Olympics CMO on Olympic glory and a Paralympic legacy

0:06Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored CMO. Now, if you hadn't noticed, we're coming up to the Olympics and the Paralympics. And this gives me a wonderful opportunity to catch up with someone who's not told their story before. Greg Nugent was the CMO for London 2012 and since then has gone on to do some amazing game changing ideas and really brought to life. And particularly focusing on disability and how we can learn more about disability and put it in the spotlight. Greg is an amazing and inspirational person who has learned so much about how you take an idea and make it a reality in a way that really changes the world.

0:39This is an amazing conversation. I've got so much out of this. I know you're going to enjoy it. Here it is. So, Greg, I'm delighted for you to be joining us on the Unsensored CMO. Delighted to be here. Thank you for having me. Yes, great. It's a complete honour. Let's start with your background, shall we? How did you get into marketing in the first place? What's been your journey? I'm a kid from Nottingham which is a brilliant city in the Midlands and I grew up with a manager of our football club Nottingham Forest and he kept winning European Cups and so a little team like Forest in a relatively small city all I really remember was that we were like on the world stage, the city our city, our football club and I think from that moment onwards it made me think that whatever you think your prism is you can expand it and as a kid i was obsessed i was kind of obsessed with brands very early so i'd say the three brands that i could probably outdraw you now on we won't try it would be adidas originals logo yeah feeler um forest and nasa and the thing that obsessed that i obsessed about all of those ventures as enterprises was not person that goes to the moon or in the space i got all that but i once got a letter from the from the secretary of nottingham forest football club and i thought what does the secretary do and i thought oh my god so the team yeah do the team but there's a team behind the team yeah and that was my way into that what the teams behind the things that happen and i think the reason i got into marketing is after uni i had a pretty pretty drab schooling and then i met a load of unbelievable people at college they were thinking about doing big things and you could see that ambition went to uni finished uni worked in a great shop for a bit then i thought i've got to start doing this and i had this yearning for classical training i'd i think i'd read somewhere that you need to do your classic training first so i was looking into like the pngs and the kellogg's and you know those businesses seem to invest a lot in your training and i i was very lucky to to start in sales at wheatabix and I was told it would take six years to get into marketing Weetabix to get one of the plum jobs in.

2:57And I was a senior brand manager at Weetabix after 18 months. Wow, that's impressive. Yeah, and it was. I think if I'm honest, it was not normal. There was places like Weetabix, they're amazing businesses, but they have these so-called rules for a reason. and you know I think I was told crudely you need to go on the road for two years then you might get a senior a junior brand which I did but it'll take you this long and yeah on average Greg you won't get into marketing and I was thinking god that's like six years man that is a long time so I think I wrote to the marketing director that day and said look I can't wait for six years and if there's any job anything I kind of want to be one of the people behind the thing and And yeah, I luckily got an interview and got the job.

3:43And people like, in your life, you meet people who take, you know, we've both had it. Lots of your guests have had it. You meet people who take unbelievable gambles with you. They spot something in you. And a guy called Simon Grandage spotted it in me. And next minute, I've been marketing at Weetabix after six months. And then a year later, Paula Withel, who's ex-Hines, she said, come and work on Weetabix. And I learned a lot of Weetabix. That's very impressive. I didn't move as fast as you, but I had a similar experience, really. Because I think back then there were like these graduate programs where you had to kind of work in the factory, work in the sales team, work in accounts.

4:16And then eventually get the brand team was always the place everyone wanted to go. I mean, I had to do my bit in sales. I did my bit in category management. I did trade marketing, which is kind of like the slightly grubbier version where you sort of build a cardboard display. Exactly. And sort of inch my way through to brand team. But it took three or four years, I remember. Yeah. I never forget when I think it was this. I'd been in marketing after six months. that was like but it was a small brand and one of the accountants said to me we won't even notice you in the meeting because you don't make any money on this brand and I was like fair enough I have to change that but I think what happened is Paula gave me this job Paula and Tony Corp gave me this job on Weetabix and it was the big one and suddenly you notice the profile change you know I never forget Tesco did a thing called EDLP which is where they stocked everyday low pricing so they stopped you promoting like big deep price promotions and they said we want to lower the price for as long as possible and it really messed with the forecasting how to forecast and i'll never forget in in in july the warehouse manager coming up to me and saying you greg nugent and i thought i've made it in this place i said yeah and he said do you want to go for a walk and i thought brilliant this must this must happen all the time when you're on Weetabix and that was the big brand there and he walked me around every warehouse and I didn't know what was happening and at the end of it he said all the warehouses are full Greg he said so there's no overtime before holidays and he said that's not how we work here the factory they need the factory workers need their overtime and your job is to get forecasting right and I'll tell you in an instant you think this isn't about going to the agency in London this isn't about this is about proper product management and it really sharpened me up quite quickly yeah and then and he said if you ever if he said you're lucky if you'd done that christmas you'd be out of a job because because everyone needs their own it's so true you forget it because if you're in a head office and you let you say you're surrounded by agencies and you're spending all your time doing that you forget that actually decisions you make have a real impact all the way through the supply chain impact on jobs i mean i've had a couple of big crises in my career i mean what one was um I was working on a private equity-backed soft drink, and we had a mould infection when we tried to relaunch the, we put a new factory line in.

6:37And there was an infection on the line when we tried to relaunch, and we had to shut down for like 12 weeks, recommission the line, start over again. In the middle of the hottest summer for like 10 years, when, you know, I mean, soft drinks go crazy when the weather gets hot, right? The best advert is the sun shining, basically. And we couldn't supply our customers, and they were screaming. And exactly the experience you had is I had my customers screaming at me, but I had people on the factory floor going, I rely on doing three shifts a week. And now we're going down to two. I can't afford to, you know, pay the bills.

7:08And, you know, suddenly you're going, this is real. You know, this is absolutely real. I think that I also once lost half a million quid. Did you? Yeah. As you do. Well, EDLP, again, it really changed the way everything was reported. I found it. So I didn't lose it forever. But I, I, again, it was the, it was, it was just how high profile you were in this business. It's why I loved marketing because you, in marketing, you tend to get yourself in the room and, you know, think about all the dynamics and the levers you can press. Inevitably, they're going to want you in the room. They're not going to have a meeting without you.

7:39So that's why I wanted to get into marketing or learn how to market. And, um, yeah, I, EDLP kicked in and just about the time I got this senior brand manager job and and i i definitely kind of wasn't thinking through the daily changes in the numbers and tony came out to me one day and said the numbers don't look right in accounts versus your numbers and there was discrepancy now in the end i found it but it just you know in that role it just made you realize just how big those 100 million pound brand yeah and you make a little swing little a little mistake everyone can see it yeah in your instance there you've got a crisis as well so you know like we've all been through them so no i mean it was a like i did dream of other places but wheatabix was unbelievably a brilliant like testing ground i mean we you know we marketing's a funny old place because you can do that obama thing you know like you can bring in the best team yeah it i think it's different if you're in operations accounts etc i think in marketing you genuinely have quite a lot of the p &l to spend and you've got a lot of the p &l to earn but you genuinely can bring brilliant and i learned that paula withall we to bitch you know she's brought econometrics into we to bitch and i love my maths but i didn't know my econometric modeling and then she went well you you've got a year to learn it yeah and we built models that would predict three to five years worth of volume and then suddenly you take all of that with you wherever you go you know so i think that's what they called it fmcg i was never sure it was that fast true you know it wasn't fast like it was do you know i mean it was like you have an idea for mpd and 24 months later you might have 12 distribution it was slow but the rigor of it was like the grounding.

9:34And I definitely have managed to, you know, squeeze into a number of roles since that I think come down to that classical training, frankly. You know, we deal a lot with brands now, harder than you think. And actually knowing what they're thinking about in terms of volume swings, market share, effects of weather, you know, all of those things like pricing, changes in distribution. If you don't know those things, then it is hard to, I think, work with the great brands. It's a very, very good training, isn't it? You know, very, very thorough training. If I look at your career, you've started out with a classical training, but you love to take on a big challenge, don't you?

