Musa Tariq on How Short-Term Growth Can Disguise Bad Strategy

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It's on prime. Available in select areas. Terms apply. And so I sit there, Seth, and I've got my head in my hands, and I'm just like, "Oh my God, I'm actually going to get fired." I'm Seth Matlins, and this is Creator Destroyer. A business show, a marketing show, and a show that argues they've always been the same thing. My guest this week is Musa Tark, who began his career in what was at the time, the wild new frontier of social media. Back in 2008, Musa was a social media manager of Burberry, where he convinced the brand to invest six figures on satellite bandwidth to live stream a high-park fashion show. The first fashion show to be live streamed, by the way. Setting expectations with senior management, that they'd reach an audience of a million viewers. Having to tell Burberry CEO Angela Arons that they delivered only 673, by the way, not 673,000, just 673, wasn't the best day of Musa's career as he'll tell it, but it was among its most important, because while it seemed like a failure, like value destroyed to almost everyone, Arons saw it differently, and as an early signal, a necessary first step, and she wound up teaching Musa a succinct lesson in resisting short-termism that's defined how he thinks about value creation ever since, across roles at Nike Ford, Apple, Airbnb, and GoFundMe. Today is co-founder of the consultancy science and story. He's trying to bridge one of the most expensive and dumbest divides in business, the one between brand and business strategy. It's a great conversation with lessons and learnings from across these companies and more. Let's get into it. Here's the first question. I'm guessing you've got a theory about value creation. So, A, what is it, and what from your perspective are the ingredients essential to it? I was hoping we could talk about gardening, but not the first question. Porticulture is the next topic. I thought it was a tool, dude, sitting there and talking about gardening and life. Let's go very serious. Seth, I am grateful to you for not necessarily coining this term, but bringing this term back into nomenclature. I really hope to think that you're sorry. Value creation. You're welcome, by the way. Thank you. I appreciate it. I think we're all grateful for you. Listen, I like to simplify things as much as I possibly can. As you know me, I'm a very simple human being. And when I think about-- You masquerade as a simple human being. When I think about value creation, I think about a number of steps that need to take place and the challenges actually doing each and every one of them and getting them right. And so the first thing is recognizing what you, as a business, as an individual, are good at capable of. What is your strength? The first second is then finding an audience who has some sort of value or desire or need for that skill set. And it may not be perfect, but in that realm. The third is then understanding that person or consumer really, really well. So what are their pain points? What are the barriers? What are the challenges? What is it that they want more? What are the things that they want less of? Being able to provide that for a price that works for them. Then building a relationship with them. And a price that works for your business. Yes, and a price that works for your business. Being able to provide that for them and being consistent. And so it's, what are you good at? Who is your audience? What do they want? Providing that at the price that they need or want. And then building a relationship and being incredibly consistent. And I think that while they sound like these easy steps, they're pretty hard to do because ego gets in the way. Pride gets in the way. I know the consumer, but everyone else, operations get in the way and so on. And so to be able to do those things is difficult. But when you list it up like that, it sounds pretty simple. And there's lots of examples of brands who have done it really well. One of my favorite examples is a company that was based in like a little room above a garage in New York City where they would troll Amazon reviews. And so imagine they found a Bluetooth speaker that was selling on Amazon for a decent price and it had sold loads of them. But they would review the reviews and look at what people wanted differently. And so if someone said, "I actually know, I wish there was a hook on that Bluetooth speaker." They would then go and create that Bluetooth speaker with a hook on it. So they were just responding to comments creating the product in response. That's exactly what we're creating product adjacent aftermarket product. That's it. They knew they were really great at making product in China or wherever it was around the world and sourcing that product. They could adapt it quickly. They found an audience of people who basically saw that there was a demand for it and then they went and fulfilled it quickly. Okay, now I'm going to guess. Unless those two guys in the garage above the deli or whatever it was in New York are a founder garage story who are now a global enterprise that you're just being shy about mentioning that they didn't scale. And you've worked from some enormous organizations and brilliant brands. Nike, Burberry, Apple, Ford, Airbnb, GoFundMe. So let's look at it from the perspective of any one of those. Perhaps there are any other large enterprise who you think has done it really well. And then I want to ask you specifically about your point about price because you've said a couple of times at a price that the consumer wants. Now, we all typically want less than, right, best affordable, most affordable. But every brand you've worked for, almost every brand you work for, is a premium brand, commanding premium prices and build that into your value equation, if you would. Yeah, let's go to Nike and I think we'll touch on them a couple of times in this chat. At their best, and I think I was there when that was the case and the two are not correlated. It wasn't just, it wasn't just your departure. John Donnell herself the hook now. At their best, Nike's key customer was their 17-year-old athlete. And Nike across all divisions, that was like the news. Everyone knew that the 17-year-old athlete was the target. And I can tell you this for a fact, they knew the 17-year-old consumer better than any other company in the world. They knew that 17-year-old consumer, they knew how they consumed content, what they were doing in their lives. They were moments where teams would literally go and spend a week with a 17-year-old from the moment they woke up to the moment they went to sleep. And they knew what they wanted, how they consumed content. And that was, I think, genius because when you think about the 17-year-old, they are at the forefront of culture, right? They're the ones who are adapting to technology. They're the ones who are bringing up language and slang. Is it more than just ethnographic work, it sounds deeper than traditional ethnographic research? Yeah, they would spend a lot of time with those athletes. And at the same time, a lot of those people in the categories were people who had been in those positions, right? Like D1 athletes who would then start working. That's the first thing. The second thing is they knew the best athletes in the world. So consistently, while you were in Beaverton, the best athletes in the world would come through and provide insight and input onto what it was that they wanted. And so on one hand, you knew the customer. And then the other hand, you knew the human beings that these customers aspired to be. And so you were able to provide the 17-year-old athletes with product that in essence was accessible and available and designed by the best players in the world. So if you were a football fan, the shoes that you were wearing were inspired by the input from Wayne Rooney. Um, and, and so at its best, I think you have companies like Nike who just knew the customer better than you asked, and this might be breaking news, but when I was at Ford, I asked everyone, including members of the Ford family, if Henry Ford had ever said that quote, you know, yes, if if you'd asked people what they wanted, they would have set a horse, never did no one contributes with him historians have looked back in time and there's no writing. There's no speeches. He never said it. And, and I don't, I think that we use that quote all the time and it's bullshit. Like it's, we need to know what still works, even if the attribution is bullshit. But there is always some sort of signal that you might, you know, people really interesting, there's always some sort of signal that people kind of are looting to something or wanting something that you can tap into now, you might have to tap into the, you know, the 10 people who shape culture or 10 people who are ahead of the times. But there is always some sort of evidence and, you know, Apple is a company as well. Like that does a lot of research. Can we spend a second on that? Because I'm wondering if, I think, I think you are right broadly, but didn't Nike Apple, maybe even Burberry for that matter, create, which is said just to focus on some of the companies you've been with. Create, have in a product innovations that just taught a market what to want rather than responded to a market, like you really think the signals are always there. I think the signal is always there. You look at the number one setting vehicle in the world, North America, at least anyway, they're 150 vehicle, right? That is a premium product. 