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- [00:00]
Jim Stengel
Before we dive into today's episode, we would very much appreciate a moment from you to make sure you're subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen, along with optioning to auto download the episodes. It really is the best way to never miss an episode. Along with supporting the show and the amazing team that helps me bring it to you. And while you're there, leave us a rating or review. It only takes a minute and helps more people find the show and helps us learn and of course share this episode with a friend or colleague who might enjoy it. We wouldn't be here six years later and still going so strong without you all our community. So thank you for being part of it. Now, onto the show. What's the first brand you remember making an impact on you as a young boy?
- [00:47]
Nick Law
Well, as a young boy, it was the rugby team I followed and they're called the South Sydney Rabidos. And they have a little logo there of a rabbit, which I thought it's so weird and quirky and their colors are red and green, red and green stripes. And so, you know, back in the 70s, when you watched the rabbit Os play on a color tv, it would make your eyes hurt because the red and green would like vibrate like bad Christmas lights. Yeah, yeah. So, you know. But you know, as growing up, Apple was definitely the brand that I, you know, that I had a relationship with and I was abnormally curious about everything they did.
- [01:29]
Jim Stengel
Hi, I'm Jim Stengel. I've helped hundreds of major brands discover and activate their purpose. Because when a brand's purpose is clear, compelling and authentic, profit naturally follows. Each week, I welcome the CMOs, the chief marketing officers of your favorite brands, to speak to how their job is so much more than marketing. These leaders share their inspiration and challenges along with how they try to build a full, healthy and happy life in and out of the office. And it's that energy that reaches everyone they touch. And we're glad you're here to feel that energy and to learn from these remarkable leaders. So here we go. My guest today on the CMO podcast hails from Randwick, Australia, which is a suburb of Sydney, where he began his career decades ago in trade school. Our guest today is Nick Law, the creative chairperson of accenture song, the $20 billion by Revenue Creative services division of Accenture. Accenture Song has four areas of marketing, design, digital products, commerce and customer Service. Notably, in 2019, Accenture song, then called Accenture Interactive, purchased the highly awarded and fast growing creative agency Droga5 Teaser Alert. Its founder, David Droga, is a big reason that Nick is now an Accenture Song. Nick began his career studying drawing in trade school, but soon found his way into the creative world. He spent 17 plus years at RGA, helping shape arguably the most innovative creative agency. In the early 2000s. After a brief stint at Publicis, Nick went client side to Apple where he was VP of marketing integration. In early 2022, Nick joined Accenture Song. He is now the creative strategy and experience leading and creative chairperson of the company. I have known and admire Nick since his early days at rga. So it's about time he joins our show. Here's my conversation with a top bloke and legend. Here's Nick. Well, hey, Nick, welcome finally to the CMO podcast. And man, you get around. I was researching for this show and you're like out and about, I think more than you ever have been. Is that true?
- [03:35]
Nick Law
I think in the last few months, maybe not through any design, but there's been, you know, I think because a lot's changing and so in periods of change, I tend to have opinions.
- [03:46]
Jim Stengel
Yeah, I know. We'll get to that. Well, I have to say we were talking before we started recording. You've worked at rga, Apple and Accenture, and all three offices are amazing.
- [03:56]
Nick Law
Yeah.
- [03:57]
Jim Stengel
I remember when you opened the new RGA office. The old one was kind of funky. I remember when you opened that and. And then Apple, of course, is unreal and Accenture looks pretty cool.
- [04:07]
Nick Law
Yeah, no, I think it is. The interesting thing about Accenture is that even before the pandemic, they had a culture of more flexible work because a lot of Accenture people will find themselves with clients and distributed. So it's a great place to connect and it's designed in a way that, you know, so that it is more flexible.
- [04:27]
Jim Stengel
I want to look back a little bit before we look forward. And I first met you when you were at rga and I've known you for many years now, as it turns out, but you spent 17, almost 18 years at that company. I think it was a hundred people when you joined. It was like 2000 when you left. The revenue growth was transformational and I think that in the early 2000s, it was the most innovative agency out there.
- [04:55]
Nick Law
Yeah.
- [04:56]
Jim Stengel
You were not a client of mine, but I still visited you. I talked to you guys about what's going on. I admired you. I always went to your stuff at Cannes and other places where you showed up. So I want you to go there first, Nick, for this that was a big time of your life, right? 17 years. You're not that old a guy. It's a high percentage of your working life. So can you talk a bit about how that shaped you as a person, as a leader?
