The American South Live from Greenville, South Carolina

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1:05From 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. That's systemonegroup.com. Hey, welcome to this week's episode. It's great to have you back. If you had work that ran in the U.S. this year, it's time to get your entries in for the 2027 FE Awards. And if that work worked, they want to see it. It actually covers all marketing activities that ran in the U.S. between June 1, 2025, and September 30, 2026. So between June 1, 2025 and September 30th, 2026, they are eligible.

2:00So get your entries in for the U.S. 2027 FE Awards. You can learn more and enter at fe.org forward slash united dash states. That's fe.org forward slash united dash states. And the final deadline for submissions is December 8th. That's December 8th. Good luck. And I'm excited to see the entries that end up winning. It's going to be, I think, a great year. We are doing our phenomenal holiday ad special in Chicago again this year. And the beauty of this year is that we're also doing it in New York City. So this has become a legendary event in Chicago. This will be our third year doing it in Chicago to sell out crowds.

2:53And I mean, it's a simple show, but it is fun. It is heartwarming. It is a great way to connect with the strategy community in your city. All we do is we have everybody come along and we enjoy holiday cocktails and tasty treats and we watch, rate, and debate the best holiday ads from the U.S. and the U.K., past and present. Last year, the tone of the work last year felt a little different than the year before. And so what we decided to do was, instead of just relying upon what was great this year, that we probably need to mix it up and mix in some of the great stuff from the past too that people may or may not be familiar with.

3:37And one of the other things that happens, which is always so phenomenal to see, I would advise people to bring tissues because there's always tears that fall during this, which is fantastic because the work is so beautiful. And much of the work that is done around the holiday season, particularly in the UK, is some of the strongest emotional work of the year. So we are excited to have you come along and be a part of this. The New York show is Tuesday, December 1st at Ogilvy in downtown. That's Tuesday, December 1st in New York City. The Chicago show this year is going to be Wednesday, December 9th.

4:15It is going to be this year at Leo Burnett. Wednesday, December 9th in Chicago at Leo Burnett. Both shows start at 5.30. They go from 5.30 to 7.30. This is the perfect opportunity to make this your strategy department holiday event, to bring everybody together and to have some great connection time and meet friends old and new. You can get tickets for both of these shows. Well, I suppose they're different URLs. You can get tickets for the Chicago show at onstrategyshowcase.com backslash Chicago. on strategy showcase.com backslash Chicago. And for New York, it's on strategy showcase.com backslash New York.

5:02Yeah, not much of a difference, um, but you can get your, uh, get your tickets there. Bring the, bring your team and bring Santa hats or ugly sweaters if you want. I know most people don't want to do that, but some people do. And it's kind of fun to see that happen. The audience gets involved. The audience votes on the best work too. We give you guys little props to use in your chairs. And it's been a great event, one of the largest and most popular shows of the season. So I'm thrilled to have you guys join. So we'll see you for our holiday ad specials, New York City and Chicago. Now, here in the U.S., we've had just this transformative week where the voices of our populace were heard and major changes are happening in states that otherwise were pretty were pretty solid in their political representation.

5:53And it's sort of interesting and maybe a perfect week to release this episode because when I got a call to come to the South, I was really excited. Chris Plating, who's the Chief Strategy Officer at EP & Co., which is a 40-year-old agency based in Greenville, South Carolina. They also, I think, have an office in New York City. But it was wonderful to get the call because Chris had heard our shows from different cities around the U.S. and was wondering if we might want to do one on the South. Now, I have worked in the South, different agencies at different times, and lived in the South, cities like Richmond, Virginia, which is the capital of the Confederacy.

6:35I also lived for a time in Charlotte, North Carolina, working in agencies. So for me, I was familiar with the South, not of the South, of course. I'm a guy born in Dublin, Ireland, but I experienced some of it in some of the culture. So it was interesting to get a table that was willing to talk honestly about the South, to talk about its history, to talk about its identity, to talk about its contradictions and its cultural tensions. And as I say in the show, these are not cultural tensions that are only present in the South. Cultural tensions are present throughout the U.S., and I think that was important to underscore before we got into this conversation.

7:17But what's happening in the South is super interesting, and the emergence of the South as an economic power center is also an important thing to talk about. So we're going to have this conversation with four terrific folks. First is Chris Plating, Chief Strategy Officer of EP &Co in Greenville. Kristen Cavallo is the CEO of the Martin Agency out of Richmond, Virginia. where I once worked. Jorge Hernandez is the chief marketing officer of Majority in Atlanta. And Janice Middleton is the founder of each and every collective out of Atlanta. So it was a really interesting conversation. We didn't avoid any of the issues.

8:07And I think the entire room came away feeling that we had learned something, something that was good, something that was important. Enjoy. Welcome to On Strategy Showcase. I'm Fergus O 'Carroll in Greenville, South Carolina.

8:34I love it. I love it. I love it. It's great to be here at EP &Co in this great city. This is a place I've been to when I was working at the Martin Agency, ironically, working on FMC Corporation, which was selling agricultural chemicals. I regret that in retrospect. But we would travel throughout the Deep South and other places dealing with farmers in rural areas. So we would come back to towns like this. And it was kind of wonderful to spend a night in a modern hotel. So let me introduce our guests for tonight's discussion. Kristen Cavallo is CEO of the Martin Agency. Come on up.

9:19Jorge Hernandez. Jorge Hernandez is CMO at Majority out of Atlanta. Come on up.

9:30Your very own Chris Plating, Chief Strategy Officer at EP &Co.

9:40I guess you've got some bias in the room. and Janice Middleton is the founder of each and every collective out of Atlanta. Come on up.

9:53Our topic, I suppose, for discussion tonight is sort of the Southern experience. And so there's lots of dimensions to this. And as I said to Chris when he called, I was, at least, kind of uncomfortable with this topic because I was sort of unsure if I was going to walk in. and I was born in Dublin, Ireland, so I didn't grow up in this country. So I know the history, but I don't know the sensitivities. So I was a little worried about it. So I've had individual conversations with the four people around this room, and we've all felt that there's an opportunity to talk about the past and how it's fed into the present.

10:33And it's certainly important to point out that the South is not what the South used to be. And I see it as I sit here looking out the windows today with the amount of what everything is so damn new in this city. From the airport to the highways to everything else. So we wanted to start off by talking about what is the South today and what defines its past and present. So since Chris is the one who started this all off, we're going to throw it to him first. So give us your thoughts on that first question. And by the way, for everybody, you've got to get up super close to these microphones so that we get to pick you up really well.

11:15Go ahead, Chris. Yeah, I mean, I think thinking that the past and present aren't both here at the table is one of the things that we need to correct. Because the reality is you can think that things are in the distant past. You can talk about slavery. You can talk about racism. And if you put them into something like the past, then you don't realize that it's still legal to be a slave if you're an incarcerated person. and you don't think about the fact that diversity can be very complex. And so when we talk about how we bring diversity into the industry, we have an agency here that has a lot of Republican voters, a lot of Democrat voters.

11:45So we have to have all of those contradictions at the South. So I think when we think about what defines the South, it begs who's defining it. And I think there's an oversimplification from the outside world. And the initial thing that said, well, how does this shape how we think about planning and strategies? What do you value in strategy? And I think one of the things for me is honesty and nuance and context. And I think that those are something because we've grown up at tables together and talking and at tables that are not together because there are still many ways that we can be broken apart and pulled apart.

