February 20, 2025 • 39 mins
Join Christena Pyle as she hosts Karen Land Short and Jeff Goodby in an engaging discussion on the evolution of advertising, purpose-driven creativity, and the impact of some memorable campaigns. Dive into insights on mentorship, overcoming challenges, AI's impact on creative work, and celebrate Karen's shift to sustainability as well as her induction into the Advertising Hall of Achievement.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, Welcome to season three of the Future Legends of
Advertising podcast on iHeart, featuring the hottest up and coming
stars and advertising as well as the biggest legends in
the game. In this series, we explore the future of
the advertising industry through never before heard conversations between those
who created it and those who are shaping its future.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I'm your host Tim Natividad.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And I'm your host Christina Pile.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And with that, let's meet the legends. Welcome well.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Full disclosure in preparation for this season of Future Legends
of Advertising, I being season two with host Ross and Haley.
If you have not listened, it's actually worth going back
to take a listen. There's phenomenal episodes with legends and
luminaries like Bob Pittman. At iHeart, there's Tammy and at
the NBA there's legendary Roy Spence at GSDNM and NBA
(01:05):
superstar and sweetheart Chris Paul. Shout out to Ross and
Haley for building this platform and passing the mic. So
my co host Tim and I have this exciting task
of pairing future legends with living legends, and then we
jockey and we fight it out for who gets to
interview whom Well I won this interview. I wanted to
(01:27):
be in the presence of two creatives by craft with
decades of experience, heart for this industry, and two leaders
who see a bigger purpose for creativity. Today we have
Karen and Jeff together. I'm so excited to be talking
to Karen land Short, the global executive director of Sustainability
(01:48):
and manager director Atic Center Song. Karen has spent the
last two decades building a career as a creative leader
dedicated to building brands of influence through purpose driven creativity
and innovation. Her mission is to make sustainability relevant and
actionable for everyone. She's used her creativity for good for
countless companies and renowned brands like under Armour, Meta Prudential, Chabani,
(02:10):
and also major nonprofits the United Nations Foundation, the Clinton Foundation,
the National Women's Law Center. This is just to name
a few. Karen may have Short in her name, but
she has racked up a long list of accolades for
her work, with recognition from The Clos, The Webbies, The
One Show, The Fies, the Art Director's Club, and naturally,
(02:33):
of course kan Lyon with multiple Titanium Alliance and the
first ever Glass Lion. Again, I'm just naming a few
we don't have all day, folks. Karen is an alumni
of the University of Virginia and I'm extremely proud to
say is a two thousand and six winner of the
af National Student Advertising Competition. Talk about a full circle
(02:55):
career moment for Karen. Karen, welcome to the pod.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Thank you, Thank you, it really is. It feels great.
It's good to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah. And also congratulations on being inducted in November into
the Advertising Hall of Achievement. You had like a major endorsement,
a very cool video from David Droga.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yes, I was grateful for that.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Do you remember can we go back do you remember
to two thousand and six the National Student Advertising Competition,
Like who was your client? Do you remember any of
the details?
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, I could tell you so many things. The client
was not I think I think it was a bit
of an outlier because it wasn't like a well known brand.
It was Postal Vault, which was a security mail like
a mailbox company, A riveting very yeah, and we did.
We have we have a program at the University of
Virginia that just focuses on that competition and I it
(03:45):
has the best teacher, had the best teacher, Jack Lindgren,
and so he organized us as if we were an
agency and I got to play creative director. And it
really was like the first time I ever flexed the
muscle that is now my career was really fun. I
had a fantastic time.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, I remember my year we had the Coca Cola company,
fun client, but my team didn't get nearly as far
as yours dead, so congratulations.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Thank you. If we did go to Nationals and one
in San Francisco, and that was when me and a
couple of my teammates went to first visit Goodbie Silverstein.
It was like the biggest deal ever.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
So fun. We're going to talk about so many full
circle moments in this recording. Well, while we certainly give
a lot of credit to the AAF for launching Karen
into this creative space, we must also give a lot
of credit to our second guests for launching her agency career.
Karen spent the first few years in the industry at
Goodbye Silverstein and Partners. I'm so excited to welcome their
(04:42):
co chairman, mister Jeff Goodbye himself. Jeff has brought humanity
and grace to the questionable art of advertising, overseeing countless
widely imitated and influential campaigns that spawned an unprecedented number
of award winning agencies, production companies, writers, artists, musicians. I'm
(05:02):
sensing a theme here, and of course I got a
list for Jeff too. Think about ads like got Milk
or bud wise er. I love this game for the
bold and sega. I don't think we need any sort
of explanation for any of those taglines as they continue
(05:25):
to this day to cross generations of our mainstream culture.
Jeff takes pride in his work and his team's work
being so influential and appreciated that you quote the cab
driver knows your work. Jeff has this rare ability to
see the truth and capture it in a few words,
and then it becomes this like feature length movie story.
(05:46):
That's a quote from Rich Silverstein. It's quite clear to
see why Jeff was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame. Jeff,
thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Christine. I can't believe that you're so spontaneous with that introduction.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
There's no few cards here. I'm just looking at you
and remembering the full length of your career.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, that was awesome thing.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I could have done that for memory.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Thank you, Jeff.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Do you remember Karen during those years ago?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I told her, I told her I do remember her
there and yeah, and I'm sorry that we didn't have
more time together, although it sounds like she's been doing okay.
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah, but the people, like just the people that were
there when I was there, it was amazing. I got
to hang out with you and Rich a little bit.
But I was telling them that I've I'm in touch
with like fifty plus people that I worked with. Good Bee.
It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
I've been so lucky to work with people like you,
and you know, it's been It's made all the difference.
I mean, I'm like Christina was saying, people have gone
on to do amazing things after this, and you know,
I can't even begin to list the people as Karen
knows there, they're just at the top of agencies everywhere.
(07:06):
I have to deal with them all the time as
competitors now, which pisses and yeah, what kind of reward
is that. No, it's really a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Well, Careen, you were there from two thousand and eight
to twenty twelve. That wasn't by any means easy time
in the industry, with the backdrop of the global financial crisis.
Can you kind of paint the picture of what it
felt like back then, both of you? Please?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Oh well, I mean, obviously GSP has had like decades
and decades of wonderful work. But I felt like when
I was there, like it was like when I was
a junior creative. I went to can and I got
to go on stage with you guys to win Digital
Agency of the Year. It was just like so much
good work was happening while I was there. It was
like a heyday and just amazing people like Margaret Johnson
was definitely someone I fit into a lot, and like
(07:57):
Ricket Hunter and has and Jamie Barrett. There were just
so many, like Steve Simpson was it was amazing. It's
just like this incredible flow of amazing talent and great work.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, I'm so glad that that was happening, and it
was it was not an easy time to do good work.
I remember we kind of made our minds up to
go into to be really strong at digital and you
guys did it, you know, and we were almost immediately
Digital Agency of the Year, which was incredible. Yeah, because
we were like babies at that point and we just
(08:34):
went we're going to do this, and it was amazing.
I'm saying to.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Rito's Hotel sixty six was like one of the first
things I worked on. It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
And you know the other thing about that era, two
thousand and eight, we were doing the Hyundai account and
that was that was the most indicative of the era
to me because cars, the car business just went in
the toilet. Nobody could sell a car, and we started
working for Hyundai won the Hyundai pitch was like worst
car in the world at the time, terrible reputation, terrible reputation.
(09:07):
A guy in a in a focus group said, there
they there. There are ship boxes made in in in
sheds in Seoul. That's what I remember him saying. Nice breath,
that's the breath. So we actually took this is an
interesting story. We took the Hyundai logo and put it
(09:27):
on a Mercedes. We put a BMW logo on the
Mercedes and so on, and looked to see like which
one actually brought the value of the car up or down?
