Putting the consumer at the heart of creative development

Ryan Barry:

Hi, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Inside Insights, a podcast powered by Zappi. My name is Ryan, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-host and friend Patricia Montesdeoca. Hi, Patricia. What's up?

Patricia Montesdeoca:

Hey, Ryan.

Ryan:

You're back in the US, I heard.

Patricia:

Back in the US of A. Thank God, I was able to make it back.

Ryan:

It's amazing. Welcome back. It's a beautiful day. You know it's crazy, Patricia. I went on a business trip this week. A real life business trip.

Patricia:

You did? Oh my God.

Ryan:

Yeah. I had a roller bag with clothing, and work stuff, and a book. And I stayed in a hotel last night, and I had a work dinner. And it was really fun, but it was kind of weird, a year removed from doing that stuff.

Patricia:

I can imagine.

Ryan:

It just makes me think of what work looks like now, in this new time that we live in. What do you get on a plane for? Where do you spend time with people? It's really a fascinating thing to think about. 

Patricia:

I think it's taught us a lot.

Ryan:

I agree. Well, we didn't necessarily come here to talk about the future of work, but maybe we should, sometime.

Patricia:

We should. Yeah.

Ryan:

Today's interview, I'm excited about. We're going to talk to a really, really seasoned advertising research expert, Tim McEntaggart, who's the Director of Brand and Innovation Insights at PepsiCo. But we're also going to talk to a marketer who has led the growth of some significantly iconic brands, most notably Walkers snacks, which for those of you listening in the US, is the Lay's of the UK. And these gentlemen, I think represent the art and science component of advertising.

Patricia:

Yes.

Ryan:

And you'll see what I mean when we get into the conversation. So I'm really excited just to share this with you. So we're going to zip it, and we'll get you right into it. Shall we, Patricia?

Patricia:

Go for it, dude.

Ryan:

Hi, everybody. Thanks for tuning in to Inside Insights. I'm really excited for today's conversation. I have the pleasure of talking with Tim McEntaggart, who's the Director of Brand and Innovation Insights for PepsiCo, as well as Fernando Kahane, who is the Senior Marketing Director for Walkers snacks, which are very delicious. If you haven't bought some, please do buy some. Gentlemen, thank you very much for making the time to talk to me. I appreciate it.

Tim McEntaggart:

No problem.

Fernando Kahane:

Thank you for inviting us.

Tim:

Good to be here.

Fernando:

It's going to be a really good discussion. Really excited to be here.

Ryan:

We're going to talk about advertising today, gentlemen. It's going to be fun. I'll tell the audience, we met to get acquainted a few weeks ago and we should have just pressed record because we covered it all. But we're going to do it again today. It's going to be a lot of fun. You gentlemen have really interesting backgrounds. I don't usually on the podcast tell people, ask people what their background is, but I'd love for each of you to tell the audience what gets you to what you're doing today, because I think both of you have really, really unique and cool backgrounds. So Tim, why don't you go first and then, Fernando, you can follow afterwards?

Tim:

Yeah, sure. Happy to. So yeah, it's been an interesting journey. I've started off in marketing. I did a Master's in Marketing and then slipped accidentally into market research. I worked for Kantar Millward Brown for five years, and all I was doing there was testing advertising for tons of different clients, thinking about ad development, then moved to the client side. So worked briefly for Weetabix, five years at PepsiCo, actually in the UK, I was Insights Controller for the snacks business there, then for Western Europe, and then moved away from PepsiCo. Spent five years in Danone, two totally different categories, dairies and waters for UK and then Northwest Europe. I was a Head of Strategy and Insights there but still keeping the ad development side of things.

And then I've just in the last year or so come back into PepsiCo to do this role. It's a new role for all of Europe. It's Brand and Innovation Insights Center of Excellence for Europe. It's all about putting the consumer at the heart of how we build brands and how we build advertising and innovation across the whole of Europe, all of our categories, all of our brands. So it's a strange journey in the sense that I've come back to Pepsi, having been here before. Literally, couldn't get enough. But it's a super exciting role and advertising development's a massive part of it.

Ryan:

I never knew this phrase , guys, until a few weeks ago, but you are what they call a boomerang employee. Have you ever heard of this phrase?

Tim:

Literally, when I rejoined, HR were talking to me about being a boomerang. At the risk of being controversial, people jumped ship from Pepsi and then realize actually the grass isn't always greener and you're going to come back. So I'm not the only one.

Ryan:

I love it. I love it. Fernando, talk to us about your background.

