Episode Transcript
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Okay, it's
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the greatest lost tweet of our generation.
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well. Tagline is produced by I Heart
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Hi. I'm welcome to Tagline. I'm
0:50
Rope Norman. I'm the chairman of Group. H'm North America
0:53
and it's great to be back. I have
0:55
wonderful guests today, the renaissance
0:58
man and media entrepreneur Warmington,
1:00
the CEO of Canvas Worldwide
1:02
more about which in a second, and
1:05
Vivian Rosenthal, the founder
1:07
of Snaps, a media
1:09
entrepreneur, one of the original Google
1:11
entrepreneurs. In residents
1:14
and in a little while, we're going to be joined
1:17
by Mr met himself In Shaefer,
1:19
the founder and CEO Deep Focus,
1:22
who we believe to be held up for
1:24
fifteen minutes in spring training before
1:26
opening day. Here at tagline and
1:29
hello both of you. Hello, Hello,
1:32
Robbie. That's so good Robbie.
1:35
You see, that's what comes from being close.
1:37
I am the godfather of Paul's
1:40
son, and here's the godfather of my dog,
1:42
which is unusual but true. Today
1:44
we're going to talk about an interesting topic. We're gonna
1:46
talk about creativity and the feed.
1:49
And when we talk about the feed, we
1:51
talk about the place where people are spending more
1:54
and more of their time in the
1:56
Instagram world and the Facebook
1:58
world, and the Snapchat world, in the Twitter
2:00
world, and an area
2:02
that presents kind of huge opportunities for
2:05
advertisers and brands and huge
2:07
challenges for creative people.
2:10
And I'm hoping that
2:13
this group of people are going to be able to help
2:15
all of us understand feed a bit better
2:17
and understand what makes for outstanding
2:20
content and great user as
2:22
well as advertiser experiences.
2:25
Now, I'd like to start with you, Vivian,
2:28
because you do
2:30
something that very few other people do well.
2:34
You're maybe alluding to the fact that we're building
2:37
chatbots to allow people
2:39
to talk to brands, which is even
2:41
going one step beyond the feed actually,
2:43
so we might be jumping ahead, but you're also probably
2:45
referring to the fact that we're creating branded
2:48
emojis and stickers, which
2:50
we're doing in droves. When
2:52
we think about like how the ad unit has
2:54
evolved, it's clearly an opportunity
2:57
to see it evolved in social but also
2:59
now in the message space. If we think about the
3:01
feed, the feed is going to be something that started
3:03
off pretty narrow, both literally
3:05
and sort of metaphysically,
3:08
and it's going to be something that is
3:10
actually very all encompassing,
3:12
right. I think there's many pros and many cons
3:14
to that. So that's something I want to dig
3:16
into for sure. Okay, Paul,
3:19
So you are responsible
3:22
for, among other things, the Hyundai
3:25
and Ka brands that canvas worldwide.
3:28
The automotive industry if it's been famous
3:30
for one thing, it's been famous for long
3:32
television spots and huge print
3:34
ads and huge billboards.
3:37
How do you think about this much
3:40
sort of narrower canvas
3:43
in the context of the brands
3:46
you work with. Let me try
3:48
and level set a bit of the context.
3:51
We whether it's the auto industry, almost
3:53
every other industry has a lot of muscle memory.
3:56
And I think Vivian said ad unit, and
3:58
I think what we were doing was we always chasing
4:00
trying to change consumer behavior, because
4:03
we're still in that mindset
4:05
as it was ten years ago that two thirds
4:08
of communication was controllable and
4:11
therefore ad units the way that you did it, whereas
4:13
actually, if you look at today, two
4:15
thirds of people's consumption
4:19
is the opposite. It's actually
4:21
much more organic. It's not controlled.
4:24
Help me help me that a second. Yeah, I mean that's
4:26
one of those kind of great statements. It used
4:28
to be two thirds like this, and now it's two thirds
4:30
like that. Come on to the day. But so the data
4:32
thing, I think all I was going to say is that we've got to
4:34
change brand behavior rather than changing
4:36
consumer behavior. The net output was
4:39
let's try and change consumer behavior through
4:41
communications. But now I think we have
4:43
to think about how brands behave in these
4:45
environments. So even when we talk about
4:48
standardizing AD units, what we're trying to
4:50
do is invade feeds
4:52
and invade spaces with as you said,
4:54
repurposed television ads
4:57
as opposed to thinking about the feed and
4:59
a of other communication channels and much more
5:02
inventive. So in the In
5:04
the much beloved and iconic first
5:06
episode of Tagline, which I think is now
5:08
collectible in certain quarters, Wendy
5:11
Clark, who is iconically the
5:14
first guest, said that
5:16
we have to be invited into pupil's
5:19
homes and into people's lives
5:21
and permission to do
5:23
that. Do we need to be invited into
5:26
people's feeds? And I
5:28
mean, I'm thankful to see consumer
5:31
behavior changing it. I think they're
5:33
really judicious and what they want to see.
5:35
And I only want to see a brand in
5:37
my feed if it's providing some value
5:40
to me, right, and that value you could ascribe
5:42
many different features to it, So it could be
5:44
some type of learning or education, it could
5:46
be some type of utility, it could be
5:48
some type of commerce opportunity, or it
5:50
could be entertainment. But to me, if it doesn't
5:53
fall in one of those three categories
5:55
of value, I'm not particularly interested,
5:57
right. And I think this is true particular
6:00
you with a younger audience that are more interested in
6:02
the brands that have some value
6:04
that is a creative to their life. Part
6:07
of it is that the types of brands that
6:09
we're going to see in our feed are going to be more curated
6:11
by sort of their values. But the
6:13
interesting thing is that the most
6:15
majority of marketing will
6:18
crash a feed. But I think
6:20
the beauty of crashing it is it's just
6:22
like that nerd who crashes a party, gets
6:24
very drunk, but still is incredibly funny.
