Qualcomm's Don McGuire, on How A Narrative Shift Created 89% More Value

27:45Yeah. I mean, there's, yeah. And there was a, there was a fair amount of positivity around that. I think a lot of companies would say, yes, thank you. Um, it would shift the narrative to your point, right? Um, this short term focus, what have you done for me yesterday? And what are you doing for me tomorrow? Um, is, is, um, is, is crazy. And it really messes with the minds. of organizations. I'll give you a perfect example. Even with Qualcomm, we had, I think, seven or eight, maybe over 10 straight quarters of record earnings. Maybe it's not 10. Maybe it's something less than that. Where we announced record earnings and we guided above consensus and our stock dropped 10%.

28:26Yeah, I mean, we've seen a lot of that over the last few months in particular, at least in my portfolio. Why? I do. Is there a, Is there a reason why? Well, you know, like what's the logic? They say the market runs on emotion. Yes. There's lots of noise, ghosts in the machine, so to speak. But I don't, I mean, it's hard to figure out and I'm not a, you know, I'm not a finance person, but it is interesting. To me, as a marketer and as someone who's looking for what is in the mind of these people that's driving their behavior, to me, it's all about belief in where value is created. And I think for us, just our situation, even though we were succeeding at what we do today, we were being viewed as a certain type of company.

29:17And even with our success, that we were not part of the value creation group because of our of our heavy, not dependency, but our heavy sort of mobile focus. Right. and mobile bent to what we've done historically and what currently drives our business today. And I don't think we were doing a very good job of signaling to the market, what we do today is important and it drives that short-term financial results that everybody wants, but where our eye is really towards this to the future. And we weren't signaling forward. We weren't signaling where we're headed. We were focused on today and what we just did.

30:01And what we're going to do next quarter. Yeah. And that's on us to a certain degree that we weren't signaling where we were headed. The IR narrative and the narrative. Super important. It's fucking marketing. It's marketing. Thank you. The oversimplistic, you know, Seth take on it is it's like why every coffee company wasn't. We're not a coffee company. We're a tech company that sells coffee. They just want to tech multiples. That's right. And those multiples are. Look at Allbirds. Yeah, Albert's such a good example. We're no longer a studio company. We're an AI company. We're a data center company.

30:36Stock just pops, you know, like whatever. It's crazy, but that's narrative. That's a narrative and what narrative can do for you. And we'll take it. We did a horrible job up until this last earnings call. And what shifted internally? We have a new head of IR. Right. His name is Brett Simpson. He's amazing. And we looked at how we communicated to that audience, not only what was important of what happened in that quarter, but where we were headed. Yeah. And and for the first time talked about sort of the new new, the next new. And that signaled to the people who get on those calls every quarter and listen to what we have to say.

31:23Something different. Something's changing at Qualcomm. And we were it's like Chrisiano puts it this way. It's really funny. He said, you know, there's there's a chat room set up for all the you know, all the all the AI data center. People are in the AI cool club. Right. The mag said whatever. and then you have to get admitted into the chat room. And so there's people waiting to get in, right? And we were one of those companies waiting to get in and we weren't in. And then all of a sudden after this earnings call, we were let in and now we're in the chat room and now we can interact, right? With this group of companies and people and sociopaths.

31:58You got past the velvet rope. But it's - That's human. Right. So permission to enter, right? The secret password was granted. And then you've seen what's happened over the last several weeks of, I mean, our stock is up 89%. In what period of time? Like two weeks. 89 % in two weeks. We're at like a 238 today. We're at like 137 just about a month ago or whatever. Well, this explains the Tom Brown check. No, no, no. I got a good deal of this. No, but it is interesting, the shift. Now, we have to deliver, right? It can't just be about speaking and narratives. We have to deliver and we're very confident we can.

