Starting a company at 26 can be intimidating, but Daniel Gilbert was up for the challenge. In this episode, we talk to the Brainlabs’ founder and CEO about what it takes to start your own business, the rise of “brandformance” and the art of authentically engaging in culture.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
You can have what aff culture you want, but you
have to decide what you want that to look like.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Hi, I'm Michael Casson. Welcome to Good Company. We're all
explore how marketing, media, entertainment and tech are intersecting, transforming
our lives and the way we do business at a
breakneck speed. I'll be joined by some of the greatest
business minds at strongest leaders who will share how they
built companies from the ground up or transformed them from
the inside out. My bet is you'll pick up a
(00:34):
lesson or two along the way.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
It's all good.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
It's a great pleasure today to welcome Daniel Gilbert to
Good Company. I had the good fortune of meeting Daniel
maybe two years ago and have been like most of
us in the industry, watching really carefully what Daniel has
executed in his building of brain Labs and what I'd
love you to do. Who was kind of give your journey.
(01:02):
You went from Google to founding your own digital first
media agency, as I said, brain Labs, and I think
you were at the ripe old age of twenty six
when you did that. Can you give a little background
on kind of that journey and you know the transition
and as well what inspired you to kind of bring
(01:23):
brain Labs to the world.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Thank you so much and thank you for having me, Michael.
It's such a pleasure to be here. And great title
for the podcast, because you are a good company. In fact,
that you're better than good great company. I started brain
Labs twenty twelve, and I had this unique privilege of
working for this super cool company called Google, having just
been a graduate and not really knowing that Google even
(01:44):
employed people. So bear in mind, this was like thirteen
years ago, fourteen years ago when I applied there, and
at that time, like Google was this search page where
you kind of put things in that you wanted to find,
but you didn't really think of them as a massive advertising,
giant employer. They hadn't gone into as many areas as
they're into now, self driving cars and apps and technology
(02:06):
outside of search.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
So I had this amazing privilege.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Of working at Google, and after a while I was
with these incredible colleagues working on life changing type of work.
And at the same time, I guess you could call
it two different things happening. One the commercial entrepreneur opportunist
in me saw how the world was changing in Google's favor.
So this new concept of media that instead of booking
(02:31):
over the phone or negotiating with media partners, you were
just buying in real time or bidding for I should
say more accurately bidding for in real time in live auctions,
So trillions of data points in a live auction that
required a level of science, technology sophistication that hadn't really
been seen in the traditional media world prior to that.
(02:53):
In that more commercially led buying, packaging, negotiating, selling media.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
You saw the whole, the delta between, if you will,
between what you thought was relevant and necessary and what
was actually being done.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Well, yeah, and I don't know about the whole, right,
but there was at that time, let's say Google, which
was effectively what you would call digital media. At that time,
there was Google. Facebook platforms weren't around I don't think
twenty ten eleven, so it was effectively Google. And I
hope everyone that was present would forgive me for saying that.
But let's just say ninety percent plus market share of
biddable media, it was still only five to ten percent
(03:33):
of the total media mix.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
And I could just.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
See that there was this whole new wave of media
coming that required a completely different approach, and I'd summarize
it later or we still kind of call it, hence
the name brain Labs, But I could see that it
was about brain power and nothing to do with buying power.
And part of what prompted that Michael was being on
the other side at Google having some bordering on hilarious
(03:57):
conversations where media agencies would come in to Google and
try and negotiate better rates with Google, and you'd have
these kind of conversations where it was like, no, no,
it's an auction, right, you log in, here's your log in,
go and bid for the media Like no, no, no, come on,
wink wink, give us a discount. It's like no, no, there's
no discount, Like we don't have it's an auction, and
you go round and around in circles.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
And all that was kind of clocking for me at.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
The time was like, well, whoa, this is traded in
a completely different way. And what I mean by that
is not that the media agencies didn't know what was
happening necessarily, but there was a completely different business model
and of all the things in the world that are
easy slash all the most difficult things in the world
to pivot a business model, like how you make money,
and I could just see that at the time that
(04:41):
you know, not just the talent that was going to
be required, but the technology that needed to be built
and then how you commercialize that as a service or
product was going to change for this new type of
media that I didn't know how quickly it would happen,
but it was obvious to me that Google was going
to grow and that, you know, the old world would
be displaced by this new one. And all I can
really say that we've been fortunate to have chosen a
(05:02):
great wave to ride. We chose a good one, but
we've navigated it well. And that's been underscore the success
of brain Labs with just me leaving going to mom
and Dad's attics so I didn't have to pay rent
and starting from home, growing into where we are now,
which is a thousand people globally running media for some
of the world's biggest brands, which is kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And Daniel, the journey has been amazing to this point.
