Planning for Effective Outcomes Ep#4: CCOs - Mischief, BBH and Deutsch

0:00James Hurman: This special series is brought to you by the EFI's. For over 55 years, EFI has been the global authority on marketing effectiveness. They lead the way with the largest, most prestigious marketing effective awards across 130 markets worldwide. And the EFI Index ranks the most effective brands, marketers, and agencies globally. But EFI is more than awards. They're dedicated to helping all marketers understand what makes marketing effective. by equipping them with the insights, tools, and inspiration they need to succeed. Learn more at EFFIE.org. That's E-F-F-I-E dot org. And by Tracksuit. If you're a regular listener to our show, you already know there's a difference between having a good strategy and knowing whether it's working.

0:49James Hurman: That's exactly what Tracksuit is built for. Always-on brand tracking means you get continuous visibility on where a brand sits in the category, how awareness and consideration are shifting from month to month, and how that stacks up against the competition. It's not a snapshot from six months ago. It's current data, updated monthly, that shows whether the strategy you're executing is actually building what you think it's building. For agencies, that changes the conversation. You're not just defending your recommendations with logic. You're backing it with hard evidence. You can have your tracksuit up and running within 30 days.

1:24James Hurman: Check them out at GoTracksuit.com. That's GoTracksuit.com. So the Effies do a brilliant job of providing us with the principles of effectiveness in looking at what is common across an enormous body of award-winning work internationally. So when they agreed to sponsor this series, it was like the recognition that a lot can be learned from talking about the people that are doing the work on a day-to-day basis. So we started off talking with CMOs about how they develop client briefs. We then talked about how briefs are then sort of received and interrogated by chief strategy officers. Today's conversation is talking to creative leaders and trying to understand what they want out of planning, what kind of work they like, and how they work, so that we can sort of maybe take some tips from what they do and we can apply it in our world, whether we're clients or strategists or creative leaders.

2:25James Hurman: So we have three of the best creative leaders here in the U.S. We're joining us today. We've got Ryan Lair, who's co-chief creative officer and EVP at Deutsche LA. We've got Alex Booker, who's head of creative at BBH USA. We've got Kevin Mulroy, founding partner, executive creative director at Mischief. And we have a great conversation about how they work. And you probably already know this, but Ryan Lehrer is behind all of the Fansville work for Dr. Pepper. Alex Booker was behind all that phenomenal work for Neutrogena. And, of course, Mischief and Kevin are behind so much of what is coming out of that agency in terms of effective work.

3:13James Hurman: Now, one of the things I wanted to touch on and point out is this, this book. If you're watching us on YouTube, you can see the cover right now. It's called Hitmakers. It's come up in this conversation. Kevin brought it up as a sort of a great source of inspiration. It's about how to succeed in an age of distraction. It's a book by Derek Thompson. Now, our head of operations here at the show has been trying to push me to do a sort of an Oprah-like book club. I've been resisting her kind of doing that, but it looks like I'm heading in that direction. I genuinely don't want to do a book club. but this is sort of my book of the month because I actually bought it a number of years ago.

3:53James Hurman: I never read it. And when Kevin brought it up, it put it back on the top of my stack. So I'm going to try to get through it in the next couple of weeks, and maybe we can talk about it on a future episode. So this is our next episode in our Effie series, and TrackSuit is also supporting this series. This is our conversation with great creative leaders. Enjoy. I want to talk about work that you haven't done that you love. Kevin, what have you been seeing recently that you love, but you never worked on? I still love that. I mean, I think it's the second round of this campaign. The Uber Eats, Football is Food.

4:37Is that the line? Yeah, Football is for Food. Yes. I feel that way. I feel about that campaign the way I felt about the first season of True Detective, which is I love it so much. I can overlook Matthew McConaughey, who I kind of can't stand in anything. But the writing is so good. I mean, I've worked on NFL campaigns, and especially when they're big like that, the NFL is not easy to work with. And to find a really funny, stupid insight that you can write over and over and over again is great. I think they're doing a really good job of it. I think it's so special, right? Yeah, special.

5:14James Hurman: I think it's always surprising. like how much runway they've got with that like i thought like that joke would have like ran out of steam like it's amazing like like every time they come up with like a new analogy i'm like oh man that's perfect that's so funny yeah i love they're onto something yeah what about you ryan what do you like it i mean i'm gonna go with another like kind of tried and true staple from the last few years and i still just again it's it's similar where i thought at first i was supremely jealous because it was it's such a silly concept and it's the progressive you know you're turning into your parents work which is it's again as a writer my trade it's just the writing is so great the casting is so great the execution um it's just all so perfect but But again, I also thought that might run out of meat on the bone, but it just seems like they're still able to kind of find these new relatable little moments.

