Sir John Hegarty & Orlando Wood on the next creative revolution

28:33Well, first of all, I think this is something that Orlando has been working on for, one could argue, 20 years. You could argue, couldn't you? But it's called Advertising Principles Explained. And I think we're an industry that is not moving forward because it has misunderstood some basic principles and it doesn't realize there are things that you can learn from history. I always quote my history mastermind. You said you came into us at the age of 11. He came in and said, I'm here to teach you history. History isn't about the past. It's about the future. And I think what Orlando's done is he's written and created a whole series of talks on how advertising got to where it was and is and how it can move forward.

29:22And when you're armed with that, you actually understand how I can make my advertising better. So it's called Advertising Principles Explained, APE, which is why he had a gorilla on stage. I was going to say, that does explain the surprise guests on stage. Good branding, I think. But I think, you know, it is, I think, you know, our industry is, I think, in crisis. I really do genuinely believe that. I think we've got something like now a billion people paying online not to receive advertising. Wow. Blocking. Blocking. A third, isn't it? A third of all internet users. A third of all internet users.

29:57I have no idea of that. I'd never heard that before. That's the thing we do and spend money on, and a lot of money. Well, in fact, talking of money, the global advertising industry is just, I think it excludes China, has just tipped over a trillion dollars, which is up, I think, 10%. So we're building a wall to stop advertising, and we're building an even bigger, like, cannonball. What's the old-fashioned thing? The trebuchet. The trebuchet where they throw the fiery ball over the wall. But it's like an arms race, isn't it? Yeah. I'll get more nuclear weapons to stop you doing this. I'll get more.

30:31And what we're doing is instead of actually lowering the wall by saying, why don't we create something that people actually enjoy going back to entertainment? And I think our industry has forgotten that the first thing you've got to do is engage me. Engage me and say something that I, oh, that's interesting. I like that. I want to share that, which after all, the greatest form of advertising is word of mouth. All advertising campaigns should be, where is word of mouth going to come out of this? It should be on the brief. How is word of mouth going to come out of this? And then creating work that actually people applaud.

31:10Wouldn't that be good? Well, I will say, you ever read a business book where somebody said, now, for your next product, why don't you make something people don't like? There's no future in that, is there? And that's what we're doing. We're making a product that people don't like. Now, how is that going to be effective? And I think there is another aspect to that is it's like fast fashion. So we're churning out more stuff. You're told more stuff, more stuff, more stuff. The planet can't survive with this. If you care about your carbon footprint, which all brands should, you care about the packaging, you care about transport, but what about your communication?

31:53You're spending more and more on average stuff that's being rejected, and that's costing the planet. So if you care about your carbon footprint, then you should start thinking about how can I create work that generates word of mouth? Because that's the most efficient. So we've got to think about creativity. My belief is think about creativity as a green industry. That's what it is. That's a great perspective, actually. And back to our friends at Oasis, one post. One post. One post. Didn't need any more than that. And that's what I think what Orlando has written in this advertising principle has explained, which is absolutely brilliant.

32:29How do we get back to creating work that people want? want yeah now some might say that um you know we're just all harking back to a golden time where everyone sat around the telly together watching you know watching the levi's commercial and uh enlisting and buying the track as i did at the age 15 um but orlando what i think to your credit uh you've done is you've brought the science and the evidence to the conversation as well and i think the importance of that is when you're in business you know and you're a cmo like I used to be, I'd have to go in and justify kind of why we should be investing often a lot of money.

33:10It's often a very, sometimes it's the biggest investment a brand or a company will make in a year. But there is some good evidence, isn't there? And I know you've published a lot on this, but yeah, describe some of the evidence that backs up what you're saying about salesmanship. Quite strong evidence, you know, and not just from me either, but, you know, evidence that the sort of advertising that captures attention, that moves people. tends to involve the living, something unexpected happening, people, animals, facial expressions, all of these things that you can see. I mean, look at the laundress ad.

33:44It's still brilliant. And it's got all of those things in it, a scene unfolding. So all of those things that capture attention, generate an emotional response. And then when you look at the kind of advertising that looks like that, that has that kind of look and feel, you find that it's that kind of advertising that drives awareness, salience, growth, sales gain, profit, share gain. And that kind of advertising, emotional advertising, otherwise, you might describe it as, is the sort of advertising that drives not just volume sales over time and lasting effects, but also reduces your price sensitivity.

