S06.EP11 - Inside DixonBaxi: Building Brands That Matter with Simon Dixon

0:00Identity is only as powerful as the meaning you fill it with. So a logo is an empty vessel. So say, for example, you see an Apple logo on a car. What would you think that car is going to be like? Brilliant. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You haven't driven it, you know, you don't know how much it costs, but you assume it's going to be good, don't you? Yeah. That's the power of branding.

0:24Hello and welcome to Just Branding. The only podcast dedicated to helping designers and entrepreneurs grow brands. Here are your hosts, Jacob Kass and Matt Davies.

0:41All right, before we jump in, if you're serious about mastering branding and building a thriving creative business, the Brand Builders Alliance is for you. Inside, you'll get live masterclasses, mentorship from our eight resident coaches, a stacked resource vault and a global network of brand builders who actually get it. If you're done winging it alone and are ready to scale with structure, support and serious momentum, head over to joinbba.com and get on the wait list. That's joinbba.com. Now let's get into the show. Hey folks, welcome back to Just Branding. Today's guest is someone we've been wanting to speak with for a while, Simon Dixon, who's the co-founder of Dixon Baxi, which is a global brand and design consultancy.

1:27And if you're working branding or design, you've probably seen their work without even realizing it. Netflix, IMAX, AC Milan, Samsung, Hulu, the list goes on. But this episode isn't just a highlight reel. What we really wanted to explore with Simon is how they think, how him and his team build brands that feel bold, human and future ready. We're going to dig into their approach to design systems, how they keep creativity alive at scale, and how they're using innovation through things like AI and motion to build what they call intelligent identities. We're going to tuck into the Dixon Baxi way, not just their work, but the culture behind it, and peek inside their innovation lab, Superfutures, where they prototype the future of brand.

2:15There's a ton to cover, so let's jump in. Welcome to the show, Simon. Yeah, thanks for having us, Matt. Thanks for having us, Jacob. And thanks for a very nice introduction. Welcome. There is a lot to cover. So we did cover a bit about your agency, but I'd love to learn a little bit about yourself. So do you want to share with our listeners a bit of insight into who you are? Yeah, sure. My name is Simon Dixon. I'm one of the co-founders of Dixon Baxi. So I've been a practicing designer for 36 years now. So I started as a graphic designer. and then over the years through opening studios first of which was when I was 19 and subsequently opened studios around the world then Dixon Baxi 24 years ago I've gone from a graphic designer to basically a brand designer or somebody who runs a brand agency really that's what I do I create this space for other people to be creative Dixon Baxi as I said is 24 years old about 90 % of our work is international and 50 people in this studio or 54 people great brand experiences for billions of people all over the world through quite iconic companies and we're lucky to do three main things we build the strategies for businesses we translate that into identity systems living and breathing ecosystem and then the implementation thereof a lot of which is highly collaborative with the client it's quite a big difference isn't there simon between being a designer with hands on the tools to then, you know, leading a team and creating that space like you say.

3:41Well, how have you found that journey? Has it been tough for you to transition to that? Or have you found that, you know, that step into team leadership, you know, eat relatively easy? What are your thoughts? You'd have to ask the team rather than me. I've done a good job. I mean, I've been working for a long time. So when I started out, as it is with anyone, you're very selfish. It's very about your career. It's about what you love. It's about defining yourself in terms of your creative expression and how you show up in the world and setting the template for what you believe is your career. And of course, most people's careers are quite kind of squiggly and messy.

4:15But then I've always run studios. So I've always been in a collaborative environment, whether that's with two or three people up to much larger relationships in terms of groups of people. And I think you just learn it. I've learned everything I do really by doing. I'm not a highly academic person. I'm not a highly educated person. I'm somebody who basically learns by the practice. So I try things. I test my assumptions against the world. And I think when you're running an agency, it's about how you create space for other people to create and make the most of their talents. So rather than expecting to show up in the world similar to how you do, it's creating a space for them to show up the way they need to and then collectively go after something because you need a raison d 'etre.

4:59You need something to believe in, I think. so it's a combination of how you mentor the individual as part of a collective interesting what i found fascinating was on your your website where you talk about the dixon baxi way and you've got a whole video series that go into like the your creative principles and you know creative lives and everything on one of them like i think it's the first video actually you say that you ask what is good design and you say that good design should move people so what does that actually mean in practice? It's emotional, isn't it? So if you think about a brand, you have different relationships with brands, which have different relevance and different meaning and different kind of interaction with you.

