No Stone Unturned: with Lisa Smith

0:00as someone who is a diehard Knicks fan. Yes. The NYX logo, if you really look at it for a long time, it's bad. Yeah. It's dated. But it's so iconic and it's so ingrained in people's minds. Those are more the modernized jobs. Does everything need to be modernized, though? Oh, God. Here's Kevin. Oh, yeah. Which brand? That was from the Manischewitz you said that. Oh, did I? And that wasn't really modernized. We did change it entirely. Well, I don't stand by anything I say. Lisa's here for revenge. I heard everything you said on this podcast. I listened to your podcast. I don't stand behind anything.

0:44We got it, right? Three, two, one. Kevin. What's up? We have a special guest in the building today. Lisa Smith doesn't just rebrand companies, she reinvents them. With over two decades of turning big business problems into creative gold, She's behind iconic transformations for Burger King, Impossible Foods, Chobani, and even a little museum called The Met. As global executive creative director at JKR, Lisa's known for her bold vision and fierce approach to shaking shit up. Dubbed the queen of the rebrand, you can ask New York Times or Fast Company, she thrives at major inflection points saying, small change isn't my thing, I'm here for the big stuff.

1:26she's one of the top two working designers and she ain't too welcome to front center lisa smith oh my goodness that's such a big introduction you know alex she does it big yeah we do it big around here welcome to the show lisa thank you thank you i'm excited to be here it's great to see you as always so as the queen of the rebrand you uh famously rebranded the met wolf olens what was that 10 years ago how long ago has that been yeah it must be about 10 years ago now yeah and if i recall correctly people didn't like it they really didn't like it well uh they were wrong like they were wrong i mean yeah it's still there test of time yeah they were wrong in fact actually i went today to the bank and someone was wearing a met hat yeah and i love when you see the mets version of the met hat like that's like when i think uh scarlett johansson was wearing one the other week i have one it's so cool it's really cool yeah that's amazing but how did it feel at the time it felt pretty awful i mean we knew the right uh sort of strategic grounding was underneath it so we could tell a story so i think in terms of like when we've seen brands that have potentially made um quite big sort of branding blunders a la tropicana a la uh gap there wasn't no one was coming back out and saying well we did this for x y and z reason we could talk about that we could talk about why why the met were embarking on that they were embarking on the next kind of era they were talking about connecting art history across times making sure as it's an art object museum that everything was as relevant to the next generation as it has been and it's quite hard when you've got like victorian dresses and things like that so how do you have like a show like if you have a really culturally relevant show like an Alexander McQueen where everyone comes how do you get them to visit the rest of the museum and you sort of start to curate collections that like somebody like Alexander McQueen would have been inspired by and you start to connect this all through kind of history and I just think this life to art art to lives idea was just this changed radically how they curate how they write about their labels how the brand identity showed up it was why we removed the sort of Leonardo da Vinci man because that only stood for one point in time and we needed to be for all points in time and it was almost it was also simple and reductive but yet it was inclusive in terms of the way we approached like languages and and told stories and things like that and yeah it's 10 years later people love it they were wrong the people were wrong we could just say it and I'm gonna go I I mean, the type was a bit weird.

4:15I know it was. I love it though. I guess in terms of rebrands, how do you ensure that when you put that out there on day one, the Jaguar effect doesn't happen? Oh, you can't ensure that. You can't. You just can't. Change is hard, as we know. Lots of people don't like change. Apparently they do in politics, but not in rebrands. Facts. Yeah, you never know. And they're always going to find something. So even when like a Burger King, which I think really took hold of culture much more than I think we'd even anticipated. There's still haters. There's still bits. Oh, yeah. She ain't got haters. She ain't popping.

4:56Yeah, that's right. I mean, if, you know, people just everyone loves it, then it's just like, what's the point? I feel so now like thick skinned to that. It really, the Met really hurt. I had a friend who was like shouted at me about the low. is it right aligned left aligned or centered and i'm like we're all of the above shut the fuck up we're at dinner i don't want to talk about this right now leave me alone it hurt i got over it yeah i can laugh about it 10 years to get over it and nothing yeah it does thicken you up and also yeah cultures kind of changed we didn't have all those platforms that we have now and the comments section and it's kind of like good reading now it's kind of if i have the time i mean I think I love brand new.