10:13So, I mean, maybe the first, I call it big break, big job, but you were at Eurostar, weren't you, when the move from Waterloo over St. Pancras happened. That was a pretty big kind of thing to oversee, wasn't it? Eurostar was the first time that, you know, I think people wanted me to have ideas. I think in all the other jobs until then, they wanted me to perform as high as I could, but within a model. I'd brief time at other places where you go, no, this is how it works. You're going to operate in this system. And I go, that's not going to work. And, but they, they almost didn't want to know that.

10:50Whereas Eurostar was different. Some unbelievable characters there, you know, the Nick Mercer was my boss and I don't know why he hired me. because I was always going to be impossible. And Richard Brown was his boss and he was the CEO. But I think between them, they created a culture that said, look, this is a£9 billion project, so we might as well get it right or come up with ideas to get it right. And I'd say the difference for Eurostar was it was the first time in the culture where they wanted somebody to kind of come up with those ideas. And I came up with some of them and helped other people deliver their ideas.

11:30But it was in a culture to, I never forget, it's a guy called Alistair Gordon and I think it was my day one. And he said, so what's your plan, big man? And then everywhere else I'd been, they would go, here's the plan. And I loved that. That Eurostar was like... That's really rare. I love what you said earlier about like most businesses, you work to a framework, don't you? It's like, this is how we do marketing. This is what we want to do next year. And you are, rewarded and you know based on compliance to the plan pretty much aren't you and and how well you did the plan but if i think of all the best things i've ever done in my career none of them have been in my objectives none of them were like written down it's like we want you to go and come up this crazy new idea and change how we do you know change how we do innovation or whatever so to be in a place where that's celebrated rather than being seen as the kind of slightly awkward employee that wants to do something differently is really good, isn't it?

12:25Yeah, honestly, it was life-changing because I definitely think that's right. I don't think there is as much as we talk about creativity. I think it's within frameworks. I think there's this horrible caveat, you know, within a framework or there is a constraint mostly to where you can go. I won't say who, but I remember working in a certain sector for a certain business and my boss had left and I got to go into the beatings that he went into. And one of them was an annual forecasting meeting. And so I, in those days, just used to obsess about the numbers. And if any of my old team are watching or listening, they'll probably laugh at that bit because I would just want to know the numbers.

13:06How are we going to perform? And I went into this annual forecasting meeting and I heard everyone present their numbers. They were all very senior people. I thought they're mad. Like none of these people know their numbers. and so at the end of it the cfo said to me what are your numbers greg and he did this brilliant thing he said i want you to all now critique each other's numbers so i did and obviously it went down like a lead blue like i shouldn't be in the room never mind talking but anyway i got all the numbers probably within about a percent at the end of the year and it cost them millions they lost millions because of it and and this like lack of rigor i was always taught you've got to know your rigor every single element to this you've got to know all it at Eurostar they what I loved about Eurostar is you had Emma Harris who's easily the best sales director I've ever met Nick Mercer delegating saying to me go and make St Pancras the thing and then us being given freedom that was not in a framework so mad story about St Pancras and it's often forgotten I was in a sauna in Chiswick like on a Sunday morning and there's a couple in the sauna talking about the Da Vinci Code book this was I don't know about a year before the film comes out and in this conversation one lady says oh we're going to Paris again and the other conversation I think oh it's my focus group right so I'm the head of marketing at Eurostar so I go what's going on here and the other person asked the question I would have asked which is you've already been why are you going again right she goes oh we read the da vinci code she said just forget it's so beautiful it's on your doorstep so i just ran home pretty much following day walked in said to nick i think we should do a global partnership on the da vinci code and we had saint pancras which was about 18 months away so there's no capacity and nick nick and i crudely turned it into a so-called test event could we do a mammoth project in the middle of 2006 that would ready the business on where the world get glare so that the year after atst pancras we found this stuff easy that's how we rationalize it yeah anyway no joke within three weeks of meeting sony me and paul charles ended up in michael jackson's old apartment which sony's building yeah she do and um sony said sony said yeah let's do the deal we're in new york and then paul charles out of no way said why don't we take the whole of the crew and the cast from london to can on a world record high-speed train and so it's cool yeah beautiful yeah we had absolutely no i mean to this day we had no idea it could be done it's a world record but but that's a good example of the the culture that nick richard and others created at euro stars there was me a group of people that were very ambitious and there was no set framework there was don't do this it was like what ideas have you got because in the end travels in a travel business you have to know your numbers and they're so sensitive that you know if something happens like they just drop and then they're making redundancies so i loved your star for that reason it created it was like an unbelievable opportunity the same pancreas itself i mean we i mean like when i look back that was like the best the best opportunity you know i worked for this unbelievable team and you know sharpie and ricky bless him we lost him very sadly but just had this unbelievable team of people that put everything into this station opening and you know like to be given that freedom like to begin to be to be asked what ideas have you got how do you make this thing a big thing and that's how we named high speed one because of that did you oh it was it was called the channel tunnel rail link section two so it's government acronym with ctrl two right and i i so engineering isn't it yeah and there's this great meeting where we'd hired a consultant and mike luddier remember but i think they proposed the grand union railway and it was just not working and so i i said to mike look let me take this on i'll do this and i just thought railways should be named like Thunderbirds yeah and we came up with High Speed 1 and presented it in the room and obviously everyone loves High Speed 1 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 totally yeah yeah sadly we don't have High Speed 2 yet no we don't do we all these years later we're still doing but I'd say that the skill of that business was its willingness to that it was properly entrepreneurial to let people come up with ideas and see if they work and if they don't work they don't all have to work but that was a game changer for me yeah i mean the other famous thing everyone talks about atst pancras is the longest champagne bar in the world isn't that crazy so what where did that idea come from and what what role was that playing because it's the thing that people talk about as so it's a there's an amazing guy called mike loddy absolutely amazing guy and he was in charge of the station and what he did is he went around the world looking at the great train stations and came back from he came back from the one in um the big one in new york and he basically what he'd worked out i forget the exact name we used to use for it but i think adam as well morgan yeah we were pushing for something to be over and above what we'd offered and what happened with that it's quite a good little story if i'm i'm going to tell the truth now um we originally they gave us this long vertical strip next to the what they call the rz which means you'll die if you go over it it's because it's electrocuted and everyone went oh you can't do anything with that it's tiny and like i think mike just went away and had a few thoughts and and and can i have a bit more of that strip and got more of it and and then he came back to us and said uh it's going to be a champagne ball and you think ah genius you know like it makes complete sense and what happened with a year to go i think or it might be might not be maybe three months ago but we originally said it was the longest in london and then with a month to go we tell the evening standard it was the longest in europe and on the night of the opening which was the 14th of november uh lewis hamilton was there and i would luckily got to you know introduce him to the station and i think i said longest in the world i don't know if it is the longest but it's become it says it on Wikipedia and no one's ever challenged us and I'll never forget the week one or week two or week three like on a on a Monday night there was a queue of about 500 people to get in and Jay Jamiroquai you know Jay Keper he was in the queue about 300 people down I'm like what have we done that's amazing that's insane but again that what a beautiful thing to genuinely want to allow creativity to have a proper like role in a big project and a big idea and i kind of came okay i think that became semi-addictive like big ideas where creativity is allowed to play got to get the logic right and i always talk about logic and the magic you know like brilliant you've got your magic right but your logic's not right so this doesn't work and the logic of that station was beautiful yeah but the yeah again it was back to a team that just wanted to work on a big idea and no one really cared who got the praise it's all those things you ever read about high performing cultures but it was one of those yeah totally i was with rory southerland last week actually at mad fest and he was saying that they should have got hs2 uh brief should have gone to disney he said imagine what would happen if you you thought of a fast train journey in in terms of entertainment rather than utility how would it change how you approach experience how what you build how you look at it and your feeling of rather than going how quickly do i get there how do i feel when i get there will change you know whole experience but yeah i but i also argued after 2012 because i think if you 2012 everyone used to say to us oh the budget's so big because not it really isn't like and i remember northern rock collapsing and around that time and the budget of northern rock was multitudes of what it cost to stage the games and i i kind of developed this idea in my head which is why doesn't the government always have a tiny fraction of at-risk money to do things that make the country really competitive yeah and you know rory's idea there would be you know probably not to let disney build the tracks and the trains but how do you use that to completely re-engineer the experience and now i listen high speed two will come back and way after we're gone there'll be a high speed 11 you know if you're the boss or the chair or the boss or the board or the investors and you pigeonhole creativity and you say no there's a space for it it's over there which is i won't name but i've been part of that then it won't work that none of the big ideas will work you know like and so yeah i i i love them i love reading about big ideas i love other people's big ideas i'll work on anyone else's big idea i just don't think i don't have a lot of time for something that is going to be incremental you know like this the sad thing is when you know how life works it's a blink of an eye yeah right yeah so if you ask yourself every day what are you doing and does it matter and for me the does it matter thing is the thing i've always loved it's why i've always edged between very commercial things and and things that i think really matter yeah um you know that rory's right we should still i i think we should new government we should try and get disney into we should didn't we see if they can take over high speed too I love that I love that well let's talk about the games in 2012 then so where so that's almost like a dream job isn't it I mean it must be like once in a lifetime incredible opportunity how did it come about did you pitch yourself or did you apply for a job where did it come from I bought the Sunday Times every Sunday for about two years I mean first of all I knew the bid team really well yeah because we were Eurostar and they were based in Stratford and we had a station in Stratford so got to know Jackie Brookdor really well and got to know the chief execs and Seb and you know you got to know this unbelievable team that was like an acorn just beginning to grow out in in Canary Wharf and I think there was always this unofficial advice to Greg that I used to get from Keith Mills more often than not which was they'll come a time for them to need a CMO um equivalent but it's not yet right now they've got to get in the funding and And rightly, you know, great people were coming in all the time.