- [05:20]
Nick Law
It was the perfect storm for me professionally, because I had, prior to that, not through any great plan, worked across a few different creative tribes. So I started in design, specifically, sort of brand and identity, and then I moved into advertising when I moved to London, and then into the early Internet in the mid-90s. So by the time I knocked on Bob's door In the early 2000s, this thing called the Internet was bringing together all of the stuff that used to be separate. And even then when the Internet was really a hyperlinked brochure, it wasn't the big pipe of everything that we think of it now. Even then, it was obvious to me that you needed a design sensibility, which I had grown up with. You needed a storytelling sensibility, because at some point the Internet was going to be the delivery system for great stories and utility, you know, and you needed to sort of understand the narrative and the systematic side of creativity. And, you know, and obviously Bob had done an amazing job to sort of set the stage for the transformation of RGA. And. Yeah, and so we had this amazing, amazing 17 year streak, you know, and the reason 17 years didn't feel like a long time is because we were very honest about our medium, which was this thing called the Internet. And as a result of that, we changed a lot because the medium changed a lot. So we mapped our capabilities and designed our processes and recruited our talent based on the opportunities that the technology afforded. And as a result, we had a high tolerance for change and we were excited by every new opportunity at a time when the industry was actually pretty tentative and scared about what was going on.
- [07:10]
Jim Stengel
No, I loved how you always. I always went to your presentation. I mean, I think you. You picked seven or nine years that like every. Every seven or nine years a company should totally change everything, turn themselves upside down, restructure, look at the work required for the future. Yeah, And I always thought you were the harbinger of what's coming in terms of organizational design in creative services. So the question I have for you on that is, what was your learning going through that? Because you guys really did not just pivot, you kind of turned upside down. And how do you do that without losing who you are?
- [07:49]
Nick Law
The first thing you need to acknowledge, which is difficult, I think, for agencies that are purely narrative, because change is a design problem, not a storytelling problem. And if you think that you're going to change your agency by adding a few slides to the back of your deck, then you're wrong. And so I think the first thing that you have to understand is the first act of a creative company is to design yourself. And designing yourself is basically looking at what are the new things you need to make and then reverse engineering everything from that instead of trying to force the new thing into an old structure, which is, I think, what a lot of the agencies did. But the thing that, how you don't lose yourself is that you're really clear about what your principles are, and then you're very flexible about what your practices are. So the anchor is your principles, and they are things that you can apply to new practices. And what that gives you is the ability not just to be sort of coherent as a company, as a brand, but it also means that when the new practices come along, you know how only you will be able to solve for them and so you can move quicker, which is, so you've got this principles that never change and, and practices that change constantly. And the principle for us was that we recognized that the job of a creative company was to recognize that creativity is both spatial and temporal, or as I used to say, systems and stories. And not only that you had to have these two creative sensibilities, but the real power was in the overlap between the two. So if you think about when you're using a digital product, you are, you are guided both by the affordances that have been designed into the interface. So the creative ability to create a digital product, but also the stories that are embedded within that digital product. So it's really hard to pass those things apart. And there were plenty of agencies that were good at designing interfaces, but didn't have a sort of narrative sensibility within that interface. And then there were other companies that had great ideas about narrative objects, but didn't understand how to design the behaviors that an interface would deliver in that. So we. And going back to what doesn't change, the task is those principles actually shape the culture. So it's impossible to do what I just explained unless there's a mutual respect and a structural equality between these sort of systematic thinkers, which tend to be introverts and really care about how things work, and the sort of more narrative creatives, which tend to be more expressive and open and really know how to make people care. And it's a zero sum game if you decide to do one or the other. But the cultural ability to have A world where both is respected and they work well together and they're equal structurally within the company and the processes was the great achievement of iga.
- [10:46]
Jim Stengel
Now you made two big jumps. One, you left RGA to go to Apple, and then you left Apple go to Accenture Song, which I think was Accenture Interactive when you joined. So I'd like you to talk about both of those leaps.
- [11:01]
Nick Law
Yeah.
- [11:02]
Jim Stengel
Because I think going to RGA didn't expect it from where you were at that place in time. These two may have been a bit more unexpected. So could you take us back in the room when you made that decision?
- [11:12]
Nick Law
I'll have to correct you, Jim, because I did have a fleeting. Oh, you did.
- [11:16]
Jim Stengel
You did have a fling with publicists.
- [11:17]
Nick Law
So I was with publicis. Yeah, but that. Which was a great time. And then Apple called and so I couldn't say no. But I went from this agency to the holding company, saw the structures of marketing organization, and then went to Apple. But there is a connection, I think, between RGA and Apple and that is this sort of balance between science and humanities, which. It's a very Jobsian idea. And it's what Apple uniquely did in Silicon Valley in that world, which was to combine technology and design in a way that no one else did. You know, hardware, software, technology, design. And you know, it was analogous to the RGA stories and systems structure, you know, just on the product side. And, and also as a result of that, you'll find a lot of alumni from RJ at Apple. I don't know what the number is, but it's, you know, makes sense. Yeah. So that made sense. And for me, Apple was a company I was, know, I always admired. I followed them ever since they made, you know, beige boxes that crashed before Jobs came back. I mean, because I was in the creative industry, I, I always had a Mac. I was one of the few people that bought a Newton. And you know, even to this day, I'm always, I'm, I'm, I buy every product they make. I've got a, A vision pro sitting down there. And you know, I just think it's a wonderful company, great design sense and a great marketing sense. So that, that to me made maybe more unexpected was my move to Accenture, as you were alluding to. And that had a lot to do with my relationship with David. I'd known David for many years. We had talked about.
