Scott Galloway on the end of the brand era, monetising rage and how to create wealth

25:02There's absolutely no reason to have anyone under the age of 16 on social media. They have weaponized it. They have lied about it. They've deployed really charming people. Sheryl Sandberg to pretend she gives a flying fuck about young people and then depress teen girls all over the world. To have an individual named Mark Zuckerberg who's done more damage to young people while making more money than anyone in the history of the planet. And then we have effectless, ineffective leadership, average age 63, that's a cross between The Walking Dead and The Golden Girls, trying to regulate these technologies, 40 hearings on social media and impact on kids.

25:35Zero legislation. Speaker Pelosi, when she had her first child, Castro declared martial law in Cuba and two-thirds of households didn't have a color TV. But she really understands an 18-year-old girl getting extreme dieting tips on Instagram and what needs to be done. She really understands a 23-year-old male is getting addicted to gambling apps. So I think we have minority rule. And I think we're very concerned with seniors and making sure wealthy people stay wealthy. But I think we've totally abandoned young people. And the fastest way to build a trillion-dollar company is to find a flaw in the species.

26:12So young men are more risk aggressive. They like gambling. Oh, girls are very sensitive about their social capital. So they become addicted to aesthetics and kind of their self-worth in the eyes of strangers. Think about what a place of perversion. I mean, downright perversion Instagram begins with. We're going to have algorithms that reward 15-year-old girls for posing in provocative sexualized imagery such that her peers and strange men all over the world can evaluate her. I mean, doesn't that make the Catholic church seem kind of upstanding? It's just like this shit is just so weird and so perverted.

26:53And I think when we look back on this age, we're going to regret the weaponization of our elections, the coercing of our discourse, the income inequality. But I think the thing we just won't believe, and I think it will change, is we're going to ask ourselves, how do we let this happen to our kids? And I think a lot of it is because our elected representatives don't understand these technologies. These companies are very smart. They've weaponized Washington. There's more lobbyists, full-time lobbyists in Washington who work full-time for Amazon than there are sitting U.S. senators. and they're very good at deploying these attract.

27:24It's already happening. Sam Altman, God, he's dreamy and thoughtful, hushed tones. I'm worried about AI, John. We really need to be thoughtful about this and I'll care like I give a flying fuck about anything but money and then I'll deploy a series of lobbyists to kill any legislation. We're being Sandberg'd again and it's our fault. In America, to be rich is to be loved. So you can understand people making incremental bad decisions or rationalizations so they can have billions of dollars and be superstars. I'd like to be, you know, that would be amazing. But we don't vote in place people who protect our children or have the skills to regulate these companies.

28:01There's more regulation in this mic than there is in all of big tech. There's been no regulation in big tech, which is just strange when you think about it. So I'm very worried about young people. I'm worried that we haven't paid any attention to the externalities of social media. Fossil fuels are a great thing. They produce carbon. We're concerned about it. Pesticides are a great thing. They produce terrible emissions. So we have an FDA to say you can't use these pesticides, right? What regulation is there converting attention to money at the expense of mostly children in the mental health of America?

28:37So anyways, big tech has not been good. Big tech has speedballed a lot of the negative aspects of our society. It's too embedded, isn't it, really, with too much vested interest in the economy. me. I wanted to move on, if I can, to marketing and obviously your role clinical professor of marketing at NYU Stern. I heard this story. I just want to check that it was true. But did you kick out a student for being late? And then your response to it went viral? Yeah, that was my first brush with fame. Yeah. Tell me about that. That sounds exciting. What a reason to get famous. No, a kid walked into the class about 15 minutes in and I said, I'm sorry, I don't allow people late in the class.

29:17And it was an uncomfortable moment. And then he walked out and then he wrote me a diatribe saying, I was checking all the classes. I was auditing the classes. I was going to be in your class for five minutes and go to another one. And I said, okay, I get that, but I don't allow that. And I just wrote a response to him. I X'd out his names with people. And I said, this is in my next syllabus. I said, this is my late policy. And it got picked up by the media and I had to go back and read it and see what I wrote. But yeah, that was my, I say to young people, get the easy stuff right. I screwed up so much.

29:52I was late all the time. Worked my ass off and then I'd be late to a meeting. I mean, just get the easy stuff right. Show up, dress well. Anyone can dress well. Get your sister a gay man. That's a hate crime now to say that. The gay men have better taste than straight men. They do. Get your mom. Straight men have something that's wrong in their brain around fashion. Literally, they're like, oh, this Knicks tank top and a baseball cap on backwards. I'm killing it. Right? Find somebody who has better taste than you. Especially when you're young. Show up on time. Don't speak your first six months at a job.