23:44And I would buy the Sunday Times every Sunday religiously. I'd almost go out as soon as I woke up, are they going to advertise for this job? Because even though I was convinced someone would phone me, he'd say, you should go for that. I thought, what if they forget? And it's not like now where you can just press a button. You'd have to properly write a letter, et cetera. And then eventually, eventually it nearly didn't happen. Because what they originally wanted to do, I just had this, like unbelievable chance at Eurostar to I think apply some of my ideas to a big project and and it had kind of worked and people had given me the space to do that and and I I dreamt of having something similar like that at 2012 knowing that everyone in the world in my industry would want that job and knowing that I wouldn't get it if I'm honest and so what what happened is I left Eurostar and then did two things at the same time is I uh very for a small amount of time I worked at Clarence House did you yeah wow and I'd luckily met this incredible guy called Sir Tom Shabir who was the prince the then Prince of Wales's number one I think at like new ideas but he's also oversaw the charities and Tom came to see me and Richard Brown at Eurostar and he said we've got this idea and we're going to do a new thing on sustainability which i've become really interested in your style is very sustainable business and i've read a lot about climate change this was pre-inconvenient truth yeah so we're really beginning to get into it and um tom presented this idea which was a nice idea and i just said to tom like may i say this because you know you're the principal's not here it's just not very ambitious you know like surely the Prince of Wales will want to try and restage the next great exhibition.

25:35And Tom goes, go on then. And I said, well, you know, his great, great, great, great grandfather created the great exhibition. That was the birthplace of industrialization. The negative externality is that all of those ideas were carbon ideas. Yeah. We were learning how to build machinery. We didn't know we could generate power from the sun. So I said, wouldn't given his incredible leadership, Prince of Wales incredible leadership, I said, wouldn't it be shouldn't you rebuild the next great exhibition and anyway that meeting was over and I probably went for a drink that night and a dinner or something and the following day I got a call and could you come to Clarence House please and Tom had phoned and said I've explained what you said to the Prince of Wales I'd like you to come down and talk to us about it and I literally was I had to go and put a suit on love it go to Clarence House which is like this mad place in London and I got to present this idea and they said okay well do you want to run it and I did like for about six to nine months we we basically built the idea the great the next great exhibition uh it's called project oat and it was under his royal highness's leadership we raised the money in theory and everything was all set and then lemans crashed and the whole economy just gridlocked and suddenly the you know there's a time for big ideas and it's a really interesting thing timing is critical well sometimes you have to really hold there's a we've got a business now called 4 Night Only Phono and it was originally Kevin Cahill's idea Kevin of like raised 2 billion quid CEO of Comet Relief created Make Poverty History and he came to me and said I really want to do this thing around 4 Night Only and I said can I rent it you know I want to do it with you I just don't think now's the time it took 6 years for us to get that to move and so I think big ideas sometimes have to have the right atmospheres around them and so so after the after Eurostar I was moving between that and very luckily I I managed to get to work for a mentor of mine called Philip Gould and Philip was working with Matthew at Freud's and Philip was Pauling and we very sadly lost him and but he had this he was like Labour's brain for Tony Blair and the team and I got to work between the two of them and but i still was yearning for 2012 so i buy the sunday times every every sunday morning it nearly didn't happen because originally they wanted to put it into a director rather than its own seat yeah i was devastated i think i cried and then about six months later i'd got over it i think and i was in clarence house and i got a call from gene tomlin who's the HR director at 2012.

28:18And I think, I think even then she was calling me Gregor. Um, but she said, um, okay. Yeah, we heard you. Um, marketing does need its own seat and we're going to set up the office of the marketing department and we need you. If you're interested, we would like you to start on Mondays and in interim. And my job is to go in and build the base of the marketing department for London 2012, having watched David Magliano before me do his magic. But I was only there for six months and my job was to set it up respectfully, knowing that the world's best CMOs would sweep in and knock me out. And I began a campaign at that point to be indispensable.

29:00I love that. And how many years before 2012 business? How long was the run into the games? So this for me would have been the start of 2009. Yeah. and at that point the organization's probably only got a hundred people so it's very very yeah because yeah it ramps you know it's an exponential volume ramp at the end where the volunteers come in yeah um but again like i i i walked into that knowing my first job was for my boss this unbelievable person called bould it and he seemed to be saying something similar to me which is this place needs a kind of a flair in creativity but we also don't need a maverick on a hill like we we want somebody that's going to work with this unbelievable team and i've never looked left and look right on a team like i looked like at 2012 so olympics is like it must be almost the greatest team sport when you think about it isn't it because you're putting on an mighty show you've got the eyes of the world looking at you there's so much logistics so what did you learn about how teams work and the importance of teamwork to put on something as spectacular as 2012 no i think you it's back to the oceans 11 thing i think for me you you know you i really mean it the day that i walked in had my first exec meeting and i look around me and think these people are really remarkable people and they are driven and they're going to do something incredible and then you walk down the road and you've got the olympic delivery authority and they've got a separate organization they're building the venues and the infrastructure and then you go to government or number 10 and you meet the security people who you'll never meet no one will ever know they did it but they sat gchq keeping us safe and then you meet peter hendy doing the transport making the trans you know like the thing about that project is i've never heard anybody say i did it yeah nobody's ever done that because nobody did do it it it was just the most unbelievable web of highly driven people who didn't want to take the credit that was the beauty i think what happened within that you obviously have to have really key leadership positions what i was lucky was that my boss and the board and having keith there as well i mean you know keith mills is like one of the greatest marketeers in history um they wanted the risk that came with creativity i mean you know think about Danny Boyle and having his own vision for, you know, that wasn't how ceremonies worked.