34:24So it pushes your pricing power, which of course comes down to profit, profit margins, what you can charge, as well as a whole host of other business effects that go with it. You know, recruitment, it becomes easier. People stay with you for longer. You can get, you know, cheaper loans. You know, the credit terms are better if you're a big brand. Helps you with all kinds of other stakeholders. It lubricates the whole business in a way that salesmanship doesn't. But, you know, salesmanship is focused on the sale, on the quick sale amongst the half interested here and now. So showmanship drives these broader, longer lasting effects.

35:02And so in the course, we provide the evidence, you know, to help you make your case, but also frameworks for thinking about the creative itself, you know, and to help judgment, really, to help to judge whether you've got a good idea. I think actually most brands would be better off if they cut their budget. They just said, right, we're going to spend 25 % less. And what we want is we want 75 % better creative work, because that way will compensate for the cutting budget and that will create work. So I think one of the great advantages today, which was harder in our era, when you talk about the golden era, yeah, it was, but it worked in a different way.

35:48I think today you've got the brilliance of being able to talk to an audience. You have to sort of identify who you're going to talk to in a way which is engaging, involving, committed, and all the things that we want to do that doesn't require huge amounts of money. It doesn't. I mean, I think that's the wonderful thing. You know, I came from an era when, oh, my God, how much did a television commercial cost? How much did it cost to go on? Well, you can get around all of that now. But if you've got a brilliant idea and a brilliant attitude, you can do it. If we talk about a serial brand called Surreal who've made LinkedIn their media and they're creating great ads and they're obviously having fun.

36:34They're obviously enjoying themselves. creating work and it's the fastest growing cereal in the uk today and i think it shows that you know a lot of people say oh yeah but you came it was big budgets no no no don't think like that think about better creativity think about engaging and entertaining i i i think the essence the essence of that question though is is because what you're suggesting there is absolutely right that with constraint you have to be more creative right and but unfortunately most cmos are going my budget's being cut and i'm being asked to deliver results quicker therefore i'll shift my budget into performance and that's the mistake isn't it right because taking the crazy channel is absolutely the right response to that but instead i think the problem is is that i'll spend more money on meta because i've got a fancy dashboard it tells me i'm getting good results i'm not seeing it in real life but you know i've got a chart i can go back to the boss and say oh look you know look how many people clicked on this but aren't those brands just in decline yeah they're just the brands in decline so you have to go yeah i go to surreal i go here's a brand growing where do i want to go who do i want to be a part of liquid death well that's liquid death yeah perfect you know why do i want to be surely that's where you've got you if you are about tomorrow the future why do you want to be with a brand that's in slow decline as opposed to a brand that's growing that's where i'd want to go yeah there was a campaign the campaign that got ddb noticed i think but by vw was the all backs campaign for the you know retailer and smallish retailer in new york and they spent about a 40th of the budget of macy's and yet when you ask new yorkers you know who who's spending who do you see more who do you see more of you know which retailer comes to mind it was all backs that was that was winning and that i think just shows you know how creative work really creative work has that ability to to to cut through now oasis one one ad

38:39anyway but um orlando you you've spent more time than anyone else i know looking at advertising studying its effects writing up the principles and you now put into course which is wonderful so and everyone should sign up. Who would you say today, because it's easy to go back, and I've heard you a lot, you know, you know each other very well, talking about inspiration from the past, but today, who do you think is doing the kind of work that would meet your bar? We talked to a lot of people on the course, you know, CMOs, and one of the brands that we feature is Cadbury's. I think Cadbury's is doing some work that is showing us how to stand out in a noisy category, in a noisy world, they have gone back to, I suppose, the founding philanthropists at Cadbury, who were all about generosity.

39:33And generosity is quiet. And so they've created this wonderful campaign, which is very quiet in the way that it works. It doesn't really need many words either, but it's all done through facial expression, through gestures, through interactions between people. You know, it looks very much like a Vermeer painting. If ever you've looked at Vermeer paintings, they're quiet, but you know there's something going on between these two people. But they're powerful though, aren't they? Very powerful. They're not recessive. No, no, it pushes. Actually, you lean in. Because of the way they're talking to you.

