August 30, 2023 • 20 mins
Join Brett Marchand, CEO of Plus Company, on this episode of Partners in Possibilities. Take a retrospective journey through our conversations with the thought leaders of innovative, award-winning campaigns and catch a glimpse of the future with invaluable insights on AI technology advancements and improvements to our daily lives. Enjoy this Season 1 Spotlight on our best and brightest moments from our episodes so far. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes that promise more of Partners in Possibilities' insightful content!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
In an ever changing world.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
That's all about stain connected, building connections and seeing where
the next collaboration takes a marketing campaign from an initial
brief to the follow through what paths are going to
make a campaign success more than a possibility. Hi, I'm
Brett marschand CEO of Plus Company. This is Partners and Possibility.
(00:23):
This season, we've taken a journey through the realms of marketing,
exploring everything from the ingenious Super Bowl Pregrain series to
the unforgettable award winning Cheatle and Cheetle campaign. We've also
delved into the exciting world of AI integrations that are
reshaping our daily lives at work and at home, from
game changing strategies to innovative ideas. Here are some of
(00:44):
the most inspiring and insightful moments of the season. Let's
dive in. First up, we reflect on the ingenious, multi
award winning Cheetos campaign Cheatle and Cheatle. So you've got
this giant hand. It's a statue of a hand that's
got the actual cheetle on the fingers. It's in Cheeta Alberta.
(01:04):
By the way, probably helpful that it's spelt Cheatle the
same way as Don Cheatle.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
We did think about the Cheetle trinity of Don Chiel
Cheetle statue in Cheetah, Alberta, but it was a bit
of a moonshot to be honest. And again, you know,
sometimes I think as Canadian marketers, we need to give
ourselves permission to dream that someone like you know, war Machine,
Don Cheetle Academy or Don Cheetle would actually interact and
(01:28):
lo and behold, Jimmy Kimble kind of broke he that
for us, and I think that again that's a testament
to the cultural residents of the product and the execution
that truly an earned fashion, no brain integration, no paid partnership.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
It showed up on Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Do you know that the name of the Cheeto powder
like that orange dust, is called Cheatle.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I do know that, but it's spelled differently to the tea.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
This is a sculpture that they have in a gittle
I post for that.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
There's eighty three people.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And they all gathered around to look at this, which
is on tour right now.
Speaker 6 (02:05):
You know, amazing, isn't it. It's it's a masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
It really is what it is.
Speaker 6 (02:12):
I hope that makes it to your house.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
I mean that would be if I were to commission
a replica of that, would you put it on your lawn.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
When you came by?
Speaker 6 (02:20):
Yeah, rightly to run back.
Speaker 7 (02:26):
It was just a really brilliantly simple idea to get
this thought across. But it allowed the consumers to really
take it, take it on and and showcase it to
other people as almost something they discovered versus you know,
receiving an AD and so I think that's what made
(02:48):
it so so unique.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I know when we talked about this initially internally you
were like, does it need a big logo? Doing everyone
need to know?
Speaker 8 (02:55):
And you know, with your team's guidance, we all had
trust that this notion of a hand Lina Cheeto and
the cheatle was iconic enough and like, not many brands
can do that. Not many brands have the cachet to
be able to go out with something like that unbranded
and get instant kind of credit credit for it. It's
amazing to see Canada showing up on the on the
(03:17):
global stage and in a way that like it's probably
leading even the US team in terms of like this
type of activity and you know we're getting we've gotten
trophies and attention from all the kind of big international
shows both in the PR world like PR Week and
UH and the Sabers, but also like one show Cleo's
DNA D things like that. But what justin I was
(03:40):
talking earlier, like, what's really interesting is that it's not
just getting recognized in like a PR stream, but it's
it's really getting recognized in out of home, in brand
experience and activation, in regional effectiveness, return on budget, you know,
overcoming challenges, things like that, which you know, I think
is really interesting in credit to the project.