31:32Ceremonies normally were very constrained for cameras. Danny says, I want my own cameras. You know, like he's got his own vision for it. I think, I think, you know, Seb and Paul, the board, the government, all the state actors, Tessa Jowell. I mean, she was the, I think she set, I think Tessa Jowell set the barometer on the culture in that project. and crudely you arrive and you look right and left and you think there is no we have no seconds for politics and no seconds for underperformance so the question is how do you then find the right team make sure they've got the right scope the right budgets the right clarity and how do you make them like work out where the risks are and every Tuesday we used to do a thing called the Tuesday update for the team there'd be hundreds of people and all I used to say is if you're the person every week i'd say this say if you're the person who's been given something to do and you don't think your boss has got the time to worry about the thing you're worried about stop someone else and talk about it because otherwise you're harboring all this risk yeah so look ultimately there's that great quote about not wanting to take the credit that was what it's like i've never looked i've never watched any 2012 stuff i've never you mentioned this before why why what is it about that experience that means you don't you don't want to watch I'm not a massive in general I've never done anything like this you know I think it's a brilliant thing to do and I'm thankful for you letting me do it but I don't know I just prefer to do tomorrow than yesterday but I think with 2012 I think that what I love about its reputation since it's finished is they're genuinely you do meet somebody you've never met and they've never met you but the bond you have is that you between you you did something remarkable it goes back to my books on NASA and the secretary at forest like nobody knew the secretary at forest didn't go out and collect the medals and but they won the medal you know like i buy that janitor story about who put someone on the moon so i think 2012 oda low cog gla all these acronyms you've never heard of you know like and in the end everybody worked for london 2012 it did london 2012 doesn't exist as a name or an organization we were called low cog oda gla number 10 you know like and i i would say i think test somebody somewhere has to define the spirit obviously seb and um you know tessa for me were spiritually defining and and but you know again to have a boss who could see all of the risks but also be wanting to say you know how do we do this in a way that means it matches up to london and british creativity a lot of the talk before is about a lot of justification is about the legacy it will leave on the nation, isn't it?

34:21I mean, that was a lot of the chat before is what's the impact going to be for London, for the UK and so on. What do you think the legacy's been? I think it's the chat for London. I mean, the London Olympic and Paralympics was a completely different proposition to a normal, if you like, bid. I mean, bids historically didn't do legacy. It was the genius of the bid team that did that. And they created an emotional proposition that when they won it, they won it because it was an emotional pitch like you guys yeah remember the films and yeah david and the team that did that did an unbelievable job i think two-thirds of all the money spent in and around the project was spent on physical things east london has been transformed um you know transport system in east london is accessible largely accessible you know the there's no country in the world that's ever had a kind of abrupt change in attitude nor shift towards disability than the uk and so um i it more than made its money back but i think the cultural impact like when i when i remember early stage thinking on that was if you tell people what you were doing they'd think you were mad and they would always bring back the millennium dome and but we never thought about failure like we just knew it would be an accretion of a billion tasks nobody would be the person that did the magic it would be everybody you know like the games makers you know like the we had a problem with the games makers and the problem was a really unique one which was uh we had to put them off it's put them off yeah so that you need 250 you need 75 000 volunteers and they all have to work for free and you cannot offer them accommodation and you know first set of polling we did on that i think 12 million people wanted to do the job yeah because it's like it's what we do right yeah once in a lifetime yeah once in a lifetime very British response that isn't it the greatest acronym I used to write all all the time was that once in a lifetime yeah I used to write it all the time and it was the pitch I can't pay you what you get paid here I can't work you know everything is but this is once in a lifetime and it's true but no the problem with the volunteers is a really great problem is we had an IT system that could cope with about 250 ,000 applications and we were being told it was 12 million then we did a bit of rejiggery with the polling it was eight million so actually the job of the marketing on the on the games makers for gene tomlin was not to attract volunteers it was to put them off and we ran this great focus group never forget it where there was eight people and they were they were all applying and we ran this ad um which nikki and the team at mccann did and it said something like um you know you're working on the games in a car park in the rain um there's no television that you see no sport and you do not meet usain bolt but you made the games happen and one of the people in the eight said i can't wait and that the mentality like the mental it's a great question the mental thing that we approached it through mentality yeah is would you feel proud if you did the worst job we've got on offer and you went nowhere near the Olympic Stadium and obviously there's people fist bumping Usain Bolt but for most people it was a car park and it wasn't in London and yeah that got us down to the magical games makers that we created but it was the reverse we had to turn in a nice way we had to convince people this one you should go and watch it not work it here's the job you don't really you should go and watch it not work it yeah that's incredible isn't it absolutely amazing and how about the sponsors as well because obviously you know there's a huge amount of commercial interest isn't there in the olympics so how did all that all the sponsorship work did was that part of your role managing all the no that was part of the commercial department's role but where we interacted with them was they would be looking for activation ideas yeah you know the big thing about the the brands around the olympics and paralympics is i would say that london was a brilliant games for the brands because you know we didn't in marketing terms we just didn't you know we didn't need to have our own budgets what we needed was brilliant relationships with brand owners who wanted to be really courageous and do stuff that really make sure that people understood that they were part of this thing and what i think london was the breakthrough on was the brands i think for the first time said how do we get involved with the paralympics yeah that was the first time and that that that stemmed from a really big decision we made yeah which was it was going to be channel four that broadcast the Paralympics not the BBC yeah and I remember that decision and I'll never forget one person saying no one's ever sacked the BBC it's like sacking the Queen and we were like oh shit like maybe it is that hard like but Channel 4 what Channel 4 wanted to do they wanted to totally re-engineer the way broadcasting worked thinking about disability and they wanted to talk about ability rather than disability obviously you've got to cover both and I'd say as a result of that there was a mentality in the organizing committee that we had two big events not just one it was the olympics and paralympics and then on top of that there was a mentality within channel four which was going to make this a sensation off of the brands and i'll never forget i mean justin king he's a he's a good mate now and always been incredibly good business person but he was on the board of 2012 and i think he excused himself at some point from the board because he said look if there's a chance the paralympic rights come up i want sainsbury's to be part of that and obviously sainsbury's became yeah and one of the greatest things ever was sainsbury's only wanting the paralympic rights yeah so our job was to be there to service the brands to make sure that london could network come up some of these ideas you know the big brands would come in and be looking for the big ideas and but i what i loved about our side of that was that i think it was the awakening in for the brands around the paralympics that was very visible i remember that at the time actually because you know before then the sort of paralympics were felt like quite a small event that sort of followed on once the games was over he says kind of quote unquote but i think london 2012 really felt like it was it was up at a similar level it felt like you know it's just had the same amount of effort and spotlight on it and well the the paralympics olympics yeah yeah i mean the the paralympics was better than the Olympics in London.