Fernando:

I have a degree in Marketing and Advertising. I started my career back in Brazil at Unilever. I've always worked in food, so I'm a foodie. Pretty much I've worked for most of Unilever’s food brands. After that, I moved to London when I was in Uniliver, leading Hellmann's brand in Brazil, and then moved to join the global team. So I spent some time in the global role at Unilever.

About three years and a half ago, I joined PepsiCo, initially to lead the nutrition business and more recently Walkers. I think it's a really, really exciting job leading Walkers brand, because Walkers is part of British culture. It's a staple in all houses of the UK, I would say. It's such a not only tasty but fun brand to work for. There is no single time that I talk with people that I work on Walkers that people don’t start to talk about their favorite crisps. So it's really exciting that-

Ryan:

Salt and vinegar.

Fernando:

Yeah. The way these crisps, if they eat crisps with the sandwich, inside the sandwich. It's a really, really fun topic. But I think I have been in a journey on how we could really place focus as part of British culture and create a more purposeful brand. I think I have been partnering with insights to really move from being the most delicious taste crisps in UK to be a brand that has cultural relevance in people's life and clarifying our distinctive meaning and why we exist. I think this has been a very interesting journey in the last two years. I think, finally, with Zappi, Ada, using a lot of different tools, finding our territory that emotionally resonates with the nation. Hopefully, we're going to be able not only to be remembered by the best crisps but also a crisp that makes people feel different about something. In our case, it's all about levity and positivity. But yeah, this is a bit of my journey and what we have been doing in Walkers.

Ryan:

It's amazing. So Tim, I have to ask you, what's your favorite Walkers flavor? Since everybody has to tell Fernando. What's your-

Tim:

Prawn Cocktail. Hands down, Prawn Cocktail.

Ryan:

Prawn Cocktail?

Tim:

Yeah. It's a bit of a niche one, but yeah, the pink bag. It's interesting. I worked on Walkers for about five years and I'm the only British guy on the call. When you tell your family and friends, as a British guy, you work on Walkers, everybody's got an opinion. Like you say, everybody's got their favorite flavor. Everybody talks about Gary Lineker. There's so much strong association with that brand. Then the challenge is what do you do with it next.

Fernando:

Yeah. Actually, someone asked me recently what keeps me awake at night, and I said, how I'm going to do a better campaign than the last one. Literally, that's what keeps me awake at night, because I think there is this demand about what Walkers is going to do next.

Ryan:

And I've had the benefit of seeing some of the ads you've created. They've broken the scorecards that we've built, anyway. So I wish you the best of luck. You've set the bar very high for yourself. We do have probably a mixed audience. So for the American audience, you know Walkers in the US, it's just called Lay's. So I want you to let us know in the link below what your favorite flavor is. Mine's salt and vinegar. I'm a classic. Always been the same. Love it. And ironically, my kids love the same flavor, which is kind of cool.

So I want to talk to you guys about advertising. There's a big theme within your organization at the moment around this being the year of creative excellence. There's a lot of training happening. There's partnerships with other organizations from Cannes to Yale to everything going on. I'm going to start with you, Fernando. What does that mean? What does creative excellence mean from your perspective?

Fernando:

Big question. I think creative excellence is really about how we not only communicate but we create activities that resonate with people. It makes people feel different. I think feeling for me is a very important part of creative excellence. A lot of times, we try to put in a paper what makes a good ad or how we'll get to good ideas, but in the end of the day and working actually with Zappi I have realized that sometimes the same messages with different feeling have completely different outputs. 

But I think creative excellence is really about create campaigns, activations, innovations that resonate with people. It is really about consumer centricity in the end of the day, how we put consumers first. It's not about a test result. It's about what consumers are telling us, what we are learning from consumers.

I think we mentioned the communications that Walkers has been doing. I would say that the best campaigns that we have done are the campaigns that were based on consumer insights. We talk about how we can cut through and create new ideas. But sometimes a simple insight told in a disruptive, relevant, creative way is the campaigns and the ideas that work better. I think we live in a space that we talk a lot about breakthrough. And being a bit controversial here, I think sometimes creative excellence is more about telling stories in the best possible way, it does not necessarily need to be the most breakthrough idea.

Ryan:

So he teed you up. That was controversial. This is the key marketing director, one of the biggest businesses in the company. How does the insights department, set of tools, approach, evolve to balance the art and science breakthrough that were needed? What are some of the things that you're seeing and driving within the business to support these needs?

