What’s Your Thing: with Alex Adam

0:00Alex Adam has two first names and is the founder and creative director at Boredom kills creative The studio, not an agency, is based in the UK and operates worldwide with a mission to build community and connection through world-class brand identities and storytelling that gets products on shelves and butts in seats. You may have seen their work for brands like Churn, New Brew, or Prince Street Pizza. I first saw Alex's work on Instagram, where he's a bit of a content king, where he posts studio recaps, case studies, and other branding-related videos. We had a great conversation with Alex and we discussed his work and learned about his pop punk background.

0:39Starts now.

0:46You're a pro. I mean, you're a front face king. Yeah, I have done some. Yeah, no. When did you start doing those? Maybe like a year and a half ago now. Okay. Yeah, I think so. Did it come naturally or did you have to try to figure it out, get a learning curve? Oh, no, it was awkward as hell at first. It was definitely like, especially because you're on your own in the room. It's just you and a camera and it's like, okay, personality, go. It does not happen. Let me turn this thing on. Yeah, let me just become an actual psychopath and like, hi, guys. No, you have a very natural YouTuber kind of energy that you're bringing.

1:26Is that something that you tapped into? It is. I guess like previous to the studio, I was in a band, which was very front facing, very like talk to the camera, perform for the camera, be on stage. Really? What kind of band? It was a pop punk band. Okay. Yeah. Let's go. Yeah. So that is kind of where I was like, I mean, you know, we joked about positioning before this but like in my mind I was like what what can I actually do that like is somewhat unique to me yeah and I'm fine talking on stage I'm fine talking on camera yeah and a lot of people are not no I think most designers would consider themselves introverts yes myself included I'm an introvert I am a masking introvert that's right I would say yeah so I can turn it on but then I'm gonna stare at the wall in the hotel for three hours to recharge.

2:21Yeah, and if someone invites you to something, you don't want to go. If it's last minute, no. If I knew like six months in advance, then I can prepare. Well, it's nice you got your own flow. I don't know anyone else who's like, oh yeah, so we're working on this project and it's in this phase. Doing a good job on there. I appreciate that, yeah. The level up recently is that I brought in my friend to shoot the content with me. Nice, nice. And he was in the band too. So he's like someone I've been with for the last like 12 years. And having another person to bounce off made it so much easier. Really?

2:53Yeah. That's key. Because I'm not now just being like, okay, did I have enough personality in that 60 second clip of me just talking on my own? Alex was out one week and I tried to do like a solo episode of a podcast. Yeah. And I ended up just like kind of having a mental breakdown and just like, it was just, it was bad. Immediately deleted. Just never see the light of day. it's tough i'm still trying to get uh some of the footage there because it sounds incredibly like uh terrible but also amazing at some point it comes out it's a tough it's tough to do solo content i can't imagine i it's so much easier now i have a friend that's great yeah now i'm just like okay come over we gotta do this like we'll just drink too much coffee and have fun nice the thing that i thought that sounded good to me was the room i was like oh a nice like quiet room somewhere where you can be as embarrassing as you want to yourself because i think to me the secondhand embarrassment because sometimes i try to set up like microphones in here and i'm like if anyone hears me be like well today on front center we got a story from oreo you know it's like it starts to be like whoa that's who the fuck is that weird tiktok voice yes you know where is that coming from but that is the barrier to entry for this though is like you think you have to put on a weird tiktok voice but you don't you just have to be you and wow wow like just be yourself damn honestly it's like some fucking fortune cookie shit but like it's true like i i definitely did the the funny voice at first and then over over reps of doing it i was like oh no i don't want to i would rather not have work than do that but i think sometimes when i do it i use my regular voice i'm like man this guy's low energy you know yeah there is tap in a little bit of juice right yeah you gotta dial it up a tiny bit that's where the coffee comes in right that's where the coffee comes in yeah and i think like coming back you want any coffee no good thank you i've had enough today um but yeah i think that's where the kind of band thing was really valuable for me because we spent 10 years like kind of overthinking who you were supposed to be yeah and you come out the other side and go it's just like me but dialed up a bit that's that's the thing can i ask about the band what was the band called pop punk yeah pop punk i just finished mark hoppus's memoir okay so i uh i'm a fan of uh of of the genre okay nice there's i feel like there's a cutoff though right yeah blink 182 and then that's all i've ever listened to okay okay what but what was the band the band was called rome okay which was named after another band in our scenes very popular song which was an interesting choice okay how did they like that did they they did not and shocker and no one else in the scene liked it either but i think that kind of acted as fuel in the early days for people like some tension who the fuck is this yeah yeah who are these guys yeah and where exactly did you grow up i grew up on the south coast of the uk in a town called eastbourne which is known for just elderly people uh they call it god's waiting room uh and actually like i think we might have to read rebrand it because why that's perfect well i think they've they're not in the waiting room anymore oh they're in hospice or they're no as in like they're with him they're with the lord now okay okay okay yeah so they're gone though they're gone yeah and we're starting to get younger people okay so so we need to rebrand to try to attract more youth yes got it and so growing up there you were bored 100 um and creative uh yeah you put that into music or design or both music it was 100 music until i was like maybe 27 okay 28 potentially were you the guy in the band that made the flyers and the merch and the artwork not originally really no not originally i i had no i mean i was okay at design at school but i was not really a design guy i was 100 in on music and the band was like full-time so that became kind of everything.

