David Droga: My greatest lessons from 37 years in advertising

0:06Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored CMO. Now, the legend that is David Droger has recently stepped down as CEO of Accenture Song, and he's been in the industry for a full 37 years. And I thought now would be the perfect moment to sit down and ask David, what are the biggest lessons that he has learned from leading our industry over the last 37 years? I think it's fair to say that there aren't that many people on this planet that have had a bigger impact on the world of creativity than David has had. So here I'm asking him for his biggest lessons and what you can take from those.

0:38Here we go. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored CMO. We've got a returning guest. The boomerang. The boomerang. We've got a boomerang. David Droger, welcome back. It's good to see you again. I'm very happy to be here again. Happy to see you again with all your fancy equipment. Now I have to try harder. Well, you seem a bit more relaxed, I have to say now. It's like the weight of the world has lifted off my shoulders. What's happened in the last few weeks? Exactly. exactly well I have to say rumors of your retirement I think might be exaggerated I have a feeling that uh you're not going to be going quietly into the next well it's not a retirement as such it's I mean originally it was going to be a retirement and wisely and you know in a flattering sense they sort of asked me to stay on as vice chair and I really sort of had to understand what that meant they said well it's really up to me to you know decide what that is but they know my personalities because i care a lot about what i do and what i've done and people around me that i get to sort of cherry pick the the clients and the projects and some of the acquisitions and particularly the people that i can support and all that so it's a it's kind of a glorious weaning you know it as an ex-ex smoker i haven't smoked for 20 plus years you know how you wean yourself off with nicotine patches yeah maybe this is the equivalent of sort of weaning my way off of uh i like every day i think you and rory sutherland is the only two people i know that are vice chairs i again it's it's it sounds very fancy but it is great look i mean the thing is as i said i take any opportunity uh seriously so already just in the 10 days that i've stepped from stepped into this role because obviously i had to i had my pedal to the metal to the end of the financial year because i wanted to close it out you know with glory and hit certain things and you know and hand it over uh in a really great place but even in those 10 days i've sort of had some fantastic meetings already and i've all but i've also had some a few days where i've been able to just walk my daughter to school or go visit an art gallery things like that how wonderful it's unbelievable yeah it's unbelievable enjoy life no no i know i mean you know i also know my personality it's um you know i'm a thinker and a builder so for the rest of it you know my life i'm always going to be contributing hopefully in positive ways.

2:52Now the last few years, of course, you've been CEO and Essential Songs had a brilliant growth trajectory over those years. And it's great to see someone with your kind of creative talent leading an organization. We don't see many kind of CEOs that kind of have your kind of background. What have been the big lessons for you in that time? Well, you know, that was the whole point of why I took it so seriously, because I think more creative people should definitely be given those opportunities because i think that we look at the world slightly differently and i think that you know for some reason i think people assume if you're a creative minded person or you know a pure creative that doesn't mean you have a respect or an understanding of business or operations and which is just not true i mean there are certain look of course there are some creatives that are best left in the playpen and just left with the you know kept away from people and sharp objects who are inspiring but at the same time i mean creative people is just a way you look at things and frame things and unpack things and I've always been very proud to be a creative first and through you know to my marrow but I understood the mechanics of business as a way to in the early days when I started to protect my belief system I didn't want to just be a just a hired gun or someone who's just a thinker and you know paid by the hour or paid by the project I I wanted to build a robust business.

4:17I wanted to understand the clients because we're not, as I said, we're not in fine arts gallery and, you know, we are in the business in the capital market and people pay us millions and millions of dollars to do things that are hopefully worth millions and millions of dollars. You have to have a business mind to that. So the last, you know, that's what, going back to your question, the last four years as CEO of Song was a privilege. It was very all-consuming, but I'm a person who likes, I'm a mission-based person. And I didn't want to let the team down because, you know, I'd hate to be a poster child of that's why you shouldn't put a creative in charge.