5:39Some you love dearly and will be with you a lot of your life. Some will be quite transient. Some you'll need for specific moments. Some will be things that you use more in a more ubiquitous way. But it's all about how it's relevant and meaningful and it creates a connection because we make choices about what to interact with in lots of different levels some are pragmatic some are emotional some you just need to get a cab or you need some information some that define what you are as a person so that those logos and the things you wear and the things you like define you as a person you know you see that collection of things you're showing the world who you are so it really depends where you are in the relationship with the brand and how important it is to you so how do you actually make a brand that matters then how do you make it matter well basically it's not it's not about making the brand matter it's about expressing the truth of what the brand does for people and then meeting them in the world on their terms and then the people who want to use it and the people who believe in it and it's like i say relevant and serves them well will use it so for example if you took ac milan if you're an inter milan fan you will have a hate relationship with AC Milansbrand.

6:49If you go to the San Siro, you'll have a love relationship. But then there's many people in Malaysia and China who will like the idea of what Milanese football is, style, culture. They might like a particular player. So they'll have a kind of medium relationship. So it really depends where you are on that kind of relationship scale. And the key really is meeting people in a way that has a kind of honest and a kind of clear attract to the benefit of having the relationship so if you're using netflix you want to get a nice piece of content and obviously there's competition for brands that give you nice pieces of content so what it does it creates an idea in your mind it makes you think something when you say a brand's name or it makes you think something when you want to do something where you go well this particular brand will facilitate that or be a choice so that's really what you want to do you want to build meaning and benefit for people but if you can do that on an emotionally engaging level something which is more truthful something that's dynamic something that's useful something that's exciting and delightfully engaging and the experiences you create allow people to be the best themselves and interact with it rather than it be a monologue and force things at them then you tend to have a better relationship so simon really fascinating to hear you talk and express that in such beautiful crystal clear terms quick question then so you mentioned that there's these three steps to the process and you know the i was just wondering if you could kind of uh walk us through like how do you find that truth how do you understand how do you get your arms around a brand to the point where you're confident enough then to start working through creative and experiential things for for potential customers give us a sense of how that works great excellent question the previous question was an excellent question as well i didn't realize you're going to be this difficult i should i should have practiced we try we try yeah i'm only joking um yeah they're very broad the questions you're asking very broad questions yeah so they create broad answers but if you think about the principle of the process you need input so in order to understand whatever the challenge is there's usually a brief somebody says we want to rebrand we want a brand change program and they'll usually write things on a brief that say this this and this we need to target a new audience we launched a new product there's more competition things like that aging audience base there's usually a driver behind that there's usually a bigger driver and it usually comes down to a place in the world relevance in the world the ability to grow the ability to be distinct as as a brand or an entity so what you really want to do is look at that you want to look at the business itself, the company, the people who run it, what they do for people, how that shows up in the world, how that system works, what's the competitive set, how does culture, behavioral habits, attitudinal habits, technology, platforms and devices affect that relationship.

9:51And in that audit, what we do is we play back what's called what we heard. And we play back the core insights that drive the benefit and the meaning and that distinction for the brand. and then that starts to inform how that shows up. You translate that into a strategy which drives, in a sense, it's the engine of change. It's a future-proofing engine for the business, which is on its terms. What you don't want to be is a sh** version of somebody else. You want to be a brilliant version of what you are, and that creates a distinction. And then you translate that strategy into a kind of living, breathing thing.

10:25Traditionally, branding was a fixed-state set of assets. You take a logo, color, the semiotics work, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. It doesn't work like that now. You have to show up in a world where you are interacting with people, your share of conversation. It's a narrative. It's storytelling. It's experiential. You can hear it. You can touch it. In many instances, you can feel it. So that's a connected ecosystem. So whatever strategy and brand you create has to show up in both a fixed and flexed way. You have to have a through line that people understand. They know what it is. But at the same time, it needs to be localized and flexible at the point of impact because it's different.

11:02If you're on social, it's completely different to if you're in a shop, for example. And it has to be adaptable to change because change happens regardless of whether you want it or not. So smart brands become cultural entities as well as just brand entities. They're part of general conversation and culture. So it's a kind of line. And then when it hits the world, the implementation, it needs to work. If it doesn't work or the language and the narrative disconnects to the reality of what the brand does, people realize and they disconnect. So it's very hard to cheat people. You can't say we do something awesome or we save the planet.

