TikTok Former CMO & President of First Round: Nick Tran – Culture, Chaos, AI, & Being Yourself in the Digital Age

31:36The Gstaad Guy:And you'd figure this out through polling? we figured this out through consumer research which is partially through like surveys and like yeah focus groups and other things but ultimately we had this data set that basically said people didn't know what hulu was but they thought they did so they just ignored it completely and they were always you know considering either hulu or netflix and to them netflix was all about great original shows and programs that people talked about around like you know water cooler talk basically and then hulu was just like completely ignored so the way that we were positioning hulu at the time was one you need to develop a slate of original content that could break through that noise so then they brought in handmaid's tale which was like very like groundbreaking at the time and then on the flip side on the marketing we developed a campaign that was very provocative edgy and it was almost impossible to ignore and it was this phrase that said, we're about to ruin TV for you.

32:33And when you, when you push something out there, that's like pushing on something that you love, which is TV. And you tell people like, we're going to ruin this thing for you. The first question is how, like, how are you going to ruin this for me? And so as soon as you get people to try to discover more about your brand, you then break that first hurdle or break through that first challenge or hurdle where they no longer think they know about you because if they knew everything about you and yet you put something out there that makes them question like well how are you gonna do that or what is it you do then it gets them to like look deeper so we were able to then use that message of we're about to ruin tv for you to then show people for the first time that there was a lot of things about hulu that they did not understand so that was like the first way that we were able to change apathy into you know a bit of

33:29from apathy to interest. And it was that gap of going from apathy to interest that then said, okay, well, if you're going to ruin TV for me, one, how are you going to do that? What does that look like? And then you have to prove that out. So we showcased the original programming and then we brought in live sports. And we also developed a campaign like Hulu has live sports. And it was through those mechanisms that we then got people to realize like, you know what? Hulu was actually worth paying five bucks or seven bucks or 12 bucks a month to have and it wasn't necessarily to replace Netflix we realized people would just get both so we were able to like well nearly triple our subscribers during our time that I was there and then during the acquisition of Disney with the Disney plus bundle it just sort of like skyrocketed from there so I do think there is a way to provoke interest by challenging what people thought they knew about your brand if

34:22The Gstaad Guy:they have you know zero feelings about it i guess that's also the strategy on socials for people to for sure of course like you in your world i assume as you're putting out content you don't want to put things that are just like 100 agreed upon by all parties for sure like you're going to put stuff out that provokes interest provokes people to want to learn more about whatever it is that you're talking about or just have a reaction where they're just like no that's so yeah like false or then they like call you out on it absolutely it's those moments where you're like you're like i got you like you literally are probably in your head reading the comments like i got you and like now you're coming you're doing all this stuff i want you to do that's how it is in marketing basically i what you said actually with hulu is basically like shock factor of absurd statement and then back up absurd statement yep and i i think that's a big part of my goal with a lot of content i make i'm sure just like make absurd hook and then back up even if the backup is unreasonable yeah if someone's made it through listening to the backup like you've won you made it yeah you know what's been your most absurd hook i did one over the summer which was never wear shorts was like it wasn't it was it was like an order to my audience like do not wear shorts which of course is absurd um and then the the argument was unless you're wearing bathing suits while swimming sports shorts while taking part in sports uh or like going to bed or something uh your knees should be covered just wear trousers no shorts which is okay back to the original statement that we started this whole day on yeah there's a half truth in that exactly there's a half i agree there's a half truth but the audience was so split it was actually mostly women saying yes please men hide your knees Hide your knees, yeah.

36:11The Gstaad Guy:And then men saying, but it's too hot. I can wear whatever I want. And it's like, the nice thing about it is it's a trivial argument. No one's actually getting offended. Everyone's just kind of chuckling about it. Yeah. But there's also this humor in passion for the argument. Absolutely. You know, so people loved just... But, okay, this is probably where I feel the half-truth might also kind of drift into. I refuse to wear sandals. I also refuse to wear sandals but like there's some men out there that are happily displaying their toes and in no environment am I showing my feet like I don't wear sandals and some people that I'm friends with like even when you go to the beach I'm like even when I go to the beach I'd rather get sand in my shoes and empty them out later than like wear the you know the specific flip flops or anything along those lines like I just I refuse to do it I agree.

37:06But if we believe that, then the shorts argument isn't far off.

37:11The Gstaad Guy:It's not far off. Actually, one of my other videos was never wear flip-flops. But you should never wear flip-flops. I'm all about when it comes to outfits and my character to the nth degree is a thousand times a believer in this is think of intention with why you're dressing the way you are and go all the way in that category. All the way in that category. So if you don't want sand in your shoes, barefoot. I'd rather go barefoot than wear slip-flip flip-flops. Absolutely. Absolutely. As with my character. Yeah. You know, like if he goes to the Maldives, he's barefoot for the week. Okay. If he goes to a city.

37:42The Gstaad Guy:Is that just your character or is that you too? I try to be like him. So I'll do that too. I'll actually, I'll probably, I actually do this thing often when, if I know I want to work out at some point during the day, I'll commit through my outfit because there's, it's a terrible feeling to put on a workout outfit. And then not work out. And not work out. Okay. You know, I'm like, if I put on a workout sports shirt and shoes and I take that off and it's still clean and it's not sweaty, I failed. Do you think the people that wear athleisure feel the same way or no? Athleisure, probably not. But fully athletic, I'd hope so.

