How to Turn Ideas Into Strategies That Land

When the strategy is clear, the sandbox from the outside looks small, but once you're inside the sandbox, it's enormous. And it allows us to channel our creative energies and to hit a target. A lot of times in our side, when we get the creative brief, we're like, "Oh my god, who paid for this? This is terrible."

Imagine sharing a strategy in three words or one word. That's pretty confident. You're not rewarded for confidence in a corporate career. I was a head of strategy of an 800 person agency in New York and I work with some of the biggest companies in the world. I see their documents and it's all just ridiculous language that nobody would use on the streets because we're trying to trigger an emotional reaction with our communication. So, if we're not triggering it with each other, we're not going to be able to trigger it in public.

"Oh, I like where you're starting to take this now. I can see something happening."

"We're going to get cancelled off YouTube. Cancel the stream, bro."

"Stop flirting with me. Oh my god."

"God, getting back to something that you said, which which kind of tickled my brain a little bit."

The four points are problem, insight, advantage, and strategy. The problem. What I'm looking for is the obstacle or the barrier that's preventing people from doing or buying something. One of the reasons I do what I do is because we need critical thinking. We need creativity. Creativity creates economic value. There are some serious topics at play here, but I was happy to flirt with you today.

"I thought I was just giving you space to finish your thought."

"I know. I thought I was giving you space to finish your thought. Well, we're not."

Hey, welcome to the world of creative, everybody. Mostly we're here because of the gentleman sitting to my left. As often as possible, we're going to be doing these conversations in person in studio with a live studio audience because I think conversations with real humans and the energy that we feel in the room makes it special. Mark was on my radar because during the clubhouse days, that's where I remember you from. He was popping in and out of rooms and I became really curious about who this human being is. And I went and got the book, Strategy is Your Words. And this already is interesting to me and there's lots of things to unpack. But Mark, welcome to the studio. Thanks for being here.

"Awesome. Super surreal, too. Are you scared? I've been trying to scare you to see how unhinged I can make you cuz I know you're usually really comfortable, but you usually you're in control. And in my world, usually I'm in control. So, this is going to be a fun battle."

"Okay. Well, I I will Let's see how this goes. And I like that there is some possible tension about who's in control. And I'm going to just warn all of you. We're going to go into a lot of places. I am going to describe this to you as we're going to be driving in the middle of the night with no lights on, no seat belts, and no guardrails. We'll see where we wind up."

"Holding hands."

"Yes, of course."

"Yeah, we did just do a thirst trap. That was your first thirst trap."

"I didn't even know that was a thirst trap, but we'll we'll get into that. You're using the term"

"If you're taking photos in a mirror in a bathroom, that's a thirst trap, Chris."

"But our clothes were on."

"Don't you have to show a little bit more flash?"

"This is what I'm learning. Okay, we're not doing advanced thirst traps. Okay,"

"We're doing beginner those traps. Yeah."

"All right. U Mark has a very interesting story background and it goes all over the place. He's a man of many talents. I don't say that lightly. So, so Mark, people don't know who you are. Please introduce yourself."

"Oh, okay. Uh my name is Mark. And one way to traumatize an Australian in the US is to ask them to do a self introduction. Thank you for not asking me to do a fun fact as well, cuz I only have sad facts, Chris."

"Okay."

"I only have sad facts. your Americans are so optimistic. Um, I mean from a professional point of view, so I'm from Sydney. From a professional point of view, uh, published what was the first fullc coloror hip hop magazine in the southern hemisphere. Was doing community radio for 5 years, interviewed lots of people such as Raqqa and Flavor Flave and Ice Cube and Company Flow and all kinds of people, graffiti ass, etc. So that was really my life. Wrote for a lot of magazines. Still remember when Vice in Canada gave me $50 for an interview with Flavor Flave before they were really, really big. but also happened to work in agencies and in my 20s largely doing information architecture and user experience under the title producer because we didn't have many other titles back then and was doing marketing stuff but also really complicated I guess product planning such as uh 300page functional specifications for an Audi online training program for mechanics and an e-commerce platform too was always writing through then um and then in the agency world in the advertising agency world when I was 28 I joined joined Leo Bernette in Sydney, which I now realize was my peak advertising experience."

"Uh,"

"You peaked at 28."

"Well, I've been thinking about this a lot. Sometimes you happen to be sitting in a room next to some of the best people you'll ever work with, but you don't know that for a while."

"And when you leave, sometimes you think you can help recreate that and it's really, really difficult. There's just something in the in the air and the climate in some of these companies and it might last for 10 years, 20 years and then disappears. So that was all in Sydney and then 14 years ago moved to the US, worked for a few other companies for 5 years. Realized that I really do not like corporate America. Don't like it. Don't like it. So I left and set up my own company and now I mostly have an education company teaching strategy around the world."

"Okay."

"There's a couple other things that you forgot to mention that we"

"My love of reggaon. What?"

"Well, that"

"Brazil funk."

"That you were also a radio host."

"I was a radio host. Yeah."

"And that you were going to pursue a career in law."

"Uh, when I was 17. Yeah, I got the grades to study law and someone put a little thing in my ear about doing music law cuz I was writing really bad raps at the time and I liked music and then I still remember one of the first classes of tors to rs and they said only 60% of you will finish this degree and I was like oh I worked so hard to get here and I was like yeah I'm out. I was making hip-hop websites, putting on dance parties."

"Wait, wait. When I hear 60% of you will make it, I consider myself part of the 60."

"Same. And I got three years in, I'm like, no. No."

"Okay. So, you became part of the 40."

"I became part of the 40. Yeah. I was doing some night nightife stuff, you know, getting extorted by the main heroin gang in the world and stuff like that, Chris. You know. Okay. Just normal stuff that happens when you're 18."

"Okay. Okay. Pretty wild ride. And you also write lyrics."

"I've started to write lyrics again."

"Yeah. And are these lyrics for hip-hop songs? What what are these lyrics for?"

"So most of what I listen to is like Latin music like and Dembo and Brazil funk. So we have a new genre. I'm going to call it future paro soul. It's very central regon and uh it's about things I encounter or hear about in my travels, but very sexy."

"Okay. And I just want to also just acknowledge the fact that you flew in yesterday. I believe you were having a Asia tour. Many stops. We saw the photos on Instagram of crowded rooms, hundreds of people."

"What are they there for?"

"Uh for cuddles mostly. I think for cuddles. Yeah. Like so I went through 10 cities and I sort of base the bets on could we get about 40 people to come and I've done I think three or four tours this year. It sounds so pretentious to say tours but they are tours. Yeah."

"And we had about 700 people come through. So the biggest event was in Malaysia. We had 170 people 40 people on a waiting list. And then the smaller events probably 40 to 50. Uh, what do they come for? They come to talk about strategy. They're largely agency strategists. They could be marketers. They could be in-house teams. Uh, their needs are often that they're trying to do something creative, but they don't have the tools or the language to do that. They're looking for clarity. They're looking to feel stimulated because a lot of people are not that happy in their jobs right now."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"Okay. So, for people who don't know what strategy is, most of our audience are designer creative types."

"That's a weird word, strategy. What do you mean? The main definition that I fall back on, which is only a partial definition, is that strategy is an informed opinion about how to win. But I need to stack a few other concepts on that."

"Okay?"

"So, if we're working together and I say something like what's the strategy, I mean, what's the idea in the strategy? What's the organizing idea?"

"By that, I mean, what are the two topics coming together that we can build a lot of our tactics, a lot of our maybe design around. And I'll give you an example to show you what I mean. Um, one of the joke examples I use is for the New York Knicks, right? And so when we do research, we find that a lot of people until recently have been very frustrated by this basketball team because they've not done well since the 1990s. The joke strategy based on that is to try to sell them as anger therapy. Right? So that would be the organizing idea in the strategy that we're going to sell the New York Knicks as anger therapy because we're not fixing the product. And if you have that organizing idea in place, you can work out your tactics for communication and advertising and also then design."

"Okay, I like that a lot. I think later in our conversation, we're going to dive into how one arrives at that organizing idea. But let me just recap here. So a strategy, it's not just like we want something magical to happen. It's not just having an opinion about what has to happen, but it's having an informed opinion. And so we use strategies to get there. And we work with strategists to get there."

"Potentially. Yeah, I mean strategy is a set of acts that anyone can do. I work a lot with strategists, but the point of the informed opinion part of that sentence is you need information otherwise you're just making stuff up."

"But you need to have a strong opinion and management consultants might pretend that they don't have opinions, but everyone's guessing the future."

"If you have opinion without information, it's a bit reckless. So those two things have to come together and it's typically about improving your chances of success in the future. And it doesn't have to be all high and mighty business stuff. could be you're in a tribe, you're under threat, you need food and water. What are you going to do about it?"

"Organizing idea could be go east,"

"Right? And then the tactics could be at what time of day you're going to travel, who in what formation you're going to travel, how you going to eat and drink along the way, right? So these things don't have to be high and mighty. And one thing that I feel like is a little bit of my teacher insight is just trying to close the gap between the stuff I teach, which is super practical, and what people see and do in their real lives. So for teaching insights for example, I want them to pay attention to things, content, sentence structures that have affected them in their lives and to apply these techniques to their lives because it'll make them a better strategist."

"Right."

"In your time at agency in the agency, did you do the strategy work?"

"Yep."

"Okay. And so did you So for people who don't understand the sometimes complicated world of advertising, how does it work? like what we we see the ads on on on TV on the billboards and then we were like how did this come to be?"

"Yeah. And there's lots of different kinds of strategy and strategists as well. And so I often show this slide with all the ideas and sometimes also all the different kinds of strategists. It's a mess. And so the way that I get people to think about this is like just clarify the language you're using. Clarify the roles because every company's there's like a cold war where everyone's competing with, oh, we've got a brand strategist, a com strategist, a media strategist, a PR strategist, a UX strategist, a design strategist, all this sort of stuff. And most of it's nonsense. What we're talking about really is critical thinking and creativity and having being able to find evidence, being able to form an opinion, having rationale that helps people take simple actions. It's not about complexity. So, when it comes to the advertising process, I can give you a quick example what's going to come to mind. I was working on a launch for Kleenex Kleenex wipes for babies. And so, we did a little bit of research. So, don't please don't call yourself a strategist if you don't do research. you need to do some research. And you know, I would just do simple stuff. I'd be mind mapping consumer reviews or interactions in online communities. And we landed on this, we'll call it an insight. We landed on this insight that before you become a parent, you don't realize to what degree we and poos and bums and other things will dominate your life, right? And so that led to this campaign called Escape from Poo Poo Island, which is the first time Kleenex had ever used the word poo or poo poo in public. But essentially, you're doing a lot of divergent thinking, coming up with a lot of stuff. That's the easiest part of all of our jobs. The people who get paid the most are very good at convergent thinking according to the to the research. So, the research exposes you to the behaviors and the attitudes that are out there. But then the strategist needs to simplify what we can do with that sort of stuff. And a lot of full-time strategists, let alone people who are not full-time strategists, but a lot of full-time strategists struggle with that, especially in the US, because there's this culture of having a lot of information and showing all your work as opposed to I've done presentations where I've handdrawn the presentation in front of people or I'll come in and go, there's no slide today. I've just printed out this one piece of paper. That's our presentation. US is all about showing your work and having a lot of information and a lot of data. That usually is not very useful."

