Creative Inspiration Gold! Tagline hits LA to chat with a group of unique creators. Dan Lin (Founder, Lin Pictures, of Lego Movie fame), Mike Sheldon (Chairman & CEO, Deutsch North America) and Michael Beneville (artist and designer) share with Gayle Troberman (CMO, iHeartMedia) how they create, surprise, sell and change the game. On repeat.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, I think we all need to kind of think
like fifteen year old girls. Ideas are not generated as
a group. Ideas are generated as individuals and made better
as a group. It's a way to be with people
without being with people. Welcome to Tagline. Pour a cocktail
(00:26):
and join us for inspired conversations with the best storytellers,
culture makers, and creators, presented by our friends that bullet
Frontier whiskey. Please drink responsibly. You can never script what
you're gonna get out of real people. Tagline is produced
by I Heart Radio and partnership with Advertising Age. Welcome
(00:46):
to this episode of Tagline. I'm Gail Treberman, CMO of
I Heart Media, and we're coming to you from our
l A Studios today. Or We've gathered some amazing Left
Coast creators to discuss the topic of what actually inspires
create activity along for the ride. Dan Lynn, producer for
Lynn Pictures who brought us the Genius Lego movie series,
(01:06):
among many other film and TV credits. Mike Sheldon, Chairman
and CEO of Deutsch North America. He's our resident ad expert,
probably best known for some of Deutsch's award winning campaigns
for brands like VW, Target, Taco Bell, and Dr Pepper
and Michael Benneville, founder of Benneville Studios, who's an artist,
designer and known for creating everything from objects to office
(01:28):
spaces and burning Man spider houses. A true creator's creative.
I am personally insanely excited to be here today with
you all, So why don't we get started? Most of
you and what you do, you're actually are trying to
create experiences. In my mind, how do you think about that?
How do you think about creativity as an experience? We
always are talking about brand behaviors and platforms and Voltiwagen
(01:50):
and Target, Taco Bell and Dr Pepper, etcetera bigger things
than making ads or banners. It's what is brand want
to standford for the next ten years, And that means
it's an experience. You want to feel it, you want
to live it, you want to interact with it, and
so it's much bigger in terms of thinking of platforms
than ads. For me, it's not only creating a experience
when you're actually watching what we makes when we make
(02:12):
film and TV, but it's it has to last with you,
so I can television if that's such a great experience
watching that you want to stay and watch a week later,
or even with the Lego movies, that you want to
watch the movie and go out and then hopefully with
the right experience and go out and play with your
kids or your friends and actually build. So it's not
just the experience itself, but what happens after that experience,
if the experience is impactful enough. Yeah, actually that you know.
(02:33):
I think the Lego Batman movie is such a great
example of where there actually are physical objects tied to
the idea and the story and that you're creating, right,
And it's interesting movie at the end when all of
a sudden it goes to live action. The message the story,
they're about being a good parent, and they're about being creative,
remarkable way bigger than just hey, that's a funny movie, right,
(02:56):
you know, it's meant to be about creating and then recreating.
Part of Will Farrell's journey is that he has to
learn you can't just create and keep it static and
call it cragg all crazy good. You have to learn
to break it down and do it again. I'm sure
that's part of your guys process too, which is your
constantly redoing things in a different way. And trying to
improve on things and break things down and try it again.
So it's an interesting word breaking, right, we use the
word constraints. We use the word breaking like it's interesting
(03:19):
when you start talking about creativity, how it becomes very
much this construction site metaphor. Creativity takes an extreme amount
of energy. That's why you're hungry after why want with
your cotic But it does. I mean, I think our
capacity to create as creatures, paired with our ability to
(03:39):
find food and to find it better than other creatures.
That's when our brains got the excess capacity to take
on bigger, more intentional projects. When you think about your
job as creators, how much of your time do you
think you actually spend in a creative process or in creativity?
For me, yeah, I don't believe I stopped. I don't
(03:59):
think of the time in my day where I'm not creative.
When I go on a vacation, I'm lying on the
beach and I start thinking about sandcastles and coconuts and
watching the ants and eating the areas. You know, But
that's like, that's vacation. I find it very relaxing to
be creative, and I don't know what it's not to
be creative. I think you're lucky. I mean, for me,
maybe fifty of my day is unco creative. The other
(04:22):
half is managing. You know, we have a hundred people
that in l I work on on the Lego movies.
It's managing, it's hr and then that's the part that
I have that issue. Now, not that many people, but um,
but certainly a lot of the day is in that
for me. I guess creativity is a very wide ranging things.
Somebody asked me the other day, well, how how do
you deal with the clients who just can't accept the
(04:43):
creative process? They are undervaluing it and all that kind
of a thing, you know, and they're coming at it
from their negotiator angle. For me, I look at that
and I realized, well, their master negotiators. That's what they do.
That's how they express their creativity. So what I try
to do is to interface with that aspect of their personality.
Their highest level of creativity is to win the deal.
And the only way to deal with that is a
(05:04):
creative You have to start talking about your master creativity
and say we'll go ahead and do it without us,
you know, fine, like, yeah, well our business, we have
a creative department, which is probably the worst thing you
could have to call it, because that means if you're creative,
you're creative, and if you're not, stay out. And I
think that was built on a very old system, because
(05:28):
today we can't live without everybody being creative. And to
your point, Michael, I'm dealing with HR issues and stuff
with accounting and stuff with finance and our holding company,
and if I'm not creative, I'm dead, you know. In
our business also, we trade employees, so all of our
competitors steal our people and then we steal their people,
(05:48):
and it's all just one big pool. That means we
always need to be changing the game. We always need
to be doing something different, because if we go into
new business and we're pitching some new thing, and our
competitors are gonna do the same thing we did last
time because they got all our old employees. So unless
we're constantly innovating and trying new stuff and being creative
at all aspects, not just in the TV spots or
(06:10):
digital work or whatever, we're debt, it's a game of
constantly pushing, innovating and iterating. Having worked with agencies for
a lot of my career. In some ways, you're always
going there really is no new idea, new ideas, or
some mash up of things that existed. And I think
actually podcasts are really interesting reimagining of a medium that's
(06:31):
existed for decades, right, And yet somehow there's this resurgence
that's happening because of the luxury that we have now
where media is always accessible to actually pause in our
day somewhere on the subway, plug in your headphones and
actually get a new thought in your head. In a
funny way, it's it's a way to be with people
without being with people. Yeah, you know, we need each
(06:54):
other when you're on the subway or in your car
or working out or whatever, you have something else going on,
not just music. It's kind of a comforting thing. Well.
And also we are at an all time high in
terms of creativity and the means of production being in
the palm of a person's hands. Maybe the last time
it was as equal as when we really were sitting
(07:15):
around campfires and anybody could tell a story and creatives
were really valuable. Then they were all storytellers, and then
they were all replaced by a studio system and a
sort of a top down thing because if you didn't
have the means of production, you needed to reach far
beyond your campfire and your little town. And if you
didn't have those means of production, you didn't have a
way to speak or now your school and we call
(07:37):
him predators, producer, editor, and directory. They got their iPhone
out and they're like, what do you would mean We
got to spend six dollars on a TV commercially, it's
gonna take two months. I'm gonna go shoot that this afternoon,
and they can do it and the quality is good
and the storytelling is good and they're used to that
and they grew up that way. I don't want to
(07:59):
get into politics too much here, but I do think
this trauma I think it's going to make it even
more creative because I'm finding people who normally sat back
when we're very comfortable of any different age. Now people
are speaking out. People aren't just protesting, but they're out
there creating. And so no matter where you stand on
the political spectrum, you know, I think everyone wants to
have a voice now. I think no matter where you are,
(08:19):
you want to be heard because there's very polarizing points
of view. So I think that's actually gonna bring out
even more creative than you talked about. What's the moment
in time when your actual audience are creators, when they
can respond with their own content. The system still exists
to spend millions of dollars on distilling what a story
will be, but then suddenly thousands of people can respond
with their own version of it, they can hack it up.
(08:40):
It's really extraordinary. It's not just the means of creating,
right the cave drawings and people have always sort of
have found some way to express creativity even when we
didn't have technology in our palm of our hand. But
what we didn't necessarily have was the ability to distribute
content at the scale we have today. And so now
when everyone's a creator, Like, how does that change your
creative process? Knowing that everyone can react immediately, and you know,
(09:05):
we're trying to figure it out. I got a fifteen
year old daughter, and she knows all about these videos
and musicians and bands and stuff that's coming at us
in every different direction, and like, where do you find that?
Because I want to know, I need to know from
my business. She's like, I don't know. I think we
all need to kind of think like fifteen year old girls,
because there we have to understand the pipeline in where
(09:30):
culture is coming from, because all the traditional ways are
evaporating fast. I had the good fortune of having a
dinner once with Michael Solomon and he headed up Laura
mar when they distributed American television, and the conversation, I said, well,
you know, content is king, and he said, yes, Michael,
a distribution is emperor. That's like a hugely valid point
(09:55):
where we hit out a little bit earlier, Dan, right,
where you want to spend most of your day creat
and yet there's all these other pieces of the job
to put your creations out into the world. Any advice
on how to actually sell in creativity because that seems
like almost more challenging many a day than actually what
the inspired creative idea is. Yeah, I mean, I think
(10:16):
the challenge is speaking your own unique voice. You know,
we're talking about creativity, and there's more creativity than ever,
but the quality of the creativity is spread out even
more now and diffused. So there's still a handful of
creators who can really create content that everyone really wants
to view. It's still pretty concertrate as far as people
who really can create innovative, provocative storytelling. You know, we
(10:38):
talked a lot about how they're only so many ideas
in my business. They say in the movie is there's
only seven stories. There are a handful of creators who
will stand out from the rest of the pack. Those
creators will get older and become less relevant. That just
the nature of creativity. And then you just have to
figure out, how do you identify kind of the next
generation when there are so many out there right now?
With the gals point, how do you sell it? I
(10:58):
look at a Lego Batman movie to go, oh my god, like,
I don't know how you would ever be able to
sell all that in You know, you got ninety minutes
of content. You gotta sell somebody. How do you do that?
Lego Batman was easier because of the success of the
Lego movie. But the Lego movie is really hard, and
that one we're trying to create something no one had
ever seen before. And so when I talked about the
(11:19):
Lego movie, they had something different in their mind than
what I had in my mind. How do I put
together different pieces that people will see what I have
in my head? So in the case of the Lego
movie when I talked about it, wanting to look photo
real at to show a piece of material. So I
went out and talked to a buch different visual effects houses.