- [12:49]
Jim Stengel
That's David Droga, the founder of Droga5, which Accenture bought in 2019. Yep.
- [12:54]
Nick Law
So what happened is that quite unexpected to David I think but it's sort of interesting move was that Julie Sweet asked David to be the CEO of what was then Accenture Interactive, which became Accenture Song, which is the customer facing part of Accenture. And then when he accepted that, he called me and asked whether I'd be interested. And I was also ready to go back east and the family was ready to go back east and I always wanted to work with David. So without knowing too much about Accenture, but having faith in David and the team that he could assemble, you know, joined Accenture. What I would say is that it is interesting because it's different, right? And now there are some threads that run through all of those things which is, you know, how do you build creative teams, how do you build both digital products and great marketing. But it's also just a, it is a diff. A different enough world that you feel like you're learning all the time.
- [13:53]
Jim Stengel
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- [15:22]
Nick Law
It's been a pleasant surprise actually.
- [15:25]
Jim Stengel
Tell me about that.
- [15:27]
Nick Law
Well, I mean, they're all different sorts of leadership style. I don't think there's any correct way to be a leader. The difference between someone like Bob Greenberg and David couldn't be more different, but they're both brilliant in their own way. I would say that David's great strength is that he has an ambition that includes everyone around him. So he's been hugely successful, and he's done that by recognizing get great people and give them permission. I was thinking about this the other day because he's got this hall of Fame coming up, and I was figuring out what to record for a little video for him. And I always felt when I was interacting with David, that he starts from a place of good faith, which is for a creative person, gives you oxygen. You're not fighting against skepticism or big questions. And. And it doesn't mean that once you start to refine ideas and get work out in the world, that he doesn't help shape it and have opinions and everything. But the starting point is always of this sort of boundless ambition, which I love. There's a great energy to that. And he's also, given what he's achieved, incredibly humble and just easy to work with, just an easy person to be around. I mean, I knew him as a friend before I knew him as a colleague. And actually, my relationship didn't change at all once I started working with him.
- [16:44]
Jim Stengel
He always has that sense of humility, curiosity, family. He's always been about family.
- [16:51]
Nick Law
That's true.
- [16:53]
Jim Stengel
He's going to the hall of Fame next month. I am as well. I'm part of his class. So there was a big event on Wall street to announce it in December, and he was there with his son, just having fun, having a good time. I had my son there, too. So he's never lost his sense of self?
- [17:09]
Nick Law
No, that's right. Yeah. And I think it's important. I mean, one of the things that we're losing, I think, from the marketing discipline is this sort of empathy for the customer. And I think David has a very high emotional intelligence, and I think that's why he succeeded.
- [17:26]
Jim Stengel
So as you work with him more closely over the last four years than you ever have, how do you think you've changed as a leader in these four years?
- [17:34]
Nick Law
He's actually, in a strange way, made me. We're both Australian, and I think a good quality of Australians is that we're not very hierarchical. It's pretty egalitarian, given its weird founding. And I think that means that you're very frank and open. I realized how important that was to David's success. He doesn't really give a fuck about what other people think, but he cares about the work. So when I say he doesn't care what they think, it doesn't mean he's not considered. But he's very clear about what he thinks is right and he's brave enough to keep insisting on it in the most respectful way. And I think that's a really important thing to do when you're selling spiky ideas.
- [18:16]
Jim Stengel
Well, you came in to this company four plus years ago. You were named creative Chairperson a year or two ago. So tell me how your work has shifted since you joined. You're probably more of a manager now than a doer. Tell me a bit about that.
- [18:33]
Nick Law
Well, I think a lot about how to assemble, curate and choreograph teams, because, as I said, I think creating the conditions and the direction for work is not easy. And it's also not something that can be solved in a mechanical, procedural way. So there is a structural piece, but then there's a cultural piece, and all those things work together. You can have an amazing process, an amazing structure, but if you don't have the right people, the work's going to be rubbish. And you can have really great people and have a bad process and bad structure, and the work's going to be rubbish. So when you manage creativity, you need to be able to bring those things together. And so doing that at scale, I think how. Maybe the thing that I've learned at Accenture is just the dizzying breadth of problems that we try to solve. And different problems, clients with different problems means that you have to apply those principles I was talking about to so many different practices and tactics and contexts. That becomes the sort of interesting part of working at a place like Accenture. And it's also why I fell back in love with being on the service side, having been on the brand side, which has its own strengths and, you know, but being on the service side is having exposure to that surface area of problems and companies and people. And it's just like, not sure how many people are at Accenture now, but it's a small city.
- [20:04]
Jim Stengel
A lot.
