The Mischief mindset behind the most creative agency in the US with Greg Hahn

0:06Hello gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored CMO. Now if you've been listening to me recently you'll know that I've done a talk at Cannes called The Extraordinary Cost of Being Dull. It turns out that being dull costs a lot of money. And I'm meeting up in this episode with somebody that is the antithesis of dull, one of the most interesting creative people on the planet right now. Greg Hahn is the founder of Mischief. He used to be the chief creative officer at BBDO. He's run some of the world's biggest brands, most awarded campaigns. He really knows what he's talking about. Mischief are on fire at the moment.

0:39They've won lots of awards, FEs, CANs. They've been named Ad Age Creative Agency of the Year two years in a row. And I'm catching up with Greg to find out what their secret is. How do they produce such interesting work? And what is the strategy that sits behind what they do and what they stand for? There is so much in this episode, and I know you're going to love it. Here it is. Greg, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be on this, even though I'm not a CMO, but I know a lot of them. We do. You do, exactly, yeah. And CMOs enjoy hearing from people like you, so it works very well.

1:09um maybe let's start the beginning so how did you get into this amazing world of the creative industries oh gosh i started out i was a journalism major and a psychology major and neither of those felt right but if you think about like advertising is the venn diagram of those two professions yeah so i somehow like you know i've always been interested in something creative and you know tv shows about advertising made it seem fun and glamorous so putting all that together when i graduated i was like yeah i'll try to find a job in advertising did not go to portfolio school or creative school. I just kind of did all my own stuff outside of my day job and started moving it around to places I was in LA at the time and got hired.

1:49And from your early, what were the experiences that really stood out for you that kind of shaped the person you are today? Wow. I mean, I started at a really small independent agency that was in LA and I was the only writer at that time. So as a junior, I was doing TV, I was doing all kinds of stuff and I learned really quick on the job. And they also brought in some great freelancers from LA. So I had mentors like Harold Einstein, who is an amazing director right now. He was one of the people I worked a lot with. He was a great writer back then. So I just tried to absorb as much as I can because I knew I didn't go to ad school.

2:21So that almost put me in the position where I had to be my own mentor or find my own course. So I just sought out anybody that would talk to me about advertising. Fantastic, kind of learning on the job, which is probably the best way. Yeah, kind of. I mean, now they do have internships and things like that, but I didn't have any of that. I just had to kind of make my own way. Now, you had a big long stretch, didn't you, at BBDO? I did. Yeah, which is, well, famously the most awarded kind of agency on the network on the planet, I think, isn't it? Is the big claim to fame. Yeah, I was at Fallon before that for nine years.

2:58I do long stretches. I'm not one to move around. I was at Fallon, I think, for nine years and then BBDO for close to 15. What are you most proud of from that time? I think when I came into BBDO, it was a very different place. It was known as the big TV shop and, you know, kind of quote-unquote gaggy, big, stunty kind of TV work. Celebrities, he's a lot of celebrities. And when Lubars got there, his charge was to move it into the next digital era. You know, it'd be a 21st century version of a cool 60s agency was the way he put it to me. I was like, that sounds pretty cool. So we took strides to do that.

3:32I mean, the first thing we did that people started to take notice of was HBO Voyeur, which was not TV. It was experiential, it was digital, it was 360 at a time when that wasn't the thing to do at that point. So I think moving BBDO to a different kind of place and then when I was CCO, I think we were able to do some fun work. I was proud of the work that we did then too. Now, what was the point that you thought, you know, you've done your big stretch. Well, two big stretches, right? So what was the moment that you said, you know what, I'm going to go out and do this on my own now? It was the moment they fired me from BBDO.

4:04That's a very good reason, isn't it? Exactly. I'm a bit controversial about that. I think getting fired is the best thing that can happen to you. Well, to be fair, it was during the height of the pandemic when we'd had 300 layoffs at BBDO across the board. It was a sweeping readjustment of their staff. And I was at the top of the ladder there. So I took care of a few salaries, I suppose. But yeah, that was the moment. It was a wake-up call I did not want, but i'm really glad i got yeah because it was very easy for me to stay there you know it's a comfortable place i was doing well they treated me pretty well but then one day during the you know 2020 april 2020 i got a call about a shareholder meeting that took place over the weekend and i was on the list of salaries they no longer wanted to support and that was it was like you know 15 years of of you know being at cco at a place that was number one agency of the world that's a kind of tough position about how did it feel to kind of get that call yeah it was tough and especially from david lubars who was yeah it's to this day a close friend and mentor and you know he didn't want to do it but it was no it was panic if you take yourself back to the april 2020 it was an insane time yeah and we didn't know if advertising was going to exist in six months let alone you know jobs at my level so you know it did shake me but i i kind of thought about it for a day and then i was like what's next you know i'm not one to dwell i was very quickly ready to find what i wanted to do next you say right about the time actually because in my day job we we do kind of creative pre-testing right and um we found at the moment covid hit uh our business went down 50 percent overnight yeah because suddenly people weren't making up they weren't making out apart from the usual in these dark times and you know the sort of like you know or social media type campaigns.

