Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: I think you need be a fountain of ideas. So
Speaker 2: I write down everything. Anything that sounds insane, I still
Speaker 2: write it down, I still pitch it. And I try
Speaker 2: to create environments where anybody can say anything without any judgment.
Speaker 2: And I think the best clients and the best relationships
Speaker 2: are you've set that process up together where you've created
Speaker 2: the environment for creativity to live.
Speaker 3: I am Bob Pipman, and welcome to Math and Magic.
Speaker 3: Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing. Today, we have someone
Speaker 3: who has been at the center of the magic of
Speaker 3: advertising and has been a creative leader in the advertising business,
Speaker 3: from reimventing Burger King to the Fearless Girl statue of
Speaker 3: Wall Street. He's Rob Riley, Global, Chief Creative Officer for WPP,
Speaker 3: the massive global advertising, marketing and communications company. Rob started
Speaker 3: out live ast Robert grew up in New Jersey, played soccer,
Speaker 3: was in a band, was a fighting blue hen in college,
Speaker 3: and even had an early job as a bartender. He
Speaker 3: won a slew of awards and has been a part
Speaker 3: of some of the greatest creative agencies. For a good reason,
Speaker 3: he makes extraordinary creative, and for that same good reason,
Speaker 3: he has chaired the can Lyons Awards show Jury four times, which,
Speaker 3: for those of you outside the industry, is like the
Speaker 3: Academy Awards of advertising. We got a lot to discuss today, Rob.
Speaker 4: Welcome, Oh, pleasure to be here.
Speaker 3: What I want to do now is get you in
Speaker 3: sixty seconds?
Speaker 4: You ready? Perfect? Yeah? I'm ready. Do you prefer capture dogs? Neither?
Speaker 2: But if I'm forced to choose one cats, city or country,
Speaker 2: I think city, though we live out in Shelter Island,
Speaker 2: which is a beautiful place, so getting to be a
Speaker 2: little bit more of a I don't know if a country,
Speaker 2: but more of an islander. Books are movies, I think.
Speaker 4: I'll say audio books, amor FM.
Speaker 2: Well, in college I worked at an AM radio station,
Speaker 2: so I'm going to say AM for all it was
Speaker 2: back then.
Speaker 4: Don Draper or George Lois.
Speaker 2: Don Draper, George Lewis. I met him once and he
Speaker 2: cursed at me in an elevator favorite TV show.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna say Bevis and butneat.
Speaker 3: Most exciting advertising campaign that you did not make.
Speaker 4: Right the future, Nike, Let's jump into the meat.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about developing creative ideas as we've discussed on math.
Speaker 4: And magic before.
Speaker 3: And I'll take my own personal experience that creative ideas
Speaker 3: for me are just sudden epiphanies. I think about the
Speaker 3: issue and then I forget about it, and in the
Speaker 3: middle of the night or often in the morning, when
Speaker 3: I'm taking that nice, hot meditative shower, answers just pop
Speaker 3: in my head out of nowhere. And by the way,
Speaker 3: David Eagleman, the neuroscientists who's been on this podcast, it
Speaker 3: has theories and talks about why that is.
Speaker 4: But how do you.
Speaker 3: Develop new ideas and what's your creative process?
Speaker 2: For people like me my kind of creative process, it's
Speaker 2: so much a process. It isn't just come up with
Speaker 2: while the idea is the briefing part of advertising is
Speaker 2: the thing that's most underrated for successful creative work. When
Speaker 2: you have a brief that's clear and pointed in inspiring,
Speaker 2: you have first and many steps of making great work.
Speaker 4: I always tell.
Speaker 2: Clients, listen, this brief is not for you or I.
Speaker 2: This brief is for that junior team that has to
Speaker 2: show Rob Riley work at nine am and it's midnight.
Speaker 2: And if that brief is convoluted long eight point type
Speaker 2: on a page versus twelve point type. If it's trying
Speaker 2: to do too many things, it's going to be a nightmare.
Speaker 2: How do we make that brief the best friend? And
Speaker 2: the way you do that is you've got a very
Speaker 2: simple ask. It's going to solve some tension that's out
Speaker 2: there in culture. And when this idea lands in culture,
Speaker 2: what's the thing that the press writes about? What's that
Speaker 2: thing people love share and spread. That's the entire process.
Speaker 2: It started years ago at an agency called Kryst and Bagusky.
Speaker 2: We called it's the press release process. And when the
Speaker 2: idea lands in culture, what's that story the press will
Speaker 2: write about? And if you can't figure that out and
Speaker 2: a sentence or two, there's no way you're going to
Speaker 2: be able to make an entire campaign that's going to
Speaker 2: pop in culture. And we did it to help young
Speaker 2: teams compete with senior teams on big projects like launching
Speaker 2: a Windows ten to the world. It's really hard for
Speaker 2: young people to take that and figure it out. So
Speaker 2: I try to simplify things by creating that process, and
Speaker 2: I still use it today. It's evolved to what's that
Speaker 2: thing people love share and spread through the Internet through
Speaker 2: on social But it's a very simple thing. If I
Speaker 2: can't imagine it what it's going to be when it
Speaker 2: lands in culture, then it's probably not going to be
Speaker 2: a great idea.
Speaker 3: So you've got a really good process, and it sounds
Speaker 3: like you're very thorough, very thoughtful about it, and you
Speaker 3: wind people up and say, Okay, this is what we've
Speaker 3: got to do. It's got to accomplish these things. It's
Speaker 3: got to really impact culture. But the idea has got
Speaker 3: to come from somewhere. How does that idea hit you
Speaker 3: or hit other creatives?