6:27
So that's what you want to be as opposed
6:29
to the sad person who crushes the party not
6:31
invited and spoils it.
6:34
But I think the truth of the matter is, although I agree
6:36
with Wendy and I agree with with Vivian,
6:38
at the end of the day, there's the great unwashed
6:41
there who are crashing every feed
6:43
and crushing every social how do you
6:45
stand out and touched on it that
6:47
it's like, if you crash a party, better damn
6:49
be funny, right, But the problem is
6:52
not every brand's DNA is to be funny.
6:54
So it begs the question, Okay, well, if you're not funny,
6:56
then what are you provide some other kind of value?
6:59
You will well come in a stranger if they're valuable
7:01
to the party, right. So I think a brand has
7:04
to think about and their agency of
7:06
record, who they're working with. How am I going to be valuable?
7:08
Right? So if you
7:11
talk to some of the big operators
7:13
of feeds like Facebook,
7:16
they will tell you that the key to the
7:19
puzzle is relevance and
7:21
that their job, which
7:24
they do with machine learning and
7:26
super computer power, is
7:28
to make trillions and
7:31
many trillions of decisions every day
7:33
that matches ads
7:36
with people's feeds, and that
7:38
the key signal
7:40
that they're looking for is
7:43
relevance to connect the
7:45
user or the consumer of the feed
7:48
with the AD. And
7:50
they would argue interestingly
7:53
that what will
7:55
happen is that the most
7:57
relevant ads will be the ones that are fast
8:00
most frequently. And so, when
8:02
you're thinking about it creatively, how
8:05
do you think about the concept of relevance
8:08
that helps that algorithm
8:11
that's driving that match
8:13
of feed and add to surface
8:16
your clients have. So we
8:18
actually coined a term for this um at
8:21
my company. We call it intelligent messaging.
8:23
But it's delivering the right company is Snap Society,
8:27
not Snap Singular. No, that
8:29
would be even better. But that would
8:31
be better, but no, that would be maybe future
8:34
lifetime. So we call it intelligent messaging,
8:36
which is delivering the right piece of content to
8:38
the right person at the right time, at
8:40
the right place. Right reinvented I am I
8:43
remember, I am Yes? If something
8:45
doesn't have contextual relevance, you're
8:47
really missing the boat. If you had the ven diagram,
8:50
it's like, you know, something that's contextually
8:52
relevant cross with something that adds value
8:55
to me is the sweet spot. You know, that's the
8:57
opportunity. I think both with the feeds
8:59
and even if we look at what we're doing now in chat
9:01
bots as just another feed, right, So these are chatbots
9:04
that sit on top of Facebook Messenger. It's in
9:06
essence, another feed, another space for
9:09
a brand. I think that people will
9:11
respond to things if they're pertinent,
9:14
right. So as an example, we
9:16
did a chat bought for bud Light and they were sponsoring
9:18
the NFL, and so it would ask me, viv,
9:21
where do you live? Who's your favorite team? Just two pieces
9:23
of information. So if I say the New York Giants
9:26
New York, it goes away, becomes invisible.
9:28
But then two hours before game time, it will
9:30
send me a text notification saying like
9:32
are you stocked up on bud Light? And by the way,
9:34
don't forget to tune in and watch the Giants
9:36
in two hours. So I'd say like, no,
9:39
I need bud Light. It kicks me out too many bar drizzly
9:41
and I get beer delivered to my door within
9:44
kickoff time. I mean, that's a very contextually
9:46
based experience that was very successful,
9:48
and there was very very high completion
9:51
rate of like clicking through that funnel because it
9:53
was providing value. Okay,
9:55
so that's a version of
9:58
relevance, pauls, so I
10:00
can kind of get bud and the
10:03
circumstantial nature of a football game. For
10:05
some reason, I don't know why, but it seemed
10:07
to me the advertisers worked out quite a long
10:10
time ago that men like
10:12
football like beer. QE. Ed advertised
10:14
beer in football games, which
10:16
is kind of a prescience notion that still
10:19
holds up quite well. But as
10:21
you know, Mark Pritchett and his noted speeches
10:24
at the io B in the a NA said not
10:26
long ago that advertisers actually
10:29
in the era of digital
10:31
and oversupply and massive
10:33
consumption of media, have fallen into
10:36
the crap trap that too many people
10:38
are producing too much rubbish.
10:40
And so in your world, and particularly
10:43
with your range of clients, where rubbish
10:45
is not a good idea, how do you think
10:47
about that kind of quality and
10:49
relevance when you don't have that the
10:51
immediate contextual opportunity of
10:54
men beer football. Yeah.
10:56
But one thing I think it's important to remember
10:58
whether or not we fall into the crap
11:00
trap. There was always a crap trap
11:04
of all tv ads, as
11:06
voted by consumers, and probably
11:08
most credive directors would be deemed
11:11
crap. And it's
11:13
a crap trap and you've been caught
11:17
the boom turn raps. Yeah, absolutely,
11:19
Well that's the that's the beauty. The first thing I think
11:21
is that early adopters, whether
11:23
you're crap or not, get
11:26
this violent reaction against
11:28
in a new platform. But also
11:31
you get huge engagement just
11:33
because you're early to it. And then there seems
11:35
to be this cycle of adoption and
11:39
I be a standardization
11:41
and then what that does is it
11:43
exponentially increases crap
11:46
because you standardize everything in order
11:48
to scale it, but to scale the crap.
