Live from BarkleyOKRP in Kansas City

0:00Howard Laubscher: This On The Spot series is brought to you by System One. What if you could predict whether an ad or product or an idea was going to connect with consumers and be successful even before it launched? That's where System One comes in. They're the creative effectiveness platform that uses emotional measurement and norms to help brands predict what will truly drive growth and how to further improve it. From new product concepts and packaging to Super Bowl spots and social campaigns, System One enables you to create with confidence across all of your creative. To learn more, check them out at systemonegroup.com.

0:42Howard Laubscher: That's systemonegroup.com. And by Tracksuit. Tracksuit is the affordable, always-on brand tracking tool that helps marketers and agencies answer the question, is what we're doing working? Companies pay$100 ,000, which I still can't believe, or even more, for brand tracking, which is out of the question for most modern brands. Their in-house research experts do the heavy lifting, using best-in-class practices to craft your survey and get you results fast. Tracksuit gives you brand tracking you can afford. Check them out at GoTracksuit.com. That's GoTracksuit.com. So we were in Barkley OKRP in Kansas City a few weeks ago for our live show.

1:31Howard Laubscher: We had a great conversation there. And what we typically do when we're in an agency that's hosting us in their city, we tend to do two shows. We do a show during the day that's focused on a client who's doing great work. And then we have the evening show that we record in front of a live audience. Now, what's happened this time is we had Laura Krug on, who's the chief marketing officer of the Kansas City Chiefs. And Laura was good enough to come to the day show. She was the guest, the primary guest at the daytime recording. And that episode has already dropped. It's a great episode. You've got to check it out if you haven't already.

2:05Howard Laubscher: Hearing about the Chiefs, the entire culture of that brand and what her plans are for it, the whole Taylor Swift effect. It's really a great episode. She came back in the evening to join the table again. So huge, you know, huge thanks to Laura for doing that. Laura is CMO of the Kansas City Chiefs. Also joining the table in this recording were Brad Jones. He's Chief Creative Officer at Barclay OKRP. Jeremy Klein works for Ryan Reynolds Agency Maximum Effort. Their shop is located in Kansas, in Los Angeles, but he's out of Kansas City. He works on social strategy and is a terrific guy. He's part of the conversation.

2:48Howard Laubscher: Also, Chris Cardetti is chief strategy officer at Barclay OKRP. And Howard Lobsher is chief strategy officer at VML. And VML actually started all those years back in Kansas City, which is interesting to know. And it's fun that their office is actually on a private airstrip. I actually saw it coming in from the airport. it's pretty kind of wild. Apparently what you can do is you can, you can drive if you're a client and you fly in on a plane, you can fly in and just roll your plane up to the office, up to the agency offices and jump out. So that's super convenient. Anyway, for everybody who comes to our live shows, you always get one of these fancy lanyards.

3:33Howard Laubscher: And these lanyard things, I think if we're lucky, will become collector's pieces. So if you haven't gotten one of these, I'm showing for those watching on YouTube, they're actually pretty damn cool. And we'd love people to take pics of them and post them on social. But come to our live show and you get one of these. It's an added value, available for an unlimited time. So we would love to see you come out to our live shows. Now, what's interesting when we go to markets such as Kansas City or we go to Boston or we go to Dallas or wherever we end up going, that aren't the major New York, Chicago, LA markets, there's always a tendency for these agencies to say that they have a lock on how real people think by virtue of where they're located.

4:21Howard Laubscher: Now, I don't believe that. I don't feel that to be true. I think that's selling yourself really short because I think there is agencies in New York City. There's agencies in all parts of the U.S., major and not so major cities, that have a phenomenal understanding of everyday people. As I feel that people in Kansas City, in these agencies, have a phenomenal understanding of people on the coasts as well as in the center. So I think when you look at places like Barclay, I think the reason that those smaller towns are such a wonderful blend of talent is that they do great work and they're attracting people from across the U.S.

5:01Howard Laubscher: to come in there. We saw the same thing in Minneapolis where most of the people there are not Minnesotans. So it is great work that's a signal to the rest of the industry that they can go there and have a rewarding creative career. And if they want to change, they can have different aspects of their life met there. If you have a family or your partner used to live there, whatever the case may be. so I think that anywhere you can do great work as long as you have really great talent so um I would love to hear your uh questions or any suggestions about this particular episode you can reach me at hello at on strategy showcase.com we always love your your comments or you can connect with me on LinkedIn and see all of the work associated the creative work associated with this episode and all of our episodes on our website at on strategy showcase.com enjoy it uh we've got um we've got other live shows coming up i'm sorry i have to just mention this we've got our next live show coming up in um in uh in september september 10th at gsdnm in austin texas from there we go to london we then go to new york for a couple of shows we're in la we're going to be at Widen and Kennedy in Amsterdam.