Tim:

Well, it's interesting you use the “art and science” terminology. There's definitely a science component and I think there's a thing with the word creativity or creative excellence that creativity or being creative is incredibly loaded. You think there can't be any science involved in that at all and really it has to be something that just comes to you when you're sat in a darkened room and you have a magic aha moment. Actually, I think art and science are super important. You need to bring your judgment, you need to take risks, you need to actually open yourself up, but you should also have consumers as a part of that process as well.

I guess, our philosophy is if you can speak to 400 consumers and know that you're asking them the right questions that are going to help you understand, is your advertising going to have reach? Is it going to resonate with people? Is it going to drive the response that you want? Then why wouldn't you? Why would you say, "Right. We don't want to do that. We need to be creative and we mustn't do any research and it must just come to us as a genius moment." So art and science is a huge part of how we want to think about it.

I guess, the other part is probably bastardizing an Ogilvy quote, but he talks about something along the lines of, it isn't creative if it doesn't sell. I think creativity for the sake of creativity, or creativity just for the sake of winning awards is not really what we're about. That said, the stuff that does win awards, it's 12 times more effective at driving sales. So creativity is worthwhile, but it's not just art and it certainly isn't just science. You need to do both.

Ryan:

Fernando, how do you balance that? Because what I love about you is you're a highly creative man but you also get this balance. So how do you balance those frameworks when you're developing campaigns and territories with your teams? And how are you using insights to make that happen?

Fernando:

I think a big part of creativity, it is inspiration. We talk about inspiration and perspiration. And yeah, I do think that it's 99% perspiration, but to be honest, maybe on creativity it's more 50/50, 50% inspiration, 50% perspiration. What I mean by that is there is no start of a brief that I don't sit with my team and insights. And it's not only about hearing what consumers are saying. It's social listening. We run ad hoc research to understand what they are talking about the product, but also what they talk about the occasion that we are trying to tap in. We look how other brands have tackled similar issues before. 

I think it's really important for a marketeer to not think that no other brand has ever thought about that before. I'm a believer that recycled ideas, there is nothing wrong with that. Basically, the inspiration is through data, but also quant and qual. I think some of the best campaigns that we have landed on Walkers, they came from initially maybe some qual feeling and later we proved. One of the ones that I really like is about parents hiding snacks. 

We looked online, social listening, and we started to see a lot of parents talking about, "Oh, I hide the snacks from my kids. Otherwise, they eat all my snacks. I also deserve a snack." It's very, very funny. And kids and actually teenagers talking back and said, "My mom again is hiding the snack." And we said, "There is something here." We didn't know what the scale was. And we partnered with insights to think how we can learn more about that. Probably, we have conducted the biggest research ever in the UK about parents hiding snacks. We found out, partnering with insight, that two-thirds of Brits hide snacks. And two-thirds of parents, actually, hide snacks from their kids. And it's not because they don't want the kids eating snacks. It's just because really they want for themselves. Because we explored the reasons they hide. So it's really around like, "I want my moment of enjoyment."

So I think creativity is really about inspiration and the balance is really sometimes we start with a qual information that we have read and it sparked insight, and later you work with insights to prove if the insight is right, and also to refine the understanding about this insight. I think just connecting back to the first thing about creativity, because I think, on this one specifically, the big thing was really about how we could drive empathy by heightening a very interesting reality. I think there is something interesting also about empathy, because when you find these nuggets of insights that people don't talk about, they are the ones that probably generate more creative campaigns and resonate better, because it's kind of the thing that everyone can say, "Yes, I do that," but they never talk about it. But I think inspiration, perspiration, probably 50/50 is a good balance for creativity.

Tim:

What's great for me is having a senior marketing director talking and basically telling out loud the vision for how we want to be as an insights function in PepsiCo. We don't just want to be the guys who show up and assess stuff and test stuff and say, "Yes," "No," "Stop," "Go." It's about sparking and inspiring and getting to the rich insight that creates the work in the first place. And then when we do classic market research with consumers to look at advertising, whether that's quant or qual, we're about nurturing the creative idea and making it better and assessing it and optimizing it. That's basically our philosophy on it. So we spark and inspire, but also when we have the tool to say, how good is this, we don't just use it to kill or proceed. It's about nurturing those ideas and making them bigger and better and more resonant for consumers.

Fernando:

It's very interesting, because it's a journey. But I have to say that so far there was no idea that it started with a good insight that later in execution failed, or that we haven't not made work in execution. I think if you start with a good insight, execution will follow, and you can work insights to refine, refine, refine.

