Dare to build work that outlasts you - Nils Leonard

0:08When I say loud, I don't mean in a brash, possibly American way. I just mean be out there, be heard. If you're happy writing as opposed to speaking, then write. If you're happy publishing, do that. If you're happy to make an image a day, do that. But constantly be out there, I think is important. I mean this like back to our original conversation, be making things that appeal to you first, not to clients. Don't try and make things that are clever for clients. Make things for you that move you and everything else will follow. All the best lessons in the world, all the coolest bands, the coolest people, the coolest chefs, they never made food for their audience.

0:45They made it for themselves and their audience fucking loved it.

0:51welcome to daring forever a podcast about being human wired for wonder capable of courage perpetually becoming it's about the waves that look us under and the strange stubborn grace with which we surface my name is radian malinich i'm an author creative and an eternally curious human being on a mission to speak to incredible people whom i call forever daring humans those in pursuit of an extraordinary life. Every week I share an interview that is packed with amazing stories, value, and I can only ask you, how will you dare forever? This podcast is inspired by my upcoming book titled Daring Forever, which is now available for pre-order out in October.

1:37Today on Daring Forever, I'm joined by Nils Leonard, creator-founder of Ancommon Creative Studio, with offices in London, New York, and Stockholm. Uncommon's work spans design, advertising, film and even art shown at Venice Biennale. Nils doesn't want to win the opening weekend. He wants to make reference points, work that people still talk about decades later. We talk about why he lets himself treat every single brief as a chance to matter, why the question worth asking new client is, why are you here? And his method for flashing out fake client inquiries too. We also chatted about his recent bacteria heist behind the off-festival identity.

2:16This conversation is about building work that outlasts you. It's my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Nils Leonard.

2:27Hey Nils, welcome to Daring Forever. How are you doing? I'm good, thank you mate. Good to see you. Good stuff. Good to see you here. So the show is, film around the title of my new book called Daring Forever and tell every single guest on this season so far that they're the most fitting guests for the season because a purpose to look for people who are doing the things that I feel they've been put on this planet for and in your case you've been going one of the very big leading voices in our industry doing what it feels like that you want to do what you feel like you want to do so if someone have not heard of Nils Leonard who are you what would you do how would you introduce yourself my name is Nils Leonard I'm the creative founder of Uncommon Creative Studio I started the studio with Lucy and Natalie we are still the only majority female founded studio of our size in Europe probably the world I'd argue but let's see that's up to debate I'm sure.

3:14I've been going about nine years this year we have three studios in Stockholm London and New York prior to that I was creative chairman of a place called Grey London which was a big traditional ad agency that I grew to a certain point and I think that's where I learned all my lessons but that's sort of me now we make a mix of stuff fully fledged design practice global design practice we make advertising and comms we do PR we do brand narrative and strategy we do feature films we do what we call narrative objects and experiences and we make art most recently exhibiting at the Venice Biennale. Well how do you keep all of it under I know some one direction because I like that you call it uncommon and I remember the time when you guys left grey and started on your own I believe you had to do a bit of a gardening leaf so you were trying to make disposable coffee pots is that right and then you got uncommon because in a way what I've witnessed you do in the recent years it's like you're the diversity of the output you said that is the design and comms but I feel like It's so much more.

4:11And I think it's growing. I think, is it curiosity driven? Is it demand driven? How does it go? Pretty good question, man. So you're not wrong. And thank you for doing your research. We had long enough off. And this is quite an important point, I think. We had long enough off leaving Gray to not just start Gray Part 2. I think if we'd have been told to stay off for a month, we'd probably have just opened what we thought was quite good and that would have been Gray. And we had long enough to ask ourselves some quite big questions. and I was like well what do I really wish I could build and I was haunted by this question that somebody asked me years before in a pitch they said Nils how do I go from being a brand that sells crap to people to being a brand that people wish existed and then I thought about that question quite a lot and you might have heard me talk about this in the past the truth is though I thought well never mind you name an agency or studio that the real world wishes existed I thought really really hard about it like the real world the actual real world wishes existed And I was like, well, what would that have to make?

