Episode 20: Mike Hutcheson

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hi everyone, My name is Bruce Cottrell.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Thanks for joining us and it's great to welcome you
back to Leaders Getting Coffee for what is now episode
number twenty. So we're getting through them and it's great
to have you with us. As many of you will
know by now, we put this podcast together with the
support of the great team at zed ME and of
course they also run my articles on their channels through
the New Zealand Herald and News Talk ZEDB. One such

(00:39):
article ran last week on ZEDB and it's entitled asylum
seekers ahead, proceed with caution. We're not hearing much about
this story through the New Zealand media, but the big
countries in Europe and the United States are all having
major problems in securing their borders. As a result, millions
of refugees from Africa and the Middle East in Europe

(01:00):
and a constant stream of illegals from South America are
arriving daily in the USA. In Europe in particular, the
impact of these arrivals is starting to get the attention
of the politicians, with the Greeks shutting the door, the
UK sending the illegals to Rwanda, and the Netherlands new
leader initiating a massive crackdown on illegal immigrants, and we're

(01:23):
seeing a search to the right in the various election
results coming out of Europe as well. Of course, in
New Zealand, our distance is an advantage when it comes
to such matters, but you can bet that the inevitable
question will come our way and will be asked to
take an ever increasing number of the refugees and asylum
seekers who've been displaced over the last few years. By now,

(01:45):
there are plenty of lessons for us to observe, and
when those requests come in, we should proceed very cautiously.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
In my view. You can find the columns on the
New Zealand Herald or the ZB plus sites, or of
course at dubdubdub dot Bruce Coell dot com, Forward Slash Blog.
Thanks again for being with us. We've got something a
bit different for you this week.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
We're talking about the advertising business and we're talking to
one of New Zealand's most distinguished ad men. We'll be
back shortly on Leaders getting Coffee with Leader number twenty.

(02:27):
Welcome back to Leaders getting Coffee. I've often said that
executive life, you know where you're sitting in a corporate somewhere,
and it sometimes can be a bit of a grind,
it can get pretty dull. However, in my case, I
always looked forward to the meetings with the advertising agency.
That was where you've got a chance to look away
from the people issues and the financial struggles for a

(02:48):
moment and turned to where the conversation was always positive
and we're able to talk about the future.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
We're able to talk about.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
What our customers might be expecting of us and how
we might deliver for them, and of course we usually
had plenty of fun while we're at it. For many years,
the guy on the other side of that table during
those discussions was the legendary advertising man Mike Hutcheson. Hutch
grew up in Nelson and he spent most of his
life working out what makes people tick and figuring out

(03:16):
what they want and why. He left school and studied
fine arts and then moved on to study law at
both Canterbury and Victoria Universities, but he didn't finish his
law degree. He did, however, he claims achiever milestone when
he broke the world rocking chair record. Mike discovered advertising
by accident, but once he got serious about it. He
was pretty good at it right from the start. He

(03:38):
went on to win the Trenchard Smith's Trophy for the
highest marks in Australia and New Zealand in the Advertising
Institute examinations, and he won the Reader's Digest Scholarship for
New Zealand's Outstanding Young Advertising Man. Can you imagine calling
a prize for the outstanding Young Advertising Man today? I
guess in today's terms would call it the outstanding young Person.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
And so began one of the.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Finest adizing careers this country has seen. He's a co
founder of colenso Bbdo and Hutchison Noles Marinkovitch or HKm
as they were non and he's a former managing director
of Advertising powerhouse SARChI and Sachi. Throughout his life he's
had periods where he's decided to go off.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
And be an entrepreneur. Every now and then.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
He set up Replica Homes, a house building company with
franchises throughout New Zealand, Michael Hutchison Real Estate, Scarborough Fair,
a fair trade organic tea and coffee company, and he
also set up and planted the Lonely Cow Vineyard on
Wahiki Island.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
But he always found his way back to advertising.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
He's been a director of a number of public and
private companies, and a number of charitable organizations have benefited
from his input. Where he served as a trustee for
the Foundation for Youth Development, the Graham Dingle Foundation for
eighteen years, the Spirit of Adventure Trust, the Second Nature Trust,
which runs the Vodafone Events Center. I guess it's called

(04:58):
the one Zeen Events Center now and earlier on the
Salvation Army Advisory Board. Of course, advertising people love awards
and they've come thick and fast. He's a Fellow of
the Chartered Institute of Marketing was inducted into the Marketing
Hall of Fame in twenty twenty one. He's written award
winning innovation and humor columns for The Independent Business Weekly
and Ideologue magazine. He's written five books and he's currently

(05:22):
penning number six. And just when people his age should
have been thinking about a retirement, he enrolled to do
a Master of Philosophy degree, which he passed with first
class honors. His thesis was entitled Paradox, How New Zealand
culture enables creativity yet mitigainst against its spread.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
He became the adjunct professor.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
At the Auckland University of Technology and recently founded hutch
and Co, a new strategic marketing and communications consultancy which
he calls Advertising six point zero. Like many of his
ilk the creative types, he can usually be found wearing
brightly colored trousers and with a silf around his neck,
even in the summer. So it's a great pleasure to

(06:03):
welcome to Leaders Getting Coffee. Guess number twenty Mike Hutchison,
Good a hutch.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Mate, How that there was a lot? That was a lot? Yeah,
there was.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Well you, well, you've had a full life and you
founded a t in coffee company.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Surely you're an ad guy.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Surely you could find a coffee company to sponsor this
podcast with a name like this.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Oh well, I'm sure we could. I mean, let's yeah,
I think I'll figure it out. There must be somebody
who can do it.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
This must be it must be a coffee a coffee
company somewhere that would love to sponsor somebody called Leaders
Getting Coffee.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
That's right, Well I drink a lot of this stuff,
so yeah, I'm joy. Can Joy can.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Tell me about the world Rocking cheer record?

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Well that that was the capping week. In capping week,
we had to do something and my task, I can't
remember how I even got involved, was to drive them
around on the back of a bed for truck, handing
out beers to various capping staf around christ Check. And
we thought, well, while we were doing it, we might
as well do something that would be raised raised some money.

(07:08):
And we looked through the Goodness Book of Records for
something that we could actually do. And this is a
few weeks time. Could you have to actually apply for
these records? You can't just Robert, and so we duly
applied to Guinness and I looked through their entire book
at the time to find something that didn't involve any
hard work or danger. And so I thought that I

(07:31):
didn't want any anything, any personal harm coming to me,
and so rocking chairs seemed to be pretend to be it.
So that's where we booked it up and said, what
do we have to do? They had we had to
have scrutineers, we had to do all that sort of
stuff and set it up and I rocked for the
previous record was ninety hours and I did ninety three
and a half. I do recall that. Then I had

(07:52):
to stop at that point because my girlfriend at the
time wanted me to take her to a ball. And
so after four days and nights of rocking in the
rock chack, I mean, I was, I was gaga. It
was that you go through, you go through that whole
period and you might as well just stay away because
and I did. And but unfortunately when so we duly
applied for the record, and within two months of me

(08:15):
doing it, a woman in Canada and some theater theater
for Sarah in Ontario broke it to a hundred hundreds.
We're trying to get three hundred hours. But but my
girlfriend wanted me to stop and go to the ball,
so that that was that. So we actually we didn't
make the book because someone else broke it, but we
did break the record.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Somebody beat you to it.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Oh well, at least you had to crack it up. Hey,
where did you go to school in Nelson?

Speaker 3 (08:40):
I went. I went to a number of My father
was a school teacher and we fiftled around a bit,
so went to a number of schools, but almost secondary
school teaching was career was at at Nelson College.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
At Nelson College, was it a good school? That was
a good school.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
Yeah, it's a good school. It's good school and and
it was a bit of history there because my my
great great one my maternal family came from Nelson, and
my great great grandfather was the original architect who designed
the first Nelson College. And he arrived. He was he
was a London architect, but he was stone deaf, and
because when you're stone deaf, it's pretty hard to actually

(09:18):
get a good client held when you can't want anyone's
asking for so he thought I had got in a
boat and came to the furthest away country or colony
in the world, he would actually be a shine, and
he did. And he apparently designed the first Nelson College
on the form and the like of old. He was
an older Toonian, so an Eaton College look alike, and
that was it. Some of the best loveliest old Gothic

(09:41):
revival houses around Nelson he designed. He William Beatson was
his name, and so that and all my cousins, my
uncles and stuff or went there. So it just seemed
My father died when I was quite young, so we
went back to Nelson, where my mother's family came from.
So that was where I went to school.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
And were you Were you a hot shot at school?
Or were you mister average?

