Rishad Tobaccowala | The Omnicom IPG Merger - What it Means & What's Next | Part 2

0:00The CMO Confidential Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast? I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth, and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit IHearEverything.com. Welcome to CMO Confidential, the podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions, and choices that go with being the head of marketing. Hosted by five-time CMO Mike Linton. Welcome back to part two of our discussion with industry thought leader, Rashad Tabakowala, on the ramifications of the Omnicom IPG merger and what impact it will have on the agency market in the future.

0:49So basically you need, if you're a large company, you need one of these big people to be your main partner. And then you have some other people with them. We had Oren Hoffman was on the show and he was saying one of the biggest skills over the next decade is going to be, and I think he's right along this plankton analogy, vendor management, the ability to work with people to get that 80 % you're talking about right. Yeah. The whole thing right. Yeah, so a lot of it is that. It's basically, you know, the different years, we used to call it different things. But to me, this is the biggest issue.

1:27I would pay a lot. So my basic belief is, and this is not self-serving in any way, I'm going to say three things to marketers which will make them feel really good and then one or two things that might not be good about this future. First, the good news. Here we go. Yeah. So the first good news is I think marketing is going to be more important in the future than ever before. And it's primarily because all the modern technology is giving people godlike power. So we are now marketing to the gods versus just to people. And so you're going to have to have very smart marketing. But marketing broadly, I define it broadly, right?

2:08Understanding and meeting customer requirements. The second is marketing has this weird combination of math and magic or what I call story and spreadsheet. And it's the one that actually will be the division that will be least impacted by AI as a profession. You're already basically seeing massive havoc taking place in pure consulting firms, in computer programming and technology firms. One of the reasons all these big people are laying off 15%, 20%, it's not just middle managers. AI can do stuff that is completely left brain. Our business is not left brain, only it's left and right brain. So it's going to be very, very important.

2:54Third is when everybody has the same data, everybody has the same knowledge, I believe data-driven storytelling will become the differentiator. Trust, which is what brands are, is going to become the differentiator. And so you're going to finally actually see, instead of CMO confidential, your thing is going to be called board confidential, which is CMOs are actually going to be on every board. Okay, so I think those are all very good. Now, the challenge, not bad, the challenge is this. I believe that right now the CMO should basically think about quality over quantity. And what do I mean by quality over quantity?

3:34I believe in this modern world, the top 10 or 15 % of talent will account for 85 % and 90 % of everything. Okay. Because talent is not only going to be in short supply, but really good talent can use AI to do amazing things. Now, I am out of date and all kinds of other shit. But when people see everything I do, they're surprised there's one person doing it. Yeah. Right? I write books. I speak. I consult. I advise. I'm on board of directors. I run three platforms. And they say, who's your team? And I say, you're looking at them. Pretty pathetic, but that's what it is. Okay? And that's because I've learned how to plug and play with world-class technology.

4:15And what tends to basically happen is, assuming that I have talent, this lets me scale. you know, Archimedes said, give me a place to stand in a lever long enough and I'll move the world. And AI and all this modern technology is doing that. So in effect, I would basically no longer ask about how cheaply, I always said, if you decide how cheaply you can buy the pig, you're going to end up with a poisoned hot dog. Okay? I'm going to take an analogy. But what you're basically saying is... It's actually, so you're competing for talent, which means you're competing for talent in the outside world versus the inside world.

4:55So you actually go to agencies and say, or whoever your service providers are, I want the best talent and I'm going to pay a premium for that. But you're also saying it used to be it might take a while for talent to show up in the marketplace because a lot of times you have to work it through the creative idea, the media or the product or the distribution front. And with the way the world is going today and the way it's going to be, better ideas will accelerate at speed and the talent that can create them will accelerate. supply. We'll be in very short supply. And by the way, that talent, like never before, and this is part of what I have in my new book, is despite what people believe and all this bullshit numbers that they show, which have got no facts based in reality, because I'm a math major.

5:48I've actually looked at the numbers. I believe what we're seeing is the biggest move from capital to talent you've ever seen. Okay, that in effect, if you're talent, the capital will come to you. I know there's no zero interest rate and all that, but I tell you, I've never ever seen the benefits of scale to talent versus scale to capital. And so this is the thing that's a little bit different, which is, yes, you have the scaled organization, but what happens is the scaled organizations require world-class talent to plug into them or are run by world-class talent. And so, in effect, the thing that is that while marketers' roles are going to grow more important, marketing is going to grow more important.

6:31Marketers also have to stop thinking about that they're buying pounds of beef. They're buying world-class talent, right? Or they're trying to work with world-class talent. That's number one. Both that's internally in their own teams and with outside teams. So if I am sitting here, and I want to go to the book partway here. And I think this is kind of along the lines of the book, which is if I'm super talent on the creative front, on the agency side, or if I'm super marketing talent, how should I be thinking about this marketplace for me? Do I want to be with a whale or do I want to be a plankton that can scale at will?

