A conversation about strategy with Joe Burns of Quality Meats

Welcome to OnStrategy Showcase. I'm Fergus O'Carol in Chicago. If you're here in the US, you should know that the 2026 Fee Awards are now open for entries. If you're marketing effort ran anytime between June 1, 2024 and September 30, 2025, it is eligible to be entered into the 2026 US Fee's. There are a couple of deadlines between now and the final deadline. The final deadline is November 3rd. You can find out a lot more information about this at fee.org or you can do what worked better for me, which is just the Google 2026 US Fee Awards. 2026 US Fee Awards and it'll bring you straight to the page where you can download the kid on the case study templates, etc. So good luck to everybody who gives that a shot. We always love having Fee winners here on the show. I also want to let you know that we are recording live on Thursday evening, October 23rd at Deutsch in Los Angeles. I'm really excited about this one. Our theme is going to be moments of magic and moments of magic. We've all experienced them. They can come to you in the shower when you're walking the dog, when you're talking to somebody in a focus group, when you're walking, when you're reading a book that's completely unrelated to what we do, a spark happens and you know that you've unlocked the strategy or you've unlocked the creative idea. We're going to be talking about examples of these, how they came about and most importantly, the great work that resulted from them. We've got a phenomenal panel. We've got Ryan Wine Lair is a Chief Creative Officer of Deutsch. We've got Jill Bergenson is Chief Strategy Officer at TBWA, Shia at Dale Los Angeles. We've got John Deshner, who's head of brand at Ryan Reynolds Agency, which we've heard a ton about maximum effort. Amanda Shapiro is EVP Strategy at Deutsch. And Jason Carly is Executive Creative Director at Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's Agency Artist Equity. So come along and you can get tickets at on strategyshowcase.com under the Live Tour tab. On our website, we hope to see you there. It's 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday evening, October 23rd, which is pretty much next week. So I'd encourage you to go out and get your tickets. So hope to see you there. We're going to be talking today with Jill Bergens. Jill Bergens is a Strategy Leader Quality Needs. They're an agency out of Chicago, but Jill is actually out of Brooklyn. We have a conversation about strategy. His point of view on strategy, the way he approaches it. And I really enjoyed this a lot. He's a prolific writer. If you're not following him on LinkedIn, I'd strongly encourage you. Jill Bergens, best place to connect with him, is on LinkedIn. Enjoy. So I've recently come across Joe Bergens. He's Strategy Lead at Quality Meets, which is wonderfully a Chicago-based agency that is really everywhere, I suppose, right? Jill, that's the way to think about it. Yes. It's all people who kind of got a little bit sick and tired at the big agency world. I wanted to do something a little bit more trimming the fat, more efficient, get to good ideas quicker, less layers, that kind of thing. Yeah. So it's out of Chicago. It's gotten a ton of accolades at age, at week, small agency of the year, small agency, a-lists, and has grown phenomenally in the last three to four years. You guys started in 2020, so it's all new. And of course, again, an agency with a really unusual name, which seems to be the thing to do these days, right? Indeed. Quality Meets. Brian and Gordy, the founders talk about this. It all comes back to trimming the fat, you know? Anyone I think who's been in a big agency, it's hard to not look at it and be like, "My God, there is a lot of hierarchy and layers, and up and down the chain of information." And just time and resource that I would have you wasted on coordination costs and the transactional costs of communication internally and with clients. So we cut all of that out, which allows us to get to a better product quicker for less money, I think. I love that. So if anybody just missed that quality meat is when you trim away the fat and you get the best quality meat. Exactly. I love it. I was wondering what it was. I saw some reference to a butcher when I was reading that something recently. So now that all makes sense. Anyway, we had a conversation a couple of weeks ago, really good conversation and you're a prolific writer. I mean, you write really God damn well. I think there's very few people who do it really, really well. I think Rob Campbell does it. I think Martin Vigal does it. I think you do it. And not only do you, I mean, Rob Campbell writes every day. It feels like you write very, very frequently. What does the writing do for you as a strategist or as a human being? Oh man, that's a great question. You've put me in some very esteemed company there. So I'm slightly flattered. But yeah, the reason I like just like making stuff, I think if you're a strategist in an advertising agency, this, what I would say is two big problems that will get you down if you don't do something about them. I think the first is the pace of it. Now I'm going to sound perhaps heretical here and people might be jumping in the comments like you're not allowed to say that. I think it's very slow. The journey from getting to a brief, a set of objectives or whatever, to actually making something that you put out into the world is incredibly slow. It's like months, right? You know, to the between the brief and the finished ad. And that's just not fast enough for me to keep interested in something. You know what I mean? I like to be interested in something. Maybe a couple of weeks, tops, 48 hours, ideally. And I think the other thing that is a deep source of frustration for planners in advertising agency is the lack of agency. It can be quite alienating because you have such little direct control over the outputs of the work. You know, you don't exist to, you might make some decks or reports or run some research or write a brief. But like the thing that goes out into the world, you don't really get to put your fingerprints on it directly. It's