11:37You get there and they're not doing that. There's a disconnect. So there has to be a kind of underlying reality to that as well. Love that. I love that idea of meeting people in the world on their terms and also in the context of the brand and the company that you're working with. Funnily enough, Jacob doesn't even know this, but I actually experienced a bit of that with Dixon Baxi because I was a design director at Capital One in the UK around, I can't remember, how long ago was that? Maybe 10 years ago, eight years ago? And your team were working with us on the rebrand of Capital One. And I was involved in quite a few of the kind of focus groups, the meetings.

12:17I was predominantly running the creative team there. And, you know, we were looking at that. We were sort of sharing information around how we're using this, you know, all of the communications that were going out. And, you know, that kind of review audit piece, you know, definitely helped, I think, later on, because then we were able to take the amazing work your team did, like that was super creative. And then my team were also doing sort of some of the basic stuff, like, you know, letters to customers and so on, how they were laid out. But actually, that's not basic, is it? Because what you're actually doing is that is the reality of the brand.

12:51Whatever you make and send to a person is the brand. It's a touchpoint experience, yeah. Yeah, and my feeling is the more actively you listen to people like yourself who are experts in your field, experts in the brands you work on, the better our objectivity works because it's a match of those two things. And when we create a kind of brand system, the more we understand the technical stresses, the system stresses, the information flow stresses, the team stresses on the brand, the better you can serve it. So what you're doing is you're teaching a person to fish rather than just saying, here's a bunch of stuff on a PDF.

13:26Don't squash the logo. It doesn't work. So what you're doing is you're trying to build belief in the brand because if the internal team believes in it, it will hit the world in a really cool way. And usually the people we work with, our clients, they're super smart, really articulate, highly creative people with a lot of pressure and stresses and strains on them. So helping them with that means that the brand is much more likely to be successful when it hits the world. I want to talk into the internal team section question next. But before we do, I wanted to talk about the Dixon-Baxi way because you've kind of outlined the process, but is anything unique that you feel that you guys do differently when it comes to building brands that people become fans of?

14:09Yeah, it's a really interesting question. Traditionally, you know, our industry, the idea is you have a proposition, you know. You come to market with a proposition. Your agency is the most transformative or the most expressive or the most technically gifted or whatever. In my experience, I don't think it really works. What works is a quality process, one that has high fidelity, has tested a lot, and has been through a lot of rigorous thinking. But it's actually the people, their attitude, and the principles that drive the work that determine the difference of agencies, I think. It's not the process, and it's not the clients.

14:43It's how you think, how you act, how you carry yourself, and what drives the work. So when you talk about the Dixon-Baxi way, that's driven by principles and an ethos, things we care about, about creativity, wherever they show up in the world. and they're more eternal things that we've tested over 25 years so they're not the latest proposition to match ai into our industry they're ideas which we believe will work whatever we do and however we apply ourselves and i think if you do that it's the truth to you that you'll show up in the world and you'll do things that people can connect to and they believe in and if you do you'll have a strong collaborative relationship with people if not they'll work with somebody else so what are the ones that come to mind when you think about your way yeah it turns out principles so high tolerance for risk that's a calculated risk so there's a risk of inaction basically if you don't change the world will change around you and you will be less relevant and relevance is a big thing for me is making sure that we're making things that make a difference creating a safe space where people can create and push themselves and go to an uncomfortable space to discover new things and then come back to sharpen that to the thing you need because if you don't go far enough you're not creating new and interesting things and that's what's needed it's highly collaborative it's very much about share a voice everybody is equal at the point of creating it's about i suppose this idea of always being in beta this idea that we're a work in progress so we're a body of work and a methodology that meets the world rather than any one project any one person or any one thing trying to do that in a kind of enthusiastic optimistic way as well i think optimism is a superpower and when the world is difficult and hard optimism won't solve the problems but it'll give you a great chance of doing so because you'll be in the right mindset so it's things like that there are things that just put us in the right frame of mind to be the best version of ourselves and if that works then we'll work with the people who like that and connect with those ideas i love that i love that i mean i've worked at a number of agencies and you know more recently in my consulting work and i think all what you've set out there is is so wonderful because i think you're absolutely right the people that drive the brand they need to feel that confidence as well they they almost like you know what i've found is the most successful projects i've ever worked on the team has got inspired like not just the the immediate project team but the wider company you know and all the people in it they're inspired by by the work and you know they're they're connected to it they've come along with the journey you know almost like as a change piece like you were saying and and they're the best the best projects and for your team to do that they also have to be in a positive frame of mind like you were saying confident yeah i agree but i think it's another level i think great clients inspire the agency so there's a lot of in our industry about how clients are and they get in the way and they give feedback that's their actual job that's literally their job is to give feedback so all the kind of like clear winning black pencil winning work sponsored by clients or sponsored by some form of leadership the more you respect that understand that the people in the organization the people who create the thing and you're inspired by that then inherently you're inspired to do better work the thing i look at is the people we're serving which is the end audience that's the actual client so the client is serving them as well so when we focus on the work we focus on how to help the client help the people that they're serving that's the key to it and and the better you get that the just the better the work i think so you have a fairly intense process so when you pass the torch over to the clients how do you actually empower the internal teams to you know keep going yeah it's it it's it's not it's not an intense process it's a very it has intent rather intensity so it's a very focused process there's a difference because you can be very intense and put a lot of energy and get nowhere i mean it obviously has momentum but a lot of it is how you set yourself up for success i think the key to it is even before we work with a client it's about how we build a relationship and we have a shared ambition together so um we don't pitch creative we just we do chemistry meetings so we get to know people and you get to understand whether your worldview would be suitable to their worldview to solve the problem they have to solve.

