March 20, 2025 • 42 mins
What does it take to go from scrappy startup to industry leader? Bill Koenigsberg, a Hall of Fame advertising legend, and Neil Waller, a rising star in the creator economy, sit down with Tim Natividad for a conversation about entrepreneurship, reinvention, and the evolving landscape of advertising. With candid insights, unexpected humor, and hard-earned wisdom, this episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to build something that lasts.
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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.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
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 3 (00:26):
I'm your host Tim Natividad.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
And I'm your host Christina Pile.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
And with that, let's meet the legends. Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
If you had asked a young Neil Waller at the
University of Bath in two thousand and three to predict
his future, he likely would have laughed at the idea
of a career in advertising. Yet shortly after he and
his best friend James Street cropped out of college, moved
to Spain and launched a travel website that attracted eighteen
(01:03):
million visitors annually. With a global franchise and nearly forty staff,
this venture marked the beginning of their partnership as serial entrepreneurs.
With nearly a dozen startups to their name, Neil and
James foresaw the rise of social media influencers and content creators,
positioning themselves at the forefront of this movement in twenty sixteen,
(01:27):
they launched Whaler, now Whaler Group, a global powerhouse in
the creator economy. Neil's early recognition of the value in
partnerships with social platforms and his ability to identify emerging
trends have made Whaler an essential bridge between creators, brands,
and platforms. Today, Neil's influence on the advertising industry is undeniable.
(01:50):
His induction into the Advertising Hall of Achievement is proof
that even he couldn't have predicted just how far his
vision would take him. Congratulations Neil on this well deserved honor.
Bill Koenigsberg founded Horizon Media in nineteen eighty nine, building
it into a world class data driven marketing organization over
(02:13):
the past thirty five years. Along the way, Horizon has
earned numerous accolades, including Media Agency of the Year, Best
Places to Work, and recognition as one of the most
innovative ad and marketing agencies in the world. Bill himself
has been celebrated for his vision and leadership. He's been
named an industry Legend by the Ad Club of New York,
(02:35):
included on Adweek's Powerless, and also honored as Media Executive
of the Year by Media Week. The four a's have
also named him Media Maven twice. His philanthropic contributions have
earned him the Riisenbach Foundations Distinguished Citizen Award, the National
Kidney Foundation's Visionary Leader Award, and City Harvest Star of
(02:56):
the City Award. As an entrepreneurial pioneer, Bill leads Horizons
oversight of an eight point five billion dollar client portfolio,
including brands like the NFL, Revlon, Capital One, A and
E Networks, and Paramount Global. Committed to advancing diversity and inclusivity,
Bill was rightfully inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame
(03:19):
in twenty nineteen. I'm very excited to have both Neil
at Whaler and the Bill Coningsberg together on this episode
of the Future Legends of Advertising. What I want to
set up here, Billy, Obviously, you've been an entrepreneur, You've
been running Horizon for a significant period of time. Now,
if you can kind of walk back down memory lane,
I think part of what's fascinating and exciting for someone
(03:41):
like Neil. Neil just not so long ago, a few
years ago, sought to build out what is now known
as as Whaler, which I think all of us know today,
but anyone who's built anything in advertising knows you have
to take some kind of risk, right, and so maybe
a good place to start for today's episode, can you
kind of walk through those early days of Horizon and
when you know the business was unknown, maybe your name
(04:02):
wasn't quite known, and maybe that might be reflective of
some of Neil's early chapters here at Whaler.
Speaker 5 (04:08):
God Tim First, thanks thanks for an the introduction in
we are going on thirty five years here at Horizon,
And if you think about where the world was thirty
five years ago versus where it was today, it's like
a different planet, a completely different planet. And I was
(04:29):
really lucky because I don't know about you, Neil, but
I was really really lucky because really early in life,
for some reason, I was born with the advertising gene.
I knew I wanted to go into advertising. I was
a TV junkie. I like loved watching commercials on TV.
It's fascinated by content. And you're really lucky if you
(04:54):
can find that. Very very early, and I was working
for a big communication company. They owned a little media agency.
Someone made a run at the company. They decided to
get rid of a lot of their ansilary businesses. They
wanted me at that time, back in nineteen eighty nine,
try to sell it to a Holt Co.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
In the early days of unbuddling.
Speaker 5 (05:15):
I said, I don't want to sell it to the
Holt cos I want to buy it. I was thirty
one years old. Except when problem don't have any money,
so they lent me the money thirteen million dollars. And
that's how I started Horizon back then. And for me,
I had three simple principles. Build an incredible culture, make
(05:36):
my clients love me every day, and build.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
An agency of belonging.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
And if I could do that, great people, great product,
great culture, there was no limit in terms of where
we could build the company. And by the way, those
mantras from thirty five years ago the same mantras that
I try to live by, which is quite interesting that
thirty five years later they're as as important as it
(06:06):
were thirty five years ago. And obviously the business has,
you know, completely transformed. And I guess the biggest thing
I've learned is the only thing that's predictable is unpredictability.
Every day is another change. Every day is another opportunity
to reinvent yourself. And if you don't do that, you're
(06:26):
not going to survive and you get run over and again.
You know, with Neil and his success and what he's done,
that that didn't exist thirty five years ago. So the
world really has morphed. And here we are today, thirty
five years later. It has not been a sprint. It's
been a long, long journey. And that journey, by the way,
(06:48):
is nowhere near over.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
You know, the marathon of marathons. I'm going to pull
on one thread there, Bill, which is one of your principles,
building an agency of belonging. Right as you say, now, Neil,
I'll flip this over to you. Obviously today you are
the co founder. You're the co CEO of Whaler Group. Now,
for those in the uninitiated, the Whaler Group is a
(07:11):
global creator company featuring an end to end creator ecosystem
of six unique companies that span a full service creator agency,
a three sixty talent management company, a physical campus as
well a home, a place for creators to develop content,
an innovative operating system, a studio as well as a
gaming offshoot as well. I gotta take a breath after
(07:33):
rattling that up. Now, going back to Bill's point, building
an agency of belonging, today, I think it's pretty easy
to say, hey, creator based marketing has a home in
our industry. My guess is, Neil, when you started, it
was probably a lot more difficult to establish that need,
that belonging for creators. And could you just talk a
little bit about what that experience was like and how
(07:55):
you chose to take on this mission at Whaler.
Speaker 6 (07:57):
It's a great question.
Speaker 7 (07:58):
Well, first of all, thank you very much Uch for
having me on. Thank you for your support in the
Hall of Achievement. Tim and Bill, it's an absolute honor
to get to speak with you on this podcast. It's
been an equally interesting journey, you know, so myself and
my co founder James, we actually dropped out of university
in two thousand and six and Waaler is the ninth
(08:19):
business we've started together, and so it's taking all these
different experiences. And it's interesting, Bill, because you said you
early knew on that you wanted to be a marketer.
I don't think we actually knew that we were marketers.
But in building businesses, if you can't communicate with audiences
and build relevance and community, then you don't really have
a business. And so what we worked out is that
(08:41):
we were marketers, and that we had a passion for
the marketing and communication landscape and tim as you said,
like when we started eight years ago, now, it.
Speaker 6 (08:50):
Was very early on in the creator economy.
Speaker 7 (08:53):
In fact, it wasn't called the creator economy, right, it
was called influencer marketing.
Speaker 6 (08:56):
It was this tactic.
Speaker 7 (08:58):
And actually at that time, five percent of the what
was then called influencers that we work with were not
full time.
Speaker 6 (09:05):
They had jobs.
Speaker 7 (09:05):
They were doing this in their spare time as like
passionate storytellers and community builders. And you know, it's difficult
because it's sort of it's one step at a time, right.
We always had this vision for all it could get to,
but we've just taken it one step at a time.
We don't really plan more than one year out at
a time, and I think it's difficult to do more
than that with the rapidly changing kind of technologies that
(09:28):
we have in front of us. What resonated though with
what Bill said is that we're very fortunate in the
earliest days of starting what was Whaler and is now
the Whaler Group to get in touch with Sir John
Heggerty from BBH and he distilled this mission.
Speaker 6 (09:43):
For us of liberating the creative voice.
Speaker 7 (09:46):
And it was kind of having a value and a
north star that we then judged everything against and set
ourselves on this kind of path for. And we've built
out other values on top.
Speaker 6 (09:56):
Of that since.