- [20:04]
Nick Law
Yeah, it's like 800,000 or something. So you could imagine there isn't a company in the world that we haven't worked with. At some point, it seems Ad Age
- [20:13]
Jim Stengel
calls your company your division. Anyway, accenture song the $20 billion Enigma. And they did a big story on you recently in your company, which I thought was really well done. Now, most companies would say, ah, that's a bug. I think you guys see it as a feature. So could you talk a bit about what's behind that Enigma and why you guys are sort of proud of that moniker?
- [20:36]
Nick Law
If a different sort of company is mysterious, even you explain it like if I was going to explain it very simply, I'd say, well, you know, we have four things that we do. Marketing, design, service and commerce. All right, I get it, they're all things now. So that's one way you can describe what we. But obviously the thing that makes that all work is looking at all of those things as a harmonized customer experience as opposed to these sort of discrete organizational silos. And so what does it take for a company to stitch all those things together in a way that rhymes and from a customer point of view, feels coherent? The one thing I'll say that I see over and over again from clients, scaled clients especially, is how difficult it is to work across silos at big companies. And so there's a sort of dissonance to a customer experience if you haven't connected all of those things. And also more recently to do that, you need to unify your data. And you know, because that's a sort of this generalized technology called AI has become so important to stitch those things together. But they can only be stitched together if you've unified your digital core. So there's the sort of back office thing of figuring out how to stitch data together and then the sort of customer facing thing, which is how do you then turn that into a harmonized experience for the customer? And so to me, that's the simplest way to think about it. But it's an enigma because you're trying to find comparable companies and your patent recognition gets a little bit off because it's unusual. I mean, RGA had the same problem.
- [22:15]
Jim Stengel
Yeah, they did. And to some extent Apple does too. Right. You're kind of in a category of one, which is a nice place to be, but also sometimes a bit bewildering to people on the outside.
- [22:25]
Nick Law
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
- [22:26]
Jim Stengel
So the growth numbers are pretty extraordinary. I mean, since accenture song bought Droga 5, I think the companies. I think I got this right by looking at your financial stuff. It's almost doubled. So, I mean, come on, those are crazy numbers. So what can we learn about that growth rate and what's happening in that company? I mean, it doesn't just happen, right? People make it work.
- [22:53]
Nick Law
Yeah, well, I mean, I'd like to think that one of the things we can learn is that people with creative backgrounds can run successful companies. So I think it's really important for all companies to, you know, to be efficient and to be well run and everything. But you have to be a lot braver to think about how to grow because Growth is creating something that doesn't exist. And so there's a risk there. There's no risk in efficiency. You can never get criticized for making things more efficient. But I do think that some leaders worry about getting criticized for trying new things, which is what creative people have an instinct for, that hopefully lead to growth. And so David's ability to. To surround himself with great people and to have a vision that is around growth and growing. Because Peter Drucker, the great business leader, would say that you don't have a company without a customer. And when you hear that, you think, well, that's obvious. But so many companies become so operationally obsessed that they abstract themselves away from the customer.
- [23:55]
Jim Stengel
What are you most proud of? As you look back on the time at Accenture Song?
- [23:59]
Nick Law
I think just turning a company that was not known as being particularly creative into a creative company. I mean, all the things that it takes to do that, getting the right people, creating the right conditions inside of this enormous structure is, I think, a real accomplishment. And David gets most of the credit for that. But hopefully I helped a little bit.
- [24:21]
Jim Stengel
I think you did. Now, I want to talk about CMOs. Right. You have a unique purview of them. I've heard you speak to that and I've heard you say in one interview that the core part of the CMO job that a lot of people don't really get is that their role is to make their companies or brands interesting.
- [24:38]
Nick Law
Yeah.
- [24:39]
Jim Stengel
And then you have to be where people are to discover how interesting you are, of course, which I know you believe in. But I'd like you to wax a little bit. You knew a lot of CMOs and heads of marketing in all of your roles. You're seeing a lot of them at this company because you work with almost everyone. So what's some of your counsel thoughts? Wisdom for senior marketers, CMOs today, on being effective and by the way, being fulfilled and happy in their role. Because, I mean, you need to be both for it to be sustained and I think for great work to come out of it.
- [25:17]
Nick Law
Well, it goes back to what I was saying about David's leadership, which is unfortunately a bit of an anomaly right now. One of the things that is true of big companies is that they are systems and they're complex systems. They're also built mostly on software now, which is in itself this systematic platform. There has been this drift towards more operational leadership in all roles, and I think most ruinously in the CMO role for the reasons I mentioned. If your job as CMO is to make your company interesting, then you have to have a theory of mind about your customer. And this tends to be this continuum of thinking that goes from being more empathetic to more systematic need. The sort of inventive instinct, how to make things work, and the expressive instinct, which is how to make people care about that. I think you need both. And I think the one that we're missing the most right now in the CMO role is the expressive one. Because marketing has become a very complex and matrix system. Right. So I'm not saying you ignore that, but at least acknowledge that your primary role is to understand the customer. And if that means having a balance, balancing out your team and having balance, both of these ways of thinking, then do that. I read somewhere today on LinkedIn about someone saying that CMOs need to be system architects now. Well, yeah, I think that's an important part of being a cmo. But is that the primary role of this? Does a system architect typically have a great theory of mind about the customer? How far can a company abstract themselves away from what a customer cares about? And of all the roles that shouldn't be doing that, who should understand the customer the best? It's a CMO. And yet somehow we have a generation of CMOs where we just don't even talk about it anymore.