12:20So I think the South is not something that was or is. It's something that we every day choose to create. So what was it, though? What was it that we have to remember in what it is today and how we act in it today? if i mean if you speak about a place if you think about the industry so it's we have large agricultural roots we have uh large textile roots again we are a place that if you go all the way we're planners so we always go back to the origin story and that's where the part that makes people uncomfortable to talk about the south is our origin story which was something of deep inequity and something that nobody wants to really address and talk about but as you name it as you can talk about how it persists in our systems today, I think that gives you the nuance and the tools to then move past them and look at innovation and growth and persistence.

13:11Because all of those things exist in equal part. And if we choose to push those forward and celebrate those things, then we can actually solve the problems that go well beyond what the South is often associated with. That is something that is much more of national conversations. Janice, what do you think? I agree. I agree that you can't really talk. We tend to think that it's the distant past, but it truly is. Specifically, hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, growing up there, born and raised, even today's gubernatorial race. It is local. However, it is national coverage, and it's because we are not so distant.

13:46I think the thing about us, those of us who are strategists within the South, we understand reconciliation. Attention, I believe, that brands tend to deal with, which is the history and kind of coupling that with progression, right because we often hear when we get to these tables we can't abandon our core and i think we often know what that code could be right it could be our core which is the the past roots that we used to have specifically southern companies right companies that are born in that that are bred in the south but i do agree cracker barrel like a cracker barrel exactly exactly we can't abandon our core and then of course the internet erupts when they change a logo you know you put a period on the end of something and everyone erupts right so i do think we have to make sure we understand And that there's this tension and there's this balance and reconciliation.

14:29And I think those of us who do work at agencies in the South or work with brands in the South, that really gives us our edge, if I'm being honest. I think complexity is at the core of us because we understand complexity. We understand it at its core. So I feel like that's the foundation, and so is reconciliation. We understand many things have to be true in order for us to push any brand or even our agencies forward. So, Jorge, when you look at that, when you look at the Cracker Barrel situation, where that brand chose to make a pretty quick reversal, they get criticized for doing that, and they get criticized for both doing what they did and then for reversing what they did.

15:11What does it say about the South or about even our country that that is what's happening as some brands are running away from? Well, I think that conversation is probably broader than the South. That's a little bit of the kind of piling on reality that we're in today. And it feels like there's so much of, you know, we'll call it trolling. And it feels like everybody just wants to get into the conversation that is leaning into one of the other. I wouldn't be surprised that there's people that actually leaned into both sides of the conversation just to be part of the conversation, which is unfortunate.

15:46Because it's like, well, what's your point of view? Or do you not have a point of view? You just want to be in that place where you're just kind of finding something to, I don't want to say complain. I'll use the word bitch, like to bitch about. And I think that's bigger. I will say, to bring it back to the question, you know, it's so hard to deal with something that's so ingrained to the region. But folks want to move away from it. But they also want to be careful not to give up the core. but they also don't want to be associated with a history that is something that they don't believe in so it's it's complicated you know and i think your answer chris illustrated the level of complexity i think your answer janice like the way you guys are talking almost sounds like you're talking out of both sides of your mouth but you're not doing that on purpose you're doing that because that's the reality of the region yeah it's true but but are both sides winning in that conversation and in that sort of...

16:46I don't know if it's a win or a loss. I don't think it's that. I think it's like, here's all the information. Here's all the reality. Here are the tension points. Here are the conflicts. Here are the things that haven't been resolved. And then within that, you kind of have to, like, burrow through it. You know, it's like getting through things that's messy. It's like when you go through reconciliation, whether you're in a, you know, you've had a fight with a friend or you're going through, like, marriage counseling. like you have to go through the through the crap you have to go through the shit I don't know how much I'm supposed to curse on here but it's gonna happen a lot it's good it's gonna happen a lot the New York is gonna come out I don't know what to say you have to burrow through it you have to burrow through it to get to the other side and I would say in a lot of ways we're burrowing through it still like I mean historically speaking when you think about everything that came to be and changed and all the upheaval and all of the defiance that happened during the 60s.

17:42The 60s is 60 years ago, which in a macro sense is like two seconds ago, maybe. So when you think about it generationally, we still have ways to go. Now, we've moved in some directions, and then every once in a while, you see something that pulls us back, and it's like, oh, I can't believe we're still there. So it becomes this process that I think eventually we'll get past, but I don't know if we'll ever get to a place where we've completely forgotten that history or that completely goes away. I don't know that that's a realistic expectation. And not a good idea. Right. Good idea, because then you repeat it if you're not careful.

18:16Is it different from the experience of somebody who's 18 to 24 who is Dominican like you or African-American, Hispanic, that they're a person of color in the South than it was for their older sibling, for their parent? is it dramatically different do we feel? It's interesting you say that. I asked my father this about a couple weeks ago. He's 86 years old, and he grew up in Augusta, Georgia. So I wanted to know, is this reminiscent of Jim Crow? You know what I'm saying? He lived through that, and he said it's actually a bit scarier, right? And I'm sure he oversimplified it because he's a man of few words.

18:56He just says what he needs to say, and he's like, get out. But that really blew my mind because we can talk about the progress that we've made, but to hear an 86-year-old say, it's still pretty scary, you know, and he remembers the years where he didn't feel like he was in Jim Crow, and we're back at that in his mind because he was, that was his childhood. That was his lived experience. So it's interesting you ask that because I just asked him that question. And so was he feeling that because he sees the reversal in public policies, like DEI policies, et cetera? What was he thinking of? Do you believe?

19:29I think it's what he sees on the news, and I think anything that comes out of that. So yes, the reversal of DEI, because obviously he was alive when affirmative action was signed into law, right? So he knows what it's like when that's not in place. And I do agree that it is going back to that when we think about the 700 ,000 black women who are out of work because of governmental jobs or DEI roles that were feeding families. That doesn't seem that different. So I believe he sees it through the lens of the news. He hears the rhetoric. A lot of that is very reminiscent of what he heard back then.

19:59you know the only difference is there may not be any dogs or water hoses but the 13th amendment to your point still speaks to slavery yeah it's called prison and you know as somebody who's not not of the south or from the south for me i i think i i'm not sure if place matters anymore because i see the same issues in chicago in cities that i go into on the tour we see the same things it feels like uh this is an it's an it obviously is it's a national challenge um but let's bring Kristen into the conversation to talk about are there things about the South that are strengthening now? I mean, are there things about the South where it's there's aspects of the character that are getting stronger and those that are fading away?

20:44I feel like I got the softball question here. You can go back to the first one. I felt like I was at the Atlantic for a minute. I was like, this is good. I'm not from the South, so maybe it helps me a little bit. I'm an army brat. That said, I was born in Arkansas. But I moved here from Boston. And so I think maybe I can look at it a little bit still like an outsider. But I was prompted by a conversation I had with you a few weeks ago. I went and really looked at what's happening in the South. Because I do think it has changed a lot. And I'm certainly not in the shoes of others. so I don't want to minimize the fact that it may be in your father's eyes worse.

21:28But I also think there are elements where, to your earlier point, I actually think it is an advantage. So as a planner, I think I look for a handful of things anytime I study a brand. I'm looking at what are people doing, what are people talking about, and where does the money go? And when you look at people, I mean, TikTok, thank God for Rush TikTok, but TikTok made the South. Like, I'm not lying. Like, I mean, something like 91 % of Northeast students applied to SEC Southern schools. Like, it is a dramatic shift. And that means you're bringing people who are graduating from schools in the South.

