning or actually a lot about creativity. Rob, who you all should know.
- [43:28]
Martin Beverly
I.
- [43:28]
Martin Weigel
Think he's probably one of the most dangerous minds I've met in this silly industry of ours. And there's not a conversation where I feel like my brain has sort of been flipped upside down. I'm like, what the hell is happening here? I think he taught me, I felt on joining Wide in Kenya, I was actually, I realized I was very game of creativity. Rob taught me to chase the most exciting idea and figure out why it was right later on. He taught me about the virtue of not trying to win an argument with a client and recognize that your purpose was to help them win. And he taught me the power of kindness to, you know, the less accomplished or the less fortunate be mindful of one's privilege. I mean, I hate saying it because he's going to get so cocky when.
- [44:29]
Martin Beverly
He hears this, isn't he?
- [44:30]
Fergus O'Carroll
Yeah.
- [44:33]
Martin Weigel
But yeah, I think he's taught me more about sort of the commercial application of creativity than probably many other people.
- [44:41]
Fergus O'Carroll
Brilliant people. It's a pleasure for me to be able to be here, to be a part of this conversation and for everybody else listening here, we love having great, we love having great thinking and great thinkers on the show. It doesn't have to be, you know, work that's become an award receiving work. We, we just want great thinking and fun thinking and original thinking. So please reach out if you have anything you want us to consider for the show. We'd love to have a conversation and have that work featured. So I want to just give a collective round of applause please for our three guests tonight. Thank.
- [45:31]
What a fun night we had in London and I absolutely loved my trip there this year. I was also in Dublin for a few days just before that. So we had a really great trip and it's so great to connect with people in person. And to meet everybody. Be sure to check out our upcoming live shows, hopefully in your city. You can learn more about our November 7th live show in Los Angeles at TBWA Chiatay's offices by clicking on the live Tour tab on our homepage at onstrategyshowcase.com tickets go on sale this coming week and the theme is brands and entertainment. It's going to be a good one and we'll see everyone on the next episode.