Why does doing good still feel risky in the boardroom even when it’s good for business?
In this episode, OBERLAND Founder & Creative Chairman Bill Oberlander joins Jason Harris to explore the Soul & Science of purpose-driven marketing and talk about why creativity, commerce, and consciousness can (and should) coexist.
Bill shares his journey from Madison Avenue to launching a values-first agency that's now AdAge’s Purpose-Led Agency of the Year. He opens up about building OBERLAND from scratch, pitching campaigns like ELF’s So Many Dicks, and why he believes hustle, resilience, and unrelenting honesty are the keys to making good money, by doing good.
What’s Inside:
✅ Why a purpose-driven brief matters more than a purpose-driven agency
✅ How “creativity, commerce, and consciousness” intersect in great marketing
✅The origin stories behind some of OBERLAND’s boldest work, from pitching Thinx to launching ELF’s viral “So Many Dicks” campaign
✅ Why brands that ignore social impact are missing their next generation of consumers
Memorable Moments:
💡 “You don’t need a purpose-driven agency to do purpose-driven work. You just need a purpose-driven brief.”
💡 “The best new business department is just better creative.”
💡 “Make good money. That’s the line.”
Brought to you by Mekanism.
In this episode, OBERLAND Founder & Creative Chairman Bill Oberlander joins Jason Harris to explore the Soul & Science of purpose-driven marketing and talk about why creativity, commerce, and consciousness can (and should) coexist.
Bill shares his journey from Madison Avenue to launching a values-first agency that's now AdAge’s Purpose-Led Agency of the Year. He opens up about building OBERLAND from scratch, pitching campaigns like ELF’s So Many Dicks, and why he believes hustle, resilience, and unrelenting honesty are the keys to making good money, by doing good.
What’s Inside:
✅ Why a purpose-driven brief matters more than a purpose-driven agency
✅ How “creativity, commerce, and consciousness” intersect in great marketing
✅The origin stories behind some of OBERLAND’s boldest work, from pitching Thinx to launching ELF’s viral “So Many Dicks” campaign
✅ Why brands that ignore social impact are missing their next generation of consumers
Memorable Moments:
💡 “You don’t need a purpose-driven agency to do purpose-driven work. You just need a purpose-driven brief.”
💡 “The best new business department is just better creative.”
💡 “Make good money. That’s the line.”
Brought to you by Mekanism.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Always look for an opportunity to create social impact no
matter where you work. You don't really need a purpose
driven agency to do purpose driven work. Yeah, you just
sted a purpose driven brief, right, and that could happen
in any agency, in any design.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
For our in today's world, how does a brand break
through the noise and become iconic? Join me Jason Harris
as I speak with the world's leading marketing experts about
how they use soule in science to build an iconic brand.
Think of it as EQ meeting IQ. So let's lock
in and together fast forward our marketing minds on the
(00:36):
Soul and Science podcast. Welcome to Sole and Science podcast.
Today's episode is all about conscious creativity and how marketers
can apply that philosophy to their work and the world.
I'm joined by Bill Oberlander, who started the agency Oberland,
(00:57):
which just one add ages a list per stream of
an agency, which is a very coveted and hard thing
to win. So we're going to talk a lot about
Bill's career and about his agency, and we'll see where
the conversation goes. Welcome to the podcast, Bill.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Thank you. Jason.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I am a little blur in the eyes because we
over celebrated and overserved after that at age event. So
I'm still limping event.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
How late were you out?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I think there was out like one point thirty two,
you know, but I'm getting up there in my senior
year or so I have.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
To like, Yeah, that's a good that's good. It's a
good run.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah it was fun.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So Bill, tell me, how did you get into marketing?
Did you just fall into it or did you always
know you were going to go into marketing advertising?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I don't think anybody knows. Well.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I think that's exception, not the rule of people knowing
what they're doing. But you know, when I was a
kid growing up in the sixties and seventies, the television
was the centerpiece of the family dynamic. So it was
always watching television after school, after dinner, and of course
served up in all the programs, was all the commercials,
(02:08):
all the jingles, all the celebrities, and it was just
magical to have Ed Sullivan and the Mod Squad and
the Gong Show all that in your living room. And
it just I found out to be captivating and it
kind of set the course of my career because I
felt like I wanted to be in business, but in
some kind of show business, some kind of you know,
creative expressions.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
So but what but what happened was my father.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Was a German descent, so I had three sisters, and
he put a big priority on the boy in the
family and I was the only son. So he picked
me out of public school and put me to private school,
an old Catholics boy private school. And it was very
career driven, you know, the academics, science, math and all
that crazy stuff. And I had one art course for
(02:54):
over forty years, no way, but I just had this.
I was always writing scripts and listening to music and doodling.
And so when it came time to go to school,
my father wanted me to follow the steps of my
cousin Robert, who went to Notre Dame and who's a
business major. And there were two things knowing, I mean,
one was I always wanted to be in some kind
(03:16):
of creative field, just knowing at the back of my head,
and if Notre Dame was not the place to do that.
And secondly, I just finished four years of no girls
in my social circle and Notre Dame, I think the
ratio boys to men to women was five to one,
so I was really campaigning against that. So I figured
(03:40):
out a compromise, which was I found a school University
of Delaware, where I could be a art major and
a business minor.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
You could get the major you wanted there.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
It was I started as an art major, find fine
arts major, and then I started to get disillusioned about
how fine, how fine an.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Artist I could be, so I gravitate towards design.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And then when I was finishing up my sophomore year,
I visited a friend's father who worked at bbdo oh cool,
and I was walking the hallway saying, what is a
shangri la?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
People are walking around and cut off jeans and listening
to music and smoking cigarettes in their offices, And I said,
we got to figure out how to get here. So
I actually went to my professor at the University Delaware
and brought back the one show, the Art Director's Club AIGA,
all the ward annuals, and I said, I would love
these for these books to be my study guides and
(04:37):
this would be the curriculum for the next two years.
So I kind of invented the advertising program at university.
I just kind of and it's amazing that he agreed
and let me just roll through that. So it seemed
like I knew what I was doing because I had
the creative thing, and I had the business acumen from
business administration A major, a minor, and you know, I
(05:01):
just graduated and came straight to New York and started
pounding the pavement with the yellow pages and a roadary phone.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Oh my god, that's crazy. Where did you get your
first job?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Well? Before you know, I think I actually remember the
Red Book. Do you remember this thing called the Red Book? No,
it was the encycloped of all the ad agencies. Okay,
so I had that on my left, the yellow page
in the right, and you would have basically just called
a receptionist and you would say, is is Robert Berger
the art director on American Airlines?
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Can you connect me to his office?
Speaker 1 (05:32):
And then Robert would pick up or not, and then
you would just try to get an interview. So I
did that sixty six times before I finally got a job.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
How many interviews did you get?