11:51
So let me So that's interesting. So what
11:53
you're saying is that when a new platform
11:56
emerges, the instant reaction of its users
11:58
is to reject a must be very engaged
12:01
in it. But they're very engaged, and arguably
12:03
it can be quite effective. At which point
12:06
a well meaning industry body normally
12:09
multilaterally from the supply side, the
12:11
buy side, the technology side, then determine
12:14
standards to operate in that platform.
12:16
But actually what standards do is
12:19
allow for the exponential multiplication
12:21
of crap. Is that what you're saying. I am, and I
12:23
think the banner ad would be the prime example
12:25
of that in its form today and
12:27
its whole history that keeps popping up, and
12:29
it keeps popping up. Yeah, yeah, but no,
12:31
coming back to the question, by the way, I'm very excited
12:34
about what's about to happen here on tagline, very
12:36
so carry on, just excited. I
12:39
think the idea of contextually
12:42
relevant agree with.
12:44
I think you can take it
12:46
to to literal a form, and I think
12:48
some people take it to an extreme,
12:51
and that's where I think the human creative
12:55
power of then
12:57
an AI it has
12:59
to be in there because sometimes there's serendipity
13:02
that you do and that's an art form still,
13:04
so it's the balance of the art and the science
13:06
of anything. Otherwise you know, the machine
13:08
would run it. I don't want to bring back one of my
13:10
favorite sport piece
13:13
of content that was for social was
13:15
for Heineken, and funny enough,
13:17
they have been leaning more into sport
13:19
and it just so happens that you keyed me up
13:21
okay, and we're going to be back just in
13:23
one second, because in the on deck
13:25
circle playing first base and betting
13:28
number three for tagline, we have Ian
13:30
Schaeffer, the founder of
13:32
Deep Focus, joining Paul
13:34
Warmington's from Canvas Worldwide and
13:38
Ian Rosenthale from
13:40
Snaps. Hello. Ian, Hello,
13:43
Sorry, we're
13:45
purposely made entrance were
13:49
a little bit. We're
13:52
super happy to have you, very
13:54
happy. We're talking about creativity
13:57
in the feed. Sorry, Paul, so
13:59
kindly kind of sports. So it was just I
14:02
couldn't resist. You teed it up
14:05
Heineken. They obviously
14:07
sponsor a lot of sports, Champions
14:09
League being a particularly big
14:12
event around the world, everywhere
14:14
apart the United States, and
14:16
they just created some wonderful
14:18
content. And there was a particular Italian
14:22
agency created a beautiful piece
14:24
of long form content and I can't think sat
14:27
in the feed. I even got
14:29
it and it was retranslated.
14:32
It was a spoof on a guy who watches a football
14:34
match with his friends. He then gets
14:36
an invite to go to the game, but he
14:38
doesn't tell his friends. He goes to the game, and of course
14:41
they broadcast it in the stadium
14:44
with his buddies saying, what the hell are you doing? You
14:46
know? But it was a wonderful just one of many
14:48
that they're doing, and it's long form that was very relevant
14:50
too, I think passions of fans and
14:52
things like that. It took all my fancy, but I
14:54
think it's another great example of a market here
14:56
being adept to understanding they have to
14:58
change their brand behavior, be a bit braver and
15:01
in some ways be invited into the conversation
15:03
rather than try and push a message. It's scary
15:05
though, when they have to compete against the likes
15:07
of Fox Sports and ESPN
15:10
to produce relevant sports content for the sports
15:12
fan. And no, by the way, they also have to sell
15:15
beer. Yeah. Does anyone remember
15:17
bud TV by the way, Yes, But
15:20
that's because no one wants to go anywhere for it, right.
15:22
The content is the finer, and I think that's the complexity
15:24
of creativity. And the feed is filled with stuff
15:26
we've opted in to see. And
15:29
then yet how does an advertiser survive
15:32
in that river? Which is interesting because
15:34
the notion of the advertiser
15:37
content channel, and there have been
15:39
many and bud TV is one, and
15:42
the Coca Curtla company has been engaged in that kind
15:44
of area, and there have been a few others. Do you think
15:46
we've finally seen the end of
15:48
that particular notion
15:51
that brand as publisher to
15:53
that degree as a sustainable idea.
15:56
No, because I think that
15:59
there are some brands out there that are going to
16:01
believe that they're diminishing returns in their core product
16:04
and that they're such great lifestyle marketers
16:06
that they're going to be able to actually compete in the content
16:08
businesses. Production costs come down by selling
16:11
even maybe like direct subscriptions
16:13
via some kind of like over the top. Yeah,
16:15
and we've seen that done well by
16:17
some brands, right, And it's like
16:20
Burbery to a phenomenal job
16:23
Burbery World. And if you talk
16:25
about music, people go to
16:27
the site to watch acoustic sets
16:29
and we'll stay twenty seven minutes on the
16:32
Barbary world side listening to music,
16:34
watching music videos. But it's a
16:36
totally integral part of their brand,
16:38
their brand, and it's content, and I
16:40
think they do particularly a fantastic
16:43
job. That's a good illustration. Yeah. Similarly,
16:45
I was thinking of go Pro and I fly Virgin.
16:47
I actually often find myself choosing
16:49
the go Pro channel over other channels,
16:52
which is the Virgin Yeah. Um,
16:54
because it's like phenomenally shot
16:57
action sports content, right,
16:59
but yeah, that's a more immersive experience.