But last month you secured a major investment in brain
Labs from Felt Furious, the private equity firm. Can you
talk about how there's new investment, injection of capital, what
have you is going to change or somehow modify your
(05:44):
plan or you know, is it just really that element
which is going to support your goal of becoming the
largest and most successful digital media agency in the world.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
It's not a dream, it's destiny, we decide. I did
take private equity funding first. This was going back four
years ago. We took our first institutional capital and we
did that rather than going down the more trodden path,
which was to sell to one of the network media agencies.
So that was where ninety five percent of agency acquisitions
(06:16):
landed at that time, and private equity weren't really in
the space at all. Lots of different reasons that I
maybe won't go into now, but in part because they
didn't want to be in the space and had not
quite got up to speed with investing in service based businesses.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
It's funny you say that, Daniel, because when people talk
about the concept of B to B or B two C,
the industry has begun to speak in terms of B
to H business to human. Yeah, and my own opinion
in that context was really fortified by the fact that
when people talked about B to B. I always say, well,
let me ask a question. When you're selling into a company,
(06:56):
is it an inadamant object or is it the proper
group or is it somebody human? Is body that we're selling? Yeah,
companies aren't humans. They were made up of people.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
I mean, I think it's so insightful what you're saying,
because it's like one of those harmful terms that gets
taken for granted. You know, that just becomes part of
the day to day narrative. And there's other parts of
the business where I'm seeing that come to life, up
to and including like how you market to those people
as well, and how you treat your marketing. And there's
this whole piece in marketing at the moment, it's like,
is it B to B or B two C.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I came up with a word a couple of years
ago in the context of a particular client assignment we
were dealing with, and the client looked at me and said,
why is it that I why is it that we
have a brand marketing unit here and a performance marketing
unit here. Why can't we just have a brand and
performance marketing unit together? And I looked at the person
and I said, you mean brandformance and they said is
(07:53):
that a word?
Speaker 4 (07:54):
I said, it is? Now, yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Know, I think it falls into that and ties in
n with that previous discussion, which is, you know, it's
a false dichotomy. Mark Ritson has started talking about this
concept which I love of Bodhism and or like this
concept of it's not either or it's both. And actually
when you trace back some of the history of marketing
services or advertising agency businesses and how we landed at
(08:20):
where we are today, that partly helps explain why there
is a differentiation between brand and performance. And what people
generally mean by that is investment in advertising that doesn't
have an immediate impact measurably, versus advertising that does have
an immediate impact.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Without getting specific, think of financial services, think of the
credit card industry. It's one thing for them to drive
the brand and get you to acquire the credit card.
It's a far different thing to get you to use
the credit card because the mere fact that you're carrying
it in your pocket in your wallet, you don't use it.
(08:59):
They don't actually make any money well one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
And like there's there's probably like I mean, there's countless examples,
but there's a there's another extreme version on the other end,
which is like a Coca Cola for example, you might
call a classic brand advertiser. There's no direct response, right,
they don't show a TV ad for diet coke and
expect you to run off onto the internet or into
a shop and buy a coke. The implication is not
(09:22):
for a second that the money that they spend on
advertising does not have some financially modeled return, so it
does not not perform. Right, It's not not performance marketing.
So it's neither brand nor performance. It's marketing.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
It's brandformant.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
It's brandformance using your term. You know, it absolutely deserves
to be and should be accountable to some profit metrics.