Speaker 7 (09:57):
But I think it was kind of having that one
resounding value and mission that kind of gave us this
ability to a keep going and be explain to others
the kind of higher mission of what we were trying
to achieve. And then honestly, it's just about trying to
do great work build a company the right way. I
think there's a dirty little secret in that there's a
(10:19):
very fine line between success and failure, and you dance
on it quite a lot. I think timing has a
hell of a lot to do with it. I'm always
I love this. There's this ted talk by a guy
called Bill Gross that founded a company called Idea's Lab.
I don't know if you've seen it, but he basically
did a study of thousands of companies and looked at
the ones that were successful and the.
Speaker 6 (10:39):
Ones that weren't.
Speaker 7 (10:40):
And his thesis was that the idea was the most
important thing. He called his company that was an investment vehicle,
Ideas Lab, and he judged on five criterias, so the idea,
the team, the timing, the business model, and the amount
of funding that the company had. In his research, timing
was fifty five percent of the criteria and team was
thirty two, so eighty seven percent of the criteria. Success
(11:03):
was timing and team, business model, funding, the right idea.
Those were kind of subsequent to it, and so I
think a great part of it was we were at
the right time and we've been able to build a
great team that navigated it.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
God. You know, Neil, you talk about timing and team.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
Our with this massive competitive advantage, with the space that
we built down here in Tribeca, incredible collaborative, beautiful offices.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
It was part of our culture.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
I knew when when talent came here they could feel
the energy. I knew when clients came here, they could
feel the innovation and inspiration happening. And then the freaking
volcano went off called COVID, blew up the entire cultural
ecosystem here we're on March fourteenth. When we left and
(11:55):
didn't come back from multiple years, you had to then
go rein event culture and belonging in a remote workforce
that is still in my opinion, a massive work in
progress in terms of how people want to work today
and talk about being thrown off your game, right to
(12:17):
talk about again unpredictability and change, and then how you
navigate twenty six hundred people from home and get them
motivated and inspired. You have to reinvent yourself all over again.
So it goes back to this unpredictability of the world
(12:37):
and trying to plan for the future. And as you said, Neil,
you don't plan more than once you're in advance. And
I don't blame you because you don't know where things
are going, and you've got to have that mindset.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
You've got to have that Maverick mindset of it's kind
of like.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
A soccer player or a tennis player or baseball player
getting ready for that next play and where it's going
to lead you. So you know that has completely transformed
you know, the population that's in the workforce today and
culture within companies as well.
Speaker 6 (13:15):
I love that.
Speaker 7 (13:16):
It also made me think I love this. I think
it was Barack Obama that this quote come from. Sometimes
fifty one percent certain has to be enough to make
a decision. You know, there is a range of decision
making probabilities from fifty one percent to one hundred, and
I do think one of the things entrepreneurial people are
quite good at is kind of navigating that range and
(13:36):
being able to take decisions when they're on that closer
to fifty percent end of the spectrum and move and
learn as well.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
One of the reality is as leaders, we have to
make a lot of decisions, maybe with not all the
information readily available at hand, So there's an element of
gut right and Neil, you mentioned this earlier, just to
kind of walk everyone through your history and your bio.
I heard this phrase once you become an entrepreneur, not
with your first successful business, but actually with your first
(14:05):
failed business. It sounds like you've had nine different stories
before we got to Whaler at one point, I mean,
feel free to share anything that you've learned. I'm sure
there are notes of resiliency as well, not just reinvention,
as Bill mentions across those first nine chapters. But at
some point along the line, right with Whaler, you all
(14:28):
must have picked up a signal, Hey, what we're doing here,
what I'm building together with James, is actually there's a
runway behind it. There's momentum there's tailwinds behind it. So
can you just kind of share were there any aha
moments or moments of enlightenment when you all felt like,
you know what, I think this bet is starting to
pay off. We're actually starting to see some kind of
cultural adjustment or influence that Whaler's having on the market.
Speaker 7 (14:51):
So I'll answer that in two ways, because yes, obviously
there are, but the second is, like, to be honest,
we're always looking ahead at what we want to achieve
next and build, and so that's always like a big
jump forwards for us, and so we still don't feel
we've made it to that point of where we want
(15:12):
to be, all the success that we want to have,
all the scale and impact that we want to have
in the industry, and you know, we don't sort of
look backwards in that sense. I think though, as you
wrote something recently where I said, you know, from a
marketing standpoint, the Creator economy has gone from a marketing
footnote to a boardroom priority. I basically can see the
level of fluency about it and the amount of conversation
(15:36):
that it takes at industry events in a really big way.
So you know, we've been going eight years ago, we
actually exhibited at can Line eight years ago and have
exhibited every year since, and so CAN for me is
a real tracker of Like at first it was like, well,
what is this little company doing here and what is
this about? And it was like that for a few years,
and then it was like, oh, the creator economy has arrived,
(15:58):
wanting to learn more about this than it be taken
more seriously. So we've ovidly seen that happen. I think
the other thing is you just look at that journey
of creators. Ninety five percent of the creators we now
work with, the full time creators, they're entrepreneurs and media
owners in their own right, building really robust, diverse, sustainable
(16:18):
businesses where advertising is one pillar, still the largest, but
just one pillar of revenue for them as well. They've
now diversified their revenue streams too, So it's more seeing
this manifestation in the whole creator space. But yeah, we're
so forward looking. The one thing I'll say is I
do describe Whaler as a snowball rolling down a hill.
With each roll, the surface area increases, and therefore it's
(16:41):
picking up more snow with each following role. It's not
been these giant step changes or singular moments. In our minds,
it has just been this kind of continual, iterative rolling journey.
And by therewith that sometimes when we roll snowfalls off
and the ball gets smaller as well. I don't want
to give the sense that it's all in one direction.
There are plenty of like mini lessons, failures and challenges
(17:03):
along the way as well, But you've just got to
have move quick and have more successes than failures.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Bill, you You've when I think about the creator landscape,
obviously there's plenty of intersection with the video landscape. And
you know, when I look back at our industry, I
don't know that there's an agency that has defined and
shaped the video ecosystem right in the way that Horizon has.
And you kind of just share a little bit of
(17:29):
some history on how video and entertainment, how our ecosystem
kind of got to a place where, you know, creators
and groups like Whaler have been able to meaningfully impact
how brands show up in the marketplace.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
Yeah, I mean so first, you know, we have one
of the fastest growing entities.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Under our roof is our influencer agency, Blue Hour.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
So we are quasi competitors with With Neil, it is
the fastest, one of the fastest growing entities under my room.
But I go back to him, you know today, and
I'm sure Neil has tools in his arsenal as well.
Everything starts with audience science, right understanding the consumer and
(18:15):
being able to know everything that they're possibly is about them,
to understand how to marry them with a creator, how
to understand what kind of content they consume, how to
understand their mindset, how to understand, you know, what potential
cultural realm they live in.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
There is so much data available today that we.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
Have in our robust connected marketing platform Blue and that's
where it all starts. Like without that, you don't know
what creator to go out to. Without that, you don't
know what messages or are going to resonate with the
audience you're trying to reach. Without that, you don't know
what platforms the creators should should should be on. So
(19:01):
for me, I would say the biggest revolution that has
changed over the last several years is the amazing amount
of intelligence and insight you can get now from what
he in science, which then we use that to help
our entertainment clients understand what content they should be producing,
(19:24):
what streaming shows they should be producing. We talked to
our studio clients about what content they should be producing,
all from this amazing audience science platform, and everything starts
with that. Think about that as the heartbeat, and that
points you towards north stars, where there's opportunities, where there's
(19:45):
white space, where you can be authentic, where you have
permission to show up.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
And you know, I read an article.
Speaker 5 (19:53):
A couple of weeks ago about pretty famous guy in
the advertising industry who hung up as cleats and he said,
because data has killed the industry.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
And I don't believe that.
Speaker 6 (20:06):
I believe that.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
Through the use of data you can get more creative
than ever before because you do understand so much more
about where you can play. And that's how we've connected
content with audiences and it has been a game changer
in terms of how we work with our clients today.
