The 'vanilla imperative': Why American ads play it so safe

0:09Ann Marie Kerwin: Hello and welcome to The Work Podcast. I'm your host, Ann Marie Kerwin, America's Editor, and today we are diving into a paradox that has puzzled global marketers for decades. America practically invented modern advertising. It's home to some of the world's biggest and most innovative brands, and yet somehow it has proceeded to make some of the most careful, literal, and some say deliberately bland commercials in the world. Global marketers who sit through a reel of American ads next to work from London or Paris or San Paolo can feel the creative gap immediately, according to my guest today. But is this carefully bland approach actually a creative failure, or is it a structural necessity, even a strategic fiduciary duty?

0:55Ann Marie Kerwin: To unpack this, we are joined today by brand strategist Shan Begleon. Shan is a co-founder of Kumquat AI and author of a new article on work called The Vanilla Imperative, Why U.S. Advertisers Are So Carefully Bland. Shan argues that in a nation as culturally loose yet ideologically polarized as the United States, playing it safe isn't a sign of creative cowardice. It is the only rational economic move to avoid alienating a fragmented market. And he tells us to remember that vanilla is a terrific flavor. Before we talk to Shan, here's a quick message from our sponsor. If you're listening to this podcast, you'll know that WALK is the home of leading effectiveness thinking.

1:39Ann Marie Kerwin: And now we're teaching you everything you need to know about the fundamentals of strategy. WALK Strategy Fundamentals is WALK's new digital course for junior or entry-level strategists. You'll learn from award-winning case studies and hear directly from top strategists and Wark's own experts, giving you the latest industry insights alongside proven practical frameworks. Sharpen up your skills to excel in 2026 with Wark Strategy Fundamentals. Available now at wark.com slash learning.

2:14Ann Marie Kerwin: Chan, welcome to the Wark podcast. Thanks for being here with me.

2:19Shann Biglione: Thanks for having me.

2:21Ann Marie Kerwin: so you wrote an article for work recently that opens with this almost painful comparison of european ads or global ads compared to american ads you describe a typical uk reel as having an irony and a wink and the french selling with sex absurdity and a shrug and the brazilians with theatrical exuberance but then you say american reels sells with a smile a benefit and a legal disclaimer. So what was like your personal aha moment when you realized that American ads tend to be bland, carefully bland?

2:58Shann Biglione: Well, I think everyone who's traveling to the US gets that experience at some point watching TVs in sports bars and watching what's kind of going on on screens, really. I think there are different reasons for why it's happening. I'm going to get into those, but it's pretty clear to you when you walk into a TV show and see all those interruptions is that a lot of it is just pretty simple and straightforward and rational. We have a lot of pharma ads, for instance, which are very regulated, and they have to say certain things as well. And so I think the overall advertising pressure is higher than any other country I've lived in.

3:35Shann Biglione: We have a lot of advertising, lots of advertising cuts. It's kind of annoying. and yeah the creativity of itself is not is not always what we're used to especially in markets like you know australia or the uk which is often held as as the big ones so you experience that i think is a pretty big whiplash the first time you arrive it doesn't mean there's not good advertising in the u.s it definitely is some of my favorite campaigns are made in america but by and large it's like this and i think the research proves that and so i know marketers often get beaten up

4:06Ann Marie Kerwin: for being boring and that the knock on the American ads is that they're so literal. But when we talk to agency creatives, we know how hard it is to get envelope pushing ads through when they're trying to sell it to the client. And you argue that this vanilla flavor of American ads isn't really a creative failure as much as a fiduciary duty. Can you tell us what you mean by that?

4:34Shann Biglione: Well, in the plain English sense, basically, it's that the fiduciary detail is making sure you pay off the investors and shareholders of the business. And so I think from that perspective, the truth of the matter is Boring has paid for a lot of yachts. And it does work. You should think of the greatest brands out there. Most of them are pretty bland. I mean, I know I'm going to offend someone, but the blend and the vanilla aspect is not a negative. And we'll get into this into the podcast as to why the vanilla matters. But you think of the Coca-Cola's and McDonald's of this world. These are very, very mainstream brands.

