Brent Rivard (4:32)

Yeah, no, I avoid all those made up holidays for the most part. But yeah, that's fun.

Jim Stengel (4:38)

I think it's kind of a mean holiday every time I've sort of done that, you know, my kids were younger. It's like it never ends well.

Brent Rivard (4:45)

And actually this will be an interesting one when you think of how popular now AI has become. Right. Because we don't know what's real right now anyway.

Jim Stengel (4:52)

Yeah, right.

Brent Rivard (4:53)

I can't go on to Instagram and know what's real and not anymore. So you know, the value is, is slowly decreasing. But, you know, I think it'll devalue April Fool's Day where people already don't know what's a joke and what's not.

Jim Stengel (5:05)

That'd be a very positive outcome of AI. So, hey, I think you are part of the Gen X cohort born between 65 and 80, and I'm obviously right in the smack in the middle of the baby boom generation. So I want you to start with what ways are you a typical Gen Xer and what ways are you definitely not?

Brent Rivard (5:26)

Oh, that's a fantastic question. I mean, I kind of look at it as we're just grinders. I mean, Gen X just, you know, get to work, get it done. We never complain. And this is maybe to our demise as well. We didn't complain. We respected authority. We got to work before our bosses did and we left after they did. That's just a big difference in our generation was this, that we were, you know, we were just the, the original hustlers, I think, and just get after the problems. And, you know, we didn't, we. And to our demise, we didn't take any time for ourselves. Right. There were no mental health days in the Gen X world. Right. There was no such thing. And maybe there should have been. You know, maybe that's our. To our demise. Yeah.

Jim Stengel (6:08)

Anyway, you're not sort of a Gen X type.

Brent Rivard (6:10)

I think I'm kind of really typical Gen X. Yeah. You know, I, I think that what I just talked about is something that I'm becoming not as typical because I'm starting to embrace, hey, maybe, you know, maybe a little meditation in the sauna after a workout is a good idea. Whereas instead of just rushing to the next meeting, maybe taking a moment and a beat. So that's where I'm becoming less typical of a Gen Xer and Embrac. The things that other generations are doing that I admire.

Jim Stengel (6:36)

Well, you're the first guest on this show in a series of episodes we're doing on exploring marketing to different generations, different audiences. This is kind of where you sit now with this agency that you started. Do you have any watch outs or advice for us as we start this series? You're the first episode of several we'll do over the next few months.

Brent Rivard (6:54)

Just embrace everything. And I think that that's what's not happening for marketers.

Jim Stengel (7:00)

Right.

Brent Rivard (7:00)

As marketers are still youth obsessed. And, you know, that's kind of what, what this agency was founded from the beginning is just, you know, getting after a specialized market that's completely ignored. When people do market to it, they do it wrong. So, you know, that's for the most part, kind of where our head's at.

Jim Stengel (7:16)

You know, this is such a fundamental decision every marketer has to make, right. What audience they will focus on to grow their brands. And then obviously, once you decide, that affects everything. How you design your brand, your marketing. So if you're going to be consumer centric, you have to start with deciding what audience you're going to be consumer centric or audience centric about. You've worked with a lot of brands in your career in advertising and now with Geezer Media.

Brent Rivard (7:41)

Yes.

Jim Stengel (7:41)

When you think about this topic, who do you think has done this? Well, in your opinion, what brands, what categories?

Brent Rivard (7:48)

There's very few. I mean, what was interesting to see this past year is luxury, right? So luxury's figured it out that, you know, maybe I should market to the people with all the money when I'm selling a luxury good and $4,000 handbags. You know, you saw the luxury category, get after it and you know, with older representation, older Hollywood, older actors and, you know, celebrities instead of the youth. But you don't see many companies doing this properly because nobody's, nobody's. We're the ignored generation. It really is fascinating to watch that, you know, we're the ones with 70% of the disposable income, but nobody wants to talk to us. And I think there's a lot of underlying reasons behind that, but. But then you have a few glimmers. I think that we're seeing the beauty industry start to pay attention to it. We're seeing, you know, the uprising of the Pam Andersons going makeup free and, you know, proudly, strongly representing their, their age and not the obsession of, of looking younger. So we're seeing those moves. You're seeing the beauty companies start to pay attention to. I was in with my wife in Manhattan. I went to Jones Road and I was happy to see that not only does Joan Road say it, act like it on their website, but when you went in, the sales representatives were also reflective of that 50 plus audience. Not all of them, of course. It's a mix. I thought that was good. Caddis eyewear, I think, does a good job. I walked by and there's a tiny store in the West Village, but I was pleasantly surprised and it stopped me in my tracks to look at the photography. And I went, oh my God, somebody's doing it, right? Like these are young, young spirited photographs of people that are 50 plus and present it Appropriately, as opposed to, you know, as soon as we think 50 plus, it's slightly overweight. The gray, short haired woman that looks like she's 80, not 50. Right, so. So there's some. There's some. It's starting. I really do think that our timing is particularly good and I'm hoping that I'm correct. But we see a lot of brands just starting to shift, but not enough yet.