38:21The Gstaad Guy:I would hope so. Athleisure is actually like a dangerous gray area. It's actually very gray. Because you could get away with. People get away with it all the time and they don't feel the guilt that you feel. That's true. And you don't break a sweat. Absolutely. It's like the whoop. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, the whoop is... Do you have one? I do have one. I'm not wearing it right now. I took it off. But I do wear a whoop. And I'm very religious about wearing it for sleep, to track my sleep. Okay. Does it impede your sleep because you're so obsessed with tracking it? It might. I actually... That's my concern.

38:58The Gstaad Guy:Actually, it's funny. Last night, I was really tired and I got to bed and I was just about to fall asleep. and then I realized I didn't have my whoop on. You're like, I can't sleep well without this thing that tells me if I slept well. I literally go get this thing. I went, got the thing, put it on. I literally disrupted my sleep so I could have that confirmation, likely confirmation bias of some kind. And I do feel like we're getting too much down that path with like data and, you know, all the rings and all the wristbands and all this stuff. Like I don't actually wear or use anything. and my gauge of sleep is if i wake up feeling refreshed or not like i don't worry about all the metrics and and all the all the things but i can see why because i have a little bit of an obsessive personality if i started going down that path i would try to optimize that to the mth degree yeah and i don't even want to open up that door so i'd rather just not even test it i mean i i totally see where you're coming from yeah i felt the exact same way until I realized that the value unlock with all these health trackers, like Aura, Whoop, all of them, is actually the surveying after, after your sleep.

40:13The Gstaad Guy:So when you wake up in the morning, it hits you with the survey of, hey, Nick, you slept pretty well last night. Did you do these following things that you usually do? Does it tell you you slept pretty well? It tells you your sleep score was good, bad, medium. It actually quantifies it out of 100. with it's like a percentage so there's a little bit of immediate bias when you wake up so you're either like yes happy i slept well or like shoot my score was not that great yes okay okay there is that immediate bias yeah and it's it's mostly driven by like your heart rate variability okay your time awake first time asleep and movement in bed and all these different things they measure but where the survey i find very handy because just that as an absolute value i find it's kind of useless because i could wake up and say oh i feel good or i feel bad But the nice thing about the survey is it helps you figure out the why.

41:02The Gstaad Guy:So it asks you, did you drink last night? Did you get into an argument last night? You can actually set the questions of, did you sleep next to your partner last night? Did you have meat? And over the course of three months, if you keep answering this survey, it will look at, okay, and all the nights Nick slept badly, he actually had dinner later than usual. And the nights that Nick slept well, he was sleeping next to his partner. but but you're also assigning weighted value to things that you think could be the cause yes which is how like people will come up with those crazy stats like you know 99 of people who eat pickles die within two weeks or whatever whatever those like crazy statements are yeah so it's assuming correlation it's assuming exactly and that's where i'm just like well i don't know for sure yeah because who's to say that it was any of those things or whether it was like something that you did not track or you did not answer that's actually it's true i think it's just it's just helping you see patterns that might help you in the future like for me hours slept is far less important than what time i went to bed oh yeah i know we're spending a lot of time on this no no i love it i love it but okay back to the theme that we're talking about before maybe for me the reason i'm not like as susceptible or open to those things is because those are those instances where the logic is laid out and it gives you a finite answer.

42:28And just the way my brain's wired, I'd rather be in the chaos and then try to find the patterns for me that tell me whether or not I'm optimizing my sleep versus not, as opposed to having it laid out in the constructive manner where I'm like, okay, this is what it says. But then I'll always question whether or not that's the right thing. And then I get to the point where I'll be obsessed over and I won't be able to sleep anyways. So I'm like, nah, I'd rather just like not have that and then just figure it out on my own and see like within the chaos, you know, like what helps me with sleep.

42:59The Gstaad Guy:So good, so good, so good. New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to 60 % off brands like Rag & Bone, Levi's, Adidas, and Free People. Join the Nordiclub to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. plus buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free great brands great prices that's why you rack i like that yeah do you also like to solve chaos in your free time uh sometimes um yeah like whether it's various puzzles i mean there was a point in my life where this is gonna sound a little bit disturbing but i would take um standardized tests before bed just because i thought it was fun so like what the act is uh like the lsat or like the gmat or things like that there was like logic questions or logic puzzles um and the lsat that i thought were like really fun and it would just like help me go to bed but like i'd finish a few of those puzzles and i'd go to bed so that was the there are moments like that where I can see just the urge to solve things.

44:10Yeah, it like motivates me, but also calms me and it helps me relax.

44:15The Gstaad Guy:Were you a good test taker at school? Absolutely. Yeah? Yeah, I crushed tests. Part of it was like, you know, I can't say this, I don't think, but like part of it's being Asian. And then the other part is just like... I think you can say it. Yeah, I can say it. Yeah, like you grow up in an environment where a standardized test is like a rite of passage. and you basically like on your birthday you're given like an ssat you just like take it and you you score well on it but i also love taking tests because i like seeing how i benchmark and even though they're not like an indicator of iq or or you know intelligence because it's just a test yeah i also love all those puzzles that are in there because i think if it's a puzzle or a game or a test, you can hack it and you can solve it and you can technically win.