6:17James Hurman: And again, it's just pitch perfect the way they've kind of built that out. And I'm just charmed by each one of them. I feel exactly the same about that campaign because, man, you could easily see them doing like dads in like white socks and sandals on the front lawn jokes, and they just they have not done that. and I was judging D &AD for writing, writing for advertising and they were like, yeah, this campaign's been around for a long time. I'm like, I don't care. Like the writing is still goal worthy writing. It's still there. So like to be able to do it year over year is almost harder. I love that campaign.

6:51James Hurman: Do I send my bribes to you specifically?

6:58James Hurman: Slash your Venmo QR code. That is not how it works in the industry. But you've got the same challenge, Ryan, with Fansville, right? You've got to be fresh every year, and that's eight years in. We didn't know. We're editing the ninth year. So as I'm saying, I'm like, you've got to go 10. I mean, once you're so close to 10, right, it's inevitable. But yeah, no, that is a challenge. It's also a fun challenge. I think one of the things that we talk about with Fansville that I think gives us a little bit of something maybe that's slightly different than these other ones. well probably more in line with uber um with the uber eats work is that we kind of get to take a break you know it's seasonal uh and it allows you know and i think it gives even the audiences a break sometimes with these you know other campaigns you know i think the the challenge is that like oh man you're gonna have to see this character all year every year and so with with football specific work you know it allows us a little you know a little downtime which is funny is that our downtime is actually during the season because our work's already done and so i would tell my teams you know to keep things fresh is like you know we get our best inspiration from actually watching uh the season and so again i tell everybody like take notes what are you feeling when you're watching the games you know and again luckily a lot of you know almost everyone on the team is massive football fans and so um you know i tell them like hey man just if you're feeling something or something funny happens or your friend does something funny while you're watching the games like write that down because our best work is the stuff that is truly inspired by reality and getting into that fan mentality and so and again it doesn't always have to be you don't have to be a football fan to understand the fan mentality even watching the world cup this year i was like hey man i'm like writing things down because it's like you know it's i think these little nuanced things and it's similar to like the progressive work where it's like it's these moments that just seem like they're really like taken from real life and they're not the cliches as kevin said it's not you know obviously that it's not always the obvious thing it's like these other little like moments of insight or inspiration that are what truly kind of you know keep things fresh um so yeah it's alex what about you what are you what are you liking this year oh i'd say the columbia the flat earth thing that they just did yes yes man totally that to me was just so good when i first saw it i mean they took something it's one of those ones you could have you know like it's a crazy idea but to fully commit to the bit and just go all in on it the way they did i think it was just genius and i think the way like they just went hard at the flat earthers they went hard at the conspiracy theorists and got in there and started commenting on absolutely everything and really challenging them to kind of, you know, go off and find the edge of the earth.

9:57I thought it was just, the second I heard it, it was brilliant. And then I watched a case study and I was like, oh my God, I'm so jealous of this.

10:03James Hurman: Yeah. Is that Adam and Eve out of London? I think it was, right? Do you guys, does anybody know it? Not sure. We're trying to get them on the show. We were actually just, we just had a call this week. We're going to have that. But I agree. I think that was brilliant work. You know, one of the interesting things with you guys is the three of you come from agencies that have belief systems. Now, the important thing for the listener to realize is that just because somebody has a belief system doesn't mean shit. The work has to be great and reflects that belief system. There's a lot of belief systems, right?

10:37James Hurman: But I think it's good to look at these shops like you guys that are doing great work. And I'm curious, Kevin, for you, where did that come from? And how does it inform the work? Because there's some pretty powerful shit in the sort of things that you guys believe in at Mischief. And it's on the website if anybody wants to see it. Yeah, it's on the website. It just says things we believe to be true. It's 10 thoughts that we put on a page that, you know, it's easy to kind of have an ethos and a thought system when you're six people. and you first start and you're all in the same startup mentality and you all are heading towards the same goal.

11:21But as you start to grow and you hire people and you have maybe a little bit less day-to-day interaction with all the people at your agency, you want to put those somewhere front and center. So they're on our site and it's things like we're here to make a stir, riskiest thing you can do is be ignorable, what we say yes to shapes us, what we say no to defines us. you never go wrong by doing the right thing. It's, it's just these sort of like short little pithy things we believe in. So they're on the side, but then when new people start, um, it's one of the first things they see. It's like, this is what we believe in.

11:54And this is what we sort of expect or expect. Isn't the right word. It's sort of allow you to be, you know, we, we hired you because of you. When we want that, we want to, uh, that to come out of you instead of us sort of hammering you into the way we normally do things. So,

12:09James Hurman: but it also signals what I think is even more powerful about it is, It also signals to the marketplace the way you want to work and how you work, which is not a common thing among agencies. It's like you guys have a set of beliefs. If you come, and the implication being, if you come to this shop, you better believe in these too. I think so. I mean, I think it starts with the name of the agency. It's like you kind of know what you're getting into. But it is just a, yeah, it's a way to reinforce it with potential clients. And then, like I said, our own people. You kind of want to reinforce that every day, all the time, make sure people remember, like, this is what got us here and this is what will get us to the next stage.