Jim Stengel (9:44)

Well, you feel very strongly about this and I've obviously done my homework on you. Could you kind of go a little bit deeper? You're already going there. But what your point of view is about this failure to make a good informed choice about the audience you're going to try to design your marketing and your brand for. How did you come around to this point of view? Why did it inspire you so deeply that you found that an agency focused on this? And so could you just go a little bit more deeply about your personal story when coming around to this point of view?

Brent Rivard (10:14)

Yeah, it's funny. It's a big story. It's not a complicated one, but it's big. It was a combination of frustration with advertising agencies and my frustration that they've become a bunch of generalists. Yet the finite nature of marketing problems is looking for specialists to solve them. It's actually a verb now, the juniorification of ad agency people because of a failed business model. And now we're eliminating all the most expensive and the most experienced people in favor of just making your numbers work. And that's a failed experiment. And we know that. And we've been watching the consolidation the past few years of the large hold cos and seeing what's happening. It's the only industry in the world that ignores experience. It's kind of fascinating that if you think of it on its simplest terms, like if I need a litigating lawyer, I want a veteran. I want somebody that's maybe a year out from retirement. If I need somebody to build my house, I want somebody that's built a thousand. Right? If I'm having heart surgery, I don't want Doogie Howser doing my surgery. I want somebody. But then it comes to ad executives and people are like the 28 year old will do, you know, so there's the frustration from that standpoint and watching all of the most talented people that I had the benefit of growing up in the industry with and watching them age out of a business where, you know, less than 5% of the industry is 50 plus, and that's, that's just beyond shameful. That's like malpractice when you actually think about it.

Jim Stengel (11:52)

And how much of the spending in the American economy is 50 plus 70%,

Brent Rivard (11:56)

70% of the disposable income. It's $8.3 trillion market right now. And if you want to feel a little bit older, I mean, millennials, I believe start turning 50 in four to five years and that 8.3 trillion is going to go to 12.6. Yet we're ignoring it, which is kind of fascinating. So there was, there was the frustration with the ad businesses angle and then it was, it was just the numbers, right? And then it started just resonating to think that it's more difficult than I planned on it being. But I'm confident that marketers are going to pay attention to this and to realize that, you know, you're. What is the average tenure of a CMO right now? I mean, is it a year and a half, maybe three years, somewhere in, in between? Like you're paid to grow businesses and it's not happening. Right? We have the entire alcohol industry. I mean your stocks are down 41% since 2021 and you're still marketing to 21 year olds. You know where Gen X outspends, I think, I think it was Gen X and boomers. The stat is they outspend Gen Z by a factor of 8 to 1 in alcohol sales. Yet we're still seeing the same behaviors. The combination of frustration with the industry and the frustration with marketers not paying attention to this. And then for us, the opportunity, which is, hey, we have an opportunity to right a wrong and to get a bunch of really talented people back to work on some really big juicy briefs and business problems to solve. And the thesis is really simple, that if you want to understand the insights into a 53 year old, you probably shouldn't ask a 27 year old, right? And we've even said if a client comes along and just loves our experience angle and says, you know, hey, we're launching a new skittles candy to 14 year olds, I have to decline that invite and say I don't, I don't know the insights into them. I don't understand their language. We're probably not the agency for you. So that was kind of the thesis at the beginning was, you know, this combination and collision of a market being ignored. The necessity for specialized people to get after specialized problems and then the frustration that's going on in the ad industry and how it's declined significantly.

Jim Stengel (14:13)

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Brent Rivard (15:50)

So what do you think the root

Jim Stengel (15:52)

cause of that is? And how do you break that pattern?