5:43I've always been a huge fan. Shout out to Armin. I'm with you though. Like I just love that people care. Yeah. And the fact that branding is now a public domain culture topic is incredible. Yeah. Because I remember when no one gave a shit. Yeah. When a company rebranded. Yeah. I know. It's completely changed throughout the whole of my career. I've sort of seen it change. Which is amazing. So let's go back to the beginning. Rewind. So where does Lisa Smith start a career in design or at least just thinking that she wants to be a designer? It's not as linear or as perfect as you would think it is.

6:24I'm not one of those designers that are like, I was born with a pencil in my hand and I was so creative and my mom was like, oh, You're doing so well at school. No, I played a lot of sports actually until I was in my teenage years. I didn't love school. So then sports went to partying maybe a little bit too much. And I would do anything not to go to school. My mom was brought to the school to say she doesn't come in very much and she needs to attend more if she's going to pass at anything. um I shouldn't I was so silly to stay between the 16 and 18 where you actually can select to stay in school I think it was just because all my friends were there and then we could all skive together instead of going to school but um when I flunked really badly I was uh 18 and I was like left in a bit of like what do I do what do I like and I weirdly did get into a university to play sports and I was just like but what am I I'm going to be a teacher it's not that I am my one of my brothers is a teacher I'm not nothing no offense to teachers but I was just like I don't think I want to wake up on a Saturday morning in the gray British weather going to play field hockey with a lot of kids so I was just like ah what do I also do I like doing and I did this course called like craft design and technology it's called CDT which was kind of like making things like woodwork and dimensional and and and I was like oh I really liked this I kind of like art I really hadn't done very much of it so I applied to do what they call a foundation year in the UK that first they were like well we can't accept you don't actually have a portfolio you didn't actually pass any of your exams uh can you draw something for us over the summer we will see if you're able to actually draw.

8:19And I spent the whole summer drawing a car engine. And I don't know why I drew a car engine, but literally like photographic, like dedicated two hours a day. Damn, do you still have it? I think probably in my mom's loft somewhere. Nice, nice, nice. Oh, you want to be an artist? Draw something. That's what they said. They did. And it wasn't very quick. So I don't know what that would have led to. But anyway, I was really lucky. they took me into the art foundation it was the best thing I ever did and it was it was the defining sort of year because it was like draw with your elbows and your feet in fine art and life drawing classes it was going into textiles it was knitting and crocheting it was making jewelry it was photography it was graphic design it was everything and I was just like oh my god I love this and love the combination of all the different disciplines.

