How brands can find better insights with Adam Wilson, Co-Founder of D/CAL

0:04Hello, everyone. Welcome to Question Everything, a podcast all about learning from the successes and the failures of those who dared to, well, question everything. This podcast is part interview, part therapy, and part price is right. We have our own game board stacked with questions that'll make even the most successful CMOs sweat. I'm your host, Ashley Walter, CMO and partner at curiosity. On today's episode, I sit down with Adam Wilson, founder of Decal, a subculture-driven strategic creative agency making an outsized impact thanks to its board of celebrity outsiders. On this episode, you'll learn why nuanced insights aren't found in massive data sets, the biggest red flags plaguing creative briefs, how CMOs can get the most out of their agency partners, and why the most successful brands have to think like creators.

0:52So put on your strategy hat, we know Adam already has his on because this episode will challenge the way you differentiate your brand, understand your audience, and activate killer insights.

1:08Adam Wilson has spent nearly three decades at creative and digital shops, leading work for iconic brands like Jeep, Disney, and Kraft. He's also gone in-house to lead brand marketing at Carhartt, cementing his love of strategy and growing his empathy for the complexities today's CMOs face. Today, Adam is the co-founder of Decal, an agency known for its distinctive approach to strategy, including an impressive board of outside voices, among them, co-founder Tony Hawk. Whether it's strategy sessions with clients or kickflips in the boardroom, Adam's experience and stories are guaranteed to give marketing leaders a few new tricks.

1:48Adam, welcome to the show. Wow, thank you. You sort of alluded to the fact that I can kickflip, which is not true. You know, I was going to ask you if you could try. I feel like Tony's certainly taught you a trick or two, no? No, no, no. Actually, he thinks it's really funny that I never learned to do that. Really? Yeah. I have a girl on our media team. She has always wanted to learn to skateboard. And then just like all of a sudden in her 40s, she's like, you know what, I'm going to go learn and picked it up and found a mentor and a friend. And she's got all these pictures of just like banged up knees, bloody elbows.

2:30But yeah, I love that for her. Yeah, that's great. Skateboarders are tough. She's going to join the ranks. Yeah. Yeah. She's a tough girl. So what the heck have you been up to? What's new? Yeah, we're experiencing an embarrassment of riches in terms of projects and clients, many of which we haven't announced, but we're very, very busy right now and enjoying it. Lots of different project work from lots of different clients. Cool. Well, good for you. It's been a blur. It's a hot market right now. At least that's what I keep reading in Ad Age, right? Yeah, that's what they say. That's what they say.

3:07All right. Well, you know how this podcast works. You're a fan of the show, which I love. I have 12 super spicy questions on a game board made just for you. Wonderful. Let's do it. All right. The power is in your hands and I can confirm you do not know which question is behind which number and neither do I. So which number are you going to pick first? We'll go with number nine. All right. Number nine. All right. This is a long one. CMOs are asked to drive growth, build brand, deliver quarterly performance, justify spend. In your opinion, is marketing leadership being set up to fail right now? And what should agencies be doing to support their CMOs?

3:49Oh, Ashley, we could just erase all the other numbers on the board and talk about this for the next 40 minutes. Yeah, I do. I do think CMOs are, I don't know if they're intentionally being set up to fail, but you know, you look around and CMO tenure continues to shrink compared to their peers, their C-level peers. I really do believe, and I've written op-eds on this thing, on this topic, I really do believe that the people that surround them, other people in the C-suite, CFOs, CEOs, boards, are under the illusion of certainty. They have CFOs and boards and all of these folks, they've greenlighted massive amounts of investment over the past, whatever, 10, 15 years and data sets, data hoarding, data warehousing, first party, third party, all of it.

