#715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers

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5:48 Check it out. Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And then I'll see you personally question. Now it is seen. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal and the skeleton. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers, to tease out the habits, routines, techniques, favorite books, so on and so forth that you can apply.

6:27 in your own lives. And I interview people from all different disciplines. And guests could be from all different disciplines. They could be from the military. They could be from business. They could be from entertainment, they could be from academics, research, chess. In this case I would say the creative Arts. Now The guest, Chris Beresford Hill.

6:46 is best known as a creative leader in advertising. He's an adman. He's a very, very good adman. He started off as an unpaid intern, the journey is wild, his techniques highly effective But he's not just an admin. This conversation is really about coming up with good ideas. How do you come up with original And good. ideas that not only

7:09 change narratives, change stories, change the stories people tell, change culture on some level. And I loved this conversation. So let me get to the bio and then I will give some teasers. Chris Bertsford Hill is one of the most sought after creative leaders in advertising and has led brands with a combined market cap of over one trillion dollars. He was recently named Chief Creative Officer of the Americas, BBDO. Previously. Chris served as North America President and Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvie and Chief Creative Officer at TBWA Shyat Day.

7:41 His work for clients like Guinness, Mountain Dew, Dove, Workday, Adidas, FedEx, McDonald's, HBO and FootLocker have driven sales while putting dent after dent into pop culture. But it's not just these huge brands. We also get into the early stories of how cold email to Mark Cuban changed the game for him completely. So we do talk about the super scrappy bootstrapped very, very novice days when he made a mark and slowly built his trajectory up to the stratosphere. Back to the bio. Christmas teams have won every award for creativity and effectiveness many times over. They even have and I didn't even realize this was a thing, five campaigns in the permanent collection at MOMAC.

8:21 He has been named to Adweek's list of best creatives. Adweek's Creative 100, Business Insider's Most Creative People in Advertising, and the Ad Age 40 Under 40, back when he was under 40. And you can find Chris Birdsford Hill. On LinkedIn, that is the best place to connect. And we'll link to that in the show notes at Tim.blog slash podcast, but it is linked in.com slash IN slash Chris Barritsford Hill. And this episode touches on just about every aspect of creativity, and also Using positive constraints, how do you operate with positive constraints to make yourself

8:58 More unorthodoxed, more effective. How do you find sort of the Gap. in what is right in front of you to see what other people have not seen. to create something.

9:11 that takes off. that goes viral. How do you do this? How do you develop a reliable toolkit for this? So we not only talk about the ad game, print advertising, super bowl ads, that type of thing. We also talk about Metallica, we talk about Conan O'Brien, we talk about South Park, we talk about Every possible medium. We also talk about my longstanding interest in effective copy, which goes back decades and how to use a swipe file and so on. So that's enough preamble. Now, without further ado, please enjoy a very wide ranging conversation, a very practical conversation with Chris. Birdsford Hill.

9:43 Chris, welcome to Austin. Nice to see you, man. Nice to see you, too. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So we are going to Bob and Weave and do some Improv jazz. In this conversation. We're gonna wind all over the place. Let's start with A basic, which is how did you land your first job?

10:03 My first job was at a very cool, very trendy ad agency in Boston called Modernista. And I convince them to let me be an unpaid intern. because they were so small they didn't know how to say no to me coming in and offering To work for free.

10:17 So I just graduated college and I got really lucky'cause there was kinda no high speed internet or anything. I just found them in the phone book literally and I Walked around and it was just a Cool office and I so I kinda By virtue of that I found my way there and they let me be an unpaid intern and

10:32 And they let me write website copy, very web one point oh copy for General Motors for the Hummer truck when that was Brought back with the H one and the H two. And I decided This was my dream.

10:43 Maybe write a ton of web copy and that was making me really excited. Maybe do a print ad back when there was magazines everywhere. Maybe uh put an idea on the back cover of a magazine and that would really be massively fulfilling. So As soon as I got that internship, I just I had to figure out how to get hired, but they weren't.

11:01 Un unpaid to paid. Barely paid. But at that time, and we could touch on this, it was much more competitive to get into the ad biz because there just you know, there weren't as many creative options for for career. So we had an assignment for the Dallas Mavericks Two thousand And two NBA program, like the magazine that that people would buy when they went to Mavericks Games.

11:24 At the time Mark Cuban was was this very besides just being Mr Shark Tank, he was this very outspoken NBA owner, he was always criticizing the league and the officials and he was always getting fined, and it was that was a big theme. So I wrote an ad and it wasn't a particularly good one. It was okay. But I wrote even Mark Cubin has nothing bad to say about it with a picture of the truck.

11:43 Which I thought was clever. I don't know if it's g really stand the test of time. But I knew that getting a billionaire to give you the rights to their name was probably something that had to be thought through where there's probably some people that would weigh in on that. And I remember this urban legend. Again, very like

11:55 Web one point oh which was that Mark Cuban had an email address that if you could find it and you emailed him, he like wrote everybody back. So I kinda put together a a very short, concise email. Pleading my case. I'm an unpaid intern.

12:09 This would mean so much if you would let me put this ad into the world and I Made a little PDF and I attached it. And like True to magic.

12:17 About an hour later why he just wrote back and just said, Go for it dash M And so he summoned the genie. I he was you know, he was right he was there for it. May maybe it was because it was that about him. Yeah. Maybe there's other emails he didn't want to write back to, but maybe this maybe this works for him. And so I remember I printed out the ad and then I printed out the email from him. And I put it underneath and I showed my boss Lance and He laughed at that ad and then said, You know, the requisite, like we're never gonna be able to do it, but thanks, kid.

12:43 And then you know, he turned the page and there was the email. And I think that You know, more than any creative idea I'd ever shown him, and I was doing my best to show him everything I think I showed him that I was gonna solve every problem with creativity, not just the assignment. And so we we ran that underwhelming ad, but that was enough for him to give me

12:59 A job offer for twenty two and a half thousand dollars a year. Which was the best job offer I ever got. So many follow up questions. So the first is And uh You may not recall, but

13:11 Do you have any idea what the subject line was, or the gist of the subject line? You know what? I don't remember the subject line. But I'll tell you this, I think it was good and considered because I to this day I receive a lot of email.

13:25 That's not from People I'm I'm looking to hear from And I know the power of a subject line. So I think very hard on these things because everything is The communication. Oh yeah. So for example, when I worked at T BWA Shay Day, I would

13:37 Sometimes cold email clients we'd ha we'd have an idea for Audible or an idea for IKEA and I would find the client and I would reach out. And I figured out the perfect email subject, which was Hi from Apple's ad agency.

13:50 Because T B W A is Apple's ad agency. And my response rate on that was killer. Uh so I've definitely learned that, you know, your first impression is kinda your only impression. So Maybe I appealed to his kindness, maybe it was desperate unpaid intern. I don't know. I don't know what, but it's some appealed to his level of get shit done. And Yeah appreciated the the Chut Spa.

14:10 I hope so. It would seem to be the case if he gave your permission. So So if I ever see him, I'll say a very big thank you. He may end up hearing through the podcast. So Coming back to the phone book. Becoming an unpaid intern.

14:23 Yeah. Why did you Choose to focus Because the phone book has a lot of entries. There's a lot of different types of businesses.

14:32 Yeah. Why did you choose To pursue. This particular Company. Or at least sector.

14:39 Everything is luck. You can be prepared for it. You can have some gifts. But you're an idiot if you don't think that chance and fate and all those things because there were a number of ad agencies in Boston and I was sure I wanted to be an advertising creator person. But again, you Googling wasn't a thing to do. Like the computer with the internet was at the library, you know, and I think I I think it was like yellowpages.com. And I think Modernista was the name of the agency. So that's like kind of in the middle. That's not like the first one.

15:04 I think I tried Arnold advertising in Boston and uh they didn't want to meet with me. I think I just worked my way down and I think they were just it was just the right place, right time where they were like, Yeah, we'll take free labor. You couldn't look up what the client lists were. Did you have a pitch or was it I will do anything if you let me in the door, or was it more specific? It was I will do anything because I had nothing to offer. Mm. And I think Later I would get my second job and I would go to someone

15:29 And now I am a copywriter and I would say I will Right on your accounts. In my spare time, if you want, I would You gotta offer whatever you have. But I started out with nothing to offer. So I think I knew I was free labor and I said I would get coffee. And I did. And I got a lot of coffee.

15:44 We may come back to that. There's a lot of power in being willing to do the small things. Mm-hmm. Because a lot of folks feel like they're too good for it or too qualified. But we may come back to that. I want to ask you for the program, and maybe you already said this and I missed it. Coming up with the even Mark Cuban has nothing bad to say. About Mm. This particular car.

16:04 Did they give that to you as an assignment or is that something you just did of your own volition? I think I graduated from website copy to the smallest of creative tasks. And so I think there was, you know, you could write the welcome signs for the GM convention and try to make that clever. So there's all kinds of like little things that weren't the big brand stuff and they weren't the big T V spot or any and that's kinda where all the focus was and you kinda had to Work your way through those things. You said

16:29 That You have to consider luck. I'm paraphrasing here, which is of course true. There's certain things you can do to increase your surface area for luck to stick to. I'm borrowing that concept from somebody else. I don't know the attribution. And You didn't get a yes from the first few spots or the first few companies you contacted. Did Modern East to end up being a particularly good fit? Or

16:51 particularly influential In a way you could not have predicted. So interestingly, when I kinda found, you know, my own quote unquote voice Modern East was one of these ad agencies that was very stylish, very European, everything was very cool and they would Put out work that was very avant garde.

17:07 I think I later became a little bit more mass, a little bit more comedic in the work that kind of Came out of me. But what I got at Modern East. is the owner was a guy named Lance Jensen. And he, for any ad nerds, you know exactly who that person is.

17:22 Because he had written One of the best advertising lines of all time, which is On the road of life there are passengers and there are drivers. drivers wanted for VW. Mm-hmm. And so he had

17:33 created that campaign while working in Boston at an agency called Arnold. And he'd done all these famous ads. I don't know if you remember there was an ad. I don't know what the name was, but it's that da song. And a couple guys just killing time. driving around in their VW golf, I think they pick up a chair and they drive around a little further. They realize the chair smells'cause they picked it up off the street and they let it back out and they drive around and the line said, You know, the the VW golf, everything you need for your life. Or your complete lack thereof. Things like that. So there's all these you know amazing ads and there was years and and years of them.

18:04 And so he had struck out on his own and opened this ad agency, unbeknownst to me, Modern East to So when I walked in They had accrued, you know, there may maybe twenty, twenty five people there. But I didn't know.

18:15 that I was gonna effectively be interning For you know, one of the best, most poetic. writers in the industry ever. So that was dumb luck, but what I got out of that is the one thing you cannot quite step back. and get from the start is your taste level.

18:28 You know, at the end of the day, it is a skill, it is a muscle. It is an ability. But ultimately you're making choices on the ideas you're coming up with and the ideas you're approving and putting forward and that's all on taste. And

18:41 I don't think there's anyone on the planet that says they have bad taste. Everyone thinks they have good taste. Sure. So I literally stumbled on the doorstep of just one of the most thought emotional writers ever. So I learned my taste from him. And I learned the bar and the standard and I learned what was acceptable and Making everything feel brand new and interesting. You know, he could write a a line about a car

19:02 And it would make a c we know what a car is, but he could make a car sound like this really exciting thing that you really needed to get one of. And that that's the art of it. So I learned That from him. And the best gift you can ever get is A first boss that has great taste or high standards.

19:16 We will come back to taste. Yes. Almost certainly. But I'm gonna bookmark that. I'll say a few things. And this is context that you did not have before we started recording, but As I began to Explore entrepreneurship. Mm-hmm.

19:29 Almost all of the books that I first read were on copywriting. Mm-hmm. So caples and all of the classics. I also bought as many books as I could possibly find and afford. on print advertising. Because at the time this is let's call it Two thousand, two thousand one.

19:48 Print was still a thing. Yeah. And it is still a thing to a lesser and lesser level, but I was going to be doing a lot of direct response advertising in magazines. So I had swipe files. I had a three ring binder. Where I collected various advertisements. I also bookmarked a lot of advertisements, one of which was the VW campaign.

20:07 That you just mentioned. Yeah. And I am endlessly fascinated by Copy because it's effectively. At its best.

20:16 I think sort of poetic. Mind control. The idea that I'm making these sounds that are coming out of my face that are instantaneously registering Mm-hmm. Semi instantaneously.

20:28 through your senses into your brain and then facilitating thought is pretty wild when you sit down and think about it. And no I'm not on drugs people at the moment, just to be clear. So I suppose my next question is actually bridging. The bookends of where we started. Which is

20:43 This Cold email to Mark Cuban. And then an email that you sent to my team. Mm-hmm. And the reason I think this is Perhaps fun to unpack is that a friend of mine asked me earlier today

20:56 She said. How many guests have you booked who have called emailed you? And I thought and I said, I honestly can't even think of Three. Yeah.

21:06 But Your email worked. Which one would hope, given your track record, right? That's like Okay. So like this guy Knows how to play the game. And he knows how to get my attention. He knows how to get it surfaced at least to my attention. And now we're sitting here.

21:20 So when you thought about that email How did you think about crafting that? Or any email like it. Honest answer. Yeah. I think I have the muscle memory now. So I don't think I had to really sit down. I think I

21:33 Made the connection. I thought boy, I really I really want to talk about this with a broader audience and I wanna get more people Thinking about advertising and I want people to think about it as a career. So I had that thought and then I found my way to you via our mutual friend Zach,'cause that's that's part of it.

21:48 But You know, the muscle memory for me Is not only coming up with ideas, the other muscle memory is actioning and executing them. It's one thing.

21:57 To have all these great thoughts. I know people That are so much smarter and more interesting than me. But It's also pairing that with this. Knowing how to

22:04 Do it. So I hope I had a good subject line. And I hope I was brief. And didn't oversell because no one likes that. And I think that's probably what I would have stuck to. I think I was kinda doing what I do.

22:15 I have your email in front of me, so let me share my perception of My read of the ingredients. First thing is you get to the point. It's not Six paragraphs of meandering

22:28 Life story. you sort of establish that you know the podcast very quickly within the first two sentences. And You mentioned very quickly your credibility, so twenty one years. Chasing the dream.

22:41 Too much success and far more failure. Okay. What kind of failure, right? So you're prompting sort of questions. Immediately sizzle reel of some of my career highlights, short sizzle reel. Which you can accomplish in different ways, by the way. It could just be a few bullets, but like credibility upfront, in other words. And then thanks for entertaining this. Like here are some macro topics we could talk about.

22:59 So like immediately getting into topics which Prompt questions in my mind. Including several that I would want answered, not just for my audience, but for myself. Yeah, so I would say establishing credibility. Yes, you have the connection, but that actually is just table sticks.

23:15 Right. Right. And particularly if I'm not extremely close to the person making the introduction. If it's someone close, I know they're putting their social capital at risk with me. So it gets

23:27 In some cases. elevated by someone on my team. But this is it's very rare. that something like this will convert But I was interested in exploring

23:38 as you led to in the second paragraph of your email, not just the successes, but also the failures. Sure. But first we're gonna look at the the nurturing and development of your ability. To get things done. On the execution side. Well before that, by the way. I think in that email, and maybe the big thing about it, because we also when we pitch as an agency. We show up with

23:58 ten people and a hundred page deck and that our capabilities and the ideas we're gonna bring forward. But the thing you never can lose sight of Is whomever makes Their idea easier to buy. will sell their idea. Whoever makes their product easier to buy. So I think any time

24:13 Either I position the work or our company or myself. I try to give you a couple of reasons for a yes. rather than relying on someone else to put together my Cinderella story for me. Yeah, I mean you had different headings too, macro topics and then later on techniques, truths.