9:14So the sort of point came towards the end of the last term where you're meant to pick a subject and then you can apply to go to university. And I was like, I'm going to pick fine art. I told my mom I was going to pick fine art. And she was like, are you sure? Because I don't get the feeling that you want to live at home for the rest of your life. And you're going to be like a poor artist living at home. And I was like too right I definitely don't uh she said what else could you do and I was like well there is this thing called graphic design and design with a capital d and I was like you could do all of this stuff under design you can do typography I could do photography I could do illustration I could do art I could do it all and I was just like this is the course that I need to take and so that was really that moment were you into brands as a kid or like what you were said sports like what were like brands or things that you were like into outside of partying you know as a big party I don't want to talk about those brands um raves and going to yeah to helter-skelder and milton keynes oh my god so old uh brands no I don't think you know I just wasn't design wasn't that thing for me yeah and but the minute kind of this art college experience it was like going to museums and going to the like the V &A changed my life like many years later I again I found it so interesting because it was so many different types of art it was like Islamic and Turkish galleries and sculptures and um and and photography and all and ceramics and so it was everything so things like that really them sort of mixed media really inspired me and where did you start officially as a professional designer where what like uh agencies agency side yeah I did so when I I went to university in Bath which was a very uh it was very art college it was wonderful if people know Bath you have these amazing like halls of residence that uh that were like this old crescent that you could run from one end to the other and it was like it was ceramicists and fine artists and designers and we were just having a ball like it was just like one that was also a beautiful big party but it was creative and felt um very yeah experimental and and ended up doing most of my degree in photography and I'd only just learned to like put a little bit of helvetica typography on the corner on the corner well we all had to share max so there was like again it was it was just before the kind of every designer would have to have one it was it was just kind of that that point and it was also a recession in the UK when I graduated so it wasn't a great time I really wanted to work in advertising I really wanted to work at mother and make dancing pot noodle ads and 911 singing thing ads and I just thought they were hilarious so those were the things that kind of spoke to me initially okay like very kind of again pop culture-y brand so like very generic like Heinz ketchup and things like that which is kind of the irony of where I work now but um they turned me down because I didn't have a writing partner and I was like sorry I don't even know what is a writing part like I just didn't know that kind of formality and tradition and I was just I mean it was such bs to me and I was like uh oh they said well you can do that if you've gone to centralst martin's in london I was like no I went to college in bath in west country what are you talking about I was a hippie like it was cool but um I ended up writing hundreds of letters uh as i said it was a recession there wasn't a lot out there get buying magazines like creative review and design week those became my bibles in terms of like finding out what agencies there was a an agency called williams murray ham which we probably know now as packaging but it was as a they made a baked bean like they made hovis bread it's one of my favorite pieces of packaging that has just baked beans covered all over it or cucumber all the sort of ingredients that you put on the bread and it was just so cool and I was like oh that's I mean that's kind of like also like advertising on bread really I mean so it was all kind of mixed and and I maybe I just wasn't completely clear anyway I ended up getting an internship an annual report company that did a lot of finance stuff which sounds yeah brochures brochures yeah I think there was about 50 guys on one floor and I was the only woman.

13:48And I was like, oh my goodness. And they go for beers at lunchtime and I drink a pint and go bright red. Just like, oh, these guys, what am I doing? And now I've got to come back and design a Christmas card for Klein, Walt and Benson, the three, and I called them the three wise men and blah, blah, blah. But there I met a creative director who was like, are you sure this is the right job for you? and I was like I don't know I don't think so I was just trying something out turned out his mom was my primary school art teacher and he looked at my portfolio which had a lot of photography he was like you should go and work at a studio like brands that do art books for photographers like Martin Parr and I was like oh my god I would love it like Martin Parr did become one of my sort of first photographic sort of heroes.

14:40I got to meet him very many years later and sit in his studio and edit through some of his things. But he was like right to Browns. Browns were looking for an intern. It was just, it was like the stars were aligning. One of the partners got me to come in one day, show the portfolio. He said I had rivers running through my type and it was really bad, but he liked me and he asked me to come back the next two days, the next day to meet two other partners. and we all got on really well. And I was like, I was walking with my giant portfolio back then. Do you remember those giant portfolios we'd all carry where you'd have big plastic pages?

15:18As a listener to the show, you know that Kevin didn't have to do this, but I did, of course, you know, carrying around a big leather portfolio with the handle and, you know, just jamming a bunch of shit in there and yeah, showing people real printed pieces of your work. So that's where I got my first job. six months internship i thought they were going to fire me uh or not fire me let me go at the end of the well they kept renewing it and then they'd hired someone more senior and it they said oh it was a goodbye party for me and a welcome party for them and they gave me this little brown package that i unwrapped and it was my business card oh that's sweet i'm actually on their website right now they do some pretty cool stuff uh to this day they're uh definitely in publication design and yes i did editorial like annual reports for channel four lots of photography books uh with magnum photographers but really actually commercial projects selling paper to be honest for paper companies so um yeah my first book was uh pandora's box which was a sex club in new york oh amazing yeah i i saw you speak where i forgot at some conference and you shared like some of these photos of the uh early photography work and the early stuff that you were doing and it was um Yeah, it was controversial.

