S06.EP08 - Making Brands Relevant: How to Connect Culture, Creativity & Commerce with Cyril Louis

0:03Hello and welcome to Just Branding. The only podcast dedicated to helping designers and entrepreneurs grow brands. Here are your hosts, Jacob Cass and Matt Davies. Hello folks and welcome to the latest episode of Just Branding. Today folks, we are in for a treat. We have the one and only Cyril Lewis with us. I know him as Cyril the Squirrel but no one else can call him that apart from me on this podcast. Who is Cyril? Cyril Lewis is a hybrid creative leader whose career spans the worlds of technology, fine art, and brand innovation. From building robots in the south of France to shaping global brands like Beats by Dr.

0:50Dre, EA Games, and Heineken in the APAC, Cyril has mastered the art of blending cultural relevance with brand storytelling. With a customer-centric approach, Cyril has led transformation across London, Australia, Singapore, Tokyo, Dubai, wherever he's been there in the world, crafting seamless digital and physical experiences that resonate with audiences worldwide. If I was to list out all of the awards Cyril has won, I think we'd probably spend the whole of the rest of this podcast just walking through those. But let me just tell you, he's had over 200 international awards for his creativity and his expertise lies in brand building, digital innovation and storytelling that enhances people's lives.

1:37Currently, he's a creative partner at the Royals Agency in Australia and they claim to be the most interesting agency in the world. So we look forward to tucking into that with cyril in a minute cyril welcome to the show thank you for spending some time with us thank you for having me um i was just saying to jacob just off air that we worked together in our early careers and i think you said it was 2003 i mean how bizarre is that 22 years ago before you had a beard man and i mean could i grow a beard then cyril do you reckon i don't think i could really well you had a bit of like um like a youngish like stubble like a very smooth beard you know the type of one that doesn't grow fully so like a like a younger chicken very much you used to call me uh you used to call me roast beef i remember quite frequently um which was a lovely uh term so you were cyril the squirrel and i was the roast beef because i go red all the time well it's it's the pejorative term that's like french like all british people usually because when they come like to the south of france where i'm from they kind of like can't handle the sun and they're the same color of the roast beef i remember you had a mullet if i remember correctly at the time so you know i did i did have mullet that's quite in trend now that i'm in australia but i cannot grow a mullet like unfortunately like anymore but yes i did well what's amazing is is that since um those years like cyril has gone on to be this phenomenal superstar and i've just sort of ended up with jacob cass i'm just branding so i don't know you're going so i'm i'm really excited to to ask you cyril like give us a bit of your journey um and your background from where we started in that small agency in london to where you you've kind of been over the last few years give us a sense of who you are even before so it's like it's funny because I started in Mechatronic.

3:39So my, and it's something that you don't know, Matt, is very much like when I was like a kid, I wanted to build Starships. Fan of like sci-fi, but I realized that Starships, like really, we still don't have Starships. So I went into Mechatronic because I'm from the South of France. That's where Europe aerospace is based. So I wanted to be the closest of doing that. But after a while, in fact, it was not that interesting to me. It's a bit like when you go into architecture or even design, you know, you want to be like Jonathan Hive or Frank Gehry. You think that you will be working on the most interesting stuff.

4:20But in fact, you start like at the low place. And then you have to build it like for a very long time. And I didn't have this patience. so I moved into fine art library merch and then studying like spatial and print like library merch and that was in France moved like to the UK without speaking a word of English so like I helped you a little bit with that from time to time yes yes yes you did and you were patient like trying to understand what I wanted to say so that's I still don't understand what you want to say half the time but you know yeah i i did my best so i i've worked like across like then since then like the uk like like across a few continents so i've worked in the uk i work in the us i work like in ue like in singapore for the old apac and now in australia so my career like taking me from creative agency to government like in ue to innovation labs from building global brands like with like Beats or like Biggs by Dre, Heineken, to shaping national narratives, like doing the nation branding, like for the UE, as an example.