- [27:19]
Jim Stengel
Yeah.
- [27:20]
Nick Law
And I'm someone who's built a career on working with great technologists and really being interested in technology. So I'm not saying I'm not one of these Luddites that think that we just need to do beautiful films at all. I'm just saying that going back to where we started, which was that there's a magic in how you intersect different capabilities, different ways of thinking. And marketing is a system, but it's also a story. It's like this fever dream of personalization at scale. My heuristic there is that service should be personal and brands should be communal. And to me, that's obvious. You don't have a brand unless everyone agrees on what that brand stands for. And you don't get that agreement if you send out a million ads that say more about the people that you're sending them to than the company itself. Balance. Figure it out. Balance. Make decisions. Think about integration. Stop. It's this ridiculous tribal war between performance and brand, that is. And performance has won in recent years. Performance has won.
- [28:25]
Jim Stengel
So is that what happened? Did CMOs get sucked into the performance vortex and forget about the story?
- [28:33]
Nick Law
Yeah, I think it started with the separation of these two ways of thinking. So I have this Visual of it's not even a funnel. It's more like this is the state of mind of the consumer because we know the funnel isn't this sort of methodical march from awareness to transaction, right? And the way I think about it is that at the top you've got how people feel, at the bottom, it's how they're acting, and in the middle it's what they understand, right? And instead of thinking of it going from top to bottom, I think of it from starting in the middle and going out. Right? And why I think that's so important now is that I've seen too many marketing organizations that are divided between feeling and acting, right? So between brand performance and the brand marketers are making these beautiful things that no one sees, and the performance marketing are making ugly things that everyone sees. And the problem with that is that you've got this organization that's shaped like an hourglass because the middle is empty, which is the understand piece. Because having a banner chase around the web is not really clarifying the value of the product. And neither is a big metaphorical spot is getting played during the NFL. And people are making decisions about what they think about brands and their products on third party sites because they're the places that best represent. Like you go to YouTube, you go to Reddit, you go to all these places, any sort of considered purchase, that's where you're learning about what you care about. And so I just think that it's this sort of false, you know, you shouldn't be fighting for brand marketing above performance, and you shouldn't be fighting performance or marketing. What you should be starting with is how do you clarify the value to a customer that doesn't have time to wallow in all the stuff that you want to say, that wants to know why they should care about you? And then once you've established that, once you've established the middle, inflect it up into big awareness things and then inflect it down into more transactional moments. But always start with the call. It seems obvious to me, but the structure is the thing that's stopping this from happening and culture, because you've got artists and mathematicians that are in this, in this war.
- [30:47]
Jim Stengel
Yeah, yeah. Hey, everybody, this is Andrea Sullivan, the CEO of Vive, and we produce the CMO podcast and are so excited to have partnered with Jim Stengel for so many years. Wanted to tell you a little bit about something that could be right for you. 5 is a program for entrepreneurs and business leaders who want to get more out of their life and become their best and happiest selves, both personally and professionally. We have a 12 month program that allows people to meet up with some of the best business leaders out there and additionally experts in the wellness sector so that you can learn how to nurture yourself. So we teach things around sleep optimization, meditation, all those good things as well. Please reach out to us at Podcastibe Co to get more information. That's P O D C A S T S at V Y V E Co. Thanks for listening to the CMO podcast and hope to talk to you more about Vibe. You've had a number of sound bites already in the show, but I've heard you say others that I want you to comment on. And the first one is the industry needs more freaks.
- [32:02]
Nick Law
Yeah, well, especially now. I mean, I've always thought that. Speaking of management, I think one of the things that I learned at RGA was that some of the people that create the most value are the most difficult to manage. And to expect everyone to be a good corporate citizen is to sort of is to engineer a company that is really mediocre. And so your job as a manager is often to manage people that are difficult. Not disrespectful, not abusive, but just difficult because they're just not like everyone else. And you've got to, I think, to great, great successful companies figure out how to manage the freaks. The irony is that, you know, bring yourself, you'll be your whole self to work. HR meme coincided with a time when actually they didn't want that at all. So, you know, again, there's a challenge there because you don't want to. People that are, that are so disruptive that they just, you know, so you need to figure out how to work with peculiar people. I would say, you know, in a good way.
- [33:06]
Jim Stengel
Did you bring more freaks into Accenture?
- [33:08]
Nick Law
Oh, definitely, yeah. And. And you have to protect them, protect them from themselves sometimes.
- [33:15]
Jim Stengel
As a percentage of people that were. Was RGA the highest in freaks?
