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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantz, and my guest today is Pierre Gilardi. She's an entrepreneur, speaker, and co founder of Refinery29, whose new book, the Playful Way, argues that play is not a distraction from meaningful work and life, but a practical mindset that can help us navigate creativity, change, relationships, and even adversity with more curiosity and possibility. So, Pierre, welcome to the show.
- [00:40]
B
Thanks for having me. Let's play.
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A
So I'm sure, I'm sure one of the first questions that you get asked all the time is, you know, because so many of us, especially people of my generation, like, you didn't get to play it till you got your homework done. And so how or when for you, I should actually ask it that way because you argue that it's not something that we earn, that it's actually something that enhances how we work. When did that become true for you?
- [01:04]
B
So I was fortunate to grow up in a really playful family and to have parents who were playful while they navigated growing businesses, having families, dealing with illness and loss. And so I got to see how playfulness could. And the curiosity and creativity that comes with playfulness could actually weave into every aspect of our life. So playfulness was something that was sort of baked into me. But then, of course, like most adults, I rubbed up against, you know, teachers that wanted me to do things a certain, you know, straight line way, wanted me to, you know, sit still and go from point A to point B. I went into workplaces that also expected a certain degree of seriousness and, you know, seriousness in terms of rigidity. And so I definitely rubbed up against places that, you know, told me that play and playfulness was something frivolous, was something that we do, you know, after our homework is done, after our hard work is done. But what I found in my life and in my work was that integrating play created the best results. It created the most innovative ideas, the best relationships, and the most resilience for me to work through the problems that came up.
- [02:15]
A
I believe you a hundred percent and totally agree with it. Is there any research that you've done or that you've studied that kind of backs this up scientifically as well?
- [02:24]
B
Yeah, there's a lot of research about the power of play, and also there's, you know, research about play deprivation, which is something that I experienced, you know, in a period of work where I was trying to present in a serious way. So I packed up my playfulness and tried to kind of, yeah, show up in a way that was, you know, in zipped up in my serious suit basically. And play deprivation leads to us being less resilient, having less of a solutions minded attitude, having, you know, less of a big perspective on what, you know, what there is in life. And so we end up, you know, not having that intrinsic motivation that helps us to drive us forward, that helps us to feel, to find joy and excitement in our day to day, to find connection with each other. There's also a lot of science also around like the neuroscience of sort of that playful experimental mindset and how when we try something new, you know, these neural pathways are reshaping our brain. So when we're in that play state, we're in a much more open minded experimental framework where we can actually learn and grow versus getting really stuck and being set back by failure. Which is when we're in that perfectionistic serious mindset, we're trying to control the outcome, we're trying to, you know, get it exactly right. We tend to be less open minded, we tend to not be able to deal with, you know, deal with the change, the uncertainty, the setbacks in the same sort of pliable, resilient way that we can when we're in that playful mindset.
- [04:00]
A
So a lot of, I think a lot of business owners, we've come a long way. I think a lot of business owners get the idea of doing creative exercises, kind of opens up dialogue and different things. But when you use the word play, do you sometimes get pushback because people have a bias about, well, that's goofing around, that's not serious. That's, you know, that's not who we are. I mean, do you so, so does the word play itself actually cause some issues for you?
- [04:24]
B
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of anti play sentiment because we sort of associate play with one mode of play. But there's a lot of ways to be playful. So we sort of think of, and I in the book, I have these eight archetypes of play. So I think the one that people most associate with play is the joyful jester, right? That's like the class clown. That's the one that is, you know, making things light, that's bringing humor and that person actually can be so powerful in diffusing tension and helping to relieve stress and helping us to laugh so that we can actually get to a solution faster. But they're definitely the one that people feel is, I think it's the most controversial in the workplace. And though they really are powerful and there's also a lot of research about the power of humor in problem solving, in stress relief, in relationship building. But there's so. But there's. That's only one way of being playful, right? That being humorous, being light. There's, you know, curiosity is a huge element of play. So there's the curious cluster. That's someone that asks a lot of questions, that's intellectually going down these rabbit holes. And they're really powerful to have in the workplace because they help you to think differently by introducing, you know, introducing questions and new ways of thinking. There is the. There's the visionary dreamer. That's the person that is. You know, we might think of them as having their head in the clouds, right. They're often the negative side is they're seen as the dreamer, the unrealistic one. But they're also the one that's looking beyond what is immediately in front of us. They're not trying to just replicate the same thing over and over again. They're. They're really opening up possibility in new ways. So there are a lot of different ways to be playful. And so I think one thing that I'm trying to do is educate people about these different modes of play so that we can understand how to value them and how to bring them into the workplace in different ways.