6:23Howard Laubscher: So the 2026 live tour is well underway and we hope to see you on the road. Enjoy this episode. Welcome to On Strategy Showcase. I'm Fergus O 'Carroll in Kansas City.

6:50Howard Laubscher: We were talking about the loudest stadium. This is the loudest room on the tour so far. That's pretty damn good. So let's welcome our guests for tonight. Jeremy Klein, Social and Strategy at Maximum Effort. Jeremy, come up and join us.

7:11Howard Laubscher: Chris Cardetti is Chief Strategy Officer for Barclay OKRP.

7:24Howard Laubscher: Laura Krug, Chief Marketing Officer of the Kansas City Chiefs.

7:35Howard Laubscher: I just noted that chief is in your title. Chief, chief. Howard Lobsher, Chief Strategy Officer at VML Kansas City.

7:57Howard Laubscher: Welcome, sir. Thank you. And Brad Jones, Chief Creative Officer, Barkley, OKRP. Welcome, man.

8:13Howard Laubscher: It's a privilege to be here, to be a part of this city for today and to talk to everybody here. Regular listeners will know that we do this in cities around the world, and we get to talk about the culture of creativity in that particular market, and we bring together clients and agencies to have those conversations. So these folks are going to represent your city. I hope you won't be disappointed. I think they're going to do great at representing it really well. So we're going to talk about, first, we're going to talk about Kansas City. we're going to talk about being in the 38th most populous city in the country and we're going to talk about it being in the middle of the country so the first question is what made you move here and for these guys what kept you here so I'm going to I'm going to start off with you Brad So tell me about it.

9:11Chris Cardetti: I mean, for me, I grew up at the beach in Sydney, Australia. So this is the complete polar opposite. But I think it comes back down to curiosity and being like, we only have a short amount of time on this earth. So let's try and experience as much of it as we can. You know, I spent 10 years in New York, about a year and a half in LA, and then quickly went back to New York. About a year in Charlotte during COVID. In Charlotte, North Carolina? Yes. Oh, no way. I used to work there. Oh, we should talk after that. Back in the day, for sure. Chris and I and the rest of the Barclay folks, we talk about like fantasy versus reality a little bit when it comes to like truly understanding the consumer.

9:57Chris Cardetti: And if you want to truly understand the consumer, you've got to come to where they are. And that's right here in the heartland. you know so I think it's a little bit of a reality check at times and and maybe that's an obvious thing but I think when you're when you work in New York and you work in Los Angeles like you are in this little kind of like an echo chamber bubble you don't really understand what's really going on what's happening in that 13 or 14 year old you know teenager's mind you know you're just you're just so far away from it you just it's hard to really understand that and like the work that coming out of the city is amazing.

10:30Chris Cardetti: And VML, for decades, they've had some of the most awarded work it can. And that's for a reason. They understand the audience. Yeah.

10:41Howard Laubscher: Howard, how about for you with VML? You're a Chicago guy. You grew up in Chicago, right?

10:45Lara Krug: Yeah, yeah, yeah. My wife and I met in New York. We're from Chicago. We live there. We like have kids. How about move to the suburbs or maybe a smaller city? And so when you come here, you realize you can lose all the friction and you can define what your rich life is and it doesn't mean

11:03Chris Cardetti: we don't fucking work hard right we work hard don't we yeah all right actually the i would say just jumping on one thing on that like i i left at mojo supermarket which was on canal street in new york city which is probably the most insane place on earth to come here and i was like you know what it's going to be amazing it's going to be so chill and it's complete opposite so i'm working harder than i was i have had a far seat to brad's culture shock and it's been amazing

11:33Lara Krug: it's been a study in and of itself but to build on that we're also nice you know and so like actually get nice what's the friction you know like oh i gotta drive so long to get my kid to school oh you want to have a play date oh i live in this neighborhood that's 45 minutes on the weekend. So like, you just, you got, you got a wait list, you got, you know, and my kids can ride the bike to school and, and I don't have to worry about it. And so like, you can lose a lot of the friction. But now that culture can happen anywhere and anybody that wants to embrace it and go deep and you can find community.

12:06Lara Krug: I think we don't, we don't lose a lot without it, you know.

12:09Howard Laubscher: So Jeremy, how about you? You, you, you didn't grow up in Kansas City, but you grew up in Kansas or Missouri?