6:48You were just the charismatic front man. I was, I was singer and guitarist, but that was another singer as well, which two singers in a band. Yeah. Wow. I hear this a lot from designers. I feel like it's a very common path or at least it's one of the most common paths, which is I was in a band, they needed flyers, they needed artwork. And I decided to do that i was the one that did it and then uh the band broke up and then i took it professionally that way but that wasn't the case here i mean towards the point where i was like i need money okay i need to survive what um that was where i was like oh i could try and like learn to design to live in god's waiting room it is it's expensive to be on tour you sold out man it was cheap to be in God's waiting room but I was not there often yeah how was touring was that the the dream that Mark Hoppus makes it sound like in his memoir Fahrenheit 182 available now wherever you buy books he uh maybe has experienced a different end of that spectrum to me oh because Blink-Way 2 was the biggest pop punk band in the world and he's incredibly rich yeah I think I mean it was great It was, I credit it to a lot of what I have now and who I am now.

8:05Sure. But it was hard. Yeah. He does make it seem hard. I will say that. It's a good book. Yeah. If anyone's interested. I like memoirs. I like documentaries. I like just real stories. I like to learn more stuff. And yeah, he talks about the sort of the gruelingness of being in Cincinnati, Ohio, and it's freezing fucking cold, and you have to load in all of your own equipment and play to, you know, five to 10 people. Yes. And you basically lose money on the operation and then have to just immediately go to the next show. Yeah. That night. Was that how it was for you guys? Exactly how it was. Yeah.

8:38Did you have any moments of breakthrough? 10 years is a long time. 10 years is a long time. Yeah. We, the last tour we did when we broke up, we actually called 10 years is enough. Did we have any breakthroughs? I mean, we had like some success with a couple songs. Okay. in terms of like very low level success, but like 10, 15 million streams on a couple songs, which I would consider as like our kind of breakthroughs. Do you have fans? Yeah, we definitely did. Yeah. We toured, we did best in the UK, but we toured the whole world. We did Australia, Japan, Singapore, the US. We did Canada, but it was varying levels of like three people, 300 people any breakout shows any shows that are like this was the greatest moment of my life nothing's ever going to top this uh you know i think the greatest achievement for me personally was like i grew up on some 41 they're my favorite band in the world they're the reason i started playing guitar and we we when they went on their like big hiatus the first time they came back to the uk to tour we supported them wow and that was like all killer no filler it was all killer yeah exactly sorry but in that exact era we had also copied their logo oh sick and and like regurgitated some of their songs as our own um i'm starting to know a trend here yeah but i wasn't aware of that at the time i was just like this is great and then now i see the poster And I'm like, ooh, those are the same logo.