80s, $90,000 vehicle. That team knows the customer so incredibly well that that product is built for a certain customer. And I will tell you consistently over and over again that it is that the teams and the businesses that know their customers the best are the ones that succeed. So, you know, actually, I want to walk my own pushback back because the innovator is typically the first customer and is finding something missing in a world that they want. So you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. And I owe you my deepest apologies for downing you. So, it's a first. All right. Well, here's a better way to think about it. The world around them changes. So, let's take a contractor, right? A general contractor. They needed a clipboard and a piece of paper and maybe a pen. That was like their existence. That was like their office work for the longest period of time and then obviously the phone came along. Now, you can get internet and Wi-Fi anywhere. So they started carrying their laptops with them. When you're sitting in the front seat of an F-150, there was nowhere to put your laptop. I want to just let the audience know I have never sat in front seat of an F-150. I'm neither ashamed of it nor proud of it. It's just a fact. None of us are surprised. But now if there's a steering wheel that actually drops down where you can put your laptop on it, like that was a pain point that those customers had. And it wasn't that they wanted something new. It's that they had a pain point and the team knew that and then they went and delivered against it. So I think across everything that you've said is one of the premises of the show, which is the greatest source of value creation is being perceived as valuable by an audience that is large enough to grow over and over and over again. So if we flip this, if only to pay homage to the title of the show, across these companies you've worked with. Now you're a consultant and you've seen so many businesses large and small, operate brilliantly and less so and now really trying to get out of their own way. Are there are there patterns that you recognize when value begins to get destroyed when when and is it as simple as they take their eye off the consumer, the end user rather. I mean, let's let's go there again. There are enough people on LinkedIn who have an opinion on Nike's downfall. I myself have have beat that drop a few times. And so I haven't but let's just go here for a second given my experience on the inside thing, like I said, at their best, they knew the customer better than anyone else. And the way they did this was that they were all also organizationally designed that way. So it wasn't just a process, they had designed and organized their business around categories. So there was a team that was responsible for football, basketball, tennis and Seth, you could tell like what these teams were, right? All the Europeans were football players in the slightly bigger guys, American soccer. And then the American football players were slightly bigger guys and tall guys with basketball guys like and women like and it was very clear that the category teams were, you know, once upon a time the customer is a bit new to his business is incredibly well. And then from what I understand management consultant came in and said hold on a second, you've got like 15 different companies within a company, you know, got a marketing manager for golf and a market manager for tennis. Why not merge those two things? Skill set is the same, right? You're marketing person to why can't you do both. But with that, they lost their relationship with their customer with that they lost that insight that they the running team only knew because they were all runners or they had relationships with runners. And therefore you basically left a massive gap and I think that, you know, when you made it functional and lost the emotional well, yeah, and I think when you don't know your customer well, you leave a gap for other competitors to come in and get to know them better. And that is exactly what happened. Well, to extend that metaphor, they also left a gap on retail shelves and in wholesale relationships, I mean, and you would argue Seth that that is also a misunderstanding the customer that you keep using my first name. That is also a reflection of like a lack of understanding of customers, which is like we like to try shoes on. I want to ask you a question that's a bit of a digression, but as you were talking, I was thinking about my first experience with Nike way back in the day, right? What's the relationship for a brand like that and maybe even for Apple and Burberry and brands that you haven't worked at between performance equity and lifestyle cool because I wore Nike for a long time. Yeah, on my feet, I was never a performance athlete, which this two may surprise the audience right because I wore them because they were cool because the right people were wearing it, you know, simple 17 year old aspirational thing, exactly what you're saying before. Did they manage for cool as well as no, it was just performance and let the cool chips fall where they make you can actually argue that this is again my belief that that. That Nike at its best always focused on athletes and performance right and if you can imagine performance only gets better over time there's a constant people constantly improving that is a human truth right people are constantly getting better people are constantly improving and so. As long as people are constantly improving and these athletes these world class athletes are pushing and pushing and pushing your constantly pushing for better and more innovation. There is a time and period that I believe in those like 90s early 2000s where the deed is their competitors went heavily into culture and with that you get relevance but short term relevance so you might have a performer that you are sponsoring who is cool for you know a year to three four five years. And then all of a sudden drops off and then all of a sudden you're like well we've got to go find our next person and our next person and I think that at that time I hate bringing him up but that was that's the story of Kanye that is exactly the story of Kanye and so when you when you're in the world of performance you also appeal to certain person under armor for example their whole story is that they built you know training. Tisha saw or where for for athletes and and that was the thing that every young football American football athlete war in school and so they became really big amongst younger people so there is an element of performance that pushes innovation that therefore enables you to start having things to talk about your product means that you're kind of at the leading edge of things and you start getting rid of innovation. You got to then go harder on storytelling or you got to go hard on emotion right like liquid death is a point of view with just water. In a can but we're gonna you know sell you on brand and I think that's possible although the can itself like does not get enough the can and the price point don't get enough credit for the genius of what liquid death did at the beginning yeah absolutely. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen, and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching, and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit at ND.com/podcast. That's ND.com/podcast, terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Now, it loads. Faster quotes started the Lowe's ProDesk. Got a material list handwritten on a sticky note or saved as a photo? Perfect. Bring it to us and get a quote in minutes. 