24:29 et cetera. And these were very well thought through. So in effect, you made it easy to say yes because okay. You've done fifty percent of my research for me. In a sense. Which makes the yes easier. That's right. There we go. And by the way, folks.

24:43 Number one, this is not an invitation for thousands of people to call the email because trust me, it's not gonna work. I'm giving you The exception to the rule. But what I would say number two is that And then we're going to Go to father son.

24:58 Trips. That's gonna be next step. So I'm gonna precede that. By preparing this, and maybe you have discussed some of these bullets before. in talks or in pieces you've written. But the work that you did, even if I had not said yes.

25:12 Mm-hmm. Would be useful in other places. Thinking about your career. You're History, the techniques that you've used.

25:19 Is not lost if the first person says no, or the second person, or the third person. So I'm just pointing out that It was well crafted and a good investment. All right. Father son trip to California. I'm gonna use that and let you run with it.

25:31 Yes, this is something I Yeah. is a formative experience that I only really put together. a couple years ago on Father's Day, when I I kinda felt like I wanted to tell my father how inspiring he is for me because you know Your dad's your dad, your mom's your mom. I don't often take a step back and let him know.

25:48 the things he showed me when I was young, how much I value them and how much they help shape me. So When I was ten years old, we took a father son trip. to California and it was the first time I'd ever been to the West Coast. My father's a teacher. It probably would have been a family vacation, but I think maybe it was like a

26:03 Let's just send the two of you and on the dock it was we were gonna go to Universal Studios and then we were gonna go to a water park and then we were gonna go to the beach or what have you. And obviously Universal Studios was the big ticket item because those were really expensive and that was the highlight. So We go to Universal Studios and I my mind was blown I you know grew up A little bit of a shy reclusive kid. So I did kind of if I wasn't out playing with the other kids, I was watching TV, I was watching movies. So so that world was extra important to me as a child.

26:32 And I'd never been anywhere near where these actors were or where these things happened. And so we took the tram tour and I saw, you know, the actual house from Psycho and the real Mill Valley Town Center from Back to the Future, which was my favorite movie ever. And and even the empty Water tank. that was you know, I still remember this that was also cross purpose as a parking lot, but had a giant painting of uh infinite ocean behind it, and that's where they filmed the water scenes for Jaws and a dozen other movies and you know, all this stuff. So I was so excited and I I just never

27:02 In many ways I've been kinda chasing that rush to production and to sets and to to where it's happening ever since. But I mean the the guy walking past the tram with the paint bucket, I want it to be him because he was doing something. So anyway, it's just it just blew my mind. How old were you at the time? Probably nine or ten. Mm-hmm. So it blew my mind. So we we go home, we go to the hotel and and call my mom and report on the day and I said, Look, I know I know we can't go back, but I would give

27:26 Anything. to go back and and that was that and I appreciated it. And then the next morning My father wakes me up, you know, maybe it Five or six AM, which is

27:35 really early to a nine year old it's pretty early for pretty ear a lot of people. Pretty early for a lot of people. And we get in the rental car and I don't really know where we're going and we drive twenty, thirty minutes. And we wind up in some kind of a strip mall. And we go into like a storefront and I remember this and there's like a A row of chairs and like an old school projector. I guess the old at the time it wasn't old school, it's just a projector'cause it was nineteen ninety. Um like overhead transparencies or something like that. All that stuff like the sheets and

28:01 It was a four hour timeshare meeting for a new development in Anaheim. And they started was a hard sell. I mean, they were coming in, they were talking about these are gonna go fast and people would raise their hand and get up and buy into it and then After they left the room they would like lower the price. And I mean it was really I was worried my fat I didn't know what was going on. I was worried my father was gonna buy one of these things. And so after this whole four hours is over, we go to the front to sign out. And you know, we were rewarded with two

28:26 super crisp day passes to Universal Studio. So my father figured out that that was another way to get access. And so we Burn rubber. got to the park and we rode the back lot tour, like until they literally kicked us out of Universal Studios. I think that was

28:39 What we're getting at with this story was this is My father kinda taught me the definition of creativity. Which is really just looking at any situation and finding another way because he didn't overextend himself and buy tickets he couldn't afford. He didn't get mad or upset that he couldn't get them.

28:54 He Bypass all of that and he was just always gonna figure out another way and that's who he is and that's how he Lives his life and my father is is a guy who kinda has never let his situation Ever determined where he was gonna go. It rubbed off on me and uh

29:09 In a number of other ways, it kind of made me a little audacious or precocious and so I was a very shy kid. Yeah, I was very little and we moved around a lot. So I was kind of every couple of years I was the new kid. Why did you move around a lot? My father is a very ambitious

29:24 teacher and he's became a headmaster and became a professor and he pursued a Doctorate. So we kind of would move around every couple of years to wherever fit. But it made me you know, it ki kinda made me I think I wasn't a great athlete, I wasn't a great student, I was small.

29:39 So I felt like okay, I'm not gonna kill it in seventh grade, so I'm gonna abide my time. So I probably spent a lot of time observing people, which pro helped me as a creative person But what would happen is I lived this double life where At school I was this kind of quiet, nice, invisible kid. And then I would chase my passions.

29:56 And take these moonshots in my personal life so I love the New York Knicks. They were great in the nineties. I don't know if you're a old school hoops fan. Oh, I I remember the Okay, Starks, Mason, Oakley, Ewing, I mean they were that was an incredible team. And I'd never been to a Knicks game.

30:11 But I love them and I never missed watching one, so As I watched it I absorbed everything, so when Marv Albert would reference that the Knicks had a big day of practice at SUNY purchase before the game I bank that and

30:24 I happen to have a a friend that I would go see And I noticed that the Sunny purchase was on the way to his house, so I convinced him To hitchhike there. And then we wide no internet. We walked around the campus until we found

30:36 A giant beige building with like eight Mercedes in front. So we're like, I think this is where the Knicks are. Doesn't look like student transport. Doesn't look like student transfer giant Mercedes. And we staked it out and when people started walking out, like trainers, they had those exit only gymnasium doors. I grabbed my friend and we ran for it and we slipped in and practice was just ending. And You could see people were filtering everywhere and a few Nick's were like staying with maybe to work on some stuff.

31:01 And I don't know what possessed me, but I grabbed a ball and I started dribbling it and I kinda figured, Okay, maybe they're gonna think I'm like a trainer's kid or something. And so my friend who I'm coaxing with me'cause he's my friend Steven did not want to do this. So we start shooting and then I swear on my life, Tim. Maybe it wasn't as like pronounced or as dramatic as this, but In my memory, I heard a ball slap.

31:21 And I turn around. And it's Anthony Mason and John Starks who were the heart and soul of this next team. At center court, they go. Two on two. And so we played

31:30 You know, a five minute game. The day before they were playing a Straight out of a Disney movie. Straight out of a Disney movie. The day before they were gonna be facing off against Michael Jordan, the Chicago Bulls at Madison Square Garden. And so I go to school Monday and I'm sitting at the lunch table and everyone's talking about that game. And I can't even tell them. Because they wouldn't even believe me that I played basketball with them the day before.

31:52 Well my parents supported that. They thought it was great. I know you've had Todd McFarlane on before. I'm a huge image comics fan. I grew up loving him and my favorite was Rob Liefeld, who I don't know if you know of who Young Bloods, but he actually famously created Deadpool on you know many great characters. I would come home from school every day and I found out

32:11 that the image office, I will remember this was in Venice, California. And so I called four one one and I got the number. And I came home from school every single day. And I called the number and A woman would pick up say image comics and I said hi, my name is Chris. I'd like to speak to Rob Liefeld.

32:26 And she said, Okay, Chris, let me take your number and I'll give him the message and so I did that. And then the phone would ring and it'd be my mom's friend. It was never him. But I did it. Every day.

32:36 Because I just wanted the off chance, maybe. That receptionist was gonna be sick one day. Maybe she'd Have some mercy. Maybe he'd pick up the phone himself, but I was had to talk to him. Just for the contact high. I just needed that. So

32:49 Later that year we went to the Jacob Javit Center for the New York Comic Con, which was a very big deal in this must have been like nineteen ninety or nineteen ninety one. Yeah. And instead of just you know going in with our tickets, I had to enhance my surface area for something magical to happen. So

33:04 Again. My poor friend Steven. I don't talk to him that much anymore, but Steven Steven, God bless you. Out of control. Uh I think we convinced I think it was my parents' time to drive us in early and We with like a few like maybe ten or twenty people. We went to the service entrance of the Java Center where there were some barricades and at this time comics were big. Limousines were showing up. And these guys were, you know, getting out with their teams and so I was here for it. I wanted that

33:28 chance to see them. And you know, lo and behold, like the image crew roll up and at this time they were really the You know, Marvel was the old school and image with these these bad boys and they'd all Exodus, and it was Jim Lee and it was Tom McFarland, it was Rob Liefeld or whatever. So they all walk out, so I start yelling to get attention just like everyone else.

33:46 And I swear to God, Tim. This woman. walks up to me'cause I'm yelling and she goes. Are you Chris? And I was like, Yes.

33:55 And she was the woman that had answered the phone there. With the patience of a saint. With the patience of a saint. And this is when I said I was like little. She like lifted me over the the barricade. And they brought it Me in and I got to sit behind the table with those guys for the whole morning and

34:10 Stan Lee came by. You know, and I got to visit it from the Godfather. You know, yes. So all that stuff I found out where the Dave Matthews band recorded their albums and I would Send a self a letter and a self addressed envelope to make it real easy. A pen pal for a couple of years. But then I would go to school and I'd

34:27 Have my too big backpack and be a mediocre student, but I kind of was living this world where superhero in your own way. Well, yeah, I just felt like I was able to create the life of my dreams, even if the day to day reality Didn't totally match it. And that was fine by me. So then we flash forward your Getting coffee for people. Yeah.

34:45 That modern East to Then You catch a break. With this amazing email. That you get back.

34:51 from Mark Cuban. What is the next sort of quantum leap moment. Which might have been at the time seemingly small, but Some moment, some experience, some small or big win where you're like Okay, here we go.

35:06 I think I can be really good at this. Or Something that sort of marked as a milestone after that. Does anything come to mind? Doesn't need to be sequentially immediately After that, but something that ended up being an inflection point whether you recognized it as such at the time or not.

35:22 It's a good question. I play golf with my father in law. I just learned it, so I'm terrible at it. I don't know if you play. Terribly. Yeah, but it's fun. It's it's a nice place to if you're on a golf course in the morning, it's life's not bad. But I was taught that when you putt, if the hole is twenty feet away What you do is you measure

35:37 Ten inches in front of the ball. on the path to the hole. So you don't aim for the hole, you aim for that spot ten inches in front. And I think That advice landed well with me because I think I kinda had a sense of my dreams, but I was only really looking at the incremental of okay. I made a Mark Cuban

35:53 Dallas Mavericks ad. Now what I really want. is to write something that's gonna be on the back cover of GQ, you know? And that was Everything. So you had a clear idea though. And it was incremental. I knew that I was not gonna do the the Super Bowl, you know, my first year. I accepted that. But every time it was okay, now I'm regularly writing print ads and print headlines, okay.

36:12 Now I really want to do a T V production. I really want to Go learn that and do that and that's bigger and that was that gave you more weight. And as I did that you know, I I slowly accrued a body of work and that's the beauty of this industry is, you know, you can have a a a resume and and you can say whatever you want about yourself, but you actually have a basket of your ideas and you can be appraised on those. So I built up just enough to get a job in San Francisco at Goodbye Silverstein.

36:35 Which was I think that was my big break because that was You know, I was learning my craft in Boston. But I didn't realize that when I went to Goodbye that was a Then and now is still one of the greatest creative ad agencies in the world. They came up with Got Milk, for God's sake. So, you know, it doesn't get that much better than that. But when I got there

36:52 What I realized is I had I had learned how to write in the modern East style. And that taught me a great lesson, which is that it's not totally about you. Like as an advertising writer, you've got to be a chameleon. You've got to understand Yeah, not everything can be Your voice it has to be the correct voice. I want to come back to San Francisco, so bookmark for a second. But I've made a promise earlier that I've not forgotten, which is coming back to taste.

37:13 Yeah. And I think this may tie into the modern East style. So could you say a bit more. About What characterize the modern East style.

37:23 And just a little bit more about being introduced to good taste. Mm-hmm. There seems to be this is an overstatement, but a religious divide among creatives where On one side you have people who think that taste can be taught or cultivated.

37:39 And on the other side it's like that is nature and not nurture. You either have good taste or you do not. Now, that might be like two people with different definitions of God debating the existence of God, which is gonna go nowhere because they're talking about different things. So could you tell us a little bit more about Modernista style? What is that? And then uh Good taste. Well, the first thing I'll say about it too is I don't know the nature nurture answer, but I have personal thoughts. But I think Lance, who's still in my life now, by the way, he's still he was a a great first boss, but but someone I you know still talk to regularly.

38:08 He had a good way of saying it. He's very self effacing, like like many Many really talented, but the most talented person is usually the Person that's, you know, least boastful and least sure of anything. I've definitely learned that over time and also radically open minded versus And Lance would say

38:23 That the modernista style was kind of You put an idea out there and the vibe of it is like That's cool. They really did know how to do one of the hardest things, which is Cool is is or isn't and and it's hard to convince of cool, but there's just a way of writing

38:36 You know, there's a an ad for the Big H two Hummer truck. At a three quarter angle that made it look like almost like a piece of jewelry. And then the the line on it said.

38:45 Perfect for rugby moms. But it was smart, but it was just kind of badass, kinda kinda sexy, kind of Those things and so that was succinct also. Yes. Very very succinct.

38:56 You know, it was very art and copy. It was very tight writing and it was beautiful art direction, and that was the hallmark. And that was the box there. And if you came with something that was Two Wacky. Or too dry or too intellectual, too much like maybe like the economist.

39:11 Or too much like A big broad Super Bowl ad just didn't fit into the kind of clients that were attracted to Modern ESA and that Modern ESA service very well. So I really learned How to find that voice and write in it.

39:23 And then when I went to Goodbye the four ends of the box just fell down. And I realized like, okay. You could go to Jeff with something that makes someone laugh out loud. Or you could go To him was something profound.

39:35 And the color palette there because of who Jeff and Rich are and because of the amount of the scale and size of the agency and the the amount of talent They'd had through the halls over the years. The aperture was just wide. But at that point

39:49 I think some level of taste, some level of maybe standards. feel fresh, it has to feel interesting, it has to be succinct. Like those Kind of lessons. were learned.

40:00 And then you could apply them to goofy things and profound things But I think it's like The taste and the skills kind of were merged.

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41:09 and build long term wealth. So why wait? Visit wealthfront.com slash Tim to get started. That's wealthfront.com slash Tim This was a paid endorsement by Wealthfront. Part of the reason I wanted to have this conversation, we were talking before we started recording. Or you asked me rather.

41:28 Michael. What Would you be interested in or what do you interested in hearing? And we discussed a few past podcast guests who are very iconoclastic and Have

41:40 sort of painted a unique path for themselves with Seemingly very few constraints. Like McGruin would come to mind. One of a kind. And Part of my answer was creativity within constraints because the

41:55 reality for most people and the reality for me more than a lot of people would assume. Is that I'm operating with a team or with contractors or with Deadlines.

42:06 I have constraints. I think a lot of good creativity. flourishes with constraints. But when you have a team, when you have a boss, when you have clients You have to navigate a whole host.

42:18 of different hurdles and challenges than if you're a solo operator trying to be a creator on, say, Instagram or TikTok. Which has its own challenges, but they're very different. And I thought that would be fun to explore. So one of my questions as someone who doesn't know the business at all, really, or very Little bit As you're building the portfolio, you could have a portfolio that doesn't pull its weight after a few years. There's the possibility you assemble a portfolio that doesn't get you to the back cover of GQ.