Speaker 7 (20:28):
I think I find funny about that is it's like,
when hasn't data been empowering to making decisions and work
things out, even back in the earliest creative days of
like you know, researching places to be and new topics
coming up, or like A and R people in music
going out and like seeing what's popular. It's the same
type of thing, right, It's just data is the most
(20:50):
powerful tool to inform where you can creatively play and
what audience has to speak to. And for me, the
two biggest sins in the creator space a one focus
on vanity metric just thinking that like followers and reach
as the end answer, well who did it reach and
did it resonate with them? And was it the right
message to land? And on the other end of the spectrum,
it's this notion of you've got to just leave it
(21:12):
all to the creators. They know absolutely best, so just
commission them and leave it to them. It's a partnership,
it's a collaboration. There's got to be a tight and
clear brief. There's got to be respect between both parties
to deliver great work. And I think a lot more
goes into it than people realize and build touched on
that a lot, and it's like, if you do that,
it'll be successful. And if you don't do that, you
(21:33):
can use the new medium that is the greater economy
and get no results and do really badly at it.
It's the platforms there, You've got to know how to
use it.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
Yeah, you know, Neil question I would ask you, are
you freaking out and being and having sleepless nights? Because
one day, sooner than we know it, it can happen.
Today through AI, artificial creators are being developed and consumers
are not going to know the difference whether they're real
not real. And how does that enter into the whole
(22:03):
content creation world? In are creator is going to be
replaced by AI? Yeah, it's it's a great question.
Speaker 7 (22:11):
So two, but one, Genia is going to be a
massive tool to creators in the sense that you might
have a creator with a great idea to create a cartoon,
but they don't know how to animate, and so they're
going to be able to bring their creativity in their
community to the forefront and now have the capability to animate,
for example, or they just don't have the budget and
(22:33):
time to do it. On the notion of literally completely
GENI creators, I think for sure it's going to happen.
I always think like, there's going to be then people
that have like programmed those and made those And I
kind of look at it like, although to your point,
you won't be able to tell the difference necessarily, but
I kind of look at the point of like Spider
Man's right not real, Wonder Woman's not real. There are
(22:55):
fictional characters that get created that could also be amazing
when they're powered by jen and people can really interact
with them. And there will be a place for that
and it'll be really exciting. But I don't think it
will be replacing all of the kind of creator communities
and creator communications. I think it will be a segment
of it. But I do think you can also get
(23:16):
to a place where a creator might be able to
create an interface that their audience is able to interact with,
where it's an AI answering on behalf of that creator.
So I'll just give one little example. It's not a
direct answer to your question, but later this week, we're
launching a genai customer service agent on our Waler Group website.
(23:37):
We've been building this and testing this for the last
three or four weeks. I now daily go on it
and ask it a question when I've got to respond
to an email somewhere, or the other day I had
to give like a short but funny bio on myself.
This thing's been trained on all of my LinkedIn articles
that I've written, all of the talks have I given
all of the materials that we've got about the whaler grip,
(24:00):
it is better than I would or maybe with hours
i'd get to that level of like consistency answering. But
I now go to this thing that we've trained to
get the answers to things like that, and it's just
it's it's it's been a game changer.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
And the interesting thing about that is that through that
gener of AI and the ability to connect the dots
of anything I've ever said, or anything I've ever done,
or anywhere I've ever gone, I could then still run
my company after I'm dead, because all someone can do
is type in Bill, what should we do about this?
Speaker 4 (24:34):
And it's going to respond yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
So you think about where the world is going, it's insane.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
And you know when you said, you know you don't
necessarily think that's ever going to happen. Well, I still
have my blockbuster card. I do from like thirty years ago.
Who thought that the world was going to be where
it is today? And I you know, I go back
to the incredible technological advancements and some of it's really scary.
(25:04):
It is there's technological advancement for good and there's technological
advancement for I would say not so good. And I
just think that that goes back to, you know, going
the extra mile. Ignorance is bliss, meaning sometimes you know
(25:24):
what you don't know is better than what you do know.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Because of the places it could take you.
Speaker 5 (25:29):
And then also, and I know you've done this, Neil,
with your company and same thing with mine. We're all
under so much competition in today's world because of AI
and the creator economy, and anybody can launch a business today.
One of the successes of building your business and keeping
(25:50):
it ahead. And you said it, Neil, you know, the
difference between success and failure is like inches or something
like that.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
Said something like that, and it's.
Speaker 5 (25:59):
About going the f extra mile and you hear it,
but I don't think people really understand what it means.
There's less traffic when you go that extra mile ahead
of somebody else, there's less traffic there. You can get
a competitive advantage, but you need to understand how to
go that extra mile.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
And you've done that.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
Very well obviously with what you've built. And that's been
a mantra of mine for years around around the agency.
You know, don't just run the marathon, go the extra
mile and we will win. And getting that, you know,
indoctrinated into employees' mindsets today is I think one thing
that's led to our stamina and success.
Speaker 6 (26:40):
I love that. I love that so much.
Speaker 7 (26:43):
We kind of got three values that we build on,
the first being that we're liberators. It's in that mission
to liberate in the creative voice. The other is that
we're pioneers, so we always are trying to push the boundary.
And the third and last is that we're long term us.
We take the long term approach and do things that
are going to pay off later and try and build
sustainability in what we're doing. And I also with your
(27:04):
quote about it's the less busy road, we also talk
a lot about I think it was the sage of Omaha,
the investor Warren Buffett. Here's this thing where he says,
the benefit of making the right decision always is that
the road is less busy.
Speaker 6 (27:17):
You know, it's always take the high right.
Speaker 7 (27:19):
It's funny how it can all get distilled down to
little phrases that can mean so much in the decisions
that you take. And then, as you said, Bill, it's
about conveying that to the team, right, because if it's
got to be embodied by everyone, I mean I cannot
imagine what it was like. And actually I'd love to
hear your thoughts on it, you know, having a two
thousand plus person organization and having them understand those cultural
(27:41):
values and principles that you set because I think you know,
I'm so proud of our team at Whaler. Frankly, they're
the ones that make us look better than we deserve
to be. But at three hundred and something people, it's
already more people than I ever imagined happen. And it's
also the only thing that gives me a daily heart
attack off like, oh my god, it's all you know,
(28:01):
how does how do we keep our culture? How do
we keep these values? How do we keep it with
this amount of people, let alone what it's.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
Going to be in coming years? So just how have
you done that to the scale you're right.
Speaker 5 (28:13):
Now, to the best of my ability, And it's gotten
harder and harder as we as we've grown in one
it's got to be entrenched in your DNA as a company.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
Everybody needs to understand it.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
You have to be very protective in terms of who
you bring into the company. From a talent perspective, and
are they the right cultural fit. It's about transparency and
it's about communication, not just in the good times, but
it's about communication and the bad times as well, so
that people really understand where the company is going. And
(28:49):
you need to be transparent about good and bad at
all times. I think it's the little touches, you know.
During COVID, I mentioned that earlier when we went out
and all of a sudden, we went from twenty five
hundred people in the same space to twenty five hundred
people scattered all around the country and in some cases
(29:10):
other parts of the world. Every night, I sent out
a bill daily, every single night, and I didn't it's
interesting when I sent out that, and I did that
for a year and a half every single night at
five o'clock, and I did it at five o'clock, so
everybody knew it was coming the same time every single night,
about what was going on at the agency, celebrating birthdays
(29:31):
and adversaries and client things. And I'd end it each
night with an evening thought of hope and inspiration, because
in the early days of COVID it was pretty pretty
pretty dark, and all of a sudden, I started getting
emails back from employees' parents saying, Bill, I read your
I read your bill daily.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 5 (29:54):
And it not just brought my community together, but it brought,
you know, a larger community together, and that it was
a way of communicating to the organization. And I never
realized that that's what it was gonna was going to become.
And that's that's how I kept kind of the culture
together of the organization during during COVID. So that's one way.
(30:15):
And today my leadership has to carry that torch and
they have to and they're held accountable for those personal
touches that keep the business personal, and some do it
better than others. As you get larger and larger and larger,
and Neil, you'll you know, you'll you'll feel that, you'll
see that. You know, I don't know how it's done
(30:36):
in one hundred thousand person organization or a fifty thousand
person organization. You know, I actually still consider myself a
small little company when I look at, you know, the
Holt Coast population versus mine. I'm a little baby, So
there's no excuse for not being able to do it
at my size, in my opinion.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
I love that it's funny.
Speaker 7 (30:57):
It's it's like, you know, a certain point, the role
is still about vision and pushing to the future, but
really it's about being the vehicle for communication internally to
empower the team to go and do their best work,
because that's where the scale then comes from. I think
the other learning that I've had, you know, sort of
all throughout James and my building for the last whatever.