16:32It was. It was. I gave that book to my mom and she was like, don't ever show your granddad. You will never get any more money. Yeah. It's not what you, you know, Lisa Smith, you know, you think of the, you know, the incredible, what's it, your executive global, you know, world. Yeah, creative director. Yeah, she was started with sex clubs. That was really where it all starts. It all started. It all starts at the sex club. But yeah, so you were there for like four or so years? Yeah. I did books for like Dries Van Noten. Yeah, like did lots of reports for Channel 4. And then I went to work at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

17:10I answered an ad in the Guardian newspaper, which was crazy. I didn't want to go to a competitor. An ad in a newspaper. Yeah, for a job. Looking for designers? Yes. Amazing. And apparently hundreds of people applied to work at the Victoria and Albert Museum. And I got the role. which was cool. And so that was the first time like working, I guess, in-house technically. And so working on the client side, being a part of the museum. Yeah, there was two senior designers and two 3D designers. And it was cool because then we were like creating exhibition spaces for the permanent collections as well as like their exhibition program and then doing all the marketing materials to promote them.

17:50So finding, like I got to work with David Downton, which is this very famous like fashion illustrator. and we did like all the posters for the couture big show that was coming up and we went into the archives and found like a really old beautiful Dior dress like it was so interesting like I did a show with Gregory Crudson called Twilight Magic Hour and it had Philip DeLauke like all these artists and we lit the whole room purple but their pictures were white lit so they glowed off the like it was experimenting with space and design and 2D and 3D. And I just think, again, I think that that foundation course has not stopped kind of paying off all throughout my career.

18:35It's been very about how can I mix mediums of digital, motion, physical, and print, really. And I'm... No, it makes perfect sense. And I think that's, yeah, that's the key to sort of learning about sort of design, but not through the lens of like, how can I make this work? Yeah. Never test me on like, well, no, old school, like famous typographers and things like that. I don't read any of that. I just know what I like. From there, Marquis. Is that a design show? Yeah, I pronounced Mark. I mean, to be honest, that sounds crazy because it was called Third Eye Design. I was working at the V &A. Third Eye Design.

19:20And a guy asked me, a friend said, oh, you've got an American passport, don't you? There's this Scottish design company that are looking for a designer to join the team in New York. And wow, it would be such a bonus because they wouldn't have to get you a visa. You could come over. And you would have sort of British design sensibilities. I'm like, what's that? Anyway, whatever. And I was like, oh, this is cool. but the company is called Third Eye Design. I've never heard of them. Third Eye Design. No, they're called Noe Associates now. And Mark Noe, it was his first sort of company that then we changed the name to Mark Creative when we were there.

20:06And it was an ode to his name being Mark, but Mark as in like a symbol, M-A-R-Q-U-E. And then, yeah, now it's Noe Associates. And so when I joined there, we were doing things like property. I did the Nolitan Hotel. I worked on Delicatessen and some of the Lion, other kind of restaurants. I worked on Horch of Venison galleries here in New York. So it was, again, more 2D, 3D printing, making, all very about making, to be honest, I think. Yeah, they do some really great work too. Yeah. And they're still crushing it. Yeah. Doing hospitality projects. Yeah, it's very, it's sort of a specific sectors now.

20:47Follow. it's a good thing they moved away from third eye design yeah I don't know it came back around yeah I don't know yeah it could be couldn't it but yeah yeah but they had some really amazing talent that worked there so it was like that was I was like if they're gonna join okay and that was the first time you sort of moved to New York to work as a designer yeah and so you've been here ever since yeah and from there moving brands another agency with a tremendous name that was a really fun experience didn't last for very long it was in san francisco i was excited to go to san francisco because i've been in new york for two years and i was like oh i can live anywhere i can do whatever i want but i i kind of had amnesia that actually i was quite lonely the first year i lived in new york and it took me a while to find my sort of tribe and friends and people to hang out with.

