Eyebrow raising McDonald's advertising - Chaka Sobhani, Leo Burnett

0:06Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored CMO. Now, one of my favourite adverts of recent times is the new one from McDonald's. I don't know if you've seen it yet. Raise your arches. There's me attempting to do arch raising for anyone on YouTube. So sorry if you're listening on audio, you might have missed that. But anyway, I'm meeting up in this episode with Shaka Subani, who is the global chief creative officer for Leo Burnett, who made the ad. She's one of the absolute legends of our industry. She's so creative and has got so much passion, not just for creativity, but also diversity inclusion as well.

0:39So in this episode, I'm catching up with Shaka to get her advice on how to be creative, how to make great work. We get into the craft of the ad as well and why it's been such a success. And we also talk about the state of diversity and inclusion in our industry. She is a kind of prominent mixed race lesbian as well, has got a good point of view and a good perspective on it that I think we can all learn from. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Shaka. Shaka Shabani, welcome to the show hello darling how are you it's lovely to see you how are you i'm very well as i said to you a little earlier i'm coughing a lot so i'm so sorry i'm just getting over this bloody cold but apart from that i'm all good i'm very happy to be here and uh have to have a chat well let's start with congratulations so campaign just nominated you creative leader of the year no that was very nice that's nice isn't it it was very very lovely it was a very lovely surprise on all fronts genuinely we we went along as a crew we thought we're gonna have a lovely evening uh We had some of our clients down there.

1:35Obviously, you see lots of your pals and all the rest of it. And we're having a few drinks. But we thought it would be nice and nice that we're in the running. That's very cool. All the rest of it. Certainly not assumptive in any shape or form. And then it got to strategy leader of the year. And Joshy's name was announced. And we were like, hmm? And then it went a bit crazy. And then about five minutes later, my name got announced. And we were like, hmm? What the hell is going on? And then when they said agency, that was the one. Oh, that's everyone, isn't it? That's lovely. Yeah, that's the one that means the most.

2:06It's very, very lovely to have it individually. Don't get me wrong. It's lovely. But actually the one that, yeah, that has proper, proper meaning to it is because we've, yeah, this is a crew effort. We've been busting it up for a long time. So to get sort of a recognition of that was really, really lovely. And the agency was buzzing and our party was amazing and lots of sore heads and lost shoes and God knows what else. But no, it's very cool. It's really, really lovely. Well, I can't wait to talk to you about the McDonald's campaign, obviously, that's really kind of present at the moment. But before we do, tell us where it all started for you.

2:41Why advertising? How did you get into the industry in the first place? It'd be great if I had a real plan and I could tell you a real story like I'd hatched it out. I didn't at all, and I never have had, to be completely honest. And I've been very, very lucky. And sort of things have worked bloody hard as well. But I personally, in my experience, the best things have happened to me without having a plan. Again, without necessarily overthinking it, what I realise, if I can be grand enough or probably old enough now to look back at my career and look at why certain things have happened is I've always been driven by or have followed really amazing people and interesting people.

3:17So if I meet someone, not necessarily followed, but like I meet someone, if I'm lucky enough that they'll give me a job, I love being in awe of the people that I work with and that I'm going to learn a lot from. and I've had some incredible, incredible masters and mistresses. So that's sort of been my North Star. Do you know what I mean? Without even knowing it, I've met people and been like, oh my God, you're fucking amazing. Versus sort of like, oh, that's a really cool brand or organisation or whatever. So the aim was never advertising. I didn't even know really advertising existed. I mean, I knew obviously advertising existed, but I didn't know it was an industry or anything.