(31:19):
It's been nineteen years or so, and I think we've
got better at it even now. We still can make
sense of this sometime. And this is going to sound
a bit negative, but I just think it's so important.
The impact that the wrong person can have is disproportionate
by an order of scale to the impact that the
right people can have. And you know, early on in
our careers we would hold on to having the wrong
(31:43):
people in an organization for far too long.
Speaker 6 (31:46):
Because it's difficult to deal with and to move them on.
Speaker 7 (31:50):
And sometimes it's not that they're a bad person either,
it's just the wrong person in the company at the
wrong time with where the company is at. And so
I really think it's it's getting to a place where
you know, you've really got to recognize that and make
those moves quickly.
Speaker 6 (32:06):
And you know, we're kind of out a place now.
Speaker 7 (32:08):
And I used to love this where you could go
and speak to ninety five percent of the people that
we let go of, not that chose to leave, that
we let go of, and they would tell you invest
at Whaler, work at Whaler, become a client of Whaler,
and several of the people that we did that so.
Speaker 6 (32:22):
Have become clients and partners of Whaler.
Speaker 7 (32:24):
There is a way to go about it where it
can be to be clear, I said ninety five percent
of the people. Yeah, there's always the outlier cases. But
I just think as we've grown, that's a really important
piece because it's unlocked growth for us by getting that
right but doing it the right way. These people have
gone on to be evangelist and become clients and partners.
And you never know where someone's going to show up
(32:46):
and in what company, and so, like you know, back
to the line you said, and to the Warren Buffett line,
like the road the higher road is less busy, do
it the right way and you'll have advantages in that.
And I think that's been a really it's a bit
of a negative thing to talk about people being asked
to leave, but I think it's a really important piece
of successfully growing a company.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Yeah, and I would think that.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
You know, there have been many times I've probably been
too patient and not moved fast enough.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
And that's about going back.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
To probably my business's personal roots as opposed to just
a hardcore business decision boom, you're gone, as opposed to
you know, I'm a healer, try to help people.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
I want to lift people up.
Speaker 5 (33:36):
I want to look at their strengths and try to
negate their weaknesses. But as you said it, Neil, I
couldn't agree with you. More trust is imperative. Being able
to collaborate, being able to play well in the sandbox,
being able to take criticism, being able to inspire others.
(33:56):
Those are like critical, critical attributes you know that you
need in a company today. You know, we talk about
it also because the world's moving so fast.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
You know, we talk about business athletes.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
You have to have stamina, You've got to be able
to flex new muscles, you have to be able to
want to flex new muscles, and that whole management of
talent and how you do that is critical to the
success of any organization. And as you get bigger and
bigger and bigger, and you will keeping that with in
(34:32):
your DNA is going.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
To be a critical component to your success.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
And I'm a constant preacher of saying, we don't get
it right every time.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
You know, you have to admit when you don't get
it right.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
You know, I for years, ever since I started the company,
I only write green. You may or may not know that,
but I only write in green. It's a sign of
good luck, it's a sign of money. I love the
thirty five years only done that, only have green folders,
so on and so forth. And I would write an
anniversary note to every single one of my employees. I'd
(35:08):
signed about three hundred of them a month, simple anniversary note.
Then COVID came. I couldn't do that anymore. So I
started doing anniversary calls once a month, and now once
a month. I have two hundred people plus on a call,
and I see them in their living rooms and kitchens
and you know, somewhere in the office, and so on
and so forth. You got to find a way to
(35:29):
continue to connect with people.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
And those little things mean an.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
Awful lot, an awful lot, and it gets harder and
harder you know, as business becomes more complex and businesses
get bigger, but just go back to your roots of
what made you successful in the first place.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
I'll build on.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
I'll add two points to this part of the conversation
Bill o' neil, that you all are raising. The first is,
you know, I've had Mark Cuban come in. He's talked
to our team internally on a number of different town
halls and off sites, and I'll never forget the moment
he looked in front of everyone, looked at everyone and said, Hey,
if you want to be successful in business, hire slow,
(36:14):
fire fast in a nutshell. That's essentially getting to the
point that you all are converging at. But the other
point I'll build on is whether it's Horizon or Whaler.
For me, it was early in my career P ANDNG
right and I didn't work at P and G. I
just had a lot of customers who happened to have
spent some time in Cincinnati, and I noticed at a
certain point there wasn't a single CMO that I met
(36:36):
who hadn't at some point gone through the ABM program
at P and G, and then eventually at Google. I
started to see Google then became at one point a
great exporter of talent within the advertising industry. And so
the point that you all are raising here, which is, Hey,
whether it's six months at Horizon or six months at Whaler,
or six years or sixteen, the point is the philosophy
(37:00):
in the foundation that you are creating for your employees
actually will have impact beyond the amount of tenure in
time that that individual spense at the company. And we'll
carry on into the next chapter two chapters down the line, right,
however long or whatever short that might be.
Speaker 7 (37:16):
I agree, and just you know, Bill said about it
being athletes, and I think the other piece is that
it's not a solo sport. It's a team sport, and
so it's you know, so much has to go into
making that team great, and a team that's amazing on
paper with superstars can get outperformed by other teams that
play better together. And you can mix superstars with great
(37:39):
playing together, then you win.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
Right.
Speaker 7 (37:42):
But like it's interesting, like to think about it in
that sports analogy as well.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Well.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Listen, while while we are, you know, in this conversation
celebrating Neil's Hall of Achievement, the reality is, as Bill knows,
the race has actually just begun. Bill is a recipient
of the American Advertising Federation's Hall of Fame, if I
remember correctly, and we'll have to fact check this after
part of the credibility and criteria in order to be
(38:09):
eligible for the Hall of Fame. I believe Bill, is
it thirty five or forty years of service in the
industry something like that, right, So, in a lot of ways,
the race has actually just started for Neil.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
So congratu.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
You know if that's not a you know, that's how
most promotions go these days. Congratulations, here's the next two miles.
You got to look down. So Bill, if you can,
let's close out here in our conversation, as someone who
has maybe walked a mile or two farther down the
line from where Neil is at today, do you have
any kind of parting wisdoms for Neil on his path
(38:40):
from the Hall of Achievement to maybe one day the
American Advertising Federation's Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
Yeah, So I would say a couple of things, Neil,
for you.
Speaker 5 (38:50):
One is always keep things in perspective, right, That's what's
kept me grounded in terms when I mean keeping things
in perspective of there's a lot of shit going on
in the world where people are suffering a hell of
a lot more, you know, than I suffer. And maybe
a bad day on a new business pitch that maybe
(39:14):
we didn't get, or some other challenge that comes up,
employee challenge or whatever they pal in comparison to illness, war, strife, poverty.
So for me, that's always kept me grounded from a
prospective basis of when I think I had a bad day,
(39:36):
think about everything else. I think secondly is the ability
to constantly reinvent yourself. And you're doing that, but constantly
reinvent yourself. Never ever think you've arrived. Ever, And you
said that because you're going to get run over. I
fear every day I'm going to get run over. Still
(40:00):
ever ever feel that you've arrived. As you start to
grow more, you become more of a coach and an
advisor and allow your people to grow and allow your
people to rise and empower them, empower them. And I
think lastly, words are incredibly powerful, both negative and positive.
(40:23):
And choose your words carefully. And sometimes I'm so quick
to try to get something across and make a decision
and tell somebody something you lose sight of how it's
being perceived sometimes and I work really hard to choose
my words carefully, and then most importantly, somehow keep that
(40:46):
personal touch. Don't lose touch with your people, and let
them know that they have access to you.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
I tell people all the time, email me, come see me.
Speaker 5 (40:56):
And I guess the last one is I remember when
I saw in this industry I couldn't get the time
of day from people, and those people that gave me
the time of day I valued so much. So although
it jams your schedule, I try to make time for
people who might normally not normally have access and it
means a lot.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
And be humble.
Speaker 5 (41:18):
Be humble as well. So those are some words of
advice and wisdom. And surround yourself with great people.
Speaker 6 (41:25):
All right, appreciate that so much. Love everything that you said.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Okay, well, there you have it from two of the
best in the business, an existing you know, current legend
of advertising and of course our future legend of advertising.