4:51And hopefully for any of the successes I've had with brilliant teams behind me and around me, it would hopefully open a lot more doors for creatives in boardrooms. I really would hope that. And I would say that because I think it's better for business as well. That will actually make it work. I mean, to that point, do we value creativity enough? Because if you look at kind of tech, you know, there's huge multiples on tech companies, massive margins. And when it comes to the creative industries, it seems to be low margin, not valued enough as it should be. Do you think we need to do change how we view the role of creativity?

5:25Well, definitely. But I think it's also the way creativity is framed. For some reason, creativity is framed as just the sort of the veneer on things. You know, creativity is essentially much more than that. It's the idea. Sometimes it's the essence of everything. You know, the tech companies, look, they're not really paid for just by the hour or they're not really in the service business. I think that's the floor. The business model of advertising and marketing is the biggest barrier. I think the necessity for creativity and originality and uniqueness and style and design and taste and understanding, I think there's never been more of a premium need for that.

6:05But I think the business model is what we need to do. So to highlight your point about reframing the model for creativity, last year I did this thing with Adam Morgan Peterfield called The Extraordinary Cost of Being Dull. And we tried to actually work out how much our business is losing by basically doing boring creative work. And in the US alone, just on audio, just on video, we worked out it was something like$180 billion gets wasted on ads that make zero difference. And just to illustrate it, we came up with this. Adam said to me last year, he said, John, let's find the most boring thing we possibly can.

6:42Like a film of cows eating grass and test that against all the best, you know, all the best adverts in the world. And how would it do? And cows eating grass was more interesting to people than 50 percent of the ads that we could find. Well, there's so many points to unpack in that one as well, because cows eating grass actually is more interesting. and you don't see that every day on television. So it's already unique. It's a weird thing in so many categories where the averages is the norm and people's aspirations are to be average. You know, if they want to be of a category, they want to be of a type, you know what I mean?

7:20And so they aspire for the middle because then they worry that if they go too extreme, they sort of lose on the edges. And then everything blends, you know, why does every car commercial kind of look the same? Why does every pharmaceutical commercial or bank commercial kind of look the same. You know, they almost have the same uniforms of conformity. And it's strange. And I understand why that happened when categories were being created because you sort of people want to project or signal where they are or who they are and stuff like that. And, you know, they saw if a reputable car company had this field and if you could be like them, that put you in the same class.

7:57But people's need to sort of replicate category leaders, they didn't realize they're not really a category leader can still be failing yeah so people started you know i mean they've all they've been copying they've been following the wrong pace car all the time and i think that's the problem and as i said things are written by you know research and conformity that's why everything is bland look out the window that's why most architecture is bland that's why most music is is formulaic that's why most advertising and films as you know people appeal to the middle because they think they're going to get more people and more and more now where you know people are looking for uniqueness and differentiation and personality and stuff like that it's always a return back to the craves and again there's there's enough examples of companies that have mastered storytelling or creativity with uh engineering or with um a business you know the business of of of all the mechanics of something and created something unique.