all done by proxy of the creatives who make it and then the producers who put it out there. So the right in and the production of these little PDF documents, that's my way of solving those two things. It allows me to do things quickly and to do things where I have completely autonomy and agency over the output and say what I want to say. And the reason I do that and what right in brings to me, ultimately it's about stepping into things that I don't really know how well it's going to do. You know, and maybe I should make this a magical three because there's a third issue with being a strategist in an agency that I think you have to do something about if your brain works like mine at least, which is you're always kind of doing something where the parameters of how well it's going to do a sort of known, you know, you've minimized the risk throughout the process. You kind of know how well something's going to do. Whereas I think when you write for yourself and put it out into the world, you're able to create things where you're completely uncertain whether or not it's going to be succeed or fail, you know, and that's I think you can generate far more learnings and personal development. If you do things that are highly uncertain as to the the response and the results of them, so it hits all those things for me. So are you a person who who finds it hard to turn off? Oh, God yeah. Yeah. My wife had to confirm this, you know. I was having I had a friend over his another strategist, but dinner the other day. He was like, you ever just not thinking about stuff or having opinions on stuff? And I'm like, now to be honest with you, I'm not because you don't just write, you write and you gather those thoughts into documents. This is what is interesting to me about you. You you produce a bunch of PDFs. If you if you follow, if you follow Joe on LinkedIn, you'll see this. And it's like a carousel document that's that you can just see you you don't just post. Is there a reason you create these PDFs that are just almost subtly designed? Yeah. Yeah. There's two big reasons for that. One is and this is probably the most weird and idiosyncratic of the two. I think as a species, we overrate like logical rational communication. And I think like, you know, you mentioned Mike and Wygall, isn't it? I think he'd probably disagree with me on this. I think he's probably inclined in the other direction, you know, he's writing very formal and structured. You would know what no one on earth would accuse him of being style over substance. That was absolutely. Whereas my opinion is styles better than substance. Substance is easy. In my opinion, like it's easy to have substance. Having style is magic. That's hard. And I think it stems to the second point. A style as in a graphic style or how you write as a person. Everything. I am of the school of Oscar Wilde, GK Chesterton, through to Glamrock. That's what I like. I think if you could like David Bowie, there's substance, but the style is what elevates it. And that's the second thing to me. I think my dad was a huge fan of "Roxy Music", right? - Yeah, it is. - And the thing that's so great about "Roxy Music" is the style was the substance. You know, you've got Brian Eno and Brian Ferry together. One of them is this kind of like sci-fi wizard character, twiddling knobs and producing this whole thing. And then you've got Brian Ferry, who kind of like, he's like a kind of lounge lizard sleazy snake. He kind of crunes his way in. And it's like, that was just playing in the car when I was a kid non-stop. And like, and the album covers and the artwork that was on these LPs, which is kind of probably a bit sorcery, politically incorrect by today's standards. But like, I can just remember being captivated by this universe that they would create. And like, obviously mine is much more pathetic because it's on lintens about the advertising industry. But it's like, in my head, it's that same thing. It's not just about putting an idea out there and the substance of the idea. Like, I just love things that start, you know, like I said, it comes from, I think it's a very British kind of dandy-ish thing almost, just like the style matters a lot, you know. So what does that mean for you when you're working with creative as a strategist? Are you a more visual creative or strategist? I mean, do you believe your recommendation should come in the form of an idea? Or how do you think about, or how does that influence the way that you deliver for a creative team? That's fine. Because, you know, creatives like to work in different ways. I struggle with some creatives. The ones I struggle with are the ones who want to be handed a very single-minded proposition of like, say this. Now your job is to go away and say it in a clavaway creatives. Janine, I mean, like, say this. Yeah, totally. This is specifically the message. You now go and roll it in some glitter. And like, I don't work like that. And I think I'm going to lean into music again here. I was in a band from the age of like 15 to 1920. And that's really shaped my idea of what creativity is. You know, and I wrote all the music, you know, in the band that we're in. But I'd come with some riffs and some ideas and some thing. I can't write lyrics to save my life. So it's weird that I can write. But I can't write lyrics to songs to love or money. But like, I'd come with these fragments. And then together, we'd start of like, you know, we'd be sitting around drinking tea and smoking rollups. And like, just are the basis to be like, oh, what if I did this with it? And it's all very collaborative in a way where, for me, the whole process of creative fitee. And this is going to really, I think, maybe rub people up the wrong way again. Because I think it's all about kind of killing your ego to a certain extent. And just being like separating the art from the artist. And like, that's the creatives I like to work with are the ones who can riff, you know, and just like throw ideas back and forth with, and I, what if we try this, what if we try that? And then you kind of like, go down the mountain as I call it. And like, it feels at first like you're moving away from