3:50I was just obsessed, obsessed, obsessed, obsessed with films. And the only thing I knew that I wanted to be was a director. but only really because it was the only title i could really understand you know when you're looking at the credits and all the rest of it and this is before the internet as we know it now so you couldn't really go and research stuff in the same way and if you did i used to go to the bfi down on steven street off totten court road and even there like your production companies and and you'd look through stuff and i'd be like i still like what the fuck is a gaffer and a director sorry if i swear by the way i swear like a sailor you know all of that sort of stuff i didn't really know what it meant and so I was lucky enough to find a course that was like 50 practical and 50 theory and all I knew was I wanted to direct I didn't even know what I had no bloody clue and I started off yeah as a director um no contacts nothing wrote my you know 200 letters got 200 rejections made phone calls on my first ever shitty mobile uh that I got with coupons from Sainsbury's thanks very much the Dan call phone soup's cool and found that there was a studio in South London in Brixton called the Boiler House that had been set up by these two amazing guys Mikhail Geisler and Clive Howard one was an art director one was special effects guy and they had uh funding from Lambeth Council and it was a 30 by 30 water gantry studio so we did like stop motion water effects sort of like music video stuff and um and pack shots for like commercials and stuff and these boys just gave me my second sort of university and they were so generous they gave me super eight they got me out shooting and then from that i started doing really really low budget when i say low budget i mean literally no budget music videos uh that went up and to give you the fast forwarded version from that i got into comedy did some sketch shows ended up at fox at a kids network fox kids and then at itv got hired at itv to set up itv creative with david pempsell one of the most instrumental people sort of in my life and career who I adore to this day and then from there a big chunk of time there then to mother and then to Leo's so yeah so that's the that's the whistle stop tour of it otherwise I'll bore you senseless with all the what's it called but there's lots of adventures in every in every chapter fascinating I mean take me back to ITV as well so you set up the in-house creative team production team what do you learn about kind of the the art of making crazy presumably on a bit of a budget as well I've had this brilliant podcast with um Chris Evans and Chris Evans was talking to Claudia Winkleman and they were talking about their days in the 90s on cable TV you know when like digital channels were first being set up and they talked about it they talked about how important it was to them because they were making they were sometimes succeeding sometimes failing but they talked about it Chris Evans talks about it like pilot hours I really dug that and the thing that I am forever grateful for forever grateful for for my temperament my hopefully for anything that I've learned was that directing and then television so if I could be grand enough to sort of talk chapters so directing is probably one chapter then that merged into tv but then tv and then advertising is I had my most fruitful period of making we made so much and obviously when you go into advertising it's literally like the handbrake comes on and you're like holy shit and if I'm honest as a young creative I think I would have really struggled in an agency because I think it's really important that you're making I think it's really really important one for your clients but I think just for your own passion projects so it was oh my god it was just one I just I've always felt very um this might sound a bit mushy and sentimental but I sort of don't care actually because I mean it I felt so lucky that I just was invited to the party every time I'd walk into that building to to London Television Centre down on the South Bank I would get genuinely every day a little bristle of excitement and butterflies in my stomach and I would go down to artists cafe where all the studios were I would smoke my cigarette I would see the loose women cast and this morning and then the people were coming in for Jonathan Ross obviously the weekends it was Ant and Dare it was Graham Morton was was shot there have I got news for you I'd go my first couple of weeks I got to know all the chippy like that was it for me was yeah great you know obviously all the management flaws and all the rest of it but being in and around studios uh and it just not just tv studios you know black island wherever the hell we were going with shepperton or pinewood like just the smell of those places still to this day it's like the biggest rush to my stomach i'm the luckiest luckiest girl in the world to have had those experiences but to still feel like that when i not just think about those memories but every day i've pinched me moments all the time so anyway like i said that sounds a bit gushy and a bit sentimental but i learned it was just again it was like another university and every day i was learning something new i worked across all the genres which is great for me because i don't like repetition of working on the same thing over and over again uh that needs to be sort of um yeah a mixture of different things that we're working on and obviously itv works from everything from fact n to drama to sport current affairs you know it's like the whole gambit branding design, production, copy, continuity.

9:03It was the whole kit and caboodle. And it was awesome. And it all worked in this sort of mad, chaotic way. And you always just had this incredible sense of the thing that you did, people gave a shit about in some shape or form. I used to love the fact that my grandmother and grandfather-in-law, going and seeing them, they lived in Leicestershire, like you were quiet. when Emmerdale and Coronation Street was on, like, you literally didn't say, you didn't go make a cup of tea or anything. And I was literally just, I used to get drilled. Like, what's happening in this show? What's going on in that?

9:35What's going on in this? There was just a currency to it, above and beyond, like, just celebrities. And I'm like, what, how? Always a common question, like, what are an Anthem Deck like? Lovely, of course, which they are, and they're gorgeous, and I've worked with them for a long time. They're fabulous. So it was, it was incredible, working with commissioners, working with talent, working with agents, working with all different types of creative people, showrunners, art directors, writers, designers, like I said, it was honestly the best bloody university, the best university. And I met some incredible people who are still firm, firm friends to this day.

10:11And yeah, lucky girl. Well, talking about that, I did get a listener question from a Mr. Rupert Howe. Me old mucker. He says, if you can make a brilliant production for£10 ,000 at ITV, why are you spending so much money now? He's such a cheeky monkey. Do you know what? I saw this brilliant talk years ago, about 15, 16 years ago. It was Mike Figgis, the director. And it was a time when, maybe it was a little longer ago than that, actually. But it was the time when everyone was, the big debate in production was around HD and whether HD was going to take off. So you either shot on film and you were a film purist on 35mm and 16mm, or you shot on DigiBeater, or worse still, SPBeater.