Brent Rivard (15:55)

That's a big question too. I think, to oversimplify it is you have a lot of marketers continuing to use the same playbook. And here we are in this inception of AI, where it's changing everything. But is anybody really changing? It's still the same playbook, but markets have changed, attitudes have changed, the way we purchase has changed, but marketers are still stuck in that. Let's keep my head below the clouds. Yep. You know, it's almost, remember the area, you'll remember this. It was basically, you know, I used to run big car accounts and I used to say to the media director every once in a while, hey, you forgot to change the date. Like, you copied and pasted last year's media plan into the new one. Right. Oh, where they were launching the Toyota Camry. Let's go back four years. And you know, so you got marketers following that same playbook. And then I think you have an issue in the marketing departments as well where, where there's too much youth. We like to market to ourselves. Right. I like to think of myself through my lens. So I think that there's another factor there that you have a 35 year old trying to make a mark for themselves in marketing. And they're marketing the 35 year olds because that's, that's a natural kind of knee jerk. We look at it through our own lens. It's funny, and I mean this in the best way possible. It's. You'd think that marketing leaders would be regarded as at like the forefront of everything, but if you actually look back and I think of all the people that I've worked with, it's kind of like they're kind of the last of the party in some cases. Right. So there's risk, there's inherent risk with saying I'm going to take 25% of my budget and my sales at least are stable or declining. But I've kind of started to turn the tap off a little bit. There's risk to say, hey, I'm going to get after a campaign and go after 50 plus as a segment and stick my neck out. But I'm telling you, the company that does it first is going to become famous in a hurry. And then my prediction is, is then everybody's going to follow. It's going to be the new shiny object to say, wow, we just found some growth. I mean, who's going to be the first beer company? It's funny that they were way ahead of their time. I'm probably dating myself, it's probably 20 years ago where, and I don't know if it was in the United States at the time I was in Canada, but Carlsberg had an ad that said, welcome to your Carlsberg years. And if I reflect, they were 20 years too early because the market wasn't sizable enough back then. So I don't know that, you know, that would have been successful. But if they're looking at it now, they should dust that one off and give it another try.

Jim Stengel (18:27)

You know, Michelob Ultra, I don't know the numbers on this, but just I see it as a consumer, they're sort of marketing toward fitness and wellness. But it seems to be they're casting and they're putting out, you know, I think a more older audience or a more mature audience. And that brand has been growing. It's one of the few in the category that is, that is growing.

Brent Rivard (18:49)

Yeah, I actually think it's the only one in their portfolio that's going. Obviously I have a, you know, probably eight years I spent working with AB InBev and I still stay in touch with a lot of people there. And you're right, it's the only brand that's growing. But even that, I mean, I remember the super bowl ad from last year. I've heard the process wasn't easy to get everybody to buy into having the older demographic in that spot. And maybe now that they've had some success, they'll get after it. But there's an easy one to say, hey, you're doing it. And it's working.

Jim Stengel (19:18)

Modelo as well. When I think about Modelo, who also is a very hot. It's a very hot brand now. I mean, they're all about working hard and we're the beer. It's kind of the old Bud, the old Budweiser kind of thought. But as I look at their casting and how they're presenting themselves, it is a broad, diverse mix of people across generations with this one thing tying it together is they work hard, they care, and this is a reward. So maybe something's shifting.

Brent Rivard (19:45)

Yeah, we're seeing the glimmers. You're seeing the doors opening a little bit. I think the beauty category is the biggest one because if you think of there's one thing to be youth obsessed, but then there's one thing that shift in selling to look younger constantly. And we're seeing that they're starting to move slightly away from that. And it's only logical. I mean, you can talk to somebody that's getting an allowance or you can talk to somebody that spends $1,000 a month on products that help their skin.

Jim Stengel (20:13)

You've also said, I think I've seen this in other venues that the travel industry, which you have some experience in, understands this opportunity well, is acting on it. So could you speak a little bit about that category? You were CMO of a travel company for several years before you start at Geezer Media. What are they doing? How are they getting this right? I mean, who has been a leader in that business? What could others learn from what they're doing?

Brent Rivard (20:39)

Yeah, it's funny because in the travel business all the money is made in the luxury category. And we're gonna see the proliferation of artificial intelligence. Exaggerate that. Right. That's the one sheltered area that they have is that the ultra high net worth individuals aren't ever gonna book anything on their own. So you have that. And then naturally, you know, of course they're 35 year old millionaires as well. But for the bulk, that's where that category resides from a business standpoint. And then if you actually look at one of the problems that they do have is that, you know, of the 80% of the highest producing travel advisors in the luxury category, the median age is over 70. So again, have the reverse situation of where we're criticizing marketers that are young just focusing on themselves, but you've also got 75 year old travel advisor that you know, has a roster of a mirror image of themselves doing all of the business. So that's where that kind of resides. But I think, I think the travel category, they have the opposite problem, that they need to start paying attention to the ultra high net worth young people. Right. Instead of just focusing on where, where they are today. It's kind of the opposite problem. But I think that that's just. They're the ones that get that. Yeah, the person that spends $150,000 on a long weekend vacation with their spouse typically is over 50.