45:05So when I was younger and I was taking the SATs, like I wasn't satisfied unless I got a perfect on the math because that's actually very solvable and there's no ambiguity in like how to solve it. As long as you know the tricks on how to crack it, you can get a perfect on your math side. The other side is a little bit harder because there's not a formula. Like you'd actually have to know through like language what those patterns are, which is a little bit harder. But like, yeah, I love taking tests. I think I took every test I could for grad school, whether I was going to that program or not, just to see how I would do on the tests.

45:35The Gstaad Guy:A big part of your roles today is building teams. Yeah. Do you look at how people test and score when you build those teams? No, not at all. I don't think testing – for me, it's fun, but I don't think it's an indicator of anything. So I don't look at test scores. I don't look at where people went to school. I don't look to see even if they went to school. Like I could not care less. I would even say what I found at TikTok, which don't know if it's like fully credible, but I'd say for the part of the work that I was working on, we realized that and it wasn't we didn't change our hiring practices by any means.

46:15but I just noticed a pattern where people who graduated from an Ivy league had a more difficult time with the work that we were doing at TikTok than people that went to like a state school. And the reason that we started to uncover was that the people at the state school, they were always looking to see how they can optimize and not have a structured approach they felt they had to rely on and because we were creating something new in an environment that hadn't been done before with a you know audience that was you know not any like there's no precedent for what we were building they tend to fare well versus the ivy league kids who were very much just like this doesn't fit my mental model of how this should work and they would only be able to assess previous, you know, industries and then find correlations.

47:12But when you realize that the way that social had evolved, the way that TikTok had developed the algo, it flipped everything upside down. That made it so, unless you could think completely out of the box and it was tough to comprehend. So I found that like a lot of the Ivy League folks were a little bit more challenged when it came to that. So I don't worry about school. I don't worry about tests. I don't worry people that are just experts in a very particular area to the point where I trust them inherently more than I trust myself with that thing. And then if they have the ability to work fast, own that specific area of expertise, and then work well with others and build a culture that's fun and collaborative, that's what I normally like hire for.

47:55And I also, because of that, I go super lean. So at TikTok, we started with a team of 16 and ended up becoming like a few hundred people. but with the team that i have now i try to pare it down to basically like a dozen people that i find to be just like absolute badasses in their field and like how do you win and move fast you know it's it's always easier to do it with a small nimble group than with a large team that you have to take everyone with you so i definitely find um working in these lean environments for these like turnaround uh you know brands is a much easier thing than when you have like a huge team where

48:31The Gstaad Guy:you're basically just managing the team yeah and when you're looking to fill those roles i assume you're a busy man you don't want to do too many interview rounds where you try to uncover those skills you're looking to find those skills quite quickly yeah how do you and what do you look for in a person to see whether or not they can do those things luckily there's been a good number of folks that i've worked with in the past that are sort of my go-to so i'll ask them first. Fine. Half the time they say yes. Half the time they're in a situation where they can't say yes. Okay. But then within that group, they know people that are just like them.

49:08Fine. So then you can easily like. Referrals. Yeah. Get those referrals in. Yeah. When it comes to the interview process, I tend to ask a question that I think is a good filter, especially when it comes to marketing and brands. So the question I always ask is, if your brand were to show up at a party as a person, what would they wear? How would they look? who are they hanging out with? I love it. And then people then normally answer that question. Normally they try to answer that question and they attribute it to who the marketing ambassador is. And I always pull back. I go, no, no, no, no, no.

49:40Forget them. The brand, like, what's your favorite brand?

49:44The Gstaad Guy:Loro Piana. So if Loro Piana, I mean, that's a little bit easy because that's me. Well, not just that, but like, it's also what, you'd be wearing Loro Piana if you were Loro Piana. Okay, okay. Let's take a Apple. Apple. So if you're saying, if Apple were to walk in a room and Apple was a person, what are they wearing? So I'll ask you, what is Apple wearing? I'm not going to give you the Steve Jobs, Issey Miyake. No, no, no, no, no. What is Apple wearing? I think Apple's wearing Uniqlo. Okay, great answer. What collection? Like summer, fall, like what? I think the Autumn and Spring, like a couple layers, water resistant.

50:20The Gstaad Guy:Okay. Because the reason why I choose those collections is because I think Apple is technical and it's not knitwear. Yep. So it's those Shield collections, kind of like Arcturics, but more plain. Wonderful. And then you also pick something that's essentially logoless, which says a lot about what you think about Apple. It's like minimalist design and all those other things. And then if I were to say, okay, what does Apple listen to? Music-wise? Yeah. U2. U2. But that's just because they used to preload U2. I was going to say, is it because they preload U2? They used to preload U2. I think actually the Beatles.

50:56The Gstaad Guy:Okay, the Beatles. So timeless, classic. Exactly. Timeless, classic, community, happy. Okay. And then in the realm of the party, who are they at the party? I think Apple is trustworthy. So they're in the corners. They're not in the center. Yep. Apple is kind to everyone, but not the center of attention either. Yeah. And Apple is caring for people. Okay. So designated driver. great answers is it because they have apple care plus they have apple care plus pro max so i would ask that question and then i would follow it up with um who are the competitors of apple and who are they at the party and i asked that without saying who the competitors are because one i like to see who people think the competitors are because sometimes they're straight just wrong yeah and who they think we're competing against is not who like i love i love I love this question.