12:14Brad Jones: Kansas. I am from the middle of nowhere, basically. Super small town, probably closer to Oklahoma than Missouri. And I think similar to like Brad, I think what's magical to me about Kansas City is especially when you think about life outside of Madison Avenue. And, you know, it's like there's so much happening elsewhere. And I think that's really important in advertising to reach people who aren't in New York or LA. And especially when you think about culture and it's like the 12 people uh who write about dime square make you think dime square is important but a bunch of hipsters in this neighborhood it's maybe not that important to the majority of people that a lot of the big brands that we all service and work on here which is kind of slept on in kansas city like they don't care about that like you know it's like there's just this kind of like aw shucks mentality here that we're just like we all just want to do really great work because we're Midwest nice, you know?

13:14Brad Jones: And that's how we want to service and show up. And I think that's something that's actually incredibly special about Kansas City.

13:21Howard Laubscher: So how did a guy from near Oklahoma City get to be in this world here in Kansas City? I would say dumb luck.

13:30Brad Jones: I don't have like a traditional agency background. I went to school for business, but I had the chops and experience and, you know, I was with VML for a long time, you know, and was able to get in through that, like, through that work. But I think that's also something that's important and special here in Kansas City, where it's like, I'm gonna be really honest, I did not really know what agencies were, right? Like, and was still able to come in and do the work and to be able to do a lot of impactful work and really grow and be nurtured in that, whereas maybe a traditional market might be like, well, where's your book?

14:05Brad Jones: Where'd you go to portfolio school? Where'd you go to ad school? And I think if you want to make really impactful, culture-breaking work, it's like, why don't you look for unconventional backgrounds if you want to make unconventional work?

14:17Howard Laubscher: Yeah, which everybody talks about wanting, but they don't necessarily

14:20Chris Cardetti: know. Yeah, no one actually ever does that.

14:24Howard Laubscher: Or the unconventional background really isn't scalable within the world of marketing. It's like too narrow sometimes. So Laura, you grew up in Connecticut. You were in New York City. You were working on L 'Oreal. You were working on Stella Artois. And then you moved to Kansas City and you become the chief marketing officer of the Chiefs.

14:47Jeremy Cline: That is the story.

14:49Howard Laubscher: How does that, how does it happen? And then we'll talk about what you're going to be, what your goals are there.

14:56Jeremy Cline: Yeah, how it happened. So, yes, I was with Anheuser-Busch in New York City for almost 10 years, which was like a blink in the eye. And my husband and I and our two children decided to move to Kansas City for his job in 2020 during COVID, where everyone, I think, was starting to question everything of, to your point, friction and values and priorities and challenges. and we did that and I was lucky enough to have been at Anheuser-Busch for a really long time and they were really supportive of me moving like everyone else at that time and was here doing my thing. I'll never forget having to fly to the Bahamas during COVID from Kansas City for our stellar Super Bowl ad.

15:46Jeremy Cline: It was like, is there a flight from Kansas City to the Bahamas? And that was the plan. And then in April of 21, the Kansas City Chiefs decided to build out their first ever CMO position. And I was at the right place at the right time and was reached out to by a recruiter for the job. and as someone that is married to someone from Kansas City who is a diehard Chiefs fan, the irony is not lost on me that I didn't grow up an NFL fan. I became a Chiefs fan through him and through family and through the aura of why I think so many people have fallen in love with the Chiefs now. But I was fortunate enough to get the position five years ago.

16:41Jeremy Cline: And I think a big part of it, similar in many ways, I don't have a traditional CMO background. I didn't go to MBA, started my career at a media agency, moved over to Avon, which sounds like I had a plan in place by going from Avon to L 'Oreal. I didn't. It was like B2B marketing to get on the digital side and then made my way over to ABI. So I come from a non-traditional background, but I tend to, now I can look back, and I tend to gravitate towards positions that are quite entrepreneurial, but within legacy organizations that want to grow, that want to evolve.

17:20Howard Laubscher: So Chris, you've been here for 15 or 16 years? 15 years, yeah. So is there a superpower to being outside of the big markets? and if there is, do you leverage that? I know Brad talked to it. We'll come to Brad. You mentioned it to me in an interview earlier.

17:38Brad Jones: Yeah, I think in draft off of what Brad said, maybe off what Laura said a little, we get sometimes in client meetings or pitches or things like that, get labeled with, well, they had a really good Midwest energy and I'm always like, what does that mean? But I think, I was trying to dissect it the other day, I was like, I think what that means is we have a really strong belief in the ideas we have, but we're not arrogant enough to believe that we're right. Secondly, I think there's a lot of good chemistry, I think, that we have with our teams, and we get that fed back. Like, well, you guys actually, like, do you like it?