32:41A promise made undelivered against is the fastest way to value destruction. That is the fastest way to value destruction. But the fact that we've been working on all this stuff and we are doing it, but we weren't talking about it. Right. At least signaling at the right time the right things is a little bit of a miss. But that's that struggle, that constant struggle I mentioned in the Friday staff meetings. How much do we say? How much do we not say? You know, are we being too conservative? Are we being, you know, not conservative enough? That's the constant tension. And I think what was happening is we were leaning a little bit more towards conservatism because we were we like to be sure of ourselves when signaling things, especially to, you know, the financial community.

33:21Yeah, because they don't like anything less than they like a failure to manage expectation. Absolutely. And we don't, you know, we're the new sort of maybe not by actions, but by perceptions. We're the new kid on the on the AI data center block. And so we've got to act accordingly. So we don't believe we have maybe that credibility to just stand on a stage and say unlimited Tam. And everyone goes, oh, my gosh, it's amazing. Right. Some companies have that ability today. I mean, if you look at speaking of sociopaths, Elon and, you know, all the promises he's made about robots and Tesla and whatnot, you know, the stock has typically and over time been rewarded while he's delivered against none of that because he's given the permission to promise and oftentimes not deliver.

34:10Or just set a very, very broad narrative that doesn't necessarily attach itself to his business. Yeah. And it's not just him, right? It's others. No, no, no. It's not just him. And when you're dealing in, you know, quarter over quarter exponential profits, right? You know, NVIDIA is a perfect example of this. You're going to get the credibility. Yes. Right. Because you're, you know, you're talking about up and to the right. Yeah. Right. You know, and so, and so you can stand on a stage and say unlimited TAM and everyone just goes, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Right. And they're going to give you that automatic credit or credibility.

34:47We have to earn that. and that's also part of our DNA, right? Because we've been this sort of great enabler, open ecosystems, open platforms type of company because democratization of technology for us is really the great equalizer as well as the great enabler. And some companies don't operate like that, right? They like vertical organizations and vertical value chains. And so it's a philosophy thing. Which is its own form of, or its own philosophy of value creation, which I tend to, and I talk about this on the show, but I think leads to less value creation over time. Because if there's no horizontal in your vertical, then going back to what we were saying about the capital markets, myopia sets in.

35:37And you're optimizing for what you do rather than what the market needs, wants, and what the company is actually capable of.

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37:39but you you brought it something up a couple of times that i want to i want to um um use as segue to this next question which is you you've talked about the choices that senior leadership that cristiano has to make and you know the conversations that take place in those friday meetings. Sure. In your role at Qualcomm, where you're both CMO of Qualcomm and CMO of Snapdragon, right, which is a B2C play, right? You oversee, you operate across both, you know, B2B markets and B2C markets simultaneously. And, you know, as we were saying about IR, your job is to tell similar stories, different products and services, but similar stories to multiple stakeholders, whether it's OEM, it's investors, policymakers on the one side, consumers, maybe creators on the other.

38:29And I'm wondering, in a world where you have to make choices, are there times when you found that the value you're creating for one audience is actually in tension with what another audience needs? And if so, how do you reconcile that? I would say yes, but I would also add to that and say another challenge, I don't know if it's equally as big or maybe smaller, is how do I bring the two or them all together so that they're accretive to each other? Yes. Yeah. Back to what we were just saying about the vertically oriented. Right. So and that's one of the one of the areas where we are really starting to take a deeper look because Snapdragon has sort of taken off and we've we've kind of built this this machine of or this momentum towards a brand and a product that lives inside of something else.

39:32Yeah, I want to talk about that in a sec. Sure, and taken sort of the Intel Inside playbook, which I ran for six years when I was at Intel, and turned it on its head a little bit. And so, because the opportunity with Snapdragon is much broader. But that's kind of been on its own track. And we made a conscious decision to separate the two in 2020. You know, the brands were, the Qualcomm master brand company name and Snapdragon were locked up together prior to 2020. Oh, is that right? Which was a strategic decision or kind of a default? It was a strategic decision based on data and issues that were preventing us from telling the Snapdragon story and really achieving that growth with consumers and building sort of a, hopefully like an iconic consumer brand, you know, culture brand.