There's a house in Ventice called Blur that Tim Miller
runs and he shot a short film for me. So
(11:40):
I took that and I showed that to the Lego
Company into Warner Brothers so they could see what it
looks like. And basically Tim and his partner Jeff Fowler
went out and shot this little short film that was animated,
and the reveal at the end was that it all
took place in Jeff's or Tim's kitchen. So it's a
mini version of the movie where the first two thirds
of this little short from more animated and the last
(12:01):
third was live actions. You not only had the studio
corporate client, so you had layers to go through. Yeah,
because the challenge of the Lego Company was there doing
very well. This was in two thousand and nine, and
when the rest of the accountmy was down, they were
still selling. Sales increase year on year, you know, they
were still doing and so the question was I wasn't
(12:24):
doing a sub brand of the Lego Company. I was
doing the mothership, the main brand, and so there's a
lot at risk because if the movie didn't work, you're
hurting the main brand the whole. Yeah, that's actually an
interesting How did they get over the hump? That's a
hard thing to do, especially when you're doing well baby
steps along the way. But I think the main pitch was,
if we do this right, you'll reach an audience that
you're not reaching now, and you'll expand the audience even
(12:46):
more because with Lego they called the Dark Ages that
after around eleven twelve kids start getting interested in the
other gender video games. They stopped playing with the Lego toys,
and then they get back into maybe in their college
of their nerves, and then again when you're an adult
and a parent. And so the pitch them was, if
we do this movie right, like Mike I got you
(13:06):
to see the movie, you're expanding the audience of people
who don't normally engage with Lego anymore. No. Yeah, clearly
that was a good bet. So it seems like that
worked out. Okay for you. Time to take a break
with our friends for bullet Frontier whiskey. Please drink responsibly. Well,
speaking of kind of pushing creative boundaries and innovating in
(13:27):
the cultural frontier. I want to introduce today's rock star mixologist,
Yale vengro Hi. Everybody, um and love to hear a
little bit about what you've been concocting for us. If
you don't know Yale, she has been declared one of
the thirty under thirty rock stars redefining the mixology industry,
which is one of the hottest and one of my
favorite creative practices. Tell us what you whipped up for
(13:50):
us today. This is called You're killing Me Small. So
this is an old fashioned variation using bullet Bourbon as
its base, with a little bit of peted Irish single malt.
We've also got some coconut liqueur and Kremta noi o,
which is a liqueur kind of siwilar to muretto made
from apricott and cherry kernels toasted the convitters and a
(14:11):
touch of salt. So the inspiration behind this I was
trying to recreate summertime and the idea of a campfire
and translate that into an old fashioned and so the
bullet bourbon is serving as the base of this, like
Graham Cracker, a little bit of salt as well. Just
to add to the crust um, the coconut for the marshmallow,
(14:32):
and pecan vetters, and the kremlin oio to give the
nutty chocolate sensation. So you have to have the coolest
job on Earth. I was fortunate enough to do that
in New York City, which I think is the best
place for that kind of experiential environment. What is a
bos Lhrman says, you have to live in New York
once in your life, but leave before it makes you hard.
And live in California once in your life, but leave
(14:52):
before it makes you so. I have to compliment you.
What I love most about this drink is the salt.
And in my creative work, I was think, when you're
making something sweet, you have to be very mindful of
the salt, and when you're making something salty, you have
to be very mindful of the sweet. It's salt that
makes candy so good, and you leave it out of things.
You just over confection a storyline and there's nothing there.
(15:13):
We find salt in shaking drinks all the time, but
in a stirred cocktail it's really unique. Texturally, salt is
so similar to bitters, which are used very often in
cocktails as well as like a binding ingredient the first
time you have salt and chocolate. Yeah, yeah, I thought
that that's awesome. And I love the inspiration of camp
fire and is like one of the most vivid, creative
(15:33):
inspiring elements is fire. Sure anyways find that great things
come from sitting around campfires. I agree, I agree, maybe
we should like something on fire, but just like to
drink on absolutely back and smore is going. It's very
easy to look towards an obscure or an arcane ingredient
as a source of inspiration. I'm going to use micro cilantro.
(15:55):
I'm my hyper season all men you kind of scenario.
But for me, I am not very culinary focused. I
can't cook. I can cook a salad, So for me,
I think that taste and smell, these things that are
so related to sense memory can trigger these very emotional
responses and that's kind of what we're looking for when
we are having a drink or in a bar environment
(16:16):
going out. And so the inspiration behind this was how
do you make somebody feel like they were there in
that moment? And you see a lot of other people
these days using all sorts of other elements. We you know,
joked about setting something on fire, and perhaps if we
were at my bar, I would do that. I would
set something on fire to make you actually feel that
visceral reaction of what it's like to be in that
environment at that particular time. But the goal is all
(16:38):
the components in a glass that will trigger that kind
of emotional response towards something that you look fondly upon.
Hopefully you guys, thank you, grab the spiritual, the story, open,
(17:01):
all the disappear the bullet frontier whiskey, Please drink responsibly.
Do you guys have a secretive process a thing you
(17:23):
do which is where your great ideas come from? Or
any rituals, any process tips or advice you want to share?
A mentor of my Adam Grant as professor of Wharton,
and I was talking about what's the best process, because,
to be honest, my first initial idea was let's all
get in the room, let's spit ball in the room,
and then out of that come up with ideas. And
he said, Dan, that's the wrong way to go to creative.
(17:44):
So you get people who speak the most are going
to talk, but maybe the best ideas might not come
out and you have people who are talented but quiet,
and they'll be overshadowed. So he said to me, Dan,
have everyone here. The brief the issue go. White people
can create on their own and then come in and
when you're you can make the idea better. But ideas
are not generated as a group. That ideas are generated
(18:04):
as individuals and made better as a group. So I
think that for us, that's interesting as far as the process. Yeah, Michael,
I'm curious how how your creative process works. Sure, Um,
I think that the Muse is always speaking. She speaks,
and I will say to me, it's a she. I.
To me, creativity is a ship. I believe in the muse,
harnessing the muses, about setting the creative intention, accepting the
(18:28):
fact that you will arrive at an answer to the
extent that fear is the mind killers of vanquishing fear,
just saying fear is not going to help in anyway.
It's a great reptilian tool to tell me I'm in danger,
but it's not a great way to create. So let's
just take off the table that I'm not going to
come up with something, or that my team and I
are not going to come up with something embrace the
fact that we will. All right, that's great, but you're
(18:49):
still looking at a blank canvas. And for me, the
first step of process is to mess up the canvas,
not with any intentional answer, but really more clouding it up,
confusing it. Socrates and the Dialogue, he says that all
order is preceded by chaos. Well, then chaos is amazing.
Chaos is chaos is where it all comes from. Our
(19:09):
eyes and our minds and our hearts and our everything
are designed to make order out of chaos. We look
at clouds, we see patterns. We look at you know, leaves,
we see patterns. We look at we look at things,
and we see patterns. So I think that great storytelling,
great projects, great anything should assume that we can start
by clouding it all up and except that we'll find
(19:30):
an answer and then get out there, like go for
a walk, take a shower, or live your life. Going
to be a kid on the street years ago, this
kid was looking at an oil slick gasoline and a
puddle in a parking lot, and they looked up at
me and said, it's a broken rainbow. You know it's not.
You're not gonna find the answer in a room, right,
(19:52):
like staring at the bottle of shampoo and thinking like,
damn you, shampoo, give me the answer. I'm not in advertising.
My hat off to the people who are who nail it,
I mean, who completely transformed me. But they never transformed
me by something that's really literal in any way. And
a movie doesn't transform me that way either, something that's
(20:12):
that's vague and engages me because I have to buy
in to get the answer you mentioned earlier. We all
want to be together, we all want to be engaged also,
and the great stuff we want to be surprised. I
look at what you did with Lego movie, like the
Batman movie. I look at what you did with our
office space, Michael, and everyone gets off the elevator and
they're insanely surprised by this transformative tunnel of sounds that
(20:37):
they walk through. Right, you know what you guys are doing,
like you know, breakthrough like live advertising in the middle
of shows. Right, you're breaking paradigms and rules. And I
think that's when creative stuff that we remember, the things
that stick with us and inspire us. It's usually when
you when you surprise people. But is that something when
you guys go into the process. Do you overtally think
about trying to surprise people or is that sort of
(20:58):
a lucky out some way to work. We always start
with a creative brief, right, and I'm sure you guys
all have your version of that. We obviously see. The
strategy is the idea. The creative is just an expression
of that idea. The strategy really is where the platform starts.
You know, we had Taco Bell come to us a
couple of years ago, so they wanted to get into
the breakfast business. Well, Taco Bell has no business being
(21:20):
in breakfast that's owned by McDonald's and Denny's and Starbucks
and a million other brands. So we set out a
strategy that said, we want to make this a two
horse race. If we take on McDonald's, we de facto
become number two. So that was the strategy, not your breakfast.
(21:40):
So we came with the campaign called Ronald McDonald Loves
Taco Bell Breakfast. But we found fifty Ronald McDonald's from
all over the country. We flew them into l A
all at the same time. So you got all these
guys coming off these planes and we're holding up these
cards sitting round McDonald they're all going, what that hell
that's going on? They're all checking the same hotel. What's
(22:02):
your name, Ronald McDonald? I got a room for you
next one. I'll get on a bus. Next morning. We
go to the shoot, We feed them talk about breakfast,
and we interview them. Errol Morris interviews him and they
eat Taco Bell breakfast and they go, do you like it? Yes?
What's your name Ronald McDonald? So, Ronald McDonald likes Taco
Bell breakfast. So the idea was we always do the
(22:26):
Matt Lauer effect, and the mant Allower effect to us is, well,
Matt Lauer talk about it the minute it hits the airways,
and if we can hit that, we've got something great.
And it's a really high bar and it's and in
that particular case, as soon as that went on air,
the CEO of Talk About had to get on the
plane and get to New York start doing the interviews,
(22:48):
and it just blew up everywhere. You know, number one
trending thing on Twitter and a million other places. That's
when you know you got it just right. The creative
becomes easy once the strategy is good. That case, how
do you guys come up with that idea because I'm
curious about it. Is it a group thing as an individual?
And how does it generate? It's chaos, it's messy because
you start with you got a product and you got
(23:08):
a price. So when I just we got a new
Taco Bell breakfast and I'm just put that out there,
there's nothing more boring than product price advertising. And then
just started iterate too. We got this big beast to
change people's minds, to turn left into a Taco Bell
versus right into McDonald's, get the same thing you've had
for twenty five years. It's really hard. But if we
(23:30):
just take on the biggest beast, then the product almost
doesn't matter. At first, anyway, it was just, you know,
not your usual breakfast became our mantra. As soon as
you had that, it was like, okay, I know where
you go. How many Ronald McDonald's are there in America?
Well there's at least fifty at least, and there's what,
we had a twelve year old Ronald there, which like,
(23:55):
really you did that, the poor little kid, So that's
not that bad you're eating breakfast? Yeah, exactly. They actually
thought they were coming in from mcdowald's commercial so interesting,
and that would be the naturalist and about they really
were like, let's get these guys after all these years
have been made fun of. We're happy to help you out.
(24:19):
I love the idea of working with real people too.