22:09They're looking for jobs. They're getting married. They're building friend bases. They're not wanting to leave. You're also looking at massive purchasing power shifting to the South. So like New York, I was studying like tax filing, and New York has more people filing taxes. To prepare for the show? Oh, my God. I fell down a rabbit hole a little bit. I love it. I fell down a rabbit hole. But like New York is getting more people, but actually at lower salaries, where the purchasing power is moving to the south. Companies are moving to the south. South includes Texas. So you're looking at major companies moving south.

22:42You've got another really interesting fact. It is a place where the demographics are spreading in both directions. The only segment of the country that is growing with people under the age of 18 is the South, and over the age of 65 is the South. It is literally as a brand stretching in both directions at the same time. And then you look at culture. You look, I mean, hip-hop is the number one genre of music. Two-thirds of all hip-hop emanates from the South, not New York. country music is now big in London and in the UK, emanating from the South. Morgan Wallen, I think highest album sales. So I remember one time we didn't get in a pitch at Martin because the client was like, I'm not sure you have your finger on the pulse of pop culture in Richmond, Virginia.

23:32I think if a client came to us today and said that, I'd be like, you don't have your finger on the pulse of what is America. Because I'm telling you, America is the South. If the purchasing power and the people and the culture are all moving south, something like six of the top seven states that are climbing in GDP are all in the south. Two-thirds of all of the U.S. job creation is happening in the south. Like that's enormous. Bloomberg literally said America is the south. So I think if I'm a brand and I don't know what's going on in the south, then I don't know marketing. Because it is way bigger than what we were known for.

24:16And I come from an agency that's in the former Capitol Confederacy. So I don't think you can have a racial conversation or racial reconciliation without involving Richmond, Virginia. But I also can tell you on a per capita basis, we export more creativity. For a city that's only 230 ,000 people, our museums are in the top of the country. The Brand Center is sending students all throughout the world, influencing the pipeline of our industry, started by folks at Martin like Mike Hughes and Diane Cook-Tench. I mean, I just think it is not on the fringes. And I think in the past, people would have said a southern market was a fringe market.

24:59I used to feel, I came from Boston, I did feel like both of the south and Boston were similar in this respect. I felt like if we were on a new business list for a client, it was kind of like someone going to Ikea. Like they brought a truck. Because if you were getting in the car and going to Ikea, you were probably driving 45 minutes and you were coming home with something. You didn't just go shopping at Ikea. You purchased at Ikea. So if Martin's name was on a new business roster, I thought, okay, this client, and they're coming to visit, and they're flying to Richmond, we have a shot. Yeah, yeah.

25:32And I kind of feel like that, you know, but that was hard. It was hard to do. Boston and Richmond didn't always get in the pitches because clients didn't want to travel. Or they thought we were fringe markets. Now, I don't think that's the case at all. And I think that's what prompted me to reach out was when Boston spoke to grit as a defining feature of the Boston ad market. Which is also a tertiary market outside of kind of the big three, right? and I thought how would we describe the southern strategy and I thought the briefs we typically get are we want an agency that understands what it is to park in a parking lot or go to work or has a yard right and so you get these everyday brands that connect things and I think there is a little bit of a shift where as we said you used to go to New York to be in the culture and now there's a bit more of an honest thing which is the culture is happening in the south The new Americas are colliding every day within the South and seeing what will come from that.

26:29And we talked about when Andre 3000 and the 95 source were said, you know, the South has something to say. That's all I have to say about that. There was a swagger. And I think that as agencies, we're so afraid of being regionally typecast as a regional shop because we want big, global, juicy, you know, national accounts and national opportunities. And the biggest problems because we have the creativity and the inventiveness. And we know it of ourselves, but we don't go out and really talk about what it is to do planning from the south. And we don't really stretch across Atlanta to Richmond and get at tables like this often to say, how can we come up to raise the voice of an industry so that we can demand enough from clients and brands to see what we can offer?

27:12You know, there's data and then there's muscle memory. And, Kristen, you just... he was enjoying your point you just dropped so many data points that illustrate like well of course you would talk to agencies in the south why wouldn't you i mean look at all these reasons that you you throw out like 15 of them and you probably have 15 more but then muscle memory gets in the way you know and i think about it through the lens of all the hard data you shared and then i think about it through the lens of like hey we want like a regional shop you know because this insight and I'm like okay you know just so you know Atlanta is like the number one influencer capital of the world and you know our biggest export is you know pop culture and black culture is pop culture and hip-hop and that's Atlanta so sure we could talk regionally but you know ironically if you also wanted to you know connect on a global level you would also come here or when you talk about diversity and you talk about diversity and he becomes this thing and multicultural and it's like that's not general marketing it's like look at where all the culture is coming from look at the diverse of lived experiences and how we are all embracing that as a as like a mass populace right so why are we still having these conversations it's because muscle memory it's because this is how i've done it and it just takes me a while the same reason why innovations have to be incremental because radical innovations scare people because it's like whoa i i don't know i've never done that before i'm going to go back to doing the thing that i've done even if the thing that you're putting right in front of me is obviously so much better than what you've been doing.

28:49I'm still doing what I've been doing because it's what I'm familiar with. And I think that's one of the biggest things that we have to overcome is how do you change the reality that what you thought the South was is no longer the case. And it's not because we're trying to wish it into existence. All the data is irrefutable. And by the way, the person I'm talking to probably has a bunch of family members and relatives and friends that used to live right next to him or her, and they've moved to the South. So they're literally surrounded by the reality that we're all talking about, but they just haven't quite come to that term where they embrace it as reality.

29:24And that's from a marketer perspective. Do you think that's true as consumers also? Because my gut would say that the younger it goes, the less that's an issue. Obviously, because there isn't a lived experience from a muscle memory perspective, pop culture is national culture. but do you feel that you see it more commonly amongst a certain age group or a certain type of person? I do. I mean, I think all the kids are going to college in the South, so they're not looking at it in the same way. But to your point about innovation, and I am a stats person, so I do look for those numbers. I'm also using this podcast as a form of advertising, so hopefully these clients are listening and we're selling ourselves.

30:06You did a really good job. I think you dropped like five fines in that one. I was taking notes. I was like, you got to drop five fines. I'll send them to you after. But when Chris and I were chatting about this beforehand and the topic of innovation and patents came up, one of the things that always struck me about Boston that I loved when I lived there is that it was the number one area for patents per capita, not on a total basis. That was still Silicon Valley. But there was something about the kids going to MIT and Harvard. And when these young inventive people met old money, you know there was this flurry of you know the Facebook's of the world popped up well so I went online to find out what is the fastest growing area for patents in the United States and it's Bentonville Arkansas oh wow yeah I'm telling you not only is Walmart reinventing retail today and what it means to be a retailer and I think they're they're you know not surprisingly or surprisingly depending on your point of view of Walmart and Amazon but they're giving Amazon a real run for its money, a run for its money, and DoorDash and others.

31:07But the kind of inventiveness and money that's coming out in patent creation of ideas from the South is the fastest growing area. And that, I mean, Walmart, as you guys know well from the Martin agency, I mean, Walmart is made up of people who have come to Bentonville, not of Bentonville. They're a magnet. Yeah, it's interesting. What are your thoughts on this, Janice? You know, Kristen, you said something very interesting and I truly have always believed that the soul of America is always seen through the lens of the South. It has to be. And you mentioned how that's coming back today. That's exactly what it was before, just in a different way.

