How Google put humanity into technology - Nishma Robb, Google UK

0:06Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored CMO. Now in this episode I'm joined by Nishma Rob from Google. And we're going to be talking about all things technology, but not just technology, what the role of representation has in advertising and media and what impact it has on society, because we all want to make positive changes to this world in which we live. So I love this episode. I know you're going to enjoy it. So here's my conversation with Nishma Rob. Nishma, it's great to have you here. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Now, we were just talking about Mad Women, which I just think sounds like a brilliant place to start a conversation.

0:37And it aired last night, didn't it? But what was your favourite bit of the episode last night? Well, it was an incredible show. And as you say, aired on Channel 4 last night, made by South Shore Productions and inspired by the fact that Wackle, which is a community group of female leaders in the advertising industry, is celebrating its centenary. But the show last night, I think, charts from around the 1970s forward, telling amazing stories of these women behind some of our most loved ads. and you know from shaken back to the incredible Levi's ad that starred Nick Kamen which was a real turning point I think for for advertising and actually how probably one of the first advert adverts that was from a female gaze where everything had been predominantly from a male gaze which was kind of it was definitely a turning point for looking at ads that then kind of followed it but I think for me one of the most interesting bits was actually there's a lovely there's an incredible woman called Barbara Noakes in there who is the genius behind the Levi's ad and she talks about actually her inspiration was seeing some guy come into the laundrette just a week before he was actually you know trades guy and he'd come in on a Friday and literally stripped off down to his boxes and had popped more in the washing machine she said it was a horribly grey day and he wasn't that attractive so she decided to use a little bit of creative license when she cast Nick Kamen into a rather beautiful sunny laundrette but that sense of being able to play with your own observations and and desires and interest and let that play out in an ad and how transformation that was for the brand amazing that's brilliant isn't it I never knew she was behind that ad as well so it just goes to show how important telling these stories are isn't it to you know elevate the people the creators that made it all happen she's an absolute hidden gem in our industry she's 80 years old she's never been very public facing um this is the first time she's come out and talked about her work and she had so many stories as did all of the women the wonderful carol ray who um has been a real leader for a lot of our wackle centenary celebrations and was the first woman in the uk to have a name above the door of an agency so you know a real pioneer in terms of what she's done but she was also when she was a lowly account exec uh the woman behind the infamous shaken back and you know shaken back and get the freshness back i won't sing it um but um you know as as we as you tell you you'll see in the foot in the documentary but also if you find out more about it no one cared about the freshness of their carpets and no one wanted the brief in the agency so they kind of chucked it to the junior and it took her 20 scripts to get that signed off by the brand by the by the client and then went on to be one of the most successful ads that that agency made.

3:21I love these stories, isn't it? Because isn't it, how often is it that so many of the greatest ads seem to have that sort of, it was rejected 300 times? And I kind of think it's wonderful to hear that, isn't it? It's amazing to see, I mean, A, the persistence of the incredible women in that, in the, featured in the documentary, and so many more that I could tell you about that I've met over the years that I've been part of WACOL. And it was such a privilege and an honour because it is on their shoulders that we stand on. but the not just the challenge they had in the workplace of being heard and seen and respected or even considered for the work and ideas they had but actually they were pushing against societal norms and challenges you know i still have to remind people it wasn't i think in the 1980s that women could get a mortgage in their own name and so actually to think about women in the advertising industry in the 60s 50s 60s 70s who were making work that really shaped the industry it's pretty mind-blowing.

4:16It really is, isn't it? It really, really is. Now, I want to talk tech, obviously, because you currently work for Google, but you started out in a very tech-related space as well, didn't you? Tell me where you started your career. So I started my career in, for anyone who's a Brit will know, this was a much-loved service called Teletext. So this was the analogue text service that sat behind ITV and Channel 4. So the rival to CFAX, and I have to say, it was a very, very successful business in its own right but also a very very popular tech service it was the google before google you know it was how in those days pre-digital tv where there were 24 hour 24 hour rolling news services or access to information that we have today you know you quite happily waited 20 minutes for the latest news update that seemed real time you know i used to love that we used to talk about it as real time but we knew just the kind of the lag of the technology and to get up to these physical transmitters, it was 20 minutes.

5:15But it's how people got the latest football scores, the share of shares results, the movement on trying to get a cheap loan or racing odds. You know, people would watch these screens and it was a part of kind of British culture. And probably most infamous was its cheap holidays. Yes, it was, wasn't it? Absolutely. And it actually helped create a whole industry in the UK around these telephone centre, you know, a call centre led businesses that were effectively trading holidays. You know, they were smart trading businesses who knew how to buy stock or flights or find the best price and package them up.

5:53And it did spawn an industry that I think is amazing for the people it employed and what it created. Definitely there were times of embarrassment of perhaps we were fuelling Brits abroad on the cheapest holidays, which might have led to some of the reputation that we had in certain parts of the world. but you know it also helped deliver dreams and opportunities for people so both those that worked in the businesses and the people who benefited from the holidays that they got you know i went on many a i think the cheapest holiday i ever managed to get on teletext was for 30 pounds flight and accommodation to malloc insane that is insane it's like ryanair google all right into one that's amazing and obviously peter kade is a fantastic sketch all about teletext and the frustration of it rolling on because you couldn't pause it you couldn't hold you had to just wait for the carousel to move but you know actually working from a marketing point of view at that time I had an interest in technology I had this idea of how technology transported information into living rooms and it was such a hard sell um I was on the sales side at the time but selling it to agencies and creatives and brands to this was a way to communicate was you weren't just you know peripheral media but you were a technology and there was restrictions you know in the analog teletext days it had only nine colors and I was very junior at the time and certainly a mistake I made that I didn't later but I very enthusiastically sold a teletext package of media to a very new exciting mobile phone launch and I was you know a slam dunk great deal had been made for Teletex, you know, new brand.