18:17Brad Jones: It looks like you like each other. And it's really, it's an underrated skill in this industry. It's like your team actually likes each other, and I want that. I want to work with that magnetic quality. our new CEO Katie Hornaday was my old partner Brad new partner and we used to do this thing where we would flip the clicker to each other in a presentation and it was intentional we did it but we did it to show that we were connected

18:44Howard Laubscher: but none of that matters if the ideas don't travel

18:50Brad Jones: it's got to be great work I think that comes with a little bit of what Brad said a lot of what marketing talks about these days is not what people care about. And so I think a superpower we have to your question is truly wanting to understand people, wanting and knowing that people are smart, not dumb, that people are interesting and fascinating and crack you up, and anything they say is going to lead to a different story. And getting in there, uncovering that, and finding how our brands can solve for that, that kind of like journalistic quality, I think we may be losing along the way here. If we can still capture that with that Midwest energy, sell those ideas in a non-salesy way, I think it all kind of works.

19:38Howard Laubscher: It used to be that markets outside of the big markets were working on small brands. And you guys are not working on small brands. I mean, Wendy's, Hills, Pat Food, Frontier Airlines, The Chiefs, AMC Theaters, Burger King, Coca-Cola, Febreze. These are not small brands that go to small markets to do good work. These are big brands that expect great work.

20:07Lara Krug: Yeah, I think like what everyone's been saying, there's a couple of things there. The first one being the city bleeds a little bit of creativity. you know, Disney started here. The Hallmark story passed just to have thousands of designers on staff. So you had these people marrying, having kids, having a natural creative family born here. And so like at even one point, the mayor was touting creativity per capita here was greater than other cities, you know, because of that. So like six per capita creative. I don't know the math on that, but he had the bow tie and he was awesome. So like, I'll take it.

20:44Lara Krug: I'll believe anything he says. But, you know, it kind of allows us to leave our mark on the city and be creative, which I think is great. And then in terms of the brands, you know, like we have the talent, but like everyone said, we have the perspective of the consumer. And when you break down the data, I think you'll find that like we probably buy more Tide and have more cars and have more kids than some of the bigger cities because of, you know, the size of the city we are and what it caters to.

21:10Chris Cardetti: The one thing I would say on that is like the one thing I've noticed in just like the last seven months and actually the reason that I came here in the first place was there's pretty much zero egos here. You know, if you find an ego, that's like an anomaly. But like the fact that there's no egos here means everyone's just focusing on doing the work and doing amazing work. You know, we've just come out of a couple of pitches where we were up against agents like two or three of the best agencies in New York. one of the best agencies in LA. We won the pitch. And it's like the best work always wins.

21:44Chris Cardetti: So my thing is like the ideas here are just as good as the ideas from any global city. We just don't have to worry about any of the toxicity or ego that comes with a lot of agencies and doing what we do. Yeah.

22:02Howard Laubscher: And the other thing is, I think in part it might be because I hear similar things from different cities, smaller cities. You know, Boston thinks there's a Boston way, and Dallas thinks there's a Dallas way. But I think what they all have in common is that they attract great people. And then they've got a base of good talent and great talent, but then more people are drawn in. So it's not that there's a Dallas way or a Boston way or a Kansas City way. It's that those markets are attracting great talent that are creating great work that works in every part of the country.

22:41Chris Cardetti: I think the people that are focused on doing the best work and not worrying about any of the other BS. That's my thing.

22:48Lara Krug: And celebrating it, you know, like, and like, I'm so glad that this is getting noticed and getting attention.

22:54Brad Jones: Well, I think people that the other piece of it is people that actually want to work, build together versus, like, get all the credit, do it alone. I do think there's a spirit of, like, without the ego, like a healthy collaboration definitely means like strong debate, but healthy collaboration, not being precious with that. Like I didn't, I didn't, I'm not from Kansas City and I didn't come to the city. I came to the agency and I, where were you from? Southern Missouri. I'm from here. I'm a Midwest kid, like through and through, but I came here on a whim and I was like, well, I'll try that. And I got real lucky.

23:29Brad Jones: My first day here, I got to brief some ECDs on a big project. They were looking for something new to work on. The first, second day, I got to write an RFP opening letter for our CEO. I don't know how. It got put in front of my desk. I'm like, okay. Then I found Kansas City after that. I found the agency. I'm like, there's a lot of potential here. I think I could build stuff with a lot of people that I like. Then after that, I found Kansas City to be in this pretty good island in the middle of the country that was full of makers and creatives and entrepreneurs and all with kind of an honest take on the world.

24:05Brad Jones: And that's what kind of kept me.

24:06Chris Cardetti: The only problem is there's no beach. There's no what? No beach. No beach.

24:09Howard Laubscher: No beach. That's true. We could build one. No coast. You got lakes, though. You got a lake? Lakes, Brad.