5:09Shann Biglione: And they need to kind of revolve around those aspects. Because, you know, when you win in an election, you win by 50.1%. As everything, you buy 50 % plus one vote. When you want to win a market, you have to win as much of a market share as possible. And you cannot really alienate people. And I think that's one of the foundational parts of the piece here for me when I wrote it is that the vanilla aspect is an imperative. And it is the U.S. is a more complicated market than most people outside of the U.S. realize. And sometimes even within the U.S. I've had this conversation over the past 12 months, which is I ended up writing the pieces.

5:43Shann Biglione: Most people, when we talk about it, like, yeah, you're right. There is that tension in America that we don't actually experience elsewhere. And for a brand that fiduciary duty is just, I'm here to increase market share. And market share means capturing segments that may not be resonating the same way everybody would.

6:01Ann Marie Kerwin: Yeah, exactly. And your piece cites 30 years of academic content analysis showing that the American commercial speech is consistently more literal, information-driven, and allergic to friction than its global peers. Why do you think American advertising is structurally built to make verifiable claims to strangers rather than sharing jokes with cousins, which is how you characterize the difference between American and European messages? Yeah.

6:31Shann Biglione: Well, the first one is that it is the most litigious consumer market on earth. You can get sued pretty easily. So there is that aspect. And I think a lot of people have this on the back of their minds that offending someone could be a real pain in your ass further down the line. Legally speaking. So there is that aspect. But I don't think that's the entirety. Which for me the core of it really is the fact that humor and irony need those shared contexts to be decoded. And so when we go about those things that make us smile, make us a bit more curious, they're not as universal in the US. And it's going to be harder to kind of find those common grounds.

7:08Shann Biglione: Even humorists and comedies, I find there's different flavor and they're pretty strong in terms of how they go about it. Like, Enrique Gervais is definitely not mainstream in the U.S. and will piss off a lot of people, but it will be very, very popular in the U.K., for instance. And so that's basically it. At the end of the day, we kind of grew up as cousins in some of those countries. Not to say everybody is the same. There's not more variances. I mean, I'm French, and, you know, we can talk about the fact France is looking more and more like the U.S., for instance, at the moment. But we lack those threads.

7:42Shann Biglione: And think of this like when you move to another country, it's hard to relate to the humor, right? And the U.S. has a little bit of that aspect. It's like not everyone kind of coalesces around the same thing that makes them, you know, makes their spine tingle, if you will. So it's a little bit harder, I believe. And then you have one final fact, which I think we sometimes forget. Most global brands are American brands. And so I think from that perspective, they're not only trying to attack the U.S. market, but they also have a fiduciary duty to the global market shares. And so there is that extra aspect of when you try to please the world where it's Michael Jackson, it's not the who.

8:21Shann Biglione: So that type of mindset, I think, is much more universalist in the American culture. And that often requires softening the edges a little bit.

8:30Ann Marie Kerwin: So you write that unlike France or Sweden or Japan, which are held together by centuries of shared deep culture, sharing cuisine and language and the same dinner table debates, essentially, that America has inverted this. And you cite Samuel Huntington, who argued that American identity is built on a portable creed rather than blood settled by the most committed dissenters of the Protestant Reformation, who never got a cooling off period. How does this nation of true believers make life incredibly difficult for a mass market brand?

9:05Shann Biglione: Well, I mean, the thing is that to the point of Huntington, whom I quote in the piece, so he talks a lot about creed, not blood. And so this idea that America is a set of ideals, and you've heard Obama talking a little bit about this. And so that aspect of how they coalesced was different. And, you know, I always like to joke to people, it's one of the things you learn when you live in the U.S. that I forgot. I didn't really know before I moved here as a European. It's in the name. It's the United States of America. And we forget what it really means, that these are people at some point say, you know what?

