I’LL MEET YOU AT SIZZLER: WITH MIKE PERRY

0:00Mike Perry is the founder and chief creative officer of Tavern, a Brooklyn-based creative agency with a focus on food, beverage, cannabis, and hospitality brands. Mike is a proven leader with 13-plus years of success building industry, leading brands through bold, ambitious, and beautifully crafted creative food and beverage industry veteran. He's gone from behind the bar to behind some of the biggest brands in the industry, including Budweiser, Beam, Suntory, Burger King, Diageo, and many, many more. His dynamic and strategic approach to design blurs the lines between the branding and the advertising world, turning every touchpoint into an opportunity to build brands iteratively.

0:36And the lightning fast speed of culture today through Tavern is setting a new standard for the creative industry, one where the case studies are fantastic and where branding isn't static because brands no longer are. Welcome to the show, Mike.

0:57So you grew up in Philadelphia. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Delaware County. Okay. Outside of Philadelphia. Go birds. When did you find out that you were a designer? I guess we'll start with sports. It makes sense. I used to draw logos as I'm sure all of us did, but they were always hockey logos. It's funny. We're talking about hockey. Flyers logo. Great logo. Impossible to draw in the third grade. Yeah. Took a lot of skill. Solid. But I always wanted to be a designer of sort, I guess like art, but like mostly designer. And my parents, my mom's like a Catholic school teacher. My dad is a mailman.

1:35And they were like, you're going to college. And I'm in middle school being like, but art school. And they were like, you're going to go to college first. You can go to college and then you can go to art school, but you're going to do real work. design not or art in general not real work certainly not at this time not at this time not in no early early 2000s sure yeah um so then i went to tyler where i'm at jeff carados yeah um this is just as jeff carados podcast jeff is now gonna have to come on the pod as well but yes okay i go to tyler school of art as we were talking about before uh the infamous jess hish went there yeah paula share yep lots of other people that i'm forgetting that i you I know.

2:21Yeah. Those two, though. That was cool. But that was connected to Temple University. A real school. A little bit of both. A little bit of both. So I got the best of both worlds. Yeah. You get to go to, like, football games or you get to go to basketball games. And then also you get to go to our classes and you're, like, you know, with Jeff Cardos and the artists. And Max. And Max. Yeah. You're like, okay, let's include Max here, too. Yeah. We'll get Max. Yeah. Shout out to Max Amato. We should get him on the pod. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I know. He's crushing. Okay. so real school real job once i graduate i'm in philly um i work at nbc sports which i'm stoked on yeah and it's like design and sports i'm doing that and it's really cool and i you know i basically all they hired me to do was silhouette like cut out football players for sunday night football yes and pen tool pen tool four days it took me a few weeks and i was like i got so fast that I was like sick my like job is done by noon and then I just start wandering around but it was like an actual entertainment studio so they had like editing bays and things like that so I just wander into these editing bays and guys were using this thing called Avid which is like a big ass machine where they edit uh film I learned it at the time it's like very old school and I just start asking them questions how do you do this can I like help and I start like slowly just like hey I made some titles that I think would be cool here.

3:45And they're like, sick, you're doing my job for me. So I like kind of just start making commercials. And at the time we were doing Tour de France 150th, Sunday Night Football, Wednesday Night Rivalry for Hockey, Formula One look and feel. That was the first year it came to America. And MLS was the very early days of kind of the MLS on the network, I guess, because it was in the US. But so I was making these MLS national commercials, kind of like doing titles and cut sequences and like really weird motion, like stop motion on top of like edited film. Who knows what it looks like today? But I was like sitting at the bar with my dad and a commercial came up and I was like, yo, I made that.

4:26And he was like, I finally get it. Yeah. And they're like, all right, cool. Sports design. I know how to. Yeah. Yeah. How to connect the. Connect the dots. Yeah. You see me, dad. I'm out here making commercials. commercials. To keep it real for a second, I worked in-house and I talk about this sometimes where I say, if you work in-house for business and you want to do the type of work that you're not doing, sometimes you just got to show up and be like, yo, I did this. What do you think? And more often than not, people will be like, I welcome this. 100%. I think that can be done at any studio anywhere.