30:31Just listen. There's just basics. You know, shower. Like young men aren't showering. Right? Just some basics, right? Get the easy stuff right. And I speak from experience. I used to work so hard and I would get the easy stuff wrong. I wouldn't be kind sometimes, right? Say stupid shit or just get the easy stuff right. And I think there's some basic blocking and tackling. Have manners, follow up, just basics. So many young people don't make the mistake of thinking anyone cares about your politics at work. That's the one I hate. you know people will nod and call you a leader for complaining and then memo to self next layoff you're out of here so and get the basics get the simple stuff right and you've taught a lot of marketing to mbas what would you say is the most important uh skill for a marketer today that you might see lacking at the moment it's the most important if i could give my kids any skill would be storytelling the ability to take a concept a narrative and communicate it in a compelling way across mediums.

31:35Learn how to write, learn how to present, learn how to get up in front of it. I'm not suggesting you need to be a great presenter. You got to be able to present. So it can be very uncomfortable for people. So modulate, try and get to average, learn how to write, learn how to, you know, text. Some people give great texts. You know, those people are like, they can just in eight words summarize the situation and they're funny. Find the medium you are great at. It might be something on social. You might find you're great on LinkedIn that you good posts. I am really good in front of large crowds. I'm not good one-on-one.

32:08If these people were here, you would find me intense yet aloof, right? Or insecure yet aloof. So I very rarely go to meetings alone. I like to have a foil there. I'm not good on the phone. So I don't do important stuff on the phone. So it's important to figure out where is your strength, but storytelling is the key. Animals have instincts. They can communicate live, but they're not able to communicate to broader parts of the species. So they haven't evolved nearly as fast as us. We can write pictures on cave walls and say, this is when you plant the crops. I can communicate to you around how to get somewhere more efficiently, more effectively.

32:44So storytelling and an ability to communicate is something that's really valued in the species. That's why Mick Jagger gets to hang out with a 30-year-old ballerina, because he is an outstanding storyteller. So if you can communicate something in a compelling way to somebody, you can not only make a good living, you're going to have friends, you're going to have a broader selection set of mates than you deserve. So I don't know if it's, I don't, you know, I don't, I remember 10 years ago, they were teaching Mandarin in high school. I mean, anyone using their Mandarin lately? When I went to high, I took computer science in college.

33:21I think one of the stupidest things we did was replace civics class with computer science in high school. I don't know if we're going to need as many programmers. We'll always need storytellers. We'll always need people who really understand how to communicate across different mediums. I think that's the key. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Now, I put out a few questions to the audience to say, if you're asking Scott one question, there was one question that overwhelmingly came back from everybody. So you're in Cannes in front of probably the world's most celebrated brand builders. And you said the era of brand is dead.

33:54What's the thought behind that? Well, if you think about traditional brand building from 1945 to kind of 1995 to the introduction of Google, the primary algorithm for creating shareholder value was have a mediocre product, a mediocre shoe, salty snack, car out of Detroit, and then sugary drink, and then wrap it in these amazing brand codes, youth, European elegance, American vigor, sex, paternal love, maternal love. We'll take 20 cents a tooth of peanut butter paste and turn it into$2 of maternal love because choosing moms choose Jeff. And then we had these incredibly inexpensive vehicles of communication called broadcast medium where 60 to 80 % of the households every night were in one of three places, ABC, NBC, or CBS.

34:41So take that shitty car, convince that you're tough like a rock and stuff the channel with it and print money. The Coca-Cola, you can dance like Michael Jackson or was that Pepsi. Oh, I drink Budweiser because aren't those frogs funny? And this was the primary means of creating irrational returns to shareholders. And then the ecosystem got so crowded with channels that the returns went way down. And also So your social graph and word of mouth and glass door said, okay, and I'll use the example hotels. I travel a lot. I've spent probably 50, 60 % of my life on the road. And I always used to stay at the Four Seasons or the Mandarin Oriental.

35:26Why? Because someone else was paying and they always deliver a seven or an eight. And when I'm in Istanbul, I don't know where to stay. But now with my social graph and TripAdvisor and Google, I know that the Soho House in Istanbul is the old American embassy and it's great. Whereas the Chilton Firehouse in London has the best room with a lot of hot young people who I like to hang out with. So the brand used to be this weapon of diligence. It was always a seven or an eight, Four Seasons or the Mandarin Oriental. But now I can find the nine for me with these new weapons of mass diligence called Google, TripAdvisor.

36:03So quite frankly, the brand has diminished in power, and it sounds very passé, but product is the new black again. If you have a truly better product, people will talk about it online and word will get out. So a lot of the capital has been taken out of marketing and is being reinvested in things like supply chain. Can I get you something within 48 hours for free? Can I produce programming for less than money that's really good, squid games, parasite, money heist? and just, you know, what are the companies that have added over$100 billion in value in the last decade have in common? They don't advertise.

