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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to OnStrategy Showcase. I'm Fergus O' Carroll in Chicago. Before we dive into this week's episode and I wanted to touch base on a couple of things we have upcoming. We are going to be in London in early November for the Effies gala, which is really exciting. What we do is we're going to be interviewing people as they come off the stage after having won their Effies and talk to them a little bit about their case. We did this in New York last year and it was really successful and a ton of fun. So we're doing it again. I that up only because while we're in London, we're going to be trying a new format this year. Rather than doing a show that is in front of a live audience, which is what we always do, generally have done, we are going to do a show, a roundtable without an audience. We have got a terrific panel of people, a roundtable, group of people, and we will record the show and we will release it later, but there will not be a live audience. We are thrilled to have Martin Beverly of Ace of Hearts. Alex Greave is Chief Creative Officer for BBH London. We have Nils Leonard, co founder of Uncommon. Felix Richter is chief creative officer for mother. Chris Gallery is chief strategy officer for mother. Mel Arrow is CEO of McCann. She is formerly their Chief Strategy officer is joining us. And Paula Bloodworth, Global CMO with Idris Elba is going to be joining us also. So it will be recorded and we will release it as an episode. But really, really excited about that. Then we're back in Chicago in December and we are thrilled that High Dive has agreed to host us again at the Merchandise Mart for our holiday ads special. For those of you who were there last year, it was just brilliant fun. And all we did was we threw a party and we just played holiday ads and we had everybody rate them and we talked about them and it was just that simple. It wasn't some deep topic. It was a great success. So we're gonna do it again. So if you're in Chicago and you're a planner in whatever type of agency you're in, we would love to have you come join us. It will be Thursday evening, December 4th, and tickets will go on sale in a couple of weeks as we get closer to it, but we would absolutely love to have you there. I want to thank our live tour sponsors, the Effie's Tracksuit and Ipsos. It's brilliant to have them along for the ride. After Chicago, we're going to be in San Francisco after the new year. And then we will wrap up, I think around maybe late January, early February with our final show of the season will be in Boston. So more information to come as we get a little bit closer on those shows. So back to today's episode. We had the privilege of of being hosted by Mischief in Brooklyn. They have these fabulous new offices and we had the opportunity to bring everybody together. We had a great panel which you'll be introduced to in a second. Our topic was has what matters most ever changed? And one thing I wanted to point out, cause I only discovered this afterwards, but Emily Portnoy, who was on our panel, she's the chief strategy officer for BBDO in New York. Somebody had sort of challenged her to actually drop in the word orangutan into the actual night. So it was only in edit that I began to. I heard it. She had brought it up to me, but I didn't even notice it in the actual night. We were all going out for drinks afterwards and Emily said that somebody had sort of suggested that she try and wedge orangutan into one of her answers. So when you hear that, you'll appreciate it for what it is. So here it is live from Mischief in Brooklyn. Enjoy. Welcome to On Strategy Showcase. I'm Fergus o' Carroll in Brooklyn, New York. Thank you so much for that. All right, so let's bring up our panelists for tonight. And they can sit wherever they want to sit, wherever they are comfortable. So we're going to start off with Tom Morton is a CSO and founder of Narratory Capital. He's been a guest on the show before. Formerly global Chief Strategy Officer at RGA Taskistopoulos, Global Executive Strategy Director. The most famous man in the room from Wieden and Kennedy. He works on the McDonald's business. Emily Portnoy is chief strategy officer at BBDO New York. Great to have you back. Annabel Casso is North American Chief Strategy officer for Ogilvy. And our Good friend Jeff McCrory, Chief Strategy Officer here at.
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B
San Andimas High School. Football rules.
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C
You see, if I got to go.
- [05:29]
A
Grab my drink here. So one of the things that we all agreed to tonight was, is not to talk about AI. Now the reality is it's not going to be easy not to touch on AI. But if you actually use the term AI, you will be thrown out into the wet.
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D
I reflect tomatoes.
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E
So you can't even reference it in a bad way?
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A
No, no, you can refer to it with some other reference. So where did this all come from? I think this topic came from the fact that there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of anticipation about what's going to happen in this industry. An awful lot of change. So my father in law sent me three huge boxes full of CA annuals. Do people know what CA annuals are? Holy shit. You're kidding me.
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C
Yes. Yes.
- [06:34]
A
Can you believe that, Greg? So CA annuals, Communications Arts Annuals, it was the bible of creativity back in the day, along with the One Show. So my father in law is like 96 and he sent me his boxes from the 1970s. And I was looking through it all, looking through these magazines, and I just was enamored by how amazing a lot of that work was and how appropriate a lot of that work would even be today. So we wanted to have a conversation about the fact that has the thing that matters the most really changed. This is not a denial that change has happened. It is just a point of discussion to say, are there things that we do, we don't need to be on a sort of treadmill about as much and are there things that we need to remember are key to what we deliver? So it's almost, but it's not saying, because we've talked about it as a panel, it's not saying old is good, new is bad. It's just saying that if we can find where we're all rooted in, maybe things will seem a little less scary as change comes to us going forward. So that's where has what matters most ever changed? And so these brilliant people here have got opinions about that. So I thought we would jump right into it. I'm going to start with Tom Morton with our first question.
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D
Okay.
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C
Phew.
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A
Phew. Okay, so no pressure. So if you look at the beginnings of planning, look at the beginnings of strategy in the communications realm, advertising realm, you look back to people like Jeremy Bulmore. You look back to people like John Steele. When I was coming up, John Steele was big, his book was brilliant. What remains vital and true from those times?
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F
Okay, well, as the, I guess as the token owner of a gray beard on this panel, I should have a very gray bearded answer. And I think if you go back to the, like the foundation moments of planning, which is London advertising agencies in the late 1960s, the profession came up as an answer to a need which was you had. There were large, aggressive, very quantitative American research firms that had a very behavioralist approach to how advertising worked and how to study people.
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A
What is, what do you mean by behavioral?
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F
What I mean is literally if you tell someone to do something, they will do it. If you reward someone, they will do it. If you punish someone, they will do it. And there's something in research people will say what they mean and mean what they say. And of course anyone who spent any time with human beings will know that's not the case. And so the strategy discipline basically arose as creative companies needed a much more humanistic response to how people understood advertising and how people really went through their lives and chose their brands and what they liked. And I think if you wind forward like 50, 60 years from that moment then and you let's say you swap out the behaviorist research and you replace that with say ad tech of the tech Bros. And you take out the making TV commercials for soap powder for everything you can do now the abundance you have now that need for. Okay, what's the humanistic view and what's the understanding of how people really think, how people really buy and also like how people, what people really like. That is actually a really now urgent contemporary need. So I think to that extent it hasn't changed. And you mentioned John Steele. John was a 1984 class of 1984 trainee of Bozema Ceme Pollott, the agency that is now Adam and Eve. And that Boseman Simi Pollitt actually published and circulated the first ever recruitment ad for planners back in the early 70s. And it said we need numeric graduates with an interest in human psychology. And I think that description of skills. Let's take out the graduate thing. We know college education isn't everything now, but like numeric with an interest in human psychology that is as relevant now as it was 40 years ago when Junior John signed up.
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A
But was that because there was a concern that the type of behavioralist research wasn't working anymore? Was there this argument?