9:00Apple's obviously an obvious one. You could pick some of the German car manufacturers. You know, Tesla put aside the politics of that one. You know, like there's great design never goes out of style. Great insight, great communication, great storytelling never, ever goes out of style. But there was decision makers and bean counters would make decisions and engineer things into mediocre places. And so when creativity, as I said, even with the onslaught of ai which is going to be incredible and everyone's sort of caught up in the the excitement and euphoria of we can do all these things that are very familiar really fast and really cheap and that's just exciting and interesting at this stage but everything's eventually going to look the same because everyone's going to have access to exactly the same and when everyone looks the same again we're going to have the cows in a field thing yeah well did you know it's funny you mentioned cars because actually in the study we looked at all the car logos and how the car logos are going to become the same the um the side profile of cars in fact we had 40 cars in the same category so these are small suvs right and we took the logos off and you couldn't work out which one was which you couldn't tell the mercedes from the kia we did the same thing with fashion this is the crazy thing because we thought well surely fashion if there was ever a category that's going to be distinctive and different we showed the logos 20 years ago and the logos today and it's just become the same it's like this massive homogenous organization and then as you say you put technology in we just get to do that quicker and more cheaply i mean it's amazing as i said people find comfort in in familiarity to a point and then it all starts to tumble away because unless there's a point of difference if you're just if you're the same as everybody else in any category what business case do you have you know if you're people have heard me say this about opinions as well you know if i have 10 10 people who who work for me and if all 10 people agree then 10 people aren't necessary yes you need different points of view now i need you need consensus to move forward with certain things but 10 people will agree on everything and have exactly the same taste and all that so that it makes for one very dull future now i love the way you framed essential song as creative led tech enabled as a lovely kind of balance those two things i mean talking about that risk that technology is going to homogenize and and potentially kill creativity how do you kind of use technology to release creativity well i don't think it's funny because you know it's it's not like technology is a new thing yeah it's a lot of time everything's been technology you know that's moved us forward so the technology has taken made life easier for us since you know almost the dawn of time but i think obviously the pace of which technology has moved into our into industries and and playing catch-up has changed.

11:44But, you know, all technology has been amplified and been brought alive by creativity. It all has. You know what I mean? Once the technology becomes the common denominator, it's the creative minds that sort of seep into it and change it and do stuff with it. So I'm not one of those people sort of naysayers who are saying that, well, technology's going to kill us and it's going to wipe us all out. It's more, as I said, the lazy people who are going to allow that to happen, surrender to it you know but i think the beautiful thing about humanity and people is that there's a tenacity to us and an improvisation and a need to tweak and change and bend and and there's emotion baked in stuff and all that and i think that we'll we can bend it to our will the best stuff has always has always happened that way and it's a lot and they don't always have to be creatives as designers or writers or anything like that you know a lot of times you know some of the the geniuses in silicon valley you know they took the the emerging technology digital and they sort of input their ideas or their ambitions into it and they just allowed them to do things they couldn't do before and i'm excited for what's going to happen with yes there's the the the jobs model will change and the the org charts will change and the skill sets will change but the outputs and things we're trying to create won't change people still need to be informed still need people want to be entertained and feel safe and feel loved and feel needed and feel you know status and all these other things but the delivery systems will change and that's why i'm optimistic about creativity you know people were decrying robots will be taken over by robots in the 1920s when they first i think that's when the word robot was around that was to actually created and people were like oh we're going to be automation's going to take over robots are going to take over that's why all the sci-fi started yeah and we're just there now but just with, you know, more proof points.

13:34Well, even going back to like the printing press, the printing press was seen as like an evil propaganda machine that was going to make everyone take up witchcraft. I mean, everything, a single thing is. I mean, my love of our imaginations and the potential of thinkers and doers, it transcends and it eclipses my loyalty to, you know, types of technology that were, you know, when they, I didn't, I'm not moaning that I love a typewriter. Now I have it as a, as a, almost like a sculptural piece. I didn't bemoan the fact that I didn't write on typewriters anymore. You know, I didn't care that when, you know, I used to have a typography department when I was in Saatchi, London, brilliant typography department.

14:12You know, when technology allowed us to do type in new ways and different ways, my love of type and the necessity of type didn't disappear. You know, and so my loyalty is to the output and the opportunities that they open more so than, you know, I'm not sort of trying to unionize our jobs. What I'm trying to do is unionize our output. We often talk to me about craft, don't we, as something. And I think that's something that we have to probably protect, don't we, with new technology. Because the output I tend to see, it all looks very similar, doesn't it, when you see AI-generated output. Yeah, I completely like that.

14:47But that sort of love and craft and care and nuance often disappears. Well, that's the point I'm saying is I think everyone's still excited and intimidated by the pilot trick of, oh, you can do that much output and you can create this image or this moving image or this logo and all that sort of thing. And it does a fine job to be dominant and to be as disruptive as it is. AI only has to be better than average, and it already is. Great. You know what I mean? Fantastic. I could put in, you could open up an art gallery or a coffee shop tomorrow and it could design you 10 logos in five minutes that you would be really chuffed to have.