7:13So what I believe is whether you are sitting inside a whale or not, you want to basically start operating like a company of one. Okay. And what do I mean by a company of one? So personal story. Five years ago, now it's five and a half. Five and a half years ago, six years ago, I stopped working at Publisys as an employee. and in my particular case I was somewhat fortunate that not only was it through choice but I signaled long ahead to Maurice and Sadun that's what I was doing and so they sort of helped me do it the correct way so I spent a couple of years but in my career I made sure that while I was intensely loyal to publicists I kept building skills that made me world-class outside by myself right so I I was making sure that I was building skill sets, building reputation, building networks, building relationships, so that it wasn't that if someone took me away from the company, I would be useless.

8:19What I tell most people, including clients, is people call your company, you just happen to be the meat that represents it today. Yeah, right. Right. Nobody cares about you. They care about the brand. Don't make the goddamn mistake that you are the brand. You are not. Okay. And so to a great extent, you start to operate like a company of one. And I've written a series on company of one. That's number one. Now, if you do that and you can continue to do that in a large company, it is absolutely fantastic. But at some particular stage, you may be somewhere else. The second thing that I would basically say is how to do that is right now, start focusing on six skill sets and those one method, one way of behaving and six skill sets, which so many marketers are not doing.

9:08And once I talk to them, they say, oh my God, you're right. How do we work and do it? So one, so case number one is do not make the mistake that you are your company's brand. Please do not. Okay. Too many people get full of themselves. And my whole stuff is like, you stupid idiot. Okay. Once they take away your brand, nobody's going to call you. They're coming after your budget. They're not coming for you. Right. You have money and power. I mean, the whole idea, they get so arrogant. I won't take a meeting. I'll even go to five secretaries and say bullshit to you. Okay. Anybody talented is going to put up with that crap anymore.

9:44So that's number one. The second is we've gone from an age of what I call bosses to leaders. So we've entered the age of debossification. And so in effect, what does a boss do? So I said, look at the time you spend during the day. How much of your time are you allocating, delegating, measuring, monitoring, and checking in? And how much of the time of your day are you building, creating, selling, mentoring, and guiding? And if this left-hand side is more than 50%, change it. Okay, you have to do some of those, but change it. But most people do 95 % of the left-hand side and barely any of the right-hand side.

10:25That left-hand side, nobody wants. One of the reasons people don't want to come back to the office is they don't want to come back to bosses. Right? I basically tell people, people aren't rejecting the space. They're rejecting you. And what percent of bosses are bad in your mind? It's not bad. It's not bad. Everybody has the ability to be a great leader and a bad boss. Okay. What percent of people are great leaders versus bad bosses? So today I would say you basically have about 20 % to 25 % people are great leaders. 20 to 25 % are tolerable leaders, and 50 % are bad bosses, but they don't know what.

10:58I agree with you. Okay, so it's something like that. You might be being generous on how many people are bad bosses. Well, because I believe given guidance, and I've seen this, people can turn new leaves very quickly. So sometimes it's just how I'm giving guidance. But so what basically happens is, A, do not associate yourself with your brand. B, think leader versus boss. And then what are the six skill sets that you need? So this is what I would tell every marketer. so the first skills three skill sets are what the person needs to do one is spend an hour everyday learning which i mentioned which is called commission be curious ask questions okay including asking questions like this one if i were to start my company today would i look would it look like this right or if somebody came to put me out of my misery and knock my brand away what would they do?

11:49They're going to attack mode versus defend mode, right? And the third one is creativity. And creativity, I define as connecting dots in new ways. And to me, cognition, which is the ability to learn, curiosity, which is to question the status quo, and creativity, which is connecting dots in new ways, are critical for the modern marketer and the modern leader. And don't forget, four, listen to CMO Confidential. It's a CMA confidential. Well, fourth, fifth, and that's part of probably cognition, learning. Fourth, fifth, and sixth, right, have got to do not with yourself because you don't work by yourself.

12:29You work with other people, including alien life forms called AI, but you're going to work with other people. And for that, you need the ability to collaborate, the ability to convince. So I believe everybody's a salesperson, and everyone's going to now have exactly the same information, the same technology, the same spreadsheets, how are you going to convince someone? I always tell people we're coming to a world where the cost of knowledge is zero. I can put together a McKinsey-like deck faster than McKinsey can, believe me. I have done it. And so my whole stuff is, that's not why people hire McKinsey.

13:05They hire them for their crystallized intelligence, not to put decks together. I can do the deck part. And so what tends to basically happen is the ability to convince and the ability to collaborate. But here's what I believe is the most important skill for marketers. It's the sixth C. And it's kind of calls to Newcastle because marketers are supposed to be good at this, which is communication, right? My basic belief is you have to be a world-class writer and presenter in the modern world. And too few marketers are actually practicing that. Why is that? Because, you know, I mean, you're pretty much on stage all the time as a, you know, a C-level exec.