4:48And they expect certainty from CMOs. It's like, they think they've given CMOs a crystal ball with all of this quantitative data. And you should be able to pull the exact insight out. and you should be able to pull audience behaviors and all of that stuff. And you should be able to do differentiated work. Turn this brand around, what is your problem? And that's the fallacy because everyone else is also doing that. So that's my biggest, I guess, beef with our industry at the moment. And where my empathy for CMOs comes from is that, what was it, like 51 % of brand leaders say that they don't have the insights to do truly differentiated work.

5:42I think it was like a lion's state of creativity report. I think that's what they're faced with is their brief is not differentiated. Their insights aren't very differentiated because everyone's using the same data. Like everyone's fishing from the same river of data and arriving at the same picture of a consumer. So I do think that there's kind of an unfair pressure or expectation of CMOs. They don't have a crystal ball. Otherwise, why would 51 % of them say, you know, I'm struggling to differentiate my brand? Yeah, yeah. So how do you help? Like you as an agency leader, what's your role in easing some of that pain for them?

6:35So, yeah, I mean, I know this isn't about, you know, me hawking our wares too much, but in this, this, this really, I think the rest of the industry should follow suit. And I think a lot of smaller independent agencies are also doing this. Be unapologetically qualitative, like don't be afraid of it. I'm going to re-quote myself because I thought it was a good line. Let's go. Talking to six people can often lead to more differentiated insights than the digital exhaust of six million people. I mean, because we're really using averages and I think that's the unfair thing for CMOs is they are kind of being forced or expected to use averages to come up with something that is not average.

7:33And so we are very unapologetically qualitative here. It doesn't mean we dismiss the quantitative stuff. It doesn't mean we dismiss, you know, in the case of Scott's, our Scott's client, they dominate the lawn care category. The goat. And thus, yes, thank you. Right there. And they know everything there is to know about their audiences. They've been in this category. They dominate the category. They've created much of the category. But there were still some areas. There were still some blind spots. And the way we approach strategy is to go into their audience segmentation, double-click, triple-click, through the lens of subcultures.

8:19Which is a bougie way of saying, what are these people interested in? And talk to them that way. Like the old-fashioned way. Like have one-on-one interviews and talk to them about the things they're interested in. Maybe just hold back on the lawn care questions right away. Like when you sit down at a dinner party, you know, are you going to just start asking people? Yeah. Well, and are you going to start with like their demographics? you know what's your household income and and i'll like no one likes talking to a person like that because they exist people light up when you start talking about the things they're interested in and the last thing i'll say about this is um you know we often get pushback you know well i'm a national brand we are a general you know sort of general audience uh sort of brand mainstream whatever is this too narrow to go through the lens of subcultures and you know the the question is no the question is you you the answer is you need to get narrowly focused you have to differentiate further upstream this our industry has for in my opinion for too long relied solely on creative to create the differentiation.

9:42And I think I speak for a lot of creatives, actually give me a differentiated brief and the work will already have sort of a head start on differentiating the brand. Yeah, and you can tell the work that started with a good brief and the shit that doesn't, right? I mean, even in the Super Bowl, you can kind of handpick, like, I could write that brief. That's a really freaking good brief. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. All right, my friend. Let's go back to the board. All right, we are. We're going back to the board. Got a little nerdy on that last one. I like it. That's good advice. All right.

10:18Let's do number one. All right. Number one. You put your AI agent Hank on your website. How has this level of transparency changed client conversations around the use of AI? I love this coming off the question we just talked about, which is like so human, right? Now let's talk AI a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think, I mean, we use, everyone's using AI. We're using it a lot, you know, at a personal level. It's somewhat begrudgingly as long, you know, so that aside for a second. Yeah, I mean, our clients are seeing us use it, you know, generative AI to pre-visualize things. things. And that has been a boon for us.

11:07I'm sure I speak for a lot of agencies. It used to be that the thing that was in the way of showing a variety or a spectrum of work against a brief was just the time it took to visualize, Photoshop things, find images, blah, blah, blah. So we're feeling like we can show more work, a breadth of work, explore strategies and territories a lot further and deeper because of generative AI. I think we're starting to get past the keeping it a secret that we used AI to get a start on strategy or to shake down a big Excel spreadsheet full of data or whatever. We're pretty open about it. As a matter of fact, we build custom GPTs for each of our clients, we call them oracles.