Speaker 3 (10:05):
I was a cruiser, the the the I didn't enjoy
school at all, and but I was able enough. I
learned out later that i'd actually I never swatted, I
just did stuff, and I had a pretty good memory,
so I could actually get through and cruise on without

(10:26):
without having a swat too hard. But the only things,
the only things I can do properly bresilia. I can't count.
I was hopeless manatic, and and but I can I
can write, and I can draw, and and so my father,
having been an English teacher, I shied away from that.
Being an impecunious school master wasn't my idea of fun.

(10:47):
But I thought, well, I could actually be an art teacher.
So and my seventh was sixth or seventh form yea,
I enrolled in fine Arts prelim In those days, you
had to do a preliminary exam to get into art school.
And so so my seventh form year, most of the
guys went to the scholarship, of course, but thought I
didn't want to have an academic career. But I thought, well,

(11:08):
if I could be an art teacher, that would be
pretty good enough. I went to Canterbury. I could get
a teaching scholarship to go through university, which seemed to
be a little another cruisy way of getting through, and
so I enrolled in finance pregum in my seventh form
year and we did twenty seven periods of art and
six of English a week. It was really cool and

(11:32):
it was at the end of the year though my
foremost have got me A side said that hutcheson your
max are ridiculously high. If I put these for it,
I have to give you a first place in class.
I can't do that. You've just done art. I said,
I did aunt in English and I did actually come
rop with the class in English. Fat Kemberton was school
in English there, and he said, yes, but that's ridiculous.
I mean just one subject. It's not good. I mean
this a you've got an oil painting. Some of the

(11:52):
boys have done very well in mathematics. How do I compare?
I said, well, I don't don't. I don't know, I
don't know. I think that's the don't be insubordinate. And
anyway he has said, I'm not even going to grade yet,
and so I was dropped off the list. I remember
the guy who got first place went and did accounting
and finance at un and became merchant banker. So I

(12:15):
loathed a test accountants and merchant bankers. It's a deep
and personal wound for me. And I'm so pleased now
to see that AI is taking over the accounting profession,
and I'll never take over the artistic profession.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
You recently posted on LinkedIn an essay you wrote in
the sixth form, and it was called a Letter from
seventeen year old self by Mike Hutchison. The closing paragraph reads,
school has finished for the lever. Twelve years of schooling
have provided him with the potentialities and mind required for
his chosen course in life. Is it the alma mater

(12:51):
that has provided one with the tools of trade for
his life? At old boys reunions and in posterity, No
doubt it will give one peace of mind to think.
So school has posed many problems, of which many remain unsolved,
but one is appreciative of it, even if one has
passed through its portals with little trouble, little work, and
little distinction. That's masterful writing for a seventeen year old,

(13:16):
isn't it.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
I don't you tell me? I don't know. I'll tell
you what.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
I couldn't write like that when I was seventeen. I
can't write like that now.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
Yeah, well that's what it was, this stream of consciousness.
We had a great English master. He was a mister Rock,
Chris Rock was his name. And remember we started with
him in the third form, and I remember saying, look,
I think I'm going to take it was the Chindus
during the war, and so he had a great, a

(13:46):
great war experience and used to tell us amazing stories
and that is what to me bought a lot of
things to life. And I remember saying, look, chaps, I'm
going to have you all the way through your school careers.
And of course sometimes it gets a bit boring because
we're going to do clause on clause on analysis and
and and poetic criticism, and I think they're pretty boring, really,

(14:09):
I mean, you don't need to know what the object
of a gerrand is or your use of So we
will do those in the third form, and then I
think we'll do poetry criticism in the fourth form, and
then I think fifth and sixth we'll just do an
acting player. We'll just tell stories. And he was bloody amazing,
and you know, he would and then would stop and

(14:29):
he'd tell us about and the Chins because they were
behind Japanese lines and Burma during the war. Amazing stories,
and he just bought stuff alive for us when we
would act out Shakespeare and he he'd he'd say, look, now,
I know you guys think this is boring, and Shakespeare
talks in a funny way, but you got understand that Hamlet,
for example, it's about a young chap who has It's

(14:52):
about procrastination. He couldn't decide whether or not he should
kill his uncle or not. And so all of a
sudden that that that that comes alive and he's in
a nic. So was it again to get so complicated?
Even Shakespeare couldn't figure out how to end it, so
he killed everybody, you know. And and those those sort
of insights made me just think really differently about, you know,
what literature is all about. And I became a voracious reader.

(15:16):
One of the things that did the other day, well
the other day, I'm so old now that anything up
to twenty years ago the other day for me. But
I've got Waterstone's one hundred Best Novels of the twentieth century.
If you want to get a good reading list, get
Waterstone over there, and there are number there are a
number of lists you can get. But yeah, Waterstones one
hundred best novels of the twentieth century, and go through
and read them all, and it just it just fills

(15:38):
your mind with the way people examine the world. And
I think I learned more history by reading novels than
I did in any history book. And I was a
mad keen Western novel reader, and so I leard a
lot about the Sioux and the Chayenne, and the Apaches
and goodness as well, simply by reading good novels.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
So so writing's been your thing from a young age.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
Isn't it amazing?

Speaker 2 (16:05):
What a what a teacher, what a dedicated teacher can
do for young people?

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Oh? Absolutely, and they are so rare.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
So yeah, I had a couple of those who influenced
me a lot.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
You won't You won't like one of them much.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
Here was a math teacher, but I had a pretty
good run with maths teachers over the years.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
What made you decide to go to law school?

Speaker 3 (16:30):
My cousin, Well, when I was told I couldn't that
first place in class three my toys. I realized I've
done something useful with worthless. It was useful enough to teach,
but worthless to evaluate. And my cousin, who was a
lawyer in Nelson, said, you're in the debating team. You
should actually do law. You'd be a good lawyer. And

(16:51):
so I thought that'd be quite good. And it seemed
appropriate and funny enough and right to that point. And
there was a day after I was told a good
now for this place, a guy from Canterberan University turned
up to basically, you give us a bit of a
lowdown on what happens and and and and cristation and
our total vocational guidance was this guy is standing on

(17:13):
the stage saying, okay, all your chats doing law here,
accounting here, medicine here, and teaching here. And that was
that was the group. And I thought, well, at that
point I still hadn't really thrown my toys. So I
went with the teachers in the library. And it's the
same guy. I said, Oh, the boys, it's wonderful you've
chosen teaching as a career. Another old bullshit on the

(17:34):
teacher and and and it's wonderful that you're going to
give back to to youth. You know what you've learned
and so on. But you have to realize that if
as teaching it's it's it doesn't pay a lot, you'll
never own a jack. Any questions, any questions, I said,
whether you guys want to Jacks goes there and he

(17:56):
said are you serious? Yes? And he said, I think
you may go with the law. And that was it.
So I matched out the library and went to the
common room and spoke in the role and roll and
law and it was so bloody bo shit. It's boring.
I really admire anybody who completed a law degree, but
you'd go spare.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
So how long did.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
You last at law school before you realized it wasn't
for you?