Should we measure that through the lens of when we
show an ad to someone buy immediately?
Speaker 4 (09:47):
No, absolutely not. So it requires a different measurement framework.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
That doesn't mean that we have a different marketing thesis
or financial slash commercial justification for it. And I think
that's where a lot of the kind of false dichotom
that we're speaking about is where people think, well, if
it's brand, then I'm not accountable to the CFO or
you know, I have a right as the marketing department
to be the only department in the entire company in
(10:10):
the history of how companies are run to not be
accountable to I spend something and I get something back,
but not also at the other end of the performance spectrum,
where it's like no, no, every penny that you spend
must immediately be accountable back, you know, in a kind
of click to purchase type of dynamic. So I think
your brandformance thing is spot on. There is no point
separating the two.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Let's switch gear to here for a second, if you
don't mind, Daniel, I want to get into I'm using
a big word here. Culture. You know, we've all experienced
over these last several years, so many issues around culture,
whether it was the Great Resignation a couple of years
ago or the Great Reset.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
On the one hand, talent acquisition for you, you've got
a thousand people, finding the right people is key. And
you know, I've always thought that the role of a
CEO is both CEO chief executive officer, but is also
CTO chief talent officer. Part of your job is not
only to run a company and lead the strategy and
(11:16):
the implementation of that, but it's to make sure you've
surrounded yourself with the best people in the best roles.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Getting back to culture, it's tricky. I think it's fair
to say if you miss it, you become irrelevant, and
if you dive too deep into it, maybe you become
too relevant. How are you navigating that and how are
you advising clients to be both authentically engaging with content
or you know, culture if you will.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, I mean I loved your and you know my
partner Steve Allen, who you've worked with for many years,
so we have these recurring conversations and we both love
our sports. But you know, taking that analogy, I think
you know we love that as much as our job
is not play on the field, but to choose the team,
(12:03):
to hire in and encourage those teams, and to set
the formation so how they play together, which you could
call organizational structure or operating systems.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
But then there's a third strength to.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
That that touches on what you just asked around culture,
which is how do we play together and how do
we show up? And what does it look like in
the dressing room? So how do we talk to each other?
And I think for me, that's partly what culture is
is like not necessarily the work that we're doing, you know,
or the vision of what we're trying to build together,
but it's how do we show up and how do
we interact with each other? What are our rules of
(12:34):
engagement on a day to day basis with each other
and with our clients? You know what matters to us?
What are the behaviors that we're modeling, and who do
we want to be? And I think you know breaking
down that question in a few different ways. I have
seen and I share entirely your conviction around culture being
the CEO's key job. Where I've seen it go badly
is where that's delegated to someone anyone, or whether the
(12:58):
CEO thinks it's not their job.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
And I've seen this.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
There's multiple HBr studies that kind of back this up
where you turn it into a bottom up exercise where
you kind of take a vote from the whole company
and say what are our values? I think like the
takeaway for me and my experience over the years is like,
you can have whatever culture you want, but you have
to decide what you want that to look like. And
the concept of culture springing up organically and by chance,
(13:23):
being how you want it to be is nonsense, right.
I think the way that I express this to our
people is no one here believes that they have a
fixed personality as it were, as in like you would
expect to continue learning and improving and growing as a human.
Like everything in life, you're either growing or decaying. You're
adding to your knowledge, you're adding to your insight, you're
adding to your wisdom, you're adding to your wit. And
(13:45):
I think it's the same thing with the culture, right
you don't set it out once and say this is.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Our culture, this is what it's going to be forever.
It should change, A healthy culture should change.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Thank goodness, Brain Labs today has a different culture to
how it did you know when I was living with
Mum and dad as one person, And please God, it
continues to be different as we become ten thousand people
globally and more accurately reflect a global type of business
that we want to become.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
So I think it's a good thing that it changes.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
You have to work on it, Daniel, I want to
play a word game with you. The words that I
use for this exercise are words that I have begun
to call media links t's and c's T words. These
are thoughts starters. So you pick the word trust, transparency, talent, technology, transformation.
