The business of creativity - Sir John Hegarty

0:06Welcome back everybody to the Uncensored CMO. So one thing I am very, very passionate about is the power of creativity to transform your business. Throughout my career, creativity has been one of the most important things that I've applied to delivering results. And I know it's one of those things we just don't talk enough about. So in this episode, I'm joined by a legend of the industry. So John Hegarty, one of the founders of BBH, who spent a career applying creativity to solving some big business problems. He's now actually creating a course called The Business of Creativity to train people and teach people how to leverage creativity and its power to make a big difference.

0:46This is a great episode. John, as always, has got so many great stories, anecdotes, examples and decades of experience to bring to this important topic. I love talking about creativity and I really enjoyed recording this. Here's my episode with Sir John Hegarty. Something I'm really passionate about is the power of creativity to transform businesses and really deliver business results. And there's probably no one better to talk about that than Sir John himself. So welcome back. Good to be here, John. Now, one of the things that stuck me last time, and a lot of people talk about pitching, don't they?

1:19And it's one of those angsty things, isn't it? You know, like clients, you know, it's a big deal for clients, but it's a flipping big deal for agencies, isn't it, when you're putting all that work in. And I remember you said something that really struck me that you used to, well, firstly, you didn't show work. Did you? We didn't do, we didn't show creative work. Didn't show creative work. Yeah. But you started with a show reel of your, I mean, as a client, you know, you know, I thought it was a genius move because you used to have to sit through, here are the creds, here are the team, here's what we've worked on, here's, you know, and you'd be like 50 minutes of the hour to pass before, like, let's see some ads.

1:54You know what I mean? You forget actually that what clients love are the ads. They like pictures. They're like children. I love pictures, movement, colour. Give it to me. No, it came out of when we opened BBH in New York and we'd go in to do our creds pitch and they were done in a conventional way. Hi, we are BBH. And I could see the interest draining in these potential, we hope, clients' faces. And I kind of said, we've got to do this differently. But of course, you know, we were a British agency in America. America is a very kind of parochial country. They don't really like people outside coming in, telling them what to do.

2:36They're very sort of, you know, insecure in that way. So anyway, so I said, we've got to do this in a different way. And I remember Richard Attenborough, when he was making Gandhi, he talked about the movie Gandhi. He talked that he raised the money for it, but it had to succeed in America. but if it didn't succeed in America then you know they would never make their money back and he said why would Americans ever ever think about a bloke in a loincloth with two twiglit legs being anybody that they should listen to I mean Gandhi you know who Gandhi never heard of him does he go to the gym no all right so he thought I've got to I've got to make them realize this person was important.

3:16So he said, I'm going to start the movie with his funeral. And he said, when you see 10 million people turn up to somebody's funeral, you kind of go, my God, who was this man? So your interest is sparked. So I said, in future, when we do a creds presentation, we walk in, say hello to everybody. And we say, before we say anything, we would just like to show you these five, seven, whatever pieces of work, and then start the conversation. And of course what happens is they see the work and they go wow that's good i don't mind a bit of that oh that i remember i saw that you know whatever and you go that's who we are bbh and then you can kind of but you know the convention is you tell everybody what you do here's who's and here's who's in the meeting this is when we started they're yawning all the way you know there's so many reasons why i mean a you're different to everybody else because everyone else is doing that but you've invested so much talent time money making some amazingly emotive creative work you might as well show it off and then also from a client i mean you hear about a client's point of view you're thinking do they understand my problem you know um are they going to be able to create something that's going to really work and there's nothing better than showing someone that is showing work and of course you realize and good clients and in a kind of way your presentation process is a filtering process as well because it kind of filters out the people you don't want to work with because if they look at it and go oh i think that's ridiculous and stupid I'd never buy that one fine and you know we don't want to work with you so you've got to use it as a filtering process of kind of getting them to understand what it is you're about but also getting them to realize that what you're trying to create is magic and and that's and those that get that realize you've got to have a relationship and you've got to have a sort of a way of working that allows magic to occur because you know why does one piece of creativity work against another piece of creativity, you know, in anything, in movies, in books, in painting, in whatever.

5:16And it has magic and you've got to allow room for the magic to occur. So you've got to get people to understand that. And it's very hard to tell people magic, isn't it? You can't go, we're going to create some magic. You know, it's very rational. You've got to show magic or experience it or feel it, don't you? And they kind of think, oh, no, God, you know, they're going to be all over the place. They're looking for magic. Oh, no, we don't want that. No, no, no. I want to be able to measure everything. And of course you can't. Can't measure the magic. You can't measure the magic. And that's what you're looking for.