Ryan:

That was always the problem with advertising research before technology gave us its gifts, because it was a test. You go back to your old days at Millward Brown, I don't think the intention was to be the homework grader. It was just the way that it played out, where it's like, "Hey, I got to go dark on you for several weeks and then I'll tell you if it's good or bad."

Tim:

Yeah, exactly.

Ryan:

I know all of us on this phone call know Tim Warner. He said something to me years ago about, "We need to make these things amplify creativity." To this day, I've never forgotten that sentence. And a lot of the stuff we've done with Ada together is we started with marketers. What's wrong with this? It's not that marketers are divas. It's like, no, we're going to start with a foundational truth. We need help making it better. So Tim, talk a little bit about some of the stuff that you've curated to sort of fuel the big idea, but also to help refine it. Because I know that there's a lot of consolidation of learnings that you've done, but also you're finding ways to spark trends.

Tim:

Yeah, exactly. Well, from the inspiration and sparking insights point of view, we place a massive emphasis on consumer empathy. We have a big consumer empathy program across Europe, where we speak to consumers every month in our top eight markets and we just listened to them. Now, more than ever, there's never been a greater need to actually understand what's going on in people's lives and the felt experience of this crazy world that we're living in. Because lots of overused cliches, like we're all in the same storm but different boats, but really stuff has never been more volatile and fragmented. So we place a massive amount of importance on that, being always on and how we operate this culture of consumer centricity.

But then in terms of the actual, the ad development, and the tools that we deploy, job one is to get the best possible tool. Make sure you're asking the right questions to the right people in the right way. That's what we do with our Ada Amplify TV tool that we've developed with Zappi. We make sure we're measuring the right things, it's validated as the right way of assessing reach, does the ad resonate, is it going to drive the response that we want? And then when you've got that tool and you've got the most advantaged tool that you can get, it's then all about what you do with it and the mentality. A slightly different quote to the Tim Warner quote, our current VP talks about the risk of these research quant tools for advertising being the “condom of creativity.”

Ryan:

That's hilarious.

Tim:

That is absolutely what we want to avoid. It didn't come across well when she first said it. I think everyone was kind of scratching their head. But when you think about it, it so can be the case.

Ryan:

Totally.

Tim:

You've spoken to 400 consumers. Why not read what they say? Why not weed out the people who've got those reactions and see, is this going to go down the same way with everybody? You need to listen to people, is the long and the short of it.

Fernando:

But I think a big difference as well is how we see testing, I think, at PepsiCo and with insights. I think for a long time, you usually see an ad test as the last part of the process. It was really about like, let's see if it works. The mentality, I think, is quite different is that, let's see how it can make it better. It's very important that you shift this mindset. And I tell my agencies, it's not about go, no-go anymore. It is about understanding what is working, understand how we can make it better, understand what is not working as well, and refine. I think Mariah Carey Christmas a year ago. The first test was awful. The results were awful. Probably, most companies would kill this idea. But we thought it was something culturally relevant about Christmas, a time for sharing, but Walkers crisps, we’re not going to share. Who owns Christmas globally? Mariah Carey.

We thought it was a really interesting idea, and he said, how can we make this work? We used Ada to help us make this idea work, and from a very, very bad result we got one of the top scores for my ad from Walkers. So I think this idea of freely moving from research as a way to validate to a way to learn, improve, refine, it's the big change. It's a change that I think we are trying to implement at PepsiCo, but it's the change that we are working with our agencies as well, because it's a journey. I think it requires a bit of pragmatism as well, because we as marketeers and our creative agents, they are personally invested in the ideas.

I think creative excellence is about really putting your ego aside and really putting consumers on the throne and hearing what they are saying. I think there is a change of the way we use research. And I think it's that journey, how we move from go, no-go, to really an idea where we are learning to make the best ad that we can.

Tim:

I think, just to build on that, to your point a while ago, Ryan, around digitization and the growth of agile in the last 10 years or so, I think it's how you work as well is super important. So we're self-serve, we're transparent. Things don’t disappear into a market research agency for two weeks and come back with a formal presentation with caveats… we all got our hands dirty. We sit around the data within a couple of days of having done the work, done the consumer research, and we say, what does this mean? What does this mean for our brand? Do we think there's potential here? How can we make this advertising better? 

It's a totally transparent, open conversation, almost sitting around the table, virtually together with marketing and insights and the agency saying, how can we make this better? Not something that disappears that comes back as a formal set piece. So that, I think, is a catalyst for better creative, because you're honest with yourself. You're like, "Look, this wasn't very good. Why wasn't it very good? How can we make it better?"

