How creativity transformed Australia’s No.1 Telecom’s brand - Brent Smart

Summary

Uncensored CMO | Episode Summary

Episode Overview

Main Theme:
This episode features Brent Smart, recently departed Chief Marketing Officer of Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company. Host Jon Evans dives deep into Brent’s playbook for transforming Telstra's negative reputation into a creatively lauded and valuable brand—offering lessons on the power of creativity, emotional storytelling, agency partnerships, and how to navigate the turbulent waters of brand turnarounds in “boring” and heavily commoditized industries.

The conversation explores:

• Brent's transition from agency to brand side
• His history of creative turnarounds (NRMA, Telstra)
• Frameworks and principles for driving effective, business-impacting creativity
• The enduring need to “protect the work” as a CMO
• Memorable campaigns and viral moments
• Building a culture of creative excellence

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Brent Smart’s Journey & Philosophy

From Agency Side to Leading Brands

• Brent began with a “big ambition” at Telstra: turning a conservative and unloved corporate brand into the most creative in Australia ([01:51]).
• He’s drawn to low-involvement, “boring” industries (telco, insurance, cereal) where creativity is transformative ([02:36]).
• The decision to move client-side was driven by frustration: “Nothing has ever been invented that's better at killing ideas in a corporation. They're amazing at killing ideas.” ([03:36], Brent).
  • Brent sought to become the “recipient” of creative ideas, not just the originator.

“I think it's a real skill…to navigate those complex corporations and keep a creative idea intact.” ([03:56], Brent)

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Selling & Protecting Creativity in Corporations

Conviction and Storytelling

• You won’t have data for transformative creative moves; you must operate with conviction ([06:27]).
• Storytelling must be emotionally resonant and differentiated from other business presentations ([07:03]).
  • Brent used customer ethnographic drawings to reframe Telstra’s challenges—not just data ([07:43]):
    • Suited “corporate guy”: Traditional, serious
    • “Monopoly Man”: Greedy, profit-focused
    • Bully: “Two stick figures… the big one pointing at the small one, said ‘bully.’”
  • Presenting these visuals created a powerful, undeniable impetus for change.

“If you don't believe, they're not going to believe.” ([06:54], Brent)

Involving Customers & Internal Pride

• Jon shares how putting the customer’s voice at the center of pitches is persuasive ([09:54]).
• Employee pride is as potent as customer connection for transformation ([10:29])
  • Making staff proud to represent the brand can “improve NPS overnight.”

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Case Study: NRMA Turnaround

Academic Foundation & Heritage

• Relied on “The Long and the Short of It” (Binet & Field): balancing long-term brand investment (60/40 split) versus short-term activation ([11:54], Brent).
• Revived the core NRMA “HELP” motif—a flip in the logo, leveraging historic brand equity ([12:53]).

“I always think... look at when the brand was at its best and what creative they were running. There’s magic in that heritage.” ([12:58], Brent)

• Example: Koala home insurance campaign—used emotional symbolism (koala homes) over typical category tropes ([15:00]).
  • “For every home insurance policy we sold, we'd plant a tree... every home needs protecting, including the homes of koalas.”
  • This distinctive, emotional approach drove major brand value growth and cut-through.

Fame, Feeling & Fluency

• “Magnet, not a mirror”—creative should attract, not just reflect ([16:21]).
• Winning with creativity, not just business metrics, is crucial ([18:30]).
  • “The most successful campaign… was creatively famous.”

“If you also back it up with really famous work… then I think that's how you sort of get that higher level, Grand Effie sort of work.” ([19:37], Brent)

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Telstra Reinvention: Changing Feelings, Not Just Messages

Emotional Reappraisal

• The insight: “If you want to change how people feel about a brand, change how the brand feels.” ([22:39], Jon quoting Brent)
  • Telstra was rated poorly among non-customers, despite decent NPS from current customers ([22:50]).
• Changed tone and style to evoke surprise and warmth:
  • First campaign: Stop-motion animal puppets for regional coverage, launched during the Olympics ([25:12])
  • Ongoing: Animated, emotionally driven work—“no mobile phone in there… all based on emotion and all based on feeling” ([25:58], Brent).

“Brands are feeling things. Right.” ([22:50], Brent)

Viral Fame—The ‘Telstra Walk’ ([27:01])

• Iconic animated walk (inspired by Mick Jagger) from a brand ad became a social meme on TikTok ([28:19]).
• Initially, a negative fan reaction during sports broadcasts (“my team's losing, I have to watch your ad!”), but evolved when fans began imitating the walk ([29:19], Brent).
• Telstra smartly leaned in: aired a TikTok “supercut” during the State of Origin rugby final, fueling further virality ([31:13]):
  • 30M+ TikTok views, 5000+ user videos, even athletic celebrations.

“How amazing that people have taken their time out of their busy lives… to imitate the walk from a telco ad.” ([29:59], Brent)

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The Power & Measurement of Brand

• Even in peak retail periods (e.g., Christmas), half of sales were attributed to prior brand investments, not just direct response ([35:27], Brent).
  • “The power of brand… it really does build that future demand and then when people are in market, you're able to convert it.”
• Creativity not only wears in, but compounds over time ([36:45]).

“Good creative wears in, doesn’t wear out.” ([37:01], Jon Evans)

• Surprise as an emotional tactic is especially effective for reappraisal ([37:07]).

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Creative Consistency vs. Surprise

• Consistency comes from tone of voice, craft, and emotional approach—not rigid sameness ([38:49]).
• Brent’s campaigns featured a range of creative styles (puppets, animation, live-action donkey ad), but unified by a crafted, human voice.

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Agency Model & Creative Culture

Unique Agency Structure

• Plus61—hybrid model combining leading indie creative shop (Bear Meets Eagle On Fire), network support (TBWA) for strategy and delivery, and OMD for media ([39:29]).
  • Ensured creativity was central, scaling without compromising distinctiveness.

Emphasis on Craft

• “Crafted with the human hand” as a brand value; out-of-home ads made with real paper craft ([41:23], Brent).
  • Signals warmth, humanity, and “premium-ness,” countering the flood of AI-generated content.

Feedback & Internal Culture

• “Be hard on the work, not the people”—balancing psychological safety and “intellectual honesty” ([44:16], Brent).
• Quarterly, rigorous scoring of every output (adapted from AB InBev), with external chief creative officer oversight ([44:40]–[48:05]).
  • Raised standards and fed a culture of continuous improvement and learning.

“There’s one Barrier Reef in the world that’s great. There’s one wall in the world that we can see from space that’s great … is it just good, or is it just average?” ([46:15], Brent)

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The CMO Role: Protector of Creativity

• The CMO’s real job is “to protect the work”—not just strategy decks or internal meetings ([48:57]).

“What you put out into the world is what builds your brand … Your role is to make that as great as you can make it.” ([48:57], Brent)

• Internal “air cover” is vital—much of the real work is unseen, defending and selling creative vision inside the company ([51:02]).
• True transformation embeds creativity into the company’s culture, enduring across leaders ([52:48]).