5:42It's like a product. Why does one product succeed versus another? Yes, there are lots of rational things. There are all kinds of things. But on top of it, there's something that just captures people's imagination. Now, this might be a mean question, John, because you talked about your showreel. And I would always be intrigued if you had, let's say, five in your showreel. You've obviously made a lot of very successful campaigns for a large number of years. which five ads would make that show real if you had to choose and you're talking such a mean question but you've got bbh yes okay well yeah yeah let's say bbh let's do bbh because prior to that there are and well yeah it's a mean question um because i'm i'm almost certainly going to upset somebody now i was gonna say i heard the you didn't mention you already had phone call office from some client going hang on a second you didn't mention or one of the creatives you didn't mention in that ad you thought was one of the best things we ever did.

6:33Well, I did that day. The next day, there was something else. Or maybe five that stood out for different reasons. Well, I think I could do five that sort of, they are moments in time where you go, that changed things. So the first one I would do obviously would be, not obviously, but you don't know, would be Audi Villas, which was the launch of Wolfsprung-Durk Technik. and that transformed BBH's fortunes because all of a sudden we came up with this ad that everybody was talking about, can you beat the Germans to the beach? And it launched Vorsprung-Durk Technik that was interestingly, all the research said, don't use it because people don't like to be reminded the car is German, they don't like the Germans and all that rubbish that you get from people.

7:25but fortunately we had a brilliant brilliant two brilliant clients there uh uh brian boulder and johnny mazaras and and they went we're a german brand let's tell people we're german and it's it's something we should be proud of and it has value because germans are known for engineering so that was the first one then i think i would go for a kind of personal favorite of mine was uh kay shoes creeks now i didn't do all of these by the way i must make that i was creative director on them. Some I personally did, some I did. So, and I worked a lot on them with the other creative teams, but they are not totally mine.

8:00So I must make that clear. So Kaysu Creeks was brilliant. And it was a demonstration of how you match head and heart and how you put a rational message into an emotional story. And it's a brilliant example of it. And in many ways, it was really ahead of its time because we were putting women in charge. So this was made in like 1986, and he was a woman, center stage. She was the major protagonist, and it got us tremendous coverage, press coverage in the newspapers for the sort of the attitude of the ad of putting women in charge. Then, of course, I had to do Levi's Launderette because even though in many ways I think some of the later ads, were in some ways better.

8:51This is the one that got it going. Can I ask you why that one at that time? Was there anything in terms of culture or moment in time that made that or is it all the things coming together? That could be like a half-hour conversation. I don't think we've got that. But it is very, very interesting. There is a sense of timing, but it really was in a way a piece of magic. And I've always talked about that. One of the reasons I love working with film, I love print. I love doing it. I love all that. But you can kind of work it out. You can look at it, change that, do that. When you work with film, you just don't know until you see it put together.

9:30You just don't know. You've done everything right. You've been at the shoot. You've watched the performances. Until you see it stitched together, you just – and for me, that is where the magic occurs. Because with that one, I was target audience. So I was 15, 16 when that came out. I bought the cassette, you know, because there was actually a cassette, wasn't there, with all the songs on it. With all the songs on it, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I bought the cassette. I bought the Levi's. It was surprising seeing a guy get undressed, you know what I mean? That's right, yeah, yeah. That was a bit risky at the time.

10:02That was very risky. And everyone was talking about it. So I kind of experienced what you created as a state of audience. Yeah, so it kind of transformed, obviously, it transformed a method of advertising, a style of advertising that people later copied. That's fine. That's a great compliment. It revolutionized, obviously, boxer shorts. We've had that story a thousand times. And it also revived the careers of people like Marvin Gaye and Benny King. Revived their careers. People had forgotten them. And I always remember the writing team of stock, Aitken Waterman, sort of, you know, were very critical of it.

10:40And they said, why are they doing this? They're getting old tracks out. and I mean completely stupid and what they had failed to understand and what we tapped into in a way, which we didn't realise at the time, is that music, if I can call it, we can call it whatever you like, pop music, rock and roll, R &B, it now had a history. It now had a history. And in a sense what we were doing with that was reminding people of their history. So people were going back and going, God, I never knew about this. I never knew there was this guy called Benny King or Marvin Gaye. What an amazing track. So we opened people to a whole genre of music that they hadn't seen before.