- [33:19]
Nick Law
Oh, absolutely.
- [33:19]
Jim Stengel
Of the places you. Oh my God.
- [33:21]
Nick Law
Yes, we. What an exotic collection of different personalities. But again, but they all believed in the mission. Yeah.
- [33:31]
Jim Stengel
Right.
- [33:32]
Nick Law
So this is the thing. The sort of variety and the diversity of thinking was there, but it was all pointed in one direction.
- [33:39]
Jim Stengel
Next sound bite. And I like this one. People who will thrive in our AI world will have agency, ambition and taste.
- [33:46]
Nick Law
Yeah.
- [33:46]
Jim Stengel
Is that the brief for CMOs?
- [33:48]
Nick Law
Well, I think it's an operating way to think about operating with this amazing technology. Right. I think there's a version of working with AI, which is a surrender that will lead to sort of cognitive offloading and the work being very mediocre. And then there's another version of it where you have agency over these tools and it sort of amplifies your thinking. So in a funny way, it means that what you need now is people that don't have. That don't come from the academy, that don't come from the sort of received wisdom world, but are autodidacts, people that are just naturally curious and want to learn and want to, you know, and want to interrogate their thinking with these tools as opposed to surrendering their thinking to the tools. So you're basically solving for the how with these new tools, but only a human can solve for the why, which is your ambition, and the what, which is where taste comes in, where you look at the thing that you made and say, is that good? Do people care about this? So you were bookending this amazing technology, but we need to bookend it.
- [34:56]
Jim Stengel
Can you coach ambition and taste? I mean, I guess the answer is yes, because I guess you've been doing it.
- [35:01]
Nick Law
You can encourage ambition, but there's a point where it's innate, I guess, but you can give people confidence that their ambition matters enough that they exercise it at work. And, you know, taste is a lot to do with exposure. This is. I mean, one of the things that people are concerned about with these tools is that, you know, you build up your own large language model just through living life and making decisions. And, you know, you've got your own data, data set of experiences. And taste gets built over time. No one's born with great taste. You might have a sensitivity. You might have a, you know, the predisposition to look at aesthetics or understand language or something, but it needs to be developed. It's a muscle. And this is a thing. I think why I worry about the triumph of the systematizer over this more empathetic sensibility is that there's an assumption that creativity is somehow the thing that you come up with in the shower, that anyone can be creative and that it's sort of subjective and. And it's just not true. We know that good creatives take a lifetime. They have the talent. But There's a Gladwillian 10,000 hours that go into becoming really good at this stuff, and it should be respected as such. And taste is one of those things. Going back to Rick Rubin, that's what he's got. It's his superpower. It's not an accident that he has produced culture Defining music for decades. It wasn't just an accident. It wasn't him just subjectively throwing a dot at these things. It's a real skill. It's discipline.
- [36:40]
Jim Stengel
Okay, last sound bite. Most leaders have not yet solved the marketing organization design of the Internet era. And we're now in the AI era. Right? The Internet era was what, 20, 25 years ago? Yeah, I know what's going on. That's not good. It's a lack of courage or, or silos or. What do you think?
- [36:59]
Nick Law
Well, no, I think it's hard to imagine completely rethinking the talent and the organization that you need. Having become successful in the old model. I think that there are three big revolutions that marketing has had to handle. The first one is Industrial Revolution. There was no marketing before the Industrial Revolution because there wasn't mass produce products to sell. So the Industrial Revolution spawned marketing. And then I think the Internet revolution, you had to then think about not just the stories you tell, but how to connect with people because there was this interface in front and for all media. And then you've got this AI revolution, which in a strange way, if the Industrial revolution helped you make everything, and then the Internet revolution helped you connect everything, then the AI revolution combines everything, it synthesizes everything. And so it solves. So you have to solve different problems, which means that you need to be honest enough to think about different processes, people, structures. And it's just really hard to do that. And one of the things, I alluded to this earlier, one of the reasons I think a lot of the agencies didn't figure out the Internet is because they assume that creativity was this thing that was invented in the late 50s by art and copy. This perfect team of art and copy could solve for anything, because that's a creative team. That's a primal, creative way of thinking. It's ignoring the fact that one of the important creative disciplines in the age of the Internet is experience design. And that is not narrative thinking, it's design thinking. And that's why we, you know, our version of the burnback model with storage and systems on art and copy. But to admit that you then need to, need to start hiring and firing and, you know, design, redesigning yourself, doing all the things I said before. And it's just, it's a, it's really hard. Yeah. And I suspect, by the way, that you know, that what you need to run a creative organization with AI tools is going to change not just what needs to be made, but the commercial model so drastically. There's probably a Better chance that those companies will emerge separate from existing creative organizations.
- [39:21]
Jim Stengel
That's often how it goes, right?
- [39:22]
Nick Law
Yeah.
- [39:22]
Jim Stengel
And the marketing organizations today who have the most forward looking designs are typically younger ones.