There's something, you know, there's something that's become so organic
and so natural. We're actually working with not not necessarily
actors and unscripted content and you just see what happens
you're in, You're you can't avoid having a surprise moment
that probably ended up in those spots. Yeah, you can
never script what you're gonna get out of real people. Yeah,
(24:41):
game changing ideas. Is that what you set out to
do or is it something that you stumble into, Is
that you just set out to come up with a
movie idea, or you set out to come up with
a new physical object, a new piece of machinery, a
new piece of art. You're saying before, how you know
(25:01):
part of the percentage of how much you're able to
dedicate to the creative versus all of the managerial stuff.
And I think that part of the question that you're
asking is how to creatives get their fix and true
creatives get their fixed by pupping the anti constantly Phineas T. Barnum.
He went out on a high. He retired three or
(25:23):
four times, and literally the biggest show he ever produced
was the last one he ever produced. There as some
people who choose to kind of rest on their laurels,
and at a certain point, obviously you've created a machine
that can crank out certain aspects of what it is
that you do. But for me, game changing is always
the fix I'm looking for. How do you know you
have a game changing idea? I think you asked for me.
(25:45):
That's very reptilian. Again, in that process of sort of
believing that it will happen, it is the hero's journey,
and and two thirds of the way and you'd start
to think, like, is this the time when it doesn't happen?
I mean, really not going to solve this puzzle. If
you're the captain of the situation and the ship is
crossing and no one believes that anything is over the
horizon anywhere, drawing straws to eat each other and all
(26:07):
that kind of a thing, that's the moment where true
creative leadership has to take hold. It wants to then say,
believe we set out on this journey, we will find
the promised Land. But in the midst of it, of course,
there have to be challenges. The strain that you're feeling
of pushing up against this wall is the fact that
you're trying to push through a wall to create a
(26:27):
door where a door didn't exist before, and that takes
unbelievable energy. And if it's not taking that energy, and
that's a warning sign you're not actually going to be creative.
If you're not feeling the stakes, you're going to be
generating something that you've done before, and that's going to
feel comfy. I look for that feeling, and then it's
a really reptilian moment, certainly to get your clients to
(26:50):
buy into that, because that is really inspiring for creative people.
But it's also really tough when you have a lot
of money at stake and a big corporation that you're
selling stuff. I think what Dan was talking out with
how you sold through this incredible idea for a film
at a vast scale. I mean, we weren't just making
a tiny little thing. You were beginning with a huge
idea that then was going to be made in this
(27:12):
very gritty way. In a way I meant it feels
like it's stop motion, could have been done at home,
but it feels like it's come alive. And in the
case like when we had no idea, we're making a
game changer. But I looked at my partners, Phil Lord
and Chris Miller. They've done a lot of game changers.
So they directed twenty one Jump Street, they had Clinded
with the Chance of Meatballs, they had the TV show
Last Man on Earth. Now they're directing Hans Solo. But
(27:35):
their whole mantra was fail fast, fail often. And when
I started my company, until my company, failure is not
an option, right, So it's totally different. It's like a
radical game changer for me because these guys said to me, Dan,
fail fast, fail off. And said, what do you mean guys,
And they said, Dan, in this building, we're going to
fail a lot. By the time it goes out into
(27:55):
the public, people think, oh, it looks easy, it's simple.
But here we're gonna fail. We're gonna support each other.
So in the Lego movie, we made a whole version
of the movie. It just failed and we threw it
away and we started over again. So I think that
mentality because I was like, what's the genius to these guys?
And I think that mantra is really important. What that
means not only failing, but they're constantly trying new things,
(28:16):
pushing it as much as they can. And the other
part is from the Lego Company. Their mantra is only
the best is good enough. So there's the failing part,
but also just the drive to the very end. All
my lego was, I gotta pull these movies out of
these directors and the pencils on the paper into the
very end, I literally to put as much as they fail.
When they're finally making it, they're putting everything into it
(28:36):
until I literally have to take it away. So it's
a weird exposition of those two things. I had an
acting teacher years and years ago when I acted guy
named Michael Howard, and he still teaches, and he's in
his nineties and he's sharp as attack. It's unbelievable. And
I remember him saying, once they're good actors out there,
really good actors. You know you got your Tom Selleck,
Harrison Ford, Like I love Harrison Ford. He's amazing. And
(28:56):
Harrison Ford, he said, has always delivered a fantastic performance.
Great for him always, he said, But then you get
a guy like de Niro or an actor like that
who doesn't always give a good performance, and it's because
they're risking val Pacino risks and he gets a bad movie.
He doesn't nail it, but he's actually really putting it
out there and taking the chance. And that's the other
(29:18):
flip side of it is you get something that just
is beyond its transformational. And the other thing is that
because you asked the question, how do you sell that
through at a certain point, how do you sell that
what you know inside and they're not understanding how do
you get that through to the client. I work with
a guy I've known him for years and his name
is Shan Low, and he started a company called the
(29:39):
Business of Being Creative. We just talked for years and
years over lunch, and then finally I just thought I
should stop harvesting all of his knowledge and I should
actually hire him, you know, and fire him from one
of like what he does. He was really incredible. But
he said at one point something I think from a
sort of a negotiation standpoint, that there comes a moment
in the conversation we have to be able to look
at the client and say you hired me based on
(29:59):
a everything that you know about what I have done.
And let me tell you something. There's gonna come a
time in this journey past which we were going to
be leaving the base camp, and creatively, you're not going
to be able to You're gonna need to stay in
the base camp because up on that mountain our beasts
and dangers and things that you do not understand, you
(30:22):
cannot accept, and you have to believe that I will
come back for you once I've worked out how to
put in the ropes and how to get to the
top and my team and I can do this, but
you can't come along. And if you think you can,
you don't need me. It's so interesting because we do
these camp fires that we talked about, and the brands
always want to come to the campfires, and the credits
(30:43):
that that's the rule. They cannot come. So you're coming
back down from the mountain is at the end, we'll
talk to you about what we created, but the brands
can't come in. So it is talking about kind of
getting out to your own creative space. You talked about
where it's going to the beach or shower, but you
have to go to that special place sometimes just to
be free and then come back and having this awesome
conte exactly. You know, it's funny. I was Chief Creative
Officer at Microsoft, did a past life managing a bunch
(31:05):
of our agencies across all these different businesses. And to
her genius, this amazing woman that I had the honor
of working for their who was the CMO Microsoft, Mitch Matthews,
she had created this chief Creative Officer role for me,
and really it's intent was to basically harvest other people's
genius creativity and protect it from us the client. Like
(31:26):
that really was my job. On a good day, I
could take folks like you and these amazing ideas in
these places that made us crazy uncomfortable, and I could
navigate around a corporation and make sure all the people
who needed to know and prove and fund and whatever
sort of knew what we were doing, but didn't get
too close to it to make it what we would
have done internally, which defeats the purpose of bringing in
(31:48):
amazing creators like yourselves. When it worked, well, it was,
but it takes you know, it's it's funny. I was
as I was listening to you guys, I was like
one of the words that it wasn't in the questions
we wrote here to talk about it all, Michael, I
think creativity is a lot about trust, Right, You have
to trust the people you're going on this journey with
to bring their crazy, to bring their expertise, to bring ideas.
(32:11):
Like the toughest part about selling good ideas, or the
biggest killer to good ideas is success, because success is Hey,
we did a campaign a couple of years ago. We
always use celebrities. You always get the product name the
first three seconds, and then you show the product, and
you show a price, and you say it's for a
limited time only. If you put all those things in
(32:34):
a couple of years ago, we were crushing it. Well,
you just took every second I had to work with
and gave me something to put in there, and success
killed any good ideas. So we have to convince our
clients that just because there was one way to do
it before, doesn't mean that's the only way to do it.
Because the corporate America is looking for rules. Corporate America
(32:56):
is built not to fail, right. That's why we have testing,
and that's why we have lots of lawyers we have
data because we don't want to mess this big six
billion dollar company up. And that's legit. But there's also
one way to really mess up big six billion dollar company,
and that's not doing anything that ever has any risk
(33:17):
to it. Yeah. I think the words that just insane
league hit up against each other and should never go together.
Predictable creativity, right to really create these successes. You've all
had the game changers. Well, we did this to the
spot past predictable with this little mini Darth Vader on
the Super Bowl years ago form Volkswagen, and we had
a dog, we had Darth Vader, we had the Imperial March.
(33:41):
We had it was a great piece of storytelling and
a protagonist and antagonist, and it blew up, and it
blew up huge fifty million views when fifty million views
was unheard of. And so the next year we had
to and so we had to dissect what and try
and do that again. I was like, this is not
(34:04):
the way to get to greatness is try and put
it on paper and figure what little pieces of that worked.
Once we got out of that mode, we're able to
free our brains up and do something new. But everybody
wanted to dissect what worked, and do you ever really
know what works? Like, can you look back at these
amazing things you've created and go, that's what made it work.
(34:27):
It's funny, I think sometimes in that moment where you've
really realized it's going to be a success, and then
it's a success. The odd thing is that in this
fuzziness of it all being a success, you really actually
appreciate the thing itself. And I find that it's five
years later when I actually see it and I think, God,
that was really right. Not everybody's telling me it's great,
(34:49):
but me. Actually we're getting to see until we go
to the next client that we're pitching and we watch
our stuff when they're watching it and go, oh, that
was really hard to pull off and it really worked.
But it's not until much later. I agree that you
realize you did something good. But I think it's hard
to create because I think a lot of it we're
talking about sparks of creativity and it's hopening amongst people.
(35:11):
It's relationships. So you can't just say, Okay, we're gonna
do that exact same thing again and hope to get
the same results. It really is about the combination of
people in a room, talking together, going off on their own,
coming back talking together. Look at sequels to movies and
the same team, but the second movie usually it's not
as good as the first. They're definitely trying to recreate
the same exact process, but you can't. Everyone's changed. Do
(35:32):
you think about the time it takes to make a film, right,
how much as each individual in that process of the
year two years, right and that arc, each of those
people is no longer the same person they were when
they started that project. And you guys may deal with it,
because then people want to do different things, right, They
want to play different roles in the process because they've
had success. And that's the danger success mean, Okay, I'm
too good to do that same role now, I want
(35:53):
to step up, but they may not be as good
in the new role as they were in the role before.
I think it's always been a challenge for us as filmmakers. Okay,
when do you promote someone or when do you let
them do what they're really good at and stay in
their lane. You're getting the Bits versus Adams conversation. To
be creative right now is to live in a golden
age of creativity. As so much of the world is
(36:15):
being machine converted to and the very tool that allows
us to do all these things is an expression of
how automated something becomes. App to animate face and make
its lips move. I mean, like that would have cost
six seven figures back in the day to do that,
and now anybody can do it. But I think then
that's when the creativity actually gets to its highest demand,
(36:37):
because to break through right now with an original idea,
whatever we call original. I mean, yes, there are seven
story arcs and you know, just a few things. I
used to know that Leonard Basket, he was a printmaker,
and you know, he said, played your eyes, played your eyes?