36:38How much advertising does Netflix, Google, you know, OpenAI? What about Amazon? Because, I mean, your Bezos quote of advertising is a tax on a poor product. Yeah. And now Amazon are probably one of the biggest advertisers in the world and one of the most invested in storytelling, actually, back to your storytelling point. I think they've taken a lot more money in advertising than they put out. One of their biggest groups which is Amazon Media Group, where they advertise on their site. I don't see them actually as a percentage of their top-line income. I can't think of the last Amazon commercial I saw.

37:08They buy a lot of keywords, but I think that they, all the big players don't spend that much. I think advertising kind of outs you is not getting it. And I think this is true of that. If you're having dinner with strangers all the time, it means you're selling an undifferentiated product. I was in the services business, and my life, when I really distilled how do I make a living, I started a strategy firm when I was 26. I started an analytics business intelligence company when I was 40. And I thought my life is renting my brain to old white guys. That's what I did. I developed these proxy father-son relationships with the CMO of a big company.

37:42And I said, I'm smarter than you. I'm going to rent you my brain and I'm going to make you the CEO in three years or less. In exchange for this, you're going to give me a million to$2 million yearly consulting gigs so I can pay all these other people and make a lot more money than if I was just selling my own time. And I found it just exhausting. And what I say to people is if you're constantly having dinner with strangers, it means you're selling an undifferentiated product. Google was a 10x better product. You know, Tesla is a better product, even though I'm not a big fan of the owner. So all this money has been taken out of branding, traditional branding, gone into direct response, Facebook and Google, and into the product itself.

38:21Nobody invested in supply chain. Amazon came along and said, no, supply chain is the opportunity. And they made a staggering investment to get you anything you want within 48 hours for free. No one was thinking that way. Everyone else was just trying to lower the cost in supply chain. Netflix is supply chain, producing stuff in different markets. Nvidia is supply chain. They said, we're going to design the chip, but we're not going to invest in these factories. Shein, which is the fastest growing apparel company in the world. No stores, no warehouses, no factories, no trucks, no stores, software using AI to look at the 50 ,000 to 500 ,000 people that are on the site at any given time, tracking very closely their patterns and movements.

39:04And they go, okay, this top, we're going to need 1 ,700 of them. And then the software goes, what factory in the Philippines or in Vietnam can create 1 ,700 most efficiently? The order goes in, no humans. Order comes out, no humans. This is how we're getting it via air cargo to those addresses, no humans, all software, asset light, you know, asset light supply chain model. Anyways, it's, it really is an era of product and innovation again. And so the CMOs and marketers, we all love to be nostalgic and say, oh, advertising's coming back and we give each other awards. Every day there's less and less oxygen in the room.

39:41So if you're over the age of 40 and you're traditional branding, ride it out. If you're young and you can get out, get out. It's an industry and structural decline. When I was young, I ran a brand strategy firm. The players were IPG, Publisi, Omnicom. They were the masters of the world. Google and or Meta will lose the value of all three of those companies in any one trading day or lose or gain it. So the sun has passed midday on traditional brand. Don Draper has been drawn and quartered. This notion you can have a mediocre product and instill it with great emotion and just sell a lot of it, that's done.

40:14That's over. So I wanted to come on to talk about your new book, which comes out tomorrow. So we're recording this on Tuesday, it comes out tomorrow. I want to start with the Marcus Aurelius quote, if I can, which I thought was fascinating. You have power over your mind, not events, which I thought was a fascinating place to start. Yeah. Life is about what happens to you. No, sorry. Life isn't about what happens to you. It's about how you respond to what happens to you. Yeah. That's it. It's the key, isn't it? Yeah. Well, not only that, it's, I struggle with anger and depression that probably goes, is no surprise to any listeners or anyone who knows me.

40:45And you're in the past. Depression is basically, depression for me is in the past. I'll think about this pod and I'll think about the one or two places I screwed up and I'll get angry and upset and I won't be able to let it go. I don't forgive myself. And the past is the most immutable thing ever. There's literally nothing you can do about it. Literally, and I can prove this. Nothing we can do about it. But if you're successful, and I'm also successful, you're constantly in the future, right? You're thinking about, okay, I'm going on, I'm name dropping right now because I'm desperate for your affirmation.

