November 6, 2025 • 46 mins
The shift to creator-owned models is changing how artists, brands, and audiences connect. Chaucer Barnes, CMO of Translation and UnitedMasters, has built his career at that intersection. In this episode, he and Christian explore how context strategy reshaped brand storytelling, why fan data must empower artists, and how AI could build a stronger creative middle class instead of dismantling it.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Possible Now Stories of Possibilities, the podcast where
we dive into the leadership frameworks, bold ideas and personal
stories shaping the future of marketing, technology and leadership. Welcome
back to Possible Now. I'm Christian Much and today we
are not just talking about marketing or music. We're also
(00:25):
talking about power, who holds it, who shares it, and
how culture decides where it flows. Next, my wonderful guest
today is someone who has built his career at the
intersection of creativity and accountability. Chose Bons is the chief
marketing officer of both Translation, the creative agency that taught
brands how to stop renting culture and start earning it,
(00:49):
and United Masters, the artist's platform redefining ownership in the
music industry. He's an architect of context strategy, a discipline
that forces brands to meet culture where it is not
where it's convenient. He is a musician turned marketer, a
strategist turned activist, and a leader who says his mission
(01:09):
is to make strong morals the new normal. If you've
ever wondered what it takes to navigate cultural spaces without
exploring them, or how to build structural equity into the
DNA of business. This is your episode. Let's get into it.
I'm super excited to welcome Chose Barns shall so welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I'm flattered to be here, flatter to be here. Let's
do it.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I'm really excited about our conversations. So let's kick off
with something. You know where you come from. Before you
were CMO across two worlds, the agency and the artist's platform,
you were a musician learning how culture actually moves right. Yeah,
tell us about your identity as a creator, how it
shaped your past so far, and how this ended up
(01:55):
to become the seamore of translation in the United Masters.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, I'm happy to My journey began. Its actually where
I am right now, Greensboro, North Carolina. I'm and my
mom's house. You see all the books behind me here.
And I was raised in a family full of professors.
I went to college. I studied philosophy, and while in college,
I started to MC with an existing jazz trio. And
so we put together this little songbook and we play
(02:20):
little dates and whatnot, a little tours around. We'd go
play a jazz society and then we'd go play a
frat party afterward. We did that all around the Northeast,
and then I graduated and it turns out there were
no job openings for rapper or for philosopher. So I
was like, all right, well, I guess I'll just stick
with the one I think is cool. And I decided
(02:42):
I wanted to just continue to use music to see
what else was out there. And luckily I had a
partner at that time, my music director. He basically wrote
all the music and I wrote all the words, and
he was in a similar position, and so we flipped
a coin between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington and landed
in Portland, and we got up and we moved to
(03:02):
Portland to just see what was out there. We were
both from the Bend Atlantic. When we got there, we
both got some day jobs and we rebuilt the band
and it was my very first truly entrepreneurial pursuit. Right.
You got to figure out, Okay, what is your duty
to pay for? What is my due you pay for?
(03:22):
How are we going to do these logistics when we
bring in a rhythm section, how are we going to
cut that in, how are we going to run these flyers?
What's more important? And so you know everything that goes
into making a marketing budget and making a product budget
and all of that. That was my kind of early
mister Miyagi style montage thereof. And the product got pretty good,
(03:43):
and so at a certain point I wanted to record
a music video. And I had found this interesting space,
kind of a gallery shaped space and the Pearl District
in Portland, and it turned out to be the global
headquarters of Widen and Kennedy. I don't know, huh, I
didn't know. I had big, cool doors and there was
somebody's name on the door, and I knew it was
some kind of business. But when you go inside and
(04:04):
you don't you haven't been a part of big agency world.
You get inside and you're like, maybe this is a
craft mall, Like I don't know what this is. I
just know it would make a cool backdrop for a video.
And I met Dan Widen, and Dan Widen took an
hour and some change meeting with me, in which we
talked about the humanities, and we talked about boxing, we
(04:26):
talked about sport, and we talked about Naomi Klein, who
had written a book where she talked about him really
really poorly that I was a big fan of called
no Logo and at the end of it, I played
him a record and he listened to the record and
he said, well, hell kid, if you can do that,
you can write nike Y D. And he took me
outside and he introduced me to Mel Myers, who was
his head of creative recruitment at the time. And that's
(04:50):
how I wound up an agency land.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So he's saying, you never met him before, but in
the very first meeting he offered you a job.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
It didn't offer me a job. He said I could
and then he entered reduced me to somebody. It's actually
a labyrinthine journey for over five months to actually get
a job. And by the way, I didn't start as
a copywriter. I started as a media planner and I
was just around the building so much. And then once
I was on the radar, they looked around and they
were like, Oh, that's the kid that's opening for the
(05:17):
roots at the Crystal Ballroom. That's the kid I see
him on posters now. And so when Converts came into
building on the media side, on the media planning and
buying side, the media director called me up and said, hey,
I know you don't know anything about media, but I'm
willing to teach you because you're the target of this media,
and if I teach you the grammar of the business,
(05:38):
I'm confident that you'll be really good at this. Certainly
on this account.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
The music you did was rep you said, right, yeah,
it was a band or it was a it was
a band.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Organic hip hop project. So it was guitar led, guitar, drums,
bass keys as a full set, and then we would
build up a horn section at certain points, but that
was the base set of five piece organic jazz.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
That's a great story. I'm sure you're still into this,
so good to know. For the future. Maybe you can
do something together.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I don't perform anymore. I'm I'm forty five. I left
that to okay, okay, okay, but I know a guy
or two. Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
You mentioned Widen Kennedy and how you met. You said
in a recent interview article, your mission is to make
strong more than your normal. In your early years with
these agencies Widen Kennedy and there was the Modern agency
as well. You saw that the machine from inside and
what convinced you that marketing needed a new moral compass.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Well, I think it's less about a moral compass for
marketing per se. I think it's about leveraging the marketing
discipline because it drives cultural wake, it drives collective action,
and advertising as an industry is one of the final
bastions of non user initiated content. Right, it's the only
(06:56):
content that comes chasing after you. And whether it be
you know, environmental like big out a home or retail,
or it's targeted or whatever, what have you. The ambition
of all of these brands is to create an almost
kind of rhapsodic irrational preference. Right, And just as easily
(07:17):
as you can make an irrational preference for a pair
of khakis it was made in the exact same factory
as the Para khakis, it costs twelve dollars less that
you don't want, you can also create an interrational preference
for values. You can also create a interrational preference for ideas, right,
ideas that need to happen. And so the same exact
mechanics that go into selling a car pair of khakis
(07:41):
a plastic disc would also be employed in selling the
idea of universal income or universal healthcare, or you can
pick the thing that you actually care about. But because
the mechanics are so similar and because we know that
cultural rewards brands that lead. I find it a great
(08:02):
industry to be in to leverage brand budgets and to
build a toolkit that can be applied to any idea.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So you pioneered the context strategy at Translation, I think
it was back in twenty twelve or at this time,
and you defined it as a unique discipline marrying creativity, strategy, data,
social intelligence. It aims to align brand behavior with authentic
consumer conversations to boost relevance and impact. Right, what moment
(08:31):
made you realize context strategy could be more than a discipline,
it could be a lever to shift power.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Well, the first just the origin story of context was
very specific to Translations place in the ecosystem at that time.
So Translation had big, loud fortune fifty clients, and the
ideas that they were bringing in those clients, your state farms, McDonald's,
Anheuser Busch were very out of step with the way
(09:00):
those brands normally behaved. Right, And as a result of that,
because you have creative and media divorced from one another,
even if you win the creative assignment, you can hang
something on the wall. It's a brilliant idea. Everybody wants
to buy. But by the time it goes through the
system it comes out the other side it is not
sequenced correctly, it's not targeted correctly, it's not rolled out
(09:22):
in such a way that it's going to attract the
original advocates who need to push it to its fullest
kind of pop cultural potential. And there was no sliver
of an opportunity for a Translation like object to take
on the media buying for companies of that magnitude. Right,
You're not going to all of a sudden take a
billion dollar media budget and know what to do with it.
(09:44):
And so there needed to be an adapter, right. And
what Translation had previously done was go get a media
guy who was kind of fluent and creative and he
would just like work with the media people over here.
