The Cannes Debate: Why sport is becoming marketing’s most powerful platform

0:00James Emmett:Hello and welcome to The Can Debate, a three-part series from us at Leaders on sport's new place in the media and marketing ecosystem. My name's James Emmett. I'm the Editorial Director at Leaders. And my name's Alex Charkham. I head up strategy and consulting at Fuse. Together, over the course of this series, Alex and I will be asking why and how sport has taken a central position in brand marketing and communications. What are the evolving trends that should see sport dominate the marketing agenda? And what's the point of Cannes for the sports industry? Alex, we're here finally in Cannes. Welcome back.

0:40James Emmett:Thank you. Set the scene for us. Well, first of all, I'll quickly point to our guest, Dan Clays, the chief executive of Omnicom Media for the EMEA region. You got it right. I got that right first time. Very good. Thank you. Yeah. Alex, set the scene for us. Where are we? I can hear... the thump thump thump of music there yeah the grinder bus is in full swing so we timed it really well activation just outside you know that's that's how we roll we're in the omnicom space brilliant facility here in cannes first time i've been here yeah um and it's been a brilliant day so far so the great and the goods of omnicom media and broader omnicom are here alongside a lot of other sort of publishers and entities that have made the trip down to cannes it's great to have here because we really want your view on where sport sits in the wider sort of media and marketing ecosystem, your outsider's view.

1:32James Emmett:But Alex, if you will, can you just give us a real bullet point reflection on the first episode that we did with Kenny and Jonathan? Kenny was brilliant. He's obviously here in full force and I think you might have bumped into him a couple of times since he's been here. But no, really, really great start. He's obviously got a major role to play here at Cannes, So it gave us that particular point of view in terms of what it's all about, the prominence of sports that keeps on getting more significant with each year that goes by at Cannes. Obviously, it's my first time here, so I'm living and breathing it as we speak.

2:02But we talked about loads of other stuff. We talked about sports role in media and marketing. We talked about the importance of considering it alongside your other traditional marketing investments. We talked about rights and benefits. We talked about sport leading into loads of other verticals, fashion, lifestyle, and all of the brilliant rights holders such as PSG and Liverpool who are capitalising on that. So, yeah, we'll see how that plays out in the next few days.

2:27James Emmett:Sort of sitting in a kind of advertising marketing giant in Omnicom. We'd love to get your view on how you've seen sport move into the mainstream, really, I guess. But tell us a little bit about your kind of sports bona fides. I've seen you in there in the Omnicom space in there. You've had sports content in there. Yes. And you were nodding along like that. Yeah. You look like you were into that sports content. Tell us about you and your sort of sports relationship. Yeah. And it has been a huge day for our approach to sport and the confidence we have around sport and entertainment as Omnicom today.

3:07we've pretty much dedicated a big chunk of the sessions today through sport what we're doing how we're um investing into it both from a talent and a product and capability perspective so yeah there's a huge amount of interest and excitement around what we're doing in sport yeah your question was how your relationship with sport my relationship with sport and in and how it fits

3:29James Emmett:into what i do or what i've done yeah well just generally like uh how are you a sports fan i am Have you worked inside the sports industry? Have you always been in marketing? Yeah, okay. All right, we'll jump around a bit. I am a, full disclosure, I'm a big Liverpool fan. Sorry about that. And it was great to have the guys from Liverpool actually in the Omnicom space. Had nothing to do with it, or did I? But the guys came in today and it was good to see those folks here. I mean, I love all sport. I mean, I watch a ton of it. I go and see a ton of it. I used to play a lot of rugby growing up. Since quitting, I sort of then did a lot of running and, you know, sort of, you know, the classic 5 and 10Ks, which means I've sort of changed shape a bit since my rugby days.