24:15Jeremy Cline: It's just not the same. Someone give Brad a beach. Please.

24:19Howard Laubscher: Just give him a beach. So let's talk about the Kansas City Chiefs. So we've had conversations before today, and a couple of things struck me. You talked about the brand as being a media and entertainment brand with a football product. What's the ambition? And then when you came on board, there has to have been something that they said or the first CMO role that they've ever had. Why did they need a CMO and what was the North Star?

24:55Jeremy Cline: So hopefully when Coach Reed hears that, he doesn't get mad at me. Can we raise the mic? Can we raise Laura's voice? So, yeah, we, I believe, and I think we are on a journey to getting there, but that is a mindset shift that we are a media and entertainment company that has a football brand and has multiple other brands. We have an events brand. We have a entertainment, like we have a production brand. And I think when we moved from thinking about ourselves, which has been an evolution and it was part of to the second part of your question when I joined when we move from only thinking about our business as one product which is the core of our flywheel the game the game experience coming to the stadium is our core bread and butter that's what makes everything else possible but when you start realizing that that can only stretch so far it really forces you to have to think quite differently on how do you grow.

26:01Jeremy Cline: And so when I joined five years ago, and really I think what was being, the groundwork was being laid by our owner, Clark Hunt, our president, Mark Donovan, they were starting, obviously, there had been a ton of success many, many, many years ago. There had then been this resurgence of success, certainly beginning with a guy named Patrick Mahomes, and Coach Reed and Travis Kelsey, the snowball started to grow. You then start adding in everything from the international program really becoming a main focus of the league. So the NFL believed that international and globalization is, unshockingly, the future of every sport and every audience, just the way the world is moving.

26:51Jeremy Cline: you start adding in um i think people's appetite again i think things sometimes work for the reason you then add in right after the chiefs had won the super bowl in 2019 the first one in 50 years you then add in covid which then you have a migration of people to cities that we were just talking about right you have this mass exodus out from major cities so now you have renaissance happening in cities like kansas city so you had all these ingredients plus you have a legacy organization that has been around for 60 plus years, you have this combination of things happening. And all of a sudden, what went from being an ambition that was still big of wanting to be the number one team in Kansas City, then the ambition started to become much bigger.

27:38Jeremy Cline: And the story, which is a true story, when I joined coming from large brands like Anheuser Bush where you are judged on your sales and volume targets. Like it's very clear what your KPI of success is. When you move into a role like I did, you should have seen my face the first few weeks where I was like, okay, so the league does the media deals and there's a lot of...

28:04Howard Laubscher: And you can't do any paid advertising.

28:06Jeremy Cline: You can't do paid advertising because that's how the league works. We can only advertise in our HMA, which is Kansas, Missouri, and part of Nebraska. And so then you start checking off the list. And so then when you realize that you have all these ingredients, but you have all these constraints, this conversation happened between Mark and I, where I was like, what does success look like? And he said in the most humble way, if anyone knows him, he's an unbelievable boss and very humble. He basically said, let's let the Cowboys keep America's team. They've earned that. That's theirs. why couldn't we become a global iconic team and we then kind of copy wrote and paraphrase that to becoming the world's team and that statement becoming the world's team becoming the world's team right and so i would say within the first not at all ambitious not at all ambitious and and that look that you're having on your face you know as a new cmo and a new kid in the room coming to a marketing team that was small, very small at the time.

29:12Jeremy Cline: We had one social person, one digital person, one creative, nothing was done with agencies. Everything was done in house. And then you come and say, we're gonna become the world's team. They are like, what are you actually talking about? But it took marketing and internal sales ambition, if you wanna say it like selling to say, why not? And once you start building a little bit of that credibility, a win, a win, a win, you start seeing people's mindsets really shift. You then add in all sorts of things that start coming over the last couple of years with Super Bowl wins and AFC and famous people and all the other things.

29:53Jeremy Cline: It was like, thank goodness we had that initial ambition because I think we were just so prepared in some ways for what we thought could happen with the brand in the future.

30:04Howard Laubscher: So let's talk about VML, Howard. I was driving in here yesterday from the airport, and I drove by your private air place. I've been on a private jet. I saw the...

30:20Lara Krug: Can we start a Kickstarter for that one, too? I saw Howard on the back tail fin.

30:26Howard Laubscher: But your offices are actually on a private airport ground. You guys have been around... What is it since 1992? VML started in Kansas City originally, right? It's now a WPP international thing, 26 ,000 plus employees, but this is where it started. Tell us about what VML is like today, how it's positioned.