5:10For your wife, lover, sister, brother, whoever, to know about us and like us, what would we have had to have done? Well, first of all, I don't think the real world likes ad agencies. They're trying to skip it. There's a button for that. If you disagree with me, it's moot because there's a button trying to skip our entire industry. They're sick of it. Studios make and studios build things and studios contribute and they do it with or without clients. And so I was obsessed with that. and I reversed back from this idea of a brand that people in the real world would wish existed and I was like well I would have wanted to have made films I'd have wanted to have made objects and experiences that will stand the test of time and arguably more than anything I'd have wanted to have made what we call reference points which is the idea that we'll make works that isn't just good around launch but hopefully comes up in five ten years maybe even 25 if we're lucky from when they were made and that's the fantasy this is a great segue to the only one question actually I've got prepared and I'll see a reference when you talk about reference points is referencing Anna Wintour because in your own words you say you don't want to win the opening weekend you want to be thought of in five years time about a certain reference point and in Anna's quote she says if you're an overnight sensation you can be yesterday's news in no time whereas building something slowly and carefully that has value and quality that's what's going to have legs and I want to know how would you separate the now versus the future and the legacy because you creating something that if you want it to be of a greater quality of a greater legacy does it feel like a sort of extra weight on your shoulders how does it feel it feels like a privilege i just don't think most of us give ourselves a permission i don't separate them i think the truth is that every thing you do and every minute you have is a chance really and if you imagine every piece of work can either contribute to some tapestry of your life or just fill up someone else's list and that the only difference between those two things is how you decide to view your job and that's in your power, not theirs, why would you do it any other way?

7:11I went to a German festival for creativity and they did the most amazing thing just down the left-hand side of the wall at this festival. I can't remember which one it was. Maybe Ciclopet. I can't remember. They just had fly posters with blank gravestones on it and someone at the end had written their name and then put content solutions. beneath it and I was like whether you like it or not we all spend all these hours doing all this stuff and so I didn't want to just feel like all I helped do was build some unambitious playing it safe board guy fill up his list that's just of no interest to me or anybody at the studio so it was very much about viewing all of the work we make as an opportunity to really matter if I'm honest that's what this is all about I like your answer because saying it's privilege rather than a self-imposed burden or self-imposed limitation because i think we go through our lives in these stages where when you self-accept who you are and what you can do that gives you a better platform of actually then seeing this as a privilege how do you create the right platform for people to actually be on that mission with you when you fly in the flag of no this is a privilege well i think that's lovely thank you and i think the mission has to be far enough away it has to be incredibly clear but it also has to be bigger than the industry and that's why a lot of our language and a lot of our intent we think very hard about it do i don't really believe in luck and i also don't believe in we make good work good work is too wide a term what does that mean your version of it will be completely different to mine so what i wanted to do was have something that was completely agnostic of geography everybody wakes up in the morning and the people that work at the studio want to matter and they want to make things that someone else is going to remark on.

8:52We said when we were born, we wanted to work on the most important and influential briefs of our time. But now that's not, that's actually not for everyone. It's not. Some people don't want to do that. Some people are scared shitless of that. Some people want to go to work and come home and not think about it. And that's fine. But the people at this studio, we get out of bed in the morning to take those briefs on. Now that used to be a complete delusion, by the way, that line. And what I've worked out is the act of wanting to makes it far more likely to happen. And that sounds incredibly stupid to say, but the act of trying to make reference point work means you're more likely to make reference point work, dude.

9:28And most of us don't give ourselves permission. I mean, it sounds like you're sending a signal to the universe. If you want it enough, it will come to you. I think that's absolutely it. Because you said, yeah, the definition of good enough work is different to many different people. And I think in our pre-conversation, you mentioned Rick Rubin. And I think he had a conversation with Murphy McConaughey on his podcast. And McConaughey says, when I start a project, I want to establish what excellence means to the other side. what does excellence means to the other people and when you think about it if you're about to do it with every single briefing every single project how good you want it to be i'm like you can actually get a gauge of actually what other people on the other side really want but then isn't it up to us to actually make that excellence higher in their eyes because it could be as good as we can really really want it to be right i think most of the problems in this industry stem from not making it clear what success looks like it's the question i ask all the time in the very first meeting with the client, which is what does success look like?