40:25The problem was, or there were several problems, but one of the problems was it was a very long brand to articulate visually, verbally. Oh, you just mean the number of characters? The number of characters, yeah. The size of the logo lockup, Qualcomm Snapdragon and a fireball. By the way, just like, I mean, you know, for those listening, not watching, I'm pointing to the backdrop, which has the show name, Create or Destroy Reimagining Marketing. And we had a lot of conversations, even for an enterprise not quite as big as Qualcomm, although the wisdomist company is on its way. Just you watch, my friend.

41:05the number of characters in the title for something that's going to show up in a thumbnail in a podcast queue. Right. Like it's real. It's real. And we had massive issues with the size of the footprint that it took up in co-marketing, for example. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With our partners. They're like, too much space. Yeah. Right? Your logo's too big. And just for the audience who may not yet know, though I'm going to dig into it in a second, And when you talk about co-marketing with partners, let them know who you're talking about. Oh, so this would be device makers across various product categories, whether it's smartphones or PCs.

41:42So it's Microsoft. It's Microsoft. It's Samsung. It's Xiaomi. It's BMW. Right. It's Meta. It's Ray-Ban. It's so many different brands. Try to fit in the pleasure of Snapdragon on somebody's eyeglass. Right. Exactly. 37 characters or whatever. And a fireball. And another problem was that in certain languages, one word translated and the other didn't. So that was problematic, especially in our Asian markets, which is where we started to build the brand. And so having Qualcomm Xiaolong together didn't really work. And so there was, you know, translatability problems, size problems. Yeah. And and and so we did research when we separated the two.

42:34There was a thought, I think, at first that having Qualcomm attached would actually create more value for the brand and would lift the brand in our audience's minds. Sorry to interrupt, but when you say in our audience's mind, it was a brand new audience, unless you were in fact talking to the capital markets, right? Because it was for the first time, to my knowledge, a consumer audience, different relationship with the OEMs. But the only people I would think, because consumers are probably less aware of Qualcomm because it's a B2B brand. Like what audience would that create more value for? Well, we had a certain amount of awareness infinity in Asia for the brands.

43:16Oh, is that right? Okay. I'm so American. That's okay. So Snapdragon has existed for 16, 17 years, and it started percolating in Asia. The brand was created with Asia in mind, right? The color red, the fireball, which is sort of a yin and a yang symbol. Snapdragon being a flower and obviously having the word dragon in it. Dragon, obviously, in folklore in Asia is a very powerful symbol and well-liked. So a lot of that work, by the way, way before my time, I didn't create the brand or the logo or the ethos for it originally. That was already done when I joined Qualcomm. But kudos and bravo to whoever did it.

43:59So there was a certain amount of awareness. But what we found when we went out and studied with those consumers was that not only having And Qualcomm on top of it or stacked on top of it didn't add value or didn't bring more value to the brand. It actually created more problems and actually created destruction. Yeah. And so because we tested them separately and we tested them together. And so we decided to separate. And that was in 2020, 2021. one. And we basically decided that Snapdragon needed to stand on its own, be its own thing. And we were going to build it in the context of the product categories where it lives on the path that we've taken it on and where we are today with it.

44:50So one thing I will say is when we made the decision, we looked at examples of who's done this before or who has the similar challenge. And we really sort of use the Microsoft Xbox example as the example that sort of guided us towards the conclusion that we went to, which is Xbox is Xbox. Don't mess with it. Yeah. Right. It's got its audience. As opposed to PlayStation, for example, which is Sony PlayStation. As opposed to PlayStation, which is Sony PlayStation, where master brand does provide that value because you created PlayStation under the umbrella of the Sony brand ethos. Xbox was Xbox.