sensible answers. Yeah, yeah. And then you start feel like, oh, no, now we're on an incline again. We're going uphill. We're going to find something great up here. And maybe that's what you do. So, and then what are you doing in that conversation? Because you can be, you can be thinking imaginatively and creatively, but you also have to have a level of logic that you keep things between the rails, right? I mean, as a strategist. Absolutely. I do think there's something really important in the conversion part of strategic thinking. But that should always be applied to defining the problem. You know, reframing, thinking about the problem in a creative way. That you do kind of have to go away and lock yourself in a cupboard and just think alone. And then there's a strategist. But then when you've got that reframe, and I can give you an example of one of those if you want, which might help illustrate it. It's like, we were working on a pitch for Benacol. And Benacol was like a cholesterol lower in yoga and spread and food, functional food stuff in the UK. And they briefed us and they were like, OK, we really want to talk about the efficacy of this in lowering cholesterol. And we were like, well, hold on a minute, because you can get statins for free on the NHS in the UK. So it's cheaper to use something that's more effective. And we-- so it's like, let's not talk about efficacy, because you're not as good and you cost more. So we went out and checked some people with cholesterol issues. And we got this fantastic insight where one of the guys who were interviewing, we were like, so why is it-- why is it-- we use this product rather than just take the statins. He's like, I don't want to take pills every day. That's something old people do. - Little rusty. - And then we reframe that, OK, so the problem is-- the problem this product solves is that it stops you from feeling old, because you don't have to take medication every single day. Like, you can just spread it on your toast. That's everyone spreads butter on their toast. Just my butter. And like, you know, we-- it's quality meats. We recently did the GoDaddy Super Bowl spot with Walton Groggins. And I think the reframe of the problem there was just like business owners, even when they're nailing it, feel like they're faking it. So let's play into that, you know. We help business owners get over in pasta syndrome. So like, I think that part of the equation, the strategist really does need to go and kind of isolate themselves and just work out what the problem is. But then once you've got that problem, you then need to bring everyone in like, I'll now let's solve it together. And like, really, I think your job as a strategist in those moments is just to keep the big picture-- the big thing. It's very interesting if you watch people in general, how quickly they'll lose sight of what the objective is. Genetically, because people-- Yeah, totally. --inclined to get excited about either executional things or small details or the real-- the biggest tyranny is a checklist. And I always feel like most of the 90% of the arguments that a planner gets into is the planner wants to focus on the big objective. And then there'll be someone who's got a checklist and be like, OK, well, I made a bullet point after the last client meet in. And there's these 10 bullet points that we need to hit. I'm like, I don't think anything good has ever happened from having a checklist of 10 bullet points. And you mean that who would have the checklist? I think it's more the account manager's usually. OK. There'll be someone who's like, I've written this checklist. Oh, like, so in other words, like-- But what about what the client said? Yes, exactly. And it's like, oftentimes, I think, is a planner. You're like, if they knew what they wanted-- If they fuck off. If the clients knew what they wanted, we wouldn't have a job. So one of the things that I tended to struggle with in my years inside some agencies was the fact that, to what you were saying earlier, you would come in with a brief. You would come in with a reframe. You would begin conversation, what might typically be called the briefing conversation with creatives. And then the wheels would start turning. And I would find that the wheels began to turn in a completely different direction than the direction I wanted it to go in. And I think in retrospect, I reacted to quickly to that, to try and course correct it. And I think what I hear you saying is, you've got to just let that bullshit fall away. And then come in later and course corrected, rather than course correcting it in the moment. Because I think you have to have a strategy as a strategist on how you deal with creatives. Because every creative is different. But is that what I'm hearing from you that you have to allow the team to go through the motion in order for you to get where you want them to ultimately go? Yeah, that's exactly. And I think that's why the most important thing is defining the problem. Because that's the thing that you set in stone. And usually a brief from me will probably be like, OK, here's the shift we need to make. This is the problem. We need to move people from this to this or we need to change the way they think from this to this. Here's three different ways you could try it. And essentially what you're doing is giving the creatives three four start points to have a go at. Now, that leads to go one of two ways. You've got to grab onto one of those things and love it. And then all the work will just be really close to it. Although just ignore all three. And they'll go off in different directions. But I think that's why it's really important that you really have nailed the shift that you're looking to make down and the problem that you're solving down. Because then you can always come back to that and be like, I know you guys got really excited about this thing that's over here. But does that actually do the thing that we've promised the clients? And we've said that the work is going to achieve. So yeah, I do-- and the other thing is like, you don't know what you don't know. And I think a big part of being good as a planner is understanding the