15:24build you the website do some marketing material all those things fantastic that's great and let everyone have at it and let all the people do that but eventually as i said when everybody has that what's going to be the difference is it's going to be the the imperfections of how we think and how creative people think i mean i i said this in a uh in an op-ed that i wrote you know like ai is is is designed and technology is designed to avoid error okay it's built around like the worst thing that can happen in a program or an algorithm is error a bug you know i mean it's designed to be perfect and deliver all that sort of stuff everything that makes us interesting is the errors is that is how we misrepresent or misinterpret or reinterpret or context or angst and all these things that make us human that's what makes us creative so you know that's the sort of the tension between the two you know and when you imply what makes us human which is our bugs our personalities our learning you know all that sort of stuff and you put that you know that's why we that's what separates us from that i can't remember who said this so i'm probably going to misquote them but they were saying that the last thing ai will be able to work out is human stupidity well it's true something like because we don't make sense that's what i mean by like our personalities are our quirks and our bugs in the way we look at the life and it can be from upbringing context it can be from emotional devastation or it can be from great things It could be desires, needs, personality, trait, all those things.

16:48You have yours, I have mine, all that sort of stuff. And how that manifests out in the world, you know, put some skill to it and all that sort of stuff. No one can replicate that. Now, yeah, sure, you know, I'm a writer. I know that I could put into AI, you know, write a paragraph that sounds like David Droga wrote it. And it would probably do a fine job. But it's not going to be thinking how I'm thinking at that moment and what I want to get across right then and then. And I might be pissed off that morning or I might be sad or happy or excited about something. And those sort of multilayers, that's what I think is that gives me optimism that the necessity of us is going to be, you know, it's going to be the forward scout with technology.

17:30So I'm not anti-AI and technology. I'm wary that it's going to be too easy and convenient. And it's, you know, laziness is the thing that worries me more than technology. is human laziness. That's interesting because there's already, I think, research suggesting that people using AI are thinking less because they're kind of outsourcing the thinking to AI and therefore they're not training themselves to think through a problem, make the creative leaps. Yeah, I just don't want, you know, as I said, going back to the averages thing, I don't want good enough to be good enough. You know what I mean?

18:02Because going back to you were talking about researching things and the averages, you know, people celebrate better than average now. You know, they even celebrate average. And I think that the world needs all these people who are filled with provocations and ambitions and, you know, want to blow things up or want to create greatness or whatever it is just to drag us into lateral deep places that move us forward. And that's what's so exciting. That's why I love being creative. I love being a creative person because you have permission to be outrageous and a daydreamer and think about possibilities and without really understanding the mechanics of things.

18:45And you can always backfill that, you know what I mean? I just think that that's what's exciting to be a creative person. Love that. Love that a lot. As you look back on your career, what you created with Droga 5, what are you most proud of leaving in terms of your kind of legacy over that time? it's not a piece of work or anything. I think that I'm proudest of the fact that since day one, I was sort of fortunate enough to find my footing in this industry, that I grew along the way. In every place I went, I sort of felt that I contributed and learned a lot creatively and did it with a lot of great people.

19:28Yes, I produced a lot of work that I'm very proud of, but I felt like I grew with, I didn't plateau emotionally, mentally, ambition-wise. My care didn't plateau. Like I just kept on snowballing and moving forward and it allowed me to go all over the world and prove to myself, you know, maybe that's an insecurity of myself. You know, I'd probably hide behind an ego but, you know, there's part of insecurity in that as well. It's like you just want to be relevant. you want to be contributing. And I was just always put myself in places. And sometimes that means deliberately challenging myself to find a harder task, you know, to burst the bubble of security of running Saatchi London, to go to public, to burst the security of being the first worldwide creator to start my own thing.