- [39:28]
Nick Law
Yeah, exactly.
- [39:28]
Jim Stengel
Younger companies. Yeah.
- [39:30]
Nick Law
They don't have to justify legacy pieces.
- [39:43]
Jim Stengel
So I want to flip to the creative brief and I want to take you back to school. So you grew up in a suburb of Sydney, right?
- [39:50]
Nick Law
Yeah, yeah.
- [39:51]
Jim Stengel
And you went to a trade school. You didn't have a classic formal education, so could you talk a bit about that, why you did that, what you were thinking about then?
- [40:01]
Nick Law
I was spectacularly unacademic at the high school, like I really was. I had a feral childhood. No one was paying attention, least of all me. And so I came out of high school and the only thing I achieved was playing really good rugby. And so I didn't really have the option to go to university because I didn't have the academic credentials. But there was this technical college that you could apply for with a drawing test. And so that's what I did. I applied for, I got in. I think I was the last person that was accepted into this at all trade school after rounds of these practical. So there was no. You didn't get into school by having a good mark in your high school. This is completely separate. It was just doing these practical tests. That's how I got in. And it was two years. Got a certificate at the end of it, learned how to use a T square and a drafting table. No one's seen the certificate ever since. So I was in the industry. By the time I was 20, I had a job and was working.
- [41:03]
Jim Stengel
What was the first job out of the trade school?
- [41:06]
Nick Law
I worked for a little design company that did mostly corporate identity and brand work.
- [41:10]
Jim Stengel
Were you an artist as a kid? I mean, did you have talent in drawing?
- [41:13]
Nick Law
Yeah, no, I could, yeah. I draw. I was constantly drawing. Constantly, yeah. And my, my dad's a writer, so I, I also have a little bit of that too.
- [41:22]
Jim Stengel
What did you draw as a kid?
- [41:24]
Nick Law
Football players, monsters, all that good. All that grubby little boy stuff that crosses cultures, right?
- [41:33]
Jim Stengel
Crosses continents.
- [41:34]
Nick Law
Yeah. I don't think I had a very sophisticated sensibility when I was young.
- [41:41]
Jim Stengel
I want you to talk about. You've looked at a lot of creative briefs in your life, so is there one that stands out as the most amazing brief you've ever worked from?
- [41:49]
Nick Law
You know what? It wasn't a brief because it sort of accreted over time and turned into something. But the original Nike plus was so interesting to Me, because it wasn't this sort of, you know, what's zeitgeist and you know, and what's. What do we need to tell the world? It was, we've got this technology and how do we combine it all in a way that makes a great user experience? And RJ was working separately on two things that sort of converged into Nike plus. One was a manual tool on Nike running where you could track your, your pacing. Right. So it's a run tracker, right. But it was manual, manual entry. So it was, you know, but it was still interface. And the other one was doing workout mixes on itunes. And if you added this hardware technology, which is a pedometer that spoke to a sensor that you plugged into ipod Nano, then all these things came together. The run tracking, the music and interface that showed all these things together. So I think it was a good example of something that I don't think Madison Avenue understood, right, which is that sometimes ideas can bubble up when you just combine the potential of existing technologies. Because in a way, there was a brand argument in Nike running around, whether the way that Nike running positions itself, which was two high performing runners, whether those people actually ran listening to music. So there was a bit of a back and forth about are we pitching this from a brand point of view in the right way. Now, as it happened, pretty high performing runners ended up using Nike, but there was a question about whether it fit into the brand story, you know, which was a little bit odd given how advanced the technology ended up being.
- [43:31]
Jim Stengel
You might answer this the same way. But what's the most personally meaningful brand or campaign or initiative that you worked on in your career?
- [43:40]
Nick Law
Well, all the Nike work would fall into that. But I think, I think the Beats by Dre work just before Apple acquired Beats by Dream. And the reason I say that is because the same year that we did the Beats music app, right. Which is I think one of the reasons that Apple acquired Beats. We did amazing storytelling, right? So we did the game before the game work, which was. So we uniquely created great digital product and great storytelling for one brand. And it all felt coherent and great. So I think that was a high watermark for proving out our model.
- [44:21]
Jim Stengel
Do you still play rugby?
- [44:24]
Nick Law
No, not really. I mean, there's a version of rugby which is like flag football, which I could probably hobble around and play a little bit of, but yeah.
- [44:31]
Jim Stengel
So what do you do now for your fitness and kind of overall wellness, health, well being?
- [44:38]
Nick Law
Yeah, I try to keep fit. I go to the gym. I don't Know, like four times a week or something. And, yeah, I find it very therapeutic. It clears the head. It's the closest I come to meditation is sweating.
- [44:50]
Jim Stengel
I think the last time I may have seen you in person was at a gym. Didn't I run into you at Adobe's meeting?
- [44:56]
Nick Law
Yeah, yeah, right.
- [44:58]
Jim Stengel
I think you were getting a pastry, though. I think I was coming out of the gym. I ran into you in the cafe. What's the first brand you remember making an impact on you as a young boy?
