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Jaws welcomes Giant Ideas.
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Thank you for having me, Tommy. Great to see you.
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I've been wanting to do this for for ages.
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You very kindly have helped us rework the Giant brand and the Giant storytelling for for an amazing project, which has been so fun to work with you on.
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So, I'm really excited to try and bring some of the magic to the to the world.
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Well, thank you for the opportunity.
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Um we're going to start by talking a little bit about how you build iconic brands.
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And you have helped build some of the most iconic.
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You've worked with all all of the, I think, most iconic brands from Nike onwards.
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If you have kind of had to distill what you've learned about brand building into a pithy sentence or two, what would you say?
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I think if you think about a great brand, they're also great storytellers.
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And I think that's true of every enduring organization that exists.
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I, you know, I I would argue that Charlie Munger, the late Charlie Munger, and Warren Buffett are phenomenal storytellers.
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And it's one of the reasons why Berkshire Hathaway is such a strong brand.
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And at the heart of every great brand and every great story is desire.
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So, every bra- every great brand will have a desire where there's a wrong in the world that they want to put right.
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So, that's what their motivation is.
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And someone like Jim Collins, who's, you know, one of the most profound authors there is, like he wrote Good to Great, he'll say that the the test of a great organization is if you removed the organization from society, what would be missed?
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So, in short, great brands are great storytellers.
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So, to understand what builds a brand, one has to understand the essence of story. Interesting. So, say more about that.
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What kind of storytelling?
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Cuz presumably it can be very, very different from someone like Berkshire Hathaway being investment firm through to someone like Nike that you've worked with.
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How do you think about different ways you can tell great stories?
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So, when you think about a great story, whether that's a song you love, a poem, a film, TV series, whatever it is, book, one of the aspects is true about any great story is that if you have a story without conflict and crisis, you will bore your audience to tears.
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And one one of the aspects of great brands is they are in conflict with something.
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So, if you took, for example, Apple, Apple story is it's in conflict with complexity.
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And if you took Nike, Nike's story is it's in conflict with inertia.
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So, when something isn't moving forward, it's in conflict with that.
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And likewise with Disney, it's in conflict with with misery.
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So, it's pursuing happiness.
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So, in every great story, there's always a protagonist, the lead, and antagonizing forces which get in the way of the protagonist achieving their desire.
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So, when Steve Jobs used to present a keynote, they they're just beautiful storytelling because it would show you the conflict with complexity and how Apple's innovation will simplify your life and and and help you to achieve the the goals that previously didn't exist because Apple simplified that for you.
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So, every great brand is the protagonist of its story because it has a deep desire to improve the world and it has amazing intentions for its audience and it has an amazing intentions for society and they're the brands that tend to endure, the ones that think bigger than than the others.
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You got my English literature teacher ringing in my ears from high school.
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He said drama is conflict.
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And it's really interesting that you're talking about these brands.
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You know, they they have to stand not just for something but almost against something as well.
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You worked with with Nike for well over 10 years, right?
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You did some really really important work with them.
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Let's talk about Nike as a case study.
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So, what do you think it was kind of in the early days that really allowed them to build this incredible brand and then I'd love to hear if you're allowed to talk about it some of the work that you did with them and what you think really worked and maybe where they are today and where you see some gaps.
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We actually worked with them for about 25 years.
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So, it's been over two decades of working with with with Nike and some of the projects that we helped launch in collaboration with Nike on Nike Training Club, which is the number one personal training app in in the world.
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>> Yeah, so it's had a phenomenal impact and that that was really one of the ways that Nike build a customer ecosystem and had direct connection with its with its audiences.
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And other projects include when the Nike Run London activity, but we've worked on dozens and dozens of of projects >> Yeah. over the years.
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What's helped Nike achieve that success over sustained amount of time is has a very clear mission and purpose.
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And the mission that Nike has is to bring innovation and inspiration to every athlete in the world.
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And then it has an asterisk by that which says, "If you have a body, you're an athlete."
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So, the point is that Nike exists to bring innovation and inspiration to everybody in the world.
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And when Nike is doing that across its different categories, that's when it's really winning.
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Great brands are great storytellers. We've established that.
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But also great brands understand that everything a brand does tells a story.
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And these days, there's an infinite canvas and opportunity to tell those stories.
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So, you can tell stories through software and interactive services.
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And a lot of those interactive services, they enable athletes.
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So, they help people achieve give people guidance and and coaching and community and and connection.
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And some of those are about inspiration.
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So, you'll see a film or or or some content that just fires you up and sparks your imagination.
