Musa Tariq on How Short-Term Growth Can Disguise Bad Strategy

0:00What is a life worth? Calculating dollars isn't the tough part. The tough part is the emotion and the stories you hear about life's unfairness. I'm Preet Bharara, and this week, Ken Feinberg, one of the nation's foremost mediators and special master of the federal 9-11 Victim Compensation Fund, joins me to discuss his reflections on the 25th anniversary of 9-11. The episode is out now. Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts. And so I sit there, Seth, and I've got my head in my hands, and I'm just like, oh my God, I'm actually going to get fired.

0:45I'm Seth Matlins, and this is Create or Destroy, a business show, a marketing show, and a show that argues they've always been the same thing. My guest this week is Musa Tarek, who began his career in what was at the time the wild new frontier of social media. Back in 2008, Musa was a social media manager at Burberry, where he convinced the brand to invest six figures on satellite bandwidth to live stream a Hyde Park fashion show. The first fashion show to be live streamed, by the way. Setting expectations with senior management that they'd reach an audience of a million viewers. Having to tell Burberry's CEO, Angela Ahrens, that they delivered only 673, by the way, not 673 ,000, just 673, wasn't the best day of Musa's career, as he'll tell it.

1:29But it was among its most important, because while it seemed like a failure, like value destroyed to almost everyone, Ahrens saw it differently. and as an early signal and necessary first step. And she wound up teaching Musa a succinct lesson in resisting short-termism that's defined how he thinks about value creation ever since and across roles at Nike, Ford, Apple, Airbnb, and GoFundMe. Today, as co-founder of the consultancy Science and Story, he's trying to bridge one of the most expensive and dumbest divides in business, the one between brand and business strategy. It's a great conversation with lessons and learnings from across these companies and more.

2:08Let's get into it. Here's the first question. I'm guessing you've got a theory about value creation. So A, what is it? And what, from your perspective, are the ingredients essential to it? I was hoping we were going to talk about gardening. We are going to talk about gardening, but not in the first question. Horticulture is the next topic. I thought it was just two old dudes sitting here and talking about gardening and life. that's got very serious. No, Seth, I am grateful to you for not necessarily coining this term, but bringing this term back into nomenclature. And I really hope it sticks. Value creation.

2:50Okay. You're welcome, by the way. Thank you. I appreciate it. I think we're all grateful for you. Listen, I like to simplify things as much as I possibly can. As you know me, I'm a very simple human being. And when I think about you masquerade as a simple human being when i think about value creation i think about a number of steps that need to take place and the challenge is actually doing each and every one of them and and getting them right and so the first thing is is recognizing what you as a business as an individual are good at capable what is your strength the first second is then finding an audience who has some sort of value or desire or need for that skill set and it may not be perfect but in that realm the third is then understanding that person or consumer really really well so what are their pain points what are the barriers what are the challenges what is it that they want more of what is it that they want less of being able to provide that for a price that works for them then building a relationship and a price that works for your business yes and a price that works for your business um being able to provide that for them and being consistent and so it's what are you good at who is your audience what do they want providing that at the price that they need or want and then building a relationship and being incredibly consistent and i think that while they sound like easy steps they're pretty hard to do because ego gets in the way pride gets in the way you know i know the consumer better than everyone else operations get in the way and so on and so to be able to do those things is difficult but when you list it up like that it sounds pretty simple and there's lots of examples of brands who have done it really well my one of my favorite examples is a company that was based in like a little room above a garage in New York City where they would troll Amazon reviews.

5:01And so imagine they found, you know, a Bluetooth speaker that was selling on Amazon for a decent price and it had, it sold loads of them, but they would review the reviews and look at like what people wanted differently. And so if someone said, I actually, you know, I wish there was a hook on that Bluetooth speaker, they would then go and create that Bluetooth speaker with a hook on it. So they were just responding to comments, creating the product in response. That's exactly it. Or creating product adjacent aftermarket product. That's it. They knew they were really great at making a product in China or wherever it was around the world and sourcing that product.

5:38They could adapt it quickly. They found an audience of people who basically saw that there was a demand for it and then they went and fulfilled it quickly. Okay, now I'm going to guess, unless those two guys in the garage above the deli or whatever it was in New York are a founder garage story who are now a global enterprise that you're just being shy about mentioning, that they didn't scale, right? And you've worked from some enormous organizations and brilliant brands. Nike, Burberry, Apple, Ford, Airbnb, GoFundMe. So let's look at it from the perspective of any one of those, perhaps, or any other large enterprise who you think has done it really well.

