June 11, 2025 • 42 mins
Philip Thomas has redefined what it means to bring an industry together, turning Cannes Lions, Money20/20, and more into global stages where bold ideas drive transformation and shape culture. In this episode, he joins Michael to unpack the power of live experiences, the art of reinvention, and why the future belongs to those who build platforms with purpose, not just presence.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
We have a problem to try to help to fix,
and that problem is that marketing professionals cmos are under
immense pressure when they're going into a boardroom to argue
for capital allocation in marketing.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm Michael Cassen, and this is Good Company. Together we'll
explore the dynamic intersection of media, marketing, entertainment, sports and technology.
I'll be joined by visionaries, pioneers, and yes, even a
couple of disruptors for candid conversations as we break down
how these masters of ingenuity are shaping the future of business,
culture and everything in between. My bet is you'll pick
(00:49):
up a lesson or two along the way. As I
like to say, it's all good.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Welcome everyone to Good Company today. I'm thrilled to be
able to be joined by Phil Thomas, the executive chairman
of Informer Festivals. Phil began his career as a tenacious
journalist and parleyed that into becoming the master architect behind
the can Lions, Money twenty twenty and a portfolio of
global gatherings that redefine how brands tell their stories. His
(01:16):
visionary approach and uncannyability to turn bold ideas into industry
shaping realities have earned him the admiration of executives and
innovators across business sectors. Phil doesn't just ask what's next,
He builds it, amplifies its impact, and holds the industry
accountable to ambitious sustainability and diversity standards. Get ready for
(01:37):
a bold conversation on risk reward and the future of
live experiences. Let's dive in with my very good friend
Phil Thomas. Phil, thank you for joining me on Good Company.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Thank you, Michael. That was a hell of an introduction.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Well. I'll let the audience in on a secret. I
was actually introducing your evil twin brother.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
But I'll take you.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
What can I do exactly? I'm all you got.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
That's it, and I'm glad to have you. And I'm
glad to have called you a friend for more than
twenty years now. And I've already anticipated running out of
time because there's so much I would love to talk
to you about, so much that I know you can
share with our audience. But let's start from the beginning. Phil,
And as I said in the remarks, you were a
tenacious journalist. But can you give you know kind of
(02:25):
that journey.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
You began a.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Journalism and ended up piloting some of the world's biggest festivals.
What was there a pivotal moment or was there that
inflection point or that inspiration that took you from one
side to the other.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, I mean I didn't do very well at school,
so I was not an a student by any means.
I didn't go to college. I didn't go to university.
I was always interested in creativity, so I went to
college to do photography. I didn't do a degree. I
went to an art college, and I failed at being
a photographer. And shortly after that I started to right.
(03:00):
I started to write about the things I was seeing.
I started writing about various subjects, and that's how I
got into journalism because I'd finally found something that I
was reasonable at. And I worked on a number of
different magazines in the heyday of magazines. So Graydon Carter
has just written a book about, you know, the great
(03:20):
years of the eighties, and behind.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Signed my summer reading list. Yeah, trying to figure out
what I'm going to read after Can, because I have
no time to read anything before Can.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
It's been very highly recommended to me. That book, and
that was during those days, magazines could do no wrong.
It was an amazing place to be. But then, of
course the Internet came in. And I suppose this will
be a bit of a theme throughout our conversation today, Michael,
which is that clearly media such as magazines, newspapers, they
were right in the first wave of disruption, weren't they.
(03:51):
And I could see that magazines were going to have
a really, really, really tough time. And I wasn't qualified
to do very much. Have a law degree, I don't
have a medicine degree. I didn't have it, you know,
so I had to kind of think.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I had a practical degree.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I had a practical I had a degree from the
University of Life, Michael, the University of Life. But I
was in me. I was kind of in media. I
was in the creation of content and the persuasion of
people to part with money for that content. That was
That was what I was reasonable at.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
And so I, by the way, I'm going to come
back to that, phil because okay, that is an art form,
but keep going.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, And so I just thought, what in the world
that I could possibly do outside of rocket science and
brain surgery. What is that I could do that might
not be as disrupted by technology, and clearly events fell
into that space. So it took me a few years,
but I kind of wangled my way in to into
(04:52):
the event space and that's where I've been more or
less ever since.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Well it's so interesting, Phil, because you talked about the disruption,
and you talked about magazine and whatnot at that same time,
probably a little before that, certainly the music industry was upended,
as we certainly know, and Napster and all the things
that happened. And now we say that with a twinkle
in our eye of Napster. Oh my god, I can
tell you I remember the first song I ever illegally downloaded. Yes,
(05:19):
I said that out loud because I didn't have the
right to do it, and it was the first one.
And don't ask me why, but it's a tribute to
Chris de Burgh and Lady and Read.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I don't know why.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
That's just the first song I ever I ever downloaded.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I would say a great song.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, it's a great song.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
But the music industry, as you know, reinvented itself. It
went through that massive disruption, and several years ago we
bestowed the media Person of the Year honor on Sir
Lucian Grage and celebrating his success in the music industry.
Print didn't come back the same way though.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Print didn't come by the same way. Definitely didn't, and
there have been some success stories, of course. I would
pick out The New York Times, some of the more
upscale publications like The Atlantic, the New Yorker, these kind
of things. The Financial Times in the UK, they found
a model. They found this model of subscriptions and advertising
(06:15):
that seems to be working. But that's of course based
on two things. One the absolute quality of the content.
I mean the New York Times, the Financial Times. This
is content people are prepared to pay for.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Right, I would throw I would throw the Wall Street
Journal into that. I may not always agree, yeah, I
would not always agree with their opinions, but I would
certainly throw them into that equation. I said that myself
to their leadership many years ago when they were talking
about paywalls. I said, you have the right to have
a paywall because people will pay for your content.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
And I also think it's about being completely all in. Right.
So it got to a stage with print publications when
there were no other routes. There was nothing else to
do other other than to just go out of business.
I look at the New York Times and I just
think what they've done has been found that they just
really went all in and they said, look, we are
(07:08):
going to build a subscriptions platform. We're going to use
various things like podcasts, you know, to publicize that and
to get our message out. We're going to diversify into
all these really fast. I mean, who would think that
they would be big in puzzles and big in all
these different areas. And they've just built that model really brilliantly.
So a lot of print has had a hard time,
but actually some print.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Must be the strong British influence of Mark Thompson and
then bringing the US version of it with Meredith kopit
Levi and who put on a marvelous job collectively to
do that. Phil, let's kind of go to the other
end of the career, and then I want to talk
about the middle part, which is obviously the event space
and particularly the can Lyons. Something that you know and
(07:52):
the audience knows is near and dear to my heart.
When you made this transition and when you and I
began to work together back in twenty seventeen. We knew
each other before, but when we became partners in twenty seventeen,
the company that we became partners in, Essential had an
entirely different look to it. It owned a lot of things.
Now we sit here in May of twenty twenty five,
(08:14):
and Essential, for all intents and purposes doesn't exist. Can
you give us a little bit of that journey and
the extraordinary corporate story? Really? Because I don't want to
talk about it as an exit. I want to talk
about it as a reimagination of a company that was
done by leadership, which is generally not the case. Normally,
a result as lofty as what you were able to
(08:37):
achieve along with Duncan Painter and others and Scott Forbes
and a wonderful company is unheard of when it comes
from inside. Normally you have a private equity player come
in and break apart a company and then you say, hey,
the whole versus the sum of the parts. The Essential
story is such an amazing story. Can you give us
a little bit of that scaling through that how that
(09:01):
all came together.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I think I only see that in retrospect, So I
only see the fact that the investors certainly were very,
very grateful for a number of the decisions that were
made over time. At the time we were doing it,
I didn't realize it was so revolutionary in a sense.
And it was certainly started by Duncan, my predecessor as
(09:23):
CEO of Essential, he exited a lot of businesses, he
bought a lot of businesses, and he built capabilities around
e commerce. Then what happened was he and the board
were looking at the value creation and they were seeing
that actually the public markets, because Essential was on the
public market, the public market in the UK was not
(09:43):
ascribing the kind of value that we felt Essential deserved.
And so Scott, who was the chair and Duncan Paint
to the CEO at the time, instituted a strategic review
and the ultimately that review came to the conclusion the
business should be split up. And so, as some of
your listeners will know, Duncan's part, which was the digital
(10:07):
commerce element of the business, was sold to Omnicom. We
sold another couple of bits of business and that left
Essential as an event led business with can lions and
money twenty twenty so two pretty powerful platforms, but a
clarity of purpose around that.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
That's an important point to make, Phil don't class over that.