7:33It was also kind of a real cultural moment, generally in the industry, for orange. And orange was the one colour. And you didn't have orange, right? We didn't have. Oh, no. And I remember having to very embarrassingly phone up and go, how problematic would it be if they had to wear magenta? That's brilliant. Lesson learned. I love it. Bring us up to date with Google then. Tell me a bit about your role now and what you do, because it's quite a broad role and it's quite all-encompassing. And you've got reputation as well as part of your responsibility, haven't you? That's right. So at Google, I lead our brand marketing and reputation, so brand and reputation marketing, which is not often a kind of a common bedfellow for marketeers.

8:14You know, reputation is often handled by sort of comms and PR teams. But I think is, you know, in some respects, reflects Google's attitude to how we see our users and customers and people who benefit from our products. as you know there's a technology and product feature piece around google and really thinking about the brand and who we are where we you know fit into people's lives and there is then also a need for reputation and i say perhaps more than reputation it's responsibility and i'd probably swap the r for responsibility because it's really thinking very deeply around the prominence that we have as a platform and in people's lives and the changing nature of technology is to demonstrate how we are responsible and think very responsibly about our products so everything from you know we lean i lead an incredible program my team drive an amazing program of education so around six years ago we identified that there is a digital learning gap in this country and you know as a business and a mission that's so deeply ingrained at google that is for everyone that means for everyone you You know, we're a free product that should be widely accessible to absolutely everyone.

9:29And if one of the inhibitors to that is beyond the thought of access, but it's actually capability, we wanted to help close that gap. Because we'd seen what happens when you put digital access information, the tools into the hands of people. Amazing things happen. You know, it's always been the way we talk about our business as being the platform. You know, we're the stage, we're not the stars. The magic happens when you put it in the hands of other people. So closing that gap by providing digital education has been a big part of our responsibility. And that journey over six years, we've trained over a million people in the UK.

10:04It started out very much kind of broad sense. We don't teach them just Google skills. We teach them all technology. So initially, I always remember being, we used to have physical spaces around this. We now have pop-ups in places. But when we had some shops, I remember being up in Leeds and having a grandma who came in. and she said to me she's going to thrust her phone uh towards me and said can you teach me how to use whatsapp because none of my kids and grandkids will talk to me so i need to know what is this thing and you know we sat down and taught her how to do it and it was amazing because for her it opened up a whole world of communication i always remember a local beekeeper coming in and he'd was you know struggling at the time and we know the issues of bees in the uk but he was saying you know i need to my some of my kind of farm staff are saying i need to know how to put these spreadsheets together and that our our team of trainers and coaching staff there helped this entrepreneur with his beekeeping and they set up these tricks and that the beauty of google products are kind of google docs and and sheets is that you can collaborate on how you use them and all of a sudden he had those that are actually looking after the hives would automatically update you know where that hive was what we're doing and he managed to not only increase production for his business but he also attracted different types of staff into his business just by showing more digital literacy and if i bring it up to kind of modern day that learning program again our responsibility goes beyond just that closing the gap on digital learning which is closing and obviously the covid and the pandemic accelerated a lot of that for many but actually there's a new kind of gap or challenge or opportunity knowing that we're all lifelong learners around ai and ai tools and actually these are now often people probably like me and you actually or you know people at different points in their career who are now saying well i need to retrain or maybe not even retrain i need to just improve on some of my skills and it's wonderful to be able to we have now you know courses that offer certification that are allowing people to go off and find new jobs or get promoted or build businesses so i love that that aspect that alongside things like keeping kids safe online thinking about access to arts and culture yeah that responsibility part of my job i feel so enthused about it's amazing actually even down to a small thing i was building a bike at the weekend right randomly and i got stuck at a certain point of course what did i do i googled precisely the amount of pressure i should apply to a particular bolt in a sensitive part of the bike i mean like you know you'd have to have bought a big thick manual from somewhere beforehand but then you just google it and then there's a youtube video with exactly precisely the bike and the stage i was at and the particular challenge i had it was it she's one minute 30 video going this is how you do it and it's just like wow you know it's just amazing and all do a bit more diy less embarrassing i'm terrible at diy so literally i'm just google everything now you know i think um i always remember we used to love one of the things we used to think about you know i suppose the role of google in people's lives which it plays many things but one of them is always to kind of just help you look a little bit more clever you know just a little bit you know actually that sense of knowing which is helpful which obviously i regularly get shamed by my children of like did you not know that mum as i have to turn to google for that answer something that's always fascinated me there about this is like obviously we as you know as consumers of google we're typing in all manner of weird things and questions and whatever we've got But from your point of view, from Google's point of view, you must have a lot of fascinating insight on the world.

13:35I mean, what insight do you get on the world? Because I guess you're almost like the world's conscience, aren't you? And what's the world thinking right now? That kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, do you get any surprising insights about, you know, humanity that maybe we don't know? All the time. And the hardest thing is actually mining that data because it's a little bit like what you ask for. And the thing we did many years ago and is such a great tool. and I always encourage everyone, marketeers and agencies, everybody and actually just curiosity, journalists particularly, is we opened up that tool.