6:22And then I want to ask you specifically about your point about price, because you've said a couple of times at a price that the consumer wants. Now, we all typically want less than, right? Best affordable, most affordable. But every brand you've worked for, almost every brand you work for, is a premium brand commanding premium prices. And build that into your value equation, if you would. Yeah, I mean, let's go to Nike, and I think we'll touch on them a couple of times in this chat. At their best, and I think I was there when that was the case and the two are not correlated um it wasn't just it wasn't just your departure john donahoe's off the hook now it was at their best nike's key customer was their 17 year old athlete and nike across all divisions that was like everyone knew that the 17 year old athlete was the target.

7:27And I can tell you this for a fact, they knew the 17 year old consumer better than any other company in the world. They knew that 17 year old consumer, they knew how they consumed content, what they were doing in their lives. There were moments where teams would literally go and spend a week with a 17 year old from the moment they woke up to the moment they went to sleep. And they knew what they wanted, how they consumed content. And that was, I think, genius because when you think about the 17 year old they are at the forefront of culture right they're the ones who are adapting to technology they're the ones who are bringing up language i'm sorry to interrupt but is it more than just ethnographic work it sounds deeper than traditional ethnographic research yeah they would they they spend a lot of time with those athletes and and at the same time a lot of those people and like in the categories were people who had been in those positions, right?

8:21Like D1 athletes who would then start working. Like that's the first thing. The second thing is they knew the best athletes in the world. So consistently while you were in Beaverton, the best athletes in the world would come through and provide insight and input onto what it was that they wanted. And so on one hand, you knew the customer. And then the other hand, you knew the human beings that these customers aspired to be. And so you were able to provide these 17 year old athletes with product that in essence was accessible and available and designed by the best players in the world. So if you were, you know, a football fan, the shoes that you were wearing were inspired by the input from Wayne Rooney.

9:04And so at its best, I think you have companies like Nike who just knew the customer better than anyone else. And this might be breaking news, but when I was at Ford, I asked everyone, including members of the Ford family, if Henry Ford had ever said that quote. If you'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. No one contributes to him. Historians have looked back in time and there's no writing, there's no speeches. He never said it. And I think that we use that quote all the time and it's bullshit like it's we need to know it still works even if the attribution is bullshit absolutely but there is always some sort of signal that you you might you know people really interesting there's always some sort of signal that people kind of alluding to something or wanting something that you can tap into now you might have to tap into the you know the 10 people who shape culture or 10 people who are ahead of the times but there is always some sort of evidence.

10:08And, you know, Apple is a company as well, like that does a lot of research. So can we spend a second on that? Because I'm wondering if, I think you are right broadly, but didn't Nike, Apple, maybe even Burberry for that matter, create, which is just to focus on some of the companies you've been with, create have in a product innovations that just taught a market what to want rather than responded to a market like you really think the signals are always there i think the signal is always there interest you look at the number one selling vehicle in the world uh in north america at least anyway f-150 vehicle right that is a premium product it's a 80 90 000 uh vehicle that team knows the customer so incredibly well.

11:06That product is built for a certain customer. And I will tell you consistently over and over again that it is that the teams and the businesses that know their customers the best are the ones that will succeed. So, you know, actually I want to walk my own pushback back because the innovator is typically the first customer and is finding something missing in a world that they want. So you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. And I owe you my deepest apologies for downing you. It's a first. All right. Here's a better way of thinking about it. The world around them changes. So let's take a contractor, right?

11:58a general contractor they they they needed a clipboard and a piece of paper and maybe a pen that was like their existence that was like their office work for the longest period of time and then obviously the phone came along but now you can get internet and wi-fi anywhere so they started carrying their laptops with them when you're sitting in the the front seat of an f-150 there There was nowhere to put your laptop. I want to just let the audience know I have never sat in the front seat of an F-150. I'm neither ashamed of it nor proud of it. It's just a fact. None of us are surprised. But now if there's a steering wheel that actually drops down where you can put your laptop on it, like that was a pain point that those customers had.