20:16You know, like I liked reinventing myself because it forced me to always want to prove that, you know, I'm a relevant person that is contributing daily and stuff like that. I don't know. So my pride maybe is in consistency. As I said, not just consistency of output but consistency of belief. I have zero regrets in my career. That's great, yeah. I mean there are things I wish I'd done better or, you know, it doesn't mean I haven't made mistakes or stumbled or anything like that, but zero regrets in my career of the choices I made about it, where I worked and how I did it and how I held myself up and stuff.

20:59You know, there are business decisions. I'm like, oh, I should have done this or should have done that or should have learned this lesson quicker. But I feel so grateful that I was, you know, and maybe because I felt so fortunate, which is why I took it so seriously because I kept on thinking, like to have had the opportunities I've had is so rare and special. I gotta do everything I can to over deliver on that because you don't get given these opportunities and very often and because I was given it all Very often. I felt like I was getting away with something and the only way to sort of Make up for that was to exceed expectations I don't know if that makes any sense, but it does it does he said something last time we met actually which struck me was You didn't have a business plan.

21:44You just had belief hundred percent and that comes through in just what you said there the belief in the next thing they're also i blessed with a weird thing that would you know probably stress a lot of people out my belief system is sometimes a little bit blinding where there are multiple times in my career where i stepped away from something that had that a reasonable person or a sensible person would never have walked away from there's probably five times in my career i remember first job i had when i after i won awards i got a job as a my first job was a copywriter actually and very excited couldn't believe i was so excited i got this job paid for my imagination and i was paid thirty thousand dollars a year which was like being a millionaire and i was living you know living out of home and this new agency in australia started and brilliant young you know that the two people who were starting with two of the best young creatives in the country and they said we come and work for us we can only pay you 20 grand so you You have to take a 33 % pay cut.

22:46We don't have any clients. We don't have any office furniture. And I remember saying to my dad, Dad, I'm going to quit this job at a big American multinational to go to this startup. They don't have any clients, no furniture. I'm the first employee. And I have to take a pay cut. It was like, you are insane. Definitely don't do that. Best thing I did, quit. I did that. The same thing. It was just I believed that they believed in good work. And I just thought, well, because they had the belief system, and I've seen work they've done in the past, that I'm going to hitch my wagon to that thing. And they were right and I worked my ass off and I slept at the agency three days a week.

23:19But we became a huge success. The agency became a huge success. It was like an Australian agency multiple times and we grew. And because I was the first employee, you know, my career was accelerated by that choice. And I was, you know, Craig worked at 22. So it was, and then when that got bought by BVDO actually, I was ready to leave to go on an adventure same thing but I was I owned a quarter of the agency in stock at this stage and same thing signed the contract they were like you have to lock you down for three years and I didn't want to stay and I was betting on myself again and I'd been offered to run Saatchi Asia and again I was 26 at the time and everyone was saying like you just stay for three years you'll make x amount of money you know a lot of money which was more money I could even compute.

24:09I was like, no, I want to do this thing because I want to explore the world. I want to be even more creative. And I remember saying to one of my partners who then I said, I'll give you my equity. And they said, for what? Why would you give me? I said, in fact, I'll give you the equity if I can take that rug. I just pointed the first thing in there and they thought I was joking. I said, I'm not joking. You can give me that rug. You can have my equity. I literally took the rug, gave my equity away so I didn't have to stay. Again, everyone's like, well, you're nuts. so there's so many times where I was blessed with that thing where I was never chasing I was I was chasing work and building something and being part of something and proving something more than because I mean that's the privilege of in the innocence of youth right London was so grateful to have the success there publicist got that job that I thought you know everyone thinks they want to be the worldwide chief creative officer of a company.

25:06Same thing. And when I left that to go to do Dragify, I left behind millions and millions of dollars of equity. But I didn't care because I bet on myself that I'd rather build something without a business plan but with a belief system and in the timing and enough experience around that I sort of knew that I could, was worth a shot. And also I brought some great, you know, so it's just, wherever I got that gene from, I don't know. You know what I mean? Because I didn't come from wealth and I didn't come, you know, but I was, I never chased it. I chased, I don't know, just the idea of contributing and making something and the challenge of stuff.