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I had sixty six interviews.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
You had sixty six interviews? Yeah, so you must have
tried to call three hundred people or four hundred people.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I was just going up and down Madison Avenue.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
You had sixty six interviews. That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
But I landed a job at mccaffree McCall. I don't
know if you remember that agency. No, how old are you.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
I'm not young, but I don't remember that agency.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
It was It was the first agency to be bought
up by a holding company SACI and Sachi. It was
the first time any kind of holding like entity was
being crafted.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
But I worked on ABC News Air Canada, Mercedes Benz.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
It was like pretty right up the middle, right out
of the gate. I was very lucky and I just hustled.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Did you bounce around New York agencies after that?
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I've always been in New York since nineteen eighty one,
So yeah, I was there at mccaffor McCall for four
years and I got a call from McCann Erickson. So
I switched to McCann Erickson to work on Coca Cola
and America Express. And that was the first time I
was brilliant, kind of an international landscape. And so that
(06:55):
was there for four years, and then I got a
call from Richard Kirshmount and he saw an ad that
I had done for a prodigal waterman, pens Fountain pens
and he tore out of a magazine, gave it to
Laura Greenberg and said, find this guy who's the art director.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
And so Laurie tracked me down and.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Richard hired me. He gave he basically gave me the
keys to the car. He said, run the great department.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And I was so so not prepared. I had no
idea what to do what I was supposed to do.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So Courage and Boham was like very very revered, very
hot agency.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
You know, I was there.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
I started when I was twenty nine. I left when
I was forty one, So I was there for twelve years. Yeah,
twelve whole years. And when I started there was only
seven of us, and when I left there was close
to four hundred amazing, So there was a lot of
explosive growth. And I got to give Richard and John
they were really very innovative and risk taking and you know,
really just being very different than the rest of the industry.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
And when did you start your own agency ten half
years ago? What prompted you to start? Overland?
Speaker 3 (08:06):
So I was at JWT working on Microsoft and Nessley and.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Bloomberg, and I was I just turned fifty and I
was just going into one of those midlife awakening moments.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Where it just everything felt a little less meaningful.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
And I was actually on the AD Council Creative Review Committee,
and I would sit in those meetings get really excited
about social issues, you know, whether it was secondhand smoke
or seat.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Belts or forest fires or teenage pregnancy whatever, and then
I go back to my office and.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Work on Neslie Lasagna and I was just like, I
was excited when we're doing these these social impact issues.
And then yeah, the bread and butter stuff was just
losing its energy in my system. And I was actually
in the suburbs and my marriage was sunsetting. So those
three things were all just coming to a head. And
I got a call from it by Susan Kirschmer, and
(09:00):
she said, how would you like to get off the
agency treadmill?
Speaker 3 (09:03):
So I took a job as CMO at the Robin
Hood Foundation.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Oh cool.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, So that is a Hedge Fund filmthropic endeavor, and
they wanted me to help recruit more millionaires because it
kind of had the market looked out for when it
came to billionaires. So it was you know, and I
love New York. I'm a big New Yorker and it
was basically raising money to help out people and just centurise,
(09:28):
just franchise communities in the fibers.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And how long did you do that job?
Speaker 3 (09:32):
That was two years.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So in the back of my head, I was trying
to take the creativity and start to you know, interface
it with consciousness and that was what Robinhood was supposed
to be. But robin Hood became more of like the
same routine, more fundraising, more cocktail parties for billionaires, and
it was it's a really good organization, but I kind
(09:56):
of got restless, so I asked them if I could
become a contractor an employee. Yeah, and they became my
first clients.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
That switch is how you started, correct And when you
started it, did you say this is a purpose driven
agency or did that come later?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
The agency has been purpose driven from minute one. It's
it's it's in the DNA. The tagline was creating brands
with higher purpose. That was that was that was the
angle from the beginning.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Now let's make good money, right Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
I mean there was there was an evolution of that too,
because it was creating brands with higher purpose. Some people
kept and said, I can't believe you actually can pay,
you can make you could hit payroll, and you're working
all these not for profit brands. And I didn't want
to exclusively be working on of for profits because there's
there's no real scale, there's no real sustainability there.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
So I changed it to.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Prop up profit with purpose, so it was all about
making money. And the line make good money came from
a pitch we pitched Goldman Sacks. Yeah, and they had
a six hundred million dollar sustainability fund and that was
the line to make good money. And they laughs out
of the room and I was so like put off
by it. I said, you know what, that's a better
(11:04):
line for Overland.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
So I think it's a great line.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
The agency is what ten years old? Yeah, you just
celebrated ten years, right, yeah, and so you know, were
you five people for a while then ten people?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Like?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
How did the growth happen?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
The growth is happening now, Okay, you know because of
our relationship with ELF and the so Many Dicks campaign,
because that is something that's getting a lot of attention
and with that comes inbound increase winning pitches without it
even a pitch, just a phone call, and a handshake.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
So amazing.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
That is really coming. It's getting a lot more momentum now.
But I would say, you know, we were five people.
I remember our first office was on twenty fourth Street
and we were subleasent couple desks from a Russian digital
design shop.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
I maybe it was scrappy. You know. I worked at
the show house for a long time.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
I would just go there in the morning and grab
a table and we're until six o'clock at night, until
the coffee switched to vocatonics and then the DJ would
start up.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
You know, was there a point in time through that
ten year history where you almost went out of business?
Speaker 3 (12:11):
I remember it.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I remember that happened to us like four or five times.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Oh absolutely, And I'm sure a lot of founders could
share the same the shame woe over a lot of drinks.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
It's really scary.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
And now you would investor, so it's a different kind
of dynamic. But oh yeah, I remember on my bike
at five o'clock in the morning the middle of July,
I was so afraid of running out of money and
missing payroll. I mean that to me, it was like
pitching and payroll, pitching and payroll. It was a constant,
dynamic back and forth, and.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I couldn't sleep at night.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
So I just rolled my bike up sixth Avenue to
the office, and I was just.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Just wondering, like, what am I going to do if
this doesn't work out? What am I going to do now?
Fifty six?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
You know, a white guy in the advertising again Stee
at the age of fifty six.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Can't get arrested.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
There's no there's no there there, right, So I was
trying to figure out what So I moved to Mexico.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I'm gonna figure out how to put my two kids
through college.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
And pay alimony and pay child support and you know,
pay rent, all those kinds of things.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
So I mean, how did you get out of it?
How did you get out of that tail?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
The only way to get out of it is to win.
You have to win your way out.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Of it, right, But how do you have the hope?
How do you have the inner fortitude and just.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Fucking do it? You know, you just keep going. What
do you think you're What is Bill Oberlander particularly good at?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
I think I am unrelenting. I try to figure ot
theff between unrelenting and relentless. Relentless is a slightly less benevolence,
So I'm going to go for the unrelenting. But Lisa
Topel said, here's your tagline, an equal opportunity prick, and.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
I've been called worse.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
I think I'm really good to cut into the bottom line.