Ryan:

But that ways of working point you make is so important, because we could make an advantage tool that's faster, cheaper, and not change the way we work, and we still are testing, not learning. So let's stay here for a minute, because I think this is the thing everybody's struggling with. If there is a modern day marketer who doesn't agree with the consumer truth being important, they're probably not going to be a modern day marketer or employed for much longer. But there is a how component. How do I get my agencies onside? How do I bring my insights team along? Obviously, you guys are way ahead. And Fernando is being modest. That Mariah Carey ad was brilliant. The only ad I think that's even come close to it that I've seen in terms of good scores was one where a company was giving away free pizza. You weren't even giving away free pizza and your ad was still better.

But to go from something that bombs to, you know what? Let's not say this as a bomb, let's say this has legs, let's build on it, is actually a testament to the ways of working change that you all have pulled off. So I guess take it from both sides. So Fernando, you take it from what marketers and agency partners need to do. And then Tim, obviously, from a corporate insights department, what are the step changes people need to make? 

Fernando:

I think marketing agencies, to be honest, we need to be humble, stay humble. I know that is quite simple and straightforward, but it's almost like this idea that don't think that you know everything because it might surprise you. I think related to stay humble is how you create space to test and learn. If you look at some of the ads that we have tested on Walker, some of them I was really passionate about, some of them I was not. But even when I didn't believe on creative ideas that agencies presented, I said, "Let's test. Let's learn. Let's see what customers are going to tell us.” Maybe there is something there that I cannot see, or maybe there is something that we can leverage for the campaign.

I think it creates and foster this space that we all learn. Put learn in front of ego. I think this is the point. It's really important. I think also this idea that there is a formula, there is no formula. I can tell you a very interesting one from a campaign that we had done last year, Giant Wotsits. Probably, you want to taste that. It's very good. But the whole conversation with the agency was, we all hear that, "Oh, the brand should appear in the first few seconds." And the agency said to me, "No, Fernando. Let's keep a bit later because by doing so you might engage a bit longer the consumers and you create a sense of anticipation and they might not skip that, because they will want to find out what is behind the idea." Because the idea was about people getting shocked with the size of the Wotsits. So they have a facial expression of shocking people.

We tested both. Very simple thing. Brand in the beginning, brand few seconds later. Which one works better? Brand a few seconds later. We have all the tests and Google telling us to put the brand in the first few seconds. And yes, I can hear that maybe for traditional ad, but on TV it might be a bit different because you lose the engagement if you show the brand too early. Of course, depends on the ads, depends on the campaign. But here, just show that the mindset of learning, I think, is what is going to make great campaigns and push further the relationship between agencies and marketing teams. 

Ryan:

What about marketers inside running brands? What are some things that you feel like, is it the same? Is it the same, be open to learning? Are there changes you see in your peer group that like, "Hey, folks, we need to do a better job at this," that are worth noting?

Fernando:

At PepsiCo, we have a scale to assess the impact of the creative. This scale is pretty much starting from something that is confusing, is not working, to something that is ownable, fresh, to something that is legendary. I think there is something about, we used to think that some campaigns own the rights to be cultural phenomenons or legendary. I think we live in an era that actually all campaigns should be born to be contagious. All the brands, all the campaigns should be born to be legendaries, no matter what is the budget, no matter what is the talent that you're going to have in your campaign.

I think there is a mindset… what makes this campaign legendary? What is it? Sometimes we think that it is about super production or having a talent, but I can tell you that is not. It's about finding fresh, creative angles to tell the story. Because the thing is, the other point is sometimes the story is quite simple, but the way you tell it matters. I can tell you an example about telling stories in different ways and moving a campaign to being ownable to being more culturally relevant.

We have a new campaign now that we are launching about sandwiches, about lunchtime. One of the biggest opportunities that we have in Walkers is drive consumption at lunchtime. Lunch is a big part of consumption of crisps in the UK, or chips if you are in the US. We had a big opportunity to drive high penetration at lunchtime. We found out that 30% of Brits, they add crisps inside the sandwich. We found out that 30% hates to add crisps inside of sandwich. They think this is awful. And other 30% are sometimes in, sometimes out. We created this whole campaign about, are you crisp in or crisp out? That itself is a great campaign. But we said, "How can we make that more culturally relevant? We thought, who owns sandwiches in UK, or even globally? And we came to Subway. We decided to partner with Subway. During the campaign, you can eat your crisp in any sub in the UK. What that generated, last week we had a 15-minute session on a TV show in the UK talking about crisp sandwich and talking about Walkers partnering with Subway.