difference between uncertainty and other different things that we often confuse with it. Like, I think it's easy to mistake heading out into the unknown as heading in the wrong direction. Because if you've got-- you know what I mean? If you know that there's a six out of 10 quality score answer east, if the creative start heading west, you go, I know there's a six out of 10. So let's just go that way. And I think sometimes it's just good to let them go east. Because maybe they're going to find a eight out of 10. And maybe for now they can jump to another one. So like, you do have to maybe switch on bastard mode three days before the pitch sometimes and just be like, guys, enough. In fact, I-- I've got a streak on my right and I've got a half finish piece on this because there's a mathematical solution that turns out this. It's very sexist title but it's called the secretary problem and I don't know if you're familiar with this research but it's from the 60s when everyone doing social sciences I guess was hugely sexist when they decided to do what they were going to do other things but I think the more modern name for it is called the optimal stopping problem and the optimal stopping problem. Yes, the optimal stopping problem and essentially what it says is if you've got a fixed amount of sorry if you've got a elastic amount of time you can spend as long as you want doing something then obviously just keep going and find something that's perfect but if you say got two weeks to crack a pitch let's say and you want to get to the best idea in that two weeks at what point do you say right we're going to stop now because we should stop looking and start polishing when you start polishing the ones you've got and the mathematical answer to that that wins in Monte Carlo simulations is you should spend 36% of the time that you've got that two weeks so let's say a third for simplicity sake spend a third of your time just completely openly exploring do not try and pick a winner just spend a third of the time looking at oh we could try this we could try that then after a third of your time use that as the benchmark and say okay we spent a third of our time exploring this is the best idea and then keep exploring and the next thing you get to that beats that benchmark is statistically speed limit likely to be the best idea you'll have in that two week period and it will probably come around halfway through the process and I think if you just keep that in mind it's just a really useful thing which is like as long as you've still got a third of the time left you're probably not in the shit with a process you know what I mean like the thing that you coalesce around and say right this is the idea now let's polish this up and turn it into a presentation that doesn't need to come until 60% of the way through a process really if you want to get to the best idea you'll do it that way you'll spend a 30-a-time just open mindedly exploring set a benchmark the next thing that comes along the beats that benchmark is going to be your best answer that you get in the time so like that's a great comfort to me as I mean you know I'll breathe the creative and I'll be like okay we've got a week and a half of creative development here as long as we make a call around 60% of the way through that time I think that's just given freedom so what do you do to your point earlier when you've given three scenarios off of your your reframe and the creative comes back and says we have a fourth scenario and you say well does it but does it work against our goal and they say yes and you say no well that's when you I don't know man it's tough that is tough I think the first thing you have to do is take that out of a group scenario right because like if you're making decisions in a consensus environment you will lose as a planner 90% of the time as if you're in a group if you're in a if you are in a group situation inside an advertising agency you're always going to be outnumbered there's never more than there's never more strategist than there are creatives and you've got to just go okay let's take this me you miss the ECD or Mrs CCO or whatever it is let's me and you go and chat about this because I don't think doing it in the room is gonna help so I just take that out of that environment I think it's just sound a little bit dark artsy but I think internally managing those relationships with the creativly it's on the thing and there'll be much more receptive to having the discussion is you know what I mean I think in the crucible the coliseum of a create and review no one like you know what I mean like it's not it's not the best environment yeah it's a tough thing because I think you know I think the way we talk about it here is is in the ideal world where you're not actually going to be presenting the work in three hours or to the client or the next morning and you can actually you might have to struggle to get a meeting with somebody you know and it might take two days to get it for that one-on-one sidebar conversation it can be enormously destructive to the role of the strategist when there isn't that sort of either there isn't that there isn't that perfect fit with the creative team put it that way you know culturally or for our in terms of a relationship and I think that happens to more strategists than we're willing to say in terms of the role that we have to play and the fact that the reality is not the reality of it is very different than what you think it's going to be yeah exactly I mean I think strategy strategy is just a funny job because it's the only job in the world of advertising that subscribes to a just world fallacy it's like it's like it seems kind of nuts when you think about it but like strategy makes an awful lot of sense if remarket liberal capitalism is about maximizing profits and good for the consumers right like okay that's what we want to do and you know no one's going to pretend that that is not what we're doing but in a weird way it's like planning is the only one that kind of has to buy into it really and doesn't just use it as a game to further themselves you know what I mean like if you're if you're young creative do