40:07Information is withheld in a way, isn't it? And that's how you capture attention. is my not giving people everything they need to know right now. And you sort of lean in, well, what's going on here in this interaction? And you only know often by the end of the ad, you know, what the relationship is. The garage ad, for instance, great example of that. You know, what's the relationship between this woman and this man? You know, are they romantically involved? You know, what's the age difference? I'm not quite sure. You know, it's only at the end that you realize when she shouts out, I love you, dad.

40:40You know, that is, you know, they've obviously had a falling out. I mean, we've done the face trace on that, haven't we, in terms of system, one thing. And the uplift at that moment where she says, love you, dad, is one of the biggest uplifts, emotional transformations I've ever seen in an ad before. It's 5.9 on our scale. It literally tops out the scale. And that is right. You know, psychological transformation is what one of my class episodes is about. How do you create that in the viewer? And it's often by showing it on the screen. And that is a wonderful… It's interesting you put that example.

41:15There's another one your history teacher would approve of, is looking back in the brand's past, actually, to find the secrets of the future, isn't it? And that quiet consistency. Brand archaeology. What made us famous in the first place? And it's quite nice to have liquid death as the upstart, but Cadbury's been around 200 years, 150 years? Something like that. It shows you don't have to be the new kid on the block. to do things that are effective. And just looking at Lynx advertising, they've gone back to the Lynx effect and are creating very, very interesting work now. And again, going back to kind of that core thing of what are we about?

41:53We're about giving you confidence. It's not really a fragrance. It's giving you confidence. So they've gone back to kind of articulating the campaign as it was when we first launched it back in 1990. Now, I love that. I mean, that's one of the most, if I were to pick, you know, some of the most iconic and clever campaigns. But yeah, tell us about the original brief you worked on. Well, the original brief on Lynx was, obviously, it's for 15-year-olds, a fragrance. It's not a deodorant, it's a fragrance. And it's basically for kids at a time when confidence, they're emerging as adults, they're unsure.

42:37So it's a very pertinent product for them. But what we did is they'd been running advertising saying, you know, bloke sprays it on and all of a sudden women are falling at his feet. And it was all kind of cliched nonsense. And they came to us, Simon Clift, who is the marketing director, brilliant, brilliant marketing director, said, look, this is just not cutting through. is just not talking to our audience. We're not growing the brand. And we said to him, so what you've got to do is you're talking to a 15-year-old. You've got to talk to the opinion leader in there because they're all at school.

43:09So if you talk to the opinion leader, everybody follows them. So that makes your advertising more effective. But you've got to understand they know advertising. They understand it. They're very, very knowledgeable about it. And going to them saying, you know, you spray this on and you'll get the go, they just laugh at you. It's just nonsense. So we said, play a game with them to say, you know, I know that this is nonsense if I spray this on. So what we'll do is we'll take a geek and how a geek gets the girl. But remember, it does wear off. And the first ad we did was a guy goes to a party and he's very unsure.

43:47It's all I'm feeling. He goes into the bathroom, sees some links, sprays it on, comes out and he's Mr. Cool. And all of a sudden, all the girls want to look at him. And he goes out and he dances her in there and he takes her out on the balcony. And he says, but just remember, it does wear off when he opens his arms and smacks her in the face and she falls over. So that whole sense of playing with the genre grew the brand. And that's what drove it. The next one we did was a geeky guy who gets Jennifer Aniston doing his laundry, doing his designing. and it really really grew the brand the problem came is that they then began to listen to too much research and the research would come back about the ads with every oh okay and of course what also came back is young boys like girls with big breasts um yeah i could have kind of told you that so increasingly the ads featured girls with bigger breasts and it became vulgar and it lost it lost that lovely quality of this is a joke guys you know i know it we all know it yeah and was building an interesting brand and they moved away from that sales declined and now they've gone back to it but you make a really good point though about like what we have lost a lot today is just the sense of humor because what way i mean that i found that very funny just listening to you talk about that and and i get the joke and i you know as a 15 year old boy i'd love to have sent that to my friends as a bit of a laugh you know oh we can imagine like billy down there that you will take mickey out of you know he's give him some links or whatever you know it's funny it gets it's what creates the word of mouth he talks about it feels like we've become too serious yeah today but again it's that left brain oh i don't like you know why are you joking you know well because that's how people like to engage with people that's how they remember things that's how they kind of and it overcomes all kinds of problems humor overcomes all sorts of problems It does.