5:01I think that's amazing advice for anyone yeah just do the fun thing yeah that you're stoked on and show people if they don't use it don't be bummed but like you did it it was practice we've been having a lot of conversations internally um lately about like practice i love this idea of practice like for sport everything relates back to talking about practice for me yeah i couldn't help myself but everything relates back to practice and it's like you know i play a lot of golf or or anyone that plays anything but like golf you're not you're not golfing all the time you're always practicing even as an adult and That's a really weird thing to think about that an adult goes to go practice a sport that they have fun at.

5:37But we go to work and design all day long, and we don't practice. So we've started to implement early mornings. We'd spend like 30 minutes or something. It's just like pick the thing. Full squad? Calisthenics? Pick what you want. Stretch it out. Okay. And then rip along. And it's been cool. It's exactly that, but kind of dumbed down into our studio. I love this. This is fucking brilliant. No, that's super cool. And really cool things come out like stupid business cards or like the Tavern Sizzler logo. Like it's dumb shit or it's really, really cool things that like, you know, a lot more motion.

6:13And those two things can be the same. Yeah. Like a really dumb thing can also be the best thing. I don't have an example that I can talk about yet. But there are examples that like do trickle their way into work. Are they? Like client work, which is really cool. Are they mostly ideas or just fiddling around practicing on client work? Or are they like, hey, Tavern ideas? It's a combination of both. I would err more towards just like tavern. I, you know, we use tavern because it's like, it's, it's a word that we can play around with that makes sense. We're not like making nothing. It's sketching basically.

6:42Sometimes it's with client stuff where it's like, this is really whack and weird and we'd love to show it to them. Yeah. You know, maybe like some Rizzler Sizzler ideas. I don't know. But, um, yeah, but, but yeah, no. So it's, it's either or, but I think, I think it's actually important to separate it from the client work. That's super interesting. Every day. Is this, is this five days a week? We were. Yeah. We're in studio three days a week, so who knows how it's getting on. Do you sit next to each other? Are we all practicing together? We are. Oh, wow. It's a straight line, but it would be a circle.

7:14Do you have to wear a certain type of garb to this type of practice? Yes, full workout. What's his name? Tom Sachs used to do the same thing. Oh, really? No. He would make his whole team run together outside, go on runs and wear matching garms. and he also got canceled for other things that he was doing with his team. So I wouldn't really take his kind of guidance. But there is something about camaraderie, and there's also something about making stuff for the sake of just making it. I was at DesignBridge years ago, and we would play indoor soccer as a team. And it's the same idea. I think it's awesome.

7:49Like, I'm not good at soccer. No. And half of that design team was definitely not running around playing good soccer. But it was fun. In the office or outside? No, no, no. We went to a place. I forget what it was called. It was East Village. It was literally indoor soccer. It was really cool. And there was a bar connected to it. So we were just drunk playing soccer. But we'd play other groups. It was fun. I think there is something to sport and... Camaraderie, teamwork, and just kind of being friends. Yeah. Are you getting people hyped up? Getting people ready to run through a brick wall? Yeah.

8:22Like Brian Dawkins. Yeah, he was the big pump up. Yeah, right? Definitely. You should start channeling some of his. i know i should his energy so i love this idea of like golf right because golf everyone is you're right like people are practicing more than they're playing yeah and so do at the end of this sort of session when you guys are practicing do you show each other is there like there's a kind of like work together okay so it's kind of happening at the same time where it's like yo this is cool this is cool and then the group chat kind of goes out or the slack team chat whatever it goes off with like this thing's cool this thing's cool this thing's cool and even with some of the younger design i actually did this at multiple studios before starting tavern where i i'd make the multiple the younger designers specifically spirits design is such a like yeah for sure impossible to teach thing you kind of just get it or you don't yeah um i just make them take one like really old 1940s 50s um spirits labels that are just completely fucked from a typographic standpoint in a beautiful way sure and it's like there's no reason why you'd ever make those moves So I have them drop it to 50 % opacity and like over long breaks and like make three of these.

9:28And you have to make it, you have to find the type you have to make it. Wow, recreate. Yeah. And I mean, some of them just don't do that. And they're like, fuck you. But some of them who definitely do do that get really stoked on it. And then they start, you kind of see those moves. So that's part of it too. With some of the more junior guys, like we'll have them literally trace some old things that we think are cool. And I even still do it, which is a weird thing to say. You just find some old. I mean, Draplin does that, I guess, all the time on Instagram. But like you find this old, really whack logo that you're like, how the hell did they think to make that move there?