14:05So we have a product called Google Trends, which you just can go online and you can actually have a look at what are those trending search queries. And it's a kind of graphical representation or over time of how searches are changing or what's really top trending searches and who's the most searched for person at the moment. And you're right, it's a lovely indication of society of culture of interest but you can learn so much from it and it is like what you are so you know everything from i've seen around elections for example i remember this is like casting a bit further back but you know people are obsessed with how tall someone is you know and that would be this you know probably not great because we should be more concerned with policies but you know human interest is you want to know a little bit more I'm not sure how that sways someone's voting preference I don't know but you know also actually which led on to a campaign you know I like not just seeing what people search for which is curious you know I of course people will see the spikes you get around programming so you could watch a tv program or a big sporting moment and you'll see a spike in search query as people rush to go what was that who's that you know what's their name but also actually what people don't understand and I think in a in a world where things can feel more polarized than ever before and it feels like you've got to have an opinion and you've got to pick a side what happens if you don't understand and you don't know and actually that's one of the things we observed and i did you know i think for us it's not just what people are searching for but it's also sometimes going a bit further back to why are they searching for that so actually we were looking at say around actually lgbt questions and how that's evolved over the last 20 years so questions that might have been around permission you know quite simple questions around permission you know can i marry a man can i do this to now looking at the kind of questions which shows a real evolution in our thinking and our attitudes and a curiosity that is there to support how do i support my son to come out as gay you know which is not just necessarily about the individual but how we want to help each other um and it did lead on to some brilliant work we made with uncommon called it's okay to ask and it was an observation of the fact that we have this confessional relationship with search and at the time we wanted to build a campaign that you know searches now in its in the way that it's used it's utility you know we don't really think about the fact that we search in the way that we don't think about electricity when we turn the light on but actually there's a there's a reality that we have a slightly different relationship with google in that often when we don't want to turn to someone else we don't want to look silly because i don't want to say I don't know I don't fully understand that do I really have an opinion from the weird and the wonderful to how do I fix something to actually what should I think about this is we go to Google and so it's quite a confessional relationship that we have with it and so without being intrusive you can start to see patterns and one of the patterns we'd seen and observed at that time there was actually you know a lot around you know parents asking for support on how to support their gay children or around at the time there was unfortunately a lot of racism surrounding the euros and people you know there was this polarized debate and discussion around taking the knee and players that wanted to take the knee with the government taking a position on this you know the media taking a position on this and it became really like you are the for or against actually what we observed is there was a huge number of people searching like they go why are people taking the knee what does it mean and that was really interesting because between the graphs you go hold on there's a whole there's millions of people here don't even understand it and so that was an opportunity to really lean in to not just encourage people to ask those questions in a time when not only do you have to have an opinion you're not allowed to change your opinion but we all know the better informed we are more likely to change an opinion so that led on to that lovely work of it's okay to ask which we'd never imagined having a voiceover and actually nils being a purist uh creative would have honestly i think died in a ditch at the time if I suggested a voiceover.

18:07But we already had a relationship with Marcus Rashford. I'd reached out to him six months before that when he'd done his amazing efforts to help get kids fed in the half-term breaks. And they'd had this incredible rush of businesses and restaurants who were going to Twitter going, you know, you can come to my restaurant and I'll feed the kids, you know, between 10 and 11 or whatever. And they didn't have a very simple way of being able to kind of aggregate that information. And I literally just reached out to him and said, look, I think we can help. I think our technology we can create a map for all these businesses so if people because you could see the kind of friction you know if you go to search you couldn't find the help that was being offered so I wanted to help him do that so having worked with Marcus and his team his incredible partner who's kind of led all his operations Kelly she I was talking to her actually about a different project and she asked me what I was working on I told her about the it's okay to ask campaign and she's like oh Marcus would love that you know he's really passionate about people asking questions he felt when he was younger he didn't get to ask some of the questions he wanted to you know and that no one wants to be censored or felt shamed about not knowing and simply presented it to him and he was loved it wanted to give lend his voice to the campaign and and i love how that whole premise of it's okay to ask has continued on you know we've been having lots of conversation with our trans colleagues at the moment to help build better understanding around some really complex issues yeah i can really imagine for anyone watching or listening that hasn't seen the confessional because it's really quite moving isn't it can you describe it for everybody just to how that exists so we um and again great fun of kind of demonstrating the breadth of questions we actually open on a group of kids group of young boys of different races and they're having some kind of conversation and it's the white boy of the group comes up to the others and says you know wag one and they're all full about laughing and you could get this sense are they teasing him yeah and and it goes on to a set of vignettes of curiosity a boy looking for a bus that some people muslim people praying outside to you know curiosity of a neighbor looking over looking at duvali celebration a really beautiful scene in a mechanics of two older men of one looking over to the other to recognizing that the other guy was struggling but didn't really know how to talk to him so the vignettes kind of give you a sense the curiosity that we all have of sometimes a gaze or something more concerning and then leads into the search queries you know all to a banging track as nils would say that led to then marcus at the end saying giving that permission but the language and the the incredible copywriting that the uncommon always do was gave real power to that message that sense of you know it's not what we ask it's what we do with the answers you know still gives me chills now that's really powerful isn't it really powerful I wanted to ask you about that because there's some theme that runs through a lot of the work you create is humanity, isn't it?