You know, I'm in my sixties now, so I have
the wisdom and the biz acumen and the client radar to.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Know what's going to work.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
So I'm kind of like bottom line built, you know,
just cut away all the nonsense, clear the noise and
find out, you know, where is true north in a nanosecond.
And some people get rubbed the wrong way because they
find it to be you know, sharp elbows and abrupt.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
But I'm creative.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I'm chair now with the agency, so I have less
day to day so I just kind of see a
bigger picture down the road stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
But tell me about the the Elf campaign So many Dicks,
which obviously I loved. It's such a bold idea. How
did you sell that in? Was that hard? Did you
have to be unrelenting there? Or did you was that
just like Elf takes big swings and they loved it immediately?
Speaker 3 (14:55):
It was both. It was both. I mean, let me,
let me back it up.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
So about four years years ago, we were probably like
thirty five people. We were on the fifth floor of
two five four Canal Street, twenty four windows wrapper around.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I mean it was a I art directed designed it
down to the last you know, pushpin.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
And there were two people in our new business department
and they were just sitting at their desk staring at.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
The phone, and I kept saying, this is not how
it's supposed to work.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
The best new business department is just better creative, just
a better product that gets the attention to potential new
business leads. So those people segued elsewhere and I took
their salaries and I moved it to Lisa Topole. So
I've been trying to hire Lisa Topole for years. She
(15:48):
was one of my writers at Ogilvy, and she's just
a real creative powerhouse, but has a really big heart
and she cares a lot about social issues. I tried
to hire once that I couldn't afford. So she went
to DDB for a couple of years, and I saw
like eighteen months two years later on LinkedIn that she
was leaving DDB and we were pitching thinks the period underwear, and.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I don't think I.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Had the chops to talk about menstruation and period underwear.
And so I hired Lisa immediately. I said, listen, this
is a great client. The clients are from Bbdo they
speak our language, you know, make a play that really
speaks to young women about their periods and period underwear.
And so I put Lisa right up in front and
I basically we were basically dating to get married.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
And I never touched the product. She was writing the script.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
She was the one who wrote the script about the
older woman who said, you know, you could put a
man on the moon, but for thirty years I had
to find a string sticking at my biprack. I mean,
I can't, I can't write that. So when the campaign
was almost ready for presentation, Lisa had her line that
was the pitch line, that was think outside the box.
(17:00):
And I was like, love the campaign. I think the
line isn't big enough to hold all the social impact
stuff we want to do with them.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
But I also didn't want to get in Lisa's face.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
So I just wrote on a post it note, a
little note, a little tagline, and I pushed it across
and it was how a new generation, how the new
generation thinks t HI and X and Lisa scripted out
the word but uh, and that's the winning pitch line,
and they bought it right away and we went to
LA and we shot it. So that was kind of
the bar that was set with Lisa. Just go for it,
(17:38):
you know, use your life experience, but also understand what
makes these brands tick. And with Lisa, to get creative prowess,
you also get a rollot X.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
So she was the.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
One who, you know, after a year's time when her
not compete expired, she was the one who we can
actually get those relationships she had when she was at DDB.
So one of her clients went from over to Michael's
and our Michael's client is wonderful and that is because
of Lisa's relationship with her.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And then ELF was a relationship with our head a strategy,
Kay Charles, who knew some folks over at ELF. So
we got an assignment to do emotion graphics video about
how they have more women on their corporate executive board
than any other.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
You know, Wall Street corporate board.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
And after looking at it, it was Kate and Lisa said,
maybe there's more to this, So they started looking at
why is there so few people of.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Color and women on corporate American boards.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So they found out, you know, that there was more
guys named Richard Rick or rich or Dick than any
other kind of person.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
On corporate American boards. And that was the that was
how they cracked the coat on the thing.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
The CMO of ELF is such a powerhouse and she
just wants to take risks and she really wants to
really empower women to take these senior positions, so that
the platform is called change the Board game.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
But the campaign is so many Dicks campaigns. Yeah, it's
so good, But it wasn't hard to sell.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
It wasn't It was easy. Got to get the right client,
right idea with the right client. What is the hardest
thing about being a purpose driven agency? You know some
things that come to mind. Do clients think most of
your work's pro bono? Do they pigeonhole you into like
you can only do this one part of the business
or the campaign? What are the most challenging parts about
(19:36):
being focused on purpose and make good money? And then
what are some of the advantages of it?
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Well, the advantages is that's where the world is.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, you know, the new consumer my Sons for example
twenty six, twenty eight. There they buy goods and services
from brands that behave responsibly in the world. So you
know they will not buy Tesla. It's not not this,
not today, maybe five years ago. But so I think
(20:08):
we're at the right place at the right time, and
that momentum is not going to stop.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And you hear, you.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Hear a lot about Purpose is dead and DEI is
being defunded, and yeah, that is just all media. People's
values don't change because it's a bad guy.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
In the White House, right, that's just noise.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, there's a lot of noise. I did my research.
Four hundred eighty six of the corporate five hundred still
strongly back their DEI projects and initiatives. That isn't changing.
You know, you got that guy, which think Robert Starbuck,
Bobby Robbie Starbuck, who's out there banging a gong about
Harley Davison and John Deere and all these people, all
(20:50):
these brands that he has converted and convinced the board's
like even Target, Like what is Target doing?
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I don't know, but it's hurting their business.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
They didn't do their homework on that one. So I
think the store traffic is down twenty seven percent.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
But purpose, when you're doing creativelopment, you know, when you
worked in a non purpose driven agency, are just looking
for how does creativity intersect with commerce? You know, so
you're looking for an idea that connects with the human
insight that really brings the value of the brand forward,
(21:27):
and then you could find your target audience and start
your campaign there. With purpose, got to bring in the
ven diagram, the third element of consciousness. So it's creativity,
commerce and consciousness, and that consciousness is a little bit
a little bit more money, right.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah, it's squitchy and it depends on what you mean
by it exactly.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
So with ELF, it's all about empowering women. So that's
how you get the Sods campaign with strong roots. It's
one of our clients. It's a plant based frozen product
that is convenient. It's frozen, so so obviously that's a
that's about saving the world less you know, greenhouse gas
effect on the planet. Their tackline is good made easy,
(22:10):
So that's those two examples are very linear. Michael's is
a bit of a challenge, right because they sell you know,
art supplies and craft supplies and how do you make
that purposeful? Right, So they talked a lot about the
joy of creativity and Lisa and her team got to
(22:30):
a campaign called.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Create the World You Want to Live in, which works
on both levels. Right.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
It says you can create your own Halloween costume and
your own Christmas treet decorations. But at the same time,
if you want to protest what's happening in wolst in
the White House and DC right now, and you want
to create a world where we have personal freedoms and
that your friends in the LGBT community need to be
protected and your MPR is not going to be revoked,
(22:58):
you know you can create that world because that's the
kind of brand that we represent. So it's a little
bit more philosophical. The ideology is not as linear as
those are the two examples.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
I give you.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
It's more nuanced, but it's still there in your work.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, and it kain of comes down to a great client.