“That’s why it’s so rare to see brands that do it through multiple CMOs… it’s become part of the culture DNA.” ([52:48], Jon & Brent)

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Notable Quotes & Timings

• On Corporate Resistance:
  “Nothing has ever been invented that's better at killing ideas in a corporation. They're amazing at killing ideas.” ([03:36], Brent)
• On Selling Change:
  “If you don't believe, they're not going to believe.” ([06:54], Brent)
• On Internal & External Narrative:
  “A picture tells a thousand words, doesn't it? Literally.” ([09:35], Jon Evans)
• On Bringing Ideas Back:
  “There’s magic in that heritage.” ([12:58], Brent)
• On Measuring Greatness:
  “There’s one Barrier Reef in the world that’s great. There’s one wall in the world that we can see from space that’s great ... is it just good, or is it just average?” ([46:15], Brent)
• On the Work of the CMO:
  “Your role is to make that [the work] as great as you can make it… Creativity is the biggest competitive advantage.” ([48:57], Brent)
• Best Advice Received:
  “Trust your gut. It's smarter than you.” ([53:56], Brent)

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Key Timestamps

• [01:51] Brent’s ambition at Telstra & history of brand turnarounds
• [03:36] Agency to client-side motivation; “idea-killing” inside corporations
• [07:43] Emotionally selling change with ethnographic studies
• [09:54] Power of direct customer voice
• [11:54] Academic inspiration: The Long and the Short of It
• [15:00] Koala home insurance campaign example
• [18:30] Grand Effie: Creativity, fame & business results
• [22:39] Fame, Feeling, Fluency framework; emotion-first positioning for Telstra
• [25:12] Launching stop-motion puppet campaign at Olympics
• [27:01] ‘Telstra Walk’ TikTok virality story
• [35:27] Brand activity impacts sales even at Christmas
• [38:49] Consistency vs. surprise in creative work
• [39:29] Telstra’s agency model (Plus61) and focus on craft
• [44:16] “Hard on the work, not the people”: Quarterly scoring & cultural effects
• [48:57] The CMO as protector of creative work
• [53:56] Brent’s best career advice: “Trust your gut…”

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Memorable Moments

• Customer-Drawn Brand Images: Presenting stick-figure “bully” drawings to Telstra’s leadership ([07:43])
• Telstra Walk goes Viral: From negative footy fan reactions to a national pop culture meme ([27:01] onward)
• Donkey Christmas Ad: “Silly” but deeply effective, winning both Cannes Lion and Effie; surprise as a neglected emotion in advertising ([34:17]–[37:37])

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Lessons & Takeaways

• Creativity—grounded in emotion and executed with distinct craft—can transform even the most unloved and commoditized brands
• CMOs must be relentless advocates and internal defenders for creative ideas, not simply strategists or managers
• Fame, feeling, surprise, and genuine staff pride are not “nice-to-haves”—they are business imperatives in driving growth, differentiation, and cultural resonance
• Making creative heritage relevant to today can be more effective than chasing novelty for its own sake
• Partnering with diverse agencies, demanding the highest craft, and rigorously scoring output can systematically raise creative standards
• Trusting intuition—your gut—is sometimes the most valuable marketing tool you have

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For more rich marketing insights and creative case stories, listen to the full episode of Uncensored CMO with Jon Evans and Brent Smart.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, everyone. Now if you want to know the secret to more impactful creator ads, then this is good news. Stop obsessing over engagement rates and start pulling the three levers that really make a difference to your brand. Now, what are they? They are creative quality, creator fame and brand fit. And they're revealed in a brand new report from WPP Media, System One and TikTok called the Creator Effectiveness Playbook. This is your guide to making fantastic creator advertising that works for your brand. Now, to get hold of it, all you have to do is go over to system1group.com and download the report today. All right, without further ado, let's go on with the show. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored cmo. Now, in this episode we're talking all about what it takes to turn around a big brand when it's not doing so well. My next guest, Brent Smart, knows all about that. Imagine for a second that your brand was called boring, a bully and greedy. That's exactly what Brent faced when he took over as CMO for Telstra. But over the next four or five years, he completely transformed the brand, added enormous value to it and won lots of creative awards, not just for the sake of creativity, but because the creativity delivered business results. And this episode I'm going to be talking to Brent about how he did that and, and what lessons we can all learn about the power of creativity to transform a business. Here it is. Brent, welcome to the show.

[B]

Thanks for coming down, man. It's great to have you down here.

[A]

Oh, it's great. You know, I love Australia and like, you know, the marketing here is great. You know, there's some brilliant people here, so it's a good opportunity for me to catch up with lots of cool people. So, yeah, and thanks for doing this. So let's, yeah, bring us upstate with your journey. Cause you've just recently left Telstra, I believe, haven't you?

[B]

That's right. After four years. So big decision because I had a great time at Telstra and we did a lot of great work and. But I sort of felt like the chapter was closed in a way. So when I joined Telstra four years ago, I had a big ambition and that was can we make it the most creative brand from this part of the world? Now that was pretty crazy when I said it because Telstra, Australia's biggest telco, are very corporate, very serious sort of brand and in the decade previous had never really won any creative awards or really sort of made a creative mark. So it was a big ambition when I said it and I feel like we kind of achieved it. So yeah. Ready? Ready for the next challenge, John?

[A]

I love that. It's a bit like Alex Ferguson, isn't it? Like, you know, retiring at the top rather than going on too long.

[B]

I don't want to compare myself to

[A]

Sir Alex, but as a Liverpool fan,

[B]

of course, Big Liverpool fan. Yeah, exactly. And I think what I know about myself, I'm much better at building than maintaining and it was starting to feel a little bit like maintaining. So I really like the challenge of transforming brands and I think I'm a bit of a glutton for punishment because telcos, insurance companies. When I was in America I worked in cereal with General Mills. Like, I don't know, I'm drawn to these low involvement categories where creativity can make all the difference.

[A]

I love that actually. That's a theme running through your cv, isn't it? Like the turnarounds, like you say, taking an underperforming brand, turning it around and getting into good shape. Maybe. Let's start, let's go back one chapter to, you know, NRMA as well. Because you had 20 year career in the creative industries. You had a very senior role over at Saatch and Saatch in New York.

[B]

I did.

[A]

And then you left that to come back to Australia and take up a very challenging brand in a challenging situation.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So what inspired you to make the jump from kind of agencies, creative industry side, into brand side clients?

[B]

So clients. So basically I'd spent 20 years working with these marketers who I'd hand ideas over to and invariably those ideas would die. And I sort of started thinking, well, what if I could maybe be the recipient of those ideas? What if I could take responsibility for getting those ideas through organizations? Cause I think that's the hard. But you know, you've done the job. The hardest bit is, look, it's very hard to come up with an idea, sure. But actually getting a creative idea through an organization like nothing has ever been invented, that's better at killing ideas in a corporation. They're amazing at killing ideas. So. So I think it's a real skill and a real superpower to be able to navigate those complex corporations and keep a creative idea intact. So I started thinking, what if I could do that? Because. Because again, I'd worked with a lot of marketers who couldn't do that. Whether they just didn't care enough about the ideas or didn't understand the ideas or felt the, you know, the huge pressures that come with the role and felt like Maybe they couldn't, you know, take that leap, but. So I thought, yeah, maybe. Maybe I want to do that. The other thing was I've got three boys and they were very American. So we'd lived there for eight years. And, you know, mom, mom, all their references were American. They weren't all Australian. So I was very keen to get the boys back home to Australia at some point. So, you know, it just became the perfect timing that there was an opportunity to come and work as a CMO back here in Australia. I felt like my agency time had come to an end and. And look, an insurance company probably wasn't on the horizon. Not really what I was sort of planning to do, but I think the opportunity to transform a brand like nrma, which had wonderful heritage, funnily enough, a brand I'd worked on agency side early in my career, so I'd had a bit of experience with the brand, so I knew the brand.