Why do you think God made your eyes us? It? Incredible? Incredible,
(37:01):
just talked about that. If you saw him in sixteen minutes,
he's been an interviewed and she said, God, it sounds
a little bit like Michael Jackson sounds a bit about
it goes absolutely. You know, there's Michael Jackson, there's everybody
in my stuff, my dancing, my music. How do you
think we make this stuff? And you see, I think
that I had a painting teacher. He said to me,
if you go down this path, and I didn't as
(37:22):
an artist I did, or as a creator I did
as a painter. He said, you will not make anything
original until you're in your forties. It takes that long
to exercise from your mind and your heart, all the
voices of the teachers and the parents and the experiences
and all that. Why you quit, Michael, I want to know.
I think it's actually but I think that holds true.
In my forties, I've really hit a place where when
(37:45):
I'm making creative decisions, they feel like mine, and I
really feel like I'm confident. Yeah, it's really interesting not
to hear all the voices chattering about what you ought
to do this and that. Yeah, I had the confidence
to know when you do hit that idea, you're willing
to go that all corporate America to fund or movie
studios or and here's you Just you raise something inside
(38:06):
me that actually sort of boils up, because the thing
that happens is that you'd find this voice to say
and it's acceptable to say you don't know what you're
talking about, and I do you know how to balance
the books? You don't know how to make something this way?
And I respect that you know how to balance the books.
I really do I have learned so much from people
(38:28):
who taught me about spreadsheets and businesses and black versus
red and all that kind of thing. I really, I
really respect it. I look for people as friends who
can teach me how they see the world. But I
think at a certain point, as it creative, you really
have to own the fact that they don't think this way.
Given a thousand springing hours in a room, they would
(38:48):
not come up with the idea that you came up
with in a minute. And how do you sell that?
I mean, how do you sell that? It takes you
a minute to see, distill and know it and then
is that blink moment you know what. I'm sure when
you had your lego moment, or when you were pitched
internally or heard or came up with the idea for
any one of the spots that you've you've talked about,
(39:09):
you just knew it. But not everybody does. Yeah, just
what they pay for it, exactly. It takes a little
reminder every now, and this is why we're here. It's
a really good I think it's like an important point
to note, right, Like if you're going to hire, collaborate,
partner with amazing creators, creatives right, whatever, Moniker you want
(39:31):
to be known as. It's something we almost should be
a contract upfront and we're going to learn to do
what we ask you to do. Now, we learned something
a long time ago, which was we'll have clients that
will say, here's exactly what I want. I want lots
of car I want voiceover, I want supers, I want
hard hitting, and I want to and we'll go, you
(39:53):
got it, and we're gonna show you that. You're going
to show you for that too. There's a lot of
people who to well create within a box, and there's
people who have to break out of it. Absolutely so,
and then we'll show that version and then we'll show
what we want to do. And nine times out of ten,
if you let the air out, if you let if
(40:15):
you give them what they want, they will buy the
good thing. And it's a risky thing. A lot of
people don't want to do that, but it takes all
the anxiety out of the room because we're not hey,
it's black, it's white, it's it's yours. Hey, you can
have it, but put that up against this. And by
the way, show your spouse. I so agree with you.
(40:39):
I don't know whether it's cost me more than it's
gained me. I think it's gained me more than it's
cost me. But I believe in the humility of creativity. Also,
I don't like to be the person that walks into
the room and starts peeing all over everything and says,
we know and that, and it certainly in our commission work,
part of what we're selling is the ability of the
person who's commissioning of it to experience it's the creative moment.
(41:01):
And I'm perfectly happy to step out of the way
of that and let them feel that they came up
with the idea just by commissioning it. The Pope would
want to feel that way about the Isteine Chapel, right,
and that's okay, like they should because it wouldn't have
gotten done without them, and they did inform the process
and they do have great things to bring to the
table and all of that. I find it interesting when
(41:23):
once the creative is out sort of looking back on
it in the retrospect, the value of it is diminished.
And I'm gonna tell you, the Nike spush in retrospect
just seems like a simple thing, but it came out
of something absolutely extraordinary. And yes, it took commerce and
all those things to propel it forward to a place
where it would be accepted at such a huge, huge level.
(41:43):
But somewhere along the way there was a creative. I
love collaboration. I don't want to be the person who
had the idea. I like a team based system, and
I want everybody in the team to feel like we're
all twisting the peanut butter j are together, because that's
when people are invested in the process. Kennedy was walking
around NASA and he asks a nitor, what do you
do here? And he said, I'm helping to put a
man on the moon. That's all you know, and and
(42:06):
and you know what, He's absolutely right. The clients that
are extraordinarily creative as well like a target, they're creative
for a living. They have to make a lot of
crave decisions in running their business. And we find that
we get to a point where you don't know who
the account of person is, or who the client is,
or who the creative is or the strategist is. We're
making stuff together that's really wonderful. And it's only because
(42:28):
these guys really appreciate doing extraordinary, big, risky ideas, and
part of having clients is to fundamentally believe that the
answer lies within them. That's that's where the answer is.
That they've been the ones frustrated. It's not about what
I want to build next. We have a strategist, Lindsay
Allison at our office, and when we get stuck, she says,
it's called the client. Go sit with somebody who's worked
(42:50):
in that business for the last twenty years, not in
the marketing department, maybe in the marketing department, a research
person or somebody who does operations behind the scenes for
Taco Bell. Talk about the brand, just talk about how
they got here and why it matters, what the food
quality is all about, and where you source the stuff.
You'll have a treasure trove of ideas coming out of that.
(43:15):
You know, did you spend time with kids when you
were spend time to a point where, uh, maybe I
looked a little creepy from the outside. You know, we
go to Lego Land, and we'd go backwards, so we
would go to the mini land first and then go
on the rides at the end, so we kind of
going the reverse circle. You know. There's comic con for
like comic book fans and movie fans, and then there's
(43:36):
brick Con, which is like a comic con for Lego fans,
So we would do things like that. One of the directors,
Phil Lorda, would have his birthday at the Lego store. Yeah,
so we spent plenty of time with kids, and then
we start doing these community events where we have kids
from underprivileged schools come in and we teach them about
how do we make these Lego movies? So Will Arnett
would come in and he teach them how do you
(43:57):
voice project be it? It's actually really hard to be
Lego Batman the voice because he loses his voice after
four hours. He talks about that, and we had someone
else talk about master building. What does it like to
actually build out a Lego um. So, yeah, we definitely
talked to kids. And it's a way for us to
remember who we're making the movies for, because I think
that's how dangerous worked in our little bubble making these products,
and then we forget it's actually for these kids. But
(44:19):
I also felt it was for adults, Like I watched
that movie and loved every minute of it and it
was silly is crazy. We're hoping Miken, we tap the
kid inside you. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Well,
that's not too far down. I think the beauty of
that film is and and I think so much great
creativity is that everyone wants to be five at heart,
giving all of us permission for a moment to experience
(44:42):
a piece of art, a tunnel of sound, a lego film,
right to just get out of your head for a
moment and get to play, you know. I think that's
the luxury that great creators and creatives give us. A
mile and had the poem and I'm gonna hack it up,
but it says when I was one, I had just begun.
When I was two, I was hardly knew. When I
was three, I could bare least. When I was four,
it was not much more. When I was five, I
(45:02):
was barely alive. And now I'm six, And that means
I'm clever and I shall stay six forever and ever.
I think that is an amazing thought. To get to
our last question, our show is called tagline. I'd love
to hear from this creative group of people here, what's
your tagline? You want to start? Mike, you do this
(45:23):
for a living, Yeah, dude, change the game. So there's
this great scene in Moneyball where someone said, it's not
enough to win the game. We have to change it.
And if you think about business and you think about marketing,
think about what we do for a living. It's a game.
And if you're doing it well, you're winning, but you
also can lose. And you also have overlords, and you
also have these competitors and clients, and you have strategies
(45:45):
and you have tactics, and you have executions and all
these things that are very game like. Obviously because of
the business that we're in, because we do trade employees.
If we're not changing the game, we can't win it.
So we do that and we think about that. That
that lives through HR and PR in account management and
creative and everywhere. We have to be changing the game.
(46:09):
My tagline is create an environment for others to succeed.
I truly believe company culture affects the final product. And
so in the case of the Lego movie, our group
was subversive. They were funny in their own way. There
was a lot of heart, It was chaotic, and it
was fast paced. And so when you watch the movie
and you get to know the people who actually worked
on the movie, our office environment was very much like
(46:32):
the movie itself. So people aren't surprised that people who
work with us go okay, that's them, because that's the
way they worked. So that's part of it. The other
part is we're all in service business, no matter what,
we're serving other people. For me, that tagline just reminds
me it's not about me, it's about created mine for
others to succeed, because if they succeed, you'll succeed as well.
So just remembering we're all stewards in a certain way,
and the brand could be the steward. You could be
(46:53):
stuarting the brand, you could be stuarding the client. But
it's just a good reminder for me. That's awesome. It is. Yeah,
it's rarely the great idea has happened alone in some
magical bubble where it just happens in an instant right,
and it is such a collaborative process, in such an
organic process. How about you, Michael, what's your tagline? Um?
My tagline would be the vaguer the watchword, the greater
(47:15):
the prophet, And it's it's actually it's not actually mine.
It's a piece of a quote by one of my
favorite authors, Nikos Kazinsakas, who wrote over the Greek and
Last Temptation of Christ, and he's amazing guy. And the
full quote is did you play with Lego so much?
(47:35):
I played with Lego. The greatest gift that a prophet
can give to man and let's say women also is
a watchword. And the vaguer the watchword, the greater the prophet.
That informs for me so much of what I try
to do, which is to not spell out every little thing.
It's to leave the space in between. It's to leave
(47:55):
the breath in between the words, to allow the human
eye and heart to fill in the blanks and bring
to the table that thing which invests them in a story.
Because people want to belong that's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah,
I think creative it is a sense of belonging when
you enjoy an idea someone created for you and you
get to share in it and share with others now
and it's a collective process. I want to thank you guys.
(48:17):
This was an amazing conversation. I really enjoyed it. I
want to thank our friends at Bullet for bringing us
together and inspiring another creation creative conversation. Yes, friends on
the frontier of creativity. Thank you for showing up. I'm
gonna take away four words from this, maybe a freezing
three words. I think what I learned today was have
no fear. I love that you find your reptilian moment,
(48:39):
which I'm going to quote you on, which is awesome.
Don't be afraid to fail, and failure is part of
the process. The other two words trust and surprise, And
I think when those things come together, creativity happen. So
I want to thank you for inspiring all of us
here at Tagline today. Thank you guys, thanks for having us.