11:18So it hit many, many points. And obviously, as we all know, it became incredibly famous. And then my next ad is for the launch of Xbox in Europe. And if I said to you, the brief is, you've got 60 seconds, you've got to explain the meaning of life. You go, look, I mean, you know, the Bible tries to do that and it's several volumes. How am I going to do that? You can do it. It's amazing what you can do in 60 seconds. So if you go online, go on to YouTube, type in Xbox Champagne, launch of Xbox in Europe, and you'll see that you can explain the meaning of life in 60 seconds. That's a brief. That's a brief.

12:05So that's why I selected that one. And my last one is back to Levi's because they were such a phenomenal client for us at BBH. It was Flat Eric, the traffic cop. And Flat Eric was great because we decided that we needed a different kind of hero. We'd done this singular hero and people talked about kind of, oh, it's, you know, it's very cool. But maybe we should do something else. And maybe what you do is about a partnership or something like that. and uh so i i i thought this was interesting but all the scripts we were writing were just you know predictable you know if you when you read a script if you go yeah i know where this is going then throw it away yeah you've got to give people a reason why they why why should they keep watching because they don't know where it's going to go if they feel they know where it's going to go then they stop watching obviously and uh so with this we thought you know we've got to do something different and then i'd been shown this fluffy puppet some about six months beforehand and i thought wonder if we got this fluffy puppet as a hero along with his buddy and they're on a road trip so it's jack kerouac on the road but one of the characters a yellow fluffy puppet but treat the fluffy puppet as though it's real you know nobody's surprised you know when the traffic cop stops them he doesn't go what's this fluffy puppy they just yeah it's a fluffy puppy and uh and it was and the thing with that was that again you never know yeah and i had so many people coming up to i had to take it back to the client three times before they eventually bought it well i was going to ask you about this because the obvious you know if we might if i put my client hat on it's like how did you sell that you know we're going to call him flat eric puppet you know that yeah what what what convinced them to kind of go with this idea well the way i sold it was i I didn't, I just described the scenario.

13:56Two characters in a car, stopped by the traffic cop, classic situation in America. They're sort of, you know, think of Jack Kerouac on the road. Once of them step outside the car, we get to see what the guy's wearing, open the trunk. In there, he's got all the clothes laid out. And they're going, oh, yeah, John, oh, we really love this. Because they want security in a way, which I sort of understand. And I said, that's great. There's only actually one thing I haven't told you about this. And I said, what? And I said, well, one of them characters is a fluffy yellow puppet called Flat Eric. And they went, what?

14:31What? And I said, yeah, Flat Eric. And it's a unique partnership. You know, you've seen all the other partnerships. This is a unique one. And they thought I had gone mad. As many people in the agency thought, John's lost it. This is going to be a disaster. And you have to hold on to it. But I went back three times. I said, you're not seeing it. And I got lots of references for other things and how people like puppets and stuff like that. Actually, I just wore them down. I think I wore them down. Oh, he's going to come back. We just have to say yes to get him to shut up. God, to get rid of him.

15:03Oh, please get him out of the room. Just say yes, for Christ's sake. And to be fair to them, too, they kind of went, you might be right. But they didn't know it was a real risk. And again, it was phenomenal. It just exploded. But I think this touches on an important point in advertising, that so much of what works is irrational. And yet you're dealing with people that are, you know, accountants, you know, salespeople, that they need certainty and logic and so on. So it's a skill, isn't it, how to sort of pitch an idea that on the surface seems crazy. But actually, I mean, it's one of those funny things.

15:36The more I've gone in my career, the more I've read about the science behind marketing, the more I realise that makes so much sense in terms of its surprising, its characters, you know, all that kind of thing. that's well it's kind of it and also the audience are able to kind of understand what it is and where it is you're coming from yeah i mean my big disappointment with that as part of that campaign was that i wanted like back covers of vogue and all those style magazines just to have a big picture yeah yeah big pictures of flat eric on the catwalk yeah instead of that sort of you know macho guy or you know groovy model or whatever it was and that was my only disappointment with it we didn't get that which would be if you think you want to be surprising you want to make people feel something and be remembered right it does all those things yeah i mean one of the things that that you know when you look at lots of bbh even the levi's work we tried to put a little joke in there and people have forgotten advertising is a part of his job is helps making people laugh you know and there's a lovely i always remember seeing a wonderful documentary about a a trader a legendary trader in Petticoat Lane and the interviewer, Joan Bakewell, it was on one of her programs and she interviewed just interesting characters and she'd followed this guy for a week.