5:53People just weren't doing anything. I mean, no one knew how long it was going to go on for. You know, we didn't. Yeah, it's so hard to think back about. It seems like a different lifetime. It does, doesn't it? But there was a time where it's like, we're going to be home for two weeks and then we're all going to go back to work. And then it was six weeks. And then it's like, is this thing ever going to end? And then it came to a point where nobody's advertising, but it just started to catch up to the times and people were, you know, laying everybody off. Yeah. And then it was the new normal. That's going to be what life is like forever.

6:19Right. They'd bounce back. Now it's like PTSD now. So from that point of getting fired, which is clearly a tough thing to go through, how long does it take you then to get to the point where I know what I'm going to do now? I know the agency I'm going to create. Well, I got fired. I know the date. It was April 16th, the day after tax reporting. I guess it was a financial reason they had to do it. April 16th was the day I was looking at BBDO. we launched mischief in june 1st which is two or three months we were ready to launch in may like we already had our first project in may so it happened very quickly quick yeah but like i said as soon as soon as i was done with bbdo i was immediately thinking about what's next and you know part of the reason i started mischief was when i was you know talking to people and trying to figure out what's next for me what felt right for me what was i really excited about not just what's going to fit the job and you know hopefully pay my my bills i really wanted something i wanted to wake up and be passionate about i just couldn't find that place like i there i didn't it didn't exist so i thought that's kind of sad what why don't i build a place that i want to see exist and that's kind of how mischief came about and i met the right people at the right time many stars aligned and june 1st we were officially mischief usa you know amazing yeah and where did the name come from it seems like a really cool an obvious name but i mean purposely because it was me thinking about like what is missing in advertising at that time like it was very doom and gloom yeah and no one was having fun i just thought someone needs to come in and fuck things up yeah like let's stop taking ourselves too seriously it just felt like advertising was missing mischief like and it was all taking itself very seriously so that name sprung naturally out of my feelings.

8:06But also, I wanted a name that sort of self-filtered the kind of clients we brought in. So if you're a client that doesn't believe in fun and creativity and shaking things up, you're probably not going to call mischief. It's not going to be on your list. If it is, you'll quickly find out it's probably not right. So I think that does a lot to say what we're about, who we're for, and who we're not for, and that leads to better relationships. Yeah, that's a good point. If a client pushes back, you can go, well, look, you knew what you signed up for. The name's above the door, right? I mean, you hide mischief, you get mischief.

8:40We don't do it just to stir things up because it's fun. We do it because it shows that we have results. Yeah, absolutely. And how's the reality of having your own agency compared to what you might have imagined back on the 1st of June? Well, it's interesting because I've always had, I think a lot of creatives have like this sort of Willy Wonka chocolate factory version of the place they'd love to work and what would be a perfect agency. And I had that in many ways, that's what mischief is. But the reason I didn't do it is because I'm not a business person and I don't know the backend and how to do billing and scoping and God forbid, like IT and HR, like that's not me.

9:14so that's why i never did it but then i met dave lafond and some of the people in search rancourt my two partners in mischief who have been doing this for years and has such you know long established histories of opening agencies running big shops but you know publicists in canada and they said well what if somebody took care of all that stuff and you got to create the agency and your creative vision and i was like that sounds like a great deal yeah it sounds like you know it's a really good lesson that just in general life is find the thing you're absolutely brilliant at and then employ people to do the things you can't do don't try to be something you're not and there are people that are better at you than the things you don't want to do so let them do that and how long does it take you to get your first client i mean you opened on june the 1st did you have a client already it's interesting some people started hearing about about us starting something and through a connection of a connection in canada we got a job we got um our first assignment was for capri sun which was great because craft huge you know name package goods household it instantly legitimized us so we were starting to work before we officially launched and then it was a back to school kind of thing so it launched in august so from there that was the first project then we got another one from craft and then people started seeing that i think we had 10 projects in the first four months out there in the world i wanted to start off really strong i wanted to start off and that's in lockdown as well i mean your Capri Sun idea is a lockdown inspired.

10:37Yeah, we shot long distance. I was on Zoom, which was never, you know, nothing any of us had done before. So it was all kind of making up as we went along. And that's kind of the way we did it is we just didn't overthink it. And have you had to pitch for clients or has your reputation kind of just brought them in? Fortunately, more of the latter, but we do pitch and we get our eyes. And if it seems right, we'll go all the way with a spec pitch. But more and more, that's kind of rare. A lot of times it's a chemistry session or it's a project that leads to something bigger. I think that's the best way to start.