Speaker 7 (04:01):
You never kind of set out to win an award,
and I think if if that had been the brief,
we wouldn't have gotten to such a strong idea.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
And listen, I talked to a lot of clients often,
and I used to be a client for a long time,
who say that awards don't matter and they're not the
be all and end. Ahle, let's be honest. But you know,
I always say to marketers, well, if your campaigns aren't
winning in international shows, that means they are not standing
out against a whole bunch of other work, which means
(04:28):
they are not standing out in a very very crowded media,
social media, online market right now, which means they're not
getting noticed. So you know, if you win, you win
the kinds of awards that this campaign's winning. It means
that people are recognizing it and it's standing out, which
has got to help, you know, the brand and sales
and a bunch of other things. Next, how has Super
(04:50):
Bowl Winner helped this campaign score on a Super Bowl classic?
Speaker 9 (04:56):
As the team was trying to solve for how do
we have Super Bowl? How do we how do we
enter the surround without paying big dollars for an in
game ad, this idea of pregraining came about, and the
insight behind that is all about the day of Super
Bowl is the highest grain consumption day of the year,
(05:18):
but in liquid form Hops Barley mal you get, you
get the idea, Yeah, there you go. And so we thought, well,
wait a minute, we are an iconic one hundred and
forty five year old brand that stands for whole grain goodness.
How do we enter this grain consumption moment? And hence
(05:39):
pre graining for the Big Game was born. So that's
kind of the genesis of the campaign. I think sometimes
within our industry there's this bias for new and reinventing
the wheel. In this case, I think we did absolutely
the right thing, which was take something that we had
(06:01):
already begun to build and make it even stronger.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
There's an interesting point that you just made, Kristin, which
is you build equity over time, right, And so often,
both on the client side and on the agency side,
you want to move on to the next idea and
start from scratch and scrap whatever you've done. But there's
real value, I think, because when consumers don't have to
work so hard to figure out, you know, who is
(06:26):
it and what are you talking about, then they can
really absorb, you know, what the new idea or the
new product or whatever it is, and it's actually easier
to be entertaining instead of harder to be entertaining.
Speaker 10 (06:39):
You know, we would hand an idea to Eli and
he would just run with it. He would just dive
in and indulge, and of course you would say the
lines that we wrote him.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
But then he also was he's a great improv actor.
Speaker 10 (06:54):
In one of the little pieces, he or one of
the scenarios, he jumps on this large oversized canister of
quicker oads and as he lands on it, the whole
thing collapses and he falls to the ground, no crash pad,
no stunt man or anything, and I go, Eli, thanks
for doing that, really really appreciate it. And he was like,
(07:16):
you know, all day you've been giving me notes about
how how to lift up my spoon, how.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
To look in the mirror, and then the one time.
Speaker 10 (07:24):
I jump and fall in my butt, you're like, perfect done.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Let's reflect on how human creativity is integrating into our
daily lives.
Speaker 11 (07:40):
The speed and adoption of chat GPT is unlike anything
we've ever seen.
Speaker 6 (07:47):
It's easy enough. My parents are using it.
Speaker 8 (07:50):
You know.
Speaker 11 (07:51):
It's that easy that if you know how to text
on a phone, you can use chat GPT. For things
to reach critical mass and have that rate of adoption,
they have to have a simple, clean, easy interface, which
is really what chat GPT allowed to happen. And it
felt like it was overnight, even though it took years
(08:12):
and years obviously to build.
Speaker 12 (08:16):
I always get the question how is mechanism using AI
And a lot of the times my answer is in
ways that you'll never see, we're using it as a
back end tool to help make our brief stronger so
we can question on our own thoughts better we're using
it in a way to analyze data faster. Humans are
not great at looking at large data sets and making
(08:36):
inferences very quickly. We take a lot of time to
be trained on that data, to look through a thousand
line spreadsheet and get to a specific idea. But computers
are really good at that. They're really good at analyzing
really large amounts of data. And so one of the
things that we're trying to do inside of our agency,
inside A plus company is look for opportunities where AI
(08:57):
can be better at doing computer things allow us to
have more opportunities for humans to do the things that
humans are good at, like presenting.
Speaker 11 (09:06):
The current opportunities are really in assisting creatives. You know,
AI has become the new blank page, right you get
a kickstart in your walking or shower concept.
Speaker 6 (09:21):
It speeds things up.