And when it was State Farm, he'd worked with OMD
and when it was and as a Bush, you go
work with SMG. And what we decided to do, and
this was where the idea of the context discipline came from,
(10:06):
was actually build the work so that it prescribed its
own rollout, and build the work in such a way
that when the client approved the work, they were also
approving the first run of people who were going to
get it. They were also approving the surfaces it was
going to show up on. They were also approving the
kind of posture of that inventory. And once they said
(10:26):
yes to that, it became like a bispect for the
media shop. Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah, So when
that happened, there was an opportunity for me. I came
in to do that for translation clients. And what context
strategy has become is there's a real industry opportunity. And
(10:49):
so that has really bloomed under the leadership of Joel Rodriguez,
who leads that discipline today and has built it into
I think seventeen person squad, and they exist on all
sides of the business pre brief, biz DEV, prost brief
and form the brief activation. They're on set and they're
reporting and they're posting. They're doing kind of everything that
(11:13):
makes an idea actually come to life that I could
not have imagined. When I walked in the doors, I
thought I was coming to be a secret weapon, like
some kind of Swiss army knife. And what it has
bloomed into is really our signature sauce. And it's the
distinction that we make, you know, a lot of people
can come to the same line, a lot of people
can come to the same celebrity, a lot of people
(11:33):
can come to the same framework. And you know, one
of our most famous pieces of film is Beats You
Love Me Want a Titanium Lion the year right before
they renamed the Titanium Lion for Dan Widen, And there's
a line. The whole thing pivots on this line, which
is you love black culture? Do you love black people? Right?
(11:56):
And of course I'm very proud of the film and
the film is amazing, etc. Etc. But there was also
a Dorito's add out that had that exact same line,
and that was the idea at the same time, and
the difference between what we were able to do and
set that brand on a new trajectory with youth culture
writ large, not just with black kids with that piece
(12:18):
of work is all about the contextual layer on top
of it that made it feel like it was from
a community outward to the world as opposed to all
the other things. And that's not just tone, texture, title card,
sign off.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And obviously you built something at this time which is
still the well, not just the foundation for today's work
and motivation, but I assume it's further developed over the time,
but you say it's more irrelevant than ever. Right, what
you developed now twelve thirteen years ago. Is this the
core of the agency's world today, of the agency's goals, etc.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Is this driving the whole business? I think it's one
of our most differentiateds, right, because look, you're gonna work
at this level of polish, You're gonna have brand, strategy,
creative production. They all have to be a one. And
we all know who a one people are, right, We've
worked together for years. We all know who the aces are.
And so context direction is further down into the kind
(13:18):
of special sauces and yeah, I mean you know it
came to possible two seasons ago and told the story
of the at and t helmet, and that obviously the
piece of film and the engineering and everything had to
come together. But context is on a pedestal in that
(13:40):
scenario because it can observe right, observe who should be
served by five G tech. It can identify, right, it
can find a perfect kind of avatar for that population.
It can scale so it can start to think about
(14:02):
who needs to be what kind of communities we need
to puncture. So that this doesn't just stay about deaf kids,
but it actually rises to the conversational kind of crest
of fairness in college sports, right, et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. So it is indistinguishable from our practice and
I don't see it anywhere else. And yes, I feel
(14:23):
like it gives us quite a significant amount alpha.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
So you guys are translation you'll help brands into cultural spaces.
And how do you make decisions when a brand is
earning the right to be there versus extracting from a culture?
Is it in your conversation with the client with a brand?
How can I imagine how your decisions made you know
(14:46):
when you say, okay, you belong to this culture as
a brand.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Sometimes our job is to turn what was rented into
a canvas for contribution. So our work early on at
Stay Farm in the NBA that led to like Chris
Paul and Cliff Paul and just successive seasons, that was
really about figuring out what state farms value equation, which
(15:10):
had service right as it's kind of apex thought meant
in the world of basketball. Right, So how do you
take the proposition of service that only a state farm
agent can offer and put it in basketball, and so
once all of the decisions are downstream of sticking to
that idea, Now you don't have the problem that many
(15:31):
brands have when they try to enter a theater like
sports and they're just buying people based on follower accounts
and Biscuit looks good in that and whatever. Now, because
you have this organizing principle, you go, okay, well, who's
the assist leader this year? Was this guy Cliff Paul? Okay,
if his name is Cliff Paul, so on and so forth. Right,
all the decisions flowed from our focus on that principle.
(15:53):
There are other times where that's not what you're doing
at all. Right, going back to the AT and T five,
g AT and T has been around college sports, and
specifically college football for as long as anybody can remember.
But what was their contribution to the game? Right, they've
just been around it. And so though they didn't have
(16:14):
a pre existing relationship with Gallaudett University, though they didn't
have a big brand reputation built around deaf and heart
of hearing communities, they did have a heritage factor. And
a heritage factor had everything to do with Alexander Graham
Bell okay and his deaf mother and sister. And so
(16:34):
when you can pull that heritage forward and find a
new way for them to behave now, all of a sudden,
it transforms the way that they use the canvas of
college football. Both of those are equally actionable. Right I
bought something helped me integrate successfully. Right I bought it
a big entitlement, whether it be an F one thing
or a league deal or what have you help me
(16:57):
find out what my meaning in this world can be.
And then also, hey, I already exist in this world,
but I haven't made a contribution. How do I find
something that people will actually care about and that I
would measure in people's enthusiasm as opposed to people's exposure.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
But I'm sure they're also boundaries or non negotiatables, you know,
for protecting communities. When brands want to go into this,
when was the time or can you share an example
when the community tells you no? Right, when you thought
about together with a brand, about a concept and idea,
and then you felt and you were back and said no,
that goes beyond that, it doesn't fit.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
We kill those in the crib at our shop. I've
seen things on our walls, and part of my job
and Joelle's job, and Albetto and Sanding all leadership translation,
our job is to make sure that nothing goes to
the client that is going to be out of hand rejected.
But of course we've had some moments where here's good example,
(18:01):
we did a campaign for AT and T. It was
our first relationship with AT and T built around area
codes and so it was a hyper local campaign and
one of the markets that we were penetrating was Atlanta.
In Atlanta, there are bike clubs. It's a big part
of lifetime there. It's just like roller skating or waffle
(18:22):
house or whatever else. Right, And so we had done
a shoot where we had these guys on these bikes, right,
and I think or maybe we had even taken user
generated content of these guys on these bikes. And basically
what we were doing is we were taking great photography
from the community and we were like putting AT and
T livery on it to say it's a four or
four thing, right, And we get a call, and the
(18:44):
call is that some Greater Atlanta Business Bureau or maybe
some neighborhood watch was really upset about the fact that
apparently these bikes are illegal in Atlanta, and they were
really upset about the idea that AT and T was
promoting illegal activity in Atlanta. In a scenario like that,
(19:06):
the person you're after is definitely feeling seen and respected
and acknowledged by that poster and that bus shelter. Yeah,
but that doesn't mean that the person that call rang
that phone isn't meaningful in your orbit somewhere else. And
so you're often when you do work that is, you know,
(19:28):
culturally contributive, you're often going to wind up in a
position where somebody calls and gets really upset. And as
long as you're prepared for that, and as long as
you've predicted that, then it's a basic risk reward scenario.
It's not a panic moment. Yeah, And so tension is
(19:51):
one of the outcomes. Reaction, even negative reaction, is one
of the outcomes. It's a question of can you shape
the advocacy to drive the business outcome that you're looking to.
That's the only question. Ever.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Let's also talk about United masas so you have two
heads on all the time. United Masters treats a fan
base as an artist's second most valuable asset after the
artist's own creativity if I understand, right, So what protections
need to exist so that fan data isn't weaponized against
the varied creators it's supposed to serve.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Well, let's back up one step, because I don't know
how familiar everybody is with the music industry large. So
the first premise of United Masters is that historically, if
you put any money into an artist, you own their work.
And the only artists that we ever heard on the
radio or saw on the television or what have you,
were artists that somebody had put some money into so
(20:51):
that they would be there. And with the explosion of
social media, that stopped being the case. What stopped being
the case was people were fronting all of this money
to build these acts and then therefore reaping the reward.
What was going on was these acts were popping on
their own, and they were giving them Usery Bank loans
in order to own their work forever. And so back
(21:13):
to that idea of morals, right, like a new normal. Right,
that was an idea that we knew could stick. That
independence should be the default setting of the music industry
all across the world, meaning this work should be creator owned,
it should not be owned by someone who didn't participate
(21:36):
meaningfully in it. And if there aren't alternatives to get
that first amount of seed capital, we'll do it. But
you should own that work because you now own the work.
Now you have an entire generation of artists who are
owner operators themselves. They're CEOs, right, They're not just talent,
and so they're thinking about all the time, how do
(21:58):
I build a full business? And that's where they're fans,
and ideally and certainly in our ecosystem, other brands that
are trying to be built that are trying to earn
those same fans right start to come into focus together.