you give a shit about your clients profits going up or do you want to win an award so you get a better job at a cool agency in six months time or do you want to do what you think is the better idea we're maybe not your goal isn't to win an award but you definitely want to be creating great work because that's what your role is and and if you think you have a brilliant idea you want that you want that to come to life even though it may not meet the goal exactly exactly so the incentive where the we're supposed to be the conscience of the industry yeah and like the account people are always one of them going to want to have clients that happy and you might argue the clients that produce successful market in are going to be happier but that's way down the list on their objectives versus like climbing the pole internally you know in a mean like getting a promotion or getting a better job and getting a fair human nature I mean you can do that yeah so in a way I think maybe I've never said articulated but maybe we get into the point that the problem with strategy is that it goes against human nature because human beings selfish and will pretend that they've got the actually in a mean and like strategy is the one department that's like oh no we are all here to make effective great advertising work and like it's kind of like kind of quietly naive in a way it's worth reflecting on and I've done this a number of times in the show where I think that there is very rarely done but when it is done the magic in this industry happens and what I'm talking about is when you meet your sort of soul mate in on the creative side of the equation and you just connect and I think you see that happen in so many places that are doing the best work they are they're it's the result of people who connect and click the rest are fighting to find that it's like finding your life partner you've got to find your creative partner if you're a strategist you've got to find the type of person that you connect with I just don't think I don't think most of us have the ability to be able to connect with any creative it's impossible to do and it's tough it's it's the same for creators to find their spirit partner in a strategist otherwise it's like it's like an uphill battle yeah I think and I think like as you go through your career that relationship is going to look slightly differently you know um so I think about some of the my favorite ECDs and CCOs and Sydney creatives that I've worked with and had that relationship they've all been kind of different like uh guy called Martin Rose mother in London we we do create reviews just me and him sometimes whilst playing like apex legends play station like with the headset son and we're like running around shooting guns on a computer game as we're chatting around the world it's perfect and then like Eric who was ECD at Mother New York we had a good relationship because we'd have our call he was based in Sweden at for a lot of the time and um we do our calls because I've got to you know what at the time one young kid and he'd wet me up at like 5 a.m so me and Eric and and my kid Henry would have these calls at like 5 a.m. New York time and Eric would be like holding dolls up on the cameras doing little puppet shows and then here are quality meets I think like Brian and Gordon is still a creative team which makes it a little bit more difficult to kind of find your foot in as a strategist um what do you mean by that well when you've got a really close creative team who are already friends it's a bit third wheel three's a crowd you know okay just it's a different role you have to find so like I'd say I'd probably orientate probably a bit close to Gordy I don't know if you know Gordy but they don't yeah I think it helps that I'm English I think in his head he's like a king like dressed in the kingly robes on a throne and then there's this kind of English gesture. You think he's going to like that? No, I think he will. I think he's like sitting there and then this kind of like English court gesture type character is there. Do you know what I mean? Right. Jonathan the Fata. Like to entertain the king and the thing and like not a monarch but a gesture. I'm, yes, exactly. Exactly. So I think I can kind of be a kind of court gesture role there. So like I think there's different ways you can find that groove. Sometimes it's like, because they're unlike I said, I'm a little bit under the weather so I can be a bit unvarnished on the court on this thing. But it's just like, I think the one that I resent is when creates treat like a researcher. You know the meaning like, there's, if you've seen the movie, the Outlaw, Josie Wales. God, if I have it years ago, that's decades old, right? Yeah, it's Clint Eastwood movie. And there's a line in that which is just stuck with me. And I think I probably saw this as like a 10 year old kid on the TV on a Sunday afternoon or something. And Josie Wales, this cowboy just says, don't piss by my back and tell me it's raining. And I think that it's the creative, this creative director who are like, you'll say, hey, I think we should do this and they'll be like, no, we should do this thing that I want to do. Now go and find me some stats that prove that you're wrong and I'm right. And I'm just like, go fuck yourself. If you think you're right, like I'm willing to kind of go at it with you. Let's go. You go find your proof. I'll find mine, you know what I mean? And we can have an argument. But like, I think you don't get that so much back in the UK, but I think here because of the genealogy of planning and the way that research was kind of already a thing over in the States and then planning departments kind of grew out of the research and testing function. Yeah, you're right. I think there's a little bit of like sometimes creative directors will expect strategists to go and just find evidence for why they're what they want to do is correct, you know what I mean? And like, I don't have, I just, I find that boring and I don't want to spend my life, you know, proving, proving myself wrong in a way, you know what I mean? So why do you think it's different in the UK? Because I think