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So, the great The greatest brands are the ones that treat everything they do with love and care and curation to somehow have so much respect for the audience that they want to elevate their spirit and elevate their their soul when they come in the when they engage with it.
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And I think the other aspect that differentiates Nike is the I I kind of think of it as the organization as an athlete.
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And so, what they have is they have these extraordinary massive goals.
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So I remember 15 years ago, Nike made it very clear that we want to be number one in football.
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And at that time, it seemed like, you know, one of the most audacious goals they could possibly have and almost beyond reach.
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But that focus on that audacious goal and the athletes mentality really helped them to to achieve it.
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And what what about today?
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Where where does Nike stand today as just one example and what do you look at there and go, yeah, this is what I would love to go in and maybe do differently?
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Well, I think Nike's going through a transition right now.
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So a few years ago they went from being in categories.
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So where they were very clear with the categories like football, running, basketball and then they had very very very clear categories. >> Yeah. To more generic.
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It was men, women and and kids.
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And that is that that that strategy is something, you know, the the strategy that probably works much better is the focus on the sports because that's where you can get authenticity.
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And if you can get authenticity you can become an authority.
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And so and I think that's where the focus is right now in terms of the reinvention that the the new CEO is is putting in place at Nike. Interesting.
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Have you seen the latest Adidas Football World Cup advert?
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>> With Timothy Timothy Chalamet?
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>> It's absolutely extraordinary. So good.
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People who haven't seen it, it's kind of amazing use of AI where you see like a younger David Beckham and a younger Zinedine Zidane.
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And it's this incredible, you know, with Timothy Chalamet, an amazing actor, like a wonderful, a true story.
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>> a genuine football fan. Okay. Yeah.
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>> So he really means >> Yeah, yeah.
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So it's like he's he's the right person to put in there. Yeah.
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And yeah, just your point about focus in that case on football and like storytelling that appeals to, you know, my generation who would look at Zidane or Beckham and then new generation with the younger stars they've got.
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But, doing it in this just wonderful storytelling method, which I think maybe is missing from Nike and Adidas.
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to respect Adidas for a lot of the work they've been doing recently like the work they did with Oasis last year.
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And and this work with with Timothy Chalamet where it's crossing sport and popular popular culture as well.
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So, and and the fact that you've responded so positively to it and it's inspired you and energized you is exactly the reaction that they're seeking to get in a in a World Cup year.
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>> Well, let's talk about founders.
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So, you know, with Giant the founders we were working with, they want to go very quickly from zero to tens of billions of dollars within 10 years.
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How do people think or how should people think about going about creating a brand that is authentic and enduring, but it needs to happen quickly?
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They don't have 30, 40, or in Apple's case 50 years of building this brand up.
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Well, there's a there's a there's a great book called Hit Makers. Okay.
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And in that book Derek Thompson, the author, has this argument where he did he writes for the Atlantic as well and he's got his own podcast.
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And what Derek Thompson says is to launch something new make it familiar.
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And to launch something familiar, make it feel new.
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So, that's the formula that he would he would give.
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So, you can see as an example an organization like Anthropic >> Mhm.
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where the way it communicates feels incredibly human and familiar.
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and rather than synthetic and distant.
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And that that's obviously that that formula working.
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And and I think it's the same with with with any great great organization is that they're able to articulate the values of the organization in a in a in a way that feels familiar even though they might they might have a radical the clean product.
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And it's those contrast that intersection where the magic happens.
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How much of building a brand from scratch as a founder today is about visual design and visual identity versus the core values and the value prop and the way you show up every day and your physical environment.
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How do you separate those two things and and how Yeah, how important is the visual elements of all of this?
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Well, the visual design is just one component of the entire brand universe.
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And I I'm one of these people who doesn't really believe in the idea of again, what tends to happen is in our industry is people say aspects is subjective but I tend to be more of the belief that either something is brilliant and it has this universal appeal and the vast majority of audiences find it to be engaging and interesting or it's not. >> Okay.
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And so >> Visually we're talking about.
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I think visually or a story.
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And that's why you see sites like or services like IMDb. Yeah.
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And if a film where it's the wisdom of crowds. >> Right.
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So if if there's a film that scores above eight on IMDb you're doing yourself an injustice by not watching it. >> Okay.
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Because the wisdom of crowds have decided that this is a And obviously there's Yeah, and and you said earlier you said dram- Conflict is drama.
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>> Conflict is drama, which is obviously true.
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But there's another saying in Hollywood, which is character is story.