11:09Now, we were both out in Cannes this year. And one of the reasons I've been looking forward to this conversation is me and Adam Morgan did a talk called The Extraordinary Cost of Being Dull. And you made a comment actually on a post about it, which I wanted to play back because it's absolutely brilliant. I've often told my clients they don't have the budget to be boring. And I just think that sums it up brilliantly. I mean, in the work we were doing, we were thinking, well, look, we all know, right, we should be more interesting and we should be creative and we should be emotional rather than rational.

11:37And yet people don't do it. So myself, Adam and Peter Field were thinking, what if we positioned it as a cost? Yes. And we told people the pain rather than, you know, because we'll nod our heads and go, yeah, yeah, of course we should be interesting, right? Yeah. But we worked out, and this is British data, it's much more exaggerated in the US. but we worked out by looking at um the difference in performance between interesting campaigns and campaigns you'd have to spend 10 million pounds per campaign yeah to match the same effect right that's the interesting one you need repetition yeah that's the only way you're going to break through it's just like pounding people through it exactly and it's not a way to build fans yeah at all yeah yeah we we we have on our like one of our credos is the riskiest thing you can do is being ignorable.

12:20You're going to waste a lot of money playing it safe. Yeah, totally. And we did a couple of experiments just to make it fun as well. So Adam said to me, because we do creative testing, he said, how well would a video of cows eating grass? So let's find the most boring thing we can, literally get cows eating grass and put a 30 second video together and we'll see how many ads in the world that beats. Turns out 50%. Beats 50 %? 50 % of ads. Now we've tested 160 ,000 ads and the emotional response to it. And watching cows eating grass is more interesting to half the advertising. I would say though, that is kind of an interesting idea.

13:00I'd stare at that going, why am I watching this? Do you know, it's actually quite hypnotic. That's what I was looking for. And it's also actually, there's a little bit of science to it because we actually get pleasure from looking at animals and also grass and blue skies i'm cheating a bit but the point was to say how easy it is to do something you know that's better than a lot of the stuff that's out yeah we took it one step further actually and um i kind of said i said adam look cows eating grass is a little bit interesting let's go for paint drying yes can you make paint drying interesting now again cheated a little bit so i just 30 second video me painting a wall right and uh but i put a really good soundtrack to it and i had a dog you know go and give me a high five at the end of it so i was cheating a little bit but that was better than 90 of ads but anyway i was just that that was more saying you know a little bit a little bit of thought and some basics can you know but it's often safer feeling to sell something in that that nobody has an objection to because people are afraid of objection and i think any reaction is better than no reaction yes yeah the other you know phrase we have on our website is indifference is the enemy and the last thing you want people to feel is nothing yeah no completely that's perfect but why why why is everyone playing it safe i mean obviously you're here to make it interesting and probably you're doing the kind of work that's you know very interesting but why you know in your experience why are people playing it safe i think it's it's just in a lot of companies and it's not everybody like we have great clients that believe in what we do but you know i've been doing this long enough to know how other companies work and it's because someone else's job is on the line and you could get fired for taking a risk but you're probably not going to get fired for doing the safe thing because like who would blame you what was the risk there yeah so i think it's it's just it's a personal thing i get that but what we have to do as an industry is make the argument that you should be fired if you're if you're spending money on something that nobody cares like the risk is not doing you should be rewarded for taking risk even if it fails yeah yeah yeah yeah the risk is not taking the risk in a way that's that's what we need to change as an industry is you should be rewarded even if it fails if you took a risk yeah if you did what you thought was going to bring the most attention in a good way to your brand yeah you're quite you're right as being boring is the risky thing isn't it yeah yeah so how do we how do we how what do we do how do we fight back on this do you think because obviously well you know i like to think we are you know yeah this sounds like bragging because it probably is um mischief was awarded at the effies the number one most effective agency and we won the grand FEs and I think a record-setting for any agency 28 20 FEs this year 20 FEs and you know as a client I love FEs I like them as a creator makes me feel good but FEs makes me proud way more important you know I mean because it's like that the work works yeah it's way more important to me because I think you know can I love of course I'm creative but it's a vanity metric yeah yeah FEs are an effectiveness metric yeah and it shows that when you can do creative work that people would question and it turns out to be the most effective kind of work that's just proof that creativity does what it's supposed to do totally so yeah i think that's the way we do is we build strong strategies do work off of that and make sure we have a case for creativity yeah that's kind of what you got the work you guys are doing exactly what was that what was the highlight from the effies in terms of like what was the work that was most impressive in amongst the effie group the interesting thing is we won like amongst seven clients i think but the one yeah um We won a grand Effie, the best show, I guess, is what that would be for Tubi.