19:09And if you have a shared ambition, it's amazing how much you can achieve together. There's bound to be ups and downs. And we've got a very pragmatic view of that, which is there'll be stress points in the moments which are difficult, but usually that's because you're pushing, changing and change is slightly uncomfortable. So we spend a lot of time talking to the client about what's coming next, how the process works and talk about trust, really trusting that the outcome will be great this moment we might not have the answer but that's okay because we're not supposed to have the answer now we're not the answer later so what we try to do is not rush the processes and we we try to do each beat in a way that it builds consensus it builds belief and it builds momentum for the next phase so by the time it hits the world everyone agrees that's the thing that should hit the world if you're building a brand and want to do it right this is for you.

19:58Join the Brand Builders Alliance for expert coaching, live masterclasses and a crew of brand builders who've got your back. Get on the waitlist now at joinbba.com. Now back to the show. In practical terms, what does that look like? You mentioned like chemistry sessions, but is there, you know, things handed off or do you meet, you know? Yeah, yeah. Do you want literal things then? Yeah, like we can go into the practical things, literal things now. No, no, I mean, if you want literal things, I can give them to. I mean, it's not different to anyone else. It's basically meetings. Everybody, in any project, you do hundreds of meetings, and they're all for different things.

20:36Some are strategic, some are procedural, some are creative. But what we see is every meeting is an active conversation to move the project forward rather than just demarcating it. So we have different types of workshops, different types of ways of working. So for example, internally we have a thing called ignite which is like an inspire phase so it's a couple of weeks which is ours it's semi-private where we've got the brief we brought it all on board we understand the strategy then we just create things with fire we just mix lots of things intuitively based on the brief and what we've learned and then we have what's called a campfire and the campfire is where everybody looks around the table and we say what have we won what do we like What is working?

21:17What can we add that would add to this? And we kind of start to look for the signal in the noise in the work. And then what we tend to do is we tend to be very open source and high cadence with our clients. So we're sharing things all the way. So we're not doing, we do, of course, large formal presentations you have to present to executives and things. But we're showing people as we go our thought process and how the insights and the strategies translate into the design and the systems and the implementation. So there's a series of kind of moments of commitment and consensus all the way through.

21:50But what we do is we just try to be live and active in every meeting and be listening all the time to what's behind feedback, what's behind the question, what's behind a particular thing. Because if you just do feedback loops, you'll be ticking boxes and the work will just become gray and mushy. But if you think this person is saying something like, I think the blue is too cold. And you're like, OK, so what does that mean? But behind that might be anything. It might be they tried blue before and it didn't do very well, or they subjectively might not like blue, or they might actually think the whole thing is just a bit hard and they want it to be warmer.