45:42And you're absolutely right. We've forgotten it. And advertising was great. And, you know, we're not saving the world. It's advertising. We're selling deodorant. We're selling a breakfast cereal with a yogurt, a car, you know. Can we not just lighten things up a bit and make people engage? I've got – there's a whole class on this in the course on humor. and you know it's really important because because it broadens our attention actually human humor anxiety hunger narrow it you know but humor broadens our attention so we're interested in it and we're interested because there's often an incongruence come back to juxtaposition putting two things together i think the lynx effect's a great example and with what's going on here exactly and so it holds your attention is the first thing it does second thing it does once we've worked it out we're more likely to put the thing in memory and thirdly we feel pretty clever and funny you know good about ourselves at the end of it so it leaves a positive impression on the viewer you know so actually there are really good reasons why we should use humor and of course it's much more effective campaigns if you ever done a bit of research because if i were to think about i don't know let's say ads i remember from the 80s i'm pretty sure at least half maybe more were funny i mean yes but but i'm sure 50 of ads in the 80s weren't funny but i remember the funny ones so that funny creates much bigger share of my mind than unfunny i mean that's a bit of a plonky way of saying it but but is there some logic around what makes us laugh gets remembered there is well it's that it's you know it's the generation effect so it's called and you know so you laugh at something and you're more likely to put it in memory and you're more likely to remember the gist i talk in in the course about you know there was an experiment with where people were shown some uh bizarre cartoons and some funny cartoons and they showed that the bizarre cartoons you know people didn't really remember but it was the funny ones uh that people remembered the gist of and much much better so it's not the sort of puzzling at what's going on it's not the unusualness of a thing so much that drives the effectiveness of humor it's the resolution and the working it out and putting it into memory and that's that's you know very important and so the gap can't be too big but it can't be too that the audience has to fill in it can't be too big but it can't be too small either it's got to be you know you give the people enough to get it but not too much that it's not it's not funny i think one of my proudest moments as a kid was uh there was a there was a comic called whizzer and chips which i used to get every week and you used to have to write you have to make up a joke and and send it in and i think i sort of sent in eight or ten whatever eventually got it published i got a wizard and chips wallet sent to me that i had kind of growing up it was my proudest moment kind of thing you know but it's amazing you know that humor does does create memory well i can remember the very very first advertisement i ever remember i was about eight years old and it was a guinness poster and it just had down with guinness and I went back to my father and I said, I don't understand that.

48:56I've just seen this poster and it had a toucan in it and I'm down with gin it. And I said, why are they telling you not to drink any? He said, oh, no. He said, you know, that's a little joke. You see, get it? Down with, down with, get it? And all of a sudden, you know, I remember that. I was eight years old. Yeah, yeah. You know, and we're hardwired to want to laugh. We're hardwired towards humour because I think it opens people up and it creates community. You know, that's the thing we get and that's what we seek and desire because we're social beings and humour is a great way of developing sociability.

49:30And brands are a fundamental part of that. So we're back to entertainment again. Now, obviously, you know, you're putting on this course to help. What would your advice be to senior marketers, CMOs listening in terms of getting businesses behind this kind of thing? I mean, John, you must have worked with a lot of, you know, kind of high-powered CMOs in your time. What, well, I suppose what makes a great CMO when it comes to being able to sell this kind of approach into their organisations? Well, I think what we're driven by is effectiveness. You know, we always said, you know, at BBH, we're always driven by effectiveness because we understood that what we were creating produced effectiveness.

50:11And I think when you go through this course, you look at how much advertising is actually working. I think there's some fact about, you know, I don't know, 90 % of it isn't working. You know, so that's only 10 % is working. It might even be less. I don't know. But if I could move that to 15%, wouldn't that be great? So I think what this course does for you is it helps you understand all the differences and it helps you understand how can I move that 10 % to 15%. So it's about how can I be more effective? and actually then begin to be able to dissect all the differences that are going on and be the smartest guy in the room or woman, whatever it might be.