They understand that it's easy to work with a brand
like let's.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Say Arii or Patagonia, like these brands have always been
purpose driven from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
It's in their DNA.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
But if you're going to work with a brand that
doesn't know what their purpose is yet. That takes conditioning.
And we talk a lot about progress over perfection. So
we're never going to work with Smith and Wesson or
Philip Morris or anything like that now chemical, but you know,
we can work with brands that are not as obviously
(23:49):
looking out for the planet or the people or the critters.
It takes more investigation to give them an angle.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Right, But would you say almost all businesses you can
find an angle?
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah. Tell me about the concept of constructive capitalism. What
does that mean to you?
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (24:07):
It means yuh yeah, not greed over everything else.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
It means not having the cash region ring and you
don't actually contribute to society.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
It means you can do both. You can do well
by doing good.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
I've heard it called conscious capitalism, constructive casalism, capitalism, construct
conscious consumerism, that you can actually run a business but
at the same time look after some kind of social agenda.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
What are the challenges about being purpose driven?
Speaker 1 (24:37):
The pressure on cmos from the CEO about driving profit
on a quarterly basis. You know, where's where's my return
on my investment? Purpose isn't a short game, you know,
it's it's not like you're going to have a sale,
or you know you're going to sell a new line
(24:57):
of tube socks and it has a new style that's
more attractive, and then you had the immediate, you know,
blip on the on the radar. Purpose is a slow build,
so we try to work with clients that can have
performance marketing expectations that also have a purpose campaign running
alongside of it. I mean that's what ELF does. ELF
has a handful of agencies that do their marketing so slow.
(25:20):
It's it's slower than most CEOs.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Have the patients work.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
I see. It takes real commitment and strong cmos to
drive the work forward correct. How has your leadership style changed?
Would you say maybe from when you were leading teams
at I don't know, Kirschenbaum or building that agency to
leading them at a purpose driven agency.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I say, just it's a lot easier because we are
self defined as an organization. I remember going to the
first Advertising Age Small Agency Awards and they would have
these breakout sessions where you can work the consultant to
figure out how to sharpen your purpose profile as your
(26:05):
agency profile and make yourself more differentiated from the competition.
I didn't go to those breakout sessions because.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
We need to.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
It's already you know, baked into who we are. So
those are the clients. Those are the kind of clients
that come to us for that very reason, So we
don't have to figure out what our language is. We're
already self defined and already in that space. And also
with the people that work for us, we attract that
kind of person So when people are built into purpose
(26:36):
that they really care about social issues, they're far more passionate,
far more committed, and far more energized to work harder
and to see that change through. So you know, when
I was in a big agency and I would work
on you know, Bloomberg or Microsoft or Nestley, you know,
you're just it's transactional and you're just looking for the
(26:57):
next funny thing and trying to get sales, to get
a blip so you can, you know, get your bonus
that that quarter that year, it wasn't a lot of
personal investment.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
And that's not the case that overlent.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
What advice would you give to maybe younger creatives who
want to be you know, in the industry and successful,
but also want to lean towards sort of social impact.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
To be honest with you, don't know, you don't really
need a purpose driven agency to do purpose driven work.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, you just need a purpose driven.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Brief, right, And that could happen in any agency, in
any design firm. But my business part and true, we
just wanted to build a business on the back of
all purpose brands.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
So I think the advice would be always look for
an opportunity to create social impact no matter where you work.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
But I say this to my sons all the time.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
You know, the way to break into any business, any
creative business, and I don't have to tell you is hustle.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah. Do more people want to save the world today
than when you first started.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Absolutely. I mean when we started, purpose was kind of
an unknown quantity and people would look at me sideways
and say, what's with this purpose? That what you're saving dolphins?
I was like, it's purpose, it's social purpose. But you know,
I think purpose hit a peak about four years ago
(28:21):
and Fearless Girl was a can and there's a lot
of hype around that, and now that we have a
new administration, it's falling at a fashion. But I think
only superficially you know, I do a bunch of research
all the time to make sure these things are data driven.
Eighty seven percent of new customers between the ages of
(28:42):
eighteen and thirty eight expect a brand to take a
position of politics, you know, have a point of view,
stand for something. So that's not going to change. The
new consumer is not going to move their value system
because of who's in the White House.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
That's going to stay consistent.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
What's a business challenge that keeps you open night.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
I'm sure you have.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
You have this soone the same one. I have never
reconciled the issue of the subjectivity of our business, the
subjectivity versus the profitability. Right, So I think it's a
good idea. Ex client says, I don't see it, you know,
(29:25):
And you could do all the focus groups you want.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
But as a creative person a you're being defensive. Yeah,
you know.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
And the client says, well, if you're so so creative,
go back to the sandbox and find more ideas. So,
you know, if we were digging a hole and filling
it back in, it's a very tangible thing and it's
going to cost you. The shovel is going to cost
it as much. The worker is going to cost as much,
and the ice ice tea is going to cost as
much and I'm going to market out twenty percent and
(29:51):
that's a fair about fair price. How do you put
a price on ideas? How do you make the ideas
that are my opinion, actually going to move the needle.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
And have have them been proved out?
Speaker 1 (30:04):
And also when you have the idea sold in, how
do you make sure you're getting paid enough? Like what
are you getting paid by that the hours by you know,
the skin in the game percentage.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Of sales exactly. So that makes me nuts.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
And you know, and SAG is dealing with the same thing,
and AI is coming in there and their people spots
are writing scripts are probably going to be actors soon.
So creativity, I think, is not getting its respect, and
it's fair shake of the wall. It's getting more and
more marginalized.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
What do you have a mantra quote that you live
by that you always think about.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I'll tell you sorry.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
When I was a kid, I belonged on a swim
team and you know, the coach would say warm up
into fifty laps and my father was always like sitting
on the side of bull I swim and I'd be
winded and he would just say five more.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
So I always swam fifty five laps, and he was
trying to, you know, instill in me that.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Hard work pays off.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah, and you really have to lean in and give
extra to really be successful. So I had this thing
in my head, give a damn work.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Hard, repeat, give a damn work hard repeat. I love it.
That's it.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
That's my bumper stary.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
It could also be the bumber sin could be five more. See,
I like that.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
I'm more of a strategist.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Now, do you have a role model anyone that you
try to emulate or you look up to?
Speaker 3 (31:40):
No, you know that's how.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
That's how. That's how I met rich Kerschmount because ad
Week did a a story about mentors and mentees, and
I think Richard was with Helene Speedac and there were
you know, the mentee mentor mentee, mentor menee and the
guy who.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Called me said, you know, ask me the same question.