Speaker 4: People? Oh, fear that you won't have an idea.
Speaker 2: I don't like to use fear as a motivator, but
Speaker 2: I think for each individual person, like you do wake
Speaker 2: up thinking am I going to have any more ideas?
Speaker 2: And I think you need to be a fountain of ideas.
Speaker 2: So I write down everything. Anything that sounds insane, I
Speaker 2: still write it down, I still pitch it, and I
Speaker 2: try to create environments where anybody can say anything without
Speaker 2: any judgment. And I think the best clients and the
Speaker 2: best relationships are you've set that process up together where
Speaker 2: you've created the environment for creativity to live.
Speaker 3: We talked about George Lois, and you told me your
Speaker 3: George Lois story. George Lois created Don't Want My MTV.
Speaker 3: And I had lunch with George when mad Men first
Speaker 3: came out, and he goes, that's not me. We spent
Speaker 3: a lot of time at lunch on me that wasn't him,
Speaker 3: which meant it was probably more him than not. But
Speaker 3: it was interesting with George Is. George was not afraid
Speaker 3: to revive old advertising ideas. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 3: I Want my MTV was actually I want my Maypo
Speaker 3: And when George pitched it to me, he said, look,
Speaker 3: this was really successful for Maypo. I think this is
Speaker 3: what we need because our goal was we had cable
Speaker 3: companies that did not want to put MTV on because
Speaker 3: they wanted us to pay them. We didn't have any
Speaker 3: money to pay them, and we had this very crazy audience.
Speaker 3: We said, well, we can enlist them to go sort
Speaker 3: of get consumer pull for this. And so he wasn't
Speaker 3: afraid to go back and use it. But I saw
Speaker 3: him throughout a lot of his work and others as well,
Speaker 3: go back in mine great ideas from the past place
Speaker 3: for you and that or do you have another point
Speaker 3: of view?
Speaker 2: Well, everything is rived of off everything, right, I don't
Speaker 2: think there's too many original ideas. Years ago at Crispin
Speaker 2: to promote a Burger King chicken sandwich, we came up
Speaker 2: with this idea called the Subservient Chicken. But it was
Speaker 2: a guy in a chicken suit responding to commands. There's
Speaker 2: been a million things with people in chicken suits, right,
Speaker 2: But until you do it and put a twist on
Speaker 2: it and make it just that's weird enough, then that's
Speaker 2: what it becomes special. So now what George did, I
Speaker 2: don't know if you can get away with it now.
Speaker 2: I mean he literally took the exact sam campaign he
Speaker 2: made decades before and just put it into MTV. I
Speaker 2: actually give him a lot of credit for not worrying
Speaker 2: about what people might think of, like, oh, you stole
Speaker 2: your own idea, because it was the right idea for.
Speaker 4: MTV at the time.
Speaker 2: I mean, that campaign, you could say, is probably a
Speaker 2: big reason why MTV was successful. I mean I remember
Speaker 2: it like it was yesterday. I remember the first d a
Speaker 2: MTV came was and it was a Saturday afternoon, I
Speaker 2: believe I was in Long Island, New York at my
Speaker 2: aunt and uncle's house watching this thing come on, and
Speaker 2: I remember like it was yesterday. So in some ways,
Speaker 2: like I give George Lowis a lot of credit for
Speaker 2: being brave enough or not caring enough. But I think
Speaker 2: his style, but like the style of being gruff and
Speaker 2: maybe yelling a bit more like those days are gone.
Speaker 2: You can't get away with it now, Like you really
Speaker 2: have to be more of a charming provouct You need
Speaker 2: to charm your own people, your coworkers and your clients
Speaker 2: with charm them with wit, intelligence, caring about their business
Speaker 2: where that they care, knowing about their business more than
Speaker 2: they do, then you could be provocative. The days of
Speaker 2: throwing chairs at clients or at teams or those are gone.
Speaker 2: It's a much different world and you've got to figure
Speaker 2: out how can you be successful in that style of business.
Speaker 2: And I'm not necessarily a yell or screamer, but you
Speaker 2: know I did a lot of coaching from ten to
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago where you know, I was intense and
Speaker 2: you know, didn't care about people's feelings as much. So
Speaker 2: I think it's a new kind of creativity that you know,
Speaker 2: would be interesting if George could survive in this day
Speaker 2: and age.
Speaker 3: Let's take that note of the past. At the dawn
Speaker 3: of the century, you were the acting chief creative officer
Speaker 3: at Hill Holiday and you took up sixty percent pay
Speaker 3: cut to change jobs and become just a copywriter at
Speaker 3: Crispin Porter. Clearly it all worked out. Why did you
Speaker 3: take that risk and what lesson did you learn?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: I had worked for this amazing boss named David Weekle,
Speaker 2: and he was the chief graative officer and they parted ways,
Speaker 2: and I was one of the more senior people there,
Speaker 2: but not very senior at all, and they said, well,
Speaker 2: maybe you can step in temporarily while we search for
Speaker 2: a new CEO. Might have been some discussion if you
Speaker 2: want to throw your hat in the ring to be
Speaker 2: that person. And I kind of realized that I had
Speaker 2: all the skills of a great creative director without maybe
Speaker 2: the work of a great creative director. And I did
Speaker 2: want to end up being a New York creative at
Speaker 2: a certain age that kind a giant salary, but didn't
Speaker 2: have the work where people would follow you. So I
Speaker 2: ended up going down to Crispin Porter and Buguski at
Speaker 2: the time probably one hundred and twenty people, sort of
Speaker 2: getting known for doing some really interesting national work for
Speaker 2: smaller clients, and I pitched Alex Buguski, now my current wife,
Speaker 2: my only wife, but she was my girlfriend the time
Speaker 2: she was working there, so I had a connection. But
Speaker 2: Alex wasn't going to hire me just because I was
Speaker 2: the boyfriend. Maybe in fact, didn't necessarily want some guy
Speaker 2: from New York who had all the wrong sort of
Speaker 2: closed and was a big creative director from New York
Speaker 2: City come down to his agency in Miami.