If you own the work, then you can build the
business on top of it. Right. Otherwise, the business on
(22:20):
top of it isn't yours because Instagram owns it or
somebody else owns it, and the thing underneath isn't yours
because Sony owns it or Universal owns it or what
have you. And so our idea was always to catch
this wave that we see in gen z across the globe,
which is entrepreneurial zeal first name, last name, LLC. We're
going to talk about this when we get to AI
(22:40):
as well. And we wanted to make sure that in music,
we had a way to do that. So you have
your core IP, you have the business that you can build,
even if that's just you know, influencer businesses as we
kind of currently think about it, and for some you
also have the ability to build products, services, and movements
that are going to have install bases because those install
(23:03):
bases are coming from your music. So everybody won't have
a finty like Rihanna does, but everybody should be thinking
that way. And so the data, specifically the fan relationship
being the second most important thing, because the biggest thing
you can figure out as an artist is a distinction
(23:25):
between an enthusiastic fan who'd be willing to buy this
particular sweatshirt right well over market, and somebody who just
happens to enjoy the music and who will help contribute
their point zero zero zero to percent penny to your
stream count.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
You've mentioned something like AI, so obviously we have to
talk about AI as well and the influence into your
business and the Auntice business. But let's widen it up
a bit. It's AI, it's creativity, it's equity. So how
do you foresee this kind of collision and what's the
new outcome of it in the near future how is
AI specifically, but in the combination with creativity and equity
(24:16):
driving a whole industry here, we're.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Just seeing this rapid collapse of the price point of
great content, right, And it's not all just Jenai's. I
think it's a host of tools, and it's really an
install based and a bunch of creators who are fluent
with these tools that now have just precipitously dropped the
cost to make something great and intentional marthy. And so
(24:39):
as we look at that first and foremost for our artists,
great day, right, because now all of a sudden, you
don't need the kind of budget that you needed even
three years ago to be really really great. That's a
net plus in terms of yield and scale. Of course,
consequence of that is same consequence we know across the
(25:01):
media estate, which is like we're gonna get a lot
of slop, We're gonna get overloaded. But within that, I
think artists are more empowered to build better and more
significant businesses and get to a cash register moment easier
than ever before. And we're just gonna see that accelerate
as we start to see them figure out really crack
agents especially. I think there are going to be some
(25:24):
really exciting companies that agentically solve, you know, into it
for creativity, if you will. That's definitely underway, and it's
going to be as hands off as putting a filter
on something is today. So the net for the artist
space is great if more competitive. Look, I think in
(25:46):
the agency world, a lot of people are going to
they're going to realize that the moat that we had
as an industry that we saw fall around you know,
Hollywood content, we saw fall around video in particular, we
saw a fall around photography, and that we then saw
fall around music has now come for us. You know,
(26:10):
there was a time where the movie industry was like
four companies, right, and that was just what it was.
And the archetype of that was Marty Scorsese, right, and
now mister beast, you name it. And there was a
time where I don't know name a great photographer was
like that was the archetype of who got to get
paid for making pictures. And now Kendall Jenner gets paid
(26:33):
day morning, right. Sure, sure the same thing has happened
in music, and the same thing is going to happen
to us. So I think in agency land, we're going
to see, you know, four person teams be just as
dangerous as one hundred and fifty person shops today. Further out,
I hope that the creative class starts to recognize itself
(26:57):
as one body, because I think the new talent that's
coming into the creative class is going to be less
likely because they're going to have to learn these tools
as they're built, as opposed to be taught these tools
by some earlier pro I think that they are going
to vacillate between disciplines to a degree where you know,
(27:21):
the multi hyphen it degree, the hyphens will eventually just disappear.
And I think we're going to have a really great
opportunity to build a working middle class within a creative class.
And whether they use their own personalities, they use generated personalities,
(27:42):
whether they are behind the lens in front of it,
they're working for brands, they're making music videos, or they're
making whatever thought pieces. The hope for me would be
that we would create a scenario, and this is certainly
what we're trying to do it United Masters, where of
(28:02):
course we have those knockout over the fence. You know,
you're mister bash your big ex the plug right now.
But we also have this broad, stable, credit worthy middle
class that are earning let's call it eighty thousand USD
a year as passively as possible. That's what I see,
That's what I want to engineer. Yeah, in the meantime,
(28:23):
there's gonna be a lot of layoffs and new opportunities
for sure, alternity probleternities, is that right?
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, that's fascinating and I would love to see you
also be back here but also on all stages talking
about these experiences you know in case studies, when we
see more and more realize and happening, and what the
new opportunities all look like. Because currently, yeah, it feels
for me, you know, more people are scared about this,
then see those opportunities in it.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Cumbents should be scared. That's how revolution goes. But it's
still well more exciting than it is scary. I agree.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
She'll say, you've described yourself as someone who who makes conspirators.
A few musicians and marketeers what God wails, whether it's
contracts or in your ref share or creative councils, make
that conspiracy equitable.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Oh yeah, well, look, it starts with shared values and
then it should structure out to share, you know, returns. Right.
I think the origins of this company were always that.
I think I think people get us wrong because, you know,
Steve Stout and they see Beyonce singing Happy Birthday to him,
and they just think he's just everybody's buddy. No, Steve
(29:33):
is really really well known for creating scenarios that have
come multiplayer, multipayer scenarios. You look at jay Z right now,
and if you were paying attention to him in nineteen
ninety eight, he always saw his shoulders out. He was
wearing like a way oversized throwback every time you saw him.
And it wasn't until Steve wound up putting him in
(29:56):
that hp ad where he's wearing the suit and he's
flipping through on the HPT tablet and showing you the
plant sort of Barclays like HP in a very real
way helped skuld the identity of jay Z as a mobile.
That's not to say it was happening. That's to say
they helped frame that in the popular imagination. Right. And
the s stock Carter, which was a sneaker that had
(30:18):
a really really tiny distribution that had a significant cultural
impact that really put him on the road to making
products improving to multiple categories. That music could sell the
way that sports could, even though they didn't want to
believe that. And so because that's the heritage of the shop,
when we see a scenario today, like you know, McDonald's
(30:42):
has recently hired us to help them really get closer
to the African American segment, and they're really trying to
create significant share for themselves in a chicken market where
they haven't historically been. And so if there's a scenario
that involves an artists, I know that that artist has
(31:04):
the potential to create significant wake for McDonald's and I
know McDonald's has an opportunity to create significant wake for
that artist. The thing that most people just leave out
and they let the money settle this, They let the
money cover the differential is does this benefit them both?
Can we look back at them both and go, oh,
(31:25):
you're better for that and you're better for that. Yeah,
And that's what we're trying to engineer. The money is important,
and most people will do a revshare deal, but they're
not going to give you a chunk of their company
just to be a celebrity endorser. Right, So it doesn't
have to go to that extreme, but a mutual benefit
off of those shared values. So the partners are getting
(31:47):
each other where they couldn't have got without the other.
That's just great business and it's one of our hallmarks
that's been with us for twenty years. It's going to
be something we keep doing. You're not going to see
us get people in business with one another and the
faces and names switch out.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Should say, should we talk about d I and Bravery?
Let me ask you, do you see people in power
resist some of those things you would like to see
happening independent from maybe our industry. Is there anything you
would say, I mean de I's and I would say
in the spotlight right for some time now, maybe in
recent months, more than ever before. Do you have a
(32:24):
wish list based on your own experiences and your perspective
into this where you would say, okay, especially also, our
industry needs to step up a bit more and should
do more, so that it's not just rhetoric, it's more
a real commitment that we can see.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
The first thing I'll acknowledge is that when you're in
the business of mass persuasion, is everybody in marketing and
advertising should be you're hobbling yourself by not having a
diverse workforce, Like, I don't know. That seems to me
to be obvious. What is less obvious, though, is I
think the timeline. So you know, eighty eight percent of
(33:00):
people under twenty five live in what we call it
global style. Eighty eight percent of people human beings under
the age of twenty five. And that's to say, like,
if you plan to be in business in fifteen years
at all, if you haven't created some kind of relationship
with those young people, you're gonna have to buy them
(33:23):
at whatever market is. Then yeah, And I look at
it just as simply as this. In nineteen eighty six,
if you wanted to know where global youth culture was headed,
you would go to Hollis Queens and you would go
like the adida's executive, you'd go find run DMC and
be like, oh, this is the thing that has the
capacity to take over the world. Right. If in nineteen
(33:44):
ninety two you want to see where global pop culture
was going, you go to like Compton, California, maybe even
South London, and you would see the creative that was
being born there being able to ripple for the next
forty years right now. That is absolutely Legos, Metojine, Santiago,
(34:07):
San Paolo, Soweto. These are the Hollis Queens of right now.
And that means and remember what I said about this
like broad multi hyphen and then the hyphens are going
to disappear. The creative class, the people that will dictate
the cultural agenda are probably somewhere there. And if you
(34:30):
don't have any pipeline to bring them anywhere in your orbit,
you have no earthly idea what could possibly happen next.