12:52James Hurman: Yeah. Because it's the same with you guys, Alex. I mean, BBH for so long has had another zigzag. So it's this idea of a belief in difference, right? Is that how you think about it? It is. It's like, how do we look at what's happening within the market or within the category and find a differentiator and a different way to do things? But I think it's also about just giving permission to creatives to make sure that they approach things differently with a new mindset, fresh set of eyes, all of those kind of things. It's been around since 1982, I think, is the length of that one. And it actually comes from a Levi's ad that was written back in the day.

13:35I forget the copywriter's name, unfortunately. But the story goes that we asked permission from Levi's once that campaign started running or stopped running, sorry, that we could use it as the BBH tagline. And that was since the 80s. But yeah, it's all about just finding different ways to get it unexpected, which is kind of what we all do, right? It's how do we kind of find new ways of saying things, find new points of views on things, and give people permission to chase something different.

14:09James Hurman: So, I mean, for you, Ryan, you guys, tell us about what is meant by fans versus attention. Does that inform what you do? Yeah, definitely. I was just laughing a little bit, imagining the copywriter who wrote that line, expecting Alex to give him his proper due. One single tear. Maybe we'll fix it and add it or something. We'll drop the name. Bobby Jones. A little bit of biography at the end. Yeah, I mean, again, at Deutsch, we really believe that we're building fans, not brands. you know and so so many of our brands now you know whether it's dr pepper or taco bell you know they're just you know so you know sort of built by the passionate fans that you know love them and those if you can sort of activate them they become true sort of megaphones for whatever our message is and so again we just believe that you know sort of that's where true brands are built these days and especially as everything is becoming more and more social led uh we just feel that you know to sort of sort of sprinkle and fertilize that feel to you know create these moments similar to like what we did, you know, when the Dr.

15:30James Hurman: Pepper jingle came about earlier this year with Romeo, the TikTok creator, you know, that was a moment of inspiration from that creator. But we feel by being Dr. Pepper's, you know, digital and social agency for the last six years that we helped kind of create that environment to allow that to happen because Dr. Pepper had such passionate fans and we engage with them as fans. The reason I've had the three of you guys on is because you are, you three are typically associated with what is effective work in the marketplace. I think that since you guys are more consistently good at it, what, what can you share about what makes an idea effective?

16:15James Hurman: Who wants to take this one? I'm going to take next. Kevin, please give me the seat. I'll tell you all the things that we do that are geared toward the intent of effectiveness. I think, you know, it's going to be an obvious answer that it starts with the strategy, but I think the way we approach strategy is a little bit different than any place I've been before, which is to say that we treat the strategic process like a creative review. um um so greg bianca and i or some combination of of the three of us are always in the room in the beginning with our cso and the president and the you know whoever's leading the brand or the project and we sit in a room and listen to like eight or ten ways in and then we just go through them like it's a review and and we kill some and we say like that's maybe a fact not an insight but who cares that still works um this one feels a little like an ad construct let's lose that then we'll take that maybe four or five to our clients and then we'll do that again with them and when they're involved in the process in that way they they're sort of more um committed to the the truth the insights that we're landing on and then what we do a little bit differently i think is we allow them to pick we don't say you have to pick one you say we can pick up to two no more than two otherwise it's kind of chaotic but the reason for that is because we don't think that there's just one way to get to the right answer you know there's there can be a couple ways at it and we tell them we're not really going to box check against both these briefs it's really best ideas win could be five against one brief one against the other one brief might suck it's good on on page but doesn't yield anything which everybody in this call has dealt with before you're like hey that's great on paper but i don't know what to do with it so you got multiple creative briefs in play correct and all the teams i mean or let's say there's like two teams on a project they both get both briefs and we say go to town best ideas win um and so i and then i think in terms of trying to to find something that's effective all of our creatives are trained to think about what the pr line is we are far from the first agency to do that obviously everybody thinks about it in terms of boiling the idea down to the essence what is this what's the takeaway and if you were to write about it in the headline what would somebody actually care about like if they saw it what would they actually be interested to read so it's such a core simple thing but so important that people think of their ideas that way when they present them so you're you're you're coming the you're seeing five different directions that they could go strategically right when you have this sort of core senior management group.