Speaker 11 (09:22):
So you know, it's not good enough that you're using it,
but it's good enough that it cracks.
Speaker 6 (09:30):
Writer's block or art director's block.
Speaker 11 (09:33):
It gives you something to push off of, and so
that's the current real use is that it's a place
to start.
Speaker 12 (09:42):
When you're a copywriter as a profession, you have that taste,
you have that innate ability to see something in front
of you and know that's good. And I don't know
if computers know something is good. They just know that
it was selected over fifty one percent of the time
as the correct answer. It don't understand why. It just
knows mathematically that's what it should choose. If you have
(10:04):
an open mindset, if you're curious, if you like learning
new things and new technologies, then you have nothing to
worry about and you will only be more efficient at
your work. You will only be able to optimize your
work better. As these technologies start to come online, and
as companies start to figure out ways that they can
implement them correctly and ethically, then I don't think anyone
(10:25):
should be concerned. My favorite quote that people are throwing
around is you won't lose your job to AI. You're
going to lose your job to somebody using AI. And
I think that's totally true.
Speaker 11 (10:37):
We're creating sort of that center of excellence for AI,
but ultimately it's going to touch every aspect in every department.
Speaker 6 (10:44):
It's almost when you used to.
Speaker 11 (10:45):
Have when you used to think of an agency as
just digital or just social, and all of a sudden,
you're like, well, everything's everything lives on social platforms or
everything's digital.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
Now that's teams. What's happening with AI? Where it's is it?
Speaker 11 (11:03):
Is it going to be a department? Now it's going
to be woven into every single department in how that
department is going to use AI to you know, save time,
deliver you know, better quality, take on more clients or
more projects.
Speaker 6 (11:18):
So it's going to be in kind.
Speaker 11 (11:21):
Of across every you know, service line, but it's going
to be used in different ways.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Check out clips from our conversation on the powerful partnership
with AI and data.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
We know about all the challenges to filling out that story.
Data that exists behind wall gardens, privacy regulations, you know,
low quality telemetry, dis missing pieces, AI or generitve AI
can can solve the puzzle and predict what that journey
looks like. And now we have a building block to
(11:56):
be able to tell all of these combined stories about audience,
creative media, timing, different KPIs the journey through the funnel,
and do so in a way that allows us to
build technologies that answer the questions we have today based
on how mature we are as data and AI sort
of organizations, but also answer the questions of the future
(12:19):
that we don't know because we've built it around the customer,
who's always going to be the building block of the marketplace.
Speaker 13 (12:29):
The first thing you're going to see is a lot
of discomfort. The folks who are experienced in the field
are going to say, I would never ever do that.
And it's going to take a moment, I think, for
everybody to eat a piece of humble pie or just
take a breath and say, Okay, maybe I need to
try something a little bit different.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
So there's going to be a lot.
Speaker 13 (12:46):
Of discomfort at first, but I do think over time,
what it's going to do is change the way in
which we fundamentally make decisions. We're going to be able
to your earlier bread around. You know, half advertising works
we've just done which half. There might be a point
where in fact that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. We
(13:07):
don't necessarily know what it does. We just need to
know that it is working. So how do we think
differently about the structures that we have in place, the
way in which we make decisions and being okay with
a little bit of risk.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
You know, I remember that tension as a client. Okay,
that is a really interesting idea, but oh my god,
that's risky. You and this idea of being able to
test and learn and use data to verify that it's
going to work. You know, it's not going to be
a waste of money. It can be incredibly empowering, I
think for both sides.
Speaker 13 (13:40):
Right, and then even if there's a situation where it's
truly first to market and there's not really a way
that we can reliably predict our scenario plan around it. Okay,
so we'll do this over here, and then everything else
that we're doing, we're going to make sure in scenario
plan and predict that we're going to make sure that
this stuff is eighty percent or ninety percent of what
we're doing over here get you your goals. So rest
(14:01):
assured this part over here that we can absolutely, you know,
predict with a lot of assuredness is going to get
you where.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
You need to go.
Speaker 13 (14:08):
So we can actually take these dollars and try something new.