Neil Walller, thank you everyone for joining and listening, and
we'll see you on the next episode.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
Yeah, thank you, Tim, Neil Pleasure Sas, thank you.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
I'm Tim Natividad. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
We'll be back with another episode before you know it
and from More information on the American Advertising Federation go
to a a F 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.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
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 3 (00:26):
I'm your host Tim Natividad.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
And I'm your host Christina Pile.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
And with that, let's meet the legends. Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
If you had asked a young Neil Waller at the
University of Bath in two thousand and three to predict
his future, he likely would have laughed at the idea
of a career in advertising. Yet shortly after he and
his best friend James Street cropped out of college, moved
to Spain and launched a travel website that attracted eighteen
(01:03):
million visitors annually. With a global franchise and nearly forty staff,
this venture marked the beginning of their partnership as serial entrepreneurs.
With nearly a dozen startups to their name, Neil and
James foresaw the rise of social media influencers and content creators,
positioning themselves at the forefront of this movement in twenty sixteen,
(01:27):
they launched Whaler, now Whaler Group, a global powerhouse in
the creator economy. Neil's early recognition of the value in
partnerships with social platforms and his ability to identify emerging
trends have made Whaler an essential bridge between creators, brands,
and platforms. Today, Neil's influence on the advertising industry is undeniable.
(01:50):
His induction into the Advertising Hall of Achievement is proof
that even he couldn't have predicted just how far his
vision would take him. Congratulations Neil on this well deserved honor.
Bill Koenigsberg founded Horizon Media in nineteen eighty nine, building
it into a world class data driven marketing organization over
(02:13):
the past thirty five years. Along the way, Horizon has
earned numerous accolades, including Media Agency of the Year, Best
Places to Work, and recognition as one of the most
innovative ad and marketing agencies in the world. Bill himself
has been celebrated for his vision and leadership. He's been
named an industry Legend by the Ad Club of New York,
(02:35):
included on Adweek's Powerless, and also honored as Media Executive
of the Year by Media Week. The four a's have
also named him Media Maven twice. His philanthropic contributions have
earned him the Riisenbach Foundations Distinguished Citizen Award, the National
Kidney Foundation's Visionary Leader Award, and City Harvest Star of
(02:56):
the City Award. As an entrepreneurial pioneer, Bill leads Horizons
oversight of an eight point five billion dollar client portfolio,
including brands like the NFL, Revlon, Capital One, A and
E Networks, and Paramount Global. Committed to advancing diversity and inclusivity,
Bill was rightfully inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame
(03:19):
in twenty nineteen. I'm very excited to have both Neil
at Whaler and the Bill Coningsberg together on this episode
of the Future Legends of Advertising. What I want to
set up here, Billy, Obviously, you've been an entrepreneur, You've
been running Horizon for a significant period of time. Now,
if you can kind of walk back down memory lane,
I think part of what's fascinating and exciting for someone
(03:41):
like Neil. Neil just not so long ago, a few
years ago, sought to build out what is now known
as as Whaler, which I think all of us know today,
but anyone who's built anything in advertising knows you have
to take some kind of risk, right, and so maybe
a good place to start for today's episode, can you
kind of walk through those early days of Horizon and
when you know the business was unknown, maybe your name
(04:02):
wasn't quite known, and maybe that might be reflective of
some of Neil's early chapters here at Whaler.
Speaker 5 (04:08):
God Tim First, thanks thanks for an the introduction in
we are going on thirty five years here at Horizon,
And if you think about where the world was thirty
five years ago versus where it was today, it's like
a different planet, a completely different planet. And I was
(04:29):
really lucky because I don't know about you, Neil, but
I was really really lucky because really early in life,
for some reason, I was born with the advertising gene.
I knew I wanted to go into advertising. I was
a TV junkie. I like loved watching commercials on TV.
It's fascinated by content. And you're really lucky if you
(04:54):
can find that. Very very early, and I was working
for a big communication company. They owned a little media agency.
Someone made a run at the company. They decided to
get rid of a lot of their ansilary businesses. They
wanted me at that time, back in nineteen eighty nine,
try to sell it to a Holt Co.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
In the early days of unbuddling.
Speaker 5 (05:15):
I said, I don't want to sell it to the
Holt cos I want to buy it. I was thirty
one years old. Except when problem don't have any money,
so they lent me the money thirteen million dollars. And
that's how I started Horizon back then. And for me,
I had three simple principles. Build an incredible culture, make
(05:36):
my clients love me every day, and build.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
An agency of belonging.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
And if I could do that, great people, great product,
great culture, there was no limit in terms of where
we could build the company. And by the way, those
mantras from thirty five years ago the same mantras that
I try to live by, which is quite interesting that
thirty five years later they're as as important as it
(06:06):
were thirty five years ago. And obviously the business has,
you know, completely transformed. And I guess the biggest thing
I've learned is the only thing that's predictable is unpredictability.
Every day is another change. Every day is another opportunity
to reinvent yourself. And if you don't do that, you're
(06:26):
not going to survive and you get run over and again.
You know, with Neil and his success and what he's done,
that that didn't exist thirty five years ago. So the
world really has morphed. And here we are today, thirty
five years later. It has not been a sprint. It's
been a long, long journey. And that journey, by the way,
(06:48):
is nowhere near over.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
You know, the marathon of marathons. I'm going to pull
on one thread there, Bill, which is one of your principles,
building an agency of belonging. Right as you say, now, Neil,
I'll flip this over to you. Obviously today you are
the co founder. You're the co CEO of Whaler Group. Now,
for those in the uninitiated, the Whaler Group is a
(07:11):
global creator company featuring an end to end creator ecosystem
of six unique companies that span a full service creator agency,
a three sixty talent management company, a physical campus as
well a home, a place for creators to develop content,
an innovative operating system, a studio as well as a
gaming offshoot as well. I gotta take a breath after
(07:33):
rattling that up. Now, going back to Bill's point, building
an agency of belonging, today, I think it's pretty easy
to say, hey, creator based marketing has a home in
our industry. My guess is, Neil, when you started, it
was probably a lot more difficult to establish that need,
that belonging for creators. And could you just talk a
little bit about what that experience was like and how
(07:55):
you chose to take on this mission at Whaler.
Speaker 6 (07:57):
It's a great question.
Speaker 7 (07:58):
Well, first of all, thank you very much Uch for
having me on. Thank you for your support in the
Hall of Achievement. Tim and Bill, it's an absolute honor
to get to speak with you on this podcast. It's
been an equally interesting journey, you know, so myself and
my co founder James, we actually dropped out of university
in two thousand and six and Waaler is the ninth
(08:19):
business we've started together, and so it's taking all these
different experiences. And it's interesting, Bill, because you said you
early knew on that you wanted to be a marketer.
I don't think we actually knew that we were marketers.
But in building businesses, if you can't communicate with audiences
and build relevance and community, then you don't really have
a business. And so what we worked out is that
(08:41):
we were marketers, and that we had a passion for
the marketing and communication landscape and tim as you said,
like when we started eight years ago, now, it.
Speaker 6 (08:50):
Was very early on in the creator economy.
Speaker 7 (08:53):
In fact, it wasn't called the creator economy, right, it
was called influencer marketing.
Speaker 6 (08:56):
It was this tactic.
Speaker 7 (08:58):
And actually at that time, five percent of the what
was then called influencers that we work with were not
full time.
Speaker 6 (09:05):
They had jobs.
Speaker 7 (09:05):
They were doing this in their spare time as like
passionate storytellers and community builders. And you know, it's difficult
because it's sort of it's one step at a time, right.
We always had this vision for all it could get to,
but we've just taken it one step at a time.
We don't really plan more than one year out at
a time, and I think it's difficult to do more
than that with the rapidly changing kind of technologies that
(09:28):
we have in front of us. What resonated though with
what Bill said is that we're very fortunate in the
earliest days of starting what was Whaler and is now
the Whaler Group to get in touch with Sir John
Heggerty from BBH and he distilled this mission.
Speaker 6 (09:43):
For us of liberating the creative voice.
Speaker 7 (09:46):
And it was kind of having a value and a
north star that we then judged everything against and set
ourselves on this kind of path for. And we've built
out other values on top.
Speaker 6 (09:56):
Of that since.
Speaker 7 (09:57):
But I think it was kind of having that one
resounding value and mission that kind of gave us this
ability to a keep going and be explain to others
the kind of higher mission of what we were trying
to achieve. And then honestly, it's just about trying to
do great work build a company the right way. I
think there's a dirty little secret in that there's a
(10:19):
very fine line between success and failure, and you dance
on it quite a lot. I think timing has a
hell of a lot to do with it. I'm always
I love this. There's this ted talk by a guy
called Bill Gross that founded a company called Idea's Lab.