10:50Sacrosanct. and remember when you watched telly back in the day like you could see the soaps were shot on like digi and then you'd look at films oh that's shown very very grand and the very beginning of kind of hd cameras i remember sony would go around do all these like demos and stuff and they were trying to say oh you can shoot high high speed and it was like rubbish and there was anyway anyway the cameras weren't great at the time at the very very beginning but like i said there was this big raging debate of which one's better and actually i think this is a point it's not about good or bad or better and worse.

11:18Mike Viggis talked about you choose your instrument depending on the story that you're trying to tell. So when he was directing Leaving Las Vegas and he wanted that sense of the atmosphere of addiction and kind of falling, your life falling apart, and he needed that intimacy. He needed to shoot on 13 mil. He needed that grittiness. He needed the depth of field, what he could do with the colours in the grade. And then when he was shooting something like Timecode, which was literally about four parallel stories, funnily enough, you know, when you've got a mag, a 100 foot mag on that's only gonna give you 10 minutes you go to it and shot it all on little pd 150s because the tapes were an hour and a half long so he could shoot the entire film in one take and that's the point it's not about oh whether it's an idea is 10 000 pounds or whether an idea is two million pounds what are you trying to achieve and what's the end result if you want pancakes it costs a certain amount of money and pancakes are fucking brilliant and delicious amazing you wouldn't need to go and spend 100 000 pounds on some pancakes whereas if you want something fancy schmancy and the taste of caviar and the richness of this and and the look of that it's going to cost more money if it's got talent involved etc etc so it's not as i love him because he's cheeky and he's been trying to be controversial little minx um it's not i have no pleasure in just spending money for the sake of it i like to think i'm very bloody responsible because i was brought up with no money and by a brilliant bloody mum who gave me an appreciation of the value of everything and just because you've got it doesn't mean you need to go and spend it but you have to be very honest about what you're trying to achieve in any field uh whether it's obviously what we do creativity and production and ideas or whether it's finance or whatever the hell whatever it is everything has a price attached to it and you have to be honest about that and what you're trying to get to and you know not have champagne taste for beer money or the flip way around and if money is a concern there's always a way of being able to get to the i refuse to believe that it's like oh well money means something's brilliant and not having money means something's shit absolute rubbish absolute rubbish the antithesis of creativity but you have to be honest about what you're what you're trying to achieve and what you need to get there makes so much sense i'm not trying to be diplomatic i genuinely no no you're absolutely right it makes a lot of sense um you look you went from itv where very hands-on and now you're global chief creative officer for a big network agency.

13:36How different does that feel in terms of the actual job? Because presumably you're not involved in as much of the craft and on the ground decision making. Talk to me about the role of what was a global chief creative officer role feel like? I don't think there's well, I don't think there should be one definition of it. I think hopefully it's about how you turn up and what's important to you. Now, there's obviously there's certain parts of the job, which are sort of, they are different to when you are a pure, pure maker. You are much more client facing. You're, obviously, I'm massively involved in new beers and working in different markets as well.