9:42Shann Biglione: We have different views. And some of them, they were pretty stark views. And that disharmony was kind of part of the tension. They went through civil war on the back of some of those problems. but it's a group of states. And we'll talk a little bit about maybe some of those wider things and the ramifications and how sociologists kind of look at this, but it's not just like the coast versus the middle. There's more nuances into this, right? So that aspect of coming to America, America is the absorbent. It is a system where you can come from all around the world, like I have, like you have, from many, many people trying to say, look, there is an ideal we're trying to get towards.

10:20Shann Biglione: And that's what makes America interesting in its experiment. And so for marketeers, as they try to navigate that, of course it is hard because they're working in a tension where there is both this globalist aspect where you're trying to speak to people who come from loads of different views, but also trying to have this unifier, which is this creed of like, you know, what does it mean to really be in America? And that makes a very complex market that has this huge tension between trying to be a bit of everything and accessible to everyone, but also trying to define who they are. And America itself is going through that very motion at the moment.

10:54Shann Biglione: I mean, Huntington spoke a lot about those 60 years. For him, every 60 years is a crisis of ideals versus institutions. And he predicted 60 years ago that in 2020s would be the next one. And I think it's kind of validating when we see what's happening right now. It is hard because people are looking for where the meaning comes from. What defines us as a group is what America goes through. And as brands, we're often asked to have a say in it, to have a voice. I mean, how many times have you heard people say, yeah, well, you cannot just shut up about this problem. This is important. We need to go after them.

11:27Shann Biglione: Brands decided to, quote unquote, take sides, which I'm not making any judgment on, but it creates this very, very, very tension friendly universe for anyone to evolve it.

11:38Ann Marie Kerwin: So part of the way that you show that we have this fragmentation in America is moral fragmentation. You bring up Pew Researches showing this massive 44-point gap between American conservatives and liberals on whether Christianity is central to American identity. And you also mentioned Michelle Geflin's research on tightness and looseness, showing the U.S. has weak overall norms but massive regional variation. Do you want to just explain what this tightness and looseness research shows and how that leads to the vanilliness of America? Yes.

12:19Shann Biglione: So the tiniest looseness is 2011, 2014, so early 2010s research from Michelle Gelfland. And so she surveyed 33 nations on how strong the social norms are and how much defense they would tolerate. And so what she found is that there is tight cultures. So Singapore, Japan, Germany. I'm married to a German, so yes, I relate to that. Pakistan, they have very strong norms. They have low tolerance, more order, more monitoring of how things are happening. And then you have loose cultures. So US, Brazil, Netherlands, New Zealand, for instance, they have weaker norms, higher tolerance, they tend to be a bit more creative and open, but more disorderly as well.

13:05Shann Biglione: So that simplification is quite interesting to us because it shows already there are things we can play with here. And the reality is that tightness is actually making it easier because you know the rules. they're there. They're pretty well shared. And looseness is actually harder for a mock-tier often because like, no, no, if there's loose, how do you play with those stretches that you see there? She actually even further, because I think it validates even more the problem for the U.S. in 2014, she did a follow-up and she looked at all 50 states and what she found where there's a huge internal violence in the U.S.

13:36Shann Biglione: itself, which is for me the point of the vanillating parity of the U.S. marketeer is the fact that, you know, the South is very, very tight. The coasts are very, very loose. And so that aspect of looseness and tightness creates very interesting dynamics for marketeers as they were.

13:54Ann Marie Kerwin: Many of us, especially those who are my age, on the older age of the spectrum, grew up thinking that the mainstream was sort of the natural state of things. You know, I grew up with like three broadcast networks and, you know, daily newspapers and a very regimented media world. And of course, that's drastically changed. But you lay out how the mainstream was actually a historical aberration. We think this media fragmentation that we have now is an aberration, but it really sort of harkens back to a time when people weren't as connected by a mainstream. So now that broadcast viewing is down to around 20 % and we're all tuned into algorithms, what do you think the natural state America is reverting to and how does that change how marketers should talk to the populace?