Speaker 4: That was really small type culture.
Speaker 2: But I knew that's the kind of work I needed
Speaker 2: to be part of, because in the end, you don't
Speaker 2: necessarily just follow people. You follow people because of the
Speaker 2: work they've done. And I had all the skills of
Speaker 2: being able to present and good with clients and maybe
Speaker 2: good with teams, but I didn't have enough creative work
Speaker 2: that I thought was like culture changing that was going
Speaker 2: to get me to a long term career. So I
Speaker 2: took a few steps back. But it wasn't the easiest ride.
Speaker 2: When I got there, I was the guy from New York.
Speaker 2: Everybody's in flip flops and shorts. I'm here in the
Speaker 2: produc boots in black. I stood out like a sore
Speaker 2: thumb and about thirty days into it, Alex calls me
Speaker 2: in his office said, listen, man, I love the work
Speaker 2: you're doing. I think you're fantastic. Here's the problem. No
Speaker 2: one else likes you. So I thought he would say,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter as long as I like you. He said,
Speaker 2: that's the opposite. I can't have one guy who ruined
Speaker 2: the culture. So you got to figure out how to
Speaker 2: get people to like you. And long story short, I
Speaker 2: ended up going back and deciding, like, you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to shut my mouth and sit in
Speaker 2: the corner and crank out work.
Speaker 4: And that's what I did.
Speaker 2: And then once you start making work, people respect. That
Speaker 2: was the beginning of building a body of work that
Speaker 2: I'm really proud of at every level. Copywriter, creative director, CEO,
Speaker 2: creative chairman. To down with WPP, head of a holding company.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, let's go back in time for a second.
Speaker 3: Why didn't they like you? What were you doing?
Speaker 4: Why didn't they like me?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: I probably had the wrong clothes.
Speaker 2: I had an incredibly intelligent, smart, beautiful girlfriend who's now
Speaker 2: my wife and doing all the amazing work.
Speaker 4: And I was a boyfriend from New York.
Speaker 2: I came from a big New York ad agency and
Speaker 2: it wasn't quite fitting in the culture. And I think,
Speaker 2: growing up in New Jersey like we're loud. And when
Speaker 2: I went and told my wife that Alex said that
Speaker 2: people didn't like me, her response was, why don't you
Speaker 2: just try shutting up and doing the work, you know,
Speaker 2: like you're the problem. So I was taught a lesson
Speaker 2: early on to shut my mouth and do the work.
Speaker 2: And when you have the work, you get the respect.
Speaker 3: Well that's a great lesson. And ten years later you
Speaker 3: were the chief creative officer of Crispin Porter. So it
Speaker 3: all worked out. Yeah, it all worked out. You continued
Speaker 3: to succeed. You went on to be Global Creative Chairman
Speaker 3: at a McCann, a worldwide group from twenty and fourteen
Speaker 3: to twenty twenty one, and then on to WPP in
Speaker 3: your current role. Everyone knows the Fearless Girl statue on
Speaker 3: Wall Street.
Speaker 4: What's this story?
Speaker 2: It's a great story because State Street Global Advisors was
Speaker 2: an account that McCann had for a few years and
Speaker 2: hadn't been known for doing such great work. But when
Speaker 2: I went to McCann, the first thing I did to
Speaker 2: turn around an agency that maybe hadn't been doing as
Speaker 2: well as they had hoped. Was let's put an attainable
Speaker 2: goal in place, and we called it three for All,
Speaker 2: and it was, how do we create three magical pieces
Speaker 2: every year for every client in every office and this
Speaker 2: way everybody is responsible for contributing to hopefully the creative
Speaker 2: turnaround that McCann eventually achieved a process, and I think
Speaker 2: three magical pieces a year is pretty attainable and you
Speaker 2: don't rely on just one account making the famous work.
Speaker 2: Every account has to deliver. And state ttreat was probably
Speaker 2: one of the most challenged. It's because it's a financial
Speaker 2: company based in Boston, a great company, but not known
Speaker 2: for doing very bold work all the time. But at
Speaker 2: the end of the year, we didn't really have three
Speaker 2: pieces of work that we could hold up and say
Speaker 2: these are our best three pieces of work for State Street.
Speaker 2: And someone said, well, they got this amazing fund called
Speaker 2: the She Fund, where you can invest in female lead companies.
Speaker 2: Because State Street realized they were part of the problem
Speaker 2: with the lack of female leadership on Wall Street. They
Speaker 2: created a fund where you can invest in female lead companies,
Speaker 2: and they put pressure on companies to put more females
Speaker 2: on their board. So of course an easy thing for
Speaker 2: us to do was to do a print ad about it.