14:10Obviously, I'm based in London and the UK is still, I'm still the CCO for the UK as well, but obviously got markets around the world. So those aren't necessarily things that I was involved with as a maker. But me as a person, I sort of think about it like, it's like if you're a chef. I don't really think you can call yourself a chef if you don't still get into the kitchen and um not because you should that's just who I am I'd lose my mind oh my god love you know I'd go crazy this is what I'm wondering it's like you know surely you want to be also in the creative process 100 and and I think the difference is so and I would like to think that sort of like I said it's sort of in your hands how much you do that and what's important to you and it's massively important to me hopefully to keep me fresh and keep me learning and learning from our youngins who are coming up working with brilliant partners I still get a buzz of working with you know new directors or new designers or whoever it is or whether they're young or old or people just I haven't worked with that for me is the definition of creativity is those butterflies you get in your stomach because you just you see the electricity in the air and you're a part of it and that's a beautiful thing about what we do certainly the beautiful thing particularly when you come from production is you are a crew literally it's all of you together and that's where your strength comes from i think one of the things particularly um as you get older and it probably a little bit of this is to do with the obviously the change in your role and stuff but it's really important to me to give people autonomy i thrived the most when i was allowed to be responsible and make decisions and stand by those so it's a fine balance i think of staying involved and hopefully being helpful um and also selfishly getting something out of it yourself like i said in the learning thing but hopefully adding a little bit of a little five percent that might you know just with experience and stuff might take things in certain different directions but at the same time i felt i personally i think you start feeling a bit of a shift as you get a bit older in terms of my role is no longer about being in the spotlight myself i think there's a period in your life in your 20s and your early 30s where it's about me me me it's a massive part of my job now is to create hopefully the environment where people can be the best version of themselves creatively and just as human beings it's not just about work but also about opening doors and putting the spotlight on amazing talent that's coming you know that feeling when you see someone and like they they don't even know how good they are and they haven't even reached their peak it's like a sportsman or sportswoman and you're just like holy shit this is electric and to be part of that that's that's just no that's that's i so resonate what you said that actually because i don't know whether it's an age thing but i genuinely get more excitement from other people's success now i genuinely feel so happy for them and kind of like you know and i think it's a weird thing and maybe in my 40s or whatever but that i can really resonate with that it's so satisfying to see it probably has also some kind of correlation as well to sort of like basically like becoming a parent as well like so again like the shift becomes about uh the focus is on someone else and you wanting them to do really well and i'm not saying that's the same relationship as you have a work it's not as it's not infantilized like that it's not a parent child but but hopefully i think that's a beautiful thing about life is we have these different chapters and our rhythms are different and it doesn't mean that we're any less or any more we just bring a slightly different flavor to the table so anyway yeah no it makes a lot of sense they're talking of great creative work as well i'm desperate to talk to you about uh mcdonald's campaign yay i could talk maccas all day i'm sure i know i love them and look this it really caught light didn't it i mean look again sample of one but it's by far the most red linkedin post i've ever done when i when i shared the results of the campaign yeah quarter of a million people saw it it's just like something there was something about it and what i thought was fascinating is it's very unusual to have such industry acclaim and such kind of popular claim as well because sometimes in our industry what excites us is the craft or the you know the you know pushing boundaries that sort of thing and then you can look at what the audience like and they're often very different yeah but in this case it was very it was very good um what was also great about it i thought and again i'll show you some system one results in a minute is it did long-term brand building and it did activation it was one of those things that did both right sell them the long-term dream and so the other thing i thought was amazing about it is you were selling burgers with no burgers in sight yeah that wasn't bad was it that's a trick right but But talk to me about where did the brief come from?

18:38How did the idea come about? I'd love to find a bit more about the idea. So, and I am going to sound gushy now. I don't care about this at all. So I love McDonald's. I love McDonald's as a brand. Always have done it as a kid. I worked at McDonald's when I was 16 years old. Had a very fetching uniform. Managed to get one star. Did you get a star? Oh, good. I got one star, yeah. I only stayed for a summer. It was in between my, I think I was doing my A-levels, yeah. So it was in between college courses. But anyway, I've always obviously had a relationship with the brand. And then when I joined Leo's was lucky enough to start working on the brand in the UK and then and then obviously globally as well.

19:14So that's that's sort of a given. The other part of it, which was, which I've been told, and then obviously, you have to experience yourself as clients, it's always a strange word clients, but obviously, that's the official term for it. They're more than clients. They're my friends. And they are people that I respect. And I genuinely adore and love. they are brilliant human beings they uh just as human beings first and foremost uh then as marketeers so they're a joy to work with because they understand their brand inside out and back to front they understand the dna of their brand from a values and sensibilities point of view i think that's you know our relationship goes over 30 years and there's a reason for that is because we share the same values and kind of like where we come from so that's the foundation to for any great work i think firstly i don't think you can ever get to that without a proper relationship that is baked in trust and love and generosity.

20:03And we have that in bloody spades. And there's genuinely not a time, and I'm not saying this is some bloody thing, do you know what I mean, to sound sucky. I don't care. They're just fucking great. So that's the starting point. So we've been on a journey, obviously, and through all the stuff that happens in culture and society, and there are moments when, you know, the brand is sort of more popular and all that kind of stuff. And I think particularly over the past sort of four or five years, we've felt like we've been on a real trajectory with the brand and finding, I don't know, maybe a different gear for it and a different level of confidence.

20:32Never braggadoose, but sort of always under the sort of the North Star of kind of being confidently humble. Anyway, so again, I don't think there are just moments where you just fall upon it. I think it's all kind of incremental and you kind of are building to these things without really knowing it. We have a very clear comms model and a strategy that we know inside out, back to front. This piece of work came out of the affinity pillar, the love pillar, which is always the trickiest one because it's around brand. So in one way you kind of go, oh my God, we can do anything. And then on the other hand, you're like, oh, shit, like, what's the thing that we can talk about?