12:46And it wasn't that they wanted something new. it's that they had a pain point and and the team knew that and then they went and delivered against it so i think across everything that that you've said is is one of the premises of the show which is the greatest um the greatest source of value creation is being perceived as valuable by an audience that is large enough to grow it yeah over and over and over again so if we flip this if only to pay homage to the title of the show across these companies you've worked with. And now you're a consultant and you've seen so many businesses, large and small, operate brilliantly and less so and now really trying to get out of their own way.

13:36Are there patterns that you recognize when value begins to get destroyed? when, and is it as simple as they take their eye off the consumer, the end user rather? I mean, let's go there again. There are enough people on LinkedIn who have an opinion on Nike's downfall. I myself have beat that drum a few times. And so I haven't, but let's just go here for a second, given my experience on the inside. They, like I said, at their best, they knew the customer better than anyone else. and the way they did this was that they were all also organizationally designed that way so it wasn't just a process they had designed and organized their business around categories so there was a team that was responsible for football basketball tennis and and seth you could tell like what these teams were right all the europeans were were were football players and the slightly bigger guys.

14:33For our American audience. Soccer. Soccer, yeah. And then the American football players with slightly bigger guys and tall guys with basketball guys, like, and women, like, and it was very clear that the category teams were, you know, once upon a time, the customers, but knew those businesses incredibly well. And then from what I understand, management consultant came in and said, hold on a second, you've got like 15 different companies within a company and you've got a marketing manager for golf and a market manager for tennis why not merge those two things the skill set is the same right you're a marketing person so why can't you do both but with that they lost their relationship with their customer uh with that they lost that insight that they the running team only knew because they were all runners or they had relationships with runners and therefore you basically left a massive gap and i think that you know when you made it The functional and lost the emotional.

15:28Well, yeah. And I think when you don't know your customer well, you leave a gap for other competitors to come in and get to know them better. And that is exactly what happened. Well, to extend that metaphor, they also left a gap on retail shelves and in wholesale relationships. And you would argue, Seth, that that is also a misunderstanding of the customer. Makes me uncomfortable that you keep using my first name. uh that that is also a reflection of like a lack of understanding of customers which is like we like to try shoes on yeah i want to ask you a question that's a bit of a digression but as you were talking i was thinking about my first experience with nike way back in the day right um what's the relationship for a brand like that and maybe even for apple and burberry and brands that you haven't worked at between performance equity and lifestyle cool because i wore nike for a long time yeah um on my feet uh i was never a performance athlete which this too may surprise the audience right because um i wore them because they were cool because the right people were wearing it you know simple 17 year old aspirational thing exactly what you're saying before did they manage for cool as well as no no it was just performance and let the cool chips fall where they may you can actually argue that this is again my belief that that nike at its best always focused on athletes and performance right and if you can imagine performance only gets better over time there's a constant people constantly improving that is a human truth right people are constantly getting better people are constantly improving and so as long as people are constantly improving and these athletes these world-class athletes are pushing and pushing and pushing you're constantly pushing for better and more innovation there is a time and period that i believe in those like 90s early 2000s where adidas their competitors went heavily into culture and and with that you get relevance but short-term relevance so you might have a performer that you are sponsoring who is cool for you know a year two three four five years and then all of a sudden drops off and then all of a sudden you're like well we've got to go find our next person and our next person yeah and i think that at that time i hate bringing him up but that was that's the story of kanye that is exactly the story of kanye and so when you when you're in the world of performance you also appeal to a certain person under armor for example their whole story is that they built you know uh training um uh t-shirts or or wear for for athletes and and that was the thing that every young football american football athlete wore in school and so they became really big amongst younger people so there is an element of performance that pushes innovation that therefore enables you to start having things to talk about your product that means that you're kind of at the leading edge of things and you start getting rid of innovation you got to then go harder on storytelling or you got to go hard on emotion right like liquid death here's a point of view we're just water in a can but we're gonna you know sell you on brand and i think that's possible although the can itself like does not get enough the can and the price point don't get enough credit for the genius of yes what liquid death did at the beginning yeah absolutely

19:07Hi, I'm Bella Freud. Each week on Fashion Neurosis, I invite guests from the world of fashion, art, film, music, sport and literature to lie on my couch and explore the connection between identity and fashion. This week on Fashion Neurosis, I welcome Charlie XCX. To be childlike as an adult I think takes a lot of bravery because there's always this fear of being embarrassed I suppose you also have to kind of like be willing to completely fall on your face all the time pursuing that childlikeness can sometimes really open you up to ideas that maybe you would feel too embarrassed to have if you weren't doing that and I think that's quite a scary thing but a really beautiful thing.