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It's the over 100 years old. It is iconic, and I don't know if it's despite its iconicness, it has had massive ups and downs over the last few decades in terms of its cultural resonance, relevance, business. Are there signals that you have seen kind of when you were there or subsequently, you're like, yeah, this is where you guys started to miss it. And putting aside for the moment that fashion is a very, very hard business. I'm very fortunate that one of my first client side jobs was at a company that had to go through a complete overhaul and transformation. And I think it's a brilliant case study, and you know, you and me believe in this same principle that like principles around brand and marketing are like, whether they were 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, still apply today. There's channels and things have changed, but you and me both are big fans of going back and reading books, even though they're pretty racist and sexist from the 60s and 50s about marketing, because that's, I think, where I've learned a lot of my skillset in the last couple of years. But it's kind of crazy to me, I'm sorry, I didn't try it again. It's like so many of the kind of foundational elements that I believe I wind up quoting are from 1950, 1960, 1971, John Steele, 1974, not John Steele, Stephen King, 1974, John Steele and other brilliant strategists. John Steele's book, just shout out John Steele, who is a speech every once in a while, who lives in Australia now, I think, wrote Truth Lies and Advertising, which is still one of my favorite books, real time. So to go back to your question, I was there at a time when there was complete transformation. The brand was in flux. It was all over the place. There was no real focus and direction. And the CEO before Angela Arendt had done a fantastic job of buying that- Angela was CEO when you were there. Yes, but before that, the CEO who was there before Angela did a fantastic job of buying back all the licenses from across the world. So there was a point where you could find the check on dog ball, dog collars, t-shirts, like anything you could imagine. You overmonitized goodwill and then destroyed goodwill. And exactly. And so when you have, when you're a luxury brand, you own a few things, but like you need to protect those things, so Angela came back into the business. And I think that this is consistent now, you know, since knowing Angela's story, but like looking at other businesses over time, the thing that Angela did first was she had a blank slate and she went back into the archives of Burberry to understand its DNA. And she learned that Burberry was founded by a guy called Thomas Burberry. And he was an inventor. And he took cotton and learned how to, you know, sow it in such a way that it became waterproof. And so- Right, yeah. And it was called Gabardine. And- We've pronounced it Gabardine here. Gabardine? Gabardine. And he, he basically said was like, right, I've created this material that's waterproof. Just put it on outerwear and coats and trench coats. And all of a sudden it became the, you know, the brand around outerwear and coats. And so people wore it, obviously, in the trenches, Amelia Earhart wore it when she flew, Shackleton wore it when he went to the North Pole. And Angela was right, right, right, this is where we're going to start with. What is it that we are great at? What is it that we have a history on? And we were still producing trench coats in Northern England and a beautiful factory that they'd been using for, like, you know, decades and decades and decades. And she told Christopher Bailey, who's the creative, she's creative also at the time, like this is going to be where we start. And if you, Seth, if you look at most turnaround stories, you'll see that the CEO or whoever is coming in to do that transformation would go back and look at the DNA. Right. And that actually went, and this is a slight tangent, but whenever I meet someone who's a bit lost in their own lives, I actually tell them to go back to their, you know, their age of zero to 20 before, before, like, job identity and titles are a thing and ask them to really look at that point in their lives and what mattered to them and what they were good at then because it feels tends to be true now. I can't help but think that you've unpacked kind of another part of your value creation theory in this conversation about destruction, which is you can't forget about the end user and you can't forget about who you are at the time and, you know, to your point about the CEO who comes in to drive a turnaround, she's oftentimes, if not always, at least the ones who are successful looking at who they've always been, because that's what gives you the permission to be. Absolutely. All right. It's a great point. I want to stick as Angela's part of this story too with, um, it's a story of innovation that, well, I don't want to give away the punchline. It's a story of innovation. Um, when you got to Burberry, you were, uh, if I have it right, you were it's first social media manager director, I started coordinating, yeah, um, which at a time because your very old was, was, um, certainly not a position many had anywhere, let alone in fashion. You have an idea and innovation, really quite ahead of your time to stream a fashion show. Yeah. Tell us that story. How to go. So, so some context here, which I think is important and again, ties into my original point about value creation. You can get to a point where your brand is so tarnished and so damaged that there is no way that you can convince new people, uh, those existing customers that it has changed. And that is literally how bad it was for Burberry at the time. And so the direction that we took, we knew that we were greater out of where we knew that was our strength. We knew we were our point of differentiation was being British. But when we started looking at our audience, we recognized that we can't convince our existing audience that we were different or new. And so we had to go after a new audience. And that audience was a younger audience and it's really interesting. And so, you know, we put Emma Watson, we put Emma Watson straight after, you know, have a couple of performances in Harry Potter, internet campaign and people were like, well, this is crazy. What are you doing putting a 16, 17 year old? Yeah, you have to create some dissonance, like which is, it's not your father's old brother. That's it. And by the way, you know, Emma Watson wasn't relevant to a 40 year old woman in the Midwest who was wearing Burberry at the time. And so all of a sudden, you had to go after a new audience at Emma Watson festival did that. That was first thing. The second thing is in the channels and how we communicate to our new audiences were different. So when I got to Burberry, you had 12 assets that we shot for the whole year because you had 12 issues of oak. And we would take those assets and put them into stores and so on. And so when I got to Burberry and we started thinking about how we were going to attract this new audience, social was the thing that I needed to try and get everyone on board on. So there were women and men who had been in fashion for like 30, 40 years and some of the biggest establishments in the world. And for them, actually, luxury was exclusive and social was democratic. And so those two things just couldn't match, but it took me six months of just educating what year is this? This is 2008. So Facebook's been around for like four years. Everyone I needed to educate people and I literally went on this road trip. Across the globe to every single team, across the world, and I just started educating them. Not trying to teach, not trying to tell them anything, but just educate them on social media. And I finally got permission to go and create our social channels. And I realized that I only had 12 assets, which is like a Facebook album. So what do you do after that? And I just had happened to go to one of our shows. Now, I've never been to a fashion show before, but I turn up to this beautiful 10 in Hyde Park. And there's, you know, it's a 15 minute show and it costs an awful lot of money, but it is one of the most beautiful things I've ever experienced in my life, you know. Music, people, like celebrity, it's just-- - It's a sensory, it is a salad. - And no one does it better. And so I'm like, let's stream this live streamer's online and because live streaming had just happened, I think I just watched like Coachella or something on a live stream and they were all crashing as well. And so, but at the same time, they was like, wow, this is new and exciting. And so I convinced everyone that we should live stream the show and there were challenges there because, you know, fashion shows were ultimately meant for buyers and press. You couldn't access or buy anything from the runway. But at the same time, it was like such an amazing experience. - Really amazing how that too has changed, but. - And I think, by the way, I think this is what shaped that. So I convinced everyone that we're gonna live stream the show and we do it in a way that only Burberry can. So we create our own little experience. We make our own website. Everything is beautiful. Production is done really, really well. And I get a call from the satellite guy because again, it does embarrassing to say, this isn't a time where you could just bring