42:48 Yeah that doesn't get you to Super Bowl ads. How did you think about and I'm not sure how much agency you have with this, I guess pun intended. building a portfolio that would get you closer to the hole. It's like okay, you can measure twenty inches out for that putt. Or whatever it might be. How did you think about

43:04 portfolio construction and making progress. More interesting things. I suppose it's what you're attracted to and what you love. And I'm not here to say that

43:14 all of advertising when you drive past a billboard or flick on Instagram or turn on TV, it's mostly not good. Mm-hmm. And in fact most of it is not even ideas. I think oftentimes it's just information. So there's a lot of it. And I think for whatever reason My interest in the industry latched on to somewhere in the top twenty percent. You know, because I don't think I wanted a job in advertising. I think I wanted to express myself in an interesting way and I wanted to put provocative or interesting ideas into the world. So I think I was obsessed with the best of the best. And so I would

43:42 in my early years spend time with award show annuals and look at what the industry said were the best and I'd form my own opinions and I would say, Okay, I think that's okay, but I love that. You know, so I started to shape where I wanted to go with it. And then of course you figure out, okay, well, what are the places or who are the people that are doing that and how the hell do I get near them? Mm. And are those people who are on the creative side, are those clients, are those both, how much control do you have over what you do next? One thing you said that surprised me was.

44:08 you came up with an idea for a client and then sort of pitched it to a client who has not already signed with the agency. So I was like, Oh, okay, that's interesting. So I would assume in a big agency it's like we have these clients and like here's your assignment. Sure. So I don't know how much control you have in sort of forging your own destiny with

44:27 New clients, being around new people. You know, like anything, I think it's if you are being challenged and if you have all the opportunities under the sun in your current roster. Or whatever your workload is. Then you Give your all to that. But if you're feeling

44:41 Like maybe there's a lower ceiling on some of the things in front of you. then naturally I think you've just got to get proactive. Because again, at the end of the day When the clock runs out or when the year is over. whatever you made is what you have to show for it. So if things start to go south, I mean Sometimes

44:57 There'll be maybe a host of great clients, but maybe the CEO has very questionable taste, doesn't like ideas that are too big or bold or creative, and you've gotta account for that. And you've got to kinda hedge on that. You've got to have a lot of irons in the fire. And when you're feeling like Things are stagnating, you're going south, you've got to almost invent your own opportunities. So it's a mix. How did you get your first?

45:16 Super Bowl ad. How did that happen? It's a little bit of the it may be a nature Nurture. thing as well. If the nurture is my dad who kinda figured out how to remove

45:27 obstacles to where he was going. To get a Super Bowl brief. is and was a very big deal. But I think maybe Ten, fifteen years ago. Things were much more hierarchical. I think today

45:37 It's not uncommon to give big opportunities to all levels of creative people or any strategist or account people, anyone in the agency. But back then it was very hierarchical. And I went and again this is like the most one A thing. But I went and I asked for the assignment.

45:52 Can you place us in time? Like where are you? Two thousand and five in San Francisco at Goodbye Silver Stein and Partners and the previous two years they've done a Super Bowl ad for Emerald Nuts. And so I went to the creative director of it and I said I very much love this campaign.

46:09 It's one of the reasons why I was so excited to be here. If you would have me. I will It doesn't even have to be formally assigned. I would just give anything to work on it. That was it.

46:19 That's a smart way to word it. Make it an easy yes. If you maybe have to be formally assigned. I mean, that probably simplifies the political slash approvals. That's right. And dynamic. And it gives that creative lead, uh I was scoped for two teams. I just found a third writer. So

46:35 I did that and I was fortunate. It was a guy named Steve Simpson who worked it was him and and Jeff Goodbye together and we got the brief. And the brief was win the Superbowl admeter. And that means, you know, just win the popularity contest. So we Peanuts or parity.

46:51 So just do our peanut ad and make it amazing. And I remember we were uh sitting in a Comments room on the sixth floor. And everyone kind of funnel out.

47:01 And I felt like I was so close to this chance to do a Super Bowl ad that I just I needed it. I had to give myself the best shot to win. So the strategist was one of the last people to leave the room and the strategists are the ones that work with the client and they align on like what needs to be communicated, what are the core elements and what do we know about our audience and and that kind of stuff. So this is not to diminish the role, but it's kind of like an account manager, like they work with that specific client. Yes. To translate their needs and preferences and so on to the in house creative.

47:32 translate the ask from the client into something that might be inspiring in in a brief that would get The creative thinking. And it was a guy Matt Herman, and I remember I kinda grabbed him and he was a nice guy and I knew him socially and I just said, Hey, just tell me Is there anything that I could put in this that would make the client like it.

47:49 Even more. And he had said, Well, you know, we're we're having these conversations about Maybe thinking about peanuts as as like a source of energy, not just like a snack, but something that can give you like a pick me up. And so I took that and then I ran

48:03 And I wrote twenty scripts, but every single one of them had the peanuts as this source of energy that gave you something that got you out of something that protected you from something, but I made them feel like more of a utility. You know, and as a result. I kinda game the system and then

48:18 all the ads I wrote were the ones that went forward because they just It did more. Mm-hmm. And If table stakes are table stakes, if you can in anything, creativity or whatever your job is, if you can

48:29 Figure out one more thing. That what you're being asked to do could do. And you cover everything and that. Mm. You're more attractive, you're more appealing. Always.

48:39 And I wanna highlight also that First you have to have the chops. Like you have to have the ability, the skill set to execute. But so much is left on the table by not asking targeted questions. You asked. The question.

48:54 Which is like the spell. Yeah. that provided you with the information you needed. To use the hook. All right. What does the approval process or

49:03 Alright, so you send off these twenty Different scripts. I think I had to say like a I don't know how long the spot is. Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds. So it's a you know, fits in a page. The average thirty second spot is like three quarters of a page in a script. How much does a Super Bowl ad cost these days? These days, oh boy, oh boy, I wanna say like a thirty is like six or seven million. Six or seven million. I think a sixty is somewhere in like the ten to twelve. At this point I think Super Bowl.

49:33 was the Super Bowl, but I think it was like a million dollars. Mm two thousand and five, two thousand six. It was a bad Also reputationally a big deal for people within the client company. All right. So thirty second spot. Obviously huge investment for the company. If not in capital, certainly in reputation. Sure.

49:54 What happens? So I wrote a lot of them. And we can chat a little bit later about the techniques. But I spilled my brains and I wrote Um the trick when you're coming up with creative ideas

50:05 I think everyone has slightly different techniques, but I think the one consistent thing is You have to cajole yourself. To release Every possible thought. You can.

50:15 And get it. All out of your head. And then when you think you're empty, you have to trick yourself into coming up with more ideas. You've got To Mine yourself. You've gotta say

50:25 What is the ad I think we should make? What is the absolute wrong ad to make? What is the worst ad to make? Mm-hmm. my hero David Fincher would make.

50:35 What is the ad Peter and Bobby Farrley would make? My friend Jason has one where he says What would I do if the laws of gravity and physics were not in place? Like you have to Fuck with yourself. And it's almost like trying to make yourself vomit. I mean that's I've I've never said it that way before, but you got it, you gotta get it all out. And then essentially, you know, when you're a babe, when you're young

50:57 You bring all that raw material and a creative director tells you what's good. That's how you learn some taste. Good creative director. So these three are the interesting ones. As you get better, you start to be able to sift your own material, but you've got to get all the material out. Now Twenty plus years in, I think I can vomit in my head and extract the bits. But I think the journey is Get everything inside of you out.

51:17 And then in the beginning someone tells you what it is. In the middle you get it out and then you work through it yourself and then in the end You can have your private vomits. But anyway, so I I wrote all kinds of them and the one that went through I trapped myself to write it.

51:30 And A few years ago I was You reading something or I saw interviewed The Artist Cause K A W S, I'm sure you I've seen his stuff. He does those big kind of vinyl Like Disney looking characters with the X's for I'm.

51:42 Oh, I'd have to check it out. Yeah. All right, got it. It's really good pop art and he sometimes uses these crazy color combinations. And I I think someone it must have been a written question, someone asked. How do you make sense of these colours? He kind of reverse painted himself into a corner. He would start in a corner with a bunch of colors that didn't make sense. And then he used the rest of the canvas to make sense of it. So he forced himself to make sense out of what he did here.

52:07 All the way here. And That I learned later, but that was just something I would do to myself. So I started writing a sentence and I didn't know what the end of the sentence would be. And I would do that to myself a lot, just to force myself.

52:20 I would start an answer without knowing what the answer was and then I would so How would you pick the beginning? I would start with logically. So I thought about the brief I got to with my friend Matt was There's an afternoon energy slump and peanuts are a good Pick me up.

52:33 So I wrote Around three PM when your blood sugar and energy are low. And then I sat there and then I wrote Robert Goulet appears.

52:42 And messes with your things. And I I didn't have that idea. I just started a sentence and I said. Finish it, fucker. And so that was again one of a bunch of ideas, but that was the the idea was basically to turn

52:55 Robert Goulay the now passed, but the Iconic crooner. And singer of the impossible dream. To turn him into an afternoon poltergeist. And so basically

53:05 I think I had also seen That incredible Fat Boy Slim Spike Jones video with Chris Walken. Yeah. You know, I think many of us saw that and went, Oh my God, I want something like that. So I kinda had the the sentence I wrote and then I thought, Let's make this Like a weird kind of dance around an office where everyone's asleep and Robert Gooley is pouring coffee on keyboards and taping people to chairs and just d doing whatever. So it's written and I I think Another thing obviously

53:30 I show my bosses and it's Steve and it's Jeff Goodbye and Jeff Goodby is in the advertising world. One of the Mount Rushmore kind of figures. So I also learned If he's

53:40 Ten times better than me. Don't try to sell him on anything. He knows. Uh so I you know, so I read it. I didn't I didn't mean it. Yeah, okay, this one's crazy. Oh, you're gonna love this. No, I just I just I just said okay, here it is. Yeah, yeah, pro tip. Don't ever say that to No, it's it's true. It's you're gonna love this. No. Don't do that. Don't laugh too hard at your own jokes ahead of time either. So they liked it. Uh I don't think they you know, I mean I think they liked it and they're like okay, that's cool. And then you know what ended up happening again is You know, the craziest ad ideas

54:09 A really highly, highly rational strategies brought to life. in highly, highly surprising memorable ways because When we went to the client with it, and it was a a guy named Burke, who was the the CMO of Emerald Nuts at the time. We had a very literal idea. We had an idea about a little Mick from Rocky kind of coach that would keep you awake in the afternoon and tell you to eat pee you know, we had stuff that was

54:31 A little bit on the nose. Well. To his credit, he didn't see This weird poltergeist thing, he's like, Oh, I get it. We're gonna show people.

54:40 that there's actual danger in being sluggish in the afternoon and we're gonna make up what that is. And we'll position ourselves. So He immediately saw past the kind of insanity of the execution. to the strategy. And that

54:51 you know, ultimately a great client does that and great work does that and I was talking to m to my friends Eric and Craig who did the Old spice the man your man could smell like. And that Is also

55:02 You know. A completely batshit idea. But the strategy was We make body wash for guys. But

55:09 their lady friends buy it for them. Mm-hmm. And they said, Great. We're just gonna have a hot guy talk to ladies about it. And again, and then they made it entertaining, but it's almost like There's a rationale behind it. Yeah, and it's simple. And it's own simple.

55:23 And then the creativity and the surprising connections you make and the surprising things you write, that's the magic. But it's always magic on top of something very simple and easy to understand. It has to be. So to go back to this. So okay, so we go through it. So it's sold and I will say to this client's credit It was not. over researched or heavily researched. So what they did is they put it in

55:43 to some quantitative research to show the storyboards. We made some storyboards. And a moderator, you know, shared it with a panel of people and it was not panel meaning almost like a focus group. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like people that are like, Okay, people roughly in the demographic. And they you know, were kind of read the script. It wasn't performed, it was read by a third party. And instead of saying

56:03 The dreaded Do You Like It. Which is how many a great idea gets unraveled. They just said okay, so what Did you see? What did you understand from it? What did it make you understand about peanuts? And you know, what do you think of emerald nuts now? It was very again, it was asking customers the right questions. Yeah. I think sometimes when you

56:20 You know, the Henry Ford uh ask people what they want and they'll say a faster horse. I think sometimes when you Ask your audience. To tell you What it should be.

56:29 You get a lot of mirroring, but when you Make the conversation about what are you getting from it. Then you can give them something unexpected and you can Push yourself. So we did that kind of research. Thank God. Those are good questions. It makes me think of something that is maybe only tangentially related, but Something Kevin Kelly, who's a friend of mine who's been on the podcast, who's very wise in a lot of ways and

56:50 He has a book of advice, short pithy lines that started as a list of lessons learned on his I believe sixty eighth birthday to give to his So cool. And one of them was if people tell you something is wrong, they're almost always right. When they tell you how to fix it, they're almost always wrong. But people have a gut sense. So I mean these questions pair well with that. Insight, I think. Okay, so those questions are asked.

57:16 Those questions are asked and it passes people say what we wanted them to say. And and of course Again, maybe the reason why this one sailed through it I have many a horror story was again Because they got a natural energy message when they had convinced their board they were just gonna Entertained. So it was it was already in the bonus round. So it was so it was favored. And that gives you that lift so you can move through. So then we hired a director. It was a duo called the Perlorian Brothers out of Toronto, Canada. Amazing name. I don't know where it

57:43 Ian and Michael. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. And uh And they're these two, you know, former ad creatives that became directors and They got into it and we did a call with Robert and his wife Vera. We can talk a little bit about celebrity.

57:59 advertising because This was my greatest experience because normally celebrities are very They're very specific on what they will or won't do and and there's always some pushes from their team. Uh Robert just wanted to know if he could choose his own wardrobe and we said Absolutely sounds good. So we filmed it in Toronto over two days and it was very fun. Again, the client was um and this is you know, probably

58:20 maybe inside baseball in the industry, but I think sometimes clients so creative that they mirror the job. But sometimes the best clients are Let the creators be creative and you're there to say like

58:32 I think this is okay. I'm not comfortable with this. Here's a note on why making this change would actually be more effective, not less. But our client Andrew was just there to supervise and make sure that we We're getting the right stuff in the can, protecting his investment, but giving us liberal room to play. So it was it was a magical shoot, it was right before Christmas and then you hire an editor separately. And so uh there's an editor named Ian McKenzie who's cuts a a ton of Super Bowl ads and and he's very good at it. early January we go into his suite in the flat iron in uh New York City and I'm

59:01 Super excited. And he plays it. And I'm Super disappointed because it's not didn't live up to all my dreams. It I don't know if feels flat. It's is it funny? You know, I could see nothing but the problems with it. And what you end up doing

59:14 You know, with the editors think I think back in the day When you had to cut film with a razor blade and use tape, you you would debate And at it. But because you're doing things in, you know, at the time final cut. You know, you can try anything. You can make it you can ready fire and you can make it backwards. In some ways it allows you to explore anything, but maybe in other ways it takes some of the thinking out of it, which could be a shame.

59:33 But anyway, we go through a couple of days where we try a whole bunch of different things, we try some different music, we change the order. afternoon Maraud. We experiment. And then what I've learned with Ian, because I've now, you know, been working with him for fifteen years. Ultimately I we start to feel really good about it. Me and the the art director I was working with and our much of that was the product changing versus your psychology adapting to the fact that

59:57 Perhaps nothing could live up to the Swirling dream of Perfection in your mind. It's the latter. It's the latter. Yeah, you're exactly right.

1:00:06 And what I've learned with Ian, and I just For Super Bowl ad we made this year. I brought a young team for the first time to work with them. So I've I've how fun. I've I'm seeing them get to do what I did, you know, fifteen years ago. And uh the advice I gave them is I said Just no.