there's certainly, there are certainly pockets in the US. I'm thinking back to the early days of planning in the US. And there were, there were people who were here, John Steele, Jane Newman, others who sort of began to try and apply the practice in the US. But I think you're right in general that this has been a country where there was such a strong need to have planners on teams over time that people who seem to have an aspect of that skill were pulled into it. And they came out of research, right? But they weren't, they were, they were being almost in a certain way sort of forced into a role that wasn't fully formed. Why is it different in the UK? There's so many different reasons, but I think the one that's probably most interesting and entertaining for a podcast, if we're going to do a hypothetical theory, let's choose the one that's going to be the most interesting to listen to. My theory is that the UK is an, it's a nability culture, you know what I mean? If you're at the leadership level, you're borrowing from the kind of codes of nability in a way. You're not expected to be the smartest. You're not expected to be the best at anything. You kind of know deep down that you're there through luck. And happenstance, nothing to do with merit. It's just like my virtue of what? Your education, your background, your room. Yeah, exactly. There's no meritocracy. There's no assumption of meritocracy whatsoever in the UK. With deeply suspicious authority, who think that they know what's best? Like the role of authority, I think for the Brit, is just to kind of preside over things, just like to get in the smart people and then be like, right, then chaps that all sounds great. Let's go and get a lunch. And as a result, strategy plays a really important role because those people who were making the decisions, the CMOs, incline agencies or the CCOs, increative agencies, you know what I mean? The senior leaders who were making those decisions. Back in the day, right? No, even now. I think culturally this is embedded even to now. Okay. And they don't want to have to be considered the smartest person or the right person. They just want to be like, yep, that's what we'll do. I've listened to the people and we'll go and do that now. You know, there's no embeddedness between being in a senior position and being smarter than anyone else or better at anything than anyone else. There's not that meritocratic assumption there. So as a result, the environment's just more open and less hierarchical. I mean, there is a hierarchy, but it's got nothing to do with merit. When I listen to you, I'm thinking that it's rooted in hierarchy. Yeah. But that's not the impression I get at all when I talk to CSOs and the theory that I've heard that I kind of go, that makes sense. Came from Martin Beverly when we were alive in London last year. And he said, the reason is because most UK agencies had planners on the board. They were founders. They had their names on the ad, but they're not here in the US. We don't have that. So you're always in a secondary position trying to earn your way up to what is ultimately the voice of the agency. We don't have, we don't make strong enough contributions to the voices of the agency. For example, why wasn't John Steele? Why wasn't it good be Silverstein and Steele? No, even a guy who made such an impact in creating the practice in North America or in the US at least didn't necessarily have that seat at the table to determine the role of the role of planning or the critical role and the planning is an optional. It needs to be followed. We don't seem to have that here. It seems to be more prevalent in the UK. Oh, it definitely is. And I think where I was getting around to is I just think the US is much more of a militaristic culture. You know, if the UK is based on the codes of an ability, the US is much more based on the codes of the military. If you look at what happened after the Second World War, all the guys from IBM who were like plighting out the bombing raids and things and the Pacific theatre, they would like Macnemara was dropped into the CEO of Coca-Cola, you know. And I think the US business culture stems from that military way of seeing it, which is like there is a leadership team and everyone else's job is just to execute what they say. Like they are the ones who determine what we're going to. Everyone else is just an operational executor of that thing. And as a result, you don't really need so much strategy because those people's jobs are just execution of what someone has decided. And I think that's part of the reason that you don't get those senior strategists with their names above the door of agencies because agencies roll is more executional here. I think that's about fulfilling the assets that are written down on a media plan and making those as efficiently and as impactful as possible, rather than necessarily like defining what that media plan shape like and how it is going to influence consumer behaviors and the things that I think traditionally strategy would have to main over. And that's all made worse because like, and this is changing now and I think strategy is starting to become more important even if some agencies don't realise this. Which is the United States has surfed a wave of like capital inflows, you know, high skill migration on precedented economic growth. You don't need strategy if you can just spend more money. You don't need it. Strategy happens when you need to outsmart people rather than outspend them. Whereas the UK is probably quite good planners because we've literally, since the 1950s, we've just been an empire and declined. So it's just like, when everything is declining, you need to outsmart things rather than outspend. You've got no money, you've bankrupted it. So I think there's like, you know, it's partly down to that. And I think that's changing is the material economic environment in the States, maybe shifts to a world where you can't just throw money at every problem. So do you think strategy is necessary in an agency for an agency to deliver for a client? I think strategy is necessary for clients, whether that lives within or outside of an agency