19:06James Hurman: So Jeff and his strategists have already gone at doing strategy work to come up with those five. You're not involved in any of that early on or just you're just involved? They'll come up with, they'll dig shallow, but lots of, lots of shallow holes, right? So they'll come up with eight or 10 potential ways in. And then we get that from eight to 10 down to four or five. and then we take the four or five to the clients and then we do the same thing over with that yeah yeah what about you guys ryan is it is it different for you and i'm thinking more like i know with it's fansville you've got a brand platform so it's a little different a little bit different structure there what about a new business or in new assignments i mean i think especially early on i think you know similar to what kevin was saying we all like to get in the room from the account leads to the strategy leads and creative leads and you know really sort of hash it out.

20:00James Hurman: I was, yeah, I'm definitely going to take notes on Kevin's and formalize this new, you know, I actually love that, that you really treat it as a creative review because I think, you know, in my career, sometimes, you know, creatives, we are so used to being put in front of everyone and the slings and arrows of, you know, agency, clients, and then ultimately the public because you know again you put your work out and you know hopefully people see it there's always you know in this media landscape you never that's never a guarantee but you know oftentimes you know our creatives have to you know really build this like teflon skin and i don't necessarily know if that translates throughout the agency but that idea the idea that kevin brought up about you know multiple shallow holds yeah going versus strategy going deep on one thing or another.

20:56James Hurman: I mean, that to me feels a little different because as a purist strategist, the direction would be, I'm going to give you a strategy that I believe is going to be the right strategy to meet the business objective. But this idea of shallow holes is a different approach to it. I love what you're saying about fandom and finding those insights about football because, man, when it's not the season of the sport that you love, it's crazy how fast that information just shoots out of your brain and you can't think of anything so i love that you tell people to take notes in the moment but this our strategy is kind of similar it's like what are like 10 things that are true about this brand or the people that use it what are just like 10 insights about the thing that we're trying to express and then like we can we can build it from there and and then we can sort of like you know go deeper from there but it's just like finding those little bits and everybody in the room goes, yeah, that's true.

21:55I buy that.

21:55James Hurman: So because there'll be great creative territories that ultimately, in other words, a great idea doesn't have to be supported by data. It can be just a great idea that's going to work because it's a great idea. And I think when we bring in those, like we cut it from eight to five and bring it to our clients, often those four or five will get better because our clients will go, here's a data point that supports that. Here's something that happened with our consumer that tells us that that works. And that's kind of what I'm talking about. Then they're more invested in the smart part before they see the stupid or weird or provocative or whatever part of it.

22:38James Hurman: Yeah, I think having those data points is really great. And I think anytime you have like a statistic and to your point, Fergus, earlier, like my creatives love that. They love having those little juicy morsels of an idea that is based truly in an insight that is data-backed. It really gives you the confidence that your work is going to resonate because you have that data that backs it up. And our insights and strategy team is really great at finding those. And so when they bring those to us, like it's, it's awesome because it just, it's a, it's inspiring, but it also just gives you that confidence that this is going to work.

23:26James Hurman: You know, one of the other things was Alex, one of the interesting things that I've noticed to what, to, to Kevin's point about multiple shallow holes versus going deep too early is I've been really excited to see that many client briefs are pretty amazing these days. I got one this week that came in for a show that we're prepping for. And I read through it and I was like, this feels like it came from a really good planner. So I'm wondering whether sometimes the planning team's idea is just to develop creative strategies and potential creative directions to go to. Because a lot of that work is many times being done well on the client side.

24:08James Hurman: Does that make any sense to you? It makes 100 % sense. I think nowadays, the client briefs have gotten a lot sharper. And I think there's a lot of great training. I mean, a lot of clients are coming from agency side or have had a lot of experience working with agencies. And over time, that osmosis is kind of spreading out into everything that everyone's doing and the briefs are getting sharper. I think, to your point, it is our job as the creative agencies to kind of find the unique pieces within each of those briefs. and find those different viewpoints, be it, you know, when the zigzag thing or building fandoms or, or, you know, whatever it may be of each of the agencies, but it is like those briefs are so much sharper now and it's like leading to better and better work.

24:58And everyone's starting to see how, you know, the media landscape has changed a lot since we've, we've all started doing these things and it's finding out what resonates on TikTok or Instagram or wherever you may be, all of those things are starting to inform what we're seeing in the world and how we react to things, be it something like Kevin, what you guys did with CauseLight, the super reactive thing with the baseball or Ryan, like you were talking about before being super reactive with the Dr. Pepper jingle. It's like clients are seeing those things happen out in the wild too. And they're as much asking us to kind of come up with those really quick turn things and how do we respond and how do we be more reactive and how do we essentially like get our brands the fandom that they're all chasing.

