February 5, 2017 • 38 mins
For the debut episode of "Tagline," host Rob Norman (Chairman, GroupM North America) welcomes Wendy Clark (President and CEO, DDB North America) and Rob Reilly (Global Creative Chairman, McCann) to tackle the topic of Chasing Creating Culture vs Chasing it. Listen in as some of the funniest and most talented minds talk about what it takes to inspire and create today. Come for the drinks, stay for the trio's personal taglines (and their surprise phone call to 'tag in' the next guests for the next show). Tagline is a joint production of IHeartMedia and Advertising Age, presented by our friends at Bulleit Frontier Whiskey. *Please drink responsibly. iheartradio.com/tagline #tagline
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
My tagline is Creativity is the only way to survive.
Creativity is the only way to survive. Okay, you can't
even get to culture if you don't have a good
answer on So what have you ever been tagged in before?
This could be the pilot that never kept shown. Welcome
to Tagline. Pour a cocktail and join us for inspired
conversations with the best storytellers, culture makers, and creators, presented
(00:31):
by our friends at Bullet Frontier Whiskey. Please drink responsibly
if you give them an intention. No, no, no, they already.
It's just because whenever we have a friend of a
plan of ours, we always give them an intention. Tagline
is produced by I Heart Radio and partnership with Advertising Age. Hi.
I'm Rob Norman. I'm the chairman of Group HIM in
(00:52):
North American. Welcome to Tagline, the premiere episode and today
I'm thrilled to be both starstruck and all strut. Starstruck
by the marveless The Clark, the President and CEO of
DDB and awe struck by Rob Riley, the credive Chairman
of MCCAM and we're all thrilled to be here today. Yeah, Hey, Wendy, Hello, Hello, everybody,
(01:13):
it's good to see you. Thank you. We're going to
talk about breativity and culture, and we're going to talk
about whether creativity and advertising drives culture or whether creativity
and advertising follows culture when they talk to us about culture.
Oh well, I don't think there's any podcast that could
cover everything that we should probably say about culture. There's
nothing that perhaps shapes advertising and has done so for
(01:36):
forever as much as cultured does. So I love your
the provocation of your question, do we shape it or
does it shape us? And the answers yes, So it
is both. I think when we're at our best, of course,
we love to say that we shape culture, and I
think you can quickly point to brands that have done it,
do do it, um and seek to do it. And
(01:58):
then when we're not perhaps our best, we're either irrelevant
culture it doesn't ladder up to what we're doing or
or become material for the brands that we're working on
um and uh. And I think that's an incredible loss
when we don't do that, because culture can work hard
for us and hard for our work. So YouTube almost
above anyone in the business, stand in the the footholes
(02:21):
of the footmarks or even on the shoulders with great
giants of our business of Doll Dame Bernbach and McCann.
And you think back robed to the notion of truth
well lit and the history of McCann, do you think
that our truth now is as well as it has
been in our history? I've ever heard described as truth
well lit. I kind of like truth well lit. It's
probably good. There's your tagline we just jumped to the
(02:41):
end of the podcast from yeah, you know and we're
out of here. No, I haven't been at McCann for
three years. And that phrase that is, you know, over
a hundred years old, that tagline of the McCann truth
well told. It's more relevant today than it probably was
a hundred years ago. What I think is important and
it's interesting. It's like creating to verse of chasing culture
in those words like culture, it's kind of like content
(03:03):
some of these words. That's all we hear. So it's
a little hard to give it, like, you know, the
perspective that that is accurate for me. But I think
we're at a time where people accept brands in their
lives more and more more than ever before. And that's
that's a good thing. The challenge for brands and the
challenge for us as the you know, the people who
(03:23):
work with brands is um that people expect more from
brands too, so they'll accept you in your life. But
you better bring a lot of things. You better be transparent,
you better be in a way, be better be fun
and interesting because you know, if you're you're allowed in
the lives of people, they want more. So it's a
really uh important time for us to get it right.
I'm talking a little bit more. What does it people
(03:44):
being prepared to accept brand in their lives mean to you? Well,
I have a whole theory on this. I don't know
how long our show is, but it's to me, I
think it's started. It started. It started, you know, uh
for me at a very uh certain time when Naster
came on board, because before Napster music, uh and bands
(04:07):
were sort of the sacred thing that young people didn't
want brands to mess with, you know, and young people
to keep everything. You know, it starts with young people.
There was a time when, you know, when a band
was in a commercial. I remember when the Beatles went
on the Nike commercial for Revolution. I think people were like, Wow,
that's the Beatles have sold out, and I think young
people are always protective of music and brands and bands
(04:27):
and brands, But when NASTERA came along and we're all
getting music for free, that's what young people realize. Okay,
we're screwing these bands over. It's okay, okay if Pepsi
is sponsoring uh an artist, It's okay if the band
wants to be on a commercial because we know this
is the only way they can make money, because we're
screwing them over. So I think that's when it really started,
(04:49):
whereas like brands really started to seep into culture through music,
and now we're at a point now it's like you
can't imagine a tour without being sponsored by a brand,
or you can't imagine a band being ridiculed for being
on commercial. They're almost celebrated. So I think that it's
really changed. You know. I just think we have to
remember that our principal product, what we do for a living,
is an uninvited guest in people's lives, and there's nobody
(05:12):
who wakes up every morning goes, oh, I'm looking forward
to seeing some advertising today. Advertising not brands I do,
I mean principally what we do for a living, all right, Um,
advertising and so advertising is an uninvited guest and our
job is to give it the credibility, the invitation that
people bring it into their lives. And uh, you know
(05:32):
the answer everyone has to work toward is so what right?
So what so many of our clients come to us
I want to do this with this is this? You
have to sit there defiantly for the consumer on behalf
of that consumer and say, so what the average consumers
see six thousand brand impressions a day in the US
six thousand A right, So everyone's clamoring for the attention,
(05:56):
everyone's trying to get their message across. So what about
what you're trying to say? Should that consumer invite you
into their lives even for thirty seconds or fifteen seconds
or whatever length of time? And I think that that
transcends everything that we're trying to do. So you can't
even get to culture if you don't have a good
answer on so what right? You're not even gonna if
you don't invite it in, there's no way you're shaping culture.
(06:18):
You when you say that, you imply quite a high
order activity. And because you're trying to get in the
permission to get into people's lives. Yet, when we hear
now so much about everything from ad blocking and in
particular the idea of kind of influence the marketing, and
the idea that people from the street and relatable voices
(06:41):
to people in audiences are the ones that they seek out.
Do you think that the kind of curatorial quality of
advertising is diminished by that or do you think there's
a legitimate place for those people and those voices in
support of brands, given the responsibility brands have. That's a
big question. Thank god he said right to know, that's
a big question. I mean, I don't know me yet.
(07:02):
We'll talk to us. It's almost like that question is
too smart for a person like me. I'm trying to
really decipher it. Rob Norman, Torman, can you give us
your take on your own question. It's a great question.
I think, Well, let me let me reframe it. Thank
you podcast media people level. Um, So what do you
(07:30):
think of the notion of influencer market I think it's
super important. I think everything is smart. That's why it's
like I think the ad agencies. If you're good, you're smart,
you're doing everything you know. You are helping to curate
this influence marketing. You're cultivating those relationships with these people.
I think it's all marketing, and sometimes we get paid
for it, sometimes we don't. If you're smart, you're continue
to bring these ideas. I met with this young person
(07:52):
who is a friend of a client of ours and
they're doing a u GC sort of company where they
start to give them an internship. No, no, no, they already.
It was just because whenever we have a friend of
a client of ours, we always give them an interest.
Of course, that's the best thing to do. And all
the people who aren't your friends or interns of my company,
and there's a lot of that, but you know, it
was a u g C company and they sort of
(08:13):
aggregate all the photos of some brands they use and
they sell it to brands and they help and it's
really not something that we would do. But I was like,
we should be introducing these people to our clients, you know,
for their benefit, because you never there may be influenced
out there that are using you know, Snapchat, using Instagram
to promote a brand or talk about a brand, even
on purpose or not on purpose. So I think all
(08:34):
that matters, Like we're in a war all the time
with our brands, Like all this stuff matters finding a
way to get those influencers, you know, caring about well.