50:56It did make me smile. You did a brilliant presentation and having the ape on at the end was a masterstroke in capturing people's attention. But over on LinkedIn, the big debate that ensued was, I think you used the phrase, only 6 % of advertising is truly effective. and then a massive debate range. Oh, according to this source, it's 4 % and then this source is 10%. Marketing LinkedIn just went into meltdown over whether it was 6, 4, 8, 10. It doesn't matter. As you said, John, it's like arguing about how quickly the Titanic is sinking. Is he drowning? Shall we throw him at? No, it'll be all right.

51:35I know, we do get, you know, people do get sort of obsessed about, you know, The bigger picture here, guys, is it's not working. Most of it doesn't work. Yeah, most of it doesn't work. Let's improve it. I agree. So when's the course launching? The first cohort's on the 23rd of September, so taking bookings now, advertisingprinciplesexplained.com. And, yeah, it's, you know, I mean, the questions I ask really are, Can you and your board, importantly, and I think probably your agency too, articulate the difference between salesmanship and showmanship advertising? Can you describe the scale and type of business effect associated with each?

52:21And can you and your board and your agency, you know, recognize these two schools of advertising when they see it and know how to develop in particular showmanship advertising? Because if the answer to those is no, I'm not sure they can, then how can you brief it, judge it, develop it, sell it in? And that's what the course really, I think, is helping people to do. It's supporting marketers. And I think the other thing to do is it does give you context. I think it's terrifying we're an industry that doesn't understand its history. And we're not asking people to go back. But, you know, if you studied architecture, you would know who Mies van der Rohe is.

53:03You would know who Frank Lloyd Wright is. You'd know why they did what they did and how you've moved it forward. You know, fashion, you know, you're studying fashion, you'd know who Coco Chanel is. You'd know who, you know, all the other greats. You know, in our industry, people don't, you're going to, you've mentioned names here. People are going to go, who? Yeah. And you can't move forward unless you understand the context of how you've got to where you've got to. And then how I can push it forward. It often gives you the energy to move forward. And principles remain, but practices change. Understanding those, it's terrifying that we don't have that.

53:37And that's partly what I think APE explains and gets you up to a point. But you have the confidence then to know how to move forward. I think confidence is key, actually. because that's what this course gives you. That's what I've enjoyed by working with you and getting a glimpse into the course as well. It gives you the evidence to win the argument and it also gives you inspiration because you see how it could be done and it's incredibly motivating. So well done. Well, thank you, John. It's very interesting. The long and short of it, essentially, Les and Peter of a very famous publication, those arguments were being had in 1915.

54:16you know the long and short of it existed then really between these two schools salesmanship and showmanship you can see the same thing back then and although they didn't have all the evidence to support it back then there was enough for people to know that these two schools exist well i think that's the difference now is is we've got overwhelming evidence of what why it works and how it works and so there's no excuses not to be able to go and you know work with your creative partners and sell it into the board, which is brilliant. I thought we'd just round up. I put a post on LinkedIn this morning.

54:50Now we're going to have this chat. Any questions for John as he's going to be here? So I got a good response, actually. So I thought, if you don't mind, we'll round up with a few quick questions. We may have touched on some of these already, but let's see how we get on. So Fiona was asking you, is there a campaign that didn't do as well as you expected or vice versa? Is there one that has done better than you expected? So going back to your uh bbh days i i think i've always focused on the positive you know i've always i mean there's so much rubbish about let's let you in a way i've always said you learn from great things you don't you know mistakes will happen you know but the one i would say that worked much much better than i ever anticipated was vorgesprongde technique for Audi.

55:39And it did literally become a catchphrase to the point where, you know, when Boris Becker was playing and he wasn't doing very well, they'd say Boris has lost his Vorsprung. And it was a line that we had to really argue within the agency to kind of, should we go with it? Should we not? And research said no, but we had two brilliant clients at Audi who said, well, we are a German brand. Let's be honest about it. And so they went with it and the rest is history. And it became actually the most famous almost car brand advertising at that time and still exists today. They still do it running today.