I don't have a mentor.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
I never did, so they shot me standing next to
an empty stool.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Oh my god, that's so cool now, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
So Richard Richard was photographed before before I was, and
that's how we met.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
For the first time. I like the old school stuff,
you know.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I like like Earl Cavanall from Scouty mccaben Slow's and
Ralph Almaradi and Carl Alli. Those are the heroes I
mean for me, you know, Lee Cloud and the icon
Dan Whyden, like, those are the people that just blazed,
blazed the frontier and really just created culture.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Don Don Draper, all right, well, thanks for being on
the podcast. You're amazing. I'm personally glad we've become friends
over this year and I've been really wowed by what
your agency has done with your recent campaigns.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Jason, You're a star. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Thanks so much for listening to Soul and Science and
we'll see you next week. Soul and Science is a
Mechanism podcast produced by Maggie Bowles, Ran Tillotson and Lulie Jablonski.
The show is edited by Daniel Ferrera with theme music
by Kyle Merrick and I'm your host, Jason Harris. At Mechanism,
(33:22):
we build iconic brands with soul and Science. The soul
is culturally relevant brand building and the science is the
always on marketing activities that drive the bottom line. Learn
more at Mechanism dot com
Always look for an opportunity to create social impact no
matter where you work. You don't really need a purpose
driven agency to do purpose driven work. Yeah, you just
sted a purpose driven brief, right, and that could happen
in any agency, in any design.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
For our in today's world, how does a brand break
through the noise and become iconic? Join me Jason Harris
as I speak with the world's leading marketing experts about
how they use soule in science to build an iconic brand.
Think of it as EQ meeting IQ. So let's lock
in and together fast forward our marketing minds on the
(00:36):
Soul and Science podcast. Welcome to Sole and Science podcast.
Today's episode is all about conscious creativity and how marketers
can apply that philosophy to their work and the world.
I'm joined by Bill Oberlander, who started the agency Oberland,
(00:57):
which just one add ages a list per stream of
an agency, which is a very coveted and hard thing
to win. So we're going to talk a lot about
Bill's career and about his agency, and we'll see where
the conversation goes. Welcome to the podcast, Bill.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Thank you. Jason.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I am a little blur in the eyes because we
over celebrated and overserved after that at age event. So
I'm still limping event.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
How late were you out?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I think there was out like one point thirty two,
you know, but I'm getting up there in my senior
year or so I have.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
To like, Yeah, that's a good that's good. It's a
good run.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah it was fun.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
So Bill, tell me, how did you get into marketing?
Did you just fall into it or did you always
know you were going to go into marketing advertising?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I don't think anybody knows. Well.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I think that's exception, not the rule of people knowing
what they're doing. But you know, when I was a
kid growing up in the sixties and seventies, the television
was the centerpiece of the family dynamic. So it was
always watching television after school, after dinner, and of course
served up in all the programs, was all the commercials,
(02:08):
all the jingles, all the celebrities, and it was just
magical to have Ed Sullivan and the Mod Squad and
the Gong Show all that in your living room. And
it just I found out to be captivating and it
kind of set the course of my career because I
felt like I wanted to be in business, but in
some kind of show business, some kind of you know,
creative expressions.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
So but what but what happened was my father.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Was a German descent, so I had three sisters, and
he put a big priority on the boy in the
family and I was the only son. So he picked
me out of public school and put me to private school,
an old Catholics boy private school. And it was very
career driven, you know, the academics, science, math and all
that crazy stuff. And I had one art course for
(02:54):
over forty years, no way, but I just had this.
I was always writing scripts and listening to music and doodling.
And so when it came time to go to school,
my father wanted me to follow the steps of my
cousin Robert, who went to Notre Dame and who's a
business major. And there were two things knowing, I mean,
one was I always wanted to be in some kind
(03:16):
of creative field, just knowing at the back of my head,
and if Notre Dame was not the place to do that.
And secondly, I just finished four years of no girls
in my social circle and Notre Dame, I think the
ratio boys to men to women was five to one,
so I was really campaigning against that. So I figured
(03:40):
out a compromise, which was I found a school University
of Delaware, where I could be a art major and
a business minor.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
You could get the major you wanted there.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
It was I started as an art major, find fine
arts major, and then I started to get disillusioned about
how fine, how fine an.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Artist I could be, so I gravitate towards design.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And then when I was finishing up my sophomore year,
I visited a friend's father who worked at bbdo oh cool,
and I was walking the hallway saying, what is a
shangri la?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
People are walking around and cut off jeans and listening
to music and smoking cigarettes in their offices, And I said,
we got to figure out how to get here. So
I actually went to my professor at the University Delaware
and brought back the one show, the Art Director's Club AIGA,
all the ward annuals, and I said, I would love
these for these books to be my study guides and
(04:37):
this would be the curriculum for the next two years.
So I kind of invented the advertising program at university.
I just kind of and it's amazing that he agreed
and let me just roll through that. So it seemed
like I knew what I was doing because I had
the creative thing, and I had the business acumen from
business administration A major, a minor, and you know, I
(05:01):
just graduated and came straight to New York and started
pounding the pavement with the yellow pages and a roadary phone.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Oh my god, that's crazy. Where did you get your
first job?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Well? Before you know, I think I actually remember the
Red Book. Do you remember this thing called the Red Book? No,
it was the encycloped of all the ad agencies. Okay,
so I had that on my left, the yellow page
in the right, and you would have basically just called
a receptionist and you would say, is is Robert Berger
the art director on American Airlines?
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Can you connect me to his office?
Speaker 1 (05:32):
And then Robert would pick up or not, and then
you would just try to get an interview. So I
did that sixty six times before I finally got a job.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
How many interviews did you get?
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I had sixty six interviews.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
You had sixty six interviews? Yeah, so you must have
tried to call three hundred people or four hundred people.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I was just going up and down Madison Avenue.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
You had sixty six interviews. That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
But I landed a job at mccaffree McCall. I don't
know if you remember that agency. No, how old are you.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
I'm not young, but I don't remember that agency.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
It was It was the first agency to be bought
up by a holding company SACI and Sachi. It was
the first time any kind of holding like entity was
being crafted.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
But I worked on ABC News Air Canada, Mercedes Benz.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
It was like pretty right up the middle, right out
of the gate. I was very lucky and I just hustled.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Did you bounce around New York agencies after that?
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I've always been in New York since nineteen eighty one,
So yeah, I was there at mccaffor McCall for four
years and I got a call from McCann Erickson. So
I switched to McCann Erickson to work on Coca Cola
and America Express. And that was the first time I
was brilliant, kind of an international landscape. And so that
(06:55):
was there for four years, and then I got a
call from Richard Kirshmount and he saw an ad that
I had done for a prodigal waterman, pens Fountain pens
and he tore out of a magazine, gave it to
Laura Greenberg and said, find this guy who's the art director.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
And so Laurie tracked me down and.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Richard hired me. He gave he basically gave me the
keys to the car. He said, run the great department.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And I was so so not prepared. I had no
idea what to do what I was supposed to do.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So Courage and Boham was like very very revered, very
hot agency.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
You know, I was there.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
I started when I was twenty nine. I left when
I was forty one, So I was there for twelve years. Yeah,
twelve whole years. And when I started there was only
seven of us, and when I left there was close
to four hundred amazing, So there was a lot of
explosive growth. And I got to give Richard and John
they were really very innovative and risk taking and you know,
really just being very different than the rest of the industry.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
And when did you start your own agency ten half
years ago? What prompted you to start? Overland?
