The Day the Universe Changed with Mike Moynihan (Lego) and George Carey (Human-ology)

23:53So when you think of 23, 25, 28 year olds, you know, that's the time of life where you traditionally associate as someone who is kind of coming into their own. They're out of school, they've got their first job, they're making some money, you know, and this is the year in which you really sort of assert yourself and kind of live a pretty large life in the world. You're more idealistic. You get more involved in causes. You're looking for adventure and excitement and romance and all those things that go along with young adulthood. That has completely vanished. You know, over the last five years that we're talking about, one of the headlines that we speak about is that these 25-year-olds have gone from fearless to fearful.

24:31And to give you some statistics on that, the emotional priority of staying safe for 25-year-olds is up, watch out now, 60 % over the last five years. One percentage point is significant. Staying safe as an emotional priority is up 60%. So this whole idea of these emotional priorities around living large are all in rapid decline. So the priority of winning and being the best, you know, I'm 25, I can do anything, show me a challenge and I'll take it on and I'll do it better than the next guy. Down 52%. Social causes like concern about global warming and climate change, something I think we should be focused on.

25:11Down 35 % as a human priority for 28-year-olds. And that's not saying that these young people have gotten selfish or greedy or not thinking about other things. It's just that the fear, other things have taken their place. Now, we measure this data relative to each other. It's not an absolute scale. And that reflects the human kind of tendency to sort of prioritize things we have emotional bandwidth for. So we're seeing this huge decline in this kind of fearless young adult, and it's being replaced very much by one who is a lot more cautious and a lot more timid. And George, that crosses cultures of the 10 markets you look at?

25:50It's in the West and the US, a lot less so in China. So within Asia, we tend to see at an emotional human level. South Korea act a lot like the West. Japan is always a world unto itself. But for the West, I would say, and parts of Asia, yes, this is a global phenomenon. So why? I think the reason is that it's gotten very, very risky to be fearless. We live in a world where when you're out in the world, you are exposing yourself to physical and emotionally perceived dangers. And they're just not in any mood to sort of expose themselves to those kinds of risks. So we're seeing 25-year-olds interested in a safe and comforting home go up 38%.

26:31When I was 28 years old, I was not looking for a safe and comforting home. I can assure you. Who cares? It's pretty far down the list of my priorities. And finding time to relax down 22%. And my hobbies and personal passions up 20%. Another thing which kind of goes up in these times, and it's going up now again also, is young adults' desire to be creative. You know, creativity actually is one thing you can do where you have some control and some personal agency over things. And that is going up right now. And interestingly enough, and this kind of gets to something that Mike and his team found really interesting.

27:06When you look deeply at what the emotional rewards of creativity and self-expression are, it's for a young adult now. It's not so much about sort of celebrating my personal voice and showing the world who I am. It's very much a form of relaxation. It's a way for me to escape and find time to relax and to cultivate my happiness and being young and playful at heart. This is not Van Gogh trying to make a statement. This is me finding a Zen moment of retreat. And for Mike, when he asked us, gosh, what do you know about young adults? We're very interested in building out our business beyond kids. These were the kinds of things that we were able to bring to him.

27:43Anything else before moving to Mike? Young adults, you found some profound shifts. anything else in your data? And this happened well before, we're going to talk about the 2024 election a bit later, but this happened well before that, right? Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. As I say, COVID was the place where things really changed, not just at a kind of behavioral, environmental, medical level. That was the day the universe changed for what it means to be human. And it didn't snap back, if you will. It did not snap back. It was not, something which was a blurb or a spike in our data. And again, the beauty of having 10 years of visibility is it lets us look at human emotion.

28:23The metaphor I sometimes use is climate change. We study climate change. Not the weather forecast for today, but long-term shifts in these human priorities over time. And it only got worse. It's not like we got these vaccines and we're back out in the world. No. Other things replaced the things driving fear and that shrinking universe and the impulse for comforting experiences like a Zen moment through creativity. Is there another cohort that had such a shift? We're talking about young adults now. Yeah. Pretty much every single cohort has got emotional priorities, which are unrecognizable from five years ago.