And I'm going to put influencer in the same bucket
as raw established earlier with content and culture, because of
course everything we do is about influence, right. We're trying
to influence an outcome and trying to influence a sale,
We're trying to influence behavior. So it's a It is
(08:57):
a very vacuous word these days because we're all rushed
to words it and we all use it. And by
the way, the influencers of my fourteen year old look
a whole lot different than the influencers of my mother.
And so you know, I think knowing your target, knowing
what you're trying to do again asking that question, so
what um it starts to shape how you think about influencers.
We we had an interesting situation with a client recently
(09:20):
where we were negotiating with a celebrity for some work
and in the very final hour that celebrity pulled out,
and I mean final hour, and you find yourself, as
we've all done at some point in our career, kind
of oh, what are we gonna gona do. We ended
up is carrot top available and carrot Top wasn't available,
which made it even worse. Um and uh so then
(09:42):
we went to this set of you know, YouTube influencers
quote unquote, and um, you know, found this influencer. Fast
forward to the work is done, and we all to
a person. Everyone on the client side and on an
agency side, we look at the word and we go,
thank god that celebrity said, no, this work is unbelievably good.
It's much better we thought it would be a celebrity
by the way the volume of content we got. I mean,
(10:04):
you know, these young quote unquote influencers will shoot for
hours and hours in every kind of format, way, combination
you can think of, which is obviously what we want.
And you kind of reflect on, you know, gosh, the
models that we have used previously now are coming into
question more and more. You know, I first started McCann
the I walked into the summercam World Group and there's
(10:27):
a big sign on the wall and said McCann World
Group Transforming brands and building businesses. And I remember saying
that Harris, this was done way before Harris timond I said,
this is sucks. The life out of people, like you know,
our job is to get young people to be excited
to work here. And I said, we've got to change this.
And we went back and said, what's McCann been good
(10:48):
at for so many years? And we sort of owned
it on the fact that they've helped brands be meaningful
in people's lives. So we start there and say, okay,
what's the role of this ran for Chevy is to
help people to find new roads, is for Microsoft to
empower people achieve more. You start there and then you
have a platform and all the work comes out of it.
So the relevance of some of these things, for me,
(11:11):
I don't think about it that way, whether it's here
or not, I don't think about it that way. I
think about, like, do we have a platform by which
this brand can live on for a hundred years versus changing, changing, changing,
But I do think you have to change. But all
been in those meetings where like, I need that campaign.
I came out for ten years, and I always say, like,
you need a platform, then you could run for the
next hundred years the camp and it has to be
(11:31):
able to accommodate the ephemeral and the jury more of course.
I think you need only look at the most recent
election to understand the changing dynamic of celebrity. What making
America great again? No, I mean the celebrities came out
in force and had very limited impact on the outcome.
(11:53):
I begged the different I think cho killed it. Okay,
one celebrity. I think I had an overweighted influence. Um,
it was interesting whereby to end up in the administration.
Welcome to the first episode of Don't Go There. Where
We're going there. Any of us in this industry who
are not studying closely the outcomes of this election are
(12:15):
not current with culture because this changed everything about the
way that we think about marketing brands and people and
participating in in culture today. I mean that celebrities just
one aspect of that, you know, you know that biggest
the biggest worry I think when you're at an ad
agency or a marketing agency on each coast is that
(12:36):
you're not connected to, you know, the rest of the country.
Talk about let's talk about that a bit more. Almost
all of the people that work in advertising are members
of coastal elites in one description or another. I mean,
you have many people in Chicago Wendy that I have
even more lately. I know you do. SPEP in Chicago
at some point has now become a as cosmopolitan as
(12:58):
as New York. And well, that's right, and it's coastal
to late Michigan. Um, so it's a coastally all of
its own ruin your metaphor, No, we can torture it,
but let's not ruin it, okay. So it's interesting that
we have people that work with us and for us
and in partnership with our clients who are kind of
(13:20):
preconditioned and predisposed to a broadly liberal, broadly cultural set
of influences. Yet we know for sure, for sure, for
sure that there are many, many people in this country,
and you just look at savings rates and all of
the other average income stats that we're very detached as
a group of people from many of the people that
(13:42):
buy our clients products. I'm kind of curious how you
think about your interaction with your teams and your clients
to keep that connection going. You know, Sam Walton had
a quote that hangs on the walls at GSC and
M I work there fifteen years ago, and it says,
whenever you get lost, go to the store, the customer
has all the answers. Uh. And I think that's pretty profound.
(14:05):
And I think if we are not dwelling in our
client's business, um, then then we you're absolutely correct, will
take a very elitist view, a very um narrow view
to what that can be. One of the questions I
get the most post star McDonald's win is well, you
don't eat McDonald's, do you? And I said, I absolutely
(14:26):
eat McDonald's. My children eat McDonald's. I got, I mean
and literally it was actually pointed my friends from at
aig UM during one of the interviews, Um was and
I said that, and it was Ken, God rest his soul.
Let's just have a little little hand over heart for Ken. Uh.
He said, well, what do your kids eat? Like, you know,
like really testing me? And I said, I can tell
(14:48):
you exactly whatly and I rattled off the order of
my little boy likes hot cakes, my middle daughter likes
a bacon, egg and cheese mcgriddele, and my oldest story
likes a Slausa jackman muffin. I can tell you exactly
what my kids eat a McDonald's because I go to
McDonald Uh. You still have custody it's not about um.
So my point in telling this tortured story now, thank
(15:11):
you Rob Norman, uh, is that we have to dwell
on our client's business. And if we somehow believe it's
for other people that we are thankfully here to help
translate them, we're sorely mistaken. And I think Sam Walton
had it right. Um. And you know interesting if you
if you stay on the Walmart construct for a while.
Obviously we don't work on Walmart anymore, but um, you
(15:31):
know the Walmart corporate employees work on Saturdays, right. I
don't know if you know that, um, because the stores
are open, you know. And to to make sure that,
even in their own structure, that the corporate employees were
never too removed from the experience of what the store
employees were experiencing, because the store employees are the ones
driving the revenue, making it happen, serving the customer. And
so I think it all facets of our business, be
(15:54):
they on the client side or the agency side, if
we get too far removed from those whom we are
trying to influence, then we will not be successful. Do
you have a grounding client. A grounding client the one
that keeps you real and connected with the social and
cultural laws that of the population. For me, like my
whole background is mostly retail. I mean Crispin where I
(16:16):
spent pretty much my most important years as a creative
person mostly retail accounts, and retail keeps you grounded, Like
I think that's the important thing. Whether it's McDonald's or
whether it's the best Buy, or whether it's you know, Verizon,
those things keep you grounded because you're looking at sales
every day, You're looking at trends every day, looking at
(16:37):
what people like, what they don't like. So those are
the things that keep you grounded. I think Microsoft for
for me for a long time, Crispin and now at
McCann because it wasn't necessarily the cool brand. It was
more of like, hey, if you make the right products,
people will come, you know. And they ended up making
the right products and people now certainly coming. So that's
probably the closest to it to grounded, to trying to
(16:58):
do the right thing for people, which is empowering people
of all types to do great things. It's funny, isn't it.
When you talk to people in our business, and especially
those have been this for a long time. A lot
of our kind of war stories and the ones we
love most even though we may not love them most
of the time involve retailers and it I always kind
of figured that the reason why it was was the
(17:18):
idea there's a bunch of guys from security that unlocked
the door at nine o'clock in the morning. On ten
o'clock in the the morning, and no one knows whether anyone's
going to walk through the door or not, and there
is this perfect sort of moment of truth which could
be triumph for or disaster for those people. For sure.
That's why the Walmart's a great example of like and
I didn't know that corporate worked on Saturday. It's kind
(17:39):
of kind of genius. I'm sure a lot of people
don't want to work there because of it, you know,
but it's kind of genius in a way because you
feel then it's like it is connected to people, Like
just because you work in the store doesn't mean you're
not a consumer. That's where you go on ROB, I
would like to point out that I have finished my drink. Yeah,
where is the delicious bullet drink DJ? Time to take
(18:01):
a break with our friends from Bullet Frontier Whiskey, Please
drink responsibly. Okay, we have Jeff, and Jeff is the
thing called a mixologist, which I'm not a young person,
so I don't know exactly what a mixologist is. Um.
Jeff actually was the world class US bartender of the year.