45:27Yeah. Before it was Microsoft Xbox. Yeah. It was not of a kind. Was not of a kind. Yeah. And so the attribution was really very, it was Xbox-led Microsoft attribution at the very, very end of a message, whatever that might, verbally or visually. And so that's the path that we went down is we kind of used the Xbox-Microsoft example. Uh, and, and so we started building Snapdragon on its own and, and we, you know, we have audience separation, we have brand architecture. Uh, we were a branded house. Now we are more of a house of brands. We have now two product brands underneath the Qualcomm umbrella with Dragon Wing being our second one.

46:12And we're about to launch a third for our data center products in about two weeks. Um, so we will have three product brands that sit under the Qualcomm, you know, umbrella. and what we've done with Snapdragon, which I would argue we've had a certain amount of success with consumers and creators in those audiences, Dragon Wing is more BDMs and more of a business to human sort of brand. It's industrial, it's robotics, it's manufacturing, it's retail, it's logistics. It's really about solutions to business and enterprise. Whereas the data center brand really is meant for the hyperscalers and the data center ecosystem audience.

46:55And so each of them will have their distinct identities. And the struggle that we have now is how do, especially with Snapdragon, and as we nurture Dragon Wing and we introduce our new brand, how do we make sure that all of them are accretive to Qualcomm as a company? I don't think we've done a good job there yet. Why? I mean, obviously it's not without significant challenge, strategic and execute strategically and executionally. But if, if you were to, um, I guess, answer the question, what will it take to do a better job moving forward? What, what's required? Uh, I think we, we need to figure out a way, uh, across multiple vectors of, of building association between the two, the goodness that we've built into Snapdragon, the fact that we've showed up on brand Z for the first time last year.

47:49Very cool. And I've heard a little rumors that we made it again. And Brand Z, for the audience who may not know, is... Oh, it's Kantar's global valuable brands sort of list ranking. And it's similar to Interbrand, but it's more focused, I think, on more consumer-facing brands. And it measures brand value. And they use different measurements and vectors and things like that. I'm not going to lie. I tend to find the methodology of some of those companies. I'll keep which ones quiet. Just so full of shit. It's hard to figure out sometimes how they're measuring, to be honest with you. I mean, it's just like in what world, and with apologies to my friends at some, you know, I think I can think of T-Mobile.

48:36So sorry, Uli. Sorry, Mike. Like, in what world is the T-Mobile brand more valuable than the Coca-Cola brand and McDonald's brand cumulatively? Like, only a world where your methodology is stupid as fuck. That's true. That's true. But the fact that we even showed up, for me, it's like, okay, wow, there is recognition there. Yeah, no, no, it's great. And then on Interbrand, Qualcomm showed up on Interbrand for the first time in 40 years, in 2025. Do you think some of that's a function on the Qualcomm side of the shift you guys made that let you get past the velvet rope of the AI? Well, it happened before that.

49:16But the shift preceded getting past the rope. Yes. The shift preceded us being led into the chat room. Yeah. And Interbrand saw that, right? Because what drove that, you know, because they look at a company for three years before, prior to considering them for the list, and they watch sort of what's going on. And they actually broke it down very, very logically. For me, it's like they said 60%, back to the question of how do I build better association between Snapdragon and Qualcomm, and in the future, Dragon Wing and et cetera, about 60 % of what drove, you know, So Interbrand and their measurement structure to place Qualcomm at number 39 was Snapdragon and the work that we had done there and the value we created there.

50:01The other 40 % were things like our diversification strategy, our partnerships with major other brands and companies. There were more company type of metrics, more Qualcomm types of things. And then, of course, our financial performance and things like that. So those things coming together landed, because they only do the company level at Interbrand. And since we don't report financials on Snapdragon as a separate company or entity, it all ladders up. And that's how sort of they came together to assess our brand value as a company and then where we would kind of land or if we would land on the Interbrand 100.