17:02
Time to take a break with our friends from Bullet
17:04
Frontier Whiskey. Please drink responsibly.
17:08
As some of you know, our
17:12
sponsor here at tagline
17:14
is none other than Bullet Whiskey.
17:17
And this is theater of the
17:19
mind we're talking about. Here. We have our
17:21
guest mixologist who joins
17:23
us during tagline. He's actually
17:26
the world champion mixologists from two thousand
17:28
and thirteen. He's been a judge kind
17:30
of since then. So he sort of went the other
17:33
side and he said to say hi, introduced
17:35
himself and maybe mix a drink. Yeah,
17:38
I'm Jeff Bell. So today we're
17:40
partnered up with the Bullet Bourbon to serve
17:42
you guys to use your Palmer. Uh
17:44
it is spring according to the calendar,
17:46
but not the weather outside. So we're a little
17:48
ambitious with the drink inspired by
17:51
the Arnold Palmer lemonated nice
17:53
Tea. We use a sweet tea sirrup made by
17:55
some friends of mine in Charleston, South Carolina,
17:57
with some fresh yuzu juice Bullet
17:59
whiskey, and so it's fair to say this is the first
18:01
year that people have been able to serve Arnold
18:04
Palmer's went. Arnold Palmer wasn't
18:06
still alive, and I think we should take a moment for
18:09
Arnold on that. But I see this is a fitting
18:11
tribute, a tribute good.
18:14
What do we think? It's delicious? It's
18:16
delicious, you see, Jeff, you're the
18:18
guy you always were. Well, I appreciate
18:20
it. Now. I can sleep well tonight. I'm sure
18:22
you will. My boss tells me that
18:24
you sleep well if you're either good or you're
18:26
stupid. And he said, what about
18:29
you? I said, I don't sleep well, which happens
18:31
to be true because I didn't want to commit either
18:33
way. Will you be back later?
18:36
I'll be back whenever you need me. Fantastic. My
18:39
kind of mixologist. You don't
18:41
just make these cocktails kind of randomly. You're
18:44
a kind of subject matter mixologist,
18:46
right, Yeah, I think there's a there's a time and place
18:48
for every cocktail. You know. When I come on to
18:50
do tag on with you guys, I try to come up with something
18:52
new that's that's relevant to what your
18:54
right minds are speaking about. So the subject
18:57
today being the feed, I wanted to bring
18:59
something that was really like aesthetically pleasing,
19:02
and it's really easy for me to say that on radio
19:04
because no one can see that and prove
19:06
me wrong. It's garnished with fresh mints,
19:08
super green, none the leaves or wilt or anything
19:10
like that. And the feed for me is that
19:13
we're kind of subjected to the
19:16
consumers. We get between a hundred and fifty and two hundred
19:18
people a day, which means that h
19:21
people a day could take a picture of a cocktail. That
19:23
cocktail then shows up in their feed and their
19:25
friends feed, and if their influencers like, it goes
19:28
on exponentially. This is kind of like a grassroots
19:30
marketing for a small business, is
19:32
you know, making sure that if you serve a cocktail
19:35
in a dimly lit space on a soiled cocktail
19:37
napkin with lines that were cut yesterday,
19:40
you're gonna be doing a disservice to your bar and you're slowly
19:42
gonna plummet down and that's
19:44
gonna be a reflection of the product you serve. But
19:46
if you you know, you source your ingredients, use
19:48
everything fresh, prepare things all a minute, that
19:50
kind of thing you creates photo
19:53
moments for people. I guess I mainly talking about Instagram,
19:55
but it's a little detail that takes a lot
19:57
of extra work. So you're talking about what we
19:59
would will return on experience. So
20:01
if you give people a great experience, they're going
20:03
to share it and come back. Right. Yeah, we
20:05
are held accountable by social media. Is
20:08
almost an extension of Yelp or Google reviews
20:10
or anything like that, which we like to read. But with social
20:12
media it's whether they have good words or
20:14
bad words to say. If the photos awful, the
20:17
drink looks awful, and then it has
20:19
this kind of sour experience of the bar. So the goal
20:21
is to make everything as attractive as possible for
20:24
photo moments. And you know, moving forward
20:26
with designing new restaurants and bars, you take into account
20:28
the way the light comes in from the windows, the kind
20:30
of lights to use over the bar. You almost need to idiot
20:33
proof the photography set for
20:35
your consumers. The story that you just told is actually
20:37
quite interesting because the same way that you're thinking about
20:39
making sure that your environment looks good in other people's
20:41
photos, those other people are making sure that they're going
20:43
to environment that looks good in their photos.
20:46
So every person, literally
20:48
to a person, it seems like these days are
20:50
thinking about themselves in some ways as a small
20:52
business, and they may not actually be selling
20:54
things, although many of them are. UM,
20:58
they're trying to build their social capital,
21:00
they're net worth. They're projecting a version
21:03
of themselves that they want people to believe
21:05
they are. By the way, it's like everybody's
21:07
client, every brand that's out there, human
21:10
or otherwise, is projecting an image of
21:12
who they want to be perceived as. And we want
21:14
to believe that social media is lifting the veil of
21:16
transparency in front of everything, but I think it's
21:18
actually clouded. I think it's added
21:20
to the lack of transparency that exists
21:22
out there, because you've got a lot of people
21:25
again behaving a certain way to be perceived
21:27
a certain way as opposed to for who they
21:29
really are. And that's really deep. And I apologize for Thank
21:31
you, and a big chest to Jeff
21:34
and to Bullet for looking after Jeff.