28:59For kids, we'll talk about this a little bit later on, but if we go from adults down to like a six-year-old kid, five years ago, one of their dominant priorities was just being a kid. Today, learning how to make money. Five years ago, getting good grades in school. Today, learning how to be successful on my own. Some would say that's not a bad thing. We've been too gentle on our kids. They need to sort of learn some of the tough rules of life. But across every age and stage, there are fundamental differences in what it means to be human today versus just five years ago. What's going on with the kids?

29:34What's your hypothesis on that? I think that these kids have been exposed to a side of life, which most of us older adults were never exposed to, that many of the things that we could always take for granted, that there would always be fun snacks in the cupboard, that there would always be a safe school environment, that our parents would always be calm and in control. None of those things have been true for a nine-year-old. They were born into a world where none of that was ever true. And one of the things that's, I think, particularly alarming for this is that some of these changes are happening across every income group and every ethnicity.

30:15Some of the challenges in life, sadly, in the U.S. and outside of the U.S., used to be primarily focused on the more disadvantaged populations, economically disadvantaged, for example. But today, everyone is feeling this. We're seeing huge increases in people's emotional focus on trying to make ends meet. But the biggest increases are not from the most economically challenged people. They're from the more fluent people, people who have never had to worry about paying the electric bill. And they now do. And so, again, at every age and stage, there's these huge shifts, which have a huge impact on everything from the shows they watch on television to the vacations they take with their family or their girlfriend, boyfriend, to the toys they play with on the weekend.

30:59So George, you see this data spike and you and your team go, oh shit, what the hell is going on? And then of course you keep asking why and so on and so on. But how did you talk about this with Mike and his team? How did you enlist them? What was that conversation like? One of the things that happens with our partners, our client partners, is that as we put this study back in the field every 90 days. If you're a member of our network, we put your category and your brand in with it. So in addition to being able to sort of have this pure read on shifting human priorities and human motivations, we can also see which one of those your brand is like lights up as well as which of those your brand is performing poorly on.

31:43And that will give you like that connection between the state is interesting to it's important because I now know that Lego is developing a real problem on a human priority, which is going up if they don't have a connection to that. Or conversely, Lego may have assets and never knew it had because there have been changes in the human condition, which no one would have known if you looked at behavioral data and which happen to be very powerful connections among consumers to that brand.

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32:50So, Mike, you're on the other side of this. You're seeing this. You've worked with George for many years. What was it about this data that was so mind-opening for you and your team? How did you grapple with it? What questions did you ask yourself? And then, I guess, more importantly, what did you do about it? We had always had some business with younger adults and adults more broadly, but it was a relatively small percentage of people who are more toy hobbyists and things like that. It did seem, though, as if in the case of COVID, when George had indicated that not only is there an emerging problem, but your brand can actually be quite associated with it.

33:29It went from looking at it as not just an opportunity, but almost an obligation. So if people are at a point where they're dealing with tremendous amounts of uncertainty, they are looking for control over things, they're looking to be connected to something, we can actually help deliver on a lot of those different needs. So it went from being, yes, we've always had products that we designed for adults to thinking, okay, and five years ago, we never even really marketed to that group. We created products, but we didn't really market to them in any meaningful way. So to your question around what did we do about it, we did a few things.

34:03We developed more products for that audience. Although, to be honest with you, we have like an 18 to 24 month lead time on products. So that was not an immediate solution. But we started an advertising campaign after doing a lot of work inspired by George's team. And the main tagline of that was joyful focus. And it basically showcased not only the products that we offer aligned with many of the passions that adults have, but it was also delivering on exactly what George had mentioned, which is, you know, they're looking for a bit of Zen. They're looking for a little bit of control in their life and things that they can master or have control of.

34:36And also, I think part of the reason as to why nostalgia has become such a big thing over the last five years is that people are looking for that sense of safety and security. And the childhood years are ones that really deliver on that. So we are not the only brand that could help in this space. You see things like Stranger Things come up as a really popular television show. It's just one example. Pokemon, other things have really taken off. But we saw ourselves as having a potential opportunity here to create a lot of value in that space. And so we basically poured a little water on the seedling there.