10:15So it seems like the band had a sort of a brand in its own, right? Where there was a playfulness, there was a willingness to fuck around with other bands. Yeah. And I feel like that maybe translated into Boredom Kills Creative. I see a thread. Do you think about that as like a pop punk band? I feel like pop punk is the one genre that doesn't take itself that seriously. Yes, yeah. I love that about it, right? It's like, you know, fuck your mom, kind of like dumb and stupid. it and it's like there's a stupidity to it that's like yeah this is not that serious i'm playing a guitar on a stage and singing some songs and i think that's what drew me to your work i think it's the way that you talk about it it's the way that you maybe don't take it so seriously and but take it very seriously at the same time and you can do both of those things yeah do you do you correlate that to pop punk to design agency yeah i mean i don't know if it's pop punk as such are Are you the blink-182 of graphic design?

11:12It's really what I wanted to say. I have a feeling it wouldn't instill the most trust in potential clients. Okay. Don't worry. None of them are listening. That's one thing you need to know. I think it is just having never had like a job as such. Yeah. There was never like a way to act. There was never like a code of conduct. It was just, I mean, obviously there's a code of conduct, but it's a weird thing to say. I don't know, like there was just like a, you just are yourself. And if that works and you're rewarded for that, then you continue. Did the brand or the band have like conversations about the brand of the band?

11:51It sounds like there were some thought there. The early days, there was not. And the early days is where we had the most kind of like quick success maybe. Because we were 18 when we started it. and at that age it's just like do i think it's funny yes yeah so i'm gonna do it and then i'm gonna regret it when i'm 31 and on a podcast and people are digging stuff up they only want to talk to me about my pop punk band well but um it is interesting though yeah i think it does i think you're right it does transition into what i do now i do think that music acts are more strategic from a branding perspective than you might think yes i think drake is really strategic i think there are a lot of artists that are like this is there's you know there's an opportunity there's a lane there's something that will gravitate or make people gravitate towards towards the music which is really what i want them to hear but like what is the thing outside of the music that is maybe going to get them to come to it i think you know chaperone or a lot of pop stars i feel like you look at them you're like without the brand of those uh containers like i do think the music is obviously great you have to have the great music but also there's definitely uh an identity and branding and strategy that i think maybe uh is goes on to talk about maybe yes that that is i think that's kind of where it came from for me yeah well like each album cycle you are going okay well what's the album about what are the visuals going to look like there's an element of like even if you didn't create those things there's creative direction in okay so this is this era of what we're doing and this is the visuals this is what the music video is going to look like these are the types of people we're going to talk to on pr this is like yeah uh the types of bands that we want to be associated with as well so you do positioning yeah you do position for each album i think our kind of issue maybe was that we repositioned for every album as opposed to being like building on what you knew of yeah no that makes sense like a rebrand for every album maybe doesn't create enough consistency yes exactly okay and so when did the band break up uh i guess like three years ago now uh 2022 okay so uh one of the band members really got into aliens i assume yes one of them did wow not aliens flat earth oh yeah wow is that a wow okay let's go it's uh yeah i mean they became a flat earther oh full full wow yeah really yeah and and and you don't think the world is flat i know i am i am uh what is it globular what's the word uh around traditional but i think it's offensive to say that oh it's i think we have to pay you can't call the earth round anymore no i think you have to say that you it's not like i i believe the traditional version of the air it is i believe in a globular uh wait it's offensive no i don't think so i mean i mean in the videos he shows me it's offensive and people are like you guys need to wake up.