12:05It knows everything about that client, starting with the RFP sometimes. Our SOWs are in there. Our MSAs are in there. Everything's in there. So, you can ask it anything. They're so effective that we've even had a couple of clients who're like, can we use that? And they're using it to build their presentations internally. And we keep them updated. So, you know, you have to do that. So I would say we're at the point of sort of ubiquitous transparency in terms of how we're using it, what we're using it for, you know, from a... Is any AI showing up in any of your final creative now or is that, are you trying to draw a line there?

12:53so soon uh soon you'll see that and and i would say it is being couched as a test because we know that we have to be really careful about like it's got to be good like this particular thing we're going to do it's got to be funny like we and to you know to ensure that we partnered with some a writer at Comedy Central and all of that stuff. And when we look at it, we go, okay, if there was budget, we would have gone to a 3D animation shop like The Mill or whatever, but there isn't. And so let's just make sure the idea is really good. And we know there's probably going to be, oh, this is AI slop or whatever the case may be, but it'll be our first foray and our clients first foray into you know a consumer facing ai generated content thing i'll have to check back in with you and see how it goes i've had a couple of guests on the show pj perera uh broke down the infamous coca-cola holiday spot for us and which was wild and epically successful if you ask Coca-Cola, but in the minds of the trade and the ad community, you know, it got a ton of backlash.

14:17And then... And with a straight face, real magic. Real magic. Right? No, I mean, that's my...

14:27Me personally, at the moment, I loathe when large brands that clearly have the budget opt for to to produce things in ai that don't necessarily like it like it's not a special effects thing it's a human beings interacting it's a you know and so some of it it's just like i just shake my head and go this is about shareholder value this is about saving some money and you know time will tell if that if that passes yeah um well and in the case of coke you know they were just they were taking some creative risks and wanted to be one of the first and there were no humans i don't believe so it was all very animated and beautifully done and then pedro laramo was on and he got backlash on one of the jesus spots that they did because people thought it was ai but it wasn't it was just very highly artfully crafted so it's wild you don't really know um so yeah i'll be curious to check in tell me a little bit about hank so for anyone listening If you go to your website, you can kind of dig down into the people.

15:39And one of the people is Hank, an AI agent, right? Yeah. Yeah. And what does Hank do? So that's another GPT. It's really, it's operational. But all those clients, it started off as mainly operationally driven. You know, you build its knowledge base. It's kind of a walled garden. You know, it's essentially another GPT. but he sort of sits above all of the client oracles okay and also has that same knowledge so there's a little bit of a hierarchy and i don't i don't want to i don't know if i want to give away much more but so far it's it's been kind of a game changer for streamlining things um building proposals, looking at, you know, we just had an MSA change.

16:33He's certainly not a proxy for an actual real attorney. So we'll do that. But just to lower the amount of time we're spending with our, not our in-house, but our legal counsel, we will have Hank kind of look at two MSAs and pull out what the main differences are. and help us sort of triangulate what is this thing that are we taking on more risk now because of this new 47-page MSA in seven-point type? So Hank's been a real pal. I like that. One other question I have, so your client agents, my question is, so then who owns that agent? Let's say you part ways with that client. Can you give them that agent that data or is that just yours to destroy it's it's funny uh i was just talking about msas and this question you have now i mean it's some of it is completely new territory yeah for us and completely new territory for some of our clients uh legal teams but you know one client in particular are leaning in like they're they're really loving it that it doesn't seem like a big pain in the ass that we're like needing to rethink some of the terms and sections of an MSA um they love it there's like this is this isn't this is exciting we haven't had to think about this before it's like who owns who owns that after so we're we're we're having those we're having those conversations that's cool yeah all right well thanks let's go back to the board Okay, back to the board.