40:49It's a fact. We exit polled every venue, every sport, every venue for every session, on every Olympic session for every venue and every Paralympic session and satisfaction scores coming out of the venues for the Paralympics behind the Olympics all the way through. That is incredible. What did you put that down to? It's a really good question and I don't think there's a simple answer. But I feel that what, I think the Olympics is absolutely and utterly remarkable. Very clever person said to me, look whatever happens it's 11 out of 10 and he was 100 right i think there's something we love about challenges it's why i always wanted to work with adam morgan and i'm you know ready eat the big fish more than i think i've read anything apart from my kids books i think we do love a challenger and i think we do love i think we do love a kind of fight in a struggle right and i think what everyone has spotted with the paras was that it wasn't getting the same you know like gravity as it deserved because in the end it's the third biggest event in the world and it is easily the most transformative event on the planet yeah because the olympics and the world cup great brilliant but they don't transform like the paralympics does so i think we there's a you know i think we'd spotted that was the way to think about the paras we'd done you know great people had hired channel four and we'd taken some big decisions and channel four had taken big decisions to hire great people and you know sophie and you know you know the last leg is a brilliant example innovation and and listen i i think what it where it led us was i think there was a kind of a huge appreciation for the paris and a sense that it had been underestimated in history and look we sold out the paralympic games in paris now if you're this goes out just before the Olympics so their biggest thing will have we sold out the tickets and they've got a lot of Paralympic tickets to sell and my hope is that they sell more than us and they have a better Paralympic games but the British public really rose to that and I think it was for me in the in the history of these great big things that you get to play with I think it was the kind of the maturing of the Paralympic idea yeah and the British public wanted that to be a goal you know used to do this thing in focus groups like if the olympics the gold what's a what's the paras and it was always a bronze but then when you came out there was people going it's it's better than gold and you know so but i again i think we gave i mean paul and seb on my side of things were always very clear the paralympics would be treated equally to the olympics there would be no 20 of it would be these things are equal and I've never left that since in fact I prefer the Paralympics yeah that's incredible and I think the stories behind it as well are just incredibly motivating and powerful aren't they some of the struggles and hurdles that people have overcome to get there it opens your mind to a whole world and people's stories that you haven't been told before in a way that's sort of surprising we had this great psychologist called Dr John Armstrong and to tell the story really quickly he basically found out his view 2009 this he said that the problem with the paralympics and disability sport per se is that the story is uh here's the disability here's a person with a disability and this is how they got their disability and this is what they can't do and they're going to try some sport and he said and we said they have to be inverted you have to talk about the sport because this is a sport this is a you know the paralytic games and talk about the sport and then if you have time talk about the person because that's what normally happens yeah right you don't in no other walk of life would you go we'll talk about the sport second sport is yeah george orwell said sport is more without the weapons right so we did that that was part of what we wanted channel four to do so one of our things was that we would ban this concept of we'd ban the pity because it's a terrible thing right and i think historically in marketing around the paralympics i think this is probably where it went a bit wrong but what we were doing is it's just it's extraordinary sport by extraordinary people and and if you get the time to talk about their lives great but start there yeah and we we had this thing of no our bless it was kind of written on the wall no our bless and it meant no pity no oh the olympics is great but this is you know for us it was this is a gold that's a gold you treat them equally and that the best thing about that is it was driven from the top you went to the board you went to you see your boss it was like how are both things going and that i think the british public got that yeah and the chance for paris right is yeah the paralympics has to beat london yeah so before we come and talk about you know rising finish i'd to get into it continues the journey but before we do that how did it feel the day the game's finished because you've put three more three or more years into this you've worked presumably the hardest you ever worked in your life on as you describe it once in a lifetime opportunity it's required a massive team effort it's a very emotional journey you've been on how does it feel when it's finally over what's that emotion well i mean the most immediate thing was extreme exhaustion right yeah but there's two answers to this question because it's the end of the olympics the end of the paralympics so a funny story on the end of the olympics so we we all stayed in the stadium and got trashed basically and i think about five six in the morning we all started to get back because we were staying in the village around the olympians yeah and then this kind of red alert comes through saying you've got to attend the ioc's hotel at nine in the morning and so it's seven in the morning quick shower change no sleep and you have no idea why we're being sent to the IOC hotel but it was and suddenly all the directors start texting and you make sure you're there and I nearly all the way through the games apart from when I was giving medals wore a games maker outfit I just loved that I loved the gear the merch and so I went to the IOC building in the morning just for whatever they needed us for and I genuinely thought it was procedural like you've got to tick some things and we got there and we entered this room and it was as if it was like in greece um and they were what we hadn't understood is they were awarding us the olympic order of merit oh and it's like really hard to get it's under my bed it looks like something out from star wars it's like a proper jedi thing that you get and we got awarded so that was completely weird because you got a thing on your head yeah oh amazing like for the kids look at yeah cool and then the second thing is that afternoon we got called in pulled item pulled his in and we thought we were there for a well done guys you know one day after the olympics finishes and there was none of that he just moved us straight on and said paris as good as if not better and it was like there was no and that what i loved about that for paul was that was brilliant leadership because he could have just said i have a day but you only actually had 14 days and the Paras was on so his view was you've got the third biggest event in the world coming in 14 days if you're not ready get ready so actually the end of the Olympics it was like it was pure exhaustion a bit of exhilaration because if you like the Olympics are done I think we felt at the end of the Paras I think you knew you'd broke the history of the Paralympic Games you'd changed the Games and I personally think that gave us this unbelievable feeling and I gave a speech to my team on the final day.

48:31Because then, by the way, they were gone that night. Emails were turned off straight away. There was no three months. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's just, it's literally over, like, immediately. Yeah, and about six of you will stay, wrap up the accounts, close the company. The legal teams will stay until April. It was an instant. I mean, I guess you know that's coming, but it probably doesn't prepare you for it, does it? Even though you know it obviously ends on that day. No, and there was no WhatsApp groups then, so you couldn't be, oh, yeah, how are you doing? It was just gone. so i gave this speech called no names it was a really long speech and i went through because you know we were one part of an enormous performance space and one part of it in a chain and if we'd have got our bit wrong they'd have got their bits wrong but they got their bits right we got our bits right and i gave a speech called no names and i went through the disciplines that we went through like i think we had one of the best polling programs yeah you could imagine to understand exactly what the country wanted we created the concept of the spectator experience division within the olympic apparently games you know like we built uh we we moved all of our money out of the idea of advertising and we moved it all into building a data system that meant that we could talk directly to families and we built the biggest what was then probably the biggest database in those days that would every day mean we're in 23 000 23 million homes and i just went through these vertical like tasks that for years people had been doing that had been done that smashed it and but i didn't name a single name because if you do then the person that doesn't get named like remembers it and yes so i think we felt an unbelievable sense of pride yeah at that but again i'm not very good at this i just go right done when away you probably have and then i that's when i jumped off to the obama thing yeah jonathan edgwood said no soft landing yeah he said get design a hard landing and i literally did have a 23 year old genius as a boss at the obama camp and they were they would say why is a brit here and i go i need a hard landing you know like and it was an amazing experience to go through but yeah but it i think it was like clear water there was no going back today's the first time i've ever spoke about any of this stuff that's amazing it's just like move on quickly yeah yeah that's astonishing um i'd love to bring us on to rising phoenix because because really inspiring how do you go from this point well working for obama as well to rising phoenix so i think we felt we'd done a great job on the paralympics in london and you then go out into the real world you get other jobs so we i teamed up with a guy called godrick smith and we set up a business called inc we did unbelievable things like i was the cmo of the co-op for about four years and we saved the co-op you know like and you know you got to go in and do things that you thought wow these things are the best and i was very lucky to be asked to help think through the print the the now prince of wales's environmental initiative and i came up with this i you know just birthed an idea called the earth shot prize you know the there's a mars shot there's a mars shot isn't it is it a moon is it yes again i think it was then the duke but now the prince of wales i think he was thinking really seriously about all of our roles in this thing called climate change and playing a leadership role and and and helping to facilitate action and inspiring action and i'm very lucky that i've managed to work around some pretty amazing people in my life and i got invited into that process and it was really just creative it was you know they'd got a plan they knew what they were trying to do and i blurted it out without any thought which is always what you'll get with me and but i think in front of everybody i said i've i've i've been to a moonshot meeting um i've now been invited to a mars shot meeting why is there no earth shot yeah and that crudely you know very clever people like jason and zoe and the team yeah we're like okay let's work with that so that you know brilliant to be allowed into other people's big idea processes.

52:36But what happened in 2016 was a stimulus that became Phoenix, which is that the Brazilian authorities tried to pull out of making the Paralympics happen in Brazil. It wasn't through prejudice. It was just through, you know, some poor decisions. And there was this potential dilemma for the International Paralympic Committee, which is that the Paralympics wouldn't happen. and there was this rumor that they were seen as being less valuable than the olympics and there was talk of no paralympics so it it made me think wow all that work we did in london yeah but we didn't do it globally we did it for uk and it made me think is there an idea somewhere where we could do this globally and what happened with this is we originally created i went to the international paralympic committee i said can i buy the documentary rights to tell your history story like an or it's called an origin story in in in film world you go can i buy the origin story now i knew the origin story better than anybody because i had to piece the book together and and they were like yeah yeah you can do exactly what you want here again bit of freedom to yeah and that film um richard curtis exec produced it barbara brockley produced exec produced it john batsek who's like one of my heroes in documentary making agrees to produce it and then they all go is it funded and i go i'll find the funds and so i i had to i went around all the studios i went around all of the you know principal finances and they were going greg your career is like do not ruin it with making a film about disability and you're like that's the same old we had yeah in 2012 and what we're trying to do now is global so so we only really originally set this thing up to be a single film that was it and then got these unbelievable directors to come in and direct called peter and ian they've just done the christopher reeve story which is going to be incredible and they made this unbelievable film for us which is called rising phoenix netflix very thankfully bought it offers and bite dance in china and the numbers on it were astronomical like we ended up with feet we still to this day get letters saying you've changed my life with this film or you've made me see something differently so when we were building that film and paying investors back because we have to do that i think it dawned on me and you know barnaby and charlotte and callum it just dawned on us and godry dawned on us that there was probably something more to do but again that was probably me going okay we made a film what can we do now and i watched a a brilliant piece of documentary making called last chance you seen it No, I haven't done that.