41:15I'm going on, I'm going on Bill Maher on Friday and the shit going on at Columbia. I know he's going to want to talk about it. So already tonight I'm like, I'm going to text Jonathan Greenblatt, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, and I'm going to ask for their thoughts on it so I can parrot it and sound smarter than I am. I'm already really thinking, I'm kind of, I'm mostly here because I like you and I like your hair, but I'm mostly here, but I'm in the future. Yeah. And that's the fear. The fear is that you get to the end of your life and if you're an atheist like I am and I think that at some point I'll look into my son's eyes and know our life, you know, our relationship's coming to an end, I believe that.

41:51You're like, okay, I was so much in the past, not forgiving myself. I was so much in the future because I wanted to be successful that I was really never there. Like, did your life really happen? That's the fear, right? Were you never really there? So, you know, life, if I could give myself anything or give young people something, it's like, okay, Forgive yourself when things aren't going well. Recognize your life is how you respond to shit. When you're really upset, it's usually not about what happened to you. It's about whatever chemicals are running through your brain at that point. And just to ease up on yourself.

42:25Forgive yourself. Be nice. Be good to yourself. And also occasionally try and just slow down. I think that's really the gift of kids is they force you to be in the moment because they can be so disagreeable. But what is it that can put you in the moment? like what can like just slow you down um i wish like presence which is sort of i think and just recognizing you can control your emotions you can't control what happens to you there's just so much of this is just so random yeah that's huge isn't it the um another thing that struck me in the book actually was the the impact of compounding which i mean i've learned doing this podcast it's been insane like the you know when you repeat something you learn from it repeat it again and keep at it over time.

43:09What you achieved this year compared to five years ago is just astonishingly different. Yeah, look, the power of compound interest, if people had, if you had decided to get a shitty Android phone, which I realize is not appealing, right? Having an Android phone is sort of saying to the world, your life really hasn't panned out the way you'd hoped. But if you had taken all the money we spend on iPhones, I bought every iPhone. I buy every iPhone. automatic on the list. It cost, I think the first one was$1 ,500. Last one was$2 ,400. Someone did an analysis and said, if you got in a free phone, you can get a free phone.

43:45If you got in a free phone and you take all the money you had invested in Apple phones and you bought Apple stock, you'd have$3 million right now. Wow. Because obviously Apple's gone insane, right? But what you don't realize as a young person is, how old are you, young man? 26. Okay. When I was his age, I could not imagine the flaw. One of the flaws in our species is that because we haven't lived beyond 35 for 98 % of our time on this planet, we can't calibrate time. So you're gonna be around probably, you're probably gonna be around another 80 years, which means if you save$100 a month or let's call it$300 a month, which is boring, right?

44:24Because you're expecting to be a baller and have him promote you and sell a podcast for a lot of money. But just in case you don't, if you manage to get$300 a month into SPY, low-cost index funds, and you didn't look at it for 50 years, not 50 years, 30 years, you're gonna have millions of dollars. And hope this shit goes big, right? Hope you are a great DJ. Hope you sell the next big, great novel. But just in case, if you can figure out a way to automatically save the 300 bucks so you never see it a month at the age of 26, I can guarantee you by the time you're my age, I think I'm older than you, you'll be a millionaire.

44:57So just in case shit doesn't work out, and I didn't have that maturity. I remember telling my friend when I was 24, who was putting 2 ,000 bucks in this super lame thing called an IRA Roth. I'm like, if 2 ,000 bucks means anything to me when I'm older, shoot me. And he's made a fraction of the money I've made, but he's a multimillionaire because he was that lame guy putting away money every month. It is amazing. 11 % a year, which is what the S &P has done since 2008, sounds really uninspiring. 11 % a year, it's nothing. Big deal. That means every 21 years, your investment's going up eightfold.

45:37So as I say in the book, the good news is I know how to get you rich. The bad news is the answer is slowly. But you wanna lean into your advantage. Your advantage is time. So if you just have a little bit of discipline, one less Starbucks a day, round up on acorns, get away to have forced savings so it comes out of your check and you never see it. go into low-cost index funds, don't believe anyone on CNBC, alternative investments, hedge funds, people who claim they know more. No one knows. My summary of the entire financial services community haven't been in economics. I'm around the brightest people in finances.

46:10No one has any fucking idea. That's the bad news. The good news is the markets in America over the long term are up and to the right. So you don't need to be a hero. Just save a little bit of money, play into your strength. You're going to have a lot of time on this planet, a little bit of discipline, a tiny bit of sacrifice. Always save. Never look at it. Don't think about it. Don't day trade. Don't get near crypto. Jesus Christ. And try and live a little bit like a stoic. Recognize that people aren't as concerned with your shit as you are. Get a Hyundai if you ever want to get a car. Before you own a home, live in a very small, clean place near work.

46:44Double down on work. Be the guy that doesn't stay at the club and doesn't feel a need to signal with a bottle of Grey Goose. Go home. Have a plan. By the way, that's really attractive to women, actually having a plan. And you're going to end up at a stage in your life where flexibility and economic importance are really important.