(14:35):
I would submit to you, Daniel Gilbert, that there are
very few conversations in our industry where those T words
aren't relevant. Let's get to the C words content, commerce, culture, creativity, community,
and curation. Daniel Gilbert, you pick any one of those words,
(14:56):
or any five of those words, and give me your
reaction to the importance of those words in our world.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Taking trust, transparency, talent, and tech. When I think about
what brain leaves are trying to build and where I
think we need to be focused in the next ten
years plus on what we build and how we make decisions,
it needs to be built around each.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Of those things.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
And that has changed and will continue to change. When
we think about how our world is changing, and if
I put that specifically within media, the way that media
is traded, for example, speaking to trust more than ever before.
We need alignment right like alignment of client and agency
full stop, with no compromises. It it ties into your
(15:34):
second one, which is transparency. You don't have trust without
transparency build agencies, and that probably speaks to your next
pieces around talent and tech, build teams and agencies around
the concept of building trust and transparency altogether, and that's
how you deliver transformation.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
So there you go, hit all.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Five, No, I love it.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Get to the ceas you know, what.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
We will see more and more over the next few years,
if we're not seeing it already, is the intersection of
all of those things coming together and an inability to
separate any of those sees as part of how we
consider media and taking just two of them, you know,
the creativity plus content. Once upon a time you could
(16:18):
separate the creatives from almost like the content delivery. Nowadays,
you know that needs to be part of the creative process,
right The way that you're producing creative needs to feedback
to the creative process in real time.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
So engaging with the communities and all of that.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I think at this point in time, as you're starting
to see from the convergence of even Facebook ads or
meta ads into Amazon just last week, the tie up
of that into commerce, so tying all of those data
points together in one place becomes the true challenge of
media and the media mix over the next few years,
and I think a super exciting time to be at
(16:54):
the intersection of that, we need to build talent and
systems around that, and I think that's where we talk
about org structures and corporate structures.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Daniel, let me ask you kind of my rap question here.
If there's one leadership trait that you as a young
successful entrepreneur and now business person, what's the advice you
can give that would be good advice to a budding
entrepreneur like yourself.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Be a radiator?
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Got it?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
The concept is that you can have radiators and drains,
and radiators are people that bring you energy and make
you feel uplifted, and drains are those that drain you
and make you feel like you're depleted. And I think
when you ask what's the most important characteristic in an entrepreneur,
it's in part, like I don't want to call it
resilience necessarily, but it ties in with that. It's the
ability to show up day after day after day after
(17:46):
day and put in the work and keep showing up
over and over and over again. And it's the bits
that grind other people down, where you know every day
is a challenge. How many days are you possibly going
to take on? I have this unique way that I
know that you share of feeling alive and vibrant from
enjoying the interactions and finding a way to take anything
into a positive even the most challenging parts of business,
(18:09):
right because where you've been, where I've been, you know.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
You have days where it's like, oh, there's nothing going
to work.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Everyone's against me, nothing's right, like the world, this, that
and the other, the economy, etc. You just have to
find a way to be positive and to be a
radiator and to let that light shine on everyone that
you work with, to bring them up and lift them
into doing something that they couldn't do otherwise, which is
build an amazing business, which I think is a unique
gift of leadership and of entrepreneurship, which is doing something
(18:36):
that others can't. You know, staying with it is easier
when you love what you do, and you love what
you do, when you make an effort to love what
you do, not just because it happens by magic.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
One day, my father taught me an early lesson in business,
which was, if you enjoy what you do, work is
not a four letter word. So, Daniel Gilbert, you've brought
a great energy to this conversation. It is clear to
me that you enjoy immensely what you do, and I
can add that I've enjoyed getting to know you over
(19:06):
these years, and I know that this is just the
beginning and you're going to take this to the moon.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
Likewise, Thank you, Michael, It's such a pleasure to be you.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
I'm Michael Casson. Thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
A Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio. A special
thanks to Lena Peterson, chief Brand Officer and Managing Director
of media Link for her vision I'm Good Company, and
to Jen Sealing, vice President Marketing Communications of media Link
for programming amazing talent and content
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
You can have what aff culture you want, but you
have to decide what you want that to look like.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Hi, I'm Michael Casson. Welcome to Good Company. We're all
explore how marketing, media, entertainment and tech are intersecting, transforming
our lives and the way we do business at a
breakneck speed. I'll be joined by some of the greatest
business minds at strongest leaders who will share how they
built companies from the ground up or transformed them from
the inside out. My bet is you'll pick up a
(00:34):
lesson or two along the way.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
It's all good.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
It's a great pleasure today to welcome Daniel Gilbert to
Good Company. I had the good fortune of meeting Daniel
maybe two years ago and have been like most of
us in the industry, watching really carefully what Daniel has
executed in his building of brain Labs and what I'd
love you to do. Who was kind of give your journey.