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F
Yeah, it wasn't working. It's very easy to make money out of because you tell, you tell clients that like if you say this, you'll get a response if you hit the consumer on the kneecap enough, they will move and respond. That's a very seductive sell. But also it tends not always to be true. So yeah, that is a need I think still remains.
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A
What do you think, Taz?
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E
Yeah, I mean it's funny you mentioned Jeremy Bulma. He's the reason I joined advertising. To be honest, he's the reason I'm here. I never thought I could do advertising because I wasn't good at art. And I went to a talk like a recruitment thing with Bulma. And he said, we're looking for the kind of people that like reading every section of the newspaper. And it was just. For me, it was a light bulb moment after doing internships in finance where I was basically faking it and pretending to love numbers and I love the money side. And I went, oh shit that. Oh, I can do that. You don't have to draw and stuff. And then actually someone, he might be here, Tom Goodwin, you know, he's been on your show. He wrote a post recently. I think he heard me say that somewhere. And he tagged me and he said, is it still true? Is that is curiosity and generalists? Is that still true? And I said, well, I hope so, otherwise the industry is going to get a lot more boring if everyone is just very narrow and focused. And I think just building on what Tom said, I think the APG in London did a similar discussion recently, maybe a few weeks ago, about the future of planning. And in that, I think one of the points of view is that I think the single most important job that planners do or strategists or whatever is understanding people. And I think it was 9.5 out of 10 people agreed that was the. And that doesn't change, right? That is in. Again, I'll be the first to quote Birnbach. I think you've quoted John Steele. He talked about the changing man and the unchanging man. People focus on the changing man, but actually the unchanging man is way more important. And that very much speaks to me because throughout my 20 plus years, I hate when people focus on the shiny new things and forget about the unchanging things.
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A
So yeah, Emily, when we were talking earlier, you brought up today, which I loved, you guys were showing work today internally to your strat department and tell us about what you were doing with all the new work.
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D
So it's interesting. We did a strat pack session today for about six hours to really focus on our briefs and upping our game. And we have a template that we use that we're practicing with at bbdo. Our focus is always on reframing. That's really the core of our briefs. That's another thing that I think remains true because back in the day we talked a lot about our job is to reframe the world in the lives of the people who we want to speak to and then find meaning in that for our brands. So in doing so though, I think there's a bit of recency bias, that exists, I would say, in this industry. We actually were just talking about this with some FE folks yesterday, I think we're really obsessed with what won last year, what, one two years ago, one three years ago. And today we actually asked our strategist to bring in some iconic work over the years. And I have to say I was actually surprised at how many older pieces of work came up. And it was interesting. We actually did an exercise to retrofit those briefs into our template and challenge that, and I think that's something we can all do today. It was incredibly eye opening for all of us. And I think to be able to step into the shoes of. We had Guinness work, we had Mercedes work, we had chocolate work, we had all different kinds. Oh, we had the Audi clowns. It was just really interesting to see what our strategists thought, you know, was truly meaningful and then to unpack that.
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A
Jeff, when I, when I have you guys on the show, I'm always, maybe you guys just give this impression, but you guys always seem to have such simple solutions that I'm just like, fuck. And the work is great. And so is there a mischief way of doing business planning?
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B
Well, I'm pretty simple. So it starts there. And I, I mean, I. I think that the industry right now is like, how do you just deal with the constant barrage of change? There's no getting away from it. You got to get your arms around it. And the danger within that is that the simple things get lost because they seem impossible, because we now have to do 42 things across 62 different channels. And it's like you have to bifurcate and bifurcate and bifurcate, and it just adds enormous complexity. And what we've found is that's kind of bullshit. And if you can really, really simplify the task in a way that creatives can get their brain around and clients can understand is interesting and bent just enough. It just unlocks enormous, powerful ideas that then we can then go figure out how they can work in all those different channels. But it enables us to think of an idea first and then how that can flow across channels second. And I think a lot of the trouble with the industry right now is it's the other way around. We're checking boxes against a media plan that's ever increasingly complicated, and we just race at that, and nobody stops and goes, okay, well, what the hell is the idea here? Doesn't matter. We gotta go and more and do and go and blah. And it's just a cacophony of shit. And we try to not be a cacophony of Shit. As best we can.
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A
Yeah. I mean, for me, Emily, I've always advocated for qual. I know not every planner has the skill set to do qual, but they definitely get inspired by it. I mean, and we'll come to TAS in this in a second, but what's your thought on qual for people in your department? And how do you. If you believe in that, how can you execute on it?
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D
So, first of all, without saying the word that will not be named, I feel like I'm in Harry Potter. The reality is that as strategists, you have never. We have never had more information at our fingertips. I mean, it's like if it was a cheese board, because I could live on cheese boards. It's like every single second, that cheese board is being replenished, and anything you want, it's there. Boom, it's there. You have an answer to this. But at the end of the day, if everybody has access to it, it just becomes table stakes. And so you have to find something original, and to find something original. And I will say this here, I do think we got to get back to. Already clients are asking for it. I think there's been this obsession with speed. There's been this fear of risk, and this also obsession for certainty. And I think, honestly, I think it's made. It can make our strategies more lazy. And so for us, you know, maybe be a little bit more like an orangutan and hold on to the wisdom and the patience and actually push back and say, you know what? I need to actually have a moment to survey this forest so I can actually understand what I'm doing here and protect that. Because if we don't protect it, like you said, you're going to be running at 7,000 things. Whereas right now, we say, tell your story in five sentences and then tell me what it is. Because I think we've gotten so obsessed with proving our value as well that we want to get credit for the rigor. And, yes, the rigor is important, but you want to get credit for the work. We don't need to get credit for the rigor, because if you can take so much rigor and then synthesize it, I think doing that through qual and through everything we have at our fingertips, I think that's our superpower. It should be our superpower, and I think it'll remain valuable for many years to come.
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A
What do you think, Tom? Because what you were talking about earlier, in essence, is that there was this onslaught of a desire and an appetite for Qual I feel it's coming back. People that I have on the show, I'm hearing clients and strategists, they're not bringing it up as if it's a newfound thing, but what they're saying even anecdotally is turning clients on. I think now more so than ever. I think there's almost a desire for us to strip away the complexity. What do you think about it in your world?
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F
Well, I mean my world is now consulting world and I'm kind of fortunate. I often encounter clients when they're at their most open minded and really want to understand how people think. And there are huge fields of, of marketing and strategic work where what people really think and feel and how they really live are very interesting. So in user experience and product development there's an obsession with how do people do things, even if it's just like user flows. And so I think any client that's come up through a kind of design and UX type world really experiences that if you come up through consulting where you're actually, you're making a decision about a holistic direction for a brand or a business, actually talking to people and understanding their real lives becomes very important. I think the challenge we've had, it's not so much, I think the media fragmentation that people are speaking about has been one thing. It's actually the projectization of the business and the smaller unit size, the smaller deliverable size of what happens in advertising has meant that that moment of genuinely exploring the customer has kind of disappeared because the economics, the economies of scale of talking to people about a thing that we're going to make and we're going to run, it's going to have a three day lifespan. Just doesn't make sense. Occasionally I guess you get TAS will talk about this beautifully. You get a moment like say McDonald's where there is a, there's a fork in the road moment for the entire brand and you've got a big enough problem where you can, you can afford to go out, talk to people and solve. So I think this is really, it's a question of finding, finding where in the process there is an example to really check in with customers.