14:54Oh, yeah. Those people are fired up. Yeah, they get pretty jazzed about the disc. Did that find its way into the band's stage performances? No, this is post. This is post. This is post. Well, the brand positioning weeded that out. They would never talk about that type of stuff. Yeah. We don't take a stance on politics or shapes. Okay, no, it's controversial. Yeah. You don't want to lose people. That's right. You know, sort of flat earthers buy records too, you know? Yes, they do. That's what Michael Jordan said. So the band was still going when you started the agency. Yes. Okay. So at some point the band is like still a band, but maybe not making money.

15:34Yeah. Well, that was never true. Actually, only post-band has the band ever made me personally any money. Wow. Wow. Which is really strange. Yeah. There's some irony there. Yeah. So you started an agency. Yes. Or you started designing. I started designing whilst we were on tour because I was like, I can't feed myself. how am I going to buy these chicken sandwiches? How will I buy chicken sandwiches? And so you were like, okay, graphic design. Yeah. And so what were the, what were the things you were working on? Uh, just really bad illustration for like other bands at first. And then to your point, I started doing like tour posters.

16:08Okay. But it didn't come from a place of like, I need to design the tour poster for our band. It came from like, Oh shit. I need to start a business because this is a lifestyle business. And the band. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. like it's uh so you're like i need the most lucrative job i can get yeah there is like a thread of like jobs that your parents would be upset about and i just stacked them up yeah yeah yeah so the next one obviously influencer influencer comedian um yeah yeah yes content creator yes well that one's that one's coming yeah yeah yeah no it makes sense uh and i imagine that all the artwork was done in the back of a white sprinter van that's like how all this design was made in the last row 100 and at first it was done with my mom's old ipad using my finger oh because there was no that's awesome i was pre-apple pencil really yeah and the bumpy road didn't affect anything oh it did it was so bad no it gave it more uh yeah yeah the early days i was very i was very much about like the textural design work because i was like oh it doesn't have to be perfect yeah i'm doing this on a tour bus yeah and you know and not in like one of those sort of cubes with the sort of uh the thing that you can open and close just the back of a van a cube with like a curtain like a curtain that was the word i was looking for thank you alex i appreciate that i couldn't find curtain no that's it i've never been on a tour bus clearly yeah my My band didn't make it out of high school.

17:42Mine didn't make it out of vans. Isn't it funny when all these sort of artists like romanticize van life and it's only because they got out of van life. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're like, now I have a bus with just my family and everything I ever wanted to eat or drink is there. And they're like, oh, van life. But then the van life is horrendous. we once uh on a i think it was our first u.s tour we shared a a like 12 seater i don't know what it's actually called but like a ford something or other 12 seater there were 12 of us in it oh my and we had a trailer for the luggage and we did a full u.s tour in that oh my god and it was just like the amount of fights was sleeping on the ground oh we would do we would get one motel six and you would have two people in each bed, one person on the floor, one person under the desk, and then the rest would be on benches or on the floor in the van.

18:40I would imagine that's just so you guys can shower, right? Yeah, yeah. It was like a four-hour stop and then carry on. Jesus. How many people were in this band? Sorry, I keep coming back to the band. Five. Five, yeah. Okay, so that's not terrible. No. I feel like, I mean, it makes sense why there's no money because five is a lot, you know, But I never understand how any band that has more than five ever makes any money because they have to do any shows. So at what point did the design in the back of the van become sort of like, okay, I'm not just doing this with my finger anymore. I can use a full computer or I can maybe take on a client and this can be something that I can do for the rest of my life.

