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A
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Uncensored Renegades. This is the 20 minute podcast where Cory Marchisotto and myself tackle one big question every week. I hope you enjoy this. Now, if you are enjoying it, I've got one request to make. We're putting this out on the current uncensored feed for a limited time only. So if you're enjoying it, go over to uncensored Renegades, hit subscribe and never miss an episode. Anyway, without further ado, let's get into it. K boss, we're back.
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B
What's up?
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A
What's up?
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B
Okay, so I am sitting in front of the chief choco caster. Oh yes, my favorite. So clearly this was put down for me to react to. Cause I can't imagine anything on this table wasn't put here specifically to cause a reaction. And this is uncensored chocolone and I'd like to learn a little bit more about it.
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A
You wanna know what's going on with the Cholone?
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B
I wanna know what's going on.
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A
Well, look, my second favorite brand in the world obviously after Elf.
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B
Wait, since you said that.
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A
Yeah. Little plug here, commercial.
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B
Apply my melting lip balm. Shall I while you.
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A
I think, I think you should. Yeah, yeah. So I am a massive fan of Tony's chocolate. Only I, I mean look, if you were to sort of like if I had to pick one thing to do in the world, it would be like inventing brands. I just love and I particularly love Challenger brands that take on the establishment and just turn it on his head. Like you've exactly. Like you've done with Elf.
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B
Right.
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And I just think. And I love chocolate as well. Right. So if I were to pick like categories disrupts. But there are so many lessons from it. Cause like what they've done, I mean the funny thing about the origin of this brand is it's a bit of an accident. Cause it was three journalists that were looking at the supply chain and they discovered that there's huge amounts of child slavery in the cocoa supply chain.
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B
Right.
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A
I didn't know this.
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B
Right.
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And so these three Dutch guys did a whole documentary about the supply chain and the amount of, you know, child labor working below the, you know, below the poverty line and the kind of slavery that exists in the supply chain. And they kind of expose this in, in Holland and they decided as part of the documentary to mock up what an ethical chocolate would look like. And I think one of the guys that did it was called Tony. So they kind of named it after Tony. And they, they basically produced an ethical chocolate. I just thought, what an absolutely brilliant story. And what they've managed to do as that brand is they've taken that idea and carried it through everything. Right, so if you were to open this up, actually. Yeah, yeah, feel free to open this up. Because they've even made the bits of chocolate uneven. So when you. So, you know, normally most chocolate is. You break it and it's in squares, it's all very uniform. What they've done with this is they've made every piece of it a different shape, basically to communicate how the supply chain itself is unevenly distributed.
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B
Well, I even love this. Share our chocolate. So this is the first time I'm ever opening a Tony's chocolone. And I love this. So they have the story on the inside and they are serious. Crazy about chocolate and serious about people.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Now, who doesn't love. Just listen to the sound of the.
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A
Oh, isn't that just the best? And foil as well. Something about foil when. When chocolate bars take the foil away. I was a bit of a shame because the foil is part of it. Now, apparently, when they first launched this, right, it caused arguments in households because of course, like, the parent would give the kids the chocolate, they'd break it and of course they'd get different. Different shapes and sizes.
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B
Yeah.
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A
It caused all this thing. And a wonderful example, actually, of. Because in the uk, I don't. I don't think this exists in the same way in the us, but we have this idea of an Advent calendar in the run up to Christmas. So in the. In the number, in the 25 days before Christmas Day, you open the calendar and you get usually a present each day. Right.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Tony's came and traditionally it's chocolate as well. All the Advent calendars are little chocolate bars. And Tony's came up with a Tony's Advent calendar. Except that on day. I think it was day nine, they left it empty and they made a point by leaving it empty to say that this symbolizes the people that don't get paid a fair wage in the supply chain.
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B
Wow.