In the Hyundaid logo actually brought the car down below?
What down below? No logo? Okay, so Hyundai actually made
(09:49):
it worse than no logo whatsoever, even though it was
a brand new Mercedes. Would you know, unidentify belowgo? And
so we started a campaign for them where we didn't
put a logo it the end of the work. Do
you remember that, Karen. We didn't put any logo at
the end, and again we just put the words think
about it at the end of the campaign and it
would say, you know what if there was a car
that did this and had this kind of a warranty,
(10:11):
think about it. And after a month or two of
running it with no logo, we finally put a logo
at the end and people were like, wow, it's a
Hundai campaign. Luckily, they were making better cars at that point,
and so we kept doing think about It. The cars
got better and their sale numbers actually went up at
a time when everybody else was going down. We're like
(10:32):
on national news one night. It was amazing. I think
that was the greatest triumph of that period because cars
were dead. Cars are dead. Well.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I love the common threads developing here, and another common
thread that you both share is serving humanity through creative work,
and I'd love to hear from each of you about
the why behind that.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Go ahead your resume, Karen is so full of It's like,
it's such a gen x to me. You need to
have an you need an oil company in there somewhere.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
It's so funny because it's like such a selfish It's like, Jeff,
I only been at GSP and Drogo five, like and
I'm still a drogod etceuch A song, like I'm such
a monogamous person. I've only been in those two contexts
in my whole career, and in both choices. Thank you.
I agree in both contexts. I was just like trying
to like like collect like acorns, like all the really
(11:30):
the stuff that I felt like was gonna be impactful
in the world. And I guess just that it feels selfish,
as like it makes me feel good, but also I do,
I like, I feel really grateful to be decent at
what I do. And if you're good, if you put
out good stuff in the world, you can make an impact,
Like you can really get exposure, you can really make
awareness a lot bigger than a lot of other platforms.
(11:54):
So I'm just sort of like wanting to to like
put my tools to work for whatever can can be
impactful in the world, and I I have sort of
strong armed my way into a lot of projects, Like
Jeff I was, I was reminiscing on, like I think
American rivers. I don't, I'd be shocked if you remember this,
but me and Ronnie Northrop were doing American rivers like
(12:14):
Nat Lawler, and that was one of the first things
where it was like this cool thing where you could
like draw your roof and then like find the impact
of your economic savings and how you can help rain
run off and if.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You changed yeah, if you changed the roof, yeah, and you.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Could send a note to Obama.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
That was like the beginning where I was like, there's
stuff like this I can do and then well and
also specifically sustainability. I worked with this group, Potential Energy
Coalition about eight years ago and got talked to by
this Harvard professor about how bad the climate crisis was,
so that that was like a turning point where I
(12:56):
started paying attention I think a little earlier than some
of the mainstream media. And so that's why I've been
kind of angling with David.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
But do clients still care about good. I mean, where
the industry is obsessed with growth, our clients are obsessed
with growth, they have unusual pressures on them. Is there
is there room for good and growth? Does this work?
You know? Do we do this work from our heart
or do we do this work to move units?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
I can speak specifically to sustainability now because it's become
just in the last few years, like very prominent of
an issue for businesses, and it's to their detriment if
they don't move on it. It will be more costly
if they don't. So there's a great sort of coalescing
of what's in the interest of businesses and what's in
the interest of the planet on that topic specifically right now.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, Jeff, I'd love to know more about you have this,
You and Rich have this kind of saying about art
serving capitalism, and we don't have to touch it here,
but I'd love to know more about that kind of
that concept, know that craft.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I mean, building on what Karen was saying, I think
that even accounts that are not specifically trying hard to
do good actually do a certain amount of good. Because
I've always thought of corporate America as or advertising in general,
as a sort of paid way of exploring the human psyche,
you know, I mean, because we have to figure out
(14:23):
like what people find beautiful, what they find scary, what
they find repulsive, what they'll support in the world. And
you know, we learn that basically in a corporate funded endeavor,
and we might be selling cookies, but we might also
be doing something about climate change in educating people, and
(14:44):
we learn about them as we do. So, so I
feel sort of positive about a lot of the work
that we do that's not specifically for good. Obviously, we
do a lot of things for good. Lately, I've been
really proud of one that started us called not a Gun,
and it was done for maybe maybe you saw this.
It was done for our courageous conversations, and it basically
(15:05):
talked about how, you know, often black people are are
misidentified as carrying guns when they're actually carrying a wallet
or a can of soda or something. And and the
most the most prominent and affecting image was just the uh,
the art director who's black photographed his hand like holding
a wallet, holding a cell phone, holding holding a candy bar,
(15:29):
things that it actually real in the real world been
misidentified as guns and put the headline not a gun
on it and said, you know, black people are I
think it was like sixteen times more liable to be
misidentified as carrying a gun when they're not carrying a gun.
And and in fact they're even less likely to be
(15:50):
carrying a gun than white people in many many cases,
if I remember right. Anyhow, we did that. We did
something recently called driving while Black. That was an interesting creator.
It was like a yeah, it was like a digital
car that we made believe was real, but it was
actually made so that a black person, if stopped by
a policeman, would be safe. So it had no love compartments,
(16:13):
so they couldn't look like they were reaching for something.
Their information would come up immediately on the driver's side window.
You know. It had tail lights that would fix themselves
so that they wouldn't get stopped for that. You know,
it's like it was like a crazy idea, but it
dramatized a real problem and real so things like that.
You know, we continue to do them, caring those weeks
(16:35):
to do them when she was there, we continue to
do them, and we're very proud of them.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
And Caaren, when did you make this pivot? Because it's
not it's a it's a big pivot from working, you know,
as a creative director and pivoting into sustainability and running
a running a whole group. I'd love to know was
this early on did you always know? Was this a
sudden aha moment and you had to chase it down?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
I mean, i'd definitely been like a bit at GSPN
then definitely in my few years into Droga I Drouga five,
I started sort of noticeably grabbing all the stuff that
was under different efforts, like a lot of gender issues
and like sort of community driven issues and youth issues
(17:21):
I got to work on. But yeah, there was the
potential energy Coalition project that I mentioned eight years ago.
Really was a turning point, but I didn't really know
what to do with it until to be honest, like
I sort of wrote the coat tails of David Droga
moving from Droga five to Accenture Interactive, which is now
Accenter Song. So I sort of was trying to grab
that in the context of sustainability, and I now am
(17:44):
you know, connected to all these like sustainability consultants of
every kind and like makers that are experts in like
tech that's sustainable and so there's like this crazy cross
section of expertises that I get to be in. It's
a very like unique situation at Accenter Song. It's sort
of hard to do an elevator pitch on.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
But yeah, I mean you brought You also broaden our
like kind of aperture of what sustainability is with a
lot of your impact work National Women's Law Center. You
did some advocacy work for the Asian community with an
uptick for aa P. I hate you've done some campaigns
for ad color. So I love that you broaden the
(18:22):
definition of sustainability.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah, when I say standard, I should say that it's
a climate, but it's also equity and healthy or that's
sort of it's like an umbrella term.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I want to stay with you. It's safe to say,
Karen that Jeff was one of your inspirations early on,
and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you
had I mean maybe maybe.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Oh no, give her a chance.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Jeff, do you remember I think I pained you this?
But do you remember when I when I was creepy
on an airplane with you, I was like, I was
like a stalker. Do you remember that?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, you made me look at your book I did.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I gave my book I had it was not I wasn't.