35:08And again, guided by George's insight and research to say, okay, what are the right triggers here that can really help people? And it is something that was phenomenally successful, like way beyond what we had anticipated. And also as George is indicating, it didn't just revert back to the mean after COVID, like a lot of things. There are a lot of brands that had big spikes, like either Netflix or Peloton or others had big spikes. And then when things went back to normal, they went back to the pre-COVID levels. We did not see that. And I think it has to do with the fact that, as George indicated, we were delivering on some pretty important needs that even when COVID went away, people were still feeling this uncertainty and the need for connection and the need for control, because whether or not it was the political environment or the economic environment, it wasn't just the pandemic that was creating a lot of these underlying issues.

36:00Let's go into that a little bit more, this joyful focus platform. And you said it had great resonance and it went beyond your expectations. Could you talk a little bit more about why it had that resonance? How did you deliver it? How did you activate it? What kinds of things really hit the mark with people? And then broader term, as much as you can talk about it, how did it impact your storied product innovation process. You said that's a longer lead time, but I'm sure it's had some sort of impact on how you're thinking about that as well. Yeah. It's had a huge impact, actually. In terms of the ultimate launch of the campaign, we went through the normal process, I would say, that most companies do.

36:38We have some insights. We created a brief. The joyful focus piece really popped. We went about the normal process of testing a bunch of different concepts and the notion of joyful focus really popped. And it just is a validation of all the data that George and his team had shared with us. So that led us to an advertising campaign as such around this. But the second thing is we ultimately have a lot of other experiences within our ecosystem. So it could be products. It's also a lot in the way of video gaming. So there's other elements there where ultimately, I think people reacquainted themselves with the Lego brand in a way that hadn't been top of mind.

37:18They talk about the importance of salience and brand building. With that cohort, we just weren't that salient. But now all of a sudden, when you throw an ad like that on Joyful Focus out, there's a bit of, well, you had me at hello because they have such strong memories of the brand as children. And now Joyful Focus was almost giving them some permission to actually engage in this brand. And that was honestly one of the biggest barriers in our research that we saw is that people were, they really, really wanted to get engaged in Lego building. And many of them did, but they would sort of like covertly go to the toy section of a store and they really wouldn't admit to any of their friends that they were into it.

37:52But so that was one of the things that we had to do also within our marketing is to basically show that this is okay. Other people do it. And we ultimately leveraged our fan community, our adult fan community for that very purpose to ultimately show how great Lego building can be for adults and to ultimately give them social currency and social permission to do it. In terms of how it affected the product offering more specifically, we've expanded the offering dramatically within the last five years. And it's all about hitting the most relevant passions for adults, whether or not that's art or music or sports.

38:28Or we also have one of our best-selling product lines right now is called Lego Botanicals. And it is basically all about building Lego flowers and Lego flower arrangements. And interestingly enough, that has brought in a completely new audience for us with adult females. It's actually our fastest growing consumer cohort is adult females. And bear in mind, these are mostly women who did not grow up playing with Lego bricks. So when we first started five years ago and really putting, you know, water on the, on the, on the seedlings here, it was mostly adult men who were rekindling their nostalgia and love of the Lego brand from when they were kids.

39:04But it was quite an interesting development when we saw the response to Lego Botanicals. We knew there was kind of an interesting concept and we just sort of launched it to see what would happen. And the response was just incredible. But I think a lot of the same issues that men were dealing with requiring joyful focus played just as well with women. And again, we hit on a really important passion point around nature and flowers and things like that. So I think that it's that kind of thing where we've really started to double down on from a product proposition. What are the right passions that we need to make sure that we deliver on?

39:38And how do we deliver on that in a way that's unique and value adding? I have this expression I sometimes use called a goosebump marketing. What that means is, is when a consumer sees something, it gives them chills. It gives you goosebumps. And that happens when you say something to a consumer, show them where they say back to you, you know what? You know me. You really, really know me. And furthermore, the brand that you are putting into this story also belongs here. And if you can put those two things together, you get goosebumps. And when you get goosebumps, you have women who have never tried Lego before suddenly buying these things.