20:54And is that an intentional thing? Because obviously, you know, you're a technology platform, you know, very data driven. And yet the work you produce is incredibly rooted in kind of human truths and humanity and helping people, really. Is that a conscious strategy? Yes, definitely. And I think for me, the, you know, I had a commercial background and have that commercial sense of the reality of business. but there was a recognition and I think this is definitely from my own upbringing of you know challenge and struggle and hardship and a lack of inclusion you know I spent the first two-thirds of my career only being the only one you know so any person of color often the only female the only woman in in certain boardrooms but also from a social class and an upbringing that wasn't the same as everybody else's and I think the sense of power that for me storytelling gave me when I was younger you know I was obsessed about magazines you know for me it was an escapism magazine and tv and it was limited to three or four channels there was only you know so much you could see you know I absorbed media as as an escape into a life that I wanted to have but they just didn't feel real you know and it does play to the fact that I was endlessly a daydreamer which I would love to go back to my teachers and go actually that served me really well but you know for me media didn't represent me it didn't show me a life that I lived or even I thought possible but that sense of aspiration escapism was there and as I as I felt and really understood actually that I could play a hand in somewhere or another whether it was through helping businesses grow and them creating jobs and opportunity for others that I hadn't seen for myself and my family or the communities I lived in or the power of marketing and media you know whether that was making content or ads or actually supporting brands and businesses that are doing that because I've worked at agencies as well that and I saw you know that's why I came to work in this industry not another one because I could see the influence it had on me and I knew the influence it was having on others so I yeah definitely motivated and driven I think in the last 10-15 years that sense of certainly since I had kids and then I you know I've got twin teenagers, but it taught me that sense of responsibility that, you know, actually you go in your younger years, your twenties and your thirties, it's all about you.

23:13And it's very me, me, me. You get to a point where you actually realize it's for your kids or it's for others. And the sense of the legacy in the, that you want to do, you know, I will, it's a beautiful saying, I can't remember who said it, but you know, that sense of you plant flowers now that you will never see bloom and that opportunity that knowing lightness and craft and art and design and storytelling changes minds it changes the way we live you know from sensible staff to seat belt to you know this girl can and motivating and finding a place so yeah i think that's been the strong thread of my work and for me coming to google was it was the biggest platform for being able to tell that story with a product that was free that was universal that i really loved the mission of this sense of democratizing information it really talked to my truth and what i wanted to do i can almost hear nails in my head now because it's like i don't want just to sell cheese but no one of the things i love about him is is reminding us that you know not only are we here to sell more cheese obviously but um we are also here to make a big impact on the society around us and leave a great legacy which i just think is just such a challenge to all of us in very privileged positions that we're in you know with big responsibility i think that sense of power and platform is is critical yeah because i think that's something we're all very humble and don't believe in nils or shako i know you've also had a podcast you know i i think one of the things i do very well is i keep very good company yes of of like-minded in the sense of not an echo chamber but like-minded in terms of mission and values but i think that sense of power is and i don't know we like the word power but interestingly i'm going to like the word power because i'll talk about that in a minute but that sense of the ability to do something you don't have to be at the top of the tree and i think i learned that in the last 15 years that i didn't need to be at the top i didn't need to have perhaps the assumed platforms actually i was making a difference in whichever way i was and i've really stressed that to everyone in my team and anyone i meet is that we all actually play a role and it's really it's it's soul food you're so right you reminded with something else actually i remember when um i think i had nils on the show about two years ago so fairly early on in my evolution uh from a podcast point of view and remember when we stopped recording at the end he said um you're now a publisher what are you going to do with it i was like damn that's a that's a cutting yes that's a perceptive question i didn't think of myself as a publisher i just thought it's a hobby i'm doing it to meet good people have good conversations and And he's like, you know, your campaign magazine, your marketing week, you know, which voices are you going to air?

25:52You know, what difference do you want to make? He's good at those questions. He's really annoyingly. Annoyingly good, isn't he? I'm going to have to come up with some counter questions for him next week. You are going to have to. Put him on the spot, make him feel on edge, you know. Let's talk about advertising because I wanted to talk about a couple of great ads that you've made recently. And the first one, actually, so obviously benefit the system on database is we get to see kind of all the ads everyone makes and get to look at them. So we've got 380, I think, Google ads on. Now, the most successful one in the UK, actually, which I'd love to talk to you about, is the Google Pixel 7 launch, which I think was earlier this year, wasn't it?

26:24I think it's just fairly recent. So we'll play this. Looking back at old camera phones, I look really dark, really washed out. Emma looks great. I look dreadful. You can only see me teeth. When I take a photo using this phone, it's more true to life. It's what we look like. I'm AJ and I've got a Google Pixel. Now what I love about that is in 15 seconds, you've got immediately, you've got a connection with somebody. She tells a very personal story about her, which resonates incredibly powerful, but in a way that only she could tell as well, isn't it? It's just, I mean, I couldn't possibly do an advert like her, you know what I mean?

27:04And even down to what I love about it is, you know, I think she's from Blackburn or something like that. And even the accent is just really authentic, isn't it? So everything about that just screams authenticity, but just focuses on one almost like amazing feature of that phone, you know, that everyone go, oh, wow, I didn't know that sort of thing. But I just thought, you know, you're talking passionately about representation. I thought it was a lovely example, a very simple way of telling a story that I just wouldn't have any experience of. But I can resonate because of the way she tells the story.