14:51Shann Biglione: Well, I think humans are, you know, by nature, parochial. And so for most of history, not all of history, really, if you take out those few decades, the village, the parish, the guild, that's kind of how it worked. And I think, you know, what we've experienced in the 20th century was very novel, that I'd disconnect everyone with a single piece of content, for instance. And that is something that's going away. And I know Scott Galloway talks a lot about this as the death of brands because we don't have anymore the 30 seconds pre-roll that we can throw to millions of people and this sort of this shit.

15:29Shann Biglione: I take a slightly different take on this, especially as a marketeer. I disagree with Scott on the death of brands. I think it's even more important to have a brand than it used to be. But it is true that the mechanisms or the ease with which we can create a shared sense are vanishing. because the algorithm, because the fragmentation, and it's just not possible. And so what we're reverting to right now is not chaos, to be clear. It is really what was always underneath for us. And the reason it works that way is because humans are tribal. We always have been tribal. I can record my own podcasts, and my co-host, she was pointing out, there's research that shows you, if I flip the coin and tell you on this team, you're instantly going to be identifying more with that team over there.

16:14Shann Biglione: It's as easy as that for us to go to this. And the tribal nature of humans is built in. That's how we recognize ourselves as a group. And we'll talk about Jonathan Haidt potentially in this podcast as well, who talks about this group revolution. But that matters. Now, what I find is super interesting is that, yes, we are tribal, but we're multi-tribal. And that's one of the things that I think is going to be very interesting for marketeers. This is a theory. I forgot the researcher. I wish I need to look into this because when I was doing my master's in marketing, my teacher at the time, she was quoting this research.

16:42Shann Biglione: We're saying I'm old too, so it's like early 2000s. And, you know, the fact that when we're a consumer, we belong to many tribes. And so for me, for instance, I may be part of the surfing tribe, the marketing tribe, the Star Wars tribe, the gamer tribe, and so on and so forth. And we have different roles of engagement for how we interact with those. And what I think is super interesting about the ecosystem that we have recognized, it used to be that we had more of a singular tribe, the village. And it was kind of the way it was defined. And it was really hard to fit outside of that box. versus what we're seeing right now with the explosion of technology and social media and algorithms.

17:16Shann Biglione: It's like being middle to tribal has been easier than ever before. I mean, think of your interest centers on your social feed. There are different tribes that use different language and lexicons and things. And so that aspect of the tribal nature of humans, I think is going to matter hugely over the next few decades. And I don't think it's going to slow down. I think it's going to be a big part of it. I think it's going to be very interesting is how marketers are able to juggle the fact we're not a single tribe. And we've talked a lot about, you know, personalized advertising in the past and great, this one-to-one marketing.

17:46Shann Biglione: But I think we've put too much onus on the individual and not enough on the tribes.

17:51Ann Marie Kerwin: Yeah, I can see how it's more powerful to appeal to the tribe because we are influenced by our peers. And that's what makes us change behavior often, which is what, as marketers, we're trying to do, get people to change behavior. Yeah, you also say that several, you say several examples of modern brands that have successfully inverted this idea of how you appeal to the mass. And two of the examples you give, one was Nike's Kowin-Kopernik campaign and the other was Liquid Death. Do you want to just talk through how those fit in?

18:31Shann Biglione: Yeah. I mean, Nike is interesting to talk about because obviously they're not doing great right now. But the Kaepernick campaign was fascinating because they reached their peak in valuation three years after. So anyone who says they went broke and then went broke, I think is missing the point of what's happening to Nike. That is not the problem. I think Nike made a very calculated choice to this point of, you know, who do you really want to appeal to? And what they realized is the customer base tend to be more young, urban, diverse, and so on and so forth. And the Kaepernick thing, I think, meant right.