"Okay. a lot of things to try to figure out here. So, if um I'm Kleenex, I believe there's a marketing director on the other side. Yeah. They reach out to the agency. Let's just say your agency of record is going to happen anyways."

"They're going to talk to you. Are you the account director?"

"Yeah. It might not strategy or head of strategy, but I can pretend to be the account. Would you like to you like"

"But you're the main point of contact at this point and the two of you are locked and saying, "We need to do this." And you're like, "Let me figure it out." If it's a pitch, they're going through like the new business team or the business development team and there typically be an account director who would lead the interaction."

"Strategists, I want them front of office."

"As in talking to the clients, becoming you friends or whatever acquaintances in large agencies especially in the US. My experience has been that people treat the strategist as like a back office like internal service provider."

"I was a head of strategy of an 800 person agency in New York. I would have people come to my desk going, "Uh, my boss has sent me down to get an insight." And so I would say, "Would you like fries with that?""

"And I wouldn't even be allowed to meet the client. That's not what I believe in. But typically, there's an account director leading the relationship. Okay."

"And they might work with project managers or producers to sort of set up everything else internally."

"Okay. So when you do the research, do you have researchers or you are doing the research?"

"Uh, if it's my own company, I tend to do the research. So my situation is if if I'm consulting and I don't do as much of that right now that most clients that I've worked with say they have too much data or data and they'll have five decks with the word strategy on them and they're like we have we don't know what it is."

"Yeah."

"So the way that I work is I'll usually come in and I'll do 10 to 40 interviews. I'll write a discussion guide. Um, I'll type up the interviews as I'm doing them because I I'm a words person. I have to feel the words. It's so weird. I'll do a simple debrief and then I'm developing like these four working with this thing that I call the four points framework and then they're little sketches. I'll get some reactions to them from the client and then I'd write these onepage things that I call strategy stories which is taking the framework stuff that I've filled in and trying to turn it into a tighter argument and that's a belief in the act of writing helping like that I believe that the act of writing will help me think better."

"Right. And that what that's trying to solve is the way that I see a lot of younger strategists work where they'll just open up a creative brief template or a PowerPoint whatever it is and they'll just fill it in mindlessly whereas I try to work in a way that's like really true to me I don't do a lot of presentations like the one pages are enough. That's how I would work if it's me."

"Okay."

"In a bigger agency, you're gonna have access to more people, which can be problem. The uh problem of abundance where people are spoiled with a lot of stuff. But yeah, you might be doing surveys and polls and have access to databases as well."

"Okay. Client signs off, Kleenex, a baby wipes are like, "Okay, we never used this word before. Escape from Pooh Island. Sounds great. Sounds pretty radical. What happens to that strategy story? Where does it go? How does it get turned into something that we, the consumer, sees?""

"So, first of all, the strategy story to get turned into a creative brief."

"Okay."

"There'd be a briefing with a creative department. If it's in a more traditional advertising agency, that team might have a week or two, a day or two, no, a week or two to respond to the brief. And then the way that I like to work is I like to separate a lot of the tasks into smaller discrete bits. So for example, rather than developing a 50 slide deck, let's just go in with a few a few ideas, put them up on the wall. That that can be called a tissue session as in writing on a you know tissue piece of paper,"

"Right?"

"And then we develop the um more of the the tactics, but at some point the media plan and maybe the PR plan, but the media plan needs to hit so that the creative team is developing tactics that will fit where the money is going to be spent. around all of that also is maybe a data and analytics team trying to work out how to measure all of this and how to optimize it. To be simplistic, they're the they're the main steps."

"Okay. There's a lot of people involved in the making of this thing."

"Can be,"

"Right? Because you were talking about somebody who does media strategy, media planning, buying, and I didn't even know that was a thing until I worked in advertising a gazillion years ago. And clients have a certain budget and they're trying to figure out the best places to reach people they want to talk to for the best bang for the buck. And so you're saying like there's multiple strategists or planners working together and at the center of that theoretically the copyright and art director have to figure out how to make that into something memorable cool that's on brief but solves all these problems right?"

"Totally totally like the main role of advertising the way I talk about it is the job is to get attention to get into the memory so that you have future cash flow so the role of the creative team is to get get people's attention causing an emotional reaction with with discipline with distinctive brand assets right? I won't get too technical because I'm incapable of that. Chris, get attention, get into memory, hopefully trigger the memory when someone's thinking about buying something that you sell and then that will help you with future cash flow."

"Okay. So, in the case of Escape from Pooh Island, once you write the creative brief, are you then on to the next strategy or are you still involved?"

"No, I mean I I want to be involved with the creative team. Every strategist is different. Every creative team is different but yeah you usually want to be you want to give the creative team space. Each department each"

"Group of people have they have different incentives. The creative team they want to own the concept. They want to own the execution of the concept because if it does well then they their career will progress in a way that the strategists would but they need to say I did that."

"And also um ego and creativity correlate as well. There's a little bit of research on that but narcissism and creativity correlate. So you need to allow the people with the egos to do the the stuff that's most egoic and most heroic. But usually want to be close. Um, and then there are different kinds of strategists. This one's a little bit rare now. One's called a comm's planner or communications planner."

"A media planner is usually more spreadsheet concrete logical in a media agency. A communications planner or a comm's planner to me they're like graffiti artists in that they'll look around any environment to work out, oh maybe a brand could pop up there. That would be really interesting. The main concept that I love about communications planning borrows a little bit from the philosopher Marshall McLuhan and it's this that when the theme of your idea connects to the theme of the media that you choose, the impact is more powerful. So an example, if you're going to talk about anger and you turn up in angry environments, it's more likely to get people's attention, which might help us get into the memory and therefore get a purchase later. If you're going to talk about intimacy, maybe you turn up in places that are not intimate. That sort of thinking is becoming rarer because of the focus on scale and efficiency and effectiveness and the algorithms but it's I don't know it's one of my favorite parts of all of this."

"Okay. So commerce planning is a little bit more creative whereas media planning is a little bit more technical database driven. Okay. Traditionally speaking, when we talk about comms and finding the right medium for the message, is this what would be referred to as like ambient media?"

"Is that the wrong use of the term?"

"It could it could it could be. I mean, most of the budget these days is going to if you're a big company, most of your budget is going to go towards the deals that big media agencies have already made for you. A lot of it will go into social platforms. Ambient media maybe. I mean, if I was trying to reach designers, I want to have photos of their desks and their their bags and what are they carrying and, you know, maybe we could do something that's interesting based on their existing behavior. So, maybe it's ambient. I'm not sure."

"Okay. And and just so I'm using my terms correctly for audience to understand, my understanding of ambient media is like in the world the advertising lives, right? So, you might be at a pub and the coaster that your drink sits on is where the ad is and that's not a traditional place for it to live. Or you might be in a subway when and I've seen this done before where the stairwell of that subway is some ad for some exercise program. So it's integrated and it and they usually win awards. And I love this because it it crosses over from what I would consider as marketing and advertising into like exhibition design art and like installation design because it becomes one and the same."

"So it can be that. But also one of my favorite campaigns and I've I've just forgotten the brand. It's from New Zealand. Special Forces Special is the agency. What they did is after so there's this television show in which people would die like every episode someone would die. Investigative television show and at the very end they brought the person back to life to talk about life insurance."

"Super smart. Really effective. That's also an example of really good communications planning. Yeah."

"That's that's pretty creative."

"Yeah."

"Wow. And and there are things like that that I would expect to see in different countries more than in the US. I think it's hard in the US because there's no real center of gravity here. Whereas if you do that sort of stuff in New Zealand, you're getting national media attention. It's a small country."

"I remember back in the day Havayanas, the flip-flops, the thongs, the flipflops, they would put these big flip-flops in Bondai Beach in Sydney. They would get national attention. What is national attention in the US? Front page of YouTube or something? There's no real equivalent. And so I think that leads to less interest in some of this style of thinking."

"I think that's changed a lot over the last couple decades where it used to be we'd get our news entertainment from three channels. This is before the explosion of satellite and cable or newspaper. There was a handful of newspapers where you could say if you got there that's pretty much what everybody's looking at. Thursday night prime time on one of the three networks was what you wanted. Now it's just so scattered. It's a big country. There's lots of places to capture attention. Well, there's also lots of activism. So, if you get any of this wrong, you might lose your job, you might lose your business."

"Yeah."

"Yeah. Getting back to Escape from Pooh Island, what was the creative that ultimately manifested from this?"

"Uh, it was largely videos that showed people in these moments, you know, like you're about to go to work and there's a bum looking at you asking you for you to wipe it right next to the door. It was those sorts of It was comedy videos. Yeah."

"Okay. Wonderful. I I've worked very briefly in the world of advertising, but on the other side in terms of broadcast design, I would get creative briefs. I want to affirm what you're saying is correct. At least my experience of it here in America. I think they must be getting paid by the word."

"They must have a stake in paper companies."

"Because they print very long documents that when you read through mean nothing. It's word salad and it's crazy. And that's why I'm so drawn to the kind of insights that you share and the simplicity of the framework, which we'll get into in a second. I think it's going to be really valuable for everyone who thinks that they'd like to have an informed opinion about an outcome that they want."

"So, really quick example. So, we just developed some characters for our brand, Sweathead, and I was in the Dominican Republic, which is a crazy country. Don't just go to Pontana, get a Santa Domingo. It's wild. One of the noisiest cities in Latin America. Lots of amazing music. And I really love this music genre called DBO. And so I found some designers, illustrators in the Dominican Republic. And my brief to them was Strategy But Dembo. Create some characters for us, but Strategy But one of the main characters that they created. So they gave us about five concepts. One of them was a highlighter with a head. And so now we have these and another was a kitty paw. Kitty paws are like these crazy sound systems that come out of cars in Santa Domingo and just super loud. So, we've got like a dog driving a kitty pole and then we have two highlights."