21:47And so sort of leaving them so quickly maybe was a bit of a mistake. But on the other side, I was excited to go to San Francisco because a lot of the ex-Browns crew all worked at Apple. So now Scott Miller is like one of the high ups there. He taught me, he was at Browns and he taught me how to use a computer and everything. I was not very computer literate, but they, you know, make beautiful things. I think Chris, one of the designers I work with at Browns, he now works with Johnny Ive, but they all are Apple. So it's all really, so I was so excited. There's all these like friends that worked at Apple, but they were all on the bus going back and forth from Apple.

22:22And I worked at Moving Brands in the middle of a city that didn't have Uber at the time. It had a thing called Taxi Magic. I lived on Eddy Street, which was, now most people would know, is not in the nicest area of San Francisco. and it was just really lonely, to be honest, and I miss New York. Wolf Hollins is next? Yeah, so I came back to New York and, yeah, I'd met with the team at Wolf Hollins even prior to moving brands and it was just all really about timing, I think. And they were coming off projects that they'd been doing for, like, the New Museum and the NYC City Identity. They were on a tear of, like, some really cool work.

23:05they'd also worked for do you remember that bank wow moo that had also uh i think that bank uh fell apart and i think that was not a great time for wolf o 'clock because i think a lot of people were working on it but um so post that period they were like um come and join the team and i was really excited to uh todd who's now uh the head of creative at um ibm was one of the ecds a gentleman called Jordan Crane, who actually is one of the head creatives for Apple stores. They were the ECDs at Wolf Hollins, and they'd done a lot of that work. And I just, I love them. They were so much fun to come and work with.

23:45And Todd said the first thing he said when I joined a week later is, we've won USA Today. Now, Lisa, let's see what you're made of. Let's see what she's got. He wrote that on a company-wide email. No way. And I was like, ooh. Throwing to the wolves. I was thrown to the wolves. That's scary. Pressure. I put a lot of pressure on myself. I worked so hard that year. It was so much fun not only to work on the rebrand and I remember doing the directions and one of the directions was just presenting a blue dot. I was going to say, and you're like, okay, all the pressure's on me. They're like, let's see what you've got, kid.

24:21He stood with me. He was with me. Lisa's like, I got a big idea. How about a circle? And they're like, fuck, she's good. I think there might have been some post-rationalization of the pulse of the nation, but it was awesome. It didn't go like that. It wasn't just like, how about a circle? No, I mean, I presented a blue dot with a TM on the corner and they were like, I don't think you can actually copyright a circle. But wouldn't it be sick if we did? And then I showed the next page, I showed them six colored circles because one was for sports, one was for life, one was for money. And the rest is history.

24:57And the rest is history. and then I said yes to a newspaper which I was crazy because I came from that editorial background and they were like they got a team working on reimagining the digital it was a hundred percent where they needed to go and put all the efforts but in truth they were still making some of the advertising dollars from the paper so they were like well it all needs to marry up and I was like could you do it I was like hell yeah I'd love to do a newspaper dream I called up the guy from who design the guardian i was like could you like give me some lessons he was like no you give me the project i'm not here to teach you how to do your job i refrained my from my my profanity i was about to use that but um it was and i bought a book and i kind of got my head around it because it was really interesting with it because i watched two designers for weeks tried to play with different layouts on on the newspaper and it would take so long and i was like this isn't how you do it it is all mod it's all modules it's all components so then i went and designed loads of headline variations loads of subheads loads of like how they look up and you basically made these kit of parts of elements which hey kit of parts then comes in many years later of like what brands and assets and elements means but designing it like that and then you kind of we program them into a proprietary system and you piece it together it's a jigsaw piece boom is this the first time you've ever worked on sort of like a big national sort of project that had a lot of eyeballs on it uh absolutely and i found myself saying i'm from america it's okay i know i have a british accent i'm from the american people i'm from queens bitch and then you're like you don't have to be very careful like uh around yeah being new york elitist i yeah yeah and i think yeah i've I mean, that has definitely gone away because I work on brands from all over America.