9:59And so you kind of trace it and you get like you channel them a little bit. That all falls into the practice category of making things just to like see how it was done. We get into motion a lot, too, where it same idea of that spirits pack where you dissect it or you build on top of it. Like, how does this how do I make this motion thing go? Like, how would I move that? Which I think is kind of helpful to teach. no i mean it's it's definitely like the looking at the old packaging and sort of looking at the past and sort of like trying to just dissect it or to understand it and then you recreate it i think that is super like i'm trying to i'm trying to think of other things you could like practice like other types of like experiments or other things but that is a pretty good one especially for package designers like i think looking like you mentioned about whiskey or just spirits in general, like there's definitely a science to it.

10:47And if you can kind of, uh, break it down, you know, understand it, recreate it, it definitely helps you sort of to do that for a certain type of client that is looking for that type of energy. And a lot of brands like that you guys work on at Tavern are sort of trying to reclaim that heritage feel. And so that's a good, in a modern way, in a modern, in a modern, in a modern heritage. So quickly though, branding and agencies before you start tavern jkr obviously big one how long were you there um let me go in order let's go in order let's do it so nbc sports yep hard pivot into alcohol so went to quicker city mercantile in philly okay they did where i led uh hendrix gin yeah it's a big one that i was hired to work on um then a lot of diageo a lot of um sailor jerry was there at the time okay this really shows the time period yeah uh narragansett beer when it made its comeback solid beer oh yeah and then i moved to new york for stranger and stranger oh shit i made it there i made it like four months it was a great team everyone's super cool there but i went from like hendrix which was this 360 full brand experience of everything down to like throwing parties and you know writing the scripts for the character actors at the party like the full 360 of the brand to just doing spirits design which is awesome as a boot camp i recommend everyone and kind of do it for four months.

12:09It's good practice. It's like going to MIT and then dropping out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you just kind of get all the skills and shit. And then, but I knew, I just wanted to come to New York and it was a perfect opportunity and JKR was hiring. Cool. And to get on the Budweiser team. Nice. So I was like, that's all amazing. So there's a clear lineage there. It's a lot of boos. A lot of boos. So JKR did a lot of Anheuser-Busch work. Sure. And things like, and Diageo. um then went to design bridge uh my time was just kind of up it was awesome i learned a ton there and i knew that design bridge had pabst blue ribbon and i was like yeah they have some sick old heritage brands remember they were the hottest brand on the planet the best yeah i mean talk about college yeah for like i would say it's like 2009 i want to say maybe 2012 like the hipster yeah mustache flannel fix beer williamsburg yep alley cat races and everyone was drinking paps yeah what happened just kind of so drink it people do still drink it never see it it's i think it's like a new york it might be a regional thing the way i don't i don't leave new york i don't leave that's the thing that's why like a like budweiser is is all over new york city because that's kind of their main market but like and like such a pain to find a miller light i feel like sometimes oh it is so yeah yeah you're right you're actually a high life nearly impossible oh never oh i've got i got spots but i got spots but you gotta go to the spots yeah there's one just down the road they just got it on tap yeah the mauer drake oh it's on tap there wow it's better on tap kevin knows love a tap beer so and then tavern or then and then tick tock okay where i I was going to say, how does that fit in here?

14:00Because it's all tracking. We're sports. We take a pivot to booze. We do booze, booze, booze, stranger, stranger, JKR, TikTok. TikTok. What year is this? This was, I don't know. Your LinkedIn said 2022. Wow. 22, yeah. This is recently. This is post-COVID. You do do good research. I've listened to a couple of these. You get knocked for not doing research? I think you're doing a sick job. I know. There's a big narrative out there that I don't do any research. I want to change this. That's actually why I'm here. I don't know. There's a lot of noise coming from the other side of the table about how there's no research being done.

14:37I like to think that maybe it's less of a research problem or a reading problem.