out your phone and live stream stayed away. You had to go get a satellite truck and you needed to buy bandwidth. And the guy was like, well, listen, how many people do you think are gonna watch the show? We had 10 million Facebook fans at the time. And I said, well, listen, if we get a 10%, that would be a success. So a million people and he said, right, that's, you know, he was like, that's a hundred thousand pounds. And I was like, okay, I've got to get approval from everyone to do this. So I get approval from everyone to do this. I said, make sure everyone is comfortable with this one million number. So the one million number starts kind of spreading. - How scared were you? - Nervous. - You know, I was, I think I was just a cocky 2024 year old, 25 year old, who just was like, yeah, this is definitely gonna work, it's great. - Sorry, I gotta do a little math. - Okay, yeah. - I made me a business up. But I get to a point where the show happens and I watch it from my office desk. And it goes really well. Did you recreate a show or just film? - No, we filmed the actual show. And so the first time we've got multiple cameras at the show, it was a whole production. Of course, there's a couple hundred thousand dollars at the end of it. And I sit on my desk at Horsebury House and I watch the show and it's flawless. Like the most important thing is that this thing doesn't crash. And it didn't crash, which means that, you know, we got the bandwidth right. And so everyone comes back to the Horsebury House that night and it was like high-fiving. And my God, we stream the show. And we're getting lots of press about being the first show that's ever been live-streamed. We're in Mashable, which at the time was like, "Wow, oh my God, a fashion brand's made into Mashable." And I have the best night of my life, Seth. Like everyone is so happy. Like high-fiving moves that we did at World, done this genius idea, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And people are texting people in the tent who are there saying, "I saw you on the live stream" and so on. - So there's a million number start spreading around. - I'm sorry, there's not following you. We were watching on your desk. Have they seen you on the live stream? - No, not me. Sorry, not me. People are texting. People are texting other people. - Just keeping the audience there, man. - People are texting other people in the tent. And they're coming back, being like, "Oh my God, the whole world saw this." So this number start spreading. So that night, the best night of my life. Right, I've gone from this social media, did a little kid to like, now like, oh wow, he's doing something interesting. And, you know, the team, the fantastic. And so that next day, we get a, I get a call from the guy who owns the satellite company. I'm like, he's like, "Hey, congratulations." It went really well. I was like, "Yeah, thank God, it didn't crash." God, I'm getting PTSD just thinking, I'm sorry. And he says to me, "Hey, do you want to know how many people watched the show?" And I said, "Yeah, sure." Like, you know, I didn't really think anything of it. I didn't think you could even give me that number. He said, "No, we can look at how many people, you know, downloaded the stream, whatever." And he says, yeah, it was 673. And I'm like, 673,000, right? 673,000. And he's like, "No, no, just 673 people." So when you do the math on a couple of $100,000 and 673 people becomes a very expensive livestream. And Seth, had you shared, real question, did you share the 10% or 10 million number internally? Yeah, that million number was kind of what people were touting as maybe the number of people who watched the show. Like, you know, lost in translation and I'm not gonna lie, I didn't stop it at any point. And so I sit there Seth and I've got my head in my hands and I'm just like, oh my God, I'm actually gonna get fired. This was a disaster, 600 plus people watching this livestream when people think it was a million or 10 or 10, like a million people is gonna like get me fired. So I sat at my desk for like an hour, didn't move and then I said, right, I've gotta go speak to Fred and Fred was my boss at the time. So I walk into his office, knock on his door and I'm like, "What role did Fred have at the beginning?" He was a VP of marketing at the time. And Fred, a really smart human being, and he was like, "Looks at me and goes, "Hey, Moose, how are you doing?" And he was very happy and I say, "Listen, we've got the numbers for the show." And he's like, "Oh, how many people was it?" And I say, you know, 627. And he says exactly the same thing I said, 627,000. I was like, "No, just 627." And he just sits there and puts his hand in his head. - Much as you had. - Very much like I did, and probably, and it's like 10 minutes of just silence. And he finally goes, "We've gotta go tell Sarah." And Sarah Manley was our CMO also an amazing human being. And we walked down the corridor, Fred first, me second, and we go knock on Sarah's door and she looks at us like the way that Fred looked at me and was like, "Oh my God, I'm so excited to see you here." Come in, what's wrong? What's happening? What's going on? And Fred's like, Moose has got something to say. - Thanks Fred. - And I'm thanks Fred. And I'm a bit of shock. So Fred obviously recognizes this and says, "Listen, we've got the numbers in." And it was only less than 1,000 people watch the show. And so I was like, first of all, he took that number from 627 to 1,000 smart guy. And Sarah was like, but I thought it was a million, and a million people watch it. And Fred was like, "No, it's just 627." And so she puts her hand in her head as well. And now, at this point, I'm like, I'm thinking, I'm 100% fired. There is no way in hell that I think I'm gonna keep my job at this moment in time. And every feeling that was going through my body was going through it. And Sarah's like, well, we've got to go tell Angela, who is the CEO at the time. And so we, Sarah walks down the corridor, Fred walks the corridor, I'm behind them, and we kind of walk up to Angela's office and knock on the door and Angela opens the door. And again, she's so, oh my god, it's my favorite people come in. Livestream is great, fashion show is great. And Sarah's like, you know, the boys have something to say. Fred's like, Moose has got something to say. And I say to her, I said, Angela, we got the numbers from the fashion show. And I'd learnt now, like, a bit of like, how to pad the stories. Less than a thousand people. It went really well, the show was great. But we found out that we only had less than 1,000 people who watched this show. And before she could say anything, Seth, I said, and we'll never do it again. So that was like my way of going right. Like, we did it once, let's like, you know, hide under the carpet and move on. And she immediately said, well, why would we never do it again? And I said, well, because it didn't work. And she said, well, the Livestream happened. Yes. Was it a good experience? I said, it was an amazing experience. She said, what about, did anyone tweet about it or talk about it? And I said, yes, that, you know, we saw lots of different tweets from, you know, in some cases, fashion, people, journalists who couldn't make it, all said it was a positive experience. Great. She said, had you ever heard of a Livestream fashion show before this? I was like, no, she said, OK, so it's brand new. She said, I bet you those, you know, five or 700 people who watched it will tell their friends next time to also watch it. And so next time we might see double or triple the number of people. And the next time after that, that might be the case. And she was 100% right. We did it again the next time. And, you know, our numbers tripled or quadrupled. We did it again the next time after that. And we streamed it live into our stores. We did it time after that. We streamed it live into Times Square, Picadilly Circus, into all of our stores, and even made the product available to buy for our VIP customers in store-- In that moment. In that moment. And other innovation. And by, you know, the fifth time, we had a million people watching the Livestream online. Obviously, Angela Arons is a legend. What-- as you look back on it, almost 20 years later, what are the lessons she taught you in that moment? Yeah. And the reason why I told you this story was because there is so much that I have learned from this. I think, first of all, and you go back to your original question about what creates value destruction, short-termism, I think, is one of the biggest, biggest, biggest, destructors of all time. And in a world-- where today something doesn't work or we get negative signals straight away, we stop doing it. I think what she taught me was that, first of all, when it comes to innovation, you have to really think about what that measurement looks like and you expect