Drama Is Conflict, Brand Is Character: Lessons from Nike, Airbnb and Apple with AKQA & Studio.one's Ajaz Ahmed

0:00Ajaz Ahmed:There isn't a brand or any organisation that does not go through troubles, but how they respond to the troubles is an opportunity to either become triumphant and a hero in everyone's eyes or lose respect.

0:16Tommy:Today we're joined by Ajaz Ahmed, the founder of AKQA, the creative agency that helped build some of the world's most iconic brands, from Nike and Coca-Cola to Netflix. AKQA was acquired by WPP for half a billion dollars. Now the founder of Studio One, Ajars has gone again, building one of the world's most exciting brand studios. In this conversation, we talk about what makes a great brand, from Disney to Apple, why rivalries and conflict create stories, and why the true test of character is how you respond in a crisis. We'll also talk about where human creativity can survive the era of AI slop.

0:53Tommy:Ajars, welcome to Giant Ideas. Thank you for having me, Tommy. Great to see you. I've been wanting to do this for ages. You very kindly have helped us rework the giant brand and the giant storytelling for an amazing project, which has been so fun to work with you on. So I'm really excited to try and bring some of the magic to the world. Well, thank you for the opportunity. We're going to start by talking a little bit about how you build iconic brands. And you have helped build some of the most iconic you've worked with, all of the, I think, most iconic brands from Nike onwards. If you have kind of had to distill what you've learned about brand building into a pithy sentence or two, what would you say?

1:30Ajaz Ahmed:I think if you think about a great brand, they're also great storytellers. And I think that's true of every enduring organisation that exists. I would argue that Charlie Munger, the late Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett are phenomenal storytellers. And it's one of the reasons why Berkshire Hathaway is such a strong brand. And at the heart of every great brand and every great story is desire. So every great brand will have a desire where there's a wrong in the world that they want to put right. So that's what their motivation is. And someone like Jim Collins, who's one of the most profound authors there is, like he wrote Good to Great.

2:27Ajaz Ahmed:He'll say that the test of a great organization is if you removed the organization from society, what would be missed? So in short, great brands are great storytellers. So to understand what builds a brand, one has to understand the essence of story.

2:53Tommy:Interesting. So say more about that. What kind of storytelling? Because presumably it can be very, very different from someone like Berkshire Hathaway, a big investment firm, through to someone like Nike that you've worked with. How do you think about different ways you can tell great stories? So when you think about a great story, whether that's a song you love, a poem, film, TV series, whatever it is, book, one of the aspects that's true about any great story is

3:20Ajaz Ahmed:that if you have a story without conflict and crisis, you will bore your audience to tears. And one of the aspects of great brands is they are in conflict with something. so if you took for example apple apple story is it's in conflict with complexity and if you took nike nike story is it's in conflict with inertia so when something isn't moving forward it's in conflict with that and likewise with disney it's in conflict with with misery so is pursuing happiness so in every great story there's always a protagonist the lead and antagonizing forces which get in the way of the protagonist achieving their desire so when steve jobs used to present a keynote they're just beautiful storytelling because it would show you the conflict with complexity and how Apple's innovation will simplify your life and help you to achieve the goals that previously didn't exist because Apple simplified that for you.

4:52Ajaz Ahmed:So every great brand is the protagonist of its story because it has a deep desire to improve the world. And it has amazing intentions for its audience. And it has amazing intentions for society. And they're the brands that tend to endure, the ones that think bigger than the others.

5:17Tommy:You've got my English literature teacher ringing in my ears from high school who said drama is conflict. And it's really interesting that you're talking about these brands, you know, they have to stand not just for something, but almost against something as well. You worked with Nike for well over 10 years, right? You did some really, really important work with them. Let's talk about Nike as a case study. So what do you think it was kind of in the early days that really allowed them to build this incredible brand? And then I'd love to hear if you're allowed to talk about it, some of the work that you did with them and what you think really worked and maybe where they are today and where you see some gaps.

5:49Ajaz Ahmed:We actually worked with them for about 25 years. So it's been over two decades of working with Nike. what's helped Nike achieve that success over a sustained amount of time is it has a very clear mission and purpose and the mission that Nike has is to bring innovation and inspiration to every athlete in the world and then it has an asterisk by that which says if you have a body you're an athlete so the point is that nike exists to bring innovation and inspiration to everybody in the world and when nike's doing that across its different categories that's when it's really winning great brands are great storytellers we've established that but also great brands understand that everything a brand does tells a story.