I didn't buy the ticket to stock you. But I
just happened to be on an airplane with you when
I was out of ad school and had my book
on a thumb drive, and I asked a flight attendant
to walk it up to him in first class and
give it to him with this note, and he read
it and then came back to me and said the
sweetest stuff. Oh yeah, I've always laugh.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Because if I'm feel happy about that, I feel like if.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
I'd done that to Rich, it would have been like
a different story.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
No. No, he likes that actually too. And you know,
I was a wonderful thing to have to have people
connect that way, you know, just by chance. I was
on the BART train going to the final A's game
at the Colisseum the other day with Rich Riches. I
think he'd never been on a BART train in his life.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I think he was scared.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Humbling experience.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
But this guy comes up to us just upper pos of.
This guy comes up to us and says, I saw
your masterclass. The two of you nice, It's amazing, It's
a what a wonderful thing. So we ended up talking
to him, same kind of story. He didn't ask for
a job, he just wanted to talk.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
It was.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
It was just a wonderful, warming thing. It's very blessed
like that, Karen, very blessed.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
And you and Rich are the only agency leaders to
do a masterclass.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
They were the only ones dumb enough to do it.
That's no, you know what. It was really fun. It
was really fun to do. And I told Rich, you know,
we really need to plan this thing out. Karen will
connect with this. We really need to plan this thing out,
figure out we're going to say. He's like, no, I
don't want I don't I want to be really spontaneous.
I said, no, that'll suck. We cannot be really spontaneous.
(20:38):
So I made a little outline just to try to
corral him in a little bit. You know, but it
was fun.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
We love extemporaneous. Jeff, Who inspires you? And what does
it mean to you to be an inspiration to so
many people in the industry.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
You know, somebody asked me who my mentors are, and
I actually think my mentors are people like Karen. You
know that that worked with me and taught me what
it's like to be fresh and young and and you know,
have have a first take on the world. That's so
important to have and and you know, I mean I
try to continue that and try to learn things. I'm
(21:17):
learning a lot about AI. You know, I've learned I've
taught myself like mid Journey and chat GBT, and I
mean I try to stay fresh. But only through the
eyes of other people can I truly be that way.
So I mean, that's that's the truth. I get much
more inspired by working with people younger than I am
(21:39):
than with which for.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Instance, it has been like I do think DSP did
like you. There's a way of hiring that is unique,
like you know, hiring Jelly Donut and like letting little
Dicky figure out his voice. Like there's just a lot
of sort of non traditional.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Little Dicky was an amazing story because he was an
account guy. First.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
He was one of the worst account guys I've ever worked.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
We can edit that out if you want me to,
we can edit that out.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
No, No, he would say that. Yeah, David would like that.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Like that. Yeah. I remember going downstairs and for some
reason we had we had were doing something and somebody
asked Little Dicky too to uh David to wrap something
and he was in the in the studio wrapping the
things and I'm like, holy shit, who is this guy? Oh?
He's an account guy? Like what?
Speaker 3 (22:36):
And then and then like I think it was Jamie
mostly like took him under his wing and like helped
him learn how to be a copywriter. And it was
really kind of a beautiful story.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think back in the day to
be taken seriously in advertising, you had to have this
outside hobby or interest, Like the the interview is like
half about maybe your capability and half about your personal life.
It's like what else is going on? What else? What
other crafts can you do? And it did. It made
(23:05):
the industry really fun.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
I remember Steve Simpson, whom Karen knows, telling a story
about how he's interviewing with Andy Berlin, who was one
of the original partners here. And you remember that Andy
like looked out the window and said, do you believe
in God?
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Like?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Yeah, interviews trying to get carried away, Christine, that's right, My.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Goodness, Karen, who else inspires you? You've had, You've worked
and learned under some of the biggest names in our Industry's.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, one of the things, like I tell younger creatives
is to find that people doing doing the work you
love and then go ask them for a job. Because
I did that liked with Jeff and Rich and then
I did it with David. I you know, it was
just like following the work and finding out. I feel
like it might even be harder now to like figure
out who's doing what it's like less public, but that's
that's what I've so, I've been really lucky to be
(24:00):
multiple decades under people that I like are my top
people basically. But I there's obviously a lot happening, you
know now that I'm so climate like climate sustainability focused,
there's a lot happening in the broader kind of NGO
space that I think is really interesting. And I'm now
sort of fanning out on innovations and you know, more
(24:22):
like tech tech things versus like big brand advertising, which
yeahs sort of like morphing a little bit.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Do you count David Drogads one of those inspirations because
he does you, Oh yeah, he does you.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
I mean it's been it's been like thirteen years now
with David. Since since I was with you guys, Jeff,
I've basically just been learning under him, and he's you know,
he's like the real stuff. He's like just one of
the every time you talk to him, you're like, of course,
that's that's like your your take is right. He's just
always so like and Jeff, I feel like you guys too,
you're just like so in tune with your humanity and
(24:56):
your like gut that there's always like a solid to
the advice that you guys give.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Thank you. So that's been.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Obviously just very special. I feel very lucky.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
David is terrific. He's a realist too, which I like
a lot about him, you know. I mean I've known
him since you started in Australia and you know, and
he's been very realistic. Things have worked, things that haven't worked,
and he's he admits it. And he's again like we are,
I think, very appreciative of the people around us and
(25:28):
what they've contributed to our lives. And David be the
first one to say that. And he's terrific like that.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
He's such an optimist. He's like just insanely optimistic.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Have to be optimistic in this business. Yeah, so much
about rejection, It's so much about people like not agreeing
with you or frowning when you show them something. You know,
I've told creative people, if you can't deal with rejection,
you're in the wrong business, because you know, the first
thing you do is you think of something, you tell
your partner about it. She says, know that sucks, and
(26:01):
you know, but maybe you get it through her, and
so you make something. You take it to the creative director.
He says it sucks. Then you take it to the client.
They say it sucks. And then you make it. You're
lucky enough to make it, and then your kids say
it sucks. That's the worst.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
I haven't had that yet.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
So I say, I tell him, you just have to
be ready for that chain of rejection and still come
back and do it again.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
You know, it's such a massive, such a massive thing.
You're so right.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
This is like a little left field, Jeff. But I've
got you on it. I've got you on an interview,
so I'd love for you to tell us more about
the connection between great advertising and vandalism.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah, this is unfortunate because it's like something that happened,
you know, with me growing up in Providence around around
some of the wrong people. But and we never did
anything really bad. You know, we would smash pumpkins and
wax windows and do things that people would find so
but what I liked about it was it would be
(27:03):
exciting to see it. The next day you'd walk by
somebody's house in the pumpkin would be all smashed against
their front door, and and it was kind of exciting
and naughty. And that's that's the feeling I think you
want from great advertising. You want that feeling of like,
wait till this gets out in the world. It's going
to like blow people's minds, and you want to be
you want to be excited and think that maybe it
(27:25):
could go wrong, you know. I mean, even that is
kind of an interesting feeling. I guess I'm not supposed
to say that on the podcast, but that's kind of
an interesting feeling too, you know, just that it's going
to make a difference, that people are going to notice it.
I think that's just so exciting when it happens. And
that's that's vandalism to me. And I think you got
to have a little bit of that spirit or else
(27:46):
you you don't have courage, then you need you need
to have you need to have courage and a little
bit of courage comes from naughtiness.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
I think, Kerry, do you resonate with that, Oh yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
David has too like the idea of doing something that
what I like to think of it as is it
feels like we're getting away with something, you know, like
you're you feel like there's something that is like not
allowed about what you're doing, or like similarly, like just
no one's ever done this, so like can we pull
it off?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
That's the thing. No one's ever done it, whatever it is,
you know, and it's just a wonderful feeling to go.
Nobody's ever done this. My peers will see it, my
friends will see it, the world will see it, and
it will make a difference whatever it's for, you know,
if it's if it's for clean air, great, if it's
for not smoking great, If it's for you know, selling
(28:38):
sports cars great. I mean, I I just love that feeling.