18:59Shann Biglione: I also do believe that people at Nike really felt it was the right thing to do. And in this case, you know, take a bow. I think it was the right thing to do. When you take liquid death, what's interesting with liquid death is they really went after a subculture, I mean, the heavy metal aspect, and kind of sort of built on it. And they made something fun and quirky and interesting, and they gradually built it into the mainstream. And that's, for me, you know, one of the textbook examples of how challenger brands, you know, eating the big fish, you've had a Morgan book and whatnot that talks about those aspects.

19:27Shann Biglione: This was a great, great case. And there's no wonder that Liquid Death was run by someone who came from marketing. This is someone who understands deep down how you create that interesting aspect in the market. So that's why when we say the playbook inverted, it's just like growth at the early stages is going to be easier when you play to the niche. For sure. You need people to care disproportionately about you because they have plenty of options already in the mainstream, most likely. And so that aspect of going for the tribe is going to be important. Now, the thing is, if you want to go more into the mainstream, you have to go beyond that tribe.

20:01Shann Biglione: That is essential. Otherwise, you will not make it there. That is the Byron Sharp aspect of appealing to the most. And so that is how those companies figure it out. I gave the example of Yeti as well. Yeti is another great brand. They started with hunting and fishing, and they did really, really well there. But how many brands do we know now? We're just doing super well with that niche and went out. Luxury brands as well. Lots of examples. It's so important to help that impact with that core tribe first. I think, to be able to kind of appeal to the wider stuff.

20:30Ann Marie Kerwin: Well, I think what's so interesting appealing to a tribe is like you get that authenticity with that tribe, you know, and you get that validation that like when you talk about Yeti, going after the hunting and fishing tribe means that these are products that have held up very well under like stressful circumstances. And they've, you know, so in some ways going after like that niche tribe makes you more

20:57Shann Biglione: appealing to the mainstream it is much harder to bullshit you were through a tribe much harder and that aspect alone makes it much easier after to say hey we were real we were there we were exactly you described we were able to be there for the people who really needed us that is such a massive proof point for how brands can then grow marketing and advertising are changing at pace but the core

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21:57Ann Marie Kerwin: so let's talk about the framework that you introduce in the piece the stretch never break framework so you advise marketers to run their brand like an ice cream counter you need weird flavors to stay relevant for specific tribes but a solid base that everyone can find is their comfort zone so how does a brand manager decide what their core vanilla is and what are the roles engagement for the weird flavors?

22:22Shann Biglione: Sounds super easy, but I think it's, for starters, you know, the vanilla really is what it stands for and what it permits at the core in simple terms. And the way I think about this is a bit more of a memory question than a positioning question, even though you need to make a choice of where you want to go into this. But this is where I'm a very Byron chart from that perspective, you know, what would your latest buyer, the one who thinks about you for three seconds, say you are? That thing, that's a good way to think a little bit of where does your common ground really reside. It's basically what is left once people who give a shit are out, once all the little things and superficial things that, you know, matter to you as a marketer.

23:07Shann Biglione: And I think marketeers is hard sometimes because we're overexposed to our brains. And so, you know, when you think about it, if you're into movies, you like weird movies. If you're into wine, you like weird wines. And if you're to your brand, you like the weird stuff you're doing with your brand. That is natural. It's just the way we operate as human beings. But kind of stepping back and really understanding, what is that space that we exist in? It doesn't have to be safe. It's just, what is that space that we have that really kind of goes? And so that aspect for me is really, really important.

23:37Shann Biglione: And that's why I took out that, there's three things you can think of. the snap, the overlap, and the tripwire. But do you want me to go through all three right now?

23:44Ann Marie Kerwin: Yes, that actually was, my follow-up was going to be, can you talk us through your three questions to find the vanilla, which, as you said, the snap, the overlap, the tripwire.