4:19But I probably even loved football even more, you know, growing up. So, yeah, somehow, despite growing up in Essex, where most of my pals were West Ham fans, I was decided to learn Wolf simply because... Glory Hunter. Chloe Hunter, Kenny Dalgleish, Ian Rush and the works. But once it's in you, it's in you. And then in terms of how it factors into what I do, so yeah, you're right. I run Omnicom Media for the EMEA region. My path to that was I got into media. It was the first proper job, really. That was in TV planning. And then around 2000, I moved into a digital agency, a specialist digital agency.

5:00and I learned all about the digital industry and did that for 10 years. That was really about being entrepreneurial as much as it was about being a kind of a digital kind of expert. It was both. I think what happened in that sort of first decade of the 2000s was everybody in that space felt like anything was possible and I really bought into that. And then after 10 years of doing that, I moved to OMD, one of our agencies at Omnicom Media, I ran that for the UK. Then I ran Omnicom Media Group. And at that point, Fuse, our sports marketing entertainment specialist, the Fusiliers, as I like to call them, just an amazing group of folks, brilliant talent.

5:45We'll talk about them as we go through. Came under my sphere because I was running Omnicom Media for the UK in its entirety, and I was very, very lucky to work with the likes of Lou, Amon, and Alex, and a whole bunch of brilliant, brilliant people. Yeah. And did that for the UK. And then after doing that for a period of time, was fortunate enough to take on that role for the whole region. And really what that's about, my job is how do I make sure that I've got one eye on how clients are growing today, but also tomorrow so that we've got the right people, we've got the right capabilities, we've got the right specialist expertise for our clients to unlock new paths to growth.

6:28And so when you think about the trajectory that sport's on, that becomes quite a big part of what I do as well as being a kind of cross media data and technology person. So my job is across the spectrum of media. But of course, a key vertical within that is sport. And I'm sure we'll talk about how sport has become increasingly central to a lot of those things. And so I make sure that our sports capabilities are kicking along very nicely across all of our markets. And it's crazy to think that a mayor comprises of over 60 countries, you know, that we've got operations in.

7:03James Emmett:Yeah. 20 that take up a lot of my time. And, yeah, I'm very fortunate. And, you know, I get to see some great sport. Don't play as much. I bet you've still got a good 10K time, haven't you? I'm decent on 10K. Yeah. I did eight this morning on the... Eight. I know if the camera can show surprise face right now. Yeah, I couldn't quite get the final two over the line. It was hot. And then I spent an hour essentially cooling down and finding a route back to my hotel that I knew that I wouldn't see anyone, you know, because I wasn't particularly looking great at that point. Yeah. But I do like it. I find it mentally.

7:41It's a really good thing to get out on the road and run.

7:44James Emmett:Question, I guess, for both of you, for our predominantly sports industry audience for this podcast. Give us a sense of the scope and breadth of Omnicom Media, the stuff that you're obviously 60 territories in EMEA. But give us a sense of the breadth of the clients that you work with, the types of organizations that you have within the group. And then, Alex, how sport fits into that. Yeah, I mean, we're very proudly... Convergence records us as the largest media ecosystem in the world now. I think it's in public domain that they have quoted that something like over 70 billion of dollars is through our business with the clients that we're very proud to work with, which comprise of incredible brands like McDonald's, VW, Pepsi.

8:35we will talk about a lot of these through the course of the session today and yeah we're operational in over 100 markets around the world as I said we've given you the numbers for Amir but yeah it's an incredible business working with truly iconic brands you know when you you know you're going to work and having a conversation about Apple or Warner these are just you know awesome awesome businesses um and they cut across all categories you know from finance uh to the grocers to car to auto so a whole range of categories that we uh that we work with um and in in the region of amir we've got something like 15 000 people uh across the across

9:20James Emmett:the footprint yeah and alex how does fuse plug into it all and ultimately is dan responsible for giving you a pay raise or not at the end of the year. Yeah, I think our reason for being came about because I think of a desire for the media agencies in particular to diversify their client offerings and sports partnerships and sponsorship in their traditional sense, having a really prominent role to play in mainstream media. We're seeing at the moment of the World Cup, right? All the advertising around the programming is very, very sponsor-focused. And of course, they are paying for that incrementally above and beyond their rights investments.