Jim Stengel (22:05)

Now this decision on an audience for your brand and your company is a fundamental one. At P and G, we used to teach you start with a who, right? Who are you trying to go after? And that's a decision that goes beyond the marketing function. If you're really going to design your services, your products, your offerings, your communication to a specific audience, everybody has to be part of that. Everybody in R and D, comms, finance, hr, everyone. So do you feel like that's part of the problem? That's a heavy lift. And it may not be as fun to look at an audience that might be 50 plus who has different values, needs than the people who work at the company. Because companies tend to be a little bit younger. So have you had any experience in dealing with that? Who's done that well, who's tackled that? Because doing any company wide initiative that transforms things, changes things is a heavy lift.

Brent Rivard (23:03)

And that's where this word brave comes in. You need a brave marketer to be able to say, you know what, I don't have to. I was speaking to a VP of marketing at a large beverage company. I'll say. And you could hear yes, yes, nodding, I understand. Yeah, sure. Young people aren't drinking flavored syrup anymore. In fact, they're pushing back against it and they're not drinking alcohol. It requires a brave marketer to. As you said, it's not just them waving their magic wand and saying, I'm going to get. After the obvious, you've got to get all your colleagues on board. You got to go to the CMO with a bold thought. You have to change the way things have been done in that organization from years. Like talk about the first person at Procter and Gamble from your alma mater that. No, actually, you know what? I don't think this way is the only way. I know you've been doing it for 20 years, but you know what I think, Jim, is I think we should try doing it this way. That requires a brave person. I think once upon a time, going back to your first question about, you know, Gen X, and we were grinders. We made our careers from wanting to disrupt, from wanting to do things differently. And that was the way to get the promotion, to get your name in Ad Age magazine or Ad Week and to really send your career on another trajectory. And I think somewhere, and I don't know where, but that changed. And I think that there's this safety of the same way of doing things and not wanting to gather R&D, HR and everyone to say, I think we might be doing it wrong. Or maybe not. It's not even wrong. Like, in no case am I recommending to marketers. You know, what you need to do is you need to shift 100% of your dollars away from Gen Z and into Gen X, right? No, but what I'm suggesting is there's a lot of money here with people that are buying your product and they're ignored. And just might you allocate some money, do a test and learn, and be the most celebrated marketer in your building and start a trend. So I think it's just. I think people are just, good is good enough. And I didn't grow up that way. And our generation wasn't represented by good is good enough.

Jim Stengel (25:31)

Now, harkening back to my P and G days, we had a principle that I want you to talk about, and it was that it's critical to capture an enormous market share at the entry point of a category or a reentry point of a category. So we were obsessed with the first diaper on a baby's bottom. Had to be Pampers. You know, the first detergent that someone should try when they buy a new machine has to be tied. Same with Crest Toothpaste. You know, the first toothbrush and toothpaste has to come from Crest. And we spent a lot of money on programs to be there at that entry point. And we often said, when budgets are tough, times are tough. Those are the last dollars to cut. So that does kind of naturally skew your spending young, you know, in most cases. So what's your take on that? Do you think that still holds true? Because obviously the theory at P and G was that first impression is deep and it's powerful and it sets a standard. And brands that typically own entry point go on to have A dominant market share.

Brent Rivard (26:34)

I think there's still a role for it. There's no question, as I said, in no respect do I want people to shift all of their spending to Gen X. But it's not as true as it once was. So, you know, there used to be a purchase funnel, right? And now there's kind of like a purchase mayhem, right? And it used to be that, you know, if you got the Pampers on the baby for the first one, that then they're going to buy Pampers exclusively for the rest of their parenting lives. But that's the part that's not true anymore. You have multiple opportunities to conquest and to gain a customer. Nowadays we are not as loyal as we as we once were. That whole old playbook, that market has shifted so dramatically. But again, as I say, there's a role for that though. I'm not suggesting that you don't talk to them to get the first. But what I'm suggesting is there's another opportunity down the timeline that isn't being taken advantage of. And that's where I suggested from my last answer, that there's fear that, oh my God, what if I take away from. Because budgets are finite too, right? Nobody's going and saying I need an incremental 50 million, right? To test and learn, you're going to have to take money from your current activities. Try it further down the timeline. But I think that's where the opportunity is currently being ignored. And that's where I think there's a massive amount of growth potential for so many marketers out there.

Andrea Sullivan (28:08)

Hi everybody. I'm Andrea Sullivan, the CEO of Vive and we have produced the CMO podcast with Jim Stengel for many years. And I'm sitting in his seat right now. It's so exciting. I wanted to tell you a little bit about one of our programs. It's called Vive by Vayner. It's a 12 month program that's designed for C suiters and founders. And we want to help people to grow their businesses, but also to grow themselves. And so we bring in people from Shark T Bank to talk to our founders, but we also focus on wellness. We want to make sure that people are leaning into becoming their best selves, their best and happiest selves. So if you are someone that wants to learn how to grow your business and grow yourself, check us out at Vive Co. That's V Y V E co. We'd love to talk to you.