14:45Moving on. We're at TikTok. TikTok. We're at TikTok. So 2022, TikTok is – is it booming yet? It's booming. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's like just about booming. Yeah. Yeah. People still don't get it. Yeah. That's kind of the whole point of my job. ByteDance. What's the name? ByteDance. Yeah. Yeah. So I leave Design Bridge. I know I want to do something on my own. I've always kind of wanted to do something on my own. Sure. We're in the middle of the pandemic. I want to leave a studio. I mean, it wasn't. It was 2022, I guess. It was like the tail end. Things were so weird. And there was this creative strategy role, which I fancy myself a strategist a little bit sometimes.

15:26I'm somewhat a strategist myself. I don't know if everyone would say that. But there's this opportunity at TikTok, which I kind of was like, maybe I'll dabble in tech. There's something really interesting. TikTok was on the boom. I mean, meta was ripping at that time. They were really like betting on the metaverse, which thank God we didn't go over there. Remember that? Remember Zuck put out that metaverse thing? He's like, I'm in the metaverse. and it was just like the it was like the paris but it's so shitty like what was what was that and they they really were gung-ho that that was going to be it oh they they changed the name of the company to meta this is still developing uh-huh it truly is i don't think we're going to metaverse i hope where do you stand i know i absolutely not i mean i hope we personally go in reverse coming from the guy who worked at tiktok but like i'd love to go a little into reverse but But I think we are going to be in the movie Her.

16:23Okay. I think that's the level of metaverse. I kind of want that. I want to just talk to Siri and be like, do all these emails for me. Yeah. So that's what I'm betting on. I think anything that's going on your face is a bad bet. I heard the Apple's, they're not even making any more Vision Pros. Really? It's completely closed? That makes sense. I mean, it was a flop. Yeah. That's a lot of money for a flop, too. Shout out to me. I did not buy one. Self-control. self-control i i wanted to buy one i still want to try it me too i've never tried i want to try it real bad we should go to the apple store all right i mean like the only time we're just there across the only time it would be really dope technology in flight yeah that would be like the only time where it'd be like really actually nice or anything else do you think it'd be weird in flight though because like that plus turbulence so you just kind of got like maybe i think it'd be cool if i'm on a flight i'm into it i would try it but i don't know i don't know either i'm sitting by a campsite, that scene that they have where there's a big movie and I'm actually on a plane.

17:22I think that would be cool. That's cool. I'm wearing a 40-pound weight on my head. I just fall asleep. It is good to strengthen your neck, though. That is good for neck workout purposes. You need to have a strong neck. I know, like Floyd Mayweather. Yeah. Mike Tyson. Hope she not get concussions. That's good. I need to work on that. So when I get into tech, there's a more strategic role. I also need to burn non-competes and all very technical things. This is my smoke and mirrors exit from the industry to go to a different industry. Very strategic. Damn. I fancy myself a strategist. I took this creative strategy role at TikTok for Creative Labs, which is really interesting.

18:07It's their internal ad agency. Due to some legislation, all of these um you know meta snap tiktok these social media platforms if you were if the platform themselves can't make content so it was interesting i worked with um brands like png and clorox on like burst bees and um old spice and we'd work directly with their cmos which is really cool so like helping them make content helping them yeah like pitching them ideas here's how you should optimize the tools that we have things like stitch and like some of it was rudimentary some of you know a lot of them got it because they're mark they're you know big marketers but and then working with agencies as well so like i'd have a standing with um the vayner team and they'd kind of you know run ideas by me because i kind of had a little bit more inside knowledge than they did of like how do we how do we make this better how do we tweak this up it was really cool because it was like working with a super good team and then you just kind of are like plopped in there to like Throw some notes on it.