And it's just greedy. So there's you know, there's sort
of a sense of common security emphasides.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Let's review our conversation on the value of diverse perspectives
to drive innovation in the world of marketing.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Any company, any organization is going to have to step
up the game around inclusion. How do I communicate to
you that I do value inclusion. Well, in the past,
I would say that Commanis could kind of get away
with bare minimum, you know, like, yeah, we just got
(14:49):
to show something here and we're good. But that's not
good enough today. Today it has to be placed with
a real stake behind It ables you to further broadening
the discussion around who is represented in the United States today.
It's a sign is this ideal, this is this notion
(15:11):
that this is backlash? It's too woke. Ask yourself, what
would happened if when did that? You do a campaign
where there is no diversity in it? Right, like, just
if you visualize it, It's simply about where the world
is heading. These are forces that no one person, no
one country can stop. These are massive forces that have
(15:37):
been in the making for decades. All new ideas are
really only just combinations of existing ideas, something that already
exists with some other concepts. Through that we create something new.
In my book, I talk about all kinds examples like this.
The opening example is around an architect that the sciences
(16:00):
building in Harara, the capital Zimbabwe, which uses ninety percent
less energy than any other building around it, and the
way he did it was but this was by drawing
from designed principles the termites had when they build their
mounds of the African savannah. So you combine into concepts
and creating a new one. If the ideas that you
combine are diverse, if they're very different, if they're unexpected,
(16:24):
well then you greatly enhance the probability that the new
idea is innovative. This is where we get some a
concept like termites and architecture, And the way it works
is this, whenever you approach any given problem or opportunity,
there's all kinds of assumptions that you have built in
as to what you need to do to pursue those
(16:44):
and you may not even reflect upon it, right, and
so you don't really examine what a solution could look
like outside of that assumption. So, for instance, let's say
that you try to come up with a new restaurant.
More assumptions that you might make about that is that
the restaurant should serve food, because obviously, what else does
the restaurant do serves food? So you don't even question
(17:05):
that assumption. Reversing of assumptions means that you list out
some of those assumptions and then you reverse those and
see how you can make that idea happen. Anyway, what
would a restaurant look like if you can't serve food
right and all of a sudden, now a new whole
host of new ideas.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Might Most recently, we discussed the groundbreaking Sick Kids Versus
campaign that reminded us all that sickness does not equal weakness.
Speaker 14 (17:34):
Equally important is the authenticity of the campaign, because you
can't make this stuff up, or if you do, you're
telling the wrong story. And when you had parents applauding
the creative and people sort of openly weeping every single
(17:59):
you know, creative piece that we would put out for them,
it was genuine and authentic. And one of the things
we do with sick kids is we make sure that
every piece of creative is tested against sort of the
parent reaction to it. The authenticity will easily get exposed
(18:22):
if you're not really telling the true story comes out exactly.
The one story that we featured on Grace, who was
one of the twenty percent of children who didn't overcome
her or cancer diagnosis. It just so happens that the
(18:42):
family was friends with Hailey Wickenheizer, captain of the women's
hockey team and a wonderfully decent person who was training
to be a doctor actually herself. And it just so
happens that Haley was best friends with Ryan Ren and
Ryan saw the work and he all of a sudden said,
(19:03):
tell me how I can help. You know, every time
we would put a new ad out there, Ryan would
be sending it to his network. And it wasn't before long.
I was getting donations in from places like Iceland and
Korea and you know, French Polynesia. And I remember thinking,
(19:24):
this is amazing, this is transformative. I hope they have
the guts to do it, and you have the guts
to do it. You have to have the courage of
your convictions. And with Cassette's help, we did a social
audit of the reaction around the campaign, and for every
negative comment, there were over ten thousand that were positive.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Listen, it was copied a lot and a lot of
other people who tried to do something similar, not to
the same effect. Obviously, it's won lots of awards internationally.
As you know, I can't I mean want everything, and
I think in many ways it's actually fundamentally changed people's
point of view about how to do work rate cause advertising. Yes,
you should be very proud of Thank you for listening
(20:06):
to partners and Possibility. We hope you've enjoyed this retrospective
episode where we've revisited some of the season's brightest sparks.