19:21I think I started by offering design services to other bands because I was like, my band's not going to pay me because we don't have any money. Yeah. So I started doing really bad designs for other bands and tour posters. And I guess at that point I was like, OK, I'm actually doing this because someone gave me like$50 for something. Yeah. so that was when I got Illustrator Photoshop and started kind of messing around with that and it was a slow progression over the next like two years of like I first of all was doing posters so I'd make merch I would make screen printed posters they sold really well at first because it was fans of the band that were buying it so I was like oh I'm a I'm an artist this is my calling but then once that initial wave of like people supporting disappeared yeah i was then sat with like oh i have 400 posters at home and no one wants them of a band that i don't even like not even of a band like just just design posters at that point that was transitioning into like i'm an artist oh okay so these are just to get your ideas out there into the world yeah yeah there's nothing more humbling than uh yeah sitting on your own inventory and just being like okay yeah no one there's there's not a market for this yeah um i was just looking on your linkedin and it says that the uh agency was founded in in january of 1924 yes yeah um just post world war so uh you have just you're just celebrated or you're about to celebrate 102 years yeah so congratulations congratulations thank you yeah that's huge at what point did you decide to make your design work an agency in reality, not on the LinkedIn sort of 100 years.

21:10Although very funny because it does say you've been doing this for 101 years and eight months. Yeah. Next to your experience. Yeah. That's my USP. No, it's great. It's very, it's very popunk of you. Yeah. It's the most experienced designer we've ever had on the program. That's huge. It's huge. Definitely. And when you combine the fact that everyone was with me at that point as well, that's like 400 years of experience between us. Wow. Yeah. Huge. I think honestly, it was probably three or four years ago that it became a studio. Okay. Until then it was freelance work and I was taking on a lot of different things.

21:42Didn't really know what I was doing. At what point do you think you should be able to call yourself a studio? And at what point do you become an agency? Okay. I would say studio is, is five people and under. Okay. Maybe. So I would say we're studio. Okay. and we're an agency because i would say you're an agency shit see we still want to be a studio what what's your definition well it's funny i saw this question going around a little bit online and i think 10 is you could still be a studio i actually think uh 15 and under i think you could still be a studio in my mind i think once you cross 15 and you have to like call in advance to go to a restaurant or get a back room or you can't sit at one table.

22:26As the guy who spearheads lunch around here, we are getting to that point where it's a bit hard to get into restaurants. Yeah, that's agency stuff. Yeah, that's agency. I would have no trouble getting into a restaurant. But I think it's an interesting question. My real true answer is I don't think that it's a number thing. Yeah, why do we got to label everything? Yeah, I think it's a mindset. Yeah. And you are a studio. We're not an agency. I actually hate the word agency. Right. But sometimes we have to pretend like we're an agency. We don't have a single agent here. So it's a studio, a collective of freelancers.

23:02Yeah. And where did the name come from? Boredom Kills Creative. I hate the name. It does kind of sound like they could do Warped Tour. yes yeah well that was that was glamour kills yeah which is probably where i honestly i have not got a good history with naming based on the band and then the studio yeah yeah yeah yeah um honestly it was because when we were on tour we would turn up a a fucking warehouse in the middle of germany to play a show where there's nothing around and you might get there at like 1 p.m but you're not playing till 10 and if you have no money you can't uber anywhere you're just gonna sit in a warehouse for nine hours until you play okay and i was like this is fucking killing me yeah i should be able to do something with this time that is productive that means i could afford to at least get an uber somewhere so it was like boredom kills was the kind of where that came from i got it and so creative was added yeah just the end like a studio or people call called Center Design.

24:08Yeah. But we go by center. So Your Boredom Kills. It's a lot like Blink-182. They were actually just Blink. Yeah. And then they had to add the 182 because apparently some other band sued them. Right. Okay. So Boredom Kills Creative is the full thing. Yeah. But I actually like the name. I think it sounds... Now that I think about it, it does have Warped Tour energy. But I don't think there are a lot of agencies out there that go that route. No. it's definitely unique in that way. And then sort of what were the first projects that you guys were doing technically as a studio or as a sort of a collective?