1:00:21 Whatever Ian shows you. First. is gonna be closest to where you end. 'Cause that's what I know about. So we kinda walked walked around the moon with him. And of course it was like maybe some music tweaks, maybe a a little bit of You know, tightening up a few moments here, but it ultimately he had it, but we had to get our brains

1:00:37 to catch up with reality. Yeah. And of course, you know, at the end of the day, when someone has never seen it, they're gonna kinda see the best version of it, but you Torture it. Editors are magicians. So they I mean the good editors In any Medium.

1:00:52 Are so important, yet so frequently semi invisible. I think I am getting this Roughly right enough, but I believe If you look at Steven Spielberg's films and his greatest hits. The greatest constant, I believe, is his film editor. Yet how many people could name his name? I wish I could name his name. I've read the story. I've researched this guy.

1:01:15 And He is one of the masters at work, Again and again. More happens in the edit than people think because it's not lining it up in order. You know, it's speeding up shots, it's arts and crafts, it's punching in, it's The amount of raw stuff we do in the Avid where we'll split the screen, take this take from that, and the amount of experimentation that happens there.

1:01:35 And that's really, you know, in many ways like that's the most important moment. So we walked with this edit. I showed it to So Jeff Goodbye and Steve Simpson and they liked it and it was good. And then a very interesting thing happened. I I had the quick time on my computer.

1:01:49 And I showed a couple of people in the office and I Played it for a couple people. And they went. Huh.

1:01:58 And I distinctly remember this. It showed two or three people And by the way, like you know, I think Some people respond as professionals, they immediately think what they would have done with the opportunity maybe or I don't know what.

1:02:10 But for some reason and I don't know why. It didn't bother me at all. And in many ways I started getting a little excited by the fact that people Didn't get it. I've not really unpacked this. I'm talking about this

1:02:22 kinda long form for the first time in a long time. But I kinda felt like there was something like that. more special happening. If it wasn't an easy get for people. Mm-hmm. And I started to think that it might be more original. And I think

1:02:34 That was the case. And I kinda learned a great lesson there, which is once you take feedback and and definitely share your ideas, but once you've Once you've kind of locked in and you're sure you're good with it. You really don't have to look back. It didn't rattle me, and I'm glad it didn't. And I think to this day If there's something that I believe in If I get Luke results, it just does not phys me at all.

1:02:53 And Usually you'll find your audience, people will like it, people will respond differently than your inner circles. What happened when the ad came out? Is it well? Okay. It did really well.

1:03:02 It was The ad age the next morning ranked it number one. They had an ad critiquer named Bob Garfield, who was like the Siscoel and Ebert uses. He was and I feel like Jeff Goodbye and him had went head to head a few times and Jeff wasn't a big fan and but he he liked it. And I think it was, you know, kind of

1:03:18 early days of YouTube and I think it was like for a day or two is like the number one comedy video on YouTube or something something crazy like that. So it so it worked. And the sales went up. I saw it back then. I remember seeing it. It was weird. Because it got sent to me. Yeah. And it was on YouTube. I recall this. Oh nice. Very, very specifically.

1:03:35 So I wanna unpack a couple of Concepts slash lessons from a few different people and I want you to explain them. And then we're gonna go to lying to the CMO of Adidas, if that's the right way to put it. That's what we call Cliffhanger. After this commercial break. No commercial break. But

1:03:54 The first is From David Blue bars? Mm-hmm.

1:03:59 I'm getting that right. And I'd love for you to share what advice or lessons you took from him. Now one that I have in front of me. Which could be a starting point, or maybe is the point. Make as many decisions as possible. I'm not clear on what this means, but it does pique my curiosity.

1:04:18 So who Is David. And what does this mean and any other any other lessons learned or principles? So David is the Worldwide chairman and chief creative officer of BBDO. I worked for him for eight years.

1:04:30 And I've kind of not shy of saying he was the best boss I ever had. He's the best boss I ever had because he he was very clear and he was very consistent, and that's what you need in leadership. And so You could show him a bunch of work and he would tell you what he liked. And what he chose right away.

1:04:47 And that was that. And He didn't need to split hairs. He would he would come give you his response and he knew That he would make a bigger impact. in this giant company by going around and saying, I think this is the most right thing, the most creative thing, the most interesting thing, and just go and do that and not be afraid. Two

1:05:03 Make decisions. Create progress. And by the way, you know, if he picked something that was wrong What do you do? We'd we'd have to go back and do it again, or maybe we had one that That wasn't as good as it could have been.

1:05:14 But he never inhibited progress. He always facilitated progress by doing that. Meaning sort of catalyzing some type of forward motion. Exactly. He never would say, Let me take this back, let me think about it, or let's pull more people into it. He would just give you these gut reads And it always gave you permission to go forward. And it really taught that um Someone who's really pushing everyone And keeping everyone in motion just

1:05:38 happens to always be at the center of so much and that's why you know, for that eight years, I mean the agency was one of the most awarded in the world and There was my little corner of the universe, but there was all these other corners and he just Amplified himself by empowering his people and saying a lot of yes. Sometimes a no, but he was

1:05:53 You know, he was always gained to move forward. Were you able to emulate that at the time in some small way, or is that something that you were only able to implement later as you had more and more direct reports or I used it. I used it then. Because

1:06:10 BBO at that time was David's place. So we David's had to do it. David said, Let's go. I don't think we ever gotta look at an org chart or reporting structure. I don't think we ever knew That that carried mustard. But a lot of us Love the decisions he was making and so enough of us.

1:06:24 would constantly say that's what David wants. And so whether or not that was And so We were all emboldened to make moves. I myself couldn't. There wasn't much I could do.

1:06:37 In terms of making your own decisions. No. No, I was kinda probably working through my own process, but it was it was invaluable later because you do see people That In a high creative role. you've really gotta make things happen. And you will see some people in very senior roles that really gild the lily.

1:06:54 And that really obsess over such a great expression. It it is. And and by the way the Yielding the lily of two minute case study for an award show and

1:07:05 changing the mix on the music eight times and you're like, listen. Doesn't really matter. And there's times to craft the hell out of it, but there's also this step back. And I think In our industry and in in creativity Fast decisions.

1:07:17 Are really stepping back. You know, as opposed to Getting in the weeds. Can you say more about that? Rif on a little bit is

1:07:26 How you think about fast decisions? Mm-hmm. This is a source of constant fascination for me. It's something I revisit a lot. To what extent do I prioritize like speed and just catalyzing? Things happening. Versus

1:07:39 Honing. Minimizing mistakes. I think that's what it comes down to for a lot of people. It's like what error rate are you willing to accept? Right? Is it ten percent? I I know it's hard to track these things, but is it like you're willing to accept kind of breakage of making the wrong call ten percent of the time because

1:07:55 The speed net. net over time is just a huge competitive advantage and good for what you're doing. That's a long question, but With a fair amount of lead up. How do you think about that? I remember that at the end of the day it's subjective.

1:08:09 It's not Mathematics. It's not mathematical. And so you know, I've learned to trust myself, and I've learned that If you A B something too long.

1:08:19 You're lost. So I think the more I get stuck in something, the more I realize I need to make a fast decision because I don't think Obsession. when you're really deciding go, no, go, good idea, bad idea.

1:08:33 Excited about this, not excited about this. I don't think time is your friend. I think time pulls every it slows everything down. It takes the energy out of it. So I think Sometimes you just gotta let it fly. And then by the way, you can correct and you can change As you go. I mean You know, I've approved ads that wound up being completely different ads that were really

1:08:52 Proud of so tha that's the other thing is that you know. Nothing is totally fixed. It also strikes me that there are so many things Just pulling from my own experience that get worse with time. And more deliberation, like deals.

1:09:06 And just deal structures, right? Negotiating. Often in my experience. Like the longer it takes. The more that is a harbinger of Pain to come.

1:09:17 Right. Or just a bad, wasteful outcome that ends up stalling out. There's so many things like that where it's like, okay, if there isn't some speed to this Likely the outcome's gonna be worse. For sure. Time kills all deals.

1:09:29 Yeah. For sure. And it kills momentum and it kills energy. And it takes people so if you've got people going, if you need to take something offline for yourself Just know that their muscles are gonna cool. They're gonna take a break and they're gonna, you know, restart and

1:09:41 And many times. Yeah, the wrong decision can become a The right decision. You know, if it if it's actually an okay time, I'd love to tell you a little bit about a a Mountain Dew Super Bowl.

1:09:52 It started out as one thing and it became something totally different. And there's kind of a beauty in that sometimes the nonlinear way it really works. So this would be I wanna say it's like twenty eighteen. And

1:10:05 We are Mountain Dews agency of record. I'm working at TBWHI Day at the time. I'm the chief creative officer and I have these Incredible. executive creative directors named Amy and Julia that run the Mountain Dew business. So we we got the Super Bowl brief. And The idea we landed was something about how it was for Mountain Dew Zero Sug.

1:10:23 And This is like the zero that they really got right. Like this one tastes so close to the original. That we needed to do something that was gonna cause like a real Reappraisal. And so I jotted down before we started talking. I was like that's right, because I couldn't remember what it was.

1:10:37 So our original idea was It's impossible taste. So that was like the core thought we were executing against. And Amy and Julia had this Really gutsy idea. And the idea and I'm

1:10:47 caveating here this idea never happened. Was never purchased by PepsiCo. So I'm gonna get this behind the scenes in our house at the agency. Um We have the idea that for this impossible drink.

1:11:00 We were gonna do the impossible Super Bowl ad. Is we were going to announce Uh make a press release. Billboards. You know, front page of variety.

1:11:10 That Daniel Day Lewis I'd agree to star in Mountain Dew Zero Sugar's Super Bowl ad. And we're gonna do it. Without Telling him. So

1:11:22 For sure he would say go away if he acknowledged it, and for sure he would probably cease and desist if not Sue And our whole idea was gonna be we were gonna let this play, but we were gonna stay because this Mountain two zero sugar was so impossibly good. You deserve an impossibly hard to make Super Bowl ad, so we're gonna do it. And we were gonna even have

1:11:40 Like a live cam. of a limousine parked in front of his last known address on the day of the Super Bowl and we're gonna have the set ready and we were gonna basically film and and live stream like is he gonna come and do it? So As I'm working with Amy and Julia on this, we're loving that we're having fun. And this is when the best ideas are when you're like We can never do this, we're gonna get in big trouble, this is so wrong. When you feel that, you've got to stay there. You absolutely that's where all the interesting stuff happens.

1:12:05 So then we started saying, Okay, well what so what happens When he doesn't Show And so we're talking, we're like, okay. We made this up. We were gonna

1:12:13 The whole pre campaign, all the buzz, Daniel Day Lewis sues Mountain Dew, f he's he doesn't want to be part of this, he's not gonna participate, but we still had the this the T V ad. So A camera. Kind of wines. Through a set.

1:12:27 from like in there will be blood and finds its way into this chapel and finds the back of this Cloaked character. And it's it's Daniel Day Lewis's character. turns around.

1:12:38 Mm-hmm. And it's Will Farrell in a mustache and a hat. And he does the the beautiful performance piece of like I take my straw and I drink your milk shape. And he just goes nuts yelling about how I I take my straw and I drink your Mountain Dew Zero sugar and I drink it up

1:12:53 So then the rug pull becomes Insane. So he's not gonna do it and then Will Farrell Does an insane Daniel Day Lewis screaming about Mountain Dew Zero Sugar So we know it's probably probably a long shot. But we go to Pepsi, we go with a bunch of ideas.

1:13:06 And we go. And the client was a woman named Nicole and and there's the CMO Pepsi guy named Greg Lyons, who's been there a long time. And he's great. He's he knows creative. Again, when you talk about the kind of clients you can work with that Understand creative people. But also understand their own business and can bridge that. That's why.

1:13:22 Pepsi marketing has has consistently been so strong. And so we show Greg and Greg's like, I love it. I love it. We uh there's no way we can do this. And he goes, But I but he said, But you know what, but I I will bring it to our legal because look I look I love it. I just know we can't do it. I love it. Uh and sure enough, and I won't even get into the myriad of reasons, but basically

1:13:40 There was like a potential legal precedent that would have been like would have altered Pepsi stock price forever if we pissed off Daniel Day Lewis or whatever. So it was it it was a That's too tantalizing. Yeah. Nothing happened. So I think there was a case that perhaps If this went wrong.

1:14:01 He may be entitled to a royalty on every Pepsi dog sold forever. I can see why legal would push back. I'm talking about like a bag of Frito Waves in Bangkok like is like still day to day Liz gets money. Um but anyway. It's like that guy who had a phone thrown at him by uh Russell Crowe. That's right. Man, won the lottery. And if he put that money into Apple stock now, how good is he doing? Um got it. So legal's like I I love it. We think not. So we think not. So this is how it really happens. So we go back to the office and we're new ideas and stuff. And we're sitting the three of Amy and Julia are great. They're working with their teams and then we would get together for an hour or two.

1:14:41 And we're saying, you know what, there's just something about That weird ass scene. With like the wrong actor. Just screaming about Mountain Dew. That we just loved.

1:14:50 We just loved it. So then you just go, Okay. I don't know how you'd ever get to that without the Daniel Day Lewis thing, but let's cut off the Daniel Day Lewis thing and make sense of this. And so then we said, okay. Well What if it's

1:15:03 About Mountain Dew Zero Sugar is like Almost as good as the original. Or What if it's like

1:15:10 As good as the original, if not better. And then we That's our idea. And we put The wrong person in an iconic scene. And have them go nuts and make it.

1:15:18 When we saw the Will Farrell idea, we're like, I just want to see that. Mm. So then we knew, okay, if you have something you people want to see, don't leave it. So then we said okay, maybe Maybe it's cast away, maybe it's there will be blood, maybe it's the shining, that's how we landed.

1:15:32 The Shining where we recast with Brian Cranston and Tracy Ellis Ross remaking the shining. But again, he's just he's ranting and and looning about Mountain Dew Zero Sugar. And so that's how we got to that. But we would have never got to that if we didn't just go on a weird journey. And stay creative the whole way.

1:15:48 I wanna come back. She something you said in passing that I'd love to Hear more about And maybe you have a another example.

1:15:59 And this ties into Jeff Goodbye. Make sure you always feel like you're doing something vaguely naughty. So that feeling of like, Oh, we're never gonna get away with this, or like, uh the you use slightly different wording, but could you tie these things together because that type of Indicator

1:16:16 I wanna understand what that feeling is and how you actually use it because for instance, this is not A hundred percent, but for me there is a certain like physiological quickening that I experience. have experienced before almost all of my best investments. Obvious.

1:16:32 Signal. that I've learned to tune into. It's not right a hundred percent of the time, but the hit rate is very high. So what is this? Well, I mean it's you know how do you use it? Any way you want to tackle it. The thing I love, by the way, about asking people advice

1:16:46 is they give you advice but but people tell you who they are when they give you advice too. And that and that's Jeff. You know, Jeff Is A super smart guy who went to Harvard and wrote for the the Harvard Lampoon and he he happened into advertising, but he's just a vibe

1:17:01 Really smart guy. And I think he kind of behaves like he wants to fuck around. And he's a serious businessman and he can talk to the CMO and CEO of any brand he works with and totally explain why he's doing what he's doing. But he has his way about him. Where it's gonna be fun. And some days you go to work and it's

1:17:17 You know, your deadlines are are tough and the client pressure is tough, but he just always behaved like it was it was fun, like he was having fun, whether he was or wasn't. And that kind of vibe is great and that does embolden you to say, Okay, we should be thinking about this as as a form of play. In the day to day you don't. It's about engineering and it's about we have to get this just right and we have to hit this timeline and we have to You know, make everything neat and tidy.

1:17:40 But it's really our responsibility. To make it. closer to art because that's what people respond to. People don't respond to tons of rational drivers. People don't respond to things that have been Focus group to death.