22:28So what you've got to do is kind of figure out what's behind the feedback as opposed to just take everything on the surface. And I think if you do that, a lot of the process is much easier to handle. Thanks for sharing that. I think we'll jump into the next section, which I want to talk about your intelligent identity. So do you want to just share what that is all about and how it's different from, I guess, visual identity? Well, it is visual, but identity is only as powerful as the meaning you fill it with. So a logo is an empty vessel. So say, for example, you see an Apple logo on a car. What would you think that car is going to be like?

23:09Brilliant. Yeah, exactly. you've never driven it I've not asked you you haven't driven it you don't even know it's petrol or electric you know you don't know how much it costs but you assume it's going to be good don't you yeah that's the power of branding so there's an idea in your mind that comes from everything that Apple has done through humanizing technology creating eco systems that work design of a super high fidelity that connected relationship the way the market that the way that shows up in digital how easy it is to download the packaging the stores it raises the bar so you believe something as soon as you think about that brand so in essence you know that's that's what it's about it's about intelligent identity is rather than just being a surface thing it's driven by things that will make greater change for the organization but will also serve people better and ultimately what you're trying to do is build communities and build that give access get people to what they want faster allow them to have control of the process rather than just projecting a kind of linear idea of people but of course you do also need to build brand fame and do that so you know you're driving purpose and relevance and a strategic engine which fills the identity with meaning the identity shows up in the world in a fully active way so it moves sounds it's a narrative it's physical the semi-optics of the color and the systems and everything works it's a language and then that builds attribution It builds conversations.

24:37It builds meaning in the world. It's something that works everywhere. And then ultimately it's relevant and it drives the relationships with people and ultimately can drive communities. So how are you actually building an intelligent identity? Do you go through a certain motion or is it less linear than that? When you say motion, like as in process? Yeah, like a process. Would you start on the static and then move into, you know, motion or voice or like audio? No, we start. No, no, I get what you mean. Yeah, yeah. We'd start on the ideas first. So what you do is you go, well, we did a project recently for a brand called Tubi.

25:18Tubi is a streaming platform. There's lots of streaming platforms. But what you don't want to be is a Netflix not light. You don't want to be just like a library of just like lots of stuff going, here's a video, here's a video. You like this and watch this and watch this and watch this and watch this. It's just boring and it's lifeless. And they have a huge catalog of content. Some of it's great. Some of it is just the stuff you might watch on a Tuesday night because you've got a cheeky half an hour. But in a world where everybody was basically trying to be something for everyone, the strategy behind that is really everything for someone.

25:51The idea of super serving underserved people. So it's a very simple idea. But from that, you suddenly realize that you can't design it like a wall of a library. you've got to actually speak to people so there's a lot of tone of voice and language to that the the color palette is highly distinct the way they market is highly confident the way that the product works is much more kind of interactive and it's got lots of really smile in the mind they create a thing called studios where they invest in minority communities so they can make their own content and share with their audience so once you have a kind of clear strategy you can make whatever you want indefinitely and it's not about static emotion it's about how the brand shows up in the world because what's the point of moving it if it's a poster you know if you go to the top of a mountain and you've done this wonderful walk why would you wear an ar experience for north face you wouldn't would you but you would use strava to track that to tell you how far you've gone and how useful it is so the design and how it moves how it sounds and what it does is entirely relevant with 2b we created an audio sting which is 2b 2b that's how it goes can you can you uh do that again that was beautiful yeah it's 2b 2b it's a lot better than that but it's highly addictive it's highly addictive and it sticks in your mind but what it does is if you're in a room and you're not paying attention when that sound comes on it makes you think something and you'll know that from the hbo sting and things like that so they're all kind of pavlovian or things to make you think something and then you think oh to be there's probably something there for me not so there's something there for everyone so there's a different relationship so there is something for everyone as well love that and that what that does is it highlights that principle you were talking of earlier which is like relevance right and and understanding the way the brand needs to show up for the customer or for the user in order to serve them?

27:56We don't call them customers. Sure. Because it's important demarcation because not everybody has a monetized relationship with the brand. I'll give you two examples. Say Coca-Cola, I'll just give you numbers. Coca-Cola is worth 100 billion just for round numbers. They have 5 billion pounds worth of assets. There's another 95 billion. What is that? It's not sugar and water. Or if you took Ferrari, millions upon millions of people wear a Ferrari cap. Very few people drive a Ferrari and almost nobody will ever buy one. But the brand's relevance is that idea, that meaning. So it's not always about someone being a customer.