55:21It's on Netflix. Beautiful. It's a really amazing piece of episodic documentary making. And I thought, we're going to build Phoenix into a hard knocks. I want to build something like the hard, I want to build a hard knocks for the world of disability sport. That became, that was the first film. We then went and shot Tokyo through COVID. Ridiculously difficult thing to do. And we then shot a podcast where we teamed up with P &G. and we i think we wrote one of the best six or seven episodes on this why is the world so unequal if you're disabled and this year 2024 we've got a unbelievable podcast coming with matt stosman the armless archer who's in our first film yes brilliant and michael johnson four-time gold-winning olympic icon and they've got this podcast called rising phoenix what's it take which is about studying in depth the character of a paralympian in the same way we study the efl or the NFL or the IPL.

56:19We don't do that enough with Paralympians. We should. So that is a new... And then we've also been making a new film with an unbelievably talented young man called Sheridan O'Donnell. And it's called A New Revolution. And what he's trying to spark with his film is the idea that the world can become more equal. And his film's, I think, the best thing I've ever seen on why the world is so unequal and what it's going to take to fix it. And what it will take to fix it is activists and people with passion, and people who can see a slightly different world ahead of us. So we've kind of fallen into this by accident.

57:01We have a company called Harder Than You Think. We tend to take on things that others think are too hard to do. Like, you know, build a platform for disability sport. Most people go, you know, like, so it takes us a long time to do it. But what we're finding, like especially through Hard and You Think is we're finding that if we build really good ideas that I think sit in this space between creativity and impact and I think that's the bit I mean I grew up and I used to play football every day in the front garden but the one day that I stayed in when I was a kid was watching Bob Geldof and Live Aid and like he spotted this space between creativity and impact and I was just like wow and then I watch the team that create comic relief.

57:47And I think, wow, yeah. Good business, but also good for the world. And, you know, like back to my roots, the Brian Clough thing is the only time I ever met him. He only ever said one thing, which was be good, young man. And I do think that sadly, this thing is in a blink of an eye. It is, isn't it? So if you get to work on stuff, work on stuff that matters. And Phoenix is unbelievable. It's beginning to grow. It's beginning to take off its own. You know, I think the trust we're building with the athletes and chronicling their story. But listen, we're, you know, big people now want to talk to us and we're lucky we now get to work with the likes of Procter & Gamble.

58:23Don't forget I'm a kid. Well, you were out in Cannes, weren't you? With P &G talking about this, which is brilliant. Well, again, I think they have this very clever thing, which is for growth and for good, but get your growth right first. And that's an important lesson for all of us. You know, back to growing Weetabix. You know, I once upon a time would have dreamt of walking to yeah into the building at png so um no working with i mean we have ideas phoenix for one night only with ed sheeran earth to cop where we're trying to disrupt cop it's the only thing in the world that saved the planet on climate and we're this little group i think we want to try and disrupt it but what we're finding is people want to partner with us on those things and so on phoenix particularly i think we're building a project where i think disabled creators said with editors writers and non-disabled creators writers want to come and create something unbelievable we set this big challenge didn't you i was listening to your talking can of 50 of the people in front and behind the camera being disabled to some extent well in front it's often more because we're telling paralympic stories yeah but behind yeah with the first film we made had 16 disabled representation we thought that was like amazing it's not Tokyo was 25 % the first podcast we made was 62 but it was in COVID so it was easier and on our new film it'll be 50 we set a target 50 and we'll hit 50 and you know we try not to go back to the people we've already worked with and what we really want to do is like what I'm learning from Channel 4 you know they built this kind of university of talent that came out of the London Games where we can do that all the way through to LA we have this unbelievable relationship with the ipc where we get to tell their story so it's really important and in the end like you you work with these unbelievable brands like png and adidas and they want you they're there they're there because they believe in your mission and they have they they share that mission but then when it comes to the authenticity of doing that they they genuinely want to see it done in a new way yeah and i think that's interesting because that is changing and it's changing from london 2012 i would imagine this year in paris there'll be so many more people activating around the paralympics than in london yeah and i bet you by la i mean my personal prediction is the la paralympics will be the equivalent of what the la olympics were in 1984 all right cool which was when the space pack guy comes in with that so they that that transformed the commercial dynamic of the olympics and my prediction is that will happen to the paralympics in LA because the brands see the the reality and the truthfulness and the authenticity and rising phoenix is that platform we're trying to build that platform yeah so listening to you talk you know it it's really inspirational listening to the kind of big bets you've taken and and the bold moves now i i know a lot of people myself included right that you've sat there and you've had the big idea and you haven't done it right what's the secret to going from that big idea in your mind to actually making it happen what what you know what are the ingredients to doing that because I mean if you just think about myself I think the first thing is just fear of failure it's just like this feels too big can often be a challenge can't it I mean look anybody can have a big idea you know I think the question is can you deliver it I bet loads of people having big ideas today the question is can you deliver it the ingredients for me there's two and it's magic and logic

1:02:21it's the book I want to write I mean, I think that inevitably, if you want to build something big, and it's probably original, you are going to need to accept that you are the curator of the idea. But I think almost instantly you have to share it. And I think almost instantly you have to onboard people who are going to help you deliver it. And I think people worry about that because they think it might dilute. But actually, I've never had a problem with that because I think that if someone comes in and goes, yeah but then i can spot whether it's just negative energy or whether it's it's rational so i i think the big thing is to bring people into it and make them feel like they've authored it with you even though deep down you've had it or yeah person next to you's had it and then i honestly think that the thing that big idea where they go wrong is they're just not focused enough on the logic of how this will go wrong so if i think through now i and you know charlotte my team will have a view on this but i i think i almost instantly turned to the logic like i've got this idea almost what means it can't happen yeah and you go through it and you go yeah it can happen and i think when you've got the logic right really when you've studied the forensics of what's it going to take to deliver this then i think there's space for the magic and i i think my view would be that people think marketing is about magic and it can be and it should be but if you've got your logic wrong it nothing will work like great i think great ideas have to have both and so i i mean i don't know how that helps or not but i that makes a lot of sense i mean you reminded I worked at BrewDog for a few months, didn't last long, sadly.