51:54And then after they say, I think our competitors would be XYZ, and then they would show up this, and then you frame them in the sense of the party, like who they would be. Okay. That question takes me like 20 minutes to get through, but it weeds out a lot of people to see, one, can they think a little bit out of the box? Do they understand the actual brand? Do they know the competitive set? And can they identify who our audience is and who we should be reaching based on those little categories that we're talking about, whether it's the clothes, type of music, what sports they're interested. in like all those things in culture that matter i'll pepper those in to get an idea of how well this person knows the brand and how they can think about that so that's that's my go-to filter to see

52:33The Gstaad Guy:how people are can we play the apple competitors game yeah yeah yeah so who do you think so so who's the competitor okay i think it's it's a it's a busy party it's a busy party yeah busy party party's packed so in one in in the center of the room you have huawei oh my gosh you went for a deep cut Huawei is wearing a tank top flexing its big muscles Really? Because of all the folding screens So it's like, look, I can fold my screen four times Yeah, yeah, yeah Don't worry about the UI Don't worry about how easy it is to migrate your stuff over I'm big and strong, look at my muscles Look at my muscles Great I think that's Huawei Okay And then you have, in the other corner, like the silent power of, hey, that guy's really smart, people don't realize it And that's, he's cool, but he's, you know, he's understated.

53:25The Gstaad Guy:He's a threat. I can't wait to hear who this is. Who is this? I think this is Carl Pei and nothing. Oh, that's a good one. Okay. I think that's Carl Pei. Okay. Then you have Samsung. Yeah. And Samsung. But what about nothing's design? Nothing's design is meant to be a little bit like. Inspired by Apple in many ways. But it's also a statement. Like it's bolder and more interesting. So like, I don't see. So just to take your analogy. Please. nothing isn't standing or sitting in the corner silent it has elements to it that's flash and sizzle beyond some of the other phones which is why like they have the you know all the stuff that's happening on the back of the screens and all that stuff so you know you know in in friend groups the person that doesn't say much but when they say something everyone's meaningful so that that's nothing i think that's nothing fair the reason why i think that is because from far away nothing's unassuming yeah and it's only impressive when you actually pick it up yeah and you see the the lights at the back and all those things yeah and far just looks like a smartphone whereas a Huawei from far you're like what is that these gold colors and it folds out like a map you know it's like what is that it's your Huawei exactly it's so absurd nothing is not absurd no it's not absurd it's like it's like this little gem that you actually have to discover I find yeah yeah what is that and someone has to story tell yeah yeah you know so i think and the i love the um like see-through nothings as well where you can see some of the mechanics yeah i think that's like a uh if nothing was a brand would be valence by arcterics yeah it's arcterics like more premium yeah tailored so still like performance but it's also urban and cool totally i think i think i think nothing is valence um samsung i think samsung is a rich kid samsung is a rich kid you know i think it's like well he sees what you get it's there you know he's told you what he does yeah and that's why you know what he does because he's told you himself yeah okay i mean if we were doing an interview you'd be hired without a doubt the way you broke that down i mean any phone manufacturing hardware companies should be reaching out to you to get insight I appreciate it I used to work at Apple oh I used to work at Samsung there you go and I also advised Carl a bit and like I love nothing so me too they're doing some good stuff Carl's good if Statt guy had a phone what phone would it be a Virtue oh of course none of the other ones none of the Virtue the discontinued Virtue the completely inaccessible discontinued version of one exactly or just an iphone an iphone with with like 12 sim cards oh just love love e sims that's so funny yeah like like loads of sale e sims yeah do you say do i use what sayly no sayly oh my god do you roam i mean yeah i guess oh i have my uk sim and i have my us sim fine and uh i i don't i don't think i roam do i oh sayly's gonna change the game for you well because i have t-mobile if i'm international No, it just uses T-Mobile.

56:41And it's free.

56:42The Gstaad Guy:It is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Full high speed the whole time? Five gigs per each country that you're in. And I rarely exceed that because I'm not in the country for like more than two weeks. Okay, fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nassali is like, basically you just download eSIMs. You just download eSIMs. You just download them. So you just prepay, download eSIMs, it's loaded, and then you're just good to go. And you're good to go. And I, maybe I'm over paranoid, but I'm paranoid of like public Wi-Fi hotspots. So I just have. I think that's fair. Yeah. I wouldn't rely on those. So I'd rather just use my T-Mobile.

57:13The Gstaad Guy:So I even tether to my laptop. Oh. I watch full Netflix movies through my Saili or put on my iPad. Oh, I got to look at this. How do you spell it? S-A-I-L-Y. It's the NordVPN founders. Okay. So there's also a lot of trust built in, which I like. That's great. Because I'm very scared to go in. You know, like when you land in random countries and cities and they have those buy some card at the airport? Oh, I'm scared of those too. I'm scared of those. Someone's going to throw in a SIM that's just going to drain all your crypto. Something. Drain whatever it is you have on your phone. Exactly. I actually got hacked once through airport Wi-Fi.

57:49No way. Yeah.

57:52The Gstaad Guy:Like four years ago, maybe. Just signed into airport Wi-Fi. Do you know which airport? Yeah, I'm not going to say it because I feel bad for the country. Oh, okay. It's just out of respect to the country. If that country were to walk into a party, what would they redress again?

58:08The Gstaad Guy:but yeah i i i remember i refreshed my socials and an hour later they were just oh really yeah oh okay it wasn't good yeah that's not good that's not good yeah i'd love to know more about how you feel about universities because you're also a father i am how how does the way you hire impact the way you raise your kids oh my goodness that's a good question i don't care if my kids go to college well and it doesn't mean they can't mess around and just like you know go do whatever they want um we we've talked about this and luckily my wife is on the same page as i am but um i don't have a high degree of value for tradition i went through college four-year degree went to grad school got my mba i want to teach at a grad program so i do believe in teaching i do believe that people who want to go down that path, there's a lot of opportunity there.