31:44So when you talk about the, even the largest black population, when we're talking to clients about growth strategies and growth audiences, because can we call them multicultural anymore? It's scaring people at this point, right? So we have to find other names as we often do, but that's, you can't ignore this. Multicultural has become a bad term? because of DEI, because of diversity, equity, inclusion. Oh, of course, of course. So now, even when you are an agency or if you are a platform that reaches multicultural audiences, you've now pivoted that word to growth audiences. You know, it's becoming pretty common now because it's scaring people, you know, and I'm using air quotes, by the way.

32:20So it's interesting that you say that because I feel like being a Southerner, we've always, the way America has been to the South is always what America will be, and that is starting to happen once again, right? We went to the Great Migration, all of that good stuff to the Midwest, and now we're all coming back, right? Their kids are all going to the southern schools. So it's a very interesting stat on the SEC. And my alma mater, Clark Atlanta University, they had 25 ,000 applications last year. They've never seen that, ever. I don't even know if an HBCU has seen that. You know what I'm saying?

32:49And I'm sure that's wrong. I'm sure somebody will gut check me on that. It's fine. But I think that says a lot, right? So I do, to your point, I do think the generations are different. However, everything goes around the sun. You know what I'm saying? So I do believe it all. Nothing new is under the sun, I think, is the actual saying. So let's flip it. And we touched on this in our conversation, which is when you left the South as a strategist and you went to markets outside of the South, I'm very curious about what that experience is like. When you leave to go somewhere else, does that perception, or in the past at least, or whatever it might be today, does it follow you to markets outside of the South?

33:33Yeah. As a planner, I'd be retired now if I had a British accent. You know, so I think it was one of those things. But once I opened my mouth, it revealed a place. And it revealed kind of the stereotypes that you would apply to someone with a relatively southern accent before a couple drinks and then a bit more southern after a couple. And so, again, I think it's – I used it as a strength and to my advantage because then it's like low expectations. I think Alan taught me that, like low expectations, high performance. You know, like you always want to exceed account management trick is always do more than what's expected.

34:07And so for me, it was a way to kind of step in. And so much of strategy is simplification and reduction. And so if you could bring it down into the simplest form and then deliver it and then surprise people with the level of human insight that does kind of pervade everything, it was a much more powerful way to show up into RIMS. Is that still the perception of Southern strategists who go elsewhere? Do you feel that, or have those days passed? I'm not sure. That's why we're here today. I wanted to know, because again, I think it's something that I think has changed a lot because the rooms that you're in and the way you speak in advertising, I think your instincts of it feels less connected to place because we're all in Zoom screens is right.

34:51but as we look at the role that tech is playing and we're all pulling from new resources that we do not control it's stripping the place away it's also stripping the humanity away from what we do and it's not long before the pendulum swings back the other way and we demand connection and we demand kind of true insights and again I think that's when you talked about it before it connected to something that I didn't realize was really a pet peeve of mine is when someone says well what's the insight you know every planner is bothered by well how do you define insight but I think the word the is what has always struck me because I'm like the inside there's one I'm like you're coming to us because for us creativity is disposable we can do it all day sadly we've done it we've made creativity free for clients you know we pinch against each other right and so you know we've created a cycle where there's such a low expectation for the value of our creativity that we've started to believe the lie we tell and that's why I think if we really embolden the fact that you also said, you know, we hope it into existence or we imagine it into existence.

35:51That is the superpower we have. So again, you can kind of belittle the role of advertising in the world, but when we use our platform and the brand's platforms and we push them towards what they put in market, we can create the new images of the South or of America or what world we want to live in at large. All right. So for majority, Jorge, you moved back, not back, you moved to the South to join majority. What was the motivation for that move back to this or into the South? Well, I was just to clarify, I was already in the South. I was already in Atlanta. But I mean, but your your question still has the same answer regardless of that, which is we wanted to create an agency.

36:35First of all, that normalized, diverse lived experiences as, you know, a general market agency with award winning capabilities. and what we noticed was, you know, what if an agency like really came out of Atlanta with the core and the roots of what Atlanta is about? And, you know, the examples we would use as ambitious statements are like, you know, we want to be the Widen of Portland. We want to be the Crispin of Miami. We want to be the Martin of Richmond. We want to be an agency that lives in the air of creative agency, the most creative agencies in the world, in the country, but not defined by the expectations.

37:15Oh, New York, Chicago, San Fran. It's like, no, we're an Atlanta agency. That's what we bring to the table because Atlanta brings so much to the table, not only from the talent, but also the influences that it brings outside of that city, outside of that state, outside of the region. And how's that journey going? I mean, it's been five years, and I would say all of us are, I would say, very happy and very proud of where we are, but not satisfied. You know, I think what's been interesting, first of all, and Omid says this all the time, you know, when the whole idea of flipping the script, you know, you think about just the industry in general, and you've got general market and multicultural and how a lot of agencies, you know, struggle with diversity.

38:03and it's for a lot of reasons. Like people can immediately be like, oh, it's just like systemic. It's like, there's some of that. There's no denying that. But there's also just, it's hard to get talent. Most folks don't necessarily know that it's even a career. They don't even know how to embark on that career. Back in the day, to get started, you'd do internships and there were free internships in New York. No one's living in New York if they don't have the resources to live in New York without a job for six months or a year or with a job, but you're not getting paid. So it was very difficult to break in.

38:33And we figured what we were saying was going to be like, well, you know, we're going to get a head start, but everybody's going to catch up. Right. And what's crazy is five years later, we feel like we're more avant garde than we were five years ago because of all the, you know, polarization and how the word diversity has been weaponized because the word is weaponized. It's become this whole thing versus wait a minute. It's just a reflection of where culture and society and demographics and like your kids. like every like this is not a this is not meant to be uh weaponized but it has been and it's to the detriment of the industry and i think to the detriment of like progress in general i would say a lot of companies have done worse because they got rid of dni but not directly because they got rid of dni but they got rid of the people in those rooms that understood how to better connect with the audiences that they're actually trying to sell more product to and the mic can drop at that point I would also say, one, majority is doing a great job, and you've done it the way that I've always wanted to see it done in Atlanta.

39:31So I'm getting golf claps for that. But everything he said, I plus 100 up because it's the people in the rooms. What my role was as chief inclusion officer was not from an HR perspective. It was from a strategy perspective. So when you think about the nuances, you can cast for diversity all day, right, to your point. but those nuances have to come through. You know what I'm saying? If everyone eats a pancake, cool, but if you're going to cast a Hispanic or a black family, how do they eat their pancakes though, right? Those nuances actually make sense, right? And the people of the culture actually see those things.

40:06So to your point, they have shot themselves in the foot in many ways because those people have been removed from the rooms. Whether they were in an HR, CDO, CIO role, whatever you want to call it, a rose is still a rose by any other name and the fact that those have been removed, we're going to see a lot more in my opinion and no agency is exempt, but we're going to see a lot more blunders, if you will, just because those people have been removed. And it's to their detriment and it's to every brand's detriment for sure because if you're going after these audiences where we know exactly, and no one's a monolith, obviously, right?