30:48Lara Krug: I did not work there then, but that is what makes it a special place. You know, we've always been a combination of technology and creativity. We were making websites before people were going there. You know, we're early adopters of all the things digital, be it SEO, be it social and etc. You know, Wendy's was the first brand on Discord. There's no technology that we're afraid of. And we have really, really deep experience in that. But at the same time, you know, we developed modern brand storytelling and modern brand building. And so that duality of that in itself, like, has sort of been our special sauce.

31:26Lara Krug: and you don't tell a brand story anymore in 30 seconds. It's made up of all these different things. Wendy's is getting noticed for its tweets. Wendy's story is happening in the comments and everywhere else. Our special sauce is those two things and combining them, digital and technology. But isn't everybody doing that?

31:50Howard Laubscher: It doesn't really...

31:52Lara Krug: We can create the seamless experiences is that brands are navigating complex business issues from commerce to everywhere else and tell that story really efficiently and seamlessly, I think. And then I think the other thing that we really enjoy being a part of is the culture of Kansas City since it was all born here. Even though we have several offices all over the world, we still get asked to come to Kansas City. Our leaders from all over the globe come here. Our clients come here.

32:22Howard Laubscher: You guys won an FV last night, right?

32:24Lara Krug: Yeah, Navy, subreddit won it, and then a lot of the commerce work out of Chicago won nine more.

32:32Howard Laubscher: Barkley is heavily in the news in the last year or two in terms of best-of lists, right? Am I wrong? Tell us about that. Make it quick.

32:44Brad Jones: Yeah, yeah, no, Effie, yeah, UnitedHealthcare client won Effie last night. Shout out, Effie, love him. I always say the FE form is our job, all of it. But yeah, I think Brad and I, the work we try to do here, whether it's BK, whether it's Jiffy Loop, whether it's Frontier Airlines.

33:06Howard Laubscher: And this isn't the retail part of it. I mean, you do all of the - All verticals, yeah.

33:11Brad Jones: I think we have a belief in building brands. It starts with understanding the consumer, lifting them up, celebrating them, and driving kind of what we call kind of uncontained impact across channels, across the business, all through creativity is that's the point of view versus we're just in these verticals. Although our agency was born in retail, so we're very much in retail and restaurant, and the fast pace of that I love because you just get a lot of at-bats at all times, you know, with work out in the world. But, yeah, that's the type of work we do. I mean, some of the latest work that Brad has come on and we've worked on, Frontier Airlines had a big push.

33:49Brad Jones: Yeah, great stuff. Low budget, but big earned media action around making good on the Pepsi jet. Guy from the 90s who didn't get his jet, we gave it to him through Frontier Airlines. I can let Brad talk about that.

34:03Chris Cardetti: I would prefer to make less advertising if we can.

34:06Howard Laubscher: Traditional.

34:07Chris Cardetti: Traditional advertising, just do things in the real world that then we create work around, right? So we have a media arm, so I'm not saying we shouldn't buy media, but my philosophy is that the idea needs to earn attention before any attention is bought. So the idea needs to be able to get a headline and get people talking about it before we spend a cent of media. So when you put the media on top, it's like a bonfire with fuel being bought on top. that's my philosophy and I think

34:44Howard Laubscher: and that was evident in BK it's evident in Frontier it's BK, it's Frontier

34:49Chris Cardetti: it's Jiffy Lube, right so you see the proof is in the pudding in like declaring a very clear vision and inviting everybody to act on that like I've seen that just in the seven months of being here and it's been like an absolute pleasure and honor to see like all of our creatives like really embrace it and be like yeah You know what? Let's not just write some more scripts for Jiffy Lube. Let's steal the guys from Sonic that we created 20 years ago from a completely different category, a different brand, and put them into our ad. Like, why not? We can do that. We can do whatever we want. We're creatives, right?

35:25Chris Cardetti: So, like, the whole idea is being, like, a little bit more unruly, do things that you think you can't do, and you will see, you know, an exponential return. We call that uncontained impact.

35:38Lara Krug: I think it's taken a lot of swings you know like we try to have that always on idea you know that that brands can act against you know like when on true green we always like call to quit how do we get people to quit doing it themselves and hire it out and it's like you should get this person to quit Jason Day is going to get people to quit and it's really all about just the endless and iteration because you're going to keep telling these stories and all these different parts and you can keep telling them all meant to earned you got to take a lot of swings yeah and my other thing

36:06Chris Cardetti: is like, I feel like it's very easy to get very serious about what we do. You know, and I've seen it in New York agencies, seen it in LA agencies, it gets very serious. And it's like, guys, we're making advertising here. This should be fun. Don't overthink it. This should be fun. Like, we know the strategy, we know the business objective, we know what we need to do. Like, let's one, not try and make more ads. Do something interesting that real people care about and then we can make an ad out of that if we need to you you guys are the same way well