21:38
You can see you next time. Thank you, Thank you,
21:41
Bullet. Don't you go changing
21:44
your story.
21:59
I would
22:12
Bullet Frontier whiskey, please drink responsibly.
22:16
So I habitually quote Jefferson and Churchill
22:19
car marks from time to time, um
22:22
and and and of Corsi and Schaeffer, And
22:24
my favorite in Schaefer quote
22:26
was I've never seen a skip button
22:28
on that that I didn't love. And so,
22:31
Paul, when you're thinking about the
22:33
automobile market, and
22:36
how do you prevent people
22:39
in the way you think about it not
22:41
using the skip button or not exing
22:43
out of their feed because I don't want
22:46
this at anymore? What kind of processes do you go
22:48
through with their client and your creative
22:50
partners to get the great question.
22:52
I'll give you an illustration. So
22:55
I view someone like Amazon as
22:57
a feed. It's not a formal feed, but
22:59
it's something that's digitally enabled.
23:01
It sits there, it's an application and
23:03
I go to it. We did a partnership
23:05
so Hyundai we were the first and we have exclusive
23:08
in category and we are offering Prime
23:10
now Drive Now. So essentially
23:13
media became a service. So
23:15
the service was you could
23:18
go to Amazon Prime and we were obviously feeding
23:20
through the data the people that we thought were most likely
23:22
to want to test drive and Atlantra
23:25
and they could actually test drive it when
23:27
they wanted, where they wanted and how they wanted
23:30
it if they scheduled it. So we did
23:32
that. It was an absolute blast
23:34
success. I think you're playing fast and loose with my
23:36
definition of the feed. I'm just saying no,
23:38
but there's no skip button there. But that's the
23:41
point is there's no skip button. That's the future.
23:43
I think of a lot of digital communications.
23:45
You talked about utilities and service. To
23:47
me, the best form of service in
23:49
this consumer driven world is fantastic
23:52
service. I mean, a fantastic service
23:54
is the proofpoint of the brand was we're going to
23:56
do it better so you don't have to go to the
23:58
dealership if you don't want to go to a dealership. Now,
24:00
if we could do more of that in a Facebook
24:02
environment, if we could do more of that in a snapshot
24:04
environment, that's what I would welcome.
24:07
And that's what I'm striving to do. How
24:09
we can improve service and utility
24:11
and other aspects of the business. You
24:14
can think of us as just consumers
24:16
is just ducks being force
24:18
fed, right. That's sort
24:20
of like one way to look at it, and the other way
24:23
to look at it is like the ducks
24:25
that have sort of broken out and are like,
24:27
I'm going to go figure out my own life
24:30
and I'm going to make a life for myself that
24:32
I choose. You know, maybe I'm going to be vegan
24:34
or who knows what I think. There's also
24:36
this idea that people want to
24:39
be able to have choice, they want
24:41
to be able to opt into
24:44
something. And I think the problem with the feed, and
24:46
maybe the reason why none of us are necessarily
24:48
coming up with great examples for the feed and we're pointing
24:50
to other things, is because there's
24:53
this element of the feed you can't choose,
24:55
right like, if you want to be on social media, then you sort
24:57
of have to bow down to the feed, and then that means
24:59
that along with it comes all the advertising.
25:02
What we're seeing with the advent of choice
25:04
is that people are choosing selectively
25:07
to engage with brands they really care about. So
25:09
to me, the opportunity for a brand is potentially
25:12
to extricate themselves out of the feed
25:14
and come back into a person's life in a different
25:17
way, to sort of unexpected way.
25:19
That's kind of a very reassuring sort
25:21
of social thought. However,
25:25
my general experience and advertisers
25:27
is that they spend money when
25:29
they see a return on the money, and
25:32
there is no doubt that Facebook,
25:34
in particular within the feed space
25:37
with Instagram and now with Messenger
25:39
also is like the
25:41
Dyson vacuum of money. It
25:43
must be being effective. And the
25:45
only way that the advertisers
25:47
the seeing effectiveness is this they're getting a
25:50
return of some description on another.
25:52
And so there is a kind of a bit of a paradox
25:54
because if it was that unwelcome
25:57
when people have made the Faustian bargain that
25:59
they want to be on Facebook yet had to deal
26:01
with the advertising, that would just reject the advertising,
26:04
and then advertisers would reject Facebook.
26:06
But that doesn't seem to have happened. Yeah.
26:08
Well, I mean, I think we live
26:11
in a consumer driven culture,
26:13
right, that's all about consuming. The other
26:15
night I was watching a film called Minimalism,
26:18
a documentary. I don't know if anyone's seen it, but it
26:21
makes a really it
26:24
actually should be shorter. I would agree with that, good
26:26
joke. It's interesting. It makes the point that we should
26:28
be much more judicious in terms
26:30
of the brands we led into our lives, in terms of the
26:32
people we lend into our lives, in terms of everything,
26:35
right, And I think that as a culture,
26:37
I actually think that that's a really big
26:39
underground movement that's happening. And and so, while
26:41
you're absolutely right, of course, Facebook and
26:43
Google and others meant money. But
26:45
I think that there is inevitably
26:48
often a backlash. Let's let's
26:50
just say the ads don't work. I know I'm very
26:52
specific about what ads I'll engage with,
26:54
right, And it comes back to what I said before. It's like, the brand
26:56
has to offer some value to my life. It has to
26:58
be creative in some way. If it is,
27:01
then I don't even see it as an ad. I actually see it as
27:03
like content that I want to know
27:05
about. So you think about yourself
27:08
when you think about minimalism, and I imagine
27:10
that we have some shared values to people
27:13
in this room, and there are other people
27:15
who would say, well, you may
27:17
be a little bit on the coastal elite to side
27:20
of the equation. And
27:22
we've had an incredible
27:24
prominence for feed based
27:27
environments in the last six
27:29
months of our collective lives
27:32
and how they've influenced some very very
27:34
big decisions and some very big moves
27:36
and opinion in our
27:39
society and in our country.