13:52You know, colleges are supposedly training in business schools. Why is, why are so many people not that good at this? I think because they have delegated their communication to their PR department. okay so what they do is they stand up they outsource this skill they've outsourced the skill they've outsourced everything they practice their reas they have slides and they come off like bozos okay my basic belief is if i already know what you're going to say i could have read the slide i don't need you to read me a slide okay and what tends to basically happen is like when And you hear something really, really good.

14:38And over time, I've had the opportunity now to do this very often. And in the last week, I've done four really amazing, really interesting talks with very senior people all over the United States, not the world. And later I get feedback. And one of the feedback is, what was really interesting is you actually were 100 % authentic. You were very respectful. but my god you told me really something that you really believed and you could see that you believed it right so one is the inauthenticity comes through if you can't be authentic don't stand up right the other is the inability to have a point of view or a perspective or a provocation or a plan of action versus basically having a agenda you know like tell me something new Are companies training you to be a crappy communicator because they're giving you talking points, they're outsourcing this, they actually don't want you always to be authentic in the room, they want you to be supportive, and they sometimes undervalue communication as, oh, it's just communication.

15:49How do companies own this? So companies can own it too, but here's my belief today is here is a statistic that I will give you and a fact for people who believe their large companies have the answer, and I'll show you why not. Right. So let's look at a slightly different industry where I actually have facts, which is the industry of media, which is a very associated industry to our industry, right? All right. So a lot of people talk about something called mainstream media and niche media. So I did some investigation, and here are some basic numbers that I have for you. Mainstream media, which you think about ABC, CBS, CNN, Envy Times, all of that kind of belief, they basically have less than the revenue of all of those things, right, tend to be basically in the less than$20 billion.

16:44Yeah. the media of all these youtube people and influencers and people like that right is around 50 billion dollars right now it's always called alternate media okay all right okay yeah but more importantly there are something like 78 000 people in mainstream media who earn more than 100 000 a year yeah there are 2 million people in what is considered to be alternate media that earns over$100 ,000 a year. And Pointer and other research has now pointed out that the single person company is considered to be more trustworthy than someone who is a journalist or any of these brands. So what is starting to happen is when companies don't let you be yourself, obviously within company guidelines, in effect, you are an untrusted person.

17:41Because in effect, every day, every time I write and every time I present, I have to earn the trust because I have no halo of trust besides what may have been my previous reputation. And the fact that you've been on CMO Confidential three times. CMO Confidential, exactly. I've been allowed to be on CMO three times, right? But what basically happens is, so the idea simply is, is all these folks, my big thing to a CMO is you're surrounded by a bunch of supplicants, wake up. Okay. You are a company of one competing in a world where people are going to be really world-class and you need to compete with that and not basically think that you are the brand.

18:23You have a bunch of supplicants around you who are saying, yes, sir. Yes, madden. Yes, sir. Right. And then suddenly you're dazed and confused when the world turns around you. What I find is the molly coddling. It's almost like these people are surrounded by jujips and marshmallows. I've always loved that word, molly calling. Yeah. It's like, what is that? What is that? That word in cattywampus. Yeah, it's quite a way. But what tends to happen is I truly believe I've never seen as many talented people in marketing, talented CMOs, talented brand managers, talented leaders who have basically, for some strange reason, decided to become average.

19:03and my whole stuff average won't cut it in the future

19:10and the thing is I'll tell you there's so many times I go to these boards and I go to senior people and say they literally say you just given us Mary Poppins treatment which is they said you say it very nicely and kindly and generously and you say we which I put myself as part of the problem. Yeah. They say, you know, it's like Molly, it's like Mary Poppins. A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. Yeah. Right? But my whole stuff is, here's the medicine, people. Right? And their stuff is like, and what happens is every one of these people are so God I'm smart that they know they need the medicine.

19:50I've never seen anybody who basically says, what you're telling me is stupid. Right? What they're basically telling me is, what you're telling me is really smart. I've always known that, but you've made it, you've communicated it in a way that simultaneously makes me want to change, but, and I know I can change, and it doesn't want me at the same time to hate you. All right, I want to break into Chim Chim Arena, but I'm not, I'm not going to do. Exactly, exactly. I need to move us to towards the end of this, but I want your top predictions. By the end of 2025, what will we see that will surprise us?

20:36I think what we will see by the end of, I mean, it'll surprise me too, but what I anticipate we will see by the end of 2025 that will sort of surprise us is that the ecosystem of the service businesses is likely to change more this year than it has in the past three or four years. There's this line by Ernest Hemingway, which is someone went broke slowly and then they went broke suddenly. What we're going to basically say, we've been seeing a lot of festering small change. And this is like suddenly it'll be exponential change. And we're going to see this across a lot of different businesses. So we're going to see more change.