Speaker 3 (18:19):
Two years? Well, I lasted one year realizing that this
wasn't for me, but my mother told me, look, you've
got to give it a go. So I had another
year but it got no better. But fortunately by then
i'd heard about this business. Because when you come from Nelson,
you don't know about advertising. I'd run into the sort
of notion of advertising agencies, and so I literally, by
accident I wanted the dialogs the old agency then, and

(18:41):
I've been on it working on a building site in
Varsity Holidays, and that was I knew I wouldn't want
to do it be a builder's labor for the rest
of my life. And I wanted them to dis advertising
agency and got any jobs, you know. And I had
no idea what it was, but I'd heard about it.
And there's people who write and draw and have fun
and drink and stuff.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Yeah, and so you started as a copywriter.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Yeah, today as a copywriter. Yeah, that's a funny story
to the And I was also because I had two
years at law. They were a bit suspicious that someone
had dropped out of law school and had this vision
of being an advertising and I said, well, I just
want to be a writer. And mister Hughes, Jim Hughes,

(19:23):
in fact, he's Don Hughes, Don Don's uncle, Jim Hughes
was our head of copy at Charles Hadden's. And I
remember the first ad I wrote. I think it was
for Gilett. It doesn't matter. Imber writing this ad, thinking
that's right. And in those days there was a copy department,
which then went to the visualizing department that went to
the art department. So there's no writer arted to teams

(19:45):
like we have now. Anyway, so I went to mister Hughes'
office and I pushed this little peper faced the paper
across his desk, and so there's there's my answer. He
didn't look at it. He looked at me and he said,
is that your best work? And apparently it's an old trick,
but I hadn't a bit of it. And what do
you say? Your stuff? Whatever you say, so just one

(20:10):
more thing. I looked at it. I'm bit of an
apostrophe in arts, and I knew that my punctuation was good,
and I thought it was all good and it made
sense to me, and I thought it was quite you know,
and read read well and stuff. So anyway, you said,
I think I think it is and put it back
into it. He looked at it. Oh that's okay. I mean,
but that was all the compliments you've got in those days.

(20:32):
But that was that was my start. It was just
a way of you had to think about yourself, have
you done your best work? And how? And when it's
you know, it's like when you write yourself. There's no
right or wrong answer, just better or worse funds. So
there's no gold standard. There's just does it work? Is
it lyrical? Will people read it? Does it hold their attention?

(20:55):
Is it got an idea? And to me I realized
then it was all about an idea and what's the idea?
And people you'll get anyone. You could get someone to
read a full page of nine point Times Roman if
it's a subject that they're interested in. It's about how
do you talk to you? How do you talk to
your audience? And that's and it could be long of

(21:15):
it could be short copy. But you know it, you
know when you see it because you you revel in
the words. I actually think when I think about it now,
my old Irish grandmother, who would she could talk? You know,
and you learned that lyricism of the language.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Yeah, Yeah, fascinating moment that Mike Hutchison, former see of
Sarti and Sachi among other things.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
And we'll be back in a moment.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
With Mike Hutcheson and we're talking advertising and in particular
the early days of advertising. What were the big surprises
early on, hutch when you first got into the business
and you're just a young fella, you're a copywriter, what
what surprised you?

Speaker 3 (22:06):
What surprised me was the the low level of creativity
in the business. It was, it was kind of there
was no real international influence. Then one of the the
thing that woke us up at Charles Haynes was Mike
Wall who came back from from the UK and he

(22:27):
and Rodge mcdonelson have set up as their writer acter
at the team and it was and he brought new
ideas in and so when we started Colenso, and I
was twenty two and Hilton and Roger and Mike were
older about twenty eight, you know, And so it was
it was and it was that we knew that there

(22:48):
was a better way of doing things, you know, it
wasn't sort of formulae and and that and earlier as
at Colenso, that was the first introduction of the writer
writer at director team, whereas normally you'd have a copy
department and there was all kinds of separate bits. So
that was that was extraordinary when we didn't know we

(23:09):
were pioneering at the time. It just seemed like to
make an enormous sense.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
But they used to write music like that too.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Somebody had been wonder room writing the music and somebody
else to be writing the lyrics down the.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
Hall that's right, that's right. That the whole Rogers and
Hammerstein thing wasn't it. It was gold at each other.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
But so that that period where you guys kicked off
Colenso it was sort of the start of the golden
era of advertising and it's since given us mad Men
and all of that. What do you remember about the
antics of in those days?

Speaker 3 (23:46):
Quickly moving on next question, what can you say? Well, no,
but it was it was. It was fun, It was fun,
and I must admit that that one of the things
I bless is that I've been honored to work with
some of the best creative teams and people in the country.
And I mean, and if you're the best in this country,

(24:08):
you're probably the best in the world. I think per capita,
New Zealand has probably won more gongs than any other
country in the business because we're unafraid. We didn't have
that enormous, deadening influence of corporate hierarchies in those days,
and we were able to do some really brave things.
I mean, guys like Lenn Potts, you know, man is

(24:31):
a snake, and but those brilliant ads he did for
Tighter with Barry Crump, you know, in the in the
seventies and eighties. They were remarkable things. And because we
didn't have to go through we didn't have to filter
ideas through layers and layers of weak corporate mid mid management.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yes, and we dealt with you're probably dealing with was
he CEO?

Speaker 3 (24:57):
Yeah, we didn't the CEOs. And I can tell you
it would have been nineteen eighty eight eighty nine, after
the crash, and that's when it all changed and globalization
came and took over, and everything became hierarchical and formulaic,
and it kind of stopped being fun through the a
little bit of fun through the nineties, but the halcyon
days were the seventies and eighties.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yes, that period you mentioned. You mentioned Toyota, We had Line,
we had space, YEP, Crunchy bar, KFC BASF tapes. We
don't even have tapes anymore.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
And yet.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
One of the most memorable ads certainly of my childhood
tip Top with the trumpet ads and all of that.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
You guys are right in the middle of that.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
You know, you and your colleagues and others like Sir
Bob Harvey down the rod of his colleagues and others
from the same era. It must have been a fascinating
time to be in the business, to be pitching for work,
to be you know, moving around corporate New Zealand putting
essentially putting this little country.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
On the map.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
It certainly was. And and I've got to take my
hand off to Bob too, he was he actually agreed to.
In those days, you had to have accreditation to get
commissions from media, that's right. Yeah, And we couldn't find
anybody because we started with Wellington. We couldn't want anybody
to do it. And basically the agency business circled the

(26:21):
wagons around us and would refuse to do anything to
do with us. And so you know, here was a
bunch of cheeky little buggers in their twenties who are
trying to do this, and Bob was the only person
who would actually play for us. So I've got an
enormous debt to him in particular. And then it's just
those guys that we met on the way through some
terrific talent, and particularly in Wellington that came out with

(26:42):
the and yeah, all those the Twitter ads that the
Grunty Burro ran for forty years, and that was that
was right to make them and Roger basically had, you know,
put together a whole collection of clip film clips with
Tony Williams or make to make that work. And we
we pioneered stuff and see and the Dancing Cossacks campaign,

(27:02):
which I'm now hugely but embarrassed and ashamed of because
it enabled Muldoon to cancel and News in New Zealand
super Fund because it was about comment and in fact
we didn't know any better. It was just a really
huge fund to build that ad. But and Rogers and

(27:22):
Mike wall had had met the hand of Abera guys
in Sydney and the little b wouldn't be terrific. They
have a little cartoon and so it was a pioneering
thing in itself. We didn't realize that that it was
really just a vehicle for Muldoon to to deep sex
the superfund, which would have been a brigadid it wos
it would be like Singapore now if we had been
canceled that just crazy.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
Yeah, it w'd be totally different. You've sort of touched
on politics. You've you've worked on a few election campaigns
over the years.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
What are what are the memorable ones?

Speaker 3 (27:53):
Well, that one was won for a start. But then
oh we actually and the idios of eight came. We
got appointed to to Bob Jones New Zealand Party campaign. Yes,
and I really like Bob and and his ideas, of
course was to basically sell New Zealand with a vacant possession,
you know, just pay everyone a million backs the head
and and and and give them vaking vacant possession. But

(28:15):
he shook it up, you know, they were they were
the different things. And then we did a number of
Done Night two been involved to National Party campaigns, two
Labor Paddy campaigns, and then more recently with Meryl campaign
or did at least Bells Meryl campaign in the late
eighties and then Lenn Brown's and Phil Goff's more recently.

(28:40):
But but they became tame and and and there was
no big ideas and the thing that.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
I was going to ask, what's I was going to ask,
what's the biggest change from the old election campaigns to
the new ones?