25:48Don't get me wrong, I was very happy to build a very successful company, but, you know, but there were certain decisions I made along the way that I think a rational person, and I'd probably, if someone was asking me for advice, I'd probably tell them to stay and not do the things, you know what I mean? But because it was me, I just kind of always knew. The thing that struck me about that is the power of the environment you put yourself in as well. So rather than chasing the big client, the name above the door, the salary, et cetera, et cetera, you're putting yourself in a position where you could flourish because of the people you're with, the environment, the context as well.

26:24Completely. I mean, I've also, I've always liked putting myself in a position where there's something at risk, not like personally risk and stuff like that. And it's not, you know, but I have to prove that I love, I don't know if that's because I'm a Leo or because I'm the fifth son in the family or whatever, but I wanted to prove that I could step into hard things and make them great. and I knew if I took this like again if I if I walk away from that wow you better be successful you better make that success that make you work harder you know if you walk away from that like I don't want to be the I don't want the footnote to be that idiot did that you know I mean again I'm drawn by what could be more than what is there's something powerful about a big challenge isn't there I really relate to that because I'm there's motivation isn't there where there's a really big challenge you've got no option other than to lean in and make it a success rather than play it safe and repeat what you've done oh i love when you can take the alibis away and it's just you and the the rawness of the opportunity and your own talent and your own tenacity and your ethic work ethic there's just something pure about that you know and i love being in my own head because i mean i'm i'm my wife sort of teases me that i sort of you know i like my own company a I sort of like to think about things.

27:40And, yeah, there's something great about that. It's a privilege to be able to try and unpack things and think things through. And that's what a great thing to be able to do. Yeah. If you were to start today, let's just pretend you were starting out from scratch, what would you do today? And would it be any different to how you started out, given that the world has changed, media channels have changed, you know, technology has changed? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't necessarily start an advertising agency or anything like that. I definitely want to be a, it would have to be a creative endeavor. I'd have to thrust myself into a creative business, but I would look at how I can apply my creativity in what industry and where I think that I can add value.

28:20You know, so it might be something, you know, I'd be definitely compelled to understand AI and what I could do with that. You know what I mean? I don't know whether it be entertainment, whether it be healthcare, care who knows but i would definitely look at something where there's the biggest need for creativity and a platform for me to grow and learn you know i like both that i want to contribute but i also realize what i want to learn at the same time like i think it what i want to do this mutually beneficial relationship because that was also another reason i i like throwing myself in the challenges and that can be the challenge of moving to asia or london or america or starting an agency or joining a tech company is it's another step up and another gear to add to sort of who i am and i'm learning you know there's another everything was a different dimension to what i already believe so no i'm collecting things as i the experiences of all those places were not lost when i went to the next thing but then i added another dimension and i think that that's always sort of something that i've um you know i'm a collector of things and I'm a hoarder of, you know, I've always collected art and things like that.