Jim Stengel (29:06)

Now let's talk about your personal story. In approaching this For a minute. I mean, you had a long career in advertising, you worked as a CMO for a while, but you decided to jump start your own firm with a couple of friends. A lot of people dream of that. I mean, I left P and G and did a similar kind of thing, but a lot of people don't do it. I get a lot of calls to say I'm thinking of doing something on my own. What have you learned? And it's always a good discussion. So you're passionate about this topic. You see a gap in the marketplace, you see what's happening in the advertising industry in terms of staffing, and you're saying it's not going to end well. So tell us a little bit about how it's going as a leader, as a person starting something up, even though the opportunity is big. What are you learning about yourself? What are you learning about your team? What are you learning about brands as you have this discussion with them that, you know, they nod their heads but some of them act and some of them don't. So tell us a little bit about what the last, what two years has been like.

Brent Rivard (30:06)

Yeah, just about. Yeah, a year and a half anyway. It's not for the faint of heart. I will never sit as a, as a founder and an entrepreneur and say that this game is easy. You know that too well, Jim. Yeah, but it's, it's. The benefit is the learning. You know, I had the pleasure of doing an MBA some years ago and I can tell you that one year of owning your own company is about 73 MBAs. And you trip and you fall and you learn by, but you just again, you keep grinding and you keep telling your story and you make sure that it's a sharp story. You know, advice for anyone out there trying to open an ad agency or any company. We all know strategy is more about what you choose not to do versus what you choose to do. And yeah, it's hard. It would be hard for me to say, no Skittles, I don't want your million dollar retainer, but you have to make tough choices. So I mean, my advice to anyone out there is get real specific. And what's haunting to me as well, with advertising and the way it's gone is that when did we stop paying attention to our own brands? Make your brand your first client, your own brand, and sweat the details and don't get frustrated, which is impossible. That's just. Actually, that's probably terrible advice. You're going to get frustrated. I get frustrated daily, if not hourly. So there's a lot of fulfillment that comes out of it. You know when you start to. When you move a client from head nodding to saying, I'm going to give this a try and we're grateful for the ones that we have that have started with us. It's very fulfilling when you start seeing it work or you talk about the philosophy of your business, but you haven't taken it on a test drive yet. One of our philosophies is once upon a time, agencies used to love God. I hearken back to one of the companies I worked at, Low Roche. Jeffrey Roche was the creative director and founder at the time. He demanded eight weeks to come back with work to clients. I'm like, eight weeks? If you get eight days, you're blessed nowadays. But. And then it was the drop of the curtain. Ta da. Here is all of our wondrous thinking. Whereas the geezer philosophy is we'd rather meet 10 times over a three week period and involve our clients in the process and iterating with us. And when you see that come to life and you see, wow, the rounds of revisions that we used to go through are gone. And it's very gratifying to go. It worked because we essentially took something from theory to practice and that doesn't always work. And we know that. Right. So in theory, every marketer should be allocating a significant amount of their margin to testing this out and seeing if they're leaving money on the table. In practice, that's not happening at the level that we'd love to see it, but we are seeing it and we're grateful for it.

Jim Stengel (32:52)

You said a few moments ago about the importance of a sharp story and I'd like you to go back to that for a moment. I talked to a lot of young companies. In fact, I was just with a very fast growth AI company who's rich with talent, lots of clients growing like crazy. Their story's not sharp.

Brent Rivard (33:12)

No. And you'd see that a lot of the tech world.

Jim Stengel (33:14)

Yeah. And it's like that might be okay for now, but once you have a few competitors pop up, how are you different, what sets you apart? And I just find that is such a. Obviously it's hammered into you when you're a P and G about how's your brand different, what's your point of difference, what's your purpose, how are you meaningful and what's your sustainable competitive advantage. All that good stuff. So could you talk a bit about arriving at a sharp story?

Brent Rivard (33:41)

Yeah, it's hard. I can't remember who the writer was that had the quote. I'm sorry I wrote you a long letter. I didn't have time to write you a short one.

Jim Stengel (33:48)

I think it was Abe Lincoln, actually.