19:09Yeah. Here to help you guys use our platform. Yeah. Did you ever yuck it up with Gary V? I never, never. Yeah. One day. What a legend. I know. I think it's interesting. This is a job that actually a lot of creative people in this country have. And some of the best, most talented creatives are working for some of these companies right now. Yeah. And TikTok. Helping brands use the platform to create good advertising and good content. Which I'm glad to hear that you made it out. because sometimes i could have stayed yeah sometimes pretty sweet and everyone was super nice yeah uh the money was solid how many years uh like nine months nine months okay nine months not competes yeah and so tiktok you're out and then taverns then yeah hard pivot into tavern cool um where we focus on food bev and hospitality all things a great tavern has to offer what a strategic sort of and our philosophy we're still working on our philosophy crafting modern heritage brands in the pursuit of timeless design see this is Kevin research see Kevin you're right Kevin gets too much shit for not doing any research when in fact he does make this document that is so so helpful this is maybe one of the worst documents but one of the things so you start tavern and uh one of the things i really liked that you did was that you made your first project was a tavern beer and you uh you gave those out to prospective clients friends family i got a six pack uh what what was the thing in there you're like i'm gonna make this and this is gonna be a way to kick in the door yeah so i mean you kind of heard my whole story it's like if i could do anything it's spirits and beer and beer is kind of the number one given the budweiser background and you know cores and pbr all of these kind of core mass brands um and even small ones and innovation ones and i couldn't get a beer to save my life still to this day wow tavern has not done a beer has done one beer it's on the website but it's uh yeah you're basically you're waiting for your your big beer moment get this guy a beer we're looking for beers guy a beer we had a big are we looking for beers.

21:27Shout out to Biro. Shout out to Tom Holland. Shout out to our newest, best brand, Biro in the house, non-alcoholic beer. So is that beer? Yeah, of course it's beer. Right answer. So Tavern is how many years old at this? A couple months, a few months, I think. I don't know. I'm so fuzzy on these timelines. I would say it kind of capped off our one year anniversary, but we were kind of... So let's call it a year. That was year one. This is your two which i'll hint at and what were you cruising what were you cruising on like right out the gate uh our first client was flying embers actually a hard kombucha so still like canned alcohol beverage sure um and we were doing some beam centuria as well cool uh which some of that is kind of trickling its way onto our onto our site nowadays but um so we were we were working with big alcohol brands you know medium to big couldn't get a beer so i said fuck it we're just going to make our own beer and we worked with these guys elix who have since closed that would do basically what they were doing at the time when i met them they were like you'd get a bachelor party and you can put like alex's alex's 40th birthday party i uh considered it uh for an event that we did yeah yeah they were they're awesome so i hit them up and was we were talking and they were trying to basically brew more and be more of a beer company and i was like well i got an idea why don't we make some beers let's make some beers so we made some beers and we launched it um at please don't tell which is an old uh the the speakeasy inside criff dogs okay yeah yeah which is an old client of mine that we've redesigned years ago nice uh good friend jeff bell okay runs that so we launched it there um and we basically snuck it into lucy's uh for the after party nice um then they and they loved it so they picked it up so for a short period of time And we were there and a couple other friends' bars.

23:20But it was more like a case or two until our friends drank it all. Got it. But we were loosely in market. So it was like a legitimate real beer. Nice. If you can't get one, you might as well fake our way into selling it in market. At this point, you can legitimately launch a brand yourself. Yeah. And I think that's – any thoughts about maybe like continuing it or trying to like actually sell it? I would love to. Yeah. but it's more of a one-off so what we're doing now is every every year to celebrate another year in business we're going to do a different offering so this year we're actually doing a tavern wine a house wine fancy very fancy but it's not just anyone it's a it's a nice nambrusco something you know something that fits the vibe right like a little wine you know kind of a little funk to it yeah i like that something you get like kind of in a in a like red saucy kind of italian i like restaurant or a dive bar like anything you can drink in a tavern a divey tavern is is really the goal so who knows who knows next year is so the tavern in your mind is is a bit divey it's not like it's it's not a high-end pub it's it depends it depends okay i think we have i think there's multiples right like if we're in like old granddad world which is one of our more recent projects okay uh it's a little 1800s white horse tavern inspired but in my mind i kind of consistently live in a 1960s 70s dive bar that has miller highlife on tap yeah no that makes sense and tracks i guess my one question is and this is like the shittiest design question of all time it's like do you think having a style is good for agencies do you think that center or tavern has a style i think we both have a style interesting and i think uh i try to break out of it by trying to flex outside of the thing that people think of us put you in the box for correct i i don't think we have a style because i think we're we practice modern heritage um is that not a style is modern yeah it's a good question i don't think modern heritage is a style i think modern heritage is literally taking all of the good pieces from your past and reinventing them to create something new that hopefully lasts forever it's it's this search get a little more back to practice get a little more yeah yeah philosophical it's the ultimate search for timelessness i think like beautiful perfect design is timelessness yeah and i think the only way that you could truly get there from up doing a mass brand is like scissor is i know we're gonna go on there we're on it we're on one track i know i only have i only got so many talking points on this but listen the scissor talking points are right next uh coming next you know the only way to get to that timelessness especially for these mass brands i think is to take everything from their past throw away the bad stuff obviously but take all the good things that have happened in the past and modernize them and keep them up to date and continue to build and tell the story.