10:19And don't say sent uplift in the sales of red cars, because that's not really what you've got in your head. A lot of the time they've got themselves on the cover of Fast Company, or they've got a promotion, or they've got a series of influence, or they're stood on stage reading a keynote. And I think these things are far more telling as to what the real brief is when you work with people. But I think if you don't have that conversation, I honestly think that's where 80 % of the industry's woes come from, which is I can't believe it. Fucking client didn't buy my idea. It's like, well, they never came to you for your idea what if they came to you for low cost content what if they came to you for integration what if they came to you for synergy none of which are what you're selling and so if you don't have that chat i think you are about to write off a lot of hours probably on something you don't want to be doing how do you do with a client who wants to sell 14 more red cars well find out if they want to sell 14 more red cars the way we would the hardest thing is i used to remember being at gray man and here's a really telling thing when people would come to see me i would never say why are you here not once so i would say thank you for coming so glad to see you do you want to hear a bit about me let me show you my stuff i was so desperate just to win i'd never really inquired as to what i was winning and the reason that's a problem is they were like what if they said well the reason i'm here is all that panten work i'd have been like well that panten work back at gray was shit and i have no interest in making any more of that so uncommon now i say why are you here if they don't say hey i saw you speak or i saw this thing you did or i saw british airways windows or I saw H &M once I can see, we tend to not work with them because it usually limits our ability to make our best work.

11:51Whereas when they say, hey Nils, I saw Britain get talking, that for me is exactly what we're after except a bit like this. I already know we're on the same task. So they'll have business objectives, dude. It's not like our clients turn up without them, but it's how they want to achieve it. The very first meeting I had with an airline client and he was like, it wasn't the one we ended up working with, by the way, who were brilliant. It was a different one, who should, by the way, be perfectly fine with what I'm about to mention, but they weren't. And he was like, why do you keep talking about bravery and fame?

12:19You keep talking about fame. And I'm like, well, because I think fame's an intrinsically important part of what we do here. And he's like, but what if I said I wanted some work that wasn't really that famous? I'd be like, well, why are you sat in our studio? Literally, why are you here? It's the very lifeblood of this business. So I think it's quite important to have those conversations. With the breeze and with the mission that you said, basically, you want an agency to be bigger than the industry. that was the thing for the offset. I think one of your swan songs in grey was the invisible... Life paint.

12:47Life paint. When it comes to selling ideas like these, because that was such an important thing for Volvo and for you, how do you sell the invisible to the visible?

12:58Nils Leonard:We'll be back after a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Lux Coffee Co. The first creative speciality comfy company building a platform to shine the light on emerging global talent with a mission to make a positive impact on a creative industry and beyond. Lax Coffee Co. offers exceptional coffee sourced from around the world through ethical and sustainable practices. And you can discover the current range of signature blends and single origins, coffee hardware and accessories along with exceptional apparel at laxcoffee.co.uk. You can use the code podcast to get 15 % off your first order.

13:49other people talk about risk or scary ideas we try to remove the concept of fear here so we have a quote in every deck and it's the ethos of the studio and it's from death of a salesman and there's a bit in that book or play i don't know if you've seen it where they're all sat around and they don't give a shit and he yells at them i'm not interested in stories about the past or any crap of that kind because the woods are burning and he wants them to be moved by the burning woods into doing something different and now all our work at its best reacts to the world as it is it doesn't try to just fit in and be comfortable we try to look for the tensions and we try to look for friction points so with volvo in mind they're a company known for safety and innovation yet cyclists are dying on the roads particularly in the uk and they've got innovations in the car that help avoid that but what else could they do at that point people in london were starting to ride more and more bikes boris bikes had just been introduced and everyone was riding them and so we realized there was this friction between a car company trying to grow and stand for it stood for but yet rising bike death and we found this spray and they used it to spray antler horns in the nordic regions that was what it was for because if you hit a deer or a massive reindeer it will write your car off it'll kill the deer it's a nightmare they're huge and so these things were designed to glow in the dark and we found this brand we said well look what can we adapt this so it worked on clothing without ruining it and the guys at albedo worked out how to do it and so we then spent the next few months persuading volvo to do it here's the thing i wish we'd have just done it differently now so i wish i'd have gone to albedo and i said i'm going to do this thing called life paint and we'd struck a deal and then i'd have gone to volvo and said i'm going to do life paint would you like to be the brand that does it with us instead of can we do life paint there's a very big difference and I think that would have changed the dynamic we'd have made more money out of it for sure but I think that would have changed the dynamic and taught people a lot more I remember at the time people in the industry some of the trade mags still can't get their heads around the fact that we actually made that they're like but did you and is it real and I just don't think they understood it as a piece of work which taught me a lot about the limitations by the way of the UK industry press but mainly for me I think it's about empowerment realizing that we can go off and have these ideas and never mind begging our clients to make them we can go make them and then ask our clients in a very different position of power whether they'd like to come along for the ride and that for me is a massively important part but the trick to your original question sorry for rambling is that's okay you've got to find a way to answer their problem and to answer their needs in a way that makes them have to do it not want to do it you have to find a way to make it the only solution not the brave one i don't buy that bravery score thing i never have i'm much more about how do i create the conditions in which you don't even think this is brave you just think this is the only way well that's obviously i remember that project from years ago and being so so clearly volvo so clearly aligned with the brand when you talked about earlier about the airline man who was in your office makes me think of new business and when i look at the uncommon website i can't find any work on it there's some stuff on your instagram i know what you guys do through the press and linkedin how does it work how do people find what you do because yes you can find an amazing campaign but How do people get all the way to you from something they've seen?