[A]

Do you know what you said makes so much sense? I remember when I met Mike Cesario, founder, Liquid Death. Yeah, that's basically the same story. He was so sick of pitching these brilliant ideas to clients who never bought it. Eventually he said, well, I'm gonna have to make it if no one's gonna buy it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that's the ultimate sor. You know, you can kind of complain about it, you know, or you can actually go and do it, you know. And so, yeah, that was a motivation for me for sure. I was like, like, could I actually make more great work happen by. By being, you know, on the marketing side versus the agency side?

[A]

I love this conversation because, I mean, I. I've always been client side.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I guess System 1 will be Agency side, but the different kind of thing, right? Yeah, but I remember the amount of conversations I've had with creative agencies. I love your idea, but just remember what I have to do when I leave this room and the kind of people I have to convince and the organization I have to change, you know, what's required sort of thing. And I very often felt they didn't understand that. And I kind of thought, if only you understood, and if you help me sell the idea to these people, we will make the magic happen.

[B]

Absolutely, absolutely.

[A]

But what would be your advice then to somebody that's trying to sell creative ideas into a big organization?

[B]

Yeah, well, I mean, I think the first thing is whenever you're embarking on a creative exercise, and particularly if it's a transformative one, where you're really trying to sort of change things you don't have the data that backs up going on that journey, right? You just don't have the data at the start because it hasn't been done before. The brand has never behaved in that way. And so you don't have the data. All you've got is conviction. And I think having conviction is. Is critical. If you don't believe, they're not going to believe. So I think you've got to really have conviction and belief and really feel the idea in your bones and feel it's right.

[A]

And.

[B]

And then I think storytelling is really important, like the way you tell the stories of the organization is critical. You absolutely have to explain, why will this work commercially, in your opinion? Of course, you don't know, right? You don't know. But in your opinion, why do you think this will work? Based on your experience, based on your expertise and that we've got all this sort of marketing literature. We need to show that creativity is effective. So build a really compelling commercial story on why the work will work. But then importantly, I think don't present that in a way that looks like all the other presentations that leaders of a corporation sit through. Like, why would you turn up and present it the way that a CFO would, with all the graphs and the data and the very serious and very sort of rational. I think finding an emotional way to tell the story is key. So at Telsha, for instance, we had all the data in the world on our brand. You can imagine, right? Big telco. We had so much data, brand health, brand tracking, we had all of it. And it showed a very clear picture that the brand needed to change because. But what we did was we commissioned an ethnographic study with a small number of customers. And we spent a lot of time with these customers in the pub and at their sporting clubs, in their homes, and we got them to talk about the Telstra brand. But the real aha moment was when we said, draw how the Telstra brand feels. And we got back three drawings, mainly. First one, which we got a lot of, was a white guy in a suit. So you're corporate, you're traditional, you're serious. The second drawing we got a lot of was Monopoly Man. Cash registers, bags and money. You care more about shareholders and profit than you care about customers. And the third one, which was really. I remember I'll never get presenting these. These drawings. And there was a. You could. You could hear this sort of inhalation, you know, this sharp inhalation of breath. When I presented this third one, because it was two Stick figures, a small stick figure and a much bigger stick figure that was bending down and pointing at the. At the smallest said bully. Oh, so you're serious and boring, you're greedy and you're a bully is basically what was coming back. And the power of those drawings versus data points that said the same thing, you know, it was just so powerful to be able to tell the story in that way. So I think for anyone who's trying to convince people that we've got to change the brand, we need to do something differently. You've got to be able to tell the story in a really compelling way. Way to get people to, you know, back you and support you and want to go on that journey with you.

[A]

Such a lovely example of picture tells a thousand words, doesn't it? Literally.

[B]

That just so does. Yeah.

[A]

This amazing conversation a few years ago now, Richard Warren, he's done a bit like you. He's agency, he's gone client side when he was agency, and the reason he got the gig he ended up getting was he was working on Halifax bank in the uk, right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And came up with this big idea. And what he did, he went to a typical Halifax, in a typical town and sat down with the customer service service manager of the branch and pitch the idea to her. And then what he did when he went to do the pitch, he said, doesn't matter what I think, but this is Brenda from Halifax and this is what she thinks. And of course, Brenda was going, oh, I'd feel so proud if I saw that. You know, it made me feel really great about the job that I do and the whole thing. You know what I mean? And because you can argue against the agency, you can argue against the cmo, but you can't argue against the customer. And when you bring the customer in the room, it's a tough one to push back on.

[B]

Yeah, fantastic. And also on the pride thing, too, I think staff pride is also super important. So, you know, I think in any service category, you could spend a whole bunch of money on digital transformation to make the experience better, and you should, and that's important, and we're all doing that. The other thing you can do is if you can make them proud of the brand doing work that they really feel emotionally connected to, that makes them feel really proud to represent the brand, then you can improve NPS overnight, you know, because. Because you can feel it from certain brands, can't you, that the people that work there are proud to work there and proud to represent the brand. And then there are other Brands where you don't feel that at all. So it's something I always try and think about is how do we build genuine staff pride? I think it's a really important KPI for any CMO to do work that the staff are proud of and can really change the culture inside the business quite quickly.

[A]

Huge. Yeah, that's absolutely huge. Just going back to NRMA just for a second.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I got this lovely quote from our good friend Ritson. Oh ye. And he said you took the academic framework and put it into practice at scale and the case study should be taught at Harvard, which I thought was amazing.

[B]

That's very nice of Ritson to say.

[A]

Lovely.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

So what was, what were, what were the academic bits of evidence or framework that you adopted and what impact did it have?

[B]

Yeah, well, I think, I think the, the academic framework that I always fall back on is a long and short.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, every market has to read the long and short of it and I think it again, when you come into any category where it's very competitive and there's a, and there's a lot of pressure on the short term acquisition side of things, insurance, telco, retail, whatever it is, then I think what you find is they'll tend to be an over reliance on those short term tactics, lots of promotional activity, a lot of performance marketing, whole lot of that going on. And, and, and you'll be seeing results in the short term for sure. But you're neglecting the brand building. So, so I guess the first big change I made at NRMA was just shifting that balance and starting to build the brand and getting close to a 60, 40 kind of profile in terms of the spend. But again, coming back to your earlier question, so how do you get people to go on that journey? I always love a test. So I'll find one geography, one market where we will change up the spend, spend way more on brand, leave it for six months and then see what happens. But then, then, so that's, it's, it's, I think it's important to get that, that budget profile right. But then the question is, well, what do we do creatively? Right. Like it's one thing to spend on brand, but then you've got to do something actually, you know, is going to have an impact. And the thing about NRMA is it's got wonderful heritage. It's the motor club here in New South Wales, the biggest state in Australia. I always think when you're a cmo, one of the first things you have to do Is is look at when was the brand at its best and have a look at what creative were they running? What did the brand stand for? What was going on with the brands at its best? Because when I joined nrma it wasn't at its best. It was, you know, it had a couple years of declining sales. It was the 36th strongest brand in the country according to Brand Finance. So, so, you know, it wasn't one of the stronger brands in the country. So I went back in time and, and when NRMA was at its best, NRMA equaled H E L P. It was this little brand device that they run for many, many years. The logo, the NRMA logo would flip around and NRMA would become H E L P. So it stood for help and they hadn't used it for about a decade. And I'm like, well, there's magic in that heritage. So we brought help back and we made the brand stand for help. And in a category like insurance where people think you're not going to help, you know, really sort of powerful positioning, emotional positioning, which, you know, was great. And, and we actually brought back that little logo move of the nrma, tuned hlp and so we brought help back. But importantly, we didn't just bring back the way it used to be. We had a very sort of modern interpretation on, on, on help and that was sort of the main positioning move that, that really changed the fortunes of the brand. So, yeah, like I said, it was the 36th strongest brand in the country. It got up to fifth, which was a huge move in terms of brand strength. We created a lot of brand value. We won a grand effie for our work there. But the most successful campaign we ran, and I can see Koala here as one of your souvenirs while you've been here in Australia. Here we go. Here it is.