The cultural trade deficit between the West and the rest
of the world, and America and the rest of the
world specifically is reversing. I can show you a poster
of like Coachella in twenty thirteen. You don't know any
(34:51):
of these acts, but they're all homegrown. And in twenty
twenty three, it's burna Boy from Nigeria, It's Black Pink
from Korea, It's Rosalia, it's Bad Bunny. And when you
go out there and you see eighty thousand young white
women from like eight hundred k plus households who don't
(35:12):
speak a lick of conversational Spanish singing everywhere to Bad Bunny,
it's like a light bulb comes on. You're like, oh,
this is exactly what run DMC was in nineteen eighty six.
Now I think about cultural currents in music, blah blah blah,
why I make those references. But when I circle all
this back and I think about the little tiny squabbles
(35:32):
that we have inside of our industry, like, well, how
many these people do you have? And how many of
those people do you have? I'm telling you, we're looking
through the microscope, and we need to be looking through
the telescope. Yeah, And in our organization, one of the
things we're thinking about is how do we connect with
the creative glass at scale in all of the places
where culture is being born, so that we are in
a position to help our brand partners contribute to it
(35:53):
meaningfully enough to lead it and to benefit handsomely there from.
And so look, I don't know when people start getting
rid of their heads of diversity at XYZ hold Code Shop,
I don't know what they're thinking, but I know it
creates opportunity for us. Yeah, right, And the more group
(36:15):
thing that you put in the room, the more opportunity
for us to come in later. I'm just waiting for
the pendulum to swing back, and then the politics of it,
you know, and the politics of it are momentary.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
So the message, as I understand it, hopefully correct, is
it's less about especially when I think about our industries,
less about these campaigns and initiatives which are important to
bring attention to something and someone, But it's more that
just to live it, because it's part of our daily
life around the globe, around our personal life, our business.
(36:47):
It's just really it's so simple, but just to live it.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
All the growth is just no chart you can look at.
All the growth is coming from one place. And that
doesn't just mean the customer base. That also means the
cultural leadership, as we violently deport people, as we do
all the things that we're doing to kind of insulate.
Clock's gonna keep on ticking and these things are gonna
(37:10):
continue to be true.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Can you share or are you willing to share a
personal moment when taking a brief stand which didn't go
as planned? Can you share something from your personal.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Experience they're gonna brave stand did not.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Maybe just a baptize, you know, in terms of you know,
public reaction or anything like this.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
No, I mean the closest one I would tell you,
is that that AT and T story about the bikers
on the poster, Yeah, you know, Beach You Loved Me
was released at a time we were all still in
quarantine and Tucker Carlston was still on the air, And
I gotta tell you, like I was a little let
down that I didn't make Tucker Carlson's show when that
(37:53):
work came out, because I really wanted to kind of
see his capillary burst at the idea that an Apple
owned company and would be doing any of this. And
now that the politics of the day are the politics
of the day, that becomes a little bit more challenging.
But at the time, you know, people want to root
for things, and one of the ways they discover what
(38:14):
the root for is who roots against them. And so
that backlash that everybody's always trying to avoid is actually
one of the most significant weapons that we have. And
I think there's really no better example of that going
on right now than this whole Sydney Sweeney thing with AEO.
Whatever you think of that, whatever you think of that. Mechanically,
(38:37):
the outrage is part of the advocacy, and the advocacy
would not be as strong without that outrage. And so
while I don't have any opinion I'm going to put
forth on that work. I know that there's more of
that to come, and I actually respect it mechanically, even
if I don't respect it topically.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Let's look a bit to the new future. Let's assume
five years from now, what story would you want a
young creator or brand manager to tell about how they
used their role to widen the circle rather than protect
the status quo as an outcome of all your work
you're doing and working with those people.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Another great question, Christian. Five years from today, I think
it would be great if you had a brand manager
or director from one of my partners is JP Morgan Chase,
And I remember it might have even been a conversation
with you, did you do want to use with Carla
and she was.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Talking about Yeah it was in the last season.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah was that the episode I heard? And she was
talking about craft service? Yeah? Okay, yes, yeah. So five
years from today, I would love to have someone from
JP Morgan Chase be able to stand on our stage
and say, look at our economic impact. First, five years
ago today, we did a deal with United Masters whereby
(40:04):
a couple of things happened. Number one, all of our
music needs outside of a couple like prestige appointments were
met by independent Creator owned IP, and we started to
measure how much Creator owned IP we cleared globally, and
just by measuring that alone, we started to realize that
(40:26):
we were building these new small businesses that we could
equip in multiple other ways through this, that the other.
And then because of that, we started to realize that
we could play a significant role in making superstars just
by our sink strategy on our Sapphire commercials, but also
by ensuring that these artists got visibility around all of
(40:49):
the entitlements that we have sundance, this, this, that the other.
As we did that, we documented it all and we
really developed the signature expose on how the creative class
is built from the ground up right now and how
it's equipped by the products that we build. And so
(41:09):
in these five years, we've been able to really engineer
products that are expressly for this class of people all
around the world. And today I'm really proud to tell
you that because of this program, we wait our Creator
owned IP the same way we talk about our carbon
neutral travel and this is our score here. I'm really
(41:33):
proud to say that this is the most watched documentary
on Netflix and released in its year. I'm really proud
to say that we've identified one hundred thousand net new
prospects for Chase Private client who we wouldn't have known
were there. And I'm also happy to say that we've
(41:55):
paid out over sixty million dollars into the creative economy
just by changing things that we were already doing.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
That's a great agenda being there in five years, and
we will look back by then, I will come back
to you and we we check it out.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
It's the measurement that starts it all. We value what
we measure. In the moment you start to measure it,
everything can unlock them.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
There, She'll say, I have a last one for today.
What's a conspiracy you're building right now? You're working on
it right now that no one's watching, but everyone should
know about it. In other words, what can we expect
very soon from you from your daily work coming out
of this.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
One of the things I'm really paying attention to translation
is in the process of opening our first office in
the GCC, we're gonna be HQT in Dubai there and
the team in Dubai that we're building has really ratified
something that new for me. I don't think I had
(42:55):
ever seen Dubai locals like kids that were born in
expat rich communities that before. And it's just incredible how
culturally fluent they are all around the world, like the
things that they can plug into, and this idea of
third culture kids and the social and economic reward getting
(43:18):
further and further apart, by which I mean we are
clearly at a place where you have to kind of
question yourself before you go spend three hundred thousand dollars
on law school, right because you know, all those associated
jobs that existed since seventeen seventy six aren't going to
exist in the same way because of the pressures we've
talked about before. And so all these third culture kids,
(43:41):
and specifically first generation kids in the West are having
these moments of achievement that their families can't acknowledge. They
don't know how because there's this unspoken, infinitely translatable support
(44:03):
for doctor, lawyer, engineer, doctor lawyer, engineer, whether your mom's
Bamwadeshi Ukrainian Nigerian, those are the three things she'll brag
to her sisters about. And something about meeting these young
people and recognizing that for them, success will not fit
anything shaped like that. I think it's causing a very
(44:25):
real crisis, a crisis in the social reward getting further
apart from the economic reward. And I think in that crisis,
there's a huge opportunity for us to reevaluate what success
looks like as a civilization. And I'm excited about that.
(44:47):
I'm excited about a new definition of success because we're
all going to have to reform our existing ones. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
She'll say, that's a great ending, and I think every
body agrees listening to us today that you don't just
talk about culture obviously, you engineer the conditions for it
to thrive with guardrails, with governance, with a moral core.
Whether it's helping brands showing up with integrity or ensuring
artists keep the value they create. You're rewriting the rulds
(45:20):
of how marketing and music interact. And this is impressive
what you do at Translation and United Masters. Thank you
so much for your time with us today, for your openness,
and a personal note, also thank you for your support
as official advisor of Possible and being a great friend
in this industry. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
Shall say great my pleasure brother. Appreciate you and everybody listening.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
If today's conversation spark new ideas or new questions, you
can find more Impossible Now follow us on iHeart or
wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like this episode,
shared with someone who still thinks culture is not just
a buzzword. I'm Christian Muveur and this is Possible Now.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
And see you next time.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Thank you, thank you, thanks for tuning in everyone. Once again,
I'm your host, Christian Moher. If you have a question
or suggestion to me, reach out, send me DM on LinkedIn.
If you're curious to learn more about Possible, sign up
for our newsletter, or if you want to join us
at the Possible Show in Miami, visit Possible event dot com.
Possible Now is a co production of iHeartMedia and Possible.