36:38Brad Jones: i was going to say uh the thing about our industry is a lot of people spend their hard-earned money to not see the work that we create yes i think we all know that have the version without ads yeah and we all have a understandably healthy denial of that as well but i think similarly like um you know we really have a writer's room approach you know and it's just like it's the same thing it's like how can we service the idea the best we don't care who pitches the idea where it comes from and that's also similar to like when we think about like the culture of it like that's also how like we ran and like run the Wendy's team like as well like on that it's just like how can we make something that like people actually think is like actually funny and not like advertising funny which is a different thing but it's the same thing of like getting people to care because there is too much ads and I always say like being sold to sucks like we all hate it but buying stuff that can be cool i like people can enjoy that but when you try to sell me on it i'm kind of uninterested and so it's like can you make something so what's an example of what i was going to say it's like making something interesting that's a piece of media and entertainment like most recently not most recently but like one of the first things i was able to work on was our campaign with 50 cent and doordash and you know this is also coming off the heels of previously like last year, you know, DoorDash did like DoorDash all the ads.

38:01Brad Jones: It was a big thing. And this year they're like, we want to win the Superbowl. We're not buying a Superbowl ad or anything. Um, and so, yeah, you know, it's, it's the same thing with clients. Like I want to go viral. Um, but through that and then just continually like, like again, through like our own taste, our own excellence, like what do we think is good? You know, we ended up on this idea of like in America there's no day with more beef than Super Bowl Sunday and so to show that DoorDash delivers everything including beef you know let's get the king of beef himself 50 cent to come in and show all the items that you can get delivered because it's more than just food and everything there's like a lot of easter eggs that you can see that get broken down and they're all references to like his various beefs with various people and then so that was kind of even the main thing and like it was meant to be this entertaining it's not directly selling you of like it's game day get your stuff delivered but it's like inherent in that and it's something that people actually hopefully wanted to actually watch and and enjoy and then you know that idea can then also extend through so we worked with WAGS we worked with a lot of um you know uh various creators a lot of Bravo creators because the culture is also this just soup and everything's in it um and you know it was quite flattering then to be in like roundups of like the best Super Bowl ads and DoorDash being number one when we didn't have a Super Bowl ad.

39:31Brad Jones: But it's like approaching it as we are a media and entertainment company. Let's make something people actually care about and can enjoy rather than like trying to sell them something. And you actually like there was also an effectiveness part of it. Like it was very effective for DoorDash. And so it's like it still had that commercial impact but it wasn't starting with a kpi volume goal yeah you know it was starting with this which this sounds so trite now also it's like it's starting with a culture goal you know like but but i i do think that is a different place to start from is when you think about like i want to create this impact first i think the commercial will can live downstream

40:08Jeremy Cline: from that yeah i mean i that stuff i i also think it's an interesting coming from being in in more classic kind of CPG marketing world to then going into sport. It's in some ways the same. And yet, I remember when I started, we had this conversation where I was almost pushing my team, not to think about advertising, but a little bit of when you're a sports team like us, you have such an inherent fan base already built in. And so the muscle of having to now reach new people is not as strong. You're so used to the not rinse and repeat in a bad way, but the rinse and repeat of giving an existing fan what they always want that you know will crush and then you just move on.

40:51Howard Laubscher: And they're not going to go to some other brand.

40:53Jeremy Cline: No, right. Like to lose a fan would be at, yeah, extreme would be an extreme. I think the idea of being an avid fan has changed. I think there's a lot of people that are coming into the football sphere that maybe never will have a first team. They may be willing to be an AFC, like a Chiefs fan because they like what we stand for. And then they're going to go down to Miami for a weekend. Like I just think, and if we start, if we continue to keep siloing people, especially the new fans, I think that's where we're going to have a huge miss. And I think that's where creative ideas need to, and the process needs to evolve because we're just thinking about people so one-sided and that's just not.

41:32Howard Laubscher: So we have to talk about the Taylor Swift effect. People would throw mud at me.

41:37Jeremy Cline: You've got 45 minutes in.

41:38Howard Laubscher: Tell us about the impact that had on your strategy because you've had some major initiatives after that that are beginning to reach out to young girls, younger girls, teenagers.

41:51Jeremy Cline: Yep. I mean, it's an undeniable impact that everyone, unless you are living under a rock somewhere, has seen, has felt, have heard about, have talked about. I mean, it is a true marketers gift. I will never deny that or explain away what has happened over the last couple of years. I mean, it has been so massive in terms of fandom growth, in terms of reach and awareness, and the stats are insane in terms of, you know, primetime games, but also when you look at our numbers. Our fan base is now close to 57 % female. Our YouTube channel, which is the number one channel now in the NFL, over indexes on female audience, which a professional men's football team having more female viewers on YouTube when a majority of that content is still football first.