"I don't even know what the word you're saying right now, Mark. You got to come with me, son. Jet lag."

"Kitty pole. K I T I P O."

"I know you don't know it. How could you? You've not been to Santa Domingo."

"Who? I even I understand half the words he's saying."

"No one needs to understand this, but but als but also I'm trying to build this brand for people. I'm trying to build this international brand for people outside of the US."

"Okay."

"Okay. So anyway, we have this dog driving these massive speakers and then we have these two highlighters with heads and one of them's based on one of my favorite Dembo artist and another's this sexy lady character. The point is I needed characters and I just said strategy but Dembo and then they did the work and I work with some of the biggest companies in the world. But I see their documents and they're somehow able to turn two-page brief templates into 10 pages with 50 comments on every page and it's all just ridiculous language that nobody would use on the streets."

"Right?"

"And so it's useless. And so I'd say to like your community, if you're receiving these things and you think they're useless, you're correct."

"I think words are important, but not in the way that people think. Not the volume of words, but the economy of words that you use. Because every word you use, if you use only a few words, means a lot. and you're asking me not to do your work for you. So, a lot of times in our side when we get the creative brief, we're like, "Oh my god, who paid for this? This is terrible.""

"And I know they spent six months doing the strategy, uh, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars doing this, and there's nothing for me to pull from it. No."

"And they're like, "What is the inside here, everybody? What are the communication pillars? I don't know. There's nothing here." And for some reason,"

"It's fooled people. I I don't just say corporate America. It's just in in corporate that this is the standard. This is the way you do things, right?"

"Yeah. Because they don't learn how to write. I can we can get into words as well. There's some word theory link."

"I think we have to I mean"

"There's this thing called it'll change your life. It'll change your life."

"Uh, so regardless of whether you're a good writer, imagine sharing a strategy in three words or one word. That's pretty confident."

"And you're not rewarded for confidence in a corporate career. I've interviewed a lot of people who worked in agencies and they went client side and they said largely speaking they did it because they wanted more control end to end and slightly less toxic toxic environments but they also would say that they would spend 80% of their time in politics. You're not rewarded for taking risk in corporate America. So you can't expect people you we have wrong expectations of people in these situations, right?"

"One word, three words as a strategy. God, that's pretty risky."

"Okay, so G getting back to something that you said which which kind of tickled my brain a little bit."

"You're talking about the New York Knicks is kind of hated by a lot of people because they haven't been winning in a long time."

"And you were like, well, here's the insight. It's a form of anger management."

"Yeah. The insight I use in that is to talk about how in New York you put up with everything until you snap."

"Right? And so there's articles by people like Joan Diddian and Moby, the producer, that I could use as evidence for this. I can find a ton of stuff on Reddit and Facebook, but essentially the way I explain this is like people move there and they're always really special. Special people move to New York. You have to be special and you got to pursue your dream and then after like the fourth winter, the fifth relationship breakup, the second rent hike, you're like screw this, I'm moving to Mexico City, right? And so that's the insight there."

"But the framework that I use all builds around anger, feeling angry, anger management. And when I'm writing a strategy statement, I'm largely playing with two topics. So here we'd have the New York Knicks and I know something about anger. And I'm usually playing with nouns. I'm not playing with a lot of describing words like adjectives or adverbs because that's bad writing largely speaking. And strategy is full of three and four syllable adjectives, but I know I've got the New York Knicks and something to do with anger. I'm like, well, okay, we're not going to fix the product, so maybe people can come watch a game and feel less angry. What's that? Anger therapy. anger management. And so I'm just trying to work out how to put those things together in a simple sentence."

"And if I were to get the brief and like, okay, the New York Knicks is a form of anger management."

"So I'm angry. I'm going to go and watch the game so I don't have to snap. Is that the idea?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah. And then from an advertising point of view, maybe one tactic is you take the big photos of the players to one of the angriest street corners in New York. people can come down, throw a ball at the player that they think played like tried the least on the weekend and the player that gets hit the most doesn't get to play on the following weekend."

"Right? So, we're looking for a thread from"

"At least from the idea and the strategy through all all the tactics and then from a design point of view, I'm expecting to see probably a combination of anger and peace."

"I know you've done this for a lot of people. I I used to have um a boss and I would show him an idea and he's like that's not a concept Chris. I'm like um any help here and no it's just it's yes or no. So somebody who's working for you or in one of your workshops and like here's the inside mark how do you know if it's an inside it's not?"

"So there's a few ways. So we we have to define all of our words. Okay."

"I I don't think I would have written this book if if I had not moved to the US. I had five years of culture shock. I was in meetings at the top of Rockefeller Center. Everyone was speaking English and I'm sitting there going, "What the hell are they saying?""

"I was like, "What?" Sometimes I accidentally said that out loud, too, which is not a good career move. When it comes to an insight, the way that I define an insight is"

"Wait, does that does that make you angry?"

"What?"

"When people are blah blah blah in these rooms."

"Yeah. Because I I write from a place of pain and anger. I've had teams abused in these environments. And so I can catch myself teaching and I'm like, I am so angry. I can tell that I'm really angry because I'm remembering"

"Flashback. Yeah, the time that maybe my team wanted to quit because I were treated really poorly through language by a media agency or abused by, you know, one of the big like big companies in South Korea or something. So I I teach from a place of anger even though teaching is my love language."

"So with insights, unspoken human truth, that's what I'm looking for. Um"

"Unspoken human truth."

"Unspoken human truth. There are different kinds of insight. So you could have a cultural insight, a brand insight, a blah blah blah. I just focus on insight. I use it once in a project and I want to hear an unspoken human truth. So, how do I know if there is one? First, I want to have a subjective reaction. Ah, I haven't heard it like that before. I want to have that reaction. I watch a ton of standup comedy and so I'm constantly like, "Oh my god, I'm just learning all this stuff." Right?"

"It's a subjective reaction. Second is mechanics. Mechanics is means I'm looking for two topics in a sentence. The insight that I usually teach around is I was interviewing guys about losing hair and a guy said to me, "I don't feel accomplished enough to go bald." So, I look at that sentence."

"Okay."

"You're setting me up for my third point. I look at that sentence. I'm like, "Okay, achievement or accomplishment. Bald going bald. Great mechanics check." Third thing I look for is other people's reactions. So, if I hear a bit of a laugh, uh, giggle, some kind of sound, or I see the eyes go like that, I know they're glitching because we're trying to trigger an emotional reaction with our communication. So, if we're not triggering it with each other, we're not going to be able to trigger it in public. So, they're the three things at least that I look for. And so, one of I have strategy jokes. I don't know who I became to the point now, I have strategy jokes, but when someone says to me, how do you know if you have an insight? My answer is by the distance people's snot travels in the room when you say it out loud."

"The distance what travels?"

"The distance is he speaking."

"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll slow I'll slow down for you Chris. We'll do duolingo speed."

"Please."

"How do you know if you have an insight? By the distance that people's snot travels in the room."

"Smart."

"When you say it out loud, right? Because that's the glitch. And standup comedy is all about violating reality. So you take topic A and then you smash it with topic B and you're like, "Whoa, that just created new meaning for me.""

"Oh, okay. I see what you're saying."

"So they're the main things that I'm looking for when it comes to an insight. Obviously, it needs to be relevant to the brand and the product, but they're the main things that I'm looking for."

"Okay, that's very good. Clearly, you have thought about this a lot because you've explained it if I can understand the words very simply. Let's go back one at a time, please."

"So, an insight is an unspoken human truth."

"Yeah. Do we need the word human?"

"I don't like the word human as an adjective, but I I will use it here. Yeah. Okay. Because that's set because humans talking about this."

"I know. It's just weird."

"It's one of those things. It's a vestage of"

"I wouldn't use it exactly like that right now,"

"But we like it. Unspoken human truth. So,"

"See, I know you're good with words because you've taken a very complicated thing called insight and you've broken it down to three words. Could even be two, but three words."

"I'm borrowing some language there, by the way. I'm borrowing language there."

"That's okay. Yeah."

"Yeah. I love it. Okay. So, unspoken human truth."

"So, if it's not true, you're not interested. So, they're like, "Oh, it's like X." And they're like, "No, you just made that up.""

"And it doesn't need to be fully true. What do I mean by that?"

"This is super slippery. Patula, are you here with me?"

"Okay. I like this."

"Doesn't need to be fully by the way."

"It doesn't need to be fully true."

"Okay. What do you mean?"

"So, there's this infatuation, especially in the US with numbers and pretesting things, right? And so people who are not used to this work, they might say, "Well, does every man think that?""

"Irrelevant."

"Have you ever listened to a song and thought, "Wow, I don't agree with all the lyrics, but I really like the song." Have you ever gone to standup comedy and gone, "Wow, that's really funny." It's not me, but I relate to it enough."

"Right?"

"So, yeah, it doesn't have to be fully true."

"I'm going to double click on that because I tell stories and then my children sometimes or my wife, that's not how it went. I'm like, well, first of all, I'm telling the story, so that's how it went down. It's not fully true."

"Right? But the expression is don't let facts get in the way of a good story."

"A little,"

"Right? So, mostly true."

"Yeah."

"Okay. 51% true."

"Are we good with that or higher? Is your threshold higher?"

"The thing is like it does everybody agree with that? So, when I'm saying it doesn't have to be fully true, what I'm saying is if you're advertising to men about losing hair, not every man needs to agree with that."

"Right? Okay."

"Yeah. Then the next part is if it's true or enough people agree but we all have heard this already then there's no point. You have to surface something that we've all been thinking but no one has said is that why it's unspoken."

"I mean I have I have high expectations so I want to land on something that we haven't heard before. But"

"Yeah,"

"You know let's take So George Carlin the comedian has this bit about how every driver on the road thinks every other driver is a bad driver. We might have heard that for decades, but in the right hand, someone could bring that to life with a new film or a new ad, a new piece of content in a novel way. I have a bias towards novelty, right? So, if I've heard it before, I think there's a George Orwell quote on writing which is like, if you've seen words used like that before, don't use them like that. There something like that. So, I have a bias towards novelty, but you could take something that's been around and dress it up a little bit differently. Uh number two is you said something about two"

"Mechanics."

"Mechanics. Why the what do you mean mechanics?"

"So subjective reaction is the first one. Mechanics is can I just look at it and see that there are two topics coming together?"

"Okay? Is it semiotics?"

"No. No it's not semiodics. I just mean the structure of a sentence."

"Can you give us more examples besides I'm not accomplished enough to go bald."