16:33Yes, yeah. The Super Bowl work we did for Tubi won a grand Effie. Yeah. Should it just give people listening a bit of a sense of that campaign and the results that it got? Yeah, I mean, the thing about Tubi was nobody knew what they were. So our brief for Tubi literally was, this is a brief the client gave us. We want people to say, what the fuck is Tubi? And we want them to at least go Google it. At least talking about it. Get the world talking about Tubi. So we did two things on the Super Bowl with this positioning of find your rabbit hole, which is Tubi is a place that doesn't have all the highlighted glamour projects and big blockbusters.

17:08And it's not Netflix. It's not prime programming. But they have a ton of really good niche content that if you're into it, you will go far down. They have stuff you really want to watch. So the way we put it is rather than trying to outshout them, we'll just change the conversation. and we're not going to try to play out blockbuster them out star power them we're just going to go down the road of we've got we're going to put you down a rabbit hole that you want to keep going so the spot we did on super bowl we did two things one was the spot literally rabbits connecting people and throwing them down a rabbit hole you know just kind of weird and what the fuck and ended on you know to be find your rabbit hole but the spot i think that got the most talk value was i'm not sure if you remember but you watch super bowl yeah i did yeah yeah yeah it was one that it made it it looked like we're going back to programming we had fox announcers because it was on fox and tubi's owned by fox so we're able to use the real announcers of the game and they're going back to the programming and then it appeared as if someone had switched the channel to tubi and changed the station in the middle at the end of a very tight super bowl game so it caused a ton of stir people were like throwing their remotes at the tv bars were you know erupting in chaos it it became quite a stir so that got a lot of attention did what people want what we wanted to do is you know what the fuck is to be and got people looking for it but also increase their sales you know b2b and their viewership by like 500 percent and you know based on that they actually beat disney last quarter did they yeah that's insane yeah that is insane so you you got the actual anchors that were doing the super bowl coverage who were going to be on game nights yeah we shot and in the studio so you so is that so you thought you're watching the game and then it cuts out to tv yeah i thought you're watching the game and then like as if you know on smart tvs the little interface comes up yeah so you know there's still the speakers the announcers are still on yeah and then the um the interface comes up and you see someone like scrolling through going to tubi and then switches to a tubi film oh that's so good and then it just then it went to tubi logo and then back to the super bowl and you're right about the game so i watched it from a bar in york and it's insanely close wasn't it as you know travis kelsey whatever literally it was tied till the very end it was tied wasn't it yeah same and they were behind for most of it and then we couldn't have asked for a better yeah yeah yeah the drama and the timing of it and it was it was this at the in the final quarter yeah so just as a game it's like one of the last spots in the quarter i really wanted to talk to you about the the mischief mindset which i saw your video and i just think it's absolutely brilliant and um maybe start with the fact that i I think you said that, you know, smart people come up with good answers.

19:43Geniuses ask good questions. Yeah. Which I think is just such a good phrase. I think it's an Einstein quote. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, he said, like, if I had an hour, I would spend 55 minutes deciding what the question was. Yeah, exactly. And then it becomes, you know. So, yeah, give me an example of how that plays out. Yeah, I think part of our ethos is ask really interesting questions because that will lead you to super provocative answers. so a lot of them are non-intuitive like for 2b it was how can we take our weakness and turn it into a strength our weakness was we don't have blockbusters yeah but we do have you know fun niche content and the other you know some of those questions and we have a list of them but they're you know not nothing's set in stone as far as that goes it's just looking for better questions but the question is like what's the absolute wrong thing to do right you know what would be afraid if our competitors did yeah i'm trying to think we we have a whole set of them but they're all that kind of thing of just getting you thinking about the whole problem differently yeah so when you come up with solutions it's like wow how did they get there yeah then when you try to get back it's like of course it's the question it's the question that propels you isn't it exactly which is good yeah i mean um i love the example that the deep fake that you did of kim jong-un oh yes i'm like that is yeah yeah tell me a bit more about that because that's a really good example Yeah, that was the question that led to that is like, who would benefit from our failure?