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E
Qual was transformational for us, for me personally doing it for us on that pitch, on that journey, you know, the road trip we did that I've talked about on your podcast and you know, it's been enshrined in our methodology which very simply we say is just go out and talk to people about McDonald's. It's not that hard. But like, you know, for me, again, I've always loved qual over quant. I've always loved people over data, you know, ideas over execution, strategy over tactics and keep saying these things, but like, I do think the things at the top are the things that change the least and the things at the bottom do change and we have to know about them. But actually I've always been excited about this job, about the things more upstream. Right. A lot of us are brand planners and so again, it's the changing and the unchanging and yeah, I think that for me is what still motivates me in this job. And I try and get people in my team excited about. It's like the human nature part. I would rather hire someone that's great at psychology than knows about NFTs.
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D
Right.
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B
So if I may.
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C
Please.
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B
Because you opened by. And it's funny because I, I took notes and thought about this because I'm a professional and when you talk about the things that don't change, I defaulted to like the foundations and the mechanics and all of that's true. But then I realized, like the other thing, thinking about my career, that every time I've been at a place that was great, it was the people. It's a talent business and I don't care how much money you're putting into your. Well, I care, but it's like lots of money in data stacks and all of these things that we're trying to prove out. Give me the best talent and I'll wipe the goddamn floor with anybody. So your talent is your gift.
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A
I completely agree with that. Anna.
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C
Will, we were just talking about talent a few minutes well over.
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B
I've had a few beers.
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C
I have like one less than you, two less than you. But we're talking about talent because I love what you just said for many reasons. The reason why I mention is because one of the things that to me makes talent great, to put it that way, is something that I think I would dare to say that it's not that it's been lost, but it's being forgotten or put second, which is the importance of taste.
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A
Yes, yes.
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C
And important of the association of caring. Like giving a shit about developing taste. And then that impacts the craft, not just strategy. You started with ca. I mean my pal ca. When I am uninspired, I just go and start looking back into the 70s, the 80s, and there's some fundamentals that never change. And the craft, the taste, all that is all there. We don't need to study the past. But we would benefit from doing that. Because when we're talking about talent, we're talking about not going to say everything does, but we're talking about the importance of. In a past experience that I had at Whiting, someone told me that your best talent, when you run an agency, your best talent, you have to let them go. Because the best telling is let them.
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A
Do their thing, not actually lay them off.
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C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Edit.
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B
I'm firing my department. I'm sorry, guys. Drink up. The beer's free.
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D
Edit.
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C
Edit. No, but it's like you have them, they come in, they make magic for you. They reinvent the agency. And at some point, if you want to refresh how you operate, you have to get the next generation. And then they go and get better and then they can come back later. So I love what you say because at the end of the day, one of the things that I fear to forget about myself is the importance of nurturing the talent, even if they don't. Especially when you're not going to keep them forever.
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D
Just on that, if I may. And I am fortunate enough that I see folks that I've been lucky enough to mentor at BBDO and Gray in the audience. And it's really lovely. But I think one thing that many of you will remember, and I've said this for a long time, we are often the smallest department in most agencies by a lot. And what that means is that we have to punch bigger and heavier than our weight, whatever that mixed metaphor is. But I talk a lot about superpowers. We've been talking about it for probably over a decade. And I think one, I believe every strategist should have a superpower. And I think that no matter where you are in your career, we need to help us as leaders. But you have to believe that you will find yours. And then you got to figure out how to be in an agency that allows you to flex it over and over and over again. Because we all have them. And you know what? Have drinks and have all your strategists get in a room and have them tell each other what their superpowers are. It's pretty awesome, by the way, as a team bonding. And guess what? You'd be surprised at how sometimes we are so busy that we don't even see how others see us. And I think having a moment to remember that you are a strategist. And something that came to mind to me was last, last week I was at one of my son's class, whatever evening nights and the Pre calc math teacher said, I just want to be really clear. When your kids are in this room, they are not students. I tell them they have to be mathematicians. And why I do that is because when they give their homework in or they give an essay in, they're not just checking the boxes. They're not just getting it done quickly. This is their job. They're going to be the best mathematician ever. And I would challenge all of us that it doesn't matter who you are. Don't be a planner or a strategist doing a brief, but be the cso, whatever it is that you're presenting in that moment. Like, how do you be that cso? Put yourself, think at a higher altitude, and then you'll be able to reach it. So I think that's also just a mindset shift that maybe we can all embrace and champion each other on.
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A
By a show of hands, how many strategists in the room think that they're doing the best work that they could be doing? Oh.
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D
Five.
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F
Go.
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D
Ten. Five.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So, yeah, raise your goddamn hands.
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D
You're all the CSOs. There we go.
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E
Come on.
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D
Also, BBD, you're the best, though.
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C
Two of the best in the industry.
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A
But. But to that, maybe. What, Jeff, what do you. What do you think when you see that reaction from the crowd? In other words, are we adapting well to this new world.
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B
The data would suggest? No.
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C
That'S true.
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B
I don't know that I trust the data, but I've been told I should.
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A
But we're always. I think we're all. I think. I can't speak very much.
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D
Wait, hold on. What if we all close our eyes, we get a different result.
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A
But I think, like many creatives, strategists are creative at heart, and they're idealists, and they get really pissed off when they can't get the best done. And the reality is this is a practice of compromise. You can never get exactly what you want. But do you think we're adapting well? Do you think that we've got a lot more work to do to be as good in the past, to be as good today as we might have been in the past when things were simpler?
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B
I mean, I'm shockingly old. I know I look quite boyishly handsome, but I'm, like, super old. And I would say I've never been more excited to work in advertising than now. Like, what is possible is insanely interesting and exciting and just awesome. The getting to it. Yeah, might be harder. Right. But I'll take that Trade. I will take that trade. And I think the job for us is to try to embrace the hard and find. Put yourself in a position where you're surrounded by people that will help you embrace the heart. It's easy to destroy. It's hard to create. And our job is to create. So are you in an environment that allows you to dream, that allows you to fail without a fear that you're going to lose your job, that surrounds you with people that you can't wait to tell things about because they're going to help you make it better. So, again, I think the reality is it's really hard right now to make great work, by the way. It's always been hard. It's probably slightly harder now. But I think the potential of what we can do is absolutely worth the heart.
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C
Can I build that with him? Because to me, it's a question that I'm going to ask to all of us, because I asked that myself. Seeing the raising and not raising of hands, the first wonder that I had is like asking, do you think you know or you understand what gray work or what your best work is? Because that's another thing. What's the benchmark like? Some of us in our generations grew up with specific benchmarking from specific people who shape the way. Like, does you know, like, when you were there now when I was there, why then I knew what my benchmarks were. It was never good enough because I walk around the hallways and I saw, fuck, I am not. I need to go and change my whole deck. This is way better. I don't know. I'm wondering if in the current model, like, I mean, unless you're just Ms. Chief, because trust me, you guys are fucking killing it. But it's like when I look at the industry, I'm wondering if the younger generation actually has a benchmark. I don't know. I'm just.
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A
And is the benchmark an idea or is it effective ideas? Tom. And then I want to go to task, please.