18:14Let's do 11. All right. Creatives often wait for a strategy to be handed to them. How can creatives start thinking like strategists from the beginning? Well, you've got to be a creative with that proclivity to begin with because I think there's that spectrum, right? like all the way on the left there's the creators or creatives that um i'd like to maybe put myself in that category of like we're the constant three-year-old like why why why is it like that why does it say that why are we taking that angle and then all the way over here the the creators are like i don't give a i just want to make this look so good yeah you know um you know there's the finishers and you know anyway i think this the simplest the simplest way i break it down and have to remind myself to break it down is um strategy is is what needs to be said or demonstrated to a particular audience and creative is how to say it or demonstrate it to that particular audience So if you think about the what and the how, if you can sort of delineate those two things as a creative, don't even think about how.

19:37Think about what should be said. And that's probably the best way to judge a brief or push on a brief is what is being said. It's kind of a daisy chain. Like, is what the planner or, you know, whomever in this brief is saying needs to be said, is that connected to some real true insight? And if those things are disconnected, call it out. If those things are disconnected, connect them. And then that happens, right? Like that where no one speaks up or maybe the planner has come down from on high. We've worked with these types, right? Where it's like, there's no negotiation. here's my 30 slide picture deck silver with crafted headlines on every single one you all get it now right now go make beautiful creative if that's not happening um then you know or if that is you should definitely push and try to keep it what is being said and how because you're being eventually asked how to say it yeah yeah that's right that's funny you said why why why i have a slide that i use all the time remember the kids that always asked why we hired them i love that i love that creative it's like that's great more i want to know more yeah that's great that's great all right let's go back to the board all right we're flying on you are you know what all right we'll go uh number four okay you've said brands often expect advertising to solve marketing problems and marketing to solve business problems How often do brands misdiagnose the real issue?

21:22I think it happens a lot. And now you're going to ask me for examples of which I have none readily available. Yeah, I mean, we're working on a sizable RFP right now. And it's really clear to us that they're asking for a new paint job when the plumbing is fucked up. Yeah. And that, we can try to, we're going to, we're going to try to solve the business problem with marketing. um but they they really have they really have kind of a well they have a plumbing problem really yeah um do you tell them that you know like how vocal are you especially in these early days we're going to we have to we have to that's i mean that's that's the only integrity that's the only way we can build integrity as a as a as a shop and this is this comes from me personally where it's like there's so many things all of all of us all agencies we could take projects on and give them exactly what they're asking for but our job at the end of the day is to is is to is to re-diagnose a problem without it turning into a three or six month discovery phase that's costly and stupid.

23:03We're pretty good at looking at their diagnosis and either agreeing with it or seeing overlooked areas, aka a misdiagnosis. So, you know, you're not asking for this, but if any advice to small agencies, that's where some of our I think that's where most of our value is, is in being able to quickly diagnose, align on what the problem is. Is it the problem or is it not the problem and being honest with it? And if that means not winning a pitch. Yeah, so be it. It's a good vetting mechanism, too. You know, like your interpretation of the problem and having that conversation with the CMO. And if they don't agree, if they're hell bent on not changing it, I think that is a signal to you.

23:54Like maybe they wouldn't be a great client also. That's true. But the temptation is there. I mean, we're a small shop and this could potentially be a very large piece of business for us. there is that choice that's there in this space-time continuum to go, oh, yeah, that is the problem and bring solutions. I mean, we're all very good at this and bring solutions that would fix or that would have the appearance of fixing that problem. We've answered the brief, right? But you're going to get in trouble because we're all going to sign up to the KPIs. We're all going to sign up to what we're going to hold ourselves accountable to.