27:42
And I'm curious how
27:44
smart are the people
27:47
that are creating
27:49
the influence politically,
27:52
and how are they using the feeds to such
27:54
extraordinary effect. By most people's
27:56
estimation, but
27:59
having gone to cool in Washington, d C. With
28:02
an eye towards like having a political career,
28:04
I could tell you I chose the less nasty
28:07
of the professions. If you want to look at where
28:09
there's less friction, I mean, at least an advertising fortune
28:12
tends to favor the friction list. Buying process,
28:14
politics, the fortune tens to favor that the friction list
28:17
like believing process and so bad
28:19
news travels very fast. Fake news travels even
28:21
faster. When you tell people what they want
28:23
to hear, they're not only going to
28:25
share it, but they're going to opt into it. And I think
28:27
that's why you see the ratings
28:29
that you know, a partisan news channel would
28:32
have. When someone sees something that justifies the
28:34
belief that they have, regardless of whether
28:36
it's fact or fiction, they're going to share it because
28:38
it validates again a belief that they have
28:40
and doesn't make them feel lonely anymore.
28:43
That dynamic doesn't really advertising, because
28:45
that's a very transactional place. Someone said to me this
28:47
morning, Actually a group of people didn't say to me. They
28:49
said, the confirmation and affirmation
28:52
are much easier to deal with than information.
28:54
We're in a place where information doesn't necessarily have
28:56
to be fact, and most information is noise, and whatever we
28:58
choose to be signals what we pull out of it. Right.
29:01
Yeah, I love that the alliteration also
29:03
delegation because I think in a lot
29:05
of social feeds, people delegate
29:09
the important to the ephemeral,
29:12
and I think there's enough psychology relegate,
29:15
delegate and relegate. They're relegating,
29:18
delegating to alliteration. This
29:21
is important too. I think understand the psychology
29:23
of a lot of people go to feeds to
29:26
lesson stress, to kind
29:29
of fill in gaps. I mean, there's a lot of psychology
29:31
around that, and maybe to not do what
29:33
they should be doing. And I think that's absolutely
29:36
universal across every
29:38
demographic. I wanted to build on your alliteration
29:41
ask you a question. Do you think that advertisers
29:43
are insufficiently manipulative if
29:46
they actually took some of the lessons from
29:49
the way some of the political dialogue
29:51
is driven, which clearly works, you would
29:54
think, And you go back to vance Packard and
29:56
the history of advertising and hidden persuaders
29:58
and so forth, do you think some of that's been lost and maybe
30:00
needs to come back. There are a lot of emotional
30:02
strings that get pulled in service of
30:05
a brand campaign that speak more
30:07
to a movement or emotion than
30:10
actually the product that it's meant to sell. And you
30:12
can make arguments that maybe none of those
30:14
really actually sold the products
30:16
they were meant to sell. They just actually made the brand
30:18
get credit for a particular kind of message,
30:20
and maybe there's like a long strategy.
30:22
Are you saying that purpose driven marketing
30:25
is somehow manipulative. I
30:27
think it often is manipulative, and
30:29
so not somehow just is the advertising is gonna
30:32
have a budget, to your point, unless that budget
30:34
is meant to give some kind of return. We
30:36
all want to believe that companies are out there
30:38
spending money and that consumers
30:41
want to engage with brands and companies
30:43
that are doing things that are good for
30:45
society. But I think most
30:47
of the time, very large corporations
30:50
are doing things I'm so dated in
30:52
advertising that are good for society is because
30:54
that's what the research says the consumers want. I
30:56
think purpose driven marketing, if
30:58
it really is a fundamental part of the behavior,
31:01
that's fine, and I think whether will be phenomenal
31:03
that almost everything they do socially, how
31:06
they link digital to physical I think
31:08
a lot of their activations. In many of that is
31:10
good and when they actually lean you know, they
31:12
don't overtly have to
31:15
lean into their an underlying part
31:17
of their business model because it was baked in right
31:19
at the beginning. But I agree with you. I think everyone
31:21
is now trying to adopt these new behaviors,
31:24
and I think they're struggling between now
31:27
it being a social cause and actually being
31:29
a brand behavior at the fundamental level. Yeah,
31:31
I think it's also just important to step back and think
31:33
about even what the pain point is
31:35
for these brands that's causing them
31:38
to go to the feed. Nike came to us and they
31:40
said, okay, so millennials and
31:42
gen z kids aren't going
31:44
to our dot com as much, right, and they
31:46
obviously don't open up email, and they're
31:48
in messaging what's been called dark social.
31:51
So how to rereach them that has
31:53
to be sort of like what an agency and
31:55
a creative shop really looks at when they
31:57
think about this is not just sort of doing the exact
31:59
same thing and mapping it on. And I think when
32:02
brands and their agency partners take a
32:04
step back and really think about what
32:06
this new medium is that's driven around
32:09
visual communication, when I think of the feed, if
32:12
I have to define the feed, I think it would be like a real
32:14
time visual heartbeat of
32:16
the creative collective consciousness. Right,
32:18
that's that's that's the
32:20
thing of beauty from you. Someone
32:23
just checked that that is characters
32:26
or less. Because if it isn't, it's
32:28
the greatest lost tweet of our generation.