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F
I want to talk about this benchmark thing because I think that's so important. I think I've been doing a lot of work about studying, like, the future of the creative economy and just looking at companies that are building, you know, creative or design or strategy practices in businesses that never had them before. And what was really interesting, when he spoke to the people who are doing it, they say the biggest issue they have is how do you set a bar? And one of the. One of the hidden things in agencies is there, there is a bar and whether it's because of those annuals or, or because there is a CCO wants to conquer the world or there's like a history of work. The presence of above, the presence of greatness and a kind of an understanding in the walls of greatness has always, always helped. And I think, I don't think it's a generational thing. I think it's the fact that we're doing strategy in more different types of companies and more structures that are new that may not have a bar. And I think if we try and look at like, has what matters ever changed? The creating of a bar is absolutely vital.
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A
But what is an example of the bar is it gave x percent results or it was just a brilliant idea.
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F
That honestly, it's going to depend organization by organization. And not least because we're talking about organizations that might be making media or that might be doing product experience design. I don't want to give an example of like a classic ADLAN bar here, but I think the idea there's a standard that what the excellence is is less important than the fact there is a standard of excellence that people feel and, you know, are excited and scared at the same time to step up to.
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A
You want to jump in on that, Tess?
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E
I was just going to say I was going to link what you said, Annabel, about what is great creative. And then the point about watching cable and knowing the reality for me, like, you know, even though I didn't think I could be in advertising because I wasn't good at drawing when I started looking into it and read John Steele and read Ogilvy and stuff, I remember when I, yeah, I was always like a passionate consumer of the product. Like, I loved ads. Right. Nerdy as that sounds. And so when I, when I, you know, back in 2004, I applied for BBH. I'd never heard of BBH. I'd only heard of WPP because they were in like the FT at LSE or something. But I was like, oh, I never heard of these guys, but they seem. And then I looked at their reel and I went, oh, shit, you did that? You did Levi's, you did modding and oh, I had that on my wall when I was growing up and I used to buy the CD when Levi's is like, oh, you kind of built the 90s that I lived in. That's the, like, culture. Oh, okay, I'd love to wear there. And you know, again, one of my biggest peeves with the industry is when that link between what great work is, if we say what Great work is, is what gets, you know, wins at Cannes or wins creatively and what we actually real people enjoy. I worry about that coming apart. Like I feel creatively the industry awards a lot of stuff for the industry that real people have never seen, never done, never have on their wall. And I think that's really bad for.
- [33:18]
A
All of us and would most likely not react well to.
- [33:22]
E
Yeah, like it just, you know, it's a flash in the pan and then they spend media money on stuff that is pretty terrible on cable. And so it's like I want the stuff on cable to be great, not this thing over here that people in the Croisset saw.
- [33:36]
F
So.
- [33:37]
A
Because it's true that according to various people that the vast majority of what we produce is, is not up to par. I mean that's. And it's not the people sitting in this chair. Although I'm sure that there's stuff that we, we've all produced great agencies. Not so great agencies. That's subpar. I mean that's a, That's a terrible sort of. That's a terrible reflection on planning. Why if there's. Let's assume for the sake of conversation that all of that work has got a planner on it. Why is it sucking so much? Are we not being allowed to do what we do best? Is circumstance getting in our way?
- [34:18]
E
Actually, sorry, before anyone else asks, I just got one more thing to say. I actually think that Effie's work is actually rewarding the most famous creative work in a way because that actually has to be seen and enjoyed by real people. So I actually think the Effie's in a way are a better judge of real work that people see. Oh, I saw that. I like that. I loved your Beyonce. I loved your Beyonce, you know. Oh, I saw that. Like, yeah, sorry, I'll get off my soapbox.
- [34:46]
A
That's all right. We are the official podcast partner.
- [34:52]
E
Referencing the sponsors.
- [34:54]
A
So we'll be right back on. Strategy Showcase is thrilled to be the official podcast partner of the effie's. For over 55 years, effie has been the global authority on marketing effectiveness. And if you are in the US the 2020 FES are open for entries. If you have work that was in market anytime between June 1, 2024 and September 30, 2025, you can enter your work into the 2026 US FE Awards. The deadline is coming up fast. It's actually November 3rd here in the US but there is a deadline extension to November 13th, so to find out more, go to February and good luck. Our tour is also brought to you by Tracksuit Want always on brand metrics that deliver value to stakeholders. Tracksuit is a beautiful, affordable and always on brand tracking tool that helps consumer marketers and agencies 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 many modern brands whose budgets are under press. Tracksuit provides enterprise level brand tracking without the big price tag. Their in house research experts do the heavy lifting using best in class practices to craft and launch your survey to get you results fast. You can check them out@gotracksuit.com and by Ipsos. Every marketer knows the best creative work starts with a strong brief. Yet the reality is many briefs that brands give their agencies miss the mark. In fact, Ipsos found that that only 5% of brand marketers say the quality of their briefs is really good. That's why Ipsos created Creative Fuel. Creative Fuel is strategy research designed to help brands ensure the messages in their briefs are something both their audiences and their agencies can get excited about. So if you want to start fueling your next campaign with strategy that really moves the needle, check out Ipsos Creative Excellence and their Creative Fuel solutions. Learn more@ipsos.com now back to the show. I wanted to switch a little bit because I think when you look back at the last couple of years this is a fair question. Do we need to be more business fluent Tom? Do we need to be a little more Galloway, Scott Galloway and a little less Rick Rubin?
- [37:38]
F
I'm gonna paraphrase another shouty marketing academic here, which is Mark Ritson and Ritz. Now Ritson has a dog in his fight because he's got his own MBA training program and he says lots of people ask him in the brand owner side, should we learn more business skills? Should we be more mba? Should we be more finance literate? He said, why don't you start with marketing? Why don't you start with knowing marketing? And we're in this bizarre world. I think it's in Europe where the majority of people who are professional marketers don't have any professional marketing qualifications. And as an industry and as a discipline we're not always good at knowing like the totality of how our clients marketing works, how that combination of price and promotion and product and place are all playing in together. And I think that's the thing that's holding us up. We don't need to be cosplaying as McKinsey or fanboying Rick Rubik. We actually just need to be a hell of a lot better at the marketing side. And I think one of the big things the industry is missing, well, the profession is missing, is a theory of victory. Because one of the things that's happened, the fragmentation of what we've been speaking about here, people increasingly have to be a real ex subject matter expert in their channel, their discipline, their micro part of it. And the thing that everyone is losing is the ability to talk about the totality of how those things work. And I think that that theory of victory, that sense of here is what business success looks like in this category. And here is the biggest. Here's the biggest barriers of growth that we're going to go overcome for the client. That's the stuff that's really useful. I would get good at that before we start worrying about how we can cosplay McKinsey.
- [39:29]
A
And that's what Jeremy Bulmore professed that there needed to be a broader understanding of all marketing as opposed to just advertising or comms. Right. I mean, Emily, would you want to give us some thoughts on that in terms of this knowing the four P's? And is that something that we need to bring into our tent more because we don't understand it?
- [39:50]
D
Yeah, I mean I think there's definitely a gap there and we do need to. And it's interesting because many of us have also had these conversations about we know that Most of the CMOS jobs are also now CGO's. And the idea, I think I was just talking about this earlier, you know, and talking about the EFFIE Awards again, this notion that we have to tie what we do closer and closer to marketing's value, which ultimately ends up in the CFO's desk. And so one of the things we were just talking about with some folks at the FES is like, let's get the Effies on cnbc. Right? Like, what if we start to rethink where we as an industry want to show up can and closet can still live. But I think we do need to. My perspective, I do think we need to be much more business sound. I think there's. But it doesn't mean that we just have to know the P's. We talk a lot about this at bbdo, but this notion that creativity has been zoned too far downstream. To your point about racing to this and racing to that and getting on the channels and all the different ways that we can show up in the world. But creativity deserves to have a role Further upstream. Because if creativity can shape business problems, not just solve them, then we are all tying ourselves back to the business, which ultimately maintains our own value as well.