everything to blow up tomorrow. We expect everything to be as big as Apple tomorrow. If your startup isn't working the first six months, then shut it down. It's not working. I think that there is a, particularly when introducing new behavior into something, we talked to us earlier on, the signal was that people wanted more content from brands. They wanted to be closer to Burberry the brand. They wanted access. They wanted to be in fashion shows. The 700 people who watched it gave really positive signal and intent. I didn't think of it that way. I just thought about it as well. It wasn't a million people. She analyzed it from completely different, four and from a completely different perspective instead of numbers. That is exactly it. I think that I have now really, in everything that I do, rethink the measurement to everything and I'm very critical about it because I do think that the measurement then, therefore, changes your behavior. If you've got, for example, in a performance team and a brand team, they should be measured against different things. At the end of the day, they're all measured against value creation or growth in a company. Or they should be. I'm not sure they all are. But the inputs then might be slightly different to get you there. Yeah, but I actually think, in that example, you point to a problem, in particular, on the performance side of things, where you optimize for performance metrics, which aren't necessarily the things that move the business forward. Because you cannot capture and monetize demand you have not created, which is why I think we're seeing a cycle back to the power of brand, especially in a AI agenda. But we'll leave that for another show. Actually, we'll leave that for another show, but I want to come back to brand. And I love that story so much. Can I say one last thing? If you know, of course. One last thing that I think, I think, Angela, that she taught me that I think is so relevant to everyone listening today. Particularly if you were running teams or organization. Is she always believed that the best ideas, and very similar to my Nike story early on, she always believed that the best ideas should come from people more junior in the organization, people who are closer to culture, people who are closer to change in consumer behaviors. And she felt that the more senior people in those organizations should be responsible for helping execute against those. And what I love about that is most people think ideas come from the top and the most junior people then have to go execute against it. I think actually flipping the model was incredibly important. And it is like, in my opinion, one of the less talked about organizational design symptoms in terms of growth that is out there. Actually, I think it's a pretty good segue to what you're doing now at Science X story, which is an agency. Science X story. Science, would I say? X story. If it's Science X story, which I know, I should know, but why not an ampersend? Why is it with an X? Point of differentiation. We're trying to be cool. I don't know. We've gone back and forth. Science X story, I apologize. And I should have gotten that right. You look at collaborations though. Yeah. They all have a little X. I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah, that's good. There's your answer. There you go. So you're building it on the premise that there's a fundamental disconnect between brand and business on the client side. And on the agency side, your preview having work client side for so much of your career, all of it. Now I was at JWT for a bit. Was that right? What was your first job? I was at Deloitte for a really small period of time. They sponsored me throughout university as a consultant. And then I was at JWT for four years. That's a great job. That's a great beginning. Very cool. The other side of it is your perspective that agencies don't understand the business and consultants don't understand the creative. So basically, you're building this new agency on the premise that there's just a lot of disconnection. And that inside this disconnection between brand and business, between business and agency, between consultants and creative is where value gets lost. Yes. Kind of similar to the first question I asked you, but maybe through a different lens, are there patterns that you see? What's the signal you're picking up in the noise that led you to the creation of this platform? Yeah, I think it's two things. So I'm going to take put QSR and CPG aside for a second because I think they still got it right. But if you look at marketing everywhere else, as you know, better than anyone else, a lot of marketers, particularly in the tech world. And when you start thinking about marketing today, if you have a small real estate company into a auto car dealership, right, you've got marketing people in you, we are no longer in charge of the piece, right? We're no longer in charge of price, we're no longer in charge of product, we're no longer in charge of place. Yep. And so over the last couple of decades, where this is becoming more prevalent across industry, although I think the pendulum is coming back and we can talk about that, we have got to a place where the marketing department for so many organizations is just promotion. Yeah, is just kind of everything. Go and go and tell people about this. Now, there are some CMOs who have gone, no, no, no, actually our voice is really important across all of these things. And I think that that is kudos to them. But in most organizations nowadays, like marketing is just looking after promotion. And as a result of that, I find that agencies who serve those clients have also gone that way. So there was a time, actually, like J. Walter Thompson helped invent the measurements on a knob of butter. So you know how you like met like that was that was JWT who did that because their client at the time was responsible for product. And they were like, how do you understand consumers? What are the pain points? Right. I don't know how to cut whether it's, you know, one table. So let's put the lines there. And there's actually lots of great examples of where ad agencies did a lot for. They were business partners. They weren't ad agencies. They were an advertising partners. Yeah. And so, so that I think is one piece of the puzzle. And so then, you know, you're less, are you less important to the CMO or CEO, not necessarily, but it's one piece of it. And then on the management consultant side, you're very, all right, we've got these people who do the promotion and brand side things. Let's focus on the other side of things. And so as a result, the disconnection happened. Now, I also think and I hate to see this. But I think that there are many of us who have had it easy in the last couple of decades in marketing where growth was inevitable in many cases. So the fact that money was more accessible than ever before. And, and free, free, free, exactly. Where digital innovation kind of meant that we could now target more customers for less, less money, geographic innovation, like digital innovation. Like there were so many things that have made that happened in the world that have made easy for marketers to be successful in their jobs for the last couple of years. That I think a lot of, say that again, because I mean, it's, it's like never been harder, I think, for a marketer to be successful in large part because of what you're talking about with the pulling apart of. Okay, so what about this? Most of us have grown up in a environment of growth. Yes. Okay. Yeah. But like, yes, you've had hiccups along the way, a couple of recessions, but very short, small recessions in the bigger scheme of things. And so most of us have grown up in a time where kind of everything was moving up into the right. Yes. Which disguised a lot of else strategy. Like where like disguise a lot of bad strategy. Yeah. And I'll be first to admit, there was a time where when I was more younger in my career, your job was just to do cool shit. And if everyone felt everything was happy and we were going up to the right, then no one was criticizing and challenging you. Yeah. And I'm going to be the first to admit, I grew up in an environment where that was the case. Now, is that the case anymore? No. And for the last five, 10 years, I've had to go and teach myself about like real marketing and business strategy because I was never taught it. I was just thrown, you know, even at JWT, it was a 10, set five days worth of training. And that five days worth of training was like, right, this is what an agenda looks like. Know what drink your client wants to drink. And then go do it. And I do think that we are guilty, first of all, of a lack of investment in education and training. Now, I don't, I don't not believe that I haven't learned on the job through amazing bosses. I've been really fortunate enough to learn from