28:38It's about the value of the relationship, some of which are monetized and some of which are not. as I said earlier an Inter Milan fan has a very different relationship with AC Milan but that love-hate thing is still a very powerful driver for their brand I stand corrected very well it's just it's just important to how we see things there's different ways of doing it I'm only expressing my version so when I say this I mean no disrespect it's just no no none taken it's lovely to hear you you speak like that and everything you said 100 % agree and I was going to say as well like i love that idea of the relevance uh because what that sort of brought out for me when you were talking was you know particularly with the brand example that you gave it's kind of like that the strategy allowed you to know what the brand was but more importantly what the brand was not in a you know positioning wise strategically against the the other offerings on the market so and that then drove the brand code and the assets and the creation of the the experience So I think that's absolutely a great point for folks to take away.

29:38Yeah, and that's from leadership. That's from the CEO, the chief marketing officer, the head of product, their creative team, their internal team. Because you can't do it unless they believe that. So that's what I was talking about earlier about the truthful relationship. The advertising agency, the digital agencies, performance agencies, all fantastic on that Tubi project. But it was a leadership choice that they did. they had the strength of mind and the creativity and taking the risk to be the best version of themselves and then it makes it easier for obviously agencies like us to deliver against that let's talk about the future so we've talked about your intelligent identity there's another section on your site that's all about the super futures which is kind of like a r &d for brand it sounds like like what do you prototype in now what is to do with this there's a number of things we've always had a forward-looking version of ourselves because the last thing you want to do is believe you've become successful or you you've got to the point where you know what you're doing because that's when you start to atrophy so what you really need to do is challenge yourself to improve so there's a kind of restlessness to improve also the world throws a lot of at you they throw covid at you they throw remote working at you they throw stresses and strains tensions in the world so to remain creative you need to keep putting something back in so super futures is basically an unlimited form of expression where the team is given two or four weeks to work on a project uh we did everybody works on it not just the designers entire company so the operational growth produces everybody works on it and they have to make something and it just teaches the the form of intuitive passionate real making and then we see what we've won and what it does is it just enriches our processes enriches our thinking and the ignite session i talked about earlier that we use early in our process that is super futures so we do that on projects so it both benefits us as a creative entity makes us more inventive and comfortable with trying new things but it also allows us at the early phase of a branding project to try different things and prototype instead of different ways of solving the problem and um we're going to publish it on on our website and do a book to share it with people but what i found is it just um you know making for a living is great it's like a really amazing thing to do to create for a living and there's a feeling that you get in your stomach and your heart and your head like a flow state when you're making i don't know if you've ever felt that but it's like a really profoundly amazing thing that's why lots of us love creating so it's trying to find that feeling and once you found that feeling you can recollect it so when you're in the middle of a project and things are tough you can say let me just go back to what it felt like when i was creating like that and it just opens up the kind of creativity

32:34are you purposely trying new tools and methodologies or like how do you approach it like for example ai or mixed reality like how do you you know expand yeah it's a good question it's a good question the technology is only as useful as as the person using it and the reason they're using it. So technology in itself doesn't mean anything. It's just software or tools. So I think what happens is people get caught up in terms. There's a lot of terminology in our industry about different tools and software and stuff. So they talk about Figma and assets and AI. AI is like a utility. It's a ubiquitous technology that is everywhere.

33:15It's in everything. So it's how you navigate the world. It's how you create. When you think about applied AI to actual creation, the problem with it potentially is it's grabbing everything remixing it and creating something now the problem with that is you get great goop you get something that looks really highly finished on the surface but has potentially no meaning to the application you're doing but if you apply ai to a problem solving so for example we're working with a brand at the moment that's doing early detection in cancer just using ai to increase survival rates that's when it gets really interesting for me.

33:50It's something that is actually improving the actual outcome as well as the style of it. And of course, we've tested AI and AR and VR and all the various technologies at different stages. When I started in the industry, and when I certainly started Dixon Baxi, there was no Uber or Google or Deliveroo. There were no smartphones. There were no apps. There was no applied AI like there is now. There's no self-driving cars. Motion didn't exist. Digital product designers didn't exist so as you as you develop your career i think all you have to be is present and active and consistently applying your version of creativity your principles your ethos to the tools and technologies that allow you to make the work you want to work with the people you want to work with in the way you want to work and that's really all it's about so yeah we use ai for you know testing research it's fantastic for things like that it's great for versioning it's good for implementation but it's not great human invention and it's what happens is it's a bit like social media because everybody can see everything instantly everybody makes the same bento box and ai is that on uber steroids so you just have to find your truth and yourself in that i think and not copy other people you've been through the ropes you know starting from all those things not even being existed to where they are now so i'm curious like what what excites your and scares you from you know where branding is heading i'm not scared by anything to be honest i'm not i don't think like that i think if you take all your knowledge everything you you have you know your experience your type whatever talent you have i don't necessarily have any talent but if i had some talent my experience people i work with the things i've learned and i hold them in my hand and say right i can do something with this now it's really exciting it's a it's a cool thing and I get great joy from creating.