47:04And also that notion of compound interest, it goes for relationships too. Most people, when asked what the singular relationship in their life is, they almost say always it's their mother, right? Even if you don't like your mom, even if you don't get along with her, it's usually the singular relationship in your life if you have to identify one. And it's because of compound interest. Every day, she'd made dozens of these little investments. Like my mom used to wake me up with a soft voice like, Scott, Scott, right? Totally concerned with my well-being, teaching me how to drive, all this shit, right?

47:33My dad wasn't around. You wake up or she wakes up 30, 40 years later, and that relationship is singular. She's a millionaire in my eyes, right? She's been gone for a while, but like the wealth she accreted, making tiny investments every day. And so when you're young, and I didn't do this, a little act of kindness, checking in on people, texting people, you hear about a job opportunity and you think of a friend and you reach out to them. You tell someone you admire them. You hear they're down, whatever it is, just tiny little investments when you're young. I made some of those. And now those friendships are just so big, right?

48:14So I think compound interest, most people acknowledge it in finance. What they don't appreciate is how much little investments and relationships can pay off as you get older. I mean, the friends I had in college where we made little investments with each other are just these wonderful relationships now because of that compounding of little things we did for each other. Yeah. I hadn't thought about the compound relationship point, but that's really true. Because I think I found as my network has grown, good things just come, doesn't it? Because you You multiply the number of people you reach and opportunities get created and knowledge gets shared.

48:49It's very impressive. It's a great point because, and this is in the book, the difference between being economically secure and the people who are really wealthy is there's a myth. And the myth is kind of the Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren trope that rich people, billionaires crawled over other people to get wealthy. And what I found in the research is that actually wealthy people are generally speaking really good people. Because what you want is you want to be put in a room of opportunities without being in that room. And in order to be really wealthy, you have to collect allies along the way.

49:20You have to have people that think of you with opportunities, give you the benefit of the doubt. you also um wealth is a kind of what i call a full person project and that is the fastest way to to steal or to grasp or snatch financial insecurity from financial security is personal failings the lack of character uh divorce which i have been through i lost 60 percent of my net worth overnight you split your assets and then you lose another 10 because you're supporting two households and to become a forced seller of assets, which is never a good idea. And also, show me a small or medium-sized company that's doing really well and that all of a sudden kind of folds.

49:58I'll show you people at the top who are professionally divorcing. They're not getting along. So unless you're willing to bring generosity, forgiveness, empathy to your personal and your professional relationships, I don't think you're ever going to be that wealthy. I mean, some people are so fucking talented. Kanye can do whatever he wants. He's going to be fine. Assume you are not Kanye. You want to bring, generally speaking, the millionaire next door is someone who values his personal relationships or her personal relationships, is a good person, and people want this person to win. So character really is – the most important part of being wealthy are things you can't control, when and where you're born.

50:40Being born in the 60s California, a white heterosexual male gave me unfair advantage. but the things you can control saving compounding focusing on your talent and being a high character person being a generous person if you don't bring generosity and forgiveness to relationships i think it's gonna be very difficult to be wealthy because you're gonna end up with personal and professional divorce from key relationships thank you what i'd love to do actually is bring some questions in at this point so i think we're getting to the hour point um should i start with colleen today because we were chatting earlier weren't we so i thought we're having a good chat about social media before not stalking you i was here recording before you we were doing a little episode earlier but then you said you were coming colleen de courcy used to run wendian kennedy now i am the cmo and cco at snapchat we were in can together weren't we we were yeah good to see you yeah good to see you too yeah um we share a lot of the same viewpoints on social media.

51:38Yeah. And the thing that has occurred to me at this point, having been on the outside, been on the inside, looked at what's happening, is the people that run these businesses are more afraid of Wall Street than Congress. Mm-hmm. For good reason. Yeah. And when, you know, I know we're both Jonathan Haid fans. Mm-hmm. And a lot of the points that you make, you know, I think are right. of course the thing that stops so many companies is this evil monetization of rage, as you said. And you've talked about, you know, Facebook being a stock that like, you know, just keeps going because they're not changing their approach.

52:20In this come to Jesus moment that I hope to God is going to happen, how do we manage the fact that really this tech and social money took over from, the kind of dying off of industrialization in America. We need the money. The tech people are the people who are supporting the people running for office. That's why nothing ever happens. What has to break for us to get there? So first off, I think big tech and their leadership are culpable, but the culprits are Congress and Senate, and to a greater extent, us. If we don't elect people that hold these companies accountable, we've had 40 hearings on social media in danger to kids, we've passed zero legislation, right?