6:47Ajaz Ahmed:And these days, there's an infinite canvas, an opportunity to tell those stories. So you can tell stories through software and interactive services. And a lot of those interactive services, they enable athletes. So they help people achieve, give people guidance and coaching and community and connection. And some of those are about inspiration. So you'll see a film or some content that just fires you up and sparks your imagination. So the greatest brands are the ones that treat everything they do with love and care and curation to somehow have so much respect for the audience that they want to elevate their spirit and elevate their soul when they come in, when they engage with it.

7:46Ajaz Ahmed:And I think the other aspect that differentiates Nike is the, I kind of think of it as the organization as an athlete. And so what they have is they have these extraordinary, massive goals. So I remember 15 years ago, Nike made it very clear that we want to be number one. in football. And at that time, it seemed like one of the most audacious goals they could possibly have and almost beyond reach. But that focus on that audacious goal and the athlete's mentality really helped them to achieve it.

8:26Tommy:And what about today? Where does Nike stand today as just one example? And what do you look at there and go, yeah, this is what I would love to go in and maybe do differently?

8:34Ajaz Ahmed:I think Nike's going through a transition right now. So a few years ago, they went from being in categories. So where they're very clear with the categories like football, running, basketball, and that they had very, very, very clear categories to more generic, it was men, women, and kids. And that strategy is something, the strategy that probably works much better is the focus on the sports because that's where you can get authenticity. And if you can get authenticity, you can become an authority. And I think that's where the focus is right now in terms of the reinvention that the new CEO is putting in place at Nike.

9:28Tommy:Interesting.

9:29Ajaz Ahmed:Have you seen the latest Adidas Football World Cup advert?

9:32Tommy:With Timothee Chalamet. It's absolutely extraordinary. So good. For people who haven't seen it, it's kind of an amazing use of AI where you see like a younger David Beckham and a younger Zidane Zidane. And it's this incredible, you know, with Timothee Chalamet, an amazing actor, like a wonderful, a true story.

9:46Ajaz Ahmed:Well, he's a genuine football fan. Okay. Yeah. So he really means it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's like he's the right person to put in there. Yeah.

9:53Tommy:And just your point about focus in that case on football and like storytelling that appeals to, you know, my generation who would look at Zidane or Beckham and then new generation with the younger stars they've got, but doing it in this just wonderful storytelling method, which I think maybe is missing from Nike.

10:07Ajaz Ahmed:No, you have to respect Adidas for a lot of the work they've been doing recently, like the work they did with Oasis last year. Yeah. And this work with Timothee Chalamet, where it's crossing sport and popular culture as well. And the fact that you've responded so positively to it and it's inspired you and energized you is exactly the reaction that they're seeking to get in a World Cup year. Well, let's talk about founders.

10:35Tommy:So, you know, with Giant, the founders we're working with, they want to go very quickly from zero to tens of billions of dollars within 10 years. How do people think or how should people think about going about creating a brand that is authentic and enduring, but it needs to happen quickly. They don't have 30, 40, or in Apple's case, 50 years of building this brand up.

10:55Ajaz Ahmed:Well, there's a great book called Hitmakers.

11:00Tommy:Okay. And in that book, Derek Thompson, the author,

11:06Ajaz Ahmed:has this argument where he writes for The Atlantic as well, and he's got his own podcast. And what Derek Thompson says is, to launch something new, make it familiar. And to launch something familiar, make it feel new. So that's the formula that he would give. So you can see, as an example, an organization like Anthropic, where the way it communicates feels incredibly human and familiar, rather than synthetic and distant. And that's obviously that formula working. and i think it's the same with with with any great great organization is that they're able to articulate the values of the organization in a in a in a way that feels familiar even though they might have a radically new product and it's those contrasts that intersection

12:18Tommy:where the magic happens how much of building a brand from scratch as a founder today is about visual design and visual identity versus the core values and the value prop and the way you show up every day and your physical environment how do you separate those two things and and how yeah how important is the visual elements of all of this well the visual design is just one component

12:44Ajaz Ahmed:of the entire brand universe and i i'm one of these people who doesn't really believe in the idea of again what tends to happen is in our industries people say aspects are subjective but i tend to be more of the belief that either something is brilliant and it has this universal appeal and the vast majority of audiences find it to be engaging and interesting or it's not okay and so Visually we're talking about. I think visually or a story. Okay. And that's why you see sites like, or services like IMDB.