I don't know if you've seen it, but he basically
did a study of thousands of companies and looked at
the ones that were successful and the.
Speaker 6 (10:39):
Ones that weren't.
Speaker 7 (10:40):
And his thesis was that the idea was the most
important thing. He called his company that was an investment vehicle,
Ideas Lab, and he judged on five criterias, so the idea,
the team, the timing, the business model, and the amount
of funding that the company had. In his research, timing
was fifty five percent of the criteria and team was
thirty two, so eighty seven percent of the criteria. Success
(11:03):
was timing and team, business model, funding, the right idea.
Those were kind of subsequent to it, and so I
think a great part of it was we were at
the right time and we've been able to build a
great team that navigated it.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
God. You know, Neil, you talk about timing and team.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
Our with this massive competitive advantage, with the space that
we built down here in Tribeca, incredible collaborative, beautiful offices.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
It was part of our culture.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
I knew when when talent came here they could feel
the energy. I knew when clients came here, they could
feel the innovation and inspiration happening. And then the freaking
volcano went off called COVID, blew up the entire cultural
ecosystem here we're on March fourteenth. When we left and
(11:55):
didn't come back from multiple years, you had to then
go rein event culture and belonging in a remote workforce
that is still in my opinion, a massive work in
progress in terms of how people want to work today
and talk about being thrown off your game, right to
(12:17):
talk about again unpredictability and change, and then how you
navigate twenty six hundred people from home and get them
motivated and inspired. You have to reinvent yourself all over again.
So it goes back to this unpredictability of the world
(12:37):
and trying to plan for the future. And as you said, Neil,
you don't plan more than once you're in advance. And
I don't blame you because you don't know where things
are going, and you've got to have that mindset.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
You've got to have that Maverick mindset of it's kind
of like.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
A soccer player or a tennis player or baseball player
getting ready for that next play and where it's going
to lead you. So you know that has completely transformed
you know, the population that's in the workforce today and
culture within companies as well.
Speaker 6 (13:15):
I love that.
Speaker 7 (13:16):
It also made me think I love this. I think
it was Barack Obama that this quote come from. Sometimes
fifty one percent certain has to be enough to make
a decision. You know, there is a range of decision
making probabilities from fifty one percent to one hundred, and
I do think one of the things entrepreneurial people are
quite good at is kind of navigating that range and
(13:36):
being able to take decisions when they're on that closer
to fifty percent end of the spectrum and move and
learn as well.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
One of the reality is as leaders, we have to
make a lot of decisions, maybe with not all the
information readily available at hand, So there's an element of
gut right and Neil, you mentioned this earlier, just to
kind of walk everyone through your history and your bio.
I heard this phrase once you become an entrepreneur, not
with your first successful business, but actually with your first
(14:05):
failed business. It sounds like you've had nine different stories
before we got to Whaler at one point, I mean,
feel free to share anything that you've learned. I'm sure
there are notes of resiliency as well, not just reinvention,
as Bill mentions across those first nine chapters. But at
some point along the line, right with Whaler, you all
(14:28):
must have picked up a signal, Hey, what we're doing here,
what I'm building together with James, is actually there's a
runway behind it. There's momentum there's tailwinds behind it. So
can you just kind of share were there any aha
moments or moments of enlightenment when you all felt like,
you know what, I think this bet is starting to
pay off. We're actually starting to see some kind of
cultural adjustment or influence that Whaler's having on the market.
Speaker 7 (14:51):
So I'll answer that in two ways, because yes, obviously
there are, but the second is, like, to be honest,
we're always looking ahead at what we want to achieve
next and build, and so that's always like a big
jump forwards for us, and so we still don't feel
we've made it to that point of where we want
(15:12):
to be, all the success that we want to have,
all the scale and impact that we want to have
in the industry, and you know, we don't sort of
look backwards in that sense. I think though, as you
wrote something recently where I said, you know, from a
marketing standpoint, the Creator economy has gone from a marketing
footnote to a boardroom priority. I basically can see the
level of fluency about it and the amount of conversation
(15:36):
that it takes at industry events in a really big way.
So you know, we've been going eight years ago, we
actually exhibited at can Line eight years ago and have
exhibited every year since, and so CAN for me is
a real tracker of Like at first it was like, well,
what is this little company doing here and what is
this about? And it was like that for a few years,
and then it was like, oh, the creator economy has arrived,
(15:58):
wanting to learn more about this than it be taken
more seriously. So we've ovidly seen that happen. I think
the other thing is you just look at that journey
of creators. Ninety five percent of the creators we now
work with, the full time creators, they're entrepreneurs and media
owners in their own right, building really robust, diverse, sustainable
(16:18):
businesses where advertising is one pillar, still the largest, but
just one pillar of revenue for them as well. They've
now diversified their revenue streams too, So it's more seeing
this manifestation in the whole creator space. But yeah, we're
so forward looking. The one thing I'll say is I
do describe Whaler as a snowball rolling down a hill.
With each roll, the surface area increases, and therefore it's
(16:41):
picking up more snow with each following role. It's not
been these giant step changes or singular moments. In our minds,
it has just been this kind of continual, iterative rolling journey.
And by therewith that sometimes when we roll snowfalls off
and the ball gets smaller as well. I don't want
to give the sense that it's all in one direction.
There are plenty of like mini lessons, failures and challenges
(17:03):
along the way as well, But you've just got to
have move quick and have more successes than failures.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Bill, you You've when I think about the creator landscape,
obviously there's plenty of intersection with the video landscape. And
you know, when I look back at our industry, I
don't know that there's an agency that has defined and
shaped the video ecosystem right in the way that Horizon has.
And you kind of just share a little bit of
(17:29):
some history on how video and entertainment, how our ecosystem
kind of got to a place where, you know, creators
and groups like Whaler have been able to meaningfully impact
how brands show up in the marketplace.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
Yeah, I mean so first, you know, we have one
of the fastest growing entities.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Under our roof is our influencer agency, Blue Hour.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
So we are quasi competitors with With Neil, it is
the fastest, one of the fastest growing entities under my room.
But I go back to him, you know today, and
I'm sure Neil has tools in his arsenal as well.
Everything starts with audience science, right understanding the consumer and
(18:15):
being able to know everything that they're possibly is about them,
to understand how to marry them with a creator, how
to understand what kind of content they consume, how to
understand their mindset, how to understand, you know, what potential
cultural realm they live in.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
There is so much data available today that we.
Speaker 5 (18:38):
Have in our robust connected marketing platform Blue and that's
where it all starts. Like without that, you don't know
what creator to go out to. Without that, you don't
know what messages or are going to resonate with the
audience you're trying to reach. Without that, you don't know
what platforms the creators should should should be on. So
(19:01):
for me, I would say the biggest revolution that has
changed over the last several years is the amazing amount
of intelligence and insight you can get now from what
he in science, which then we use that to help
our entertainment clients understand what content they should be producing,
(19:24):
what streaming shows they should be producing. We talked to
our studio clients about what content they should be producing,
all from this amazing audience science platform, and everything starts
with that. Think about that as the heartbeat, and that
points you towards north stars, where there's opportunities, where there's
(19:45):
white space, where you can be authentic, where you have
permission to show up.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
And you know, I read an article.
Speaker 5 (19:53):
A couple of weeks ago about pretty famous guy in
the advertising industry who hung up as cleats and he said,
because data has killed the industry.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
And I don't believe that.
Speaker 6 (20:06):
I believe that.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
Through the use of data you can get more creative
than ever before because you do understand so much more
about where you can play. And that's how we've connected
content with audiences and it has been a game changer
in terms of how we work with our clients today.
Speaker 7 (20:28):
I think I find funny about that is it's like,
when hasn't data been empowering to making decisions and work
things out, even back in the earliest creative days of
like you know, researching places to be and new topics
coming up, or like A and R people in music
going out and like seeing what's popular. It's the same
type of thing, right, It's just data is the most
(20:50):
powerful tool to inform where you can creatively play and
what audience has to speak to. And for me, the
two biggest sins in the creator space a one focus
on vanity metric just thinking that like followers and reach
as the end answer, well who did it reach and
did it resonate with them? And was it the right
message to land? And on the other end of the spectrum,
it's this notion of you've got to just leave it
(21:12):
all to the creators. They know absolutely best, so just
commission them and leave it to them. It's a partnership,
it's a collaboration. There's got to be a tight and
clear brief. There's got to be respect between both parties
to deliver great work. And I think a lot more
goes into it than people realize and build touched on
that a lot, and it's like, if you do that,
it'll be successful. And if you don't do that, you
(21:33):
can use the new medium that is the greater economy
and get no results and do really badly at it.