1:17:51 It's our job. To sort of find the line. And find like the edge. And stay there. And that kind of attitude gives you that permission.

1:18:00 That like if you're feeling like this could be wrong. You're probably on to something. And if it feels dead right. You're probably dead in the water. Are there indicators for that?

1:18:09 Right, so for instance, I'm making this up. But your Go in blue sky, you're coming up with a lot of bad ideas, getting things out of your head so you can hopefully Sift. Sit the moment.

1:18:21 Ex vomit, exactly. It's a good commercial visual for you. Somebody vomiting into their own gold pan over a river. In any case. In terms of doing something wrong. Or that Type of Characteristic. It's a scent trail for something promising, right? What are some indicators? Is it that people around you are like, Oh god, oh like they break out laughing, or somebody above you is like, Oh, I love it, but I don't really want to say I love it. I don't know.

1:18:50 How to really express what I'm trying to ask, but I think you get what I'm grasping for. And there's different feelings. I was a very good kid, but like sometimes when you're presenting an idea and you think you might get it through If you feel like maybe what you think you'd feel like if you were shoplifting a Snickers bar. Yeah. That's one. Tell.

1:19:06 Is when you're like, Oh boy, if I get out of this meeting. So if you know you're getting away with something, and if you feel that in your bones, that's something. If people are nervous, And they start to scenario pl like we all love the idea, but they scenario plan. The other's if you just can't get it out of your head if you become a dog with a bone and like us creatives, you know. We are dying to get our best ideas into the world, and so if you you know, we become insufferable when we attach to one. That actually is

1:19:29 pretty good segue to the Adidas story, if you want,'cause that that's one where we We got away with one. So we are gonna get to the dataset. I'm gonna put one thing in between. Which is And you may have to help me with the pronunciation here.

1:19:43 Tor Myron? Yes. Getting it? Yep. All right. Executive at Apple. Apple CMO specifically.

1:19:51 has said what a world class agency partner does is quote unquote reduce things. Yes. What does this mean to you? Well, it's the case

1:20:01 for creative agencies because If I'm a soap company. I could hire Us. Or I could just make our own ads.

1:20:10 Well I say our soap's the best soap. Obviously, and we put love into it and our people are that you know, you um You start to Wanna say everything and you wanna say your polyana version of it. And I and I think an agency partner. You said polyamorous version of it for a second. Poliana version of it. Uh no comment on uh polyamore. That's a whole other topic. We are in Austin.

1:20:31 Um land of plenty. Anyway, continue. But I think you know what an agency does is the clients come and say we want to say this and this and this and we say no, no one's gonna care. No one's gonna care that you think your soap makers are the best soap makers. No one's gonna care. You're saying the everyone says the ingredients. Look, we show you everyone says ingredients. So What you get from us. is your jumble of all the things you want to do, and we strip it down.

1:20:52 To like The most compelling core truth. about why your product or service or offering is compelling. So Everyone adds. And really what you want from us is to subtract and come to you with like the one thing.

1:21:05 and passionately and say we we know and we know communication and this is what you have to do to make your point. So it really is The art of editing. And just down, down, down, down, down. Any examples that come to mind, I mean this is not exactly

1:21:18 statement. Got milk is a pretty Good. Wait, it's a an attention grabbing distillation. For messaging purposes. But do any other examples come to mind of reducing Yeah, anything good. I mean anything good. I think a thousand songs in your pocket. A thousand song. I mean, talk about a brilliant

1:21:35 Megabytes. It's not about speeds and feeds. It's about show me what what about this is magical. It's about finding the one magical bit. I think you can just look at any great execution or any great ad and say, Okay, that that was focused, that was reductive. So no, I don't even I I think it's kind of that's the difference between the good ones and the bad inherently present. Yeah. Where's where's the beef? We could go on and on. Yeah. Exactly. Drivers wanted, on and on.

1:21:59 All right, Adidas. This is a good idea. This is like a good landing spot because it's Like the Mountain Dew one, it's a bit of a tail. Love tails here.

1:22:08 Okay, good. And I'll say every bit of it as much to not get in trouble. Everything ended well for everybody. So I'll start there. We are given an Adidas assignment. Not the big Brand Adidas assignment. That's there's Adidas works with a number of agencies on a number of projects, but we were granted an awesome opportunity to do something for tennis for the US Open.

1:22:29 what it is calls heartbeat sports, which is like tennis, fencing, swimming. So we had this opportunity and we thought, okay. For our Motley crew, for our squad to get to do something for a brand like Adidas, we're gonna We're gonna show up at our very best. So we invited the client. And I'll refer to the client as the client.

1:22:44 And we invited the client to visit us. Capital T, capital C. Yes. The client. And a good client. We have the client in. And we brought

1:22:53 our strategists. We brought a strategist from another region that had worked on Adidas. We brought a creative team. You don't normally when a client is gonna tell you about a project, you don't normally bring the creative team. Normally You kind of understand the project. and decide what you want to do with it and then bring in the creative team. But we did we kinda Full core press. We went for the full core press. And by the way, the another. less than certainly in advertising, but anyways the more ground you can cover in a room

1:23:17 The better. Because you start further ahead than if you Constantly. Come together and split and come together and split off. So our intention was like let's land a brief together. When we say land abrified basically

1:23:27 Getting the gig. Yeah, getting the gig and and also and and the strategy and like what we want to do. And what our objective is and the challenge that we're gonna meet with creative ideas. So we're having this day. And

1:23:37 You know, we're talking a lot about how and this by the way is I think the statistics still valid, but like something like eighty percent of the time of of young girls would drop out of sport due to body confidence issues or you not feeling like athletics were for them because obviously the the kind of media bias is towards male athletes. And so kind of an initiative not only with Adidas, but also with Nike and all these companies is about keeping young girls in sport because it uh obviously has great benefits, not only that they could go on to be professional athletes, but for confidence and all you know, all kinds of teamwork and all the great things that come with it. So our client was excited about the idea of like let's do something about girls in sport.

1:24:13 Okay, we're talking and then our client says you know, we have Billie Jean King. You know, she's gonna work with us and we're thinking. Pleasion King is awesome. I mean she's a total

1:24:21 Rule breaker. Trailblazer, she played the battle of the sexes. So how exciting. And so We had the very obvious idea like well, okay for the US Open

1:24:29 We gotta take her blue suede shoes. We gotta bring'back we gotta bring'em back and sell'em. So obvious. Done. And then as it turns out, it's a little more complicated than that. They've got a Make that in a factory somewhere else in the world and then Ship that volume of shoes on a big slow ship.

1:24:44 So that wasn't gonna happen. And so one of the creators we brought into the room His name's Ricardo Franco. He says Why don't we just change people's shoes into Billie Jean King's shoes? And

1:24:54 It was just that and we went. Okay. That sounds like a Something I haven't heard before. And we didn't know what it meant. And we said okay, so would we

1:25:02 Have like felt applications that we could stick on. You see if you came in you know, wearing a pair of new balance you could like A fix them and

1:25:10 We kept talking, so what about spray paint? What if we get like shoe artists? There are these people like the shoe surgeon and all these people. So what if we got some of those people? And so we started saying, okay, maybe this is possible. We should figure this out. And even someone in the room said to you, Oh God, imagine if someone comes in Like a pair of Nikes and Everyone was rubbing their hands together. This was great.

1:25:26 So A great lesson is when you get what you want, get out of the room. Don't like let the vibe dip and you start thinking about all the reasons why it might not work. Don't oversell it. I've learned this lesson, as many of us have, and

1:25:38 Seen it in practice. So leaving the room, you know, normally we'd say, Okay, we'll come back in two weeks and let's put it in a deck and let's draw out the comp But in this one, we just knew that The more we sat on it. Time would kill this deal.

1:25:49 Time would give people time to think about The pros and cons. So our team was just go do it. Just go. We've got money. Nancy R president in New York. Love the idea. So we said, Can we just get like ten grand to start paying people to test don't get client money, let's just do it. So we started setting this whole thing up.

1:26:05 That's an important point. Let's get a little internal money just to start jump the gun. Yeah. Let's make progress. We saw a green light. This is not the kind of idea that gets greenlit. I had a Stolen Snickers in my pocket and I want it out of that store. And so we

1:26:20 We start RDing it, we find someone that blends a cool kind of pearl blue paint and we make these stencils and we start doing these tests and we have so we're spray painting like Converse and Air Jordans and we're doing around the AC. They look awesome. I mean anyone who sees them goes, Holy shit. What is that? I want that. I'm so into that. So we get, you know, maybe about a a week and a half away from the US Open and this client Didn't live in the States, it was a global climate.

1:26:42 And The phone call comes and I knew the phone call was coming. And We get on the phone and the client Says I just want you to know though

1:26:52 That we can only have people wearing Adidas shoes. That s we can spray any Adidas shoe you want. But we can only And people sprayed the issues and so This is a moment where No, because then it takes all the coolness out of the idea.

1:27:04 But If I say no now. I mean She's got a week and a half to like Lock us out of everything.

1:27:10 And You know, this is the client. And they hold the purse strings and they have the ultimate say, they're the brand. So I can't argue it. Because if I lose the argument it's over. So I lied.

1:27:20 And so I said Absolutely. And I knew what I was doing. And I knew

1:27:26 That I was Straddling a third rail. Where if you do something like this and it doesn't work out for you Can be very bad. Mm-hmm.

1:27:34 My network's relationship with that giant company, to say the least. But there comes a moment. Where it's not even is it worth it, you say, Okay. I understand lawyers are there. Two Avert risk.

1:27:47 But In my gut. I know. That when someone at Nike sees a shoe of theirs defaced to look like a Billie Jean King shoe.

1:27:56 I know as a human being That that brand Will not come after Billie Jean King's legacy. or empowering young girls in sport. I just knew it.

1:28:07 Now the lawyer would not sign it. But I knew it. So that's the moment where you say Fuck it. So

1:28:14 Our team is still going. And our client is not at the US Open our client is Still in Europe. And so I'm

1:28:21 In Beverly Hills at the Hilton at the Beverly Hilton. With my partner Nancy, my president. And we're filming a big campaign for Hilton. And the morning of the first day of the US Open

1:28:32 My phone buzzes and Amy and Julia are sending me We stacked the line with a pair of Converse All Stars and Air Force Ones and Saukenies and With the first five are the things.

1:28:43 And they took pictures of him. And they sent them. to add age and to hype beast and to sneaker freaker and to everywhere. That's the one where I didn't have the Snickers bar. I was like felt like I was gonna vomit.

1:28:53 But it was so good. And I knew it's a lot of it. No vomiting ideas. This is like actual No actual vomit. Like bile. Like it was like a bile one. So anyway, I go back and I sit down at set and I show Nancy and I'm like, look at these and she goes, Oh, that's cool. Actually she always says the word babes. She talks like a Hollywood producer. She goes, That's cool, babes and I was like Thanks And uh and then my phone rings And I see the number and I say, I think I'm about to really get unloaded on. And she goes, Good luck. And I and that's by the way, but that was the

1:29:21 She was in on it. You know, and I was like, Okay, I got my anchor here. So I walked outside. Call the number back. And the client. Said Please hold on patching in our global legal.

1:29:32 And I was like Okay, here we go. This is it. And I got yelled at, I got screamed at. I got you were you said that this wasn't gonna happen and this happened and how did this happen and who would have done this and this and that. And I said I told you this wasn't gonna happen. It happened, so I accept responsibility.

1:29:48 I did not volunteer that I had endorsed it, but I accepted the responsibility. And I said I will have RPR and the Toothpaste is out of the tube. Once it hits the internet, it's done. So I said I will have our PR reach out to all the publications and ask them to take it down because I

1:30:03 I know a thing or two about journalists and journalists would say, No thanks. It happened, so I'm gonna cover what I want. But I said we're gonna do that. And I said, I'm I'm very sorry and and I understand you're very angry with me. So it happens And then The little hype beast community. Love it.

1:30:17 And then you know, and then it all goes away. And There was no problem. And people thought it was really cool and they got some tip of the spear cred for doing something really innovative and all the the hardcore

1:30:29 Sneaker nerds loved it and they started going for thousands of dollars on eBay. And We made a great case study out of it and That client was included in juries to evaluate the biggest brand ideas of the year for notoriety for

1:30:42 The highly disruptive Billie Jean King your shoes idea. So The lesson there. Or not even the lesson, but the thing about it too. Is When you're in a position where you can

1:30:53 Gate keep or Put yourself out there. It's like driving a car or something where you've gotta You're gonna change lanes in in between two and you gotta say I think I can do this.

1:31:04 And sometimes you gotta pump the brakes and then sometimes you gotta gun it. But really like It's a lonely decision. But you gotta make it and you gotta have confidence that you're gonna thread the needle. And that's the getting away with it. Certain.

1:31:17 To use the the racing metaphor, I mean very few race car drivers who have Consistency over long periods of time. are routinely reckless. They do have to make those decisions, but they're not routinely reckless. And you don't strike me as someone who's routinely reckless. So what I want to ask you about this particular

1:31:36 Decision, right? This calculus. In your mind. If you did, how did you rehearse the worst case scenarios where you're like, Okay, I'm gonna make this decision. And you gave me a little bit where you're like, I don't think it seems very unlikely that say Nike's gonna come after a campaign that is trying to foster youth women's participation sports. That's gonna be a bad look.

1:31:56 It's not a hundred percent. Nope. Right. But it would be a bad look. So how did you think about The calculus and just like okay, worst worst case, this is what happens, but like I'm not gonna get killed. Here's what I thought. The truth is as you talk about

1:32:10 When it feels like to get away with it. It's like a dog with a bone. It was like I just knew the idea was so good. And I just saw so much upside. And then the only question I asked myself was Could someone be hurt by this?

1:32:23 So could you do something that would marginalize a person or community or You know, and no, it would have been really pissing off a marketer. And that, no one ever died from that. That was that.

1:32:34 So swing big is a prerequisite for home runs, but it doesn't always work out. Right. Babe Ruth. Yeah. A lot of home runs, a lot of strikeouts. So what would be Ayy. For you, your personal hall of fame.

1:32:47 failure list. If you had to pick out one. It was important. In some way. whether it was just like a very strong lashing that you got that you learned from or Maybe you took something away from it.

1:32:59 Set the stage for something later. Any failures come to mind? obviously way more failures than successes. But I think by the way, you know You just have to have a short memory. So I don't think about'em very much. Actually I was thinking about when I was coming to talk to you, I was like, Well, probably that will come up and I had to dig around not because I haven't had a million of them, but because I just I wash'em out quickly. Don't dwell on them. No, no. I you learn what you can, you take that nugget.

1:33:22 But going all the way back to that agency in Boston Modern East. We had Napster as a client, so For bringing memories. Yes. So any any of your listeners that are Too young for this, so Probably when Tim and I were in college, maybe you were just like finishing college and I was just in college. I was in college at some point. Yeah and

1:33:40 It was a file sharing. App or thing. I don't remember how the hell we got it. I guess it was like a plug in or a I can't even recall, but it was I would say to my mind at least, there may have been some predecessors or parallel Tools like lime wire.

1:33:55 But Napster was the first time that suddenly At least in the popular zeitgeist that people can get music for free. Yes. Including new music.

1:34:04 And we We were And I'll I've the statute of limitations has has run out, but uh We were stealing. But what Sean Fanning, the founder, said is no no no we're sharing.

1:34:14 And that was the big Sound bite. We all remember that it was he said sharing. And that was like it became a bit of a joke, but that way it was synonymous with that. So And after Turns out it maybe wasn't sharing.