56:13So that is one I would say. I love that example because I remember it as an audience going, hang on a minute, have they played the German version? I really was confused. But it's one of those things, the more I saw it, the more I got it. And Jeffrey Palmer, who delivered it, wonderful, wonderful act in that wonderful deadpan, slightly sadonic way. Vorchebron d 'Euchtechnique, as they say in Germany. And we used to get complaints from German teachers here saying you're pronouncing it incorrectly. Yes, that's part of the point. Well, we'll have this with you, Dan. I lovingly refer to Orlando as the Grand Fromage.

56:48And then one of our French listeners corrected me on my pronunciation. So, Les Petits Legumes, I think you then decided was a more accurate way. Gros Bonnet. Oh, Gros Bonnet. Yeah, there you go. They don't understand Gros Bonnet. We had to translate it. We had to translate it. It's way funnier in English anyway. We'll stick with that. Next question from a former BBH employee, no less actually, Tom Roach. Love Tom, yes. Big fan of his. I think he's asking for a friend, quote unquote, what role do planners have in the success of the creative? Well, I said already, you know, I called my book Hegarty on Advertising, turning intelligence into magic.

57:27And I think planners are the intelligence, and I'm there to provide the magic. So that's the role they play. And I've always said that. Diego here has asked, how did you sell Flat Eric into a sceptical Levi's team? Persistence. He won't go away. I kept coming back with it. A wonderful guy there who was in charge of it said, oh God, no, he's going to get that Flat Eric out again. And we were getting closer and closer to the air date. And we did have a lot of trust with each other. And the third time I went back with it, he looked at me and he said, John, you really, really think this is going to work?

58:11And I said, it's going to be fantastic. Really promise you. I didn't know that, of course. But you have to have confidence to say that. And he said, okay, we'll go with it. And so it's persistence and being committed. But that comes out of a relationship you've built over time. You don't suddenly get that. And being absolutely honest and truthful with your clients about what you're doing builds that trust. And when you've done that, then you can sell them great work. Paul here asks, many clients tend towards conformity. How do you challenge them to think differently? Well, you know, I always should say to clients, surely the point of a brand is to be different.

58:50Shall I advertise this as the same? Is that your brief to me? Because if so, I can do that. You know, I can go, I should come back in about five minutes with an ad that's just like the one. So the point of it is to be different. Because if you're not different, well, why be in existence? You know, Audi is different from BMW. Your job is to dramatize the difference. And if your advertising isn't doing that, then give up, you know, sell the brand and go and do something else. Yeah, exactly. Reza asks, what emerging trends do you think will shape the future of advertising? Well, we've talked a little bit about this.

59:25I think advertising has got to understand that it's part of the entertainment industry. You know, we don't need another soft drink. We don't need another car. We don't need another, you know, let's be honest. You know, we are sort of overwhelmed with choice. So how do we stand out? How do we engage with people? You could argue, well, there should be less stuff. Well, I've already said you should do less advertising, you know, cut your budget. That's what I'm going to do. But I think we've got to think of ourselves as part of the entertainment industry. We're entertainment. And that's what people love.

59:58I mean, the Romans understood this, didn't they? Put on some games. We don't throw Christians to the lions anymore. But, you know, they understood it. You know, what are the Romans ever taught us? Most things, actually. It's true, actually. Neil Eshears says, we touched on this, but if there's any other points to add as well, What skills will the CMO of the future need? I guess similar to the previous question. I think it's about, first of all, start using the word consumer. Start using the word audience. I've always thought there's, you know, words carry meanings. They're powerful. You know, there's a dictionary definition of something.

1:00:31Look it up. Consumer. It's not a very nice word, actually. Whereas audience is kind of implying there's a relationship. I'm giving you something that is going to engage you. So I think they've got to think of themselves in that way. redefine who you are, redefine the job. And if you're trying to be a brand leader, well, are you a brand? Right? Yeah. Okay. And are you leading? It's a very simple phrase, brand leader. Are you leading? How are you leading? What are you doing? Are you creating a movement? Are you changing the way people feel or think? So those things become important. Questions are powerful, aren't they?