So sometimes I think what we need to do more is push ourselves to stop thinking that budget is a constraint to creativity and really think about how we move ideas to ownable territory, to a more cultural phenomenal or legendary territory.

Ryan:

That's awesome, and a perfect tee up for your answer, Tim. Because I feel like you now can be robust and creative and bold because the insights tooling of today has got your back. You can take chances. You can test up. So Tim, what do you think insights people need to do better to be the right type of partner for Fernando? Now, obviously, Fernando has a good insights partner, and we're doing all this stuff together, but I think of our trade as a whole, Tim. What do we need to do to rise to this new time?

Tim:

I think Fernando used a super important word, which is being open, and maybe it's being brave. Be prepared to not have a 100% correct answer, or to use a bit of what you've learned, a bit of the data, a bit of what you've heard, and your own judgment. So being brave, being open to learn, I think, is hugely important. If I think about the insights organization, another big one, we're particularly guilty of this, is just be simple. Cut to the chase. What is it you're trying to say? I still see 50, 60-page PowerPoint decks, and I think, what are people going to actually do with this? So bring the consumer to the fore, be super simple.

And then I think there is one which is a lot more intangible, which is around organizational cultural shift, change management from the top down, that this consumer centricity is important and it's everybody's job and it's too important to be just the job of the insights function. That's something we're trying to push. It doesn't mean it's just the job of then marketing and insights. It means everybody should be obsessed with the consumer, whether you're in finance, sales, commercialization. Whatever your role is, the consumer is at the heart. Because if you don't listen, then you don't exist. So they’d be my things, really. They're quite big, though. They take time. These are change management things, not just start using this tool and you'll be fine. These are things we're constantly working on.

Fernando:

And on being simple, I think being simple is so important as an input and output as well. What I try to do is really, what is the briefing in a tweet? Because if I'm able to write a brief in a tweet it’s because I have clarity on what you're trying to tell and what is the key message that I’m trying to convey or is the key insight. If you cannot summarize your brief in a tweet, probably you have to work harder.

It's the same thing with an idea. If an idea is good… I was discussing with the agency on all the data. They said, "How we can better sell ideas to you?" I said, "You don't need to sell anything." So then if an idea is good, the idea sells itself. Sometimes you see one imagery and you say, "I get it. I love it." We spend too much time trying to prove the idea instead of getting to good ideas. 

Ryan:

That's a good point. Yeah. You should be spending more time in the creativity, knowing that the consumer can ground it and help it make it better and everything else. There is something, Tim, that you say about this perfectionist, or almost glorifying that we need to stop doing. My business is mostly catering to insights people. Fernando, you're usually the consumer of what we do. I can't tell you how many insights VPs are just terrified of their marketing directors. "Well, we have to put the deck this way and it has to be 70 slides." And it's just like... That whole line of thinking is completely counter to, "Let's sit around the table and talk about what we know." And it links directly to the thing of customer centricity is a company-wide thing. And we, as an insights department, don't have to control the keys to it as much as we think we do.

Tim:

Yeah, exactly. What you can't do with that is just totally relinquish all control and just say, "Right, go for it." You need to have a shared understanding of what matters, what are the key important things that we need to look at? You can't just pluck the numbers that look good and say, "Let's crack on and make this." But when you get to that shared understanding of the simple things that make great advertising, or allow you to even identify if you've got an insight that's going to spark great advertising in the first place, then you need to be brave and open and just get around the table and look at what you know and what you think and bring all of that stuff to the fore. So I totally agree. We kill a lot of stuff by being formulaic as an industry, I think.

Ryan:

The truth is there's still a huge behavior change or job to be done within the advertising agency community, because for years market research engagement equaled a scorecard of their work. I've lost count of how many times I've talked to planners, creative directors, who were like, "I want to be able to test something on a napkin and see how I make it better." That's always been the ask of the community. I think whether it's technology, whether we have a choice, whatever it is, at least, I think we don't have a technology problem. So to your point, Tim, it is now about level-setting and getting the teams to work together in a more productive way so that this can happen.

Tim:

Exactly.

Ryan:

Gentleman, you've said it all. Everybody is smarter, hopefully, and is going to take your advice now for having listened to this. In the meantime, you guys just keep making advertising that's amazing. And I am, by the way, somebody who likes chips in my sandwich. How about you two?

Tim:

I'm in. Crisp in or chips in.

Ryan:

Crisp in?

Tim:

Every time. Yeah.