16:58Not having a website that works like everyone else's is one of the best things we ever did. So we have a website now, I'd argue. For us, it is a little bit better than it was. But for three years, it was a bouncing flag. That was it. It was just a bouncing flag with a contact address. And it was incredible, dude. What it forced people to do is go online and find our work. Or if they'd found our work, it forced them to find more. And now that, it requires effort. But what it meant is they really wanted us when they found us. What it also did was flush out liars. So I remember some new business calls where people would be like, oh, Nils, now I've seen all your work.

17:33It's all very uncommon. It's all on your website. I've seen it all. And I just want to, I would be like, sorry, just let me just ask. Sorry, you haven't though, have you? You haven't seen it because it's not on the fucking website because there's no work on the website. And it would flush out the people that we were just on a list. It saved us a lot of time. If you've got Billy the liar now, because we talk to you on a call, how did they find you? What is the first point of call that I should ever say? Is this very common? Most of our clients now see a piece of work in some capacity, either in real life or on LinkedIn or someone celebrates it somewhere else.

18:05And they check down who did it because there's enough press about us to make sure that they know that. I think your own PR and your own narrative are incredibly important. We have this phrase, which is we are our most important client. It's really important to me that we are known for our work and seen. and most of our clients now literally they'll hit up the hello email or they'll hit me up directly on social media and they'll just say nils i saw ba windows and i want a bit of that our instagram client really really talented partner of ours had seen the british airways outdoor work and just said i just think it's amazing and iconic and can we have some of that please so that's led to all the work we're doing currently and that's been amazing so the majority of the time that's how it comes and that's a very healthy way to do new business by the way if the clients are coming to you for your work not for endless pitching the intermediaries would have you believe differently but i can promise you now if your work's famous enough you don't need to pitch so in a world of agencies employing scaling strategists and all the growth people that doesn't really apply to you does it well i don't think that's true i don't think agencies doing that i think they're all shrinking and crumbling i think the majority of the holding groups are in real trouble because for the last five to ten years they've been about something other than creativity they've been about scaling low-cost content they've been about integration they've been about all this other crap now that doesn't mean we're not those things but that they've been doing that instead of being creative yeah maybe i should have said i mean about branding agencies like branding agencies are going actually better than ad agencies that's for sure in a way of listening to business as creatives where do we find clues where do we actually get properly ingrained i really believed it was important that creatives knew how their businesses worked.

19:45And what I mean by that is you don't have to understand the P &L, you don't have to be best mates with the finance director or any of that shit, but you do need to understand whether creativity makes money in your business or not, whether something else does. Now, uncommon, we are hired, paid for, rewarded heavily for creative thinking. That's why people come. And so as a result, I know if that's the special source of our studio, I know that we are able to have the conversations we're able to have and stand on our own two feet. The danger is if you look up some days and you ask yourself a real question, which is how does this company make money?

20:20If they don't make money from creativity, they actually make money from something else. Then you have to be aware it's very unlikely people are going to come to you for creativity. They're just not going to come for that. So I think that for me is key. But Gilbert and George said the most amazing thing. They said, make the world to believe in you and to pay heavily for the privileged, the artists. And I love that phrase. I just think the only way you do that is by understanding what's for sale. I think creatives too often don't understand money and quite frankly avoid it. Until I started the studio, I'd not been in the room when hands were shaken over the deal.