Is that Cratoff was great? He's kind of he's an influencer.
(18:25):
You've transformed bullet bourbon. There's something even more delicious, Jeff.
You're gonna tell us about it. Yes, this drink is
the Red Velvet. It's inspired by the classic formula of
a Manhattan So the base is coconut water and we
do a modifier of bullet bourbon. The reason the basis
coconut waters such a mild flavor. You have to have
more of that than the whiskey so you can actually
(18:46):
taste it. If you did two to one of whiskey
to coconut water, you wouldn't taste the coconut water, so
you have to do it backwards. I never drink bourbon.
This is the first bourbon drink I've enjoyed. Thank you did,
really welcome It's it's a fun combination because coconut water
is something you would associate with the Caribbean, with with
rum something on a beach. But bullet bourbon is aged
(19:08):
in American oak and American oak and parts a coconutty
flavor to it. Where Kentucky, Kentucky. So you're wearing an
incredible leather out for the ladies pleasure listening the leather
outfit is it's like we're thinking Gangs of New York.
It's that sort of but check on a thing. It's
(19:28):
it's a it's a leather workman's apron that's provided about
more and Giles out of Virginia. I've been using it
behind the bar for six years and uh, it keeps
me dry and people take it is the dress of
a winner. Have you ever gone shirtless? Because I think
that would. It's a little toots. You know it's hot.
I'll leave it to your imagination. How do you come?
(19:51):
I mean to be the winner? Like what what levels
of competition? What did you have to go straight to
get to that? Because I'm fascinated, but I went through
the ringer. It's an annual bartending competition. There's a there's
a there's regional rounds, regional heats, there's national heats as
a global final. Bartending is such a multifasted occupation that
they tried to come up with competitions to judge all
(20:12):
of that. So if you're just fast, or if you
just make great drinks, you're not gonna win. You kind
of have to do everything. It sounds like a pitch.
Are you considered an influencer them for Bullet Yes, I
think I know you're You're a big fan, So I'm
a fan. I love Bullet whiskey. It's also the thirtieth anniversary.
I was right there thinking right what it was like? Then?
(20:35):
How do you think that culcktails found their way back
into the kind of cultural mainstream and why do they
stay there? I think there's something very exciting about cocktails
and in along with other industries where people are very
intrigued by things that are created and created for them.
They're like this customization of it, and it's you know,
Barber's and uh, you know, Butcher's, bartenders, all these all
(20:58):
these people that make things are d been trend Right now,
the mixology or the bartending explosion has really kind of
like gone up, uh tenfold, and the last you know,
ten years, it's exploding all over the all over the
US and in the world. I mean there's great cocktail
bars in in Athens, Greece, and in Indonesia as opposed
to Esthens, Georgia. You've turned me into a drink, Jeff,
(21:19):
but only this drinking. My work here is done. It's
not done. It's not exactly Jeff. Thank you, Thank you, guys,
Thank you, Jeff. U. We love that we can fully
in the clapping. Right. So here's the thing. I got
very confused. I moved to the U. S. And a
day we called Boxing Day in England? Were you in
(21:44):
two thousand and four? And I was unfamiliar with the
ways of Americans. Yeah, very curious we were. I'm sure
we were unfamiliar with your ways. Off a Churchill famously said,
separated by a common language, and it remains true. I
was here, like, I mean, maybe six seven weeks, and
there was this thing which I was on an ardent
(22:04):
bird watcher, which not everybody knows about me, and I
saw this whole thing, Lady, the whole country was getting
excited about this thing called the superb Owl. And then
it turned out that I had misread it slightly, and
it was the Super Bowl. And it turned out that
this was two things. It was the thing that the
locals called a football game, which was all implausible because
(22:26):
of the a spherical shape of the ball, but it
also turned out to be like the Olympics for advertised.
Everyone got excited and people were thinking about who was booking,
and some people talked about how many dollars per second
the ads were costing. And it struck me that for
brand owners and for people in the creative community, the
(22:48):
combination of opportunity, fear and anticipation reached a place that
was unimaginable. Tell me about making a Super Bowl lad
rob godfear bird watching to that and you did not
know it? Well, I didn't. I've made a few um
it ruins your holiday. I will tell you that. Christmas. Christmas, Yeah, uh,
(23:14):
it's definitely the the and it's still it's probably similar
to you know, Christmas adverts in in in London and Britain,
you know, in England, So I think it's a similar
sort of now certainly now where the the anticipation for
these ads are are high, but making one, for sure,
I think a lot of a lot of the times
the rules are thrown out, you know, and I think,
(23:35):
you know, there's some tried and true sort of techniques
as to what might score high on the USA ad meters.
So I mean watching these things and and Wendy has
probably approved many you know new in her job. But
on the client side, Coca Colas was a huge part
of the Super Bowl at the time. Uh, still to
me made the greatest super Bowl out of all time.
And mean Joe Green, you know, back in the seventies,
(23:57):
but it still has the cachet to it. It's still
has some weight because it is the moment where if
you do it right. Uh. And I think one of
my favorite one when White and Kennedy did the Important
from Detroit ad for for Chrysler. It was it was
really this moment where you felt proud and I didn't care.
That wasn't my agency did and I wasn't jealous. I
(24:18):
definitely felt proud of like, Okay, this is proud to
be an advertising because it was like, okay, this is
like and it wasn't because it wasn't funny. I'm proud
to be an advertising when someone does something funny. This
is like the moment when we all can actually band
together and say, you know what, let's have a good
show collectively, because this is when we all because like,
no one cares about what we do for the both
part consumer wise. You know, they may be like the ads,
(24:41):
but they're not knowing the people who made it are
actually part of this. This is the one moment where
this is our Academy Awards. This is our moment in
time where people are saying that was good, that was funny,
that was made me think or made me laugh or
made me cry. So feel me doing my joke, cause
I just yeah, I just buy the space. Right, You
make the ads and that's great, um, but we just
(25:02):
buy the space. And like this, it's a very uncomplicated business.
You need four people to make the multimillion dollar transaction
for a Super Bowl act. You need to buyer, the seller,
and the two caddies, and then you have a super
Bowl and the mixologist and we now carry one in
our back, Jeff Mixologist week was taken with us. Right.
So when we think about it, we think about the
(25:24):
economics of it. We think about the three to five
million dollars or whatever it will be. We think about
the return on investment, and we think about effectively sort
of going through a pleasant managed evening in a casino
thinking about, well, we'll do some red, will do some
black and then all of a sudden said someone says,
shoot the Potter number twenty eight, And that's the Super
Bowl spot. If you're a creative person, does that economic
(25:48):
aspect in the sense of kind of risk and opportunity
sort of drive the way you think or how you
feel about it. Money as always a leverage point for
a client to say this better be good, you know,
so I think I look at the other way, like
this is the one moment you can really tell a
client like this better be good. But they don't pay
(26:08):
twice as much power for twice as much But like
I think the stakes are the highest they will ever be.
Is still on the Super Bowl? You know, it's not
the necessarily the Academy words. People aren't watching the Academy
Words for the ads. You happen to be a great
place to capture people's attention. But it's still a thing.
The ads are still a thing to the earlier uh
(26:29):
construct that we're talking about. Perhaps the Super Bowl is
the one day that advertising is an invited guest off
the bat. People know that they're going to see ads,
they sit still for them. To some degree, they want
to watch, and they knew it's gonna be part of
the cultural conversation the next day around the water cooler.
So gosh, with that head start as an industry, shame
(26:51):
on us if we fumble at the CEO for me connection.
When when do you just tell us what your clothes
is going to be? So if a client says to you, wehn,
do I want to get as much model a j
(27:11):
out this is possible. I'd like to trail my Super
Bowl ad on YouTube or something else, do you say,
are you mad? Before? You know? That's funny because we
were so predictable as an industry, and I love us.
I love us with all my heart. I don't want
to be in any other industry. But I think because
I love us, I feel like I have great permission
to make fun of us. And you know, you watch us.
(27:34):
We're so predictable. Someone does a thing, We're like, oh,
everyone wants to do that thing, and then like the
entire bloody industry like leans toward that thing. So everyone
a while ago went to pre launching, pre announcing their
stud All of a sudden, everyone random like every Super
Bowl ad was announced and run in some form of
fashion two weeks before the Super Bowl, and then the
next years like, oh no'm and now I wan't done this.