Speaker 2: But you know, we brought the print at but then
Speaker 2: here's thirty more ideas and one of the ideas was
Speaker 2: not necessarily a Ferals girl.
Speaker 4: The idea is to put a.
Speaker 2: Female bowl in front of the male bowl. And amazing
Speaker 2: team Lizzie and Tally came up with the idea with
Speaker 2: the help of Eric Silver, who was the CECO of
Speaker 2: North America. And you know, they kept coming in my
Speaker 2: office saying, oh, we love this idea, and I'm like, okay, okay.
Speaker 4: Go for it.
Speaker 2: And of course the clients that we love the idea,
Speaker 2: but you know, we're just not comfortable with it. And
Speaker 2: the reason they're not comfortable with it because there's no
Speaker 2: such thing as a female bull. It's a cow, right,
Speaker 2: And that's why, you know, as a CEO, you really
Speaker 2: have to let people, if they're so passionate about something,
Speaker 2: go try and sell it. But what they didn't necessarily
Speaker 2: realize was it wasn't necessarily the bull or the cow
Speaker 2: that was going to be the thing people talk. It
Speaker 2: was the standoff. It was the standoff to the charging bull,
Speaker 2: which had become the sort of the symbol of the
Speaker 2: misogyny on Wall Street, if you will, right, So I
Speaker 2: said to him, go back and let's see if there's
Speaker 2: another way to cut this. And they came back and
Speaker 2: threw a lot of brainstorming and came back with little
Speaker 2: girl or hands on her hips, staring down the bowl.
Speaker 2: We called it Fearless Girl, to match the cadence of
Speaker 2: charging bull meet Fearless Girl. And then we bought two
Speaker 2: weeks of space in front of the bowl. We built
Speaker 2: out cobblestone so to sort of match the cobblestone, and
Speaker 2: we said we got two weeks for.
Speaker 4: This to hit.
Speaker 2: And I knew that it would hit, and I knew
Speaker 2: once the world and the city fell in love with her.
Speaker 2: And again, remember Hillary did not win the presidency, so
Speaker 2: there was a lot of angst in the world certainly
Speaker 2: around this. So that it came at the perfect time.
Speaker 2: We launched around International Women's Day, and the rest is history.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: The interesting part of this, Bob is that she was
Speaker 2: causing a lot of traffic with the bull. The bull
Speaker 2: itself always causes traffic, but then with feral Scirl, it
Speaker 2: really was causing a bit of a traffic concern. So
Speaker 2: the city came to us and said, oh, we need
Speaker 2: to move feral Scroll and like we're going to move
Speaker 2: her wherever. We want to move her to a park.
Speaker 2: It's like no, no, no, no, We'll move her to Germany
Speaker 2: or to Tokyo, to London.
Speaker 4: They all want her.
Speaker 2: There's only one place she goes, and that's standing in
Speaker 2: front of the New York Stock Exchange. And if you
Speaker 2: go there today, she stands in front of it and
Speaker 2: faces the entrance.
Speaker 4: You know it doesn't front it.
Speaker 2: So when those stockbrokers leave every day, they got to
Speaker 2: see here and remember to do the right thing.
Speaker 3: More of Math and Magic right after this quick break.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Math and Magic. Let's hear more from
Speaker 3: my conversation with Rob Riley. I want to go back
Speaker 3: in time a little bit to get some context on you.
Speaker 3: You grew up in Jersey in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 3: Can you paint a picture of those times and how
Speaker 3: you grew up? What was your environment?
Speaker 2: Just awesome, Bob News Jersey is awesome that you know.
Speaker 2: We get hit a bit sometimes. I don't know where
Speaker 2: you're from, Bob.
Speaker 3: But U Mississippi, Jersey wrote, Mississippi hitting New Jersey. Mississippi
Speaker 3: gets Yeah, you get, you get.
Speaker 2: A couple of a couple of shots.
Speaker 4: You know you've done.
Speaker 2: Quite well for a guy from Mississippis So Jerseys gets
Speaker 2: a little bit of the same.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: We always seem like we're scrappy and fighting. I'm actually
Speaker 2: mostly Italian. My mother's side was all Italian and my
Speaker 2: father's Irish and German. But even though my last name
Speaker 2: is Riley, I grew up mostly Italian with my grandmother
Speaker 2: ten minutes away and the sauce on the Sundays.
Speaker 4: That whole thing is.
Speaker 2: Very much a big part of my life, and I
Speaker 2: grew up in an environment with that was very positive.
Speaker 2: Grew up in the same house for my entire life.
Speaker 2: My father worked for IBM. Years later I realized he
Speaker 2: turned down probably ten promotions. IBM used to be known
Speaker 2: for I've been moved. The only way he got promoted
Speaker 2: was moving, and he turned down ten promotions so the
Speaker 2: family could grow up in the same household. You know,
Speaker 2: sacrificed a lot. So it's not lost on me the
Speaker 2: sacrifices my parents made for their kids to grow up
Speaker 2: in the same place with the same friends and same
Speaker 2: sports teams and that comfortable environment that I don't think
Speaker 2: a lot of kids often get, certainly these days where you.
Speaker 3: Have to move a lot. Your parents clearly had a
Speaker 3: huge impact on you. What lessons do you still use
Speaker 3: today that came directly from your parents?
Speaker 4: My parents and also my grandparents. My mother's father was
Speaker 4: an artist.