21:07So the assignment was to get people involved in a fair and free election democracy. And it was a time, it was nonpartisan. And it was a time much like now, everybody was divided, two camps. Nobody believed what the other side was saying. So, you know, a piece of human insight is, you know, how do you unite people? Common enemy. So we thought, what would be the common enemy of these two divided parties and who would benefit from democracy's failure and that answer to us was dictators from other countries would love to see us fail yeah so that led to us doing a deep fake of kim jong-un and putin thanking america for helping them do their job and um yeah it was going to run on cnn the night of the election or the night before and it got pulled it got pulled did it get what because people might believe it's true yeah yeah um but that we actually use that to our advantage because then we got there's nothing like getting pulled together more than if it had to run yeah yeah that was um that directly related to the mischief mindset of yeah we'd benefit from our failure or what what would our enemies do and another yeah another good example much less provocative but pete's coffee i thought kind of did that in terms of like pushing back on kind of all the flavors of coffee you have and that kind of right it's often going against a trend yeah yeah yeah whenever there's a big swing in the trend the interesting thing is to find the counter trend because it's either on the cusp of that or it will get there like if you push it so be the ones so for pizza was all about these you know candy flavored coffees that were coming out you know birthday cake coffee and we were like you know there are people who just want coffee and really good coffee and they don't need sprinkles you know so that's that's what pizza was for it's really just like defining your target knowing the mindset and don't try to be all things to all people yeah you know find your target and embrace them it's a good challenge of mindset isn't it and one i you know you need to keep on thinking about is that what are you against it's sometimes easy to go what we're for but actually being what you're against is as important as what you're for isn't it yeah it's a really really refine it yeah another one i really liked is what's the most wrong thing you can do sure and um i mean i kind of wonder whether like you you guys in liquid death seem to be like a marriage in heaven.

23:22I love them. Yeah. If they ever need an agency, they need to be talking to you, but they are brilliant to that. Don't they go like, what's the worst thing you could call a water brand is liquid death. And sometimes that's a brilliant place to come up with ideas. Yeah. We have examples of that too. I think in that video, we talked about Capri Sun. Was that one? Yeah. Yeah. Which was our first client. And that assignment was to launch water in pouches so that kids coming back to school after the lockdown, would have safe, clean water to drink in these Capri Sun pouches. So instead of the juice, we gave them the water.

23:56So the safe thing to do and the rational thing to do would be a campaign telling parents, like, look at this great thing we've done for you and the safety of your family. Shouldn't we all be, like, happy and feel good and celebrate? But what we decided to do was apologize to kids for ruining their favorite drink. And it was just honest and fun and parents liked it. They still got the same message that we're giving these out in schools. But it was done in a way that was far more honest. And so much more surprising as well because you'd expect the first answer. But apologizing to the kids for ruining the drink that they have at school is much better.

24:29We did taste tests. Real taste tests. We gave them the juice and just let them talk about how bad. Like, why would you do this? This is horrible. Who would drink this? And then we're like, what does it taste like? He's like, nothing. We had them offer suggestions to someone with kids. It's like, maybe make it not taste like water. Yeah, we call that Capri Sun. Yeah, it's for a reason. The other Capri Sun one I absolutely love is the noise-canceling kids. That is just so funny. That came from a question that we often ask too. I forget the name of the speaker. It was a brilliant Harvard Business School speech, which was, what job is your brand or your product hired to do?

25:14yeah it's usually not the one that's on the package yeah so in talking to parents one thing they kept bringing up is like just give my kid a capri sun and i got peace and quiet for 10 you know 20 30 seconds however long it's taken to drink it so it's like that's really what the job of capri sun is doing is just giving you a little piece of quiet it is it is right it's calming your kids down it's giving them something to to kind of shut them up for for some time so we what we did is we launched capri sun as a tech device quote-unquote tech device noise kid canceling you know juice is what we called it so it's like we sold it in boxes that look like noise cancelling headphones and we sold it at electronic stores that's brilliant yeah that's brilliant and the surprise of the people buying it okay what's what is this about what's it going to do and then they realize once the kids yeah we did a video actually live a sort of hidden camera thing where we introduced the technology and like what how's that work and as soon as the kids started drinking oh i get it yeah i remember first i've always when i was you know when ipads came out i always wanted one but i never knew quite what i was going to use it and then i had kids and then i went to the best right there you go it's the world's best babysitter that's precisely the worst thing to give your child but god thank god for it yeah it's worth so much isn't it um and i know uh you and i were chatting about rory sutherland before weren't we and i love uh one of my i think his favorite thing from alchemy is the opposite of a good idea can well he says can be another good idea i think the opposite good idea can be a better idea sometimes oh yeah yeah yeah there's a brilliant way of framing it yeah his use of i think red bull is the example yes which is yeah just completely counterintuitive but they exist in a different space that's the best way to separate yourself from the competitors i think a lot of brands are chasing what the leader's doing what they did was find the leader and do the exact opposite of it you know what they did intentionally or not they did it and it became a whole different its own category of one yeah it is makes me sound out um another one i loved as well was how can you use your disadvantage to your advantage and um i remember probably it's funny actually i i did a podcast on creativity a couple of years ago and i was trying to think of the five most creative things i've done in my career and interestingly actually only one of them involved communication actually most of them were solving kind of business problems but i i put at number one i was um going back to capri sun actually in the uk at the time i i part owned a soft drink company and um we were introducing there was new legislation on kind of what kids could drink and they were trying to crack down on the amount of sugar they had and um i actually launched the the first school the first government approved drink for schools because they were changing legislation and the company i was working for at the time we had our own factory we were quite agile we could move quickly and i was like right we're going to jump on this because if we can be the first we're going to clean up now there's only one problem and I went and pitched for the biggest supplier of drinks in the whole country, Compass Group, massive.