Speaker 3 (28:51):
Oh, That's what I would have said. Yeah, Yeah, it
just became too tame. It was just too woke and
and nothing. It was just wallpaper and it was just
sad because no one there was no no bravery or
courage in politics. And one of the things I did
learn in plingual campaigns that politicians are motivated by two things,

(29:13):
or one of two things or both. One is ego,
the other one is an agenda. Every politician has gone agenda.
And I think one of the words the most dangerous
things we have now is list list politicians who get
jobs for life and we just can't get rid of them.
And that's embedded into it's always It's almost a semi

(29:35):
socialist I used to be. I used to be certainly
more left wing I am now, but I've become really
right wing because you see the agenda of the socialist experiment,
which basically believes in, eventually, through socialism, the fundamental perfection
of mankind by social means. And allder to do is
pile policy after policy into Wellington. And even last week

(30:01):
I got a I must be on some algorithm. I
know this from the University of Auckland asking me if
I wanted to enroll in a degree in social policy.
We don't need any more social policy bakers. Can you
have bulldozer drivers please? Or builders or people who do

(30:21):
things rather good at Wellington and actually have more committee
meetings and meet and just unbelievable. So I just want
people who do things and make things.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
So in that woke landscape you've you've touched on it
political correctness, you know, is there still is there still
scope for highly clever, highly creative advertising campaigns.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
That's the world that we live in.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
Yeah, that is the world we live in. Because I mean,
you do know that the notion of political correctness is
basically Marxists in Russia because you'd say, you know, one
party of Paracheck with was any other? Yes, you might
be right, but it's not politically correct. And that's the
sad bit you've got to this country was our national sport,

(31:07):
rugby was founded on someone breaking the rules rather cacking
the wall. He picked it up and ran with it.
And that's the good thing that we did. And when
I did, can I talk about this when are the starchist?
It always it's always puzzled me why it is so
hard for creative people to sell ideas to non greader people. Yeah.
And I got a psychologist to come into the agency

(31:27):
and spend a week with us and watch how we
behave and she was amazing. And there was no filing,
cabinet locked, no door shut to us, and she went
on a few meetings with clients with some of our people,
but at the end of the end of the week
she put us through Myers Briggs profiling, and I think
we did hermine brain dominance and something else. Now the
academics will sneer at Myles Briggs because they say, yes,

(31:50):
but the results differ when you change it again. The
only time I've ever seen it changing is when you
have boring, farty academic people who realize that they're boring
and like the personality of a piece of drift wood
when they do do the test, and they want to
do it again, so they become more creative, so that
it's actually self correction comes about it. And the only

(32:13):
the sure the results diff are because they realize, actually
not that interesting, You're actually a boring far and you
shouldn't be in the business. But now that I realized
that at Sarchi's all the senior team, barring the CFO
were on the intuitive side of the ledger and records
able to tell us that only twenty four percent of

(32:33):
the population is naturally intuitive, seventy six percent of the
population are non intuitive, and they've got all the money,
so you have to talk to them in an it
sequential way. And right now makes writing this book on
or trying to write a book on leadership and storytelling,
because storytelling, to me is the essence of leadership. And

(32:54):
I think that that when you realize that that most
people can't tell stories, they don't really imagine it. But
in fact, the non intuitive thinkers, when we go and
wave our arms around and say this is going to
be a great idea, prove to me that will work. Yeah,
you can't because the future is by definition imaginary, and

(33:14):
we're asking people without imagination to imagine it. And that
again is the problem with politicians and bureaucrats that they're
not they can't have and they cover themselves with all
kinds of excuses or all kinds of research or that
it's all no wonder. The consultants are in there because
they can shift the blame onto somebody else. I asked,

(33:35):
I've got all the right opinions, so we examine this one.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
But the consultants can't tell stories either.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
No inspirations.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
As you know some of the leadership experiences I've had.
If you can't tell stories, you can't drag your people
with you. Because you're in all sorts of strife and
a lot of a lot of the time, and you've
got to be able to show you people a way out.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
Yep, yep, you'll be one of the best examples of
exactly just that if you can't. In Plato, storytellers rule
the world. And I think that, and we see it
now in America that either for good or for bad.
Shakespeare good, mappagaindy good, Donald Trump bad, because Hitler and
Trump have exactly the same platform. Find someone to hate, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.

(34:23):
And most weak minds want strong leaders because most people
don't like thinking, and most people can't think, they don't
know how to.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Yeah, so true.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Hey, when you're making ads, what is it that excites you?
Is that the product or the client?

Speaker 3 (34:40):
No, it's the it's the consumer.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
It's the consumer.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
Consumer. What are we doing here? And when I think
back now with rare ex there's only a few clients
of like you, George, there's Look, there are a few
clients that I can think of who were brave and outstanding,
you know, but most in sprinting, in corporate roles, they
don't want to rock the boat. In fact, we got

(35:04):
fired by Johnson wax for suggesting a campaign idea which
we think would have stood to their market share by
ten percent. This guy, this guy's KPI was to lift
it by two and a half percent, and it was
to him the thought of risk. He would risking his
job by taking a punt on ten percent. And I looked, Jeeves,

(35:29):
that's our problem.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yeah, that's frustrating. Yeah, we're with Mike Cutchison. We'll be
back in a moment, back with storyteller Mike Cutchison. Hutch
just at a stage, as I said in the introduction,

(35:52):
when most people are thinking of retiring, you decided to
go and enroll.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
For a PhD. What on earth made you decide to
do that?

Speaker 3 (36:00):
You actually elemated me one night. She was actually a
master of philosophy, or the doctor philosophy, but pretty much
the same thing. And when, in fact, when I said
I'd like to extend this to a a doctorate, I
couldn't find a supervisor. There was no one in the university.
It's because you could have someone. The idea of a
doctorate is that you've got to have someone who's smarter
than you, and you was knowing who would take it on.

(36:21):
In fact, the vice chance to forget it. You don't
worry about it because you've got what you want out
of it. And it was really interesting because it was
it came out of that thing. And we're done at sartis,
how do we find the right creative sparks in New
Zealand because we kind of grow up with this mythology
about Kiev ingenuity and having again coming back to Nelson College. Yeah,

(36:44):
Ernest Ratherland was an old boy, so we were steep
and and what a genius he was, and therefore we
must be really smart. But for two years I researched
up the way Zoo and to figure out what it was.
Took me a year to write the Buddy thing, two
year to research it, and I think, well I could
find and beyond Brutherford there was any of any use.

(37:04):
And he actually did his thing in Manchester, not in
Christy to not in Nelson. Things that were pure New
Zealand inventions were the egg better and the egg better,
and the spiral no spiral, Yeah but you, and I

(37:25):
thought to himself. And so I started researching national invention
or the whole notion. And in Scotland, of course, you
know the the television set, the rubber tires, quite a bit,
scotch whiskey. There was a whole list of stuff. And
you have to say that the Americans putting a land
a man on the moon eclipse the egg better. But

(37:48):
one thing I did, I did realize is that it
must have been a key with you who invented the
pab flov because you can't make a pair without an
egg better. And and and a guy guy, a guy
called god Would Edward Godwood invercargo of all things. And
then there had been eggbears before, but he invented the
one with the with the handle and the non slip.