You know, it's a It's an amazing thing.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Jeff, Your your Hall of Fame speech was fun, It
was funny, it was moving, but was most perhaps memorable,
was using that moment to call on the industry and
clients to properly value and bill for creative is this
part of the legacy you want to leave the industry
and the legacy you want to leave up and coming creatives.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Well as creative as we need to earn this a
little bit too, you know, we need to be worth
the money. But at the same time, I think that
clients in the industry in general is spending way too
much time devaluing it and trying to get along without
it and creativity, you know, I think I quoted my
old boss hal Rhine, who said, you know, every department
(29:30):
in this building makes a difference, but only the creative
department can turn one dollar into twenty. That's what he
said to me, And I thought, that's a great quote.
I've used that one a lot, and I do believe
it's true, you know. It is. It's kind of like
the Department of Hope and Ambition, you know, and if
you do it right, it really can turn one dollar
(29:51):
into twenty. And so I'm just asking the world to
find a way to properly value it and pay for it.
And I think that the world right now is finding
our in ways to not pay for it and not
value it and try to get along without it. And frankly,
this is very selfish. I think that a lot of
the fun and interest of our business comes from value
(30:12):
and creativity and having people at Karen come into the business.
And if we don't value it and clients don't value it,
it will very shortly become a commoditized especially with AI around,
it will get commoditized, and we can't let that happen.
I guess that's my speech, but you know that's kind
of what I was getting at.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah, I mean, you had the room really quiet in
that moment. I know you're apologizing to your account people.
I was in the audience for your Hall of Fame speech.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
I was given this speech. I was just imagining the
people at my table going, look, where's this going.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Well, it struck a chord and for the first time
ever in the Hall of Achievement, as part of Karen's class,
we're inducting you know, a woman who she she's a lawyer.
She's looking at contracts because the contract has become so
important to the lifeblood of our business. The MSA, the
(31:12):
ms as the uh. You know it's so that that.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Tracks absolutely agree. I'm glad to hear that.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Karen. Why is it so hard to do great work
in this industry has it become harder? Does that resonate
with you at all?
Speaker 3 (31:29):
I do think the you were mentioning, Jeff, like your
friends are going to see it, your kids are going
to see it. Like the idea that everyone sees it
is so different now and the way that it's fragmented
is changing the work, I think, sometimes for the better,
sometimes for the worst. I had to do a like
(31:49):
a just influencer driven thing recently, and Jeff, I didn't
know like how to Like I'm so conceptually built as
a creative, Like it's like very hard to translate into
if you're just doing influencer work, like how to get
like a creative hit off? The influencer concept is like
such a foreign I need to dwell on that more.
(32:10):
It's so Yeah, the media landscape is like changing. I
think the way the creative coming to life, this idea
of the commodity of creativity. It sort of alluding to
AI probably in my mind, Like I'm actually very excited
about the possibilities there, the tools and especially some of
the video things that are coming out, Like I think
(32:33):
there's a lot of potential. I mean, it could go
really wrong and it could be really boring and a
lot more dry work in the world. But I actually
also believe in the upside, which is that creatives find
more tools and ways to express and the work maybe
gets even more interesting and better in certain ways. But
the question you asked about sort of is it getting harder?
(32:54):
I would say probably, Jeff, I'd be very curious your reaction.
But like clients, people brand side probably have the same anxieties.
It's probably just like the same anxieties through the decades
as ever, which is just like who's going to be brave,
who's going to take the risks to who's not? You know,
it's still like you have to have the guts to
(33:15):
not be a wallflower to succeed.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
You know, well, you need a handful of people that
take that risk to make the other to kind of
shame the other people into doing it too, and show
that it can be successful, because if you don't have that,
then it doesn't happen. And I think what you're saying
about media is so true. I mean, it's very hard
to imagine something that you can get into a cab,
(33:40):
as I often say, and start talking to the person
and have the cab driver go, holy shit, you did
that you got milk or you shitting me, you didn't
really write got milk. I mean there was a time
when and now that's that kind of notoriety is kind
of rare. We're more often doing the kind of thing
that Karen's talking about, where we're trying to like, you know,
(34:01):
get into the get into the house through lots of
little lots of little openings, you know, going underneath the
doors and coming in the windows when they're left open
and so on. And it's a it's a kind of
a different world, but it's fun. It's fun to figure
it out, you know. I mean so true, it's going
to get changed. We've been experimenting I can't tell you
(34:24):
with whom with a text to video product, and it's
it's not good yet what Karen was saying. It's luckily
it doesn't really work yet, but it will eventually and
it will be able to do crazy stuff like you know,
there's a conversation the film of a conversation between Christina
(34:45):
and Karen in English, and we want that to be
in Russian. While we just say, sample their voices, put
it into Russian, and then make their mouths move in Russian.
And this thing will do that. It's crazy. So so
a lot of shit is going to happen that we
don't know expect.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Oh my god, Jeff, I think we're going to remember
you for two words promoting people, but also got bilk. Yeah,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
I hope it's more promoting people.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
This podcast series is called Future Legends of Advertising. Karen
will be inducted into the Advertising Hall of Achievement for
her incredible impact on advertising so far as a recent
inductee into the Hall of Fame. Jeff, what advice can
you give Karen regarding the legacy she is crafting and creating?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
You know, pass it along. I know it sounds like
she's doing that, you know. I mean, it's funny. We
did a crazy thing at my company. We had somebody
come in and actually do it, do an assessment of
the partners. So this woman came in, interviewed people around me,
talk to me and so on, and she's she had
(36:00):
a great idea. She said, you need to formalize a
mentoring program. So pick four people every month and I've
done this and do an hour a week with them
and they can ask you anything and you can tell
them anything. So they get basically four hours with you
and then you pick four more than next month. And
that sounds like what difference would that make? But I
(36:21):
have learned so much from it and had such fun
doing it, and you know, that's what I would say,
is pass it. Pass it along to other people. You
know they'll be inspired by you and crazy way, and
you will get more out of it than they do. Frankly,
don't tell them that, but that's true.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
The Boys and Girls Club came to us at Done
two and they had the suspicion that mentorship has become
a lost art and they wanted us to be able
to spark that again, especially post COVID. So you're exactly
right about how simple and easy it is to mentor
people and how it can change the trajectory of life
(36:58):
and careers. And it's a responsibility. If you've achieved greatness,
you've got to rise up and reach back. Karen, Jeff
told us he's most inspired by the generation coming behind him.
You are inheriting. You are very much inheriting that. So
I'm going to give you the final word to close
us out.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Well, I'm very honored to have to be getting the
Hall of Achievement and to get to talk to Jeff
and you know, he's always been a Hall of Famer
in my book, And yeah, I'm just really excited. I mean,
I think the just from my point of view, the
potential for just because not to be cliche, but like
(37:43):
all the crises kind of led her up to the
climate crisis to in some ways and creativity. There's this
great quote from John Marshall from Potential Energy where he said,
extraordinary crises need extraordinary creativity. I think any creatives that
are you know, have an ounce of interest in this,
(38:04):
in this issue. I think if we could all learn
about it and be fluent in it, we could we could,
like Trojan Horse so much across our like, we're just
in a position to really impact things. Advertising specifically is
like one of the fastest cultural levers you can pull.
You know, there's obviously, you know, broader, longer term things,
(38:25):
but we're in a bit of a game of time
right now in the climate context at least. So that's
just sort of a shout out to anybody listening who
might be interested in learning more about the issue, and
I would just encourage them to do that and to
proactively bring it up in any context you can, whether
you're a strategist or creative or a media person. There's
(38:45):
like they're the good and bad thing about the problem
is that it's everywhere, in every context, and there's so
many things you can do.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Well. Karen and Jeff, thank you.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Thanks. That was fun. It was great to see Karen here,
so good to see your Jeff.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Thank you. Christina.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
I'm Christina Pyle. Thank you for listening. We'll be back
with another episode before you know it. And for more
information on the American Advertising Federation, go to AAF dot org.