24:34And if you believe in your bones that this ain't it. You know, so you'll make a bunch of you'll make a bunch of money. And you'll get some work put out there. But at the end of the day, at the end of the engagement, it might only take 10 months, 11 months for all of that to catch up to everyone. Well, it kind of goes full circle to I think the second question that we had, which is the tenure of the CMO. And why is it shrinking. I mean, this could be part of the reason. I think a lot of times they maybe are set up a little bit for failure because the problem is wrong. It starts there. It starts with the challenge that they're incentivized usually to solve.

25:16And if that's wrong, the rest of it's wrong. Like you said, you get 12 months maybe max. Yeah, yeah. And all of us have to remind ourselves of like, with great power comes great responsibility. What happens after you've identified the problem, whether that's right or wrong, and everyone sort of locks arms, the machine goes into action. Lots of money gets spent. And yeah, it doesn't end well if the problem has not been correctly diagnosed. Very true. All right, let's go back to the board. I think we might be solving the whole industry right now. You know what? Just us two. That's what we do on this show.

26:01I love it. You came to play. That's the, I think that's the headline or your poster frame for this. We solved everything. Yeah. All right. Let's go with 10. All right. So you have voices like Lady Gaga's producer, a sneaker shop legend, and camera Jesus in the room. Tell us about a time when the subculture advisory board completely changed the direction of the work. That's a good question and a fair one. I don't think they've ever completely changed the direction of any work. I think what we consistently get from this advisory board of really cool people and really interesting people, really connected people that make me feel, remind me that I'm just some middle-aged white dude who lives in the Midwest.

27:02They're great. they very often give us enough sort of outsider validation to play with more confidence than we would have otherwise. So, you know, like, I mean, they've really helped push the Gibson work. And we've done a few different projects with Gibson. You know, the thing, the remit there is, you know, here's here's a guitar brand that has this sort of harley davidson problem um they're perceived as like well that's the that's the guitar for the speaking of old white affluent dudes who basically put them on walls like no one's shredding them you know and you go to coachella or whatever and if people are still using or playing instruments like guitars it's probably a fender right so there's this perception problem they have and so our our advisory board especially you know folks like paul blair um who's done that who does work with produces with uh with lady gaga you know he's so tapped in um to all different genres of music um he he and a few others on the board helped us sort of find and break out of Gibson's kind of siloed approach to working with, you know, quote unquote, quote unquote, signed artists, right?

28:28Like there's, you know, there's nothing against, you know, seeing older superstar guitar players, I'm not going to name them. But when you're trying to flip the perception of the brand, you got to go elsewhere with who you hold up as an artist and so uh paul was paul was great i wouldn't say he discovered them but he he led us he led us to the well and uh that's been great but yeah this this advisory board is um you know none of them have worked today at an agency uh including tony um and they're just they're they're just great resources from a you know from a networking perspective we can put strategies in front of them this big pitch i keep referencing um there a few of them are going to be uh instrumental in in uh in the strategy work so yeah i i wouldn't say there's there's been any sort of like earth-shattering moment where like man it's good thing we brought those guys in but they just they really give us confidence uh you know early on yeah you know How do you tap into them?

29:42You just said early on, but it just made me think, are you coming to them at the strategy phase, the ideation phase? Are there multiple checkpoints with the advisory board? Is it everybody? Are you picking and choosing which members you're going to depending on the brand? It's more the latter. It's definitely more ad hoc and it's more sort of contextual to whatever it is we're trying to do at that moment. it. Yeah, we don't have a uniform sort of way we engage them. Months might go by and we haven't had any contact with them. I'm really jealous. I think there's something a lot of agencies could benefit from.

30:25I'll call it like a system like this. I don't think I could get the types of people you get. My agency is a lot different, but I love the idea of outside influences and influencers being available to help you through a strategic challenge, help you really finesse a final creative idea. I think it's brilliant. I've gotten the opportunity to work with ad council, and they have something very similar. And there's this moment in time in the process where you present to the board, and you're getting all of this incredible feedback. And I've always thought like, damn, how do I replicate that? And you've done it.