Clarity of purpose is so important for valuation and value,
both for companies, for individuals, for everybody. That is a
takeaway for our audiences, clarity of purpose. So thank you
for that.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
No, I think that was one of the things that
certainly the initial strategic review was out to bring clarity
to the business. The business was very, very different. We
had legacy, very profitable parts of it, we had start
effectively startup parts of it, addressing all sorts of different markets,
so it was very it was quite confusing. So this
(11:00):
brought this real clarity to it, and so I was
appointed CEO of the Events business, the events led business,
and thoroughly enjoying that. I then became the shortest lived
CEO in UK history because obviously we were then acquired
by Informa, which in itself is a whole story of
learning and lessons, and now we are indeed owned by Informer,
(11:23):
the world's biggest event organizer. It's just been a really
interesting learning for me about how public companies work, the
decisions you have to make, the stakeholders, you have to
discuss the future with the assets we had were so attractive,
we were always going to be a target. I'm just
(11:44):
very glad that the ultimate owner is a professional PLC
whose job it is to run events, rather than any
other player.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
I'm probably going to be off on my percentages, but
our listeners should know that. When I old Media Link
to Essential, and then when we repurchased it at the
end of twenty twenty one, I think the market cap
of Essential this is public obviously was around a billion
dollars plus or minus. And I think the result of
(12:15):
what happened and finally closed last year generated to the
shareholders north of three billion dollars. And that is no
mean feat. That is quite an extraordinary path, and as
you said, you've got to learn some lessons along the way.
But what a hell of a result, Phil, So congratulations
on that. I can only say that again, many of
(12:37):
our listeners may know the asset that was the heart
of that was something I personally coveted. So congratulating you
on a result that wasn't exactly the result I wanted,
but it might.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Be interesting for your listeners to hear that we had
a vision. So I had a vision to build a
business to a certain value, and we had a number
of shareholders that were very very supportive of us, you know,
people we got to know quite well. And after the
sale had a lunch. So these particular investors took us
(13:09):
for lunch and say thank you for realizing all this value.
And I asked her, I said, look, it's all over now,
so you can be honest with me. Did I have
to sell?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
You know?
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Could I have refused to sell and then built the
value of myself because you believed in my vision you
were going to come with me on this journey. And
the investor said immortally, said to me, Philip, there is
only one thing better than getting rich, and that is
getting rich quick. You had no choice. So that was
just a lesson. You know, in your public company, you've
(13:39):
got to be aware of who owns your business, and
it is the shareholders. There's stockholders.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
Good company will be right back after the break.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
So, Phil, now that you're a vet of M and
A at the highest level and playing in the league,
the thing I'd like to focus on is the can Lions.
About twenty five years ago, I stumbled on the can Lions,
as you know, and I was doing my normal vacation
that same time of year and I just for fun,
(14:19):
like to tell the story. And I was sitting at
the pool at a particular hotel and I looked around
the pool and I saw a bunch of folks from
the creative industries there. And I was running the largest
media agency in the world at that time. And I
only say that to make the point. And I looked
around the pool and I saw Marcia Morera, and I
saw ron Berger, and I saw i am Marie Marcus,
and I just saw a bunch of people I knew
(14:41):
from New York, from a can Erickson and other areas.
And I said, is there something going on here in
France's way? Was everybody here? They said, Oh, Michael, it's
the can Lions. I said, oh, I've heard of that.
And I say that now, and I'll repeat myself. I
was running the largest media agency in the world, and
I said, I've heard of that. I've given air quotes
(15:03):
for our listeners because that was something that was the
area for the creatives. And I was on the media
side of the business. And I turned to Ronnie and
you know this story, Phil. I turned to my wife
and I said, you know what, honey, you wanted to
go shopping and can why don't we drive in tomorrow
and take a look. I want to see what this
festival is about. And I just kind of showed up
(15:24):
and looked around and I saw something full of promise.
And that's when you and I got to know each other.
And I'd like to feel like I partnered with you
on that journey. But you were certainly the general, you know,
field General and the Marshall, and I was just a deputy.
I want to be. But can you give us a
(15:44):
little bit of that journey? Phil The Festival of Creativity
that I think is seventy five years old this year,
I think seventy five. Yeah, I may be right, because
I think in the seventy fourth or seventy third I
said the only thing older than me here in the
south of France was the can Lyons. So I am
turning seventy five this year. So the can Lions and
(16:05):
I do have something in common.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Excellent, Yeah, I mean I had a similar experience to you.
I went to the festival for the first time in
two thousand and six. Now, previous to that, I had
been to the film Festival many many times because I
was Yeah, I was the editor of a movie magazine.
So I used to go to the film festival all
the time, and in can as you walk in towards
(16:28):
the palais along the clazette on the right hand side,
there were all these really expensive posh shops like Chanelle
and Prada and those kind of shops. And the first
year I went to can Lyons, I noticed these shops
and I thought to myself, I can't believe there are
shops there. I'd never seen them before. And the reason
I'd never seen them before is because the film Festival
(16:49):
had so many people there and can Lions felt so small.
And I remember thinking to myself, the industry that this
event serves thinks that it's a really big deal, but
it isn't. It's a really it's actually a very small deal.
And I thought to myself, I wonder whether we can
(17:10):
make this something important, And by important, I suppose I
meant culturally important and more famous, just just more of
an event for this enormously important industry. It didn't feel
like it had the event that was that was worthy
of the industry. And so right from that very beginning,
a bit like you going to being in the Hotel
(17:31):
de cap and saying I've heard of Cam Lyons. I
thought to myself that all all that is here is promised,
all that is here is opportunity because it's an enormous industry.
It's going through a huge amount of change and will
continue to do so. Which is true proved to be true,
And where there is disruption and where there is uncertainty,
(17:53):
that is when an event really can come into its own.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
So, Phil, I want, I want to I want to
tell you something and this is time. This past Friday night,
I was at a birthday party for somebody we both know,
and there was a lot of It was in LA
and there was a lot of Hollywood folks there entertainment side.
And the question always comes up certainly with me, Well
I see you in Can. What you've achieved, phil is
(18:18):
Can Lyons is now Can Can Film Festival is the
other Can. Rely It's really and I'm talking about heads
of studios that I was talking to there is focused
more focused on the Can Lions than they are on
the other Can. And it used to be the reverse.
Because I went to the Can Film Festival the first
time in nineteen eighty six. I am that old and
(18:40):
you know I've been many times. It's not even close
in terms of cultural and other impact. But again, Phil,
you said something about our industry, and what I think
you've done brilliantly is bring together, as I like to
say where I live is the intersection of marketing, media, advertising, entertainment,
(19:01):
sports and technology. I think the manifestation of that for
four days in the Coke desur is never been better
expressed than by you. And the idea of bringing all
those disparate industries together in one place and getting the
leadership and the rank and file and the importance of
(19:23):
it is extraordinary. Because when you go back to that
time in two thousand and six and you make that judgment,
if you looked at it today, if you arrived Phil
Thomas today in Can, what would your reaction be. Would
your reaction be, Oh, this is the Can that other
thing the film Festival? Yeah? Is that relevant anymore? I mean,
(19:44):
I'm not picking on the and I'm not picking on
the film Festival. It's a wonderful group of people and
all of that. I have no bearing on that. I'm
just saying in terms of relative importance.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
So the first thing to say is that there's a
whole bunch of people who've done this I get quite
a lot of credit, but actually, you know, specifically Simon Cook,
who's the current CEO of Lions and his amazing team,
and others before him as well, So it's a whole
bunch of people. But I honestly felt, in twenty twenty four,
(20:18):
we're here, We've arrived. This is culture. It was for me.
It was something about culture. And I didn't even know
what I meant when I was thinking, when I thought
to myself back in two thousand and six, I wonder
if this can be important in culture. I didn't know
what it meant, really, but in twenty four I just
felt it. Now anybody that was there will have seen
the music.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
Well you might have felt and I'm going to let
our audience, and I'm going to let our audience and
on a little secret for you might have felt it
in twenty three, but I think that was the year
you were locked up in your room with COVID.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Ah, so I presumably missed it. Yes I did, I
had COVID.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
It might have felt it a year before.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I'll tell you if you will, car, if you want
to feel like the Count of Monte Cristo or what
you know, just stuck in a cell. I tell you
it was harrrendous to be in that. I was in
my room and it's right opposite the palais for the
first three days of the festival in twenty three. It's awful.