21:17And part of the reason is many of these underlying technologies have come to fruition. But there's another thing, which is talent is mad as hell and won't take it anymore. And that's the key thing that most management don't realize, because since I happen to be a one-person company, I talk to a lot of talent. And their basic belief is, I've got to go into business for myself. I need to be a company of one. This organization doesn't care for me. This organization isn't set up for the future. So you're going to see a lot of very interesting things where people are going to say, if we don't change now, we are going to get ourselves into trouble.

21:51So a lot of people who used to say, I'll spend a year or two before I retire. Let me pretend I'm going to retire, so I'll just do everything for the next two, three years. I said, I'm going to take it. That's number one. The second is what I do believe is just like we had in January, you know, a deep seek coming out from nowhere and sort of changing the rules of the game. I think people will begin to realize what I've been saying about AI for a long time. Okay, so I say three things about AI. One is right now it is deeply underhyped. Yeah. I didn't say overhyped. It's deeply underhyped. Oh, I heard the underhyped.

22:34Okay. It's going to have a massive, massive effect. Okay. Number two, it's going to be very clear to all of us who are in the knowledge industry, is knowledge is becoming free. Absolutely free. I'm not saying intelligence and wisdom is becoming free, but knowledge, absolutely free. And it'll become very clear that this thing is far more different than ever before and knowledge is becoming free. And the third thing will also become clear to most companies who are wasting too much money doing some really stupid things called AI strategy. The moment someone tells me they're doing an AI strategy, I say, shoot yourself.

23:10Just save yourself. Oh, that's heart's medicine, Mary Popp. Just shoot yourself. It's just worth it. And the reason basically is AI itself is going to be a commodity. And I said this long before DeepSeek and all that stuff. It's going to be like electricity. So when a company basically says I have an AI strategy to win against another company, I say, that's really cool. You're utilizing the same technology that everybody else is using from seven companies. You think you're separating it with your special pristine data, which is bullshit. But let's suppose that's true. OK, and you're using the same technology with some supposedly same data and you say, I will win.

23:52It's the equivalent of me going around and saying, I have electric power, therefore I will win. No, we did. Look, we did. We did an AI show with Adam Brotman and Andy Sack, who wrote the book AI First, where they said looking for a return on investment for AI. is like asking how much electricity returns to you. To you, exactly. So unless you're competing with like candlelight people, it won't work. So instead you should basically ask, how do I rethink my strategy in an AI age? So I think that's perfect. It brings us to our last question because we're at time. You know, this is a two-parter. You can take one or both parts, but you must take one.

24:38practical advice we haven't yet discussed or funniest story you can tell on the air please take one or both of those that two-parter so i will take the practical advice okay we have not talked about and the practical advice is for you to basically read my new book rethinking work and the reason for right over your right shoulder there right right and the reason to read my book Rethinking Work is like my first book. I think this is even better than my first book. It has been written to help everybody in the white collar and knowledge space, regardless of the industry, on how to see, think, and feel differently about how to grow themselves, their companies, right, and their teams.

25:24And it is not a screed and it explains why work is going to be different, but then it goes through step by step, just taking the work, work, right? So basically, I believe the world of work will change more between 2020 and 2030 than it has in the previous 50 years. And it's going to impact everything from your financials. I've written a chapter for CFOs, your strategy. I've written one for CEOs and chief strategists, your training, your organizational design, and the fixation that people have on basically getting people back into the office is not a solution to the future of work. I'm not saying you shouldn't bring people into the office.

26:04But even that question should not be, how do I get people back into the office? It should be, how do I maximize the benefits of in-person interaction in a way that allows me to compete in a world where my competitors have agility, flexibility, and cloud-based and AI services? That's the competition. I want you to come to that, you come to the very different answer. So look at this book. It's not a screed, but anybody early who has read it, right? And I've had many CEOs read it literally while I was writing, they had bought it for their entire companies. Okay. So just look at, take a look. All right.

26:36I will say this is the first time in over 100 shows of CMO Confidential that Mary Poppins has ever been referenced. So we're very excited about that. And thank you, Rashad. And thanks to everyone for listening to CMO Confidential. Look for more of our shows on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube, and the I Hear Everything Network, which include the Warby Parker case. I can see clearly now with my CLTV glasses on. Is your next best customer an AI bot? It's a bird. It's a plane. Holy shit. It's AI parts one and two and Rashad's earlier shows. A top futurist talks about what's next parts one and two. And there's another show in there too, from Rashad so you can get a giant dose of Rashad, though this is the first time Mary Poppins has ever been mentioned by going to our archives.

27:33Hey, all you marketers, stay safe out there. This is Mike Linton signing off for CMO Confidential.