53:04So Snap got grief for their solar system, where basically you got to see where you were in importance to a friend, and it ended up really upsetting kids. Like, wait, this person doesn't care about me? I'm not even in their inner orbit? And I would imagine that people at Snap didn't see that happening. But when it happened, you canceled it. Most social media CEOs do not do that. They're like, unless it's outlawed, why would I put myself and my shareholders at a disadvantage when it's not law? So here's the bottom line. I generally believe nothing gets better until someone does a perp walk. Because we can't come up with fines big enough.

53:46They have so many lawyers. They have an ability to reduce these fines. Facebook is violating a consent decree, lying to Congress to find$5 billion. $5 billion. It's nine weeks of cash flow. So if I put a parking meter in front of your house that costs$100 every 15 minutes, but the ticket was$100, I'm sorry, but the ticket was$25. The meter costs$100 every 15 minutes, but the ticket was$0.25. You'd break the law. You would just break the law. And the incentives, there's no algebra of deterrence. No one goes to jail. They find, it's like a gnat hitting a windshield. They make so much money. So until everyone has to be off their phone under the age of 16, until every social media company is subject to liability and someone can go to jail if they send out suicidal ideation emails, until everyone is subject to these penalties, to wait for their better angels to show up, just don't hold your breath, folks.

54:45America becomes more like itself every day. You know, to be rich in America is to be loved, to be able to take care of your kids, your parents, to have a broader selection set of mates. That is really appealing. So you will make incremental decisions that might have a really negative impact on the Commonwealth unless you are regulated. Ford would still be pouring mercury into the river if it wasn't outlawed. Because if they weren't pouring mercury into the river, General Motors and Chrysler would have a cost advantage when they continued to do it. So the people really failing are us. Until we hold these companies accountable, until we pass laws that say, you realize, News Corp, Fox, they get fined$800 million for distributing and spreading false information about Dominion voting machines.

55:37That was a dumpster fire compared to the nuclear mushroom cloud of misinformation on Dominion that happened on Meta. But Meta passed this legislation that inoculates them from any liability. That makes no sense. So remove 230, elect people who are going to pass laws to hold these companies to the same level of accountability we hold any other industry. So I think it's up to voters and our leadership to do what we've done in every industry and say, okay, if you knew that not putting airbags in this car and a steering shaft that doesn't collapse and windshields that are not shatterproof and people start dying everywhere, they get to sue you.

56:18You can't even do that with social media. They can't be sued. They have liability shields. They literally can't. There's almost nothing you can do to them. So I see us as at fault. I think we've got to put in place people who understand these technologies, can regulate them. And I think we need to restore the algebra deterrence. Thank you for the question. Hello. What does the agency of the future look like? If someone is young and creative and would normally go into advertising, marketing, whatever, what would they go into in the future if that's not necessarily what you see is going to be the case?

56:54I think there's going to be a lot of services needed. I'd see agencies evolving to more, for lack of a better term, supply chain and innovation and storytelling across new mediums, really helping companies work through issues around AI. I think there's going to be a ton of help, a ton of demand for smart people who offer outsourced service. The great thing, I used to pitch consulting, right? I was in your business. I started around strategy firms. I'm like, you can fire me more easily than you can fire an employee. And you're not sure if this brand thing, you buy into it or not, but give it a test.

57:28hire us for a year, ring fence your investment to half a million bucks and if it doesn't work, you don't have an entire department to lay off, right? Companies trying to figure out AI, companies trying to figure out storytelling on all these new mediums. And I would imagine there's a lot of niche opportunities. It's just that a great business model was to come in with really attractive, compelling people to tell a story and then convince you to spend more and more on broadcast so they could take 8 % to 12%. That was a really compelling business model and I feel like a lot of the agency world is still clinging to that model and I don't think it works.

58:03I think I would, a business model, I would suggest retainers. We're smart people. We'll answer your two or three biggest problems around brand or media and you're going to pay us 50, 100, 200 grand a month and we're just going to be your department but you're not going to have to pay us healthcare. We're easy to fire. You can swap us out in two years when we run out of ideas. We're not politically weaponized. We don't know what the pet projects are here. And I think that a lot of companies are going to want to outsource a lot of this. But I think there's so much insecurity around there, around branding, storytelling, innovation, AI, supply chain, that I think it's going to be a great time to be in the services business.

58:43And then also people who are great, hire young people who are great athletes. Great thing about the services business is it's incredibly, it's an incredible training. You have to be a great athlete. You have to be good with clients. You have to know how to manage a business. You have to be able to attract and retain people. The bad news is I've always thought of it, unless you absolutely love it, it's a young person's game. It took a huge toll on me. I was roaming the planet. It took a huge, oh, you know, Samsung called. The CMO wants you to the board meeting and it's sold tomorrow. Can you be there?