"Uh oh gosh. Now you're making me like go off track here. Um, let's get one out of you then."

"Answer this question for me."

"I'll be asking the questions. Sir, I noticed now you're full man spreading to me now. Is this a dominance position?"

"Yes, it is."

"It's getting really awkward. No, you can do that. It's fine. I don't mind the view."

"So, one one question that I like to ask you is what's something you've learned in the past few years that's changed how you live?"

"What's something that you've learned? I'm going to put you to sleep with my voice, Chris."

"Please."

"This is too hard. Let's ask let's ask the audience. Let's don't put me on the spot. See how I deflect? He deflected and I'm deflecting now."

"Audience, people that are here,"

"What is something that you've learned that's changed your point of view?"

"Changed how you live."

"Change how you live."

"Anybody? Go ahead. Can we throw her the mic?"

"We got the mic working out. Gwen,"

"Make it deep."

"We got the mic working, so you can use it."

"Okay, I can use it this time."

"Yeah, but close. Close."

"Closer. Okay, so I lived through a fire, not the one in January here, but one in southern Oregon, and I lost everything I owned. What I have learned is that, okay, I'm going to get really personal here. I thought everything that I kept and saved was because my past was better than my future."

"But"

"But but finish the sentence, do"

A long sentence. Oh, okay. So I thought, but that wasn't true.

Mhm. And those, those beliefs and actually those material things, I don't need to keep to have a memory of what was good. And it also allows space for something new to come in.

Perfect. Perfect. So a lot of insights rotate. Thank you for sharing that, by the way.

Thanks, Gwen. Just using you for content here. I'm joking. Appreciate it. So a lot of contents will, a lot of insights will turn around a word like "but" or "when," "despite," "even though," "however." That's sort of topic A, topic B. So we had topic A and topic B. I would need to see those words just so I can go, "That's the topic," and, "And that's the topic." But I do have a simple example as well.

Um, I was doing a workshop in Mexico City with Netflix, and an answer to that question from the head of marketing was that he would go home really stressed. He would play with his young boy, and his boy would move from toy to toy to toy. And he was like, "Oh, this is so frustrating. Why can't you just sit there and play?" His insight was this: Dad is toy. Dad is toy. My fancy business language.

Three letters, two letters, three letters. What does it mean? It means that when he goes home and plays with his kid, he's the toy. And now he can relax. So that's a simple example of putting two nouns together with the word "like." Is. You can use words like "but," "however," "despite," "even though," "although." I can keep going, especially when, especially not when, and you're twisting the sentences.

And so for people who want to get good at this, what I always encourage people to do is like, if you're on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube, pay attention to the people you already pay attention to because you are, if you, if you've taken words from someone talking about relationships, mental health, history, economics, I guarantee they're very good at putting two topics together. And it could be an insight, or it could be an idea, because to me, insights are ideas that get you to reorganize your life.

Okay. Mhm.

"Dad is toy" brings a smile to my face. That's the subjective reaction that you're looking for. Otherwise, like, nah, that's not it.

And then you're looking for two mechanics, two things that come together.

And is that also "Dad toy"?

That is toy. Would I structure?

I don't know if I would write that on a creative brief, but I would use it on a presentation. "That is toy" because it's memorable.

Yeah. Um, and it can be emotional, too.

Depending on how you look at it. Now, you, you asked Gwen to share something, something she's learned in the last couple of years that's changed how she, I forget the exact language.

Yeah.

What's something you've learned in the past few years that's changed how you live?

Changed how you live. And she said that I used to think I, I have an attachment to things because it, I was telling myself a story that the past was better than my future.

But then she realized, what, Gwen, would you say? Stop filming. Be present with us, please.

What did you say?

Actually,

just say "but." What? Just finish that part. Please land the plane.

Do you remember?

You teach like I teach.

That's why we're going to get along.

I said, "But I, that's not true. I don't have to have the material things." So I actually have fewer material things. I don't, I don't have.

That's true. So that's the behavioral change. So I don't have, I have fewer material things. That's the behavioral change. But it's going from, "I need to keep things to be able to appreciate the past," 'cause I thought the past was going to be better than the future, to, "I don't need things from the past to actually enjoy my present and the future." It's very simple. And we rewrite that a little bit as well.

Okay.

And then there's the, "So I don't have material things." That's the behavioral change. Insights interrupt existing routines, right? So act one of any story is the day-to-day. It's the routine. It's the habit. Then there's an inciting incident or incidents. In this case, it's a fire. It could be a book, a TED talk. It could be 10 years of a bad relationship. Then there's an insight. And then the final part of this is the behavioral change.

Okay?

And, and insights don't always have to be super profound and about the meaning of life, right? That could be about how you pick your nose, maybe. I don't know. Okay?

Right. But that's, that's how they work on us.

If we were going to write a brief and insight from what was just shared, how would you write that? So simple.

Uh, what's the brand as well?

The brand is Gwen.

The brand is Gwen. So I, I love these techniques being applied to people. Uh, you're really putting me on the spot now. My brain is, mine is much better if I can see the words as well.

I'm with you, by the way.

Yeah, I know. Deflecting.

You're, you're like a brother from another mother. You really are. You're a little wild, a little une. You're increasingly so.

You, you like to just say whatever's on your mind. And there's an element of danger. You drink more than I do, but, you know, there's a lot of similarities here. So, we're going to get along just fine.

So, I'm just curious.

You know how I know a pro? You don't mind if I touch you like that?

I liked it.

Okay. Um, you know how I know somebody knows what they're doing? It's when they can just freestyle, when they can improv. Because a lot of people are really book smart. They read the research and they can recite it word for word, chapter to chapter, but then I ask them one question, they fall apart.

Yeah.

I'm not saying I suspect this.

I'm not going to fall apart. I'm not going to fall. Let's keep talking. No, I'm joking. No, keep, no, I mean, I was saying it before.

I want to see the magic.

Well,

it's much easier when I can see the words. I have a strange brain.

Okay.

So,

Gwen thought that probably, Gwen probably thought that keeping objects in her house would keep her connected to the past, which would keep her happier. But she's still able to be happy without those objects in her life. Something like that.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Because there's a, usually we'd go, "Why?" and dig into it a little bit more and eventually start to simplify. But obviously, if you've got a lot of stuff in your house, either you have emotional baggage and problems with hoarding, like you're filling your soul in a way that other people might do with substances, for example. But if there's a sense that the past was going to be better than the future and holding on to these things would keep you connected to the past, then losing these things and realizing you can be happy anyway is freedom.

M.

So that's the sort of language I'd play with, but I need to.

I like where you're starting to take this now. I can see something happening.

It sounds crazy.

Right. So it's just a little ember before, and now might be a little spark there. Okay. So I think the, I, I'd love to talk to the room and everybody's included in this conversation if you want to participate, which is, this is that, what is the unspoken human truth about this observation that we attach memories to things and then we think they're so important until they're taken from us, then we realize, no, we're just fine. That those are just things. That as long as they live in our memory, it's still good.

Yeah.

Those are just totems for the experience, right?

It can be.

It's really weird because we assign meaning and story to things. So, Gwen, do you live with less stuff in your life? But just, you live richer with less stuff.

Yeah.

Maybe.

I relate to that. I'm living out of a backpack for four months. We got like three shirts. Don't get too close.

No, you don't.

Wait, what are you saying? What? What? What don't you need? You're saying he doesn't need clothes?

You don't need stuff. I mean, how much if you have a closet?

Okay, easy there. I like lots of stuff. Okay.

No, there's, I know you're a stuffed guy. You got lots of stuff.

I'm a stuffed guy.

Kind of stuffy.

But it all has meaning. But if something was taken away, it's still indelible. If the, if the, if the emotion behind the event is real enough, you don't need a picture. You don't need the scent. You know, you don't need anything, any of that, you know. And I had enough time to just grab, I had 30 seconds to grab some things. I grabbed six things and I didn't realize the importance of them. And I'm doing a TED talk about it, by the way. But I didn't re, I didn't realize the importance of those six things until later.

Yeah.

And they had something to do with all the senses. So it's interesting.

That's good. Subconscious. I mean, connected to this insight a little, I'll give you two of my own, right?

If that's okay.

Yeah. So two years ago, I was doing a lot of events like around the world, Chris, but I was in Brazil, Peru. I know, I know, it just sounds really pretentious. I'm Australian too, right? So we don't, we don't talk up ourselves. We don't talk ourselves up that much. So like I was in Brazil, Mexico City, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, over in Georgia in Europe, which is beautiful. Please all go to Georgia. There's a really good design and advertising community there. Turkey, Bulgaria, all over the place. And I started to see photos of myself happy and I was like, "What?" Because I don't, I don't like looking at photos of me when I was young because I was a bit of a depressive, a bit bit melancholic and just stressed all the time. I was like, "Oh, so when I'm around certain kinds of people doing certain kinds of things in certain countries, I'm happy. So why don't I do more of that?" But also connected to getting rid of things. I'm living out of a backpack because I want to live a creative life. I don't need to carry stuff around. I need to create stuff. And it doesn't even have to be stuff. So those two insights sort of hit me in a pretty significant way where I'm now building my life in a very different way because of those experiences and and those little epiphies.

I, I've written this before, so I'm not saying I just coming up with. Are you cheating?

No, I mean, I was just going to say that there's an expression, even though I'm the antithesis of this expression, which is, "The more things you own, the more things own you."

Yeah. And when you were freed from this, from the fire, the fire liberated you and you became freer.

Mhm.

Yeah.

Yeah. George Collins's got a good thing on stuff. Get stuff. Got all this stuff in the house. Like I've forgotten the thing, but I used to read it all the time. I know the bit.

And you put the, the stuff in more stuff. You buy bigger stuff to put that stuff in the stuff.

Yeah.

Yes.

Perfect.

That describes my life.

More stuff.

But you have pretty stuff, sometimes. You got ugly stuff. I, I used to try and purge through it. Maybe that's an insight that I've learned in my life.

Why are you holding on to it?

Not, not anymore.

You're not? No. Why were you holding on to it?

Um, refugee immigrant mindset.

I could have said that. That's too predictable. So why would you hold on to it if you have a refugee immigrant mindset?

What do you mean?

You said that you were holding on to things because you had a refugee immigrant mindset. Yeah, because like when you lose everything, everything has some meaning. And I've.

Could be useful later or.

Yeah, for sure. Is it the meaning or it could be useful later?

Mostly useful later.