Brent Rivard (33:49)

Oh, was it amazing? There you go. But that's just a fascinating way to look at. I mean, you need to start with your long story, and then you really need to be honest with yourself and keep revisiting it. I think that the geezer thesis is so simple, which is. It took us a long time to get there, though. It wasn't that simple. Right. And you have to make some hard choices about what you're not going to do, what you're going to do, who you're for, who you're not, who's the company you want to keep, who's the company you don't want to keep, who would we be great for, but who would we be terrible for? And just admit it, right? You think of how many companies God have worked for, how many ad agencies, and they all, at one point in time, we're not going to pitch. All they do is pitch, right? But it's a hard decision, right, to say we're going to put our foot down and say we're not going to do this in favor of that. So. And too few companies do it. And I think too few companies know, you know, I think the tech world, they're just not wired as marketers, right? And. And that's a good line of hire people that aren't like you. I don't need to hire another four versions of me. That would be terrifying. But hire people that aren't like you. So the tech people need to start hiring marketers that understand how to build brands and brand equity and build shareholder value in a different way. But I think that the knee jerk is, is we are going to surround ourselves with a bunch of AI PhDs and techies. And then what happens is, is when you go to 10 of their websites, they all look the same. They all use the same AI program to create the website. The colors are kind of the same, and they just end up blending in. And I think we went away from, you know, I'm not against performance marketing either, but when you dialed it in 100%, I think we all lost a lot of brand. And, you know, you've done it. How many times have I stood up in front of a audience as a speaker and said, I know people are sick of hearing us talk about Nike and Apple, but they're kind of still the only ones doing it, Right? Shockingly, Even though they wrote the playbook for everybody to follow. I'm hoping we're going to see a shift and that we're going to see people dial back to brand and start caring about their purpose. Even. You had a great segment for listeners out there. You had some fantastic guests talking about brand purpose and whether it's dead or not. And I think it's dialing back to the role of it. But at the same time, the maker of this glass doesn't need to have a brand purpose. Right? It's marketers. At one point, everybody shifted. Everybody needs a purpose. But I think we're seeing the dialing back to, oh, maybe I do need to be more specific with who I am as a company, who we are and who we're not. And it just makes selection better overall for the, for you and for the customer.

Jim Stengel (36:18)

Now, for the senior marketers listening and are inspired by, hey, maybe I haven't thought about my audience creatively enough or thoughtfully enough, or where's the spending? Or where's the spending going? What would be your playbook for that cmo? And if you're working with someone now who's doing it well, and you can talk about that, beautiful. If not, just pull some principles. But what should they go do if they're thinking?

Brent Rivard (36:41)

Curious. I mean, this is the other thing. Remember why you got in this business? I love marketing, I love advertising, I love business. It's an obsession. Get curious. Like, just ask yourself the question, am I potentially leaving growth on the table? What? That's what you get paid for. Get excited about it. Dig. Right? All we have now is data. We don't even know what to do with it. Once upon a time, by the time your data was telling you anything, it was too late, right? It was months and months and months of taking primary data and somebody coming to you and presenting what that said. And even oftentimes that was opinion. But the speed of AI out there right now with how we can, how we can scour markets, billions and millions of data points in the blink of an eye. I mean, it's not even, it's not even that much work. But it starts with you. It starts with, get curious about whether you're leaving money on the table. You might not be, but if you are, you know, get some data, get a whiteboard and a marker, get some smart people around you and start talking and do what it is that we set out to do in this business, which is find another market. And if it's there, fantastic. How rewarding is that? How many Marketers really nowadays are saying, oh, I delivered 12% year over year growth. I can't name one. Right? So get excited about that maybe being the end of the story.

Jim Stengel (38:05)

Simple stuff, right? Get a team together, get curious, ask some fundamental questions. That's the beautiful part about this function, right? It's one of the few in business that's their brief.

Brent Rivard (38:16)

And then, and then again, if it's, hey, call me, I'd love to do business with you, but if it's not, don't let it end there. Don't then do the old playbook of, oh, now I'm going to get, you know, the top 10 agencies in the country to pitch. No, find a partner that can deliver on that problem with the confidence that you require to help you because don't trip over that process now. I think we're just at the point where the old playbooks are really going away and I, I think didn't even know that it was going to be part of its benefit. I think AI is forcing everyone to just kind of re look at everything and going, maybe it's not the right way that we did 20 years ago, isn't the right way today. And again, that's about getting curious as well. Right?