29:29So maybe this is just another thing. I'm sort of a collector of experiences and learnings and experiences because then I can apply them because isn't that creativity? Creativity is parlaying, you know, taking something and making more of it. I think that's a lovely thing about creativity. It's like, you know, the circumstances may change, technology may change, but the need for creativity and problem solving. is it's never going to go away he's been here you know what i mean that's not who we are as again going back it's who we are as people yeah you know it's it's who we are as people imagination is is the world's greatest uh natural resource yeah now a lot of marketers be listening and obviously unscented to cmo is is the uh is the premise of the podcast um what are some of the traits of the best clients that you work with that uh what advice would you give you know client-side marketers well you know it's probably blatantly obvious and i also i would say to all marketers by the way a lot of respect to you because i you know i think one of the truths and the consistencies that i the longer i've been in the industry the more i have empathy for the the how tough it is to be on that side to be a cmo because you know you're sort of trying to obviously deal with you know creatives and people and and who are trying to help you and that side of things then you've got the mechanics of your business and the weight of that and also the role of the cmo has changed so drastic it's not it's much more than just built you know marketing these days it's about you know influencing every other chair in the c-suite it's about building brand and business and it's and also they're playing catch-up you know they're probably all the wave of wave of new technology and media and deployment and all that sort of stuff is suffocating and exhausting so I have a lot of empathy and I think that was a big epiphany for me when even when I first started drug five because we started in the digital age was not trying to sell to the person I was the table I was like I really wanted to understand going back to that I like to understand things like what are they what are they trying to solve for what's the challenge and if I can not just have empathy but then the empathy will give me permission to try and understand from their chair so when i do try and solve something it's it's it's the gears are matching there's an interlock between what they're trying to solve for and what we're trying to um bring to the table as opposed to just because in my early days of my career you know sometimes i would just i thought the sheer genius of our creativity was going to solve everything but i also think you know other things i would say is a lot of my favorite clients were not the easiest, by the way.

32:05You know, it's not like, oh, they just love everything we do and all that. You know, there's clarity. There's an appreciation of strategy. There's a desire for or permission for creativity. It doesn't mean you always have, you know, permission for grounded creativity, so there's a reason for it, and an appreciation of craft. And also, you know, an honesty. I've always said to a client, like, if you don't like something and there's a reason you don't like it or there's a tell me i'd rather have the most frank conversations i'm confident and arrogant enough to think that i can solve it if this isn't the right answer i don't need to be coddled to be like just have broken it to me slowly so a lot of my favorite clients was were really tough but we had very honest relationships you know i mean and then when there's a trust built people have heard me say this before i mean it's the most intimidating thing any client can do is to trust the agency oh totally because going back to taking out the alibis.

33:00It takes the alibis out. It does. Now, you have to earn trust. It can't be blind. But I... Yeah, so as I said, some of the work that I'm proudest of, because also some of the work that of my work that people think, oh, that must have been impossible to sell. I'm like, no. It was some of the most ambitious stuff was easier to sell because there was a logic and a strategy behind it and an understanding behind it. So when you explain the reason for why we were doing something before we got to what the idea was, it was already almost completely sold. So when we did present the idea, they'd be like, of course, it has to be X.

33:37I think you talked about we're not just making art to put in museums. And I think that's the crux of it. Often whenever I've been giving advice to agencies as a kind of former client myself, I'm like, start with the business problem that I'm trying to solve. Because at the end of the day, I've got to take this big idea you've got, Go back to an organization full of accountants, logistics people, sales people, and explain how this is going to help us all achieve our business business. Well, I think I might have said it to you on the last podcast. And if I did, just edit this out and drop in something more interesting.

34:10But, you know, again, I start with the end, which is, you know, why should anybody, the consumer or the receiving person on the receiving end of this or the people on the receiving end of this, give a shit about this? experience, this moment, this ad, this piece of communication, this app, this whatever, why should they give a shit about it? And what roles are they going to play in their lives? And are we interrupting them? Are we a speed hump in their life? Is it hitting them at the right time? Is it adding value? That value can manifest itself in different ways. It can be rewarding, entertaining, educating, helpful, create ease.