19:59Find Fashion Neurosis on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

20:07Hi I'm Bella Freud. Each week on Fashion Neurosis I invite guests from the world of fashion, art, film, music, sport and literature to lie on my couch and explore the connection between identity and fashion. This week on Fashion Neurosis, I welcome Shania Twain. I didn't really want to flaunt it. I just wanted to be myself and be natural. Like, you know, this is my body. And so why shouldn't I wear things that flatter it and that I enjoy wearing that make me enjoy my body instead of not wanting my body? I resisted it until I started making videos. And then, man, I feel like a woman was that was, oh, now I'm like, oh, you know, this is way too much fun.

20:56Like, like this was blowing my mind. Find Fashion Neurosis on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever wondered who invented rock and roll or why Fleetwood Mac fell apart or what it was like at Motown in the early years? Well, do I have a podcast for you? My name is Will Anderson. I'm a songwriter, a musician and a huge music history buff. and I'm so excited to announce my new podcast, the Monday Music Club. I teamed up to make this podcast with the Vox Media Podcast Network because ever since I was a kid, I loved hearing and reading stories about classic artists, recording sessions, and music history.

21:32And I wanted to have a place to be able to take what I've learned and share some of those favorites with you. Every Monday, I'll be releasing a new episode and deep diving into a new story with experts and special guests, and it's gonna be a blast. So if you're a music history geek like me, or even just a casual music fan, jump in because I promise the Monday Music Club is going to be the podcast for you.

21:57I can't help but think that Burberry is, and I want to spend a second on them because as you know, you have a Burberry story that I'm going to make you tell because I love it so much. But before we get to that, like Burberry is a brand, how old is the business? It's over a hundred years old. Right. That, you know, it is iconic. And I don't know if it's despite its iconicness. It has had massive ups and downs over the last few decades in terms of its cultural resonance, relevance, business. Are there signals that you have seen kind of when you were there or subsequently that you're like, yeah, this is where you guys started to miss it?

22:41And putting aside for the moment that fashion is a very, very hard business. I'm very fortunate that one of my first client side jobs was at a company that had to go through a complete overhaul and transformation. And I think it's a brilliant case study. And, you know, you know, you and me believe in this same principle that like principles around brand and marketing are like whether they were 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago still apply today. Like there's channels and things have changed. But you and me both are big fans of going back and reading books, even though they're pretty racist and sexist from the 60s and 50s about marketing.

23:22Because that's, I think, where I've learned a lot of my skill set in the last couple of years. It's kind of crazy to me. I'm sorry to interrupt again. but it's like so many of the the kind of foundational elements that i believe i wind up quoting are from 1950 1960 1971 john steele 1974 yeah um not john steele uh stephen king 1974 john steele another brilliant strategist john steele's book just shout out john steele who who is uh i speak to everyone who lives in australia now i think wrote truth lies and advertising which is still one of my favorite books um so to go back to your question uh i was there at a time when there was complete transformation uh the brand was in flux it was all over the place there was no real focus and direction and um the ceo before angela aarons had done a fantastic job of buying back angela was ceo when you were there yes but before that the ceo who was there before Angela did a fantastic job of buying back all the licenses from across the world.

24:27So there was a point where you could find the check on dog bowl, dog collars, t-shirts, like anything you could imagine. They over monetized goodwill and then destroyed goodwill. And exactly. And so when you have, when you're a luxury brand, you own a few things, but like you need to protect those things. So Angela came back into the business. And I think that this is consistent now, you know, since knowing the Angela story, but like looking at other businesses over time, the thing that Angela did first was she had a blank slate and she went back into the archives of Burberry to understand its DNA.