16:53And I remember, and she was interviewing him and said, look, one of the things I've noticed about you, whenever you're selling is you're always telling jokes. And he said, yes, darling. He said, when they're not smiling, they're not buying. And from that sort of gut ability to sell, which a street trader has. Advertising could learn a lot of lessons. We've stopped making people laugh. So why have we lost some of the things that have forever been true, like not smiling, you're not buying? What is it about today? Have we got too serious? Why do you think we've stopped doing that kind of thing? Well, we've become obsessed with technology and we've allowed technologists to take over.

17:33And technology is crucial. It's fundamentally important. but i've i i sort of i've i've done a talk called can you name gutenberg second book on what seems to happen with a bit of so gutenberg you know as we all know printing press printing press the movable type you know phenomenal he was the steve jobs sergi brind larry page you know all of them of his day 1440 revolutionized you know all sorts of things came out of that the renaissance but he was a technologist so what did he print he printed the bible and you kind of go well goody that's been around for a thousand years what else you're going to do well he didn't and i there is a reason for that i'm being a bit you know but anyway my point is that you know when you have phenomenal bits of technology the technology is so you could do this with it and but they're not they don't think creatively don't think about imagination think about the technology they come up with very practical things that you can do and i think over the last 20 years because the technology has been kind of you know it's phenomenal what's happened in the last 20 years we're constantly battling this bit of technology and it isn't until we settle down we think about it we look at it that creative people come back in and go actually you know instead of printing the bible we could print novels we could print stories and you invent the publishing industry or you know when when um uh the two guys um my brain stopped working there who developed the moving camera the lumiere brothers yes they actually gave up on it they didn't realize they'd invented hollywood you know they didn't they just oh i don't know what to do with this and they went back to taking not very good photographs so you get this sort of inability you know it's like les paul he's in the he's in the rock and roll hall of fame not because because he wrote any great rock and roll, but he created a great guitar, a bit of technology.

19:33But it took 15 years for somebody to write rock around the clock and go, wow, this is what you could do with an electric guitar. So I think you get this lag, a creative lag, when creative people then become a bit more confident with it. I know how to use it. I know how to subvert it. Because a lot of creativity is subverting something. So, you know, if you're a novelist, you know, Jack Kerouac, we've talked about, subverted the way a novel was written because we had a point of view about the way a novel was written. He subverted that. So once you've got an awareness of it, you can then use creativity to subvert it and make people more interested.

20:06And I think we're in that kind of place right now. And we'll get through it. But I think, you know, my one plea to everybody out there, if you're in the advertising industry, make people laugh. Yes. They love it. I know. They love laughing and they'll come back for more. Yeah. You know, it works. One question I wanted to ask you, you know, you sold a lot of ideas to a lot of clients what's the secret to pitching you know to a more rational audience some of the kind of emotive work that you've done well i think the first trick and i talk quite a lot about this is is i've seen great ideas die because the creative people selling them are kind of aren't aware of how you sell the first thing you've got to do is make the person you're selling to realize that you've understood their problem that is crucial you can you know give it back to them you say this is it this is the problem you've got this is what fascinates me about it and then when you're talking about your idea don't use your words you know i think this will be cool it'll be really great it'll be you know get awards and you'll be note no this will get you know use their words this will get my audience engaged this will this will increase repetition or this whatever and you see so often creative people trying to sell their idea and they're selling it from what it seems they're almost certainly not but it sounds as though it's from their point of view not from the person you're selling it to so you've got to get the person you're selling it to aware that i've solved your problem and then they're more likely to buy it they're not going to buy it if they think well you've done something because john that's what you like doing you know you like shooting commercials in black and white or filming or whatever it might be you know so it's really important that you get them to understand that you've understood their problem one of the things i think people forget because i've been i guess on the other side of the fence with you know dealing with ecds is reminding them that i i have to sell the idea on and often people forget that i you know i have to go i love this idea so much it's brilliant but help me because i've got to go back and talk to the cfo i've got to talk to the sales director i need to talk to the ceo and they want to know is it going to work you know what what metrics will it move and you know how will it fix the problem all those kind of things so sometimes i feel i i can see the idea and i can you know enthused by it but often you've got to go and sell it to someone else that you know one of the crucial moments in my career in advertising is i realized that and i was very early on in my career and i was trying to convince this client and eventually they were going okay and then And, you know, two weeks later, they came back and they said, no, the board won't buy it.