(38:09):
But and of course to make a pair of I mean,
meringues have been around for years, but you can whisk
them up egg size things or a little biscuit side things.
But to make a whole cake out of out of
egg white was a bit of a mission. And so
that was when the eggbitter came into its own. So
I'm concluding, just for kind of circumstantial evidence, that must
have been a key with you and ited the egg

(38:31):
beater and of the pavlova.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
So when you when when you go off and do
something like that, is it in terms in your mind.
Is it about learning new stuff or putting structure around
what you already know.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
But in structure on what I already know to give
give validity to what your gut feeling is. And so
you think you have a thesis, I want to have
an idea, and you think, okay, how can I actually
make this into valuable and pass it on to other people?
And one of the things that I'd done through my
career in advertising is and I've been involved in nine
start I've got a d D. So I've been involved

(39:06):
in lots of different things. As you well know, a
number of marriages to bridge because you know the model.
But but but the but I wasn't to mention that
I'm not ashamed. I like them all that they're When
you know that you're going to get going on lots
of different different paths, you've got to find some kind

(39:27):
of channel for it. What's this all about? Why why
do you think this way? And what can you think differently?
And one of the things that I did learnt at
a spot at in Nelson College when we were taught
to do perspective drawing. For example, you learn perspective drawing
on a drawing board with a ruler, so you're vanishing
points all go off in the right direction, and this
whole formula a thing to it. But when you're out

(39:48):
in the field with a sketch pad, or or you're
drawing freehand on on an easel and a uh and
and and and a and a canvas, you'll you'll make
a mistake in your or you might and the best
way to correct it, or the best way to see
if your perspective was a correct is to turn your
work upside down. Fine, on a sketch pad, when you've

(40:09):
got an easel up you can't you can't turn it
upside down, but you look at it upside down between
your legs, so we know it wasn't quite as tubby
as I was. I am. Now I could look at
a painting upside down my turn legs and the floors
show up. It's like, I don't know whether you've ever
done it, but take take it, take it from of
rise or the kids, and turn it upside down and say,

(40:30):
who the hell is that? Because it doesn't look for yourself, Gee,
do I really look like that upside down? And I
think that it's a great metaphor for problem solving. How
do I look at this differently, and that's one of
the things that Kiwis are good at. And that's and
that was really the outcome of my thesis is that
while we may not have had a need what many
earth shattering inventions, we are very inventive. For example, the

(40:53):
thing that really surprised me when I couldn't and Callahan
and Hindi did this in the book You're off the Grass.
Why are we so good at doing these innovative things
but so lousy at implementing them on a global basis? Well,
we know why. We're a distance scale and we're with
a socialist government has no interest in inventing and investing
in growth or innovation. It's more social focus. We don't

(41:17):
understand all that. But sadly we have the second largest
diasporate in the world after Ireland. Our best and brightest
go and we know now we have a net migration
loss because there's no point in staying around here. There's
no fun anymore. It's too woke, it's driven by bureaucracy,
it's driven out of winning. It's all formulae. To do

(41:38):
any good, you have to go. And it's the tragic
thing about it. And my thes has just proved that
when we are sixth in the world, for example, at
authoring reports and high tech publications, but we're sixty third
in the world, behind Senegal and Bulgaria about high tech
manufactured output because all the bright buggers have to go
to actually make it work something else. And it's just
and that's the sad. But we should be you haven

(42:00):
in a brilliant place for good thinking to happen, but
instead we're just focused on trivial stuff bring Sadden.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, And it's frustrating because we were we've always been
the little country that could, yep, and we've seemed to
have morphed over the last twenty years into the little
country that can't.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
They can't.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
That's it and that's frustrating to watch, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (42:27):
Yep?

Speaker 1 (42:29):
Can we fix it?

Speaker 3 (42:32):
Enormous phylical world. We can.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
Just take a generation right.

Speaker 3 (42:37):
Well, it's sadly go back to that, the Dancing Cossacks
campaign and Muldoon killing the super fund. We have thirty
two billion dollars in the bank now if that hadn't happened,
So there's no appetite for investment. Everyone we invest in
Momondad investors are best off buying and selling houses. We
will not grow our economy by setting over priced houses

(42:59):
to each other. The cost of living is just extraordinary.
The cost of housing is so great because that's where
all the money goes. The banks that are blamed, and
then they shipped all the money offshore. We are a
little cork on somebody else's ocean. I mean, if I
was brave enough to be a government, I'd nationalize all
the banks again and put the money back in and
reduce the cost of of uh land banking, making sure

(43:24):
that that we have the right focus on building product
where everyone can at least have some kind of decent living,
and then focus on creativity and invention, not rather than
speculation and constructed we're good at well, it's the whole thing,
you know. We're Kiwi fruit, those silly buggers who went

(43:44):
off and sold the Kiwi food off. Sure, but not really.
We sell the goose the South Americans. Yeah, we sell
the gainst that load the golden eggs. We should and
we should just be the place, a really comfortable country
where there was no real mortal danger, encouraging people to
do good things and live in a great environment.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
And part of that we've got to do that.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
We've got to push the wokeness aside. To do that,
we've probably got to change the teachers and the teaching
of the teachers. That's often why I think it's going
to take a generation. You know, you've got to start
with today's kids and start teaching them differently, and it'll
you know, take fifteen to twenty years to do that. Hey, you,

(44:31):
as part of your work, you rethought the periodic table.
Most of us who went to school and remember sciences
periodic table. You rethought the periodic table and tended into
a periodic table for creativity.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
How did that come about? Well?

Speaker 3 (44:46):
It was interesting because, as I said before, i've got
to I've been involved in nine startups, and when I
sat down and we did the thesis, I thought, well,
you know, what is it? How do we actually put
a framework around kipik creativity? What any creativity? Because there's
some quite clear definitions of creativity. It's about it's going

(45:07):
to be original, it's going to be useful, and as
we're recognized by other people, they're the three major ingredients.
And I think back, I've been involved in nine startups
and I thought if I sat down and thought about, okay,
what would it take? This is what I did in
the thesis and sorry, back up the track. Because at
s Archies we'd launched a YouTube university, I got to
know the top.

Speaker 4 (45:26):
Floor quite well, and I spoke to Derrek McCormick and
Booby and Bridgewater and talk, well, I'd like to drill
down a bit better and put some structure around, keep
it creativity, and I'd like to do a thesis on it.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
And I said, I'd like to do my thesis creatively.
What do you mean? I said, I'd like to do
it as a TV documentary rather than a book with
three hundred pages of doubles past times from it no
one's ever going to read. So they said, yeah, that's good.
And having done that, they said, can you turn that
into an e learning program? Wow? Cool? I said, I've
never written a curriculum afore. I said, well, you've written
a few books, you'll figure out up and fortunately I

(46:01):
was able to. Then I met up with a woman
called Catherine Newton who'd been doing a lot of online
work with her women's improvement programs inside and she'd sort
of taught me how to do it, and so we
built a program around all the videos of different people.
But when I sat down and thought about, well, what
was it in the in the businesses that I've been in? Yeah,

(46:23):
you know the first place family had had a building company,
and so I went to Polodeck and did a diplomba
and construction and renist and then did all the things
that I thought would need to know. If I sat
down and put down all the bits and pieces that
I had had to learn in order to do that
be involved in the business, I had like a coffee company,
a winery, building company, retirement and all those things, and

(46:46):
two or three advertising agencies, and I put them down
in a formula and I actually initially it was a circle.
It was the twelve step program that was a bit
like Alcoholics Anonymous. And then and then one year in fact,
when I was doing my thesis, I was looking for
some Christmas present, my grandson's and I came across the

(47:08):
pyoic table of kids box yep oh, and there are
a pair of that does the pir nothing new. That's
the other thing. That's the other thing. Min motto Rose says,
I style it first. You know that there's there's no
Ecclesiastis one night there is no new thing under the sun,
Mark Twain, Mark was the name Steve Jobs is the

(47:29):
same thing. We don't have any new ideas. We just
take old ideas about them together in a different way.
Like he didn't do it. He didn't invent that, the
touch screen, didn't invent the mobile phone, didn't event the computer.
He just jammed all the one thing. Mark Twain said
the same thing. There's no new ideas. We just take
a kaleidoscope and tumble it around into new patterns. And
I suddenly realized when I looked at this, Wow, I
could put this twelve step, you know, this twelve the

(47:51):
circle into twelve different modules. And so we created that
that that pair of table of of innovation. It really
is actually a part able to business. You know, you
start with a big idea, how do you make it work?
You know, Simon Sinek, now what's your why, Peter Dracker?
Is this is this a bible business? Is it a business?
Or is it a product? How do I get a
minimum marble product? Then you can do research, legal, financial, design, marketing, infrastructure, sales,

(48:18):
people and culture, distribution and and and and communication. So
there's twelve things. And then underneath each of those. There's
a whole lot of steps you have to take to
make an idea of work. In fact, we had airline
pilot who took the course at you need a couple
of years ago, said this is a pre flight checklist,
And that's exactly what it is. It's just a it's

(48:38):
a methodology for taking an idea from your head to
the end consumer.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
And somebody comes along to you and says, I've got
this big idea yep, and I'm going to start a business.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Where do you start?