40:13That includes my wife, which I think I mentioned to you before. Thank you to your wife. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Mike, you're a large company. I grew up in a large company as well with George's dad. When you see something in the environment that's pretty riveting, right, and it's a change, you have to get the whole company to embrace it and to welcome it and to be willing to pivot, if you will. So what did you learn as you kind of saw this data, said, well, this is really different. This could affect our entire company from CEO down. What did you do as a leader to sort of get the entire company to say, wow, we understand this.

40:52This is important. This is exciting. We can do something about this that's going to help people and us. So talk about that process for you and your team. Yeah, I will say that my team and I, my leadership team that I'm on, you know, reporting into our chief product and marketing officer, we have a very clear process around innovation and product development. But I would say that we were benefited by, frankly, an episode that happened about 20 years ago, which is that we almost went bankrupt as a company. At that time, there was a major assault on toys from digital play. There was the rise of things like cable television, which led to a lot more instant gratification.

41:32And so there were a lot of these, we had direct competitors coming into our space. So there were a lot of these existential threats that were coming in. And we ultimately saw brick building as a bit of a melting ice cube. And we said, okay, well, we're going to need to pivot. If we want to continue our revenue growth, we're going to need to pivot into many different things. And that led to a really toxic approach, which was how do we try to harvest value from our brand? How do we try to harvest value from our retail partners? How do we try to harvest value from our consumers? It was very much a value capture mindset, not a value creation mindset.

42:07And so ultimately, what got us out of the abyss, and when I say that we almost went bankrupt, I'm not exaggerating. We were very close to being bankrupt. But our CEO at the time was really fundamental in turning around not just the business, but more importantly, the culture. And he realized at the time, and this is something very few companies realize unless they're staring into the abyss, we exist to create value for other people. So at the end of the day, rather than going into a relationship with Walmart that's antagonistic, where we look at it as a zero-sum game, what if we were to actually say, you know what, we exist to help Walmart make money off of Lego products.

42:43So how does that change the conversation in terms of the way that we approach this? How do we then also think about creating for consumers in ways that are true win-wins? And what we realize is the unique value that we provide is a really solid building experience. And so with this notion in mind around value creation, he created a KPI structure that exists to this day that is very much focused around the value that we create for consumers, for employees, for partners, and for society at large. Only a relatively small percentage of my bonus or any Lego employee's bonus is based on our own financial performance.

43:16And the logic behind that is if we deliver for all those stakeholders in a really good way, by the way, we have very quantitative metrics around each one of those. It's almost an inevitability that will capture value at the end of it. So that was the basic philosophy that went into the turnaround and it was quite successful. I do think that our leadership team today benefits very much from that. Because when we think about innovation, it is all about value creation. And are we ultimately delivering for people? Yes, we can think about pricing and margins and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, are we delivering something that is compelling and unique to our fan base?

43:51And when George's data came about, it was really clear, not only seeing the big shifts in these areas, but as George mentioned, the degree to which our brand was associated with these things, it became almost, like I said, not just an opportunity, but an obligation. And so using the data, but also really supported very much by that near death experience 20 years ago, I think those are the two things that really helped us quite a bit in being able to create organizational change. Mike, you've been at the company 30 years. This is an event you talked about 20 years ago. As you look now back at those 20 years, what's the biggest behavioral change that those new KPIs and that new culture, what was the biggest behavior change in the company based on that?

44:31You know, I think it's much more around, as a matter of fact, so I'll give Mark Pritchard some credit here. If you allow me to just... P &G, CMO, yeah, my successor. Yeah, exactly. I was at a conference and I saw him give a keynote speech. Somebody asked him for the best career advice that he's ever been given. And I thought his response was brilliant. He said, you know, anytime that my career has gone off the rails, it's when my center of gravity has been around myself. What do I get out of this? What's my own self-interest? He said, when things have gone really well, my center of gravity has been around other people and how I help other people.

45:04So he said, my main career advice is to just simply be useful. And I think that's sort of the wake-up call that we got 20 years ago is to be useful. To be useful to our consumers, to be useful to our partners, our retailers, our employees. And also, even at a micro level, at an individual level, I think that is also what guides a lot of people internally. What we hear from a lot of people coming in, of course, my perspective on this is totally biased because I've been here for so long, but a lot of new employees tell us there's just less politics at the Lego group than they see at other places.