some incredible people, but at the same time, I've learned by doing versus like really being sat down and taught something. And I think it's exactly the same for me. And I think that that has made it easier to disguise a lot of strategy. And so when you say disguise a lot of stress, you mean bad strategy strategy. Yeah, I think bad strategy got on the place. And so what I recognize is that when you, when we're working with companies or, you know, Tim and myself met, I was a CMO go find me. You're, you're a co-founder. Tim, my very smart co-founder who's probably smart, one of the smart people I know. I'm sorry, Tim, but I, I should note, I am an advisor to science X stories. I will call it from now on. You are. You are. Even though it's a science and story. But you know, you know, science, Tim, Tim is one of the smartest people I know. And both of us came to the conclusion when we reconnected after, you know, we went to school together twenty years ago. When we reconnected together, both of us had this simple belief that, you know, from a client perspective, we were being kind of pushed into like focus on creative. From a agency perspective, Tim was just being made to really focus on creative piece. And actually that was a disservice to marketing. It was a disservice to brand. And it was a disservice to our industry because this disconnected happened where marketing departments were not clear, and in fact, actually most departments in organization were not clear on how it is that we were going to grow as a company. Mm-hmm. If you go into any company and you ask them, give me a sentence, tell me how you're going to grow as a company, some know that aren't very clearly, most don't. Neatahiring Hero, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Now it loads, faster quotes, start at the Lowes Pro Desk, got a material list handwritten on a sticky note or saved as a photo, perfect, bring it to us and get a quote in minutes. You can access thousands of products beyond what's available in store or on Lowes.com, right from the Lowes Pro Desk. You'll quote faster and source the materials you need to keep your jobs moving. Just like that. Add Lowes. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dies. Well, I think you're, because I know you're a believer in creative and creativity. I think that what you're saying a moment ago is not that it was the focus on creativity or even for that matter creative, it was that the, and tell me if I'm getting it wrong. It was just, it was on the execution divorce from strategy. It's the worst part of, I think, you know, the perception of marketing amongst so many Fortune 500 companies, and it's something that David Droger said to me, which is, you know, perception. It's jazz hands. You know, it's the pretty pictures. It's the, hey, let's put it on a play back to your point about its relegation to promotion, which is downstream of the strategic work that happens upstream. Nobody else decides what to say, marketing figures out at best oftentimes at the marketing department, how to say it, divorced from all of the other signals, the product, the price, the place, the IR decisions, the HR decisions, the procurement decisions that either contribute to value creation or destruction. That is exactly it. And you're 100% right. And I think that, you know, we have a very simple belief that the chief brand officer of any company is the CEO, and you've heard me say that many times, I know you agree with it. Yeah. Because you, the biggest disconnect that I found, so when I was a GoFundMe and Tim came along, I said, listen, I need this brand strategy to not just impact marketing because that's actually easy. I needed to. So you hired Tim when you were seeing my company. I did, yes. Yeah. Okay. I need, I need brand to work in product and show up in product. I needed to show up in customer care. I needed to show up in how we treat our VIPs. I needed to show up in every aspect of our business and the only way I can do that, the only way I can bring every single person on board, including my CFO, my CEO, and the board who we needed money from, was to really connect that business strategy to the brand, the business strategy and the way that we were going to grow to our brand strategy. And then GoFundMe's case, right? We were a pandemic darling, right? It blew up because of the pandemic and lots of brands kind of fell off, but we had to be very clear about how is it we are going to maintain our relevance in a post pandemic world. And were you thinking about that during the pandemic? We were thinking about that because that makes you unlike a number of categories and businesses that thought to your earlier point the good times were just going to roll. Yeah. I'm not sure I could be wrong, and I'm sure I'll get some text from my friends in the category that the pandemic burst was that you look at a brand like Peloton and a business like Peloton that has continued to struggle since then other categories and product services brands that were ripe for a moment of disruption and not ripe for the return to whatever so-called normalcy we're living in now. You are 100% right? And I think it's that those moments where you are, most people think about brand as an after effect, right? Like, oh, we've changed our business model now. We need the brand to catch up. Me and Tim call it brand lag, right? The business has changed and evolved. The brand is still talking about what it used to be. Instead of actually not what it is, but what it's going to be. And so as we were going through that shift and we anticipated this pandemic coming to an end, go fund me needed to be more about just crisis, medical emergency and crisis. It needed to be about actually how it helps people in communities and how it sends people to little league games because they can't afford to go and travel to different parts of the country. It needed to be more about survival mode, but thriving. That shift was tied so heavily to the business in terms of how we were going to continue to grow because we saw these times, right? People fundraising for communities was a completely new time that we should just show shared with the board. Just in case anyone in the audience doesn't know, Tim stands for total addressable money. As well as understanding how we made money, which is go fund me makes money through tips. If you people do not feel that you are providing a service, they don't tip you, right? Like, you know, when you go to account these days and they ask you to, to, yes, hip, I'm going to be embarrassed myself, but I often say no zero and zero now because I'm like, well, what are you doing for me unless you're serving me or whatever and coming to my table? It just feels weird. I haven't gotten tips since I stopped my work as an erotic dancer. I'll tip you off of this, but you go fund me needed to help people understand. And what it was doing. And so we started talking more about our safety measures. We said that again, go fund me needed to help people understand. The service that we provided, the value add that we gave, right? And so you ask this question earlier on about pricing. If everyone thinks you're just a little website that just is like a payment process, so then why am I tipping you? But actually, if you educate them on the fact that we have what we introduced after this was a go fund me giving guarantee. It's part of brand work, but it was a clause that we already had in our service terms of service. They thought you were just the pipe. No, yeah, they thought we were just the pipe. But actually, if you tell them we've now got to go fund me giving guarantee, which is like, if your money doesn't reach the person it's meant to go to, you get your money back. If we talk about our compliance teams, our trust in product became service. All of a sudden, we are now providing a service, people then start tipping more. And I think that was all brand work. That was all work that we introduced through this brand process by understanding how it is that we were going to grow and make money and therefore then built a brand to deliver against that. And that's really the methodology of science and story, right? We took that methodology and apply it now to other businesses. Brand, I mean, I'm sure I've said it on the show. I say it all the freaking time. I don't think I've cursed ones on this episode yet. Yeah, you cursed a lot in the Nick Tran one. Nick comes it out of me. But brand is the greatest dry performance engine in the history of performance engines and the bifurcation of brand front or rather the divorce from brand from performance, which was just digital marketing, nomenclature, you know, 25 years ago. is one of the greatest, I think, sources of value destruction business has seen. 100%. But you said something a moment ago. Can we touch on that for a second? Yeah, please. This is my biggest pet peeve, and I don't