9:55so I think for us we were born out of a media agency because of the the role that both can play and actually I think as we've evolved and grown we've I think been able to demonstrate the power that sport can play in elevating our client's advertising as well we did some great research a couple of years ago with system one and we're able to show that actually when you bring that sports IP and content and assets into your advertising the memories that can be built off the back of that amongst your target audiences are stronger and we know there's memories and associations are really important in terms of driving mental availability in particular.

10:28So all of that, I think, has really helped us build a much more stronger and prominent offering. And it's something our clients really value as well, because we can offer those services under one roof. It might look easy when you turn on the TV and you see the ads and it's all very sort of straightforward. But actually getting that integration, getting that collaboration, that's not just on the agency side, but it's the client side. You've got different people looking after different budgets and different areas of expertise. once you bring it all together i think the the actual impact is a heck of a lot a heck of a lot stronger as well so i think that's the advantage of sports sitting within a media agency in

11:00James Emmett:particular i've got a feeling that dan uh this isn't his first rodeo at can i think he's been here before but alex how have you been here for you know almost a full day almost a full day give us your red eye this morning there was a huge storm coming out of london so actually a couple of my colleagues got delayed but straight here really yeah i've done about half a mile down the Quasette got as far as Spotify yeah it's quite hot dipped in had some sort of crazy coffee infusion matcha thing yeah and came back so I haven't actually seen a lot of it at the moment but there's some brilliant events happening this evening is it is it overwhelming as a first time not yet actually I talk to me tomorrow on Thursday yeah I think I'm a couple of days in and then I might change my view but I'm actually quite excited about yeah about tonight there's an England game going on there's an England game right here um Dan what's your Cannes history your history with can and can's history with you yeah well i mean i i think i don't know for sure i'd be i'd be pretty confident my first cam was 20 years ago i i know i have a can t-shirt that is now sort of got holes in and stuff and that's i'm pretty confident that's 2006 can lions t-shirt um uh and i bet they were giving them away they were they they exactly they didn't the tote bags didn't exist in those days you know um it has got uh the scale of it is just vast now um of course the impact of global platforms has grown enormously over those two decades and so the presence of um of technology has you know woven itself into the media and the creative industries um is now you know here to stay um it's i mean i imagine it was global back then but it certainly is now in terms of attendees you know you look at people's lanyards and you say wow okay trying to spot someone just from the uk it's like you know or from europe it's like there's a big us contingent there's people from all around it's a very global event um it's very well attended um i think there's a lot of purpose for why people come genuinely um you know the pace of change the level of disruption that marketers are facing they're truly sort of sectioning time off in the annual calendar now i think to come here to make sure they're having some conversations that they don't have in the sort of day-to-day about how they reset for for the future um and then last year i was very lucky feels like a bit of a can name drop mic drop but i was the president of media lines last year which was a very unique experience um and one that i you know it sounds slightly cliched but i was i treasured it it was it was incredible i want to go into this because I know a few people who have done that role and it obviously is a big privilege and they're very proud to talk about it always but it strikes me that you get you get asked to do that and it's a sort of big moment in your career but you maybe don't think about what actually that means in terms of the work that you have to do yeah you're in a room for hours I think you you know you say yes within a nanosecond because it's you know you check with your boss uh flow my boss in New York and he was like that's amazing go ahead go do it um because it does mean that when you come here you're not up for air until the middle of the week because you've been here from friday through to to the um monday night slash there's a lot of kind of engagements to do as well tuesday wednesday so it does take up a big chunk of your time and of course you are watching reviewing scoring a lot of work in the preceding two months i think from you know from memory and you had thousands of entries right there were two and a half ish thousand pieces of work entered and the way that that is distributed to get scored is that each juror will score around six and six hundred and fifty pieces of work which sounds a lot but it's done in two waves um and you know you just you know you commit to it you tell your family and friends that you're doing this thing and it's it genuinely genuinely providing that you spread the spread it over time and don't kind of cram it towards the end yeah you can just you know take the opportunity to immerse yourself in the work and that was really really the the big thing for me was to spend so much time understanding what people around the world in uh in marketing roles or agencies thought was like the benchmark of great creativity and um yeah it was brilliant brilliant brilliant to be able to just immerse yourself in the work um yeah i utterly utterly loved it um you're running sessions in their space here in um at omnicom uh and i came along to one earlier lou johnson who runs uh fuse was running an excellent session with folks from mercedes formula one from pepsi um from a spanish brand whose name i've forgotten um and the cmo of major league soccer radica um radica dugal Now, during that session, I spotted John Shea, the CEO of Octagon, in the room.