25:01And she learned that Burberry was founded by a guy called Thomas Burberry and he was an inventor and he took cotton and learned how to, you know, sew it in such a way that it became waterproof and so right yeah and it was called garbardine and we pronounce it gabardine here gabardine gabardine uh um and he he basically said was like right i've created this material that's waterproof let's put it on outerwear and coats and trench coats and and all of a sudden it became the you know the brand around outerwear and coats and so people wore obviously in the trenches uh amelia airheart wore it when she flew shackleton wore it when he went to the north pole and angela was right right great this is where we're going to start with what is it that we are great at what is it that we have a history at and we were still producing trench coats in northern england in a beautiful factory that they'd been using for like you know decades and decades and decades and she told christopher bailey who's a chief creative officer at the time like this is going to be where we start and if you seth if you look at most turnaround stories you'll see that the ceo or whoever is who's coming in to do that transformation would go back and look at the dna and actually when and this is a slight tangent but whenever i meet someone who's a bit lost in their own lives i actually tell them to go back to their you know their age of zero to 20 before like job identity and titles are a thing and ask them to really look at that point in their lives and what mattered to them and what they were good at then because it feels tends to be true now.

26:41I can't help but think that you've unpacked kind of another part of your value creation theory in this conversation about destruction, which is you can't forget about the end user and you can't forget about who you are. That's exactly, yeah. And, you know, to your point about the CEO who comes in to drive a turnaround, she's oftentimes, if not always, at least the ones who are successful, looking at who they've always been, because that's what gives you the permission to be. All right. It's a great point. I want to stick, because Angela's part of this story, too. Yeah. It's a story of innovation that, well, I don't want to give away the punchline.

27:25It's a story of innovation. When you got to Burberry, you were, if I have it right, you were its first social media manager, director. I started coordinator. Yeah. Which at a time, because you're very old, was certainly not a position many had anywhere, let alone in fashion. You have an idea, an innovation, really quite ahead of your time to stream a fashion show. yeah tell us that story how'd it go so so some context here which i think is important and again ties into my original point about value creation you can get to a point where your brand is so tarnished and so damaged that there is no way that you can convince new people those existing customers that it has changed and that is literally how bad it was for burberry at the time and so the direction that we took we knew that we were great at outerwear we knew that was our strength we knew we were our point of differentiation was being british but when we started looking at our audience we recognized that we can't convince our existing audience that we were different or new and so we had to go after a new audience and that audience was a younger audience that's really interesting and so you know we put emma watson we put emma watson straight after you know, her, her, have a couple of performances in, in Harry Potter into an ad campaign.

28:57And people were like, well, this is crazy. What are you doing putting a 16, 17 year old? You have to create some dissonance, like, which is, it's not your father's old. That's it. And, and by the way, you know, Emma Watson wasn't relevant to a 40 year old woman in the Midwest who was wearing Burberry at the time. And so all of a sudden you had to go after new audience. So Emma Watson first of all did that. That was first thing. The second thing is in the channels and how we communicate to our new audiences were different. So when I got to Burberry, you had 12 assets that were shot for the whole year because you had 12 issues of vogue yeah and we would take those assets and put them into stores and so on and so when i got to burberry and we started thinking about how we're going to attract this new audience social was the thing that i needed to try and get everyone on board on and i there were there were women and men who had been in fashion for like 30 40 years and some of the biggest establishments in the world and for them actually the luxury was exclusive and social was democratic and so those two things just couldn't match but it took me six months of just educating what year is this this is 2008 so facebook's been around for like four years yeah um everyone i needed to educate people and i literally went on this road trip across the globe to every single team across the world and i just started educating them not trying to teach not trying to tell them anything but just educate them on on social media and i finally got permission to go and create our social channels and i realized that i only had 12 assets which is like a facebook album so what do you do after that and i just had happened to go to one of our shows now i've never been to a fashion show before but i turn up to this beautiful tent in hyde park and there's you know it's a 15 minute show and it costs an awful lot of money but it is one of the most beautiful things i've ever experienced in my life you know music people like celebrities it's a sensory uh it is a salad and no one no one does it does it better and so i'm like let's let's stream this live stream this online and because live streaming had just happened i think i just watched like coachella or something on a live stream and they were all crashing as well and so but at the same time they was like wow this is new and exciting and so i convinced everyone that we should live stream the show and there were challenges there because you know fashion shows were ultimately meant for buyers and press you couldn't access or buy anything from the runway but at the same time it was like such an amazing experience amazing how that too has changed but and and i think by the way i think this is what shaped that so i convince everyone that we're going to live stream the show and we do it in a way that only burberry can so we create our own little experience we make our own website everything is beautiful production is done really really well and i get a call from the satellite guy because again it's embarrassing to say this isn't this isn't a time where you could just bring out your phone and live stream straight away you had to go get a satellite truck and you needed to buy bandwidth and the guy was like well listen how many people do you think are going to watch the show we had 10 million facebook fans at the time and i said well listen if we get a 10 that that would be a success.