- [41:02]
A
Jeff, what do you think?
- [41:04]
B
This may surprise nobody, but I'm always the contrarian. Been fired a few times for it, but I'm like, no, all the best people have. Yeah, I'm. And don't get me wrong. You need to understand your client's business or you're. What the hell are you doing? But it's either Lee Clow or Jay Shy. It had this quote I loved. It's like I told clients, I need to understand your business exactly well enough to do my job and then not one ounce more, because then go work there, man. Like, we need to figure out the way their business works so that we can create problem definitions that creative people get excited about to do things that they can't do. I don't want to do what they do, or I would have gone work there. I want to do what we do. So us being able to actually just be okay to be an ad agency, we position brands really well, and then we find super interesting and powerful ways to bring them to life. I don't need to do your pricing efficiency analysis. One, I can't. And two, I have no interest in it. So us actually being okay with the tremendous, like, tremendous value that we generate by doing what we do, I'm totally okay with that.
- [42:07]
D
Just on that, I agree 1,000%. I think we have to know enough to be capable and. And to be believable. But at the end of the day, our value. Time, time. Again. What clients tell you when you win the business is you came in and taught me something in my business that I never would have thought of and I never would have seen. And that's the value of creativity as applied to business as opposed to just talking their language.
- [42:28]
E
Yeah, I think I was gonna say also excited.
- [42:31]
C
Go task. Go test. This is an exciting one. We all have something. Go tasks.
- [42:34]
E
I'm gonna agree with both of you because actually, what you were saying, Jeff, rings true of me. At Wieden, like, first pitch, I did, big pitch. You know, I turned up in a suit because that's what I was used to. Because at BBH, they were like, we want to be McKinsey, right. We want to dress. Yeah. And I turned up, and they're all in hoodies, and they're laughing at me going, Nikes. And they're like, oh, Tas wore a suit. Task for a black. Dan remembers this, and I'm like, but it's the CMO of me. And they're like. And then they go, oh, no, I get it. Of course. Why would you dress like they're buying the thing. They can't be. Why would you dress like them? Like, I. Now I get it. But what I will say to agree with you as well. And the point is, I take personal. You know, we all take personal responsibility for proving that link between creativity and effectiveness. Obviously, the numbers do it, but just showing how your response, the creativity was responsible for those numbers. Like, you know, we took the McDonald's CFO to cash and we got him on stage because they have the last five years. He recognizes the value that creativity and marketing has provided to the business. So he was very happy to come to Cannes. And we got him to make a gag on stage. He said, any other CFOs in the audience? There wasn't one. So we're proud of that gag.
- [43:54]
C
I think. Thank you, task. Because I'm actually building on all of that through what you said. When I first got the phone call from my ex CEO, now Devika, for this job that I have, it's been four years now. I remember that my hesitation was I told her, I've never done something like this. I don't know how to do this, this, this, this, and this. I'm good at this and this. And she told me, I need you to take the things you're good at and it's kill them as what? Scale them. Like, show me they can be done at scale. And I'm like, what about these things? She's like, that's where your team comes into play. So that was my first lesson into. Now looking fast back four years. I don't know how. I literally have no idea how to do, how to shit that I do every day. But I have a team that does.
- [44:45]
B
Yeah.
- [44:45]
C
And it's a matter of, like, figuring out a way to work as a team. You're good at this. You're good at this, you're good at this. That's being done together. I don't need to have the pressure of knowing everything. And that's my thing for the younger generation. You don't need to know how to do every single little thing of this job. That's. That's impossible.
- [45:02]
A
So how do we maintain the integrity of strategy in the face of what's coming at us and what we're facing today?
- [45:10]
B
I don't know that strategy's ever been more appreciated in the business. Like, again, I'm talking. I'm Old. But it's like when I. When we first introduced planning, it was a fight with the clients to get them to pay for it. So. And now it's, I think, never been more valued. It's. It's hard, but I. And then I. I think the other thing is to make it useful. Like, there's a lot of really not useful planning that goes on with your 42 slide breakfast study that, you know, I don't need that for bacon. I think I can figure it out. So I. To me, it's like, I think it's been. It's. We're at this glorious moment where we're on the stage and everybody appreciates it. And then I think the job is like, can you make it actually useful and not just, you know, stroking your ego because you seem smart? Is it an input into outputs that people love and that work?
- [46:01]
E
We say at Wieden, again, this might be that Dan might have coined this term, but it's like, it's more important to be interesting than to be right.
- [46:09]
F
Yes.
- [46:09]
E
And I think a lot of the industry or clients or budgets push you. I need to be right. It's like, we're not going to be. Nothing is a dead. Is a dead cert. Nothing is a. I realize that they don't have that in America. Nothing is a sure bet. Right. We say dead certain. England. If you want safe bets, you're not going to get exponential. You're not going to get, you know, Travis Scott meals, et cetera. But if you believe in this thing and it's interesting and, you know, some people love it and they're interested and it's true to you and the brand, then back it.
- [46:42]
C
I have this belief, which I don't know if it's right or wrong, but bear with me, is that we have lost touch with our gut, which I go back into what got me into this industry. Yes, obviously the books that I read at the time were great. But what got me interested in strategy was some of my favorite work in history was done before strategy assistance.
- [47:07]
A
Yeah.
- [47:09]
C
There was another department called strategy. And you look back and it was fucking amazing. Which to your point, you just carve out in my head one thing. I have one job, which is to add value. Not write a brief, not write a strategy, not something. A clever line, awesome insight. No, I had to give something that creators cannot do or don't have by themselves so I can add value, which is to me where I keep going back into your point about simplicity. So I think just going back in touch with Our gut is something that, by the way, I'm not saying we by any means have cracked it or know how the hell together, but it's something I'm striving to, I think it's working. To your question, it's an opportunity now because there's more problems than ever. There's so much noise, so many things. This is a chance for us to add value.
- [48:02]
A
However that looks like so a topic that continuously comes up in the show is effectiveness, and I bring it up a lot too. But I'm not an academic, I'm not bully, I'm not fully plugged into it, and I'm skeptical of a lot of it. But I feel that it is now. And it's hard to say that it was never an expectation that you'd be successful, of course, but I think now there's this seems to be this increased emphasis. The conversation is happening more often and at a higher level and more frequently. And my sense is that American marketers are becoming a lot more fluent in the principles of effectiveness as espoused by Ehrenberg, Bass and on the testing side from people like Ipsos and System One and other brands and Bennett and Field. Is that your sense that there are stronger, more, there's conversations of conviction around not just awards, not just about effectiveness awards, but about effect and impact on the business in a genuine way.
- [49:13]
B
I mean, I've never worked at a time where if you didn't sell more shit, you weren't in trouble.
- [49:17]
C
Like, it's just real.
- [49:19]
B
Welcome to the business, kids. You sell stuff. So I, I But we've done work.
- [49:24]
A
For decades that didn't sell shit and.