26:51So I definitely get to see all the different sides. But it was the people's news. It was Twitter before Twitter. It was color news and storytelling and graphics before any of the other news media was doing that type of stuff. It was so modern in so many ways. And I loved the quotes around when that launched. People felt like it was the digital newspaper. we did have an op-ed section which was like uh twitter stories and uh youtube videos and things like that reference culture and kind of connected the two and they talked together and and then eventually they redesigned the newsroom floor we talked about publishing like they were publishing news stories online every minute and then the print was like published the best stories of the day so we redesigned the floor as a circle and the sort of best news of stories of the day were on the outside and the heart and the beat of like the digital was sitting in the center that's really cool so you saw the it transformed the way they were and that was a really interesting time like was 2010 2012 right yeah and it's like the internet is first like emerging as a news vehicle yeah people are like still new york times was starting all those do those all those interactive editorial stories that were just so cool must have cost so much money to do back then and i think i remember at the time people were a little uneasy about the usa today rebrand or was there like i know it wasn't like the met situation no it wasn't but i remember it being maybe not in easy but people it was it was a story it was like this is a rebrand and this is yeah quite transformative Yeah, I mean, I worked with the Futura family on creating a headline, creasing the ascenders and descenders so it could become a headline font.

28:40Like, yeah, it was so modernist. Yeah. And people were confused, not confused, but just like it affected people. And people were like, whoa, this is a newspaper. It shouldn't look this modern. Designers loved it. It bucked the traditions of institutional sort of newspapers, which is important to see branding in the context of what it has been and what the industry, what everyone else looks like. And you bring in change, people are going to, there's going to be friction. And I think with that, there was a dotted line from where they came from. They were using Futura, but I modernized it and took it to a new place.

29:21They had a circle, but it had all of the Americas, even though it's called USA Today. And they had this like line work running through. It wasn't even like edit. You couldn't even reproduce it. It sort of fell apart in print. so it was they needed to be able to transfer themselves into digital platforms it was that to be honest it was the first it was one of the first ones that was thinking about how do you go from being more analog to more digital and we're still doing that obviously more in the kind of the food and uh and sort of cpg and food and beverage and stuff like that i still think those dots are still happening now where like because marketing is more is so much more digital there's still like the more analog brands there that still have that journey to go on but that was like yeah it's 2010 12 yeah um i had to google the old logo and that thing is crazy that little like uh it's like it kind of reminds me of like the diet pepsi lines i don't know yeah and it yeah i mean just yeah i mean i think it's an interesting time 2012 right where like brands start recognizing that they need to rebrand or this idea of sort of updating their visual language for the new world of digital everything and across yeah i think we're still to your point living inside of that where there's brands that are still catching up yeah 12 years later and but a lot of them have have evolved yeah and the amazing is that you've been a part of a lot of them so the met we talked about a bit but is that the sort of next one that you go to after usa today like now that you've you know sort of you've shown them what you got yeah and you've proven yourself at wolf holand's as the uh you know the pressure was it was not too big uh is they then say how about this museum or where do you what else in between i think i had i worked on grubhub okay um and we were working on a strategy of whether to sunset seamless and grubhub together because they're both owned by the same company.

31:28Can we talk about that for a second? Mm-hmm. As someone who... They've gone and undone it and made it really bad again. Recently. As a passionate user of Seamless, someone who spends countless dollars ordering food, I'm still confused by the Seamless by Grubhub situation. But yet there's also a Standalone app also for Grubhub, but they don't have the same restaurants on them, but they're also different colors. Let's, let's. Yeah. Why did you do that? Yeah. Why did you do that? No, I did not do that. I could show you a beautiful presentation where they come closer and closer together. We actually did do testing on the name.

32:12So, so you know that Grubhub is the sort of national name and Seamless is actually only in New York. and maybe Boston. I don't know. I can't remember. But yeah, so people - The loyalty of Seamless is too strong? And people love, like we tried to see, is Seamless a better name? Because you could go beyond, like obviously it just being about food and it's more about having a Seamless experience and getting things delivered whenever you want. Yeah. So that felt like, oh, that could be a cool strategy for the rest, for the Grubhub users to transition to Seamless And then vice versa, Grubhub is the name that tested much better.