45:34And, you know, it's much more around what value are you creating for other people? You know, so there's less around self-promotion. It's more like, what are you doing to help others? And I think that cultural element to me is probably a pretty understated part of, you know, the strength of our company.

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46:53Okay, we talked about what's going on with people and the fact that you're young adults business a lot, you're adults business. You found these passion points. You're creating product and experiences around that. What about kids? I mean, your core customer. You said kids have had a dramatic change. George, tell us more about that. And Mike, what have you done about those insights? Yeah, kids and their parents, which is obviously a huge target audience for many, many markers around the world. Families constitutes a tremendous amount of the world's GNP. As I mentioned to you, a lot of the joy of childhood just got washed away.

47:27There wasn't time the last five years. There hasn't been emotional space for just being a child. There hasn't been kind of time to be spontaneous. There has not been a moment where you can sort of assert your identity and be who you want to be because either the physical or cultural confines have just narrowed kids down quite significantly. And for parents, this is one of the most dramatic changes that we've seen in our data. As you'd expect, the fear factor is also up for moms and dads, as it is for everybody. The free-floating anxiety is everywhere at every age and stage. But unlike young adults, you know, who responded by retreating into their universe, the primary emotional response for parents has been this almost obsessive, skyrocketing need for control.

48:17Control the world around me. You know, when you're terrified, and many adults, I should say, excuse me, parents are, those are not the moments when you're like, let's just go and have a good time and let the good times sort of fall out how they're going to fall out. You assert control. You try really, really hard to make sure that things are the way that you think they ought to be. And with that comes this huge need to be able to be responsive to your kids and controlling things that could happen to them that are quite unfortunate. So one of the unexpected consequences of fear to a need for control was parents skyrocketing need to be close and open with their children.

48:57And the reason for that is because the one place that parents can't control their kids' world is after they leave the home. I can create a wonderful universe inside the home, but I can't control what happens to my child when they leave. And as a consequence, it's really, really important to me to have a close relationship in which my kid feels like they can talk to me, share with me what's going on. because I don't want to be the parent who wasn't aware of something, you know, kind of scary around the corner that ended up really hurting my child. And that's what comes to this kind of other kind of macro theme that we've seen here is this inversion of parenting priorities.

49:35You know, we were able to track of the different priorities that we track around parenthood. We track about 20 of them. We can factor analyze them into the five overall needs for parenthood. And what had been the bottom parenting priority five years ago, which is to have a close and open relationship with my child, number five out of five, is now number one. It's up 34 % as a parenting priority versus five years ago. And as a consequence, if you can be the brand or the experience that somehow fosters these quiet, intimate, close and open relationships with your child, you will find a very receptive ear on the part of moms and dads.

50:19So that's another area that Lego was quite interested in and led to some interesting stuff on their side. George, why was that so low five years ago? You would hope close and open with your kids would have been something that's always up there. Yeah. Well, I hate to say it was a simpler time because it sounds like we're talking about 50 years ago, but back then parents were focused on their kids doing well in school. And just being a kid and character and integrity was also an important one. So again, it wasn't that it was unimportant, but relative to those other things, the other things kind of took sway over those.

50:58So Mike, kids, parents, it's always been a big piece of your business. I'm sure it still is. So how did that impact you? When COVID first hit, there was this whole question. Of course, every company and brand out there was trying to think of, okay, what can we do to help? And we knew, of course, that kids and kids were cooped up at home. And so the very first thing that we did was we developed a program called Build Together, which was something that we could pull off in a matter of a couple of days. This was not an advertising campaign. We just launched it on our social media platforms. And it was basically every day our designers had developed one idea that parents could actually use with their kids for that particular day of how to engage just with the Lego bricks that are in their home.

51:39We weren't looking to sell anything. It was more like, okay, this is maybe something that we could help where parents could rely on us to deliver ideas for how to keep their kids engaged. And we deliberately tried to make sure that we were, based on George's data, connecting parents and kids. It wasn't just, oh, here, kids, go do this on your own. It was really much more a question of how do we actually connect the generations together? And this goes back to the point that we were talking about earlier, where now all of a sudden, these young adults were also some of the parents of these kids who were reconnecting with Lego Play.