Yeah. Uh, there's probably a box of stuff inside my garage which like parts to things. And I'm a completionist. I know this about myself. So when I go to sell or donate something, I want to make sure they have all the parts and pieces they need because otherwise the replacement part is more than whatever it is that they got. And that there's just like this weird OCD itch in my brain. Like this is bothering me right now. I need to give them all the parts to the bike rack.

What's the most number of plastic bags you've ever had in your household at once?

And is it more than 100?

Plastic bags? No. No.

No. You didn't collect them? No.

To reuse?

Oh, yes. Like that? Yeah.

Yes. Uh, probably 50.

Okay.

Yeah.

Good. Good.

Yeah.

Do you want to talk about it?

I mean, if it gets lots of views. No, I don't think that's, I don't think that's that interesting. Okay, so we're getting somewhere over here. So, we know what insights are now. Unspoken human truths. We want to have a subjective reaction to it. They need to be two things coming together. And we'll word smith that until it gets right. But they don't, you don't have to use complicated language. No.

It's not predicated on that. And sometimes that's what people do wrong.

We can talk about language when you're ready. But yeah, keep it, keep it simple.

Okay. Well, let's talk about language. I'm ready.

So, okay. I'll give you three, three things to think about. There's going to be more than three, but whatever. Three things to think about when it comes to language. One, most books on writing will use this phrase that writing is rewriting. And if you're not a confident writer, it's a really annoying phrase to hear. Writing topic K is rewriting. What that means is you get your first words out and then the real work happens. One way to simplify the way that you write is to switch out describing words. So, adjectives describe nouns, adverbs describe verbs. Switch them out for short, sharp verbs and nouns. That'll clean up your language. Or you're writing really, really quickly. If I see a slide or a document with hardly any white space and lots of long words, my brain's like, "I'm too old for this. I can't do it anymore." Connected to that are two other concepts. One is called monogamous words. So, if part of our role is to create things that get attention and get into the memory, it seems like it would be useful to understand what kinds of words would also get into the memory. Monogamous words are words that don't cheat. They're words that stay loyal. The label that I give them is pineapple words. So, if I say the word "pineapple" and I hold my hand out here, you're going to see the word, you'll see a pineapple. Pizza. Pizza. Marketing language. Empowerment, confidence, reliability, opportunity, convenience, ease of use. They're what I call cloudy words. They're big. They're up in the sky, but what's in them? Okay, so we want pineapple words. Also, if you work in English, personal theory that might or might not be fully true, is try to use what I call Viking words. So, English is a bit of a mixed language. And a lot of English is Latin-based and French, which is obviously Latin-based as well. Latin, Latin language and French language were used in politics and religion in the UK. Well, in England, the street language was Viking language, street English, Anglo-Saxon, more northern European, Scandinavian. Those words to me are often very chewy. This is a theory and it's not fully true. Mud, gut, blood, house, mouse. They're very visual words and very different from reliability, opportunity, convenience, and confidence, etc. Right? So, those three things working together. Writing is rewriting. Be careful with the describing words. Pineapple words and Viking words. I think can help people write better.

Were those all the three?

Yeah.

Oh, you went so fast this time. Okay.

No, no, no.

So, you were talking about monogamous words or.

Yeah.

Okay.

Monogamous words. Words that don't have many synonyms.

Mhm.

And the third one is use Viking words.

Viking words. Yeah.

Okay.

All right. Writing his stuff down.

The term that I learned was suitcase words from Mr. Blair ends. It's just so much things in it. I unpack it all. And so in conversations with clients, with each other, we tend to use suitcase words a lot and not realize it. Like, what does the word "organic" mean? I, I don't know.

It can mean lots of things.

Well, also in this line of work, "humanize" and "authenticity." The, a lot of people have a lot of meetings about these two words, right?

What do they mean?

So, in, in some ways, the vocabulary that you need to learn, you've already learned by the fifth grade, probably, right?

Yeah. And I think it helps to, especially if you're working on a broad, a brand or a, a product that reaches a lot of people, right? Like, you're in the fifth grade or maybe eighth grade.

What's the average reading capability of someone in this country, Chris, as well? That's pretty low.

Yeah.

So, and sometimes I have to catch myself where I might be trying to dress the strategy up in slightly fancier words. I'm like, "Hang on, we're trying to sell soap here. Let's just literally use one and two syllable words in these strategy documents, right?" But you have to train. It's, it's a confident thing to do, because you're gonna have all these business people around you being like, "What's, what's this? It's too cute. I don't know."

Mhm.

Yeah.

Okay. I want to take a quick pause and check in on the room here as we have a couple of people in house. And if there's something that you wanted to ask Mark about or follow up on before we move on to whatever we're going to do next, which I think we got to get into the four points. Anybody? No. Patrula, you okay? Actually, I'm gonna Volin told you Patrula, by the way. I'm going to just pull you in here if you may. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Patrulla is a professor. She's been teaching at Art Center for decades. Right. So when we talk about concept and strategy, those two words are used very loosely within the design education curriculum that I'm aware of. So when when Mark's talking about this, are there things that you, if you can channel the students here, because I would like our future designers, people who are going to create the world, have a better understanding of what an unspoken truth is. Do you, do you have any thoughts on that, Patrula, so that we can help them even though they're not in the room today?

Generally, I think creative people are very insecure with their words. Uh, meaning artist, creative. So when they get a hold of these words that feel very meaningful, they feel very important and it gives them confidence, even though it's lacking clarity. So it's very hard to untrain them and get them back to just the pineapple words because the others feel, they, they can they can reach somewhere and have confidence and and be more. And it takes some time.

Yeah. And even in art school, they're surrounded by people explaining their their focus with really intellectual language.

Um, you know, at, in LA, I'm sure everyone's using the word "multihyphenate" all the time. Like, what is this on Clubhouse? You know? Yeah, everyone's a multihyphenate. Good on you. Like, this language is, this language is not useful. You know?

The concepts you've explained to Chris. What happened? Okay, it got worse. Good job. Keep on.

Speak loudly.

No, no, you're good.

Okay. Um, I just, I'm so refreshed. It's so refreshing to hear what you're saying because I understand it, but I've never been able to articulate to students. Sorry, it's a little. Aren't they?

Yeah, it's like we're in a big stadium, but we're not. There's a little delay.

Where are you?

All right. Okay. Let's, let's move on, if we may. Is it a good time to move on?

All right. I want you to talk about the four points. So, I'm, I'm on your Instagram looking at the four points framework and I'm reading through it and there's one in particular that just jumps out at me, the Six Flags one.

Okay.

It's so good that I'm like to my friend Joel, "You need to see this." And I sent it to my friend Annie, who's a strategist. "See how this guy talks about strategy? He makes it visual and interesting." Don't tell me you can't talk about strategy without, you know, because every, like, it's not sexy. I'm like, "Well, maybe what you're doing isn't." So, let's tell the good people what the hell the four points are.

So, in advertising, you're usually going to be playing with a like a few frameworks. I think most advertising presentations need a framework at the front that helps people to understand the main useful things that came out of the research. And that framework will usually articulate an insight, strategy, and then the next slide would be the campaign idea or the, the concept, for example. Right at the back end, I think you need a framework to help organize all the tactics into a communications plan. I don't think you need too many other frameworks, to be honest, in most presentations. Young strategists will use 10 framework frameworks and one framework will have a have a framework. You're like, "What is happening here? I don't understand that sort of stuff." I have more of a storytelling approach to the presentations itself. One of the main and most traditional frameworks is called the four C's. It's a two by two. You do your research and then with one sentence, you're trying to summarize the consumer truth, the category or the competitive truth, the cultural truth, and a company truth in a two by two. And in the middle would be something like a brand essence or strategy statement.

Can you just, just pause a second, just so I can process?

So there are four quadrants, two by two.

What are the four C's again?

Consumer truth, competitive or category truth, cultural truth, company truth, and then in the middle, you got something that's like the strategy. It could be a brand essence or strategic thing. So that, that's probably the most used framework. Um, with the four points, I created this, I don't know, 8 to 10 years ago. I really bought into the idea that our work collectively is to solve problems. There's a lot of idealism in that because a lot of clients would come to you and go, "Just design my brochure. Please don't talk to me about my business. Give me my five videos." A lot of people aren't capable of talking about their own business, by the way. They don't know how to. So, with the four points, the four points are problem, insight, advantage, and strategy. The problem, what I'm looking for is the obstacle or the barrier that's preventing people from doing or buying something. Insight, unspoken human truth. And I want that to open up the problem. I want there to be a thematic connection. Advantage is about the brand. And that, that answers the a question that's been on briefs for decades. What makes your brand unique and motivating in people's minds? Despite there being an academic argument about distinctiveness and differentiation, which we're not going to talk about right now. And then strategy is a new way of seeing a brand based on that. So the strategy statement, for example, uh, will show that the New York Knicks are the best anger management in town. That tries to solve a problem by putting the insight and advantage together.

It's super simple.

Let's, let's go through the, the New York Knicks because we've talked about it, so we can dip it back into this. All right. So we're going to do some research, some observation. We're going to find out what the problem is with the New York Knicks. What are the problems?

Well, so I kind of wrote this as a response to a real brief and I was bored in my last job. Um, so you do some research and you see that people are just really frustrated with them. And there's a sports team like this in every league where they just never seem to get good, but they earn a lot of money. And that starts to frustrate people. The Knicks have been good recently from what I understand. So the way that that behavior came to life is people would say, "I love New York. I love basketball. I love the New York Knicks. I'd never go for the Brooklyn Nets. That's my team. But they've been crap for so long. I have to watch the games, but I hate watching the games. I'm going to watch them to complain about them." So, the way that I articulate that as a problem statement is like, "Fans are hate supporting the team."

Fans, they hate supporting the team.

Fans are hate supporting the team as the problem.

Mhm.

Okay. Insight. That in New York, you put up with everything until you snap, which I went through earlier. Advantage. The New York Knicks are designed to make people angry. Why? It's expensive. People hate the owner. Former players get into arguments with the owner from the sideline. Um, they haven't done well in a very, very long time. Often the players don't look like they're trying very hard. They traded Jeremy Lynn. Am I right? Oh my god. Strategy statement will show that the New York Knicks are the best anger management in town. And then that could lead to a campaign that we'll call "Shout It Out." And in one sentence, that idea is, "We're going to take basketball to the angriest streets of New York to see if we can make them less angry." One more step. Example tactic is the one I mentioned earlier, the big photos. So within what's that, six sentences and an idea name, you've got the, you've got the structure of something that could come to to life in the real world.

Theoretically, would the customer be the owners of the New York Knicks?

The client, the client would be the owners of the New York Knicks. Yeah.