35:43I get great joy from interacting with the team as they create. I really like problem solving. I like the blank canvas. I like it when there's nothing in front of you. I love that feeling where you can go into virgin territory and try something. That's a great feeling. And I like the outcomes of that. So I get enthused in a sense that I'm a creator, a professional creator by definition. That's what I am. And I have been since I was 15. So that's, how long is that? 41 years so so a very long time i don't i can't do anything i don't believe it i do not believe that one one iota for those listening simon is a very uh you know fresh-faced young man

36:27that's very kind of you but there is a there is a thing which is if you do something that you enjoy it's hard work don't get me wrong what we do is hard work and you know running an agency is tricky at the best of times but i get great joy from it and and i've never had like a work-life balance in that traditional sense i've just like this work weekend i worked on a book that we're creating because i wanted to i didn't have to you know so i think when you when you're making for a living there's something really cool about that so that's the thing i love i think all right let's tuck into some of your your life wisdom i have a few questions around you know wisdom values risk At the start of this, you said one of your principles would like taking big risks, something along those lines.

37:10So I'm curious, what's one of those big risks that paid off and one that didn't? The incremental calculated risks. I started a studio at 19 when I lacked any knowledge or ability to do so. I moved to America when I was very successful in London and tried something different. I made a feature film when I wasn't a director and tried that. so I've tried different things but for me it's like um it's a persistence and an aggregation of thousands of small things rather than one big thing that's how I see it it's a consistent and persistent way of looking at the world and did you what was the other half of the question yeah just one big risk that paid off and one that didn't one that didn't he likes to ask the tricky questions yeah yeah the weird thing is I get asked this a lot and I slightly reject the question really because it goes back to what I was saying before which is I'm an aggregation of everything I've ever done good and bad and as I sit here I'm really happy and I feel satisfied and I feel fulfilled that's the word for it fulfilled so I don't see anything that didn't go right as a problem because I'm sat here fulfilled so that's how I see it and it sounds a bit kind of trite or a bit kind of avoiding but that's just how I think and of of course I fucked up I'm a much better leader than well not I'm a much better person who runs a company than I was I've got a lot of skills that I can bring to bear um I've learned a lot of things I've made you know I've made I'm sure lots of actual mistakes in the way I've carried myself but I don't see it as a as a thing do you know what I mean well let's reframe that then like what would you what advice would you give to your younger self those 40 years ago you mentioned the biggest thing is work the way you want to work and don't let anyone tell you any different don't work for money work for the work the risk is worth it or that's why i would always say to my younger self which is whatever sacrifice i made or whatever commitment i made to get where i was going was worth it because like i said i'm fulfilled but i think it's about self-determination and definition that that's how i see it is working the way you want to is is the most important thing and not letting the bullshit of the industry and other people detract you from that.

39:29I love that. It also sounds like you don't tend to, you know, just listening to you there, you don't tend to blame stuff. You know, you seem to take a lot of responsibility. No, it's all on me, isn't it? Yeah, I meet a lot of people and it's like, oh, it's this person's fault or this happened in my past and that's made this. No, I mean, I've had profoundly hard things in my life. You know, like if we were really talking about these things, like everybody, we all have like... Issues or problems or things. You know, we're all manufactured by how difficult life can be. But my belief is that, one, you only get one go at it, so you might as well make the most of it.

40:02But two, if you're surprised that the world is difficult or you're surprised that people won't act like you or you're surprised that things will change, you'll be consistently confounded. I don't think like that. I just assume that there's always another shoe going to drop and there's always a thing that you need to be tooled for. And for me, it's about what you can control. I can only control so many things. I can control how I show up in the world. I can control the directions I go in. So I switch off the things that I can't control because it can be overwhelming. And I think that's one of the problems is that everybody is saturated by everything.