Ryan:

It's okay. My mother grew up in Ireland. Crisps, chips, whatever. Doesn't matter. What about you, Fernando? Is the chip going in or the crisp going in?

Fernando:

Well, after hearing too many consumers talking about crisp in, I became a crisp in guy.

Ryan:

This is kind of a, maybe not a disgusting, guilty pleasure. I love me a Turkey sandwich with melted cheese and Cool Ranch Doritos smashed on a bun. It's pretty good. You got to try it sometime. Gentlemen, thank you so much for making the time. We really appreciate it. Everybody in the audience is going to be smarter for having to listen to this. So thank you so much, guys.

Tim:

No problem.

Fernando:

Thank you.

Tim:

Thanks, Ryan.

Ryan: 

So, Patricia. That was really fun. I could have talked to those guys about advertising for a long time. What did you think? What were some of your thoughts?

Patricia:

They were amazing. I loved the fact that they played off of each other so well and didn't expect to be completely aligned, but they were aligned. I think ... you and I were talking earlier about the fact that they were all about balance and tension, which is the absolute umbrella thinking that these two brought to me. I could have listened to them forever. I really could've. They were just so willing to share all of their secrets, and their secrets were so basic, I loved it.

Ryan:

Oh yeah. It was unbelievable. In many ways you would've almost loved to isolate the two of them and unpack each of their unique perspectives, and then bring them together. I was actually ... the business trip I was telling you about, I was on, I was with Stephan Gans, the Chief Insights Officer at PepsiCo. And I was saying that to him when I was reflecting on this conversation. It really would have been cool to go real deep with both of them, but maybe we'll do that another time.

Patricia:

Okay. You got another season coming up. It's okay. We're good.

Ryan:

Season three? We're dropping it?

Patricia:

We are so close.

Ryan:

We’re dropping it.

Patricia:

Woohoo. We're getting there. You want me to tell you what I heard from them?

Ryan:

Yes. I would love to. I always loved your summaries. They're amazing.

Patricia:

This summary was just a little bit different. I approached it in a different way because of what I said to you, they're all about balancing these tensions, right? And if you think about those two words, balance and tension, you don't think that they're together, but they were. Let me just give you what I heard from them.

They started with art and science. Now, many people say creativity is something that sparks you in the middle of the night, it's an aha moment in a dark room. They're like, yeah, no. That's part of it, but it's all art and science. You can't just have a dark room with nothing to feed it. You have to open yourself up, and you have to be willing to put in the work. And they talked about putting in the work the whole time in different ways.

So art and science balance was followed up by something that I've been told since I was little, inspiration and perspiration. They played with the formula. You know how some people say it's 95%, or 91%, or 99%. They're like, yeah, no. It's 50/50. It's inspiration and perspiration. Bringing again to the table, the fact that you've got to be creative, you've got to be inspired, but you also have to do the work. Who's going to do the work? They're going to do the work. Right? And they talked about they, being marketing, insights and the consumer. In the end, it's all that group of people, that group of people working together to make sure that it all works. It's all about the art and the science, the inspiration, the perspiration, and listening to the consumer, but layering in your own judgment. Another beautiful tension. Now, the balance between listening to the consumer and having your own judgment is important, because at the end of the day, you have to drive empathy with these consumers.

So, driving empathy usually happens when you're talking about something safe, another tension. But at the same time, do you really want to go safe in order to breakthrough? They're like, yeah, hell yeah. You can breakthrough and still be safe. So there's another tension they talked about. You don't have to be crazy in order to drive relevance and empathy, you just have to know your consumer. They had the sentence in there that totally blew me away. You listen or you disappear. When they're talking about that, they're talking about listening to their consumer. If you don't listen to that consumer, so that you recognize the empathy, you know how to get there, you disappear. I love that.

They said something that had some tension, but it was such a beautiful thing. Put your ego aside. Be humble, but you also have to know who you are. You have to be brave. So being humble and being brave at the same time. Before this chat, I don't think I would have put that in the same sentence. So being humble means putting your ego aside. Don't think, "I know it all." No.

Ryan:

Right.

Patricia:

You can copy from somebody else. Do it a little bit different. Do it a little bit better. Ask the consumer, ask your co-workers, ask insights, ask the creative agency. But, you can also be brave. Let's try this. Let's ask. Ask the consumer how to refine it. Refine, refine, refine, they talked about. Make it better, make it better, make it better. And that's where the bravery comes in. Being able to put your ego aside. And they talked about that bravery and that humility, leading them to recycling and renewing, their own work and other people's work. So I thought that was great.