is unagnostic towards, to be honest with you. Tell me about that. Well, you know, I did this survey recently where it was just asking strategists and non-stratigists how they felt about strategy, how they felt about its role. So it was mostly strategists that responded, but they were also clients and they were also creatives and they were also, you know, some people from tech platforms and media agencies and things like that. But I just wanted to kind of get a sense check and a pulse check on what people feel at the moment because it does feel like things are changing and things are shifting. And really, I'm skipping a whole load of stuff because there's a load of interesting things that came out of that survey. But I think after reflecting on it, I kind of land in a place where I think there's three different roles that are all called strategy and they're all completely different and they all suit different types of person and they probably should be broken up into different Rollers, maybe not a- and deserve the role strategist, and maybe one of them does or one of them does them. But like, I think if you look at what strategy is, let's get this one out the way first, because I think it's the easiest one. One conception of what strategy is, is the alignment machines. You know, it's like, okay, there's a thousand stakeholders in the clients, big organization, and there's all of our internal people, there's all this stuff, and all these people with put opinions and politics, go in and get them all aligned, right? Now I would argue like, I don't understand why that is not one of the core competencies of account management. That to me feels like if there is anything that client services should be delivering, it's understanding the clients' internal machinations and managing to build that alignment for the work. So like, that's one conception of strategy that I think you could just put, we should just put that into client services. And I think the reason it's been pulled out is client services is probably the department that's been juniorized the most. You know, it's become over time, just more and more about project management. And I think part of that is because strategy has gobbled up some of the more interesting parts of client services. Oh, well, we'll do that. We'll do that. But like, I think if you were to give more respect to client services and build that stakeholder alignment into client services, I think the second thing which really does have to live in creative agencies is this kind of like inside vendor type role. And it's not just insights, it's also platform expertise. So you'll see this a lot these days with like social strategists, but you still see it with TV strategists as well. But it's like just being an expert in what doesn't, doesn't work in social channels, or traditional media channels or whatever, just having a kind of, you know, a scientific perspective on what makes effective creative in different channels. And being able to do the testing and being able to do listening to work out what insights are there in culture and bring that in and give it to creative system list to develop creative around. And I think that should live in creative agencies. My conjecture is that that should probably sit within a creative department rather than having a head of strategy or a CSO that commands that that should just report into a creative director. And you're not going to have as many of those. Great. You was doing that role, no. I think junior strategists, you know, and I think this is one of the things that's quite tricky if you look at strategy is like that skill set in no way prepares you for the what I would call like the big, the big strategy of like understanding a value chain or understanding how to build a comms ecosystem around a client's problem. That touches on consumer experience and it touches on their pricing and their distribution and all of the media channels that they can operate, but also the whole ecosystem of every touch point that affects a consumer and being able to build strategic thinking that can set a vision for a brand that can cover off all of that and has the flexibility to work across it. That you're never going to get good at that. If your education in strategy is about understanding whether or not to put the brand in the first six seconds of a TikTok video, you know what I mean? Like, no, no, no, no. I think the first six seconds to all of that should just live within a creative department and help the creative be more effective ultimately. I think there is a much bigger strategic job which I personally don't think does need to sit within a creative agency. It's nice if you can do it, but it doesn't need to, which is essentially defining that whole ecosystem of communications touch points and essentially orchestrating that whole thing and knowing how all of that connects, how you need to measure the effectiveness of it holistically, ensuring that you're building a creative platform that sits across the whole thing and has the flexibility. I feel like that could very well live further upstream because then you get the remit to go and talk about, well, you should change your employee training because this isn't laddering back to the brand idea. And I think that's maybe what you're traditionally called brand planning, you know? And it seems that the better agencies have figured this out. I mean, these are not the dramas that I hear coming out of the great shops. No, 100%. And I think the reason for that is because in those really good shops, the thinking is valued. That's the difference. Yes. I think the death spiral is always that focus on like deliverables. I think you can tell when an agency is about, you know what I mean? You get a pre-warning that an agency's going to the dogs when all anyone cares about is deliverables. And that might be like strategic decks and documents or it might be you give a creative brief and the first thing the creator's ask like, well, what are the deliverables? We need 15s. No, everyone stops engaging with creativity, whether that's the ideas themselves, whether that's creativity and the strategic thinking, whether it's creativity