27:34I think it's I mean the team that have worked on the pixel work have been have just had such have done an amazing job of taking technology that is incredible in its own right but making it really accessible so I mean by that so that true tone feature which is what AJ is talking about there which again is one of these things that you know you never knew didn't exist until you know it doesn't exist and you know all credit to our engineers and it actually came it's a wonderful story actually it's an engineer one of our black engineers who noticed you know in his photographs and obviously was able to use it is ai technology to be able to think about the shading so if you are of darker skin you don't kind of disappear as she says you know you only see your teeth and and actually it's not a problem that would necessarily identify or someone knew that something could be done about it so a you've got incredible technology then the power of that is saying actually how do you take that magic which is what we we have a phrase internally at google which is you take the magic and you take the user and you bring the two together so you take the magic technology and then you think about the user now there's some wonderful versions of the true tone ad in in the us that we did with lisa in that but what i loved about the work here in the uk that i think the team have really lent into and is really important for how we're setting the standard for the brand here in the uk is that relatability you know actually you wanted someone the lovely thing about aj she has incredible relatability as you say having someone who's got a northern accent actually someone who's prepared to laugh at themselves in a way that you say no one else could really do that but to not make it feel awkward and or or in any way kind of alienated and talk to the truth of the problem in such simplicity and i think the finding characters and stories like that you can only really do if you have a good sense of where you're trying to get to and that's where i think you know that's the gift we have incredible technology at google that's helped you know some of our accessibility products and we actually have built a new accessibility engineering center at our king's cross office you know that's not just transforming lives of those that have ability challenges and and issues in their life it's actually also reframing how we think about those that don't necessarily have the same access or privilege or way of living that we do you know i would never use the word normal because normal is for that individual but i think being able to take those stories and apply them in that way is really critical and that's the most important thing is like the uk is incredibly diverse not just in its ethnicity but in our lifestyles in our accents in our interests and tastes and i think bringing that out to the forefront is a big part of what we want to do and it also works i mean not being too sort of blunt about it as well but the most successful google ad on our database and as i said there's 380 is the coda one from the us which i is just so moving i wanted to play this because i think it is just very emotive but also shows how you can kind of shine a spotlight on somebody, in this case, you know, a deaf couple with a child, and really tell a powerful story that I think is so moving.

30:45I'm what's called a coda.

30:50My parents were both born deaf.

30:55I was not. When people in the hearing world learn that about me, they always want to know more.

31:10Start out your forehead and then go out with your hand. I've always had one foot in the deaf world and one in the hearing world. I translated a lot for my parents. It made us closer. Now that it's been over a year since we've seen each other in person, communication is more important than ever. Especially with this kind.

31:41It's their first time being grandparents, so they don't want to miss a single moment.

32:01and I don't either we can't wait for you to meet him

32:12so emotional I mean I mean not only does that help you see into someone else's life in a really powerful way but I mean we have this thing called the face trace which just shows the emotion that people are feeling as they're watching and the joy that people experience as they see the use of technology helping that family connect is really powerful the other thing that's interesting from from you know google perspective is right from the beginning everyone knows who it is right so because you know search and even the phone is just part facilitating that you're not going you know look what we're doing at google you know it's just you're part of the you know the technology is part of the you know what's facilitating that that kind of human connection it's really powerful that yeah and it is where we have to lean into sometimes as you say i think which is why data like this is so helpful is you know we do have those really clear brand signifiers you know that sometimes we want to throw out the typey typey in the text because do people still do that you know and modern ways of doing it but there are some kind of key signals that people immediately know where you are it's google ad okay i get it and actually didn't dwell too hard into explaining the technology but but you know i i'll say that when i saw this ad which was brilliantly placed as well so great media placement we often debate which came first but placed in the oscars where Coda was up for an Oscar and went on to win I think as well but you know I had never thought about that experience you know so we've thought about sign language products you know I knew obviously about our speech to text products I'd not considered enough you know and this is what I've heard from so many people is which is what's beautiful about these ads in terms of building that unity as you talked about which is what all our ads you know is certainly ones I love and I hope that I continue to make are the ones that bring people closer together.

33:53And I think this is not just around, you know, oh, great, people who are deaf are now seen, and that's important. It's actually seeing from all of our point of view and perspectives, and that's what's beautiful about it. In fact, Kate, who was ex-WACL president, Kate Waters, so she and I did a diversity project together, actually started about three years ago. We ended up calling it Feeling Seen. But the major insight was actually how diverse advertising unites us, and the really powerful insight the obvious insight was when you're seen you know uh you know as a minority group you feel more happiness you feel stronger emotion that kind of thing that you probably expect what we didn't expect which was great is that how everyone else also felt you know proud to see other people being seen and it was so what we call it the diversity dividend which is a little bit kind of cheap way of saying it but the point is is that actually by representing people really well you actually bring everyone else with you and it's quite powerful So we ended up calling it, you know, feeling seen how diverse advertising unites a nation, which obviously ITV with a big platform to, you know, you know, they sort of entertain the nation.

34:58But actually how diverse advertising unites a nation. Which is great because I have heard, unfortunately, you know, of people say, oh, it's too diverse. You know, that's going to offend, you know, white middle class people in certain parts of the UK. Yeah. And we've always talked about this because actually I've said it's, you know, it's about there's a uniformity of a product or, you know, that example with Coda. You know, it doesn't matter the nationality of the representation. There are so many stories that transcend, you know, our background and culture or whatever. And that's, I think, one of the most critical things to be able to kind of deliver, which is where that authenticity is so important, because then there is a broader relatability.