40:35We know these things. So we can't put this one black person in your agency. We can't put everything on their shoulders to know everything about black culture. And that goes for any marginalized background, women, LGBTQ +, whatever the case may be. but you still removed it from the room you removed it from the table and we talked about extending tables and i do believe the pendulum will swing back at some point but we still have we're going to have a lot of work to redo and that's again not fair because we're going to get back into these jobs and have to clean up all over again but majority is not is not the the the ambition for majority i assume is not about marketing to multicultural or to to african-american audiences people of color the bigger opportunity is that you're plugging into something that is um that has national opportunity in terms of growth so i mean i gotta assume that's the way you're looking at it it's like you have this you have this pulse on something golden that is uh is in essence pop culture which is mass culture one one thousand percent if you go to uh if you go to a music festival and you see who's performing on stage you know we talk about you know we'll talk about it through the lens of pop music just so that we aren't talking about individual genres because it's easy to say hip-hop you know or like but i just pop music that reaches a certain level of mass and you see who's singing or performing and if you make a bunch of conclusions you'll be off when you look at the audience that's actually enjoying that music.

42:09Or that performance, or that movie, or that piece of art. And then it becomes like this disconnect. But it's not really a disconnect. It's just we're struggling to connect it as an industry. We're struggling to just come to terms with the fact that these things are not mutually exclusive. Now, there's a lot of conversation about, well, does that mean that multicultural no longer has a space? And it's like, no, no, nobody's saying that. what we're saying is the general market has just become much more multicultural yeah like that's it it's it's as simple as that like trying to make it more than that is actually kind of doing a disservice to how basic it is and you know the best ideas are very obvious in hindsight right it's like oh of course you know and i'm quoting omid i do that a lot uh and try it like for those listening who don't know omid who is omid omid farhang is our founder and chief creative officer and you know he was the one using the classic crispin playbook of the first thing you do is ask yourself well can we flip it and that's exactly what he did it's like well the industry is 25 bypac and frankly when you look at leadership it's it's less than that you know so what if we flipped it and we made a 75 people of color and from different lived experiences.

43:28The interesting thing that you said, Janice, is, you know, it is, and I've been at this, and I will say it, I've been at agencies where I have to speak for all Hispanics, you know, all 30 plus countries and all the different, like, I have to speak for all of them. You do, yeah. My Dominican ass has to speak to an Argentinian, you know what I mean? So great, I can do that. Our agency has so much diverse lived experience that it actually created something that we weren't even expecting, which is even though they're all unique, because of that uniqueness, there's incredible comfort and everybody is themselves.

44:03And when they're themselves, they speak up with a level of confidence. So there's no world in the room where it's like this junior person can't speak because we actually want them to speak because they bring a perspective that has nothing to do with title or like experience in the industry. It's not about experience in the industry, it's about experience in life. And they all comment, people that have stayed, people that have gone for other like they all say the same thing which is i can be my authentic self in this building you know and i think in a lot of ways that's what culture is trying to do more and more people are being their authentic selves more and more people are speaking the way that they want to speak singing the way that they want to speak crossing over genres the way that they want to do it and i think the more that we do that the more multicultural it become less of this forced thing and more of like this manifestation of frankly what i just think a lot of folks want to do which is be their authentic selves.

44:54One of your questions was about what do you think is a Southern Valley that's growing or strengthening and one that's fading? And the way you spoke to it is I wish we imagined hospitality as inclusivity because I think that we're getting a more genuine hospitality when we confront tensions, when we say my vote doesn't have to be your vote. I still want to have a relationship with my parent, with my friend, with my colleague. So all of those very real things And then that's where I think instead of a almost forced manufactured, like we moved to New York to be the best at our craft and therefore we're going to shout about it until that creative tension creates diamonds.

45:34In the South, it's always been more gentle. And similar, like me and John Cornette, our chief creative officer, would say we've got to fight a little bit more. We need to get people in a room and make them more angry at each other because that's a little bit of the school we came up in. But I think if you can increase hospitality, true hospitality, and decrease politeness and fakeness, which is some of that code of nuance, like bless your heart can mean exactly what it means and the exact opposite and 12 things in between. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I think how do we do that? How do we rebrand hospitality?

46:06Because that's such a sad thing to give up. Like kindness. Kindness should be a value that we strive to have in the office. but I think so many times we throw it out with everything else because it can cause weakness. So what's the advantage of having the Martin Agency headquartered in Richmond? What's the advantage for it being in that city? Well I mean there are many and they've grown over time. When I first got there in 1998 compared to now again because of the role of VCU in the Brand Center, it's just, it's become a lot more common to talk about advertising on the street. But I would say that we used to have, still do, I don't know the exact numbers, but the turnover was way low compared to a New York or a Boston.

47:03It was easier if you were in an urban environment to not uproot your life and just go down the street and get a different job at a different an agency, but your kids were in the same school and you lived in the same house. And so there wasn't a loyalty. I think one of the greatest benefits that I have often felt at Martin is that when someone moves there and comes there, there is a concerted effort on the part of the employee to really dig deep and help the agency win. And there's a really a major effort on the part of the leadership to see and value the people doing the work and stand up for them.

47:38One of my, I never wanted to be a CEO, but one of the benefits or side silver linings in becoming a CEO is that defending my people is one of my favorite things to do. And that is at times extended to the whole industry. Like one, I think we were talking earlier, my next LinkedIn post is going to be about this horrific term of that creative agencies do non-working dollars and media agencies are working dollars. I think it is just the most disrespectful thing you could say to a group of people who are working hard to make sure that you have content in multiple channels that drive value to your brand.

48:21And so when a client calls me and says, I need to decrease my non-working dollars, I'm looking over my shoulder like, I don't know who you're talking about. Like, the people here are killing themselves for you. And we do drive to work. And we go to PTA meetings. And we're building lunchboxes. And we shop at Walmart. and we go to malls. We're not just ordering stuff and having it delivered to our door. We're eating out and we're doing all the things that you do when you live in a city with a community. I remember when we were pitching Walmart, Danny Robinson, who was the CEO before me, he was the creative director leading the pitch.

48:57There were probably seven Walmarts within the 20-mile radius of everybody who lived in the agency. and every day on the way in he would stop at a Walmart for 30 minutes and he would look at the people shopping and he would think about what was affecting and guiding their decisions and how hurried or rushed they were and how they were purchasing and how long they spent in aisles and then he would go look at the work that we were concepting and then on the way home he would stop by Walmart and he would look at the people and he would think about the work that he saw and whether it was going to work.

49:30And I'm confident that the urban agencies in New York that we were pitching against that had to get on a bus and take it into Jersey and go visit a Walmart like at a zoo were not thinking about Walmart as much as Danny Robinson was. He was really internalizing. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Having a car account doesn't have the same weight that it used to when I was growing up. Like when I was at Arnold and we had Volkswagen, like it was a stamp that you had made it as an agency to have a car account. But it has always surprised me the number of car accounts that are held in agencies in New York.

50:06And I'm like, if people don't drive to work every day, if you don't know how to parallel park, if you don't know how to back into a spot, if you don't know how to pick up the kids at carpool. Not everybody in the South knows how to parallel park. Okay, maybe not. But I just think that should be a barrier to entry. If you don't drive in every day, you shouldn't work on our business. So is that because I've heard somebody at Martin, a good friend of mine maybe a number of years ago said to me, the Martin Agency is all about understanding the sensibilities of everyday people. Would you say that's still true?