28:02I mean, they're bigger than some countries, you know what I mean? They employ so many people. You know, all the canteens in the world, do you run by them? Anyway, I pitched them. And the problem I had was I had no sales team. So Coke, for example, who also were trying to pitch as well, they had people going into schools. Because when you got on the list of drinks, right, it didn't mean you were in the school. You had to go around all the schools and convince them to take your drink off the list that they got provided. Anyway, so I remember I pitched them knowing that I didn't have a sales team.

28:32And I said, I've got an idea for it. I'm going to create an entrepreneur's program. And the program's going to be, we're going to get teams of kids in schools to own the fridge as if it's their business, right? And we're going to give them all the point of sale. We're going to give them a guidebook. We're going to give them, you know, training on how to price it. and we're going to educate kids on literally running their school shop as a little business and we became the number one drink in nine months so smart because we provided all the kit and they loved us yeah it's so smart um you know i've often said like my biggest teacher in advertising were the stoics yeah yeah because the lessons they have there basically the questions and one of the one of the principles of stoics is the obstacle is the way yes so we've used that like um which is what You could do that.

29:18Yeah. You know, we use that in Coors Light when we, they. Oh, I love that. Yeah, Coors Light came to us with a partnership they had with Patrick Mahomes, which is, if you watch Super Bowl, you'll know he's a very good football player with the NFL, currently in the NFL. The problem with using Patrick Mahomes for Coors Light is that NFL prohibits their players from endorsing beer. So they can't get on TV and say, drink, you know, I love Coors Light. This is, you know, my favorite beer. They can't touch it, really. so they bought the spot anyway you know you know and they're like can you help us with this and we're like sure we love that kind of problem so instead of running away from it we said okay what if we use that that obstacle and turn that into the idea so the idea we did is we launched cores light which was a flashlight so he just talked about how much he loved cores light being the cores flashlight and it was you know how crispy cold it was like the rocky mountains just coincidentally you know it's like everything was in in you know intended to slightly hit that he was actually talking about beer but he was selling the course flashlight which we sold and he looks like he's getting out the fridge as well doesn't he yeah there's around the fridge so it's all the language and some of the cues of of beer but we're clearly talking about flashlight in fact the voiceover says 100 you know zero percent beer 100 flashlight or something like that yeah yeah so we made it clear we leaned very far into the restriction and made that the idea and to end up selling a lot of flashlights and beer so now was that that was amazing yeah you actually made the flashlight so the flashlight was a real thing was yeah that's clever then since then if like that's become the thing it's like how do we play with the rules on yeah nfl course light the next the next one we list which which i thought was great is how can you change the context and reframe things and the one that sort of like got me was your tinder ad about getting together but but being you know being life rather than just the dates you know what i mean reframing that as the beginning of things rather than the end, you know.

31:10Yeah. Which I thought was quite clever. That's a great example of it. The question there was like, are we solving the right problem? Yeah. Because Tinder came to us and said, you know, we're seen as a hookup app and Gen Z is not in hookups. We need to change our perception of it. We can't be the hookup app anymore. What can we be? Yeah. And, you know, our thinking was, it's really hard to change the perception of Tinder as the hookup app because that's in the behavior. You own swiping. you own that behavior but what we can do is change the perception of a hookup so that's what we did is a hookup isn't just like a one night stand hookup is the beginning of any type of relationship you want so that's what the campaign became was expanding the definition of what what a swipe can lead to yes and we you know the line on it is it starts with a swipe and where it goes from there can be infinite and whatever relationship you can so that really you know um one point of pride for us is that the um the ceo of tinder mentioned that campaign in this stockholder meeting the reason that their profits went up so really yeah so that's that's amazing again i love effectiveness that's one for the fe's yeah exactly yeah they won an fe this year too that that's why you know to me those that's more rewarding than you know winning you know a trophy yeah i think it's great to have to actually show the creativity can lead to business results i'm why we're all here isn't it was just brilliant the other thing that struck me about Tinder as well was the beautiful production as well so it wasn't hook-up-y in its kind of like style it was beautiful stylistic yeah it was sort of like quite dreamy and you know on an adventure kind of like watching a kind of fantasy movie a bit totally intentionally because with every swipe there is this fantasy like what could happen after next imagine where it takes you yeah you want to you want to be you want to buy off on that like the dream of like if I just took that chance, it's not a hookup.