(01:02):
You went from Google to founding your own digital first
media agency, as I said, brain Labs, and I think
you were at the ripe old age of twenty six
when you did that. Can you give a little background
on kind of that journey and you know the transition
and as well what inspired you to kind of bring
(01:23):
brain Labs to the world.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Thank you so much and thank you for having me, Michael.
It's such a pleasure to be here. And great title
for the podcast, because you are a good company. In fact,
that you're better than good great company. I started brain
Labs twenty twelve, and I had this unique privilege of
working for this super cool company called Google, having just
been a graduate and not really knowing that Google even
(01:44):
employed people. So bear in mind, this was like thirteen
years ago, fourteen years ago when I applied there, and
at that time, like Google was this search page where
you kind of put things in that you wanted to find,
but you didn't really think of them as a massive advertising,
giant employer. They hadn't gone into as many areas as
they're into now, self driving cars and apps and technology
(02:06):
outside of search.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
So I had this amazing privilege.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Of working at Google, and after a while I was
with these incredible colleagues working on life changing type of work.
And at the same time, I guess you could call
it two different things happening. One the commercial entrepreneur opportunist
in me saw how the world was changing in Google's favor.
So this new concept of media that instead of booking
(02:31):
over the phone or negotiating with media partners, you were
just buying in real time or bidding for I should
say more accurately bidding for in real time in live auctions,
So trillions of data points in a live auction that
required a level of science, technology sophistication that hadn't really
been seen in the traditional media world prior to that.
(02:53):
In that more commercially led buying, packaging, negotiating, selling media.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
You saw the whole, the delta between, if you will,
between what you thought was relevant and necessary and what
was actually being done.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Well, yeah, and I don't know about the whole, right,
but there was at that time, let's say Google, which
was effectively what you would call digital media. At that time,
there was Google. Facebook platforms weren't around I don't think
twenty ten eleven, so it was effectively Google. And I
hope everyone that was present would forgive me for saying that.
But let's just say ninety percent plus market share of
biddable media, it was still only five to ten percent
(03:33):
of the total media mix.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
And I could just.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
See that there was this whole new wave of media
coming that required a completely different approach, and I'd summarize
it later or we still kind of call it, hence
the name brain Labs, But I could see that it
was about brain power and nothing to do with buying power.
And part of what prompted that Michael was being on
the other side at Google having some bordering on hilarious
(03:57):
conversations where media agencies would come in to Google and
try and negotiate better rates with Google, and you'd have
these kind of conversations where it was like, no, no,
it's an auction, right, you log in, here's your log in,
go and bid for the media Like no, no, no, come on,
wink wink, give us a discount. It's like no, no, there's
no discount, Like we don't have it's an auction, and
you go round and around in circles.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
And all that was kind of clocking for me at.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
The time was like, well, whoa, this is traded in
a completely different way. And what I mean by that
is not that the media agencies didn't know what was
happening necessarily, but there was a completely different business model
and of all the things in the world that are
easy slash all the most difficult things in the world
to pivot a business model, like how you make money,
and I could just see that at the time that
(04:41):
you know, not just the talent that was going to
be required, but the technology that needed to be built
and then how you commercialize that as a service or
product was going to change for this new type of
media that I didn't know how quickly it would happen,
but it was obvious to me that Google was going
to grow and that, you know, the old world would
be displaced by this new one. And all I can
really say that we've been fortunate to have chosen a
(05:02):
great wave to ride. We chose a good one, but
we've navigated it well. And that's been underscore the success
of brain Labs with just me leaving going to mom
and Dad's attics so I didn't have to pay rent
and starting from home, growing into where we are now,
which is a thousand people globally running media for some
of the world's biggest brands, which is kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And Daniel, the journey has been amazing to this point.