50:43My sense is you've moved past that. Not that it's not reflected in what you do, but that's not at the leading edge of why people come to the Martin Agency. Our why is we fight invisibility. And for us, that was a double entendre. To a CMO, it is a promise that we will make sure that your work is seen and talked about. And that's because being truthful in advertising is barrier to entry. There is this flawed thinking that advertising lies. And the truth is, aside from maybe political advertising, all ads are held to truth or they're yanked off the air. Every ad you see on TV is truthful or it is removed off the air.

51:19So just being truthful isn't enough to work. 84, 85 % of all ads are not seen and remembered. So it used to be when I first got in the business in early 90s that the most accurate predictor of sales success was awareness. If you were aware of the brand, you had a higher probability of purchasing the brand. Today that is no longer true. I can know Coke and Pepsi. I can prefer Coke over Pepsi. I don't tend to drink either one. So awareness does not have this Pavlovian response to purchase. But if you're talking about it, the most talked about brands outpace their competitive set two and a half times faster.

51:58So our promise to a CMO is that we will make sure that your work is seen and talked about. Now, that requires a certain kind of CMO. It requires a certain client that says, I am willing to be talked about. And a lot of clients ask for differentiated work but then truthfully don't want to be talked about. It's a scary space to be in. So we spend a lot of time talking about that to weed out. we don't need to boil the ocean we don't need 100 clients we need 20 yeah i only need 20 companies out of a million companies in the world to come to my agency and and and and and be like-minded with this belief but the other side of that double entendre and being the first female ceo and getting to that job in the in the year of me too and to be honest getting the job because i was a woman, not because they thought I would succeed.

52:47I got the job because it was a way to change a narrative at a time when there was a sense that that had a sense of importance to it. But that was because of something that happened with inside the agency culture that it was changing the narrative about the Martin agency, not about broader culture, right? Well, I think me too. In 2017, it was broad culture. And I think I can't speak to what happened or didn't happen. I wasn't there. But I can tell you that is why I got the job. And I got the job in 2017, which was the year of Me Too. And but so that statement for us was a promise to our employees that that no matter your race or gender, or, you know, sexual orientation or religious or anything, that you would be seen and valued and treated equally.

53:30And so for us, fighting invisibility is our why. I do hope we do work that that works with everyday people. My favorite brands as a strategist to work for are brands like Geico and UPS, because I think there is something so awesome about a brand that is functionally amazing, but kind of invisible. And when you can make someone who's great at what they do be valued for that, not because of its sizzle, but because of its stake, I think then you've got something amazing. So if I had to pitch brands all over, I'd go for the Geicos and the UPSs all day long. Because I think they excel at what they are as good at what they do as we are at what we do.

54:12But I want clients that respect that we are great at what we do. We work very hard to understand consumer culture, to understand why people buy things, to understand what fear means, to understand how to grow a business without alienating your core. and I want the kind of clients, because they don't think about advertising 24-7 like we do, so I want the kind of clients who come to the table and say, you spend all day thinking about advertising the way I spend all day thinking about shipments or car insurance or, you know, renter's insurance or pet insurance or boat insurance or all the many things that Geico sells.

54:49But I want those respectful clients. And so, again, I don't have to boil the ocean. I need 20. So for you, you just said that you knew that the reason you were hired as a CEO was because of the Me Too movement. That must have been a hell of a burden to carry. Tell us about how that felt for you and what you had to do as a result of getting that impression. I was scared to death. I mean, my knees knocked when I stood up. I mean, I had 22 hours notice. I got a call on Monday at 2 o 'clock that I was going to be introduced to the staff on Tuesday morning, and I flew from Boston back to Richmond. I lived in Richmond, and so it helped that I was already there.

55:36I think the amount of time it would have taken them to find a woman and move them to Richmond would have been difficult for the PR story. Listen, I understand that I was hired because of my gender, but I was also determined that I was going to succeed in spite of it, that I was going to make sure that, at least for my corner of the world, that no one would say, I don't know that women can lead or that we're not ready for a female leader. I was determined that we were going to have our best days in my chapter. And I wanted women at the company to feel that, but I wanted men at the company. I hired more men during those years.

56:15I hired more women in those years because the company grew. Growth is that shield. And I was very proud of those years. But we worked hard. And I picked a female chief creative officer at first with Karen Costello, who's at Deutsch. And I think for a period of time, we were the only female leadership team in the entire country. and a lot of eyes were on us of could they do this are they just tokens is this just the time period can women really lead and i i hope that that question never comes up anymore and if i play a small part in that then i that's i'll take it i can imagine that that's a similar situation right if you feel that you were if you feel that there's eyes on you that you were given a position because of your ethnic background that's a hell of a burden to carry it is but i think it's everything that Kristen said and I do think it goes back to the reconciliation.

57:08We have to know that two things can be true and be okay with that. That's the complexity of it. It's yes, you could people could think you're a token. I mean, in my case people called me such when I became partner at the agency. You know, you're the first black partner. That's a token. You know, but there always has to be Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But there has to be a one. I'm glad I was Irish. You know what I'm saying? You have to have one in order to get to number two, three, four, five, and ten. So we then take that work and we do the work that we're supposed to do. So you really have to drown that out, quite honestly.

57:38I don't think it'll ever go away. You know what I'm saying? I think anyone who comes, whether it's a differently abled person, some sexual, I don't think that will ever go away. It's really how you take it and how you use it and how you wield that power. So to the point about that Kristen was saying about being known and recognized. So EP and Co., I remember Erwin Penland. We're very recognized. It's Penland, right? Yes. I remember Erwin Penland back in the day. I mean, this agency is 40 years old. But I haven't heard much about the agency. And then when I come here and I talk to you and I see the work, why the hell do I not hear more about you guys?

58:26Modesty runs deep. I mean, I think we have brands that love the work. I think we're a hidden gem within the industry, which is a really dangerous thing for an agency to be. But we have four years with 0 % client abandonment. So we have 100 % retention of our AORs over the past four years. Maybe three? Four. Four. And so... I don't know that many agencies in the country can say that. But we don't publicize and we don't enter into a lot of award shows because it's part of our partnership with our clients. is that that's... Tell me about that, because why wouldn't you want that? You want that, but you're not allowed to have that recognition?

59:05Not all of our clients want to be in the spotlight that way. So while we're very much like-minded in terms of fighting invisibility or tapping into culture, because the reality is mathematically brands can no longer afford to not tap into culture. If you think about the Vinay Fields, and especially a lot of our brands are like us. We're 40 years old, but we're constantly reinventing. So a lot of the reason why we also have the average tenure is seven years, and our leadership is, I think, over 16 years of being here because the last three years and the next three years and the next three years are all different chapters, all different eras that we're all like-minded and embrace.

59:36So it's something that a lot of agencies have transitions and you still think of those chapters fondly, the chapter we were at Mullen together, and it's like that was a great era, but the agencies tend to move on, whereas at EP I think we do it in lockstep together. We're very comfortable reinventing ourselves. And so that ability to reinvent ourselves has become infectious and we can reinvent our clients. and tap into culture in a different way. It's not as loud and not as PR driven all the time. Sometimes it's about turning farmers into influencers for John Deere because no one's telling that 1 % of Americans story.