59:02But personally, I don't feel the college degree is worth the investment in the U.S. that it once had. So if my kids were to say, we put together a plan and the plan is for the next four years, here's what we want to learn, here's what we want to develop, and our objectives are to do X, Y, Z. And whether that's start a business or travel with the intention of learning something and picking up a skill and they say with the money that we would have put towards college we want to do this instead if it's a sound plan I would approve it and I wouldn't I wouldn't judge it harsher than I would if they were to make the decision to go to college because the thing that I also realized is the things that I learned in college you can claim indirectly helped me but from a practical standpoint the field that I'm in didn't exist when I was in college and there was no way for me to learn about what I'm doing now.

59:54And it's only getting more exacerbated as like the world of AI is exploding. Like even if kids learn about AI in class today, how that manifests itself five years from now is going to be radically different than what they learned. Yeah. So I'm not a huge, you know, proponent of like, you have to go to school, education is everything, which is also ironic because like the generation before me, especially my parents being immigrants, that was the only thing that mattered. It was just like, education first and foremost if you have to fall back on anything it's that's on that i honestly don't have a a real like desire for them to go to school now if they want to go to school i'll support it if they want to go to state school or an ivy or whatever school like it's up to them i really don't care as long as they feel like they know what they're getting into and they're going to get something out of it if they say i just want to go to school to meet people and learn how to be like a part of society and get to know a community of folks that are like-minded and just expand my mind like great go to college that's exactly what that's for but if they're like i want to go to college to be you know a lawyer a doctor engineer great that's also perfect for that but if they were like i want to be an entrepreneur i'm going to college because when they say something silly i'd be like you don't need to go to college for that actually you could probably learn that doing other things like starting your own business so i'm not really one to um have that much you know a preciousness about the education and the institutions of like you know years gone by

1:01:29The Gstaad Guy:you're a cool dad i don't know if i call dad you are a cool dad i think to me that's a cool dad well yeah i hope they see that i don't think they how old are they seven and nine so very cute my son is very academically strong yeah like if if he were to go to college i think he would do well he's been taking tests in the uk and in uh the u.s recently and his test scores are like through the roof so i more so would love for him to go to college for not the academic reasons but if you were to say like i just want to go meet people like find a community of folks that would stretch my thing yeah but like great like go to a place that'll do that um but uh yeah my daughter's a little bit more of like a free spirit she's also strong academically but she's not like as you know hitting it above the marks that like my son is if she's like I really want to go to school because I want to learn this specific thing I'd be like great but if she's just like I want to start a bakery I'd be like absolutely that's a great idea now I would help her scale that bakery and figure out like organic content how to make it like really popular and then make her the most successful baker under the sun you know like Cedric Grilet status exactly but like you know whatever they want to do I have a lot of heart for you know the passion that kids have and whatever they want to explorer i would be fully behind it and if they literally wanted to be bakers i would love that like that would be a joy of mine if we could just bake something together and have that haven't turned that passion into like an actual business that'd be amazing i love it yeah you're mentioning a lot of real world businesses which i'm a big fan of but i'd love to know how you feel about screen time with your kids oh as close to zero as possible yeah yeah i don't i don't get in screen time so when they were younger uh we would let them watch like bluey and it would be like once a week and they get to watch like three episodes so that's 24 minutes is that like a cocomelon sort of thing bluey is way better than cocomelon i think it's the australian it's an australian show okay i think the bbc picks it up but it's on disney plus okay and it's like a family of dogs and they all have australian accents so the irony is like this generation is completely messed up when it comes to accents because americans watch peppa pig so they pick up this british accent yeah british kids watch bluey so they have an australian accent australians watch american show so they have american accents so it's all mixed but um yeah we would let them watch maybe 30 minutes a week okay um that's not much at all no and then as far as like screen time now they're in school where they have ipads and laptops for homework so if i were to say like take that aside because they have to function for their class like on the ipad and on the on the uh laptop we just started allowing them through apple um like messages to communicate with their friends in london so then my daughter gets like five minutes a day uh at night after she's all done and getting ready for bed she can then message her friends who are in london so that when they wake up they can see her message and they can respond and then when she goes to bed she can respond so they're never messaging each other at the same time unless it's a weekend but they can like send messages to each other is it like a messaging for kids app that apple made or is it just iMessage it's just iMessage but we put all the parental controls on it so they're only able to message each other and nobody else outside of that ecosystem well and then we also monitor what they're talking about so amazing that's the only screen time the only time they get to have full screen time is if we're flying somewhere far then they get like a couple hours where if it's like a 12-hour flight they're going to get a couple hours where they can like watch a movie or play a game but zero social media zero like very minimal tv screen time yep and even then it just shows that we purposely you know let them watch and then um messaging they can message their grandparents and facetime them whatever they want yeah so literally outside of that i don't believe kids under 13 should be on any form of social media.

1:05:37I don't think they should be on screens. I think the addictions that we started to develop is like adults living in this generation are things that we will probably regret down the road in the time that we've wasted. So I don't, I don't let them do that at all.