35:41but i think as a business like google and as a brand many many brands i think not just google many brands in uk have a responsibility to reshape how we see society and that means you've got to lean in a bit further and the fact that the data proves that it's still really effective i think well this was almost one of the things i wanted to prove because um i was hearing the same thing right because obviously we test for you know thousands of thousands of people a year and i was hearing a little bit of hesitation you know we're going people were saying things like well if we represent this you know small minority group are we going to alienate everybody else and it was it was this fear that i didn't believe was real so i wanted to prove it so hence why i did the study so it was as important to me how everyone else felt as the audience represented because i wanted to go is this fear real should you worry about it or should you not and actually what was amazing is um you know unlike social media where you just you literally it's like choose a side you know actually the data would suggest that diverse advertising unites us the The other interesting nuance on it, actually, which is quite profound, too.

36:43We also worked out that it's better to tell one person's story well than try and represent an entire group badly. So back to your point, the one thing we did notice is that when you tried to sort of cover everybody, actually you cover nobody. And this is what you do very well in your advertising is you kind of this is why you can tell the story of, you know, a boy with two deaf parents. Right. I mean, it's tiny percentage. although actually having said that 466 million people like this is also educational when you realize you watch out go i didn't realize you know but um you know telling one person's story well is so much more powerful than trying to so you know we did find when people try and sort of put in as many different ethnicities or groups into one ad you sort of end up losing the power of that sort of diversity impact so that was one that was one sort of tip we found yeah that's a great lesson and i think it's so important because i think this is that's exactly what what marketeers are challenged with at the moment you know what you oh right you know because you do get into kind of a bit of tick box diversity and or ticks box issues even as well and you're right then you don't do any of them justice and it just feels like you're just trying to keep everyone at bay and i agree you know being able to go and actually i think this is going to be a real challenge for all marketeers going forward like we're feeling at the moment is as we you know we that census around sound you know you need to be everywhere and social media and social formats play into that which are often a lot shorter and they don't allow the breadth of authentic storytelling and the reality is that's when you do get into kind of stereotypes and tropes and tick boxes because sometimes you need just the breadth and room to be able to unpack a little bit of that authenticity and it is you know we were talking about this yesterday actually with my team and and some of the Wacker women around just the critical importance around you know when people talk about having diversity in teams and production teams and casting it's all the little things you know we were discussing a a an ad that was being shot that was all to do is um beautiful girls black hair but it was everything from like did they have the right kind of hair products in the bathroom did they you know and those are obvious things but sometimes they're not obvious and i really wish you know we're trying to do a lot of this at google in terms of leaning in and sharing everything we've learned and making that because I strongly believe and stand by the fact that inclusivity and diversity are not competitive advantage.

39:03You know, that is for everyone. It's not, you know, and therefore if we learn something and I've learned so much from you today, I want to share that with everybody and make sure we're all getting better at it. But I do hope authentic portrayal, which I think is where we focus, is like, how do you really do authentic portrayal? the data and what you show is important but you it has to be seen and felt by those that live those lives otherwise it's counter a hundred couldn't agree more authenticity is incredibly important and and you can you can tell very quickly when something's inauthentic can't you i think you know audiences are smarter than probably we give them you know that they can detect you know the kind of inauthenticity um obviously we focus a lot on kind of diversity representation in the creative but what about in in terms of media because we don't tend to talk much about the role of diversity in media no and it's interesting because you're right you know we've everyone the industry at large has really focused on the the stories that are told the people that are there etc and how do we get better representation and i think you know we're still on that journey we're still early days on that journey just even what you're saying there today and how marketeers and decision makers are learning about actually who they cast the stories they tell etc but when you think about reach and actually you put all that love into what you make and then who sees it and this was something i felt very strongly about because whether it's been connected to communities where they weren't consuming the same media or maybe not in the same volume that your media planner would love you to believe and i think partly you know it's always that kind of age old oh but you know you're trying to create volume reach or can you measure it people would abandon titles and and opportunities and platforms that do it one of the things we did we our wonderful team embarked on some amazing piece of research called mirrors and windows and i love the idea that they call this that's why you know the idea that you know media is there to reflect who we are but also provide a window into the homes and lives of others that we can learn about and that's you know as you come back to that point of unity that's how we get there when we have a better understanding you know I've done it actually through I if I reflect to myself I've done that through music you know I've lived in London my entire born and lived in London my entire life but have managed to connect to so many different cultures but I did that through music you know so you know jam rock is one of my favorite tunes and it reminds me of Notting Hill Carnival but for me it was often that window into other cultures nowadays and you know it's not just YouTube but YouTube's a big part of this but other social platforms that give a voice that give the opportunity for breadth of storytelling to so many and that can be widely accessed by anyone means you have a real way of being able to make sure your story is seen by the people who need to see it they'll also be a harsher judge of it but there's an incredible opportunity around that so i i reflect on say if i take my own family so my parents were in their 80s they're avid youtube users like you know probably maybe sometimes too much but they were able to discover content that It was true to what they wanted to enjoy that they hadn't seen from India in 60 years.