Jim Stengel (39:06)

Brent, let's flip into the creative brief. You had a long career in advertising, I think like 18 years and a couple years, three or four as CMO, as you reflect on that, you worked at all these blue chip agencies, had great accounts. Could you speak to one or two initiatives or campaigns that you worked on that you reflect now at this point in your career and say, that was very meaningful to me or very, very

Brent Rivard (39:30)

important to my development, Anomaly, when I went on board with Anomaly and we opened the Toronto office together with the partners and Frankie Rodriguez was the CEO at the time, who's from here in New York, that was kind of game changing for me. And what's interesting is, is that you talk about inspiration, that, you know, Anomaly at the time was very clear with who they were and who they weren't. The name was the idea. So as I look at Geezer Creative, the name is the idea, right? There's a lot of similarities in how this works. And the interesting thing about the Canadian market is, and not to be critical of the US market, but the Canadian market doesn't have one tenth of the budgets that the US market has. So the creative that comes out of Canada doesn't start with a Tom Hanks voiceover and a Fleetwood Mack track under. Right. That doesn't happen. It doesn't even happen with a Canadian artist that's like a B level. It just doesn't. So you have to outthink instead of outspend. And at the time, the cmo, at the time of Labatt, Jorn Soket, who I give a lot of credit to, gave me the clearest creative brief I've ever been given in my life. We're a big American brand in Canada against our number one competitor named Molson Canadian, right? We've just lost the rights to the NHL and 40%, 4 0% of beer is consumed in Canada while watching hockey. We need to own hockey. Go. That was our brief. And I'm like, bless you for the clearest creative brief that we have to come up to. We came up with the insight, which is clear as it's clear in every sport nowadays. It's clear in concerts now that the real fans aren't in the arena, right? The real fans are in their garage. The real fans are down in their basements. And the most elated part of the game is when a goal's scored and there's this great symbol, which is the goal light in behind the net that goes off and of course, the loud horn that sounds and gets everybody excited. So we decided instead of marketing at People with another beer ad, that we were going to make a piece of branded utility. And we crafted an actual physical goal light that synced up with your phone to your favorite team and when they scored, that had the horn noise and the light would go off. We thought we were onto something clever, but, I mean, these things sold out in minutes. We crashed our website the day of releasing. Famous people everywhere were referencing it. Goaltenders were like, sorry for your bud. Red light going off too much last night. That was my bad. And so that was probably some of the proudest work that we've done. And then, you know, I could go on for hours and about the, you know, the next wave of the campaign, but that was some of my proudest work because, again, it was not conventional. We looked for other solutions. We got curious in a hurry, and we landed on something. We had the right client aligned with the right agency. That was where you felt trust and you felt a tremendous amount of gratitude in a room working with people that were smarter than you, teaching you about their business. And it made a difference, and it made a huge difference. Still lives on today, still part of the campaign. That was, God, 10 years ago.

Jim Stengel (42:40)

And there was, you know, you said it was a great brief and a clear brief. It also had a clear constraint.

Brent Rivard (42:45)

Yes. 100%. And you'd had an enemy.

Jim Stengel (42:48)

Yeah.

Brent Rivard (42:48)

Right, right. And a ton of tension. Yeah.

Jim Stengel (42:52)

About five years ago, you left advertising and went to be CMO of a travel group, and a large one. Why did you do that? And was that challenging, that transition?

Brent Rivard (43:04)

Yes.

Jim Stengel (43:05)

Okay.

Brent Rivard (43:06)

Why I did that was, again, it was out of curiosity. I got a call from a friend of mine that JD O', Hara, who's the CEO of InterNova Travel Group, and said, hey, you know, I'm thinking of bringing in a cmo. You know, I've admired your work that you've done over your career. We stayed close to each other, or, you know, why don't you take a crack at this? And coming this way and being a client. And I'd always wondered, you know, you always had those questions in your head of, you know, what's going on in that building, and clients always telling you guys, only 15% of my job is advertising. It was an appropriate amount of fear. Right. And anxiety to be, like, client. I mean, I'm pretty comfortable in the role that I've been doing in advertising for years. So it took me out of my comfort zone. And, yeah, it was challenging. Navigating the client world is incredibly different. There's a lot of good in it, and there's a lot of challenges in it. And I think that it also helped me reflect and get excited about going back into advertising because I realized that ad people, like we started this discussion. Gen X people are different. Ad people are different too. Right. Ad people start with, nothing's impossible. And I spent a lot of time having to convince a lot of people to do things a certain way because, again, they're stuck in their way. So I think what it's done for me as a professional and as an ad agency owner is I have a tremendous amount of empathy for the CMO role and the marketing function within a building that wherever. In a world where everything's roi Next week, Thursday. Right. Nobody's playing the long game. So it taught me an awful lot. And again, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. I'm really grateful for those years.

Jim Stengel (44:42)

How did you evolve as a leader? I mean, did it make you more patient? Did it make you more. You said more empathetic.