20:54I just hadn't. How most agencies and studios work is the creatives will go and do their bit and then sometime afterward, the business and the finance people will have a conversation and then make a deal or not. And week two of Uncommon, I got on my Vespero to the other side of London and shook hands with a client and talked about money and it brought me to tears because it was like ah all that stuff I just did on this laptop is of that much worth and I thought that was thrilling and honestly it dawned on me it was the first time I'd ever done it and the moment you do it you become very very aware of your own value which I think is really really good for creatives.

21:28So when you talk about creativity and money has your creativity changed, improved, turbocharged, supercharged because now you're in charge of putting a price on it yeah i'm really aware of a level i want to play at which is a very high level i think at the studio we're very quick and we are very prolific and we make work of a very high divisive provocative standard i think and you either like it or you kind of don't but that's what we do and i think as a result we're very also aware that we are quite rare there aren't many of us doing it and there certainly aren't many people doing it like we do now there are other good companies that's not what i'm saying i'm saying there are some great companies but there's definitely not another uncommon and i think i know that's a value and i know that in a world where the majority of the world is becoming more similar because of our inputs all our inputs are the same everyone's taking the same stuff in and all the holding companies are trying to get more similar and trying to offer the same stuff i know that not doing that is incredibly powerful so the scarcity of that offering is of real value so it makes it sound like basically that since you started running your own company actually gave you a better sort of drive and stride for being behind bigger ideas.

22:37There were clues in the past where I think we would have made brilliant work and then the client would still have referred to us as, oh, the agency, just like another bunch of fuckers over there. And I was just a bit like, hang on a fucking minute. Some of the work we were making at Grey, I remember thinking no one else is doing this type of work. But because we were just Grey and we were still the agency, we were lumped in like that. It was like the people were making their mind up about us. Now, don't get me wrong, the reputation of Grey was great at the time so it was a good place we won two Grand Prix's if that's what you care about and all that other stuff but I did find it very very hard to break out of that that system particularly with client conversations so starting the studio is really important to me that our clients were partners I've never believed we're in service of clients I hate that term I'm not providing a service we are partners for them in an audacious ambitious journey and that is the clients that seek us out for the right reasons understand that and in one One of my experiences, you taking your ideas to unlikely places, from my experience, would be recently you guys do an off festival.

23:36I've been going to it for the last 11, 12 years. I didn't realize that festival is so good, man. Yeah, it's incredible. As it happens, this conversation is coming out after I've interviewed Peb. Peb is a good friend of mine. I interviewed PJ Richardson about a title, so I knew about your work, about what was going to happen, a little bit about the branding, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, I came to your mixer in London, I had a good time, touched everything, and only to realize a few weeks later that it was about a collection of germs and bacteria. It was incredible when I spoke to PJ about the brief that he was doing for the projection on the side of the building and what you guys put together.

24:14It made sense. It made absolutely brilliant sense of how we are all connected, like how we all compound together in our ideas. and it's one of these things that sometimes i would say the best ideas come for free because i think in an industry obsessed with budgets and money to be able to do anything it just seems to me like that was the most genius idea and then turned into most amazing design system still actually you can see i've still got my aa pass no love it so i want to know more about that because i know that this was a work that you guys came to pep and pitched it and said we want to do this Yeah, no, no, pretty much.