Speaker 3 (48:54):
Well, funny enough, I get to take the pair of
table out and I'll say, okay, what is your idea?
Who you're talking to? And it's all it's it's the who,
what why? When we're and we go through the periodic
table and say and or as this incline will come
to me and say, look, I'm not I'm not making
enough sales. But you know that sales aren't the problem.

(49:16):
It could be it could be price, it could be production,
it could be a distribution, that could be in any
number of things. So we go through the table and say, well,
which bit needs diarting up or which we needs darting down?
Because it's quite it's a it's a complex chart, but
it's really simple once you identify which bit is not working,
so that basically we'll take them through and validate their

(49:37):
their business by ticking all the boxes. Have you all
of this? Have you s all of that? But this
and and that's that. We just basically it's a checklist
and once they've checked that, we can't guarantee success. We've
been sure as he'll minimize failure.

Speaker 2 (49:51):
Yeah, I think you've missed a heading off your twelve headings.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
I've never seen that to you before. Customers.

Speaker 3 (49:59):
Oh yeah, well, well that's an error that.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
Yes, and you've got customers in various spots down below
each heading. But to me, I always say to people
that customers is one of the biggiest. Anyway, we won't
get into that debate right now. We're with Mike Hutcheson
on leaders getting coffee, and we'll be back in a
moment back with Mike Hutchison. Hutch I want to talk

(50:32):
about AI. You know, we we're living now in a
world that's obsessed with data, which affects certainly affects the
advertising industry, certainly effects innovation. Now we've got AI and
machine learning playing playing a part. How does all that
stuff affect the creative process as you see it nowadays?

Speaker 3 (50:52):
Well, you just touched on it, actually, Brisway, it's about
analyzing your customers. What do you One of the things
about AI is you can get to know pretty much
everything that you need to know in ten seconds. Yeah,
for example. But and that's where, sorry, you get to

(51:13):
a point though that AI can't go any further if
it's because AI can't have feelings, it can't communicate with customers,
it's got no humor, it's got no perversity. So and
they are the human things that you need. I'm really
pleased to see that AI is taking over the accounting profession.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
And to a large extent, all my accounting clients are
leaving me at this point.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
But please continue to feel free.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
O no no, no money. Of my best mates are accountants.
I love them as one of my very close mates.
In trouble with you actually is that it was up
to you would go broke, but if it was up
up to us, nothing would happen. And that and that's
I mean finding that, and that's what the parent tables
all about too, that how do you meld all those
things of it. But AI, I mean we see it everywhere.

(52:03):
I mean it's everything from the self driving cars to
chat GPT to one Journey, all those magic imaging tools
that we have. But what it can't do. What it
can't do and the human can is to be creative
and to think differently. I'm men before, I'm trying to

(52:24):
write this book on leadership and storytelling, and I'm actually
using chat GPT to put it together. I've got a
stack about six feet high of all the data and
the research I need for it, and that's where it's
so valuable. In a few seconds, it'll deliver with the
right prompts and deliver the information that you need to
actually do it. But to me, our business is like

(52:48):
a chruist miss art. Sorry, Well, the Christmas has three elements.
It's got the engine or in the fuel. It's got
a guidance system that's got a warhead. So you've got
to and in my PARTNS and that you've got to
deliver your message to the right target and go bang
when it gets When it gets there, AI does the

(53:09):
little bit you know, it can't it can't make the bang.
It can help the bang, but it'll be formula and
the same because it can't think differently and thinking differently.
And that's when I go back to our classes, look
at your work upside down. How can I do something
different about this? And so that that AI will collect

(53:30):
the data for you and give you the delivery to
the target. But you've still got to make it go
bang and have the fuel to do it. And I
love it. I've written five books and the thesis. But
it is a pain for me because I type slowly.
I'm like, I never let a touch tyme. So but

(53:50):
I found that exactly an advantage because I'll type at
the speed I can contract a sentence, so I don't
have to go back and read it much, you know,
So I'll type just but it's a chore. But I
found that with chat gpty, for example, it'll screw out
the right stuff for me. I have to do some

(54:11):
editing and add some insight to it. But I think
that we should actually leverage that and do it. And
of course it's going to turn up all kinds of
different ways, and I think we should have in whatever
profession or whatever our bent is, we should learn how
good it is in our particular corner of the world.
And you don't do your You can't you can't rule

(54:31):
the earth, but you can be as good at your
corner of the world as you can by using and
embracing AI. And I just applaud IT and this new
agency we're trying to form. I caught it and advertising
six point zero and that means the past, the present,
the future, And to me, I represent the past and

(54:53):
the storytelling. But our current operation does all the delivery
and the ads and the print and subst But we've
got a great little group of young grads who have
just come out of UNI, really adept at all the
new techniques, the skills they have and design delivery. And

(55:14):
the thing that actually I applaud most is the speed
at which it does it.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
Yeah, we just don't need hundreds of people laboring away.
They just do it fast. Now what will that mean
for the world of the future, don't know, But I
think what I would suggest is that everybody better get
together and figure out how they can enjoy their lives
without having a job.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
Can tase creativity hatch in the world that we live
in now?

Speaker 3 (55:44):
Yeah, well, yeah, I encourage it. I mean I encourage
people to enjoy painting and enjoy music, my gigs, painting
and art, and enjoy music and family and food and
encouraging people to do stuff, and and But the thing

(56:05):
that already saddens me, Bruce, is the cost of living.
The cost of being alive every morning, and paying parking
fees and paying this and paying that, and paying the
cost of just simply getting up and breathing is too.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
High, especially in the big cities.

Speaker 3 (56:20):
And the big cities. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward
to go up the place in the Kaipra and and
going fishing, and and and just writing and enjoying a
family and doing those very basic things so that I
love my tractor. I don't have a therapy dog. I've
got a therapy tractor and to ride around by seven acres.

(56:48):
It's just it's just it's like sailing, because do.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
You have to spend the first two days of your
holiday fixing it?

Speaker 3 (56:56):
No, that's a really good comboter. The tractor it goes.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
So you're sort of you're sort of touching on the
state of the world. And I've just written a column.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
That that some listeners will be aware of. I know
you're a voracious reader, You're a terrific thinker about the
human condition. You know, right now, we've got the Palestinian conflict, conflict,
We've got Ukraine, We've got the US presidential election, which
you've already touched on. We've got an immigration crisis in
Europe and the USA. We've got fake news. We don't

(57:32):
know what to believe anymore. I sometimes wonder if we
need a bit of a global clean out, we go
back twenty years and start again. Where does this current
state of the world lead us? You know, as I
say you're reading, you're thinking a lot about the state
of the world. I know that where does it lead us?

Speaker 3 (57:56):
I think it leads us to stoicism. I think the
biggest dangers in the world aren't atomic weapons or the
crisis in Gaza, or or in Ukraine. The biggest danger
in the world are fundamentalism, the lack of critical thinking,

(58:17):
and the if you have a fundamental standpoint is that
you believe that you're right and everybody is wrong. And
I don't care if it's fundamentalist Christianity in the Southern
States of America or fundamentalist Islam, It's equally dangerous and
equally false. For me, I'm actually an atheist anyway, and
I think that I agree with with with Richard Dawkins

(58:39):
and Christal Vergins. God poisons everything as soon as you
believe that you're right and everybody else is wrong. That's
that's the start point of every demogogic, epidomic, demogogic and
dictatorial regime. And I think that they are the big dangers.
Nothing to do really with any scientific developments or inventions.