5:29And through it all, there's one thing that become very clear that very much that brand that connect with people lives beyond the product are the ones that matter the most. Like really, so I really become obsessed with understanding why certain ideas cut through, like as well, which is one of the things I moved from design. So design was not a choice when I moved to the UK. It was a necessity without speaking the language. I could not like go into like a creative like job like very much. So understanding why certain ideas got through, why some brands feel like they belong like in your world and all they feel like strangers, you know, yelling from like billboards.

6:08And the answer was always culture. Culture is the collective harm that's of what people believe, the fear, the hopes, or like for and talk about. So what if a brand can find its place in that home, like if it can listen and then speak meaningfully, it doesn't just sell, like it sticks with people. So like in a nutshell, very much that's what I've been doing for the last like 20 years is moving from continent to continent, learning culture, learning people, moving like into different jobs, starting in this starting mechatronic moving into design moving into more like a creative creative leadership and more strategic positioning as well and then moving from brand to digital so it's very wide t-shaped how people want to call it that's very much like me in a nutshell and what i'm interested in is it's why certain ideas cut through and then and very much i did that based in culture and brand that works well in culture.

7:13Yeah, fantastic. I always thought you had this thirst for knowledge and curiosity, which I always admired about you back when we worked together. And it sounds like that's just carried on right across the world. So phenomenal. Jacob, did you have a question? Yeah, I was just going to say that it sounds like the perfect person to have on the podcast to talk about culture, seemingly very cultured, living across all these places and experiences. Excited to tuck in. I think the first question is like, what does brands and culture actually mean to you? And why is it so important in today's world? The world is noisy today.

7:45Everybody's fighting for attention and everybody's got like an attention span of a school. So everything's moving fast. Everybody's fighting for the same thing. So very much like branding culture, it means earning your place in people's lives, not interacting with them, but being like invited in like very much. So it's not shouting from a billboard, but people wanted you in their life because you add value. So culture is where brands become more than what they sell. It's where they can inspire, they can provoke, they can support or even comfort. So that's like powerful. So for me, that's what like brands in culture means.

8:25And in today's word, I talked about where attention is short and also skepticism is very high things are moving like a lot and and people also expect a lot more than brands like today's than it was like 10 years ago so like and and the way they engage with that cultural relevance isn't optional anymore it's existential like brands need to understand people and they need to be wanted otherwise not only they have like to spend like millions and millions to be able like to be seen they're not listened to they just like seen like very much so if you're not in culture you're out of mind i just wanted to kind of raise things for folks because one of the things that i'd encourage everybody to do when they get a moment is to go and have a look at cyril's website right because if i may cyril if that's okay just just plug that because then people will get what you're talking about right so if you go to cyril lewis spelt c-y-r-i-l-l-o-u-i-s.com you'll see some of Cyril's work and just to give you a flavor for example I know you did some work for example with Heineken didn't you on the boring phone and this is like um you know tapping into the cultural zeitgeist which is that we are frustrated by all the noise of digital kind of messages and stuff and you create a whole campaign for Heineken a beer brand around a boring phone right that I only kind of uh sent messages and and did and did phone calls and you built a whole campaign around that and i just think that that's so so interesting so that that taps into culture and then another one you did for heineken which i i looked at the other day was heiner kicks and the idea was that you could uh you could kind of put i think it was heineken in the souls of a trainer shoot yes yes amazing so these these were all tapping into cultural kind of uh quirks and cultural um ideas which then resonated and the the success rates are on there I mean, they're just two from Heineken, but there's loads of others on Cyril's site for everybody to have a look at.

10:27So that's what we're talking about, isn't it? Taking things that are on people's mind culturally and then weaving them into brand narratives and campaigns that kind of are relevant to people they find interesting, they invite into their lives so that they can connect with them. And there's a way, like, very much to do that. like it's it's for brand like really like to know which place which role they can play like in culture because not every brand like can play a role like some of them can play a very large role or like it's clearly inherited from the brand like dna which is they have a fit in society like very much they have a point of view about what is happening and they can immerse themselves like into that to be able then want to be wanted and some of them it's a very very very small place like a very small space like to play in the heineken like case like very much like he's all about so like freddie heineken was like saying i don't sell beer i sell good times and that stick like with people it's not about the beer and people do that you know when they say like let's go let's have a beer they they talk more about the moment they will spend together than the the beverage like very much so it's all about what block like social life honey can have a say about it and and can do something to make it happen make it more fluid or making people understand that is happening to them that social life really matters and then you should be taking care of Another example, like Matt, is like the one that's, it's an old series that was like Global Leader for Hannigan under the label called Work Responsibly, which started pre -COVID and then went along for like a few years, which is people forgetting to have a social life because they spend too much time at work.