22:48And I thought, what have the board got to do with it? You bought it. And I suddenly realised that when you're selling something to a client or you're trying to get them to buy an idea, they've in turn got to go back and sell it within. So you've got to give them things. What's the crucial point here? When they're asked, well, will this move that or why is it like that? You've got to give them the ammunition to argue back. Yeah, I've often been in the boardroom where I've shown the ad and it's like tumbleweed because you're dealing with people that are just not used to seeing creative work or feedback.

23:19And it's the most awkward. It's awful. But if you can, but you see, you need to go armed with a, you know, kind of, you know, this is how it's going to deliver our business. You know, this is how we're all going to be getting bonuses off of it or whatever it is, you know. And often it's great to show, you know, we all we often used to do that. Here are your three competitors and here's why their ads aren't working. That's a nice move. And so you can get an advantage. You can get an advantage by beating your competitors. And they go, well, I didn't know that. Oh, that's good. So you've got to make them feel good about it.

23:48Yeah, we've all got the moment where the CEO has dropped an email saying, I've just seen, you know, competitor X on this. What's our response, John? What's our response? Come on. What are we doing? You know, you've been suddenly on the back foot. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've been there a lot. Let's flip it for a second because, you know, I don't think anyone wants to make bad work, or I hope they're not. You know, we all want to make great creative work that becomes famous and shifts business. What would your advice be to a client, so let's say I'm the CMO, to get the most out of an agency relationship?

24:17Because I think sometimes I've seen them fly and I've seen them kind of frustrated, you know, in equal measure. And there's definitely an art to it, isn't it, from a client's point of view, to be better at unleashing creativity. What are the tips for that? Well, I always say, you know, when I've given talks to some of our clients about how could we be a better client, I mean, the first thing is you've got to inspire the audience you're talking to, just as they would their sales force. They'd go into their sales force and they'd talk about the brilliant things they're going to do that's going to make it very much easier for them to sell.

24:50The client's got to do the same thing or should be doing the same thing to the agency. Inspire them. Give them ambition. You know, I want this to be great. I want this to be talked about. I want this to sort of really frighten our competitors. I want everybody else to be on the back foot. I'm looking for something, you know, whatever words you want to do. So that's very important. Very important for a clear brief, you know, and create time for them to do it. And have an open dialogue and have an open kind of conversation if you're unsure about something. And I always say to clients, you know, it's fair enough for you to say, I just don't like it.

25:25Yeah. I just don't like it. You know, and that's not an unreasonable thing for somebody to say, you know, because it is quite personal. And then you can talk about it. And you go, well, I understand that. I understand you saying that. Here's why I think it's right. But you may then have to tear it up and start again. So I think the most important thing is ambition, is to make people realise that you want to buy something great. And if you do that, you'll get people thinking about it 24 hours a day, not just eight hours of the day or six hours of the day. And that's all free. That bit's free. You don't pay extra.

25:59You probably pay more by accepting the poorer work and then having to redo it later. And we do it later. And it's not as effective, of course. And then you change the campaign later. But, you know, inspiring creative people, you know, because by and large creative people come in and they want to do great work. They're not thinking about their pension or they're not thinking about it. They think like that. They want to produce great stuff. So to inspire them is fundamentally important. And then, as I say, you get them working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. and as i said you don't pay more for that yeah that's free true something else i want to touch on actually is is is the brief itself and i've been guilty of this um often the brief is not necessarily written by the most senior person it's usually a template to fill out it doesn't get the you know love it deserves and i'll be in the meeting and i'll get the creative back and i'll go that's not what we actually need and it's that horrible sinking feeling gate oh shit you know and i'll look back at the brief and go yeah i can see how they ended up there you know because you know in a brief not everything's equal it doesn't necessarily emphasize in light it's the thing that really needs to happen and sometimes things change as well sometimes like you know you've just had this big challenge drops on your desk you know a couple of weeks after and you go oh they're busy working on this and now i've got to go and do that you know and all these sort of things so one of the tips i often say when i sort of did uh training pitch training is when you receive the pitch sorry the pitch the brief always phone up the client ask for 15 minutes just to have a quick chat and just say, help me understand what's behind this brief?

27:29Like, what's the issue you're, you know, what's keeping you awake at night? And ask some basic questions like, what are your targets? You know, who decides? Who's going to make the decision on this? And do we need to think about it from their perspective? You know, there's five or six questions you can get to get on this but I think clients actually do a disservice to agencies by not being as open and honest about all the things that go on in their business that actually, if you knew that, you know, the amount of conversations i've had where they've gone well john if we'd known that you know what we would have like you know yeah we've done something completely different you know i mean i think um i mean the best breed for short because i was thinking about this and it's like uh i'm an atheist and a proud atheist but i always fascinated by people who are you know believe in christianity in the bible and they all pick out the bits that they want you know yes you You know, eye for an eye, tooth for tooth.