1:34:26 And it goes away. And then I think someone buys the the naming rights or something and it it relaunches a few years later, so it relaunches in maybe Two thousand and two. As a Kind of a like a way too ahead of its time streaming platform where it was

1:34:39 The proposition was Ten bucks a month. And Unlimited plays, a million songs, and it was a streaming database that you could subscribe to. Again, way ahead of its time. So we had been given the assignment to work on it at Modern East. And of course, We were a tiny agency and it was way too busy, so I got to take a big swing. And the idea we had

1:34:59 That I had come up with as a twenty one year old or twenty two year old was What if our campaign was Instead of buying media. We share media.

1:35:09 And what if we took A million dollars. And we just put bounties. And had regular people crash. Live broadcasts of every sort.

1:35:17 Wearing Napster shirts and holding signs. So it was called Crash Stir. Dot com? And

1:35:25 You know, the bosses at Modern East loved it'cause they were Kinda cool and subversive. So We Somehow and I this is you know, I'm talking two thousand two, two thousand three, this would have been pretty ahead of its time. And we built a website with this cool design, craster.com, we made a bounty list.

1:35:41 And it was all the way from Two hundred and fifty dollars for a local radio show if you said One point five million songs unlimited downloads Napster dot com. All the way. Two, if you crashed a presidential address, you got a million dollars. And I think

1:35:53 We had two and a half million dollars if you said that line during a live televised spacewalk. Everything in between. of like getting a sign on college game day or doing this that. So th so anyway, this was kind of Crazy stuff.

1:36:06 Lawyers were okay with it. I don't know. I know I know I know we just said something about lawyers, but this thing was Done. We had insurance. We built the site. We had We even did an inaugural practice Crash Stir where two interns from the company crashed a morning interview in Boston. And

1:36:22 interrupted a live interview with a little known comic named Bill Burr. So young Gilbert was playing, you know, some crappy comedy club. And was promoting it on you know Good morning, Boston. And we These guys came up with the big sign and they're like, What the hell's going on? They get escorted out, and then Bill Burr's like, What the hell's going on? The Napster sign? What do these guys do? It worked like a charm.

1:36:41 So this thing was gonna go and it was like within a week of going and you know, I'm twenty two years old and this thing would have been This overshot the GQ magazine cover that I dreamed of, or whatever. So anyway, so the the client. has to go to the NAFT board to give'em a progress update. And the NAFTA client is under no responsibility to share like launch ideas or activations. This fell under. So the client goes to the board and says, Okay, here's our strategy and we're gonna go to market and we have a new positioning and this and that and the other.

1:37:08 And then he says. Oh One more thing. We're gonna do this next week. And he brings it up And I'm not in the room.

1:37:15 But this is the report we got back. That he shares Craster dot com. Walks through it. And the chairman of the board just interrupts him and just I'm I'm gonna interrupt you before you finish. Just to let you know we are not doing that.

1:37:27 And uh and that was it. More Firmly dead. But that was for twenty one. I learned

1:37:35 Yeah. If you get what you need, get the hell out of the room. Which has served me well. Served many people well. To not Get into Lily Gilding and see see what happens when everyone starts thinking about it. Don't linger. Don't linger.

1:37:47 But the other great thing is the best thing for me. Because This industry is full of a lot of heartbreak and rejection. You have a million ideas to sell one. And I think if that had happened for me.

1:37:58 I would have been very successful at twenty one or twenty two. Um I liked my climb. I liked working my way up slowly and learning my craft and not Doing something that

1:38:08 might have made me very sought after and might have gotten me a A bigger, better job faster. So it kinda It was a heartache, but it kinda put me right on the path that I needed to have, which was The long path.

1:38:19 So many what ifs in life, right? Like what if it had happened? What if someone died during it? I'm glad we didn't do it. Could have been messy. Could have been very messy. What was the just out of curiosity, if the lawyers if legal had given the okay, do you know what the Substance of the objection was by the chairman. It was so long ago, I don't exactly remember, but I think it was just I think he just did not want a problem. He did not want it to r either may maybe it was because something bad could happen, or maybe because he was on other boards and he didn't want to like Wreck NBC, you know, or I don't know. I don't know. Who knows.

1:38:50 But someone had to kill that thing. It was too it was too scary. Yeah, it was out there. Question for you, coming back to process and technique. You mentioned a whole bunch of questions. What if David Fincher. made this? What if I'm making this up? But what if what's the commercial my mom would respond to? Whatever these questions might be.

1:39:08 I think about questions a lot, not just in podcasting, but in certainly writing the nonfiction books that came before the podcast. Interrogating myself. When I'm journaling I think about questions a lot and the power of Questions. Seems to be a fundamental piece of creating creativity. Right.

1:39:25 looking at something that a million people have looked at and seeing something different or seeing it a way to position it differently. Are there any Books on the ad game on creativity.

1:39:38 That come to mind. If Yeah. Somebody were sitting in front of you, like your much younger self, you're like, Okay, this kid's got some balls. Gender neutral. And is willing to

1:39:50 Step out of his or her comfort zone. Okay, I want to help this kid. What might you recommend? I have a prescription for that. There's a book called Hey Whipple Squeeze This That's authored by Luke Sullivan. You know it? This is one of my books that I read. So

1:40:05 It is the The most perfect one because it's gotta go back and reread this now. It's it tells you uh what an ad agency does. Does it have a does it have a photograph of A roll of toilet paper? Yes. So Whipple. was a grosser in like some nineteen seventies campaign.

1:40:21 And I think he was selling toilet paper to customers And so it The logo is written on a double roll of paper. So I think it w it's a weird title, but one you don't forget. And Luke just lays out What an agency does, what every job is at the agency. And then specifically as a creative, what are the types of things you're being asked to do?

1:40:39 And what do those outputs look like? It's an amazing It explains to you what a headline writing assignment is and what headlines look like and why some might be better than so it's really it's a really smart Micro apprenticeship. So I read it.

1:40:51 And I said I'll be damned if I don't do this. 'Cause I I read it and I was like, I'm in, that's it. That it told me what the job was and I said, That's the only job I want to do. But you know, now I think these days People do ask. to hop on and do informational interviews, but people will sometimes

1:41:05 Even these days ask you to like describe your job to them, which I always thought was a little Crazy because I you do want people to do some level of legwork where they might know what your job is and ask you a question about it. But I just feel it constantly with just please go read this book. And if you can't live without doing what's in this book, then we'll get time. You know? But that book is perfect. But then.

1:41:24 for like the creative journey or like even to understand what it's like. There's three video bits of content. We were chatting about them earlier. Number one South Park six days to air. You know, looking at the pressure these guys are under To come up with and do a show. I don't know if it ages well. I think'cause it uh you know, the humor can be

1:41:40 So please don't Judge me if the subject matters, not PC. You can judge me. It's pretty funny. Judge Tim. So the album goes to Tim because he likes that show too. But it was I will say that it's an amazing doc slash mini doc. There are a couple of points where it drags a little bit. But there are so many payoffs. There's so many payoffs. No, but it but even just the thing of like when um Which one is the blonde ones, that tray?

1:42:02 I can't remember. He's like the the writer writer out of the two of them. And once they've got the story down and he has to like write the script. He has his assistant go get him Uh extra value meal from McDonald's. Because

1:42:14 It's just so hard after all that to sit down and then hammer it out. And you know as a writer, and I know as a writer, sometimes you're like, I don't I know I have to do it, but I don't wanna So even watching him like bribe himself, watching like one of the most dynamic, prolific, edgy writers, like he has to fool himself into it and By the way. Sometimes when we make commercials we have to make little animatics, like little borta matics, like rips. That's considered a chore.

1:42:36 That whole show is abortact when you watch how they make it. So It's so inspiring to see Those two power through and there's just a ton of stuff that you can relate to. The two other ones I love.

1:42:47 I love the Metallica doc, some kind of monster. Because It gets into You know, doing creative within a team. and chemistry and and how challenging that can be in that document's Metallica almost breaking up and and working out their shit as they come up with the black album.

1:43:03 And it's amazing and you don't have to like Metallica. To love it. To see Are you more of a Lars, or are you more of a James? Who do you side with here? You know?

1:43:11 So that's an a an amazing study on High performing creative team dynamics. And then the last one and the most underrated is Conan O'Brien can't stop. Uh. Okay. So he made

1:43:24 After that really painful departure from the Tonight Show. He had a non compete, so he he threw a comedy tour. And so he Allowed it to be documented. And you see that this guy

1:43:35 Із creative animal. coming out of what he just came out of where you must be so damaged and wounded But he's through himself right into another enterprise and there writing bits and skits and they're staying up late at night the night before a show to rewrite it and just seeing the obsession

1:43:51 In the craft of it, you're like I watch the thing and I'm like, I do not work hard enough. And you see the euphoria And like slap happiness around all of it when you really push yourself to that man really pushes himself to his limits and you watch that and you're like I just w wanna go and write something after I see that. So those things They inspire me so much that I've got a bank that some someone else will get something out of'em. Can't wait to watch

1:44:12 Some kind of monster and can't stop. I've seen the South Park. Doc. And can you guess my favorite part? Where did I laugh hardest? Well, Tim, I don't wanna be body, but would it be the Apple user agreement human centipede?

1:44:26 It was the the voiceover session that was related to that. Ha. Yes. Uh there's a lot of good stuff. There's a lot of good stuff. It's crazy stuff. Wow. Hey Whip will squeeze this. I haven't thought about that in ages. I used to have that book when I was really Cutting my teeth on copy and spending a lot of my own money. Yeah.

1:44:48 Lead time. And the turnaround time for any type of quantitative feedback on magazine ads. I mean Oh my God, how painful. I had that book. deliberately cover out on my shelf as a reminder of some of the contents. It's been a very, very long time, but it's wild that that has now resurfaced in my life. What fun.

1:45:11 When it comes to the prompts and the questions. Are there any other questions that come to mind? If you're stuck. And you're just like. Man, we've been banging our head against the wall.

1:45:21 We're not there. This is gonna lead into some of the less glamorous maybe aspects of the job, right? Where it's like, okay, you gotta come up with X number of ideas. This is important. And you're getting close to deadline, you don't have it.

1:45:35 What do you do to Mix things up. And I suppose just broadly speaking, what do you do in a situation like that? Well, you know. Writer's block doesn't really exist. You think it's block, but you clearly you can.

1:45:47 It really is like a game of of tricking yourself. So like say Sally. is trying to come up with ideas. Sally, what are your five favorite movies or directors or writers? Okay. What would each one of them do? It's just coming up with a

1:46:00 A new challenge or a new way to approach it that fools you into coughing something up. And then again I'll go as far as Then what's the the absolute right thing to do? What's the absolute wrong thing to do? What would I do if I thought this whole thing was a big joke if I wanted to make fun of it? Mm-hmm. And again, and then even the cause technique of just start writing sentences and finish them. But I think it's

1:46:20 Knowing yourself. And knowing your interests and then using avenues. So what what things you're into, put it through that lens. But it's just it's a forcing exercise and it's really uncomfortable. It's really, really uncomfortable because The more you get out, you will find the one thing I have found And I don't think it's just me, I've talked to friends about it is

1:46:37 That Four hour, five hour, whatever your big Dump is later. You will have new ideas and things, but the biggest treasure trove you'll ever have is when the challenge is fresh. when your brain is first trying to put it together.

1:46:50 And the more you get out of that moment. The more you paid back later. Mm-hmm. What do you do when you're, say, overwhelmed or unfocused? Right because this is a game. Of creativity. And we're all playing different games, right? So all of our careers on some level are games of different types of rules. Some you can bend, some you can break.

1:47:06 But endurance Is important the ability to not just flame out, burning the candle at both ends. Some people are superhuman and can Bank all sorts of

1:47:19 crazy work weeks and sleep four hours a night'cause they happen to have the right genetic profile for that. But what do you do when you're Overwhelmed or unfocused. Interesting that you bring that up because I I work with some of those people that are I don't know if they sleep.

1:47:32 And I am I'm sensitive and I need sleep. And so I'm I'm very aware that I'm not like a full beast. So w there's two actually the question is you phrase it, there's uh kinda two answers that are different, but I read a book I know you know this book called Bird by Bird. So good. So an amazing book and it's gonna

1:47:49 Some people will Ignore it because it's intended at face value for fiction writers. It does not matter. It does not matter. I had to read it at school. So talk about I I must have had a good teacher or whatever, so I had to read it.

1:48:02 What a gift. A single thing in the book except for the titular story. Mm-hmm. And that story was And I you know, I think about it all the time. So the author's little brother Had to write a report on the birds.

1:48:15 And he had books open and printed out essays everywhere. And he was in a full meltdown and panic. Pushed it off until the last minute. He had all semester to do it. Of course that whole thing. Everyone has a version of that. And he's there. And I think in my version of the story, he's like crying at the table with all that stuff. And then

1:48:33 Good old dad comes in and goes. Just take it bird by bird, but But say it bird by bird. And you're like Wow.

1:48:41 So I like I have an imaginary father that comes in and says that to me every time because That's just it's permission. Permission to stop thinking about the totality of it. And permission. to do the littlest bit.

1:48:52 The other quotation that I love I don't have a ton of quotations, but the great Arthur Ash. Said. Start where you are.

1:48:59 Use what you have. Do what you can. And that's so fantastically empowering. Because it's saying. That you're in a good enough spot and you're

1:49:08 You're off the hook for anything more than that, you know? Yeah. Part of it. About being a beast in the constant pressure is I've figured out that I can't meditate.

1:49:17 It's something I'll get to later in life, but I think I'm too b I can't sit still. I can't be alone in my thoughts and so I discovered that Instead of turning the dial down to zero, I found Also that hard fitness. is another meditative, instead of going down to zero, it just puts me at a ten.

1:49:33 And so every morning I go do a a similar workout that Gives me almost like an existential crisis. So that by the time I show up at work this Whatever this kind of fog of anxiety that I used to live in

1:49:46 It just burns it off and I just am so calm for the rest of the day because I've already been through something tough in the morning. What is helping? There's a gym in New York City called Tonehouse and there's just one of them. And I used to exercise in college and I was in pretty good shape and then I got to doing a lot of writing and Drinking

1:50:02 beer and doing writing and I kinda let it slip and I think around Two thousand and fifteen. Back when people would upload Facebook albums the night after you did a anything. I went to a New Year's party and there was like a picture of me on New Year's Day

1:50:16 And I was leaned over like a table of food and I swear in my head I look like Alfred Hitchcock or something. Like it was like the way my jacket was open, it came out on this huge thing. And I got so upset that I looked up hardest work out in New York. And then like Bing, there was like There's one One off gym called Tonehouse. And I went

1:50:35 That day on New Year's Day they were open. The founder is a guy named Alonzo Wilson and he played D one football and played a little pro football and when he stopped playing he missed the practices. So it's a lot of The way I describe it to friends is it's like a one hour underarmour commercial that you're in.

1:50:50 Where you're just dropping the deck and jumping over stuff and banging ropes and the heart rate stays up the whole time. And so the first time I did it, I stepped out of class after ten minutes'cause the warm up is really intense cardio and I vomited in the locker room and I stayed up at night staring at the ceiling, being like, I can't let this thing get me and so I came back the week later and the week later and I kinda Palled me in and now. You know, me and a fairly regular group are there five days a week, six days a week, and then we do other Stuff but that has been

1:51:16 Such a gift for me. Because I'm just You know, I used to walk around in between meetings And I'm like, should I run? Am I like am I using my time well? Like what I I I would just ruminate on all the things I could be doing wasn't doing.

1:51:28 And something about really beating myself up in the morning I don't expend the energy worrying about all those things I just focus on what I'm focusing on. So it's made me Normal. Yeah.

1:51:38 You're inspiring me to double down. I've recently knock on wood largely address this kind of crippling lower back issue that has sidelined me for the better part of the last year and I'm really excited to get back into serious exercise and This might sound strange because I'm not built.