Stay tuned for more insights and inspiration on upcoming episodes
as we continue to explore the ever evolving landscapes of
marketing and innovation. Until next time, keep pushing boundaries, seeking
new horizons, and finding those extraordinary possibilities in every partnership
In an ever changing world.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
That's all about stain connected, building connections and seeing where
the next collaboration takes a marketing campaign from an initial
brief to the follow through what paths are going to
make a campaign success more than a possibility. Hi, I'm
Brett marschand CEO of Plus Company. This is Partners and Possibility.
(00:23):
This season, we've taken a journey through the realms of marketing,
exploring everything from the ingenious Super Bowl Pregrain series to
the unforgettable award winning Cheatle and Cheetle campaign. We've also
delved into the exciting world of AI integrations that are
reshaping our daily lives at work and at home, from
game changing strategies to innovative ideas. Here are some of
(00:44):
the most inspiring and insightful moments of the season. Let's
dive in. First up, we reflect on the ingenious, multi
award winning Cheetos campaign Cheatle and Cheatle. So you've got
this giant hand. It's a statue of a hand that's
got the actual cheetle on the fingers. It's in Cheeta Alberta.
(01:04):
By the way, probably helpful that it's spelt Cheatle the
same way as Don Cheatle.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
We did think about the Cheetle trinity of Don Chiel
Cheetle statue in Cheetah, Alberta, but it was a bit
of a moonshot to be honest. And again, you know,
sometimes I think as Canadian marketers, we need to give
ourselves permission to dream that someone like you know, war Machine,
Don Cheetle Academy or Don Cheetle would actually interact and
(01:28):
lo and behold, Jimmy Kimble kind of broke he that
for us, and I think that again that's a testament
to the cultural residents of the product and the execution
that truly an earned fashion, no brain integration, no paid partnership.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
It showed up on Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Do you know that the name of the Cheeto powder
like that orange dust, is called Cheatle.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I do know that, but it's spelled differently to the tea.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
This is a sculpture that they have in a gittle
I post for that.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
There's eighty three people.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
And they all gathered around to look at this, which
is on tour right now.
Speaker 6 (02:05):
You know, amazing, isn't it. It's it's a masterpiece.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
It really is what it is.
Speaker 6 (02:12):
I hope that makes it to your house.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
I mean that would be if I were to commission
a replica of that, would you put it on your lawn.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
When you came by?
Speaker 6 (02:20):
Yeah, rightly to run back.
Speaker 7 (02:26):
It was just a really brilliantly simple idea to get
this thought across. But it allowed the consumers to really
take it, take it on and and showcase it to
other people as almost something they discovered versus you know,
receiving an AD and so I think that's what made
(02:48):
it so so unique.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I know when we talked about this initially internally you
were like, does it need a big logo? Doing everyone
need to know?
Speaker 8 (02:55):
And you know, with your team's guidance, we all had
trust that this notion of a hand Lina Cheeto and
the cheatle was iconic enough and like, not many brands
can do that. Not many brands have the cachet to
be able to go out with something like that unbranded
and get instant kind of credit credit for it. It's
amazing to see Canada showing up on the on the
(03:17):
global stage and in a way that like it's probably
leading even the US team in terms of like this
type of activity and you know we're getting we've gotten
trophies and attention from all the kind of big international
shows both in the PR world like PR Week and
UH and the Sabers, but also like one show Cleo's
DNA D things like that. But what justin I was
(03:40):
talking earlier, like, what's really interesting is that it's not
just getting recognized in like a PR stream, but it's
it's really getting recognized in out of home, in brand
experience and activation, in regional effectiveness, return on budget, you know,
overcoming challenges, things like that, which you know, I think
is really interesting in credit to the project.
Speaker 7 (04:01):
You never kind of set out to win an award,
and I think if if that had been the brief,
we wouldn't have gotten to such a strong idea.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
And listen, I talked to a lot of clients often,
and I used to be a client for a long time,
who say that awards don't matter and they're not the
be all and end. Ahle, let's be honest. But you know,
I always say to marketers, well, if your campaigns aren't
winning in international shows, that means they are not standing
out against a whole bunch of other work, which means
(04:28):
they are not standing out in a very very crowded media,
social media, online market right now, which means they're not
getting noticed. So you know, if you win, you win
the kinds of awards that this campaign's winning. It means
that people are recognizing it and it's standing out, which
has got to help, you know, the brand and sales
and a bunch of other things. Next, how has Super
(04:50):
Bowl Winner helped this campaign score on a Super Bowl classic?