24:50He just said, he said a few things. He said, I loved the conversation with him. I'd not been, I was really intrigued by the festival. People who had been fucking loved it. And they were like, it's big, man. It's 3 ,000, 5 ,000 people. I was like, great. And he said, I want you to do the branding and then I want you to give the keynote. And the reason that was interesting to me was I thought, well, we could do the branding and then the keynote could speak to the branding. Now I imagine what he had in his mind was me going, and this is the way we got to the branding and blah. what I had in my mind was well I get to do something if I'm smart where we pull a magic trick on everyone where they think it's one thing and then it's another and I have always loved magic I've always loved the idea that you are taken along for a ride without knowing it and then at some point someone reveals it great art is like that too the Eve Klein void story is one of my favorite and so I was like well what if we found a way to do that and the only thing he kept saying was it's all about the people it's all about the community it's all about being together and i was just like okay there's one answer it's just really obvious which is it's all about all of us how do we do that and so we happened upon this thing where we were like right what if all the branding was made of everyone in the room and then we realized okay we have to make some mixes then in order to get that from them but we had to swear everybody to secrecy so i was on these calls with the guys i was like you cannot tell a fucking soul so we had these mixes gave a lot of talks did whatever and then everyone left we sampled everything in the rooms and grew the bacteria with the bacteria queen which was fucking awesome of her she's very very talented and that's how it all ended up working but thank you i'm glad you liked it honestly it was a real joy i wasn't quite sure i was quite nervous about the tour because there are a lot of people but also because i thought fuck how are they gonna react they might hate it they might hate the fact that we'd stolen all the bacteria there was definitely you could hear some reactions going oh really is that is that i'm like fuck it it's just this sounds genius especially it looked great as well they're really great but you mentioned in passing story i think for the benefit of this reveal and what you did can you actually tell that story yeah i can yeah yes i feel really fast then so eve klein is an artist in the 60s is very very cool artist one of the artists of his time quite a dangerous guy provocative guy and he used to paint things with this incredible blue it's like rgb shade of blue i imagine back in the day physical things but they looked rgb like hummed with energy and he would paint all sorts of things with this and people go and see it and these things he did would get bigger and bigger did a swimming pool which was fucking amazing anyway he decides to host a show called the void in paris and he asks everybody along and they all go and they're being told that it's not open yet and the people in the queue are like the who's who of the day they're fucking amazing like the rock stars and the kings and queens and all the above and they're being served drinks so they're like okay this is fine and some food would you like yeah and they're out there drinking away and it's been about an hour and a half they're still outside they're like fucking what is going on eventually the doors swing open and still being served drinks and two by two they're let in and so two by two they enter this room they're like great can't wait to see this they look around the room and it's all white there's nothing in there and they're like okay we'll wait for a minute and they're walking around and they expect the windows to explode or something to happen nothing happens served a few more drinks they're looking around they're like sorry is and no one answers them eventually they've had quite a lot to drink at this point they've been there three four hours they're like fuck this okay this guy's arrogant as fuck he's taking the piss he's had us all come here to look at a white room what a bastard they all storm off and they all go home they're like arrogant bastard they all go back to their hotels back to their houses back to wherever they're coming from and literally just before bed they're ranting arrogant bastard they go to the toilet never piss and a jet of pure blue piss comes out because all night the drinks were laced with his color blue and so they didn't realize but actually he had turned them into art and the whole thing had been in service of that now that to me is a fucking huge story if I'd made that probably retire but secondly no social media no phones no cameras they just stood there and that story has stood the test of time and lives now and it's still a reference point now so to me I look at that and I'm like that for me is a definition of creativity so when off came that was my homage I suppose to that and I'm at one point in 10 years someone talks about that and says do you remember when that guy stole our bacteria and stuff i mean maybe they will who knows yeah because i remember you actually mentioned that story at the mixer and i was like this is a cool story but the reveal was slightly different because i remember some reveal to me that night at home i remember watching your talk when you said no one stole your idea you were just too late and i felt like finally someone's there and finally someone's on the stage telling these sometimes timid creatives who really feel like they've invented something back in incredible and you're like no no one's stolen your idea you just went too late you know i think off is really unique i said that's pep and i actually think i wish more people understood it and knew it i think it's really a brilliant festival in loads of ways it's just good i don't consider us to be an ad agency i think we have an advertising practice within a wider studio model and we have a pure play design practice it's world class in my opinion did the EA, where we brand and a few other things.

29:57We have built environment. We have narrative objects and experiences. And as I said, we have art. We're in the Venice Biennale. So for me, I finally feel like we're at nine years getting the traction in those different spheres. And we want to rub shoulders with as many interesting people as we can. I loved hearing about the guys that were into city planning and city branding. And I just thought that was a super interesting conversation. I think more festivals should do it. I think D &AD should be more representative of that. D &AD, people forget. I think it's an amazing creative festival. It awarded the iPod.

30:25Like Johnny Ive has a pencil. That's who you're rubbing shoulders with. So I look at it and go, there are a few, but yeah, we need more for sure. I mean, I think if you're waking up every day and worrying about just one of those festivals, I think you're onto a hiding there. It's great to win a Candle Lion, but it's not everything. It doesn't change your life, does it? You mentioned a few times narrative objects and experiences. For someone who's looking around the room going, what do you mean with that? How would you explain that? Do you remember the Patagonia label, vote the assholes out? They made a tiny change to a label in the back of their jeans.