30:57So that's pretty incredible. Yeah, no, I think the, probably the coolest thing about it is it's, they themselves are essentially creators, most of them, right? Like Jessica Murnane, you know, kind of a wellness expert is now getting into, you know, horticulture as self-care and I'm botching this for her. Sorry, Jessica. You know, Rick is a creator unto himself. Obviously, Tony commands a pretty large audience, Paul Blair. So I think probably the biggest thing that they give us confidence for, and I think a lot of agencies feel it a little bit, like they feel like creators, the creator economy, the fact that we are in an attention economy.

31:50and I think clients see this too, right? Like we hear it a lot and it shows up in our decks, right? Your competition isn't that other brand. Your competition is the creators. Yeah. You know, the top 100 creators, if you take all of the engagement and sometimes the numbers of audience that they command, when you add it all up, it's greater than the top 100 brands, which is fucking mind-blowing. Yeah. And it's not going the other way. And so you have a choice as a brand. Do you rent their eyeballs? Do you hashtag add your way through that? Send them some shit, whatever. Or do you collaborate? Or do you think like a creator?

32:37And our advisory board helps us think like a creator because that's how they think inherently. Yeah. So there is that ballast. And I just realized we should probably talk more about that. Yeah. Versus their how well connected they are. It's like, okay, sure. You should. I mean, I think it's a big point of difference. And especially in terms of just like authenticity, you know, which is really easy to fake, but really hard to get right. You kind of have a cheat code. Yeah. I like that. All right. Let's go back to the board. All right. Here we go. Here we go. We'll go 12. All right. Number 12. you've run a brand and a creative agency what do cmos get wrong about creatives and what do creatives get wrong about cmos well i mean there's there's the cliche of you know cmos might see creatives um as only wanting awards right yeah oh and maybe and maybe creatives see CMOs as all they want is to sell more stuff.

33:44It's like, well, of course they do. We're here to grease the wheels of capitalism, folks, whether you like it or not. So I think, I mean, it seems like those are the two. Those seem to be the perceptions. I mean, I think some creatives get mislabeled that way. I mean, I've been doing this a long time and, you know, I still sometimes feel like I have to remind our clients, like, no, we want to hit our KPIs on this. Like, we want you to sell products or we want to flip the brand perception. Like, we want to do that. So I think it's incumbent on both sides to, I think this just goes for life in general, just make sure everyone is open and honest about what they want out of this.

34:46Yeah, your intentions. Yeah. Any advice you would give to a CMO just to get the most out of their creative agency? Any tips or tricks? Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll go back to the what and how, right? I think the best thing you can do for your agency and the creatives that work within that agency or even if it's an inside in-house group, the gift you can give them is being absolutely positively 110 % sure that what you want to say or demonstrate as a brand is it. And you are emphatic about it. You could pitch them without showing any slides. They need to feel that you really believe in what needs to be said or demonstrated.

35:45And then they will buy in and they will toil and bring you so many different, a veritable spectrum, a rainbow of ways of how to say or demonstrate it. Yeah. Man, you make it sound so easy. Well, the first part of what is not, that is the hard part. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these thrown together briefs, it does kind of get you thrown together ideas, right? I think having that crystal clear clarity all the way up in the brief phase and knowing what you want is, it's so important. And I think sometimes overlooked. Yeah, you know, you're a good indicator, speaking of KPIs, of maybe it's not going to end well, is if you have lots of people going, wait, what, what are we saying?

36:40Yeah. I mean, we've, we've heard this many times in boardrooms, even at our own agencies, like, what are, what exactly are we saying here? And if there isn't real good clarity around that because you're not locking anyone in. There's still a million ways to show how it can be said. Yeah. It's usually fear. I think fear is what gets in the way of that. Yeah. All right. Let's go back to the board. We have time for one more. All right. Make it count. Let's do... You pick. How about you pick? Oh, man. All right. We want to go two. All right. Let's go. Okay. So over half of brand leaders admit that they don't have a strong enough understanding of their audiences to take creative risks.