Speaker 9 (04:56):
As the team was trying to solve for how do
we have Super Bowl? How do we how do we
enter the surround without paying big dollars for an in
game ad, this idea of pregraining came about, and the
insight behind that is all about the day of Super
Bowl is the highest grain consumption day of the year,
(05:18):
but in liquid form Hops Barley mal you get, you
get the idea, Yeah, there you go. And so we thought, well,
wait a minute, we are an iconic one hundred and
forty five year old brand that stands for whole grain goodness.
How do we enter this grain consumption moment? And hence
(05:39):
pre graining for the Big Game was born. So that's
kind of the genesis of the campaign. I think sometimes
within our industry there's this bias for new and reinventing
the wheel. In this case, I think we did absolutely
the right thing, which was take something that we had
(06:01):
already begun to build and make it even stronger.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
There's an interesting point that you just made, Kristin, which
is you build equity over time, right, And so often,
both on the client side and on the agency side,
you want to move on to the next idea and
start from scratch and scrap whatever you've done. But there's
real value, I think, because when consumers don't have to
work so hard to figure out, you know, who is
(06:26):
it and what are you talking about, then they can
really absorb, you know, what the new idea or the
new product or whatever it is, and it's actually easier
to be entertaining instead of harder to be entertaining.
Speaker 10 (06:39):
You know, we would hand an idea to Eli and
he would just run with it. He would just dive
in and indulge, and of course you would say the
lines that we wrote him.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
But then he also was he's a great improv actor.
Speaker 10 (06:54):
In one of the little pieces, he or one of
the scenarios, he jumps on this large oversized canister of
quicker oads and as he lands on it, the whole
thing collapses and he falls to the ground, no crash pad,
no stunt man or anything, and I go, Eli, thanks
for doing that, really really appreciate it. And he was like,
(07:16):
you know, all day you've been giving me notes about
how how to lift up my spoon, how.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
To look in the mirror, and then the one time.
Speaker 10 (07:24):
I jump and fall in my butt, you're like, perfect done.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Let's reflect on how human creativity is integrating into our
daily lives.
Speaker 11 (07:40):
The speed and adoption of chat GPT is unlike anything
we've ever seen.
Speaker 6 (07:47):
It's easy enough. My parents are using it.
Speaker 8 (07:50):
You know.
Speaker 11 (07:51):
It's that easy that if you know how to text
on a phone, you can use chat GPT. For things
to reach critical mass and have that rate of adoption,
they have to have a simple, clean, easy interface, which
is really what chat GPT allowed to happen. And it
felt like it was overnight, even though it took years
(08:12):
and years obviously to build.
Speaker 12 (08:16):
I always get the question how is mechanism using AI
And a lot of the times my answer is in
ways that you'll never see, we're using it as a
back end tool to help make our brief stronger so
we can question on our own thoughts better we're using
it in a way to analyze data faster. Humans are
not great at looking at large data sets and making
(08:36):
inferences very quickly. We take a lot of time to
be trained on that data, to look through a thousand
line spreadsheet and get to a specific idea. But computers
are really good at that. They're really good at analyzing
really large amounts of data. And so one of the
things that we're trying to do inside of our agency,
inside A plus company is look for opportunities where AI
(08:57):
can be better at doing computer things allow us to
have more opportunities for humans to do the things that
humans are good at, like presenting.
Speaker 11 (09:06):
The current opportunities are really in assisting creatives. You know,
AI has become the new blank page, right you get
a kickstart in your walking or shower concept.
Speaker 6 (09:21):
It speeds things up.
Speaker 11 (09:22):
So you know, it's not good enough that you're using it,
but it's good enough that it cracks.
Speaker 6 (09:30):
Writer's block or art director's block.