1:01:06I mean, just the way you said, how are you leading? Yes. is incredibly provocative question. Because if I think back to most brands I've worked with, they're probably following. If I were to kind of go through everything they're doing, following or leading, let's mark it all up. Are you a brand follower or a brand leader? It's a good order. Do an order. I'm here to be briefed. Do you want to be a brand follower or do you want to be a brand leader? And, of course, they'd all bristle and go, I want to be a brand leader. I'm a brand leader. You're not a brand leader because you've got a bigger share of the market because somebody might be coming up behind you.

1:01:40So how do you stay ahead? You do that, funny enough, look up the word in the dictionary by leading. And the interesting thing about leading is it's very uncomfortable internally. Because I mean, even like we find this system on some of the things we do that are leading don't necessarily have universal support or there's a debate about it. And because it's anything that takes you out of your comfort zone, well, surely we should be doing it like this. And you're going to be doing it like that feels uncomfortable, doesn't it? But also the left brain likes to say, oh, this is one of those. I've seen it before.

1:02:12I know what this is. I know what to do with it. Can't deal with novelty. And you get back to that whole thing about risk, don't you? And I've always said, I won't go into it, don't use the word risk because nobody wants to risk. I don't get in the morning and think, oh, I'm going to have a risky day today and have a risky breakfast, drive a risky car. And I used to say to clients when we were in that situation, so what word would I put in that? I used to say, this is exciting. Yeah. And that's kind of, you know, you go. That's a lovely framing. That's a, have an exciting day, drive an exciting car.

1:02:42And that way, when you're arguing your case within an organisation, but this is exciting. Who doesn't want that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Back to Greg Harnach. I mentioned him earlier, but one of the quotes from the episode I did with him, which I love, is the biggest risk you can take is to be ignored. Totally. Yeah. Which is a lovely frame. Okay, last question. This one from Aidan. You famously introduced the idea of when others zigzag. what trend needs breaking today where would you zag where would i where would i zag today well funnily enough we've talked about it i i would be about engagement i about humor um and and actually funnily enough i was thinking after after you know listening to orlando talk if i was to start an advertising agency today maybe i i would call it something like um showtime I'd just call it Showtime and maybe that's the name of the agency and that's what you need to do it's Showtime folks because immediately that word strikes a performance performance, entertainment, stepping up capturing an audience the whole outlook looking it's got some swagger to it performance in the best sense of the word not the salesmanship sense of course the word performance has been like entirely adopted Yeah, totally adopted by salesmanship.

1:04:03Although it's another adoption as well. I found out last week that apparently I'm the UK's number one digital marketer, which is another word that's been adopted. On your 150th? Yes. Yeah, breaking news. I know. And you've got Judi Dench on the show. Judi Dench is on the show. Yeah, I don't know where I come in now, but I'm right down the list. They let you in the building, John. Let me in the building. I know you were proud about getting into a WeWork. We're in a WeWork and I'm 80 years old and I'm thinking, should I be allowed in? Should I escort me to a back door? Would you stop coming in the front door, sir?

1:04:38Because I think it might be embarrassing. We did. We did. I snuck in. Wonderful. Well, congratulations on that. I think that's a brilliant, brilliant thing. There you go. I'm going to frame it. Now that I've been stepped down from performance market of the year, which apparently you can only have once. I didn't realise this until Robin emailed me yesterday to say, by the way, just that you can only have this award once. So I feel a bit better about losing it. You can win more than one Oscar, can't you? I know. That's very unfair. I'm going to feed this back to him. Yeah, I can have more than one best.

1:05:08I was very proud of my performance. Come on. Because you were 24th most influential. I was 26. I'm now going to frame the number one digital rock because that's going on LinkedIn this afternoon. Well, on that bombshell, thank you both. It's been the best way to celebrate 150 episodes. Well, thank you. Also five years at System 1, actually, today. Yes. Well, so five years and turning 50. And a big five over next week. Indeed. I'm joining your exalted cohort. Yeah, indeed. Got to use the word cohort today. We didn't use that for about half an hour. So get cohort in. We're back in. All right. Gentlemen, thank you so much.

1:05:42Thanks, John. It's been a pleasure. 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 podcasts. 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 If 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