(59:01):
It's people not thinking clearly. And we are humans. We're humans,
and we're Terrence the Roman philosopher two thousand years ago
seeing said that I'm a human being. Therefore nothing human
is strange to me, and we should actually accept that.
And one of the things I've learned about creative people

(59:24):
in particular, and so I love talking to artists and
writers and because we're comfortable with ambiguity, there are no absolutes.
I used to be worried about Christian CHOIEB and Nosca
through you for years and I thought it, even thought
about going to the church at one stage and one
of my career opportunities. But then I abandoned my faith

(59:44):
personally when I realized that there's not there are no absolutes.
There are no absolutes. If there were it'll be fatinally obvious.
It's like the old notion if a tree falls over
in the forest and there's no one there to see it,
I hear it. Is there any noise? Of course there's not. Well,
there's no such there's air movement. But the definition of
of sound is the action of airwaves on the air drums. Therefore,

(01:00:08):
no ear drums, there's no sound. No you could you
could argue that the cows come home. But the the
to a physicist, they get themselves into a lie of that,
because of course there is. But to a semantic that's
to an English rider, there's no problem at all. There
are no ear drums. There was no sound. That's that's simple.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
And that's the Probably it doesn't matter that much either, hatch,
And of.

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
Course it doesn't. And that's but that's the whole point.
That's why the most important things, you know, like a
good shard and a lovely steak, you know, and and
and going fishing and doing things that are really very
simple and basic. And what do they say that that
the the next war one The last one was bombs

(01:00:51):
and stuff, and the next one we be rockets and
atomic weapons, and the next one we sticks and stones,
and I think that that's probably, you know, pretty pretty right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
We'll go back and will have come full circle. So
if you put the world to one side, our own
little country's got its share of problems at present. We've
got a new government six months in. They've got a
hell of a lot of problems on their books at
the moment.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
How do you think they're going?

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
Well? Actually, I like what that well. I like the
notes of the dismantling the public service we have. We
have a gargantuan weight of bureaucracy which is killing it.
I'm a great fan of Northcotte Parkinson's Parkinson's Law, and
I'd love, in fact, i'd love everyone to get a
copy and read it again, and whenever it comes out

(01:01:39):
of copyright, I want to republish it because or review it,
because it's exactly the same as it was. And the
crushing weight of bureaucracy, because the relucto at absurd is
of caring and a caring society is that in the end,
half the people will end up looking after the other
half because there's always someone who's lesser than you or

(01:02:00):
who needs more, and so that's the goal, and it's
the it's the the ridiculous extension of democracy. You can't
have half the people looking after the other half. We
all have family members who need help and so and
so on that that's part of the human condition. We
do that stuff, but we can't have and the government's

(01:02:20):
got no compassion. Organizations have got no compassion. We've got
to allow allow for human humankind and actually reward those
things or take the pressure off people doing those things
in different if you've got it so disheartening to see
a family who a kid with this pinambifida or some
kind of ailment or whatever it is. They should be rewarded,

(01:02:42):
able to be rewarded or at least given relief for
looking into them, rather than having a bloody great bureaucracy
with an organization paid enormous amounts of money to do
it for them. We shouldn't just and to me, if
I was to start a political party, it will be
called duo do unto others, And that's to me, that's
the fundamental law of life. Do it others as you

(01:03:04):
would have them do unto you, and all the derivations
of law should come from that simple premise, rather than
some agenda that you might have that is about because
everyone's going to find a problem. And the more people are,
more graduate you have in social policy, the more problems
you'll find.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
Ye.

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
Yeah, and you see that. I didn't run a blog
recently about the bureaucracy, and a lot of feedback was here.
But the more we got into it, and you can't.
It's not about it's not that the bad people. It's
just a bad idea. You can't. You can't fix all
these things. Is this the way life is? Life's tough,

(01:03:45):
it's hard.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
And huch my view, and I've written about this too.
You know, if we've got twice as many bureaucrats as
we need, that doesn't mean we need to shoot the
hearth that are surplus For my money, I'm happy to
keep panned them for three years while they learned to
do something else. It's not to beat up on the individuals.
I'd just like to see us get the structure of
the country, right Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
Yeah, so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely absolutely, It's not
the people, it's it's just the structure. And because and
I and aside and a colleague, I have got a
job with a quasi government department. Found there were twenty
six people there and he said, no, you can do
this with five. He wasn't allowed to reduce it because

(01:04:31):
the person who was in charge was only at that
grade level with twenty reports.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
So the incentives are all wrong, right, totally.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
You show me the Yeah, you show me the incentive,
and I'll show you the result. And unfortunately, you know,
Parkins and Law basically, you know, fifty sixty years ago
said that for every bureaucrat within five years old, you'll
have seven, because I mean they'll get in there and that,
my god, there's left handed toe tappers and the black

(01:05:01):
lung disease they are getting. You know, we need to
have a government department and whatever there is. And he was,
my god, and they have to have a conference in
Luxembourg to discuss that and so and then to go
to that, he'll have to have a subordinate he takes
over when he's gone, but kind of have one subordinate,
have two because the subordinate when he's gone might be

(01:05:23):
better than he was. And however, no job, and he
gets back, says the two. And then they were thinking,
my god, you problem. I didn't realize. And there's another
international conference they all have to go to. And within
a few years there'll be seven people doing what should
have taken one. And that's the problem. That's the problem.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
I want to move away from that because I've got
a couple of kids who work in advertising, as I
think you know, and I've got a question to ask you.
What would you say to anyone today, any young person
today who's considering a career in advertising, what would you say.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
To them if you brought it down to it's fundamental.
Advertising is about telling someone you've got something to sell. Yeah,
so it probably isn't isn't really an industry anymore because
it's it's grown up around pictures and papers and television
commercials and so on and so well, well, anyone with

(01:06:17):
an iPhone now can do a telephone commercial. You don't
need a machine to do it. It's like it's like
properly development is a business. It's it's a couple of
people in a hotel room with some contractors doing designs
and stuff. And similarly, with filmmaking, you need you need
a few studies, you don't need a business around it.

(01:06:40):
And advertising is kind of the same. What you need
it's advertising six point zero. I'd love our new company
to be like a bit like a bit real having
the whole gig economy and hybrid working. And the young
guys that we've got, three or four of them have

(01:07:00):
all got their own ideas of their own platforms, their
building or their own apps, they building. I'd like to say,
you know, okay, we'll take you and we'll pay eighty
percent of the normal thing and twenty percent of the
time you can do your own thing and will help
you bring it to market. So there's a new there's
a new employment, it's a new organizational dynamic. Yep, that's
going on, and you can be flexible in your time.

(01:07:20):
But just we have a belief system which is all
about creating new ideas. How do we develop creativity and
new ideas and how do we encourage you to do
that for yourself and figure out what is it? What
is it you want? And it's all those things and
I put them through the periodic table. Have you got
a good that's it's it's it's it's simple. You know,
there are lots of ways in it's interesting. The psychologist

(01:07:42):
that we add in Sarchies, I asked it. She's an
amazing one, and I asked, have you got any clues
as to how you can identify good creative, creative thinkers.
And because if you go through the traditional interview process
as an HR person, and HR is just another bloody
beer rocercent and I think HR people and town planners

(01:08:04):
H people in.