It was awful, but twenty four was a joy because
it kind of yeah, you saw it. They've got the
(21:15):
sport beach, you know, the stag will bring, and you've
got you've got musicians, and you've got TV, you've got music.
It's all there, and that is It's partly what we've done,
you and Simon and me and other people, but it's
also just the nature of the industry. We've been very,
very lucky to be facing this particular industry at this
(21:36):
particular time.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
Well, you know, luck is the luck is defined best
as the intersection, for me at least, as the intersection
of preparation and opportunity. I didn't make that up. I
read that in a book by Tom Monahan, the founder
of Domino's Peach, as somebody who, for most things, I
would think is somewhere to the right of Attil of
the Hunt in terms of my views in life. But
(21:59):
that one quote really resonated with me because what you
just said you were lucky, and that's correct, but you
were prepared to receive this conflation of all these industries
coming together. And maybe technology was the thread that brought
everything together, and I think it was, but capturing it
(22:20):
is the key. And Phil, this wasn't always a straight line.
You had issues with recession in the middle of your
turn tenure. You had issues of one particular holding company
deciding not to participate in events in general. But the
iyre was on Can even though it was a global event,
(22:41):
you know, restriction for a year, and everybody wondered, oh
my god, what does this mean? And then as we
all faced twenty twenty and twenty twenty one where there
was no festival and the idea of those dynamics, and
sitting here today preparing for what I believe, and you know,
(23:05):
you can agree or disagree. I don't know what your
restrictions are as a public company to answer me, but
sitting in advance of what will undoubtedly be the biggest
Can Lions in history, and I'm certain the best. It's
just amazing to me that that journey again with two
years in a row where it didn't happen, And so
(23:25):
if that was if there was ever a moment that
participants could take to pause and say, do I really
need this? Because I've just survived two years without it?
Giving somebody that option when you're selling something back to
what we started with, the ability to ask for the order.
It's tough when you have to convince somebody no, you
(23:46):
really can't live without it.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, but you've touched on a whole load of really
interesting points. I want to take them. Actually, I want
to talk about each one of those because I think
they're really, really important. So if we look back at
the history of the festival, one of the most important
decisions we made was to actually rename it. You will
remember that it used to be called the International Advertising Festival,
(24:08):
and in twenty eleven, I think it was what we
realized was advertising is a tiny sliver of the potential
total addressable market. To give it its kind of you
to give it its posh name, but effectively people wanting
to communicate with other people about their brands and their products.
It is so much more than advertising, and we were
(24:31):
stuck with this effectively with this name of the International
Advertising Festival. It was really brought into focus when I
had a conversation with a great friend of ours, Richard Edelman,
who obviously runs one of the world's biggest PR companies.
He said, Phil, I want to get involved, I want
to lean in. I want to be part of all this.
But you're called the Advertising Festival. You know, how am
(24:52):
I going to sell this? How am I going to
feel welcome? And that got us thinking, and that's why
we renamed it the Creativity Festival Estical Creativity. What that
immediately did was just welcome anybody who wants to use
creativity in their marketing. They're branding their communication, and it
seems sometimes a name is so important. And that was
(25:15):
an unbelievably important moment. The first recession, the Great Financial Crisis,
sixty percent reduction in our revenues, really tough to come
back from, but we came back from it. It began to grow,
and then we had this. Basically it was a customer revolt,
I suppose you could say, because there was one big
holding company I think people know presumably no its publicist
(25:39):
who said we're going to withdraw from the festival. They
were always clear, just for a year, We're going to
pull out for a year. What that allowed was a
number of our other customers to say, actually, while I
think about it, this is what I don't like about
your event. And that's what I don't like about your event.
The great thing about can Lynes is the industry feel
they own it. Everybody feels they own it. And that's
(26:02):
great and I'm encouraged that. But it does mean people have.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
You know, certainly then at least one person.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
On this.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
It's fine, it's fine. Is it belonged? It does in
many ways belong to everyone, which is part of its strength. Right,
So the customers were piling in, change the change that,
and change the other. But we did and I think
again it's such a lesson for me, which is we
listened to them. So at the time if you're I
don't know if you remember this everybody, but it was
(26:34):
an eight day show and some of our big customers
were saying, we just can't afford for our people to
be out for eight days. You know, you've got to
make it a five day show. And so we did that.
That was a huge thing to do. We cut the
number of categories for the awards, we did all sorts
of things in response to that difficult period we had.
(26:54):
And again, I think that's a lesson in how you
just have to be flexible and just be you know,
try to understand what your customer wants. And then the
final point you made was about COVID and all COVID
and you know, we tried the digital, we tried to
sell you know, all of that. It proved to me
my theory way back in the day when I got
(27:15):
into events in the first place, very little can disrupt
events because after two years of COVID, all people wanted
in the whole wide world was to get back together again.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
We're going to hit pause for a moment, but stay
with us after the break, we've got more insights to
share it. I want to come into the current moment
and be a bit provocative. We're in a moment where equity, diversity,
(27:48):
just the gatekeeping all those things that we focus on
and were important to consider. How do you look at
that in the context of the current circumstance. How are
you parsing that against the backdrop of what we see
in the market currently.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Two answers to that. The first is our community, our
market and our customers in many ways build the festival
each year, and how much they lean into that or
not will be up to them. And what we're seeing
is less leaning into that. For all the reasons, the
(28:24):
political reasons, we can say from our perspective, it's the opposite.
And the reason it's the opposite is that we started
on this journey when it was really quite unpopular. So
it started with us with gender diversity actually, and it
started right at the heart of the festival with our juries,
because we woke up one day and thought, you know what,
(28:46):
eighty five percent male juries not you know, how is
this reflecting either the industry or the wider society. So
we went through a whole, a long journey of trying
to balance that, and then we did that on our state,
and then we brought in other kinds of representation, and frankly,
you know, Michael, we had some pretty serious pushback on
(29:07):
a lot of this, especially on the jury side, for
reasons I won't go into. It's too complicated to this,
but people were not happy. Some people were not happy,
but we did it, and I think they're glad we
did it right, They're very glad we did it.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
So, Phil, let me ask you the hard question. Having
been fortunate over these years to be on the stage
many times at the can Lions and organizing so much
of this with you and the team, the g and
I'm going to just say it. I'm not going to
sugarcoat it. Gee, you can't have two white males on
the stage, or you can't have three white males. You
have to have, you know, two women and one person
(29:44):
of color. And is that still the view from the
can Lions.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I don't think it's ever been a hard and fast rule.
What we want to avoid is the situation that we've
seen many times of every single session being, as they say,
a mannal as opposed to a panel, because that certainly
doesn't reflect the industry that we're serving. So I'll give
(30:10):
you a couple of examples. People under people who come
to can Lions under thirty, it's exactly fifty to fifty
male and female. It drops off a bit as they
get older because of all the iniquities and difficulties of
senior roles for women. But a large number of our
people are very diverse in the audience that we serve,
(30:31):
and so what they want to see is they want
to see that reflected on the stage. And I think
that's absolutely fine. So we're not as basic as everything
has to be exactly this way or that way. We
just want the feel to be much more inclusive. And
if I look back, say twenty ten, twenty eleven, I mean, honestly,
if you were in a time machine now you went
(30:52):
back to Can Lions twenty ten to twenty eleven, you think,
my god, are there any black people on this planet? Whatsoever? Whereas,
through a lot of help from a lot of people,
I always call Steve stout out on this. He came
to me in about twenty fourteen or something said you've
just got to do something. You know, You've got to
(31:13):
bring more diverse people to this event. And so we
put a lot of effort into that, and I think
it's better for it.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
Absolutely, Phil. As we're on the precipice of twenty twenty five,
is there anything you want to spotlight, anything you want
to talk about that we should be excited about that's
coming this year that's going to be different, or things
you'd like to see us focus on.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Well, of course we could talk about the speakers, but
I think we'll talk about something much more interesting, which
is what do we actually do? What is the point
of Lions and can Lions And the best way to
describe what we do is we have a problem to
try to help to fix, and that problem is that
marketing professionals cmos are under immense pressure when they're going
(32:01):
into a boardroom to argue for capital allocation in marketing.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
I was so thrilled you were going this wave, Phil,
because I was going to modify my question. I've been asked,
and you know this multiple times to help particular cmos
or leaders write the justification to their leadership for why
they should be able to come to the can Lions.