42:08And so whether it's, you know, recipes or news or entertainment, they were able to find the thing that they like to connect with. My kids who are mixed race have been able to connect better with their grandparents through modern day Gujarati comedians like Pali Patel. But they can also discover all the other things they like on TikTok, on YouTube. And so they're able to find their own tribe in a way that, as I described when I was little, I never found that. and so i think as a marketeer your ability to buy media that doesn't necessarily have to be fragmented which i think is what most people feel fearful of to go oh god you know i'm ever going to build a brand and create reach actually technology allows us to buy at a volume and a scale to do that but the other thing is the creators themselves so i always say to people every time you're buying and investing in these platforms every time you buy these ads on youtube and you're working with you don't have to work with creators and they've got to make, but you could just be buying ads that are going to appear on their content.

43:02You're putting money into their pockets and they are able to fund better creation and creativity for their storytelling, which we've seen incredible evolution of so many of those creators, you know, take side men, you know, as probably one of the most successful collective on YouTube. If you look at where they came from and where they've got to, and even the sophistication of their production, they are, they are one of the biggest production companies in this, in this country, you know, to rival the big household names of media and production that we know. But also, don't forget that the money that's going to them and flowing to them and all the people they employ and all of the ecosystem that sits up behind those creators, they're going to communities that need that economic equality.

43:44It's incredibly democratic, isn't it? Amazing. It opens up. I mean, anyone can have their own TV show. It's insane, really, isn't it? Anyone with a mic, as you are here. Exactly, yeah. All we need is a mic and a camera. And off you go. And I think that is incredible. And so when you think about it from a media and the tools nowadays make it easier to buy and to measure, AI will make it even easier to think about, which is often the challenge. You know, when you think about hundreds of assets, well, actually, you need technology to help you to make assets and manage them. It doesn't replace creativity.

44:16It just creates efficiency. But it's sometimes remembering the end point of why we're doing this, because I've seen the transformational difference it makes to people's lives and communities. the voices and the stories that are told that you know let's face it they're not going to get commissioned by some of the biggest broadcasters in this country but we are investing in a creative community in the uk that i hope means that we will continue to lead the world although one day they might right of course you know i think they will that's the great thing about the platform is it's democratic and you know you can an unknown person from an unknown place can end up becoming the biggest star and i look at you know asim chowdhury from people just do nothing or amelia de moldemburg and you look at actually how they've evolved they are production companies in their own right you know she commissions work she's she's being courted by you know film companies and the broadcast companies and everyone's you know and people like that and many others they're really savvy about their audiences you know i've heard them say well i really want to be on itv or channel 4 because i want them to make sure my mom sees it you know but when i really want the views i'm putting it on youtube or tiktok or snap whatever you know because on youtube they can get an audience that's 10 times what they're receiving anywhere else but there is a reality that it's not a displacement you know i suppose having worked in so many different technology and media throughout my 30 years of working i've heard every single time people talk about displacement oh this is the end of that you know every time you know and web came it was going to kill every other media you know print was going to be gone etc and yeah those industries have been changed and have shaped differently the same when mobile phone came and you know god every year was the year of the mobile it's like what's happening and i hear similarly now with ai we have the same fear we have the same concerns but we also have to embrace the opportunity you know and it doesn't take in actually thinking about this wackle centenary you hear the conversations about how people were regulating tv when tv came became more mainstream people were fearful of it they were fearful of what was this going to do and you know it's going to ruin our children and all this of it now i don't say that development and technology and innovation doesn't have to be unmeasured and shouldn't be very strictly controlled and regulated but if we stop fear if we allow fear to stop our imagination and our daydreaming and our innovation we're never going to progress so i get excited about every new bit of technology like you know ar i remember an ar first kind of came to prevalence and people like yeah who's ever going to use this you start to see now you know transforming sustainable fashion economies you know where actually the idea of trying something on is a hindrance where if i can try on an ar way i'm going to rent it or i'm going to buy second hand you gave me a flashback actually because i i created the world's first ar drinks brand right so basically it's 2013 when it's just emerging technology and if you put your phone over it was a juice uh that i was selling um the fruit on on the pack would explode it's really quite cool and in fact my business card was the coolest thing because um i filmed myself like giving a talk about about the products and then if you put your phone over my business card i appear like princess leia from star wars kind of in this like fuzzy sort of like you know thing you still got them you know i do i'll show you afterwards yeah yeah it's great but um but the point was that embracing technology at that time was great because the fascinating thing i found was that every customer went to see i gave the business card i never opened powerpoint because they're just like oh this is amazing so he's just sat and they put and we got chatting and it was great so they never forgot you know and i think the first year 300 000 people had interacted with the packaging and it cost me nothing because because it was so early days at that point that the company that i was working with were investing in the tech for free just to prove the concept so just goes to show um talking about creators um any top tips for anyone that's creating on youtube he says what would your top tips be well what we've learned from others and i think that's the most critical thing because actually as i say these creators are often way more experienced and learned than we are and we don't um you know the rules around algorithms are not shared more broadly but actually i kind of i come back to some of the basics you know that's the beauty of marketing i'm sure mark ritson and others would say this regularly you know there's not a lot that's changed so when you think of a creator you know as a publisher regularity and that consistency of production and publication is critical you know setting that expectation and knowing it and we do live in a more demand driven society so frequency is important without getting kind of the point of annoying or overwhelm new formats you know so the power of things like shorts you You know, short form videos are an incredible way.

49:01Not necessarily, you don't have to tell your story. I always say to you, well, it doesn't have to be the entire story. Think of it as a mechanic to promote what you're leading people into. But it is a piece of content in its own right. So don't do the age old as we all did before, where we would take a 30 second or a 60 second and chop it up. We now know, yeah, you can do that. But the more effective ways is, what's the thing I want to say in six seconds? And actually think about that. And so the edit you might create of a podcast in that six seconds has got to be the thing that lures you in. You know, Stephen Bartlett's a master of this.