42:49Jeremy Cline: That's part of our evolution that we will be introducing a lot of really fun, unrelated football content over the next couple of months and weeks. It's been huge, but I actually think, and I've said it before, I actually think the female audience has always been in the sports sphere and in football. I just don't think there was a lens on it, and I think it was somewhat deprioritized or marginalized or whatever other word you want to use in terms of like they just kind of did the surface level we'll make a cute jacket yeah yeah and all the girls are gonna come and you're just like that's not gonna do it shrink it and pink it so i i think that's what they yeah that's what they've they said for so long and so i think i think they've been there for a really long time i just think if i could say something to taylor swift it would be like to thank her for at least allowing the spotlight to be turned around to like really see the business impact of a female audience and it's unlocked exponential growth across our business.

43:54Jeremy Cline: It's allowed us to support girls flag football campaigns, it's allowed us to reimagine fashion opportunities, everything and in between, and hopefully it kind of now allows for a future generation of a younger audience.

44:09Howard Laubscher: So we've got to recognize that Hallmark is sitting right behind you and you guys have done some great things together too, and we'll drop that on the page. Alright, here's my last question for you guys. Do, for people in this room, people in Kansas City and cities like it, do they need to leave Kansas City in order to progress in their career?

44:33Chris Cardetti: I don't think so. I just got here, but I don't know. I mean, you know, there's like some really great agencies here. You know, like VML, Embark the OK IP, like two... And clients, too. Great agencies and great clients. And I'm like, you could spend a long time here.

44:50Jeremy Cline: I'm going to say, I don't think it's necessarily about physically leaving or not. I think there is the need for as many perspectives as you can possibly get. And I think you can get them by staying here and then just having a really open mind and sponge and traveling and reading and all that. I think that is more important than the physical nature of staying or not. although I think there are lots of success stories that would say you could stay here forever and it works and I think there's lots of success stories that show leave, come, go.

45:21Howard Laubscher: Leave and return.

45:22Jeremy Cline: Or leave. I think there's a lot of different ways to get to the end.

45:27Brad Jones: Jeremy are you going to leave and then come back? I was just even thinking of the hero's journey. You leave and come back change and I think I agree that I don't know if there's necessarily a physicality to it and I also think there's a very much internal thing because I feel that pull actually a lot like even being here I'm like should I like move to like do I need to be cool and live in New York and LA and I'm like I don't know and so it's like I think it's also like something you have to answer yeah and it's like do you think you can do that here and I think unfortunately or fortunately like only you can answer that for you and then you

46:04Howard Laubscher: know I think the people that there's a lot of people in this room who actually are out of work and our sponsors helped provide tickets, comp tickets for them. How did those people get your attention? I mean, it's not, it's impossible to find your goddamn phone numbers anymore. How do we connect with you and then how do we get your attention?

46:26Lara Krug: I think most people want to help, you know, like you just, like, it's like, you don't know who needs it and it's reaching out and making the time and I think everybody will be willing to meet for coffee. You don't always have the opportunities. It's not like, you know that every the business is you know doubling tripling in size everywhere but i do think everybody wants to help each other especially in communities like these and it's just reaching out and like having that passion you know we've hired a ton of people not even in the industry because you just you just feel it when you set up time with them you're like i don't know what this person has done but i know what they can do and like passion and and effort is like 90 percent of

47:09Brad Jones: I always, whenever we do interviews, I always look at two things, and I ask myself the question after. It's like, are they a builder, and do they have a voice? And I think if you're looking to get into the business or go on client side or whatever, tell people what you've built or what you want to build and have a unique voice on that. And it's just like, are they a builder, do they have a voice? And to the city thing, I would say pick the agency or client. Don't pick the city. Kansas City is an amazing city don't run to a place run to a company that you really want to be because most of us have offices now not in Kansas City we have people that move from Kansas City Chicago, New York, Denver and that's great

47:55Jeremy Cline: we open up the New York Kansas City Chief's office we don't have an office anywhere else yet

48:01Howard Laubscher: well that is it from Kansas City, thank you to our panel Thank you to all of you for being here. You know you have this around your neck. Take a pic of this. Post it on social, because everybody loves social apparently. Tag us, and you can connect with me on LinkedIn. And it was just great having everybody here. And thank you guys for your time. And thank you for doing it twice today. Thank you for having me. Which was really helpful. Thanks a lot. Thanks, guys. All right. Thanks, everybody. Good night, you. Thank you. Thank you.

48:33Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.