24:46A lot of it at the time was hospitality stuff, mainly in LA. We had a couple of good clients who connected us with a bunch of different restaurants, coffee shops, and we were doing branding, but then also merch, but then also like, what else do you need? We could do all of that, please. just to try and build the business, which was like bad advice. I wouldn't do that if I was doing it again. But we took on everything, built out a bunch of retainers, and then I used that to build the team. Nice. And once we got the team, it was then like, okay, let's focus in on the thing that we want to be known for and how we want to grow as like professionals.

25:30Got it. And these restaurants were mostly in America? Mostly in LA. Wow. And so how did you get LA restaurants to go with your agency as someone, I assume, not living in LA at that time? I think honestly, COVID was a big thing because everyone was not in person anymore. And this was kind of around the time where things started to really pick up for us. So people had got used to Zoom and got used to working remotely and it just never was an issue. Really? People were never concerned. And the only thing people were concerned with in the early days was like when we were doing kind of more scrappy retainer work, people were like, well, what if I need a flyer made by 3 p.m.

26:12today? And I tell you at 2 p.m. Yeah. Which at the time I was like, oh, figure it out. Yeah. Now. I don't sleep. I'm fine. Was there a project that got you guys like through or like was sort of like a breakout project? um so we did a branding project for a burrito place in LA called Kofax okay that was kind of the first thing we ever did like the first branding job we ever did uh and that led to a bunch of like they they were quite a buzzy they still are quite a buzzy burrito place and that led to a bunch of other restaurants and coffee shops and stuff we also did some work with a brand that is no longer called Augie's Coffee.

26:54They had like nine locations and we did all their merch and they would always share who did their merch whenever they posted. So that was quite big for us getting a bunch of more kind of like merch-y coffee shop stuff. But I think the biggest transition was when we were working with a place called Prime Pizza and they did a collaboration with Zab's Hot Sauce. Okay. That was where I met Miles at Zab's and I was like, ooh, CPG. This feels less stressful, more focused, more like there is a business plan. In my head, it's like a glowing, like, oh, consumer packaged goods. Yes, it was. I can take this branding that I've been doing for sort of hundreds of experiences inside of one restaurant that maybe has a retainer, but maybe not that much money to a project that is going to be in stores is going to be on shelves and maybe has a little bit more money so zabs is this sort of i i'm seeing the through line yeah so that was like the first packaging project you guys did uh yeah i mean we'd done like pizza boxes and stuff but yes that was the first cpg project that we worked on uh and yeah it did open the door to like oh these these brands have to invest in their branding they have to invest in how they're positioned because the market is so much more saturated you can't just walk past and get the idea yeah and you're not just like oh i'm in the mood for tacos yeah yeah you're not shopping for it often yeah and i think yeah how does that translate in your mind from like sort of going from banned posters to restaurants to doing it in sort of a yeah a retail store or sort of a supermarket the through line that i come back to i think is that when we were in the band there was often a sense of like trying to work out who we were and trying to work out what our brand was rather than letting it kind of come naturally and we had a conversation with our a and our guy once and he was like, so what's your thing?

29:04I was like, our thing is that we play music and that people like the music. Yeah, we do these things called songs. Yeah. And then we play one and then we do some banter with the crowd and then we play another one and so on and so on until they make us get off the stage. Yes, yeah, exactly. And in return, we give all of our money and they give none. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we just travel all around and just lose money everywhere. Yeah. But that is interesting because you didn't go to design school, right? You didn't study branding. You didn't study any of this. But you learned through this experience that you need to have a thing.

29:47You need to have a thing. You need to understand your audience. I think so much of making merch as a band was really interesting because you would get hyped on the design yeah and then no one would fucking buy it because they were like i'm not you i'm i'm like a 14 year old girl that is excited about like bubble writing or like do you know what i mean like it's understanding consumers but it's also understanding like what builds cultural moments because so much of what we engineered as a band in terms of like this album campaign this music video this kind of like way that we're going to promote this fell flat yeah where a tour documentary where someone says something fucking stupid would get shouted at us in the streets when we were before a show interesting yeah so it was like you it's so hard to engineer what you think people want yeah um and i think that taught me a lot about that and now you call that building brands you want to be friends with.