[A]

There you go. There you go, viewers, you can see the Koala there.

[B]

If you come to Australia, you have to get yourself a koala souvenir.

[A]

You can't leave that one.

[B]

We actually built a home insurance campaign around koalas, which sounds counterintuitive, maybe a bit silly, but basically, you know, home insurance is one of those carriers where it all looks the same, right? It all looks the same slice of life, families happy and content in their home or conversely, you know, disastrous event happening in a home. And that's sort of the home insurance cliches. And we've seen all those ads, I mean, times before. So we'll try and find a really distinctive way of talking about home insurance and what we found was the homes that were the most at risk in Australia were actually the habitat of koalas. So. So our, you know, iconic Aussie marsupial was. Was close to being extinct because we were, you know, constantly affecting their environment and damaging their environments. So. So we actually thought, well, actually, let's go and protect the homes of koalas. So really simple idea was for every home insurance policy we sold, we'd plant a tree and we used the koala as our. As our sort of, you know, character in our. In our commercials. And a really simple thought that every home needs protecting, including the homes of koalas. And it just had massive cut through in the category. It was just such a different way of. Of talking. And again, I'm really passionate that we shouldn't just hold a mirror up to our target. And I see so many big brands do that. They just say real people being real people. It's like the big brand playbook, real people being real people. And we wanted to be a magnet, not a mirror. Find a more emotional, creative, interesting way of talking. And using the koala for home insurance was a really sort of powerful way to do it.

[A]

Highly emotive.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Everyone loves animals. Koalas, your national animal as well. So. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It's funny, actually, I love the fact that you went back to an old campaign help. Probably the British equivalent of that would be. So our roadside assistance, the AA Automobile Association. Right. So maybe 25 years ago they had this brilliant positioning where they said, we are the fourth emergency service.

[B]

I remember. Yeah.

[A]

That is so clever, you know, because like, you obviously got the core three, but if you break down on the side of the road, there's an emergency for you personally, you want to be helped and the time it takes them to get there is. Is everything, you know what I mean? Because it's a stressful situation. I just thought that's such a good insight.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But again, they've moved away from it. They' ditched and they've had three or four different, you know, positioning since none of them can touch that original one. So kudos to you for going through the archives and pulling out a. Yeah, I think.

[B]

And I think, you know, you can always execute it in a new way. You can always sort of, you know, remix it or find a new interpretation of it, I think. So it doesn't mean you just go and run the old ads or remake the old ads, which I think is even a bigger mistake.

[A]

Yeah, that.

[B]

Yeah. You know, but you find what's the new way of bringing stuff. And you see now nrma, they've even doubled down even more since I left. It's now, you know, their position now is a help company. So it's so embedded into the culture and into the, you know, people that work there that, yeah, they call themselves a help companies, which is great to see that they again, new CMO came in after me and stuck with it and has really sort of doubled down on it. So it's that beautiful compounding thing that

[A]

you always talk about that, that is a Jedi move, actually, if you're, if your marketing position can become a company position and everyone in the company can be orientated around it. I mean, that is just the move, isn't it? Just quick, before we jump into Telstra, just interesting. You mentioned grand. Yeah, that's hard to get right.

[B]

Very.

[A]

What would be the two or three things that tipped a Grand Effie? For anyone listening that thinks, right, one day I'm going to have my hands on that one. What do you have to do?

[B]

Oh, I think to win the Grand Effie, I think turning around the fortunes of a business is key because there are a lot of effectiveness entries that show good growth and often off an already strong base. But I think when you take a brand that's declining and turn that around and get growth going, I think it's. That's really hard to do. And I think that was certainly the hallmarks of that. Of that case. The second thing was the brand strength thing that I mentioned. So we were the 36th strongest brand in Australia. We went all the way to fifth. So enormous brand equity was created and brand value was created as part of that. So it wasn't just a commercial business story, but also a really strong brand story. And then the third piece, and people often say with effectiveness that creativity doesn't matter. It does. We also did work that was really creative, that was really popular, famous work. Right. There was a fame element to all that work that we did for nrma and I think that just is sort of the icing on the cake. I think for an Effie story, like, it's great to have great results, but if you also back it up with really famous work, work that's seen and known work that's been recognized in creative shows, then I think that's how you sort of get, get that, that higher level, grand, iffy sort of work and seen a lot with, with work in Australia. The Uber Eats campaign is another famous one which, which again won Grand Effie but also was very famous. Very visible and creatively recognized. So I think that's how you get to that. That. That top level of. Of grand, iffy, winning.

[A]

Love that. Love that. I peaked at a bronze, you say. I was like, I need to know what's next. Still good.

[B]

It was all right.

[A]

It's good. I. I was really intrigued, actually. I remember that this is quite a few years ago, but I launched a new brand in the Dutch market. Yeah. And maybe we're four or five years in and we changed the campaign and we did a. We did a kind of a new one and we actually put our prices up enormously. So just distribution. Maintain the same. But what we did is we'd been on the discount drug. Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so the year that I took over, we turned all promotions off and our rate, our sales went up 48% because the campaign. Yeah, 48% growth. But the average price, effectively we're selling for was 15% higher.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because we'd stopped all the disc or the, you know, two for discounts or whatever that were going on. So I remember. Get. I remember because they announced the bronze first, so I was literally the first one on stuff like. Damn it. I had to pretend to be really happy. But.

[B]

Oh, no, I was hoping because. Because the thing you've got there, which a lot of FE cases don't have, is you've got such a strong proof.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Because you turn the discounting off. Yeah. There's that section, Fes here in Australia, it says discounting other factors. And you've got to go in and show that absolutely was the advertising and the market that drove it. Like, you could prove that, like, well, we turn the discounting off. So.

[A]

Yes, we had like 64% distribution before, 65% after. We had like, the previous year. Every retailer had on average of 4 promotions running every time of year. They're all switched off. And so what's lovely exactly that is that it could only be the campaign. And then we saw the 48% increase in sales and went, there's nothing else explains this. Right. I mean, maybe the sun shone more, I don't know. But like, you know, but pretty much it had to be the campaign.