49:32He's absolutely, you know, you look at his cut down as his, you know, and he's incredibly click-baity. He is very click-baity. He's got more click-baity by the episode at the moment. Maybe a bit too click-baity. Everyone has to cry on his podcast as well, which I think is a shame. So I think there's a sense of like, come back to those roots of the production. I think the authenticity is, you know, overly polished. you know you don't want to be too weak on your production because there is now a higher bar set you know it's almost like when amazon sets the standards of you know our expectation around deliveries you know you just got to move to that space but overproduction is not just kind of leads into people procrastinating to take too long it actually also means you take away from authenticity there's a sense of too censored too managed etc so i think that that's critical and then the other power which i think is really lovely and i love seeing it more and more is that sense of collaboration so now and now you see on instagram a lot you do see on youtube where you see you know youtube has always been that that creator network has always worked together but actually more so now people recognize that they can piggyback communities that's really powerful because it's the same sense like go back to your media plan who you're trying to reach so you don't reach just the people who are your customers you want to reach beyond that so how are you going to reach the people beyond that well that's like being a creator i know who my community is but i'd quite like some amelia's community i'd like some of yours okay so what am i going to do this have shared interest to both i love that the partnership thing is so powerful i've really learned that in my career actually is that you know if you don't have budget if you don't have budget partner with people that have got the customers you want right and then offer them something of value that that adds value to them that gets in front of them yeah that's huge and And I think the AI tools, which, you know, will be endlessly debated and considered, and we will all move our position on that.

51:15I think the one thing personally I've seen is, you know, particularly, you know, as I say, AI has been around a lot longer than current news cycles would suggest. You know, so Google's been an AI business very kind of outwardly from about 2015. We've just talked about quite a lot of technology today that's all very much AI driven. but when you get into kind of the generative tools that that's created a lot more of the news and interest now which you know is is very much kind of embraced for its excitement but also concern that collaborative tool that first starting point that first draft is what i love it for and i think particularly sort of bring it full circle to our conversation about representation diversity i have the privilege of working with just the most incredibly talented and very well educated individuals it's quite daunting I have to say and sometimes for me just getting started with that first draft of with an email or something will take me takes more energy than it should do and actually I'm probably very representative of others who are like me you know who may not have had the same access to education or an upbringing or cultural kind of touch points from younger years they don't have that necessary quite at hand and it can be a disadvantage in the workplace you You know, if I can't express myself in written communication somewhere as well as someone else, it can be a disadvantage.

52:34If the tools we have today can build just another layer of democratization and opportunity to support, I think it's incredible. And that really excites me. That makes a lot of sense. I met Daniele Braga, who's the founder of Defined AI last week. She was speaking at the same conference I was at. And I said, oh, how long have you been in business expecting her to start last week? 20 years. i'm like oh my god i think all these people have been in ai thinking what that's how she was she's like honestly it's it's like game of thrones it's been winter for like 18 years and then finally summer's arrived so you know she's like been waiting 20 years for a moment but of course it's now all blown up in a big spectacular way which is amazing um any advice for advertisers as well in terms of youtube and how to approach it as a platform yeah definitely i think that that sense of seeing the breadth of audience you know i think brands are more conscious about not just what they make in terms of stories they tell but who they're reaching and actually you know part of this mirrors and windows research that we led you know led to a lot of agencies and marketeers speaking to to me and the team around i like the idea of funding creators that kind of funding communities i like actually being able to hand over the reins a little bit like we all hate doing that there's any creative way to do in it you know when i say that to them i say but you know someone like a i i'm using the likes of amir and asim or or sidemen is but there are many their production capability is and for those audiences in that platform is way more sophisticated than anything that my team or other agencies can do because they've been doing it from date from day dot you know they've been doing it for nearly 15 years so being able to hand over the reins to creators is a really great way for marketeers not necessarily to make branded content because you know that kind of falls in and out of favor but actually to help them build the ads and actually that's where i think you know go out and look at who's in your team and who you're recruiting and really have the skills here and let go of the reins a little bit more but i think you know the sense of the debate of you know should you have your own presence versus should you do advertising advertising will let you reach places that you're not necessarily going to reach it should be a complement to your marketing plan it's not a replacement you know we know that you know you want to have the right media mix in there it offers a 365 in every sense not just all day everywhere but to all people and then i think about it's an opportunity to do some storytelling or authentic portrayal that if you really know who your user and your customer is it's it's a really really embracing world to kind of drive effectiveness you know and i think you know i've always said to people you don't have to abandon great marketing you know where's your kind of brand cues what's the kind of what's the stories you want you can have a really great call to action at the end of it you know you don't need to abandon that but what happens in the middle let's just be a little bit freer with that because i think if i was critical of anything you know there are some incredible and beautiful lads and And we all, you know, we're all obsessed about it.

55:39I have a lovely, my team run a lovely thing called the Ads Showcase once a month. And we just spend a lot of time looking at ads and discussing them. But there is a degree of, and in part technology and data, but also I think societally of uniformity. And we're at risk of things feeling a little bit too uniform. You get out of uniformity when you put the hands of work, put your work into the hands of real people. One of the things I find fun about YouTube is that you've got the skip button, right? So it's almost like the world's voting button on your creative. Do you have a list of the least, it would be the least skipped or the most skipped ads?