21:01We had a platform that we launched last year around fancy McDonald's. So just the truth about, you know, there's always moments in life. And I think when we are on point with the brand, we know where McDonald's sits in people's lives, which is never front and center. There's never the arrogance of that. We're always in support and in service. So all these amazing things happen in life. And every now and then little Macca's coming in here and there. It's always lovely. It was always after swimming for me. Anyway, just as an aside. so we already had that platform and we were sort of on the second difficult album and we had a great campaign that had gone out and um and had landed kind of the thought and as always i think with the best ideas you can always do this in hindsight you look at it and you go why don't we come up with that it's the most obvious simple thing in the world and it came from a very very simple truth the brief came from a very very simple truth which is an invitation to have a mcdonald's is so ubiquitous and part of our behavior and sort of culture that there's actually no need for words there's a there's a behavior for it there's a there's a physical kind of little act that you do which is this raising of the arches and then the brilliant creative who came up this guy called gareth butters one of our creative directors again who makes it all look so simple then one having had this thought of of the brief then realized obviously the raising of your arches very helpfully uh oh what does it look like oh it looks like the arches and there it was and it was born and when you talk to him and and he's obviously far more eloquent on this because he really went into the bowels of this because he came up with the idea he'll be he's really honest he just goes i would love to tell you it's torturous but he said it's really simple i just got to it like read the inside just went right that that's what the idea is they're the best ones though they're just just just aren't they just instinctively right 100 and then to your point about craft it's about all of those small elements all the little elements in one the script so in that one piece of film that make the humor pop you know the partner that you so he's a he's a massive fan of edgar wright we were lucky enough that he read the script straight away you know you got you could tell it was edgar right as well just the way on the way the scene unfolds and the choreography being all lined up was very him wasn't it yeah and that gives you massive confidence when you send it to a director like that and straight away they're like yeah we're interesting like fantastic that's made us kind of feel good about this then all the surround sound stuff and then yeah and you said a really interesting thing obviously that the holy grail is you you it's great to have the praise of your peers of course but to be honest like the only thing we care about is is audiences i mean that's it that's all that matters it's a lovely byproduct if your fellow gang kind of dig it but that's not a reason to make right i think i read a quote from you which i love which is i love the industry but i don't do it for them and and we have to remind ourselves of that don't we which is which is why i kind of love this so much because it got obviously critical acclaim amongst you know peer group and so on but it worked very well which i want to talk about the craft because what i thought i'd do is um show you the system one results here we'll do this live everybody so if you're watching you'll be able to see this you know live on video uh if you're listening you might be able to hear it as it play out but there's a few craft points i wanted to ask you about because there's some real real mastery in this in the execution that I wanted to kind of talk through.

24:07I think it's brilliant. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the test your ad pro report. So we've picked office workers under the age of 35. Now, this was us sort of guessing, because you know, that's kind of where the scene is set sort of thing. So the reason I said it long and short is what we do with the test is we we ask people how they feel, right? Because how you feel about it's more important than what you think, because, you know, it's not an exam question. This is about emotion, right? And it It scores a very, very impressive four star, which puts in the top two or three percent of all ads.

24:35So congratulations. What it also does is short term, what we call the spike rating, which is exceptional levels. So that is how likely are people to go out and buy as a result of it, which it also does. Now, this is quite unusual to be doing both things, which is brilliant. So firstly, congratulations. I'm just going to whiz through to what we call the face trace. This is the emotion people feel as they're watching. Let me play this out. So hopefully everyone will remind if you haven't seen it or you have seen it. And let's be reminded. Here it is.

25:26Yeah. Oh, yeah.