1:04:10But one of the things I learned while I was there, so James, I worked for the founder, incredibly creative and entrepreneurial. And the first thing he would do is he'd put me under enormous pressure with an audacious goal. So typically what I do, and he'd text me and he'd text and go, you've got 24 hours to come up with five game changing ways we could double the business in six months. so he knew that was a overly stretching overly ambitious kind of idea and then i'd present them back and and some of them would land some of them wouldn't and then he had this phrase he used to ask and it's just brilliant he just said this only works if and he said answer that question for me for the one that let's say we pick number two whichever it was he said okay then what would have to be true for this to happen and it's a really good question because that's when the logic comes in see the magic can be of you know i've got this crazy idea but then you've got to turn that into well what would have to happen for this to be true and that was it was brilliant it really got you focused and then having a rather crazy goal like six months then makes you that takes you that creative leap now you might end up take 18 months whatever but it gets you to jump further than you would have thought possible otherwise you're back in the we to mix process of this is how we do things you know but yeah musk wants to build a place to land on mars well that's magical right but it's only going to happen through logic and physics and i feel that what maybe one of the things i've observed if i meet people who say you know we've got this idea we want to do this etc that sometimes i find myself having to be really logical with them to kind of get into can this should this actually work because actually the magic i mean i think we are so lucky like you know you get the chance in this industry to go and work with people who are genuinely brilliant if i've got a thing in my head i'll phone martin adam and eve or rick you know like and a note you know or i'll phone robert savile you know we like if i've got something that i want to talk to somebody about you're so lucky this this is unbelievably creative fertile space but the the thing is have you got the logic right and and by the way a lot of people don't want to talk about that and i i you know some i think there's a bit in my brain that wants to do both equally but i think people think i'm more interested in the magic yeah but the magic doesn't work if the logic doesn't work yeah and and by the way if you want a great example of that go back to london 2012 because yeah we have the director's meeting where the health and safety director comes in and we do a game of if someone dies who goes to prison and it's it's terrifying but it's terrifying but it's genuinely that's an actual question that's an actual question wow because if there's a crush in the olympic park who's in charge yeah and then you play reiki who's responsible accountable right and then suddenly it dawns on you if you don't get the logic right in this thing you're in trouble you know think about the torch relay in london you know deborah's torch relay masterful brilliant um i think 23 million people turned up to see that and the reason for that is because we positioned it very differently to torch relays most torch relays really are about um thanking the contributors that make the games happen and what we did is i i remember phoning the ioc and saying that we want to thank the lollipop ladies and they said what's what is a lollipop lady and i said well it's a metaphor for we want to thank people in communities that just do stuff i love that and we we you know the team unsung heroes yeah it's called moment shine and we yeah position and and the team that did the torch they went around the country thanking people for doing their magic in communities unsung heroes as a result of that every single one of them brought about a thousand people and as a result of that 23 million well what's the thing there you need the police with you yeah so you know like a really big idea like that a really big idea needs the the sad truth is it needs as much logic yeah as magic it might need more logic because of the risks and so on and i think at times we don't think enough about that and i don't think it's boring or i don't think it's kind of you know sours the conversation but if you really want something beautiful to happen you've got to you've got to really get the it it written down properly so this thing can work and so i i think the ingredients magic and logic i think that's spawn it's usually when you watch dragon's den all the questions are testing logic yeah the magic the magic will be in the pitch and then they're saying how much have you sold are people buying again what is it you know can anyone copy it what happens if it goes wrong you know how much how much are you investing in building the brand it's all testing the logic isn't it i think so and i think i i've seen a lot of ideas so-called big ideas that come in and i look at them and i think that's really good idea but there's not enough study of the logic and whether it's the commercials or the delivery by the way delivery is a whole different thing i mean you think a cop we were asked i was asked to direct the opening ceremony the climate conference and so there's a hundred there's 400 people in the room and 140 of them are world leaders and biden is like four steps down from me and the team yeah so the logic of getting that content right so there's no diplomatic um errors nothing for the media to devour the logic of that i mean that's why my business partner godrate the way he thinks is in a way i can't think and therefore the other thing about great ideas is don't worry too much about you know owning it or being seen to be the creator of it don't worry about that we got lucky when we we we developed in london we developed the this function called the spectator experience department and i remember being given the responsibility and no budget and thinking and so i did something which i've always done in my career is write to pete's write to somebody i'm desperate to talk to but i've got no chance of talking to and i wrote to johnny ive and i said to johnny in an email i know that you never get this email but if you did and you were willing to contribute we'd love to ask you what you how you think we should approach the spectator experience journey in london 2012 i got this amazing email back did you yeah wow and he said greg it would be an honor to talk to you and the team about this um my time is short but i want to make sure i can help so phoned him and um he only said one thing he said make it simple he said and he gave us a great bit of advice he said remove problems yeah so we then built an entire based on the five minute called johnny ive we built an entire system which was what are the problems we have to solve yeah and with three years to go we found 702 problems wow and with four weeks to go we had four left that's brilliant and in a sense his big idea we operationalized it but it can't can be as boring as that i remember um it should be boring yeah it should be boring because when i was um when i met adam morgan actually going back to adam um i was working at britwick and my big idea was i wanted to take all the innovation or the brands that had failed or the old brands that were forgotten about and put them together in a separate business right because basically what's happening in any big company you you prioritize the core so yeah you know they would focus on red box yellow box yeah exactly focus on the big ones that make a big difference and the sales team were never incentivized to worry about purdy's or mountain dew or gatorade you know kind of brands i thought could be mega if only they had a bit of focus so that was my creative idea that was my magic i was to manage it as a separate business unit take the principles from pirate inside you know from adam's book yeah off we go it's gonna be brilliant and i did this campaign going around individual board members to try and find it before i did the selling and i said to the ceo what would be your top tip for me to get this pro get this through the system and he said take away every reason to say no and i was like oh i've never thought about that because you know the salesman in me was like this is why you should do it and he said no no flip it work out why it shouldn't happen and address all those concerns.

1:12:04So I literally took him at his word. So I went around, met all the board members, and I said, tell me every reason this could fail. And then when I went to the actual board meeting, I've never done this before, I actually started my presentation with, you told me 22 reasons this is going to fail, and this is my mitigation to everything. And the CEO turned around and looked at the entire board and said, well, I assume on that basis you're all going to say yes, aren't you? And it went through in about 20 minutes. I left early, in fact. In fact, the scariest, I think, the most scared I've ever been in my life was when at the end of the meet end of that process uh Paul the CEO says well on that basis John I'm assuming this is going to succeed and I thought oh okay well the small matter of actually making and that did succeed fortunately and it was good but that discipline of the idea might have been five or ten percent of my effort 90 percent of the effort was figuring out yeah sure I mean that we have a thing called for one night only phono which we're growing and it's it's a beauty because it raises loads of money for people that need it and we again we had the idea but back to where are people going to say no and if you like the logic train and make it happen it's kevin cahill's original id one of the guys create made poverty history i'm lucky he phones me and goes got this idea but i think we should work on it together and i go i'll rent it rent it rent it for you for a bit um we put all the nose in front of us like why won't it work you know really lots of barriers to get over and the truth is we then set upon going who would give us the perfect start and we i think our mentality was too cautious because we'd kind of we're going to build up and one day one day we'll put it in front of ed sheeran and then we met will young the amazing popeye's will wow and will i said to will we're going to try this do this thing i want to do it for mental health and and he's very very motivated by that and will said and i said you know we're going to you know we're going to do going to go xyz and then one day well one day i'm going to talk to ed sheeran and see if you'll do it and he went no you're not he said i'm going to phone ed sheeran tonight and i'm going to say you should do it so we think brilliant ed sheeran might do the 10th phono ed here's about it it's at this point will has changed the genetic code of the idea rightly but the idea is still the idea and ed sheeran says i don't want to go 10th i want to do the first and then ed sheeran's for one night only was the first ever play of his new album wow in front of about 600 people at union chapel yeah and we had 550 000 people try to get in we raised 250 000 pounds for shout the mental health charity shout phone me six months later and say you have at least as a minimum contributed to 2 ,730 suicide attempts.

1:14:51That one gig. And so that is testament to what you're saying. I just think what happens is people think the magic will carry you all the way through, and it won't. In the end, Bob Geldof had this idea called Live Aid. It was about 100 ,000 people in two gigs, and a lot of logic in there, the concord between the venues. And I think the ingredients, knowing that both ingredients probably deep down are sufficiently um that they're both as necessary as each other i think this obsession with the magic i mean remember itv remember what monkey itv monkey no no so there was an itv had a digital service yeah and had an advert in it that was a monkey and i think the voiceover was peter care think yeah and is that right i think it is this might be wrong i'm gonna stop you could have invented something no ITV Digital launched something I'll never forget and it had the best advertising I'd ever seen the monk this thing you could buy it it's brilliant might not have been a monkey might not have been Peter K it'd be something but and I heard this quote never heard it's a brilliant quote it says nothing kills a bad product quicker than great advertising and if you like there's that's true shine a light on something terrible yeah it's a poor idea but we've communicated it brilliantly yeah well the magic's right but the logic in the product is not right and as a result that product died so that i you know the the the thing that i think you write on is it's it's the it's both it's the magic and the logic it's the book i have to write one day if someone will help me but it's like finding the balance between the two and if you're really confident more magic disney i think yeah you know i think um netflix got really good at this some of the new brands tech brands have learned how to do this but But if you lose the logic chain, it's great.