15:56James Emmett:I spotted Shad Khan, the owner of Fulham and the Jacksonville Jaguars, just chilling out at the back of the room. You've got a room full of big hitters in there. And I wonder if, you know, what are you hearing, both of you? You talk about, it's a really important time for marketers to come and have the conversations that they're not having for the rest of the year. What type of conversations have you been having in that room? I personally would have thought they've come to hear Louise. I did. Look, I think what's consistent across clients that I'm talking to is, as you might expect, huge amount of disruption in the marketplace, whether that is because of, I think it's probably the first time we've mentioned it, AI.

16:42changing patterns in how people are using commerce and retail patterns shifting consumer behavior shifting so a huge amount of disruption fragmentation you know at a high i'm not sure if it's sort of incrementally increasing year after year but it's certainly the level of fragmentation for the last couple of years has been huge so you know how do marketers find their paths to attention and impact and distinctiveness and how do they choose the right systems of influence so the fragmentation piece is big saturation of content i mean wow that just the volume of um content now is is is do you say hockey sticking or do you say you know the exponential growth in content so i think what it does as i say opens up new questions and i think clients recognize that they've got to think about not just their core communications channels and media channels but how do they capitalize on the new sources of influence for them and how do they connect them how do they prioritize them how do they measure them how do they measure the kind of the connectivity between you know commerce sport um creators because they know that they won't necessarily use them in isolation but how do you prioritize that um and then it's you know it's possibly the sort of um uh most pragmatic part of it but how do how do clients organize themselves and their agency partners and their rights hold partners how do they organize themselves in the future um uh to capitalize on it yeah um so it's about it's about um navigating the complexity that is in front of everybody, staying calm, keeping perspective.

18:30Everyone's in the same boat. But, you know, the questions that were being asked, how do we capitalise? How do we organise around it? How do we measure for this new world? How do we have the right type of capability that's going to enable us to take advantage? Yeah, absolutely. I think what we're seeing, what I'm really interested to see here today is kind of the coming together of different ways of doing things as well. We've got a lot of European presence. We've got a lot of North American presence. I think in particular North America, if you think of the size of that geography, sport is literally one of the things that the entire country watches because of just the nature of the kind of broadcast and media landscape there there's there's lots of national channels regional channels local channels and i think sport in the u.s has always been very media focused we talk about the super bowl moment is the sort of you know annual annual showpiece there um and contrast that to europe i think where sport still remains a massive media moment but actually i think where where we're really pushing it certainly from our side of things is how else do you use all of those assets that you get with sport, the IP, the content, the talent, the data, and everything in between?

19:29How do you infuse your broader marketing with that in a way which isn't necessarily visible on TV, but is still having a massive impact? How do you bring it into your customer ecosystem? How do you bring it into your retail environments? If you're B2B, how are you using those platforms to deepen relationships with customers, use them to get those customers over the line? There's such a full spectrum of opportunities. And I think there's a bit of an awakening going on as to what that can do. I saw last year when I was pouring through the work, sport became the springboard for the campaign. It was at the centre of the campaign that then other elements needed to activate around.