And in times like this right now, when we're in
(32:27):
uncertain economic times. Although tariffs yes, no, maybe one hundred
and fifty percent, no, percent, I don't know. We're all
over the map. I've heard from certain brands, Oh, I'm
nervous about the look the optics. And my answer has
always been, wait, you're nervous about the optics. Would you
(32:48):
feel that way if it was called the Cleveland Lions.
And I'm not picking on Cleveland. Is it because it's
can Because if it is, just pretend you're somewhere else,
because that's just location. It has nothing to do with
the substance. It's location. Anyway, I'm not I'm not priming you.
I'm just giving you the kind of.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah, well it's it's you know, if you think about
our organization, we've you know, we acquired walk, which is
an effectiveness platform. We acquired the FI organization, which is
about effectiveness. So what we're trying to do. All we
try to do actually is give cmos the evidence and
the data the arguments that they need to argue for
(33:34):
capital allocation in marketing, particularly creative marketing. And the reason
they're up against it is because, well, firstly, they've got
to show payback in year one, whereas the CTO sitting
over there says, our capitalize my investment over five years.
The poor old marketer's got to pay it back in
year one. But also one of the key things is
the rest of the c suite, the CEO's, the CFOs,
(33:56):
et cetera. They're very skeptical about marketing. They don't really
really understand it, they don't really know how to measure it,
and they don't really see the link between that and
adding value and building value across their organization.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
Well, yeah, that's the golden ticket. You know. I had
one leader say to me the other day. I interviewed
one of his leaders and the person said, to me, Gee,
we should take this show on the road. And I said,
perhaps you should come and join me in Can. And
this person's the number two, said Michael, don't do that.
(34:33):
If that person comes to Can, we'll never be able
to go to Can. I said, well, actually, I disagree
with you, but I will respect that because it just
matters what that person's experiences in Can. Because if that
person's view is this looks like a lot of parties
and boondoggles, which you and I well know, Phil, it
is not. I don't know about everyone else that goes,
(34:55):
but I just speak.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
To this personally.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
I worked my tail off for five days and five
months before, but for five days it's the hardest week
of the year. So my joke has always been with
our teams over the years that glass of rose in
your hand is merely a prop. You're not there to drink.
You're there to work.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
You're there to learn.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
And one other dynamic film that I want to ask
you about. From you, I learned the difference between festivals
and conferences, and I do understand the difference now, but
I also know that the motivation of many today in
Can is more bizarre. And I don't mean bizarre like
(35:39):
odd I mean bizarre like bazaar sales. And with the
emergence of retail media or that which we now call
commerce media and other elements, so many people are there
now to sell. Let's be clear. They're there to interact.
They're there for joint business plans, are there for top
(36:01):
to top meetings. They're there to see the work and
understand the work and get behind the work and underneath
the work and learn about creativity. But they're there to sell.
It's a different dynamic than I think I experienced when
I first went to Camp.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yes, and it is totally different from the early days
of can where people were going to basically look at
work and celebrate the people behind the work, which is
still a big part of it, of course. I think
what I realized this year for the first time was
that in can Lions and apologies for those who haven't been,
(36:36):
but for can Lions, there is the most immense amount
of proximity bias. Right. So I'll give you an example.
I was sitting with a mutual friend of ours on
a Thursday and he said, how's it all going. I said,
I'm really looking forward to tomorrow night, meaning Friday night,
Friday Night is our biggest award show, all right, And
(36:58):
he said, what do you mean everyone goes home on Thursdays?
And I said, no, you're a New York based you know,
you have a certain profile, and you're based in New York.
You go home on Thursdays. And actually so do a
lot of people. But many, many, many people also stay
for the Friday So this is this proximity bias, Like
(37:20):
everyone near me is like a bizarre yeah, but if
you go and talk to those people over there, they
have a completely different experience. And I think that's partly
to do with just the scale of it now. But
what we're doing this year, what I'm most excited about
is that we are trying. We feel now we've moved
from advertising agencies into welcoming everybody, including marketers. And we
(37:42):
have hundreds upon hundreds of marketers and they all work
really hard, by the way, when they're there. But next
step is the C suite. So how can we get
CEOs to come to can lines and understand learn about brand,
learn about how that builds value, learn more about the
measurement and excellence in marketing and communications. This is our
(38:03):
next step. So we're launching the CEO Forum, which you're
working with us on the course. It's an invitation only
forum and it's going to be small to start with,
but ultimately I think it's one of the most important
things we can do, which is to get these conversations
further up the value chain where people can make no doubt.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
So, Phil, I'm going to do something I like to
do on Good Company, which is just do our kind
of lightning round and I'm going to throw some questions
at you. And I just love your quick off the cuff.
They don't have to be off the cuff. Maybe they're
well well seasoned answers. But is there a particular habit
in your daily routine that brings you unexpected joy anything particular.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
I have a dog. You take that dog for a
walk and it grounds you and reminds you how to
live your life.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Well, there you go. I had one yesterday. I got
a call from one of my daughter in law is
saying one of my particular grandchildren just wanted to talk
to me. I wasn't going to be at a family
dinner because I was traveling, and that was the highlight
of my day, just saying, Hey, I want to talk
to Papa. I went, okay, because normally when we arrive
at our grandchildren, they look at Rodney and go Gigi,
(39:15):
and they run to her and I and they look
at me and I go, what am I chop liver?
So you know when chop liver gets a moment, it's okay.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Phil.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
If you speaking of younger, if you could give your
younger self one piece of guidance, what would it be?
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Just trust you and just trust your trust. Everything's going
to be all right, So don't be so anxious.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Phil, Was there a mentor early in your career and
somebody that you can pick out, and is there a
particular piece of advice that that person gave you?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
So my father was an academic. He dragged himself from poverty, genuine,
genuine grinding poverty to the fairly high academic excellence. And
I went to him one day and I said, Dad,
I'm not going to go to university. I don't think
I can do it. And he's, you do what you
want to do, do what you believe in. And that's
the best bit of advice I've ever had.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
Phil, is there one industry buzzword you wish would disappear forever?
Speaker 2 (40:11):
I hate ecosystem. I hope I haven't used it on
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
No you haven't, you haven't, I haven't.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
It's just that awful. I think it's biologically A rainforest
is an ecosystem. Let's just leave it there.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
If you weren't doing what you are now, is there
a particular thing or job or activity you'd be chasing?
And I want to add, I know you just took
on a chairmanship of Comic Relief and Red Nose Day
and can you talk about that a little because I
know that's something that's near and dear to your heart.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah, Comic Relief is there is an American chapter actually
for American listeners, but it's mainly a UK based charity.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Is I am going to I've agreed to be co
chairman of the Dinner again this year. I chaired it
two years ago and I've joined with Jackie Kelly and
Joanna Coles too.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Really, I didn't know that co chair of the Dinner. Yes,
that's brilliant. That's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
So it's a sort of a British institution and it's
a partnership with the BBC. We've got partners Amazon and
all sorts of partners like that, and it's really about
the joy and the happiness of giving and why giving
is important as an individual. That's what we try to
build stories around. And I've been doing it six weeks
or so and it's really really enjoyable and exciting. But
(41:23):
to answer your question, I would be an Oscar winning
writer director Michael, I would Oh, there you go, So
I would be I wasn't doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
Well, Phil Thomas, I think you're an Oscar winner no
matter what.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Oh, he's sweet. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
And as I said at the outset, twenty plus years
of friendship and partnership, I hope our listeners can sense
the affection and the respect and the gratitude I have.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
For that because likewise, likewise.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
I will say this out loud. The Can Lions, the institution,
the event and everything about it was game changing in
my career and my life. And I hope those others
who have joined me on good Company aren't insulted by this.
But this is my favorite.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Ah, thank you, Michael. It's been a real pleasure and
I look forward to seeing you in Can with a
rose in your hand as.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
A prop exactly well, you know, in my case, it
will be a Martini film, Yes, it will. Indeed, Phil Thomas,
I want to thank you for joining me on Good Company.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Thanks so much, Michael. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
I'm Michael Casson. Thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Good Company is brought to you by Three cy Ventures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
Special thanks to Alexis Borger Pude, our executive producer and
head of Content and Talent, and to Carl Catle.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Executive producer at iHeart Podcasts. Episodes are produced and edited
by Mary Doo. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
We'll see you next time.