25:48One thing I was going to add, Fergus, is I think that clients are good at identifying problems that they have. I think the thing that they can usually use out like a third party to help them with is which problem should we be solving. It's because usually they identify five and you got to go, it has to be one. And like Jeff McCrory, our CSO says this all the time, strategy is sacrifice. somebody else may have said it let's just go with jeff it's so true it's it's so true it's like they usually come to us with a litany of issues that they need to solve and you got to be like not step one you got to kill four of these problems and focus on the one that you think is most important and then and then that's how you get like simplicity clarity and then that's how you can write a pr line that people can all uh you know relate to like oh yeah i get that

26:42James Hurman: Kevin, I actually think the guy who wrote Strategy of Sacrifice is the same person who wrote the zigzag line.

26:51His hand came through the dirt in his grave. That's another name we've got to trust. I did it to Google. It was Barbara Noakes. So shout out to Barbara. Oh, nice, nice.

27:05James Hurman: So what can you teach? Because again, back to, and I know it's, I'm trying to, I'm trying to see what's in here that we can actually identify as something that others can learn that they can apply in their agencies. I mean, have you learned in retrospect, because you've done such great effective work, have you noticed anything about that work that it shares in common that, that you apply to the things that you do going forward? even if it's the structure of an idea, if it's how you think about them. I want to put thoughts in your mind, but is there shit that can be learned from doing great work like this?

27:49I can tell you one thing that we talk about a lot. I don't know if this is what makes work effective. I don't know. I think it does. I think it does. So there's this great quote in the particular is the universal. The more specific you are about something, the more people see themselves in it. And we preach that all the time, specificity.

28:14James Hurman: Versus a universal appeal? Well, no, you want the way to get to universal appeal is by being more specific, which sounds counterintuitive. but it's sort of like the more of an inside joke you make something feel like the more almost like personal it feels and the more people are like oh my god i i that's me i i get that i feel that i mean it's exactly it's like the jokes we're talking about for during college football season it's just what we're talking about right yeah yeah progressive and progressive it's like god that's my parents holy shit that's my you know yeah low-hanging fruit and then there's like stuff that goes a little bit deeper and sorry to cut you off but yeah we go through that a lot with fansville in a lot of conversations you know we do eight or nine spots during the college football season so you know some of them lean really deep into like the the like for like not casual fans and you know and i think that's okay and we have those conversations a lot like is this too far are we going too far into like the nuances of college football fandom and you know are we alienating people who aren't like hardcore fans um and so we have a lot of those debates uh with clients internally but those are the ones that actually resonate the most it feels like and it becomes sort of the fan favorites and even just the universal favorites because i think even if you're not like maybe a hard what you would describe as a hardcore fan you recognize something true about that behavior or whatever that concept is and and so anytime you can kind of get like a level deeper than surface level with with the the inside with the relatable you know uh piece of it it's like i think i i think that's when you're like getting you're touching those magic moments and similar to what kevin is saying about the uber eats work like just they're keep they keep they're able to keep kind of finding new things because they're going deeper you know well it's fully committing right it's commit to the bit and like that like that's where the work gets that becomes more effective it's when like when you soften the edges and make it too generic it just feels like you know you can feel the touch of everyone kind of taking the taking the kind of edges off things and it's just like, it's nice, it's a nice idea, but maybe it's not as effective or resonates or provokes conversation or sparks people.

30:46It's like the example before of the Columbia thing, they went so hard at that and went really hard at antagonizing the flat earthers and leaning into the conspiracy theorists and whatnot. That's what made that so effective. That could have just been a nice idea had they kind of just done the soft version of it.

31:07James Hurman: So, Kevin, how would you describe the mischief creative style? Because there's always a little twist of either weirdness or the unexpected. By design, it almost feels. Is that a fair way to describe it? Yeah, for sure. I mean, when we first started the agency, Greg, Bianca, and I all took a lot of pride in having range. So we want to be able to solve any problem. We don't want to just be just too funny or just too stunty or whatever. So we want to be able to apply what you're talking about to any project, which is, I've said this before, everybody wants to be wrong about the ending. In any unit of creativity, it can be tiny.

31:49You don't want to know what's coming, otherwise it's no fun. So finding a way to obscure the ending in anything is maybe one way I would describe it. But you nailed it. It's like surprise. Just find some way to be like, oh, I did not, I didn't see that coming.

32:06James Hurman: I love it. Because, I mean, Alex, the Neutrogena work, I mean, talk about a twist. And I know that when we talked on the show about it, that was a data point that came from planning, right, originally, about the fact that the way that consumers were reacting to themselves Yeah, it was all around to themselves, and no one really thought they were old anymore, right? What's perceived as old now has changed a lot, and it's like the conversation around wrinkles and all of those things has really gone away, and people are really looking at preventing their skin aging at much earlier ages. But the conversation around wrinkles sounds like it's something for your grandparents and i think what what our strategy team found on that one in particular was like you've got this whole generation of millennials that still think they're like 25 and it's and it's then once you realize that nirvana like came out with nevermind in like 91 or something you're like holy shit that is a long time ago or it's like you're looking at like when friends first aired and those kinds of things and people really get that wake-up call that it's like, oh, I am way older than I think.