(27:55):
Now what are we gonna do? Now we're gonna tease.
So then we did like little fifteen second or ten
seconds snippets just kind of tease it, and then everyone
does all the snippets. So it's sort of like we
rushed to we flucked towards. Hopefully we're back to just
make it good. You know, I'm really bad, like you know,
just like watching six year olds playing soccer. Right, do
(28:16):
you think that's the difference of where the Super Bowl
has evolved because it used to be it ran on
the Super Bowl, but now because obviously the Internet, it
can run before or run in a longer form. I
think the longer form. And the perfect example of this
is Volkswagen and the Star Wars kid ad that ran
as a sixty for two weeks before the Super Bowl
and it ended up being one of the most famous
(28:38):
coup but the thirty ran on TV and it didn't
matter because you kind of knew that everybody knew the story.
So like the question is like they probably didn't even
have to run it on the super Bowl because they
said it was Super Bowl. And this is like their
pre thing. So in some ways, you know, they saved
five million dollars not doing a sixty and doing a thirty,
but they gained so much by the quality of the content,
(28:59):
and it was the conting sucked. It wouldn't have mattered
if they let it out. So we know a building
materials company had just made allegedly an ad for Super
Bowl got rejected by Fox, who was a building in
tourist company and something script and it was about wall
building and there was a political reference to that. Do
you think that there's a game in gaming the broadcast order?
(29:20):
Of course, you know Droga did it with Newcastle. I
mean there's lots of ways, and everybody's thinking of all
these things, Like they probably didn't even want to be
on the thing. They're like, we're gonna make an ad
so controversial it's gonna be you know. I always say,
like when the idea lands and culture was the story,
you want the press the right right. I don't know
if that's a smart one that just says they were
trying to be selation. It would have all gone horribly
wrong if they'd actually had to write the check for
(29:40):
the five million dollars to maybe yeah, Rob your you
limited your role in the in the in product, saying
that you're immurely transaction. But I do think that communications
planning and media planning plays a key role now and
I think increasingly we're talking we don't see the super
Bowl as a single point in time. Are we looking
at the narrative arc of a brand on a continuum
(30:04):
and the super Bowl may or may not be in
that narrative. If it's in that narrative, interesting, we got
the super Bowl to play with, but we've got an
entire ongoing narrative of a brand. So what does that
point in time play in the ongoing narrative. You don't
look at it as a singular, standalone isolated so you're
looking at, you know, the highs and lows of a
narrative over time and how that plays in. So I
think in a different way, I see this world of
(30:26):
incredibly atomized rather than fragmented audiences. I think the most
atomized I think it was an individual's and I feel
like that we're almost snowed in by the rush of
data and the pieces. Did you say snowed in and
then Russian? I mean, honest to god, you just said
snow and Russian? Did you like can possibly comment? Was
(30:49):
meant to have been a coach and it was meant
to have been encrypted before he said it was hilarious.
Thank you? Are we going to do tagline? I need
both of you to think about taglines? I have many?
Can you go? Do you ready? Yeah? I'm ready. So
my tagline is creativity is the only way to survive.
(31:09):
He's the only way to survive. And I used the example.
And it's not just brands. I think people are using
creativity all the time. I think the best example is
the Pope. He used social media to really save the
Catholic Church. I think before he came in, it was
really going the wrong way when it came to perception
and being seen as a very dusty brand and never
(31:32):
and I call it a brand who there and found
a CEO? I look at like, look what the Pope
did and really changed perception of the church by what
he talked about and then how he talked about it
and how we shared it and was always photographed and
sharing in the social media. So you follow both at
pont effects and at Potus. I'll not the new at Potus. Okay,
(31:52):
you have a tagline? Well, I think it is don't
fumble on the goal line that I heard it. That
would make me like ripping off your tagline like here
on the sunt No, no no, no. You know it's funny
because we have much like Rob you you do get
I think after twenty blah blah years working you have
a whole bunch of islms people talking about Wendy is
(32:13):
ms and so that I have is ms. Um, I'm
trying to think which I would make into a tagline.
But um, for D D B. If I'm borrowing from
Bill burn Back, we believe that creativity is the most
powerful force in business. Um. That's very similar to what
Rob just said. Um. Bill barn Back also dreamed of
an agency that would be filled with talented and nice people. Uh.
(32:36):
And I think that we too often in the industry
forget about the latter part of that. Now, we get
so obsessed with talent that we forget to be nice. Yeah.
I agree, that's that's super key, you know, I mean,
that's the that's been a bit of the secret I
think for McCann is that you want nice people. It's
by the time you're forty years old, I tell people
come an interview like, you have one job. That job
is to take care of your family. You might as
(32:57):
well do what people like like because it's hard. So
i'd always be like, what's your tagline? Well, to my surprise, UM,
I've actually found that I've been working in the business
even longer than either. Really No, I'm well, yes, I'm
you know, on my bad days, on im I'm I'm old.
On mine good days, I'm venerable. Um, and I have
(33:20):
been shocked and amazed by the number of people I've
worked with I've liked, and it's been an extraordinarily great
privilege to do that. And here I am what's the tagline?
Though I don't have a tagline. I'm I'm immediate man's
tagline create funny. You've been doing a lot of good bits,
(33:40):
so I need a tagline. My tagline is what's the CPM?
I mean, that's kind of how we are in our world,
is you know, never mind never mind the quality, fail
the width, That's how we work. I want to say,
we're gonna We're gonna make a phone call. So in
the spirit of tagline, we're going to tag in new
guests for our next episode. We're excited to have him UM,
we're going to try that thing of dialing phone numbers
(34:02):
and see who answers. We're digging in t TTV. Of course, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt,
Matt is that Matt Britton. Matt, that's extreme? God? Can
you I didn't think we reached him. We got him.
I mean it was more hope than a canctuation. So
(34:23):
that now we're calling. So do you know we're calling that?
Do you know who this is? Are you glad we call?
This is a podcast? You're on the podcast. We're done? Okay,
So are you alone with do you have friends? I
am alone right now. I think we should tell Matt
what this is before he hangs out. Yeah, okay, he
(34:43):
surely recognizes your business. Matt. We're calling. I'm Rob Norman.
This is a Tagline podcast, actually the premiere of the
Tagline Podcast live from the studios that our heart and
I have with me. Rob Riley, the creative chairman, however
(35:04):
strange that sounds as we can, and Wendy Clark, the
CEO of a DDB from you, it's really nice to
hear from and we're doing this podcast and this as
far as the crank call of the podcast, this is
the crank call, right, but it's the crank call, and
it's so cranky that we're going to ask you, Matt Britton.
(35:27):
We've got the right guy, Matt Briton, would you would
you be okay with coming on the next episode of
our podcast to talk about advertising, creativity and culture and
all those kind of would you do that? Ute fan
of all of you guys, have you ever been tagged
in before? I have on Facebook? I bet you are
(35:47):
a pope too. Who knew? It's been a while, right
since I was on Facebook? Yeah, I know you and
the rest of my life has been nanti climax. I
can tell you you were coming on and you like
have fifteen seconds say I remember Britain. This is my tagline.
This is what tomorrow and culture and creativity means to me.
(36:08):
What would you say? Like, maybe off the cuff? Possibly? Um,
I would say the number one challenge for brand today
it's the future proof themselves about the changes being brought
about by the millennial generation. Wow, this guy, how the
hell did you an island somebody on one? Mr? Yet
this is a were we were just actually it's actually
(36:33):
on my really okay, now this is a little this
could be the pilot that never kept sharing. He probably is.
It was your warm up call, Mr Public Matt Britain.
We're going to be on the phone with you soon.
Thank you for being looking forward to Thanks. You have
a one but a cool guy. So that podcast is
(36:55):
gonna I mean, you know he's gonna be like his
company and I've never made Norman does. That's going to
be such an intellectual conversation. Folks, our listener, bless you
for staying with us. Rob Riley, Wendy Clark, our friends
at Heart, our friends at age. We love you, big
cattle out that good night. You've been listening to the
(37:17):
debut episode of Tagline, presented by our friends at Bullet
Frontier Whiskey at the Bullet Distilling Company, Louisville, Kentucky. Please
drink responsibly. We want to hear what you thought. Join
the discussion on Twitter now by using the hashtag tagline.