50:40And so that was very interesting to me. And we did a deep dive with Gonzalo and the team on that. I tend to think that their methodology is very solid. And I understand why we wouldn't have appeared prior. So based on their methodology and how they measure. But that's one signal to me that was like, okay, they saw it. They picked it up through how they measure, but Wall Street isn't. So I need to do a better job. We need to do a better job there. And so one of the things I've got my team working on now with IR as well as even agency partners, et cetera, is how do we, in telling the Qualcomm story, how do we tell the Snapdragon story in the context of Qualcomm?

51:25We were so focused on making sure Snapdragon was Snapdragon, and I think we erred on keeping Qualcomm out of that story. And it's great as a standalone consumer-facing brand. Consumers don't need to know both, right? They don't need to know that this amazing chip that powers this amazing device that is called Snapdragon necessarily comes from a company called Qualcomm. Right. But they may not need to know that, but the people who are measuring us on... They need to know it. They need to know that. Yeah, yeah. And so bringing that together, we rarely mentioned it, for example, in our earnings scripts, right?

52:03We rarely mentioned the Snapdragon products that were driving the results by name. We talked about our business lines. We talked about categories and industries, but we didn't say, hey, the launch of the Snapdragon 8 or X series for the PC space drove this. Well, that's a great segue to one of what will be our last questions, which is in not branding that part of the business line. Right. There was value didn't accrue to the brand, either the parent brand or Snapdragon. dragon and it's it's a context of brand value that i have i don't know that i've given a shit ton of thought to and it's super interesting but on the topic of brand you you've talked um and you and i have had this conversation over years but you've talked about how brands need to have a soul and you said purpose isn't optional especially for younger generations but of course you know A lot of CEOs and CFOs, especially of the world's biggest companies, they hear soul and they hear purpose and they think, you know, give me a fucking break.

53:14It's soft. It's unmeasurable. It's squishy. A distraction from the engineering and the product. So I'm wondering what advice, I don't want to make it about what you do internally at Qualcomm. Sure. But what advice would you have both to the CMOs and marketers in the audience, but also the CEOs and CFOs in the audience, I guess to the CMOs, understanding how to communicate the value of soul. Let's just use that word, the enterprise value, the accretive value. And then, you know, as a follow up for the CEOs, CFOs, what do they need to better understand about this so that they can realize the value upside?

53:53But it's a it's a great question, I would say, because I think at the Snapdragon level, we're fairly new on this journey. One of the things that we've learned and you can't ignore it if you're if you're looking at, you know, young millennial Gen Z, Gen Alpha. Not only do they want their products of the brands that they associate themselves with to deliver a value proposition that is important to them. So deliver the goods to them at a functional level, at a functional level. But they also want to know that the company behind this product is also doing good. And for others. So it's not good enough to have a good product.

54:34You also have to be perceived as also doing good. And as you talk about doing good, what's your definition of that? Is that the eradication of negatives, the creation of positives? Is it philanthropic efforts or is it just making the world a better place? and sometimes putting a smile on someone's face is doing good? I mean, I think it can be all of the above or a portion of those based on where you naturally fit. I think what we do as a company in our philosophy, engineering human progress, which is our, you know, our sort of our master tagline, in its sense is doing good. You know, we are making the world a better place because of what we do every day.

55:15We're allowing people to communicate and connect with each other. We're allowing people to have access to information, to friends and family, to, you know, to to their health care providers. We're creating access and we're democratizing access to technology, which in itself is a good thing. But so how do you you know, if you've got that, if it's a layer cake approach and you've got that sort of foundational cake there, how do you sort of dress it up and how do you sort of add layers to it and frosting and all those types of things? so that you can put an exclamation point behind that or in front of that.

55:52And I would say that first, foremost, it's find areas where you can intersect, where your product or your company can actually provide value to whatever that purpose is. Don't force yourself into something. It's easy to throw your logo on a cause and feel good about that. But I think people see through that as - Yeah, with no reason to feel good about it because it don't mean shit. Right. It don't mean shit. And so we are very purposeful, speaking of purpose, in how we accentuate or build that layer cake. And I'll give you two examples. With Snapdragon, as you look at the brand ethos, you know, we're like, great product, check, right?