20:10So the bet was made around that sport as a really important vehicle for the brand to connect with culture. But then it had to be more than that as well. So it's like, okay, how do you then tap into what creators can do? How are you going to connect that with the live broadcast of that show? How are you going to think about the commerce side of things? For the folks that are listening or watching this conversation, go and check out some of the work that Mercado Libre have done. They're an online commerce. That was the name that I forgot earlier. Yeah, they're awesome. And actually, Daniel Arra had won the Grand Prix the year before I judged.

20:53And so he was invited into the jury. He was the one marketer in the jury who spoke so much sense. But also, he spoke about how they have kind of got a bit of a formula for how they, and they do use sport a lot. I think they've done it again this year. I think they won the Grand Prix this year for, I think, implementing a massive barcode, a massive barcode onto a sports, I imagine a football field, I think it is, like a televised football field. And obviously that's just going to attract all sorts, you know, people's, you know. Like a QR code. Like a QR code. It's just a brilliant idea. And they did something similar last year around what is the massive, I'm going to put you on the spot.

21:39What's the huge South American football? Copa Libertadores. Well done. Good. That's right, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. What they did, let me just, I'll indulge myself on this because I just love this piece of work. What they did was that they recognised that was going to be, that final, they recognised that sports event was going to be so huge. It was going to develop so much coverage. So they partnered with it. But what they also did was they put a coupon onto the ticker tape. the gold ticker foil that drops down on all the players that they do in in south american football games knowing that that photograph was going to be the most photographed um picture and all of the national press the next day and then they ran the lads saying if you look closer at this photograph you will see that there's a code so they put sport at the heart of it but then they wrapped around media to kind of make it feel bigger and i think that for me was a bit of a wake-up moment to go wow okay if i think about all the amazing work we've done in sport we've it's just moved on so much from just saying okay we want to partner with a um a sports brand or an event and to draw on the association that that provides for us but actually want to take that a lot further now and i think that's how it's moved on really quickly yeah sorry i went down a bit of that was good that was good you went down a copper libertadores hole didn't you indulge me i appreciate

23:00James Emmett:Dan, do you think that sports place in Cannes, at Cannes here, corresponds to its place in the wider marketing and media ecosystem? The context behind that is, I think I'm right in saying, and you would know better than me, but that sports role here at Cannes has grown and seems to grow every year. There are more, at a very basic level, there is more content in and around sport on stages across the closet and even in the palais itself. there are clearly more participants from within the wider sports ecosystem here it's not just rights holders it's not just agency folks it's you know the whole it's sort of technical suppliers the whole breadth of what constitutes a sports ecosystem is now here i'm here it's and it's growing and sport beach sprung up a few years ago stagwell who aren't necessarily known for being very big in in sport suddenly have a big sports presence there's a hub uh sport lion was introduced a few years ago as well.

23:58James Emmett:Sport's now a big thing here at Cannes. Is it also a big thing in the media and marketing industry? Yeah, it is. I think I mentioned earlier about this sort of need to find ways to grab and garner attention and cut through and be distinctive and to find ways into the culture that brands need to find ways into the culture of what their audiences are talking about in a non-invasive way and to feel part of what they want to, you know, part of those communities. And if I think, if you think about sport um is there anything beyond sport that people truly love stay loyal to never miss when something significant is on in a world where we we sort of scroll and you know spend hours um going down wormholes and you know this is like appointment of you this is the i will not miss england ghana tonight it's happening whatever's happening um it's not a drama that i might park and watch tomorrow night so it's guaranteeing audience it's passionate it's um it's what people love it creates loyalty in a way that um i'm not sure what other properties do that you know music to an extent but not that not that that fierce kind of loyalty around it not the sort of the support base the follower base the community base that comes with it it's just it's unique in that respect and so in a world where people are distracted fragmented it absolutely provides an anchor for brands to to hook on to if you like and um and so therefore when you think about media marketing comms it absolutely is key to um key to what we do and i think for us specifically I'm interested in how you go from that opportunity to the other capabilities that we provide.