Check out our next episode as Rob Norman returns to
host and welcomes tagged in guests and Mr Youth founder
(37:39):
Matt Britton, along with Joanna Coles from Hurst. They'll be
discussing the topic do what Brand's friends define them? Catch
all our episodes at I heart Radio slash tagline in
the I heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
(37:59):
Audiation m
My tagline is Creativity is the only way to survive.
Creativity is the only way to survive. Okay, you can't
even get to culture if you don't have a good
answer on So what have you ever been tagged in before?
This could be the pilot that never kept shown. Welcome
to Tagline. Pour a cocktail and join us for inspired
conversations with the best storytellers, culture makers, and creators, presented
(00:31):
by our friends at Bullet Frontier Whiskey. Please drink responsibly
if you give them an intention. No, no, no, they already.
It's just because whenever we have a friend of a
plan of ours, we always give them an intention. Tagline
is produced by I Heart Radio and partnership with Advertising Age. Hi.
I'm Rob Norman. I'm the chairman of Group HIM in
(00:52):
North American. Welcome to Tagline, the premiere episode and today
I'm thrilled to be both starstruck and all strut. Starstruck
by the marveless The Clark, the President and CEO of
DDB and awe struck by Rob Riley, the credive Chairman
of MCCAM and we're all thrilled to be here today. Yeah, Hey, Wendy, Hello, Hello, everybody,
(01:13):
it's good to see you. Thank you. We're going to
talk about breativity and culture, and we're going to talk
about whether creativity and advertising drives culture or whether creativity
and advertising follows culture when they talk to us about culture.
Oh well, I don't think there's any podcast that could
cover everything that we should probably say about culture. There's
nothing that perhaps shapes advertising and has done so for
(01:36):
forever as much as cultured does. So I love your
the provocation of your question, do we shape it or
does it shape us? And the answers yes, So it
is both. I think when we're at our best, of course,
we love to say that we shape culture, and I
think you can quickly point to brands that have done it,
do do it, um and seek to do it. And
(01:58):
then when we're not perhaps our best, we're either irrelevant
culture it doesn't ladder up to what we're doing or
or become material for the brands that we're working on
um and uh. And I think that's an incredible loss
when we don't do that, because culture can work hard
for us and hard for our work. So YouTube almost
above anyone in the business, stand in the the footholes
(02:21):
of the footmarks or even on the shoulders with great
giants of our business of Doll Dame Bernbach and McCann.
And you think back robed to the notion of truth
well lit and the history of McCann, do you think
that our truth now is as well as it has
been in our history? I've ever heard described as truth
well lit. I kind of like truth well lit. It's
probably good. There's your tagline we just jumped to the
(02:41):
end of the podcast from yeah, you know and we're
out of here. No, I haven't been at McCann for
three years. And that phrase that is, you know, over
a hundred years old, that tagline of the McCann truth
well told. It's more relevant today than it probably was
a hundred years ago. What I think is important and
it's interesting. It's like creating to verse of chasing culture
in those words like culture, it's kind of like content
(03:03):
some of these words. That's all we hear. So it's
a little hard to give it, like, you know, the
perspective that that is accurate for me. But I think
we're at a time where people accept brands in their
lives more and more more than ever before. And that's
that's a good thing. The challenge for brands and the
challenge for us as the you know, the people who
(03:23):
work with brands is um that people expect more from
brands too, so they'll accept you in your life. But
you better bring a lot of things. You better be transparent,
you better be in a way, be better be fun
and interesting because you know, if you're you're allowed in
the lives of people, they want more. So it's a
really uh important time for us to get it right.
I'm talking a little bit more. What does it people
(03:44):
being prepared to accept brand in their lives mean to you? Well,
I have a whole theory on this. I don't know
how long our show is, but it's to me, I
think it's started. It started. It started, you know, uh
for me at a very uh certain time when Naster
came on board, because before Napster music, uh and bands
(04:07):
were sort of the sacred thing that young people didn't
want brands to mess with, you know, and young people
to keep everything. You know, it starts with young people.
There was a time when, you know, when a band
was in a commercial. I remember when the Beatles went
on the Nike commercial for Revolution. I think people were like, Wow,
that's the Beatles have sold out, and I think young
people are always protective of music and brands and bands
(04:27):
and brands, But when NASTERA came along and we're all
getting music for free, that's what young people realize. Okay,
we're screwing these bands over. It's okay, okay if Pepsi
is sponsoring uh an artist, It's okay if the band
wants to be on a commercial because we know this
is the only way they can make money, because we're
screwing them over. So I think that's when it really started,
(04:49):
whereas like brands really started to seep into culture through music,
and now we're at a point now it's like you
can't imagine a tour without being sponsored by a brand,
or you can't imagine a band being ridiculed for being
on commercial. They're almost celebrated. So I think that it's
really changed. You know. I just think we have to
remember that our principal product, what we do for a living,
is an uninvited guest in people's lives, and there's nobody
(05:12):
who wakes up every morning goes, oh, I'm looking forward
to seeing some advertising today. Advertising not brands I do,
I mean principally what we do for a living, all right, Um,
advertising and so advertising is an uninvited guest and our
job is to give it the credibility, the invitation that
people bring it into their lives. And uh, you know
(05:32):
the answer everyone has to work toward is so what right?
So what so many of our clients come to us
I want to do this with this is this? You
have to sit there defiantly for the consumer on behalf
of that consumer and say, so what the average consumers
see six thousand brand impressions a day in the US
six thousand A right, So everyone's clamoring for the attention,
(05:56):
everyone's trying to get their message across. So what about
what you're trying to say? Should that consumer invite you
into their lives even for thirty seconds or fifteen seconds
or whatever length of time? And I think that that
transcends everything that we're trying to do. So you can't
even get to culture if you don't have a good
answer on so what right? You're not even gonna if
you don't invite it in, there's no way you're shaping culture.
(06:18):
You when you say that, you imply quite a high
order activity. And because you're trying to get in the
permission to get into people's lives. Yet, when we hear
now so much about everything from ad blocking and in
particular the idea of kind of influence the marketing, and
the idea that people from the street and relatable voices
(06:41):
to people in audiences are the ones that they seek out.
Do you think that the kind of curatorial quality of
advertising is diminished by that or do you think there's
a legitimate place for those people and those voices in
support of brands, given the responsibility brands have. That's a
big question. Thank god he said right to know, that's
a big question. I mean, I don't know me yet.
(07:02):
We'll talk to us. It's almost like that question is
too smart for a person like me. I'm trying to
really decipher it. Rob Norman, Torman, can you give us
your take on your own question. It's a great question.
I think, Well, let me let me reframe it. Thank
you podcast media people level. Um, So what do you
(07:30):
think of the notion of influencer market I think it's
super important. I think everything is smart. That's why it's
like I think the ad agencies. If you're good, you're smart,
you're doing everything you know. You are helping to curate
this influence marketing. You're cultivating those relationships with these people.
I think it's all marketing, and sometimes we get paid
for it, sometimes we don't. If you're smart, you're continue
to bring these ideas. I met with this young person
(07:52):
who is a friend of a client of ours and
they're doing a u GC sort of company where they
start to give them an internship. No, no, no, they already.
It was just because whenever we have a friend of
a client of ours, we always give them an interest.
Of course, that's the best thing to do. And all
the people who aren't your friends or interns of my company,
and there's a lot of that, but you know, it
was a u g C company and they sort of
(08:13):
aggregate all the photos of some brands they use and
they sell it to brands and they help and it's
really not something that we would do. But I was like,
we should be introducing these people to our clients, you know,
for their benefit, because you never there may be influenced
out there that are using you know, Snapchat, using Instagram
to promote a brand or talk about a brand, even
on purpose or not on purpose. So I think all
(08:34):
that matters, Like we're in a war all the time
with our brands, Like all this stuff matters finding a
way to get those influencers, you know, caring about well.
And I'm going to put influencer in the same bucket
as raw established earlier with content and culture, because of
course everything we do is about influence, right. We're trying
to influence an outcome and trying to influence a sale,
We're trying to influence behavior. So it's a It is
(08:57):
a very vacuous word these days because we're all rushed
to words it and we all use it. And by
the way, the influencers of my fourteen year old look
a whole lot different than the influencers of my mother.