- [45:10]
Nick Law
Well, as a young boy, it was the rugby team I followed, and they're called the South Sydney Rabbit Os. And they have a little logo there of a rabbit, which I thought is. It's so weird and quirky. And their colors are red and green, red and green stripes. And so, you know, back in the 70s, when you watched the rabbit play on a color TV, it would make your eyes, because the red and green would, like, vibrate.
- [45:39]
Jim Stengel
It's like bad Christmas.
- [45:42]
Nick Law
Yeah, yeah. So, you know. But, you know, as growing up, Apple was definitely the brand that I, you know, that I had a relationship with, and I was abnormally curious about everything they did. Yeah.
- [45:54]
Jim Stengel
Who's been the most inspiring person in your life?
- [45:57]
Nick Law
That's a really interesting question. I mean, I tried to convince myself that I haven't really had any mentors, which is bullshit, of course, but I think, you know, my first job was with this crazy guy who had a little design company. What I learned from him was Oscar Wilde said, nothing succeeds like excess. And I think this guy was a version of that. He burnt out at some point, but his commitment to design was just. Was crazy. And so I learned that from him. And then I think the thing I learned from Bob Greenberg, founder of rga, was not to fall in love with. I think why it's hard for a lot of creative people to change is because they often build a reputation and a career doing one thing. And so then they spend the rest of their life trying to force that one thing into whatever's going on. And so they try to justify when things change, they're like, oh, but what I do still matters. And I think because Bob was really a producer with a great creative sensibility, he didn't care new thing he was always interested in, always sort of applied his production mind to. And that's very liberating even for a creative, just not to dwell on your craft, but to think about the sort of context of creativity and recognize, by the way, that you can't be creative without technology. You know, like, to make something. You need a medium, and all mediums are a technology. And the technology is the thing that shapes what you pre visualize before you even do something creative. So we need to be honest about that, that as creative people, we are completely reliant on technology to express our thoughts. And so learn technology because that's going to open up the potential of your next creative act.
- [47:55]
Jim Stengel
That's a good place to stop this, Nick. That's a big thought. And the right thought. So how'd this go? Did we talk about what you thought we'd talk about?
- [48:03]
Nick Law
Yeah, I think we covered a lot there. Yeah. I didn't expect the rugby detour.
- [48:12]
Jim Stengel
Hey, go where the guests lead you, Right? And you led me to rugby.
- [48:15]
Nick Law
Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. No, it's been fun. Thanks, Jim. I. I appreciate it.
- [48:19]
Jim Stengel
And I'll see you next month, right?
- [48:20]
Nick Law
Yeah, I'll see you in person. We'll cheer you out into the.
- [48:24]
Jim Stengel
You're going to be dolled up. You're going to have a tuxedo on.
- [48:27]
Nick Law
Are we expected to.
- [48:28]
Jim Stengel
I don't know. I've never seen you in a tie, so don't disappoint me. I don't want to see it as the first time you in a tie.
- [48:35]
Nick Law
Yeah, well, this, this. Yeah, you might. I might have to whip it out. Yeah, it'll be. I mean, at the ad council, I wear a tie.
- [48:41]
Jim Stengel
Oh, you do? Really?
- [48:42]
Nick Law
Okay.
- [48:42]
Jim Stengel
Well, I've never seen it.
- [48:44]
Nick Law
Well, I'm going to surprise you.
- [48:47]
Jim Stengel
All right, Nick. Hey, thanks for this. Thanks a bunch. It was wonderful. Great fun.
- [48:52]
Nick Law
I'm sure I'll get the chance to congratulate you for the hall of fame, but I'm going to say it right now. Congratulations.
- [48:58]
Jim Stengel
That was my conversation with Nick Law. Three takeaways from this one for your business brand in life. The first one, Companies need more freaks. I loved our discussion about this. I asked Nick if he has brought more freaks to Accenture. He said yes. But what we really talked about is the diversity of thinking and styles and talents that every company needs to succeed. Well, Nick is good at nurturing those people and pulling them together with common goals and a common ambition. Second takeaway. Follow great people. Nick would not be at Accenture Song without David Droga, who he has long admired. When David called Nick to ask him to come on this journey, Nick didn't know that much about the company, but he trusted David Droga and he followed him. And it's been a great, great experience for Nick. And the third takeaway, a CMO's job at the end of the day is about the customer and Nick kind of waxed about how we've lost a bit of that in many companies. And at the end of the day, a great CMO understands the customer is never complacent about it, is always curious, and brings the customer's needs, wants, feelings, habits, practices, practices back into the company so that everyone can work together to make the customer experience better. 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. Working across teams is tough, but Asana
- [50:34]
Nick Law
helps you handle it. That's because Asana is where humans and AI coordinate work together. AI can spot roadblocks and assign work in a snap so everything and everyone stays on track. That's how work gets handled. That's Asana. Visit us@asana.com that's asana.com.