Speaker 3 (08:06):
So I was at JWT working on Microsoft and Nessley and.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Bloomberg, and I was I just turned fifty and I
was just going into one of those midlife awakening moments.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Where it just everything felt a little less meaningful.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
And I was actually on the AD Council Creative Review Committee,
and I would sit in those meetings get really excited
about social issues, you know, whether it was secondhand smoke
or seat.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Belts or forest fires or teenage pregnancy whatever, and then
I go back to my office and.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Work on Neslie Lasagna and I was just like, I
was excited when we're doing these these social impact issues.
And then yeah, the bread and butter stuff was just
losing its energy in my system. And I was actually
in the suburbs and my marriage was sunsetting. So those
three things were all just coming to a head. And
I got a call from it by Susan Kirschmer, and
(09:00):
she said, how would you like to get off the
agency treadmill?
Speaker 3 (09:03):
So I took a job as CMO at the Robin
Hood Foundation.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Oh cool.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, So that is a Hedge Fund filmthropic endeavor, and
they wanted me to help recruit more millionaires because it
kind of had the market looked out for when it
came to billionaires. So it was you know, and I
love New York. I'm a big New Yorker and it
was basically raising money to help out people and just centurise,
(09:28):
just franchise communities in the fibers.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And how long did you do that job?
Speaker 3 (09:32):
That was two years.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So in the back of my head, I was trying
to take the creativity and start to you know, interface
it with consciousness and that was what Robinhood was supposed
to be. But robin Hood became more of like the
same routine, more fundraising, more cocktail parties for billionaires, and
it was it's a really good organization, but I kind
(09:56):
of got restless, so I asked them if I could
become a contractor an employee. Yeah, and they became my
first clients.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
That switch is how you started, correct And when you
started it, did you say this is a purpose driven
agency or did that come later?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
The agency has been purpose driven from minute one. It's
it's it's in the DNA. The tagline was creating brands
with higher purpose. That was that was that was the
angle from the beginning.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Now let's make good money, right Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
I mean there was there was an evolution of that too,
because it was creating brands with higher purpose. Some people
kept and said, I can't believe you actually can pay,
you can make you could hit payroll, and you're working
all these not for profit brands. And I didn't want
to exclusively be working on of for profits because there's
there's no real scale, there's no real sustainability there.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
So I changed it to.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Prop up profit with purpose, so it was all about
making money. And the line make good money came from
a pitch we pitched Goldman Sacks. Yeah, and they had
a six hundred million dollar sustainability fund and that was
the line to make good money. And they laughs out
of the room and I was so like put off
by it. I said, you know what, that's a better
(11:04):
line for Overland.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
So I think it's a great line.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
The agency is what ten years old? Yeah, you just
celebrated ten years, right, yeah, and so you know, were
you five people for a while then ten people?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Like?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
How did the growth happen?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
The growth is happening now, Okay, you know because of
our relationship with ELF and the so Many Dicks campaign,
because that is something that's getting a lot of attention
and with that comes inbound increase winning pitches without it
even a pitch, just a phone call, and a handshake.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
So amazing.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
That is really coming. It's getting a lot more momentum now.
But I would say, you know, we were five people.
I remember our first office was on twenty fourth Street
and we were subleasent couple desks from a Russian digital
design shop.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
I maybe it was scrappy. You know. I worked at
the show house for a long time.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
I would just go there in the morning and grab
a table and we're until six o'clock at night, until
the coffee switched to vocatonics and then the DJ would
start up.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
You know, was there a point in time through that
ten year history where you almost went out of business?
Speaker 3 (12:11):
I remember it.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I remember that happened to us like four or five times.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Oh absolutely, And I'm sure a lot of founders could
share the same the shame woe over a lot of drinks.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
It's really scary.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
And now you would investor, so it's a different kind
of dynamic. But oh yeah, I remember on my bike
at five o'clock in the morning the middle of July,
I was so afraid of running out of money and
missing payroll. I mean that to me, it was like
pitching and payroll, pitching and payroll. It was a constant,
dynamic back and forth, and.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I couldn't sleep at night.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
So I just rolled my bike up sixth Avenue to
the office, and I was just.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Just wondering, like, what am I going to do if
this doesn't work out? What am I going to do now?
Fifty six?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
You know, a white guy in the advertising again Stee
at the age of fifty six.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Can't get arrested.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
There's no there's no there there, right, So I was
trying to figure out what So I moved to Mexico.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I'm gonna figure out how to put my two kids
through college.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
And pay alimony and pay child support and you know,
pay rent, all those kinds of things.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
So I mean, how did you get out of it?
How did you get out of that tail?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
The only way to get out of it is to win.
You have to win your way out.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Of it, right, But how do you have the hope?
How do you have the inner fortitude and just.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Fucking do it? You know, you just keep going. What
do you think you're What is Bill Oberlander particularly good at?
Speaker 1 (13:42):
I think I am unrelenting. I try to figure ot
theff between unrelenting and relentless. Relentless is a slightly less benevolence,
So I'm going to go for the unrelenting. But Lisa
Topel said, here's your tagline, an equal opportunity prick, and.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
I've been called worse.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
I think I'm really good to cut into the bottom line.
You know, I'm in my sixties now, so I have
the wisdom and the biz acumen and the client radar to.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Know what's going to work.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
So I'm kind of like bottom line built, you know,
just cut away all the nonsense, clear the noise and
find out, you know, where is true north in a nanosecond.
And some people get rubbed the wrong way because they
find it to be you know, sharp elbows and abrupt.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
But I'm creative.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I'm chair now with the agency, so I have less
day to day so I just kind of see a
bigger picture down the road stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
But tell me about the the Elf campaign So many Dicks,
which obviously I loved. It's such a bold idea. How
did you sell that in? Was that hard? Did you
have to be unrelenting there? Or did you was that
just like Elf takes big swings and they loved it immediately?