And so you know, I think knowing your target, knowing
what you're trying to do again asking that question, so
what um it starts to shape how you think about influencers.
We we had an interesting situation with a client recently
(09:20):
where we were negotiating with a celebrity for some work
and in the very final hour that celebrity pulled out,
and I mean final hour, and you find yourself, as
we've all done at some point in our career, kind
of oh, what are we gonna gona do. We ended
up is carrot top available and carrot Top wasn't available,
which made it even worse. Um and uh so then
(09:42):
we went to this set of you know, YouTube influencers
quote unquote, and um, you know, found this influencer. Fast
forward to the work is done, and we all to
a person. Everyone on the client side and on an
agency side, we look at the word and we go,
thank god that celebrity said, no, this work is unbelievably good.
It's much better we thought it would be a celebrity
by the way the volume of content we got. I mean,
(10:04):
you know, these young quote unquote influencers will shoot for
hours and hours in every kind of format, way, combination
you can think of, which is obviously what we want.
And you kind of reflect on, you know, gosh, the
models that we have used previously now are coming into
question more and more. You know, I first started McCann
the I walked into the summercam World Group and there's
(10:27):
a big sign on the wall and said McCann World
Group Transforming brands and building businesses. And I remember saying
that Harris, this was done way before Harris timond I said,
this is sucks. The life out of people, like you know,
our job is to get young people to be excited
to work here. And I said, we've got to change this.
And we went back and said, what's McCann been good
(10:48):
at for so many years? And we sort of owned
it on the fact that they've helped brands be meaningful
in people's lives. So we start there and say, okay,
what's the role of this ran for Chevy is to
help people to find new roads, is for Microsoft to
empower people achieve more. You start there and then you
have a platform and all the work comes out of it.
So the relevance of some of these things, for me,
(11:11):
I don't think about it that way, whether it's here
or not, I don't think about it that way. I
think about, like, do we have a platform by which
this brand can live on for a hundred years versus changing, changing, changing,
But I do think you have to change. But all
been in those meetings where like, I need that campaign.
I came out for ten years, and I always say, like,
you need a platform, then you could run for the
next hundred years the camp and it has to be
(11:31):
able to accommodate the ephemeral and the jury more of course.
I think you need only look at the most recent
election to understand the changing dynamic of celebrity. What making
America great again? No, I mean the celebrities came out
in force and had very limited impact on the outcome.
(11:53):
I begged the different I think cho killed it. Okay,
one celebrity. I think I had an overweighted influence. Um,
it was interesting whereby to end up in the administration.
Welcome to the first episode of Don't Go There. Where
We're going there. Any of us in this industry who
are not studying closely the outcomes of this election are
(12:15):
not current with culture because this changed everything about the
way that we think about marketing brands and people and
participating in in culture today. I mean that celebrities just
one aspect of that, you know, you know that biggest
the biggest worry I think when you're at an ad
agency or a marketing agency on each coast is that
(12:36):
you're not connected to, you know, the rest of the country.
Talk about let's talk about that a bit more. Almost
all of the people that work in advertising are members
of coastal elites in one description or another. I mean,
you have many people in Chicago Wendy that I have
even more lately. I know you do. SPEP in Chicago
at some point has now become a as cosmopolitan as
(12:58):
as New York. And well, that's right, and it's coastal
to late Michigan. Um, so it's a coastally all of
its own ruin your metaphor, No, we can torture it,
but let's not ruin it, okay. So it's interesting that
we have people that work with us and for us
and in partnership with our clients who are kind of
(13:20):
preconditioned and predisposed to a broadly liberal, broadly cultural set
of influences. Yet we know for sure, for sure, for
sure that there are many, many people in this country,
and you just look at savings rates and all of
the other average income stats that we're very detached as
a group of people from many of the people that
(13:42):
buy our clients products. I'm kind of curious how you
think about your interaction with your teams and your clients
to keep that connection going. You know, Sam Walton had
a quote that hangs on the walls at GSC and
M I work there fifteen years ago, and it says,
whenever you get lost, go to the store, the customer
has all the answers. Uh. And I think that's pretty profound.
(14:05):
And I think if we are not dwelling in our
client's business, um, then then we you're absolutely correct, will
take a very elitist view, a very um narrow view
to what that can be. One of the questions I
get the most post star McDonald's win is well, you
don't eat McDonald's, do you? And I said, I absolutely
(14:26):
eat McDonald's. My children eat McDonald's. I got, I mean
and literally it was actually pointed my friends from at
aig UM during one of the interviews, Um was and
I said that, and it was Ken, God rest his soul.
Let's just have a little little hand over heart for Ken. Uh.
He said, well, what do your kids eat? Like, you know,
like really testing me? And I said, I can tell
(14:48):
you exactly whatly and I rattled off the order of
my little boy likes hot cakes, my middle daughter likes
a bacon, egg and cheese mcgriddele, and my oldest story
likes a Slausa jackman muffin. I can tell you exactly
what my kids eat a McDonald's because I go to
McDonald Uh. You still have custody it's not about um.
So my point in telling this tortured story now, thank
(15:11):
you Rob Norman, uh, is that we have to dwell
on our client's business. And if we somehow believe it's
for other people that we are thankfully here to help
translate them, we're sorely mistaken. And I think Sam Walton
had it right. Um. And you know interesting if you
if you stay on the Walmart construct for a while.
Obviously we don't work on Walmart anymore, but um, you
(15:31):
know the Walmart corporate employees work on Saturdays, right. I
don't know if you know that, um, because the stores
are open, you know. And to to make sure that,
even in their own structure, that the corporate employees were
never too removed from the experience of what the store
employees were experiencing, because the store employees are the ones
driving the revenue, making it happen, serving the customer. And
so I think it all facets of our business, be
(15:54):
they on the client side or the agency side, if
we get too far removed from those whom we are
trying to influence, then we will not be successful. Do
you have a grounding client. A grounding client the one
that keeps you real and connected with the social and
cultural laws that of the population. For me, like my
whole background is mostly retail. I mean Crispin where I
(16:16):
spent pretty much my most important years as a creative
person mostly retail accounts, and retail keeps you grounded, Like
I think that's the important thing. Whether it's McDonald's or
whether it's the best Buy, or whether it's you know, Verizon,
those things keep you grounded because you're looking at sales
every day, You're looking at trends every day, looking at
(16:37):
what people like, what they don't like. So those are
the things that keep you grounded. I think Microsoft for
for me for a long time, Crispin and now at
McCann because it wasn't necessarily the cool brand. It was
more of like, hey, if you make the right products,
people will come, you know. And they ended up making
the right products and people now certainly coming. So that's
probably the closest to it to grounded, to trying to
(16:58):
do the right thing for people, which is empowering people
of all types to do great things. It's funny, isn't it.
When you talk to people in our business, and especially
those have been this for a long time. A lot
of our kind of war stories and the ones we
love most even though we may not love them most
of the time involve retailers and it I always kind
of figured that the reason why it was was the
(17:18):
idea there's a bunch of guys from security that unlocked
the door at nine o'clock in the morning. On ten
o'clock in the the morning, and no one knows whether anyone's
going to walk through the door or not, and there
is this perfect sort of moment of truth which could
be triumph for or disaster for those people. For sure.
That's why the Walmart's a great example of like and
I didn't know that corporate worked on Saturday. It's kind
(17:39):
of kind of genius. I'm sure a lot of people
don't want to work there because of it, you know,
but it's kind of genius in a way because you
feel then it's like it is connected to people, Like
just because you work in the store doesn't mean you're
not a consumer. That's where you go on ROB, I
would like to point out that I have finished my drink. Yeah,
where is the delicious bullet drink DJ? Time to take
(18:01):
a break with our friends from Bullet Frontier Whiskey, Please
drink responsibly. Okay, we have Jeff, and Jeff is the
thing called a mixologist, which I'm not a young person,
so I don't know exactly what a mixologist is. Um.
Jeff actually was the world class US bartender of the year.
Is that Cratoff was great? He's kind of he's an influencer.
(18:25):
You've transformed bullet bourbon. There's something even more delicious, Jeff.