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
We have a problem to try to help to fix,
and that problem is that marketing professionals cmos are under
immense pressure when they're going into a boardroom to argue
for capital allocation in marketing.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm Michael Cassen, and this is Good Company. Together we'll
explore the dynamic intersection of media, marketing, entertainment, sports and technology.
I'll be joined by visionaries, pioneers, and yes, even a
couple of disruptors for candid conversations as we break down
how these masters of ingenuity are shaping the future of business,
culture and everything in between. My bet is you'll pick
(00:49):
up a lesson or two along the way. As I
like to say, it's all good.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Welcome everyone to Good Company today. I'm thrilled to be
able to be joined by Phil Thomas, the executive chairman
of Informer Festivals. Phil began his career as a tenacious
journalist and parleyed that into becoming the master architect behind
the can Lions, Money twenty twenty and a portfolio of
global gatherings that redefine how brands tell their stories. His
(01:16):
visionary approach and uncannyability to turn bold ideas into industry
shaping realities have earned him the admiration of executives and
innovators across business sectors. Phil doesn't just ask what's next,
He builds it, amplifies its impact, and holds the industry
accountable to ambitious sustainability and diversity standards. Get ready for
(01:37):
a bold conversation on risk reward and the future of
live experiences. Let's dive in with my very good friend
Phil Thomas. Phil, thank you for joining me on Good Company.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Thank you, Michael. That was a hell of an introduction.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Well. I'll let the audience in on a secret. I
was actually introducing your evil twin brother.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
But I'll take you.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
What can I do exactly? I'm all you got.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
That's it, and I'm glad to have you. And I'm
glad to have called you a friend for more than
twenty years now. And I've already anticipated running out of
time because there's so much I would love to talk
to you about, so much that I know you can
share with our audience. But let's start from the beginning. Phil,
And as I said in the remarks, you were a
tenacious journalist. But can you give you know kind of
(02:25):
that journey.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
You began a.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Journalism and ended up piloting some of the world's biggest festivals.
What was there a pivotal moment or was there that
inflection point or that inspiration that took you from one
side to the other.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, I mean I didn't do very well at school,
so I was not an a student by any means.
I didn't go to college. I didn't go to university.
I was always interested in creativity, so I went to
college to do photography. I didn't do a degree. I
went to an art college, and I failed at being
a photographer. And shortly after that I started to right.
(03:00):
I started to write about the things I was seeing.
I started writing about various subjects, and that's how I
got into journalism because I'd finally found something that I
was reasonable at. And I worked on a number of
different magazines in the heyday of magazines. So Graydon Carter
has just written a book about, you know, the great
(03:20):
years of the eighties, and behind.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Signed my summer reading list. Yeah, trying to figure out
what I'm going to read after Can, because I have
no time to read anything before Can.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
It's been very highly recommended to me. That book, and
that was during those days, magazines could do no wrong.
It was an amazing place to be. But then, of
course the Internet came in. And I suppose this will
be a bit of a theme throughout our conversation today, Michael,
which is that clearly media such as magazines, newspapers, they
were right in the first wave of disruption, weren't they.
(03:51):
And I could see that magazines were going to have
a really, really, really tough time. And I wasn't qualified
to do very much. Have a law degree, I don't
have a medicine degree. I didn't have it, you know,
so I had to kind of think.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I had a practical degree.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I had a practical I had a degree from the
University of Life, Michael, the University of Life. But I
was in me. I was kind of in media. I
was in the creation of content and the persuasion of
people to part with money for that content. That was
That was what I was reasonable at.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
And so I, by the way, I'm going to come
back to that, phil because okay, that is an art form,
but keep going.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, And so I just thought, what in the world
that I could possibly do outside of rocket science and
brain surgery. What is that I could do that might
not be as disrupted by technology, and clearly events fell
into that space. So it took me a few years,
but I kind of wangled my way in to into
(04:52):
the event space and that's where I've been more or
less ever since.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Well it's so interesting, Phil, because you talked about the disruption,
and you talked about magazine and whatnot at that same time,
probably a little before that, certainly the music industry was upended,
as we certainly know, and Napster and all the things
that happened. And now we say that with a twinkle
in our eye of Napster. Oh my god, I can
tell you I remember the first song I ever illegally downloaded. Yes,
(05:19):
I said that out loud because I didn't have the
right to do it, and it was the first one.
And don't ask me why, but it's a tribute to
Chris de Burgh and Lady and Read.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I don't know why.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
That's just the first song I ever I ever downloaded.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I would say a great song.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, it's a great song.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
But the music industry, as you know, reinvented itself. It
went through that massive disruption, and several years ago we
bestowed the media Person of the Year honor on Sir
Lucian Grage and celebrating his success in the music industry.
Print didn't come back the same way though.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Print didn't come by the same way. Definitely didn't, and
there have been some success stories, of course. I would
pick out The New York Times, some of the more
upscale publications like The Atlantic, the New Yorker, these kind
of things. The Financial Times in the UK, they found
a model. They found this model of subscriptions and advertising
(06:15):
that seems to be working. But that's of course based
on two things. One the absolute quality of the content.
I mean the New York Times, the Financial Times. This
is content people are prepared to pay for.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Right, I would throw I would throw the Wall Street
Journal into that. I may not always agree, yeah, I
would not always agree with their opinions, but I would
certainly throw them into that equation. I said that myself
to their leadership many years ago when they were talking
about paywalls. I said, you have the right to have
a paywall because people will pay for your content.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
And I also think it's about being completely all in. Right.
So it got to a stage with print publications when
there were no other routes. There was nothing else to
do other other than to just go out of business.
I look at the New York Times and I just
think what they've done has been found that they just
really went all in and they said, look, we are
(07:08):
going to build a subscriptions platform. We're going to use
various things like podcasts, you know, to publicize that and
to get our message out. We're going to diversify into
all these really fast. I mean, who would think that
they would be big in puzzles and big in all
these different areas. And they've just built that model really brilliantly.
So a lot of print has had a hard time,
but actually some print.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Must be the strong British influence of Mark Thompson and
then bringing the US version of it with Meredith kopit
Levi and who put on a marvelous job collectively to
do that. Phil, let's kind of go to the other
end of the career, and then I want to talk
about the middle part, which is obviously the event space
and particularly the can Lyons. Something that you know and
(07:52):
the audience knows is near and dear to my heart.
When you made this transition and when you and I
began to work together back in twenty seventeen. We knew
each other before, but when we became partners in twenty seventeen,
the company that we became partners in, Essential had an
entirely different look to it. It owned a lot of things.
Now we sit here in May of twenty twenty five,
(08:14):
and Essential, for all intents and purposes doesn't exist. Can
you give us a little bit of that journey and
the extraordinary corporate story? Really? Because I don't want to
talk about it as an exit. I want to talk
about it as a reimagination of a company that was
done by leadership, which is generally not the case. Normally,
a result as lofty as what you were able to
(08:37):
achieve along with Duncan Painter and others and Scott Forbes
and a wonderful company is unheard of when it comes
from inside. Normally you have a private equity player come
in and break apart a company and then you say, hey,
the whole versus the sum of the parts. The Essential
story is such an amazing story. Can you give us
a little bit of that scaling through that how that
(09:01):
all came together.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I think I only see that in retrospect, So I
only see the fact that the investors certainly were very,
very grateful for a number of the decisions that were
made over time. At the time we were doing it,
I didn't realize it was so revolutionary in a sense.
And it was certainly started by Duncan, my predecessor as
(09:23):
CEO of Essential, he exited a lot of businesses, he
bought a lot of businesses, and he built capabilities around
e commerce. Then what happened was he and the board
were looking at the value creation and they were seeing
that actually the public markets, because Essential was on the
public market, the public market in the UK was not
(09:43):
ascribing the kind of value that we felt Essential deserved.
And so Scott, who was the chair and Duncan Paint
to the CEO at the time, instituted a strategic review
and the ultimately that review came to the conclusion the
business should be split up. And so, as some of
your listeners will know, Duncan's part, which was the digital
(10:07):
commerce element of the business, was sold to Omnicom. We
sold another couple of bits of business and that left
Essential as an event led business with can lions and
money twenty twenty so two pretty powerful platforms, but a
clarity of purpose around that.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
That's an important point to make, Phil don't class over that.