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A
It caused outrage. It was the number two trending topic in the uk on the BBC news website of the Christmas. This is like three years ago, like, literally, kids were like, they're devastated, they're crying, upset they weren't getting the chocolate. Now, obviously, he's made the point really. Well, if we're worried about not getting one tiny little bit of chocolate, think about the kids in the supply chain. So they made their point absolutely brilliantly. But. But I think As a brand, what I love about them is how they deeply care about their mission. But how they use marketing in terms of the packaging, the way they communicate, the way they display in store, the website, everything they do links back to the purpose in a very clear way. So a very long answer to your question, but I just think as a brand, it is one of the ultimate challenge brands that have taken on a huge industry. And the other thing they. The other thing that's admirable about them as well, they are a supplier to their competitors. So they care more that the supply chain is fixed than that the Tony's brand successful. Their mission is first to fix the supply chain and second, if they happen to sell Tony's off the back of that, then that's good. But what they care more about is everybody is buying ethically, which I think is incredible.
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B
I can see why you're very inspired by that. So that's top of the list of things that inspires you.
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So it inspires me. So when I went to bless them, when I went to interview them last year, they made up a whole ton of well, okay. The reason this is called chief Choco caster is that whenever you work, whenever you join Tony's, they have this, this guy whose only job it is to write copy. They have like an in house copy guru who does the copy for everything. Every person who joins gets their own job title. So you might be the Countess of Chocolates or something or you know, do you know what I mean? So everyone has a very bespoke name that's personal to them that links back to the mission. And so they gave me the honor of being the official Choco caster.
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B
So how does that work? Did the chief copywriter sit down and interview you and then grant you this name or did you come up.
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A
It's like royalty. You have to get granted it, right? You can't apply. You just have to be granted the title, you see. So in anticipation interview, I was kind of just pitching, dropping a few hints across. Wouldn't it be nice? I don't think anyone's taken the Choco Caster title yet, have they? So maybe I could claim it. But they happily bestowed me with the title.
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B
I love that.
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But it's a great bit. I mean, you know, where we get our inspiration from I think is a. Is an important thing as marketers because I know I found in my career that oft most of the inspiration I have in any job comes from outside the organization, rarely inside. Because I think inside the organization there's A way of doing things that's always existed right. And often find looking outside can be the best place to look for inspiration.
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B
Well, I think in order for an organization to grow, for a brand to grow, the people need to grow. And how do the people grow? It's by exposing themselves to different stimuli. And when I think about myself as being a beauty executive for almost 30 years now, whenever anybody asks me what inspiration I take from within our industry, I actually say none. I spend almost all of my time looking outside of our industry. So similar to you and how you're very inspired by Tony's Chocolone. And I will now spend time with it as well because it's a pretty incredible story, and I'm very inspired by stories. I take inspiration from so many other brands. You and I have talked about our love of Liquid Death. This one for me is absolutely exceptional, but not only in the fact that a Challenger brand disrupted an industry, but even the way they deal with hate. Creating an album called Greatest Hates, and in essence, tasing their haters. And anything that happens, they flip it on its head and actually do the opposite. And I think it's just such a brilliant approach to marketing, copywriting, consistency in being very disruptive in how they approach everything. So brands like Liquid Death, as a Challenger, you want to study Challenger brands. That's how you make sure you continue to sharpen your sword. But honestly, the first place that my inspiration comes from is nature. And I love to ski. And one of the places I find the greatest inspiration is snowy mountaintops. And when it is snowing and the snow is weighing down the trees, and sometimes it's multiple feet of snow, and it's a winter white wonderland, and you're skiing down a mountain in this fresh, beautiful mountain air, there is something that happens to you as a human that you reset and you almost recalibrate your own operating system. And then the other thing I find specifically as it relates to all of the answers one can find in nature, when you get grounded and you really spend time with it and you allow yourself to be present in the moment, is the beauty of skiing is when you get down to the bottom of the mountain, you have absolutely no choice but to pause and reflect because you've got to get on the lift, and it's going to take a certain amount of time to get up to the top again. And when you're on that lift, you're thinking about your last run and how you can get better for your next run. And this is really almost a leadership lesson. Pause and Reflect, ask yourself what incremental changes can you make to get better for your next run. And if you are in a constant state of incremental changes that day on the slope, you will find yourself a better skier at the end of the day than when you started. So it's consistency, practice iterating in a beautiful environment and scenery where you're getting fresh air and you have great focus. So I actually find my time in nature clears my mind, recalibrates my operating system, and usually gives me some of the greatest business and leadership lessons that I could ever ask for. And they're all right there in nature 100%.