33:06It's not a one-night stand. It could possibly be my, you know, so many marriages. We've gotten so much back, you know, from that campaign. It's like, oh, I met my husband on Tinder. We were, you know, we've been married. It's funny, actually. I saw all the comments. That is exactly what I noticed is all the comments. People were slightly awkwardly kind of saying, oh, well, actually, I met my husband. And it's almost like a confession. I know. Oh, it did actually. They're embarrassed to say, but, you know. One of the ideas we've been playing with and I don't know if I've ever gone anywhere, but I just love the idea of like a soccer team or a football team of kids that were all born from Tinder parents.

33:36You know, it's like, it's gotta be thousands of them out there, hundreds of thousands of them out there that wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Tinder. That would be a killer thing. The next one was, use your opponent's weight against them. You know, which I thought, very similar, isn't it, to use your disadvantage, your advantage, but using your opponent's weight against you. Yeah, it's a judo move, but they're all sort of swimming in the same area. It's just really ideas that will get you thinking out of your normal straight path. Yeah. Right. So, you know, this sort of plays into what we did for Tubi and what we did with, you know, the Kim Jong-un thing.

34:09It's just like, use your enemy to your advantage. Yeah, turn the tables on them. And then the last one you've got on your list, which I think is quite profound and talks to, I think, what holds a lot of people back is, what would you do if you weren't afraid? Yeah, such a liberating question. That is, that's an amazing question. Yeah. The founders of Mischief are also the founders of this agency called No Fixed Address in Canada. And that's how I found them is on their website. You know, I stumbled on them through LinkedIn. I was like, I'll check these guys out. They sound interesting. They're doing something that no other agency is at this time, which was hiring people.

34:43Their business model seems to be working for them. What are they doing? So I went to the website and on their website, they had that thought, that line, what would you do if you weren't afraid? yeah and that just lifted the weight out of any room you're in it's like that's that's such a liberating thought and it's and suddenly you start to think creatively yeah so i think that's the question you need to ask yourself when you're debating on something it's like it's usually the right thing yeah what would you do if you weren't afraid is usually the right yeah so um that's that's been core to you know their foundation it's been we started with that question whether it's stumble upon it we started with it so it's all i think it's often fear of the consequences isn't it or or not knowing what it's why people play it safe because they think doing something really brave well brave i don't like saying brave because it's back to our previous thing actually you know doing something bold is is less risky than doing something doing something noisy yeah yeah something noisy but i think people fear what might happen but have you ever have you put it to yourself have you ever been afraid of your work have you ever sort of had you know i mean given that you're living the you know do you ever get a slightly afraid of where you're taking it um we're very responsible we don't just do stuff for the sake of like this is gonna stir shit up and you could you will see like we take our clients we start with strategy and we spend a lot of time on strategies back to the question and there's a very linear connection between the what we need to say the business objectives the strategy and our execution so it's always like when you see our execution it should be like oh shit oh i get it of course Of course.

36:18Yeah. To be like, you know, we always say it's completely obvious, but only after we show you. Right. So when you see it, you'd be like, how come no one's ever done that before? Right. There's a sense of like inevitability to that answer, but it's so unexpected. It's that dichotomy. So, you know, am I ever afraid? Nothing. There's nothing guaranteed. You never know. You know, when you do a Super Bowl spot and your idea is to prank, you know, 250 million people, I don't know how that's going to go over. I don't know if it's going to even work. but um you know god willing we have clients that that understand the the benefits of of trying something like that yeah totally it's a bit like the the what's the worst that can happen yeah type question as well i think the super bowl is its own set of you know circumstance i would say it's it's the chance for the world to grade your homework so everyone's got an opinion everyone's gonna say something you just gotta kind of go do what you normally do and that's usually the best thing like don't try to overthink it don't try to get in the system too much don't you know that kind of thing so you know with the bigger the spotlight the bigger the pressure but um i don't know i've i'm pretty zen about it again stoicism helps yeah it does doesn't it it helps a lot actually if you're comfortable in yourself and you're comfortable with whatever the outcome might be it's very liberating you can't affect the outcome you can't fail in a way it's right yeah right it's the the main principle of stoicism i believe is like the events aren't what matters that's how you react to those events totally and that's what you can i really believe that yeah Yeah.

37:45Yeah. And it's incredibly liberating that, isn't it? Because a lot of anxiety comes from what happens around you that you can't control. And there's no point because you can't control it. And I'm the worst at this. I try to practice it. But, you know, a lot of what you suffer through never actually happens. The pre-suffering before anything, which is called anxiety, you know, like this future, you know, you're paying your tax in advance. So it's like, why just kind of let things be, control what you can. And then, you know, I believe that. Well, going back to your getting fired point, I mean, I got fired twice in the same year and sort of went through the whole thing twice.

38:23And when it happens, you go, I cannot change this. There's nothing I can do to change it. And so in my situation, I went, right, I'm going to have a hundred day plan. I'm going to meet a hundred people in a hundred days and I'm going to see it in a hundred days. That's in control. Yeah, that's in my control. And I remember I went around and every person I met, so if I'd met you in that time, I'd have said, Greg, tell me three other people you think that I would benefit from meeting. And everyone was generous. Everyone was happy to help. I found the same thing. Yeah. It's incredible. Once you put the word out there, it's amazing how it kind of - People were great.