Speaker 3 (14:55):
It was both. It was both. I mean, let me,
let me back it up.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
So about four years years ago, we were probably like
thirty five people. We were on the fifth floor of
two five four Canal Street, twenty four windows wrapper around.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I mean it was a I art directed designed it
down to the last you know, pushpin.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
And there were two people in our new business department
and they were just sitting at their desk staring at.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
The phone, and I kept saying, this is not how
it's supposed to work.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
The best new business department is just better creative, just
a better product that gets the attention to potential new
business leads. So those people segued elsewhere and I took
their salaries and I moved it to Lisa Topole. So
I've been trying to hire Lisa Topole for years. She
(15:48):
was one of my writers at Ogilvy, and she's just
a real creative powerhouse, but has a really big heart
and she cares a lot about social issues. I tried
to hire once that I couldn't afford. So she went
to DDB for a couple of years, and I saw
like eighteen months two years later on LinkedIn that she
was leaving DDB and we were pitching thinks the period underwear, and.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I don't think I.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Had the chops to talk about menstruation and period underwear.
And so I hired Lisa immediately. I said, listen, this
is a great client. The clients are from Bbdo they
speak our language, you know, make a play that really
speaks to young women about their periods and period underwear.
And so I put Lisa right up in front and
I basically we were basically dating to get married.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
And I never touched the product. She was writing the script.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
She was the one who wrote the script about the
older woman who said, you know, you could put a
man on the moon, but for thirty years I had
to find a string sticking at my biprack. I mean,
I can't, I can't write that. So when the campaign
was almost ready for presentation, Lisa had her line that
was the pitch line, that was think outside the box.
(17:00):
And I was like, love the campaign. I think the
line isn't big enough to hold all the social impact
stuff we want to do with them.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
But I also didn't want to get in Lisa's face.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
So I just wrote on a post it note, a
little note, a little tagline, and I pushed it across
and it was how a new generation, how the new
generation thinks t HI and X and Lisa scripted out
the word but uh, and that's the winning pitch line,
and they bought it right away and we went to
LA and we shot it. So that was kind of
the bar that was set with Lisa. Just go for it,
(17:38):
you know, use your life experience, but also understand what
makes these brands tick. And with Lisa, to get creative prowess,
you also get a rollot X.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
So she was the.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
One who, you know, after a year's time when her
not compete expired, she was the one who we can
actually get those relationships she had when she was at DDB.
So one of her clients went from over to Michael's
and our Michael's client is wonderful and that is because
of Lisa's relationship with her.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And then ELF was a relationship with our head a strategy,
Kay Charles, who knew some folks over at ELF. So
we got an assignment to do emotion graphics video about
how they have more women on their corporate executive board
than any other.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
You know, Wall Street corporate board.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
And after looking at it, it was Kate and Lisa said,
maybe there's more to this, So they started looking at
why is there so few people of.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Color and women on corporate American boards.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So they found out, you know, that there was more
guys named Richard Rick or rich or Dick than any
other kind of person.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
On corporate American boards. And that was the that was
how they cracked the coat on the thing.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
The CMO of ELF is such a powerhouse and she
just wants to take risks and she really wants to
really empower women to take these senior positions, so that
the platform is called change the Board game.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
But the campaign is so many Dicks campaigns. Yeah, it's
so good, But it wasn't hard to sell.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
It wasn't It was easy. Got to get the right client,
right idea with the right client. What is the hardest
thing about being a purpose driven agency? You know some
things that come to mind. Do clients think most of
your work's pro bono? Do they pigeonhole you into like
you can only do this one part of the business
or the campaign? What are the most challenging parts about
(19:36):
being focused on purpose and make good money? And then
what are some of the advantages of it?
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Well, the advantages is that's where the world is.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, you know, the new consumer my Sons for example
twenty six, twenty eight. There they buy goods and services
from brands that behave responsibly in the world. So you
know they will not buy Tesla. It's not not this,
not today, maybe five years ago. But so I think
(20:08):
we're at the right place at the right time, and
that momentum is not going to stop.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And you hear, you.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Hear a lot about Purpose is dead and DEI is
being defunded, and yeah, that is just all media. People's
values don't change because it's a bad guy.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
In the White House, right, that's just noise.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, there's a lot of noise. I did my research.
Four hundred eighty six of the corporate five hundred still
strongly back their DEI projects and initiatives. That isn't changing.
You know, you got that guy, which think Robert Starbuck,
Bobby Robbie Starbuck, who's out there banging a gong about
Harley Davison and John Deere and all these people, all
(20:50):
these brands that he has converted and convinced the board's
like even Target, Like what is Target doing?
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I don't know, but it's hurting their business.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
They didn't do their homework on that one. So I
think the store traffic is down twenty seven percent.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
But purpose, when you're doing creativelopment, you know, when you
worked in a non purpose driven agency, are just looking
for how does creativity intersect with commerce? You know, so
you're looking for an idea that connects with the human
insight that really brings the value of the brand forward,
(21:27):
and then you could find your target audience and start
your campaign there. With purpose, got to bring in the
ven diagram, the third element of consciousness. So it's creativity,
commerce and consciousness, and that consciousness is a little bit
a little bit more money, right.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah, it's squitchy and it depends on what you mean
by it exactly.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
So with ELF, it's all about empowering women. So that's
how you get the Sods campaign with strong roots. It's
one of our clients. It's a plant based frozen product
that is convenient. It's frozen, so so obviously that's a
that's about saving the world less you know, greenhouse gas
effect on the planet. Their tackline is good made easy,
(22:10):
So that's those two examples are very linear. Michael's is
a bit of a challenge, right because they sell you know,
art supplies and craft supplies and how do you make
that purposeful? Right, So they talked a lot about the
joy of creativity and Lisa and her team got to
(22:30):
a campaign called.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Create the World You Want to Live in, which works
on both levels. Right.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
It says you can create your own Halloween costume and
your own Christmas treet decorations. But at the same time,
if you want to protest what's happening in wolst in
the White House and DC right now, and you want
to create a world where we have personal freedoms and
that your friends in the LGBT community need to be
protected and your MPR is not going to be revoked,
(22:58):
you know you can create that world because that's the
kind of brand that we represent. So it's a little
bit more philosophical. The ideology is not as linear as
those are the two examples.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
I give you.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
It's more nuanced, but it's still there in your work.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah, and it kain of comes down to a great client.
They understand that it's easy to work with a brand
like let's.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Say Arii or Patagonia, like these brands have always been
purpose driven from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
It's in their DNA.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
But if you're going to work with a brand that
doesn't know what their purpose is yet. That takes conditioning.
And we talk a lot about progress over perfection. So
we're never going to work with Smith and Wesson or
Philip Morris or anything like that now chemical, but you know,
we can work with brands that are not as obviously
(23:49):
looking out for the planet or the people or the critters.
It takes more investigation to give them an angle.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Right, But would you say almost all businesses you can
find an angle?
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah. Tell me about the concept of constructive capitalism. What
does that mean to you?
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (24:07):
It means yuh yeah, not greed over everything else.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
It means not having the cash region ring and you
don't actually contribute to society.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
It means you can do both. You can do well
by doing good.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
I've heard it called conscious capitalism, constructive casalism, capitalism, construct
conscious consumerism, that you can actually run a business but
at the same time look after some kind of social agenda.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
What are the challenges about being purpose driven?