(46:22):
Our executive producers are Ryan Martz and Yasmin Melendez. Our
supervising producer is Meredith Barnes. Special thanks to Colleen Lawrence
Mack from our programming team. Our theme music is composed
by Anthony Keatacoli. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the
iHeart app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows,
Welcome to Possible Now Stories of Possibilities, the podcast where
we dive into the leadership frameworks, bold ideas and personal
stories shaping the future of marketing, technology and leadership. Welcome
back to Possible Now. I'm Christian Much and today we
are not just talking about marketing or music. We're also
(00:25):
talking about power, who holds it, who shares it, and
how culture decides where it flows. Next, my wonderful guest
today is someone who has built his career at the
intersection of creativity and accountability. Chose Bons is the chief
marketing officer of both Translation, the creative agency that taught
brands how to stop renting culture and start earning it,
(00:49):
and United Masters, the artist's platform redefining ownership in the
music industry. He's an architect of context strategy, a discipline
that forces brands to meet culture where it is not
where it's convenient. He is a musician turned marketer, a
strategist turned activist, and a leader who says his mission
(01:09):
is to make strong morals the new normal. If you've
ever wondered what it takes to navigate cultural spaces without
exploring them, or how to build structural equity into the
DNA of business. This is your episode. Let's get into it.
I'm super excited to welcome Chose Barns shall so welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I'm flattered to be here, flatter to be here. Let's
do it.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I'm really excited about our conversations. So let's kick off
with something. You know where you come from. Before you
were CMO across two worlds, the agency and the artist's platform,
you were a musician learning how culture actually moves right. Yeah,
tell us about your identity as a creator, how it
shaped your past so far, and how this ended up
(01:55):
to become the seamore of translation in the United Masters.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, I'm happy to My journey began. Its actually where
I am right now, Greensboro, North Carolina. I'm and my
mom's house. You see all the books behind me here.
And I was raised in a family full of professors.
I went to college. I studied philosophy, and while in college,
I started to MC with an existing jazz trio. And
so we put together this little songbook and we play
(02:20):
little dates and whatnot, a little tours around. We'd go
play a jazz society and then we'd go play a
frat party afterward. We did that all around the Northeast,
and then I graduated and it turns out there were
no job openings for rapper or for philosopher. So I
was like, all right, well, I guess I'll just stick
with the one I think is cool. And I decided
(02:42):
I wanted to just continue to use music to see
what else was out there. And luckily I had a
partner at that time, my music director. He basically wrote
all the music and I wrote all the words, and
he was in a similar position, and so we flipped
a coin between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington and landed
in Portland, and we got up and we moved to
(03:02):
Portland to just see what was out there. We were
both from the Bend Atlantic. When we got there, we
both got some day jobs and we rebuilt the band
and it was my very first truly entrepreneurial pursuit. Right.
You got to figure out, Okay, what is your duty
to pay for? What is my due you pay for?
(03:22):
How are we going to do these logistics when we
bring in a rhythm section, how are we going to
cut that in, how are we going to run these flyers?
What's more important? And so you know everything that goes
into making a marketing budget and making a product budget
and all of that. That was my kind of early
mister Miyagi style montage thereof. And the product got pretty good,
(03:43):
and so at a certain point I wanted to record
a music video. And I had found this interesting space,
kind of a gallery shaped space and the Pearl District
in Portland, and it turned out to be the global
headquarters of Widen and Kennedy. I don't know, huh, I
didn't know. I had big, cool doors and there was
somebody's name on the door, and I knew it was
some kind of business. But when you go inside and
(04:04):
you don't you haven't been a part of big agency world.
You get inside and you're like, maybe this is a
craft mall, Like I don't know what this is. I
just know it would make a cool backdrop for a video.
And I met Dan Widen, and Dan Widen took an
hour and some change meeting with me, in which we
talked about the humanities, and we talked about boxing, we
(04:26):
talked about sport, and we talked about Naomi Klein, who
had written a book where she talked about him really
really poorly that I was a big fan of called
no Logo and at the end of it, I played
him a record and he listened to the record and
he said, well, hell kid, if you can do that,
you can write nike Y D. And he took me
outside and he introduced me to Mel Myers, who was
his head of creative recruitment at the time. And that's
(04:50):
how I wound up an agency land.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So he's saying, you never met him before, but in
the very first meeting he offered you a job.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
It didn't offer me a job. He said I could
and then he entered reduced me to somebody. It's actually
a labyrinthine journey for over five months to actually get
a job. And by the way, I didn't start as
a copywriter. I started as a media planner and I
was just around the building so much. And then once
I was on the radar, they looked around and they
were like, Oh, that's the kid that's opening for the
(05:17):
roots at the Crystal Ballroom. That's the kid I see
him on posters now. And so when Converts came into
building on the media side, on the media planning and
buying side, the media director called me up and said, hey,
I know you don't know anything about media, but I'm
willing to teach you because you're the target of this media,
and if I teach you the grammar of the business,
(05:38):
I'm confident that you'll be really good at this. Certainly
on this account.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
The music you did was rep you said, right, yeah,
it was a band or it was a it was
a band.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Organic hip hop project. So it was guitar led, guitar, drums,
bass keys as a full set, and then we would
build up a horn section at certain points, but that
was the base set of five piece organic jazz.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
That's a great story. I'm sure you're still into this,
so good to know. For the future. Maybe you can
do something together.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I don't perform anymore. I'm I'm forty five. I left
that to okay, okay, okay, but I know a guy
or two. Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
You mentioned Widen Kennedy and how you met. You said
in a recent interview article, your mission is to make
strong more than your normal. In your early years with
these agencies Widen Kennedy and there was the Modern agency
as well. You saw that the machine from inside and
what convinced you that marketing needed a new moral compass.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Well, I think it's less about a moral compass for
marketing per se. I think it's about leveraging the marketing
discipline because it drives cultural wake, it drives collective action,
and advertising as an industry is one of the final
bastions of non user initiated content. Right, it's the only
(06:56):
content that comes chasing after you. And whether it be
you know, environmental like big out a home or retail,
or it's targeted or whatever, what have you. The ambition
of all of these brands is to create an almost
kind of rhapsodic irrational preference. Right, And just as easily
(07:17):
as you can make an irrational preference for a pair
of khakis it was made in the exact same factory
as the Para khakis, it costs twelve dollars less that
you don't want, you can also create an interrational preference
for values. You can also create a interrational preference for ideas, right,
ideas that need to happen. And so the same exact
mechanics that go into selling a car pair of khakis
(07:41):
a plastic disc would also be employed in selling the
idea of universal income or universal healthcare, or you can
pick the thing that you actually care about. But because
the mechanics are so similar and because we know that
cultural rewards brands that lead. I find it a great
(08:02):
industry to be in to leverage brand budgets and to
build a toolkit that can be applied to any idea.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So you pioneered the context strategy at Translation, I think
it was back in twenty twelve or at this time,
and you defined it as a unique discipline marrying creativity, strategy, data,
social intelligence. It aims to align brand behavior with authentic
consumer conversations to boost relevance and impact. Right, what moment
(08:31):
made you realize context strategy could be more than a discipline,
it could be a lever to shift power.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Well, the first just the origin story of context was
very specific to Translations place in the ecosystem at that time.
So Translation had big, loud fortune fifty clients, and the
ideas that they were bringing in those clients, your state farms, McDonald's,
Anheuser Busch were very out of step with the way
(09:00):
those brands normally behaved. Right, And as a result of that,
because you have creative and media divorced from one another,
even if you win the creative assignment, you can hang
something on the wall. It's a brilliant idea. Everybody wants
to buy. But by the time it goes through the
system it comes out the other side it is not
sequenced correctly, it's not targeted correctly, it's not rolled out
(09:22):
in such a way that it's going to attract the
original advocates who need to push it to its fullest
kind of pop cultural potential. And there was no sliver
of an opportunity for a Translation like object to take
on the media buying for companies of that magnitude. Right,
You're not going to all of a sudden take a
billion dollar media budget and know what to do with it.
(09:44):
And so there needed to be an adapter, right. And
what Translation had previously done was go get a media
guy who was kind of fluent and creative and he
would just like work with the media people over here.