38:52People are really, this is what I think in, I mean, for me personally, in the kind of corporate cultures I'd worked in before, people kind of liked seeing your downfall. It's a weird thing in corporate culture. but actually when i went out to the real world but when i was out on my own every small business every you know everyone wanted to help it's amazing i was so like in enlivened by the fact how many people just reached out and they didn't feel like there it wasn't a shawin fraud thing like people were happy to see go down there were various support i think in a lot of ways you know some people have called me like the poster child for pandemic layoffs because it was front page news on ad age and all this kind of stuff which i would have you know tried to avoid at any cost but it became that and i was just like so you know touched by the people who i wasn't close to before but just reached out to me and leaders that don't didn't have to do that like jeff goodby gave me a call jay vedroga you know just brian collins all these people that you know they're busy they're running they're doing the same thing but they took the time to to just say you know i'm here if you need me yeah and i didn't have that type of relationship with them before but certainly have a lot of respect for him now yeah i mean i tell you anyone i speak to in the similar situation i'm just like your network is your wealth you know just really really use it yeah and people are surprisingly willing to help in these situations and i know it's really tough out there now yeah it's in some ways more than it is and a lot of senior great people are on the market yeah so to them i would just like you know you are the product right now you're the brand yeah do what you can to get yourself out there yeah don't be annoying to anybody but find ways to get on their radar, be helpful, you know, do projects on your own.

40:36Yeah. Actually, that's another good point, actually. What I also learned in that period is the power of generosity in terms of giving it away as well. So offering to help on things for free or just doing someone a favor or just even reversing it and just saying to someone, is there someone I can introduce you to? Is there some help I can give you? Because you've got this time free. Just offering stuff out and it's amazing how that leads to things. Or volunteering too. It's just starting that. and that's i think that's what i would do now if i was having a tough time just getting day-to-day work volunteer maybe teaching because that will keep your mind going also like keep you in a positive frame of mind because i think it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when when things start going downhill but you got to change that just change the chemistry a little bit actually it's interesting i noticed how quickly my mind slowed down when i was made when i was fired as well because it's like because you're used to being kind of in meetings and answering briefs and pitching and kind of planning things and and your mind's just like it's funny i've never been more organized than when i was laid off because i had meetings locked down it's like i'm not gonna sit around yeah like yeah i was like why don't you take some time off like no way man that's not in me i just like can't um so i made it like my job to you know i was on three or four calls a day just investigating and i actually kind of embraced it because it was again at a time where nobody knew what advertising was going to be and there's all these interesting models popping up and people wanted to talk and there's entrepreneurs that are super interesting and i kind of find it kind of you know fun but of course i was anxious because i didn't have you know i came off of a pretty stable 15 year run yeah in fact one of my possible regrets is that i did so the um the the week after i got fired i but so i'd never been to new york before i booked a flight to new york for a week stay in the same hotel i'm staying in now actually and i gave myself a challenge to invent five brands in five days only by walking around stores around manhattan so because you know because there's such richness of kind of different varieties of products here you know health food and yeah and so and so i was just you know in the uk we have much smaller ranges of things you know so i was just literally knocking myself out in whole foods and going what are the trends in food and drink that could be something sort of thing anything materialize well this is this is where this is one regret so what happened in that in that so i i came up with five ideas and i was really bought into all of them this is this and then i in my in my hundred day plan i started working them up i started meeting i even met a couple of venture capital companies and private investors people i knew just pitching the ideas out there and uh work with a couple of designers work some of the designs up as well and in that time i got approached by brew dog to become a cmo brew dog and i was a massive fan of brew dog and i went to one holiday with my family and we were having we were going to make this decision like do i back myself with no guarantee of income on one of these ideas or do i take a reasonably well-paid job with with some stock options on what i thought was a rocket ship one of the coolest brands on the planet and i'm like i'm gonna have to do that because it just felt like now it i that's when i got fired twice because i did the job for three months and although it was very creative what i realized is i couldn't execute in the way that James, the founder, wanted to.

43:52He wanted things done so quickly. And I was spinning up loads of new ideas and I just couldn't convert them in the timescales he wanted. And he was prepared to cut corners in a way that I wasn't prepared to do. And so that's when I got fired the second time, which is a bit annoying. But in that first time, one of my regrets is I didn't take some of those ideas. Because some of those ideas are now in market, which is just the most annoying thing. I mean, it's the worst. And I almost don't even want to say that because I think anyone who says that, oh, yeah, I had the idea and, you know, whatever, I just think, come on, you know, if you really believe you've done it, right?