It's the platforms there, You've got to know how to
use it.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
Yeah, you know, Neil question I would ask you, are
you freaking out and being and having sleepless nights? Because
one day, sooner than we know it, it can happen.
Today through AI, artificial creators are being developed and consumers
are not going to know the difference whether they're real
not real. And how does that enter into the whole
(22:03):
content creation world? In are creator is going to be
replaced by AI? Yeah, it's it's a great question.
Speaker 7 (22:11):
So two, but one, Genia is going to be a
massive tool to creators in the sense that you might
have a creator with a great idea to create a cartoon,
but they don't know how to animate, and so they're
going to be able to bring their creativity in their
community to the forefront and now have the capability to animate,
for example, or they just don't have the budget and
(22:33):
time to do it. On the notion of literally completely
GENI creators, I think for sure it's going to happen.
I always think like, there's going to be then people
that have like programmed those and made those And I
kind of look at it like, although to your point,
you won't be able to tell the difference necessarily, but
I kind of look at the point of like Spider
Man's right not real, Wonder Woman's not real. There are
(22:55):
fictional characters that get created that could also be amazing
when they're powered by jen and people can really interact
with them. And there will be a place for that
and it'll be really exciting. But I don't think it
will be replacing all of the kind of creator communities
and creator communications. I think it will be a segment
of it. But I do think you can also get
(23:16):
to a place where a creator might be able to
create an interface that their audience is able to interact with,
where it's an AI answering on behalf of that creator.
So I'll just give one little example. It's not a
direct answer to your question, but later this week, we're
launching a genai customer service agent on our Waler Group website.
(23:37):
We've been building this and testing this for the last
three or four weeks. I now daily go on it
and ask it a question when I've got to respond
to an email somewhere, or the other day I had
to give like a short but funny bio on myself.
This thing's been trained on all of my LinkedIn articles
that I've written, all of the talks have I given
all of the materials that we've got about the whaler grip,
(24:00):
it is better than I would or maybe with hours
i'd get to that level of like consistency answering. But
I now go to this thing that we've trained to
get the answers to things like that, and it's just
it's it's it's been a game changer.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
And the interesting thing about that is that through that
gener of AI and the ability to connect the dots
of anything I've ever said, or anything I've ever done,
or anywhere I've ever gone, I could then still run
my company after I'm dead, because all someone can do
is type in Bill, what should we do about this?
Speaker 4 (24:34):
And it's going to respond yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
So you think about where the world is going, it's insane.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
And you know when you said, you know you don't
necessarily think that's ever going to happen. Well, I still
have my blockbuster card. I do from like thirty years ago.
Who thought that the world was going to be where
it is today? And I you know, I go back
to the incredible technological advancements and some of it's really scary.
(25:04):
It is there's technological advancement for good and there's technological
advancement for I would say not so good. And I
just think that that goes back to, you know, going
the extra mile. Ignorance is bliss, meaning sometimes you know
(25:24):
what you don't know is better than what you do know.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Because of the places it could take you.
Speaker 5 (25:29):
And then also, and I know you've done this, Neil,
with your company and same thing with mine. We're all
under so much competition in today's world because of AI
and the creator economy, and anybody can launch a business today.
One of the successes of building your business and keeping
(25:50):
it ahead. And you said it, Neil, you know, the
difference between success and failure is like inches or something
like that.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
Said something like that, and it's.
Speaker 5 (25:59):
About going the f extra mile and you hear it,
but I don't think people really understand what it means.
There's less traffic when you go that extra mile ahead
of somebody else, there's less traffic there. You can get
a competitive advantage, but you need to understand how to
go that extra mile.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
And you've done that.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
Very well obviously with what you've built. And that's been
a mantra of mine for years around around the agency.
You know, don't just run the marathon, go the extra
mile and we will win. And getting that, you know,
indoctrinated into employees' mindsets today is I think one thing
that's led to our stamina and success.
Speaker 6 (26:40):
I love that. I love that so much.
Speaker 7 (26:43):
We kind of got three values that we build on,
the first being that we're liberators. It's in that mission
to liberate in the creative voice. The other is that
we're pioneers, so we always are trying to push the boundary.
And the third and last is that we're long term us.
We take the long term approach and do things that
are going to pay off later and try and build
sustainability in what we're doing. And I also with your
(27:04):
quote about it's the less busy road, we also talk
a lot about I think it was the sage of Omaha,
the investor Warren Buffett. Here's this thing where he says,
the benefit of making the right decision always is that
the road is less busy.
Speaker 6 (27:17):
You know, it's always take the high right.
Speaker 7 (27:19):
It's funny how it can all get distilled down to
little phrases that can mean so much in the decisions
that you take. And then, as you said, Bill, it's
about conveying that to the team, right, because if it's
got to be embodied by everyone, I mean I cannot
imagine what it was like. And actually I'd love to
hear your thoughts on it, you know, having a two
thousand plus person organization and having them understand those cultural
(27:41):
values and principles that you set because I think you know,
I'm so proud of our team at Whaler. Frankly, they're
the ones that make us look better than we deserve
to be. But at three hundred and something people, it's
already more people than I ever imagined happen. And it's
also the only thing that gives me a daily heart
attack off like, oh my god, it's all you know,
(28:01):
how does how do we keep our culture? How do
we keep these values? How do we keep it with
this amount of people, let alone what it's.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
Going to be in coming years? So just how have
you done that to the scale you're right.
Speaker 5 (28:13):
Now, to the best of my ability, And it's gotten
harder and harder as we as we've grown in one
it's got to be entrenched in your DNA as a company.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
Everybody needs to understand it.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
You have to be very protective in terms of who
you bring into the company. From a talent perspective, and
are they the right cultural fit. It's about transparency and
it's about communication, not just in the good times, but
it's about communication and the bad times as well, so
that people really understand where the company is going. And
(28:49):
you need to be transparent about good and bad at
all times. I think it's the little touches, you know.
During COVID, I mentioned that earlier when we went out
and all of a sudden, we went from twenty five
hundred people in the same space to twenty five hundred
people scattered all around the country and in some cases
(29:10):
other parts of the world. Every night, I sent out
a bill daily, every single night, and I didn't it's
interesting when I sent out that, and I did that
for a year and a half every single night at
five o'clock, and I did it at five o'clock, so
everybody knew it was coming the same time every single night,
about what was going on at the agency, celebrating birthdays
(29:31):
and adversaries and client things. And I'd end it each
night with an evening thought of hope and inspiration, because
in the early days of COVID it was pretty pretty
pretty dark, and all of a sudden, I started getting
emails back from employees' parents saying, Bill, I read your
I read your bill daily.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 5 (29:54):
And it not just brought my community together, but it brought,
you know, a larger community together, and that it was
a way of communicating to the organization. And I never
realized that that's what it was gonna was going to become.
And that's that's how I kept kind of the culture
together of the organization during during COVID. So that's one way.
(30:15):
And today my leadership has to carry that torch and
they have to and they're held accountable for those personal
touches that keep the business personal, and some do it
better than others. As you get larger and larger and larger,
and Neil, you'll you know, you'll you'll feel that, you'll
see that. You know, I don't know how it's done
(30:36):
in one hundred thousand person organization or a fifty thousand
person organization. You know, I actually still consider myself a
small little company when I look at, you know, the
Holt Coast population versus mine. I'm a little baby, So
there's no excuse for not being able to do it
at my size, in my opinion.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
I love that it's funny.
Speaker 7 (30:57):
It's it's like, you know, a certain point, the role
is still about vision and pushing to the future, but
really it's about being the vehicle for communication internally to
empower the team to go and do their best work,
because that's where the scale then comes from. I think
the other learning that I've had, you know, sort of
all throughout James and my building for the last whatever.
(31:19):
It's been nineteen years or so, and I think we've
got better at it even now. We still can make
sense of this sometime. And this is going to sound
a bit negative, but I just think it's so important.