30:56And it was when Trump got into power and was starting to take back land and make really bad environmental decisions. Patagonia did a very simple thing. Just in every pair of jeans, they put a label that just said, vote the assholes out. And it was just amazing. And it was global and it went around the world. You look at LifePain and LifePain was a can, a product that told Volvo's story far better than any advert ever could. So when I say a narrative object or experience, I mean an object, product, or place that can tell a story on behalf of a brand. And why that works better is because people can tell their own version of that story.

31:29So instead of an advert where you push it at people and you go, there you go, guys, that's amazing. A narrative object will be like, oh, here's this thing. This is what it stands for. And people will take it. They'll make their own movies of it. Creators will make their own films. The press will make their own reports with it. And it just travels a lot further. If I were opening a studio now, that's all I'd make. I wouldn't make an advert. I think that's something that you create the 99 % of the story and you let the people fill in the one last percent. So literally, what do you think of it? How do you do that?

31:56Yeah, you got to fill into the idea. That's right. Okay, well, you just opened another door for me to ask you. So if you were to open a new studio today, it would be about narrative objects and experiences and places. Yeah, I would make things. I'd make experiences. I think I would completely blur the lines between what was made by us and what was made with clients. and I would keep that ambiguous. Here's some of the other things I'd do though. I think this whole industry is incredibly needy and I think it would be a really interesting exercise, you know, in that we're like, look at us, this is who I am and see me and look what we've done.

32:29And we do it because we're needy and we're trying to get known and all that other stuff. But I think the world loves unknowns. And so I think it'd be really interesting for a studio to open where you didn't know who they were and you didn't know their story and they weren't desperate to be known and they just made fucking amazing work and you had to track them down and work incredibly hard to get to know them. They always had like balaclavas on in the press shots. Something like that. I think there's so much room when you look at how music artists are behaving, how cult restaurants are opening, how some of the scarcest experiences in the world, be it hospitality or hotels or whatever, they're all behaving in incredibly avant-garde ways.

33:08And yet our industry is still, can you please hit me up on LinkedIn if you want me to do some banner ads? I'm like, fucking hell. We've forgotten. we've learned to build all these incredible brands for others except for ourselves and i think that's a big problem i think uncommon is attempting to build our own brand that's what we're desperate to do which is why we do the sync we do when you talk about people in balaclavas and being unknown it reminds me of tomato but i was always fascinated with tomato you're like where did they exist where are they yeah they were fucking amazing they were dark and weird and avant-garde and you had to seek them out they were really cool klf they were amazing like as a group i think there's loads of examples when you actually go looking for the kind of collectives that we're talking about i just think we got a look outside of our industry i'm obsessed with the work of alexander mcqueen i think he was amazing the way he behaved he retaught the fashion industry he said the clothes are only half the story so he understood that the collection was fine and you make beautiful clothes but then how you launch and tell the world about those clothes is an opportunity to inflame everybody so he made Kate Moss into a ghost he created Sun he literally was in the Sun newspaper in the UK almost like every month it was crazy people like that whether you love or hate him by the way most people hate him I think Kanye West's a master of that whether you want to appreciate that word or not when you mentioned the word needy and I think that's a good word to mention it sounds like you're obviously on the opposite side of the world looking at it going I don't need that word in my vocabulary anymore I am needy I wish I wasn't but I am I think we all are.