1:00:08So let's send equipment out to the farms where they can capture themselves during COVID because we can't be there filming. Or let's send a small team to go and capture that story because it's a story that deserves to be heard. And it's something that was not being told authentically within the advertising space. so I think of you as a national talent I mean I don't know you very well but I've had a number of conversations with you leading up to tonight and I'm amazingly I'm incredibly impressed by you so I say that and I'm like well yeah we can do that

1:00:51I've actually invited him on a couple of upcoming shows too because we love smart people. Why did you come here? I came here for a couple reasons. One, in a way, I was born here. I interned at EP when I was in high school. So it was my first internship ever, and it was my second official job. This job moved me to Boston to be with my wife. So again, life is not just a career. It is not just advertising. My family is here. My roots are here. And we talked about this a little too. Because I think one of your premises when we were first having a debate of It does place, is there terroir for strategy?

1:01:26Yeah, does place matter? Can you see it? Can you taste it? Can you smell it? Can you feel it in the work itself? And I think as opposed to moving to the big city to prove that you have the capability, people move back home because they're taking care of family. Maybe it's an elderly parent. Maybe it's to keep a marriage together. Maybe it's to raise kids in a different context because you want them to walk through the creek and catch crawdads like you did. right and so it's a returning to home but it's a reconciliation of you can have been around the world you could have worked in the best agencies it's a choice to be here and it's oftentimes at a sacrifice because you could be paid more you could move around elsewhere and that's where i think again it's are you defining it from the inside of the south telling our own story or are we defining it from the outside with the expectation as to what belongs here so how much of the story about agencies in the South is about the South anymore?

1:02:22I don't think it's the leading story, but again, I think we're part of that. I don't think that's clients' design. Does it even need to be a part of it? What's the advantage of the part? Complexity, nuance, honesty. Again, you've got fighting invisibility, a deeply personal mission. You've got majority, flipping the balance of who's at the table. At EP &Co, we talk about building belief. Belief isn't a word you hear in a lot of agencies, and we mean it by the depth, and we've actually built it with rigor, again, of how can I take a brand that has 50 years experience, cannot outspend the market dollar for dollar, and how can we put culture on its side?

1:02:57And the answer is it's truth, trust, and togetherness. So those three drivers are what builds belief, and that's because if you want to get someone that was maybe your brand's boomers, and you want to connect with Gen Z, Gen Z wants to discover that brand. So you have to start from a place of truth, and that's not just purpose-driven branding, which had a decade, and there was a lot of incredible purpose-driven brands that were the early indicators of how to tap into culture to get swelling of supporters and support around it. But it can be truth that is not purpose. It just has to be something that is authentically you.

1:03:31Because a lot of brands that have been around for 50 years forget that they're cool and interesting, and that the first 40 years of what they were doing would still be relevant if they weren't desperately seeking, how do I copy the vernacular? How do I sound like a Gen Z? And that's where we then look to how do we rebuild trust? How do we take that truth and make it something that is relevant to culture? And then how do you build community around it? How do you accept the fact that brands do not control brands? People do. So get them to be on your side and help build what it could be next. I also wonder, as the South becomes so connected to momentum, again, going back to purchasing power and migration, I mean, the fastest growing airports, all the people moving, purchasing power, I think it becomes less necessary for businesses in the South to have to defend the decision to live here.

1:04:22I just think it's, this is where people are. This is where culture is. This is where money is. So if somebody is like, why are you here? I'm like, I don't even, I don't even know why you'd ask that. Are you paying attention to what's happening in the world? And I think so many companies are moving south and so many people are moving south and so many colleges and so many things are happening that I just don't – the question doesn't come up the way it used to. We used to have a slide in our decks at Martin in the late 90s where it would be like the elephant in the room and we'd talk about why Richmond.

1:04:55We don't do that. We haven't done that for years, but I definitely think the pandemic was the great equalizer. It didn't matter where anyone was. and that's been a benefit of that time that has stayed. What does the agency scene in the South look like in 10 years? What would you like that to be? There's a lot of great new shops coming up everywhere. I mean, things are happening as we've talked about tonight. The first thing that comes to mind to piggyback on what Kristen said is it's not defined by it being from the South. like that's not part of the definition of the agency the the because it's no longer regional and it's not seen that way so just like you don't talk about so what would the agencies in new york call themselves 10 years from now or chicago i i think that is the goal there's also a question for them too about what they look like in 10 years there's a lot of change everywhere that's fair uh I think when you consider the amount of migration that's happened to the South, and then you think about 10 years from now, so many of those families and then those kids growing up, all the SEC, you know, movement that is happening.

1:06:17And I'm originally from New York. I still have a ton of friends in New York. I mean, the amount of them that have kids that are looking at South Carolina, Auburn. you know like it's it's impressive and frankly it's a new thing i was like really uh they're the ones who are going to be growing up in this region and driving like the national agenda the global agenda so i just don't think i think the i think 10 years from now it's just not described the word south isn't it's like is it a creative agency is it this kind of agency is it a persuasion agency is it a you know combatant visibility agency it's going to be how it's defined as far as how it positions itself, not where it's from.

1:06:54Janice, what do you think? I agree with that. I think it's global. I think it's influential. I think it's communal. I think it's all of these things. And I agree. I think for a long time at the agency, we would always hear, you all are regional because you only work with regional clients or because you're in the South. That doesn't really happen for agencies in LA or New York. They don't have to answer that question oftentimes, right? And I feel like we've all had to answer that question. But I do agree that as, the Gen Zers and everyone else who's coming to Alphas and everyone else who's coming up after them, I think it's innovation.

1:07:24I think most of the innovation is going to come out of the South and not just national innovation, I mean global innovation. We're already influencing the way we speak, the music we listen to, the things that we learn, the way that we push culture out, I think the world is already seeing that of us. I would say we won't have to deal with someone stealing the narrative of it's always blank of the South. Hollywood of the South, New York of the South, where we can be the South, and I agree with you, it'll be race because we're just global, we're communal, we're influential, we're an agency, we're advertising.

1:08:0010 years is a long time. I mean, I think the reinvention of the industry will supersede the importance of the region, but I hope the positive energy of the South, when we talk about perseverance, resilience, reinvention, when we talk about craftsmanship and humanity, I hope we preserve those thoughtfully as we adopt and embrace new technologies, new tools, new ways to connect that brings us to where you can have a meeting across the world at the same time. So all of it is incredible innovations we should embrace, but at the same time, think about why some things should be illustrated by hand, why some things should be fabricated from scratch.

1:08:46Think about how we keep inventiveness that is maybe a little harder to scale, but not impossible. And I think if the South, I think we have a unique skill set in doing that, in blurring the lines between what is IRL and what is on social and what is on whatever's going to come after social that we'll adapt to and start winning awards for. That's what I hope we continue to lead the way in that, whether it's silently or, but it's going to be important for our industry. I don't know that region's going to have anything to do with it. I think the industry has to find the plot again. I hope words like non-working dollars get eradicated.

1:09:25I think that creativity has to be valued. I wish in so many ways we could strike as an industry, but I don't think we would all hold the line. But I think if people understood the value of imagination and creativity and how it impacts their business, they wouldn't treat the industry so dismissively. I think we as an industry have to come together and remind each other, remind ourselves, remind our clients of the plot. The conversation, if you were in Cannes this year, words like craft and storytelling and vulnerability didn't even exist. People were talking about agentic and LMMs. I mean, it's just media and data has been replaced by AI and technology.