But last month you secured a major investment in brain
Labs from Felt Furious, the private equity firm. Can you
talk about how there's new investment, injection of capital, what
have you is going to change or somehow modify your
(05:44):
plan or you know, is it just really that element
which is going to support your goal of becoming the
largest and most successful digital media agency in the world.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
It's not a dream, it's destiny, we decide. I did
take private equity funding first. This was going back four
years ago. We took our first institutional capital and we
did that rather than going down the more trodden path,
which was to sell to one of the network media agencies.
So that was where ninety five percent of agency acquisitions
(06:16):
landed at that time, and private equity weren't really in
the space at all. Lots of different reasons that I
maybe won't go into now, but in part because they
didn't want to be in the space and had not
quite got up to speed with investing in service based businesses.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
It's funny you say that, Daniel, because when people talk
about the concept of B to B or B two C,
the industry has begun to speak in terms of B
to H business to human. Yeah, and my own opinion
in that context was really fortified by the fact that
when people talked about B to B. I always say, well,
let me ask a question. When you're selling into a company,
(06:56):
is it an inadamant object or is it the proper
group or is it somebody human? Is body that we're selling? Yeah,
companies aren't humans. They were made up of people.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
I mean, I think it's so insightful what you're saying,
because it's like one of those harmful terms that gets
taken for granted. You know, that just becomes part of
the day to day narrative. And there's other parts of
the business where I'm seeing that come to life, up
to and including like how you market to those people
as well, and how you treat your marketing. And there's
this whole piece in marketing at the moment, it's like,
is it B to B or B two C.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I came up with a word a couple of years
ago in the context of a particular client assignment we
were dealing with, and the client looked at me and said,
why is it that I why is it that we
have a brand marketing unit here and a performance marketing
unit here. Why can't we just have a brand and
performance marketing unit together? And I looked at the person
and I said, you mean brandformance and they said is
(07:53):
that a word?
Speaker 4 (07:54):
I said, it is? Now, yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Know, I think it falls into that and ties in
n with that previous discussion, which is, you know, it's
a false dichotomy. Mark Ritson has started talking about this
concept which I love of Bodhism and or like this
concept of it's not either or it's both. And actually
when you trace back some of the history of marketing
services or advertising agency businesses and how we landed at
(08:20):
where we are today, that partly helps explain why there
is a differentiation between brand and performance. And what people
generally mean by that is investment in advertising that doesn't
have an immediate impact measurably, versus advertising that does have
an immediate impact.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Without getting specific, think of financial services, think of the
credit card industry. It's one thing for them to drive
the brand and get you to acquire the credit card.
It's a far different thing to get you to use
the credit card because the mere fact that you're carrying
it in your pocket in your wallet, you don't use it.
(08:59):
They don't actually make any money well one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
And like there's there's probably like I mean, there's countless examples,
but there's a there's another extreme version on the other end,
which is like a Coca Cola for example, you might
call a classic brand advertiser. There's no direct response, right,
they don't show a TV ad for diet coke and
expect you to run off onto the internet or into
a shop and buy a coke. The implication is not
(09:22):
for a second that the money that they spend on
advertising does not have some financially modeled return, so it
does not not perform. Right, It's not not performance marketing.
So it's neither brand nor performance. It's marketing.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
It's brandformant.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
It's brandformance using your term. You know, it absolutely deserves
to be and should be accountable to some profit metrics.
Should we measure that through the lens of when we
show an ad to someone buy immediately?