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A
The equivalent for me would be cycling on my bike actually is, does exactly what you just said because you're concentrating on staying on the road, not falling off, you know, and that being in, in the zone, I think as you describe isn't it is like that somehow it releases your mind to be able to join the dots and think about things and process. And so I get so much inspiration when I'm not doing work, which I think is the key. But the other, the other thought that occurred to me as you spoke was the importance of changing your context as well. Some years ago, I mean my, rather very randomly my degree at was actually in stock markets. And so I studied basically how stock markets grow and whether or not you could predict the returns from stock. And the theory, without going into it in too much detail, is that stock markets are so efficient that unless you have inside information, there's no way you could predict the movement of a stock. Now my theory was that depends on perfect information flows. So if you go to another market, say emerging markets, where there's less information flow, there's different languages, exchange rates, there's more variability, you could outperform the market based on having superior knowledge. Anyway, this is my entire, like my entire degree. So I actually invest, pretended to invest in six stock markets around the world and I managed to outperform them as part of my dissertation.
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B
Okay.
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A
But anyway, the reason to tell you all that big story was there's a theory in trading called arbitrage, which is where you take the knowledge created in one market and you apply that knowledge to a different market with less than perfect, less than perfect environments. And you can get unfair advantages from that. So I then started applying this when it to work by walking around the supermarket. And I think, why is he walking around the supermarket? So I'd be like a weird guy going up and down the aisles. But what I'd be looking for is so Ask her the question, what would a juice brand do if it was operating in the shaving category? What would a diaper brand to use the American quid, and what would the diaper brand do in if it was selling snacks? And what you do is you take one category problem and you solve it with another category's answer.
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That's brilliant.
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And I just, I love that. I get, I mean, it sounds weird, but I get so fascinating walking around a supermarket trying to go, oh, well, if they apply that to this, you know, I mean, I mean, ice cream, for example, how do you sell the idea of a low fat ice cream? I mean, that's contradictory, right? Ice cream's fat. How would you answering those kind of questions?
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B
I also find the colors, organization, the entire journey in a supermarket is wildly inspiring. The smells, the sounds. I have to touch everything. I don't know about you, but like, I have to touch everything. So I want to crinkle the paper like I was just doing with the, with the foil here on the table. And I find when you think about how hard a package has to work on a supermarket shelf, how inspiring that is when you think about, well, how do I tell a story utilizing my package to say everything to a shopper who's passing me by, looking at 3,000 other things. I mean, this is really hard work and hard problem solving for packaging designers, brand designers, product marketers, all of these things to be able to use a 2 square inch of space or however big it is to tell an entire brand story. And there are so many aisles that I just think are absolutely fascinating. Of course, the ones that have a lot of color I think bring a lot. So sometimes that can be your dessert aisles and things of that nature. And I think the whole experience of letting yourself be free without a shopping list and seeing what you gravitate toward and why. And what about this specific thing made me gravitate to this section? And what about this packaging is speaking to me in a meaningful way that actually makes me want to take it off the shelf and buy it at the expense of every other offer. The other thing I always do when I visit any country is go to the supermarket. Because I actually think you learn a lot about a people and a culture by wandering around the supermarket. So when I'm in other countries, two of the things that I do to get inspiration are go to a supermarket and also ride the metro and understand the rhythm of everyday life. And I get so inspired in the metro. People think that's crazy. A lot of people are like, whoa, I love it. You get to see real people going through real life. What newspaper are they carrying? What bags do they have? How are they dressed? How do they look similar or not? And the following. The rhythm of how the life moves in a particular city I find incredibly inspiring.
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Yeah, I did this once. After the first time I got fired. I know we talked about this on a previous episode.
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B
So many firings.
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I know. What time exactly. Exactly. I think it deserves a little series. But I found myself with extra time, obviously, as you do. And I remember I'd never been to New York. This is only seven, eight years ago. I've been loads of times now. But then I'd never been to New York. So I bought a plane ticket and took a week off. And the only thing I did for a week is walk around supermarkets in downtown Manhattan. Right. I did a lot of steps, but all I was doing is just thinking about this arbitrage idea of what exists here and fulfills a demand that I don't see in the uk. And I set myself the challenge in five days of coming back with five new brand concepts. And I wrote them up on the play on the way home. And it was surprisingly easy. I mean, things that I know you'll be familiar with, but. Like the seltzers, right? Yeah, Seltzers don't exist here. Cold coffee, this is a few years ago, but cold coffee in cans, like, you know, obvious, right? It serves the needs.