- [49:26]
B
You end up getting fired. That's how that goes. So I, I think there's a couple things. Like I, I, I'm skeptical of the magic models of effectiveness as well, because I particularly in 2025, there's just so many different ways that you can be effective. I don't know that there's a magic model. I think there's principles that you should be aware of. As a planner, I read all the books, study it up. I think that's good knowledge. But I don't know that. It's like I'm too busy doing the work that then they study to study it. And we've won more effies than anybody in the world over the last couple years. So the boots on the ground, doing the work that actually drives the business in terms of sales and not some crazy model, that's what I take heart in. It's like, yeah, you can do great work and when you do great work, it actually is effective. And if you have the right kind of culture, those two things aren't in opposition, they're actually a flywheel. The one thing I would say that's I think, maybe provocative, I think right now a lot of the metrics are bullshit. Their viewership, last click attribution and kind of visibility. They're kind of fake efficiency metrics that I don't. I get the immediacy of them and I get the power of them. My suspicion is they're. If they're not fake, their importance at this moment in time is greatly overstated.
- [50:52]
F
Well, they measure, so I know you had some.
- [50:54]
E
No, no, please.
- [50:56]
F
They may. They measure one thing about a small part of the business and they're often created by the media owner who benefits from that. So they're actually, they're kind of like self fulfilling yourself.
- [51:08]
B
We, we delivered really efficiently this thing that we're measuring.
- [51:11]
F
Yeah, totally.
- [51:12]
A
The, the thing.
- [51:13]
F
So the paradox is right now a lot of brands are in very slow growth. Michael Farmer writes brilliantly about this, that the, the biggest, the biggest consumer brands spent decades growing at about 8% a year. And since 2010 they've been growing at about 2% a year at a time where there's never been more data. I think the, the issue we've got, the fake effect in this thing is because the job has become much more productized and project based and tactical. We're studying these tiny intermediate effects and likes and shares and so on. And the conversation about like, what's the overall growth? And I don't mean like laying flowers at the temple of the Effies or the Ehrenberg Bass Institute, but literally is this client's brand growing? Do they have more customers than they did a year before? That conversation very rarely happens in our business right now. And the fragmentation of the work, the biggest danger of it is that it means that no one has it. The clients don't know what to do in that situation. Every survey about CMOs, what's your biggest problem? It's basically it's growth and then some kind of management of complexity. And they've been left managing the complexity. Finding out that doesn't create growth and then getting fired. And I think this is why I talked about getting back into marketing. It wasn't because I think we should be genuflecting about the four Ps, but the conversation should all be having about what is this organization overall doing to get more customers, more share and knowing how the Totality contributes. That's the big goal. That's the thing that's never changed. And we just got to fight against the smallness of our tasks.
- [52:54]
B
I would like us to never buy 6 second ads again. There I said thank you. Just don't buy them, they'll go away.
- [53:03]
E
I was just going to say again to what you were both saying. Whether we sit here and read through all the effectiveness stuff and follow it blindly, I think it is important that our clients understand it. I think for me, I've been in the US 12 years and the first few years it. A lot of the clients weren't as au fait with the literature that we all read. They didn't know Field and B and they didn't. So you're sort of presenting it to them. I don't think it's a coincidence. When I got to McDonald's they were already on board with all the things that mattered. And so they measured the things that mattered. They put value in the things that mattered. They used research in the way that was right, not the way that was wrong. It was like helping optimize, not make your decisions for you. They value the things that we value and they measured the things that, you know, there's that quote, you know, it's just because it's measurable, it's not meaningful. They measured the meaningful things and that helped create the conditions for us to make the work that actually did drive the business and that we're proud to make. So I think, I love when clients are on the same page about, you know, the stuff that matters to us.
- [54:09]
A
Couple of final questions.
- [54:11]
D
Just one stat on that and it's actually from a study that we did with Snapchat and that we were on with Tracksuit. I believe the stat is 80% of Gen Z today. We did a global study. Actively avoid what we do. Not just like kind of. No, they actively avoid it. So to the question of what's effective, what matters when you have that large of a population of the generation that we're all trying to get and entice and whatever, they're actively avoiding what we do. I think we. Let's stop by the six second ads. We got to do something different.
- [54:45]
A
So one or two final things. The first one is what do we need to be doing less of? I'll go to Annabel first. What do we need to be doing less of? And what do we need to be doing more of? We'll do a quick round robin here on this one.
- [54:57]
C
I love that you added the quick part to that one, less overthinking. Again, going back to your point, Taz, it's amazing how amazed, like wonderful, great ideas happening in like a two hour session, just not overthinking anything and just like getting to the gut to the thing. So less overthinking and that includes less overexposure to the over amount of over information, over channels, over everything. It's like back to the gut.
- [55:24]
A
So. Well, but that you're not saying sidestep rigor or are you?
- [55:29]
C
I'm going back to. No, no, no, I'm not. Because this is why I made the point before. If you go back to 1984, how much rigor was behind that? Rigor is subjective when it comes to what we do. If we qualify that, that is great work, which I'm not saying it is. I'll leave that to the amazing creatives here. If that's great work, then how much of rigor was behind the work? So that's why I have a personal dilemma with that conversation. So I'm just saying less overthinking as a generic term in terms of once in a while it's good to go back and trust our gut as human beings and just like, you know what, this feels right. One of my very first brief widen was png. Thank you, mom. And my boss at the time, after three and a half hours of discussion, just said, every freaking athlete has a mom. That's it. PNG has nothing to do with moms. But every athlete has a mom. That was the whole brief and it took two hours.
- [56:21]
A
Yeah, I love those stories.
- [56:22]
C
So when today I get faced with, hey, you have 48 hours for a brief. And then I'm like 60 pages of data, which I love data to death, trust me. But I'm like, am I going to solve it this way or can I go depending on the brief? So less of that and then more of the opposite, which is humanity, kindness. Like one thing I try to preach and practice a lot with my team is we need to find there's not perfect, but the right balance between kindness and craft.
- [56:50]
A
We just need to kindness to each.
- [56:51]
C
Other, kindness and craft, kindness with each other, kindness with the discipline and what we do and kindness with our clients and what they're going through to your point about why today and why they care about things because their jobs are. I mean, I remember it was three years ago. It was like three years for a cmo, then you went to two and now it's like three months. Like they're scared as shit. So of Course they need us, they need help solutions. So that's what I can think of in your quick turn around.
- [57:17]
F
Thank you.
- [57:17]
A
That was good.
- [57:18]
C
Now we got to.
- [57:18]
A
Jeff Tom. More of and less of.
- [57:21]
F
Okay. More of getting paid for strategy. The, the big.
- [57:27]
C
Yeah, I love it.
- [57:29]
F
And I don't mean, I don't mean that inside like some kind, some kind of fight for what you get paid because that's, that's never enough anyway. But the, the issue we have right now, the need for strategy is as high as ever, maybe never greater. The economic structure that holds strategists and gets strategists paid for is absolutely coming apart. There are two structures that have worked in the past which has been a gift with purchase and AOR relationship that's coming apart. Or consultancy where you're actually getting paid to do the thing. The middle ground of being project based creative companies where you're hoping to get on the scope but you're not going to because it's easy to cut, is going to kill the profession. And so I think all the strength and the wisdom and the kindness and humanity we bring is only going to work if we can find economic structures where we are valued and paid for.
- [58:20]
A
Love that point. We're going to come in a minute or two for questions, so please think of a few. Let me go to Emily for more of and less of.