13:30Tommy:Yeah.

13:31Ajaz Ahmed:And if a film, well, it's the wisdom of crowds. Right. So if there's a film that scores above eight on IMDB, you're doing yourself an injustice by not watching it. Okay. because the wisdom of craft have decided that this is a and obviously there's you know and you said earlier you said drama conflict is drama conflict is drama which is obviously true but there's another saying in hollywood which is character is story and when you look at some of the most profound films and TV series and books is because we can fall in love with the characters. We admire the characters. We dislike the characters.

14:26Ajaz Ahmed:And that's what makes a story compelling.

14:30Tommy:What should people be asking themselves if they had to really distill, like creating a great brand? What should they distill it down to?

14:38Ajaz Ahmed:A simple question that any organisation can ask itself is, what's the memory we want to create and what's the feeling we want to evoke in the hearts and minds of our customers?

14:54Tommy:I love that. Have there been any brands that have done that for you? I'm really curious which brands you just love.

14:58Ajaz Ahmed:So I think when you take a look at what Ben Francis has done with Gymshark, which is in just over a decade, has built the greatest community for resistance and conditioning in the world. And the fact that that started in the UK is phenomenal. And before I talked about great brands are great storytellers. And that means they have to be good authors. And if you're a good author, you will write with authenticity and you'll become the authority. And I think Ben with what he's done with Gymshark is an extraordinary example. And likewise, I think when you take a look at the brand On and how they've reinvented a category that people thought couldn't be reinvented.

16:01And that's another superb example of brand building.

16:09Ajaz Ahmed:And they're both in the sports and fitness and apparel arena, which just shows you how much opportunity there is for organizations to compete within existing sectors. if you've got a fresh perspective and if you can build community and resonate with those audiences.

16:34Tommy:Yeah, so interesting. And then going back to your previous point, I love that description of the bank, Steve Jobs' thing of building up trust. And it is very similar, if not identical, to how I think the best reputation thinkers or PR thinkers think about the kind of reservoir of goodwill that takes many, many years to build up. and then it kind of draws down in times of crisis and could be emptied very quickly. And I think it's basically the same, isn't it? A personal reputation or a corporate brand, you've got to build that reservoir up and you have to take care not to let it leak away.

17:05Ajaz Ahmed:Yeah, well, again, taking the idea that character is story and taking the idea that every brand is a character, the true test of character is how we respond under pressure so you can see it in films all the time the the the the the people or the characters we tend to admire the most are the ones who had to make a decision under pressure and they chose the right one which is often a sacrifice for them or a difficulty for them. And I think when brands act with authenticity of their character, we admire them more. But when there's some kind of scandal and it reveals something about the brand where we didn't expect that from that character, that's when everyone becomes

18:04Tommy:disappointed. We had a really good example of that on the show with Nate, the founder of Airbnb. and he basically said that the making of airbnb as a brand was how they responded to very difficult crises so for example they had a racism crisis with some hosts turning away black people in the u.s they had a crisis around like houses getting trashed by by guests and then in covid you know their guests were like or their hosts were were not having their quick key income stream right and all three of those examples they did the non-economic short-term thing to build up the economics in the long term which was basically to come in and just go aggressively towards doing the right thing even if it cost the money in the short term and his view was that that built the trust which is the number one most important thing for airbnb as a business yeah that investment but

18:50Ajaz Ahmed:there isn't a brand or any organization that does not go through troubles but how they respond to the troubles is an opportunity to either become triumphant and a hero in everyone's eyes or lose respect. And so making those investments and making sure that there's incredible respect for the audiences and the customers is really what matters. And I think when brands do that and And the audiences can see they're making those sacrifices when we really admired them.

19:29Tommy:We've talked about some timeless lessons, I hope, for brands that will endure. And we've talked about building brands going back 25 years. Let's talk a little bit about what's going to happen in the advent of AI. And specifically, the impact of AI on human creativity. Will we still be needed as human beings? How will we display our creativity when you've got things like claw design, which can spit out incredible looking video? or presentations, ad campaigns, and also, I guess, what it means to build and maintain a brand in an era of AI. So there's lots to discuss there. I know you've written really thoughtfully about this.