Hello, Welcome to season three of the Future Legends of
Advertising podcast on iHeart, featuring the hottest up and coming
stars and advertising as well as the biggest legends in
the game. In this series, we explore the future of
the advertising industry through never before heard conversations between those
who created it and those who are shaping its future.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I'm your host Tim Natividad.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And I'm your host Christina Pile.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And with that, let's meet the legends. Welcome well.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Full disclosure in preparation for this season of Future Legends
of Advertising, I being season two with host Ross and Haley.
If you have not listened, it's actually worth going back
to take a listen. There's phenomenal episodes with legends and
luminaries like Bob Pittman. At iHeart, there's Tammy and at
the NBA there's legendary Roy Spence at GSDNM and NBA
(01:05):
superstar and sweetheart Chris Paul. Shout out to Ross and
Haley for building this platform and passing the mic. So
my co host Tim and I have this exciting task
of pairing future legends with living legends, and then we
jockey and we fight it out for who gets to
interview whom Well I won this interview. I wanted to
(01:27):
be in the presence of two creatives by craft with
decades of experience, heart for this industry, and two leaders
who see a bigger purpose for creativity. Today we have
Karen and Jeff together. I'm so excited to be talking
to Karen land Short, the global executive director of Sustainability
(01:48):
and manager director Atic Center Song. Karen has spent the
last two decades building a career as a creative leader
dedicated to building brands of influence through purpose driven creativity
and innovation. Her mission is to make sustainability relevant and
actionable for everyone. She's used her creativity for good for
countless companies and renowned brands like under Armour, Meta Prudential, Chabani,
(02:10):
and also major nonprofits the United Nations Foundation, the Clinton Foundation,
the National Women's Law Center. This is just to name
a few. Karen may have Short in her name, but
she has racked up a long list of accolades for
her work, with recognition from The Clos, The Webbies, The
One Show, The Fies, the Art Director's Club, and naturally,
(02:33):
of course kan Lyon with multiple Titanium Alliance and the
first ever Glass Lion. Again, I'm just naming a few
we don't have all day, folks. Karen is an alumni
of the University of Virginia and I'm extremely proud to
say is a two thousand and six winner of the
af National Student Advertising Competition. Talk about a full circle
(02:55):
career moment for Karen. Karen, welcome to the pod.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Thank you, Thank you, it really is. It feels great.
It's good to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah. And also congratulations on being inducted in November into
the Advertising Hall of Achievement. You had like a major endorsement,
a very cool video from David Droga.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yes, I was grateful for that.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Do you remember can we go back do you remember
to two thousand and six the National Student Advertising Competition,
Like who was your client? Do you remember any of
the details?
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, I could tell you so many things. The client
was not I think I think it was a bit
of an outlier because it wasn't like a well known brand.
It was Postal Vault, which was a security mail like
a mailbox company, A riveting very yeah, and we did.
We have we have a program at the University of
Virginia that just focuses on that competition and I it
(03:45):
has the best teacher, had the best teacher, Jack Lindgren,
and so he organized us as if we were an
agency and I got to play creative director. And it
really was like the first time I ever flexed the
muscle that is now my career was really fun. I
had a fantastic time.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, I remember my year we had the Coca Cola company,
fun client, but my team didn't get nearly as far
as yours dead, so congratulations.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Thank you. If we did go to Nationals and one
in San Francisco, and that was when me and a
couple of my teammates went to first visit Goodbie Silverstein.
It was like the biggest deal ever.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
So fun. We're going to talk about so many full
circle moments in this recording. Well, while we certainly give
a lot of credit to the AAF for launching Karen
into this creative space, we must also give a lot
of credit to our second guests for launching her agency career.
Karen spent the first few years in the industry at
Goodbye Silverstein and Partners. I'm so excited to welcome their
(04:42):
co chairman, mister Jeff Goodbye himself. Jeff has brought humanity
and grace to the questionable art of advertising, overseeing countless
widely imitated and influential campaigns that spawned an unprecedented number
of award winning agencies, production companies, writers, artists, musicians. I'm
(05:02):
sensing a theme here, and of course I got a
list for Jeff too. Think about ads like got Milk
or bud wise er. I love this game for the
bold and sega. I don't think we need any sort
of explanation for any of those taglines as they continue
(05:25):
to this day to cross generations of our mainstream culture.
Jeff takes pride in his work and his team's work
being so influential and appreciated that you quote the cab
driver knows your work. Jeff has this rare ability to
see the truth and capture it in a few words,
and then it becomes this like feature length movie story.
(05:46):
That's a quote from Rich Silverstein. It's quite clear to
see why Jeff was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame. Jeff,
thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Christine. I can't believe that you're so spontaneous with that introduction.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
There's no few cards here. I'm just looking at you
and remembering the full length of your career.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, that was awesome thing.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I could have done that for memory.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Thank you, Jeff.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Do you remember Karen during those years ago?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I told her, I told her I do remember her
there and yeah, and I'm sorry that we didn't have
more time together, although it sounds like she's been doing okay.
You know.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah, but the people, like just the people that were
there when I was there, it was amazing. I got
to hang out with you and Rich a little bit.
But I was telling them that I've I'm in touch
with like fifty plus people that I worked with. Good Bee.
It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
I've been so lucky to work with people like you,
and you know, it's been It's made all the difference.
I mean, I'm like Christina was saying, people have gone
on to do amazing things after this, and you know,
I can't even begin to list the people as Karen
knows there, they're just at the top of agencies everywhere.
(07:06):
I have to deal with them all the time as
competitors now, which pisses and yeah, what kind of reward
is that. No, it's really a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Well, Careen, you were there from two thousand and eight
to twenty twelve. That wasn't by any means easy time
in the industry, with the backdrop of the global financial crisis.
Can you kind of paint the picture of what it
felt like back then, both of you? Please?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Oh well, I mean, obviously GSP has had like decades
and decades of wonderful work. But I felt like when
I was there, like it was like when I was
a junior creative. I went to can and I got
to go on stage with you guys to win Digital
Agency of the Year. It was just like so much
good work was happening while I was there. It was
like a heyday and just amazing people like Margaret Johnson
was definitely someone I fit into a lot, and like
(07:57):
Ricket Hunter and has and Jamie Barrett. There were just
so many, like Steve Simpson was it was amazing. It's
just like this incredible flow of amazing talent and great work.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, I'm so glad that that was happening, and it
was it was not an easy time to do good work.
I remember we kind of made our minds up to
go into to be really strong at digital and you
guys did it, you know, and we were almost immediately
Digital Agency of the Year, which was incredible. Yeah, because
we were like babies at that point and we just
(08:34):
went we're going to do this, and it was amazing.
I'm saying to.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Rito's Hotel sixty six was like one of the first
things I worked on. It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
And you know the other thing about that era, two
thousand and eight, we were doing the Hyundai account and
that was that was the most indicative of the era
to me because cars, the car business just went in
the toilet. Nobody could sell a car, and we started
working for Hyundai won the Hyundai pitch was like worst
car in the world at the time, terrible reputation, terrible reputation.
(09:07):
A guy in a in a focus group said, there
they there. There are ship boxes made in in in
sheds in Seoul. That's what I remember him saying. Nice breath,
that's the breath. So we actually took this is an
interesting story. We took the Hyundai logo and put it
(09:27):
on a Mercedes. We put a BMW logo on the
Mercedes and so on, and looked to see like which
one actually brought the value of the car up or down?
In the Hyundaid logo actually brought the car down below?