26:03nice what i love about this there's so many little touches in there that really make this work i just want to point two or three little things out because for everyone listening and watching um the first thing is what this does amazingly is so what we see in the graph here is is the green is happiness and the dark green is surprise and you just sustain and you feel it don't you just it's it's unusual to get a sustained level of happiness because of the way the choreography's done the music the characters and so it's brilliant now really fascinating thing here is at the bottom we've got the branding so this is at what point do people understand it's mcdonald's the post-it note scene right and it almost like 80 of the audience that's the moment yeah and that's so interesting because you this is back to my point about not showing burgers right you did not need to show a burger for people to know where what the brand was what it stood for and so on but a tiny little detail like a post-it note yeah and even you've actually got about 20 % of the audience recognized it from what the woman in the first scene is wearing yeah the yellow and the red and is that something you know I mean is that something you've understood or is it just the brand has become you know so familiar and iconic I would love us to be able to take all the credit for that um but I don't think we can I think over the years and globally obviously McDonald's is I've read something once that it's in the top three most iconic logos I mean and I don't mean brand logos I mean logos as in I think there's sort of like the Christian cross is number one and then there was something else number two and then it was the McDonald's logo which is just mind-blowing and not surprising considering obviously the scale of the brand and I'm sure again with Coca-Cola certain brand Nike you know swoosh etc so I think when we've got the heritage of that which is massively helpful and that it is so recognizable but i don't things like it's interesting when you say about you know the the colors of people's clothing and stuff like that i i think there are certain things you consider and i think there are certain things you can over consider as well and i think sometimes it can be a mistake to overthink it and there has to be a purity to the story that you're saying i don't really sound like a wanker but there has to be an authenticity to the story that you're telling and that has to drive it and then of Of course, there are ultimately we're talking about a brand where we're coming from the point of view of the brand.

28:11We have to there's certain things that need to land. The reasons with the post-it note in there was it was it wasn't for a branding point of view. It was really, really important that there was something natural that gave a cue as to why the invitation to a McDonald's. So you put the logo on a post-it note as you wouldn't have a food around and then show like a bit of packaging. That would be my burger. Exactly. Totally inauthentic. It would have just absolutely ponged straight away of like, oh, they're trying to sell us something versus no, this is just like, OK, the day's a bit like this. Actually, what would cheer it up a bit?

28:41Oh, lovely little trip to Maccas. And then from that, then obviously everything else falls into place. But things like the cues of when you say about the clothes, I think that's just a it's not just a happy accident. But it's, you know, I think we've all seen certain brands can really over index on that. And then, you know, like the color of the brand is red and everyone is wearing red. And it's like people aren't stupid. but you just, the suspension of disbelief just falls to the wayside and people just know they're being sold to. And the minute you do that, like, it's just off-putting. Whereas I think if you turn up in the most generous and true and authentic way, what's the role of McDonald's in our lives?

29:16Hopefully to sort of just give a little moment of feel good, a tiny little moment of feel good every now and then. So if you stay there and in the right place and have the right level of humility and confidence, and you tell your stories with that lens of authenticity, then I think people will come along the ride and that graph is amazing I don't think I was going to say that about a graph but you know ultimately you said exactly the right thing you know we create work uh and the only thing that we can gauge it by is feelings that we're trying to create a feeling and we want people to react to it in some way and ultimately with the brands we work with and particularly with McDonald's the reaction is happiness and joy what's what's lovely about this I think part of the reason for for the graph is that you've got this scene unfolding that just builds and builds and builds so your attention's caught very early on and then and then you just want to follow it through and and and the glances between people and the walking past the meetings and that exactly the casting's brilliant the acting's brilliant and it's a way the scene unfolds and then you overlay the music which just you know gets you i mean music is so powerful isn't it and that just you know perfectly complements the whole whole action as it unfolds 100 % and obviously as we said like when you have the mastery of someone like Edgar Wright who every frame is considered and all the performances are on point the casting is amazing eyebrow casting I mean who the hell would have thought that that would be a part of your day today that's what I love about what we do um but there's not a frame wasted do you actually have a eyebrow raise casting like well yeah I mean that was obviously pivotal if you can't raise your some people can't do it by the way a bit too much botox no not that i can't raise my eyebrows at height not that i haven't had any botox but i just it's not just not very it's not very dramatic yeah it's quite boring the way i do it the main lady with the the red hair she's got the most killer eyebrows i've ever seen like the most expressive things ever and then my personal favorite part is the guy with the mop he just it always makes me giggle with his little gladiatorial uh scream up to the to the sky that was his moment wasn't it it's the most crazy thing in the world but yeah i'm glad that people dug it so much did people start copying because it's a very good obviously macky deeds is kind of a cultural thing isn't it have people picked this up as a as a eyebrow raise in like social media all you need to do is type in uh raise your arches mcdonald's into tiktok and there are thousands thousands and this is the point this is the thing again it's like when there's an idea that you're not crowbarring down people's throats they just want to pick up on it and want to have a bit of a laugh with it so the one of the best things you see is there's loads of crew members who've done it in their restaurants and they've put something together with like their pals and they're walking around the restaurant and they're doing the raised eyebrows and stuff like that but there's just loads and loads of customers who have put on all the filters they're daft they're really exaggerated and stuff it's just a lot of laugh it's just you know what I mean it's just a bit of shits and giggles for the fun of it and that's what we're about and it kind of weird turns back to our friend Rupert it kind of feels a bit Tango-esque doesn't it the whole slap kind of thing in a weird sense of creating a oh don't give him another reason to talk about Tango No, I'm joking.