25:52So whether that is in data management, identity, commerce, how the opportunity with sport can be expanded and it can enable brands to develop, you know, strengthening their data asset or like Pepsi and the amazing work that they've done with Fuse, actually, to capitalise on their investment into sport. and taking that into shopper and into retail. So it's not, there's no dead ends in that partnership. You know, it's about how you take it from, as I said earlier, the opportunity of tapping into that love, that passion, that loyalty and using other capabilities to stretch it and have even more impact.

26:31James Emmett:I want to go into some more examples, if we can, of kind of the work that the brands that you're working with, the brands that you're seeing and talking to are doing in and around the sports space. But I want to offer you one potential analogous area to sport that I can see at least, and that is American politics. I think we're going through the sportification of America, specifically American politics, where it's always a fight and you've got to pick a side and it's classic red against blue. And there are so many aspects of sort of sports broadcasting process that go on in American politics. And I think, you know, that's just becoming...

27:09James Emmett:Who's sponsoring it? Who's sponsoring it? Yeah, where's the brand opportunity? Yeah, maybe next time it's... I mean, I've been in Cannes through a Brexit, was here for Brexit, now being here for a prime ministerial shift. Did you see the thing, mate? They happen around Wimbledon. Is that right? Yeah, all the last five British prime ministers who have resigned have either resigned during Wimbledon qualifying, Wimbledon, or just after Wimbledon. Well, there's probably been more prime ministers than have new Wimbledon champions. Almost certainly. Almost certainly. Almost certainly. Brands themselves then.

27:44James Emmett:Yes. And the conversations that you have with CMOs who have this increasingly complex picture in front of them, which you both articulated earlier. What are they sharing with you at the moment? Other than, oh my God, what do I do? What is keeping them up at night? What are they saying to you and how are you responding to that? I mean we both have a go at this I mean I think they're all the CMOs that we we work with and have conversations with growth is the name of the game that's what we're here to do that's what they're here to do incremental growth how can they prove that that investment the work of their teams is driving incremental growth how can they increasingly predict and create confidence around the bets that they're making.

28:38Well, they shouldn't be bets, you know, because they're, you know, very informed planned decisions. But I think the thing that we should never drift too far away from is we are in the business of designing for growth. And the requirement increasingly is how we can not only use our creativity, our partnerships um our innovation to um to come up with the ideas that are going to drive demand and inspire audiences and you know and generate interest in the brands um but you know how are we going to convert that into sales how are we going to capitalize on the impact that has into the performance of um of the marketing um and then how do we measure it and how do we look at creating models that are sustainable and scalable you know it's not about doing stuff that is happening in one market or once once a year clients are looking at okay how do i drive growth but how do i find a formula that's going to be sustainable repeatable um and also that they can organize in an efficient way that um doesn't require you know um you know uh you know a cost that is just not manageable and then the other part that again would be remiss to to talk about is ai and technology and i think you know clients agencies have obviously got access and embedding models into the platforms and technology they use i think what we've started to see now though is okay not just having access to the technology and how you've integrated it into your workflows but also the craft of how people are using it and how can they um uh how can they not just create productivity improvements but actually how's that going to get more how's that going to get to more effective outcomes more creative solutions um and yeah i mean you know last year they were you know judging the work there were five or six cases that stood out with ai i think it would have been hard on the jury this year to work out the ones that didn't include it you know so it's a big talking point but i think the focus for me when chatting to cmos is not just have you got it and if you're it's really about um the ai craft have you upskilled your people to be able to capitalize

30:59James Emmett:on it for us yeah i sometimes zone out when um people are discussing ai because there is so much discussion around ai at the moment and a lot of it is technical and so i think you know it's not we all zone out um but someone said to me the other day here in in can um she was a designer in fact she was just telling me that she used an ai a bit of ai software to um sign her up to everything that she wanted to go to at can and then she had a spreadsheet with all the qr codes and stuff and i just thought and it took an instant and i thought well that's a real world problem that i've got at the moment and yeah and that was a sort of gateway into a discussion that I didn't zone that off.