1:16:41Now it's magic and logic. There's one other ingredient, I think, even based on just doing this podcast, that I think people don't talk about, and that is persistence as well. And I did this going back to my BritVic days. I did this analysis of just the top 20 soft drink launches over a decade. I only took the very best. And I looked at how long it took them to be perceived as successful. And what I mean by that is sustainable. so that they were at a scale and a rate of sale that meant that they were kind of, you know, establishing the market and they weren't vulnerable, right? They weren't vulnerable.

1:17:11Got their own run rates. Yeah, exactly. They got to the same level. The average time to that point was seven years. And it's funny, if you ask someone like, you know, when do you think - Which is how many brand managers? Yeah, exactly. I mean, like 15. Yeah, exactly. No, it's true, isn't it? Yeah. And the issue, I mean, very simple, some of the issues. The issue I found at Britvik is the problem was this thing called a calendar because they had a 12-month planning horizon that within the 12 months said every month a different focus so they were launching something for a month and then by the next year there was a whole different set of things that were going to be focused on every month so basically this big kind of like peak everyone forget about it and move on and I put the chart up and said it takes seven years on average to be a success and that's just taking the ones that survived and you know were successful I think you'd be lucky at seven years I mean you know what's that thing that we always do show me the top 20 brands in the world now and show me 20 years ago the technological revolution changed that but look at all the big players 20 years ago they're the big players today and bill gates apparently has this saying which is that um something along the lines of show me a three-year plan and it won't work show me a vision for 10 years and the first three years and i'll see how you start this thing and i really buy into that idea and look you know we're building our ideas now we're trying to build our own ideas i think phoenix to genuinely have the impact we want over a billion people to think differently yeah to disability through the power of disability sport and what the amazing team the paralympics do like phono gives us a chance to raise absolutely loads of money but it takes a long time to do that trying to change people's attitudes to climate you know like this stuff takes time so no listen i'd agree i think seven years is fast it is fast well maybe the other one then adding as we go along is back to your point about it took you eight years from idea to actually starting it.

1:19:00Maybe the other point is like, get on with it today. Start today, you know, because at least you then start learning. I mean, often I think for me, I think I have to have everything in place before I take the jump, but sometimes just taking the jump and learning. That happened, that happened on heads together. So heads together was their Royal Highnesses. They were looking at mental health and the, the principles is their call. They were really interested in like, can we help change the way we talk about mental health? And there was a meeting we were lucky enough to be pulled into and allowed to contribute to.

1:19:34And our advice is that the British public do want to talk about their mental health, but nobody's quite helped them do it yet. But I remember being the predictable bit of me says something like, these attitudes so entrenched that they'll take a decade's change. It's absolutely the right thing to do, but I'll never forget Prince Harry saying, you've got a year. and that forced an urgency yeah in heads together that i think their royal highnesses um did incredibly well and and it did change the conversation and i there aren't many people that have if you like the kind of convening power to do that but but if they do i think things do move really quickly and i i think look i keep saying it like it's this this happens in the blink of an eye so what are you working on and does it matter and if it matters persevere but i love the idea that you can turn to people as you build these things and work with people that are bigger than you cleverer than you have more scale than you that's how i think scale will happen and so yeah i i do it's one of my own things which is what if you did it in a year i always have an acronym for it like what if you did what changes in your mind if you were to try and do that in a year rather than well in a way maybe means no sleep maybe yeah maybe you need to act as if it's going to take well think of it as if it's going to take 10 but act as if it has to happen tomorrow you kind of have to balance those two things together you create the urgency that it's it's it's tomorrow that's the deadline but know that it could take the problem with dragging it forward into a year is the logic where where that thing then probably fails is the bill gates point yeah so you know i think alistair campbell now calls it perseverance is that right i think you know like in his podcast so it's like you've got to persevere these things these things will not happen quickly what i think prince harry's brilliant prompt was think like you've got a year but i actually think in acting yeah you know you open a conversation about mental health you need support services to be ready the nhs needs to be ready so somebody says can i talk about my mental health you can't just talk about it yeah so i like the idea of thinking like you've got a year but acting like you've got a decade yeah do you get me that's exactly it with a sense of urgency isn't it you need a sense of energy to create change and and push things forward but equally you know it's going to take a long time to actually get to where you go and that that's true of climate yeah that's true of yeah exactly raising money foundations it's true of attitudes disability like we we want to get more involved in that that space that creative space like i think when i was i remember my first p &l at we to beaks there was honestly a budget in there called csr there was and it was like a fraction like one percent or something it was being you know there was a community someone comes in they could do a raffle that evaporated like all brands now know they've got to be good citizens and that's i think i think that's exhilarating i remember once somebody telling me they've read every website of every footsie 100 business and there was only one brand without a kind of you know positive contribution and they're an oil company and they went back five years later and that oil company's now got a positive contribution statement and that i think it says a lot about where brands feel that they're under pressure are they doing more than just doing what they're doing i i think that's exhilarating because i think brands work faster than governments sadly you know governments have to do things brands can't but but they can do unbelievable you know like work and i i do like that pace of change within the brand world because what we now meet is brands who want to be part of genuinely good things that stand up on their own and but again the scrutinizes on the logic you know they want us to make sure that the the magic is there but they'll want something that's going to be really meaningful and really that's really going to contribute well the other thing the logic does actually is it also enables sign off to happen because often the people that are signing off want to know that you've covered the logic yeah you know that's that's the other bit so um i thought maybe we'd round up with a with a bit of advice to brands and advertisers about how to get we've talked a lot about disability and what what you're doing through um through rising phoenix i just wonder whether maybe talk a little bit about system one we did this um project so we've been doing this ongoing project actually for about four or five years now called feeling seen looking at how to represent people in advertising in communication in general in a really positive way.

1:24:04And what we found was really fascinating is that people sometimes have a bit of apprehension about is the advertising going to be a bit niche? You know what I mean? Are they going to alienate the broader audience and this kind of thing? What we found spectacularly was actually when you represent diverse audiences, not only does that audience get an uplift in terms of how they feel, and we know how you feel about advertising kind of leads to how you act according to the brand, but actually in most cases, everyone else gets an uplift too. So we called it kind of how diverse advertising unites us.

1:24:34Exactly the same for disabilities as well. And we've got some tremendous examples actually on our database. And I mean, one of my favourites, I know a bit favourite of yours is the Maltesers ad. It's getting a bit old now. I think it's back from 2017. There's some great examples, I think, out there of advertisers that have lent in on telling powerful stories about people with disability and done it really well. I mean, the Maltesers one's great because the thing I love about that is that the woman with a disability is the hero and the story's being told from her perspective. And it's even quite saucy.

1:25:07I mean, she actually tells quite a kind of crude joke in it. But because it's her, she gives permission for us to kind of laugh with her sort of thing, because she's kind of the power in the dynamic. so it's true isn't it that you know sometimes that are not sometimes but actually telling telling the stories of people with disabilities can be really powerful and doesn't have to be like a niche thing like the afterthought like the paralympics might have been but can can be the core core thing i mean look great advertising is great storytelling and great storytelling places a premium on the story and the writer of the story finds a way for us to have an empathetic reaction to that.

1:25:47And Best Advertising does that every day of the week, you know, and you can tell the very best. But I think in this space is, the biggest thing for me is I can see why people are scared of entering. And what I've noticed now is they'll be like a cutaway to a prosthetic leg. Yeah. Yes. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. That's for two seconds. And then someone's cynical in the back's going, yeah, yeah. That's not great. Yeah. I totally get what they're trying to do. and I think in some ways symbolizes progress, but it's not progressive. I think the thing that I really like is when writers, creatives do, as you say, think about the story and don't single out something.