32:32
Um like heart. It can
32:34
be calm, it could be fast, absolutely,
32:36
it could be it could be many things, but that's
32:38
the that's my point. Rhythm, it
32:40
could be a rhythmic. But like when I check my
32:43
feed, I do. I see it as this
32:45
combination of brands
32:47
I care about and people I care about
32:49
and what's happening in that given moment
32:52
in the world. So that's super interesting. So
32:54
you actually see your feed
32:56
in a way it's a kind of meta and extended
32:59
you. Yes, completely, that's very
33:01
interesting. I like that. I'm intrigued
33:03
by I feel like it's so like Sacri
33:06
sanc. That's why I got so upset
33:08
before with the like duck analogy
33:10
is just because I feel like brands can't just shove
33:12
anything into that feed, Like if it's an extension
33:15
of me, then I don't want
33:17
it. And again to be fair. I think we're
33:19
all maybe older than the
33:21
audience, who's necessarily the person
33:24
spending more time in their feed but not our
33:26
aging listeners. Well correct,
33:29
you know I'm also forty one, so that doesn't
33:31
you know, so taxon
33:34
service. No, But I really do
33:36
think the way I look at my feed is the way my friends
33:38
look at their feed, which is it's a virtual version
33:41
of me. And so as such, I
33:43
wanted to feel decluttered
33:45
of anything that I don't actually believe in. What's
33:47
exciting about where the feed is going. If we think about
33:50
the chat bot space, so like the ecosystem
33:52
of chatbots built on top of Facebook Messenger
33:54
is unlike traditional advertising, chatbots
33:57
are all opt in. So in
33:59
the feed, you can't opt out of advertising,
34:02
right if you want to be on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat,
34:04
you have to assume I'm going to look at some amount of brand
34:06
new content. Now, what I try to
34:08
do is curate that, so I'm really seeing content
34:11
that inspires me or provokes me or does something
34:13
exciting. I think with chatbots
34:15
it goes even one step further, which is
34:18
you have to opt in. A chat bot can't just
34:20
come along and say like hi, Rob, like I'm
34:22
going to start talking to you. That's not how some
34:25
of my best friends of chat bots. So
34:30
no. But in that case, obviously, if you're going to opt
34:32
into this thing, it's better damn
34:34
be good. It's got to make some utility. So
34:36
yesterday, for Marriott Hotels, we launched a booking
34:38
bot so you can give it intention, which
34:40
is an LP is it to understand your
34:43
intentions. So my intention is to go to
34:45
Denver h and stay there for three
34:47
days. Show me a hotel that I'd
34:49
like. That's providing a real utility. Yesterday,
34:51
for Nike, we launched a bot that lets you
34:54
take a photo of any particular So
34:56
you see your an art exhibit, you see an
34:58
amazing installation, you take a photo, you're
35:00
really inspired by it. It will auto generate
35:03
a pair of airmax that are the colors
35:05
that you saw on the installation, and you can buy it there. I
35:07
did it today, took less than two minutes. I
35:09
ended up spending a hundred and thirty dollars. There's
35:11
ways to do this. There's ways to advertise
35:14
that provides value and is interesting
35:17
and compelling, and that it's easier to appeal
35:20
too, maybe more natural to appeal
35:22
to kind of the bottom of Meslow's hierarchy
35:24
of needs, which is like a utility situation
35:27
like that, then trying to appeal
35:29
to somebody to your point in a more feed
35:31
based environment where they're consuming
35:34
as much as they're creating, or vice
35:36
versa, right where they feel the need
35:38
to have that representation of themselves
35:40
and every engagement that they have might or might
35:42
not be rebroadcast to somebody else.
35:45
By definition, though advertising is in eruptive, the best
35:47
advertising, the most effective
35:50
advertising, I should say, has always been interruptive, right. Rather
35:52
it's been a page in a magazine, or if it's a
35:54
television commercial or
35:56
a trailer before a movie. You've got
35:59
a captive audience that to see something else, and
36:01
that's your opportunity to I don't
36:03
think there's anything wrong with that. So with
36:05
sort of conversational technology,
36:08
right, which is where it's all moving. I
36:10
wake up in the morning, maybe I
36:13
ask Alexa for a recommendation
36:16
for something. There's an opportunity obviously
36:18
for a meaningful brand connection. So
36:20
it's like give me a breakfast recipe,
36:22
and it's like, oh, here's this thing and these
36:25
eggs brought to you by so and so brand and then
36:27
I'm in an uber and I
36:29
get another recommendation through a
36:31
chatbot, and then I get to work, and then there's
36:34
something that's related to the other two interactions
36:36
I just had. And I think that idea of
36:38
moving from conversation
36:41
to actually typing back
36:43
to conversation is where it's all going.
36:45
And so thinking about how does that weave in
36:47
a valuable way, I think it's Black Mirror season
36:50
one, episode two, totally. It totally
36:52
is I know. So
36:54
we know that Vivian wants to wake up
36:56
in the morning to find in her feed or
37:00
her ai environment a recommendation
37:02
for a breakfast recipe. So, Paul,
37:05
when you wake up in the morning and our age that
37:07
in and of itself is good news. Thank
37:10
god? Was it Lords Shawsbury who said, I wake up
37:12
in the morning, I opened a coffee of the time as
37:14
I read the obituary columns, and if I'm not
37:16
in there, I go back to bed. And
37:19
so when you get up in the morning,
37:21
actually which feed you look at first? That's
37:25
Twitter, guy, Facebook, guy, Instagram, Instagram.