What down below? No logo? Okay, so Hyundai actually made
(09:49):
it worse than no logo whatsoever, even though it was
a brand new Mercedes. Would you know, unidentify belowgo? And
so we started a campaign for them where we didn't
put a logo it the end of the work. Do
you remember that, Karen. We didn't put any logo at
the end, and again we just put the words think
about it at the end of the campaign and it
would say, you know what if there was a car
that did this and had this kind of a warranty,
(10:11):
think about it. And after a month or two of
running it with no logo, we finally put a logo
at the end and people were like, wow, it's a
Hundai campaign. Luckily, they were making better cars at that point,
and so we kept doing think about It. The cars
got better and their sale numbers actually went up at
a time when everybody else was going down. We're like
(10:32):
on national news one night. It was amazing. I think
that was the greatest triumph of that period because cars
were dead. Cars are dead. Well.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
I love the common threads developing here, and another common
thread that you both share is serving humanity through creative work,
and I'd love to hear from each of you about
the why behind that.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Go ahead your resume, Karen is so full of It's like,
it's such a gen x to me. You need to
have an you need an oil company in there somewhere.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
It's so funny because it's like such a selfish It's like, Jeff,
I only been at GSP and Drogo five, like and
I'm still a drogod etceuch A song, like I'm such
a monogamous person. I've only been in those two contexts
in my whole career, and in both choices. Thank you.
I agree in both contexts. I was just like trying
to like like collect like acorns, like all the really
(11:30):
the stuff that I felt like was gonna be impactful
in the world. And I guess just that it feels selfish,
as like it makes me feel good, but also I do,
I like, I feel really grateful to be decent at
what I do. And if you're good, if you put
out good stuff in the world, you can make an impact,
Like you can really get exposure, you can really make
awareness a lot bigger than a lot of other platforms.
(11:54):
So I'm just sort of like wanting to to like
put my tools to work for whatever can can be
impactful in the world, and I I have sort of
strong armed my way into a lot of projects, Like
Jeff I was, I was reminiscing on, like I think
American rivers. I don't, I'd be shocked if you remember this,
but me and Ronnie Northrop were doing American rivers like
(12:14):
Nat Lawler, and that was one of the first things
where it was like this cool thing where you could
like draw your roof and then like find the impact
of your economic savings and how you can help rain
run off and if.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You changed yeah, if you changed the roof, yeah, and you.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Could send a note to Obama.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
That was like the beginning where I was like, there's
stuff like this I can do and then well and
also specifically sustainability. I worked with this group, Potential Energy
Coalition about eight years ago and got talked to by
this Harvard professor about how bad the climate crisis was,
so that that was like a turning point where I
(12:56):
started paying attention I think a little earlier than some
of the mainstream media. And so that's why I've been
kind of angling with David.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
But do clients still care about good. I mean, where
the industry is obsessed with growth, our clients are obsessed
with growth, they have unusual pressures on them. Is there
is there room for good and growth? Does this work?
You know? Do we do this work from our heart
or do we do this work to move units?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
I can speak specifically to sustainability now because it's become
just in the last few years, like very prominent of
an issue for businesses, and it's to their detriment if
they don't move on it. It will be more costly
if they don't. So there's a great sort of coalescing
of what's in the interest of businesses and what's in
the interest of the planet on that topic specifically right now.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, Jeff, I'd love to know more about you have this,
You and Rich have this kind of saying about art
serving capitalism, and we don't have to touch it here,
but I'd love to know more about that kind of
that concept, know that craft.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I mean, building on what Karen was saying, I think
that even accounts that are not specifically trying hard to
do good actually do a certain amount of good. Because
I've always thought of corporate America as or advertising in general,
as a sort of paid way of exploring the human psyche,
you know, I mean, because we have to figure out
(14:23):
like what people find beautiful, what they find scary, what
they find repulsive, what they'll support in the world. And
you know, we learn that basically in a corporate funded endeavor,
and we might be selling cookies, but we might also
be doing something about climate change in educating people, and
(14:44):
we learn about them as we do. So, so I
feel sort of positive about a lot of the work
that we do that's not specifically for good. Obviously, we
do a lot of things for good. Lately, I've been
really proud of one that started us called not a Gun,
and it was done for maybe maybe you saw this.
It was done for our courageous conversations, and it basically
(15:05):
talked about how, you know, often black people are are
misidentified as carrying guns when they're actually carrying a wallet
or a can of soda or something. And and the
most the most prominent and affecting image was just the uh,
the art director who's black photographed his hand like holding
a wallet, holding a cell phone, holding holding a candy bar,
(15:29):
things that it actually real in the real world been
misidentified as guns and put the headline not a gun
on it and said, you know, black people are I
think it was like sixteen times more liable to be
misidentified as carrying a gun when they're not carrying a gun.
And and in fact they're even less likely to be
(15:50):
carrying a gun than white people in many many cases,
if I remember right. Anyhow, we did that. We did
something recently called driving while Black. That was an interesting creator.
It was like a yeah, it was like a digital
car that we made believe was real, but it was
actually made so that a black person, if stopped by
a policeman, would be safe. So it had no love compartments,
(16:13):
so they couldn't look like they were reaching for something.
Their information would come up immediately on the driver's side window.
You know. It had tail lights that would fix themselves
so that they wouldn't get stopped for that. You know,
it's like it was like a crazy idea, but it
dramatized a real problem and real so things like that.
You know, we continue to do them, caring those weeks
(16:35):
to do them when she was there, we continue to
do them, and we're very proud of them.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
And Caaren, when did you make this pivot? Because it's
not it's a it's a big pivot from working, you know,
as a creative director and pivoting into sustainability and running
a running a whole group. I'd love to know was
this early on did you always know? Was this a
sudden aha moment and you had to chase it down?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
I mean, i'd definitely been like a bit at GSPN
then definitely in my few years into Droga I Drouga five,
I started sort of noticeably grabbing all the stuff that
was under different efforts, like a lot of gender issues
and like sort of community driven issues and youth issues
(17:21):
I got to work on. But yeah, there was the
potential energy Coalition project that I mentioned eight years ago.
Really was a turning point, but I didn't really know
what to do with it until to be honest, like
I sort of wrote the coat tails of David Droga
moving from Droga five to Accenture Interactive, which is now
Accenter Song. So I sort of was trying to grab
that in the context of sustainability, and I now am
(17:44):
you know, connected to all these like sustainability consultants of
every kind and like makers that are experts in like
tech that's sustainable and so there's like this crazy cross
section of expertises that I get to be in. It's
a very like unique situation at Accenter Song. It's sort
of hard to do an elevator pitch on.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
But yeah, I mean you brought You also broaden our
like kind of aperture of what sustainability is with a
lot of your impact work National Women's Law Center. You
did some advocacy work for the Asian community with an
uptick for aa P. I hate you've done some campaigns
for ad color. So I love that you broaden the
(18:22):
definition of sustainability.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah, when I say standard, I should say that it's
a climate, but it's also equity and healthy or that's
sort of it's like an umbrella term.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I want to stay with you. It's safe to say,
Karen that Jeff was one of your inspirations early on,
and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you
had I mean maybe maybe.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Oh no, give her a chance.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Jeff, do you remember I think I pained you this?
But do you remember when I when I was creepy
on an airplane with you, I was like, I was
like a stalker. Do you remember that?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, you made me look at your book I did.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
I gave my book I had it was not I wasn't.
I didn't buy the ticket to stock you. But I
just happened to be on an airplane with you when
I was out of ad school and had my book
on a thumb drive, and I asked a flight attendant
to walk it up to him in first class and
give it to him with this note, and he read
it and then came back to me and said the
sweetest stuff. Oh yeah, I've always laugh.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Because if I'm feel happy about that, I feel like if.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
I'd done that to Rich, it would have been like
a different story.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
No. No, he likes that actually too. And you know,
I was a wonderful thing to have to have people
connect that way, you know, just by chance. I was
on the BART train going to the final A's game
at the Colisseum the other day with Rich Riches. I
think he'd never been on a BART train in his life.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I think he was scared.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Humbling experience.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
But this guy comes up to us just upper pos of.