32:14It's an incredible piece of work. So, yeah, I mean, if we ever get close to something as classic as that, then we'll be very, very happy. Yeah, absolutely. And is this a one-off or are you planning more eyebrow raising, arch raising? No, it's not a one-off. That would be, I think, a bit of lunacy if we hit on something like this and thought that this was the only way we could have fun with it. As always, I think when you're thinking about the next step, again, you can't overthink it because you can get sort of stuck in, oh is it going to be as good is it going to be this is going to be that right to the the clarity and the purity of the idea and the insight and i think we'll be good so i've actually seen the work yes it's very exciting and uh fingers crossed yeah we will be making the next part of this in the next couple of months oh yeah you're teasing us now you're teasing us teasing us i can't say anything yeah but it's gonna be good well i hope so i hope anyway we'll do our best that's very exciting well ladies and gentlemen watch this space you know see what comes but That's brilliant.

33:09Amazing. I wanted just to pivot a little bit and talk a bit about diversity in the industry as well, because I know you're very passionate on it. And we've collaborated a few times on the Feeling Scene project with ITV and Wise Up, looking at older demographics. What's your take on how much the industry's done in this space and how much it's got to do? So, well, so unsurprisingly, there's still shitloads to do. I don't think that's just about advertising. I think pretty much all major industries have still got a long way to go. I'm sure that, well, not I'm sure, but I really hope the same conversations are happening in finance.

33:44I hope they're happening in industry, et cetera, et cetera. There's a long way to go. And there's a lot of really basic. So before looking at the statistics, which are still obviously fucking woeful, let's be really, really clear. Like there's no, we can't mince our words about this. I've got a 13 year old and an 11 year old daughter. And when they were born, I remember maybe very naively, not maybe, definitely very naively thinking, they were going to in 20 years time enter a very different workforce than the one that i had entered and uh very slowly uh i've had the realization that it's not actually going to be that different it's different in a number of ways and really good positive changes but it's not there are we are going to have had we are going to experience very similar experiences as mothers and daughters and i really didn't want them to have certain experiences and the fact for me personally as a brown queer woman when I still look around and try and see my representation I see barely anyone I do think advertising is behind the rest of the creative industries that I've worked in and I'm not saying for one second that television and production have nailed it not at all there's still massive discrepancies in terms of ageism what people are earning by gender in front of the camera behind the camera all of that stuff 100 but uh in my humble opinion uh when i came into advertising a lot later as as you said um only 10 years ago and i was really shocked really really shocked at just what i saw so forget again the statistics just walking around the hallways and who you see and what you see is just not reflective of my world or it's not reflective of the world that we live in.