Speaker 11 (09:33):
It gives you something to push off of, and so
that's the current real use is that it's a place
to start.
Speaker 12 (09:42):
When you're a copywriter as a profession, you have that taste,
you have that innate ability to see something in front
of you and know that's good. And I don't know
if computers know something is good. They just know that
it was selected over fifty one percent of the time
as the correct answer. It don't understand why. It just
knows mathematically that's what it should choose. If you have
(10:04):
an open mindset, if you're curious, if you like learning
new things and new technologies, then you have nothing to
worry about and you will only be more efficient at
your work. You will only be able to optimize your
work better. As these technologies start to come online, and
as companies start to figure out ways that they can
implement them correctly and ethically, then I don't think anyone
(10:25):
should be concerned. My favorite quote that people are throwing
around is you won't lose your job to AI. You're
going to lose your job to somebody using AI. And
I think that's totally true.
Speaker 11 (10:37):
We're creating sort of that center of excellence for AI,
but ultimately it's going to touch every aspect in every department.
Speaker 6 (10:44):
It's almost when you used to.
Speaker 11 (10:45):
Have when you used to think of an agency as
just digital or just social, and all of a sudden,
you're like, well, everything's everything lives on social platforms or
everything's digital.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
Now that's teams. What's happening with AI? Where it's is it?
Speaker 11 (11:03):
Is it going to be a department? Now it's going
to be woven into every single department in how that
department is going to use AI to you know, save time,
deliver you know, better quality, take on more clients or
more projects.
Speaker 6 (11:18):
So it's going to be in kind.
Speaker 11 (11:21):
Of across every you know, service line, but it's going
to be used in different ways.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Check out clips from our conversation on the powerful partnership
with AI and data.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
We know about all the challenges to filling out that story.
Data that exists behind wall gardens, privacy regulations, you know,
low quality telemetry, dis missing pieces, AI or generitve AI
can can solve the puzzle and predict what that journey
looks like. And now we have a building block to
(11:56):
be able to tell all of these combined stories about audience,
creative media, timing, different KPIs the journey through the funnel,
and do so in a way that allows us to
build technologies that answer the questions we have today based
on how mature we are as data and AI sort
of organizations, but also answer the questions of the future
(12:19):
that we don't know because we've built it around the customer,
who's always going to be the building block of the marketplace.
Speaker 13 (12:29):
The first thing you're going to see is a lot
of discomfort. The folks who are experienced in the field
are going to say, I would never ever do that.
And it's going to take a moment, I think, for
everybody to eat a piece of humble pie or just
take a breath and say, Okay, maybe I need to
try something a little bit different.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
So there's going to be a lot.
Speaker 13 (12:46):
Of discomfort at first, but I do think over time,
what it's going to do is change the way in
which we fundamentally make decisions. We're going to be able
to your earlier bread around. You know, half advertising works
we've just done which half. There might be a point
where in fact that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. We
(13:07):
don't necessarily know what it does. We just need to
know that it is working. So how do we think
differently about the structures that we have in place, the
way in which we make decisions and being okay with
a little bit of risk.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
You know, I remember that tension as a client. Okay,
that is a really interesting idea, but oh my god,
that's risky. You and this idea of being able to
test and learn and use data to verify that it's
going to work. You know, it's not going to be
a waste of money. It can be incredibly empowering, I
think for both sides.
Speaker 13 (13:40):
Right, and then even if there's a situation where it's
truly first to market and there's not really a way
that we can reliably predict our scenario plan around it. Okay,
so we'll do this over here, and then everything else
that we're doing, we're going to make sure in scenario
plan and predict that we're going to make sure that
this stuff is eighty percent or ninety percent of what
we're doing over here get you your goals. So rest
(14:01):
assured this part over here that we can absolutely, you know,
predict with a lot of assuredness is going to get
you where.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
You need to go.
Speaker 13 (14:08):
So we can actually take these dollars and try something new.
And it's just greedy. So there's you know, there's sort
of a sense of common security emphasides.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Let's review our conversation on the value of diverse perspectives
to drive innovation in the world of marketing.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Any company, any organization is going to have to step
up the game around inclusion. How do I communicate to
you that I do value inclusion. Well, in the past,
I would say that Commanis could kind of get away
with bare minimum, you know, like, yeah, we just got
(14:49):
to show something here and we're good. But that's not
good enough today. Today it has to be placed with
a real stake behind It ables you to further broadening
the discussion around who is represented in the United States today.