- [58:30]
D
I'm going to give Johnny, my partner, a big shout out right now because he said something today that has stuck with me. I think when we do rigor, for rigor's sake, we play defense way too often. How do you defend this? How do you know this? What's your argument? And strategy needs to play a lot more offense. So TM Johnny Corpus, but with that, and I think with that playing offense, ask for forgiveness, not permission more often.
- [58:55]
A
What do you mean by that?
- [58:56]
D
Just do the thing. And then somebody says, why'd you do that? Say oops, sorry, but don't ask for permission. We don't have time to wait for permission anymore.
- [59:06]
B
Me?
- [59:06]
A
Yep.
- [59:07]
B
Okay. Less fear, more fun. I feel like the industry, a lot of it is just people are, there's just so much fear and it's like, fear I'm going to have a bad meeting, fear the client's not going to like it, fear I don't know what I'm doing, fear that this answer doesn't make sense. It's like. And it's crippling and it stifles creativity and it inhibits our ability to actually make the stands. We need to make to move the industry forward. And I can tell you when you're. When you can let go of that and be in an environment when you're allowed to dream and allowed to fail. Magic happens, man. So less fear, more fun.
- [59:43]
A
And then lastly, Tess, I mean, I've.
- [59:45]
E
Said a few of the things that matter to me, like, less changing man, more unchanging man. Less ads for ad people, more ads for real people, and less lower funnel obsession and more upper funnel obsession.
- [59:58]
A
What do you mean by less changing man? Tell me.
- [60:01]
E
As in the. The understanding. So his point was. And this was whenever he said it, like, 50, 60 years ago, we focus so much on the change. Like, what's changing? What's changing? That's basically how technology is changing us. And we forget. Actually, you know, we. We've been built over millions a year. Well, maybe not millions, hundreds of thousands. But, like, those things don't change, right? What matters, you know, the fears, hopes, dreams. Like. Like, that doesn't change that much. The thing. You're surrounded with changes, but focus on the unchanging. And then again, focus more on. Less on lower funnel. The measurable sales. They're more on the upper funnel brand building.
- [60:44]
A
Okay, let's turn it around and get some questions. Where's the microphone? And then if you have a question, please raise your hand. And we need to have at least four or five questions or not. Nobody gets to leave the building. So that's it. Who's got a question? Can you raise your hand? Okay. Here at the front, please? Where would the second question be so we can get a microphone clip? Oh, you already have one.
- [61:05]
C
I'm sorry.
- [61:06]
A
I have to go here first. I didn't see this lady. Go ahead.
- [61:09]
B
Okay. Hi, I'm Renee. I am a group strategy director at Crispin, and I have a quick question for you guys. I think the obvious truth. I think that's what you called it, Emily, is. Is the world outside is a dumpster fire. On our phones is a dumpster fire. And in our jobs, we have a barrage of bullshit, as someone up here said as well. And so I want to know what you guys do as leaders to tackle the cynicism that is very rampant in our industry right now, whether it's within yourselves, your teams, with your creatives, or anyone else, or the absent from can CFOs.
- [61:48]
C
I. Well, we're gonna edit this, right?
- [61:51]
A
Yeah.
- [61:52]
C
Okay.
- [61:52]
A
Well, no, you. Yeah.
- [61:54]
D
Yeah.
- [61:54]
C
So, yes, this is something I learned from when I used to work at Junk. It's not a new term, but radical transparency. I try My best to see it with my team and tell them exactly what's going on. And I have this principle which is I will break every single rule of what I'm not supposed to tell you and trust you the day you break it. I would never tell you everything, anything ever again. But you need to know what's going on. From the finance to the operations to the realities, to the fears. Of course there are some things that stay in a certain things, but I think radical transparency to me has been a proven thing that allows me to be able to at least get my teams to understand here's what we're going through, here's what's happened. And sometimes it's like, yes, it's okay to wake up in the morning knowing that things are uncertain, but it's also okay to know that sometimes you can wake up in the morning knowing I know enough to know that I'm okay. That's as far as I can go with what I can control.
- [63:01]
D
I would agree. I pretty much over communicate. I think I grew up. I think this industry has, I know this might surprise all of you. Doesn't have the best reputation for work life balance. I know this might be crazy to say, but I over communicate because I think that it's really important that we realize that we are all humans. We talk about that for our consumers, but our talent are humans. I've got three kids and growing up I used to hide my purse by the bathroom because I didn't feel I could leave before seven True story. And I'll never let that happen again. So when I'm busy or something happens, I fucking communicate it and I expect. And what happens then is that you create an environment where people want to be at work because they know that your work also respects who they are when they're not at work. So doesn't take a lot, but just make sure that you're seeing all of your team as real humans and full humans as well.
- [63:52]
A
Let's go over here. And if you want your questions to be answered by anybody specifically because I know that's we can't get everybody to answer it. So if you have that, you can do that, ask the particular person.
- [64:03]
F
Cool.
- [64:03]
B
Hi, I'm Jenna, senior comms over at the Martin Agency. Challenging something that was said in relation to personal use of cable declining while we're still building for that. Do you think that we must be a user to understand the consumer? So for example, we're often targeting an audience much different from ourselves with different media behaviors, belief beliefs, algorithms, et Cetera. But to the question posed, must we be watching cable to get the person that we want to speak to, or do you think that we've gotten much more comfortable building general creative for these mass reaching platforms while specializing for more nuanced platforms like social?
- [64:41]
C
I really believe Tom has a good answer to that.
- [64:43]
B
Yeah.
- [64:44]
F
Well, I think you need to treat the person still watching cable and the person who spends three hours there on TikTok with the same respect. One thing that we're knowing with all of these platforms, we know they all work differently and we know the nuances really matter. And the worst thing that you can do is show up tone deaf in any of them. And so I think it's like you just, you have to have a respect for all the platforms. And so I think your behavior is absolutely right. But then also genuinely trusting the social team about the platforms and not deciding like, you know best and you can step into them. So you've got to love, love them all equally.
- [65:25]
A
Anybody else want to take a shot at that question? Next question, please. All right, it's on. Okay, cool.
- [65:34]
E
Hi, everybody.
- [65:34]
A
My name is Alvaro from Arnold. So I think one of the questions.
- [65:37]
E
That I had was referring to this.
- [65:38]
A
Idea of like, gut and taste.
- [65:40]
B
I think good strategists have really, really.
- [65:42]
A
Good taste and they listen to their gut. So I think my question is how do you rationalize intuition in a way.
- [65:49]
B
That sometimes data can't always do?
- [65:52]
D
I think you make a bunch of really interesting theses because it's never been easier with the word that will not be named to test them out and figure out what you need to go if there are ones that you should follow. So I think get creative and write a bunch of theses right at the start of something and you might get rid of four of them or seven of them or 12 of them. But chances are you'll probably, your gut will probably take you somewhere interesting. And then it's, you know, can it continue to be interesting? Can it continue to lead somewhere surprising and inevitable?
- [66:22]
C
Yeah. And I think building on that, just nurture it. Like.
- [66:27]
A
Yeah. Your gut.
- [66:28]
C
How much of the time do we actually spend nurturing our gut? I thought in the past for some of us was reading those kind of like collected books and things. I still go back and watch all commercials, all fashion commercials, all fashion print ads when I'm on inspire. And I find things because there's so much magic in the past. But the thing is not about how to solve the most recent modern thing. It's just an insight, a truth so my point with that is I think building on Emily's is like we have to nurture our gut and I don't know how much time we spend on that.