Speaker 2 (01:08:06):
We've scared we've now scared off the accountants and mathematicians
and the HR people. You're you know, you're narrowing my
audience with every sentence.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
Yeah, well, well they should think about what they're going
to do because AI is going to take over from them,
you know, and and and and they should justify themselves
in a better way, give them deep insights anyway, because
and she said that the best way to actually identify
a CREDIT person is casually. I mean, even after the
proper interview and you've asked them will you plan to

(01:08:34):
be in five years time? And what are your qualifications?
That tells you fucking nothing, you know, so you get
them over a beer or a coupee afterwards, say if
you were stuck between a rock and a hard place,
would you rather be close to the rock or the
hard place? Now? Because there's actually no right or wrong
answer to that, yes answer, And I've done this dozens

(01:08:55):
of times now, and a non intuitive literal, linear thing.
King person will always say they rock the rock, I'll
be on them because they imagine they're at sea as
waves crashing the rock solid. But a greater person will say,
you know, is this bet of is it metaphorical? Is
it real? We sea on land? And they say, saying,

(01:09:15):
tell me about the hard place, and they will create
a story. I know, I'd rather be close to the
hard place because I can see it. It's made of steel,
it's an oilder platform, and it's got a helicopter on
it and a bar and stuff, and so so a
story will come out. And a colleague of mine, I
told us, and he's a lawyer and he's very literal thinker,

(01:09:36):
and he can't and and and he's Blake, a colleague
at his and who's a Canadian. As it turned out,
he was absolutely inflamed at the question, this is a
stupid question. What do you mean? What are you saying?
I mean, why are you asking me this? This is
this is stupid. And I said, well, now you don't
want to hire him as a greater person, you know,

(01:09:56):
because it's it's it's not what you say, it's how
you say it, not what you're thinking. It's it's the
way in which you answer the question is the clue,
and it's the whole thing. You know, if you need
to ask the question, you would understand the answer. Ye,
and and so to me go back to your question.
But advertising, I would school up on digital design. I'd

(01:10:17):
read widely, read well. One of the things I've done,
when we talk about separately, is is and I was
really thankful to my misiness colleague Catherine Newton for this
that if you're creating something, if you're creating, it's like
baking a cake. You can only bake a cake out
of the ingredients who've got in your cupboard. You only

(01:10:38):
have a credible idea of the the stuff you've got
in your head. And to me, the best credits are
people who have read widely and read well, and they
can connect otherwise unconnected things. You can link this with that,
and and and and and that's a it's not it's
always a process in one sense. But it's about intuition

(01:10:59):
and sensing. I know what I can do this or that,
and I know that when I left Archiez, I read
on a piece of paper. I want to do well
by doing good. I'd had enough advertising and I met
an American friend and he said, you know, what are
you going to do? I don't know, but I want
to do well by doing good. He said, if you
thought about fair trade tea and coffee. Not really, I'm

(01:11:24):
drunk a bit, but he said, well, why don't you
think about that? And I said, we don't make coffee here,
don't grow tea. He said, but you don't need to.
And he introduced me to a young woman who's out
here at UNI doing her master's in so cential development,
and she'd been blending fair trade teas and I said,
tell me about this fair trade. You know what's it

(01:11:44):
all about. This is in two thousand and three, about
twenty years ago, and so her theme was Sarah Scarborough
and she had been doing your master's and that was fine,
and we talked about FIA trade. I think she went
to Groad Idea, yeah, And I think then there was
one fair trade. It was one of those charity groups

(01:12:08):
who were doing fair trade tea imports. And I thought, well,
and so anyway, it's all right. We found a supply
who could get us some tea from Sri Lanka. We
found a place that could get some coffee from Ghana,
and we sat on developing a brand and because there
have been some in the supermarkets, and so we started

(01:12:30):
this business. And we went to a small head adcy
who said trying to develop a brand for us, and
they called it says it was all wrong anyway. So look,
I think it's all about fair trade. And we've got
Sarah Scarborough here, who is a knows all about these things.
Why do we call it Scarborough Fare because scar Scarbroughfere

(01:12:52):
is layers and lots of meetings and music and ship
So yeah, fair And so we didn't We developed these
things and we organized and we did the packaging and
design here. We shifted the artwork to Sri Lanka. They
printed it and packaged all the stuff from there. And
similarly with the coffee from Ghana, they packed it there

(01:13:12):
and sent it around the world. And we had we're
in Turut and and cover our partners and we're ex partner.
It was was was head of progs here, so he
had the intro into all the turn markets and and
and that was great. And so the three or four

(01:13:33):
us got together and said let's do this. And we
were in two and a half thousand supermarkets across austrail
in New Zealand initially. Yeah, and then of course, and
it just took off and we're out selling del Mar
Green Tea at the time. And and of course the Yanks,
the Yanks, the AUSSI being Aussies. Oh that's a bunny
good idea. I think what we'll do it was kick

(01:13:55):
you barses out and we'll make our own house brand
down of it. Yeah, because basically had to be an
Australian thief anyway, and so but that was one of
the lessons I learned from a periodic table. Make sure
you've secured your distribution and supply chain properly. And so
you knew that, but that was a great idea. And
so yeah, a good lesson, you know, make sure you

(01:14:15):
secure your basis MAC to us, you secure your supply chain,
make persure all those things that are put in place.
You learn, you live and learn. But anyway, and that's
why again anyone go into advertising, I'd say, do my
course online, learn about the supply chain, learn the perodic table,
because you're not just going to be asked about advertising
because and the hell we were talking before and the

(01:14:36):
Halcyon days and the seventies and eighties would come a client,
I would say that this is what we want from
and we said, look, I told you what you need
a sixty second TVC. We'll sit at the south of France.
Be bloody amazing, they'll be helicopters, jet skis, gorgeous people,
you'll love it. You can come to the chute and
of course they'll be enticed by that. What you forget now, though,

(01:14:56):
is the poro CEOs. He has been, he's been this other,
he'd done that stuff, but now he's more consider about
replacing the fork lifts and distribution center yep. And so
as a and a thinking person, you have to think, okay, yeah,
what what is the creative? But how do we fixes
distribution center rather than fixes an ad campaign? How do

(01:15:19):
we reach it? And using the new media. In the
old days of advertising, we're camp at bombing. You had
to kill everyone to get the ones you want. Now
we can be much more refined and we can target
people specifically. But you still have to have a good story.
And because now the kids think, oh it's all about
TikTok nah, it's actually but a story. How do you

(01:15:42):
tell a story? And so I was yeah, they asked
me what should I read to learn about now Shakespeare?
Shakespeare was good, neither borrowing, willender b this above all
by our own self, be true. All that stuff just
just simple, simple, simple ideas.

Speaker 5 (01:16:00):
Yeah, that one answer to the last question was probably
there's a heap of lessons in there for the young
person considering an advertising career.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
I have to ask you one more question, and you
know what that is, because we're just about out of time.
But if you could be the Prime Minister of New
Zealand for a day, mate, what is the one thing
you'd like to do.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
I'll probably go back to that duo idea. I'd nationalize
all churches and charities, take the money away from them
so they can't talk absolutely rubbish, teach people to be
the best the best they can be. And i'd certainly
i'd certainly make sure that all the big multinational online

(01:16:52):
businesses paid the tax in this country.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
There's a busy day.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
If anybody invites you down to the beehive for the day,
you've got your you've got your day planned out. I'm gone,
Mike Hutcheson, that hour has gone pretty fast, infector a
bit over an hour, but it's gone really fast. Thanks
for joining us on Leaders getting Coffee. You are a
unique character. You've got you know all about storytelling, that's

(01:17:21):
for sure, so you're the best guy out there to
be advocating for it. I can certainly say that I'm
looking forward to your next book.

Speaker 1 (01:17:27):
I enjoy your books. And thanks for being guest number twenty.
Believe it or not, we made it this far.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
Well, your guest number twenty on Leaders getting Coffee in
thanks very much for sharing sharing some time with us.

Speaker 3 (01:17:41):
Oh thanks, Matt, keep it up, keep it up, love
your work.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
Thanks uch.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
Finally, folks, my leadership tip of the week. It comes
from another highly creative person and Hutch actually just touched
on it when he was speaking. It's a it's a
comment that Steve Jobs, who's no longer with us, of course,
the co founder of our computer, but it's something he
used to say and it features in my book The
Best Leaders Don't Shout, and it says this, what's important

(01:18:08):
is that you have faith in people that they're basically
good and smart, and if you give them the tools,
they'll do wonderful things with them. What's important is that
you have faith in people that they're basically good and
smart and if you give them the tools, they will
do wonderful things with them. I think we've heard a
number of comments in this session that would be consistent
with that. That's about it from us for a couple

(01:18:29):
of weeks. Thanks again for joining us on leaders Getting Coffee.
As I said, episode tweety down, and thanks very much
to Mike Hutcheson. If you have any feedback, please get
in touch at info at leaders Getting Coffee dot com.
Don't forget Mike Hutch's website. If you want that periodic
table Mike Hutcheson dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
You can download it there.

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):
And remember that our favorite charity is a buy for
Blokes dot cot in z and we'll see you soon
with another new Zealander and another fantastic leadership story. Until then,
have a great couple of weeks and we'll catch jump
with your son.

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