Speaker 4 (09:47):
No, absolutely not. So it requires a different measurement framework.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
That doesn't mean that we have a different marketing thesis
or financial slash commercial justification for it. And I think
that's where a lot of the kind of false dichotom
that we're speaking about is where people think, well, if
it's brand, then I'm not accountable to the CFO or
you know, I have a right as the marketing department
to be the only department in the entire company in
(10:10):
the history of how companies are run to not be
accountable to I spend something and I get something back,
but not also at the other end of the performance spectrum,
where it's like no, no, every penny that you spend
must immediately be accountable back, you know, in a kind
of click to purchase type of dynamic. So I think
your brandformance thing is spot on. There is no point
separating the two.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Let's switch gear to here for a second, if you
don't mind, Daniel, I want to get into I'm using
a big word here. Culture. You know, we've all experienced
over these last several years, so many issues around culture,
whether it was the Great Resignation a couple of years
ago or the Great Reset.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
On the one hand, talent acquisition for you, you've got
a thousand people, finding the right people is key. And
you know, I've always thought that the role of a
CEO is both CEO chief executive officer, but is also
CTO chief talent officer. Part of your job is not
only to run a company and lead the strategy and
(11:16):
the implementation of that, but it's to make sure you've
surrounded yourself with the best people in the best roles.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Getting back to culture, it's tricky. I think it's fair
to say if you miss it, you become irrelevant, and
if you dive too deep into it, maybe you become
too relevant. How are you navigating that and how are
you advising clients to be both authentically engaging with content
or you know, culture if you will.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, I mean I loved your and you know my
partner Steve Allen, who you've worked with for many years,
so we have these recurring conversations and we both love
our sports. But you know, taking that analogy, I think
you know we love that as much as our job
is not play on the field, but to choose the team,
(12:03):
to hire in and encourage those teams, and to set
the formation so how they play together, which you could
call organizational structure or operating systems.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
But then there's a third strength to.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
That that touches on what you just asked around culture,
which is how do we play together and how do
we show up? And what does it look like in
the dressing room? So how do we talk to each other?
And I think for me, that's partly what culture is
is like not necessarily the work that we're doing, you know,
or the vision of what we're trying to build together,
but it's how do we show up and how do
we interact with each other? What are our rules of
(12:34):
engagement on a day to day basis with each other
and with our clients? You know what matters to us?
What are the behaviors that we're modeling, and who do
we want to be? And I think you know breaking
down that question in a few different ways. I have
seen and I share entirely your conviction around culture being
the CEO's key job. Where I've seen it go badly
is where that's delegated to someone anyone, or whether the
(12:58):
CEO thinks it's not their job.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
And I've seen this.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
There's multiple HBr studies that kind of back this up
where you turn it into a bottom up exercise where
you kind of take a vote from the whole company
and say what are our values? I think like the
takeaway for me and my experience over the years is like,
you can have whatever culture you want, but you have
to decide what you want that to look like. And
the concept of culture springing up organically and by chance,
(13:23):
being how you want it to be is nonsense, right.
I think the way that I express this to our
people is no one here believes that they have a
fixed personality as it were, as in like you would
expect to continue learning and improving and growing as a human.
Like everything in life, you're either growing or decaying. You're
adding to your knowledge, you're adding to your insight, you're
adding to your wisdom, you're adding to your wit. And
(13:45):
I think it's the same thing with the culture, right
you don't set it out once and say this is.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Our culture, this is what it's going to be forever.
It should change, A healthy culture should change.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Thank goodness, Brain Labs today has a different culture to
how it did you know when I was living with
Mum and dad as one person, And please God, it
continues to be different as we become ten thousand people
globally and more accurately reflect a global type of business
that we want to become.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
So I think it's a good thing that it changes.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
You have to work on it, Daniel, I want to
play a word game with you. The words that I
use for this exercise are words that I have begun
to call media links t's and c's T words. These
are thoughts starters. So you pick the word trust, transparency, talent, technology, transformation.