- [67:09]
E
I was just going to add, I feel it's always been true, at least the 20 years I've been doing this, that there are two types of planners, the gut driven ones, but then they've got to find some data or some form of rigor to make sure that they're rooted in truth. And then the ones that sort of build their point of view up from the data and synthesize it and neither is better than the other. That's cool, but you have to apply both aspects at some point.
- [67:38]
A
Johnny, you got a microphone? Johnny.
- [67:40]
B
Hi everybody.
- [67:42]
E
Johnny here.
- [67:44]
B
I've got a thought, comment and question. So it's a three parter. So I think the thought is that you talk a lot about taste, which I think is absolutely true. My thought is that it's never been harder to develop taste if you're coming in the industry, because once you see something before you've even formed your thoughts on if you like it, if you don't like it, if it's interesting, there's.
- [68:07]
C
Someone on TikTok making a hot take.
- [68:08]
B
About it, which then adds noise to.
- [68:10]
C
Your point of view.
- [68:12]
B
The comment is my practical way of trying to overcome some of that is I carry a notebook and if I see something I want to write my immediate reactions to it to cultivate that gut.
- [68:22]
C
And then if I hear someone talking.
- [68:24]
B
About it, I hear their point of view and then I'm not clouded by a hot take to cloud my taste. And question for everybody is what are some practical ways? I know you shared around watching old.
- [68:35]
C
Fashioned ads and watching old ads and things like that.
- [68:39]
B
What are some practical ways that we can all apply to better develop taste in a world that's engineered to give us hot takes and we can't really sit with our thoughts to process something because the minute we see an ad, someone's talking about it on LinkedIn. The minute we see a movie, there's a six part breakdown on TikTok.
- [68:58]
C
So what are some practical ways to.
- [69:00]
B
Develop taste for people who are still developing their gut and their instinct?
- [69:04]
C
You know, on that front, let me just throw something out there. The Maya might not help at all. I'm a hardcore Marvel fan, hardcore from comics to everything else. I will, when I go and I watch the movie you show in the theater, my first place to go is snag what's happening on TikTok. My first place to go is into sources that I rely on, that I already identify, that I trust to either understand things, to dissect things. There's some critics that I believe in that I go and they dissect the movie. I think there's a curation element into where do we go and when and how. And then I can go to TikTok and say, let's see what the world thinks about it. So I'm not sure that that helps. But to me, it's like an important element of distinction between, yes, there's a lot of shit happening about absolutely every single piece of thing that goes out there. Adds to me is an example of what used to be back when I was growing up in the industry. But I feel like we need to identify whatever our sources, reliable sources or trusted sources or inspiring sources are to let go and find out about the things that we want to learn more.
- [70:12]
D
Just so, though mine's a little simpler. I just think you need to make sure you let your brain breathe. And your brain has to breathe. You can figure out what that means. That could literally mean, like, put your phone away on the subway and look around and see what people are wearing and what's on the subway, because most people aren't. So I just say let your brain breathe, and then you'll give space to make taste and your points of view on it.
- [70:31]
A
One last question, please.
- [70:34]
B
Hello, my name is Abraham Espinosa. I'm an SVP of Strategia.
- [70:37]
A
I thought you were going to come up here and sing.
- [70:40]
D
Okay, amazing.
- [70:42]
B
No, I just don't want to give my back to this amazing part of the audience. I love Jeff's proposal of operating with less fear. Actually, my question is about fear. Last year, a few days before the Olympic Games started, the New York Times published article about fear among athletes. Athletes that were gold medalists and they were confessing that they also feel fear. And athletes, as people that we see as superheroes that we look up to, they experience fear. And by talking about fear, they felt released about it. My question, if possible to all of you is as seasoned planners, what are the current fears that you are experiencing at this stage of your career, and how much have they evolved or changed from the moment that you were starting your career as planners?
- [71:33]
A
Yeah, great question.
- [71:35]
B
I can sing the question if possible.
- [71:37]
A
We might. That's good. Thank you.
- [71:39]
D
I just think the speed and the crunch time and the combined with the fear that our clients have just is the enemy of originality. And I think that scares me because the more that we are. Our brains are fragmented themselves every single day. You don't really have much time to spend with the work. So that would be my answer.
- [72:01]
E
Yes.
- [72:02]
B
Speed's a good one for sure. I'll answer slightly differently, if I may, where it's like, I never thought I knew what the fuck I was doing. And so I found great places that I'm surrounded by people that think I do and can take.
- [72:22]
D
They believe in your superpower.
- [72:23]
B
It can take the kind of thing that kind of sort of makes sense that I spit out and make it better. I think that's how you get through it. Right. Like, there's. That's the best way I can. I can think of to deal with fears. Like, I think planners in particular, creatives too, a little bit, but they think they have to solve the perfect, perfect thing on their own. Like a hermit. Like, you go to a cave and you've been in there for six months and now come back and you're like Moses and you drop the tablets and it's like, ah. It's like, that's way too hard, man. Way too hard. Like, put some thoughts down, do some homework, and then get together with the people that you're in this with and talk about it.
- [73:05]
F
Yeah, it's huge.
- [73:06]
B
Like, that's the best way to get through fear. You don't have to be 100% right. You have to be directionally correct and then surrounded with people that will help you be 100% right.
- [73:18]
E
I was going to reframe your question mainly because I'm scared to reveal my fears, but because I think, again, as leaders, our job is to create the conditions where your teams are not scared. Right. And whether that's sharing an idea, having a point of view, challenging. So I think that's important for us when you're talking about fear is how do we create the right culture.
- [73:40]
C
I think mine is very similar to yours task because it's something that was very afraid of that I learned to turn into a superpower by just revealing it, which is vulnerability, like, being vulnerable. One of the hardest thing I had to do in the last four years as I embrace this role, was to learn to be able to stand up in front of my team and say, I am fucking lost. I don't know, I need your help. And the fear of. It's less a fear of, like, what he says about me. My fear is if that helps build an environment in which they can come to me or to anybody else and also open up about their vulnerabilities. Because I think it could be a superpower if we all embrace it somehow. So don't know if that makes a lot of sense, but it's been the thing that I'm like, navigating the most, and I don't know if it's working.
- [74:39]
F
Tom, I think it's so true. You asked at the beginning what's never changed. What's never changed is that all great strategy departments and teams have been safe spaces or containers for weird people to do vulnerable things. At the most ethereal and fragile and unclear part of the creative process. And so making space for that. Because the fear that I think almost everyone's described here has been about a fear that involves holding back and not doing the thing and letting your own anxiety stop you from saying what you believe or trying something and creating that space entirely so people can actually just do the fucking work, Try the thing, say the thing they wanted, pursue the angle they wanted.
- [75:23]
A
That.
- [75:24]
F
That's. That.
- [75:25]
A
That.
- [75:25]
B
That.
- [75:25]
F
That's all we can do. And in that environment where people are just trying and doing, you kind of overcome the fear because it means. It means you're doing it, not holding back.
- [75:35]
D
And I would just say if you are paralyzed with fear because you don't know how to do something, just reframe and be like, why not me?
- [75:42]
A
So listen, what a great point to end that. You guys are phenomenal. Thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for your time. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you to everybody here for being listeners. Do take lots of photos and do talk about the show and what you heard tonight. Post picks, Connect with us on LinkedIn, with me on LinkedIn. And thank you so much for everything.
- [76:05]
C
Thank you.
- [76:06]
A
And I missed you.