1:51:56 Like a border collie, but it's kinda like You can't have a working dog and like put that dog in an apartment. All day long. The dog's gonna go crazy. And I remember when I was Training my dog Molly. And taking it super seriously, going like full

1:52:12 deep dive on dog training and one of the lines that stuck with me is a tired dog is a happy dog. I think that is true. Not for every person, but for people who have a certain hardware and it sounds like you're one of them. I'm certainly one of them. If you're not putting that Creature To work physically.

1:52:31 All sorts of strange things are gonna creep out of the cracks. And not the best things he's gonna You want to get a lot done. And you need to be tired out a little bit to be a little bit normal about it. Yeah. You're doing what's in front of you and you're freaking out about all the other things you could, should, might

1:52:47 And when you're just a little Taking back a little bit your I'm more present. Great. Yeah. I think a lot of kids

1:52:52 And uh getting into trouble in school because they have idle cycles they don't know what to And they don't know how to apply those idle cycles. I mean I remember In school for me, it's like I needed to draw nonstop in grade school. I got very good grades. I did really well, but I would get so bored. in class I had to draw all the time, even though I was listening to exactly what the teacher was saying,'cause I had to occupy myself.

1:53:17 And I was fortunate that I somehow chanced upon drawing, but a lot of other kids were very smart got into all sorts of trouble, got kicked out, got suspended, ended up getting involved with drugs because They didn't know how to occupy or consume those cycles. And exercises. Amazing way to do it. Any other favorite books that you have or

1:53:38 Put a different way. Books that you have gifted or recommended a lot to other people outside of what we've Discussed already? Yes. And I I love this question because I find like th those are the things I always jot down when I hear what people gift. Two of them. One of them.

1:53:51 Is called the easy way to quit smoking. By Alan Carr. Have you heard of this? So weird. All of these things are coming up in this conversation. I listen to A

1:54:01 derivative of that, but it's based on the same method. The easy way to quit caffeine. I listened to the audiobook. Somebody had recommended it to me and I stopped. I went thirty or forty days without any caffeine, which is the first time I've done that since I was like God only knows, sixteen. So please keep going. But this is in my twenties I smoked Cigarettes and I was hopelessly addicted to'em. And I don't know how I found the book, but I read it and

1:54:25 It told me bit by bit all the reasons why I thought I had to keep or why I would hang on to it. And it dispelled them one by one. And it was kinda romantic and then there's like a chapter and it says go outside and have your last cigarette. And I went outside and I did. And then I finished the book and I never smoked again and I

1:54:39 Talk it sparingly because The easy way is kind of usually a red flag. Um but that's what I love about it. If you look it up on Amazon, the reviews are in it is like five star for thousands. But I've given it to like four or five friends and all four or five of them just Read it? And never smoked again. So wild. So that book is probably

1:54:56 A life saving book. And then the other one that I I love. And I know you know this book, but The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. You know, I know the book and I have not read it, and it's been on my to read list forever. I think you would not only love the book, but you would love talking to Daniel about that book because

1:55:12 You know, I don't like business books and uh especially when things become dense and theoretical I get lost. But he Went and Spent time in like ten incredible high performing cultures that are all different from like IDO to the San Antonio Spurs, to the Navy SEALs, and just identified

1:55:29 What makes people feel like they belong in those and what gives people the psychological safety to do their best in those environments. And you read it and you'll you'll get confirmation bias like I do that, that's great, or or you're reminded I need to do that, or there's things you never thought of. Now do you recommend this book to people who are individual contributors, like operators on the front lines, or do you give that to people who are running companies? Like who do you give that to? I think for leadership for sure. So if anyone's stepping into management But I also find it's good I would imagine I would have loved the book.

1:55:59 If I wasn't a manager just to understand the kind of culture that I want to be part of. You know, obviously We're all students all the time, so I think there wouldn't be any harm in

1:56:09 imagining if you were to lead something or if you were to have total control what kind of culture you'd want. But but definitely if you're in leadership or you're stepping into leadership or if you're stepping into a new role. You know, there's just the simplest things you could do. To show that. everyone you meet that there's a long term potential future there.

1:56:26 And that's like a thing you would forget to do, but if you reference something in the future, some minor things like that, that you're like, Oh, that can make all the difference. And I understand. having been on the receiving end of those kind of It's just Great stuff. But that one like That's one of the few things that I reread every year for the last two, three years.

1:56:42 Okay, I need to read it. And I will. Side note just because I made a a mental bookmark to mention this to people listening. Conan O'Brien.

1:56:51 So impressive to me. The more I learn about that guy, the more I see The more impressed I am. So Conan, if you're listening, or a friend of yours is listening. Would love to chat sometime, publicly or privately. There is a video that I found, actually it was sent to me because I went to Seoul for the first time recently. Deeply enamored of Korea and the Korean people, started learning Korean, studying the Korean language, and there's a video called Something like Conan O'Brien learns Korean and makes it weird.

1:57:18 Which is like eight minutes long. Trust me, folks. Find it on YouTube. It is beyond. Hilarious. I've seen it. Okay, it ends with him in the class he's in the classroom, right? And he kind of with the teacher. And he's Oh yeah. And he's amazing. He's So fast.

1:57:34 So fast on his feet. Unbelievable. And another just quick side note'cause this is what I do. Arthur Ash. Another legend. an iconic figure on so many different levels.

1:57:46 And to take that word a step further, levels. There's a book called Levels of the Game by John McFee, which is about one tennis match, a single tennis match. Involving Arthur Ash. But it becomes this study of the macro through the micro and the structure of the book, the narrative. It is not a long book, something like a hundred and seventy pages and If you want to see why

1:58:08 John McFee is as famous as he is for being a master of nonfiction. Staff writer for the New Yorker for a thousand years. This is an amazing way to get a taste test. It is so, so good. You mentioned before we started recording That

1:58:23 You had An answer for the under a hundred dollars kind of best investment. Best investment is one way to put it, but Device, gadget, service, anything that you've spent kind of less than a hundred.

1:58:35 dollars on that has had a material impact. On you. What is your answer for that? My first townhouse class. Thirty four dollars. There we go. That was the thirty four dollar purchase that changed everything.

1:58:45 Mm. Is there anything else that comes to mind, maybe it's a second place, but just best investment. That could be investment of time, investment of energy. Investment of money. Well, I think sometimes you ask about what something you bought for under a hundred dollars that had a big return and You know how work is, you get caught up in things and you have your plan for the week, but then you wind up responding to real time and conditions and

1:59:07 You just never know where it's gonna go, but I go to Balthazar restaurant in Manhattan on Spring Street. Yeah. And I take One of my mentees. I go with one of my mentors. I go with a peer.

1:59:18 Why Get a lot of energy from Or an old friend that I haven't caught up with. The build no matter How you do it is always under a hundred bucks with tip.

1:59:27 And it's Always the best hundred dollars I spend every week. It's the best thing and I'll I'll never change it and I'll Even if I'm down to my last hundred dollars, I will Go have breakfast with someone.

1:59:38 It's a great location. I haven't been in a million years, but that is locate so the reason I w went, by the way, too, was Uh. Like like everyone, the pandemic really Was challenging. And I used to like Balthazar, but I didn't love Balthazar.

1:59:51 And When New York reopened. A lot of restaurants kind of popped out their Alfresco, their outdoor cafes and things like that. And I would always walk by a Beltazar and it was boarded up, boarded up, boarded up. And the owner, Keith, waited.

2:00:04 Until you could do full occupancy in door before opening it. And when he opened it, he did a post and I didn't realise how much I missed it. But his post said. Balthazar is open and it will never close again. And I just you know, like coming out of that pandemic when everyone's like everything's gonna be different and never

2:00:21 Just that statement. Talk about communication, that kind of a subject line on an email. I'm like I will go there every week then. As long as you're open, I'll go. This is

2:00:30 Gonna sound like such a newbie question, but I'm curious, do you in any way keep track of The ads or the messaging or the copy that snag you. Right? Because that's a hell of a line. Yeah. It's a good line. Yeah. Right? It worked.

2:00:44 It absolutely works. Do you have any and these could be ideas that you come up with too, but do you have any way of capturing ideas, whether they're yours Or things you come across in the wild where you're like, Oh, wow, that's good. No, I'm an idiot.

2:00:58 And I forget no and I I probab probably ten times a week I see things where I'm like, That's good and then I remember one of'em. And if I was a smart man, I would have a notebook with me at all times or I would put it in my stickies and after this conversation I'm gonna collect them.'Cause now I'm conscious'cause I see things all the time and I'm like, and that's you know. They come up at random times, but I can't call on them. So I I would like to collect better. What I used to do 'Cause I suppose to invoke Glengarry Glen Ross, you must get them to sign on the line that is dotted. You can ask people if they're gonna buy something, but

2:01:30 Uh people are nice. A lot of the time, too nice, and they will tell you what they think you want to hear. Getting someone to actually buy something is a different level of commitment, right? It's a different type of signal. So when I would find myself compelled to buy something, especially when I didn't have very much money. I was just getting started, cutting my teeth, trying to build this direct response business and sports nutrition.

2:01:52 If I Bought something. Or if I got close to buying it. I would save the ad. Take a video of the

2:02:02 infomercial or the commercial or I would take notes on what what it was that I thought got me to buy. What closed you was it the like, but wait, there's more on there's an installment, was it some Was it the timing, right? Like what do I think it was. just pure fatigue on my part where my defenses were low at three AM because I've been watching Animal Planet and God knows some ginsu knife thing came up and I would try to Figure out Although this was a secondary thing.

2:02:30 what had moved me to buy, especially as someone who is not stingy, but Had a really tight budget for most things. I no longer do that, but What did you learn? I learned a lot about Copy?

2:02:44 At the time I was reading a lot of magazines and also newsletters. And mostly text. Because text was easier to freeze and study. Yeah. Just like For yourself.

2:02:57 journaling is thoughts trapped on paper. If you're trying to figure something out by sitting there and staring off into space and thinking, sometimes it works. Often it doesn't because it's too ephemeral. Mm-hmm. These bits and pieces, the floatsum jetsum, it's just like being thrown out of the boat in the Grand Canyon and getting kinda tossed. Like you don't really It's hard to orient.

2:03:17 Two up. When you're in that type of chaotic mental state with even if it's just too much going on, right? If you have high energy state. So but for me. Journaling for introspection, but for External studying.

2:03:31 It's not that text was the best medium. It was just the easiest for me to study. as like a fly locked in the amber. Mm. So what I learned was what kind of headlines got me to Look at anything. Yeah. Right. So if I'm reading a magazine

2:03:47 And Especially I would read magazines I wasn't even interested in. Just to see what got my attention. Which is not to like really beat the drum on Glengarry Glenn Ross, which is actually a very depressing movie on a lot of levels when you get to the bottom of it. But you know, the attention. Do I have your attention? Like interested. Are you interested? The AIDA. The first thing is attention. So I would pick up, say, a fashion magazine. I'm like, all right, this is gonna be Half at.

2:04:15 And I would just rift through. And I would see what would get me to stop and I'd be like, Okay. Why'd I just stop? And I would Tear it out of the magazine.

2:04:23 Might even be at like a dentist's office or something. If I had downtime I would just try to see what would grab my attention. And that was step one. So you learn a lot of things. I mean, this is I I don't wanna go into a full monologue here, but I actually haven't talked about this publicly I don't think first thing you realize is how important our direction is.

2:04:41 Composition. Mm-hmm. Right, do you have a dominant element? Or is everything the same? If everything's the same. Your eye isn't going to necessarily be drawn to any one component and you're gonna skip over it generally. There are some weird exceptions.

2:04:54 Where like the jumble Is the branding, for instance. I have used unscented baby soap from Dr. Bronner's for Ever because it's just like the least offensive to my system and it's I really like it. Their branding, if you look at the bottom, it's like size two font.

2:05:10 with like a million words covering the label. I think I know that was something very super old timey? Is that the I there may be some old timey aspect, but it's very small font. It's kinda like unibomber. ransom lettery stuff. Like if you actually dig into it, it's not very easy to follow all of it. But it's full of text. But it's kinda like a a horseshoe where it's or the horseshoe's not the best way to explain it, but it's like you get to such a point of clutter that it becomes a clear signal again almost.

2:05:39 as like a gestalt form of branding. So there are some exceptions to that, but you realize like, oh okay, if you look at the Volkswagen ads. If you look at some of the old classics. Very reductive. Reductive. You're like okay, and now I'm I'm not gonna get the ratio totally right, but it's like all right, the top two thirds or three quarters of this ad is a bold visual, often black and white. There's one tagline that's like three to seven words.

2:06:02 And then you've got some copy at the bottom and like a clip out coupon or something for a lot of these direct response ads. So I studied the visual element'cause I was actually buying and in fact at the time I was designing a lot of my own print ads. So I was going into like Photoshop and illustrator and doing a lot of the art.

2:06:19 I was doing everything myself. I couldn't afford to hire you. I learned a lot about clarity and also converting speeds and feeds into benefits. But you said the two things and I mean these are the power of art direction, right? To pull you into a world to show you something that's interesting or attractive.

2:06:41 Is Incredible. And it still feels like art. People, you know, great art structures do not do it scientifically. They have Principles. But they're expressing and exploring. And then the other thing is also the magical set of words that can sell you someone I used to work with, one of my mentors, Rob Schwartz, used to be the chief creative officer at T BWA.

2:06:59 In Los Angeles back in the day. He has A saying that I repeat to everyone, which is clients buy words, you know? We can come to clients and assure them that we can deliver across every social channel and every asset and do all the strategy research, but ultimately We're gonna give them a set of words that tells them who they are, who they can be.

2:07:17 And who they are to their consumer and those magical words are kinda everything in No matter what changes in the industry. Clients buy words and Consumers like me buy worse too. Totally. And I feel like even if you aren't planning on playing offense in the sense that you're not a writer, you're not

2:07:34 Crafting ads. I feel like everyone Certainly everyone is listening to this. should make a deliberate study of words. for defensive purposes because if you're on social media

2:07:48 Or in any media, and of course you are exposed to advertising. All the time, you're exposed to communications all the time. You can be manipulated very easily if you're not aware of how your mind is being controlled. Or. It is being controlled, informed, right? If I'm not if I say and this is cliched, like don't think of a pink elephant, pink elephant, pink elephant, right? It's your mind is very reactive in a lot of respects. So I feel like

2:08:15 The study of words is the study of Yeah. Thoughts and the malleability of thoughts, which then leads to the malleability of behavior. If you really want to see how crazy that can get, you can watch These Netflix specials like the push. From

2:08:31 This illusionist. Is it also amazing? graphic artist uh or I should say visual artist, painter, Darren Brown. And these are long features that are mostly about social engineering, but just what you can get someone to do. If you profile them properly.

2:08:49 Have a delay. hire Confederates and in this particular case the push is can you get someone off the street and get them to the point. Where they push someone off a building. They commit murder.

2:09:01 Just by scripting everything out from start to finish. It is Horrifying. I have very mixed feelings about it from an ethical perspective. Nobody gets hurt. He has many more. Miracle, I think is another one, which is is very well done.

2:09:15 The point of all this is Part of my fascination with the Whipple Book. Part of my fascination with ads is for playing offense. Building a business and so on. A lot of it is just wanting to understand.

2:09:29 How humans work. And The practitioners are always gonna be ahead of the scientists and the theoreticians, right? That's true in exercise where it's like the coaches, they're gonna get a lot wrong. They're gonna get a lot right and they are going to be able to C

2:09:45 the state of the art before the academics ever get their hands on it. So if you want to understand how humans work, one approach, and these are not mutually exclusive, one approach is to study psychology and So on. Another is to just look how people are. Affected and persuaded. So there are many books that I've read like And I'm blanking on his first name, but Lunce is the last name. Words that work.