And when it was State Farm, he'd worked with OMD
and when it was and as a Bush, you go
work with SMG. And what we decided to do, and
this was where the idea of the context discipline came from,
(10:06):
was actually build the work so that it prescribed its
own rollout, and build the work in such a way
that when the client approved the work, they were also
approving the first run of people who were going to
get it. They were also approving the surfaces it was
going to show up on. They were also approving the
kind of posture of that inventory. And once they said
(10:26):
yes to that, it became like a bispect for the
media shop. Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah, So when
that happened, there was an opportunity for me. I came
in to do that for translation clients. And what context
strategy has become is there's a real industry opportunity. And
(10:49):
so that has really bloomed under the leadership of Joel Rodriguez,
who leads that discipline today and has built it into
I think seventeen person squad, and they exist on all
sides of the business pre brief, biz DEV, prost brief
and form the brief activation. They're on set and they're
reporting and they're posting. They're doing kind of everything that
(11:13):
makes an idea actually come to life that I could
not have imagined. When I walked in the doors, I
thought I was coming to be a secret weapon, like
some kind of Swiss army knife. And what it has
bloomed into is really our signature sauce. And it's the
distinction that we make, you know, a lot of people
can come to the same line, a lot of people
can come to the same celebrity, a lot of people
(11:33):
can come to the same framework. And you know, one
of our most famous pieces of film is Beats You
Love Me Want a Titanium Lion the year right before
they renamed the Titanium Lion for Dan Widen, And there's
a line. The whole thing pivots on this line, which
is you love black culture? Do you love black people? Right?
(11:56):
And of course I'm very proud of the film and
the film is amazing, etc. Etc. But there was also
a Dorito's add out that had that exact same line,
and that was the idea at the same time, and
the difference between what we were able to do and
set that brand on a new trajectory with youth culture
writ large, not just with black kids with that piece
(12:18):
of work is all about the contextual layer on top
of it that made it feel like it was from
a community outward to the world as opposed to all
the other things. And that's not just tone, texture, title card,
sign off.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And obviously you built something at this time which is
still the well, not just the foundation for today's work
and motivation, but I assume it's further developed over the time,
but you say it's more irrelevant than ever. Right, what
you developed now twelve thirteen years ago. Is this the
core of the agency's world today, of the agency's goals, etc.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Is this driving the whole business? I think it's one
of our most differentiateds, right, because look, you're gonna work
at this level of polish, You're gonna have brand, strategy,
creative production. They all have to be a one. And
we all know who a one people are, right, We've
worked together for years. We all know who the aces are.
And so context direction is further down into the kind
(13:18):
of special sauces and yeah, I mean you know it
came to possible two seasons ago and told the story
of the at and t helmet, and that obviously the
piece of film and the engineering and everything had to
come together. But context is on a pedestal in that
(13:40):
scenario because it can observe right, observe who should be
served by five G tech. It can identify, right, it
can find a perfect kind of avatar for that population.
It can scale so it can start to think about
(14:02):
who needs to be what kind of communities we need
to puncture. So that this doesn't just stay about deaf kids,
but it actually rises to the conversational kind of crest
of fairness in college sports, right, et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. So it is indistinguishable from our practice and
I don't see it anywhere else. And yes, I feel
(14:23):
like it gives us quite a significant amount alpha.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
So you guys are translation you'll help brands into cultural spaces.
And how do you make decisions when a brand is
earning the right to be there versus extracting from a culture?
Is it in your conversation with the client with a brand?
How can I imagine how your decisions made you know
(14:46):
when you say, okay, you belong to this culture as
a brand.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Sometimes our job is to turn what was rented into
a canvas for contribution. So our work early on at
Stay Farm in the NBA that led to like Chris
Paul and Cliff Paul and just successive seasons, that was
really about figuring out what state farms value equation, which
(15:10):
had service right as it's kind of apex thought meant
in the world of basketball. Right, So how do you
take the proposition of service that only a state farm
agent can offer and put it in basketball, and so
once all of the decisions are downstream of sticking to
that idea, Now you don't have the problem that many
(15:31):
brands have when they try to enter a theater like
sports and they're just buying people based on follower accounts
and Biscuit looks good in that and whatever. Now, because
you have this organizing principle, you go, okay, well, who's
the assist leader this year? Was this guy Cliff Paul? Okay,
if his name is Cliff Paul, so on and so forth. Right,
all the decisions flowed from our focus on that principle.
(15:53):
There are other times where that's not what you're doing
at all. Right, going back to the AT and T five,
g AT and T has been around college sports, and
specifically college football for as long as anybody can remember.
But what was their contribution to the game? Right, they've
just been around it. And so though they didn't have
(16:14):
a pre existing relationship with Gallaudett University, though they didn't
have a big brand reputation built around deaf and heart
of hearing communities, they did have a heritage factor. And
a heritage factor had everything to do with Alexander Graham
Bell okay and his deaf mother and sister. And so
(16:34):
when you can pull that heritage forward and find a
new way for them to behave now, all of a sudden,
it transforms the way that they use the canvas of
college football. Both of those are equally actionable. Right I
bought something helped me integrate successfully. Right I bought it
a big entitlement, whether it be an F one thing
or a league deal or what have you help me
(16:57):
find out what my meaning in this world can be.
And then also, hey, I already exist in this world,
but I haven't made a contribution. How do I find
something that people will actually care about and that I
would measure in people's enthusiasm as opposed to people's exposure.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
But I'm sure they're also boundaries or non negotiatables, you know,
for protecting communities. When brands want to go into this,
when was the time or can you share an example
when the community tells you no? Right, when you thought
about together with a brand, about a concept and idea,
and then you felt and you were back and said no,
that goes beyond that, it doesn't fit.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
We kill those in the crib at our shop. I've
seen things on our walls, and part of my job
and Joelle's job, and Albetto and Sanding all leadership translation,
our job is to make sure that nothing goes to
the client that is going to be out of hand rejected.
But of course we've had some moments where here's good example,
(18:01):
we did a campaign for AT and T. It was
our first relationship with AT and T built around area
codes and so it was a hyper local campaign and
one of the markets that we were penetrating was Atlanta.
In Atlanta, there are bike clubs. It's a big part
of lifetime there. It's just like roller skating or waffle
(18:22):
house or whatever else. Right, And so we had done
a shoot where we had these guys on these bikes, right,
and I think or maybe we had even taken user
generated content of these guys on these bikes. And basically
what we were doing is we were taking great photography
from the community and we were like putting AT and
T livery on it to say it's a four or
four thing, right, And we get a call, and the
(18:44):
call is that some Greater Atlanta Business Bureau or maybe
some neighborhood watch was really upset about the fact that
apparently these bikes are illegal in Atlanta, and they were
really upset about the idea that AT and T was
promoting illegal activity in Atlanta. In a scenario like that,
(19:06):
the person you're after is definitely feeling seen and respected
and acknowledged by that poster and that bus shelter. Yeah,
but that doesn't mean that the person that call rang
that phone isn't meaningful in your orbit somewhere else. And
so you're often when you do work that is, you know,
(19:28):
culturally contributive, you're often going to wind up in a
position where somebody calls and gets really upset. And as
long as you're prepared for that, and as long as
you've predicted that, then it's a basic risk reward scenario.
It's not a panic moment. Yeah, And so tension is
(19:51):
one of the outcomes. Reaction, even negative reaction, is one
of the outcomes. It's a question of can you shape
the advocacy to drive the business outcome that you're looking to.
That's the only question. Ever.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Let's also talk about United masas so you have two
heads on all the time. United Masters treats a fan
base as an artist's second most valuable asset after the
artist's own creativity if I understand, right, So what protections
need to exist so that fan data isn't weaponized against
the varied creators it's supposed to serve.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Well, let's back up one step, because I don't know
how familiar everybody is with the music industry large. So
the first premise of United Masters is that historically, if
you put any money into an artist, you own their work.
And the only artists that we ever heard on the
radio or saw on the television or what have you,
were artists that somebody had put some money into so
(20:51):
that they would be there. And with the explosion of
social media, that stopped being the case. What stopped being
the case was people were fronting all of this money
to build these acts and then therefore reaping the reward.
What was going on was these acts were popping on
their own, and they were giving them Usery Bank loans
in order to own their work forever. And so back
(21:13):
to that idea of morals, right, like a new normal. Right,
that was an idea that we knew could stick. That
independence should be the default setting of the music industry
all across the world, meaning this work should be creator owned,
it should not be owned by someone who didn't participate
(21:36):
meaningfully in it. And if there aren't alternatives to get
that first amount of seed capital, we'll do it. But
you should own that work because you now own the work.
Now you have an entire generation of artists who are
owner operators themselves. They're CEOs, right, They're not just talent,
and so they're thinking about all the time, how do
(21:58):
I build a full business? And that's where they're fans,
and ideally and certainly in our ecosystem, other brands that
are trying to be built that are trying to earn
those same fans right start to come into focus together.