52:12And so this idea now of having a multi-generational appealing brand creates a bit of a flywheel. So that for us was sort of the interesting ideas, how might we be able to help people at a really difficult time and also leverage the interest not only in the Lego brand for kids, but also in the Lego brand for adults. And so we ended up creating that program, that build together program, which had really strong uptake, like much bigger than we had anticipated. It seemed like we had definitely tapped into a nerve. Then at the same time, and to be honest, I think this was a bit of luck in terms of the timing, but we had also launched a TV show called Lego Masters, which is basically a building competition where pairs of builders square off against each other.

52:50And it became appointment viewing for many families. It became a huge co-viewing hit. So that was a family ritual that was also created around the Lego brand. So whether or not it's building with our sets or actually watching TV. And then also like a video gaming also saw an uptick during that same time, because there was this whole notion of how can parents and kids connect more directly around our brand. And I will tell you in our brand tracking thing that we've seen the biggest increase on over the last few years is the connection to this characteristic of this is a brand that actually connects our family.

53:20One of the things I've noticed is that when you're trying to connect with your kid, interrogating them will get you nowhere. So like if you're driving home from school with your 10 year olds. Hey, how was school today? You're going to get nothing. What are you going to get? Fine. No, nothing. Anything more than that? No. But if you are like on the floor, putting Legos together and just there in the moment, that's when the important stuff comes out. That's when you hear things and see things and witness things that you would never see when you're doing your official job as parenting. And I think that's one of the magical things that this Lego initiative is bringing to their lives.

53:57Mike, you talked about botanicals a minute ago being sort of a signature product for the young adults. Is there a signature product or initiative that's come out of that insight about connecting families, building together that you could highlight? What's interesting is this notion around multi-generational appeal also applies to passions and properties. And so, you know, one of the more recent phenomena that we have here is we just launched a whole series of products around Formula One racing back in March. And that is very much also a multi-generational appeal where kids and parents, even a lot of adult women based on the Drive to Survive show on Netflix have really gotten into F1.

54:34So that has been a passion point that has been really, really strong. We also see Star Wars, and this has been in our portfolio for over 25 years. That also has a lot of multi-generational appeal. We're launching products around Pokemon next year. So these are all properties and passions that have a lot of multi-generational appeal that we think holds a lot of potential for us for continuing to deliver on the need that George and his team have identified. Okay. Now, we've had a U.S. election in November of 2024. And that was another, things were already sort of upended a bit through COVID. And that added some more uncertainty and upheaval, of course.

55:11And that's not just the U.S. There's elections around the world that are adding uncertainty and upheaval. So I know you're continuing to study shifts, George, with your group. Any insights for our listeners and that you've shared with Lego, of course, about how things have changed since November around the world? Yeah, there have been a couple of things. And again, our interest is somewhat in the short term, but also, again, the climate change metaphor, like which of these things are accelerating or deaccelerating. And one of the most significant kind of trends that we're seeing across cohorts is what we have labeled the rise of the need for personal sovereignty.

55:47And what I mean by that is that through a combination of pandemic and political parties that we no longer trust and institutions that we no longer believe in throughout our lives, more and more citizens of the world, and this is a global thing. It's certainly true in the U.S., but not confided to the U.S. I have come to the conclusion and come to the statement of don't tell me what to do. Don't tell me how to think. Don't tell me how to behave. I will decide. I will be my own personal sovereignty. I will make these choices. And I think that it can't be overstated how much that kind of important that is for marketers thinking about empathy and brand purpose.

56:29They are not looking to be lectured or preached to. They are not looking for your approval. You know, they are looking for brands and experiences that give them and enable them to make choices as opposed to those that are being made or recommended for you. So that's one huge thing here is that I don't see going away anytime soon is the rise of personal sovereignty. Mike, any thoughts on that from a Lego lens? Yeah, I think, you know, what's interesting is that when you think about the line of sight back to COVID, I think this may almost be sort of a continuation of that same theme that at a period of a lot of upheaval or uncertainty, naturally people want to feel control and even assert control.