26:27So ultimately using all of the pieces from their past to tell this modern story. Because if not, you're just rebranding for the sake of rebranding and ditching what you've done prior. Do you believe in the Tosh Hall sort of method of doing it right, getting it done and never changing it again? Of course I do. I worked at J. Care for far too long not to believe in that. Yeah, I think Miller High Life is a perfect, that's a deep cut on the Tosh Hall work way back in the day. The moon, the whole thing. yeah it's it's so never change it keep it keep it forever i have no no lock it in i will not say this about any other brand maybe but i don't think i have any notes on miller highlife you think it's a perfect design system it's pretty damn everything there and it just does not you know just don't touch it talking about it ain't broke don't fix the everyone can google this at home but the the way that like the 12 fluid ounces is like tucked into that baseline in the border on the bottom is just like chef's kiss perfect.

27:22Yeah, I think it's great. And it perfectly, I think that's a perfect example of modern heritage design. It balances both where they've been in the past for a hundred years and does it in a perfectly contemporary modern way. Do you worry or think about this sort of trendiness of sort of modern retro and sort of it going out of style or sort of people getting exhausted by sort of everything having to look like it's from a past. I don't think it should look like it's from the past. I think it should be firmly rooted in today. And stretch into the future. But it comes inherently from the past. I don't think it's a style.

28:03I don't think it's a way of doing something. I think it's the right strategic way to build mass brands, medium to mass brands. I think it's the only way that they can exist. And I think what you need to do is you need to build that and then brand everything around it. So how it stretches into the current moment is really key. But we're trying to keep that uber consistency of making everything perfect forever, I think, in the modern sense. Which makes sense. Timelessness. Yeah, timelessness. That impossible to reach piece. Yeah, and perfection, which I don't believe in. I don't think, yeah, I don't think you can create perfect.

28:39I do think context is important. And I think when I think about the trendiness of sort of this retro feeling, It's like vacationification of design where it's like everything looks like it's from an 80s magazine. And I think I would use Sizzler as an example. But I think that that's what we like to call it. We've kind of coined internally as daydream brands. I don't know if other people have done that, so I'm not trying to take credit there. But that's more of a daydream brand. It's clearly set in a place, and it's a brand world in which they built around a specific time period and aesthetic. I don't think that Highlife, Budweiser, Sizzler, any of these brands should be doing that.

29:21I mean, we've had many conversations even working on Budweiser back in the day. Should it be rooted in 1970? Yeah, that'd be fucking amazing. It's so perfect. Hardwall cans. Just do the whole old thing. But it's not about that. It's about brand building first and foremost. And then how you activate can be really fun and different. So I think it's not as, I wouldn't put vacation into that category. This is when you were saying the initial, uh, ask them the question. And I think a lot of the narrative that I'm seeing on TikTok and Instagram, the design world is everyone's like nostalgia cores back.

29:56And it's like, I've been doing this for a while. You've been doing this longer than me. You've been doing this for a while. You're not that young as you like to tell us. It just looks, yeah. You look, you look great. Yeah. Um, um, But this has always been around. This is not a new idea. It's a new way of framing it, maybe. Probably not. I didn't invent this by any means. It's just how we like to practice. But it very much is the way to build a strong brand strategically and strategically then into the creative. Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons why it's top of mind for me is because, I don't know if you saw this today, but there's a leg underwear company.