30:47Yeah. Because I do think that like, and in some ways, I think we talk about like brands that people want to be a part of. And I do think there's a lot of strategy to try to make what we do feel complex and try to create complex ideas around brand strategy and positioning. But at the end of the day, it's two things. It's a story and it's a story. And ultimately that leads to a feeling, which is I want to be a part of that story. Yes. And I feel like that's simple. And I feel like sometimes as designers, we want to make it complicated. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We love mental masturbation. Here's a 65-page deck.

31:31It outlines customer archetypes. Do you guys ever do that thing where you have to put a persona to that archetype? Yes. This is Karen. She loves Lululemon and those skincare. Those definitely help though. No, those are hugely important. They help. Yeah, they definitely help. But I think there is an element of gut feeling. Like I think - Why does Karen always have to like Lululemon, right? Yeah. She always does. And she's always got two kids. And they always have like 250 ,000 disposable income. You know, like where are these people? Where are these Karens? They're all in LA, I think. I think so, yeah.

32:07Yeah. But no, I agree. We all do this, but at the end of the day, it's quite simple. I think sometimes the simpler you make it, the better the work comes out, in my opinion. So in terms of the work, Churn was the first project that caught my radar from you guys. I want to talk about it because from a product perspective, really interesting butter, really dynamic flavors. And from a branding perspective, really cool, really fun. But what really got me was the TikTok and Instagram videos that you started putting out around the brand. So talk to me about how you got introduced to the product. Did you guys build a brand in the beginning?

32:40Yes. Yeah. Well, we didn't build the first brand. I'm not sure who built that, but I bumped into Michael at Expo West, the founder. We got to get there. We've never been there. Okay. Should we go? I don't know. I mean, it's a rite of passage and I think it's important to be on trend and understand what things are happening in the industry. But personally, as a naturally introverted person it is hell yeah it does feel like hell because i i sometimes get overwhelmed when i'm in a coffee shop and there's like too many people in that room uh that sounds like that times a million yeah and you're walking down one aisle where it's like every single one of these is a protein drink it's like the spider-man meme yeah yeah we need that though yeah it's important yeah we need more protein drinks i don't know about you but i'm trying to get my protein up right okay well maybe you should go expo west just to get more protein i just want to go i want to go to look and observe now we want i also want to go and make content uh as as fellow contentsmen yes yeah um so you meet the founder and he's got a brand and it's bad uh yeah basically that that kind of was the case i mean i think it was on his radar to rebrand and to to sort out the packaging i had got in through zabs so i it looked like i worked at zabs because i think it's like a thousand dollars to walk it's very expensive yeah yeah so i i got in on a on a guest pass from zabs and he loved zabs and wanted to collaborate with them and i was like well let me let me make the introduction i like it um they never did it they they got they got quite you never made the intro no i never made the intro i think number one thing to do is to lie to people to get what you want 100 clip that out um just the secret to success in this industry yeah lying uh cheating cheating and uh false promises deception that's right i think that's an umbrella yeah you're like i heard you like zabs but what's it gonna take to get you into new brand identity yeah um well that kind of started the conversation anyway and then we we met up a couple times and we got coffee and it was it was very clear that he was thinking the same way I was thinking like I think the brand was great but it was it was very very Chobani at the time yeah um and he was aware of that too sure so we worked on everything really I mean we worked with them very closely on retainer for two years probably during that whole period so repositioning rebranding packaging website everything and then kind of iterating on feedback that we were getting from buyers from customers to really get to a place where it felt very understandable but also still had that emotional appeal at retail because i think the first round of design was great but we got a lot of feedback from costco and a couple other places that it was like people aren't shopping for churn they're shopping for flavored butter.