12:30and it's all about looking into the culture and then the context and the you need to be family you need to be contextual and like to be like in the right place i give you just like three very like examples of that same things that's like very clear which is when it started it was during covid during covid we had one problem to not like being able to switch off because people were working at home it was new to them and they could not like see the difference between work and uh and play in life like generally so we did like something like call like very much a bottle opener in fact that helps people realize that they have like to switch off It was very simple, but it was done in an emeristic way to make people realize how crazy it was to stay very much online, full on all the time because you were at home.

13:35And then we moved on into different spaces where post-COVID people went back to the office, but they spent too long. so they are like not going out so again you can see how the same issues like is evolving like true like the time and then it went on and on like that's like very much how culturally a brand can immerse themselves on the longevity as well because the issue about socializing is always like evolving so that's like takes a very human need doesn't it and then looks at that context of that culturally I love that. I mean, the other thing, you know, I mentioned, and we probably should just circle back on this, the Heineken thing that you did, the campaign, where there was beer within the soul of these trainers.

14:23And the reason for that was that there was another big problem for Heineken to launch in certain markets, weren't there? So, you know, do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because I think that's interesting, because you solved that problem creatively. So this one was like, it was two things. So the funny thing is when we launched this sneaker with beer in the sole, the sole is transparent. It's done by the shoe surgeon, really well known like in US for customizing trainers and so on. People did not understood. The right audience understood, but there was a big reasons more than reaching a specific audience, which was like a young audience who didn't like beer.

15:04who didn't care about like a 125 years old brand like as well so we needed like something to talk to them on their level who had street credential so the shoe surgeon but as well one of the other big issues is that we are to advertise what we call in alcohol jargon dark markets dark markets it's places where you cannot advertise alcohol so the only way to advertise alcohol was to create something that is not alcohol that was the shoes that have heineken silver within the sole and then we're advertising the shoe not the alcohol and that's how we managed like to advertise beer in markets where we can't advertise alcohol so that was a bit of a trojan horse i loved it but but it shows though doesn't it the cultural zeitgeist of the trainers that the trees the the shoe surgeon all of that stuff that speaks to the younger culture and the trainers and then just how bizarre that was like it just stood out to me as one of the campaigns you'd recently worked on that was a you know super exciting for building Heineken in those dark markets where you couldn't easily do that so shows how creativity can help so did you say you had a couple more examples that you wanted to bring to everyone's attention of of brands that are you know really kind of helping or embedding themselves in culture in a meaningful way there's there's some that's been there for like a long time you know apple like it's a cultural sculptor it always been the case it doesn't just reflect sculpture it creates it you know through the product design advertising the language of creativity i mean apple makes you feel you're joining a movement you know remember think different i know that's like it's here's to the misfits that's that's that's how it starts so people want to be in the shot on iphone the new privacy positioning as well the way they do like everything like it's really well done and really beautiful it's it breathes culture and again like of course i talked to body to beat is all about to find modern day friction like in social life and then solve this friction uh like in a way either make people aware like with it like the boring phone or or like uh the overwork or politics we did politics as well that's like quite like like bold i really the night belong to the vaccinated that was called during covid so again like very opinionated point of view to be in culture you need to have a point of view but but one that i want to talk more i like about it is parade you know for four years like it sat in a shadow of a giant called getter raid like we all know nobody knows parade it's a bit of pepsi coke type of like dilemma on that and all these sports giants as well were echoing the same win at all cost like narrative you know nike were like in this as well they shifted a bit but the culture shifted we saw things like you know naomi like osaka like in a cover to cover like of time saying it's okay to not be okay so people started rejecting the burnout culture and that performance like obsession and pro-eraid like very much like responded by having an opportunity to say taking a pose to be human first like you know over legal orientated societies right so they responded with a positioning in culture that was all about rewriting the rule of winnings which is again something that's fit like the new generation that's timely that's contextual with what was happening a lot of athletes had enough of that push that were from like a different like generation and it was the brand very much like embracing like that part so that pivot from pushing performance to championing a post for self-care and it deeply resonated for people and then it's it moved the brand from being forgetting like on the shelves to a cultural conversation like very much and they did it like very like cleverly because they understood the role they could play then in society and then in culture to be able to do them work on the back of that love that i want to tap into how you feel that they did that in a minute but before we do you know you mentioned like um brands have got to have a strong position and you know potentially an opinion on things but sometimes that can backfire right like do you think like do you think or can't do you think it ever can backfire like have you ever seen anything where it's gone wrong have you ever got a do you kind of does any examples come to mind where you feel like maybe a brand overstretched and overstepped the mark there is many there's there's a lot and i I can talk a bit about like why it's, there's usually like two things, a lot of like brand, they want to jump on trends.