32:55Grubhub. Because it's like one of those things that says it on the tin, doesn't it? They're both bad names. I think Seamless is a better name. Grubhub is terrible. Can I also say something that's not good? That little house with the fork and the knife in it. That's nothing. Why did you do that, Lisa? I didn't do that.

33:17Yeah. Yeah, I'm intrigued. Anyway, so you could go back and look for the War Follens era of that. But let's park that one. That's the one. That's the only one. One of the only ones that I've seen change, to be honest. How does that feel? Radically annoying when they go and make it worse. Like, why? You need to get Lisa back in here to come back around and save Seamless slash Powered by Grubhub. And they were the, when we were doing that, they were number one. And then look what's happened. Like Uber Eats and all of those. They've had, they, you know. It's so confusing. It's just like, it's orange, but it's red.

33:53And they change it back and forth. And the illustration style is a mess. Well, I think it was all red. And then, of course, DoorDash appears and it's red. But does that mean when you were all red, that then you need to change because another competitor's come in and trying to eat your brand? I don't know. Just put the fries in the bag. No. Yeah, yeah. And make sure they're hot when they get here, please. Yeah. It's also a weird orange. Sorry to go on this tangent for a bit. It's like a pretty gross orange. All right, let's move over to Zot Dog. Yeah, why'd you pick that orange? It's so much better.

34:26Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like a dusty orange. It's just like, I don't know. Like, I care about this brand a lot because I use it. I know. I would kill to do it again. I think it deserves like a good brand. We're asking. Yeah, please. A collaboration maybe. We're ready to go. I mean, you got to figure this shit out. A JKR center collab? Wouldn't be the first. We've done it before. But yeah, no, it's one of those, I mean, New Yorkers love Seamless and it's changed my life. It's almost too easy to utter every type of food. But yeah, I love the brand. And it's an example of one of those brands that actually, I would say the product is so great that it almost doesn't matter what the branding looks like.

35:07Yeah. And it's so seamless how easy it is to use that does it need to really have a great brand? I mean, it could have a great brand. You're entering Kevin's territory. Cut that from the record. You're breaking him down. Is it okay not to rebrand something? Somebody's got to be the foil on this program. That's true. I just turned it to Kevin there for a second. Whereas I'm like, bring it on. Give it back to me. I want it. I forgot I'm a businessman that thrives on rebranding. No, it needs a great brand. It's seamless, of course. but it's a shame that I don't know what they're doing over there but then to the Met and so that's when the letters they were squished together and yeah the rest is history it's still on their website actually I was just looking at wellfullones.com yeah they're still doing it anything outside of those projects in your sort of tenure right there?

36:09ZocDoc I think which is Zoc Doc yeah another good one that was one of my favorites actually yeah that was and that that's still yeah going strong with the little Z yeah yeah yeah I actually I met uh well he's no longer the CMO he's actually I think um he's more even more senior um recently and he said we still love it so much it works so well isn't that amazing yeah they're like you did good no one needs to touch it yeah let it live forever how long do these projects uh typically take uh for for you and and your team yeah they're all varied i mean honestly zot doc was almost 12 weeks i think 12 weeks it was a sprint they had a lot of the strategy baked so um but you did we did throw in some uh there was some testing in the middle which was really interesting because they felt like they wanted to grow up and and be more serious and because of like again like brands like oscar and everyone that appeared and they were all doing like happy nice illustration and they were kind of born of that ilk um so they had they had thought that that's what what they wanted to do but actually we ended up creating a really fun brand we put it in as a wild card into testing and people trusted that more to give their health information than they did the the more sort of serious one that felt more like a hospital or doctors or something you know like health insurance something that felt really grown up which was really interesting just again shows people just want a little bit of delight sometimes in their life and why does everything sad world that we live in especially around health care i mean it's it's pretty depressing that was another moment in time when like health care got a rebrand and everyone you know and oscar was a big part of that where they're just like we don't have to struggle with this terrible old-fashioned old looking design and I remember that being a big turning point because you were like if if if doc you know doctors and insurance companies can can find a way to build brands yeah it kind of means that every there's no excuse for any company to not really invest in building a great brand yeah and trying to build a brand that's friendly and approachable and also trustworthy yeah and it was really smart how they did we did that so collaboratively with the in-house team that was I think that was probably that was coming from being in-house and eventually obviously after that I went back in-house again um we're going there next oh yeah the the the sort of collaboration with in-house teams it's easy for agencies to sort of turn their nose up at it and be a little bit snobby about it but I've always felt like if we can find a way to really work together and make it feel as much about what they want to create and live with and they bring it to life, then it's like, that's why the Met is executed so well.