(14:35):
I would submit to you, Daniel Gilbert, that there are
very few conversations in our industry where those T words
aren't relevant. Let's get to the C words content, commerce, culture, creativity, community,
and curation. Daniel Gilbert, you pick any one of those words,
(14:56):
or any five of those words, and give me your
reaction to the importance of those words in our world.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Taking trust, transparency, talent, and tech. When I think about
what brain leaves are trying to build and where I
think we need to be focused in the next ten
years plus on what we build and how we make decisions,
it needs to be built around each.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Of those things.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
And that has changed and will continue to change. When
we think about how our world is changing, and if
I put that specifically within media, the way that media
is traded, for example, speaking to trust more than ever before.
We need alignment right like alignment of client and agency
full stop, with no compromises. It it ties into your
(15:34):
second one, which is transparency. You don't have trust without
transparency build agencies, and that probably speaks to your next
pieces around talent and tech, build teams and agencies around
the concept of building trust and transparency altogether, and that's
how you deliver transformation.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
So there you go, hit all.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Five, No, I love it.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Get to the ceas you know, what.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
We will see more and more over the next few years,
if we're not seeing it already, is the intersection of
all of those things coming together and an inability to
separate any of those sees as part of how we
consider media and taking just two of them, you know,
the creativity plus content. Once upon a time you could
(16:18):
separate the creatives from almost like the content delivery. Nowadays,
you know that needs to be part of the creative process,
right The way that you're producing creative needs to feedback
to the creative process in real time.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
So engaging with the communities and all of that.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I think at this point in time, as you're starting
to see from the convergence of even Facebook ads or
meta ads into Amazon just last week, the tie up
of that into commerce, so tying all of those data
points together in one place becomes the true challenge of
media and the media mix over the next few years,
and I think a super exciting time to be at
(16:54):
the intersection of that, we need to build talent and
systems around that, and I think that's where we talk
about org structures and corporate structures.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Daniel, let me ask you kind of my rap question here.
If there's one leadership trait that you as a young
successful entrepreneur and now business person, what's the advice you
can give that would be good advice to a budding
entrepreneur like yourself.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Be a radiator?
Speaker 3 (17:22):
Got it?
Speaker 2 (17:23):
The concept is that you can have radiators and drains,
and radiators are people that bring you energy and make
you feel uplifted, and drains are those that drain you
and make you feel like you're depleted. And I think
when you ask what's the most important characteristic in an entrepreneur,
it's in part, like I don't want to call it
resilience necessarily, but it ties in with that. It's the
ability to show up day after day after day after
(17:46):
day and put in the work and keep showing up
over and over and over again. And it's the bits
that grind other people down, where you know every day
is a challenge. How many days are you possibly going
to take on? I have this unique way that I
know that you share of feeling alive and vibrant from
enjoying the interactions and finding a way to take anything
into a positive even the most challenging parts of business,
(18:09):
right because where you've been, where I've been, you know.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
You have days where it's like, oh, there's nothing going
to work.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Everyone's against me, nothing's right, like the world, this, that
and the other, the economy, etc. You just have to
find a way to be positive and to be a
radiator and to let that light shine on everyone that
you work with, to bring them up and lift them
into doing something that they couldn't do otherwise, which is
build an amazing business, which I think is a unique
gift of leadership and of entrepreneurship, which is doing something
(18:36):
that others can't. You know, staying with it is easier
when you love what you do, and you love what
you do, when you make an effort to love what
you do, not just because it happens by magic.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
One day, my father taught me an early lesson in business,
which was, if you enjoy what you do, work is
not a four letter word. So, Daniel Gilbert, you've brought
a great energy to this conversation. It is clear to
me that you enjoy immensely what you do, and I
can add that I've enjoyed getting to know you over
(19:06):
these years, and I know that this is just the
beginning and you're going to take this to the moon.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
Likewise, Thank you, Michael, It's such a pleasure to be you.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
I'm Michael Casson. Thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
A Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio. A special
thanks to Lena Peterson, chief Brand Officer and Managing Director
of media Link for her vision I'm Good Company, and
to Jen Sealing, vice President Marketing Communications of media Link
for programming amazing talent and content
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