[B]

Yeah. Wow. I think you're. I think you're a bit harshly done by that, John. I think you deserve more than a bronze.

[A]

I'm not bitter. Exactly. Although I have to say, bronze does look like gold in a photo.

[B]

More. More than silver.

[A]

It does. So actually, you can't tell in the photos.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

It looks like it just switching to Tell strategy. I love something you said which was, if you want to change how people feel about a brand, change how the brand feels. Which is a really astute observation because obviously feelings are important. And it reminds me actually of that we didn't use this enough at System One, which I think we should have used it more. But there's a lovely framework that we had, I think the founder John invented, which was fame, feeling of fluency, three Fs. Right. And they looked at why brands grow and basically down to how well known they are, how people feel about them and how quickly they come to mind in buying situations. Right. And the three Fs together explained something like 85% of brand growth. That's a really good model. But I love the fact that you were zoned in on Telstra about how people felt about the brand.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you gave this brilliant example earlier when we were chatting about how people drew the drawings. Yeah, the drawings. Which is amazing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So how do you go from the drawings where you started to. To where you ended up?

[B]

Yeah. And look. And on the feeling thing too, I think, you know, boards love things like reputation and I love, you know, NPS advocacy. And I think it's really easy to look at things like that and go, oh, reputation advocacy, that's very rational. And their metrics, they're how you feel about a brand. Reputation is totally how you feel about a company. Advocacy is totally how you feel about an experience you just had. It's a feeling thing, not a thinking thing. So that's why I always come back to how do people feel about the brand? It's the key, because brands are feeling things. Right. So, yeah, that's my sort of sound bite. If you want to change how people feel about a brand, change how the brand feels. And what's really nice is people now say that to me at Telstra, like Bill Burnback or someone said it, like, no, no, I said it. But they all understand that that's why the brand personality and the way we execute the brand creatively, that's the why. The why is because we're trying to change how people feel about the brand. And it was very necessary. So when we looked at corporate reputation for Telstra and we benchmark it against, you know, the 60 benchmark other big corporates in Australia, we were down the bottom 10. Now, telcos aren't loved. So that's globally. That's a thing. Like telcos aren't loved. We're right down there with the banks and we really did struggle at reputational front and what was interesting when we dug into the data was our customers actually rated us quite highly. Our NPS scores were really, really good. And our customers were actually going, yeah, they've got a good network. And particularly our service in our stores was really positive and we're getting really good NPS scores. It was the non customers who didn't rate us at all. 15 point delta, which is the biggest I've seen like. And obviously all the work we were doing to improve CX and improve the network, a non customer doesn't feel any of that. So they weren't experiencing the brand. And a lot of them were ex customers because, you know, we're the biggest telco in the land and at some point you've been a Telstra customer. And so there was just this incredible sort of negative perception with non customers. So that's the group where we had to really change how they feel. And of course if they're not experiencing the brand, the only way that we can change how they feel is advertising. That's it. And because of that, reappraisal was really important. So if we had it turned up the way Telstra had always turned up, in a very expected kind of tone of voice and creative execution, no reappraisal would have gone on. We had to turn up in a really surprising way that was really unexpected for a brand like Telstra. And so the very first campaign that we did under the sort of new brand strategy, we used stop motion puppets for instance, and, and we were talking about coverage and we're talking about how, you know, in, in regional parts of Australia, our coverage is much better. So we got little animals from those, those parts of, of Australia to talk about the coverage. Instead of, you know, people on their phones, we just had these charming little stop motion puppets and we launched it during the Olympics. When most brands turn up with their big corporate 60 second ad, we turn up with all these little charming little 15 second stop motion sort of puppet ads. We made 26 of them. So lots of was just a really sort of charming, unexpected way for Telstra to talk. And then from there we just kept, we've just kept embracing different ways of telling the story. So our brand ad is an animated spot about a guy going on a walk. And it's just, you know, again, there's no mobile phone in there. There's no sort of rational messaging about our network. It's all based on emotion and all based on feeling. And that's been a real hallmark of all the work we've done. Very emotionally driven Very different personality for a big corporate telco. Humor has been a big part of what we've done and yeah, it's just, it has, it's just really changed how people feel about the brand. You sort of, I wouldn't go, I wouldn't go so far as to say that they, they, they all like us yet, but they, they certainly find us harder not to like.

[A]

Yeah, I mean one hallmark of making people feel something is when they start to mimic you. And I have to say I, I, I did get, I went down a rabbit hole last night of looking at tiktoks.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Of Telstra Walk. Who's not in Australia or seen it. Just, just explain it. It's very funny. And it's got very viral, hasn't it?

[B]

It's incredibly so. And, and you know, it's one of those things where you, I'd love to sit here and go, I'm a genius. I knew it would go viral. You know you always get surprised by, by these things and so. Yeah, so we created a brand ad and in the ad we have a character who's, who's, he's walking through the world and he has a little bird on his shoulder and they're, they're basically, it's about their partnership with the spot's actually called Duet and they're walking through the world and he's just, you know, he's, he's optimistic, he's, he's confident, he doesn't have a worry in the world. And as, as he walks, as they walk together, they're whistling Islands in the Stream, very famous duet back and forth to each other and, and it's really, the whole thing's just a metaphor for, for partnership because that's what we ultimately are about as a telco. It's about how we partner with our, with our customers. But the way the guy walks is quite distinct. And so when we were first working with Smith and folks, a fantastic UK based animation company, we spent a lot of time on how should this character walk? How do we really nail this optimism and confidence and sort of relaxed confidence that the guy's got. And we moulded it on a young Mick Jagger.

[A]

Oh, is that where he's from?

[B]

Yeah, and we call him Mick the character in our ad now. Cause he's based on Mick Jagger and that sort of incredibly sort of loose

[A]

limbs, laid back, flowing.

[B]

Yeah, like, you know, so it was based on a young Mick Jagger and we spent a lot of time working.

[A]

Exactly right.

[B]

We had a lot of time sort of work Work out exactly how this sort of character should, should walk. So we launched the spot and it got an initial reaction but not in a good way. So, so, so we're a huge sponsor of both the AFL and nrl, our two big footy coats here in Australia. And in the nrl, the rugby league we, you know, we, we get a lot of spots and on the average weekend you'd see the spot quite a lot. And this, this sort of very unusual fan reaction. So because the spot is very sort of happy and positive and when, when fans teens were losing and our spot would come on, they would get really annoyed. Hey, my team's losing by 20 points. I gotta watch this happy.