1:05:52The Gstaad Guy:I'm curious how you feel about knowledge access versus acquisition while, while parenting more specifically what I mean by that is to me if I ask someone a question and they pick up a book and they say oh here's your answer and reference a book versus just know the answer I'm pretty much equally impressed as long as the answer is cohesive with the question right and the same for me goes for looking something up online or asking chat GPT so I I'm a big fact checker my friends and family hate it but i have chat gpt on my home screen on my phone yep i just click it and shlove asking in fact checking things yeah as a parent are you happy with your kids not needing to learn as many things because they can refer to things more easily and more as they age i see um i i like the curiosity and the approach to thinking more than i care about the answer at this stage so when my son asks me a question my default is to pick up chat chat gbt and just ask it and then get the answer yeah but what i started to do over the last year is i ask him what he thinks first and then when he tells me what he thinks i ask him break down why you think that and then he'll break that down and then as we get further and further and further along i'll then follow up with like okay now let's look together and see if you were close and i don't care if he was actually close or not.

1:07:28I just want to know how he's breaking things down and how he's thinking about the problem. If it's a very simple thing, like he asked me the other day, actually, this is a fun one. I actually, I forgot to check it. He said, so we were landing back at JFK and he said, do more planes fly out of JFK or do more planes fly into JFK? And I was just like, I don't actually know, but how would you break it down? He's like, well, how big is the city? And so then we were trying to figure out like how big the city was. And he's like well do more people visit or do more people live here and i didn't know where he was going but he was trying to figure out like i like the question what's the likelihood like you know he asked these questions all the time but then we asked you know he said like okay you know ask your mom and see if she has a like hypothesis so he goes to his mom and she just always gives like simple quick it's the same number that go in and go out because they can't just stay there they have to leave.

1:08:21And so I'm like, okay, very practical answer. We need to go look this up and tell them the answer. But like, I didn't even have the thought to look it up because we were just dissecting the problem and trying to analyze it and then get different points of views. So yeah, hers was very simple. It was just like, if a plane comes in, it has to leave. So you're going to get the same number and the same number out. But like, yeah, having him think it through and try to think of all the variables makes it a fun challenge, regardless of what the answer is. Because yes, he can always go to chat. to read and look up the answer.

1:08:49But the process to break it down is where I find the real learning at this age at least. Absolutely.

1:08:55The Gstaad Guy:I even find it more interesting conversationally, process over product. Oh yeah, of course. Like if someone tells me, oh, this person achieved this or this person's business went bankrupt because of that, I love hearing the process of why those things are far more than just the final product. I mean, that's why podcasts, like how I made it, And documentaries about all this stuff exist because I think more people are fascinated by that journey than just knowing the end result. Now, you kind of, in the back of your mind, want to know how it ends just so you can know where this is steering. But I think the journey is always the more fun.

1:09:35And no entrepreneur will tell you that the millions or billions that they made at the end of it all is what matters. They will always reference the journey. So that's kind of where I think a lot of people forget about. And as a team manager, do you look for, do you try to understand process regardless of whether or not the product was correct or not? For me, process matters because in my world, marketing at the speed of culture is an actual pillar that I find to be a competitive advantage. So process matters to me because if you can hack into the process and make things more efficient, like we were able to engineer campaigns in a 72-hour timeline versus two months, that's a competitive advantage.

1:10:26so I find process for me is less about the craft which is what other people might talk about but more so how you develop competitive advantages within things that most people would find to be just table stakes because everyone has to go through a process yeah everyone thinks it takes two months if I told you it then takes 72 hours to do the same thing it's now a huge advantage for me that everyone else is overlooked yeah so i will look at things like process um with that lens more so than like what were the learnings and how do we get there and all that stuff i just want to hack through things and be as efficient as possible can you elaborate on this idea of marketing at the speed of culture yeah so in today's world going through a traditional campaign timeline and bring something to market months after the team concepted it and the insight was born would put you probably about one month and three weeks behind where it was relevant.

1:11:27Yeah. And I find that most things, no matter how big they are, have less than like a five day shelf life so if you're going to win in today's marketing you have to be able to bring work to life in two ways either you anticipate where culture is going and you're so good at that yeah that by the time you bring something out it's happening in that moment so you have to anticipate trends anticipate you know where the macro things are moving and then like what insights you're you're leveraging or you just figure out a way to hack the process and get something to market within a window where that thing is still hyper relevant so within five days so within five days so if you can get something out within five days that brings your brand into a moment i don't mean like the lame stuff of like oh there's a trend happening on tiktok let's have our brand jump on that trend and then capture our 15 seconds of like you know fame and get the likes and share I don't care about that.

1:12:24But like thinking about what, you know, TikTok did when I was there or thinking about what Liquid Death is able to do or like Ryan Reynolds and his crew with like maximum effort and how they move sort of at that speed. They call it fast advertising. I called it marketing at the speed of culture. ultimately I think they're all tapping to this idea that if you don't have a team that's nimble enough to develop content that's capitalizing on a thing that's happening in the moment you're not going to be relevant by the time you develop an actual campaign that comes to market so I tend to take more um put more emphasis and weight on moving quickly than having it be perfect because I think no one cares about perfect these days if anything imperfect actually sells

1:13:13The Gstaad Guy:as well. Yeah, it does. And I still find, you know, Super Bowl ads fascinating because it's such a big moment to like get a lot of attention. But like instead of taking three months or in some cases six months to develop a Super Bowl ad, you should be able to put together a Super Bowl ad within two weeks so that by the time it hits, you know, air on February 8th or whatever day the Super Bowl is this year, people will be like, I cannot believe they were able to pull that off because that thing that they're talking about was relevant this past week and now it's in the Super Bowl. That's the speed that I think people need to have in order to win.