think people talk about enough. There is a question that I ask anyone I meet when they're not in our industry, which is tell me about the brands you love. And a decade ago, I would ask this question to people whether there be an Uber driver or a family member or whatever, and they would have a list of brands they love. You ask this question to people today. It is really hard to get an answer from them. The demise of brand love is huge. And when they do love it, or when they do come back with the point, I often asked them, well, if someone came along and did it better, would you switch? And the answer is yes. And there's that correlated with this story, which is if you ask us anyone who's older than 35 to talk about a brand like Nike, for example, Apple, they will talk about the Nike and Apple of yesterday, which was like the brand that inspired us to want to go running and be better athletes and, you know, inspired us to, you know, to do it, watched World Cup, to do it exactly that, right? My first engagement with Nike was, you know, a Brazil World Cup ad, right, where they're playing in the airport. And I was just like, I want to be associated with this brand. And so the way of doing that is I will buy this product. And it didn't matter that there were other shoes available that were cheaper or more accessible. That was my way of being tied to that ethos in that vibe. If you ask anyone today under the age of 35 to describe a brand like Nike or Apple, you get a very different answer. And the reason for that is that the biggest touch point that they get with these brands is performance marketing. And if you look at a Nike performance marketing ad, it is a product on white. It is a product on a white background, or it's an email from Nike, or it's an email from any of these brands, right? All these brands who have optimized for efficiency over humanity and anything else, they're not back to your point about short-termism. They're selling. They're not building a relationship. Try building a relationship with another human being that way. It won't last. No, and I know you know this. It's why I try so hard not to use words like consumer and customer and wind up defaulting to end user, which is no better, because it's so dehumanizing. It so relegates a person or a group of people to a functional transactional role, which is not oftentimes the best way to be a value to them. But we're coming up on time. And I'm going to, before I get to the question we end every episode on, I want to go back to what you said. You were talking a moment ago about your, you know, the need for what you did it go for me and amongst the needs was going to the board to get money. So I'm going to talk about boards for a second, specifically you sit on a public company board, which many marketers do not, which is really more precisely said, many public company boards do not have marketers on them, which is really fucking astounding. See there because the first, the first, the first fuck that I've given is that the last fuck I digress. Like you would think the board would be interested in growth, because that is their fiduciary responsibility. And yet they don't have the person most responsible or who should be for driving growth represented on the board. That said, I'm wondering, given your experience on the board. And, and, you know, do you, do you see like a fundamental gap in understanding about value creation or have you learned something different about value creation? Because of, because of, you know, your privilege seat with that company. It's a great question. I, first of all, I think it's less than 3% of companies have the fortune paper. Yeah, have marketing executive, but, but there is proof points that suggest that companies who do have a marketing, that's on their board tend to do better. They are. And I think that's exactly right. I love to see more research done in that space. I think what I have learned is less about learning something new, but we're firming a belief, which is that it's not that creativity is an important, but in a boardroom, what is more important and the language that is spoken is more about growth. It's more about audience. It's more about the science and the metrics behind marketing, the working out and the strategy that gets you there, then the actual output. And so I've very, very rarely ever sat in a boardroom where we're looking at creative, or we're looking at impressions, I fucking, I know, my first, I was my first, I was my first, like, I fucking, like the, the one set of impressions as a description or as a measurement of success just tries me crazy. And so the language, I think, is very different. When you're sitting in the room of marketers and you're sitting in the boardroom, there is a very different language that is being spoken in those rooms. And I've known this all along, but now that I sit on a public company board and I sit in these meetings and I see the disconnect between the two, I think that it is often again, because marketing needs to learn the language of business, then it does very much. And like, that is not that, you know, board members do not understand marketing or do not want to speak about marketing. It is that they are, you know, mostly CFOs, mostly CEOs and companies. I think there's a reasonable argument that they don't understand marketing, certainly not as well as they think they do, because if they understood it better, they would be driving more growth, I think, and we'd see less of that, just, you know, one P remit, promotional remit. I disagree. Yeah. I do disagree. And I'm just, again, from personal experience, there is a desire and a care for it. It is just a, a more focus on, again, the strategy and the inputs that get you to an output that is mattered about more so than the output itself. And I think that we are so good at, I think, but I think in both cases, it's still forgetting the outcome. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't mean to suggest that there isn't a desire for it, though, I think some data might suggest, in fact, that there isn't, but that there isn't an understanding, because if there was more of an understanding, I probably wouldn't have this show and wouldn't be writing the CEO's guide to marketing. Before I go to the last, the last question that we ask everybody, is there anything kind of in, you know, from our conversation that you want to hit again or that you think has been left unsaid in terms of your own perspectives on value creation and destruction, anything you want the audience to consider? I think it's, I hate to go here, because it feels like I'm being promotional, but I do really believe that the market is to continue to thrive over the next decade or so, even in the world of AI, listening to podcasts like this, understanding the fundamentals of marketing, understanding the fundamentals of business. And now imperative, learning, listening to podcasts like this one, very specific, learning how to read a P&L, understanding to earnings calls of both your companies, your competitors, companies, companies you admire, companies you admire in your category is imperative. And I think that there's, there is a, and I, and I speak from experience here, I felt there was a barrier even myself at one point where I was like, I just don't understand it, so I'm not going to. It's like people who are bad at math, they always love whenever anything math comes up, they always like, oh, I, you know, I've never been good at math. Fucking get good at math. Like, it's not complicated. There's a lot of buzzwords, even in performance marketing, right? There's a lot of brands, math marketers who come to me and go, I don't really understand performance marketing. It's not complicated. It takes time, and I appreciate where all restricted on the amount of time we have when we have to kids and not everything like that, but you can learn it. And you have to, at least the important things. And I think, I think, you know, I think there's something really important in what you just said, but actually, I would offer it to the CFO and the CEO in the board, which is who do understand math, typically anyway, is there's a story in every single one of those numbers, and it's a story about demand. And it's a story about whether demand was strong or whether it was weak about whether demand led to price strength or price deterioration about value creation or value destruction. And just as the marketer and everybody who operates and is a business leader, marketers ought to be that needs to understand the math. The folks on the other side need to understand that the math is the reflection of a story that they've either collectively told well or not. Yeah, I got one more. Yeah, go. And this, I think, is also one of the premise of science and stories that if you get the strategy right. And you get people bought in on the strategy that is tied