57:08And I think we're very fortunate to have a product proposition and a brand that is all about personal control and self-expression around things. And so this is where I do think, again, when you take a look at the emotional priorities and how they've shifted, while there are some major shifts in the world that have created some challenges for human beings, I do think that this data has forced us to get much more clear around who we are and what unique value we add to the world. Even though you are seeing different events that are triggering things, there's a red thread here around volatility, uncertainty, and the need for personal control that we do believe that our brand can provide unique value on.

57:47So that's what I think has helped us continue to grow our business over the last few years. but it also only gives us more conviction on the need to stay in tune with this data to understand. Invariably, things change and things shift, and so we need to also be prepared to pivot at the right time as well. How's all this affected you both as human beings? I mean, you're immersing yourselves in these big changes in values. You're thinking about them for your company, but you're also thinking about them for yourself and your family and your friends. So any thoughts about that, how you're processing it as two people that love your work, love to work with each other, but also, you know, care about the future, what's happening on this planet?

58:29Yeah, for me, I'm the father of four kids, two of my own, two through marriage. And the battle for me has been on trying to help my kids not give up on the future. And I don't think that's a political statement. In fact, it's not. When you look at every one of these metrics in our study, these human values, every single one of them has to do with something five years from now is in huge decline. And that's things like getting involved in a cause I care about, making a statement about climate change, doing something that I won't really feel the impact of for years to come. And the ones that are in the steepest ascent, like this idea of personal sovereignty, that's like now.

59:10That's like right this minute. So I think that's important for brands to think about. If you aren't helping ease some of the emotional tensions and in many cases suffering that people are feeling right now, it's going to be tough sledding for you to get to relevance. But at a broader level, a big part of my passion for this work is to find ways of making some of these things that are so important to the future of humanity, to say nothing of brands and commerce, relevant. How do you phrase and serve up something like political engagement or protecting this planet in ways that a 15-year-old will pay attention to?

59:50And that's one of the things that I'm really looking forward to do over the next five years as I get into another life stage. Mike, how about yourself? Yeah, I'd say the big thing that I've picked up on this is this issue of things not only being an opportunity, but almost an obligation. I think when we see through consumer research or just even user-generated content and things like that, exactly how much of an impact our brand has on people, it's actually humbling. And it's something where you feel like, wow, we really have an obligation to make sure that we are continuing to deliver this because it's clear that we're meeting a very strong need.

1:00:25It even carries over into personal life where there are certain things that I might have that I could take for granted, you know, like, you know, I'd do some teaching on the side and what I might take for granted in my career, other people find extraordinary value in. And it's just because we've all amassed, you know, experiences we've worked for decades, but we can tend to take that for granted. And there's an element here of just thinking that when people are hurting or when they need something, you know, it's not just an opportunity, it's almost an obligation is sort of the way that I look at it.

1:00:58And I think a lot of us at the Lego group feel the same way that we have something that's pretty unique right now and that's value adding. And so that's what gets people out of bed every day. It's not, we're a privately held company. So it's not like our stock price is getting people to spring out of bed every morning. It's really, you know, to what degree are we actually delivering something that's really of meaningful value? Yeah. So that's maybe the way that I would frame it. Yeah. One of my things that I, reasons I come to work every morning, do believe the work we're doing is important. And the reason I say that is with all due respect to government employees and the foundations around the world.

1:01:31To be the most powerful force for positive change in the world is global or global businesses. They have the resources and the reach and the impact and the products, which can really make a difference in people's lives. And frankly, I've also lost a bit of confidence in government, for example, to make those kinds of changes. So, you know, if we in our work and our partnership with amazing brands like Lego can help put these remarkable brands on the scent of the tensions and problems at a human level of what it means to be alive today. I feel that's a really good day's work and one which I don't plan to stop doing anytime soon.