Brent Rivard (44:48)

Yeah. And I think what it did, what it does for me in my role, is that I can be tremendously helpful by saying, ooh, I know what you're worried about. Going into that meeting with the CEO who speaks one language, and that's finance. So I've actually shared that experience with a Few clients and it's been successful. Where I've said, you need to speak in their language. Right. You need to speak in roi. Right. Don't push back against it. Don't come up with a reason why they shouldn't be focused on that first. You're not going to win that argument. So I've been able to be very empathetic and very helpful to clients on how to navigate a discussion with a CFO and a CEO that come from the finance world on why they should be investing an incremental $20 million with you. Right. That's not an easy discussion. So I've helped out that way. But it's a very different world and I think, again, it's been a tremendous amount of growth for me.

Jim Stengel (45:41)

What's the first brand, Brent, you remember making an impact on you as a small boy?

Brent Rivard (45:46)

It was just those pure white Nikes with the black stripe. I was obsessed. And maybe that's what sucked me into the world of advertising and brands, because that was the. I know it's such a typical answer from an ad guy, but it's the truth. And the other one that's funny is the other one is the rock band Kiss. I remember as a very six, seven year old being obsessed, you know, and I was like, but if you look at them, they're a big brand and they still are. They learned merchandise. They were the original marketers. And, you know, we think of the Taylor Swifts and the Madonnas of the world that have been successful. Like, you go back in time, they were kind of the original Gen X, baby.

Jim Stengel (46:24)

Nike and Kiss.

Brent Rivard (46:25)

Yeah, there you go.

Jim Stengel (46:26)

As you said, you're typical.

Brent Rivard (46:28)

Yeah, I sure am.

Jim Stengel (46:30)

So, Bran, who has been the most inspiring person in your life?

Brent Rivard (46:33)

My wife. Challenges had my wife go through some health problems and that whole, like, I can lay down in the corner or I can get up, dust myself off and get back after it. So really inspiring.

Jim Stengel (46:46)

Is she an advertising person?

Brent Rivard (46:48)

Yes, she's the president of an ad agency that will remain unnamed.

Jim Stengel (46:53)

There you go. Brazilian, right?

Brent Rivard (46:55)

Gen X, Yeah. Gen X. Gen X, yeah. Through and through.

Jim Stengel (46:58)

Well, Bren, thank you for this kicking off our series about different audiences. I mean, this whole show has been about one really fundamental question. Are you thoughtful enough about who you're designing for, who you're marketing to, whose life you're trying to make better? And I love the depth we went on that, and I love that as a question we can leave this show with and go back to your teams. Are you curious enough and do you feel like you have the audiences that will help you exceed your growth targets. Over and out.

Brent Rivard (47:27)

Give it a shot. I mean, all you can be is wrong again. In this day and age, you don't have to spend millions of dollars to test something. You can spend hundreds of dollars on a meta platform and get some pretty interesting feedback that same day, right?

Jim Stengel (47:44)

All right, Brent. Well, hope April Fool's Day goes well for you. And no one, no one plays any tricks. We'll both behave.

Brent Rivard (47:52)

Yes, we will. Yes.

Jim Stengel (47:53)

All right. Thanks, man. Thanks for this. It was really, really terrific.

Brent Rivard (47:56)

Yeah, I appreciate this. Thanks for having me. I'm a huge fan of the show and this has been a good one for me.

Jim Stengel (48:03)

That was my conversation with Brent Rivard. Three takeaways from this one. If you're a business brand in life, and the first one is a simple one, and we hear it a lot on the show, be curious. A key, key, key characteristic of top leaders we hear again, again in the show, is their curiosity. When I asked Brent for advice on what a CMO should do to pick the right audience for their brand and not be obsessively youth focused, he just said, be curious. Ask deep questions. Get your team together, get some creative people around the table and ask some fundamental questions. Second takeaway, and relate it. Hire a team for your business or brand that represents the consumers, the people that you want to market to you. It's a diversity point, but it's also a point that's just so, so simple. If you want to appeal to an audience that's not like you, you need to populate your team with people who are not like you. And third takeaway, the importance of a sharp story for every company. As I talked to Brent about starting his own company after many years at big agencies and one stint as a cmo, he talked about how important it is to have your story sharp. Who are you? Why are you here? And how are you different? I think that's important for companies of 2 or 3 people, up to companies with 2 or 300,000 people. Thanks as always for listening. And remember, this is part of a series of episodes that we will be doing over the next several months about choosing the right audience for your brand. So listen up. We won't be dropping one of these every week. We will sprinkle them among our more traditional classic episodes. But we want to do several episodes, episodes about this very fundamental marketing choice that we are sometimes not as thoughtful about as we need to be. Who is the right audience for your business? Looking forward with your growth goals in

Brent Rivard (49:41)

mind,

Jim Stengel (49:46)

That's it for this week's episode of the CMO Podcast. As always, I would be grateful if you shared our show with your friends, along with subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. The CMO Podcast is a Vive Original production.