32:03So a million people. And he said, right, that's, you know, he was like, that's a hundred thousand pounds. And I was like, shit, okay, fine. I've got to get approval from everyone to do this. So I get approval from everyone to do this. I said, make sure everyone is comfortable with this one million numbers. So the one million numbers starts kind of spreading. How scared were you? Nervous? You know, I wasn't, I think I was just a cocky 20, 24 year old, 25 year old who just was like, yeah, this is, this is definitely going to work. It's great. sorry i gotta do a little math okay i may have made this numbs up but um i get to a point where the the show happens and i watch it from my office desk and and it goes really well did you recreate a show or just film we film the actual show and so the first time we've got multiple cameras at the show it was a whole production must have cost us a couple hundred thousand dollars at the end of it and i sit on my desk at horseberry house and i watch the show and it it's flawless like the most important thing is that this thing doesn't crash and it didn't crash which means that you know um we got the bandwidth right and so everyone comes back to the horseberry house that night and is like high-fiving and my god we stream the show and we're getting lots of press about being the first show that's ever been live streamed we're in mashable which at the time was like a wow like Like, oh my God, a fashion brand's made into Mashable.

33:23And I have the best night of my life, Seth. Like everyone is so happy, like high-fiving Moose that we did it well done. It's a genius idea, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And people, you know, people are texting people in the tent who were there saying, I saw you on the live stream and so on. And so this million numbers start spreading around. I'm sorry, that's not following you. You were watching on your desk. How'd they see you on the live stream? No, not me. Sorry, not me. People texting, people, I apologize. People texting other people. Just keeping you honest there, buddy. No, no. of people are texting other people in the tent and they're coming back being like oh my god the whole world saw this and so on so this number starts spreading so that night the best night of my life right i've gone from this like social media digital kid to like now like oh wow he this he's doing something interesting and you know the team the fantastic and so that next day we get a i get a call from the guy who owns the satellite company and i'm like he's like hey congratulations it went really well i was like yeah thank god it didn't crash god i'm getting ptsd just thinking and he said he says to me hey do you want to know how many people watch the show and i said yeah sure like i you know i didn't really think anything of it i didn't think you could even give me that number he said no we can look at how many people you know downloaded the the stream or whatever and he says um yeah it was uh 673 and and i'm like 673 thousand right 673 thousand and he's like no no just 673 people so when you do the math on a couple of hundred thousand dollars and 673 people becomes a very expensive live stream and seth i had you shared real question And did you share the 10 % or 10 million number internally?

35:09Yeah, that million number was kind of what people were touting as maybe the number of people who watched the show. Like, you know, lost in translation, and I'm not going to lie, I didn't stop it at any point. And so I sit there, Seth, and I've got my head in my hands, and I'm just like, oh, my God, I'm actually going to get fired. This was a disaster. 600-plus people watching this livestream when people think it was a million. or 10 or 10, like a million people is gonna like get me fired. So I sat at my desk for like an hour, didn't move. And then I said, right, I've got to go speak to Fred. And Fred was my boss at the time.