[A]

And you got this house Dr. Ad happy guy.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And they get this really sort of intense reaction, right? And so, so we got all these, a whole bunch of, of rugby fan videos basically on tick tock of them. Basically you telstra, like, you know, my team's losing, I have to watch your ad. It was a real like I'm thinking, Jesus. And so the sentiment wasn't looking good. I got the call from corporate comms saying, you know, God, the sentiment's not great on social media. It's a bit negative and we're sort of sitting there going, this makes no sense. Like this is sort of crazy. Like we're trying to actually, in a time when the world feels anything but optimistic, we're trying to be positive, optimistic. Anyway, then it suddenly turned because then people started to your point, imitating the walk. Rugby fans started imitating the walk and doing the walk themselves. And then more people did it and more people did it. It started becoming this thing and we saw the sentiment start really turning and now there were hundreds of videos of people imitating. I mean how amazing that people have taken their time out of their busy lives. Young people on TikTok to imitate the walk from a telco ad. I was like, this is incredible. And it was getting more and more traction. So then the question to any marketer is how do we amplify this? Right? And I think it's super tempting to. Well, let's make our version. Let's put ads into TikTok. But we thought, no, no, let's. This, this is something that the fans own. This is happening in their community. Let's just sort of, let's not mess this up by being a heavy handed telco brand. But what we did do was we waited until the state of origin, which is the biggest rugby game in Australia. It was a state of origin decider game. 3 It was a big deal. And we, we have the first spot when the first try scored, like it's the best spot you can buy in Australian television. And instead of running our usual animated, beautifully crafted brand ad, we decided let's run a version of all the fans on TikTok doing the walk. And we'll edit. And we'll edit it together in a way where it looks like one continuous walk.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we'll just celebrate the fans and the way they're playing with our brand and we won't PR it, we won't make a big deal, we'll just drop it, we'll just run it. And when we did that, then it really took off and we saw it became a celebration in. So in a rugby league game, a player did a try, he did the walk. Jack Ginnivan, a very famous AFL player, he did the celebration after he scored a goal. A girl did the telstra walk of the North Korean border.

[A]

What North Korean border?

[B]

On the North Korean board, she filmed herself doing the telstra walk. And it's just. So now we're up to 30 million views on TikTok. Something like 5,000 different videos of people doing the walk. It's become this huge cultural thing. I mean, 30 million views on TikTok for a telco is. We're not a Kardashian. Right. We're a telcos. It's pretty crazy. And it's just had this incredible organic cultural kind of impact.

[A]

And the legisl brand, all the ones I saw just said hashtag telstra walk as well. Yeah, that's the, that's the common reference for that walk.

[B]

Absolutely. And at one stage when it was at its absolute peak on TikTok, we had 90% of all searches for telco on the TikTok platform were Telstra, which is like, wow, unreal. Right? So, yeah, so it's had an incredible, incredible.

[A]

And that is relevant actually because TikTok, it might be the second or third most used platform for search.

[B]

Absolutely. That's how young kids search.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like my daughters will search for things on TikTok, it's become their search engine.

[B]

Yeah, that's right. And like, and like any big incumbent market leading telco, our market share is much stronger with. And also we're the most expensive telco in the market. So our market share is much stronger with mums and dads than it is with, you know, younger customers. So, so, you know, to see this sort of traction, you know, with, with, with young kids on. And look, my favorite Moment was I was watching my. My son play soccer under 12s and his mate scored a goal and did the telshaw walk celebration. This is. This is. I've made it.

[A]

I've made it around and see everyone, like, make sure everyone's cocked it. That's great. Just take a moment. I talk with marketers all day. Many of them say the same thing. Traffic is down, leads are down, and they're not sure why until they realize what has changed. Most of their customers now trust AI to recommend the right brands to them, and the first one that AI recommends they go with. Visibility in AI Search comes down to whether AI trusts your content. But most brands have no idea where they stand. So how do you show up when someone asks AI about the things that you sell with HubSpot AO? HubSpot AO shows you exactly where your brand stands in AI search and makes clear recommendations on what to do to improve it without having to guess. So when someone asks AI what to buy, you're already the answer. Try it for [e-mail] AEO recognize what's just happened. I love that. I mean, talking of having fun as well, I loved your Christmas ad with the donkey.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

As well. That's a good example of. You talked earlier about humor.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Being, you know, a good weapon as well. That's another good example of where you can use humor to cut through.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. And the donkey ad. So, yeah, I mean, silly idea. A donkey eats a mobile phone. There's a famous Christmas song playing when he eats it. And so therefore, every time that donkey opens his mouth, he's singing the famous Christmas song, becomes the famous singing donkey. Like, it's kind of ridiculous idea. But what's interesting is that one a Leffie, that. Which is one of my favorite ambitions. So a Leffie is the same piece of work that wins a line and an Effie, which is really, really hard to do. Very small and hard to do. So. So, yeah, that one, it picked up a line at can last year, but also picked up at our Effie. So because that's, you know, Christmas, that's the pressure moment for any telco marketer because we're a retail category, really. Right. And, and obviously, you know, gifting people buy a lot of phones at Christmas time. So that, that Black Friday through to Christmas period, we, we, we just, you just have to win, like, it's so important. And again, we took a bit of a different tack because most telcos are very aggressive with their sort of offers and, and, you know, promos and things. Around Chris, we decided, no, we're going to do the John Lewis style big emotional Christmas ad and really sort of try and win that mental availability game. And you know, it's totally worked really well for us. We've had huge standout in the category. It's driven fantastic commercial results. But here's the fact I like the most. So we've got a pretty sophisticated market mix model that we built to really sort of prove effectiveness. What I love is I had a look at our results from Christmas just gone and what we're seeing is so at a time when, you know, it's the most intense time for like here's a retail offer, here's a call to action, you've got most people in market. We saw that half of our sales came from our retail and performance activity. The other half came from brand work that we'd run four plus months earlier. So all the brand work that we're doing, not only is it working, you know, throughout the whole year, it's actually working at the most intense retail period as well. And driving and driving about half of our sales during that sort of period. So, you know, I come back to 60, 40, the power brand. Like it really does build that future demand and then when people are in market it, you're able to convert it.

[A]

I think people forget that even in a short space time, number of weeks, creativity compounds even in the short term. So I mean, whenever we used to, I mean system one would always pre test things. Right. We're testing how people react before they've seen it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Very occasionally we would do another pre test a few weeks in or a few months later.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When the campaign's been out in market it would always, the scores would always have gone up.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We used to say familiarity breeds contentment, not contempt. Right, yeah. Because actually people do like things well, as long as they're good.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If they're bad, obviously there's no help for you, you know. Yeah, yeah. But, but good creative wears in, doesn't wear out.

[B]

Absolutely. 100.

[A]

I tell you the reason I brought this up, it's quite funny. I'm doing some work with Adam Morgan on the element of surprise basically. And it's a forgotten thing actually because again we all know about making people feel happy or maybe it's John Lewis, I'd make them feel sad as well, you know, to get emotion. But actually surprise is so potent and that ad is one of the most surprising on the system on database. So 40% of people pick surprise as the primary emotion is that Right. When the donkey swallows the phone, they weren't expecting it, you know what I mean? So that's why you've captured everyone's attention. Yeah, it's a really good way of.

[B]

And coming back to. Because reappraisal is such a big part of our strategy to get non customers to reappraise, re. Engage, think about the brand differently. Surprise is a common element through all our work. And I think where it gets interesting, I think for any marketer is if you're trying to drive reappraisal and surprise, how do you get that sort of tension between surprise and consistency? Right. So. So, and our, and our approach has been we think we've got a very consistent voice. There's also a level of craft that's very consistent on our work. But, but the executions are quite varied. Like before, I was talking about an animated guy walking. I was talking about stop motion puppets. You're talking about a, a live action ad where a donkey swallows a phone. Like, there's quite a lot of variation in our, in our executions at Telstra, but we think the voice is very consistent and we think that the, the level of craft is very consistent. I think it's a more maybe sophisticated way to think about consistency versus sort of slavish consistency where it's all the same all the time, which works for some brands. But I think if you're a brand that's trying to drive some of that reappraisal, I think you just can't be too consistent because people will tune out right away. You know, you got to get them to just spend a little bit more time with the work and get under their skin a little bit so that they'll think differently.