This guy comes up to us and says, I saw
your masterclass. The two of you nice, It's amazing, It's
a what a wonderful thing. So we ended up talking
to him, same kind of story. He didn't ask for
a job, he just wanted to talk.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
It was.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
It was just a wonderful, warming thing. It's very blessed
like that, Karen, very blessed.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
And you and Rich are the only agency leaders to
do a masterclass.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
They were the only ones dumb enough to do it.
That's no, you know what. It was really fun. It
was really fun to do. And I told Rich, you know,
we really need to plan this thing out. Karen will
connect with this. We really need to plan this thing out,
figure out we're going to say. He's like, no, I
don't want I don't I want to be really spontaneous.
I said, no, that'll suck. We cannot be really spontaneous.
(20:38):
So I made a little outline just to try to
corral him in a little bit. You know, but it
was fun.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
We love extemporaneous. Jeff, Who inspires you? And what does
it mean to you to be an inspiration to so
many people in the industry.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
You know, somebody asked me who my mentors are, and
I actually think my mentors are people like Karen. You
know that that worked with me and taught me what
it's like to be fresh and young and and you know,
have have a first take on the world. That's so
important to have and and you know, I mean I
try to continue that and try to learn things. I'm
(21:17):
learning a lot about AI. You know, I've learned I've
taught myself like mid Journey and chat GBT, and I
mean I try to stay fresh. But only through the
eyes of other people can I truly be that way.
So I mean, that's that's the truth. I get much
more inspired by working with people younger than I am
(21:39):
than with which for.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Instance, it has been like I do think DSP did
like you. There's a way of hiring that is unique,
like you know, hiring Jelly Donut and like letting little
Dicky figure out his voice. Like there's just a lot
of sort of non traditional.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Little Dicky was an amazing story because he was an
account guy. First.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
He was one of the worst account guys I've ever worked.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
We can edit that out if you want me to,
we can edit that out.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
No, No, he would say that. Yeah, David would like that.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Like that. Yeah. I remember going downstairs and for some
reason we had we had were doing something and somebody
asked Little Dicky too to uh David to wrap something
and he was in the in the studio wrapping the
things and I'm like, holy shit, who is this guy? Oh?
He's an account guy? Like what?
Speaker 3 (22:36):
And then and then like I think it was Jamie
mostly like took him under his wing and like helped
him learn how to be a copywriter. And it was
really kind of a beautiful story.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think back in the day to
be taken seriously in advertising, you had to have this
outside hobby or interest, Like the the interview is like
half about maybe your capability and half about your personal life.
It's like what else is going on? What else? What
other crafts can you do? And it did. It made
(23:05):
the industry really fun.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
I remember Steve Simpson, whom Karen knows, telling a story
about how he's interviewing with Andy Berlin, who was one
of the original partners here. And you remember that Andy
like looked out the window and said, do you believe
in God?
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Like?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Yeah, interviews trying to get carried away, Christine, that's right, My.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Goodness, Karen, who else inspires you? You've had, You've worked
and learned under some of the biggest names in our Industry's.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, one of the things, like I tell younger creatives
is to find that people doing doing the work you
love and then go ask them for a job. Because
I did that liked with Jeff and Rich and then
I did it with David. I you know, it was
just like following the work and finding out. I feel
like it might even be harder now to like figure
out who's doing what it's like less public, but that's
that's what I've so, I've been really lucky to be
(24:00):
multiple decades under people that I like are my top
people basically. But I there's obviously a lot happening, you
know now that I'm so climate like climate sustainability focused,
there's a lot happening in the broader kind of NGO
space that I think is really interesting. And I'm now
sort of fanning out on innovations and you know, more
(24:22):
like tech tech things versus like big brand advertising, which
yeahs sort of like morphing a little bit.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Do you count David Drogads one of those inspirations because
he does you, Oh yeah, he does you.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
I mean it's been it's been like thirteen years now
with David. Since since I was with you guys, Jeff,
I've basically just been learning under him, and he's you know,
he's like the real stuff. He's like just one of
the every time you talk to him, you're like, of course,
that's that's like your your take is right. He's just
always so like and Jeff, I feel like you guys too,
you're just like so in tune with your humanity and
(24:56):
your like gut that there's always like a solid to
the advice that you guys give.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Thank you. So that's been.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Obviously just very special. I feel very lucky.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
David is terrific. He's a realist too, which I like
a lot about him, you know. I mean I've known
him since you started in Australia and you know, and
he's been very realistic. Things have worked, things that haven't worked,
and he's he admits it. And he's again like we are,
I think, very appreciative of the people around us and
(25:28):
what they've contributed to our lives. And David be the
first one to say that. And he's terrific like that.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
He's such an optimist. He's like just insanely optimistic.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Have to be optimistic in this business. Yeah, so much
about rejection, It's so much about people like not agreeing
with you or frowning when you show them something. You know,
I've told creative people, if you can't deal with rejection,
you're in the wrong business, because you know, the first
thing you do is you think of something, you tell
your partner about it. She says, know that sucks, and
(26:01):
you know, but maybe you get it through her, and
so you make something. You take it to the creative director.
He says it sucks. Then you take it to the client.
They say it sucks. And then you make it. You're
lucky enough to make it, and then your kids say
it sucks. That's the worst.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
I haven't had that yet.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
So I say, I tell him, you just have to
be ready for that chain of rejection and still come
back and do it again.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
You know, it's such a massive, such a massive thing.
You're so right.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
This is like a little left field, Jeff. But I've
got you on it. I've got you on an interview,
so I'd love for you to tell us more about
the connection between great advertising and vandalism.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah, this is unfortunate because it's like something that happened,
you know, with me growing up in Providence around around
some of the wrong people. But and we never did
anything really bad. You know, we would smash pumpkins and
wax windows and do things that people would find so
but what I liked about it was it would be
(27:03):
exciting to see it. The next day you'd walk by
somebody's house in the pumpkin would be all smashed against
their front door, and and it was kind of exciting
and naughty. And that's that's the feeling I think you
want from great advertising. You want that feeling of like,
wait till this gets out in the world. It's going
to like blow people's minds, and you want to be
you want to be excited and think that maybe it
(27:25):
could go wrong, you know. I mean, even that is
kind of an interesting feeling. I guess I'm not supposed
to say that on the podcast, but that's kind of
an interesting feeling too, you know, just that it's going
to make a difference, that people are going to notice it.
I think that's just so exciting when it happens. And
that's that's vandalism to me. And I think you got
to have a little bit of that spirit or else
(27:46):
you you don't have courage, then you need you need
to have you need to have courage and a little
bit of courage comes from naughtiness.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
I think, Kerry, do you resonate with that, Oh yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
David has too like the idea of doing something that
what I like to think of it as is it
feels like we're getting away with something, you know, like
you're you feel like there's something that is like not
allowed about what you're doing, or like similarly, like just
no one's ever done this, so like can we pull
it off?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
That's the thing. No one's ever done it, whatever it is,
you know, and it's just a wonderful feeling to go.
Nobody's ever done this. My peers will see it, my
friends will see it, the world will see it, and
it will make a difference whatever it's for, you know,
if it's if it's for clean air, great, if it's
for not smoking great, If it's for you know, selling
(28:38):
sports cars great. I mean, I I just love that feeling.