23:54Shann Biglione: The snap, it just means, like, literally the snap of a finger. Like, what happens between that snap of a finger? Like, those three seconds, what is going to be returning? You know, the arches, the fries for McDonald's, for instance. You know, that's really, really important for you to go there. and most brands you will have an experience, but it's very important to not focus too much on your heavy buyers. It's critical to not just focus on the heavy buyers. You have to understand how the light buyers, the ones who don't give a shit, will be reacting to it and what they're going to say about you.

24:24Shann Biglione: The overlap is another test. So for instance, in this case, what you have is that you're trying to overlap different audiences. And so when we talked, we've not talked about the details, But, you know, if you think of the 11 nations of the United States, which was a piece of research I was referencing in there, you know, there's 11 different tribes that compose the U.S., not left, right, just like 11 different things, the Appalachians and whatnot. And so how do you reconcile an evangelical Texan and a secular Brooklynite who have very different moral compasses? That is a practical question. And that's one where testing your ideas against diverging audiences is a good way, as you look at the overlap, to understand, you know, where does the Venn diagram exist?

25:10Shann Biglione: When do we do something that pleases both? And having a chance to explore and define what those overlaps are is very, very important in the vanilla world. And what makes sometimes, it's literally how you soften your edges a little bit. And that's a very important part. But I would say in this case, America has one advantage, is that because it is designed this way, there are ways to identify those trends. There's been lots of sociological research on this for you to start creating different panels of customers where you can try to understand, cool, where do we play that starts creating tensions between them?

25:46Shann Biglione: And we start losing one versus the other. The last part is what I call the tripwire. And the tripwire is like the things that we really don't want to go too far. These are the load-bearing associations where this is not true anymore. Now, this is something that technically marketers should be really good at. You know, how many times have you met marketers like, great, but that's not who we are. And I think this is baked in and this is an aspect of positioning, but it's also an aspect of distinctiveness, if you will. And so that, knowing this is really, really critical. Mario and Nintendo, they know the tripwire is really, really well.

26:15Shann Biglione: There's loads of things they will never do. Disney, I worked from Disney, for instance. It was very clear. I mean, I remember the days I worked on Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean, for instance, between my age again. But like, you know, when Paris Bikirn came out, they were like, is this really a Disney movie? Like, are we sure? But that's what a company who is obsessed with this tripwire knows how to do. And the example I gave in here was the Ferrari Luce, the new electric vehicle, which for me tripped the wire. And I know it's a bit contentious because they're sold out. But I don't think selling out five-rent Ferraris in the current state with these people everywhere.

26:48Shann Biglione: Well, there is collectors everywhere is telling us much. I just I'm a big auto fan and I've seen the forums and I'll tell you the wire was tripped like a Ferrari is not introduced with light blue pastel weird shape that doesn't really belong on a racetrack you know the Ferrari is all about the outside of the redness and basically a car that just signifies completely and irreverently racing and that car for me was just a step where They will recover. They have too much credit in the bank, but I will not do five ruches in a row. That would be the death of Ferrari.

27:26Ann Marie Kerwin: So you also posit that you had two tests that you put in the piece to see whether your brand strategy will fly. Do you want to talk about them there, the screenshot test and the boomerang test?

27:40Shann Biglione: Yeah, so the first one, the screenshot test, this is about taking your edges work and removing all context about, you know, things that you do and who you are and whatnot and putting into a hostile feed. So trying to go after, I mean, obviously don't put it on social media too much, just don't want to blow up, but like putting these edges work without the context of what it is that you are as a company and see how people react from the different tribes is a good way for us to see where you are there and whether this edge is kind of anchored to your vanilla or whether it's kind of just floating out of the ether because you have to be able to make sure that it brings it back to you.

28:17Shann Biglione: and doing edgy work. I mean, McDonald's, I've given these, but McDonald's is a great company that has done fantastic vanilla work, but also has figured out how to do interesting things to the tribes. They've done lots of campaigns in the past few years. But as long as you make sure it kind of has something that ties it back to you, it needs to be there. If you lose the anchor, then you're just cosplaying and it's just not going to fly. The boomerang is, can this bring something back to your brand? Because I think that's what's interesting. Sometimes they go, as we've established, smaller brands tend to grow with their smaller tribe or their smaller nation.