39:03Their in-house team were an incredibly high caliber of creatives. They're doing a lot of the day-to-day, so they don't actually have the time or sometimes even the outside perspective to be able to necessarily completely take on the rebrand, but they need to be walking in lockstep with you whilst you're doing it. And the brilliant bit with I think with ZotDoc was like they they need backends that the doctor the back end sort of booking system that the doctors use versus the consumer kind of facing platforms I wasn't going to be designing all the UI and UX experience of all of that so it was awesome to give over we gave assets over very early on for them to test and learn and we project them in the studio and we'd do sessions and see who were breaking it how far you could push it and then we sort of co-created the guidelines together it was brilliant and i think that is that is the way that great brands are born and and and and live yeah is when there's a team that can really bring it to life and actually execute it because you could build the best brand system in the world and hand it over to someone and if it's it's wonderful idea ideology that we're all going to work together till the end of time but yeah but it rarely happens and i think sometimes designers yeah to your earlier point like put their you know their noses up at the sort of in-house people and as someone that spent a lot of time in-house, I always, you know, sort of that, that friction always bothered me.

40:27And it was always something that I always found like, to fight up against as well, because I think that in-house reputation of those guys that are just like, you know, mad at the agencies or sort of this tension that always seemed to exist. And I think it still is, is there. Right. And I think people, yeah, they still struggle with that. I I think that sort of transition or that partnership is really key to any great brand. It's still snobby. Still snobby. Agency's snobby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Working at an agency. Yeah, yeah. These fucking snobby ass agencies. No, I mean, I think it's, you know, again, it's just a natural tension.

41:05There's not a lot of empathy for the politics that the in-house team are having to go through. Because it is political. And the in-house team will be oftentimes very talented and very passionate and very knowledgeable about the brand. And then it does sometimes take an outside person to come in and say the same thing that those people in-house are saying and then sort of get, you know, the respect or the sort of appreciation that. But I mean, I think that changes because of brands that prioritize in-house design and build out teams and have success. Top of the list, Shobani. and so you are at Wolf Owens and um how does Leland Mashmeyer convince you to go to Chobani yeah I'd never met Leland before okay as well so that was um it was really nice I remember going to breakfast with him and meeting him for the first time shout out to Leland and um he's coming on the pod Leland you're next oh yeah yeah yeah I love Leland yes and he was he was just yeah so sweet but I think he'd I mean he really painted the picture I think there was a point at Wolf Hollins when sort of after some of those projects where I was working on I mean it was it was good fun I worked on a law firm we were starting to get uh more banking and things like that that I was just like less of the more sort of purposeful um or for the people type brands that we were working on.

42:36And when he talked about the mission for Chobani being better food for all people, it was just so inspiring in a country where the food is honestly pretty gross. And I mean, I only met someone this week who was telling me for the first six months they moved to the US, they haven't felt that well. And I'm just like, oh my goodness. And then I go to Europe in the summer to see my mom and I always go in the summer and everybody always says, you look so great when you come back. And I'm like, I eat more meals probably than I do here. And it's just the food is just so much better quality. So it's just like, and you just feel healthier.