56:32Amazing technology, check. Cool brand, great ethos, color, visual identity, right? Check. all these things, all these sort of emotional attributes, uh, were, were in really good shape. Soul was a little empty. Um, and by soul, do you kind of mean emotional depth and resonance? Emotional depth. And yeah, I get it. You technology, it's amazing. If it, if, if you took it out of my device, my device would just be stupid and not really do what I wanted to do. um that's cool but what else uh and so we when we when we just started to kind of ask ourselves that question what else we went and looked at okay so how do we then put that exclamation point and you know behind that and uh and so we looked at really where we could leverage what we do in the spirit of and in the service of a cause that a resonates with people B is brand safe for us, because I think that's really important.

57:37People talk about brand safety all the time in the context of making decisions in the business sort of narrative, but you also have to make those decisions with regards to who you associate with and what types of organizations you associate with, because it's easy to alienate. You've talked about this. It's easy to alienate upwards of 50 plus percent. Yes. Of your audience at any given time. Yes. And if you're okay with that piece is just given your global purview and, and is that particularly true in America or is it really a global phenomenon? Oh, I think it's a global phenomenon. I think it's a global phenomenon.

58:15I think it's worse in some places. I think you can alienate like 70 % of your audience in some countries just by the actions that you take. And I'll give you an example of how we went through this process with REDD. Product REDD. Product REDD. Yeah. So Product REDD, obviously, organizations have been around for 20 years. This year is its 20th birthday, started by Bonham, brought Bobby Shriver. And it's with a simple purpose, right? Bring private enterprise into the global fight against HIV and AIDS, which after, you know, Rock Hudson in the 80s and the stigma sort of faded with regards to... I mean, I should probably ask you to explain who Rock Hudson is for our audience, but I'm not going to Google it.

58:56And it's just. It was an actor. Yeah. Summer noun. Yeah. And after sort of the stigma had faded around the disease, it's simple purpose is to eradicate it. Yeah. Right. And especially when it came to where it was spreading rampantly in Africa. And and so the global fund is the more public sector part of that effort where they go around to governments and get governments to commit to this this fight. Bono and Bobby Shriver, you know, on a ski slope and Davos decided, hey, well, let's get, how do we get companies involved? How do we get the private sector involved? So they found a product, Reddit.

59:32Yeah. And you remember in the 80s, you know, him and Oprah and whatever, you know, walking down the streets and. In the 80s or the odds? Maybe the 90s. It was the 20s. It launched in the odds. Yeah. Sorry. It launched in the odds. Sorry. I'm, yeah, I'm thinking way too far back. But, but it launched with much fanfare. Yeah. As a brand. It was huge. Right. Huge. and there was red products popping up everywhere. And then over time, the machine got started, right? So they were generating upwards of, well, almost a billion dollars now to the Global Fund through their efforts, which is amazing, to eradicate and fight HIV and AIDS.

1:00:11And they've expanded into other things like vaccination and women's health and other things like that. So it's even gone broader with its mission. So when we were looking at who we could associate ourselves as and who we can help, actually. We looked at REDD's mission, which is the broader mission of eradicating health and justice, right? And we said, who on this planet? Now, maybe there are some people. But for the vast majority of people, who would disagree with that, right? Getting people healthy, making people healthy, keeping people healthy, eradicating this terrible disease. Well, arguably Bobby's cousin might.

1:00:53Might, but it's pretty safe. Yeah. Right. And it's come so far, right? And where, you know, it's a brand safe place to play. And we could actually help. And so that's why it made sense for us. what then is the counsel to the ceo and cfo who views this as soft and squishy and a dilution of resources uh so i i would say um it's not just well it's not just a matter of of associating yourself to a and and and hitching your your you know your your your wagon to a cause horse but how you bring that to life and how you activate it in in service of the brand and the products that you sell. In the case of Red, we came up with this amazing plan with them where we took one of the assets that we have as a marketing asset, which is the front of shirt for Manchester United, which that piece of sports marketing real estate, each time it showed on a home match is equivalent to one Super Bowl ad in AVE.