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And when you look at some of the most profound films and TV series and books, it's because we can fall in love with the characters, we admire the characters, we dislike the characters, and that's what That's what makes a story compelling.
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What should people be asking themselves if they had to really distill like creating a great brand?
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What What should they distill it down to?
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A simple question that any organization can ask itself is what's the memory we want to create and what's the feeling we want to evoke in the hearts and minds of our customers? I love that.
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Have there been any brands that have done that for you?
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I'm really curious which brands you just love.
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So, I think when you take a look at what Ben Francis has done with Gymshark, which is in just over a decade has built the greatest community for resistance and conditioning in the world.
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And the fact that that started in the UK is phenomenal.
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And before I talked about great brands are great storytellers.
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And that means they have to be good authors.
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And if you're a good author, you will write with authenticity and you'll become the authority.
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And I think Ben with with what he's done with with Gymshark is is an extraordinary example.
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And and likewise, I think when you take a look at the brand On and how they've reinvented a category that people thought couldn't be reinvented.
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And and that's another superb example of brand building.
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And they're both in the sports and fitness and apparel arena, which just shows you how much opportunity there is for organizations to to to compete within within existing sectors if you've got a fresh perspective and if you can build community and and resonate with with those audiences. Yeah, so interesting.
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And then going back to your your previous point, I love that description of the bank, Steve Jobs's thing of building up trust and it it is it very similar if not identical to how I think the best reputation thinkers or PR thinkers think about the kind of reservoir of goodwill that takes many many years to build up and then it kind of draws down in times of crisis and could be emptied very quickly.
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Um and I think it's basically the same, isn't it?
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A personal reputation or a or a corporate brand, you got to build that reservoir up and you have to take care not to let it leak away.
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Yeah, well, again, taking the idea that character is story and taking the idea that every brand is a character, the true test of character is how we respond under pressure.
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So, you can see it in films all the time.
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The the the the the the people or the characters we tend to admire the most are the ones who had to make a decision under pressure and they chose the right one, which is often a sacrifice for them or a difficulty for them.
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And I think when brands act with authenticity of their character, we admire them more.
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But when there's some kind of scandal and it reveals something about the brand where we didn't expect that from that character, that's when everyone becomes disappointed.
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We had a really good example of that on the on the show with Nate, the founder of Airbnb.
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And he basically said that the making of Airbnb as a brand was how they responded to very difficult crises.
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So for example, they had a racism crisis with some host turning away black people in the US.
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They had a crisis around like houses getting trashed by by guests.
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And then in COVID, you know, their guests were like all their hosts were were not having that quick key income stream, right?
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And in all three of those examples, they did the non-economic short-term thing to build up the economics in the long-term, which was basically to come in and just go aggressively towards doing the right thing, even if it cost them money in the short-term.
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And his view was that that built the trust, which is the number one most important thing for Airbnb as a business. Yeah, that investment.
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Look, there there isn't a brand or any organization that does not go through troubles.
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But how they respond to the troubles is an opportunity to either become triumphant and a hero in everyone's eyes or lose respect.
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And so making those investments and making sure that there's incredible respect for the audiences and the customers is is really what matters.
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And I think when when when brands do that and people and the audiences can see they're making those sacrifices when we really admire them.
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We've talked about some timeless lessons I hope for brands that will endure and we've talked about building brands going back 25 years.
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Let's talk a little bit about what's going to happen in the advent of AI and specifically the impact of AI on human creativity.
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Will we still be needed as human beings?
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How will we display our creativity when you've got things like Claude design which can spit out incredible looking videos or presentations, ad campaigns.
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And and also I guess what it means to build and and maintain a brand in an era of AI.
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So there's lots to discuss there.
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I know you've written really thoughtfully about this.
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The favorite thing that I've read from your writings is the example of the impressionist and their response to the invention of the camera which I think is such a great analogy but tell us about that.
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but tell us about that. I'm a incredible optimist that these new tools and technology and this new energy that we call AI will give rise to a thousand creative flowers blooming rather than the way the common narrative is where it talks about it's going to take
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everyone's job and I and one of you know we're on a podcast today and one of the podcasts that I regularly listen to and love is AI reality check where what happens is he goes through in detail the perceived wisdom of the day and deconstructs it. And
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And I've been lucky that when I was 15 years old I worked for the world's third largest software company then I got to work with an amazing gaming company.
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The And then I got to work with an amazing consumer electronics company.
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So, I spent a fair amount of time in the technology industry.