If you own the work, then you can build the
business on top of it. Right. Otherwise, the business on
(22:20):
top of it isn't yours because Instagram owns it or
somebody else owns it, and the thing underneath isn't yours
because Sony owns it or Universal owns it or what
have you. And so our idea was always to catch
this wave that we see in gen z across the globe,
which is entrepreneurial zeal first name, last name, LLC. We're
going to talk about this when we get to AI
(22:40):
as well. And we wanted to make sure that in music,
we had a way to do that. So you have
your core IP, you have the business that you can build,
even if that's just you know, influencer businesses as we
kind of currently think about it, and for some you
also have the ability to build products, services, and movements
that are going to have install bases because those install
(23:03):
bases are coming from your music. So everybody won't have
a finty like Rihanna does, but everybody should be thinking
that way. And so the data, specifically the fan relationship
being the second most important thing, because the biggest thing
you can figure out as an artist is a distinction
(23:25):
between an enthusiastic fan who'd be willing to buy this
particular sweatshirt right well over market, and somebody who just
happens to enjoy the music and who will help contribute
their point zero zero zero to percent penny to your
stream count.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
You've mentioned something like AI, so obviously we have to
talk about AI as well and the influence into your
business and the Auntice business. But let's widen it up
a bit. It's AI, it's creativity, it's equity. So how
do you foresee this kind of collision and what's the
new outcome of it in the near future how is
AI specifically, but in the combination with creativity and equity
(24:16):
driving a whole industry here, we're.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Just seeing this rapid collapse of the price point of
great content, right, And it's not all just Jenai's. I
think it's a host of tools, and it's really an
install based and a bunch of creators who are fluent
with these tools that now have just precipitously dropped the
cost to make something great and intentional marthy. And so
(24:39):
as we look at that first and foremost for our artists,
great day, right, because now all of a sudden, you
don't need the kind of budget that you needed even
three years ago to be really really great. That's a
net plus in terms of yield and scale. Of course,
consequence of that is same consequence we know across the
(25:01):
media estate, which is like we're gonna get a lot
of slop, We're gonna get overloaded. But within that, I
think artists are more empowered to build better and more
significant businesses and get to a cash register moment easier
than ever before. And we're just gonna see that accelerate
as we start to see them figure out really crack
agents especially. I think there are going to be some
(25:24):
really exciting companies that agentically solve, you know, into it
for creativity, if you will. That's definitely underway, and it's
going to be as hands off as putting a filter
on something is today. So the net for the artist
space is great if more competitive. Look, I think in
(25:46):
the agency world, a lot of people are going to
they're going to realize that the moat that we had
as an industry that we saw fall around you know,
Hollywood content, we saw fall around video in particular, we
saw a fall around photography, and that we then saw
fall around music has now come for us. You know,
(26:10):
there was a time where the movie industry was like
four companies, right, and that was just what it was.
And the archetype of that was Marty Scorsese, right, and
now mister beast, you name it. And there was a
time where I don't know name a great photographer was
like that was the archetype of who got to get
paid for making pictures. And now Kendall Jenner gets paid
(26:33):
day morning, right. Sure, sure the same thing has happened
in music, and the same thing is going to happen
to us. So I think in agency land, we're going
to see, you know, four person teams be just as
dangerous as one hundred and fifty person shops today. Further out,
I hope that the creative class starts to recognize itself
(26:57):
as one body, because I think the new talent that's
coming into the creative class is going to be less
likely because they're going to have to learn these tools
as they're built, as opposed to be taught these tools
by some earlier pro I think that they are going
to vacillate between disciplines to a degree where you know,
(27:21):
the multi hyphen it degree, the hyphens will eventually just disappear.
And I think we're going to have a really great
opportunity to build a working middle class within a creative class.
And whether they use their own personalities, they use generated personalities,
(27:42):
whether they are behind the lens in front of it,
they're working for brands, they're making music videos, or they're
making whatever thought pieces. The hope for me would be
that we would create a scenario, and this is certainly
what we're trying to do it United Masters, where of
(28:02):
course we have those knockout over the fence. You know,
you're mister bash your big ex the plug right now.
But we also have this broad, stable, credit worthy middle
class that are earning let's call it eighty thousand USD
a year as passively as possible. That's what I see,
That's what I want to engineer. Yeah, in the meantime,
(28:23):
there's gonna be a lot of layoffs and new opportunities
for sure, alternity probleternities, is that right?
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, that's fascinating and I would love to see you
also be back here but also on all stages talking
about these experiences you know in case studies, when we
see more and more realize and happening, and what the
new opportunities all look like. Because currently, yeah, it feels
for me, you know, more people are scared about this,
then see those opportunities in it.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Cumbents should be scared. That's how revolution goes. But it's
still well more exciting than it is scary. I agree.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
She'll say, you've described yourself as someone who who makes conspirators.
A few musicians and marketeers what God wails, whether it's
contracts or in your ref share or creative councils, make
that conspiracy equitable.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Oh yeah, well, look, it starts with shared values and
then it should structure out to share, you know, returns. Right.
I think the origins of this company were always that.
I think I think people get us wrong because, you know,
Steve Stout and they see Beyonce singing Happy Birthday to him,
and they just think he's just everybody's buddy. No, Steve
(29:33):
is really really well known for creating scenarios that have
come multiplayer, multipayer scenarios. You look at jay Z right now,
and if you were paying attention to him in nineteen
ninety eight, he always saw his shoulders out. He was
wearing like a way oversized throwback every time you saw him.
And it wasn't until Steve wound up putting him in
(29:56):
that hp ad where he's wearing the suit and he's
flipping through on the HPT tablet and showing you the
plant sort of Barclays like HP in a very real
way helped skuld the identity of jay Z as a mobile.
That's not to say it was happening. That's to say
they helped frame that in the popular imagination. Right. And
the s stock Carter, which was a sneaker that had
(30:18):
a really really tiny distribution that had a significant cultural
impact that really put him on the road to making
products improving to multiple categories. That music could sell the
way that sports could, even though they didn't want to
believe that. And so because that's the heritage of the shop,
when we see a scenario today, like you know, McDonald's
(30:42):
has recently hired us to help them really get closer
to the African American segment, and they're really trying to
create significant share for themselves in a chicken market where
they haven't historically been. And so if there's a scenario
that involves an artists, I know that that artist has
(31:04):
the potential to create significant wake for McDonald's and I
know McDonald's has an opportunity to create significant wake for
that artist. The thing that most people just leave out
and they let the money settle this, They let the
money cover the differential is does this benefit them both?
Can we look back at them both and go, oh,
(31:25):
you're better for that and you're better for that. Yeah,
And that's what we're trying to engineer. The money is important,
and most people will do a revshare deal, but they're
not going to give you a chunk of their company
just to be a celebrity endorser. Right, So it doesn't
have to go to that extreme, but a mutual benefit
off of those shared values. So the partners are getting
(31:47):
each other where they couldn't have got without the other.
That's just great business and it's one of our hallmarks
that's been with us for twenty years. It's going to
be something we keep doing. You're not going to see
us get people in business with one another and the
faces and names switch out.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Should say, should we talk about d I and Bravery?
Let me ask you, do you see people in power
resist some of those things you would like to see
happening independent from maybe our industry. Is there anything you
would say, I mean de I's and I would say
in the spotlight right for some time now, maybe in
recent months, more than ever before. Do you have a
(32:24):
wish list based on your own experiences and your perspective
into this where you would say, okay, especially also, our
industry needs to step up a bit more and should
do more, so that it's not just rhetoric, it's more
a real commitment that we can see.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
The first thing I'll acknowledge is that when you're in
the business of mass persuasion, is everybody in marketing and
advertising should be you're hobbling yourself by not having a
diverse workforce, Like, I don't know. That seems to me
to be obvious. What is less obvious, though, is I
think the timeline. So you know, eighty eight percent of
(33:00):
people under twenty five live in what we call it
global style. Eighty eight percent of people human beings under
the age of twenty five. And that's to say, like,
if you plan to be in business in fifteen years
at all, if you haven't created some kind of relationship
with those young people, you're gonna have to buy them
(33:23):
at whatever market is. Then yeah, And I look at
it just as simply as this. In nineteen eighty six,
if you wanted to know where global youth culture was headed,
you would go to Hollis Queens and you would go
like the adida's executive, you'd go find run DMC and
be like, oh, this is the thing that has the
capacity to take over the world. Right. If in nineteen
(33:44):
ninety two you want to see where global pop culture
was going, you go to like Compton, California, maybe even
South London, and you would see the creative that was
being born there being able to ripple for the next
forty years right now. That is absolutely Legos, Metojine, Santiago,
(34:07):
San Paolo, Soweto. These are the Hollis Queens of right now.
And that means and remember what I said about this
like broad multi hyphen and then the hyphens are going
to disappear. The creative class, the people that will dictate
the cultural agenda are probably somewhere there. And if you
(34:30):
don't have any pipeline to bring them anywhere in your orbit,
you have no earthly idea what could possibly happen next.