You're gonna tell us about it. Yes, this drink is
the Red Velvet. It's inspired by the classic formula of
a Manhattan So the base is coconut water and we
do a modifier of bullet bourbon. The reason the basis
coconut waters such a mild flavor. You have to have
more of that than the whiskey so you can actually
(18:46):
taste it. If you did two to one of whiskey
to coconut water, you wouldn't taste the coconut water, so
you have to do it backwards. I never drink bourbon.
This is the first bourbon drink I've enjoyed. Thank you did,
really welcome It's it's a fun combination because coconut water
is something you would associate with the Caribbean, with with
rum something on a beach. But bullet bourbon is aged
(19:08):
in American oak and American oak and parts a coconutty
flavor to it. Where Kentucky, Kentucky. So you're wearing an
incredible leather out for the ladies pleasure listening the leather
outfit is it's like we're thinking Gangs of New York.
It's that sort of but check on a thing. It's
(19:28):
it's a it's a leather workman's apron that's provided about
more and Giles out of Virginia. I've been using it
behind the bar for six years and uh, it keeps
me dry and people take it is the dress of
a winner. Have you ever gone shirtless? Because I think
that would. It's a little toots. You know it's hot.
I'll leave it to your imagination. How do you come?
(19:51):
I mean to be the winner? Like what what levels
of competition? What did you have to go straight to
get to that? Because I'm fascinated, but I went through
the ringer. It's an annual bartending competition. There's a there's
a there's regional rounds, regional heats, there's national heats as
a global final. Bartending is such a multifasted occupation that
they tried to come up with competitions to judge all
(20:12):
of that. So if you're just fast, or if you
just make great drinks, you're not gonna win. You kind
of have to do everything. It sounds like a pitch.
Are you considered an influencer them for Bullet Yes, I
think I know you're You're a big fan, So I'm
a fan. I love Bullet whiskey. It's also the thirtieth anniversary.
I was right there thinking right what it was like? Then?
(20:35):
How do you think that culcktails found their way back
into the kind of cultural mainstream and why do they
stay there? I think there's something very exciting about cocktails
and in along with other industries where people are very
intrigued by things that are created and created for them.
They're like this customization of it, and it's you know,
Barber's and uh, you know, Butcher's, bartenders, all these all
(20:58):
these people that make things are d been trend Right now,
the mixology or the bartending explosion has really kind of
like gone up, uh tenfold, and the last you know,
ten years, it's exploding all over the all over the
US and in the world. I mean there's great cocktail
bars in in Athens, Greece, and in Indonesia as opposed
to Esthens, Georgia. You've turned me into a drink, Jeff,
(21:19):
but only this drinking. My work here is done. It's
not done. It's not exactly Jeff. Thank you, Thank you, guys,
Thank you, Jeff. U. We love that we can fully
in the clapping. Right. So here's the thing. I got
very confused. I moved to the U. S. And a
day we called Boxing Day in England? Were you in
(21:44):
two thousand and four? And I was unfamiliar with the
ways of Americans. Yeah, very curious we were. I'm sure
we were unfamiliar with your ways. Off a Churchill famously said,
separated by a common language, and it remains true. I
was here, like, I mean, maybe six seven weeks, and
there was this thing which I was on an ardent
(22:04):
bird watcher, which not everybody knows about me, and I
saw this whole thing, Lady, the whole country was getting
excited about this thing called the superb Owl. And then
it turned out that I had misread it slightly, and
it was the Super Bowl. And it turned out that
this was two things. It was the thing that the
locals called a football game, which was all implausible because
(22:26):
of the a spherical shape of the ball, but it
also turned out to be like the Olympics for advertised.
Everyone got excited and people were thinking about who was booking,
and some people talked about how many dollars per second
the ads were costing. And it struck me that for
brand owners and for people in the creative community, the
(22:48):
combination of opportunity, fear and anticipation reached a place that
was unimaginable. Tell me about making a Super Bowl lad
rob godfear bird watching to that and you did not
know it? Well, I didn't. I've made a few um
it ruins your holiday. I will tell you that. Christmas. Christmas, Yeah, uh,
(23:14):
it's definitely the the and it's still it's probably similar
to you know, Christmas adverts in in in London and Britain,
you know, in England, So I think it's a similar
sort of now certainly now where the the anticipation for
these ads are are high, but making one, for sure,
I think a lot of a lot of the times
the rules are thrown out, you know, and I think,
(23:35):
you know, there's some tried and true sort of techniques
as to what might score high on the USA ad meters.
So I mean watching these things and and Wendy has
probably approved many you know new in her job. But
on the client side, Coca Colas was a huge part
of the Super Bowl at the time. Uh, still to
me made the greatest super Bowl out of all time.
And mean Joe Green, you know, back in the seventies,
(23:57):
but it still has the cachet to it. It's still
has some weight because it is the moment where if
you do it right. Uh. And I think one of
my favorite one when White and Kennedy did the Important
from Detroit ad for for Chrysler. It was it was
really this moment where you felt proud and I didn't care.
That wasn't my agency did and I wasn't jealous. I
(24:18):
definitely felt proud of like, Okay, this is proud to
be an advertising because it was like, okay, this is
like and it wasn't because it wasn't funny. I'm proud
to be an advertising when someone does something funny. This
is like the moment when we all can actually band
together and say, you know what, let's have a good
show collectively, because this is when we all because like,
no one cares about what we do for the both
part consumer wise. You know, they may be like the ads,
(24:41):
but they're not knowing the people who made it are
actually part of this. This is the one moment where
this is our Academy Awards. This is our moment in
time where people are saying that was good, that was funny,
that was made me think or made me laugh or
made me cry. So feel me doing my joke, cause
I just yeah, I just buy the space. Right, You
make the ads and that's great, um, but we just
(25:02):
buy the space. And like this, it's a very uncomplicated business.
You need four people to make the multimillion dollar transaction
for a Super Bowl act. You need to buyer, the seller,
and the two caddies, and then you have a super
Bowl and the mixologist and we now carry one in
our back, Jeff Mixologist week was taken with us. Right.
So when we think about it, we think about the
(25:24):
economics of it. We think about the three to five
million dollars or whatever it will be. We think about
the return on investment, and we think about effectively sort
of going through a pleasant managed evening in a casino
thinking about, well, we'll do some red, will do some
black and then all of a sudden said someone says,
shoot the Potter number twenty eight, And that's the Super
Bowl spot. If you're a creative person, does that economic
(25:48):
aspect in the sense of kind of risk and opportunity
sort of drive the way you think or how you
feel about it. Money as always a leverage point for
a client to say this better be good, you know,
so I think I look at the other way, like
this is the one moment you can really tell a
client like this better be good. But they don't pay
(26:08):
twice as much power for twice as much But like
I think the stakes are the highest they will ever be.
Is still on the Super Bowl? You know, it's not
the necessarily the Academy words. People aren't watching the Academy
Words for the ads. You happen to be a great
place to capture people's attention. But it's still a thing.
The ads are still a thing to the earlier uh
(26:29):
construct that we're talking about. Perhaps the Super Bowl is
the one day that advertising is an invited guest off
the bat. People know that they're going to see ads,
they sit still for them. To some degree, they want
to watch, and they knew it's gonna be part of
the cultural conversation the next day around the water cooler.
So gosh, with that head start as an industry, shame
(26:51):
on us if we fumble at the CEO for me connection.
When when do you just tell us what your clothes
is going to be? So if a client says to you, wehn,
do I want to get as much model a j
(27:11):
out this is possible. I'd like to trail my Super
Bowl ad on YouTube or something else, do you say,
are you mad? Before? You know? That's funny because we
were so predictable as an industry, and I love us.
I love us with all my heart. I don't want
to be in any other industry. But I think because
I love us, I feel like I have great permission
to make fun of us. And you know, you watch us.
(27:34):
We're so predictable. Someone does a thing, We're like, oh,
everyone wants to do that thing, and then like the
entire bloody industry like leans toward that thing. So everyone
a while ago went to pre launching, pre announcing their
stud All of a sudden, everyone random like every Super
Bowl ad was announced and run in some form of
fashion two weeks before the Super Bowl, and then the
next years like, oh no'm and now I wan't done this.
(27:55):
Now what are we gonna do? Now we're gonna tease.