1:10:14And it's okay if those words exist alongside creativity, but not in lieu of creativity. And I feel like creativity is becoming a bad word. And it just needs to stop. Okay, I want to open it up. I think there's a microphone floating around. There is. If you have a question, let's ask it. If you don't have a question, make one up. All right, I have to test it out first, I was told. What does this mean for recruiting talent for each of your agencies, either locally or from other parts of the country?

1:10:53I was actually going to bring that up. I know at my former agency we struggled with it, specifically when COVID happened and we were opening our borders to other states. we did have to do a lot of convincing when it came to talent. So to your point about clients, not as much, but to talent, we did struggle with that quite a bit. And a lot of it has to do with, I'll speak for Atlanta. Atlanta can be purple, but the rest of the state is something else, right? And I think a lot of times we tend to, we live in a bubble a little bit. And I think you'd agree. We live in a bit of a bubble in Atlanta.

1:11:24So it was very tough. But I think once we're showing the innovation, when we're showing what we're doing, when we're showing that we're not regional, I do think that that helps. I think it's gotten better. Don't get me wrong. But we did struggle for a minute during COVID, getting attracting talent to the South for sure. Or maybe we didn't have a good product to sell, but okay.

1:11:46to add to that i i do think uh especially and i'll speak for for atlanta uh one of one of the things that we try to embrace is you you know so many creatives they they do this amazing stuff you know they have incredible ingenuity they have an incredible like just level of passion and energy to create things in the wee hours of the morning because they have to do their job during the day and it's like but the stuff that you do at night is actually the stuff that we want you to do during the day and you know we've embraced this this whole this reality of like you know great creativity is like or great creators like great athletes like if you can just give yourself and give them the opportunity to learn the sport of advertising it'll be exponential the return so i think one of the things that when it comes to talent for us is if you're going to be a more diverse agency you have to diversify the way that you attract and you identify talent absolutely because unfortunately if not it becomes a little bit of a self-fulfilling reality because the industry kind of the inputs of it are of a certain ilk so So you have to search in other places.

1:13:03So we put a lot in the reality of like, will that person a year from now be the person that we need? That is going to really drive our agency forward. And do we have the ability to get that person there? Because they may not be there today, but they're showing all the potential and all the talent to get there. We just have to help them get there by teaching them the industry. Is there another question? We have one more here at the front. Thank you. my original first question was going to be, why are we only talking about the SEC? What about the ACC? Go Clemson. But I'm going to move past that.

1:13:38I think everyone in this room, by the way, is super inspiring. I loved everything you guys were saying. I think we all do. We're all nodding our heads about the South and how we're setting culture. But are we getting credit for it? And I don't think we are. And what do we do? What can we all do to get more credit for that? Because I think it is happening, but I'm not seeing the recognition of it. Well, I hail from Atlanta, so I always have a chip on my shoulder, such as Andre 3000, because I don't think we ever get the credit that we deserve. But I do, I think that's for a couple things. We do allow our narrative to be spoken and told by others.

1:14:12I think we have to do a better job of telling the story ourselves. And then I think the ones who do migrate to the South and they're transients, I think we've got to implore them to tell the story as well. You know, it's more than just being a melting pot or multicultural. We're so much more than that, right? And what does that mean? and how does that drive? How is that an engine for who we are? And I think that's how we get the credit if that's what we're looking for. But I think we allow the narrative to get away from us quite a bit. And I think we can lift each other up. There's this idea that we have to compete because we're always pitted against each other.

1:14:48And when Martin fills up and has all 20, we're happy to take the calls that come next. I feel like, Fergus, I have enormous respect for you and have since the day I've met you and hired you, I think within 20 minutes of meeting you. You're talking about Chris, not Fergus. Okay, he's not Fergus. Let's make sure that the listener knows. I'm sure if I've ended this, I'm going to have enormous respect for you, too. Yeah, hopefully. But I do, I recommend people that I think, if we can't do it, if we're conflicted in some way or something, I recommend people that I feel like are going to reflect positively back on us and that I think the brand will remember favorably.

1:15:29And, I mean, I recommend Chris all the time. I was joking with Jorge earlier. I bought a majority sweatshirt early on when Omid created those sweatshirts. And I bought it, and I was going to show up on LinkedIn wearing their sweatshirt and surprise him. But then he knew I bought the sweatshirt because he mails them out all individually. And he puts a handwritten note with each one, and I thought, damn it, that's so good. But I still have that sweatshirt. I do think we have to show up for each other. I do think that question, though, is a bigger question than just the South. I think it's true for creative agencies across the board.

1:16:06I think creative agencies have to show up for each other. We have to put value back in creativity and the work that we create and the value. It matters to a brand. So I would say that question is bigger than the South. I think it is the question for this decade for our industry. and it's ironic too because in a world of AI that basically starts with math, you would think that the first industries that are going to be leveled are media, and yet this industry is so dominated by media conversations and it is so dismissive of the content that creative agencies create, and I do think it will win in the long term.

1:16:50I think the pendulum will swing. I think handcrafted. I think thoughtfulness. I think creativity, imagination, all matter. But I think there's also been a decade or two of clients that have been taught that it's okay not to talk about those things. They don't ask questions about it. They don't go to the festivals of creativity. They don't study the work of their competitors and why they're working. They don't walk the walls at Cannes. I just, I think that, again, I think we've lost the plot as an industry. And I think we have to get back to being proud to be in advertising and not feel embarrassed or dismissive ourselves.

1:17:30I mean, I used to think my kids were going to hate my career because I loved it so much. Like, I felt like I hit the lottery, not because it was fair, but because it was interesting. I never in 30 years was bored. I was mad. I felt sometimes frustrated or things were unfair but I met really interesting people who are well traveled well read I worked on different interesting meaty juicy problems and I kept thinking compared to so many people like boy did I hit the mother load and but I thought my kids are gonna hate this when they grow up they're gonna pick something totally different because maybe they felt like they competed with it ironically both my kids work in advertising and um one of them works at martin and um so i'm not allowed to hug him at work but i do look at him across the across the room and we do the you know the head tilt but there's a part of me i don't yell at work but um but i will say there's a part of me that's i wish i'd told my younger self not to stress about that because i think what they saw was a parent who loved what they did and i think if we as an industry walked around and felt like we loved what we did i think that people would be like, what's going on with that industry?

1:18:43How do I get to be a part of that? But I don't know that we walk around and act like we love what we do. I don't think our trade publications reflect that we love what we do. I don't think there's a sense of, we're not, there's not a pride that comes with it. And I think if we can only change ourselves. And there's not a confidence that comes with it. The confidence. And I think if we carried ourselves differently in the industry, people would want that because I think they're drawn to magnetism. They choose where they work the way they choose what jeans they wear. And they go to places that feel like there's energy and momentum and something interesting in a story.

1:19:21And we are storytellers. And we're not going away. That's my most hated question with people like, oh, do you think advertising is going to die? I mean, advertising has been around, I mean, from the very, very beginning. They made olive oil and they stamped the bottom of a clay pot with the family that had the olive trees. There's always going to be a need for someone to tell a story about one brand versus another or one company versus another. The tools will change, but the need for stories will never change. So if we define ourselves as print makers or TV or film, yes, that may die. But if we define ourselves as storytellers, there will always be a need for what we do.

1:20:05And that is where we're going to leave it. I want to thank Kristen, Jorge, Chris, and Janice for joining us tonight and for EP and co for hosting us. It was brilliant.

1:20:23Thank you all for having me here. It's a real pleasure to come here, and we'll see everybody on the next episode. Good night. Good night. Thank you.