31:41James Emmett:Do you want to have a go on the CMO? Yeah, yeah. No, I think, to echo that point, it's growth. I mean, it looks and feels slightly different relative to brand, relative to category, relative to audience. You know, the Pepsi example, everyday consumer, what they're trying to achieve is different. If you're a car, if you're a B2B, where the buying cycles are four years, five years, a bit longer. What we generally tend to see are two questions. One is how do we grow our market share? And second, how do we grow our category? And actually, AI example is really, really interesting. because we've got a couple of clients in the stable.

32:10From their perspective, it's very much growing the category. How do we get people to use this thing if they don't trust it, if they don't know how to use it, if they're not familiar with it? And that's where we're having the conversations around sport in particular. It's how do you break down those barriers to usage is by injecting something these people care about into their user experience around AI so they become more trustful, they become more familiar, and actually they can see the fruits of their labor a bit more because to echo the example you just gave and go, wow, this thing can actually really help my overall experience.

32:42And then from a sort of market share perspective, we see it a lot in things like ride hailing or in particular where a lot of, you know, we're all used to using Uber or we're all used to using Bolt or whatever it might be. But actually there's a lot of people who don't trust it. There's a lot of people who still prefer black cabs. There's a lot of people who still work with their local minicab company. So actually the challenge there is kind of the same but a little bit different as well. So, again, the argument is let's play a role in culture and use that as a barrier to break down these particular barriers in a way which can play against those two different areas.

33:15James Emmett:Yeah. Right, the Grindr bus has just upped the volume. They have a bit, haven't they? The crescendo is on its way. So to end, I thought let's just have a few little tidbits and I'll give you some time to think about this. I want the most interesting or best thing that you've heard so far or most surprising, most interesting or unlikely person that you've bumped into. And also I do want sort of most ridiculous thing that you've heard someone utter so far. Okay, okay. I'll do the first two. I've got two that just jump out. Oh, you don't want to tackle the ridiculous one? I'm not going to do the ridiculous one at the end if I can think of something.

33:58Last night I was very lucky to go to an evening with Oprah Winfrey. And I, you know, truthfully didn't know what to expect. I knew it was a big deal. But she was interviewed by the producer. I think it was the producer. She's about to do a whole thing with Amazon, a whole series on Amazon now. I think that's where she's going to be next on. Anyway, just listening to her was incredible. Yeah. Honestly, it was incredible. And to answer your question, the thing, a couple of things that she talked about that resonated with me. One was she does everything with intent. and I think that the danger is we don't sometimes and we go to stuff and we actually haven't thought about what's our intention here but every single thing she does um is what's the intent what am I trying to do for why am I doing this what am I looking to get out of this and I think that really struck a call with me and then the second thing she said was making sure that in life you do what you love and again stop and check if you're not doing that um uh have a word with yourself or you know and start to plan for a future where you do love everything that you do uh the second what was it was the surprising surprising person i'm uh this might not be picked up because we sat down on on chairs but i'm quite tall i'm six foot two and a half three

35:19James Emmett:um uh kevin durant nba he's tall guy i mean i don't know what i don't know how tall he is but I was I was it was neck ache yeah you know I mean I wouldn't if I'm sick he must be seven foot I mean I kid you not this guy was so tall and it's not often I take a photo I mean I just thought my son George a photo of the bottom of someone's chin I don't often go for the selfie honestly I don't I don't I don't but with my son George I just knew that he would love it yeah and it would give him some kudos yeah so anyway so good and that genuinely is me and him yeah um uh kind of you know just heads apart the guy was enormous yeah that's surprising and I'll come back on the ridiculous I've only been here for five minutes the surprising thing is I got a hug from a guy I've only met once yeah I went for the hand and I got a hug and it's a very sweaty environment right the Grindr bus is going Dan Clays Alex Charcom thank you very much indeed absolute pleasure thank you thank you for having me thank you