33:16And the strategy behind that was the whole idea. And that just unlocked a world for us to kind of play in. They gave us a great start. And then it was just like, okay, what's the best execution? Do you think guys in their early to mid-30s like us should be serious? I'm not worried about that at all.

33:37James Hurman: I don't know what you guys. You know, this feels like a great time to be a creative in this industry. And I bring that up only because I think in the last couple of years, the pendulum has swung to the shit you guys have always wanted to do. And I think, I mean, I don't know if you sense it, but I, even in the way the effectiveness guys are talking about it in terms of the principles of a really great core idea that's original, that's supported over a period of time with significant budgets. It's all this shit that we've been talking about for years, but it feels like now the momentum is swinging.

34:19James Hurman: Do any of you guys feel that? Does it feel like there's a little relief now from having to be everything about short-termism? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a double-edged sword to a lot of it. I mean, I think, you know, if you compare it to when we were all, you know, us in our early 30s, these guys starting in the industry back in the late 90s. No. Yeah. Like there was a simplicity to what, how this industry used to do things. And now there is a little, it's a little more complicated because of what we were talking about with the media landscape. And, you know, I think one of the things that work has to work in so many different ways now and so many different channels, it's almost like we talk about almost like you're not even sometimes building campaigns or building like Lego pieces that can kind of like fit together.

35:05James Hurman: and then also like go apart and end up on the floor for you to step on or for a consumer to step on um but it's like you know it's like these little like pieces but at the same time i do believe because there isn't sort of this monoculture and that you know the landscape is sort of fractured that there is a value being put a sort of a new value being put on work that is a little bit more daring creatively because to kevin's point we use this one too i don't know uh you know mischief coined this one but you know the scariest thing you can do is to to do work that's boring and i think there is now a new a little bit more value being put on work that is a little bit more provocative um and yeah can i add to that because yeah we we often say the riskiest thing you can do is be ignorable but also the most expensive thing you can do is be ignored that's right and it's just like i love that we are we're in an ideas industry we're not a people hate ads but they love great ideas like anytime someone says i hate ads show them a progressive spot like that's great you know so i love that we're still very much in the business of great ideas and we have like a really simple one-two process for work it's like what are we trying to say number two is what's the most interesting way to say it it's always still been it's it's always been and it still is you can't move on to two until you figure out what one is and like that's the core idea or the core insight and now there's just like all these other ways that you can do the second part of that like what's the most interesting or where is the most interesting place to tell this what we got to say So I think it's even more fun and cool and finding different ways to express the thought.

36:57and i love too that it's moved on from like you know a long time ago now but it used to be about like we'd put a message out into the world and just expect people to take that in and it's like how they react to the work but now it's it's very much focused on like what are the tools we can give the audiences to play with to remix things to take things and make it their own share it like getting back to the the fandom kind of thing right it's it's like how do we give people all these amazing tidbits to to go off and play with and make it their own and then they're sharing it on our behalf which is you know the goal of a great idea is to make it spread far and wide and it's like how do we equip people to spread those things for us and i think that's it's a whole new way of looking at the work but it's it's definitely something we would do internally to judge the effectiveness of an idea as to like how is this idea going to travel beyond just a pr headline but more that like people will take it and run with it.

37:56James Hurman: The interesting thing about this show is, you know, obviously on strategy showcase is the name of the show. So we get, we get a hose load of voices about effectiveness that are in my email that are coming from the industry. Do you guys get that? Are you, are people in the agency talking about that? Does it impact your work and the way you think in any way? are there things about it that you have like Byron Sharp's work, Les Bonnette's work, Peter Fields, a lot of these reports that come out from people like System One or from Ipsos. Are you aware of that shit or is that not on your radar? We're aware of it.

38:43The problem with some of that theoretical approach to strategy is it's always sort of after something is wildly successful, they're like, well, here's why. It's because they show the color blue over and over and the color blue is what, and it's just like, I don't, I mean, I, what I do think is true is, uh, success is typically associated with exposure. More people need to see the thing. Um, and I think that, you know, people are going to go see an ad and then go buy a thing. It's going to like make it top of mind for them. But I think exposure, and if you don't have$100 million to spend in media, you have to find other ways to expose more people to the work.

39:26So to us, it's kind of a bunch of the things we've talked about. It's like simplicity of the message starts with strategy. What's the PR headline? You almost want to like half do a journalist job for them, and then they're more likely to cover it.