and the processes you put around a pitch or a problem or a client or whatever. And they start focusing on like nuts and bolts, deliverables lists, evidence of thinking, you know? And like, I think that's the great shops never get bogged down in those kind of like, they're never, you know what I mean? If you know a great agency, no one's sitting there going like, oh, we need six, six second films and we need four, 15s and we need a print address. Do you not mean like people that I think they are? I think that is part of it no matter what. But I think for me, the distinction is the agency knows what it's therefore, right? The agency has a passion for creativity and therefore everybody who works there needs to work through that lens. I think as too many shops as they get larger and larger, it becomes an issue of retention rather than creativity and you begin to lose your way. So you, if you're, if you're a brilliant shop like with just a number of independent brilliant shops, that quality, quality meets, I think could become one of those, it's, you know going in what that company stands for. It actually has a brand. It's not just a fricking agency. That's not what to find it. You know when you hear its name, what you're going to get when you walk in the door, you know if you're a client that's going to be trade-offs that you have to make in order to work with that person, you're going to, you're going to wear that agency in the same way as a CMO in the same way that you proudly drive a certain type of car and you're doing that because you appreciate what they value. So there needs to be a deeper respect for what the agency offers and everybody else in there knows it. So they're talking about 15s. They're talking about the practicalities, but they're doing it knowing that what goes into that channel needs to be fricking great. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the thing that's like, you know the reason for that mindset of like like focusing so much on the details is because people, people are operating under the misapprehension that like average is a good outcome. You know, I think like in the world of creativity and advertising and marketing, average is the same as a shit. They're the same. There's best and then there's not best. Like that. Yeah, yeah, right. There's only a binary outcome, either it's great or not great. And it doesn't matter if it's a zero out of 10 or it's an eight and a half out of 10. If there's something that's nine out of 10, then the eight and a half and the one are the same. And like I think far too much effort is expanded on trying to ameliorate small problems rather than, okay, how do we make this really, really great? Because like the rewards don't go to ameliorating small problems, you know, to your point about retention, it's like, you know, clients will put up with an awful lot if you produce an amazing work, it's changing and transforming their business. Exactly right. That's exactly it. They will. And I don't think and so it comes down to you've got to have great agencies, which you've got to have great clients too. And it's amazing to see so many good CMOs coming along now that are demanding and creating great agencies because you know, no agency gets created about a great CMO who's willing to take a chance. So there's got to be credit given to CMOs. Everybody wants to shit on the client side marketers. But I think that there's they are the ones, the good ones are the ones that are keeping this industry floating in terms of the future of it. The other ones are not. They're doing the dull work. No, I don't disagree whatsoever. I actually think, I think when it comes to advertising as a business agency, the create agencies are probably like the slowest in terms of evolution. You know, I look around CMOs and they're doing really interesting stuff in terms of pushing the industry forward a lot of the time. And if I look at research vendors, there's really interesting stuff happening in the way that those guys are using new technology to better test ideas or fine qualitative insights or whatever it might be. So there's interesting there's interesting divergent strategies being adopted by CMOs by research vendors by production houses now who are adopting AI. agencies weirdly the what even media agencies I think look at them. there's breadth of different styles of media agency. What's kind of strange to me is that creative agencies apply so little creativity to how they go about doing things. You know, it's like, it's not really changing. And I mean, whether or not this is right or wrong, is irrelevant, but like, if you look at the art director copyright appearance, that emerged a historical period of time when it made a lot of sense. But it really doesn't make any sense now. Do you know how to do it? And like, maybe it still works, but it surprises me that we aren't seeing, you know, more innovation in terms of how agencies operate when, you know, if you pick a random 25-year-old consumer off the street, 80% of their media diet takes place on their smartphone. The fact that we structure creative teams based on how magazine advertising used to work is kind of a bit weird. Yeah, it's interesting. And not just that, but, you know, there's a multitude of other things that kind of you like, it's kind of strange that we deploy so little innovative creativity to the way that we go about making stuff. But it's always struck me as very strange. It's Joe Burns' strategy lead for quality meets he's in New York City. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. Do you have a, do you have a sub-stack or. No, I just. So where can people connect with you? Just LinkedIn has the place to find me, you know, I should do a sub-stack and maybe I tried to start. It's just like, I'm not very good at like coordinating all these different things. And then it's like LinkedIn, I can just throw anything on that. Little with you. Yeah, check on, check, check him out on LinkedIn. You can see all of his work and download a lot of it's his reporting and it's thinking, great having you, Joe. Yeah, I love you, Joe. Thank you. Cheers. And we will see everyone on the next episode.