Okay. Trying to sell more tickets, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Trying to sell season tickets. So that, that would be the business goal.

Okay. You said it's the best anger management. Is it better than, is it more affordable than anger management, or is it literally just saying it's the best?

So, the word "best" is a weak word. The word "ultimate" is a weak word. Hyphenating words, "hate supporting," that's weak writing. But at that stage of the four points, I'm not trying to perfect the framework. All I care about, if I was to brief a creative team, if that's what's happening, is we have the idea and the strategy, which is around the new and anger management. I don't really care about "best" or "most affordable." I'm not caring about that at all because it's such an unhinged, unusual idea.

Mhm.

That we could bring it to life in an interesting way. So, I'm just happy with that as an idea.

Okay.

Yeah.

Then they do their thing and turn it into like a brilliant piece of creative.

Yeah. Like, uh, instead of kiss cams, they could be like cuss cams.

They could be rooms where you just get angry and you're punching things. Yeah.

Mhm.

There's a whole little universe that could appear from that one sentence.

I like that. So when, when the strategy is clear, the sandbox from the outside looks small, but once you're inside the sandbox, it's enormous and it allows us to channel our creative energies and to hit a target.

Yeah.

Right. So it's like a focus force, and I like that. Okay.

Um, we'll probably put up a graphic here about what the four points looks like. I'm surprised there isn't a high resolution version of this because I wanted to use it for the event, but they're all really low res.

I can, I can, I can make you one.

Can you?

Yeah. I want you.

Well, you know what? I want to be drawing on bodies, so I could draw one on you.

Have you ever watched The Pillow Book?

The what?

The Pillow Book.

No.

Japanese calligraphy. Ewan McGregor. Lots of.

Oh, this a while ago. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No,

I can, I can get you a high. And I'm just trying to make you blush. Uh, I'm in control.

Yes, you are.

No, but I, I can get you a high res one, I guess.

Yeah, cuz you know what I was doing? I was literally retracing in Photoshop like, "No, stop this. This is insane. What am I doing?" Because it was so low res. But yeah.

I, so the way I used to work was Sharpie on paper. So since I've been doing my own thing, the way I work is I asked myself first of all, what did I used to like to do when I was younger? I was always scribbling and using Sharpies and all that sort of stuff. And then how do I want to work now? So I see my work as a creative practice. So, so all my decisions are about like, how do I want to be more creative in the world? And that's why there's no high-res version because I probably drew it on a piece of paper, took a photo of it. And I used to love that, actually. I, I used to like how the Sharpie would bleed a little bit on the piece of paper.

Because I often will use Procreate on iPad now, but it doesn't give me, it doesn't quite give me the.

The bleed.

Yeah. Doesn't quite get quite do for me.

Okay. Um, a buddy of mine, um, Adam JK, what he does is he draws with a really blunt pencil, and then he painstakingly scans them and re-autotraces them using vector, and then it becomes really sharp and punchy. So he gets the best of both. Now, what I like to do is we have just gone like at the speed of light through the four points. So, let's apply the four points to a real problem. Can we do that?

Yeah. I'm trying to work out if I should type or if I can trust myself and us enough to do it out. Let's do.

I want you to do the way that you're most comfortable.

I usually type, but let's do it. What's it? We need a brand then. We need a brand that people will know.

Let's try this. This is interactive, everybody.

Yeah, it's interactive, everybody. So, that does that mean that we can blame other people if this doesn't work? Yes, we can. We'll, we'll blame the audience that's watching. Like to try this with a real brand. Are there parameters before we picked?

Uh, just like, pick like, if it's you and I or if it's the group, we need it to be something that people know pretty well. Okay. And assume that I don't.

Okay. Cuz I'm going to pick for us unless you all want to pick something. Petrula, Gwen, anybody? Okay. No, I'll pick the brand. Okay. Here we go. The UFC.

The UFC. All right. Is that okay? Is that something you know enough?

Yeah. Grip.

Cuz, okay, we're good. We're good. UFC Ultimate Fighting Championship, everybody. We're good.

Okay. The Ultimate Fighting Championship. The UFC.

Is this a clown?

Just people hitting each other in the face.

Oh, okay. Gwen's not that interested, but that's okay. I am. That's okay.

Who's the audience?

The audience.

Who are we selling the UFC to?

Sports fans.

Just any sports fan.

Let me think about this.

Broad audience.

Let's say we want to steal from traditional stick and ball sports.

Stick and ball sports. Is that okay?

Yeah, that sounded hot.

I did that for you.

All right.

All right.

But do you know the space?

I do.

Okay.

That's why I picked it.

So the, the way that I would, if I'm, if I'm trying to get somewhere pretty quickly, I start with a problem. Okay. So in the mindset of this audience, the stick and ball people,

what?

Why aren't they watching the UFC?

Uh, there's just two men hugging each other.

Okay.

It's homoerotic. So, this is, I was I found that a bit weird when I was doing jiu-jitsu as well, a very long time ago.

You got your crotch on someone else's crotch or their face and you're like, "Am I, am I gay now?"

And I'm not gay yet.

Okay. It's fine.

So,

but I think we're all gay on a spectrum.

Oh, totally. Everything's on a spectrum. Yeah. So, what, what I would do is I'd try to collect say, five to 10 problems. I like that one. So, there's too much hugging and it's homoerotic. Give me another one.

It's barbaric.

It's barbaric. Okay. Using good language here. Okay. Next one.

Uh, there are no rules.

You're very quick with this, too. I like this.

Yeah.

Fourth.

I, uh, I don't know who anybody is.

Don't know who anybody is. Yeah.

Fifth.

Somebody else help me out. It's.

I know. When I first was watching it, I'm like, they're on the ground all the time. I can't even see it.

Yeah. Okay.

You don't know who they are.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, let's stop there. We got five.

Which of those? We'll do this intuitively. Which of those do you think is the main problem for stick and balls people?

Like, it's just two guys hugging.

It's two guys hugging. Okay. So then we'll dig into the problem a little bit. So I'll ask you, "Why is that a problem?" And you give me one sentence back. Why is this, is like a version of the five W's, but why is that a problem?

Um, I don't know what I'm watching.

Hang on. So let's, let's keep it connected to the hugging. Oh.

Yeah. Like when two guys are like that, I'm like, "What am I, what are they doing?"

Okay. Why is that a problem?

No action. Give me sentences.

Um, I, I'm not sure how to do this part. Mark, help me out here.

So, let me, let me repeat and buy you some time.

Okay.

It's two, it's just two guys. It could be women. It's just two guys hugging.

Mhm.

Therefore, I don't know what I'm watching. Therefore.

You say there's no action or something.

There's no action.

There's no action to watch. Why is that a problem?

It's really boring.

It's really boring. Why is that a problem?

I have better things to do with my time than watch two men hugging doing nothing.

Okay. Okay.

Is it okay?

Yeah. Because I mean, the advantage with working like with you is that you've, the way you stated the problem initially is quite deep, right? Usually it takes a bit of time to get there. So let's pretend that that's the problem.

Okay.

Could you state it, the last sentence again?

The last thing I just said.

That you have better things to do than watch.

Two. I have better things to do with my time to watch two men hugging.

So that's the problem. "I have better things to do with my time than watch two men hugging." Okay. So, with, if we're just working really, really quickly, the insight. What I would do is I'd have this, what I call joining language. But here's the thing about, but here's the thing about, and we're trying to get an unspoken human truth. We're going to try to bring the word "hug" or "hugging" or "better things to do with my time" into this insight. So, I'm going to ask you a question and I'll also think.

Okay.

Can you think of something about guys hugging, not having enough time for guys hugging? Yeah. Can you think of something to do with not having enough time to watch guys hugging? That is interesting.

Ask that one more time.

Can you think of something interesting about not having enough time to watch two guys hugging? What is it about two guys hugging?

What is it about two? I feel like you're leading me to something and I can't figure out where you're helping.

I'm scrambling as well. I'm scrambling as well. I, you know, the, the question is so complicated in my mind. Can you simplify the question? So, like, there's so many.

What's something funny or weird about two guys hugging?

Like, and also, we can go serious. This is. Yeah. I was going to say, like, there's, uh, that's the antidote to this male toxic energy about men showing their emotions.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So there's some big words there. Could you paraphrase? Could you rewrite that for me?

With short words? No, he's leading me to the, to the lion's den. I don't know. Who knows? Who knows? Okay.

But that was good. And then can we.

Yeah. Yeah. Let me think about that.

So, we start with.

We need positive male role models then. Is that okay?

But we want to bring the word "hug" or "touch" in, right?

Um,

yeah.

This is being really funny. It's actually very manly to hug another man.

Okay. Perfect. In some cultures, it really is too.

Yeah.

Perfect.

Mhm.

Nice and short. Okay. So the advantage is now about the brand. So this is about the UFC. The joining language that I use is "the good news is." And then we've, and when I say joining language, I'm not looking for formulaic thinking. They're just prompts that help this four points flow. So we have the problem that guys don't want to watch two men hugging. But here's the thing about two guys hugging. Give me that sentence again.

The good news is it's very masculine for two men to express themselves hugging.

Yeah. In some cultures. Advantage. The UFC has had guys touching each other for 30 years, right?

So that's an ex, that's one way to get there.

And, and also by the.

That's a banger.

Yep. It's all right.

All right.

Dropped another one. Another one.

Keep going. Keep going.

So also in this work, don't take it too seriously. Allow the weird things to pop out.

Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. So could it be the UFC, a safe place for men hugging for 30 years or something like that? Making it safe for men to hug?

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. Now, strategy. This is hard because so the New York Knicks one is, we'll show that the New York Knicks are designed to make people angry. We'll show that the New York Knicks are the best anger management in town. So, "best anger management in town" is it's got sets of nouns there. It's quite a leap with a lateral thought there. So, we'll show that the UFC dot dot dot and we got to resolve this hugging and touching thing. And we're probably saying it's manly. Yeah.

Yeah.

So, for, I need your help.

Oh, I wasn't sure where we're going with this. I thought I was just giving you space to finish your thought.

I know. I thought I was giving you space to finish your thought. Well, we're not.

Hey, welcome to the world of creative, everybody.

But we're not, we're not selling affection here, right?

We're not selling, we're not saying, "Hey, watch this because this is closest, this is the closest thing to getting touched you'll feel this week." We're not, even if we're joking around, we're probably not selling the UFC as affection.

Yeah.

Right. But maybe it's about, I'm getting close to something, Mark. Just keep talking here.

So, the reason that I love Regga Tom, Chris, and thanks for asking me that question.