Speaker 2: When he was young, he was a semi pro hockey player,
Speaker 2: was in the Rangers farm system, and he was about
Speaker 2: to go pro with the Rangers, and he chose to
Speaker 2: be an artist instead because he thought it would be
Speaker 2: a better way to make money.
Speaker 4: Isn't it ironic now?
Speaker 2: But as an artist, you know, he was very talented,
Speaker 2: but also it wasn't a guarantee that you're going to
Speaker 2: make money, So he ended up working in an advertising
Speaker 2: gains he's as a retoucher. He made money or support
Speaker 2: his family by being a retouch or in advertising. That
Speaker 2: story always stuck with me. Just because you want to
Speaker 2: be an artist, or you train to be an artist,
Speaker 2: doesn't mean you're going to be successful. You know, creativity
Speaker 2: is to crashoot. Sometimes you need luck, you need people
Speaker 2: helping you, but you need that hard work. So I
Speaker 2: always had that in the back of my mind. Is
Speaker 2: like Hey, I want to go into advertising. You know,
Speaker 2: once I started realizing I wanted to be a copywriter,
Speaker 2: It's like, this isn't a guarantee. I got to work
Speaker 2: that much harder and I've got to do everything that
Speaker 2: would give you a leg up. When I used to
Speaker 2: have this presentation I called creativity is the only way
Speaker 2: to survive. And I think my own life, in my
Speaker 2: own career, is that I'm always figuring out ways like
Speaker 2: how do I keep surviving and thriving in this world?
Speaker 2: And part of it is like always waking up thinking
Speaker 2: like it could be gone tomorrow, I could fall out
Speaker 2: of favor. That's the thing artists always struggle with, is
Speaker 2: like you put all this time and effort into it,
Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's going to turn into a success.
Speaker 3: You went to college at University of Delaware, the Fighting
Speaker 3: Blue Hens. Why there and what did you get from
Speaker 3: your college experience?
Speaker 2: Well, listen, Jill and Joe Biden, come on, We've got
Speaker 2: some pretty famous.
Speaker 4: People who went to the University of Delaware.
Speaker 2: It's interesting Delaware another state that gets a lot of shots, right.
Speaker 4: You know, my mother didn't like to fly.
Speaker 2: We didn't go on many vacations outside of the Northeast area.
Speaker 2: So when I was choosing schools, it's really like I
Speaker 2: didn't want to be so far that my mother couldn't
Speaker 2: come visit me. And I was a soccer player, pretty
Speaker 2: good one in high school and Delaware as a team
Speaker 2: is Division one team, and I liked the coach and
Speaker 2: he liked me, and I ended up going there to
Speaker 2: play soccer and then ended up quitting, you know, after
Speaker 2: two years because I just wasn't playing.
Speaker 4: It was frustrating.
Speaker 2: You played Division in sports, you're working that hard and
Speaker 2: if you're not playing it, you're like, why am I
Speaker 2: doing this? I'm not a quitter. But it did allow
Speaker 2: me to do other things. Work at a radio s
Speaker 2: work at an ad agency in Wilmington. So I think
Speaker 2: that choice I made, even though I look back on
Speaker 2: and say, I wish I would have finished that out
Speaker 2: and maybe I could have turned it around, but it
Speaker 2: allowed me to do things that maybe have put me
Speaker 2: in this position. So I think I got team mentality
Speaker 2: from being part of a high level team for a
Speaker 2: very short time. But then I got the experience working
Speaker 2: in an ad agency. Wow, you know, I fell in
Speaker 2: love with advertising from that. So I feel like it
Speaker 2: all kind of always works out.
Speaker 3: So how did you get your first job in advertising?
Speaker 2: This is a great story. I lived in the Rugby
Speaker 2: House on the main road at the University of Delaware.
Speaker 2: A bunch of rugby guys, you know, there were my roommates.
Speaker 2: And see, the Rugby guys would throw parties every once
Speaker 2: in a while. And one Saturday afternoon, we're having a party.
Speaker 2: It's on the main road and it looks crazy, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, the sky in a Porsche stops.
Speaker 4: And said, Hey, what's going on. I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker 4: We're having a party. What does it look like? And
Speaker 4: I go, why are you here? It's like, ah, you know,
Speaker 4: just driving by. It looks like fun.
Speaker 2: And I go, what do you do You're in a
Speaker 2: Porsche And he goes, I own an advertising agency. I go, oh,
Speaker 2: I work at a radio station and I'd love to
Speaker 2: learn more about advertising. And I struck up a conversation
Speaker 2: with him and gave me his card. I called him,
Speaker 2: and then right out of college I ended up working
Speaker 2: for him as an account executive. He did not owe
Speaker 2: Gladstone and Quinn was the agency. Tom Quinn was the guy.
Speaker 2: I owed that guy a lot. He gave me a
Speaker 2: shot get into advertising, learning it, but I was an
Speaker 2: account guy at the time. I wasn't a copywriter. I
Speaker 2: wanted to be one, but I didn't really know how
Speaker 2: to do it. Yeah, that was the first job. So
Speaker 2: throw parties on your front lawn. You never know how
Speaker 2: it changes your life.
Speaker 3: So let's jump a little bit to present day. How
Speaker 3: do you understand the consumer? We recently did a study
Speaker 3: along with Malcolm Gladwell comparing Real America to marketing folks,
Speaker 3: and wow, big divisions really sort of like you know,
Speaker 3: electric moment for all of us. The study did stuff like,
Speaker 3: what are two things you can't give up? Marketers and
Speaker 3: Real America agree on snacking, but mark say I can't
Speaker 3: give up online shopping. Consumers say I can't give up podcast.