1:02:01And we gifted it to Red. And then we built a whole activation plan around that. And the Red match is played once a season with the men's team and the women's team and the amplification and the global awareness we're bringing back to red. For red is amazing. But for us, we've measured that that match where we take our brand off the jersey and put reds on it. And this just happened a couple of weeks ago on the Monday Night Football match in the UK. More people were talking about Snapdragon during that match than on any single match during the season where our logo was on the front of Jersey. That's interesting.

1:02:41Because of what we did. Yeah, and what you didn't do. And what we didn't do. Yeah. And so the sentiment analysis, the chatter on, you know, Reddit and on Instagram and on TikTok and was this amazing sort of more people are talking. And then we had people coming out of the woodwork saying, this is an amazing example of someone doing something because it's the right thing to do, taking that risk and the benefit being that, you know, that the credit is coming full circle, we're doing it because we want to help Red, you know, build awareness with a whole new generation of people. And that's why we're doing it.

1:03:21So the purpose and the rationale is pure. But the results and the impact that we're having, not only for Red, but for ourselves, is exponentially more positive than if we hadn't done it. But let me ask you a question. I would think there are two purposes because if you were doing it without commercialization and commercial upside in mind, you'd do it through a different part of the organization than marketing. You'd do it through the foundation, right? And I think, and, you know, I've been in the quote unquote purpose space since day, literally day two of my career um started the purpose practice at endeavor and and it just it really does fucking amaze me that putting aside the very real realities of divisions and being mindful um and by the way i think it's okay to alienate someone as as bill brown burnback said you know the late great um if you stand for everything you won't mean some version of if If you stand for everything, you'll mean nothing to anyone.

1:04:28A lesson that I think Target has learned to the destruction of value. But you do well by doing good. Yeah, absolutely. If doing good is done well. Is done well. Yeah. And I think that's the other side of the coin, right? You have to execute it well. Yes. As with everything. As with everything. And I think, and this is the second season we've had our partnership with Red, and I think it was phenomenal. And it does, you know, it will manifest itself in more people feeling positive about Snapdragon and when they're out there looking for their next device. If it comes up in their minds that, you know what, beyond asking the product has Snapdragon inside of it because of what we bring to the table for them personally and selfishly.

1:05:08But you know what, I'm going to buy it also because I saw this match and I saw what they did for Red. And personally, I had a friend, family member, cousin, whatever, who was afflicted with this or, you know, is having an issue that's related to this cause. And so I'm in. Well, what's so interesting is you talk about them feeling good. And so many, a CEO and CFO and board for that matter, understand how important it is for the capital markets to feel good. Absolutely. And yet they dismiss it as a soft, squishy thing when an end user feels good. Likeability is very valuable. And look, you know, no matter who you're talking to, whatever community or audience, people age out.

1:05:55Yeah. And you have a whole new crop of people and these people's attitudes are different. Right. And you look at the analysts of tomorrow, the financial analysts of tomorrow sitting right here around us in this studio are in their 20s. Right now. It's such a good point. Right. And they have different attitudes and different behaviors than, you know, 20 years ago. And so you can't ignore that. Right. This doesn't stand still. It moves constantly. So understanding that and moving with it is super important, which ties perfectly to where this conversation started, which then brings me to the end of the conversation.

1:06:34And the question we ask everybody as we end every episode. Let's do it. And I should ask if Oscar has any questions for you. Oscar, what do you think? He did yawn a couple of times, I'm just going to say. Did we bore you? Yeah, he's easily bored, easily distracted. He looks pretty, he's feeling good right now. Yeah, he's definitely feeling good. Okay, so you don't have to answer this through a business lens any way you want. The only requirement is that you think about tomorrow, right? Which is not a year from now, but tomorrow. If you had all the power in the world and you could create anything tomorrow, what would it be?