35:50So we need to make that clearer. Yeah, no. And I like that sort of transparency as well. I think the videos that you do, I think you break down design in a way that feels relatable, in a way that feels human, in a way that doesn't feel like, yeah, it makes it feel like I can do it. And I think that's ultimately something that is really important, I think, for designers, because there's been generations of designers that have made themselves seem way better than than we are. So therefore we can't do what they do and their secrets are things that they don't want to share. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think there is a little bit of a, um, accessibility issue maybe with some of the coolest studios.

36:31Yeah. And I think that's, I think that's changing. I think that's shifting. I think there's a new generation that's like, I don't want to gatekeep how I do things. And I think that's why I was drawn to your videos. Cause I was like, Oh, this is a, a really smart and really good business tool to talk to potential clients or to bring people in to sort of help people understand the work that you do and the decisions you made. And then second, immediate jealousy, because I'm like, why are we not making videos like this? Why can I not talk to a camera without feeling incredibly embarrassed? But you do it really well.

37:08When did you start making these videos connected to the projects? I think the first one was probably about a year and a half ago okay um was it before churn or after turn because i think the first one i saw was churn i in my mind i was like oh this is this is really um yeah the work is great but i i was more jealous of the video than the work even though i thought the work was great it was you know obviously a really cool brand i was like man this video and the art direction everything and then just the way that you're talking about it felt really honest but really uh came natural yeah Yeah. I think, yeah, that was probably the first one.

37:47There was maybe one before that potentially. Yeah. And then you started doing more videos. You did like a deep dive on mascots. Like talk to me about sort of just like some of these videos and sort of like the goal of it, if you have one. I guess what we try and do is make complex ideas simple, but then also entertaining, right? That to me is kind of branding in some sense. There's an element of personality and positioning and all of that good stuff. But ultimately, when you're talking about functional products, for example, there's a lot of information to break down and make it very easy to understand on shelf for a consumer.

38:30and I think for me the videos were a way of doing that with our work where no one wants to see a you know 15 page case study with loads and loads of text like even when I'm looking at other agencies I don't necessarily want that amount of context I think the way we consume information has changed massively and that is that is useful for the people who want to deep dive but most people don't want to deep dive. I agree. Most people aren't going to read the, you know, 9 ,000 word sort of type at the end of your case study. Maybe at most they could digest a couple sentences. And truthfully, they're mostly just going to scroll and look at the pictures.

39:13But I do think, yeah, I mean, I think this is the sort of next layer of that is like, let's break it down for you and I can talk you through it. Yeah. And I think that content is really enjoyable. And if you do it well i think it's it's not easy to do i think you do it really well do you have a content strategy are you uh thinking about this as a as a studio not agency as a studio not an agency um i think the for me it's like do you do you follow i think they're called front office no they are i might have slaughtered the brand name if it doesn't come up okay i think it's called front office okay there's a guy called ken okay and he basically does these kind of tiktoks and instagram reels in a very similar way where he breaks down fashion choices and how fashion is made and like here's car heart here's stussy like here's the inspiration behind where all of this came from and it's actually like 1920s work where for the military or whatever.

40:17Ken Sakata is the name from the office, from Melbourne. And he's been a big inspiration for me in that sense because he breaks down things that I don't care about, but the way he breaks them down, I now care about them. So I think there is an element of entertainment and explanation that can bring people from different worlds into your world. Because I just don't care about fashion at all, but I love his videos. and he he posted something once that said like my goal is to be the Anthony Bourdain of fashion yeah and I was like that is a I mean there's a huge thing of course but like yeah it's such an interesting way to look at it and I and not that I want to be the Anthony Bourdain of design by any means it's a fucking it didn't end well for Anthony no no not at all he had a great ride though he did yeah he had a good run but i think that there is like for me i think there is i want i want bkc to be a brand i don't want us to be a studio yeah i want it to be that like you know if ai takes over it doesn't matter because we we're telling the stories and that you want to now be a part of that story from both the content perspective and the breakdown of the content, but also the actual work.