Clarity of purpose is so important for valuation and value,
both for companies, for individuals, for everybody. That is a
takeaway for our audiences, clarity of purpose. So thank you
for that.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
No, I think that was one of the things that
certainly the initial strategic review was out to bring clarity
to the business. The business was very, very different. We
had legacy, very profitable parts of it, we had start
effectively startup parts of it, addressing all sorts of different markets,
so it was very it was quite confusing. So this
(11:00):
brought this real clarity to it, and so I was
appointed CEO of the Events business, the events led business,
and thoroughly enjoying that. I then became the shortest lived
CEO in UK history because obviously we were then acquired
by Informa, which in itself is a whole story of
learning and lessons, and now we are indeed owned by Informer,
(11:23):
the world's biggest event organizer. It's just been a really
interesting learning for me about how public companies work, the
decisions you have to make, the stakeholders, you have to
discuss the future with the assets we had were so attractive,
we were always going to be a target. I'm just
(11:44):
very glad that the ultimate owner is a professional PLC
whose job it is to run events, rather than any
other player.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
I'm probably going to be off on my percentages, but
our listeners should know that. When I old Media Link
to Essential, and then when we repurchased it at the
end of twenty twenty one, I think the market cap
of Essential this is public obviously was around a billion
dollars plus or minus. And I think the result of
(12:15):
what happened and finally closed last year generated to the
shareholders north of three billion dollars. And that is no
mean feat. That is quite an extraordinary path, and as
you said, you've got to learn some lessons along the way.
But what a hell of a result, Phil, So congratulations
on that. I can only say that again, many of
(12:37):
our listeners may know the asset that was the heart
of that was something I personally coveted. So congratulating you
on a result that wasn't exactly the result I wanted,
but it might.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Be interesting for your listeners to hear that we had
a vision. So I had a vision to build a
business to a certain value, and we had a number
of shareholders that were very very supportive of us, you know,
people we got to know quite well. And after the
sale had a lunch. So these particular investors took us
(13:09):
for lunch and say thank you for realizing all this value.
And I asked her, I said, look, it's all over now,
so you can be honest with me. Did I have
to sell?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
You know?
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Could I have refused to sell and then built the
value of myself because you believed in my vision you
were going to come with me on this journey. And
the investor said immortally, said to me, Philip, there is
only one thing better than getting rich, and that is
getting rich quick. You had no choice. So that was
just a lesson. You know, in your public company, you've
(13:39):
got to be aware of who owns your business, and
it is the shareholders. There's stockholders.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
Good company will be right back after the break.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
So, Phil, now that you're a vet of M and
A at the highest level and playing in the league,
the thing I'd like to focus on is the can Lions.
About twenty five years ago, I stumbled on the can Lions,
as you know, and I was doing my normal vacation
that same time of year and I just for fun,
(14:19):
like to tell the story. And I was sitting at
the pool at a particular hotel and I looked around
the pool and I saw a bunch of folks from
the creative industries there. And I was running the largest
media agency in the world at that time. And I
only say that to make the point. And I looked
around the pool and I saw Marcia Morera, and I
saw ron Berger, and I saw i am Marie Marcus,
and I just saw a bunch of people I knew
(14:41):
from New York, from a can Erickson and other areas.
And I said, is there something going on here in
France's way? Was everybody here? They said, Oh, Michael, it's
the can Lions. I said, oh, I've heard of that.
And I say that now, and I'll repeat myself. I
was running the largest media agency in the world, and
I said, I've heard of that. I've given air quotes
(15:03):
for our listeners because that was something that was the
area for the creatives. And I was on the media
side of the business. And I turned to Ronnie and
you know this story, Phil. I turned to my wife
and I said, you know what, honey, you wanted to
go shopping and can why don't we drive in tomorrow
and take a look. I want to see what this
festival is about. And I just kind of showed up
(15:24):
and looked around and I saw something full of promise.
And that's when you and I got to know each other.
And I'd like to feel like I partnered with you
on that journey. But you were certainly the general, you know,
field General and the Marshall, and I was just a deputy.
I want to be. But can you give us a
(15:44):
little bit of that journey? Phil The Festival of Creativity
that I think is seventy five years old this year,
I think seventy five. Yeah, I may be right, because
I think in the seventy fourth or seventy third I
said the only thing older than me here in the
south of France was the can Lyons. So I am
turning seventy five this year. So the can Lions and
(16:05):
I do have something in common.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Excellent, Yeah, I mean I had a similar experience to you.
I went to the festival for the first time in
two thousand and six. Now, previous to that, I had
been to the film Festival many many times because I
was Yeah, I was the editor of a movie magazine.
So I used to go to the film festival all
the time, and in can as you walk in towards
(16:28):
the palais along the clazette on the right hand side,
there were all these really expensive posh shops like Chanelle
and Prada and those kind of shops. And the first
year I went to can Lyons, I noticed these shops
and I thought to myself, I can't believe there are
shops there. I'd never seen them before. And the reason
I'd never seen them before is because the film Festival
(16:49):
had so many people there and can Lions felt so small.
And I remember thinking to myself, the industry that this
event serves thinks that it's a really big deal, but
it isn't. It's a really it's actually a very small deal.
And I thought to myself, I wonder whether we can
(17:10):
make this something important, And by important, I suppose I
meant culturally important and more famous, just just more of
an event for this enormously important industry. It didn't feel
like it had the event that was that was worthy
of the industry. And so right from that very beginning,
a bit like you going to being in the Hotel
(17:31):
de cap and saying I've heard of Cam Lyons. I
thought to myself that all all that is here is promised,
all that is here is opportunity because it's an enormous industry.
It's going through a huge amount of change and will
continue to do so. Which is true proved to be true,
And where there is disruption and where there is uncertainty,
(17:53):
that is when an event really can come into its own.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
So, Phil, I want, I want to I want to
tell you something and this is time. This past Friday night,
I was at a birthday party for somebody we both know,
and there was a lot of It was in LA
and there was a lot of Hollywood folks there entertainment side.
And the question always comes up certainly with me, Well
I see you in Can. What you've achieved, phil is
(18:18):
Can Lyons is now Can Can Film Festival is the
other Can. Rely It's really and I'm talking about heads
of studios that I was talking to there is focused
more focused on the Can Lions than they are on
the other Can. And it used to be the reverse.
Because I went to the Can Film Festival the first
time in nineteen eighty six. I am that old and
(18:40):
you know I've been many times. It's not even close
in terms of cultural and other impact. But again, Phil,
you said something about our industry, and what I think
you've done brilliantly is bring together, as I like to
say where I live is the intersection of marketing, media, advertising, entertainment,
(19:01):
sports and technology. I think the manifestation of that for
four days in the Coke desur is never been better
expressed than by you. And the idea of bringing all
those disparate industries together in one place and getting the
leadership and the rank and file and the importance of
(19:23):
it is extraordinary. Because when you go back to that
time in two thousand and six and you make that judgment,
if you looked at it today, if you arrived Phil
Thomas today in Can, what would your reaction be. Would
your reaction be, Oh, this is the Can that other
thing the film Festival? Yeah? Is that relevant anymore? I mean,
(19:44):
I'm not picking on the and I'm not picking on
the film Festival. It's a wonderful group of people and
all of that. I have no bearing on that. I'm
just saying in terms of relative importance.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
So the first thing to say is that there's a
whole bunch of people who've done this I get quite
a lot of credit, but actually, you know, specifically Simon Cook,
who's the current CEO of Lions and his amazing team,
and others before him as well, So it's a whole
bunch of people. But I honestly felt, in twenty twenty four,
(20:18):
we're here, We've arrived. This is culture. It was for me.
It was something about culture. And I didn't even know
what I meant when I was thinking, when I thought
to myself back in two thousand and six, I wonder
if this can be important in culture. I didn't know
what it meant, really, but in twenty four I just
felt it. Now anybody that was there will have seen
the music.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
Well you might have felt and I'm going to let
our audience, and I'm going to let our audience and
on a little secret for you might have felt it
in twenty three, but I think that was the year
you were locked up in your room with COVID.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Ah, so I presumably missed it. Yes I did, I
had COVID.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
It might have felt it a year before.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I'll tell you if you will, car, if you want
to feel like the Count of Monte Cristo or what
you know, just stuck in a cell. I tell you
it was harrrendous to be in that. I was in
my room and it's right opposite the palais for the
first three days of the festival in twenty three. It's awful.