59:14Sure I can. I mean, just ting, ting, ting. Being in the services business, I think it's a great training. I think it's a difficult way to have sustainable relationships. I don't know if you found that. You don't need to tell me. But I think it's a great time to be in the services business. I just think it's going to be a difficult time if you're banking on traditional media. And also just very crudely, as far as media, your return on your human and financial capital will be inversely correlated to the screen that you're servicing. So you want to be in the business of creating media for a 50-meter screen called a movie theater.

59:54you better have rich parents. It's that business, all this majestic nostalgia around movies are back and Barbenheimer. Movie receipts are off 20 % from 2019 this year. They were up 20 % this year. They're down 20 % from 2019. People don't go to, I mean, I go to the movies because I have kids, but I used to go to the movies twice a week. I used to see movies four and five times when I was a kid. I saw The Empire Strikes Back seven times and that was normal behavior. That is no longer the way. The content in your home is so amazing now. Next smaller screen, your TV. Big business, growing a little bit on the whole, but tough, getting tougher.

1:00:36This thing, you can tell stories on this thing, champagne and cocaine. So whenever I hear a kid talking about creative or media, I'm like, what size screen are you producing content for? And if you want to be in the movie business, oh my gosh, that is a tough, tough business. When I meet movie producers, I'm like, oh, your spouse is rich, right? It's true. Or they're like amazingly talented, like crazy freakishly talented, right? And what I tell young people is surf where the waves are easy. Go to an industry that has an employment rate of more than 90%, right? I wanted to be an athlete. And I quickly, when you went to UCLA, I realized I was not on the 0.1%.

1:01:20So it was a blessing to be living with exceptional athletes and realize that I was mediocre at it. But here's the thing. In brand strategy consulting or analytics, you just need to be good. Not even great. Just be good and you can make a great living. So going into an industry, I also think another graph. I have this last day in my class at Stern. I have a graph. The correlation between the return on your investment in your career, it's inversely correlated to how sexy the industry is. You want to open a members-only club for artists in fashion industry? Oh my God, that sounds awesome. Expect to lose a lot of money.

1:01:58You want to be in food, fashion, the arts, anything that sounds remotely cool? It's overinvested, which drives down returns. You want to build a software scheduling platform for healthcare maintenance workers? Jesus Christ, that sounds awful. Ka-ching. Ka-ching. the most boring non-romantic businesses offer the greatest return on invested capital. So if you want to go into a sexy industry, just be clear, you better be in the top 1%. SAG-AFTRA. It's not easy to get a SAG-AFTRA card. This is the union for actors and actresses. I guess they call them all actors now. 180 ,000 of the most talented people in the world.

1:02:42Hard to get that card. 87 % will qualify for health insurance because they make less than$23 ,000 a year. You really want to be in that industry? You really want to be in that industry? I went to UCLA with the best athletes in the world. Went to the Olympics. Played professional baseball, professional basketball. Reggie Miller and Troy Aikman made a shit ton of money. Those were my classmates. I'm aging myself. Everyone else was calling me at 27 looking for a job. They went to the Olympics. They got a bronze medal. Great. great experience no no money in it like and the sexier in industry so and buy something super sexy on a big screen you're fucked so roi inversely correlated to the size of the screen and how sexy an industry is so if you're going to be an advertising your own agency service the just worst sounding industries in the world be like the agency for like plumbing supplies or something Hi, Jasper Ferreira, JP Morgan, which I'm laughing as I say it for your financial comments, but I totally agree.

1:03:47Right now, I'm going back to the social media thing because it's just with the listeners, like it's just such a hot topic. We know it's not right today, but what can we as marketers do today to get it right without the regulation in place? oh i don't know i'm not sure try and reward platforms to be hit but it's so hard because you're a marketer i can't stand meta i advertise on meta i have an online education company i choose me over over i mean it's very hard you'd be doing your clients a disservice if you decided oh alphabet radicalizes young men or met as depressing young teens so we don't advertise for our clients you'd be doing our clients a disservice because these are monopolies and they kind of control the ecosystem right so i don't know i think i think i don't kind of a i was asked this question i presented to uh elliot a few days ago which is one of the largest hedge funds um the only people who pay my speaking fees now are these large hedge funds by the way i speak at jv morgan all the time um um look i think the best thing a JP Morgan can do or a big successful financial services firm is to stop what I'll call certification-based hiring.