to the business. You get a lot less people interfering in the creative. So one of the biggest pain points for most creatives is, oh, we've done all this work and then someone has an opinion, well, what about this word? Or I don't really like this. That often happens because no one is showing the working that gets there. And again, I speak, I always speak from my own experience here. For the longest period of time, I was really good at someone who'd asked me a question and I'd be like, what's one plus one? I'd be like two. And two would be what I would present to the board, the CEO. And I'd be like, look, two is the answer. And I was just so like, you know, this is so obvious. Like two is so obvious that it's the answer that I don't need to show you the working. And what I've learned is, and this again is like what we do now for living to help clients with this challenge is show that one plus one equals to like you have to show people the working. Yeah, you've got to make the, especially as you advance, I think, as a as a marketer and you've got to make the implicit explicit as clear as possible, as clear as possible, so that no one challenges to because we've all been there before where someone comes along goes, well, but maybe it's three or four. And and to get that and to avoid that and to make sure that we're not solving strategy and creative or not solving strategy at the last minute, show that one plus one and show the working. And I think it sounds so simple again, but it's one of those things that if you can tell a great story and show that one plus one is the working that gets you to two and get everyone born. And on that, your life will be so much easier. I agree. And it's definitely a better approach than no, it's not you dumb fuck. Yeah. So I'm also guilty of the last last question. You got all the power in the world. You got a magic wand. You get to create anything tomorrow and you get to destroy anything tomorrow has to be tomorrow. Yeah, right. Speaking of short termism, but it doesn't have to be in a business context to anything you want. What is it? I think that this year, there will be more marketers than ever having to leave the industry because as you know, the number of job cuts, the pressure on the economy AI has meant that so many people are losing their jobs right now. And if I could create anything, it would be a pathway for the tens of thousands of marketers who are out of work today to find opportunity, be it in our industry or other industries, because you know how much I care about mentorship, right? There are so many people, Seth. You have mentored so many. Yeah, hundreds. And it breaks my heart. How many people they are right now who are really struggling to find work? And the jobs just aren't there. You know, 10,000 jobs might have been taken away this year. There are only 4,000 jobs available. So what happens to 6,000 people? And there isn't enough mentorship out there. There isn't enough opportunity out there. There isn't enough training out there. There isn't enough conversation about, Hey, why not take this skill set that you have, which is incredibly powerful in many other spaces and apply it elsewhere. And I think a lot of those people alone, a lot of those people don't have the guidance or skill set. You're often, you know, given a package and told, you know, good luck and go go go solve it by yourself. And so if I could create anything, it would be a pathway to helping those people find opportunities, be it in our industry or others. But I think we do have responsibility as marketers to help those people. It's a beautiful top. I would destroy pollen. I just, I just, allergies are so bad. This is the time of year here. I mean, I appreciate the role they play in the environment and the world and so on. But man, it sucks to have a allergy. Well, plus don't you live on a street with a lot of flower trees? And I love, you know, as my mom was a florist, I love flowers. We have flowers in a household type. But I'm on like 18 clarity in a day to be able to, you know, I, I helped promote clarity when they still, thank you very much. I appreciate you. It's so expensive. But thank you very much. I appreciate it. It was still a prescription drug. I appreciate you for doing that. But I'll tell that story on another episode of Creator Destroy Reimagining Marketing. Most of thank you so much for being with me. Hey, my pleasure. I really appreciate you having me. This week's consider this is something I've been considering for the last 13 months. At the Cannes Lions last year, I hosted and led the festival's first CEO for them, a three hour Chatham House conversation among some 50 CEOs from companies and industries across the globe. One line stayed with me since. Responding to I don't remember exactly what one CEO there said. And I'm quoting middle management is where ideas go to die. And my first silent reaction was shaped by decades on the agency side and it was like ain't that the truth. But my next maybe more fair, but equally silent reaction was wait isn't that part of middle management's job isn't their job to filter the ideas that move up the organizational food chain or don't in order to get the attention of whomever it is that makes decisions. No CEO, CMO or anyone in so called senior ranks has the time to be the filter for all the ideas middle management has to react to. But here's the thing I've been considering since who's teaching middle management how to differentiate between a good idea and a bad one who's training them to recognize the seeds of a good idea and what isn't yet who's teaching them how to sell a good idea or how to overcome executive objection when they believe something's right for the business. Yeah, exactly not many people or companies are. And I was thinking about this because Unilever's degree D.O. Durant just went all contextual on us, renaming a bunch of New York City subway stations based on what was being said about this hellish New York summer on Reddit. West Forestry became Sweat Central, Herald Square, the molten core and so on. And about the same time Dove built a campaign around the first 50 unedited Reddit reviews of their new serum. Good and bad with the tagline their reviews that's our campaign know edits. I like what both degree and Dove did because at a time when you can smell the invoice behind every endorsement, this earns a trust and credibility that you cannot pay for. But that's the thing that annoys the fuck out of me. You don't have to pay for it. None of this is new. People have been telling companies what they think publicly at scale for free for almost two decades. And what connects these campaigns that CEO's quote is that each of them only exists because somebody in the middle of these organizations, probably on the social team, heard something, saw something, recognized it for what it could be and had either the training as unlikely as that may be or the nerve to push it up rather than filter it out. EOS's president, so young Kang told me on this show a few months ago about the brand catching a handful of customers complaining about their packaging on the socials. So the brand sent them prototypes of new packaging to get their unvarnished feedback, which ultimately changed the company's entire supply chain so they'd get better. The most striking part of this wasn't their commitment to the fix, but that the customers couldn't believe a company actually gave a shit because too few actually seem to. And that's the problem. It's not that the signals are hard to find. The problem is that in most companies, the people who hear it, in other words, middle management, aren't usually the ones making the decisions it should inform. And when they are, nobody's trained them to know which signals matter more than others, how to make the case for acting on them or how to push a good idea past the executive who's going to say no, even though they're not the target. The social team sees it. Customer service hears it, sales reps know it, but too often senior management making whatever decisions have no idea what a single person said about them on Reddit last Tuesday. Because that's just not how things flow inside most organizations. But sure, middle management is where ideas go to die. To paraphrase Jesus, not something I do a lot, by the way, CEO healed I self. So what's worth considering is are you listening to your customer? Are you listening to middle management? Are you giving them the tools to recognize and champion what they're hearing? And are you doing anything to value a creative with it? And with and for them. That's worth considering. Today's episode was produced by Art Chung, Jim Mackle, Manolo Moreno, Brandon McFarlane and Ashley Futterman from the Fox Media Podcast Network in the Wisdomest Company. Fall is the perfect time to refresh and reorganize your space. 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