So then we did like little fifteen second or ten
seconds snippets just kind of tease it, and then everyone
does all the snippets. So it's sort of like we
rushed to we flucked towards. Hopefully we're back to just
make it good. You know, I'm really bad, like you know,
just like watching six year olds playing soccer. Right, do
(28:16):
you think that's the difference of where the Super Bowl
has evolved because it used to be it ran on
the Super Bowl, but now because obviously the Internet, it
can run before or run in a longer form. I
think the longer form. And the perfect example of this
is Volkswagen and the Star Wars kid ad that ran
as a sixty for two weeks before the Super Bowl
and it ended up being one of the most famous
(28:38):
coup but the thirty ran on TV and it didn't
matter because you kind of knew that everybody knew the story.
So like the question is like they probably didn't even
have to run it on the super Bowl because they
said it was Super Bowl. And this is like their
pre thing. So in some ways, you know, they saved
five million dollars not doing a sixty and doing a thirty,
but they gained so much by the quality of the content,
(28:59):
and it was the conting sucked. It wouldn't have mattered
if they let it out. So we know a building
materials company had just made allegedly an ad for Super
Bowl got rejected by Fox, who was a building in
tourist company and something script and it was about wall
building and there was a political reference to that. Do
you think that there's a game in gaming the broadcast order?
(29:20):
Of course, you know Droga did it with Newcastle. I
mean there's lots of ways, and everybody's thinking of all
these things, Like they probably didn't even want to be
on the thing. They're like, we're gonna make an ad
so controversial it's gonna be you know. I always say,
like when the idea lands and culture was the story,
you want the press the right right. I don't know
if that's a smart one that just says they were
trying to be selation. It would have all gone horribly
wrong if they'd actually had to write the check for
(29:40):
the five million dollars to maybe yeah, Rob your you
limited your role in the in the in product, saying
that you're immurely transaction. But I do think that communications
planning and media planning plays a key role now and
I think increasingly we're talking we don't see the super
Bowl as a single point in time. Are we looking
at the narrative arc of a brand on a continuum
(30:04):
and the super Bowl may or may not be in
that narrative. If it's in that narrative, interesting, we got
the super Bowl to play with, but we've got an
entire ongoing narrative of a brand. So what does that
point in time play in the ongoing narrative. You don't
look at it as a singular, standalone isolated so you're
looking at, you know, the highs and lows of a
narrative over time and how that plays in. So I
think in a different way, I see this world of
(30:26):
incredibly atomized rather than fragmented audiences. I think the most
atomized I think it was an individual's and I feel
like that we're almost snowed in by the rush of
data and the pieces. Did you say snowed in and
then Russian? I mean, honest to god, you just said
snow and Russian? Did you like can possibly comment? Was
(30:49):
meant to have been a coach and it was meant
to have been encrypted before he said it was hilarious.
Thank you? Are we going to do tagline? I need
both of you to think about taglines? I have many?
Can you go? Do you ready? Yeah? I'm ready. So
my tagline is creativity is the only way to survive.
(31:09):
He's the only way to survive. And I used the example.
And it's not just brands. I think people are using
creativity all the time. I think the best example is
the Pope. He used social media to really save the
Catholic Church. I think before he came in, it was
really going the wrong way when it came to perception
and being seen as a very dusty brand and never
(31:32):
and I call it a brand who there and found
a CEO? I look at like, look what the Pope
did and really changed perception of the church by what
he talked about and then how he talked about it
and how we shared it and was always photographed and
sharing in the social media. So you follow both at
pont effects and at Potus. I'll not the new at Potus. Okay,
(31:52):
you have a tagline? Well, I think it is don't
fumble on the goal line that I heard it. That
would make me like ripping off your tagline like here
on the sunt No, no no, no. You know it's funny
because we have much like Rob you you do get
I think after twenty blah blah years working you have
a whole bunch of islms people talking about Wendy is
(32:13):
ms and so that I have is ms. Um, I'm
trying to think which I would make into a tagline.
But um, for D D B. If I'm borrowing from
Bill burn Back, we believe that creativity is the most
powerful force in business. Um. That's very similar to what
Rob just said. Um. Bill barn Back also dreamed of
an agency that would be filled with talented and nice people. Uh.
(32:36):
And I think that we too often in the industry
forget about the latter part of that. Now, we get
so obsessed with talent that we forget to be nice. Yeah.
I agree, that's that's super key, you know, I mean,
that's the that's been a bit of the secret I
think for McCann is that you want nice people. It's
by the time you're forty years old, I tell people
come an interview like, you have one job. That job
is to take care of your family. You might as
(32:57):
well do what people like like because it's hard. So
i'd always be like, what's your tagline? Well, to my surprise, UM,
I've actually found that I've been working in the business
even longer than either. Really No, I'm well, yes, I'm
you know, on my bad days, on im I'm I'm old.
On mine good days, I'm venerable. Um, and I have
(33:20):
been shocked and amazed by the number of people I've
worked with I've liked, and it's been an extraordinarily great
privilege to do that. And here I am what's the tagline?
Though I don't have a tagline. I'm I'm immediate man's
tagline create funny. You've been doing a lot of good bits,
(33:40):
so I need a tagline. My tagline is what's the CPM?
I mean, that's kind of how we are in our world,
is you know, never mind never mind the quality, fail
the width, That's how we work. I want to say,
we're gonna We're gonna make a phone call. So in
the spirit of tagline, we're going to tag in new
guests for our next episode. We're excited to have him UM,
we're going to try that thing of dialing phone numbers
(34:02):
and see who answers. We're digging in t TTV. Of course, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt,
Matt is that Matt Britton. Matt, that's extreme? God? Can
you I didn't think we reached him. We got him.
I mean it was more hope than a canctuation. So
(34:23):
that now we're calling. So do you know we're calling that?
Do you know who this is? Are you glad we call?
This is a podcast? You're on the podcast. We're done? Okay,
So are you alone with do you have friends? I
am alone right now. I think we should tell Matt
what this is before he hangs out. Yeah, okay, he
(34:43):
surely recognizes your business. Matt. We're calling. I'm Rob Norman.
This is a Tagline podcast, actually the premiere of the
Tagline Podcast live from the studios that our heart and
I have with me. Rob Riley, the creative chairman, however
(35:04):
strange that sounds as we can, and Wendy Clark, the
CEO of a DDB from you, it's really nice to
hear from and we're doing this podcast and this as
far as the crank call of the podcast, this is
the crank call, right, but it's the crank call, and
it's so cranky that we're going to ask you, Matt Britton.
(35:27):
We've got the right guy, Matt Briton, would you would
you be okay with coming on the next episode of
our podcast to talk about advertising, creativity and culture and
all those kind of would you do that? Ute fan
of all of you guys, have you ever been tagged
in before? I have on Facebook? I bet you are
(35:47):
a pope too. Who knew? It's been a while, right
since I was on Facebook? Yeah, I know you and
the rest of my life has been nanti climax. I
can tell you you were coming on and you like
have fifteen seconds say I remember Britain. This is my tagline.
This is what tomorrow and culture and creativity means to me.
(36:08):
What would you say? Like, maybe off the cuff? Possibly? Um,
I would say the number one challenge for brand today
it's the future proof themselves about the changes being brought
about by the millennial generation. Wow, this guy, how the
hell did you an island somebody on one? Mr? Yet
this is a were we were just actually it's actually
(36:33):
on my really okay, now this is a little this
could be the pilot that never kept sharing. He probably is.
It was your warm up call, Mr Public Matt Britain.
We're going to be on the phone with you soon.
Thank you for being looking forward to Thanks. You have
a one but a cool guy. So that podcast is
(36:55):
gonna I mean, you know he's gonna be like his
company and I've never made Norman does. That's going to
be such an intellectual conversation. Folks, our listener, bless you
for staying with us. Rob Riley, Wendy Clark, our friends
at Heart, our friends at age. We love you, big
cattle out that good night. You've been listening to the
(37:17):
debut episode of Tagline, presented by our friends at Bullet
Frontier Whiskey at the Bullet Distilling Company, Louisville, Kentucky. Please
drink responsibly. We want to hear what you thought. Join
the discussion on Twitter now by using the hashtag tagline.
Check out our next episode as Rob Norman returns to
host and welcomes tagged in guests and Mr Youth founder
(37:39):
Matt Britton, along with Joanna Coles from Hurst. They'll be
discussing the topic do what Brand's friends define them? Catch
all our episodes at I heart Radio slash tagline in
the I heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
(37:59):
Audiation m
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