[A]

I mean, all the best campaigns, I see the consistencies in the idea.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or the tone of voice or the treatment. All those. Those things.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the more familiar you get, the more permission you have to vary. That's true too, you know.

[B]

That's absolutely true. Yeah. Over time, as, as people.

[A]

Because they're familiar with it. So. Yeah. They've got mental shortcuts, haven't they? Already there. Oh, yeah. That must be the next Telstra out, of course, because it's the. It's the iteration of the. On the journey.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

I want to talk about how you made the work as well, because you had an interesting setup from an agency point of view, didn't you? And you're plus six one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Kind of concept. Just explain that concept and how that contributed to the work that then happened.

[B]

Yeah. So when I Joined Telstra. I obviously had the chance to think about, like, what is the right agency model for a big telco brand like this? And, and you know, we're very big by Australian standards. We're probably not that big by UK or American standards, but yeah, we do about 600 briefs a year, so it is quite a lot of work. And as I said, there's a retail nature of telco. I think the thing I didn't want to do was make the trade off between creativity and scale. So I think it's tempting when you're a big client and a busy client, when you've got a lot of volume and you've got a lot of velocity, because we had both, then I need an agency with the resources that can handle this and often you trade off creativity for that. I did not want to want to do that. I really wanted a independent creative agency that couldn't normally manage a bit of business this big. I didn't want them just on the edges, on a small brief. I wanted them at the heart of the model, leading the brand creatively and importantly, establishing a standard across all the work. So we have an agency called Bear Meats, Eagle On Fire, who I think are the most creative agency down here in Australia. And Micah Walker, their founder, is our chief creative officer on Telstra. So they are our lead creative agency. And then what we did was we built scaffolding around them to make sure that, like, with capabilities they needed, around strategy, around delivery, that we could get that from a network agency. So TWA provides that and, you know, they bring fantastic strategy, they bring fantastic delivery, they bring an account team who are super professional and great at what they do. And then also importantly, our media agency OMD then plugs in as the third partner of plus six one. And they work in an incredibly integrated way with the creative agency and connections planning becomes the way we integrate. So the really important thing about Plus61 is it's not a standalone Telstra agency. I don't think you get the best talent on your business by doing that. It's three agencies coming together in a unique partnership and a unique way of working to deliver integrated work for Telstra. And it's. And so far it's worked really, really well in terms of the making piece. At the core of the way we think about work and, and it's one of our brand personality traits is we, we say we want to be always crafted with the human hand. So craft, we think, is not just a sort of afterthought when we're making Ads like, we think craft is actually really core to our brand for a couple of reasons. One, we're premium. We're the most expensive telco in the land, so we've spent billions of dollars on our mobile network. And therefore, I think our work should also feel a bit special, a bit elevated and kind of worthy of our network. And so we spend a lot of time making sure that the craft really signals this is special, this is better, this is premium. So that's one reason. And I think the second reason is in a world of too much content, a lot of it being created by AI, I think stuff that's been crafted beautifully, it just feels warm and human and like it makes you feel something, which I'm all about, clearly based on this conversation, but also it just stands out. It stands out and is elevated versus all that other content that there. So for us, craft is really at the core of what we do. And when we're working on projects we really are thinking about, but, you know, we almost think, what's the hard way to make this? Let's do it that way. So all our out of home, for instance, we use paper craft, where we actually, none of it is done digitally. It's all handcrafted out of paper, then it's photographed, then it's turned into outdoor sites. And again, why bother? I think that makes outer home feel different and feel special. And it's funny, we got a verbatim on it. You know those classic NPS surveys tell us about your experience with Telstra. We got one back and they didn't tell us about their experience with Telstra. They told us about our at a home and it basically said, I love your posters. They all feel so handcrafted and special. And it makes me think that your service must be pretty good, you know, in very sort of. In very sort of, you know, customer terms. But so they do feel like. Customers do feel it. They just feel special and it feels like it's been cared for and therefore the brand feels like it's going to care for me a bit more. I think it's super important.

[A]

I love that. There's a Scott Galloway quote I like, which where he says, strategy is finding the hardest possible thing to do.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

And because the hardest possible thing to do is the thing you can't be copied at.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Usually.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

And you can build a moat around it. Right. I do the easy thing, which is, let's get AI to make this ad for me.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

No one else can do that.

[B]

I love that. And I also think big brands should do things that only big brands can do.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

You know, so, yeah, I really agree with that. I think it's important.

[A]

Yeah. In terms of culture, you also said you're hard on the work, not hard on the people. How does that manifest itself in terms of. Because you're working with your internal team. You've got three agencies all working together to deliver against the goal. So how do you kind of raise the creative bar but also protect people's egos? Because there's a fair few egos involved in that process.

[B]

Right. Including mine.

[A]

Yes, exactly.

[B]

Yeah. No, look, it's. So, yeah, I think with building a creative culture, you need equal parts psychological safety. And a lot's been written on that. Right. And Silicon Valley tech, it's all about psychological safety and you need that for innovation and you need that so people feel they can bring any idea into a room, but then what if that idea is not any good? Right. You also have to have intellectual honesty to be able to actually talk honestly and openly and have some really robust debate about is this work any good? And so, and that's what kind. That's what hard on the work kind of the people is about. Hard on the work is about having that intellectual honesty and really being prepared to call out work that isn't at the standard needs to be at. And then kind to the people is doing it a way where people feel supported and trusted and confident to be able to do good work. And so at the heart of it is a way of every quarter looking at every single output and we give it a score which we kind of copied from AB and well, we did copy from AB and Beth, but you know, they've been now three times can marker of the year, so they know what they're doing. And so basically we created. It's called the Telstra dial. It's a 1 to 10 rating and we sit down every single quarter and we mark every single piece from the biggest ad to the smallest edm, it all gets marked, we give it a score and it does two things which are really important. The first thing it does is it sets the standard for everyone. Everyone. So everyone, there's. There's absolute clarity from everyone of what the standard is. Because. Because honestly, I can't stand it when people throw great around. Oh, that's a great ad. Or that's a great edm or that's a great post. Like great, great. There's one barrier reef in the world that's great. There's one Wall in the world that we can see from space. That's great. Like great. Or is it just kind of good or is it just average or what? So, so, so that the scoring gives you that sort of common language, common standard. Everyone understands what the standard is, which is crit. Really important piece is it gives you data. So I understand by team, by channel, by product, like, you can start diagnosing where's the problem? And then why is it a problem? And then importantly, it's a coaching tool where we can go to the teams and say, well, let's have a look. Why did this work not score well? Is it the brief? Is it the execution? Is it the craft? What's gone wrong? And so it becomes this beautiful sort of system where we're being very honest about where the work's at, but we're also providing lots of support and coaching for the people doing the work. So they absolutely have clarity of where they're at and clarity of how to make it better if they need to make it better. And for us, it's really helped elevate all the work. I think there are a lot of brands where you can do one or two good things and that gets celebrated and wins awards, but then there's a long tail of stuff that's not very good. And that long tail is what touches the customer day in, day out. Right. And so for us, we want to try and raise the. The level of all of it so that the whole brand starts feeling more elevated and, and sort of better.