(49:01):
You've been listening to 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 group MS Rob Norman
returns to host hanv the CEO, Paul Wilmington's Snap CEO
(49:23):
Vivian Rosenthal, and Deep Focus lead Ian Schaefer as they
discussed creativity and the feed. Catch all our episodes at
I Heart Radio slash Tagline in the I Heart radio
app or wherever you get your podcasts. YEA audiation
Yeah, I think we all need to kind of think
like fifteen year old girls. Ideas are not generated as
a group. Ideas are generated as individuals and made better
as a group. It's a way to be with people
without being with people. Welcome to Tagline. Pour a cocktail
(00:26):
and join us for inspired conversations with the best storytellers,
culture makers, and creators, presented by our friends that bullet
Frontier whiskey. Please drink responsibly. You can never script what
you're gonna get out of real people. Tagline is produced
by I Heart Radio and partnership with Advertising Age. Welcome
(00:46):
to this episode of Tagline. I'm Gail Treberman, CMO of
I Heart Media, and we're coming to you from our
l A Studios today. Or We've gathered some amazing Left
Coast creators to discuss the topic of what actually inspires
create activity along for the ride. Dan Lynn, producer for
Lynn Pictures who brought us the Genius Lego movie series,
(01:06):
among many other film and TV credits. Mike Sheldon, Chairman
and CEO of Deutsch North America. He's our resident ad expert,
probably best known for some of Deutsch's award winning campaigns
for brands like VW, Target, Taco Bell, and Dr Pepper
and Michael Benneville, founder of Benneville Studios, who's an artist,
designer and known for creating everything from objects to office
(01:28):
spaces and burning Man spider houses. A true creator's creative.
I am personally insanely excited to be here today with
you all, So why don't we get started? Most of
you and what you do, you're actually are trying to
create experiences. In my mind, how do you think about that?
How do you think about creativity as an experience? We
always are talking about brand behaviors and platforms and Voltiwagen
(01:50):
and Target, Taco Bell and Dr Pepper, etcetera bigger things
than making ads or banners. It's what is brand want
to standford for the next ten years, And that means
it's an experience. You want to feel it, you want
to live it, you want to interact with it, and
so it's much bigger in terms of thinking of platforms
than ads. For me, it's not only creating a experience
when you're actually watching what we makes when we make
(02:12):
film and TV, but it's it has to last with you,
so I can television if that's such a great experience
watching that you want to stay and watch a week later,
or even with the Lego movies, that you want to
watch the movie and go out and then hopefully with
the right experience and go out and play with your
kids or your friends and actually build. So it's not
just the experience itself, but what happens after that experience,
if the experience is impactful enough. Yeah, actually that you know.
(02:33):
I think the Lego Batman movie is such a great
example of where there actually are physical objects tied to
the idea and the story and that you're creating, right,
And it's interesting movie at the end when all of
a sudden it goes to live action. The message the story,
they're about being a good parent, and they're about being creative,
remarkable way bigger than just hey, that's a funny movie, right,
(02:56):
you know, it's meant to be about creating and then recreating.
Part of Will Farrell's journey is that he has to
learn you can't just create and keep it static and
call it cragg all crazy good. You have to learn
to break it down and do it again. I'm sure
that's part of your guys process too, which is your
constantly redoing things in a different way. And trying to
improve on things and break things down and try it again.
So it's an interesting word breaking, right, we use the
word constraints. We use the word breaking like it's interesting
(03:19):
when you start talking about creativity, how it becomes very
much this construction site metaphor. Creativity takes an extreme amount
of energy. That's why you're hungry after why want with
your cotic But it does. I mean, I think our
capacity to create as creatures, paired with our ability to
(03:39):
find food and to find it better than other creatures.
That's when our brains got the excess capacity to take
on bigger, more intentional projects. When you think about your
job as creators, how much of your time do you
think you actually spend in a creative process or in creativity?
For me, yeah, I don't believe I stopped. I don't
(03:59):
think of the time in my day where I'm not creative.
When I go on a vacation, I'm lying on the
beach and I start thinking about sandcastles and coconuts and
watching the ants and eating the areas. You know, But
that's like, that's vacation. I find it very relaxing to
be creative, and I don't know what it's not to
be creative. I think you're lucky. I mean, for me,
maybe fifty of my day is unco creative. The other
(04:22):
half is managing. You know, we have a hundred people
that in l I work on on the Lego movies.
It's managing, it's hr and then that's the part that
I have that issue. Now, not that many people, but um,
but certainly a lot of the day is in that
for me. I guess creativity is a very wide ranging things.
Somebody asked me the other day, well, how how do
you deal with the clients who just can't accept the
(04:43):
creative process? They are undervaluing it and all that kind
of a thing, you know, and they're coming at it
from their negotiator angle. For me, I look at that
and I realized, well, their master negotiators. That's what they do.
That's how they express their creativity. So what I try
to do is to interface with that aspect of their personality.
Their highest level of creativity is to win the deal.
And the only way to deal with that is a
(05:04):
creative You have to start talking about your master creativity
and say we'll go ahead and do it without us,
you know, fine, like, yeah, well our business, we have
a creative department, which is probably the worst thing you
could have to call it, because that means if you're creative,
you're creative, and if you're not, stay out. And I
think that was built on a very old system, because
(05:28):
today we can't live without everybody being creative. And to
your point, Michael, I'm dealing with HR issues and stuff
with accounting and stuff with finance and our holding company,
and if I'm not creative, I'm dead, you know. In
our business also, we trade employees, so all of our
competitors steal our people and then we steal their people,
(05:48):
and it's all just one big pool. That means we
always need to be changing the game. We always need
to be doing something different, because if we go into
new business and we're pitching some new thing, and our
competitors are gonna do the same thing we did last
time because they got all our old employees. So unless
we're constantly innovating and trying new stuff and being creative
at all aspects, not just in the TV spots or
(06:10):
digital work or whatever, we're debt, it's a game of
constantly pushing, innovating and iterating. Having worked with agencies for
a lot of my career. In some ways, you're always
going there really is no new idea, new ideas, or
some mash up of things that existed. And I think
actually podcasts are really interesting reimagining of a medium that's
(06:31):
existed for decades, right, And yet somehow there's this resurgence
that's happening because of the luxury that we have now
where media is always accessible to actually pause in our
day somewhere on the subway, plug in your headphones and
actually get a new thought in your head. In a
funny way, it's it's a way to be with people
without being with people. Yeah, you know, we need each
(06:54):
other when you're on the subway or in your car
or working out or whatever, you have something else going on,
not just music. It's kind of a comforting thing. Well.
And also we are at an all time high in
terms of creativity and the means of production being in
the palm of a person's hands. Maybe the last time
it was as equal as when we really were sitting
(07:15):
around campfires and anybody could tell a story and creatives
were really valuable. Then they were all storytellers, and then
they were all replaced by a studio system and a
sort of a top down thing because if you didn't
have the means of production, you needed to reach far
beyond your campfire and your little town. And if you
didn't have those means of production, you didn't have a
way to speak or now your school and we call
(07:37):
him predators, producer, editor, and directory. They got their iPhone
out and they're like, what do you would mean We
got to spend six dollars on a TV commercially, it's
gonna take two months. I'm gonna go shoot that this afternoon,
and they can do it and the quality is good
and the storytelling is good and they're used to that
and they grew up that way. I don't want to
(07:59):
get into politics too much here, but I do think
this trauma I think it's going to make it even
more creative because I'm finding people who normally sat back
when we're very comfortable of any different age. Now people
are speaking out. People aren't just protesting, but they're out
there creating. And so no matter where you stand on
the political spectrum, you know, I think everyone wants to
have a voice now. I think no matter where you are,
(08:19):
you want to be heard because there's very polarizing points
of view. So I think that's actually gonna bring out
even more creative than you talked about. What's the moment
in time when your actual audience are creators, when they
can respond with their own content. The system still exists
to spend millions of dollars on distilling what a story
will be, but then suddenly thousands of people can respond
with their own version of it, they can hack it up.
(08:40):
It's really extraordinary. It's not just the means of creating,
right the cave drawings and people have always sort of
have found some way to express creativity even when we
didn't have technology in our palm of our hand. But
what we didn't necessarily have was the ability to distribute
content at the scale we have today. And so now
when everyone's a creator, Like, how does that change your
creative process? Knowing that everyone can react immediately, and you know,
(09:05):
we're trying to figure it out. I got a fifteen
year old daughter, and she knows all about these videos
and musicians and bands and stuff that's coming at us
in every different direction, and like, where do you find that?
Because I want to know, I need to know from
my business. She's like, I don't know. I think we
all need to kind of think like fifteen year old girls,
because there we have to understand the pipeline in where
(09:30):
culture is coming from, because all the traditional ways are
evaporating fast. I had the good fortune of having a
dinner once with Michael Solomon and he headed up Laura
mar when they distributed American television, and the conversation, I said, well,
you know, content is king, and he said, yes, Michael,
a distribution is emperor. That's like a hugely valid point
(09:55):
where we hit out a little bit earlier, Dan, right,
where you want to spend most of your day creat
and yet there's all these other pieces of the job
to put your creations out into the world. Any advice
on how to actually sell in creativity because that seems
like almost more challenging many a day than actually what
the inspired creative idea is. Yeah, I mean, I think
(10:16):
the challenge is speaking your own unique voice. You know,
we're talking about creativity, and there's more creativity than ever,
but the quality of the creativity is spread out even
more now and diffused. So there's still a handful of
creators who can really create content that everyone really wants
to view. It's still pretty concertrate as far as people
who really can create innovative, provocative storytelling. You know, we
(10:38):
talked a lot about how they're only so many ideas
in my business. They say in the movie is there's
only seven stories. There are a handful of creators who
will stand out from the rest of the pack. Those
creators will get older and become less relevant. That just
the nature of creativity. And then you just have to
figure out, how do you identify kind of the next
generation when there are so many out there right now?
With the gals point, how do you sell it? I
(10:58):
look at a Lego Batman movie to go, oh my god, like,
I don't know how you would ever be able to
sell all that in You know, you got ninety minutes
of content. You gotta sell somebody. How do you do that?
Lego Batman was easier because of the success of the
Lego movie. But the Lego movie is really hard, and
that one we're trying to create something no one had
ever seen before. And so when I talked about the
(11:19):
Lego movie, they had something different in their mind than
what I had in my mind. How do I put
together different pieces that people will see what I have
in my head? So in the case of the Lego
movie when I talked about it, wanting to look photo
real at to show a piece of material. So I
went out and talked to a buch different visual effects houses.