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B
So obvious.
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Yes, that's such an obvious thing. That didn't exist here, really. So, I mean, things like that. And kombucha, I mean, kombucha was a bit of a fad. It kind of came and went, but there were so many. Even in. I was just looking at drinks, right? Just in drinks. There were tons of things that exist to fulfill the same need that you'd have in New York, but it doesn't exist in London. Then I looked at snacks as well, saying, you know, like, you have like thin thins or barks or whatever they're called. Like these really interesting kind of shareable, shareable chocolate. Right? In these big, beautiful packets. You don't have shareable chocolate like that here. You know, again, things like that. I found it amazing. Just by going to New York for one week, I could come up with multiple ideas for new brands.
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B
Well, I think that goes back to the idea of being open, to be inspired. First of all, you have to be humble enough to be inspired. And then when you think about this idea that you have to be curious, right? You have to be curious Curious enough to walk those aisles and be looking for something that is. Is going to fulfill something that you're unaware of. Issey Miyake used to say, spend time with things you don't know. So whether it's New York or anywhere in the world, spend time with things you don't know, which is what you were doing. And speaking of New York, I think you saw a couple of weeks ago, we were back at the New York Stock Exchange, and there's something called Experience Square, which is right outside the exchange. And it was a moment where we had to utilize the space to tell the story of six brands. That's not easy to do. We want to tell the story of our entire portfolio. And I was in Paris, let's say, six weeks before that, and there was a balloon museum at the Grand Palais. And this is someplace that I get inspiration all the time. Not particularly in Paris, but at museums. And there was this incredible section where they were essentially colored boxes where balloons were bringing some idea to life in these boxes. So one was a butterfly, and the wings were made out of small balloons done in different colors. One was flowers. You can imagine how this goes. And I took a picture of it at the time, not knowing what I was gonna use it for. But I was so inspired how they were able to unfold this story in these distinct vignettes. Yet somehow it all fit together to tell one bigger picture was about all these things that you could do with something as simple as balloons. So I took that picture and I gave it to our chief brand officer. And that was the inspiration that was used for how we unfolded our. We didn't use balloons, but it was the idea of these vignettes and how you tell a story over the course of six brands. So museums are an incredible place of inspiration. All different types of exhibits can fuel how you think about bringing activations to life, immersive experiences, even drawing and design. You can get great ideas from museums. So I like to spend a lot of time in museums, especially when I'm traveling. And one other thing that sticks out for me and a brand that I probably put on the biggest pedestal that I used to work for is Hermes. And not only was Hermes brilliant about putting their craftsman on a pedestal, so even when you go to their office, the craftsmen work behind glass so that you can see who's really responsible for the incredible work that they do, you can see them handcrafting everything with unbelievable attention to detail. And one of the things that they do, especially in the beauty space. So one of their perfumers at the time when I was working there. His name is Jean Claude Elena, and Jean Claude Elena lived in the south of France in this beautiful place that was up on a hill. So inspiring landscape, right? Because he's a creator, he's an artist. Making a perfume is like writing music. There's notes and accords. And what they would do is, is make sure that there was a steady rhythm of exposing Jean Claude to other artists. So they would send, for example, a famous saxophonist, and for three days they would stay in the Hermes house and they would speak artist to artist. And if you think about how mentally stimulating that is, and then next week it would be, you know, a fashion designer, and then anything that was not the craft that he was doing. And this idea of filling into an artist inspiration from other fields in order to expand their field of view, which I thought was really fascinating.
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A
I love that a lot. So if there was one thing you would suggest, it would be step outside
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B
of your industry and pick any category, any industry that has nothing to do with yours, and spend time with things you don't know 100%.
- [21:07]
A
How does somebody else solve your problem? So, from Corey Marchisoto, myself, thank you so much for listening and watching to Unsense and Renegades. We genuinely, genuinely hope that you enjoyed this conversation. Now, we do have one little request. We would love it if you could leave us a review. Reviews are so important to other people discovering this show. So wherever you get your podcast from, go and drop us a review. We would really appreciate it. Thank you.