1:07:11And then, of course, the other side of the coin is what would you destroy tomorrow? Tomorrow, I'm going to start with create. I thought about this a little bit. I would create a solution. I don't know how to put this, but I would create the ability to not have jet lag. I mean you do travel more than anyone I know and I know a lot of people who travel a lot yeah and I try with routines and things like that but if you could just eliminate that whole gravitational pull thing as you're driving remember you know Armand Hammer who is probably dead for decades now but was you know CEO of Armand Hammer yes did a lot of business around the world and he never changed his clock.

1:07:58Right. So no matter where in the world he was, he had a meeting at nine o 'clock in the morning on his body clock, even if it was two in the morning in that market. Right. Um, and that was, that was the way he did it. Those days are gone. And you know, with all your success, you're, you're not, uh, your name's not on a package. So I don't know that you can pull it off, but all right. What about destroy? Uh, I would destroy the ability for AI to reach super intelligence. Why? I don't think it's needed. I just don't think, I think doing something just to do something, I'm going to reference Oppenheimer here for a second.

1:08:37Doing something just to do something is very dangerous. And look, we're in the business of AI, right? But I think augmented intelligence, I think it's helpful. It can be helpful if done right. Who doesn't want some help, right? I'll take all I can get. All I get. And sometimes it's getting help from something that's synthetic is better than getting help from something that's human because it doesn't judge. But I think superintelligence for the sake of superintelligence is very dangerous. So it's not so much that it's not needed. It's that it's not needed and it's very dangerous. Yes. I think, you know, human intelligence has gotten us for better or for worse this far.

1:09:20Right. And I think it will continue to. Uh, and so why, why pursue something just for the sake of pursuing it? Do you think it's being pursued for the sake of pursuing it or? I think some people are. Yeah. Just, I mean, just to listen to them speak. Right. Yeah. It's a little scary. Yeah. It's a lot scary. Well, on that note, my friends, um, Oscar and I want to. But the jet lag thing for sure. Yeah. I mean, by the way, if that was a stock I'd buy in. Right. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. I'm all in, man. I mean, I'm, I'm just tired all the time. Don McGuire, thank you so much. Thanks, Seth. Thanks for having me.

1:09:57Thanks, Oscar. Before we go, consider this. If you've ever been to a party, the odds that you've consumed a beverage out of a red Solo Cup are crazy high. And rare is it, rare is it, that something so cheap, utilitarian, ubiquitous, and disposable becomes so sustainably and culturally iconic. The cups, which are made by the aptly named Solo Cup Company, come in a host of colors, but red. Red makes up about 60 % of sales. And despite red being the color of so many iconic brands from Coca-Cola to Lego, Adobe, and Marvel, the red here came to be not because of anything anyone would call a marketing decision, but because in the mid-70s, one of the company's packaging executives, a gent by the name of Robert Holtzman, brought four colored cups home to his kids, and they voted for the color they liked best.

1:10:47While he preferred blue, his kids chose red, beating out his blue, yellow, and peach. And peach just seems like a terrible idea. With a quick note to those CEOs listening, this does not mean your kids who aren't the audience should be voting on the work your CMOs and agencies are doing, because this too is a terrible idea. Back to the cup. For the cup's white interior, that was an engineering call. And the ridges the internet has come to swear our poor line markers aren't. They were designed for grip. So through a sequence of decisions, few would consider marketing, but all of which were, cultural, brand, and monetary value have accrued across decades.

1:11:26Cheers to that. Today's episode was produced by Art Chung, Julian Villar, Jim Mackle, Manolo Moreno, Brandon McFarlane, and Ashley Futterman from the Vox Media Podcast Network and the Wisdomist Company. Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweet Green's fall harvest menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed Brussels and crave worthy flavors in the autumn harvest bowl, maple glazed salmon plate and roasted bacon Brussels side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to Sweet Green featuring fall's best dressed.

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