20:09When you jump on a trend, you miss, you missed it already. A trend, like you miss the train, like really because it's already too late. It's already happening. You have to be there at the birth of it, at the forefront, like of that. And the way to do that is very much to understand what is your place in society. and then in culture. It's very, very, like, crucial, like, to have that. Otherwise, brand goes sideways, like, very much. And a good example, like, of that is the Pepsi and famous protest ad with Kendall Jenner. That's, like, a very good example when they try to, like, co-op the aesthetic of activism without engaging with its meaning.

20:51There was nothing, like, behind. It was shallow. So the danger of treating culture like a costume rather than a conversation really it shows a lack of curiosity and curiosity like is everything in all this work that's i have done there's a lot a lot of research that grows strategy like is key like in this yeah yeah jacob sir you mentioned some really great examples i'm just I wonder if there's other examples that are, you know, some brands that are getting it wrong, for example. Like that was one example of, you know, a campaign. But are there any brands that are kind of falling behind? They're not really catching up with the culture?

21:35Anything on that? I don't have like anything on the top of my mind. I'm like trying to follow like the one that are more like in the right and then forgetting like the negative one. And it's, I've got quite as well a mind that I need to relearn everything all the time. so I forget stuff like very easily but like it shows as well that things doesn't like stick like that much even if they do wrong they get forgotten so that's the worst thing which is like a brand need to be top of mind like it's it's you know no matter like what it is it needs to be loved you need to be top of mind even if it's not loved and it's top of mind it could be still like working But when people don't even know it exists anymore, when it's completely forgotten, that's it.

22:24It's done and it takes a lot of time to go back in people's minds. How we can actually do that then? How can we tap into these cultural movements authentically? Well, the first thing is you have to be interested. They have to be genuine. and if you're curious first, you're more likely to find this authentic role for the brand. What I talked about, it's very much the first step is mapping the brand like a place, like in society and in culture. And by doing that, it's not following like the trend. It's precursing like very much the trend because like usually you have like two planes on that. People think culture is one thing.

23:08It's not. There's the slow and then very much like and then the fast like culture. The slow culture, the fast culture, so it's what we see is very much is like, think about it as an iceberg. We see the top of the iceberg. That's what we see the trends, the memes, the fashion, the music, it's the fast culture, it's the things that goes like really quick. And these trends like very much what they are like usually, the trends are a culture on uptent like to evolve. So in a sense, it's evolving by sampling and testing what people might want or might need on that. And most of the brand, they jump into this part without understanding the slow culture, you know, that deeper, more invisible layer, which is like the bottom of the iceberg, which is value, beliefs, all the social shifts, like in some.

23:57And usually a brand is successful when they play right like in the middle. When they understand the place in the slow culture or like society generally, and they can move quick into the fast future at the burst of a trend. The boring phone was a very good example of this, which I can talk a bit about. The way it was very much made, Heineken is all about social life and what comes in social life is the phone. It's a wall in between people in so many ways. And we saw it as a barrier to social life. And we're looking into how could we make the young generation aware of this? How could we very much do something that is for them without being too authoritative and be too aggressive, but still have a very heavy point of view on that?