- [06:19]
A
I imagine a lot of people pro. One of the use cases a lot of people probably can relate to is the idea of team building. You know, there's nothing sort of you let your guard down, you're vulnerable, you do something that not you necessarily, you don't think is you and I team building. But talk to me a little bit about innovation, because I'm guessing that's a place where this really shines as well, because, you know, innovation takes meaning. You can't fail, you can't make a mistake. And, you know, I think that's probably inherent in some play, isn't it?
- [06:51]
B
Yeah. So I think of it sort of there's the pressured way and there's the playful way. And the pressured way is when we're trying to control the outcome, we are rigid. We might feel like tight in our body. And that is often like when we're really zipped up tight in our serious suit and we're very afraid of failure. The playful way is when we have that curiosity to us, when we're looking at a problem from multiple different angles, we're floating unexpected ideas, and it allows us to really find these innovative ways to move forward. And so, yeah, play is the. I mean, the most effective brands and companies integrate Some sort of play into what they do. The companies that are the most innovative know that's how you create experiences that people feel. That's how you go outside of the cookie cutter idea. Often when we go in that pressured way, we're just replicating past, you know, past success or replica or copying other people's formats. We're not creating something new. And when you think about a kid, right, like they're looking at a cardboard box and they're seeing that it can be a pirate ship, it can be, you know, it can be a spaceship, it's a closet. It's all these different things. And that's divergent thinking. And of course that's, you know, we might not think that's a very practical example in the workplace, but if you're looking at a problem, you want someone that can think about all the different ways you could go about it. And so what play does is it opens up our minds, you know, to that divergent thinking. And that's where the big solutions, the big unlocks come from.
- [08:28]
A
So I imagine, I'm just guessing that you have a series of exercises that you could bring to people and say, okay, for the next 10 minutes, we're going to do X, Y and Z. Do. Can you showcase a couple of things that you find to be really effective at getting people to do whatever behavior it is the company's trying to, trying to support?
- [08:48]
B
Yeah. So a couple really simple ones, you know, that I did a lot at Refinery 29 were. One is actually a physical shake break, which, you know, can be controversial in the workplace because people feel really self conscious and, you know, it can be hard to get people to move. But honestly, I found it to be so effective because so often you're going into a meeting, right, and you're holding on to whatever frustrating conversation you had or you're still thinking about, you know, how you're going to deal with the thing on your to do list. Also, there can be a power dynamic. Like often when people were coming into my office, have a meeting with me, you know, I'm the boss, they're feeling, you know, nervous about, like, are they going to say the right thing? And so as the leader, I think it's really important to be the one that's making a fool of yourself to a certain extent, you know, doesn't have to be huge, but lead by example. Yeah, you need to be vulnerable. You need to be the one that shows that it's okay to play because that's the only way to get people to, to do it. So I would, I, when people would come into my office, I would say, okay, we're going to do, you know, a 30 second shake break. I would do this improv exercise called Crazy Eights where you shake, you count down from eight, like shaking your one arm, the other arm, one arm, one leg, the other leg. And what would happen is, you know, it was like, I'm, I'm being silly. So then everyone else, you know, is following suit and at the end we, no one's cool, no one is, you know, no one's serious. And we all kind of have let our guard down. It evens the playing field. It opens us up, it allows us to, to create a certain space where ideas can flow a little bit more easily. I'm also a big fan of just simple curiosity questions. So, and these can be, you know, these can be really silly and just unexpected or they can, you know, they can be on topic. But introducing questions that force people to, you know, think in a new way, I think is a really simple and sort of low stakes way to bring play in. Another one is imagination. So a question I loved to float to my team was what would need to be true for this to happen? Been because so often we're sort of stuck on a problem, we're stuck on the old ways of doing things, we're stuck on the obstacles. So sometimes.