28:23Thou shalt not kill. So they've all got bits of it. And briefs, if they're long, become like that. Because people read them and they go, oh, yeah, but here it says, that's the bit here that I'm focused on. And you go, no, no, no, I just put that in because I thought. So the less in there, the better. What is it? This is what I want you to do. The one thing it must do is this. Yeah, exactly. That's it. Because it can only do one thing. if it's brilliant then other things will ripple out from it yeah that's its job it's funny in my day job now i'm on the other side of the fence the first time in my career and one of the simple tricks i've adopted is just go repeat the brief back and said by the way this is what you asked us to do and this is what you're going to get back you know i know it sounds really basic but the clients then just go ah they've listened they get it and then if they decide like i used to that well it's not really the brief then at least i've done what i've been asked but and i think that the the shorter you make it the better and then because that focuses which is harder though by the way isn't it this is the classic thing of actually getting down to that what does this really have the power of reduction yeah which is what advertising is all about of course yeah how can i get a meaningful message in 30 60 seconds i can get the meaning of life by the If you go back to that Xbox champagne, meaning of life is there.

29:48One thing I was going to ask you about is something that BBH is very famous for, I guess, building brands. We talked about Levi's and how you built brands. Do you think there's an art or an understanding of brand building that maybe we've lost a bit today that we need to rediscover? I think there are some fundamentals about brand building, which I think people have lost. And of course, you know, and I quote this time and time again, but, you know, that lovely line about a brand is made not just by the people who buy it, but also by the people who know about it. And that is so fundamental. I mean, if there's anything you can take from this chat today, please take that.

30:32Write it out. Put it on the wall. When anybody comes and talks to you about a piece of advertising you're doing or a brief you're getting, remember, that's what makes a brand. And the examples are, you know, I always use the examples, you know, Taylor Swift. Why do I, I'm never going to buy one of her, download one of her albums. I'm never going to go to one of her concerts, but I know about her, you know, and that adds to her fame and adds to her power. And that's what a brand has got to do. And, you know, great piece of advertising, Marmite, has turned that into an advertising campaign, love or hate.

31:05You know, brilliant, absolutely brilliant. So it's getting people to understand that. And I think we've lost that ability to understand that important point because we've started saying, oh, broadcast is a waste of time. And there's no such thing as a waste of time. You know, that broadcast is fundamentally important. That's how you get a message across. It's called a broadcast, a very simple word. But if you're just focusing your advertising at the audience that is going to like you, that's fine. That's very good. That's called promotion. But you've also got to create persuasion. And you don't know who's going to like your product.

31:45You don't know who's going to recommend it to somebody else. You don't know. And fame, which is what we're talking about here, increases the value of your brand. A small data point actually I discovered not that long ago that's kind of really helped shape my understanding of this is how it's going to sound really obvious, but most people are not thinking about buying you at the time that they see you're advertising. So actually what you're doing is building up demand in the future. And I think it's a B2B stat, but there's a stat from Ehrenberg Bass that said 95 % of people in a B2B context are not considering buying you at this point in time.

32:21And if you think about it, you know, are you thinking about buying a new watch? Well, not today, but I might be tomorrow. I might be tomorrow. Am I changing my car? Well, not today. I'm not, you know, but I might be tomorrow. So the work of most advertising is actually to shape the impressions and get on the mental shortlist of tomorrow. And as soon as you understand that, you suddenly think, oh, OK, well, maybe I don't need to sell the three, you know, top reasons why you should buy today. I should be, you know, creating memories, creating impressions and, you know, that will last. So at some point in the future, you'll walk into that dealership and go, that's the one I'm going to get.

32:54And that's where in a way, you know, and I do think social media is amazing where it can. How much longer we're going to be able to do this, of course, because tracking is a major. I call it stalking, by the way, as a media strategy. Not a great way to build a relationship. Stalking doesn't doesn't isn't meaningful in any sort of sense of, you know, creating happiness. But, you know, with social media, you can sort of capture somebody, you kind of know there's an awareness of something and you can promote your idea. But alongside that, you've also got to do persuasion so that when you're thinking about it and something comes out, oh, yes, that's the watch I want or that's the car I want or that's the one I admire.