24:57And we realize again that the beginning of a trend where a group of younger generation were taking flip phones to parties. Again, it started with that small discovery and we were like, that's it. That's the way we are in into culture. So by creating the boring phone, it's very much when your phone is boring, your social life is more interesting. We connected it like this and created something that was in culture by adding like a layer also of design on it, a layer of trust. It was made by like the maker of like Nokia again and distributed like in an interesting way. And the phone, like it's a mock completely like of a phone.

25:50It does nothing. It has like email, but it has only like one kilobyte of data. So you cannot receive an email, but it has email. It has snakes, but snakes, like when you launch it, it wins straight away. And then you have a two megapixel camera that takes like, yeah, you know, like stuttery video and then like blurry photos. And it's all of that is all this analog like feel to be able to pass on a message that spending time with your friends, spending time in a concert, looking at the stage with your eyes not through a phone like help you connect with people and help you to have like a better life like generally super smart isn't it i have a slight controversial example right of another beer brand that i think got it wrong um and i want to stay away from the politics of this because i think that's a red herring but in terms of the brand positioning do you remember budweiser a few years ago well it was only in 2023 and i think this is a perfect example of them jumping on the fast bandwagon so they were you know really jumping on the the kind of the fast culture of progressive identity politics and they used a transgender influencer called Dylan Mulvaney right in one of their adverts and they really pushed that the transgender kind of agenda forward but obviously their audience uh you know the slow culture that you're talking about that they weren't ready for that right they were around you know more conservative Budweiser drinkers and so that that had a huge backlash amongst their own kind of consumer group and so you know that's a kind of perhaps an example of where a brand has just leaped on a bandwagon perhaps in a very inauthentic way and they've had that that negative backlash as opposed to sort of some of the more inviting come on in kind of you know response that we want like that you've mentioned from from Heineken and another one I'm going to throw into the mix and I'd love to get your thoughts on this it's been huge here in the uk the jaguar rebrand have you seen much of that like that that's really interesting because you know obviously again very progressive kind of stance they didn't even show this the car in their their launch campaign it's very polarizing here in the uk you know you've got sort of perhaps more older generation traditional jaguar drivers which don't feel that the brand is speaking to them anymore you've got a very high priced product now coming out will the young people be able to afford it is a huge question i've got so the jury's still out on that one but interested in your thoughts on on how those that that sort of uh more i guess politically charged campaign uh is that culturally relevant and do you think that they've done a good job those brands it is like from like jaguar like it's very interesting because we need to look at where they were financially as well yeah because they needed to reinvent themselves like or like be forgotten, like an old traditional brand that will then be brought back by a different nation and then paid nothing for it.

28:53There's a few examples like that. So they had to do something drastic for it. And when it comes to the consumer, again, you need to look into the future. Nike had the same issue with Copernic, when you had a lot of people burning Nike trainers, but the people that were burning Nike trainers. There are old people that were burning one pair every three years or every four years, while the new generation were all up for a brand like Nike standing with like Copernic. And then the sales went up like crazy. So while old people thought that Nike was done for them, they converted a lot of new people. And I think it's very much the same for Jaguar.

29:39like even if you cannot afford the product that was revealed last week or two weeks ago i think at parry fashion week so that's the first time that we saw the car it looks fantastic like by the way that's just my own like like point of view on that like design wise like it's amazing again they created something new they maybe reinvented themselves and and the fact that they've polarized the audience is is right if everybody agree with something you know you you know that's like ah it's mad you know you you have like to peace off like some people and to please the others otherwise it's what I call vanilla you know everybody like vanilla but is it interesting yeah yeah nice I want to ask you a more practical question so you know in your work you mentioned sort of like you've got to do a bit of an understanding of of where the brand sits in the slow and the fast aspects of culture but realistically what does that look like I mean I know you work with big agencies i mean do you do things personally like what advice would you give for example to a smaller brand who is listening to this and thinking oh yeah we this sounds great but like how do i go about that so if you've got any advice i guess practical advice how do we go about becoming relevant culturally i think the the first like step is very much like trying to understand where you fit like in culture looking into the the dna like of like the brand like it's And the strategy, because it has to be aligned with the two of them.