It's a sign is this ideal, this is this notion
(15:11):
that this is backlash? It's too woke. Ask yourself, what
would happened if when did that? You do a campaign
where there is no diversity in it? Right, like, just
if you visualize it, It's simply about where the world
is heading. These are forces that no one person, no
one country can stop. These are massive forces that have
(15:37):
been in the making for decades. All new ideas are
really only just combinations of existing ideas, something that already
exists with some other concepts. Through that we create something new.
In my book, I talk about all kinds examples like this.
The opening example is around an architect that the sciences
(16:00):
building in Harara, the capital Zimbabwe, which uses ninety percent
less energy than any other building around it, and the
way he did it was but this was by drawing
from designed principles the termites had when they build their
mounds of the African savannah. So you combine into concepts
and creating a new one. If the ideas that you
combine are diverse, if they're very different, if they're unexpected,
(16:24):
well then you greatly enhance the probability that the new
idea is innovative. This is where we get some a
concept like termites and architecture, And the way it works
is this, whenever you approach any given problem or opportunity,
there's all kinds of assumptions that you have built in
as to what you need to do to pursue those
(16:44):
and you may not even reflect upon it, right, and
so you don't really examine what a solution could look
like outside of that assumption. So, for instance, let's say
that you try to come up with a new restaurant.
More assumptions that you might make about that is that
the restaurant should serve food, because obviously, what else does
the restaurant do serves food? So you don't even question
(17:05):
that assumption. Reversing of assumptions means that you list out
some of those assumptions and then you reverse those and
see how you can make that idea happen. Anyway, what
would a restaurant look like if you can't serve food
right and all of a sudden, now a new whole
host of new ideas.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Might Most recently, we discussed the groundbreaking Sick Kids Versus
campaign that reminded us all that sickness does not equal weakness.
Speaker 14 (17:34):
Equally important is the authenticity of the campaign, because you
can't make this stuff up, or if you do, you're
telling the wrong story. And when you had parents applauding
the creative and people sort of openly weeping every single
(17:59):
you know, creative piece that we would put out for them,
it was genuine and authentic. And one of the things
we do with sick kids is we make sure that
every piece of creative is tested against sort of the
parent reaction to it. The authenticity will easily get exposed
(18:22):
if you're not really telling the true story comes out exactly.
The one story that we featured on Grace, who was
one of the twenty percent of children who didn't overcome
her or cancer diagnosis. It just so happens that the
(18:42):
family was friends with Hailey Wickenheizer, captain of the women's
hockey team and a wonderfully decent person who was training
to be a doctor actually herself. And it just so
happens that Haley was best friends with Ryan Ren and
Ryan saw the work and he all of a sudden said,
(19:03):
tell me how I can help. You know, every time
we would put a new ad out there, Ryan would
be sending it to his network. And it wasn't before long.
I was getting donations in from places like Iceland and
Korea and you know, French Polynesia. And I remember thinking,
(19:24):
this is amazing, this is transformative. I hope they have
the guts to do it, and you have the guts
to do it. You have to have the courage of
your convictions. And with Cassette's help, we did a social
audit of the reaction around the campaign, and for every
negative comment, there were over ten thousand that were positive.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Listen, it was copied a lot and a lot of
other people who tried to do something similar, not to
the same effect. Obviously, it's won lots of awards internationally.
As you know, I can't I mean want everything, and
I think in many ways it's actually fundamentally changed people's
point of view about how to do work rate cause advertising. Yes,
you should be very proud of Thank you for listening
(20:06):
to partners and Possibility. We hope you've enjoyed this retrospective
episode where we've revisited some of the season's brightest sparks.
Stay tuned for more insights and inspiration on upcoming episodes
as we continue to explore the ever evolving landscapes of
marketing and innovation. Until next time, keep pushing boundaries, seeking
new horizons, and finding those extraordinary possibilities in every partnership
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