35:46So I walk into his office, knock on his door and I'm like, what role did Fred have? He was the VP of marketing at the time. And Fred, really smart human being, is like, looks at me and goes, hey, Moose, come in. How are you doing? He's very happy. And I say, listen, we've got the numbers for the show. and he's like how many people was it and i say you know 627 and he says exactly the same thing i said 627 000 i was like no there's 627 and he just sits there and puts his hand in his head much as you much like i did and probably and it's like 10 10 minutes of just silence and and he finally goes we've got to go tell sarah and sarah manley was our cmo uh also an amazing human being and we walk down the corridor Fred first me second and we go knock on Sarah's door and she looks at us like the way that Fred looked at me and was like oh my god I'm so excited to see you here um come in what's wrong what's happening what's going on and and Fred's like Moisa's got something to say and I'm thanks thanks Fred and I I just I'm in a bit of shock so Fred obviously recognizes this and says listen you know we got the numbers in and um it was only you know less than a thousand people watch the show and so i was like first of all he took that number from 627 to a thousand smart guy yeah um and sarah was like but i you know i thought it was a million and and you know a million people watch it and you know fred was like no it's just 627 or and so she puts her hand in her head as well and now at this point i'm like i'm thinking i'm 100 % fired like there is no way in hell that i think i'm going to keep my my job at this moment in time and and every feeling that was going through my body was going through it and sarah's like well we've got to go tell angela who is the ceo at the time and so we sarah walks down the corridor fred walks the corridor i'm behind them and we kind of walk up to angela's office and knock on the door and angela opens the door and again she's so oh my god it's my favorite people come in live stream is great fashion show is great and sarah's like you know the boys have something to say brett's like moose has got something to say and i say to her i said and angela um we got the numbers from the fashion show and i'd learned now like a bit of like how to pad this story so less than a thousand people really well the show was great um but we found out that we only had less than a thousand people who watched this show and before she could say anything seth i said but and we'll never do it again so that was like my way of going right like we did it once let's like you know hide it under the carpet and move on and she immediately said well why would we never do it again and i said well because it didn't work and she said well did the live stream happen yes was it a good experience i said it was an amazing experience she said what about did anyone tweet about it or talk about it i said yes that you know we saw lots of different tweets from you know in some cases fashion people journalists who couldn't make it um uh all said it was a positive experience great she said had you ever heard of a live stream fashion show before this i was like no she said okay so it's brand new she said i bet you those you know five or seven hundred people who watched it will tell their friends next time to also watch it and so next time we might see double or triple the number of people and the next time after that that might be the case and she was 100 right we did it again the next time and you know our numbers tripled or quadrupled we did it again the next time after that and we streamed it live into our stores we did the time after that we streamed it live into times square piccadilly circus into all of our stores and even made the product available to buy for our vip customers in store in that moment in that moment another innovation and and by you know the fifth time we had a million people watching the live stream online.

39:39So obviously Angela Ahrens is a legend.

39:46What, what, what, as you look back on it, 20 odd, almost 20 years later, what are the lessons she taught you in that moment? Yeah. And the reason why I told you this story was because there is so much that I have learned from this i think first of all and you go back to your original question about like what what creates you know value destruction short-termism i think is one of the biggest biggest biggest biggest destructors of all time and in a world where today you know if something doesn't work or we get negative signals straight away we stop doing it yeah i think what what she taught me was that first of all, when it comes to innovation, you have to really think about what that measurement looks like.

40:36And, and, and you, you know, we expect everything to blow up tomorrow. We expect everything to be as big as Apple tomorrow. If your startup isn't working the first six months, then, you know, shut it down. It was not working. And I think that there is a, when, particularly when introducing new behavior into something, there wasn't, there was, you know, we talked about this earlier on, right? Their signal was that people wanted more content from brands. They wanted to be closer to Burberry, the brand. They wanted access. They wanted to be in fashion shows. And so the 700 people who watched it gave really positive signal and intent.

41:15I didn't think of it that way. I just thought about it as, well, it wasn't a million people. Yeah, yeah. And so - She analyzed it from completely different, for and from a completely different perspective instead of numbers that is exactly it yeah and i think that i have now really in everything that i do rethink the measurement to everything and and i'm very critical about it um because i do think that the measurement then therefore you know changes your your behavior so if you've got for example and like a thousand percent performance in a market a performance team and a brand team right like they're going to be they should be measured against different things right they're they at the end of the day they're all measured against value creation or growth in a company or they should be i'm not sure they all are but the inputs there might be slightly different to get you there yeah but i i actually think um in that example you point to a problem in particular for kind of on the performance side of things where you optimize for performance metrics which don't necessarily aren't necessarily the things that move the business forward right because you cannot you cannot capture and monetize demand you have not created um which is why i think you know we're seeing a cycle back to the power of brand especially in a ai agentic but we'll leave that for another show but actually we'll leave that for another show but i want to come back to brand and i love that story so much and um can i say one last thing if you know of course one last thing one last thing that i think i think angela did that she taught me that i think is so relevant to everyone listening today particularly if you are running teams or organizations yeah is she always believed that the best ideas and very similar to my nike story early on she always believed that the best ideas should come from people more junior in the organization people who are closer to culture people who are closer to change in consumer behaviors and she felt that the more senior people in those organizations should be responsible for helping execute against those and what i love about that is most people think ideas come from the top and the most junior people then have to go execute against it yeah i think actually flipping the model was incredibly important and it is like in my opinion one of the the less less talked about organizational design symptoms in terms of growth that is out there?

43:44Actually, I think it's a pretty good segue