1:02:07Happy about that, George. Hey, what do you both think is going to distinguish the growth brands of the next four, five, six, seven years based on everything we're talking about, everything you're learning? Mike? For me, there's this distinction that I referenced earlier around creating value versus capturing value. And I feel like over the last 25 years, the marketing discipline has gone through a lot of digital transformations around things that have been pretty extraordinary. When you think about our ability now to target people through data and analytics, or the web is allowed for search engine marketing, or all of these different geotargeting, all of these different kinds of things.

1:02:50And I do worry that in many ways, many of those technologies could force more of a capture mindset as opposed to a creation mindset. And again, this is not a lecture by any means on my side, because we went down the capture path and it almost sunk us. And so I think there's just something here about making sure that when we look at a lot of these digital transformations and even the next wave of AI and things like that, I think the difference between the companies that are going to succeed and those that are going to fail are those that are really harnessing their own capabilities and the technologies toward really genuinely creating true value for people rather than really merely just trying to look at capturing value.

1:03:28It's the Pritchard quote, be useful. Be useful. Exactly. George, how about yourself? What would you add to that? Yeah, for me, it's going to be the brands that are going to really flourish in the future are going to be the ones that stop referring to their buyers as consumers. Because when you call me a consumer, you have commodified me. You have dehumanized me. You have turned me into something which is only known for one thing, which is me spending money in a grocery store or online or wherever else. And people aren't having that anymore. You are not going to get to goosebump marketing by calling me a consumer.

1:04:00So the faster you can put that aside and show up in ways that understand you as a person, what you're feeling, not what you're thinking. And this is going to sound a little self-serving and it is, but expand your understanding beyond kind of the behavioral stuff you get from Serkana to whatever way that you have to sort of reconnect with these people at a human level. That's where empathy is going to come from. That's where the goosebump market is going to come from. And ultimately, a contribution of the world and your bottom line are going to come from. Okay, gentlemen. One last question. What are you two looking forward to doing together?

1:04:36The balance of 2025. Any projects, any experiences, any dinners, any coffees? I'm looking forward to, honestly, continuing the work with Mike in kind of reimagining what entertainment brands can be and do. And I think one of those things is recognizing that brands like Lego don't play in categories anymore. They play in much broader spaces and to help reimagine what that space is and who the real competitive side is. Likewise, I think we have a longer range planning cycle that we are about to enter into for the next four years. And so this is where George's work becomes absolutely invaluable, you know, to his point before about the fact that he's not necessarily looking at tomorrow's forecast.

1:05:20It's more, you know, what are the major climate shifts? It's the same kind of thing. And this is the period of our planning cycle that I enjoy perhaps most working with him because it opens you up to, you know, the much bigger questions. And so this is where his data and help is even most valuable. Well, this was the perfect recording session before I pack up my bag and head to the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. Honestly, this is so inspiring and such important context and a reminder of why we're in this field because of its potential. And I'm totally with you, George, on the possible impact of business.

1:05:55It's up to us. Yeah, no question. Thanks, gentlemen. Thank you, Jim. Great to be with you. Thanks, guys. Talk to you soon. That was my conversation with George and Mike. Three takeaways from this one for your business brand and I think most importantly, your life. The first one is let's just drop the word consumer from our lexicon. It is, as George said, a horrible word. It thinks about a person only as a buyer, a shopper, someone who you're going to have a transaction with. But if we think about consumers as people, as human beings and where we fit in their lives, that's a much better way to frame it.

1:06:28Second takeaway, be useful. I loved how Mike talked about his inspiration from Mark Pritchard at a meeting. We talked about when his career got off track, it was because he wasn't thinking about being useful to other people. That's the way Lego thinks. It's a wonderful framework for behavior for any company that's trying to create value for themselves and for the people they serve. And the last one, there was a lot of parenting advice in this one. It's not kind of what I anticipated when we got into the show, but I loved it. This idea of creating a close and open home home relationship with the people you live with.

1:07:02A lot of us live with kids and this idea of close and open being more important than ever and rising in priority with parents globally. I think it's a wonderful thought. It's a wonderful thought to guide how we spend our time. That's it for this week's episode of the CMO podcast. As always, I would be grateful if you shared our show with your friends along with subscribing and leaving a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. The CMO Podcast is a Vive original production. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of our sponsors or its personnel, nor do our sponsors advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.