1:13:50And knowing that you have to traffic that Super Bowl spot a week before, you could give it a little bit of leeway. So you should be within two weeks of when something in culture breaks and have it on air for the Super Bowl. Not like six months out where you're like, oh, that looked so pre-planned that it just feels like it's no longer relatable at all.

1:14:08The Gstaad Guy:And at scale, I assume it's easier to move quickly than it is to predict where culture is moving 100 yeah very few people can predict things that far in advance um i've seen a couple people that can do it fairly well but yeah it's much easier to move quickly and engineer that process than to be on top of culture time and time and time again what are the levers to you other than pace and cultural relevance when trying to put together a great campaign that's culturally relevant? So I believe we have three distinct competitive advantages as a company. One is my tolerance for risk is very high. So my team knows that they need to push the edge.

1:14:51Like we will work with certain folks and they never fully understand until they start working with me for a few months where my tolerance is. so they always share ideas initially that are very safe and then i push really hard to get them out of that safe zone and they still come back with something that's just a little bit like slightly left of safe and i'm like no no no like you need to be here like way out in this area where i feel uncomfortable and i want to like pull you back in a little bit so it takes you know a certain creative to like understand my appetite for for risk and how to be on culture so that's one one advantage because most cmos slash presidents won't won't look that way secondly the speed and the pace that's another one that i mentioned so i won't get too deep into that but that's a competitive advantage when everyone's moving slowly if you move fast you'll win and then the third one is the network that we have especially now with main street advisors and then um diageo and then my personal network, that is a competitive advantage.

1:15:59Like we are literally a text or a phone call away from some of the world's most influential people, including yourself. And we are able to talk to the world's most creative folks as well, including yourself. And the fact that we have that access has to be an advantage. So if we're not talking to you, if we're not reaching out to our network, if we're not connecting to the brands that we think are moving culture, whether it's like Liquid Death or whoever else there is, then we're doing ourselves a disservice. So the fact that like we can have a phone call with the CEOs of these companies or the founders of these companies or the creators themselves, that's a huge advantage.

1:16:33So those are the three things that I look at in every campaign we do. How do we make it quickly? How do we bring in our network to really enhance it and blow it out of the water? And how do we push the creative so that the risk and the like edge is like almost palpable and it's like attention where people are like, oh my gosh, that's fun and exciting work. So those are the three things that I would put into all of our campaigns and try to make sure that we instill in our philosophy as a company.

1:17:00The Gstaad Guy:And thank you for those very kind phrases. Of course. Very kind of you. I love it. On this podcast, we always play a game of à la poubelle versus fantastique. Okay. À la poubelle in French is to the trash, as you know. Of course. And fantastique is things we love and celebrate. Absolutely. Are there a list of things in both categories in your world, maybe in culture in your industry that you would want to change and throw à la poubelle and some habits or things you'd want to celebrate and call out as fantastique. Do we start with à la poubelle all across the board? I don't know if KPIs and the way that people use them are driving the right amount of impact.

1:17:51and I feel like not all KPIs obviously, but a lot of the ones that people chase are Alapubel. Fine. I think that the role of the CMO moving forward is Alapubel. Why is that? I find that like of all the executive offices, let's call them, the CFO's role has not changed in the last 10 years. And the CFO is the CFO. Yep. The COO, for the most part, unless you're in a very innovative industry, it's the same role. So also the same. The amount of change that CMOs have had to take on over the last five years, forget the last 10, the last five years, it goes beyond marketing in their role that I almost feel that like having them called just a chief marketing officer where the traditional idea is like, okay, so you make campaigns.

1:18:49and you do Super Bowl ads and you host events. It's not that anymore. And we've been putting a lot of pressure on CMOs to evolve and oversee growth and customer service and insights and, you know, all these other aspects of the company that I almost feel like just positioning the CMO as the cost center that uses money to make a bunch of creative ads to win awards is sort of like Alipubel. Like that's not really what it is anymore.

1:19:18The Gstaad Guy:I do want to go back to the Al-Pubal game, but I want to talk about this now that we're here. Okay. Your priority on cultural understanding and alignment, I think, is one that businesses definitely share in theory. Every business wants that in theory, right? I think in practice, the way I've seen that work successfully for some businesses is when they have quite young and nimble marketing teams with people that are quite culturally aware and culturally involved conversationally. And usually younger people are more in tune with that, particularly freelancers a lot of the time. So I'd love to know how you feel about, one, how age impacts awareness of culture, but two, how full-time versus freelance leads to better or worse outcomes for you as an operator.

1:20:16I don't know if age is as much of a factor as it was previously. I find internet awareness slash like cultural curiosity is probably a bigger job. So like if someone is whatever age they are, but they're obsessively on the internet and they're coming through all the different moments in culture and they're in all the platforms, they would be just as knowledgeable as someone that's much younger so i don't need someone who's telling me about six seven or like whatever else there is that's like trending i'd rather have someone that knows like what the insight is that's driving this like cultural meme and like where it originates and how to like capitalize on that so age is less a factor more just like cultural curiosity and internet awareness as a whole probably a bigger factor love it um the other one that you said was freelance versus full-time that's nuanced because i don't think we can categorize people into their i don't even know what you call that like their work capacity because the assumption is that freelancers are picking up a bunch of different projects and they have exposure to more things so they have different perspectives and that someone full-time is stuck in their own like one world and they're only focused on that one thing yeah i think with those there's pros and cons in either way so having the stability and ability to focus on one brand gives some edge to the full-time person but then having the experience across multiple areas it's almost like do you want someone that's superficially knowledgeable at a lot of things or someone that can go deep on a few things you can't say one or the other you'd in some cases, this person's better suited.