Speaker 3: When you look at basic values being a little more
Speaker 3: serious about it, the American public, two things that are
Speaker 3: very important that are really missing from the marketers world
Speaker 3: is religion and the military. And so it's a number
Speaker 3: of things like that. It just says, wow, we're talking
Speaker 3: past each other on a lot of stuff. And I
Speaker 3: admit I'm one of those people. I live in this bubble.
Speaker 3: But we really try and understand the real America that
Speaker 3: we're talking to. How do you avoid living in a
Speaker 3: Marketer's bubble and staying connected to real consumers.
Speaker 2: So you got to read a lot of newspapers, You
Speaker 2: got to lead a lot, read a lot of things online,
Speaker 2: listen to a lot of podcasts. You try to listen
Speaker 2: to things that not necessarily about your own industry.
Speaker 4: But I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think it's a lot of how.
Speaker 4: You've been brought up and grown up.
Speaker 2: I had an amazing parent, but you know, money wasn't
Speaker 2: always plenty and saw struggles, and like a lot of
Speaker 2: families within America, grew up, you know, knowing that my
Speaker 2: parents are working their ass off to put their kids
Speaker 2: through college, to do all those things. I don't think
Speaker 2: you forget that. So that keeps me grounded. But I
Speaker 2: don't know. I think sports is the greatest of the connectors,
Speaker 2: you know, because you could be rich, you could be poor,
Speaker 2: you could be from the city, you could be from
Speaker 2: the country. But like man, you are pulled together by sports.
Speaker 2: So I spend a lot of time. My wife probably
Speaker 2: thinks I spent too much time with sports, but I
Speaker 2: do think it is the great connector because I might
Speaker 2: be in an elevator of someone and strike up a conversation,
Speaker 2: and sports is always that thing that connects you and
Speaker 2: allows you to start to get to know to people
Speaker 2: and hear what they're really caring about and thinking about.
Speaker 2: I don't think we're that different, and if you go globally,
Speaker 2: people are pretty similar to Everybody wants to have a
Speaker 2: great life for their family, do well, enjoy life a bit,
Speaker 2: and we're not that different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting you say that about the stories. When
Speaker 3: I was a young man, I rode motorcycles a lot
Speaker 3: with a group of friends and we did a lot
Speaker 3: of trips. We did two cross country trips, one in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two one in nineteen ninety four across the
Speaker 3: two lane highways across America.
Speaker 4: Won the Northern route, won the Southern route.
Speaker 3: And when I came back from that trip, what struck
Speaker 3: me the most is everybody wants to talk to you,
Speaker 3: and if you just shut up and listen to them,
Speaker 3: they're going to tell you a lot of stuff you
Speaker 3: don't know. And through the years, I've been a pilot
Speaker 3: since I was a kid, and when I had smaller planes,
Speaker 3: I couldn't make it a long distance without stopping for fuel,
Speaker 3: and every time i'd stop for fuel, I would try
Speaker 3: and borrow a crew car and go into town just
Speaker 3: to see the town, no matter where that town was.
Speaker 3: And I sort of missed that at my age now
Speaker 3: because I don't do as much of it. But boy
Speaker 3: do you learn a lot. Let's jump to corporate culture.
Speaker 3: How do you build it and how do you use it?
Speaker 2: All the CEOs of all our companies we have a
Speaker 2: monthly get together, mostly virtual because people are in different places.
Speaker 2: And I said, don't forget to tell everybody, Hey, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's always a tough year. Like advertising it, it's always tough, right,
Speaker 2: but you can't forget to thank people and let them
Speaker 2: know that they've done it, great job and accomplish so
Speaker 2: many things.
Speaker 4: It's easy to focus on the negatives.
Speaker 2: It's much harder focused on the positives, you know, and
Speaker 2: how do we celebrate those things more so? I think
Speaker 2: that's how you build the culture. You just remind people
Speaker 2: like we've come a long way, done a lot.
Speaker 4: Of amazing things.
Speaker 2: We're seen as the most creative company and advertising we're
Speaker 2: seen as one of the best places to work because
Speaker 2: I think people want to come work for creative places.
Speaker 2: I think We're constantly having to prove the value of creativity.
Speaker 4: We're out there championing it.
Speaker 2: So I think the reminding people like the job they
Speaker 2: have is such a great one because one it's different
Speaker 2: every day. Two, creativity really is the world's most valuable asset.
Speaker 2: And your agents for that and agents for helping brands
Speaker 2: be really meaningful in people's lives. And I've said this
Speaker 2: many times that listen, it's brands that are filling in
Speaker 2: for governments that just can't afford to help people, which
Speaker 2: was the original point of government was set up to
Speaker 2: help people. Well, we've not forgotten it, but but we've
Speaker 2: got so many challenges. Is like, brands have really filled
Speaker 2: in the void sometimes and it's really a great honor
Speaker 2: to do. And I think we forget that we do
Speaker 2: have a big job, and so I try to focus
Speaker 2: on the positives and create that kind of culture.
Speaker 3: What's your philosophy? Own business is doing good for the
Speaker 3: world we'd live in.
Speaker 2: There's not enough of it, and I hope we don't
Speaker 2: get tired of pushing it. More than ever. People need help.