There's a house in Ventice called Blur that Tim Miller
runs and he shot a short film for me. So
(11:40):
I took that and I showed that to the Lego
Company into Warner Brothers so they could see what it
looks like. And basically Tim and his partner Jeff Fowler
went out and shot this little short film that was animated,
and the reveal at the end was that it all
took place in Jeff's or Tim's kitchen. So it's a
mini version of the movie where the first two thirds
of this little short from more animated and the last
(12:01):
third was live actions. You not only had the studio
corporate client, so you had layers to go through. Yeah,
because the challenge of the Lego Company was there doing
very well. This was in two thousand and nine, and
when the rest of the accountmy was down, they were
still selling. Sales increase year on year, you know, they
were still doing and so the question was I wasn't
(12:24):
doing a sub brand of the Lego Company. I was
doing the mothership, the main brand, and so there's a
lot at risk because if the movie didn't work, you're
hurting the main brand the whole. Yeah, that's actually an
interesting How did they get over the hump? That's a
hard thing to do, especially when you're doing well baby
steps along the way. But I think the main pitch was,
if we do this right, you'll reach an audience that
you're not reaching now, and you'll expand the audience even
(12:46):
more because with Lego they called the Dark Ages that
after around eleven twelve kids start getting interested in the
other gender video games. They stopped playing with the Lego toys,
and then they get back into maybe in their college
of their nerves, and then again when you're an adult
and a parent. And so the pitch them was, if
we do this movie right, like Mike I got you
(13:06):
to see the movie, you're expanding the audience of people
who don't normally engage with Lego anymore. No. Yeah, clearly
that was a good bet. So it seems like that
worked out. Okay for you. Time to take a break
with our friends for bullet Frontier whiskey. Please drink responsibly. Well,
speaking of kind of pushing creative boundaries and innovating in
(13:27):
the cultural frontier. I want to introduce today's rock star mixologist,
Yale vengro Hi. Everybody, um and love to hear a
little bit about what you've been concocting for us. If
you don't know Yale, she has been declared one of
the thirty under thirty rock stars redefining the mixology industry,
which is one of the hottest and one of my
favorite creative practices. Tell us what you whipped up for
(13:50):
us today. This is called You're killing Me Small. So
this is an old fashioned variation using bullet Bourbon as
its base, with a little bit of peted Irish single malt.
We've also got some coconut liqueur and Kremta noi o,
which is a liqueur kind of siwilar to muretto made
from apricott and cherry kernels toasted the convitters and a
(14:11):
touch of salt. So the inspiration behind this I was
trying to recreate summertime and the idea of a campfire
and translate that into an old fashioned and so the
bullet bourbon is serving as the base of this, like
Graham Cracker, a little bit of salt as well. Just
to add to the crust um, the coconut for the marshmallow,
(14:32):
and pecan vetters, and the kremlin oio to give the
nutty chocolate sensation. So you have to have the coolest
job on Earth. I was fortunate enough to do that
in New York City, which I think is the best
place for that kind of experiential environment. What is a
bos Lhrman says, you have to live in New York
once in your life, but leave before it makes you hard.
And live in California once in your life, but leave
(14:52):
before it makes you so. I have to compliment you.
What I love most about this drink is the salt.
And in my creative work, I was think, when you're
making something sweet, you have to be very mindful of
the salt, and when you're making something salty, you have
to be very mindful of the sweet. It's salt that
makes candy so good, and you leave it out of things.
You just over confection a storyline and there's nothing there.
(15:13):
We find salt in shaking drinks all the time, but
in a stirred cocktail it's really unique. Texturally, salt is
so similar to bitters, which are used very often in
cocktails as well as like a binding ingredient the first
time you have salt and chocolate. Yeah, yeah, I thought
that that's awesome. And I love the inspiration of camp
fire and is like one of the most vivid, creative
(15:33):
inspiring elements is fire. Sure anyways find that great things
come from sitting around campfires. I agree, I agree, maybe
we should like something on fire, but just like to
drink on absolutely back and smore is going. It's very
easy to look towards an obscure or an arcane ingredient
as a source of inspiration. I'm going to use micro cilantro.
(15:55):
I'm my hyper season all men you kind of scenario.
But for me, I am not very culinary focused. I
can't cook. I can cook a salad, So for me,
I think that taste and smell, these things that are
so related to sense memory can trigger these very emotional
responses and that's kind of what we're looking for when
we are having a drink or in a bar environment
(16:16):
going out. And so the inspiration behind this was how
do you make somebody feel like they were there in
that moment? And you see a lot of other people
these days using all sorts of other elements. We you know,
joked about setting something on fire, and perhaps if we
were at my bar, I would do that. I would
set something on fire to make you actually feel that
visceral reaction of what it's like to be in that
environment at that particular time. But the goal is all
(16:38):
the components in a glass that will trigger that kind
of emotional response towards something that you look fondly upon.
Hopefully you guys, thank you, grab the spiritual, the story, open,
(17:01):
all the disappear the bullet frontier whiskey, Please drink responsibly.
Do you guys have a secretive process a thing you
(17:23):
do which is where your great ideas come from? Or
any rituals, any process tips or advice you want to share?
A mentor of my Adam Grant as professor of Wharton,
and I was talking about what's the best process, because,
to be honest, my first initial idea was let's all
get in the room, let's spit ball in the room,
and then out of that come up with ideas. And
he said, Dan, that's the wrong way to go to creative.
(17:44):
So you get people who speak the most are going
to talk, but maybe the best ideas might not come
out and you have people who are talented but quiet,
and they'll be overshadowed. So he said to me, Dan,
have everyone here. The brief the issue go. White people
can create on their own and then come in and
when you're you can make the idea better. But ideas
are not generated as a group. That ideas are generated
(18:04):
as individuals and made better as a group. So I
think that for us, that's interesting as far as the process. Yeah, Michael,
I'm curious how how your creative process works. Sure, Um,
I think that the Muse is always speaking. She speaks,
and I will say to me, it's a she. I.
To me, creativity is a ship. I believe in the muse,
harnessing the muses, about setting the creative intention, accepting the
(18:28):
fact that you will arrive at an answer to the
extent that fear is the mind killers of vanquishing fear,
just saying fear is not going to help in anyway.
It's a great reptilian tool to tell me I'm in danger,
but it's not a great way to create. So let's
just take off the table that I'm not going to
come up with something, or that my team and I
are not going to come up with something embrace the
fact that we will. All right, that's great, but you're
(18:49):
still looking at a blank canvas. And for me, the
first step of process is to mess up the canvas,
not with any intentional answer, but really more clouding it up,
confusing it. Socrates and the Dialogue, he says that all
order is preceded by chaos. Well, then chaos is amazing.
Chaos is chaos is where it all comes from. Our
(19:09):
eyes and our minds and our hearts and our everything
are designed to make order out of chaos. We look
at clouds, we see patterns. We look at you know, leaves,
we see patterns. We look at we look at things,
and we see patterns. So I think that great storytelling,
great projects, great anything should assume that we can start
by clouding it all up and except that we'll find
(19:30):
an answer and then get out there, like go for
a walk, take a shower, or live your life. Going
to be a kid on the street years ago, this
kid was looking at an oil slick gasoline and a
puddle in a parking lot, and they looked up at
me and said, it's a broken rainbow. You know it's not.
You're not gonna find the answer in a room, right,
(19:52):
like staring at the bottle of shampoo and thinking like,
damn you, shampoo, give me the answer. I'm not in advertising.
My hat off to the people who are who nail it,
I mean, who completely transformed me. But they never transformed
me by something that's really literal in any way. And
a movie doesn't transform me that way either, something that's
(20:12):
that's vague and engages me because I have to buy
in to get the answer you mentioned earlier. We all
want to be together, we all want to be engaged also,
and the great stuff we want to be surprised. I
look at what you did with Lego movie, like the
Batman movie. I look at what you did with our
office space, Michael, and everyone gets off the elevator and
they're insanely surprised by this transformative tunnel of sounds that
(20:37):
they walk through. Right, you know what you guys are doing,
like you know, breakthrough like live advertising in the middle
of shows. Right, you're breaking paradigms and rules. And I
think that's when creative stuff that we remember, the things
that stick with us and inspire us. It's usually when
you when you surprise people. But is that something when
you guys go into the process. Do you overtally think
about trying to surprise people or is that sort of
(20:58):
a lucky out some way to work. We always start
with a creative brief, right, and I'm sure you guys
all have your version of that. We obviously see. The
strategy is the idea. The creative is just an expression
of that idea. The strategy really is where the platform starts.
You know, we had Taco Bell come to us a
couple of years ago, so they wanted to get into
the breakfast business. Well, Taco Bell has no business being
(21:20):
in breakfast that's owned by McDonald's and Denny's and Starbucks
and a million other brands. So we set out a
strategy that said, we want to make this a two
horse race. If we take on McDonald's, we de facto
become number two. So that was the strategy, not your breakfast.
(21:40):
So we came with the campaign called Ronald McDonald Loves
Taco Bell Breakfast. But we found fifty Ronald McDonald's from
all over the country. We flew them into l A
all at the same time. So you got all these
guys coming off these planes and we're holding up these
cards sitting round McDonald they're all going, what that hell
that's going on? They're all checking the same hotel. What's
(22:02):
your name, Ronald McDonald? I got a room for you
next one. I'll get on a bus. Next morning. We
go to the shoot, We feed them talk about breakfast,
and we interview them. Errol Morris interviews him and they
eat Taco Bell breakfast and they go, do you like it? Yes?
What's your name Ronald McDonald? So, Ronald McDonald likes Taco
Bell breakfast. So the idea was we always do the
(22:26):
Matt Lauer effect, and the mant Allower effect to us is, well,
Matt Lauer talk about it the minute it hits the airways,
and if we can hit that, we've got something great.
And it's a really high bar and it's and in
that particular case, as soon as that went on air,
the CEO of Talk About had to get on the
plane and get to New York start doing the interviews,
(22:48):
and it just blew up everywhere. You know, number one
trending thing on Twitter and a million other places. That's
when you know you got it just right. The creative
becomes easy once the strategy is good. That case, how
do you guys come up with that idea because I'm
curious about it. Is it a group thing as an individual?
And how does it generate? It's chaos, it's messy because
you start with you got a product and you got
(23:08):
a price. So when I just we got a new
Taco Bell breakfast and I'm just put that out there,
there's nothing more boring than product price advertising. And then
just started iterate too. We got this big beast to
change people's minds, to turn left into a Taco Bell
versus right into McDonald's, get the same thing you've had
for twenty five years. It's really hard. But if we
(23:30):
just take on the biggest beast, then the product almost
doesn't matter. At first, anyway, it was just, you know,
not your usual breakfast became our mantra. As soon as
you had that, it was like, okay, I know where
you go. How many Ronald McDonald's are there in America?
Well there's at least fifty at least, and there's what,
we had a twelve year old Ronald there, which like,
(23:55):
really you did that, the poor little kid, So that's
not that bad you're eating breakfast? Yeah, exactly. They actually
thought they were coming in from mcdowald's commercial so interesting,
and that would be the naturalist and about they really
were like, let's get these guys after all these years
have been made fun of. We're happy to help you out.
(24:19):
I love the idea of working with real people too.