34:39I think creative people are. But I tell you what I have learned, like being back at school, the person you fancy the most, if you need them a lot, you'll never get them. And this is true in the world. It's true of everything. And I know that if we're too thirsty and want things too much and we wear it too much, we're forgetting the strategies and cardinal rules of being attractive, which is you just make on your own. you don't need others you do your own thing you know who you are you're clear about your mission and you and there's nothing better than being able to execute your version of events without needing someone else because that's the scarcest thing in the world that's power yeah i was actually putting your compliment because when you were talking about the fact that you want to create narrative objects which are you don't know if it's the studio if it's a client if it's something in between what you described just now especially as a form of acceptance we are always really be needed because the dopamine which is misunderstood is a chemical that wants you to be for pursued like it will always push you into wanting something more therefore there's a need to create like curiosity is a very human function but in a way it's almost like sounding like you were happy to be hiding in balaclava behind the product which is like you know what someone made it in a band i don't know mystery no no i'm far i'm sluttier and more cunning than that i've just worked out that if i follow that thread further what if they didn't know who i was what if they didn't know who we were people would want us even more we would be the place that just revered you know and i think a bit like tomato being a great example i just know that if a studio popped up tomorrow and behave like that i think we'd all be quite excited about it because they would be behaving like the the artists we know and love not enough of us view ourselves as projects i guess that's what i'm trying to say it's really interesting you said like everyone else even more but you almost put in a lot of expectations on the shoulders of them wanting to actually do something better because how many people would settle for average for a second that i don't even mean clients i'm actually talking about talent there's something i've worked out a long time ago which is if you basically market to talent and you market to talent first everything else follows so when i say they i'm weirdly instinctively thinking about everybody that wishes they work somewhere and it's like wanting to be a part of the coolest band or the coolest art collective or cook at the coolest restaurant that's where i'm going and i think if you manage to do that and you attract the best talent at that point everything else follows all the clients will come everyone else will come it's interesting my instinct went for the clients and trying to find this whereas your instinct is like talent so actually since you opened that that door let's talk about talent what is it like to scale from three people to three studios and numbers of different disciplines we talked about at the beginning that you do so many different things you say you are designing comms but you do moving image you do all sorts of things how do you get the right talent how do you spot it what is the thing to look out for nice we try to work on as we said what we call the most important and influential briefs of our time we try to attract those and take those on and when we get brings we treat them like they're that and so the output whether you love or hate our work it's all good that's what i would say you don't have to like it but it is of a high standard.

37:50It's usually famous. It's usually very crafted and it provokes people usually. And that's intentional. And I think that the best talent, not everybody, I don't want everybody to work here. I just want the best. And the best talent want to win. They want to make amazing work. They want to matter and they want to work very hard and they want to transform their own lives. And they tend to want to make things of significance in the world. And so I figured a really simple equation if we're the place that makes more work and makes more work like that then they're going to want to work here and so everything we do when you look at how our work is wrapped it's wrapped to make sensations out of it the off project was it's tantalizing to everybody but make no mistake it's aimed at talent first I want people to see that and go fuck I wish I'd done that but that's the desired response so that's what we do and I try to make everything about the studio inflame talent if you look at the publishing we do zines we do mini books if you look at the tote bags we make if you look at the merch it's all aimed at talent and for me that's absolutely everything I've got this crush on as we're approaching 10 years imagine a photograph of everybody that works here not a picture of a network I don't give a fuck about a network imagine a photograph where you just looked at it and you went oh my god that's thomas heatherwick that's nils leonard that's sam shepherd that's lisa smith that's bjorn style and you were like that's pretty much the best creative talent in the world across all their disciplines that's the dream dude is that for a brief period of time uncommon was where you went if you were the best in the world that's what we're trying to do how has the role of a creative changed over the last nine years it depends where you are i think the role of a creative what i've learned most is in some ways I could argue at their best it hasn't changed at all which is you are highly respected and highly paid hopefully for bringing radical thought that most others aren't able to do and that you are able to execute and produce things that are original with a flavor of your own but that make waves in the real world that's and I think the role of the best creatives over time have always done that 50 years ago, 20 years ago, whatever.

40:08I think if you're a creative in the advertising industry, I think it depends really honestly on where you've worked. I think your role has either become diminished to some degree and you've been producing short form social content, which is completely at odds with the dreams you had when you were at college and you're convincing yourself that you're grown up because that's a call you've had to make, but really inside, you know, you should be making something more important. I think that's probably true of a lot of creatives. I think there's a lot of creative leaders who've also told themselves that to get that title, it means you have to round the edges of your output and you have to sacrifice your dreams.

40:43And I don't think that's true either. And I think all those things are true at certain companies. I think it really differs in terms of where you go. What I do know is that when I was at Grey, it wasn't public, but it was something that people said, which is the A team and the B team, which was awful, really. And it was the idea that you had a bunch of clients that were keeping the lights on. And then you had a bunch of clients that you're making good work on. Now, what that means for your agency is you've got a bunch of talented people who work on great clients, but then you've got a bunch of people who, frankly, you don't respect as much.