Speaker 1 (24:37):
The pressure on cmos from the CEO about driving profit
on a quarterly basis. You know, where's where's my return
on my investment? Purpose isn't a short game, you know,
it's it's not like you're going to have a sale,
or you know you're going to sell a new line
(24:57):
of tube socks and it has a new style that's
more attractive, and then you had the immediate, you know,
blip on the on the radar. Purpose is a slow build,
so we try to work with clients that can have
performance marketing expectations that also have a purpose campaign running
alongside of it. I mean that's what ELF does. ELF
has a handful of agencies that do their marketing so slow.
(25:20):
It's it's slower than most CEOs.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Have the patients work.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
I see. It takes real commitment and strong cmos to
drive the work forward correct. How has your leadership style changed?
Would you say maybe from when you were leading teams
at I don't know, Kirschenbaum or building that agency to
leading them at a purpose driven agency.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I say, just it's a lot easier because we are
self defined as an organization. I remember going to the
first Advertising Age Small Agency Awards and they would have
these breakout sessions where you can work the consultant to
figure out how to sharpen your purpose profile as your
(26:05):
agency profile and make yourself more differentiated from the competition.
I didn't go to those breakout sessions because.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
We need to.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
It's already you know, baked into who we are. So
those are the clients. Those are the kind of clients
that come to us for that very reason, So we
don't have to figure out what our language is. We're
already self defined and already in that space. And also
with the people that work for us, we attract that
kind of person So when people are built into purpose
(26:36):
that they really care about social issues, they're far more passionate,
far more committed, and far more energized to work harder
and to see that change through. So you know, when
I was in a big agency and I would work
on you know, Bloomberg or Microsoft or Nestley, you know,
you're just it's transactional and you're just looking for the
(26:57):
next funny thing and trying to get sales, to get
a blip so you can, you know, get your bonus
that that quarter that year, it wasn't a lot of
personal investment.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
And that's not the case that overlent.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
What advice would you give to maybe younger creatives who
want to be you know, in the industry and successful,
but also want to lean towards sort of social impact.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
To be honest with you, don't know, you don't really
need a purpose driven agency to do purpose driven work.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, you just need a purpose driven.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Brief, right, And that could happen in any agency, in
any design firm. But my business part and true, we
just wanted to build a business on the back of
all purpose brands.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
So I think the advice would be always look for
an opportunity to create social impact no matter where you work.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
But I say this to my sons all the time.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
You know, the way to break into any business, any
creative business, and I don't have to tell you is hustle.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah. Do more people want to save the world today
than when you first started.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Absolutely. I mean when we started, purpose was kind of
an unknown quantity and people would look at me sideways
and say, what's with this purpose? That what you're saving dolphins?
I was like, it's purpose, it's social purpose. But you know,
I think purpose hit a peak about four years ago
(28:21):
and Fearless Girl was a can and there's a lot
of hype around that, and now that we have a
new administration, it's falling at a fashion. But I think
only superficially you know, I do a bunch of research
all the time to make sure these things are data driven.
Eighty seven percent of new customers between the ages of
(28:42):
eighteen and thirty eight expect a brand to take a
position of politics, you know, have a point of view,
stand for something. So that's not going to change. The
new consumer is not going to move their value system
because of who's in the White House.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
That's going to stay consistent.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
What's a business challenge that keeps you open night.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
I'm sure you have.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
You have this soone the same one. I have never
reconciled the issue of the subjectivity of our business, the
subjectivity versus the profitability. Right, So I think it's a
good idea. Ex client says, I don't see it, you know,
(29:25):
And you could do all the focus groups you want.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
But as a creative person a you're being defensive. Yeah,
you know.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
And the client says, well, if you're so so creative,
go back to the sandbox and find more ideas. So,
you know, if we were digging a hole and filling
it back in, it's a very tangible thing and it's
going to cost you. The shovel is going to cost
it as much. The worker is going to cost as much,
and the ice ice tea is going to cost as
much and I'm going to market out twenty percent and
(29:51):
that's a fair about fair price. How do you put
a price on ideas? How do you make the ideas
that are my opinion, actually going to move the needle.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
And have have them been proved out?
Speaker 1 (30:04):
And also when you have the idea sold in, how
do you make sure you're getting paid enough? Like what
are you getting paid by that the hours by you know,
the skin in the game percentage.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Of sales exactly. So that makes me nuts.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
And you know, and SAG is dealing with the same thing,
and AI is coming in there and their people spots
are writing scripts are probably going to be actors soon.
So creativity, I think, is not getting its respect, and
it's fair shake of the wall. It's getting more and
more marginalized.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
What do you have a mantra quote that you live
by that you always think about.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I'll tell you sorry.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
When I was a kid, I belonged on a swim
team and you know, the coach would say warm up
into fifty laps and my father was always like sitting
on the side of bull I swim and I'd be
winded and he would just say five more.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
So I always swam fifty five laps, and he was
trying to, you know, instill in me that.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Hard work pays off.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah, and you really have to lean in and give
extra to really be successful. So I had this thing
in my head, give a damn work.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Hard, repeat, give a damn work hard repeat. I love it.
That's it.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
That's my bumper stary.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
It could also be the bumber sin could be five more. See,
I like that.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
I'm more of a strategist.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Now, do you have a role model anyone that you
try to emulate or you look up to?
Speaker 3 (31:40):
No, you know that's how.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
That's how. That's how I met rich Kerschmount because ad
Week did a a story about mentors and mentees, and
I think Richard was with Helene Speedac and there were
you know, the mentee mentor mentee, mentor menee and the
guy who.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Called me said, you know, ask me the same question.
I don't have a mentor.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
I never did, so they shot me standing next to
an empty stool.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Oh my god, that's so cool now, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
So Richard Richard was photographed before before I was, and
that's how we met.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
For the first time. I like the old school stuff,
you know.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I like like Earl Cavanall from Scouty mccaben Slow's and
Ralph Almaradi and Carl Alli. Those are the heroes I
mean for me, you know, Lee Cloud and the icon
Dan Whyden, like, those are the people that just blazed,
blazed the frontier and really just created culture.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Don Don Draper, all right, well, thanks for being on
the podcast. You're amazing. I'm personally glad we've become friends
over this year and I've been really wowed by what
your agency has done with your recent campaigns.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Jason, You're a star. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Thanks so much for listening to Soul and Science and
we'll see you next week. Soul and Science is a
Mechanism podcast produced by Maggie Bowles, Ran Tillotson and Lulie Jablonski.
The show is edited by Daniel Ferrera with theme music
by Kyle Merrick and I'm your host, Jason Harris. At Mechanism,
(33:22):
we build iconic brands with soul and Science. The soul
is culturally relevant brand building and the science is the
always on marketing activities that drive the bottom line. Learn
more at Mechanism dot com
Popular Podcasts
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com