One of the last tensions that I thought, two more tensions I want to talk to you about. One of the last ones was the simplicity, right? Being simple and being great can happen at the same time. And, they had ... was is it? No holds barred? 

Ryan:

Yeah.

Patricia:

There's a saying in there… I always mess up in English, but no holds barred. They said, okay, be simple, but you have to be simple with the input, marketing, say it fast or go away, and insights. What are you trying to say? Tell me what the results are?

Ryan:

Yeah. Help me move on, right?

Patricia:

Marketing with input, be simple, insights with the output. I don't want a 70 page report. Just tell me what it's all about. What are you trying to say? What was the result? So they ... nobody was spared. I mean, nobody's ego was spared at all.

Ryan:

They were very open with the real truth of where the problems are.

Patricia:

And they were open with everybody's real truth, right? And so, the last tension that I thought was amazing was, they talked about real change management. They said, "This has to be from the top-down." They didn't say it, but it also has to be from the bottom-up, because they said that consumer centricity is not just the insights team. And they weren't dissing on the insights team. They were just saying that it's too big a job to rely on one group of people. It's everybody's job.

Ryan:

Correct.

Patricia:

If you're finance, if you're human resources, this is everybody. Everybody should be obsessed. And that's when they said that, "If you don't listen, you don't exist," which I thought was like so amazing. And they said, that's the real change management. You have to do it from the top-down, from the bottom-up, and everybody has to have the same understanding of what matters. And until everybody does have that same understanding, it's not going to work. But that is the absolute, not formula, but path. They talked about a journey and a path, not a formula to great advertising. That's what makes great advertising. 

Ryan:

Do you have chips in your sandwich or not?

Patricia:

I say yes to chips. Inside my sandwich, outside my sandwich, without a sandwich, and however they come.

Ryan:

That's it.

Patricia:

Yeah. I love your recipe, though. One with the, what is it? The Doritos inside and…

Ryan:

Doritos. Doritos smashed up is the way to go. It's really delicious. I actually did that the day after we had this conversation. I have to, you know.

Patricia:

In Columbia, we put little crisps on our soup.

Ryan:

What kind? Like a tortilla?

Patricia:

No, no, no. As in potato chips or french fries, I mean like potato chips.

Ryan:

Oh, no way.

Patricia:

The way you and I in America call it potato chips, in England, they call it crisps. We take and we crunch potato chips into our like, cream of tomato soup or something like that. It tastes good.

Ryan:

Oh, that sounds ... that would be amazing. I'm going to ... Next rainy day, I'm in on that. Everybody, next rainy day try it. Tell us on LinkedIn how you think it went. 

All right. So, season two, we still have some heat for you all.

Patricia:

Yeah.

Ryan:

So we're not done yet. And we're already starting to plot season three, but we're not going to talk about that yet. We'll let you guys wait for that a little bit. 

The next episode is with Lauren Stafford-Webb and JM Hoffman from SoFi. They are the marketing leadership group at SoFi, and we're really excited. We've got a few other interviews left before we take a breather for the summer, and then we're going to be back with season three. We want your ideas. We appreciate you listening and subscribing to our podcast. We really do. The truth is, we'd probably still do it if you didn't cause we're having fun, but we're glad you're listening.

And we would love it if you could subscribe and give us a rating, because it actually helps more people get the love. And, we really are trying to put out a podcast that's helpful for you.

If you have ideas on types of things that would… types of formats that would be fun, engaging, helpful for you, talk to us about them. We want to get your opinions because we want to make this series and the show as valuable for you as possible. You can get at Patricia and I both on LinkedIn, our emails are our first names dot our last names@zappistore.com. Or you can hit us up on LinkedIn on the Zappi page, or on the Inside Insights page. So thank you, we'd love to hear from you.

Patricia, we are going to a Red Sox game next week. It's going to be-

Patricia:

Yeah, man. I'm so excited.

Ryan:

So, it's Patricia's birthday, so we're organizing an event for Patricia. From what I understand, your husband's first ever trip to Fenway?

Patricia:

Yes, it is.

Ryan:

All right, so I'm going to tell you this. There's a lot of history in Fenway, but it's not that comfortable. It's an old ballpark, but we will have some fun.

Patricia:

I'm okay with that.

Ryan:

And maybe we can sing Sweet Caroline, who knows?

Patricia:

I'll sing. You don't want to hear it, but I'll sing.

Ryan:

All right. I'm in, I'm in. Thank you, everybody. Be well. Be kind to each other.