34:45There's all of those things. I love i love that every everything's an opportunity to do something fantastic yeah now you've come from as you talk about you started in australia singapore uk you know us you've covered the literally covered the globe haven't you classic aussie yeah if it was if i'd said i'd worked in a bar and all those places that would have made sense as well exactly yeah as you look around the kind of world today what what are you seeing what trends are maybe overrated and what trends are underrated as you know because as marketers we are obsessed aren't we with you know what's changing what's new that kind of thing I think the blindness to just celebrity is just something that drives me crazy now I don't get me wrong I think there's some celebrity that have immense power in them for the right products and they can do incredible things but I think just that there's a certain laziness to just slapping x person onto this thing and thinking that and i'm like it's no wonder you know half the things don't work when you've got one celebrity selling burgers and then perfume and then this and that it sort of dilutes their brand you know i mean like i'm there's a certain laziness in that that i don't like but trends um i don't know you know as i said we just we're all trying to keep up with what with what's happening in the world now and as i said people are heads are spinning because they're trying to understand you know we were talking about tiktok earlier as the power of that and how you know it does have the for decision making hierarchy for certain things particularly for the younger generation it's for not it's insane the power it has you know i mean and again it's so it's so i don't turn my nose up at things if i don't completely understand them either you know i'm sort of more much more intrigued to understand how and why and then then i think about like can i contribute to that or i just have to get out of way of that you know i mean i mean for me i think it comes back to you know are you clear about your strategy often with these things isn't it because there are so many you can make an argument for anything these days can't you for being on tiktok for maybe using celebrities not using celebrities or you know building a brand in traditional media new media all those kind of things or being experienced but there's so many kind of like tactics but that's more what i mean it's like it's like with the celebrity thing it's like with all these platforms you know yeah if you know what you're doing on these things yeah then it's fantastic but just there are too many decisions where it's someone reads a report that says oh this medium you know is huge with the youth and blah blah blah blah and they just they scrunch up something that was probably intended for a different medium and force it into that and it's out of context and it's like that drives me crazy i'm always seeing this thing i'm thinking who's who approved that the amount of times i've said in my career actually and i've always used to joke you know people would say you know you'd see i'd always see something if i ever saw a great piece of advertising you know a lot of times if i'd be like who created that i'd want to find out who wrote that or art directed that because i'm thinking you know maybe i should hire them and when i saw an absolute piece of garbage on television or advertising i was like i need to find out who sold that because maybe that's who i should hire i was gonna say you You should get either.

38:03You know what I mean? Because it's like, how do you sell that garbage? How do you get that one, Rich? Yeah. You know, imagine giving them something great. You know what I mean? Because there's so many things where I'm like, sometimes even when I see terrible films, I'm like, there had to be dozens and dozens of approval processes in that. And I think sometimes, you know, crappy things just have momentum. You know what I mean? It just, once it's rolling downhill, no one can stop. I guess sometimes those things is the creative is so inoffensive that no one can say no to it. Well, I think a lot of that is, which is going back to that thing I was saying before about, you know, clients try and be good clients and they sort of, they don't want to kill something, but they just tweak it and they compromise it.

38:46And a lot of also people on the creative side lie to themselves about something, even though what they've intended to make or believed in, it's a shadow of itself and it's been sort of compromised along the way. and so the end product is you can't even you know identify what it started out as but everyone's still refers to it as the same thing but there's nothing's you know i mean like everyone's tried to not hurt each other's feelings along the way and you end up with this engineered mediocrity you know i mean well this is why we did the cost of dull experiment because we're trying to work out if you could actually show people how much they're losing by saying yes to those kind of ideas but that's i mean i completely i mean that's why we did the that coinbase coinbase super bowl ad you know everyone was in you know it's also that's what the thing that i always say is one of the most under leveraged parts of communication marketing is context everyone talks about canvases and and content and all that context is often most important that can be timing all that is look at the medium look at what people look what you're where you are what everyone else is doing how are you going to stand out like what's the messaging what do you want to do like you know context is such a massive thing you know we we have context when we're as humans when we talk to each other you know i mean how i talk to you in in a setting like that you know but a lot of times when we're in a business setting everyone talks to everyone like they're in a boardroom with each other and i'm like people aren't watching this in a boardroom well actually going back to the ai point like that that's often where i ai doesn't answer the question it doesn't understand the context or what's going on in culture at the time or where your brand is you know and that's where that's where the you know humans are critical to understand context and culture and all those as i said it's our um our bugs yeah that are going to be the thing that saves us yeah and saves creativity so let's talk about some of the work uh over the years i love the fact that the other day i think you wrote was it 37 lessons from 37 campaigns oh yeah they asked to pick 37 campaigns and some stories behind them to represent my 37 years in advertising.