39:40James Hurman: Are clients talking about it? Maybe you guys are not talking about it, but are clients coming to you about it or are clients that you work with not as, obviously everybody's concerned about things being effective. But there are some that just come into a meeting and say, well, this says that, this says that, so we should do that. Versus I suspect that in your stratosphere, you have clients who already are very confident about how they feel about what great work can deliver. like i imagine that's the same for all three of you i think so i think they come to us and recognize the value of something punching through and understand that thought that we talked about which is the most expensive thing you can do is be boring yeah yeah yeah we work with system one um quite a bit with through cure dr pepper and you know so we i'm definitely on their newsletter and i have good relationships with a bunch of the folks over there vanessa and um you know and again we find what they, you know, the learnings that we get very valuable.

40:44James Hurman: And I also think there are very, I wouldn't want to say creative friendly, but there is a value of creativity through their process. And you see it in how the, you know, the work is translated and the testing results that we receive. And I find value in a lot of what we get from our testing partners. I mean, Again, I think, you know, like anything, it's a double-edged sword. I think you can over-test things and you can kind of take in too much. And I hate necessarily having to make decisions by committee. Sometimes things, you know, sometimes great things don't maybe test as well. You know, I think you could look throughout the history of advertising and some of the greatest ads weren't tested.

41:29James Hurman: But I also know that testing sometimes like sort of saves you from certain things that you might not have known were going to be an issue. Because, again, especially when you're thinking of the concept of a 30-second ad, you have to do so much with contextual clues. And sometimes you know where you think is supposed to be communicated. But you put it in front of someone and you realize that there was a little bit of a hole in your thinking. And testing often sometimes brings those things to life, especially, you know, within the context of a 30-second ad. Tell me about what you mean when you said contextual clues.

41:58James Hurman: because that's an important factor in storytelling. Well, you know, you don't have time to explain who everyone in a spot is. If it's a narrative, you have to do things. So it's like, how is this relationship between Alex and Kevin? Well, I'm going to put Kevin in a higher position and frame because he's the boss, but I can't necessarily, I have to cast Alex if he's the slacker worker to look like a slacker worker. You don't have time to explain everyone's history. And so, again, a lot of it's through casting or through wardrobe or through the dynamics of what is in frame. And so sometimes, you know, those things aren't as clear as they need to be to, like, communicate what you need to communicate very fast.

42:43James Hurman: You know, again, when you think about a 30-second spot, oftentimes there's like a little bit of a brand intro mnemonic. And then there's an out mnemonic and then a product shot or two. So you really sometimes only have like 20 seconds to tell a narrative that is going to be breakthrough. It's going to be effective. It's going to have the surprising ending that Kevin and Mischief love to put on everything. And so again, it's like you start running out of real estate. And so that's what I love too about what Kevin said and what I always try to preach and what we try to preach at Deutsch is to be very simple minded and what this insight and the takeaway is with the strategy and the creative.

43:19James Hurman: because, you know, Lee Clow once said, I like to say that. He didn't say it to me. I think I was like down the hall, but he once said, if you have three balls and you throw them at someone, they're only going to be able to catch one. That's the same with communicating, you know, anything creatively with strategy. Yeah, I think testing is, it can be extremely effective, but I think the trouble with it is just, you know, everybody's become an expert on best practices. um you know we've all we've all got those every client knows all of them and what what to do i think it is the point of like knowing when to use things and when to let them go when when to allow for the magic to happen i'm a big fan of testing ideas and idea statements before production i honestly i'm not a huge fan of testing afterwards i i don't know that it necessarily improves the improves the end product that much.

44:14I think we need to make sure that we do leave space for magic to happen. You know, like we hire these amazing, like in the case of a film, we'll hire an amazing director to bring something to life. But if we're going off and shooting testing boards, then we're really kind of robbing them of their opportunity to bring their magic to the things we do. So I think, you know, I've had clients on both ends of the spectrum, ones that will test initial creative concepts and then let you kind of go off and do what we do best right we've all done this a lot a lot of times over a long period and we we do know how things work and like you know where to leave space for magic and where to leave space for you know improvements or whatever it may be but then also like once you start nitpicking and over testing everything at the back end of the process i tend to find we we start making decisions based out of fear versus decisions based out of like what we all liked i always try and remind our clients too like when we watch a rough cut and if everybody laughs and and loves it and then you start getting the feedback like three days later that really starts to kind of butcher it it's like you've watched it a million times now so you're looking at it differently to the way you first looked at it And the way you first looked at it, your initial reaction was, I love this, or it was funny, or it was sad in the right places, whatever the responses we were trying to get out of it.

45:41It's like, make sure you hang on to that a little bit and don't over test things to the point where we just kind of dull the edges and take the magic out of things.