It was awful, but twenty four was a joy because
it kind of yeah, you saw it. They've got the
(21:15):
sport beach, you know, the stag will bring, and you've
got you've got musicians, and you've got TV, you've got music.
It's all there, and that is It's partly what we've done,
you and Simon and me and other people, but it's
also just the nature of the industry. We've been very,
very lucky to be facing this particular industry at this
(21:36):
particular time.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
Well, you know, luck is the luck is defined best
as the intersection, for me at least, as the intersection
of preparation and opportunity. I didn't make that up. I
read that in a book by Tom Monahan, the founder
of Domino's Peach, as somebody who, for most things, I
would think is somewhere to the right of Attil of
the Hunt in terms of my views in life. But
(21:59):
that one quote really resonated with me because what you
just said you were lucky, and that's correct, but you
were prepared to receive this conflation of all these industries
coming together. And maybe technology was the thread that brought
everything together, and I think it was, but capturing it
(22:20):
is the key. And Phil, this wasn't always a straight line.
You had issues with recession in the middle of your
turn tenure. You had issues of one particular holding company
deciding not to participate in events in general. But the
iyre was on Can even though it was a global event,
(22:41):
you know, restriction for a year, and everybody wondered, oh
my god, what does this mean? And then as we
all faced twenty twenty and twenty twenty one where there
was no festival and the idea of those dynamics, and
sitting here today preparing for what I believe, and you know,
(23:05):
you can agree or disagree. I don't know what your
restrictions are as a public company to answer me, but
sitting in advance of what will undoubtedly be the biggest
Can Lions in history, and I'm certain the best. It's
just amazing to me that that journey again with two
years in a row where it didn't happen, And so
(23:25):
if that was if there was ever a moment that
participants could take to pause and say, do I really
need this? Because I've just survived two years without it?
Giving somebody that option when you're selling something back to
what we started with, the ability to ask for the order.
It's tough when you have to convince somebody no, you
(23:46):
really can't live without it.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah, but you've touched on a whole load of really
interesting points. I want to take them. Actually, I want
to talk about each one of those because I think
they're really, really important. So if we look back at
the history of the festival, one of the most important
decisions we made was to actually rename it. You will
remember that it used to be called the International Advertising Festival,
(24:08):
and in twenty eleven, I think it was what we
realized was advertising is a tiny sliver of the potential
total addressable market. To give it its kind of you
to give it its posh name, but effectively people wanting
to communicate with other people about their brands and their products.
It is so much more than advertising, and we were
(24:31):
stuck with this effectively with this name of the International
Advertising Festival. It was really brought into focus when I
had a conversation with a great friend of ours, Richard Edelman,
who obviously runs one of the world's biggest PR companies.
He said, Phil, I want to get involved, I want
to lean in. I want to be part of all this.
But you're called the Advertising Festival. You know, how am
(24:52):
I going to sell this? How am I going to
feel welcome? And that got us thinking, and that's why
we renamed it the Creativity Festival Estical Creativity. What that
immediately did was just welcome anybody who wants to use
creativity in their marketing. They're branding their communication, and it
seems sometimes a name is so important. And that was
(25:15):
an unbelievably important moment. The first recession, the Great Financial Crisis,
sixty percent reduction in our revenues, really tough to come
back from, but we came back from it. It began to grow,
and then we had this. Basically it was a customer revolt,
I suppose you could say, because there was one big
holding company I think people know presumably no its publicist
(25:39):
who said we're going to withdraw from the festival. They
were always clear, just for a year, We're going to
pull out for a year. What that allowed was a
number of our other customers to say, actually, while I
think about it, this is what I don't like about
your event. And that's what I don't like about your event.
The great thing about can Lynes is the industry feel
they own it. Everybody feels they own it. And that's
(26:02):
great and I'm encouraged that. But it does mean people have.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
You know, certainly then at least one person.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
On this.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
It's fine, it's fine. Is it belonged? It does in
many ways belong to everyone, which is part of its strength. Right,
So the customers were piling in, change the change that,
and change the other. But we did and I think
again it's such a lesson for me, which is we
listened to them. So at the time if you're I
don't know if you remember this everybody, but it was
(26:34):
an eight day show and some of our big customers
were saying, we just can't afford for our people to
be out for eight days. You know, you've got to
make it a five day show. And so we did that.
That was a huge thing to do. We cut the
number of categories for the awards, we did all sorts
of things in response to that difficult period we had.
(26:54):
And again, I think that's a lesson in how you
just have to be flexible and just be you know,
try to understand what your customer wants. And then the
final point you made was about COVID and all COVID
and you know, we tried the digital, we tried to
sell you know, all of that. It proved to me
my theory way back in the day when I got
(27:15):
into events in the first place, very little can disrupt
events because after two years of COVID, all people wanted
in the whole wide world was to get back together again.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
We're going to hit pause for a moment, but stay
with us after the break, we've got more insights to
share it. I want to come into the current moment
and be a bit provocative. We're in a moment where equity, diversity,
(27:48):
just the gatekeeping all those things that we focus on
and were important to consider. How do you look at
that in the context of the current circumstance. How are
you parsing that against the backdrop of what we see
in the market currently.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Two answers to that. The first is our community, our
market and our customers in many ways build the festival
each year, and how much they lean into that or
not will be up to them. And what we're seeing
is less leaning into that. For all the reasons, the
(28:24):
political reasons, we can say from our perspective, it's the opposite.
And the reason it's the opposite is that we started
on this journey when it was really quite unpopular. So
it started with us with gender diversity actually, and it
started right at the heart of the festival with our juries,
because we woke up one day and thought, you know what,
(28:46):
eighty five percent male juries not you know, how is
this reflecting either the industry or the wider society. So
we went through a whole, a long journey of trying
to balance that, and then we did that on our state,
and then we brought in other kinds of representation, and frankly,
you know, Michael, we had some pretty serious pushback on
(29:07):
a lot of this, especially on the jury side, for
reasons I won't go into. It's too complicated to this,
but people were not happy. Some people were not happy,
but we did it, and I think they're glad we
did it right, They're very glad we did it.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
So, Phil, let me ask you the hard question. Having
been fortunate over these years to be on the stage
many times at the can Lions and organizing so much
of this with you and the team, the g and
I'm going to just say it. I'm not going to
sugarcoat it. Gee, you can't have two white males on
the stage, or you can't have three white males. You
have to have, you know, two women and one person
(29:44):
of color. And is that still the view from the
can Lions.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I don't think it's ever been a hard and fast rule.
What we want to avoid is the situation that we've
seen many times of every single session being, as they say,
a mannal as opposed to a panel, because that certainly
doesn't reflect the industry that we're serving. So I'll give
(30:10):
you a couple of examples. People under people who come
to can Lions under thirty, it's exactly fifty to fifty
male and female. It drops off a bit as they
get older because of all the iniquities and difficulties of
senior roles for women. But a large number of our
people are very diverse in the audience that we serve,
(30:31):
and so what they want to see is they want
to see that reflected on the stage. And I think
that's absolutely fine. So we're not as basic as everything
has to be exactly this way or that way. We
just want the feel to be much more inclusive. And
if I look back, say twenty ten, twenty eleven, I mean, honestly,
if you were in a time machine now you went
(30:52):
back to Can Lions twenty ten to twenty eleven, you think,
my god, are there any black people on this planet? Whatsoever? Whereas,
through a lot of help from a lot of people,
I always call Steve stout out on this. He came
to me in about twenty fourteen or something said you've
just got to do something. You know, You've got to
(31:13):
bring more diverse people to this event. And so we
put a lot of effort into that, and I think
it's better for it.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
Absolutely, Phil. As we're on the precipice of twenty twenty five,
is there anything you want to spotlight, anything you want
to talk about that we should be excited about that's
coming this year that's going to be different, or things
you'd like to see us focus on.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Well, of course we could talk about the speakers, but
I think we'll talk about something much more interesting, which
is what do we actually do? What is the point
of Lions and can Lions And the best way to
describe what we do is we have a problem to
try to help to fix, and that problem is that
marketing professionals cmos are under immense pressure when they're going
(32:01):
into a boardroom to argue for capital allocation in marketing.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
I was so thrilled you were going this wave, Phil,
because I was going to modify my question. I've been asked,
and you know this multiple times to help particular cmos
or leaders write the justification to their leadership for why
they should be able to come to the can Lions.