- [11:11]
A
Why it won't work.
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B
Yeah, why it won't work. A question like that, like what would need to be true in order for us to do this is a great way to open up that possibility. Thinking.
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A
Talk to me a little bit about Refinery 29. I know the book is kind of drawn from some of your experiences there, but talk a little bit about what Refinery29 does.
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B
Yeah. So Refinery29 is a global media company focused on 360 degrees of a woman's life. So everything from, you know, health and wellness to beauty, fashion. And we started as a, you know, we basically essentially started as a blog and we grew into a company that was doing experience, you know, these huge experiential events across the US and internationally, doing, you know, video, film, all kinds of different media outlets. So yeah, so it started, you know, it started, I started it when I was 24 and it was this small niche thing and it grew into a company that had a hundred million dollars in revenue and 500 employees globally.
- [12:18]
A
So did some of the work that shows up in the book, did it come from those experiences and from what, you know, how you kept, kept those playful and energetic?
- [12:27]
B
Yeah. So the book is full of stories from a lot of different moments in my life. But some of the. Yeah, some of the ones are from my time at Refinery 29, the problems that we solved and the innovation that we unlocked through bringing play into the workplace.
- [12:44]
A
I'm sure there's a fine line. I mean, people will may listen to this, read the book and go, you're right, we need to bring more play in. How do you make it part of the culture and not a gimmick? You know, we've all seen that. You know, the CEO goes off to a conference and listens to a workshop and the next thing you know, you know, for five minutes we're doing this now. So how do you bring it in as something that has value, that's not forced, that's not gimmicky, not performative?
- [13:11]
B
Yeah, that's so critical. I think so often companies, when they want to integrate play, they sort of do that forced fun, you know, the moment that employees feel is forced fun. Right. And it's a one off thing. In the book, I really talk about how play is something, you know, we think of play as sort of this time out or this thing that we do as a reward for hard work. But play is the most effective when it is integrated into the day to day and small moments. So I think one is understanding the different modes of play and starting to understand within your team what the different archetypes of play that people are so that you can really leverage those and you can understand, you know, what is going to light those people up. So, you know, a curious quester who's following those intellectual threads and curiosity is going to be, you know, going to light up from something really different from a mover and shape shaker that's more someone who finds, who finds play in their physical body through movement. So there's very different, there's very different modes of play. So I think the first thing is understanding within the team, you know, what are the different strength play strengths that people have? What are the powers of play that you have that you're working with? The next is to I do this thing called Plork, which is how do we fuse play and work in small moments? So that can be, you know, that can be really small. It can be, you know, introducing a curiosity question at the beginning of a meeting. It can be renaming meeting invites with something that's a little bit more whimsical so it doesn't feel like an anxiety attack when you see your calendar. It's these little moments that, you know, you commit to and you think about and you brainstorm as a team. So you think about. Okay, once you understand these powers of play that the team has, how can you integrate those day to day in small ways? What are those play plus work plork moments that become part of the culture so that you are really integrating it and finding those moments of connection, creativity, curiosity in the day to day versus just putting a play band aid on like at that one offset.
- [15:17]
A
It's interesting. I hadn't really thought of people having play personalities, but it sounds like that's a bit what you're describing. So we've talked mostly about internal team and culture. How could people use this in a marketing sense? So in other words, be more playful in their public, you know, what they're putting out there to be perceived as, you know, a fun and playful company.