Speaker 2: So many people need help. And if a brand is
Speaker 2: out there that can help people and it's born out.
Speaker 4: Of their DNA.
Speaker 2: It's not some barred interesting like why wouldn't we help it?
Speaker 2: I think it should be a real serious part of
Speaker 2: people's marketing, purpose led marketing, because I think young people
Speaker 2: are looking at brands and if you're not doing the
Speaker 2: right thing, so they just won't use they use somebody else.
Speaker 2: And so I do think it's it's important that we
Speaker 2: don't forget that brands can really be positive in people's
Speaker 2: lives and fill in when governments maybe can't get the
Speaker 2: job done.
Speaker 3: You and I were on the radio as teenagers. I'm
Speaker 3: doing a podcast and now you're a podcaster. What drew
Speaker 3: you to this medium and what is surprise you most
Speaker 3: about audio and podcasting.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a great question because I have two people
Speaker 2: that work closely with, Alex and Jonathan, and they are
Speaker 2: the producers and they run comms also. But Jonathan comes
Speaker 2: from the world of TV and he was filling in here.
Speaker 2: He lives in Singapore, but he's actually moving here and
Speaker 2: running in North America for US. But he kept pushing
Speaker 2: me into doing things, into doing more things out there.
Speaker 2: And I was on the Today Show talking about the
Speaker 2: Super Bowl last year, and he said, you need to
Speaker 2: do a podcast.
Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, I don't want to do this. Too
Speaker 4: many podcasts. You know, everybody's doing a podcast.
Speaker 2: But Mark had also said Mark Reid it said, listen,
Speaker 2: we need to put out more content for our teams,
Speaker 2: and you know you need to do more. I said, well,
Speaker 2: I'll do a town hall. He's like, well, we already
Speaker 2: have a town hall. What else can we do? So
Speaker 2: a podcast seem like a real natural way for me
Speaker 2: to connect with one hundred and fifteen thousand WPP employees.
Speaker 2: So the rest of the world if they listened to it, great,
Speaker 2: but it's really done for our own employees because one,
Speaker 2: we have so many talents people within our walls that
Speaker 2: do so many great things, and how do we tell
Speaker 2: their stories? But again, a chance for people to hear
Speaker 2: from me bi weekly through different guests about what I
Speaker 2: believe in and the kind of creativity I'm looking for,
Speaker 2: and different people's stories. And if people are out there
Speaker 2: who haven't gotten to advertising and they feel like, oh,
Speaker 2: that sounds like a cool business and we attract more
Speaker 2: diverse talent, then it's really done its job. So I'm
Speaker 2: liking it. I didn't love it at first, but Alex
Speaker 2: and Johnathan convince me to keep doing it, and I
Speaker 2: quite like it.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: Welcome to our world AI. We can't talk without mentioning
Speaker 3: AI friend or foe.
Speaker 4: Oh friend, Oh my god, such a friend.
Speaker 2: I think what's been removed from our business a bit, bob,
Speaker 2: And this is just from a creative person standpoint within advertising,
Speaker 2: because of course it's going to make production more efficient,
Speaker 2: and it's already making media more efficient, but it's going
Speaker 2: to allow creative people to experiment faster and fail a bit.
Speaker 2: You know, what's been removed is the time and money
Speaker 2: to experiment and fail, and that's such a part of
Speaker 2: the creative process. And I think is allowing designers to
Speaker 2: look at looks that would have taken a week to
Speaker 2: have it done in a couple hours and to take
Speaker 2: inspiration from that. But I do think in five years
Speaker 2: and s is why WPP has bet so hard on
Speaker 2: creativity and bet so much on creativity, is that AI
Speaker 2: is going to put a lot of mediocrity out into
Speaker 2: the world. A lot of companies a will be able
Speaker 2: to put out things at scale. So the brands that
Speaker 2: bet on creativity and the talent and the agencies that
Speaker 2: it takes to create those breakthrough ideas are going to
Speaker 2: be the ones who win because that's what's going to
Speaker 2: be needed. So I'm a fan of it. It's just
Speaker 2: like the digital camera in the computer. I mean, there
Speaker 2: used to be art directors back in the eighties and
Speaker 2: nineties when the computer was first introduced, and who said
Speaker 2: I'm never going to use a computer.
Speaker 4: I draw everything. Well, those people do.
Speaker 2: Not exist, and I think AI is going to be
Speaker 2: the same. If you're a creative person in advertising, you
Speaker 2: better learn it, understand it, at least be able to
Speaker 2: judge it. Because AI won't replace creative people, but creative
Speaker 2: people who are masters of AI eventually will replace creative
Speaker 2: people who just haven't embraced it. And for all the
Speaker 2: things that it brings you.