2:10:06 Who is a I believe a republican Political strategist. And if I'm not mistaken, I read this a long time ago, it was recommended to me by a very famous entrepreneur. Neither of us would say we have much in common politically with this guy at all.

2:10:20 But he came up with as one example the death tax. Instead of inheritance tax. Like the death tax. And just these a handful of rebrands. That became

2:10:32 almost impossible to sort of overturn in the zeitgeist. You should study that. There's a gold mine there if you stay that kind of thing. So Yes, what I learned. I mean, I continue to learn, I continue to study these things. And

2:10:46 Maybe I'm a weirdo, but I just it's so fundamental to the existence, the day to day week to week, month to month of existence of anyone listening to this. And by the way, you're gonna have to get a lot better at defense. Because everything's gonna get everything about to get so much more overwhelming. So much more personalized. The number of pitches that I get The number of pitches my friends get now just in the last few months. Where

2:11:11 Intro paragraphs are clearly crafted using AI. Or it's it's gonna take away my email writing gift. I think it'll take a while. It'll take a while because I can see you can still pretty easily discern. But you're gonna have to get better at defense if you wanna preserve your sanity and your ability to function. Let me ask a question that has been sort of in the hopper for a little while. It's been just dating. And it comes back to Blue sky thinking and creative brainstorming and then constraints, right? Because I'm listening to some of your stories and I'm like, man.

2:11:40 It'd be great. To sit down. For my own business and be like, You know what? I wanna get Bill Murra doing this in an ad. I wanna have him in the cockpit. Of a space shuttle. Yep. I already want to watch this. I like it.

2:11:52 And then there are certain eventually. real world considerations like budget. Like legal. And I'm wondering if there are examples of like Overriding these constraints where it's worked out.

2:12:05 Or at what point you kind of bring things back to earth. Right, because if you do it too early, you s it would seem like exactly. Uh, you know, there's no hard and fast rules. I think the nice thing about working at big agencies with big brands is My experience has always been if the idea is good enough, there's always more money. I think I can say that without getting in trouble, but it's true. And then I think creative people

2:12:28 We need the constraints. To push off against the money. to have ideas that have tension and that are going to be effective. So I think we try to know as much about that going in as possible. And sometimes You'll have a ten million dollar idea for a one million dollar budget and it's Tragedy because it would be

2:12:43 Amazing and and they would probably get great ROI on it and it might make economic sense. But Sorry, I'm quoting everyone and their mother, but my Another one of my mentors, Rob Riley. who's the chief creative officer of the WPP Holding Company. Always says, No client ever fired you for bringing extra ideas. And so I think you know, some of the best things we've ever

2:13:01 Gotten away with. Have been a lucky strike extra. Or saying, Okay, here's the thing you asked for, but by the way I know this would involve getting a few celebrities or k opening the coffee, but what about this and And I think once you've taken the defenses down by showing what's within possibility

2:13:17 You buy yourself goodwill and permission to bring a crazy idea and you're gonna be sharing that crazy idea with someone who's not nervous about what's to come, they're gonna enjoy it. And so by and large. You can get there with that. But yeah, I think you've got to cover your bases first, or else Yeah, it'll be custody you.

2:13:31 T B S's funniest out of the year. Yep. Could you give us some context on this on this prompt? This is It's like you're in my head, Tim, because this you've just connected it and maybe you're already know where it's going. But we my creative partner when I was at BBDO is a guy named Dan Lucy and he and I, he's my

2:13:49 best friend and you know, and for eight years I spent more time with him than I spent with my wife. Sharing an office and Finishing each other's sentences and fighting all the time too. And we had a new client in footlocker and their aspiration was to not be this kinda

2:14:04 transactional house of brands, but for holding the footlocker bag to mean something. And so that We knew there was big ambition there that we had to it wasn't just about like the shoes that were in stock, it was about trying to make the brand cultural. So we We worked. together on Foot Locker for about five or six years and we created an ongoing campaign where we got celebrities and athletes to make fun of themselves and

2:14:22 You know, kinda play it close to the bone. So part of this is we had a great client, a guy named Jed Berger, who He didn't come up from traditional marketing. He Come from Modell's, which is an East Coast sports store. I know Modells. You know Models. He also founded a basketball magazine called Dime Magazine.

2:14:38 He had other interests besides just marketing. So he's kinda came Uh things from a cultural place. So sometimes we would show him ideas that got to the bone of sports issues or athlete issues and he always championed it. So this was our first kind of big campaign. And we

2:14:52 overswung the fences like crazy. Like there was maybe you know, money for a for a cameo and an ad and instead we came up with this Kakamami idea that for this one week Foot Locker was putting out the very best shoes. They were just gonna Stack it.

2:15:06 One day after another. And the client who called it the week of greatness. And so we had written an ad that said you know, basically the what's happening at Foot Locker It almost feels like with all these shoes coming out, it feels like all is right in the world. And then we

2:15:18 leave that scene and we go and we see A bunch of wrongs. be righted and impossibilities happen. And so we wrote the script and it had Mike Tyson answering the door and a Vander Holyfield is there.

2:15:30 with a box and he's returns the Mike Tyson returns the piece of the ear that he bit off of Ander. So already we're showing that to the rest of the team at V V DO and they're like That's never gonna happen. And then we're like, don't worry, it keeps going. Uh you know, Dennis Rodman. This is But wait, there's more. Two thousand twelve kind of jokes, Dennis Rodman

2:15:49 What did we all want to see? He was at an airline counter and he buys a one way ticket to North Korea. They're like, That's never gonna happen. And then and they're like, but wait, there's more'cause Brett Farve would refuse to retire, so Red Farve is gonna make a joke about retiring. Uh you know, he's at a diner and he's got a piece of pie and he Hands it back to the lady half eaten and says he's It's time to stop.

2:16:08 So one out of the other, everyone said that you you can't bring this to them because this is gonna cost a bajillion dollars, they're never gonna do it. This is now they asked us for something simple and you've given something incredibly complicated. And You know, this is I would say kind of Halfway through my journey.

2:16:21 And you know there's probably a a period Usually around the halfway point where you're like maybe a little more arrogant than you than you are later and in the beginning and So Dan and I just went Nah, we're gonna do it. And so we got in such a blow up fight with our account lead that he

2:16:37 Said, Well, you know what, you're gonna tank this whole thing and I'm not gonna go to the meeting. And so we went, Sounds good. So we went down to the meeting by ourselves without our business partner. Who forsook us. As a matter of pride at principle. And uh we presented it to this guy Jed and he went, I fucking love it. Let's do it. So you know, you've you've got to take your chances. There's no shame in it. And we would have the in you know, and he knew

2:16:59 And Jed knew we would have had the back we can write him a cheap ad, but We have a great one. And then and so he you know, he went to Badford and he went and he negotiated that our client negotiated with all those athletes and people and Little side story which For any sports nerds will be really fun as we Film the Brett Favre.

2:17:14 segment in Hattiesburg, Virginia. So Dan went down there with the camera crew to pick that up. He gave us half an hour. Because he was a high school football coach in his first season retired. And he famously had you know, hung on.

2:17:27 to things in Green Bay. And kind of as the story goes, prevented a young Aaron Rodgers from ascending and taking the starting quarterback spot year after year. And so there was tension there and that was uh famously or in the press a bad relationship. And Dan calls me from Set.

2:17:42 And he says, I was just standing next to Brett Favre. In between shots. And I saw him open his fantasy football on his phone. And Aaron Rodgers is his starting quarterback. And I was like God, that is such

2:17:54 fun intel to get from the front line. And I swear we were like, should we call like Bleacher report and tell them this so people sports fans would have loved to know that. I really have two questions. There are Fifty more. I'm just gonna give some teasers that we won't get to. What's the why why that? Why what if it's something that someone really wants to know about and then we didn't do it?

2:18:14 Well then maybe we do a round two. Okay. Fair enough, fair enough. So the time Kanye tried to get you fired Yeah. Okay. We're not gonna do that. Although I I really I really do at some point wanna talk about that'cause just the limited context that I have makes it seem Really hilarious. It was pretty good. Okay. Okay. Actually I'll let you choose. You know what? This is gonna be not dealer's choice. This will be your choice. And gambler's choice. So that's gambler's choice. This is one option. Another option is

2:18:42 You on the cusp of taking your name off of the Guinness wheelchair basketball ad. Yeah. And what That was all about. And just how that unfolded. The Kanye is easy, but we'll save that for another time. The wheelchair basketball one because there was a good lesson in it, which is

2:18:58 So Dan, the partner I mentioned, and another guy named Tom Cramer and I Pitch that ad. What is the ad? So in the ad, a group of it's almost like you start in like a Nike ad or in a scene from the movie Murder Ball, which is a movie uh that features wheelchair basketball, you're just in a really intense game of wheelchair basketball and you get seduced into it. You follow the team down one end of the court to the other and you you think it's all about

2:19:21 performance or drive or what these guys are doing. And as the game resolves the surprise is That nine out of the ten guys get up out of their chairs. to leave the gymnasium and then one friend is still in the chair and that you understand that this group of friends all participated in wheelchair basketball so that they could play with their friend who's in a wheelchair.

2:19:40 The way we got to that. So the the line we had was made of more for ginness and it was It's simple. It's one of those great lines where The beer itself is complicated. But also. It's maybe a drink.

2:19:51 maybe someone who who wants to feel like they're of more substance or that there's something more substantial in that moment would choose. So The brief we gave ourselves was What's a story you would tell? Yeah. You

2:20:04 would wish you could do that for a friend. Or If your friends did that for you, that would mean everything. So it was just kinda writing that way. So it's very simple and that was what was pitched and that's Probably

2:20:15 What anyone who saw the ad saw. But What happened was our experience making it was not great. We were Pretty hard headed at that time. It was right, right around the The footlocker time where we were maybe

2:20:26 Little more rambunctious and a little fighty. And We had a client that Also And I think early on.

2:20:35 For whatever reason I think there was like a sense of distrust that wasn't solved when we were going to produce the ad. And for whatever reason we didn't quell it, we fought it. So We brought forward the director we wanted and the client didn't like something about the director's treatment, the director will write a synopsis of how they plan to Tell the story and

2:20:54 Instead of saying, Okay, we hear you Let's go back and rewrite it. We tried to push back. We tried to win the fight and Other thing I mentioned from my Adidas experience, you know, you you can't really win these fights. You've gotta play it collaboratively and forward, but we ended up basically just Every single thing.

2:21:09 Was a fight. And ultimately we lost every fight. And it got to the point where, you know the director was challenged and the casting was challenged and the wardrobe of one of the actors that wasn't even the lead actor was why would you choose green shoes? And we like green shoes, but it didn't matter. But we lost and then they weren't green shoes and there was a red stripe in the gym and

2:21:29 Why is there a red stripe that's Budweiser's color? And we're like, it doesn't matter and then Instead of just saying, We'll change it, we'll paint it out. So we fought everything, we lost everything, and we just felt like such losers by the time we were done. The music wasn't the track we liked. The set of words had to be rewritten'cause it wasn't right. And we were so down and we were so miserable and sad. That when it

2:21:47 Got released. The three of us have l we're gonna take our names off it because this is it's garbage. Because Maybe of our egos, the thirty battles we lost along the way, that must have meant it was crap, you know?

2:21:58 And so Maybe it was subconscious, but we never made that phone call, even though we intended to. I think we got busy. So we didn't ask for our names to be taken off of it. But we intended to And then it aired with no fanfare on a playoff baseball game in October. That I wasn't watching. The ad was not on YouTube.

2:22:13 Someone videoed it. On their phone. Maybe on their D V R uploaded it to YouTube and by the morning it had over a million views. But I don't even know how anyone found it. I don't even know how you could search it, but it just kinda went through the roof because it touched the thing that we wanted.

2:22:26 God, I would do that for someone or I I pray I have people around me that would do that for me. But we missed the whole point because we were so caught up in the thirty things we lost, we missed the story was still intact. And it was still good, but we were obsessed about our own personal experience on it. That made us lose faith in it. And so it's just that

2:22:43 Constant reminder to like step back, ask yourself. If you're feeling a certain way, does it really matter? Is it really changing things or are you just Caught in the weeds. So that was a a big lesson for me to get outside of My own.

2:22:54 Attitude about stuff. We're able to change your Behavior. in future projects because of that? I think so. I think it was a

2:23:04 a clear lesson that a lot of things we thought mattered don't matter, so maybe we need to Be a little more uh a little more amenable to feedback and suggestion, you know? Yeah, totally. But it was good. It was like a work lesson and a life lesson. So

2:23:17 Lessons. Not that you have to impart a lesson, but The billboard question. So if you could put a message A quote, an image, anything on a billboard. Non commercial. Metaphorically speaking, just to get something in front of a lot of people. What would you put first thing is I would request the billboard location would be at my house because I want to see it every day. Whatever matters to me is probably the thing that I need to be reminded of more than I need to broadcast, but I would just say in the spirit of creativity.

2:23:42 And living an interesting life. See what's possible. See what's possible. See what's possible. What would that mean to you if it were in front of your house? How would that be helpful to you? It would remind me every day that I'm not

2:23:53 Living a a routine. But I'm here to see What I can do and what people around me can do and how can we I don't like the word maximized'cause that sounds maybe a little functional, but like

2:24:04 How can you fully express in life? By taking chances, by believing in yourself, by trying new things. And it can mean anything to anyone, but it's just that reminder of I'm not here to do What the plan is today. I'm here to see what's possible. Mm-hmm.

2:24:17 I love it. Chris. Is there anything else that you would like to Well first of all? Any Websites, places to point people to that you'd like to mention. And then is there anything you'd like to say before we

2:24:30 Come to a close. Well first of all, thank you. The best place to find me is LinkedIn because I tend to post a lot about creativity and work and work that we're doing and work that I find inspiring. So it's it's a good place to engage And

2:24:42 I hope anyone out there We were talking before we started that When I was twenty one. a career in advertising was One of the few options for a creative person.

2:24:50 Today you can self publish, you can become an influencer, you can write your own movie, you can publish your own novel. It's not As attractive. But

2:24:59 I hope. We continue to attract. the best talent and I hope people do pursue it because it's a really fun job. You learn about all kinds of different businesses. They tell you all their secrets about why things aren't working, how good their product really is.

2:25:12 And you get to come up with ideas to solve it and if you hit it, you know, you get to put'em out into the world and get your ideas in front of Hopefully millions of people. And um I think it's probably a career that doesn't seem as

2:25:24 as illustrious as it used to be, but my hope is that we continue to bring great people in'cause That's the only way it's gonna be Vibrant and exciting. And by the way, otherwise you're just gonna have horrible ads on TV or whatever screen we look at. So it's kinda like Let's get good people in this industry so that we don't have to look at horrible marketing in the future. Yeah, and you also get to collaborate, right? It's a big it's a big one. I mean, a lot of people out there, I think, have lost sight of

2:25:47 the possibility of collaborating in these types of environments and these types of companies because the shiny object for a lot of young people is running your own ship as an influencer, but there are are a lot of trade offs. And one of them that I know from having spoken to a lot of people who are creators independently is you can end up being We're feeling very isolated and very lonely. And one of my top priorities, in fact, I just finished an off site recently for my whole team was

2:26:17 creative collaborations with world class people. Because You can do a lot as a solo operator, even with a team, but if you're in isolation, you're not going to be broadening, at least I don't think for me personally, your horizons

2:26:32 You're not going to be bending and testing your perception of the world in a way that you could in a collaborative environment. So We will link to your LinkedIn in the show notes for everyone. And we will link to everything we've discussed in the show notes, everybody, at tim.blog slash podcast. That'll be easy to find. And until next time. Please be a little bit kinder than is necessary.

2:26:56 Not just to others, but to yourself. And until next time, thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcasts.

2:27:44 guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun again it's very short a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend something to think about. If you'd like to try out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash. Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Element, spelled LMNT. What on earth is Element?

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