- [15:37]
B
Yeah, I think in terms of bringing it into a marketing context, it's, yeah, about, it's really about, you know, how can we do, how can we do something different? How can we bring an experimental mindset to how we market? I, I tend to find that when we think of things as an experiment, and again, there's this neuroscience around this, but when we think of something as an experiment, we open up a lot more possibility and we stop having. It stops feeling so high stakes that we can't fail, that we can't try new things. So I think one thing is, you know, thinking about what are the experiments that we want to run here? What's something that would be interesting to try? You know, can we try it in a, can we try it in a small way and then build off of that? That was something we did a lot at Refinery. We were constantly experimenting. So we'd say, you know, for example, we did this huge experiential event called 29 rooms that went to seven cities. Hundreds of thousands of people came through. But it started from just one event where we said, you know, we're noticing this behavior of how people are using Instagram and so why don't we do, why don't we do something in our photo studio at the office where we invite photographers to come in, we give them all kinds of props, access to models and access to clothes, and let them, you know, express their creativity and tag us. And so that was, the experiment was just doing that. So it was a very low stakes, low cost experiment. And we saw this huge Instagram sharing that came from this one office event. And so then we said, okay, how do we do that again? And like make it a little bit Bigger. So then we did it, you know, in partnership with a museum in New York. We brought in a fashion brand to, you know, provide the looks. And we tried it again, and we again saw this huge, like, exponential return from it. And then, you know, then it was like, the next piece, okay, like, let's pop up an event. It was a smaller scale event. Again saw a huge success. And so that was when we decided to take the gamble and put on this huge event where we brought in brands, celebrities, you know, it was like. And that. That became something that was huge, that we were hugely known for. And that became really copied. It was on every, you know, every brand was referencing it and trying to replicate the 29 rooms, you know, effect. So. But it came from that experimental mindset of saying, okay, what if we tried this? And what's the smallest. What's the smallest way we can try it within our resources to see if this has legs.
- [18:08]
A
All right, now that you've written the book and it's dependent upon when people are listening to this, it's going to be out there for public consumption. Is there anything that you hope, especially adults, relearn about themselves, you know, by. By considering this topic?
- [18:26]
B
Yeah, I think in adulthood, you know, through the course of. Yeah. Having the strict teacher that tells you to sit still, still, you know, having the boss that shuts down your, you know, humorous aside, there's, you know, through feeling the response, feeling respons, you know, the weight of responsibility and thinking that play is, you know, antithetical to being the responsible adult. There's all these moments where we start to shut down our playfulness. And as a result, we lose, you know, we lose that curiosity, we lose that resilience, and we lose the flexibility that play brings into our lives. And that makes us lose touch with ourselves, really. It makes us, like, lose touch with our true essence. You know, when we think about our relationships too, right? Like, what are the things that you remember the most about your friends, your family? It's often these inside jokes, these silly moments, these play, you know, these playful pieces. And so when we start to become that very serious adult, we start to shut down what really makes us authentic, what makes us connect authentically and what makes us come alive. So, you know, in adulthood, starting to reconnect with that playful spirit, you know, even just in. In small ways. I tell people, go back to the lost and found. Like, think about your childhood and what made you lose track of the hours, what completely immersed you, and see if there's something in there that you want to re explore. So, you know, maybe it was dancing when you were a kid and you want to like, think about going to a dance class again. Or maybe it was beachcombing and you were just like, love looking at, you know, looking for sea glass on the beach, you know, is there. Do you want to go for a walk in your neighborhood and see if you can, you know, turn it into a wonder wander and find, you know, these moments of delight. So reengaging, like starting in small ways, but just being open to the fact that that playfulness is going to unlock a lot of richness and joy and aliveness in your life. So it's really worthwhile to. It's really worthwhile to pursue it. It's. Play is not, you know, play is not the opposite of seriousness. It's what makes seriousness bearable. It's what makes you find joy in the day to day and the mundane.
- [20:42]
A
Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the podcast. Where would you invite people to find out more about your work? Find out where they can pick up a copy of the book.
- [20:51]
B
Yeah, so they can pick up the book the playful way. It's at all major booksellers starting April 7th. You can find me on Instagram and substack at Pieraluisa and my website, Pierre Gilardi.com awesome.
- [21:05]
A
Again, Pierre, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.
- [21:10]
B
Yeah, thanks so much. Thanks for playing.