Speaker 3: It's time for some advice. If someone wants to be
Speaker 3: the next you, what advice would you give them?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know why they would want to be
Speaker 2: the next me, But if someone wants to be maybe
Speaker 2: this successful in the CEO role, right, because it's different
Speaker 2: than a copywriter and even different than a creative diduct
Speaker 2: you really have to be good at everything. You don't
Speaker 2: necessarily have to be great at anything, but you really
Speaker 2: have to understand everything. They're writing the art direction to design,
Speaker 2: the media part, the business side of it, the relationship
Speaker 2: side of it, how to sell to people in a
Speaker 2: way that feels that they're not being sold to, and
Speaker 2: how to provide inspiration and influence and leadership. If you're
Speaker 2: not down with all of those things, you won't be successful,
Speaker 2: you won't be happy. Because this job isn't just sitting
Speaker 2: in your office and looking at ideas and saying yes
Speaker 2: or no. It's a lot of relationship building. There are
Speaker 2: very smart clients on the other side that are under
Speaker 2: so much pressure, and our jobs is like relieve that pressure,
Speaker 2: like by bringing them bold ideas that will lead to
Speaker 2: widely successful business results. You know, that are based in
Speaker 2: their DNA as a company and have smart strategies behind it. Like,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of work that isn't just throwing you know,
Speaker 2: darts at a dartboard or playing ping pong and drinking
Speaker 2: beers to come up with crazy ideas. And maybe mad
Speaker 2: Men has done that a bit, but Don Draper wasn't
Speaker 2: doing that, And you know he was the CCO of
Speaker 2: that company. Don Draper was dealing with clients a lot
Speaker 2: and dealing with the pressures of that but he embraced
Speaker 2: a lot of it and maybe solved it with too
Speaker 2: many scotches on the rocks. But I think that's the
Speaker 2: part that people don't quite understand about being the CEO.
Speaker 2: It's so much about creativity, but it's so much more
Speaker 2: and being that hopefully inspirational leader for people when they
Speaker 2: needed the most clients included.
Speaker 3: As we wrap up, we always end with a shout
Speaker 3: out to the best of math and magic, out to
Speaker 3: the greatest person you know know of who is the
Speaker 3: expert in the analytics or the math side of the business.
Speaker 3: And the other shout out goes to the best magician,
Speaker 3: the creative type. Can you give me a year two?
Speaker 2: Well, there's a woman that she just left recently, McCann.
Speaker 2: She was my creative strategy partner. Her name is Suzanne Powers,
Speaker 2: and there's no one better at strategy than her, no
Speaker 2: one better at looking at the data and then turning
Speaker 2: it into inspirational insights and briefs. And she's by far
Speaker 2: the mathemagician because she uses data analytics and analyzes all
Speaker 2: types of research and then delivers such inspiring ways for
Speaker 2: us to go creatively. The magic part, it's not necessarily
Speaker 2: a choice that most people would do. But there's this
Speaker 2: woman named Debica Bulchandani who's now the CEO of Ogilvy.
Speaker 2: We work together at McCann and we talked about fearal
Speaker 2: S Girl.
Speaker 4: She's the reason it got sold.
Speaker 2: And I think the people that are either CEOs or
Speaker 2: account people don't get a lot of credit for being magicians.
Speaker 2: And she's a magician and how she sells work to
Speaker 2: clients and how she really understands their needs and turns
Speaker 2: it into assignments for us and really can take an
Speaker 2: idea and say, well, here, I know I didn't come
Speaker 2: up with it, but this might make it better. So
Speaker 2: it's not necessarily a choice of the Bill Burnbacks or
Speaker 2: the David Ogleby's or the Dan Widens of the world.
Speaker 2: But I do think when you find a business person
Speaker 2: or a CEO or an account person that understands creativity
Speaker 2: so deeply and then can sell these ideas and figure
Speaker 2: out how to get them made, that to me is
Speaker 2: the real magicians of our business.
Speaker 3: Rob so great having you with us. Thanks for the
Speaker 3: stories and the insights and nice to hear from someone
Speaker 3: at the top of their game.
Speaker 2: Thanks Bob, You're a legend and This has been like
Speaker 2: one of the biggest honors I've had, and I was
Speaker 2: happy to do it.
Speaker 3: Here are a few things I picked up from my
Speaker 3: conversation with Rob one. Write down all your ideas. Ideas
Speaker 3: are our lifeblood, especially when you're talking about the magic
Speaker 3: side of marketing. Create a system for logging all your ideas,
Speaker 3: especially your wildest ones. You never know when an old
Speaker 3: thought might lead to the next great innovation.
Speaker 4: Two. Do the work.
Speaker 3: When Rob had the opportunity to rise to an executive
Speaker 3: level early in his career, he went the opposite direction.
Speaker 3: He decided to build out his portfolio as a copywriter
Speaker 3: so he could prove his talent and build credibility before
Speaker 3: becoming a leader. Dedicating time to doing the real work
Speaker 3: of your job will help you understand your business and
Speaker 3: craft better. Building that foundation will make you a better
Speaker 3: and well respected leader in your career.
Speaker 4: Three.
Speaker 3: Break out of your bubble. Pursue information that's outside your
Speaker 3: daily environment and personal interest. There's a huge gap between
Speaker 3: the values of marketers and major cities and those of
Speaker 3: consumers all over the country. Get out of your comfort
Speaker 3: zone and take in new information. Read things you usually
Speaker 3: wouldn't learn about a new industry for visiting new place,
Speaker 3: think about what bridges the gap, and use those values.
Speaker 4: In your work to speak to a large audience.
Speaker 3: I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
Speaker 1: to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts. The
Speaker 1: show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sidney
Speaker 1: Rosenblum for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is
Speaker 1: no small feat. Mathematics producers are Emily Meronov and Jessica Crimechitch.
Speaker 1: It is mixed and mastered by Baheed Fraser. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are Nikki Etoor and Ali Perry, and of course
Speaker 1: a big thanks to get Ale, Raoul, Eric Angel, Noel
Speaker 1: and everyone who helped bring this show to your ears.
Speaker 1: Until next time,