1:22:08In some cases, this person's better suited. That to me is more like the full-time versus freelance because freelancers are likely to be really deep on their skill, but then really surface level on the experience they've had across different companies and the companies in the industries that they're in. Whereas the person that's full-time will go deep on the industry and deep on their role.

1:22:27The Gstaad Guy:Do you work with both on projects? We work with both. Yeah, yeah, I have no issue. I actually try to supplement our team with freelancers because I find there's moments in the, you know, seasonal cycle where you might want to ramp up and you bring some people on, but then you ramp down and then they don't need to be there and they can work on other things. So I'd rather have like some full-time folks and then a stable of freelancers that we can trust and that they know my appetite for risk tolerance and they know what kind of creative I like. And we can, you know, leverage them for a few things that are important during the moments that matter rather than like, you know, only looking at one or the other but love it and aligned we can go back to alapubal sorry i was very curious no no i love it uh what else is alapubal um i think our traditional org structures alapubal yeah i i stripped my team it's very lean and it's very flat it's basically leadership which is most of the team and then just me and i don't want to have too many people stacked on top because I don't find managers who only manage and delegate work adding as much value.

1:23:35So I'd rather just eliminate those layers and let people run. And if they need help, I'm there. If they need specific answers to questions, I'm there. If they need guidance or the vision or the strategy or what we're building or some creative input, I'm there. but I want like a team of just you know people who can just run and do their own their own thing so I don't have huge structures whereas like when I was at TikTok and Samsung and Disney it was all built around these like empires and the structures were massive and you were almost given you know more um you know uh respect if you had this gigantic team so everyone was trying to build up their teams to be these like massive organizations I don't think that's efficient I don't think that matters.

1:24:22So I think that's all à la poubelle. As far as like fantastique, is this in marketing or what's the category?

1:24:33The Gstaad Guy:Whatever floats your boat. I don't think there's enough emphasis on internal culture. Places that truly build amazing internal culture, which is really hard to build and then also harder to maintain. that's something that I think more leaders should be very focused on because I've seen companies crumble because the culture wasn't there even though the product might be great even though everything else might be great but if the culture's not there it ends up becoming an issue so I think more emphasis on internal culture would be fantastic oh I think being on LinkedIn fantastic yeah yeah so i picked up a consultant to help teach my team how they could be better like all my direct reports how they can kill it on linkedin and it sounds counterintuitive because you'd be like well aren't they just using linkedin to find other jobs i don't think so i think people inherently want to showcase what they're proud of and a lot of the times they're proud of their work And I personally believe that thought leadership will only benefit the company.

1:25:45And if you give your direct reports or your leadership team the tools to be amazing at platforms like LinkedIn, it also gives your company another opportunity to tell its story in different areas. And especially with like my team where you have someone that's running strategy, someone's running design, someone's running partnerships and events, someone's like running finance. All of these folks should develop their own thought leadership and be able to speak on podcasts and speak in public, on stage, and represent our company in the best way possible. And if they don't have that opportunity, then that's on me as a leader to not provide that.

1:26:27And so I genuinely feel that LinkedIn is a platform that is underutilized because people just see it as a tool to look for jobs and only be active on it in the periods where you're looking and not consistently putting out content that matters to people. So I think LinkedIn and enabling your team to feel empowered to go out and do that and showcase what they're working on is fantastic. Love it. Um, I will say the last thing that I would say is fantastic is just, um, if you have a big problem that you want to solve, I actually think the smaller the team, the more likely you'll be able to solve it and crack it.

1:27:13The bigger the team, the less likely. So when I come in and I'm asked to help reshape a brand or build a brand or do those things when they're typically in a crisis, the first thing I think about is what is the smallest team required to get this done? Because that will probably be the group that will be most likely to succeed in having a huge organization. So I think Fantastique would be pairing your team down to the most basic and simple of components and ensuring that you have the resources, but making sure that you don't have a bunch of, you know, politics or infighting or a bunch of perspectives that ultimately dilute the whole, you know, creative idea.

1:28:00Just have a very small lean team to attack a very big problem.

1:28:04The Gstaad Guy:as you're saying that I'm thinking about problems I've had to solve in different categories and I think that's very very sound and very aligned with the moments we're able to solve problems well and quickly you don't want to solve a problem well and slowly and you don't want to solve a problem badly and quickly the name of the game is well and quick it's awesome well Nick I really really enjoyed this conversation this was fun, thank you so much this was really fun, really insightful and I feel like I could talk to you for another three hours. I have so many more questions. Same. Thank you so much for taking the time today.

1:28:41The Gstaad Guy:Yeah, of course, of course. Thank you. Thank you. I wish you the best of luck on Sirach, Lobos and everything else you're doing. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you, Nick. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Shtad Guy podcast. If you're keen to learn more, please follow along by engaging with our social channels on Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, YouTube and Apple Podcasts. And we look forward to seeing you next week. Merci beaucoup. À la prochaine. And a big hug from the Start Guy.

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