You know, it's a It's an amazing thing.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Jeff, Your your Hall of Fame speech was fun, It
was funny, it was moving, but was most perhaps memorable,
was using that moment to call on the industry and
clients to properly value and bill for creative is this
part of the legacy you want to leave the industry
and the legacy you want to leave up and coming creatives.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Well as creative as we need to earn this a
little bit too, you know, we need to be worth
the money. But at the same time, I think that
clients in the industry in general is spending way too
much time devaluing it and trying to get along without
it and creativity, you know, I think I quoted my
old boss hal Rhine, who said, you know, every department
(29:30):
in this building makes a difference, but only the creative
department can turn one dollar into twenty. That's what he
said to me, And I thought, that's a great quote.
I've used that one a lot, and I do believe
it's true, you know. It is. It's kind of like
the Department of Hope and Ambition, you know, and if
you do it right, it really can turn one dollar
(29:51):
into twenty. And so I'm just asking the world to
find a way to properly value it and pay for it.
And I think that the world right now is finding
our in ways to not pay for it and not
value it and try to get along without it. And frankly,
this is very selfish. I think that a lot of
the fun and interest of our business comes from value
(30:12):
and creativity and having people at Karen come into the business.
And if we don't value it and clients don't value it,
it will very shortly become a commoditized especially with AI around,
it will get commoditized, and we can't let that happen.
I guess that's my speech, but you know that's kind
of what I was getting at.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah, I mean, you had the room really quiet in
that moment. I know you're apologizing to your account people.
I was in the audience for your Hall of Fame speech.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
I was given this speech. I was just imagining the
people at my table going, look, where's this going.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Well, it struck a chord and for the first time
ever in the Hall of Achievement, as part of Karen's class,
we're inducting you know, a woman who she she's a lawyer.
She's looking at contracts because the contract has become so
important to the lifeblood of our business. The MSA, the
(31:12):
ms as the uh. You know it's so that that.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Tracks absolutely agree. I'm glad to hear that.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Karen. Why is it so hard to do great work
in this industry has it become harder? Does that resonate
with you at all?
Speaker 3 (31:29):
I do think the you were mentioning, Jeff, like your
friends are going to see it, your kids are going
to see it. Like the idea that everyone sees it
is so different now and the way that it's fragmented
is changing the work, I think, sometimes for the better,
sometimes for the worst. I had to do a like
(31:49):
a just influencer driven thing recently, and Jeff, I didn't
know like how to Like I'm so conceptually built as
a creative, Like it's like very hard to translate into
if you're just doing influencer work, like how to get
like a creative hit off? The influencer concept is like
such a foreign I need to dwell on that more.
(32:10):
It's so Yeah, the media landscape is like changing. I
think the way the creative coming to life, this idea
of the commodity of creativity. It sort of alluding to
AI probably in my mind, Like I'm actually very excited
about the possibilities there, the tools and especially some of
the video things that are coming out, Like I think
(32:33):
there's a lot of potential. I mean, it could go
really wrong and it could be really boring and a
lot more dry work in the world. But I actually
also believe in the upside, which is that creatives find
more tools and ways to express and the work maybe
gets even more interesting and better in certain ways. But
the question you asked about sort of is it getting harder?
(32:54):
I would say probably, Jeff, I'd be very curious your reaction.
But like clients, people brand side probably have the same anxieties.
It's probably just like the same anxieties through the decades
as ever, which is just like who's going to be brave,
who's going to take the risks to who's not? You know,
it's still like you have to have the guts to
(33:15):
not be a wallflower to succeed.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
You know, well, you need a handful of people that
take that risk to make the other to kind of
shame the other people into doing it too, and show
that it can be successful, because if you don't have that,
then it doesn't happen. And I think what you're saying
about media is so true. I mean, it's very hard
to imagine something that you can get into a cab,
(33:40):
as I often say, and start talking to the person
and have the cab driver go, holy shit, you did
that you got milk or you shitting me, you didn't
really write got milk. I mean there was a time
when and now that's that kind of notoriety is kind
of rare. We're more often doing the kind of thing
that Karen's talking about, where we're trying to like, you know,
(34:01):
get into the get into the house through lots of
little lots of little openings, you know, going underneath the
doors and coming in the windows when they're left open
and so on. And it's a it's a kind of
a different world, but it's fun. It's fun to figure
it out, you know. I mean so true, it's going
to get changed. We've been experimenting I can't tell you
(34:24):
with whom with a text to video product, and it's
it's not good yet what Karen was saying. It's luckily
it doesn't really work yet, but it will eventually and
it will be able to do crazy stuff like you know,
there's a conversation the film of a conversation between Christina
(34:45):
and Karen in English, and we want that to be
in Russian. While we just say, sample their voices, put
it into Russian, and then make their mouths move in Russian.
And this thing will do that. It's crazy. So so
a lot of shit is going to happen that we
don't know expect.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Oh my god, Jeff, I think we're going to remember
you for two words promoting people, but also got bilk. Yeah,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
I hope it's more promoting people.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
This podcast series is called Future Legends of Advertising. Karen
will be inducted into the Advertising Hall of Achievement for
her incredible impact on advertising so far as a recent
inductee into the Hall of Fame. Jeff, what advice can
you give Karen regarding the legacy she is crafting and creating?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
You know, pass it along. I know it sounds like
she's doing that, you know. I mean, it's funny. We
did a crazy thing at my company. We had somebody
come in and actually do it, do an assessment of
the partners. So this woman came in, interviewed people around me,
talk to me and so on, and she's she had
(36:00):
a great idea. She said, you need to formalize a
mentoring program. So pick four people every month and I've
done this and do an hour a week with them
and they can ask you anything and you can tell
them anything. So they get basically four hours with you
and then you pick four more than next month. And
that sounds like what difference would that make? But I
(36:21):
have learned so much from it and had such fun
doing it, and you know, that's what I would say,
is pass it. Pass it along to other people. You
know they'll be inspired by you and crazy way, and
you will get more out of it than they do. Frankly,
don't tell them that, but that's true.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
The Boys and Girls Club came to us at Done
two and they had the suspicion that mentorship has become
a lost art and they wanted us to be able
to spark that again, especially post COVID. So you're exactly
right about how simple and easy it is to mentor
people and how it can change the trajectory of life
(36:58):
and careers. And it's a responsibility. If you've achieved greatness,
you've got to rise up and reach back. Karen, Jeff
told us he's most inspired by the generation coming behind him.
You are inheriting. You are very much inheriting that. So
I'm going to give you the final word to close
us out.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Well, I'm very honored to have to be getting the
Hall of Achievement and to get to talk to Jeff
and you know, he's always been a Hall of Famer
in my book, And yeah, I'm just really excited. I mean,
I think the just from my point of view, the
potential for just because not to be cliche, but like
(37:43):
all the crises kind of led her up to the
climate crisis to in some ways and creativity. There's this
great quote from John Marshall from Potential Energy where he said,
extraordinary crises need extraordinary creativity. I think any creatives that
are you know, have an ounce of interest in this,
(38:04):
in this issue. I think if we could all learn
about it and be fluent in it, we could we could,
like Trojan Horse so much across our like, we're just
in a position to really impact things. Advertising specifically is
like one of the fastest cultural levers you can pull.
You know, there's obviously, you know, broader, longer term things,
(38:25):
but we're in a bit of a game of time
right now in the climate context at least. So that's
just sort of a shout out to anybody listening who
might be interested in learning more about the issue, and
I would just encourage them to do that and to
proactively bring it up in any context you can, whether
you're a strategist or creative or a media person. There's
(38:45):
like they're the good and bad thing about the problem
is that it's everywhere, in every context, and there's so
many things you can do.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Well. Karen and Jeff, thank you.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Thanks. That was fun. It was great to see Karen here,
so good to see your Jeff.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Thank you. Christina.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
I'm Christina Pyle. Thank you for listening. We'll be back
with another episode before you know it. And for more
information on the American Advertising Federation, go to AAF dot org.
Hosts And Creators
Ross Martin
Hayley Romer
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