37:28
It was kind of a great morning
37:30
Instagram moment. No, it would be someone
37:32
like you who's probably got up three hours
37:34
before me. He's crossing Williamsburg
37:37
Bridge heading to JFK and it's the
37:39
so you want that kind of inspirational this is my
37:41
town and uplifting kind of moments. And if you're
37:43
here, first feed of the day is my
37:46
notification screen on my phone curated
37:50
to the point where my most optimized.
37:52
So give me a sense of what's in the compleatly
37:54
breaking news and notifications? Right, Trump,
37:58
right, important emails, senior
38:00
client, something that I'm tagged
38:02
in, saved from my wife to make sure that I
38:05
heard it. Like it something you're
38:07
tagged in by your work, So Cheryl
38:10
tags you, right, So Cheryl taggs
38:12
you. You have a notification to tell
38:14
you to like something your wife into
38:17
someone else's social media. I'm optimized.
38:19
My life horrible. It
38:22
makes my life much much easier. No, I
38:25
mean, it's the food of love in your face. It
38:27
is. I that's incredible. That's
38:29
one of the all time great podcast admissions.
38:33
I mean, I don't know how many podcasts admissions there
38:35
have been. That's an absolute beauty. That's
38:37
great. Should I tell you mine? I saw my Twitter
38:40
in a rather Lord shast Be kind of way,
38:43
because if I haven't got any notifications
38:46
in Twitter, as in a mention
38:48
or a retweet, I seriously
38:50
question the possibility of my
38:52
own existence at that moment. I'm a perfect
38:55
narcissist, and it's the only
38:57
way I know I've existed. And I think we
38:59
get crucial moment on tageline
39:02
when the question is what's what's
39:04
my tagline? Yeah? That's good?
39:07
Is your tagline? Actually a tagline? Is your tagline?
39:09
And emoji? Fair enough? Yes? I
39:11
do like emoji is quite a bit, but no,
39:13
I actually have a tagline. It sounds morbid,
39:16
but it's not. Tagline is hashtag
39:18
Conversations from the Grave, which
39:21
is the title of a book I started
39:23
writing, which is about how we
39:25
converse with people who are no longer
39:27
physically here otherwise died,
39:30
but they live on through AI and machine
39:32
learning and deep learning. Right, and so I
39:35
think that six ft deep learning, Yes
39:37
exactly. It was the idea I had of what
39:39
would it be like if we could listen to the conversation
39:41
between Elon Musk and Albert Einstein
39:44
or J. J. Abrahams and Walt Disney, or
39:46
Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. I want
39:48
to listen to those conversations, right, so that I thought,
39:50
well, Okay, that's going to happen in the near future
39:53
in our lifetime. Stuff beautiful.
39:55
I'm loving, absolutely pitched
39:58
the story. Have you pitched the tag have and see?
40:00
I've just been writing it. I've got a slight fear
40:02
of peaking early on the
40:04
subject of taglines, and Paul,
40:07
what's your tagline? It would be hashtag
40:09
make yourself uncomfortable. I
40:11
got to that tagline after Actually
40:14
I've never been I will go to
40:16
my grave not being happy.
40:18
I mean, I'm a happy person, but actually
40:20
thinking there's something around the corner that
40:23
I should be doing. So obviously it
40:26
means that I've actually done lots of things.
40:28
Even in my career. I probably never been in a job more
40:30
than about eight years. And it's also
40:32
I think very relevant to what we've been Make
40:34
yourself uncomfortable means every single day, whether
40:37
it's having a cold shower occasionally in the
40:39
morning, that it immediately makes me do
40:41
that every moe every morning because it makes me uncomfortable
40:43
totally that I love that. And then actually
40:46
make yourself uncomfortable brilliant,
40:48
literally sitting down with
40:50
people who I have no
40:53
idea what they're talking about, but I have to be
40:55
uncomfortable with people around
40:57
me. These brilliant misfits who work at Canvas,
41:00
and they make me uncomfortable every day because
41:02
you know what, that's part of just learning.
41:05
If you just sit there in your comfort zone,
41:07
we're all going to just die. Okay, before you to go
41:09
get a room. And
41:13
what's your tagline? I'm gonna steal an album
41:15
title? Is that all right? Of
41:18
the most recent album from a tribe called Quest.
41:20
It's rooted in the notion that
41:23
I enjoy watching the status
41:25
quo die like a disgusting,
41:28
ugly death, and industrial complex is
41:30
kind of not realize what's happening
41:32
to them. So I'm gonna go with we got it from here.
41:34
Thank you for your service. So my
41:36
tagline is one over today's
41:39
datas and the words best before
41:42
I'd like to thank and Schaeffer, Paul
41:45
Willington, Visen Rosenthal.
41:47
This has been tagline. Thank you for
41:49
being here. Thanks
41:52
and thank you Bullet
41:54
Bourbon, our trustee and loyal
41:56
and motivating sponsor Palmer.
42:08
You've been listening to tagline presented
42:10
by our friends at Bullet Frontier Whiskey
42:13
at the Bullet Distilling Company, Louisville,
42:15
Kentucky. Please drink responsibly. We
42:17
want to hear what you thought. Join the
42:19
discussion on Twitter now by using the hashtag
42:22
tagline. Check out our next episode
42:25
as Droga five founder David droga
42:27
In, Cindy Gallup, founder of If
42:29
We Ran the World, and Make Love Not Porn.
42:32
Join I Heart Media CMO Gail
42:34
Troberman for a brash conversation
42:36
about the value of creativity. Catch
42:39
all of our episodes at i heart radio dot
42:41
com, slash tagline in the I heart
42:43
Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
42:50
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