[A]

That's very well said. I mean, you. And also some of the work that gets celebrated in Cannes doesn't even see the customer at all. Well, there's that too, but they're all seeing your kind of in store experience

[B]

100 and that's what builds a business day in, day out. And that's what makes such a difference to the experience. So, yeah, we take that really seriously. And the important thing I didn't say is to keep us honest, we also get an external chief Creative officer to market as well.

[A]

Ooh, that's good.

[B]

So it's not just us marketing our own homework. We also get an external, very senior creative point of view who hasn't touched the work to market as well. So that's sort of nice. Keeps us honest.

[A]

Really love that a lot. Let's talk a little bit about being a CMO as well, because we did this study last year which was a lot of fun, called Confessions of a cmo, which has given me plenty to.

[B]

I think I made a confession I was part of that.

[A]

You did, didn't you?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I wasn't going to mention that because it's anonymous, but, yeah. Seeing as you've confessed to doing the survey.

[B]

Confessed to doing the confession.

[A]

Yes, exactly. We've got one here, by the way. Thanks for doing that.

[B]

Pleasure. Pleasure.

[A]

I loved your answers. I know when you took up your first role, you said, I'm not a corporate cmo. What is the biggest lessons or biggest lessons you've taken out of being having come from your agency experience, You've now been a CMO 8, 10 years now. What have been the biggest lessons for you about what it takes to be a great cmo?

[B]

Oh, so many. So many lessons. But I think it comes back to the thing we were saying earlier at the start. I think the most important role for a cmo, I believe, is to protect the work. And that's not just because I grew up in agencies. Like, obviously, I love the works. I grew up in agencies. But I think in the end, what you put out into the world is what builds your brand. That's what touches the customer. Not your amazing strategy deck or your keynote presentation you did at the conference, or it's the work that you put out into the world. That's what touches customers. That's what builds brands. So I just think that your role is to make that as great as you can make it. And it seems it's a very simple way to look at the world. But I tell you what, it's given me so much purpose and so much focus. I wake up every day knowing what my. My role is. It's to protect that work, to make that work great, to create the conditions for creativity. Because in the end, I think creativity is the biggest competitive advantage that a brand or business can have. So that's what drives me. That's what I'm passionate about. And I think all the lessons I have are all in learning how to protect that work, get stakeholders to understand why we're doing that kind of work, and ultimately start building a movement inside the corporation where they start wanting that type of work and you're not selling it to them anymore because they kind of want to buy it. They're on the journey with you. And when that happens, it's incredible. You get such momentum because they're all supporting you and they're wanting you to succeed and they're part of the creative journey with you. And I think that's the biggest thing I've learned is how to do that and the importance of doing that. Got it. Wrong along the way. But I think that's really the job. And I think the CMOs who do that are the ones who have outsized influence in terms of their ability to transform brands and transform businesses.

[A]

I think the interesting thing about that. I had a similar experience. I used to call it air cover, is that when there was an amazing idea that surfaced, I'd create the air cover in rooms that people didn't even know that, you know, I was. In defending the work, creating the permission.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, dealing with the objections. Right. Or if somebody made a mistake and it didn't go well, I'll be defending them and keeping them in a job and all this kind of thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the. The challenge I found personally is that people only knew when it went wrong. They didn't know all the work that went out that went well. Only because I stood between them and the you know, the sort of. Of great invasion of. Of objections from the C suite or whatever it was. And it's. It's one of those skill sets you've described beautifully there. It's an unrecognized skill set, isn't it?

[B]

A little bit. A little bit.

[A]

It is because, you know, you know, sort of thing. But like.

[B]

Yeah, and as you say, it happens in.

[A]

It happens in boardrooms and closed rooms

[B]

and like, you know, and corridor conversations and, you know, and early morning phone calls and. But, but I. But I think that you have to be vigilant. Right. Like, you got. You got to really be protecting the idea at all times because, you know, like I said, nothing's been invented that's better at killing them than a corporation. They're great at killing ideas. So you just got to be ever vigilant and always sort of think about how you can help it. But for me, that gives me enormous sort of motivation and satisfaction when you do get through it.

[A]

If you pull a person out, it's amazing how quickly the corporation sucks the life out of the idea or the thing or replaces it with something else.

[B]

Yeah, you know, that's right.

[A]

You really are like the old. The old Dutch story of the, you know, you got the finger in the dike stopping the dam flooding thing. You know, you take you out of the situation. It's amazing how quickly it all collapses, isn't it?

[B]

That's right. That's why it's so rare to see brands that are able to do it through multiple CMOs. And over many years, they've institutionalized it.

[A]

It's become part of the culture DNA. That's right. That's the ultimate place to be, actually, if you can hardwire it. This is why, by the way, I responded earlier when you talked about going from a kind of brand idea to a company idea. Can the people in the stores, you know, play back to you, your kind of corporate or your kind of marketing strategy? I mean, that's when you know you've embedded it into big time.

[B]

And, you know, one of the real sort of. It's been really humbling in sort of leaving Telstra. The notes I've cherished the most are from those store managers who. I've had a few of them who have sent me notes just saying how much the brand means to them and, you know, how they love the way the brands change and like. So if you can get those guys being brand believers and protecting the brand and you know, that's the game. Like, the more of the company that understands why we're doing this and they become believers in the brand, then that's a really powerful place to be.

[A]

One question to finish up on, then maybe a tricky one. What's the single best bit of advice you've ever been given?

[B]

Oh, it was very early in my advertising career and funny enough, I can't actually remember who said it to me, but I just always remember the bit of advice, which is, trust your gut. It's smarter than you. It served me so well, trusting my gut because I do think we have a tendency to want to overthink and we get in our own heads and we. Whereas, I don't know, I've always sort of tried to stay true to what I feel in my gut. And again, in terms of, like, buying the right work and in terms of hiring the right people, choosing the right agency partners, so much has always been sort of gut driven with me and I've always tried to stay true to that and hold on to that. So I'd say, yeah, trust your gut, it's smarter than you.

[A]

Love that. That's really, really powerful. It's funny because our gut is often more intelligent than our. Than our brain. I mean, Anselmo Ramos, the founder of Gut Agency, and that's the entire basis of their creative agency. Yeah, that insight alone, yeah, it's a great name. Brent, man, it's been amazing. Thank you so much for doing this.

[B]

Thanks for having me on, man.

[A]

It's been great sharing that wisdom with us all. It's hugely appreciated and good luck for the next chapter.

[B]

Thank you, John. Thanks so much.

[A]

Cool. Cheers, man. So I hope you enjoyed that episode of Uncensored cmo as much as I enjoyed making it. Now, by the way, I've got a new newsletter, so if you'd like to get my thoughts on the One Thing that I take out from each episode every week, then do subscribe to the One Thing newsletter. I'd really appreciate it. Also, I have another podcast called just launched Uncensored Renegades with the fabulous Corey Marchisoto. She is one of the world's best CMOS. She's an absolute rock star. Every week we pick one topic, spend 20 minutes trying to fix it. So check out that it's in your feed. Uncensored Renegades. And finally, I want to give a huge thank you to my sponsor, System One. They generously provide so much support for this podcast, it would not happen without them. So big thanks and lots of love to System System One. I'll see you next time.