The impact that the wrong person can have is disproportionate
by an order of scale to the impact that the
right people can have. And you know, early on in
our careers we would hold on to having the wrong
(31:43):
people in an organization for far too long.
Speaker 6 (31:46):
Because it's difficult to deal with and to move them on.
Speaker 7 (31:50):
And sometimes it's not that they're a bad person either,
it's just the wrong person in the company at the
wrong time with where the company is at. And so
I really think it's it's getting to a place where
you know, you've really got to recognize that and make
those moves quickly.
Speaker 6 (32:06):
And you know, we're kind of out a place now.
Speaker 7 (32:08):
And I used to love this where you could go
and speak to ninety five percent of the people that
we let go of, not that chose to leave, that
we let go of, and they would tell you invest
at Whaler, work at Whaler, become a client of Whaler,
and several of the people that we did that so.
Speaker 6 (32:22):
Have become clients and partners of Whaler.
Speaker 7 (32:24):
There is a way to go about it where it
can be to be clear, I said ninety five percent
of the people. Yeah, there's always the outlier cases. But
I just think as we've grown, that's a really important
piece because it's unlocked growth for us by getting that
right but doing it the right way. These people have
gone on to be evangelist and become clients and partners.
And you never know where someone's going to show up
(32:46):
and in what company, and so, like you know, back
to the line you said, and to the Warren Buffett line,
like the road the higher road is less busy, do
it the right way and you'll have advantages in that.
And I think that's been a really it's a bit
of a negative thing to talk about people being asked
to leave, but I think it's a really important piece
of successfully growing a company.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Yeah, and I would think that.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
You know, there have been many times I've probably been
too patient and not moved fast enough.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
And that's about going back.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
To probably my business's personal roots as opposed to just
a hardcore business decision boom, you're gone, as opposed to
you know, I'm a healer, try to help people.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
I want to lift people up.
Speaker 5 (33:36):
I want to look at their strengths and try to
negate their weaknesses. But as you said it, Neil, I
couldn't agree with you. More trust is imperative. Being able
to collaborate, being able to play well in the sandbox,
being able to take criticism, being able to inspire others.
(33:56):
Those are like critical, critical attributes you know that you
need in a company today. You know, we talk about
it also because the world's moving so fast.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
You know, we talk about business athletes.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
You have to have stamina, You've got to be able
to flex new muscles, you have to be able to
want to flex new muscles, and that whole management of
talent and how you do that is critical to the
success of any organization. And as you get bigger and
bigger and bigger, and you will keeping that with in
(34:32):
your DNA is going.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
To be a critical component to your success.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
And I'm a constant preacher of saying, we don't get
it right every time.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
You know, you have to admit when you don't get
it right.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
You know, I for years, ever since I started the company,
I only write green. You may or may not know that,
but I only write in green. It's a sign of
good luck, it's a sign of money. I love the
thirty five years only done that, only have green folders,
so on and so forth. And I would write an
anniversary note to every single one of my employees. I'd
(35:08):
signed about three hundred of them a month, simple anniversary note.
Then COVID came. I couldn't do that anymore. So I
started doing anniversary calls once a month, and now once
a month. I have two hundred people plus on a call,
and I see them in their living rooms and kitchens
and you know, somewhere in the office, and so on
and so forth. You got to find a way to
(35:29):
continue to connect with people.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
And those little things mean an.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
Awful lot, an awful lot, and it gets harder and
harder you know, as business becomes more complex and businesses
get bigger, but just go back to your roots of
what made you successful in the first place.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
I'll build on.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
I'll add two points to this part of the conversation
Bill o' neil, that you all are raising. The first is,
you know, I've had Mark Cuban come in. He's talked
to our team internally on a number of different town
halls and off sites, and I'll never forget the moment
he looked in front of everyone, looked at everyone and said, Hey,
if you want to be successful in business, hire slow,
(36:14):
fire fast in a nutshell. That's essentially getting to the
point that you all are converging at. But the other
point I'll build on is whether it's Horizon or Whaler.
For me, it was early in my career P ANDNG
right and I didn't work at P and G. I
just had a lot of customers who happened to have
spent some time in Cincinnati, and I noticed at a
certain point there wasn't a single CMO that I met
(36:36):
who hadn't at some point gone through the ABM program
at P and G, and then eventually at Google. I
started to see Google then became at one point a
great exporter of talent within the advertising industry. And so
the point that you all are raising here, which is, Hey,
whether it's six months at Horizon or six months at Whaler,
or six years or sixteen, the point is the philosophy
(37:00):
in the foundation that you are creating for your employees
actually will have impact beyond the amount of tenure in
time that that individual spense at the company. And we'll
carry on into the next chapter two chapters down the line, right,
however long or whatever short that might be.
Speaker 7 (37:16):
I agree, and just you know, Bill said about it
being athletes, and I think the other piece is that
it's not a solo sport. It's a team sport, and
so it's you know, so much has to go into
making that team great, and a team that's amazing on
paper with superstars can get outperformed by other teams that
play better together. And you can mix superstars with great
(37:39):
playing together, then you win.
Speaker 4 (37:42):
Right.
Speaker 7 (37:42):
But like it's interesting, like to think about it in
that sports analogy as well.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Well.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Listen, while while we are, you know, in this conversation
celebrating Neil's Hall of Achievement, the reality is, as Bill knows,
the race has actually just begun. Bill is a recipient
of the American Advertising Federation's Hall of Fame, if I
remember correctly, and we'll have to fact check this after
part of the credibility and criteria in order to be
(38:09):
eligible for the Hall of Fame. I believe Bill, is
it thirty five or forty years of service in the
industry something like that, right, So, in a lot of ways,
the race has actually just started for Neil.
Speaker 4 (38:19):
So congratu.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
You know if that's not a you know, that's how
most promotions go these days. Congratulations, here's the next two miles.
You got to look down. So Bill, if you can,
let's close out here in our conversation, as someone who
has maybe walked a mile or two farther down the
line from where Neil is at today, do you have
any kind of parting wisdoms for Neil on his path
(38:40):
from the Hall of Achievement to maybe one day the
American Advertising Federation's Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
Yeah, So I would say a couple of things, Neil,
for you.
Speaker 5 (38:50):
One is always keep things in perspective, right, That's what's
kept me grounded in terms when I mean keeping things
in perspective of there's a lot of shit going on
in the world where people are suffering a hell of
a lot more, you know, than I suffer. And maybe
a bad day on a new business pitch that maybe
(39:14):
we didn't get, or some other challenge that comes up,
employee challenge or whatever they pal in comparison to illness, war, strife, poverty.
So for me, that's always kept me grounded from a
prospective basis of when I think I had a bad day,
(39:36):
think about everything else. I think secondly is the ability
to constantly reinvent yourself. And you're doing that, but constantly
reinvent yourself. Never ever think you've arrived. Ever, And you
said that because you're going to get run over. I
fear every day I'm going to get run over. Still
(40:00):
ever ever feel that you've arrived. As you start to
grow more, you become more of a coach and an
advisor and allow your people to grow and allow your
people to rise and empower them, empower them. And I
think lastly, words are incredibly powerful, both negative and positive.
(40:23):
And choose your words carefully. And sometimes I'm so quick
to try to get something across and make a decision
and tell somebody something you lose sight of how it's
being perceived sometimes and I work really hard to choose
my words carefully, and then most importantly, somehow keep that
(40:46):
personal touch. Don't lose touch with your people, and let
them know that they have access to you.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
I tell people all the time, email me, come see me.
Speaker 5 (40:56):
And I guess the last one is I remember when
I saw in this industry I couldn't get the time
of day from people, and those people that gave me
the time of day I valued so much. So although
it jams your schedule, I try to make time for
people who might normally not normally have access and it
means a lot.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
And be humble.
Speaker 5 (41:18):
Be humble as well. So those are some words of
advice and wisdom. And surround yourself with great people.
Speaker 6 (41:25):
All right, appreciate that so much. Love everything that you said.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Okay, well, there you have it from two of the
best in the business, an existing you know, current legend
of advertising and of course our future legend of advertising.
Neil Walller, thank you everyone for joining and listening, and
we'll see you on the next episode.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
Yeah, thank you, Tim, Neil Pleasure Sas, thank you.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
I'm Tim Natividad. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
We'll be back with another episode before you know it
and from More information on the American Advertising Federation go
to a a F dot org.
Hosts And Creators
Ross Martin
Hayley Romer
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!