I cried when I left Colombia when this Carol G song came on.

This is not helping, by the way. I thought you were going to keep clicking on the UFC.

Okay. Hugging, men touching, inner rings. It's tough in some cultures.

Where, where are we? What are we trying to say then? I think I may take a stab at it.

Okay.

What are we, what are we trying to get to, Mark?

What are we? We're trying to get to a strategy statement. We'll show that X is Y.

We know UFC will be X. The Y will have something to do with hugging and manly. Yeah.

And so if we get stuck here, the question, how are we going to sell this? How are we going to sell the UFC? Something to do with hugging and touching.

Manly. So my idea, and now moving into creative perhaps, is where I get it wrong. Okay.

Is I can see a kind of a ballet of violence with two guys destroying each other and saying, "The UFC, where strong men express their true emotions."

Okay.

Is that okay?

Yeah. So, that's kind of copy, but you could use language like that in the strategy statement. We, we'll show that the UFC is where strong men express their emotions. The thing that I'm going back to as well, so I grew up with a single mom. Thanks for asking. And so when I had younger kids, I would have single mom with boys or often talking to me and I'm like, "They got to wrestle. Like, you can keep having them not be little boys and pretend they don't have massive spikes in testosterone and they're supposed to sit there and be really obedient, but you got to wrestle." And so I'm thinking through this as we're talking. I think the way you expressed it is perfect. Give us the line again.

UFC, where strong men express their true emotions.

So that could be in the strategy. Yeah, that could be in the strategy for sure.

Hey, we did it. I like that.

Touch me. Good job.

Wow.

Only a little bit of 10%. I like that.

That's 15 minutes.

No, 10 minutes.

No, not even.

Okay.

If I could just understand what you were saying, we could have gotten there faster. But, you know what I mean. It was only a few minutes.

And this work is messy. And this work is messy.

I don't say this, but you're like a minute man here. I love it. Pretty quick. You are pretty quick.

But this work is messy.

Tandras, guys. We're going to get canceled off YouTube. Cancel the stream, bro.

Stop flirting with me. Oh god. Here's Patrula. You want to wait. Mic, mic to Patrula, please. Can you just throw it at her?

Here we go.

If he, if he would have gone slower, you could have gone faster.

That's what he said.

There's just too many antandras here. If he goes slower, I would have finished faster. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah.

I see. I see. I see. Okay. That's a bigger metaphor for life, I believe.

Yeah. Okay.

I had faith. I had faith.

Yeah. So, here's my recap of what I just experienced here is that in your process, I think you've embraced what everybody's thinking and you're going to win them over by reframing how they think about something in a way that is like, "Oh, that's kind of piqus my curiosity now."

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. People can be very dismissive about a sport that requires a lot of training and skill and say, "Oh, it's just, it's gross and it's homoerotic or whatever it is. It's just violent," whatever it is, or it's too violent. And then we brought it all together like, "Yeah, it is that, but there's this really cool part to now you can see it."

So, you're using kind of the language they've never said and you're talking to them now.

Yeah. Which is one way to approach strategy. Yeah. That's the way that I go. Yeah.

I like this, man. Where were you when we were running a creative agency? Because we're just like throwing things at the wall, not even knowing what to do.

Mark, why are you holding out on me?

Gwen.

You want to say something? Throw the mic.

>> Question.

>> Yeah, because I worked in an ad agency before all of the data collection. And you're speaking very similarly to the way Hal Riny would talk to us during through creative briefs. He just like get rid of the book. BS and get to the like you said the pineapple words the real emotion. Do you think that all of this data collection and numbers have muddied the waters?

>> Yeah, I see I see presentations from all over this kind all over the world but all over the US. It's common to see 80 slides written by six different departments, tens of bullet points on each slide, no opinion, no small words, no singular voice going through the presentation. That is the norm. And everyone I work with is like, is this normal? I'm like, yeah, everyone, everyone works this way.

>> Do you think that is a justification? I've had this experience. I've been hired to come up with additional logos, signed an NDA, and it's just to build volume to justify the cost that the agency design agency is charging.

>> A different question. That's obviously a different theme from whether we have too much data and whether that's clouding things. And my answer to that is yes. uh volume of output can be useful in getting to quality, but I'm not not sure how to address that second point.

>> I was just back piggybacking on your answer. You said that like the long documents. I'm wondering if that's an extension of that same idea like they're just

>> Yeah. And and to me it comes back to two things. Lack of competence and and lack of confidence, but also coincidentally number one most confident country in the world, right? but no competence because so much of so much of what happens in the US and it's not just here if your personality can defeat people you will let your personality defeat people that's what you're taught growing up in other cultures they don't work like that right so I I think people can get away with a big personality here in a way where they'd get like shut down in other countries and so therefore there's less pressure to be competent

>> well I I think this has been written about before that it used to be an age of character and now it's an age of charisma Uh, and that's what you're talking about, right? We've we've slipped into this

>> a little. Yeah. But also, what's funny, so I'm sitting on about six book ideas and I'm about to start the second one. One of them that I should probably prioritize is called How to Have a Personality. And that goes from going around the world and largely seeing young men struggle to be interesting.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> Right. And so, yeah, maybe it is an age of charisma, an age of personality. You've got to be main character. I didn't used to do main character stuff on the internet. I just posted strategy carousels two years ago. I was like, "Let's try it." I hated myself.

>> Now I do thirst traps, Chris.

>> I still hate myself posting them, but I do them. I do them.

>> We got to work on that.

>> Yeah, I know. Um, and so, but still, yeah. Age of Charisma. And yet, a lot of people don't have personalities.

>> Yeah. Okay. Very interesting. I don't Do you watch much of YouTube or Instagram?

>> Yeah. Not when I'm traveling.

>> Are you familiar with this show called Updating?

>> No.

>> updating is a fascinating concept. I plan to do some design version of this. So, updating is they they go on tour and they they book a bar, hotel, whatever it is. There's a bunch of young single men and women in there. So, they bring up somebody in a blindfold and they start asking questions and it's pretty funny. There's they they ask pretty blunt questions to see like what they're interested in. And then they send them away and they bring another person who they I think they already figured this out beforehand because they fill out profiles and they bring up a guy or girl now opposite sex and they ask him questions and they bring them both on still blindfolded and they do a whole bunch of different things. What's really interesting to me is when the part comes, hey uh give Shannon your pitch and the things that come out of guys mouths are just abhorentt to me. It's like dude is that really what you think women are attracted to right now? I'll give you an example. This is horrific, right?

>> So there's a very attractive woman. She turned down the first guy, wasn't right, and somebody yells out from the audience, "I want her." So they're like, "Okay." So they bring him up and he says, "What's your pitch?" And his best pitch was, and he took off his shirt immediately to show that he was very fit. And he goes, "What do you think about you and me walking in a room and just being the center of attention?" And the two guys are like, "That's your pitch, bro?" And then they vote up or down. And he votes up and she's like, "No." I'm like, "Is that really what you think women want?" So it's horrific. There is no personality. There is not interesting questions. They said, "Would you like to ask her or him a question?" And the the questions are horrific. And the things they say back are just dumb.

>> But what would you say in that situ? I have no idea what I would say in that situation. Do you have

>> Well, don't put me on the spot right now, Mark.

>> Obviously, you've been thinking about this a lot. You I can imagine driving

>> so invisible right now that you can see right through me.

>> Dude, I get told this a lot. I got I get told to stop staring at people, but that's because I'm good at girl talk. I also told that recently. mayor of Yap City also told that recently. And when I interview people on stage, I'm like watching and sometimes I have different accents, but I'm watching. I'm weird. I'm listening. I'm trying to understand the lips and everything and then eventually I go through.

>> Yeah. Okay. So, what's what's the

>> what's the question? Why are you deflecting? What's your pitch in this? There's a difference.

>> What's your pitch in this situation?

>> I would not pitch. Here's what I would say.

>> Oh, the indirect way.

>> Yeah. I would ask her because pitching means I'm less than you now. And I would ask questions because I want to hear what she has to say. I'm not selling you anything.

>> Hang on. Hang on. Is this a new course?

>> Maybe. It'll be after your book on how to have a personality.

>> Well, we could partner up.

>> Maybe. Okay. Future collab.

>> Continue.

>> Yeah. I would just say something like um I don't want to make any assumption about what you want, but I'm curious about the kind of person that you're attracted to because I'm looking for alignment. Yeah.

>> And we would just have a conversation.

>> Okay.

>> I like that.

>> That's not great, but you know, something like that.

>> No, that's cool.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

>> Yeah. But to sit there and like shouldn't we be the attent center of attention in the room? Like what regular like that's a psycho if she says yes.

>> Yes.

>> Personally, and he's a psycho. So they exist. Natural selection.

>> Yeah. Narcissistic, self-important uh self-absorbed people. I don't I don't get that at all.

>> And I I think what we've lost in the modern era, at least what I've been able to see on the internets, is the ability to have a good question, to have conversation. Yeah.

>> that's it.

>> Yeah, I think a lot of people have given up. I mean, there's a lot of research about how the genders are polarizing. Guys have all been andutated in the head and women are called progressive because they like human rights and stuff like that. And I see this when I travel. I see two things. Tokyo, I was in a restaurant, 100 people, 80% was women having dinner together, right? And then in a lot of like Latin American countries, you'll see guys in a bar and women dancing, but they don't have men to dance with. So there's stuff that you can see in the world where the genders are like they're falling apart.

>> Yeah. Okay. Without getting into all that stuff, that's a different podcast, a different thing. I wanted to to point out something. As I was digging through your content, I started to realize there's a consistency to the graphics and the typography. And then I asked you off camera, was that your handwriting? And you said yes. And that you draw all the illustrations. I think that's kind of remarkable. A guy who's got a background with words and strategy is a person who actually draws. So the the the

>> the title to your book here is drawn by you presumably with a Sharpie or something, right?

>> And I just think you have a very unique style of lettering because when I went to trace I'm like oh and you know this is a compliment to you is that do you know who Sean Stucey is and that whole Stusy campaign? You know the brand Styi, right?

>> It was really big in Australia. So there was a period and they're like the godfathers of street wear where they did these ads and somebody's handwriting was so interesting to me. It was almost like graffiti writing.

>> Yeah.

>> And then my question to you is since you were in the hip-hop culture, were you also a graph artist?

>> No. Not. No. I used to tag stuff.

>> Okay. More tagging.

>> Yeah. More Pusca. Yeah.