45:52James Hurman: How do you come back to your teams when everybody feels that idea A was the greatest idea, but it didn't get through the gauntlet? I mean, how do you manage the emotional vulnerability and the anger that must come from your ideas getting killed for what you believe are the wrong reasons, even in great creative shops? i mean we're we're in the business of stuff dying it's just we're in a business of rejection i get used to that pretty quickly and most creators get used to that very quickly um and i think we're you know we're not going to bring stuff that we don't we'd be bummed out if it got made you know what i mean like we're only going to bring stuff that we'd be excited about making so it's rare that it's like oh they they didn't buy the good one they bought the shitty one that we brought them because we just won't bring the shitty one you know yeah yeah so teams are usually pretty used to that yeah we operate on a pretty similar system as well it's like i i got that advice very early in my career i was working with this rider and he was i went to present an idea and he's like you're going to spend the next eight months making that He's like, do you want to make that?

47:11And it was like a hard no. And he's like, well, don't present it. And it was... I want to have more people use that because I use it all the time too. It's just like, yes, it's on strategy. Yes, it works. Yes, it makes sense for the brand. Do you want to make it? It's so... It's like... It's an automatic yes or no. You know the answer to that immediately. Do you want to make that for the next three months? And do you want to haggle over it and fight over it and find a director? And it's just... And by the way, easy ideas to sell are no easier to make. You know what I mean? I'm going to steal that.

47:47James Hurman: Yeah. It's still hard. Hey, what are two final things? What advice do you have for agencies that are trying to get to a place where you are, but they're struggling with it? Give me one or two things you think are pretty critical for them to sharpen the edges with. set ambitions with your clients early and get on get on the same page from the jump i think is a big one i think if you if you are not aligned with where a brand can go or you know the ambition of the agency of where they want to take the brand if you're fighting from the jump it's it's just never really going to work out in your favor i think a shared ambition and then bringing people along for the ride, I think has been another really big successful thing for us in the sense of don't spend three weeks behind closed doors and then ta-da, here's the big presentation.

48:44It never works. I think get aligned with your strategy, get the clients aligned with the strategy and then get the creatives super aligned with the strategy. I think one thing we always like to do is I love my CD teams. Back to one of your earlier points, Kevin, on the briefing and the way you guys do that is I like my CD teams to work with the strategists and then they present the strategy to me or to the other creative lead on the project because then you know your creatives or your CDs are bought in on the work that they're going to be working on. They're the ones that have to pressure test it and know whether they can throw a great idea against it.

49:23And I think to bring that back around to the bigger question, And I think, you know, it's aligning on all of those different steps and the aligning with your clients is one of the biggest ones to getting the best work out the door. There's a great book called Hitmakers. Have you heard of this book? I have heard of this book. Yes. It's really good. And it's, it's, uh, it just examines what makes things a hit, um, from a bunch of different perspectives. and it's you know it's not just um let's get a celebrity attached to it or buy a bunch of media you know like it's it's just a really interesting um way to approach and one of the things one of the chapters in there is talking about specificity like i was saying there's this kid working in a boring bookstore and he's just starts rewriting um greeting card uh like sayings just to be dumber and funnier and then he starts a little shop on etsy and he's making buttons and they're just like inside jokes that he thinks nobody's gonna get and it fucking blows up because it's kind of what i was talking about before it's like the more specific he made it the more it felt like an inside joke that everybody was in on and people passed it all around and it just blew up it's just a really interesting look like approach to what makes things work a last question is

50:45James Hurman: What advice do you have for planners in terms of working best with creatives? Because both of you have worked at other shops. You've seen it work well. You've seen it work not so well. A lot of people are coming up and planning and they're failing because they don't have good relationships with the creatives. What are the obvious things that you can share from your position of strength that might be helpful for them? Collaboration early, I think, is the biggest one for me. it's like i've worked at a lot of places where it's felt like there's a competition almost between like different departments and it's like we're all on the same team and it's like how do we get to the best work and to kevin's point how does everyone in the room work to sell that through and be equally devastated when it dies versus like i told you so or i told you we shouldn't have taken that forward i think it's those kinds of things and then the strong opinions lightly held right it's that's another one i i love to live by it's like you should have a really strong opinion on the work and you should have a strong opinion on your strategy but also like just be open to it you know it can be wrong and the creative like kevin said the creatives can be wrong and i think everyone needs to come into the room with that mindset that it's like we're in this together how do how do we get the best out of this um and really collaborate on it it's alex booker head of uh head of creative BBH in New York city, Kevin Mulroy, partner in ECD at mischief in New York city and Ryan layer, EVP co chief creative officer, Deutsche NLA.

52:23James Hurman: Thank you guys, man. This was really great, great conversation. And, uh, and I know, man, Kevin, you, you did this while you're on vacation. So you get extra credit, man. This is part of the vacation, baby. This is it. That's right. It's nice to get away. Right. Right. Thank you guys. And we'll see everybody on the next episode. you