31:12So it's very much mapping the brand where it sits society and culture. Like what is its role? Does it have a role? And then looking at the boundaries. The boundaries are also very, very important. There's one key thing. If you want to have a place like in culture, you have to be opinionated. You have to give a point of view. You have to stand for something. So you clearly have to put the boundaries because if you stand for something, that's not right for you, then it seems as being opportunists instead of becoming like an opportunity. So that's like very, very important, like to find like this, this thing.

31:49And then the other things is finding the barriers to what stops you having this role in culture. So then it becomes like very like easy to say if my role i like i'm a yogurt brand my role is about bringing vitality to the world i can talk about what's top vitality in this world like generally then the brand have a role because it comes from something simple as yogurt or milk bringing vitality to the world what's top vitality to the world as an example mobile phone sucks up vitality out of young children it's been like proven then they can have a say and you can do brand act you can do like anything on the back of it that will be meaningful for the people that will be contextual and that will be timely as well love that contextually like is is a key as well depending the market you want to hit or depending where you're from like in so on context is always changing and evolving do you think every brand should aim to have like a cultural route in it well not not all needs to can we say depends like what you are like bank it will be very difficult like for a bank they they can do it like to level but they don't really need it because brands that have more like of a heart function, like what I will call, which is, you know, I choose a bank for its app, for how they are safe and so on.

33:27There's no much emotion left like around what they provide, even if they try to inject like emotion, there's not that much. People don't choose a brand because they have a horse racing in a TV ad. No, they don't do that. Like really, people are more rational when it comes to brands so if your brand like is very much more like a herd purchase or what i would call like versus like a head purchase then like you're more likely to have a bigger role like in culture all right okay um another another quick question um do you think that there's a risk sometimes of culture washing right like like you know that we're we it's it's some and how do we know we're on the right culture so you you've said that basically what you need to do is make sure that whatever you're rooting your thinking in it's it's true and authentic that's what i've i've heard from you there like you've got to figure out where does beer play generally in society and then find that middle piece but what would you say if somebody's sort of just trying to wash culture into their brand like what if they get it wrong like any thoughts on culture washing well it's if they do the work like properly they don't try to piggyback into an existing trend like straight away it won't happen because they will be at the forefront like of it so it won't be culture like washing because they will be culture like already and they will be again having a clear role a clear mapping into the culture with like clear boundaries and then that's that's the first part of it it should not like happen at all but like if it happened again like someone that's it's all about like then humility if you have the right curiosity if you don't like the right work of of really going in deep into what you will pull out you know if it's right or wrong like really or someone's right to hide something on it that nobody like want to know but it goes out

35:43okay i'm going to jump jump us forward thank you for that um in terms of you you've worked all over the world right and you know we're the the world is becoming more and more um um interconnected isn't it globally right i was just on a discovery uh workshop and we had people from literally all the continents right there was 30 people and i was learning from from from them and it was phenomenal like so this is the world that a lot of global international companies are working in now like where they have multiple touch points in multiple cultures from all over the world and so i guess the one thing i was going to ask you about was from your experience like how do brands navigate that right because that's really hard to to be culturally relevant across multiple jurisdictions and areas have you got any thoughts on on international brands and how they can how can how they can navigate that so heineken like does that brilliantly like as an example you have like that globally the idea that is a more refreshing social life is all about like being like social like it's happening on a global scale but people doing it like differently so it's It's all about universal truths.

36:50That's what I have like globally, local truths and then brand truths. So you need that big idea that travels rooted in the brand global belief, which is that it's like, it's all about social life. It's all about giving like no this to the people or showcasing what impede people like to have that social life. But it must be expressed with a local nuance. I'll give you like a very good example on that. It's what's happening in the culture, what's happening to the people, what matters to the people there. So the voice is, I would say, the voice is consistent, but the accent changes. So what do I mean as an example?

37:29When we did the office cleaners, so that's a work, like Responsibly campaign, we wanted people to go out of work. And what we use, we use cleaners, because cleaners come after 8pm in Argentina. In Argentina, if you are 8pm at work in an office, it means it's too late. So the message was very simple. When you see the cleaners, it's time to see your friend. And then what we did like very much we use QR code on them. People could just like snap a picture. You've got like an app with a free beer, but you have 20 minutes like to get it. So we lure people out of work. So very much like this campaign, this universal truth was people stay too long at work.