30:40legwear hosiery brand called legs that was been around for like 55 years and it got sort of a new modern but like very vintage heritage look and it launched into today it launched today and it's really cool like kevin didn't prep me on this yeah no i mean literally i didn't hear about this and they're basically just kind of bringing back the old logo the old logo is sick i knew i knew it in my head yeah no it's an incredible logo i mean it's the most see say perfection of a yeah it's it's a perfect logo yeah i think it's just a question of like how many i guess when you have a brand like this that has sort of that that that heritage logo and it's got something that was just typography wise and it just it it's back in style or it makes sense to just kind of run back but i think your your point is really important about the sort of modern modernizing it to make sure that it's not just a sort of a heritage stick yeah just trying to like go back to just Doing old for old's sake is pointless.

31:40It's not going to work. It's a flash in the pan. And that's part of the issue with it. When I worked on Powerade at Coke, we used to talk about this. Because Gatorade would constantly go back and pull the sort of like. Which sick archive. Really good archive. And they'd be like, remember, we were the ones that created sports drinks. And it always worked. It was like, oh, my God, look at this glass bottle. Look at Michael Jordan. But it doesn't necessarily build your future. It just kind of reminds people of the past. And so the sort of combination is really where the magic is in your mind. I think so, yeah.

32:08Taking the best parts of the past and then taking something that makes it feel fresh and new. Absolutely. And I think so that's exactly what you guys have been doing with your partners at Sizzler. Nice. It's like you guys do this for a living. It's not a living. Just to be very on the record, it is absolutely not how we make a living. But Sizzler, huge chain. Huge. Certainly a lot of memories. and I'm just going to say it, a brand I hadn't thought about a lot in the last 10 to 20 years of my life. Yep. But then we were at How Design Live and I'd seen a little bit, but you did a full talk about the full rebrand of Sizzler and it's incredible.

32:50So congratulations. Thank you. How, when did that project come to you? How did it start? Tell us. So I actually have a really good story. I don't think you guys even know this. It's perfect. We don't know anything. The way I got this client is actually really interesting. So while I was at JKR, I was at Budweiser. I was a young design director at the time. And getting shout out to Jeff Cardos. I was going to say Jeff Cardos. Sorry. No one is going to know who Jeff Cardos is. And everyone's like, why do they keep talking about Jeff Cardos? Okay. I was a young design director at JKR and working on Budweiser.

33:27And the CD at the time, Paul Sika, shout out. um he like i needed to get more client experience i needed to be in front of clients but you know this is a relationship business you know all the kind of stuff you learn as an as an early early doors uh design director and he was like you should go hang out with this guy chris guy on the brand team okay uh of budweiser he's like he's your age he's really smart i think you two would get along and i was like that's fucking weird no no thank you he's like go get a beer with them and i was like i'm no this is like weird like he's like trying to set us up on a day i was like no it's weird yeah um so i called him and uh asked him to get a beer and we went and got a beer he actually invited me to avi um where the you know their office that had the the bar and everything yeah so we're sitting around brick yeah a lot of brick drinking beers meeting co-workers um it was great we became past friends yeah yeah the mandate worked yeah a little little just like a real date um it was a little you know we got over it he called he called the next day he texted hey i had a good time last night we should do that again sometime um but we we actually became super good it was brilliant of paul um we became super good friends and we did a lot of stuff together we lit up the world cup together we made the world cup light up cups we're like when someone scored a goal during the uh russia world cup like the whole stadiums beer cups lit up and pretty really crazy big funny budweiser things like that you know and obviously budweiser states and all the camo can all all of the things um so we did a lot of work together and then kind of just parted way i left he stayed i guess for a little bit i don't know what the story was we parted just professionally because i went to a different agency or whatever um and then i was actually in california for a shoot for flying embers um so really early days of tavern um and i i'm on linkedin before i even go to set and see that as you do you know just a little morning i mean you gotta gotta grind yeah dude i get the grind never stopped we're new business 24 7 linkedin is my number one platform right now yeah that's where i feed the streets i know i know i get a lot of the content.

35:45Did you know that Center just did a bureau from Tom? That's true. It's all over me. That's all my LinkedIn is. Can I tell you, we posted a video and it's super grainy and then I was like, oh, we should take this down and then it started getting a lot of likes. I was like, leave it up. Dude, it's social. Dude, don't touch it. Leave it. Don't touch it. Exactly. Everyone knows you guys do really clean Chris Perfect stuff. That's right. Thank you. Get the likes, get the comments. That's right. It'll fade off. Like this guy. Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm talking about making perfect brands that last forever that don't fuck around.