The cultural trade deficit between the West and the rest
of the world, and America and the rest of the
world specifically is reversing. I can show you a poster
of like Coachella in twenty thirteen. You don't know any
(34:51):
of these acts, but they're all homegrown. And in twenty
twenty three, it's burna Boy from Nigeria, It's Black Pink
from Korea, It's Rosalia, it's Bad Bunny. And when you
go out there and you see eighty thousand young white
women from like eight hundred k plus households who don't
(35:12):
speak a lick of conversational Spanish singing everywhere to Bad Bunny,
it's like a light bulb comes on. You're like, oh,
this is exactly what run DMC was in nineteen eighty six.
Now I think about cultural currents in music, blah blah blah,
why I make those references. But when I circle all
this back and I think about the little tiny squabbles
(35:32):
that we have inside of our industry, like, well, how
many these people do you have? And how many of
those people do you have? I'm telling you, we're looking
through the microscope, and we need to be looking through
the telescope. Yeah, And in our organization, one of the
things we're thinking about is how do we connect with
the creative glass at scale in all of the places
where culture is being born, so that we are in
a position to help our brand partners contribute to it
(35:53):
meaningfully enough to lead it and to benefit handsomely there from.
And so look, I don't know when people start getting
rid of their heads of diversity at XYZ hold Code Shop,
I don't know what they're thinking, but I know it
creates opportunity for us. Yeah, right, And the more group
(36:15):
thing that you put in the room, the more opportunity
for us to come in later. I'm just waiting for
the pendulum to swing back, and then the politics of it,
you know, and the politics of it are momentary.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
So the message, as I understand it, hopefully correct, is
it's less about especially when I think about our industries,
less about these campaigns and initiatives which are important to
bring attention to something and someone, But it's more that
just to live it, because it's part of our daily
life around the globe, around our personal life, our business.
(36:47):
It's just really it's so simple, but just to live it.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
All the growth is just no chart you can look at.
All the growth is coming from one place. And that
doesn't just mean the customer base. That also means the
cultural leadership, as we violently deport people, as we do
all the things that we're doing to kind of insulate.
Clock's gonna keep on ticking and these things are gonna
(37:10):
continue to be true.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Can you share or are you willing to share a
personal moment when taking a brief stand which didn't go
as planned? Can you share something from your personal.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Experience they're gonna brave stand did not.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Maybe just a baptize, you know, in terms of you know,
public reaction or anything like this.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
No, I mean the closest one I would tell you,
is that that AT and T story about the bikers
on the poster, Yeah, you know, Beach You Loved Me
was released at a time we were all still in
quarantine and Tucker Carlston was still on the air, And
I gotta tell you, like I was a little let
down that I didn't make Tucker Carlson's show when that
(37:53):
work came out, because I really wanted to kind of
see his capillary burst at the idea that an Apple
owned company and would be doing any of this. And
now that the politics of the day are the politics
of the day, that becomes a little bit more challenging.
But at the time, you know, people want to root
for things, and one of the ways they discover what
(38:14):
the root for is who roots against them. And so
that backlash that everybody's always trying to avoid is actually
one of the most significant weapons that we have. And
I think there's really no better example of that going
on right now than this whole Sydney Sweeney thing with AEO.
Whatever you think of that, whatever you think of that. Mechanically,
(38:37):
the outrage is part of the advocacy, and the advocacy
would not be as strong without that outrage. And so
while I don't have any opinion I'm going to put
forth on that work. I know that there's more of
that to come, and I actually respect it mechanically, even
if I don't respect it topically.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Let's look a bit to the new future. Let's assume
five years from now, what story would you want a
young creator or brand manager to tell about how they
used their role to widen the circle rather than protect
the status quo as an outcome of all your work
you're doing and working with those people.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Another great question, Christian. Five years from today, I think
it would be great if you had a brand manager
or director from one of my partners is JP Morgan Chase,
And I remember it might have even been a conversation
with you, did you do want to use with Carla
and she was.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Talking about Yeah it was in the last season.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah was that the episode I heard? And she was
talking about craft service? Yeah? Okay, yes, yeah. So five
years from today, I would love to have someone from
JP Morgan Chase be able to stand on our stage
and say, look at our economic impact. First, five years
ago today, we did a deal with United Masters whereby
(40:04):
a couple of things happened. Number one, all of our
music needs outside of a couple like prestige appointments were
met by independent Creator owned IP, and we started to
measure how much Creator owned IP we cleared globally, and
just by measuring that alone, we started to realize that
(40:26):
we were building these new small businesses that we could
equip in multiple other ways through this, that the other.
And then because of that, we started to realize that
we could play a significant role in making superstars just
by our sink strategy on our Sapphire commercials, but also
by ensuring that these artists got visibility around all of
(40:49):
the entitlements that we have sundance, this, this, that the other.
As we did that, we documented it all and we
really developed the signature expose on how the creative class
is built from the ground up right now and how
it's equipped by the products that we build. And so
(41:09):
in these five years, we've been able to really engineer
products that are expressly for this class of people all
around the world. And today I'm really proud to tell
you that because of this program, we wait our Creator
owned IP the same way we talk about our carbon
neutral travel and this is our score here. I'm really
(41:33):
proud to say that this is the most watched documentary
on Netflix and released in its year. I'm really proud
to say that we've identified one hundred thousand net new
prospects for Chase Private client who we wouldn't have known
were there. And I'm also happy to say that we've
(41:55):
paid out over sixty million dollars into the creative economy
just by changing things that we were already doing.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
That's a great agenda being there in five years, and
we will look back by then, I will come back
to you and we we check it out.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
It's the measurement that starts it all. We value what
we measure. In the moment you start to measure it,
everything can unlock them.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
There, She'll say, I have a last one for today.
What's a conspiracy you're building right now? You're working on
it right now that no one's watching, but everyone should
know about it. In other words, what can we expect
very soon from you from your daily work coming out
of this.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
One of the things I'm really paying attention to translation
is in the process of opening our first office in
the GCC, we're gonna be HQT in Dubai there and
the team in Dubai that we're building has really ratified
something that new for me. I don't think I had
(42:55):
ever seen Dubai locals like kids that were born in
expat rich communities that before. And it's just incredible how
culturally fluent they are all around the world, like the
things that they can plug into, and this idea of
third culture kids and the social and economic reward getting
(43:18):
further and further apart, by which I mean we are
clearly at a place where you have to kind of
question yourself before you go spend three hundred thousand dollars
on law school, right because you know, all those associated
jobs that existed since seventeen seventy six aren't going to
exist in the same way because of the pressures we've
talked about before. And so all these third culture kids,
(43:41):
and specifically first generation kids in the West are having
these moments of achievement that their families can't acknowledge. They
don't know how because there's this unspoken, infinitely translatable support
(44:03):
for doctor, lawyer, engineer, doctor lawyer, engineer, whether your mom's
Bamwadeshi Ukrainian Nigerian, those are the three things she'll brag
to her sisters about. And something about meeting these young
people and recognizing that for them, success will not fit
anything shaped like that. I think it's causing a very
(44:25):
real crisis, a crisis in the social reward getting further
apart from the economic reward. And I think in that crisis,
there's a huge opportunity for us to reevaluate what success
looks like as a civilization. And I'm excited about that.
(44:47):
I'm excited about a new definition of success because we're
all going to have to reform our existing ones. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
She'll say, that's a great ending, and I think every
body agrees listening to us today that you don't just
talk about culture obviously, you engineer the conditions for it
to thrive with guardrails, with governance, with a moral core.
Whether it's helping brands showing up with integrity or ensuring
artists keep the value they create. You're rewriting the rulds
(45:20):
of how marketing and music interact. And this is impressive
what you do at Translation and United Masters. Thank you
so much for your time with us today, for your openness,
and a personal note, also thank you for your support
as official advisor of Possible and being a great friend
in this industry. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
Shall say great my pleasure brother. Appreciate you and everybody listening.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
If today's conversation spark new ideas or new questions, you
can find more Impossible Now follow us on iHeart or
wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like this episode,
shared with someone who still thinks culture is not just
a buzzword. I'm Christian Muveur and this is Possible Now.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
And see you next time.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Thank you, thank you, thanks for tuning in everyone. Once again,
I'm your host, Christian Moher. If you have a question
or suggestion to me, reach out, send me DM on LinkedIn.
If you're curious to learn more about Possible, sign up
for our newsletter, or if you want to join us
at the Possible Show in Miami, visit Possible event dot com.
Possible Now is a co production of iHeartMedia and Possible.
(46:22):
Our executive producers are Ryan Martz and Yasmin Melendez. Our
supervising producer is Meredith Barnes. Special thanks to Colleen Lawrence
Mack from our programming team. Our theme music is composed
by Anthony Keatacoli. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the
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