There's something, you know, there's something that's become so organic
and so natural. We're actually working with not not necessarily
actors and unscripted content and you just see what happens
you're in, You're you can't avoid having a surprise moment
that probably ended up in those spots. Yeah, you can
never script what you're gonna get out of real people. Yeah,
(24:41):
game changing ideas. Is that what you set out to
do or is it something that you stumble into, Is
that you just set out to come up with a
movie idea, or you set out to come up with
a new physical object, a new piece of machinery, a
new piece of art. You're saying before, how you know
(25:01):
part of the percentage of how much you're able to
dedicate to the creative versus all of the managerial stuff.
And I think that part of the question that you're
asking is how to creatives get their fix and true
creatives get their fixed by pupping the anti constantly Phineas T. Barnum.
He went out on a high. He retired three or
(25:23):
four times, and literally the biggest show he ever produced
was the last one he ever produced. There as some
people who choose to kind of rest on their laurels,
and at a certain point, obviously you've created a machine
that can crank out certain aspects of what it is
that you do. But for me, game changing is always
the fix I'm looking for. How do you know you
have a game changing idea? I think you asked for me.
(25:45):
That's very reptilian. Again, in that process of sort of
believing that it will happen, it is the hero's journey,
and and two thirds of the way and you'd start
to think, like, is this the time when it doesn't happen?
I mean, really not going to solve this puzzle. If
you're the captain of the situation and the ship is
crossing and no one believes that anything is over the
horizon anywhere, drawing straws to eat each other and all
(26:07):
that kind of a thing, that's the moment where true
creative leadership has to take hold. It wants to then say,
believe we set out on this journey, we will find
the promised Land. But in the midst of it, of course,
there have to be challenges. The strain that you're feeling
of pushing up against this wall is the fact that
you're trying to push through a wall to create a
(26:27):
door where a door didn't exist before, and that takes
unbelievable energy. And if it's not taking that energy, and
that's a warning sign you're not actually going to be creative.
If you're not feeling the stakes, you're going to be
generating something that you've done before, and that's going to
feel comfy. I look for that feeling, and then it's
a really reptilian moment, certainly to get your clients to
(26:50):
buy into that, because that is really inspiring for creative people.
But it's also really tough when you have a lot
of money at stake and a big corporation that you're
selling stuff. I think what Dan was talking out with
how you sold through this incredible idea for a film
at a vast scale. I mean, we weren't just making
a tiny little thing. You were beginning with a huge
idea that then was going to be made in this
(27:12):
very gritty way. In a way I meant it feels
like it's stop motion, could have been done at home,
but it feels like it's come alive. And in the
case like when we had no idea, we're making a
game changer. But I looked at my partners, Phil Lord
and Chris Miller. They've done a lot of game changers.
So they directed twenty one Jump Street, they had Clinded
with the Chance of Meatballs, they had the TV show
Last Man on Earth. Now they're directing Hans Solo. But
(27:35):
their whole mantra was fail fast, fail often. And when
I started my company, until my company, failure is not
an option, right, So it's totally different. It's like a
radical game changer for me because these guys said to me, Dan,
fail fast, fail off. And said, what do you mean guys,
And they said, Dan, in this building, we're going to
fail a lot. By the time it goes out into
(27:55):
the public, people think, oh, it looks easy, it's simple.
But here we're gonna fail. We're gonna support each other.
So in the Lego movie, we made a whole version
of the movie. It just failed and we threw it
away and we started over again. So I think that
mentality because I was like, what's the genius to these guys?
And I think that mantra is really important. What that
means not only failing, but they're constantly trying new things,
(28:16):
pushing it as much as they can. And the other
part is from the Lego Company. Their mantra is only
the best is good enough. So there's the failing part,
but also just the drive to the very end. All
my lego was, I gotta pull these movies out of
these directors and the pencils on the paper into the
very end, I literally to put as much as they fail.
When they're finally making it, they're putting everything into it
(28:36):
until I literally have to take it away. So it's
a weird exposition of those two things. I had an
acting teacher years and years ago when I acted guy
named Michael Howard, and he still teaches, and he's in
his nineties and he's sharp as attack. It's unbelievable. And
I remember him saying, once they're good actors out there,
really good actors. You know you got your Tom Selleck,
Harrison Ford, Like I love Harrison Ford. He's amazing. And
(28:56):
Harrison Ford, he said, has always delivered a fantastic performance.
Great for him always, he said, But then you get
a guy like de Niro or an actor like that
who doesn't always give a good performance, and it's because
they're risking val Pacino risks and he gets a bad movie.
He doesn't nail it, but he's actually really putting it
out there and taking the chance. And that's the other
(29:18):
flip side of it is you get something that just
is beyond its transformational. And the other thing is that
because you asked the question, how do you sell that
through at a certain point, how do you sell that
what you know inside and they're not understanding how do
you get that through to the client. I work with
a guy I've known him for years and his name
is Shan Low, and he started a company called the
(29:39):
Business of Being Creative. We just talked for years and
years over lunch, and then finally I just thought I
should stop harvesting all of his knowledge and I should
actually hire him, you know, and fire him from one
of like what he does. He was really incredible. But
he said at one point something I think from a
sort of a negotiation standpoint, that there comes a moment
in the conversation we have to be able to look
at the client and say you hired me based on
(29:59):
a everything that you know about what I have done.
And let me tell you something. There's gonna come a
time in this journey past which we were going to
be leaving the base camp, and creatively, you're not going
to be able to You're gonna need to stay in
the base camp because up on that mountain our beasts
and dangers and things that you do not understand, you
(30:22):
cannot accept, and you have to believe that I will
come back for you once I've worked out how to
put in the ropes and how to get to the
top and my team and I can do this, but
you can't come along. And if you think you can,
you don't need me. It's so interesting because we do
these camp fires that we talked about, and the brands
always want to come to the campfires, and the credits
(30:43):
that that's the rule. They cannot come. So you're coming
back down from the mountain is at the end, we'll
talk to you about what we created, but the brands
can't come in. So it is talking about kind of
getting out to your own creative space. You talked about
where it's going to the beach or shower, but you
have to go to that special place sometimes just to
be free and then come back and having this awesome
conte exactly. You know, it's funny. I was Chief Creative
Officer at Microsoft, did a past life managing a bunch
(31:05):
of our agencies across all these different businesses. And to
her genius, this amazing woman that I had the honor
of working for their who was the CMO Microsoft, Mitch Matthews,
she had created this chief Creative Officer role for me,
and really it's intent was to basically harvest other people's
genius creativity and protect it from us the client. Like
(31:26):
that really was my job. On a good day, I
could take folks like you and these amazing ideas in
these places that made us crazy uncomfortable, and I could
navigate around a corporation and make sure all the people
who needed to know and prove and fund and whatever
sort of knew what we were doing, but didn't get
too close to it to make it what we would
have done internally, which defeats the purpose of bringing in
(31:48):
amazing creators like yourselves. When it worked, well, it was,
but it takes you know, it's it's funny. I was
as I was listening to you guys, I was like
one of the words that it wasn't in the questions
we wrote here to talk about it all, Michael, I
think creativity is a lot about trust, Right, You have
to trust the people you're going on this journey with
to bring their crazy, to bring their expertise, to bring ideas.
(32:11):
Like the toughest part about selling good ideas, or the
biggest killer to good ideas is success, because success is Hey,
we did a campaign a couple of years ago. We
always use celebrities. You always get the product name the
first three seconds, and then you show the product, and
you show a price, and you say it's for a
limited time only. If you put all those things in
(32:34):
a couple of years ago, we were crushing it. Well,
you just took every second I had to work with
and gave me something to put in there, and success
killed any good ideas. So we have to convince our
clients that just because there was one way to do
it before, doesn't mean that's the only way to do it.
Because the corporate America is looking for rules. Corporate America
(32:56):
is built not to fail, right. That's why we have testing,
and that's why we have lots of lawyers we have
data because we don't want to mess this big six
billion dollar company up. And that's legit. But there's also
one way to really mess up big six billion dollar company,
and that's not doing anything that ever has any risk
(33:17):
to it. Yeah. I think the words that just insane
league hit up against each other and should never go together.
Predictable creativity, right to really create these successes. You've all
had the game changers. Well, we did this to the
spot past predictable with this little mini Darth Vader on
the Super Bowl years ago form Volkswagen, and we had
a dog, we had Darth Vader, we had the Imperial March.
(33:41):
We had it was a great piece of storytelling and
a protagonist and antagonist, and it blew up, and it
blew up huge fifty million views when fifty million views
was unheard of. And so the next year we had
to and so we had to dissect what and try
and do that again. I was like, this is not
(34:04):
the way to get to greatness is try and put
it on paper and figure what little pieces of that worked.
Once we got out of that mode, we're able to
free our brains up and do something new. But everybody
wanted to dissect what worked, and do you ever really
know what works? Like, can you look back at these
amazing things you've created and go, that's what made it work.
(34:27):
It's funny, I think sometimes in that moment where you've
really realized it's going to be a success, and then
it's a success. The odd thing is that in this
fuzziness of it all being a success, you really actually
appreciate the thing itself. And I find that it's five
years later when I actually see it and I think, God,
that was really right. Not everybody's telling me it's great,
(34:49):
but me. Actually we're getting to see until we go
to the next client that we're pitching and we watch
our stuff when they're watching it and go, oh, that
was really hard to pull off and it really worked.
But it's not until much later. I agree that you
realize you did something good. But I think it's hard
to create because I think a lot of it we're
talking about sparks of creativity and it's hopening amongst people.
(35:11):
It's relationships. So you can't just say, Okay, we're gonna
do that exact same thing again and hope to get
the same results. It really is about the combination of
people in a room, talking together, going off on their own,
coming back talking together. Look at sequels to movies and
the same team, but the second movie usually it's not
as good as the first. They're definitely trying to recreate
the same exact process, but you can't. Everyone's changed. Do
(35:32):
you think about the time it takes to make a film, right,
how much as each individual in that process of the
year two years, right and that arc, each of those
people is no longer the same person they were when
they started that project. And you guys may deal with it,
because then people want to do different things, right, They
want to play different roles in the process because they've
had success. And that's the danger success mean, Okay, I'm
too good to do that same role now, I want
(35:53):
to step up, but they may not be as good
in the new role as they were in the role before.
I think it's always been a challenge for us as filmmakers. Okay,
when do you promote someone or when do you let
them do what they're really good at and stay in
their lane. You're getting the Bits versus Adams conversation. To
be creative right now is to live in a golden
age of creativity. As so much of the world is
(36:15):
being machine converted to and the very tool that allows
us to do all these things is an expression of
how automated something becomes. App to animate face and make
its lips move. I mean, like that would have cost
six seven figures back in the day to do that,
and now anybody can do it. But I think then
that's when the creativity actually gets to its highest demand,
(36:37):
because to break through right now with an original idea,
whatever we call original. I mean, yes, there are seven
story arcs and you know, just a few things. I
used to know that Leonard Basket, he was a printmaker,
and you know, he said, played your eyes, played your eyes?