28:52Shann Biglione: They grow up. It's a fantastic opportunity for a mainstream brand also to bring something back to the flavor. And so in this case, you know, McDonald's I think is my favorite example here. But like, you know, the Travis Scott meal, it sold at other restaurants, but it was still a quarter pounder with the extras. And so the hype that was borrowed there kind of still reign for the memory of McDonald's being pure McDonald's and the quarter pounder. And so the ability to go play with those things that are still true to your core and your vanilla is something really interesting. My favorite, though, is Barbie.

29:23Shann Biglione: I was very impressed with Barbie, both as a movie, both as a marketing campaign. And it's just like I huge respect because they knew that the tripwire is very close on Barbie. Very, very close. It is not an icon of feminism originally, let's be honest. And so what they've done with Barbie was just stunning because they stretched through as far as they could. They let Gerwig kind of go with it. but they've never lost the core of it. The aspirational mold in a plastic thing that she is about never really broke all the way to the last joke of the movie. And it's just like, I thought it was a brilliant exercise of how they did this.

29:57Shann Biglione: And for me, Barbie as a boomerang moment, perfect. Like I think the Barbie brand now is stronger thanks to the fact it has embraced its weirdness and its weird flavors.

30:07Ann Marie Kerwin: Yeah, Barbie is such a great example because it's really needing to appeal to the mom's nostalgia for Barbie all the way down to like, what's a little girl gonna actually love about Barbie, right? It's really a fascinating example. So what advice would you give to a CMO sitting on a major legacy American brand today? What should they take away from the vanilla imperative?

30:33Shann Biglione: I think the key thing for me, the reason I talk about the vanilla imperative is twofold. A, because I think we have to be aware that vanilla is a great flavor. And we should not be shooting it down. And I've seen people who think like uninteresting work doesn't work. It's not true. And it's not just a question of uninteresting, but like more vanilla work does work. And we have an imperative, especially for American marketers, to be there. And so celebrating what makes the vanilla is still very, very important. But the other side is, if you know anything about ice cream, You don't build an ice cream brand just with vanilla.

31:08Shann Biglione: You need to have some other flavors that go with it. And I think this is for me, like why I chose this metaphor of the vanilla here is because for me as an ice cream lover, you need to understand that your job is to really protect the vanilla, but not to contain yourself just with vanilla. You're not working in a media world and a consumer world where being just vanilla will trigger and protect you from every brand that attacks you. You have to go find the other flavors that are going to be fun. The fudge brownies and all those things are going to be good for you to play with. And so that for me is both a requirement to feel strong and empowered and confident about your vanilla.

31:47Shann Biglione: So Burger King failed a little bit on this, for instance, for a little while. They just for me lost track a bit of their vanilla here. They became the number two, the other brand that was trying to go after McDonald's. But you also need to kind of bring that interesting aspect. and it matters for CMOs because CMOs set the culture for what gets approved and what doesn't get approved. And so from that perspective, finding ways to stretch the vanilla, to go play with the other flavors is an equal part of the job. So that's ultimately what I think is really about is celebrate that vanilla but know that you should let your teams go play with flavors and figure out how to go and play with that universe as the ice cream parlor, if you will, of marketing.

32:28Ann Marie Kerwin: Thank you, Shan. Thanks so much for being with me today. I really appreciate it.

32:32Shann Biglione: Thank you, Annemarie.

32:33Ann Marie Kerwin: For all the folks out there planning brand strategies, remember it's better to define your vanilla yourself before an angry tribe defines it for you. Thanks for listening to The Work Podcast. Be sure to subscribe and follow so you don't miss an episode. I'm Annemarie Kirtland, America's Editor.