38:13But in Argentina, the way to lure people out, the switch in their mind was like, when you see the cleaners, it's time to see your friend. We did the same campaign in all Southeast Asia, but completely different. So there's no cleaners during the night, cleaners are during the day. So we cannot use a trigger very much, but there's something that they're very scared of, ghost. Ghost is a big thing like in Southeast Asia. and we created like something where we had a fake story about like a bar being ghost having ghosts in a bar so you see beers moving like and so on it was done like in a way shot from a famous person that was on holiday like in Singapore and then like it started to catch fire like of course and then we revealed what was moving you know everything so a chair was moving a beer like was levitating and in fact it wasn't someone stuck at the office and then we matches like the two video and then it becomes you know like a friend stuck in the office is a ghost at the bar so and we call it like the gossip bar and it was all about like this and then the term like again you know being ghosted by someone so you can see how and we lured people again out but from a different aspect we have friends that were not at work that were luring their friend to the bar to be like able like to do the same job as Argentina but in a completely different way so you can see how the same social or cultural positioning place would be we are all about social time and you should not work you know like too late and then how it's done completely differently depending on where you are like globally so it's being universal truth local truth and then brand truth like all done like in one very much super smart super smart love that so looking ahead then cyril right what major kind of cultural shifts do you see on the horizon that you think brand should be thinking about now so they can be there ready when it bursts like got any thoughts on that there's there's one thing like i will say which coming more and more which is we're moving from influence to evolve involvement now people they just they just don't only want to be a thing they want to feel a part of something so there's these things which is um the the word 10 15 years ago used to be more tribal the tribe disintegrated the tribe kind of like disappeared there's like a sense of like loneliness like to the whole new generation and so on so the feeling part of something having that sense of of belonging like we're moving from just influence to involvement so quarter ship not just consumption brands that understand this shift from transactional tribal like will win like probably yeah it's funny because there was a whole movement around tribes, I remember Seth Godin talking about that, Marty Neumeier, and then the pandemic sort of split that all up a little bit but digitally people still sort of move in tribes it seems to me, but then as we've gone back out into the real world, we're looking for that connection again, that belonging again, so I think that's super smart for brands to think about.

41:41Just on the tech front, you know you see the rise of AI, Web3, like what's your thoughts on the impact of that in culture and should brands be looking at those types of emerging technologies do you think or do you think that that's sort of you know less less important because we've got to get to those universal truths what are your thoughts it's always like difficult with this one we know it is like people jumping like on the new tech the new shiny toy let's do something like with it and so on but ai ai is like it's very different like there's a massive like shift like something like that. It's very much like a culture shape, not just like an enabler.

42:21It's changing how we create, how we remix, how we respond, how we see things, how everything is, a lot of things are created. So the key to use but not replace, of course, like creativity, but they amplify curiosity as well. Technology helps you to keep up but very much curiosity helps brands to stand out. So it's, again, very, very useful. I say it's a culture shaper, not just an enabler, just because of, especially AI, what we see done with AI. There's a novelty aspect of it that we haven't seen since a long time. Jacob, have you got any questions for Cyril before we start thinking about wrapping up?

43:03Any thoughts? Yeah, I'd love to get just some final advice for brands that are looking to elevate their relevance in culture like what would you give i would say like two things being cultured doesn't start with strengths it starts like way below that don't look at the tip of the iceberg try to embed yourself like at the bottom of it or at the intersection of like you know the top of the iceberg and then the bottom you know the the slow and then like the fast very much. Be more interested as well. Be more curious. You know, brands that are the most culturally relevant ones are the most curious because they interest with empathy, like insight and action like that.

43:48And then in culture, like it's everything. Brilliant. And just to wrap up, where can people connect with you and follow your work? Well, on my website, what's Matt likes to see like that. And then find me like on LinkedIn as well. that's where things happen. Brilliant. Well, Cyril, look, it's been lovely catching up after, you know, 20 odd years. You're looking well. You haven't changed a bit. And thanks so much for carving out some time. All the very, very best in your endeavors. And we look forward to following you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me.