Why do you think God made your eyes us? It? Incredible? Incredible,
(37:01):
just talked about that. If you saw him in sixteen minutes,
he's been an interviewed and she said, God, it sounds
a little bit like Michael Jackson sounds a bit about
it goes absolutely. You know, there's Michael Jackson, there's everybody
in my stuff, my dancing, my music. How do you
think we make this stuff? And you see, I think
that I had a painting teacher. He said to me,
if you go down this path, and I didn't as
(37:22):
an artist I did, or as a creator I did
as a painter. He said, you will not make anything
original until you're in your forties. It takes that long
to exercise from your mind and your heart, all the
voices of the teachers and the parents and the experiences
and all that. Why you quit, Michael, I want to know.
I think it's actually but I think that holds true.
In my forties, I've really hit a place where when
(37:45):
I'm making creative decisions, they feel like mine, and I
really feel like I'm confident. Yeah, it's really interesting not
to hear all the voices chattering about what you ought
to do this and that. Yeah, I had the confidence
to know when you do hit that idea, you're willing
to go that all corporate America to fund or movie
studios or and here's you Just you raise something inside
(38:06):
me that actually sort of boils up, because the thing
that happens is that you'd find this voice to say
and it's acceptable to say you don't know what you're
talking about, and I do you know how to balance
the books? You don't know how to make something this way?
And I respect that you know how to balance the books.
I really do I have learned so much from people
(38:28):
who taught me about spreadsheets and businesses and black versus
red and all that kind of thing. I really, I
really respect it. I look for people as friends who
can teach me how they see the world. But I
think at a certain point, as it creative, you really
have to own the fact that they don't think this way.
Given a thousand springing hours in a room, they would
(38:48):
not come up with the idea that you came up
with in a minute. And how do you sell that?
I mean, how do you sell that? It takes you
a minute to see, distill and know it and then
is that blink moment you know what. I'm sure when
you had your lego moment, or when you were pitched
internally or heard or came up with the idea for
any one of the spots that you've you've talked about,
(39:09):
you just knew it. But not everybody does. Yeah, just
what they pay for it, exactly. It takes a little
reminder every now, and this is why we're here. It's
a really good I think it's like an important point
to note, right, Like if you're going to hire, collaborate,
partner with amazing creators, creatives right, whatever, Moniker you want
(39:31):
to be known as. It's something we almost should be
a contract upfront and we're going to learn to do
what we ask you to do. Now, we learned something
a long time ago, which was we'll have clients that
will say, here's exactly what I want. I want lots
of car I want voiceover, I want supers, I want
hard hitting, and I want to and we'll go, you
(39:53):
got it, and we're gonna show you that. You're going
to show you for that too. There's a lot of
people who to well create within a box, and there's
people who have to break out of it. Absolutely so,
and then we'll show that version and then we'll show
what we want to do. And nine times out of ten,
if you let the air out, if you let if
(40:15):
you give them what they want, they will buy the
good thing. And it's a risky thing. A lot of
people don't want to do that, but it takes all
the anxiety out of the room because we're not hey,
it's black, it's white, it's it's yours. Hey, you can
have it, but put that up against this. And by
the way, show your spouse. I so agree with you.
(40:39):
I don't know whether it's cost me more than it's
gained me. I think it's gained me more than it's
cost me. But I believe in the humility of creativity. Also,
I don't like to be the person that walks into
the room and starts peeing all over everything and says,
we know and that, and it certainly in our commission work,
part of what we're selling is the ability of the
person who's commissioning of it to experience it's the creative moment.
(41:01):
And I'm perfectly happy to step out of the way
of that and let them feel that they came up
with the idea just by commissioning it. The Pope would
want to feel that way about the Isteine Chapel, right,
and that's okay, like they should because it wouldn't have
gotten done without them, and they did inform the process
and they do have great things to bring to the
table and all of that. I find it interesting when
(41:23):
once the creative is out sort of looking back on
it in the retrospect, the value of it is diminished.
And I'm gonna tell you, the Nike spush in retrospect
just seems like a simple thing, but it came out
of something absolutely extraordinary. And yes, it took commerce and
all those things to propel it forward to a place
where it would be accepted at such a huge, huge level.
(41:43):
But somewhere along the way there was a creative. I
love collaboration. I don't want to be the person who
had the idea. I like a team based system, and
I want everybody in the team to feel like we're
all twisting the peanut butter j are together, because that's
when people are invested in the process. Kennedy was walking
around NASA and he asks a nitor, what do you
do here? And he said, I'm helping to put a
man on the moon. That's all you know, and and
(42:06):
and you know what, He's absolutely right. The clients that
are extraordinarily creative as well like a target, they're creative
for a living. They have to make a lot of
crave decisions in running their business. And we find that
we get to a point where you don't know who
the account of person is, or who the client is,
or who the creative is or the strategist is. We're
making stuff together that's really wonderful. And it's only because
(42:28):
these guys really appreciate doing extraordinary, big, risky ideas, and
part of having clients is to fundamentally believe that the
answer lies within them. That's that's where the answer is.
That they've been the ones frustrated. It's not about what
I want to build next. We have a strategist, Lindsay
Allison at our office, and when we get stuck, she says,
it's called the client. Go sit with somebody who's worked
(42:50):
in that business for the last twenty years, not in
the marketing department, maybe in the marketing department, a research
person or somebody who does operations behind the scenes for
Taco Bell. Talk about the brand, just talk about how
they got here and why it matters, what the food
quality is all about, and where you source the stuff.
You'll have a treasure trove of ideas coming out of that.
(43:15):
You know, did you spend time with kids when you
were spend time to a point where, uh, maybe I
looked a little creepy from the outside. You know, we
go to Lego Land, and we'd go backwards, so we
would go to the mini land first and then go
on the rides at the end, so we kind of
going the reverse circle. You know. There's comic con for
like comic book fans and movie fans, and then there's
(43:36):
brick Con, which is like a comic con for Lego fans,
So we would do things like that. One of the directors,
Phil Lorda, would have his birthday at the Lego store. Yeah,
so we spent plenty of time with kids, and then
we start doing these community events where we have kids
from underprivileged schools come in and we teach them about
how do we make these Lego movies? So Will Arnett
would come in and he teach them how do you
(43:57):
voice project be it? It's actually really hard to be
Lego Batman the voice because he loses his voice after
four hours. He talks about that, and we had someone
else talk about master building. What does it like to
actually build out a Lego um. So, yeah, we definitely
talked to kids. And it's a way for us to
remember who we're making the movies for, because I think
that's how dangerous worked in our little bubble making these products,
and then we forget it's actually for these kids. But
(44:19):
I also felt it was for adults, Like I watched
that movie and loved every minute of it and it
was silly is crazy. We're hoping Miken, we tap the
kid inside you. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Well,
that's not too far down. I think the beauty of
that film is and and I think so much great
creativity is that everyone wants to be five at heart,
giving all of us permission for a moment to experience
(44:42):
a piece of art, a tunnel of sound, a lego film,
right to just get out of your head for a
moment and get to play, you know. I think that's
the luxury that great creators and creatives give us. A
mile and had the poem and I'm gonna hack it up,
but it says when I was one, I had just begun.
When I was two, I was hardly knew. When I
was three, I could bare least. When I was four,
it was not much more. When I was five, I
(45:02):
was barely alive. And now I'm six, And that means
I'm clever and I shall stay six forever and ever.
I think that is an amazing thought. To get to
our last question, our show is called tagline. I'd love
to hear from this creative group of people here, what's
your tagline? You want to start? Mike, you do this
(45:23):
for a living, Yeah, dude, change the game. So there's
this great scene in Moneyball where someone said, it's not
enough to win the game. We have to change it.
And if you think about business and you think about marketing,
think about what we do for a living. It's a game.
And if you're doing it well, you're winning, but you
also can lose. And you also have overlords, and you
also have these competitors and clients, and you have strategies
(45:45):
and you have tactics, and you have executions and all
these things that are very game like. Obviously because of
the business that we're in, because we do trade employees.
If we're not changing the game, we can't win it.
So we do that and we think about that. That
that lives through HR and PR in account management and
creative and everywhere. We have to be changing the game.
(46:09):
My tagline is create an environment for others to succeed.
I truly believe company culture affects the final product. And
so in the case of the Lego movie, our group
was subversive. They were funny in their own way. There
was a lot of heart, It was chaotic, and it
was fast paced. And so when you watch the movie
and you get to know the people who actually worked
on the movie, our office environment was very much like
(46:32):
the movie itself. So people aren't surprised that people who
work with us go okay, that's them, because that's the
way they worked. So that's part of it. The other
part is we're all in service business, no matter what,
we're serving other people. For me, that tagline just reminds
me it's not about me, it's about created mine for
others to succeed, because if they succeed, you'll succeed as well.
So just remembering we're all stewards in a certain way,
and the brand could be the steward. You could be
(46:53):
stuarting the brand, you could be stuarding the client. But
it's just a good reminder for me. That's awesome. It is. Yeah,
it's rarely the great idea has happened alone in some
magical bubble where it just happens in an instant right,
and it is such a collaborative process, in such an
organic process. How about you, Michael, what's your tagline? Um?
My tagline would be the vaguer the watchword, the greater
(47:15):
the prophet, And it's it's actually it's not actually mine.
It's a piece of a quote by one of my
favorite authors, Nikos Kazinsakas, who wrote over the Greek and
Last Temptation of Christ, and he's amazing guy. And the
full quote is did you play with Lego so much?
(47:35):
I played with Lego. The greatest gift that a prophet
can give to man and let's say women also is
a watchword. And the vaguer the watchword, the greater the prophet.
That informs for me so much of what I try
to do, which is to not spell out every little thing.
It's to leave the space in between. It's to leave
(47:55):
the breath in between the words, to allow the human
eye and heart to fill in the blanks and bring
to the table that thing which invests them in a story.
Because people want to belong that's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah,
I think creative it is a sense of belonging when
you enjoy an idea someone created for you and you
get to share in it and share with others now
and it's a collective process. I want to thank you guys.
(48:17):
This was an amazing conversation. I really enjoyed it. I
want to thank our friends at Bullet for bringing us
together and inspiring another creation creative conversation. Yes, friends on
the frontier of creativity. Thank you for showing up. I'm
gonna take away four words from this, maybe a freezing
three words. I think what I learned today was have
no fear. I love that you find your reptilian moment,
(48:39):
which I'm going to quote you on, which is awesome.
Don't be afraid to fail, and failure is part of
the process. The other two words trust and surprise, And
I think when those things come together, creativity happen. So
I want to thank you for inspiring all of us
here at Tagline today. Thank you guys, thanks for having us.
(49:01):
You've been listening to 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 group MS Rob Norman
returns to host hanv the CEO, Paul Wilmington's Snap CEO
(49:23):
Vivian Rosenthal, and Deep Focus lead Ian Schaefer as they
discussed creativity and the feed. Catch all our episodes at
I Heart Radio slash Tagline in the I Heart radio
app or wherever you get your podcasts. YEA audiation
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