>> More Pusca. But not not in like a really prolific way, but just in my area and on buses and things like that. M

>> um but also when so I was invited to do a talk over at Web Expo in Prague about I don't know what it was eight or nine years ago and I just kept asking myself like how do I want to live? How do I want to exist? How do I want to put myself out into the world? And so I got this presentation together. I hand drew the whole thing on pieces of paper. I took photos and then I put it up because other people do this as well. It's less common if you've got my professional background but other people do this as well. And so I took that risk and people had like a a funny reaction to it. It feels vicarious I think to people like you it feels personal like you're you're in this massive room with a massive screen and there's little squiggles that someone has done. And so I think that messes with the whole stature and intimacy of storytelling as well. You know Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, father and son sort of thing but in a in a visual way. And people are always surprised. They're like what's that font? I'm like it's my handwriting,

>> right? Yeah.

>> But it comes from asking myself, how do I want to live this creative life and how do I want to be?

>> Mhm.

>> Yeah.

>> When when I talk about personal branding, there's many ways in which we manifest what's inside that no one can see into the outside world. I think your handwriting is as unique as your voice and many people don't cultivate that. You clearly have a definite style and in this age of manufactured things through robots, it's refreshing that there's ideas, words, and something done by hand by a human and that I think we connect to even on a subconscious level and I think that's really cool. Thank you.

>> Now, you're a person of many talents and so we can't get out of here without maybe dipping into another talent of yours, not so hidden, but that you write lyrics, right? That you write lyrics and I think you're going to recite some of it for us. I have to I have to

>> uh to

>> get my phone out.

>> Beat I'll read I'll read. Look away. Close your ears. Professional rapper over there.

>> Maybe he can perform it. No, we're we're good.

>> I did send this to him yesterday.

>> Yeah. So Mark's going to recite something he wrote in whatever style he wants. Is that okay? Yeah. Wait, wait. Let's let's orient the camera here.

>> Oh god. I see. I just want to I want to face away from the camera

>> and we'll lay a beat in. No, I'm just kidding. Go ahead.

>> Got to get my glasses, too. Yeah. It's funny cuz yeah, I've written maybe seven. I've got this concept for this uh for this album and chat GPT tells me I'm not too old to put this out by the way.

>> Okay, then it must be true.

>> And like but it's kind of like it's um so the first the first whatever it's going to be the first thing's quite long but I'll go through.

>> Is there a setup before you do your thing or you just want to go into it?

>> I'll go I'll go into it. This is the song that kicked it all off that I wrote

>> as I was leaving Colombia having just been maybe a little

>> I thought you were to start. I'm like this is not No, no, no. Having just been a little bit drugged and robbed on my phone and people trying to extort me.

>> Um, and then the rest of it is kind of a little bit sexier.

>> So, this is called Crack Me Open, Chris.

>> Crack Me Over.

>> It's called Crack Me

>> Crack Me Open.

>> Oh, Crack Me Open.

>> Take Calm Down, Bad Boy. Calm Down. It's kind of Okay, so it's kind of serious.

>> Okay,

>> I have beats in my head, but I'm just going to I'm going to read it. Okay.

>> I've never done this before.

>> Let's do it.

>> Okay. Oh, what if I cry? I've been crying on stages lately, Chris. Oh, okay.

>> I'd like to see that.

>> So, it's called Crack Me Open. It goes I'll just go up to the first chorus. It goes, I did everything I was supposed to do, but it was never good enough for you. So, I'm on stages writing pages, claiming spaces, minds and faces. Grew up broken and in pieces. Everyone I knew was always leaving. Nothing held together for no reason. Winter canceled every other season. So, I spread my wings to see if I could fly. Slingshoted like a comet with a thing for sky. It took cities I'd never seen to see. There's another man hiding inside of me. Now I spend my flights trying to let him out. No more rumination time to get about. But a comet is impossible to steer. Always a breath from death and never here. I know this rooftop with his telescope. 50/50 per not full of scope. It's as close to myself as I can hope to get as a comet avoiding clouds of nope. And then the chorus just goes just crack me open again on a rooftop in Medí. Let the mountains breathe me in. I won't come back to earth, my friend.

>> There you go.

>> There you go. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Didn't cry. Didn't cry.

>> Hey, there there are some emotions in there.

>> Of course there are.

>> Gosh, forget the UFC. This is how strong men express their feelings.

>> Do you want to hear my next song? It's called Hold Me.

>> Say it to me in the bathroom.

>> Oh, I will. How long are we going to be in there for?

>> Well, not that long, apparently. It'll be It's fine. No judgment.

>> I take my time. I don't know.

>> No judgment. No judgment.

>> You're safe with me.

>> Okay.

>> Okay.

>> Go first. It sounds like it might be a threesome here in a second, but be careful. Be careful. All right. Um, if if you're still here, congratulations. If you've watched this entire thing that you haven't thrown up yet, everything is cool. Everybody, we're still safe. You know, we're still here. Um, and you're really, really interested in sharpening your strategy, your writing. And I don't think this is even something that is exclusive to people who work in the advertising space. I think if you're a person who works in communication in the largest broadest definition, I think you should look into this. So people I know you do workshops. Do you have courses? Do you have coaching communities? Tell us the the menu of

>> We do a lot of I'll be in like 40 cities this year doing inerson master classes. We've got

>> uh summer camps, accelerators, all kinds of stuff. And like I'm also going to be doing something like critical thinking for life which is about applying these tools to how you think and problems and because this is that's where it really comes to life I think for me.

>> And when you go to these places far and near do you have like a videography videographer team or somebody capturing this stuff and photos

>> a little bit. It's usually me. Sometimes I'll bring someone.

>> I keep everything really plugandplay and simple.

>> Yeah.

>> So I have a team but it's usually just me turning up. I plug in and I go I try to film some stuff. Yeah.

>> Maybe next year I'll be more confident and try to build a narrative over it because there's so many interesting moments that happen.

>> I bet.

>> Yeah. I'm starting to put a lot of it on YouTube as well, but it's more

>> I might take some strategy people for a walk and they'll talk to me about their city and just trying to the theme there is like how the world thinks. So just trying to understand how the world contemplates stuff like Japan really into depopulation. Tell me about that. You know that sort of stuff. A friend of mine told me about this thing called walk shop. Have you heard of this? A walk shop instead of a workshop.

>> So a walk shop is where they plan these walking tours.

>> And sometimes it's because the path is narrow. It's sometimes it's 2 by 2, 3x3. But it's really interesting that we can connect on different levels while doing something physical. Yes.

>> Um if something like that interests you or there's a city that you'd like to do where I'm interested, I'd love to do something with you. And if nothing else, if you're anywhere near it where we are, Drigo and I will come to your workshop. We'll film it. We'll do something and help you produce slicker content. Not better content, just slicker content.

>> Yeah, it's it's one of those thing. I just never backed myself.

>> You never what?

>> Backed myself. What does that mean?

>> Like I did a I did radio. I never had any equipment. Couldn't afford it. I've done podcast maybe 500 episodes. I do video,

>> but I just haven't backed myself properly. I do have a little team now. And so that's just, you know, I'm trying to live an expansive life and one of the questions is how do I do video better? You know, it's literally a thing that's on my mind all the time.

>> Yeah. Okay. So, if there's there's something for us to do, uh, it's a genuine offer. Let's do it. And if you want to do something in LA, are our our studios yours to use as you want?

>> Would you come to a dangerous country?

>> Which one?

>> I mean, LA is dangerous, right?

>> Not really.

>> It's just in the movies.

>> Okay. Um, but I'm interested in going somewhere it's semi-dangerous, not to be drugged up. And we'll

>> give you some drug you up a little bit.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> For the content.

>> Yeah.

>> Colombia. Brazil. Brazil.

>> Harrio says yes, but you know, me maybe. Maybe not. Yeah. Yeah. We We'll figure something out. I'd like to do that.

>> I'll be there for two months.

>> Okay.

>> Ra might be there, too.

>> All right.

>> I'm getting people to fly in. Like uh not Rucker necessarily. you're going to go there independently, but I'm trying to like live this life where I'm going to go to places and then get people to come in.

>> Yeah.

>> Because I know a lot of I have a lot of friends who I feel like they're a little bit stuck right now.

>> So, I want to show them.

>> Well, you're from an industry that's really messed up right now.

>> It is. It's really stressful.

>> It's dark out there. It really is. Um because advertising as it's existed for however many decades is just completely different and decimated. We have friends who own agencies and they're just devastated by what's going on. It's really tough. And just final thing on this, what I've been thinking about and talking to especially the younger people is there's research that shows that the younger generation now 20s is the least conscientious generation. So they're not working that hard. They're on the screens all the time. The genders are polarizing. They're outsourcing their thinking to artificial intelligence, which is leading to a decrease in gray matter in the brain. Super easy to replace in a year or two if those trends continue. Like who's going to hire you? you're basically doing what those tech oligarchs want you to do, which is to become super replaceable because everyone's in this sort of rush to mediocrity. So, you know, one of the reasons I do what I do is because we need critical thinking. We need creativity. And shout outs to people like Edward Deono who've been preaching this stuff for decades. Um, and right now in the world, not only do you have those dynamics, but a lot of governments are kind of defunding the liberal arts, which is crazy. Creativity creates economic value. So, there are some serious topics at play here, but I was happy to flirt with you today.

>> See you in the bathroom.

>> You're supposed to say that off camera. Yeah. Um, if people want to follow you, where do they go? What website do they look up?

>> Uh, Mark Polard on Instagram mostly. LinkedIn's kind of frustrating for me. It's been frustrating for 18 months.

>> But you know why?

>> Do I know why? I

>> I'll tell you why.

>> Because you've locked your profile, man. I try to connect with you and it's like I got to send your emails and just don't be so private.

>> Oh no, cuz I had a thousand people add me one day.

>> It's okay. You don't have to accept any.

>> I know, but I'm a people pleaser.

>> So I'm like block everybody out.

>> No, I just I just close it down. I just close it down. Um, so Markpollard on Instagram especially and then sweatthead.com for uh classes and things like that.

>> Okay. For those of you who speak English, it's Mark Pard. P O L L A R D.

>> Mark Polard

>> and and Sweatthead, right?

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> Thank you for translating.

>> It's been a real pleasure, man.

>> Thanks, man.

>> Thanks.

>> Thanks for having me.

>> Yeah. All right, guys. We're done.

>> Cut.

If you found this content to be valuable, I just want to let you know there's so much more inside the membersonly library. Workshops, whiteboard sessions, extended lessons, stuff we normally charge a lot of money for, you can have access to for $15 a month. It's all included. Hit the link below. See you on the inside. [Music]