35:21And if we want to make work, we talk about authenticity a lot. If we want all the best work is authentic and it is written to reflect stories that are written by people who fucking experience those stories. I do not need to have love told to me by one group of society and it being usually privileged and white and male. I love white males, even if they have privilege, but it's not the only voice I want to hear. I want to hear all of the voices. if we just rely on grassroots it is going to take forever so it takes more effort and more time i do not have the answers i am so desperate and need the brains of much cleverer people than me because i know that when we all get together we'll do some we'll do things a lot faster and i know this is is a bit it's not strange to say i don't think the pandemic as horrific as it was showed that in the face of the biggest tragedies and the worst times what this incredible human race can do when it needs to so i can't buy the fact that oh it's going to take another decade or two decades fuck right off not you sir but anyone who says that it's rubbish but it it for it to change at the rate that we need it to it needs to be of the same importance literally the same importance in our bones in our dna as new business as the survival of our businesses because it is actually imperative to the survival of our businesses when advertising or communications or marketing feels inauthentic what do you think that is it's not about oh we're not going in these channels we don't know how to gravitate towards gen z because you're not reflective of that bloody audience you're not telling those stories you're not it doesn't come from the heart and it's on the head of and we're not learning anyway i could rant on about it forever i try to stay optimistic I can get really frustrated and then I get frustrated myself because I feel like I should be doing more um like I said I don't have the answers I do know that if it's genuinely as important for all of us genuinely and I appreciate that it's difficult for it to be as important if your footprint is the main footprint of the world and that you walk through the world quite easily and you don't know what it's like not to walk through the world as easily and that's the case for a lot of us I get it but it's not an excuse I think I think that's why we kind of system we we did the feeling scene report actually was just to show people that it isn't the risk that they might feel it is that actually you know telling one person's story i mean this is one of the profound insights i've i've really struck me when we're doing the research is that if you tell one person's story really well it's not like you're leaving everyone else out because the whole power of storytelling and advertising is you see into someone else's world and that and that's really powerful and so you know i mean i remember um i was working with adi rawcliffe over at itv and we both we sat down together and um we're looking at a nicad it had a black pregnant woman in it and she was quite emotional going i don't think i've seen a black pregnant woman in an ad before not particularly not one as you know you know powerful and as emotive as that and i think tingles down my spine as well so it's not as if when it's done well you know great diverse advertising is not a divisive thing actually we ended up with the kind of you know how diverse advertising unites us kind of thing because actually done well it's a really actually this is where you need to sort of get off social media a bit because you know you can really get the wrong the wrong idea but we certainly tried with feeling seen to give people the the case not you shouldn't need to do that i know you shouldn't need to do the case for it i mean we should be beyond that point but what we're trying to do is just go look it's the right thing to do but also it's the effective thing to do and and and when people realize we it's a bit cheap we call it diversity dividend but what you see is you see the audience reflected you just we saw this happiness on on your mcdonald's ad what you see is more happiness and what's interesting is actually when we go behind the numbers it's everyone feels the same like the story arc will be the same for everybody but when you're represented you feel the intensity of the emotions greater and and and that's really powerful you can just see the you know emotion emotion more intense so i mean for me and what we tried to do with you know with the report and like we wise up looking at older generations as well is just showcase that work and give people the well first is confidence but secondly just to go look this it can be done so i'm hoping i i know i know i know there's there's lots to be done but i'm hoping slowly but and what i'm also hoping is we start to hero some of those members of society i mean we we did one we did a session of itv looking at disability i can't tell you i was humbled i mean it sounds a bit i was i what i realized in that moment is oh my god if anyone has got a challenge like just listening to you know disabled people talking about their day or how they get to a meeting or how they you know i was just oh my god if i think i've got any problems in fact i just i'd had a car accident it's not a sort of bike accident especially christmas and i was a bit limited in my movement at the time so i think i thought i'm not even going to mention it you know what i mean because like just listening to what they're going through and then i thought about advertising and thought i can name on one hand right the number of times i've seen an advert with a disabled person in it you know there are a few i mean maltesers do actually good great job for you about three years ago on it but you know i think there are some groups there that we we need to elevate and need to kind of you know yeah 100 but i mean it's um i know you weren't saying it for that for that reason but you know it's tragic that we can name one or two campaigns more importantly who are the people that you work with and have worked in advertising who are from those communities so it's not about blame and it's not about making people feel bad but like i said unless this becomes truly the priority the priority for all of us allies people who are from those minority groups and we come up hopefully with some different solutions i don't know what they are necessarily we we do need to do more and of course as you said it makes business sense but we talk a lot about um we want to impact culture and you know we have a conscience well stop fucking talking about it and do something about it you know what i mean and uh as i said it has to come from the heart this stuff has to be important to you for the right reasons and it is for the majority of people i just yeah every single put you know the idea that these stories are all so different of course they are there are massive nuances in our experiences of course but at the end of the day we are all human beings we want to be seen we want to be heard and we want to have a sense of belonging and if we can in any shape or form make people feel represented and seen and heard and increase empathy and understanding for other people's stories so that's not a bad thing that we can do within what we do as an industry that has to be a fucking good thing and we can do it's all in our hands and we we start talking about oh it means we're politicizing stuff we're not fucking politicizing anything at all you know queer stories are not politicized they don't all have to be about coming out uh the the biggest goal for me is when there isn't a need for a bloody label and i don't have to say i'm queer or whatever the hell i am well that nobody does and anyway I could hang on about it well check out the house that is the perfect peak end actually and I think congratulations by the way on McDonald's work and the power I mean we talk about changing culture right but you know what you've done with McDonald's work certainly does that so hopefully a lot more to come and yeah thank you for coming on the show and sharing your story it's very inspirational sorry for coughing all over the place I hope none of you go down with this thing if you do I apologise and I'll send you some lockets brilliant thank you so much thanks darling thank you everyone for listening to the Uncensored CMO I hope you enjoyed it.

42:49If you'd like to listen or watch more episodes like this, please do subscribe. You can do that wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to check out my YouTube channel, head over to Uncensored CMO over on YouTube. And if you'd like to leave me a review, please do, remembering that five is the score to go for. But thank you for following. And if you want to contact me, I'm over on LinkedIn at John Evans or on Twitter at Uncensored CMO. See you next time.