1:05:06What do I mean by that? Try and allocate 10, 20, 30 percent of the professional track positions in your department to kids who you develop a what I'll call a skills-based assessment as opposed to a certification-based assessment. And that is we fetishize kids from elite universities. And at Morgan Stanley, and I imagine at J.P. Morgan, it's very hard to get past security unless you went to an elite college for a professional track job. And the problem is when you decide you're only going to hire people from elite universities, you're never going to hire a single mother. You're going to hire very few Latinas.

1:05:44And there's some really good kids out there that just aren't cut out for college. Only one third of kids get a traditional college degree. So I'm working with a hedge fund right now to come up with a skills-based assessment, and they just hired their first non, they've hired a woman who was a high school dropout that's like a math whiz, and they gave her a test, and she has great critical thinking, you know, took the GSC, whatever you call it. She dropped out of high school. She had an addiction problem, but she's very, very smart, and they think it's going to work out. So 10, 20, 30, 50 percent of jobs try and go through the effort of finding someone who maybe doesn't have an elite college degree who could potentially be successful.

1:06:28Because I worry that me and my colleagues are creating a new caste system where the small number of people who graduate from elite colleges who are one of two things, they either have rich parents or they're freakishly remarkable at the age of 17. I mean, I don't know about any of you. I was not freakishly remarkable at 17. But UCLA had a 76 % admissions rate. This year it's going to be nine. And so, and the tail that wags the dog for colleges is recruiters. So I think that J.P. Morgan, a company that's as powerful and as big as J.P. Morgan, if they decide, they say we're moving to a skills-based assessments as opposed to a certification-based assessment.

1:07:08and we're going to try to make sure we hire from a lot of what I'll call the non-name brand schools and figure out a way to identify the best kids at those schools. I think that's the best way for an organization like J.P. Morgan, much less the marketing department, to kind of move society forward. Me and my colleagues, every morning we wake up and we look in the mirror and we ask ourselves the same question. How do I increase my compensation while reducing my accountability? And the way we have figured out how we can do that is by LVMH-ing colleges. Harvard has grown its endowment 5 ,000 % in the last 40 years.

1:07:45It's increased its freshman class 4%. So we have these incendiary arguments over how many non-whites we let in or how many gay kids we let in. It's a total misdirect. It's not who we let in. The question should be how many, right? We should be letting in more trans kids, more non-white kids, more white kids from Appalachia, more conservative kids. We just need more. But until we get to that point, I think that big corporations that are amazing platforms. Someone gets a job at J.P. Morgan. I have this conversation all the time. They come into my office and they'll say, I got a job at J.P. Morgan, but I really want to start my own company.

1:08:21I'm like, don't be fucking stupid. Go to J.P. Morgan. These big companies, the American corporation is the greatest wealth builder in the history of mankind. There are huge platforms. They'll have that mole removed. They'll figure out a way to save money. They care about you. You can totally fuck up and they'll forgive you. They will invest for you. They are just amazing. You got to put up a lot of bullshit, right? People less smart than you will get promoted. You'll get an email from someone will tell you there's a new policy. You won't even know why or who decided. And you have to comply with it.

1:08:54But if you can put up with that and you're patient, you can get wealthy slowly. They'll invest in you. They're nice people. They try to be civic-minded. They try to comply with the law and they try not to discriminate. They will give you – what's maternity leave at J.P. Morgan? For example, in the UK, you can get up to six months now. Okay. Dudes get six months paternity leave. Do you know what paternity leave was when I was at Morgan Stanley? It was, oh, you're not committed. Take the afternoon. That was fraternity leave. Take the afternoon. That was literally, my mom was a secretary. They didn't have maternity leave.

1:09:33I mean, they had unpaid, but they didn't have maternity leave. And so big corporations have come really far. I think that we romanticize entrepreneurship and we don't give big corporations the power or the prestige they deserve. The key is how do big corporations start hiring people who haven't been fortunate enough to go to elite universities? That was a word salad. But I would say just make it your own personal and the department and J.P. Morgan. I've talked to Jamie about this. You gotta hire more unremarkable kids. And when I say unremarkable, I mean they didn't go to elite universities. Their parents aren't rich, right?

1:10:08Are they good kids? Are they smart? Do they test well? Whatever it might be. You know, I'd like to see corporate American universities be like the Navy SEALs. Anyone can go try out for the Navy SEALs. Anyone can show up day one for the Navy SEALs. Not everyone makes it, but everyone gets to show up. I think that's what college should be like. I mean, you're always going to have elite colleges, but 76 % when I applied and now it's nine. Just weird. anyways we're out of time Scott but thank you so much thank you really appreciate it big round of applause thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored CMO I hope you enjoyed that if you did please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast if you're watching hit subscribe there as well I'd also love to get a review reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show so please do leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

1:11:06If you want to contact me, you can do. I'm over on x at Uncensored CMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.