And in times like this right now, when we're in
(32:27):
uncertain economic times. Although tariffs yes, no, maybe one hundred
and fifty percent, no, percent, I don't know. We're all
over the map. I've heard from certain brands, Oh, I'm
nervous about the look the optics. And my answer has
always been, wait, you're nervous about the optics. Would you
(32:48):
feel that way if it was called the Cleveland Lions.
And I'm not picking on Cleveland. Is it because it's
can Because if it is, just pretend you're somewhere else,
because that's just location. It has nothing to do with
the substance. It's location. Anyway, I'm not I'm not priming you.
I'm just giving you the kind of.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah, well it's it's you know, if you think about
our organization, we've you know, we acquired walk, which is
an effectiveness platform. We acquired the FI organization, which is
about effectiveness. So what we're trying to do. All we
try to do actually is give cmos the evidence and
the data the arguments that they need to argue for
(33:34):
capital allocation in marketing, particularly creative marketing. And the reason
they're up against it is because, well, firstly, they've got
to show payback in year one, whereas the CTO sitting
over there says, our capitalize my investment over five years.
The poor old marketer's got to pay it back in
year one. But also one of the key things is
the rest of the c suite, the CEO's, the CFOs,
(33:56):
et cetera. They're very skeptical about marketing. They don't really
really understand it, they don't really know how to measure it,
and they don't really see the link between that and
adding value and building value across their organization.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
Well, yeah, that's the golden ticket. You know. I had
one leader say to me the other day. I interviewed
one of his leaders and the person said, to me, Gee,
we should take this show on the road. And I said,
perhaps you should come and join me in Can. And
this person's the number two, said Michael, don't do that.
(34:33):
If that person comes to Can, we'll never be able
to go to Can. I said, well, actually, I disagree
with you, but I will respect that because it just
matters what that person's experiences in Can. Because if that
person's view is this looks like a lot of parties
and boondoggles, which you and I well know, Phil, it
is not. I don't know about everyone else that goes,
(34:55):
but I just speak.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
To this personally.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
I worked my tail off for five days and five
months before, but for five days it's the hardest week
of the year. So my joke has always been with
our teams over the years that glass of rose in
your hand is merely a prop. You're not there to drink.
You're there to work.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
You're there to learn.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
And one other dynamic film that I want to ask
you about. From you, I learned the difference between festivals
and conferences, and I do understand the difference now, but
I also know that the motivation of many today in
Can is more bizarre. And I don't mean bizarre like
(35:39):
odd I mean bizarre like bazaar sales. And with the
emergence of retail media or that which we now call
commerce media and other elements, so many people are there
now to sell. Let's be clear. They're there to interact.
They're there for joint business plans, are there for top
(36:01):
to top meetings. They're there to see the work and
understand the work and get behind the work and underneath
the work and learn about creativity. But they're there to sell.
It's a different dynamic than I think I experienced when
I first went to Camp.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Yes, and it is totally different from the early days
of can where people were going to basically look at
work and celebrate the people behind the work, which is
still a big part of it, of course. I think
what I realized this year for the first time was
that in can Lions and apologies for those who haven't been,
(36:36):
but for can Lions, there is the most immense amount
of proximity bias. Right. So I'll give you an example.
I was sitting with a mutual friend of ours on
a Thursday and he said, how's it all going. I said,
I'm really looking forward to tomorrow night, meaning Friday night,
Friday Night is our biggest award show, all right, And
(36:58):
he said, what do you mean everyone goes home on Thursdays?
And I said, no, you're a New York based you know,
you have a certain profile, and you're based in New York.
You go home on Thursdays. And actually so do a
lot of people. But many, many, many people also stay
for the Friday So this is this proximity bias, Like
(37:20):
everyone near me is like a bizarre yeah, but if
you go and talk to those people over there, they
have a completely different experience. And I think that's partly
to do with just the scale of it now. But
what we're doing this year, what I'm most excited about
is that we are trying. We feel now we've moved
from advertising agencies into welcoming everybody, including marketers. And we
(37:42):
have hundreds upon hundreds of marketers and they all work
really hard, by the way, when they're there. But next
step is the C suite. So how can we get
CEOs to come to can lines and understand learn about brand,
learn about how that builds value, learn more about the
measurement and excellence in marketing and communications. This is our
(38:03):
next step. So we're launching the CEO Forum, which you're
working with us on the course. It's an invitation only
forum and it's going to be small to start with,
but ultimately I think it's one of the most important
things we can do, which is to get these conversations
further up the value chain where people can make no doubt.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
So, Phil, I'm going to do something I like to
do on Good Company, which is just do our kind
of lightning round and I'm going to throw some questions
at you. And I just love your quick off the cuff.
They don't have to be off the cuff. Maybe they're
well well seasoned answers. But is there a particular habit
in your daily routine that brings you unexpected joy anything particular.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
I have a dog. You take that dog for a
walk and it grounds you and reminds you how to
live your life.
Speaker 4 (38:53):
Well, there you go. I had one yesterday. I got
a call from one of my daughter in law is
saying one of my particular grandchildren just wanted to talk
to me. I wasn't going to be at a family
dinner because I was traveling, and that was the highlight
of my day, just saying, Hey, I want to talk
to Papa. I went, okay, because normally when we arrive
at our grandchildren, they look at Rodney and go Gigi,
(39:15):
and they run to her and I and they look
at me and I go, what am I chop liver?
So you know when chop liver gets a moment, it's okay.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Phil.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
If you speaking of younger, if you could give your
younger self one piece of guidance, what would it be?
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Just trust you and just trust your trust. Everything's going
to be all right, So don't be so anxious.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Phil, Was there a mentor early in your career and
somebody that you can pick out, and is there a
particular piece of advice that that person gave you?
Speaker 2 (39:44):
So my father was an academic. He dragged himself from poverty, genuine,
genuine grinding poverty to the fairly high academic excellence. And
I went to him one day and I said, Dad,
I'm not going to go to university. I don't think
I can do it. And he's, you do what you
want to do, do what you believe in. And that's
the best bit of advice I've ever had.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
Phil, is there one industry buzzword you wish would disappear forever?
Speaker 2 (40:11):
I hate ecosystem. I hope I haven't used it on
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
No you haven't, you haven't, I haven't.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
It's just that awful. I think it's biologically A rainforest
is an ecosystem. Let's just leave it there.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
If you weren't doing what you are now, is there
a particular thing or job or activity you'd be chasing?
And I want to add, I know you just took
on a chairmanship of Comic Relief and Red Nose Day
and can you talk about that a little because I
know that's something that's near and dear to your heart.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah, Comic Relief is there is an American chapter actually
for American listeners, but it's mainly a UK based charity.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Is I am going to I've agreed to be co
chairman of the Dinner again this year. I chaired it
two years ago and I've joined with Jackie Kelly and
Joanna Coles too.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Really, I didn't know that co chair of the Dinner. Yes,
that's brilliant. That's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
So it's a sort of a British institution and it's
a partnership with the BBC. We've got partners Amazon and
all sorts of partners like that, and it's really about
the joy and the happiness of giving and why giving
is important as an individual. That's what we try to
build stories around. And I've been doing it six weeks
or so and it's really really enjoyable and exciting. But
(41:23):
to answer your question, I would be an Oscar winning
writer director Michael, I would Oh, there you go, So
I would be I wasn't doing what I'm doing.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
Well, Phil Thomas, I think you're an Oscar winner no
matter what.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Oh, he's sweet. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
And as I said at the outset, twenty plus years
of friendship and partnership, I hope our listeners can sense
the affection and the respect and the gratitude I have.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
For that because likewise, likewise.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
I will say this out loud. The Can Lions, the institution,
the event and everything about it was game changing in
my career and my life. And I hope those others
who have joined me on good Company aren't insulted by this.
But this is my favorite.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Ah, thank you, Michael. It's been a real pleasure and
I look forward to seeing you in Can with a
rose in your hand as.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
A prop exactly well, you know, in my case, it
will be a Martini film, Yes, it will. Indeed, Phil Thomas,
I want to thank you for joining me on Good Company.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Thanks so much, Michael. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
I'm Michael Casson. Thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Good Company is brought to you by Three cy Ventures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
Special thanks to Alexis Borger Pude, our executive producer and
head of Content and Talent, and to Carl Catle.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Executive producer at iHeart Podcasts. Episodes are produced and edited
by Mary Doo. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
We'll see you next time.
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