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And there's a phrase that often gets used in the technology or did used to get used in the technology industry, which is FUD, fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
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And what you find at the birth of any new technology, there's a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
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So, I would I would say that what we're going through right now is uh a a phase where there's there's there's incredible scaremongering and panic rather than liberating and and helping people to to use their creativity to and and and and unleash their you know, and unleash their humanity using using these tools.
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And one of the reasons I feel so strongly about that is that there is no algorithm and there is no gene for the human spirit.
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And that's that's one of the reasons that I I believe so strongly.
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But coming back to your example.
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So, the camera was was invented hundreds of of years ago.
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But the first photograph was produced in 1826.
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And you can imagine that before the first photograph was produced, there was a lot of portrait painters and a lot of portraiture.
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And that's why you have a look at the art of that era and all the previous eras, and you'll see it was objects.
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So, people and and objects.
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And you can imagine and there were headlines at the time which was talk about how the arrival of the photograph means the end of painting.
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So, the the the point was that people would say, "Why does anybody need a painter anymore?
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Why does anyone need painting?
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Because this photograph now does what the the painter used to do."
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So, the first photograph was here in 1826.
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But a teenage Monet was painting in the 1850s, and the Impressionist movement really got going in the 1860s.
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So, the point is that the Impressionist movement was as a direct reaction to the photograph being being produced.
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And so, what it did was it gave rise to an incredible creative renaissance.
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So, the whole idea of abstraction where painters like Picasso and Rothko and Kandinsky and all of these painters were suddenly liberated to instead of making something realism, they could then have a have a completely different interpretation to it.
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And if you go back to 1997 as another example, in 1997, Garry Kasparov was beaten by IBM, the the the supercomputer chess computer.
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At the time, people saying this is the end of chess.
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And that's not what happened at all.
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If you have a look at chess today, it's bigger than it's ever been in its 1,500 year history.
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And if you have a look at some of them amazing prodigies like Magnus Carlsen, one of the reasons that he's so brilliant was when he was a kid, he could practice against the supercomputers and it would really refine refine his work.
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So, you can see the crystal ball gazing often is just looking in the rearview mirror.
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And because we just have the natural tendency to think about the world as it is today and the materials that are around today, rather than the human the way the humans will react to that and respond to it.
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And just to kind of bring this up to date to now, I would argue that we're already seeing in the culture, we're already seeing an incredible reaction to AI.
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So, you used the Adidas example where AI is used to enhance the storytelling and that's a brilliant point of view and a brilliant way to use these tools and and and technologies.
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And likewise, that if you're a young filmmaker, you wouldn't have access to the tens of millions of of of of dollars required for CGI.
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You You can now take your story and have the same kind of special effects that you would in incredible blockbuster production for a fraction of the if if the amount.
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And so this democratized production in an incredibly profound and and and brilliant in a in brilliant way, especially for new filmmakers who want to unleash their ideas.
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So that's one way that people are responding and and and using these new new tools to create art forms that that wouldn't have existed before. Right.
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>> And that's where AI is becoming a real assistant when when it comes to production.
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But there's another incredibly exciting aspect taking place as well. Okay.
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So you might have seen the video that the Swedish artist Yung Lean produced.
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And in that film, you've got an incredible dance choreography that's taken place, which clearly wasn't done by AI.
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This is the one outside the school? Exactly.
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It was it's like a looks like a school photograph.
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And it it it ends up being this extraordinary choreography by Damien Chazelle and Ro- Romain Gavras.
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And that is a you you you can imagine is a response to AI because it so clearly wasn't done by by by AI.
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So I think having these This is a wonderful time to have these tools and technologies because on the one hand, people are using them to enhance their storytelling.
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And on the other hand, people are responding to it with new forms of art and exciting forms of art.
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And both of those are making a incredibly important contribution.
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So I guess it it's a it the the level of everyone.
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It It democratizes the the access to the the cutting-edge tools, and it makes people want to have humanity shine through and human creative spirit shine through even more.
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I just where would you assess like the humans ability so far to use these tools for creativity?
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Do you Are you impressed by how far we've come with them or or not so much?
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I think it's impossible to fail to be impressed with so many aspects of AI.
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So, I use it every single day, and there are all kinds of applications that I you know, it's it's become a completely and utterly indispensable tool for me in my day-to-day.
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But, there are limitations, and over time maybe a lot of those limitations will be superseded, and they'll be they'll be they'll be it'll be it'll it'll achieve even more.
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But, one of the aspects that AI tends to be quite weak at is emotion and humor.
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And to me, it's fascinating that a lot of these tools have been around since 2022 two, and yet we still haven't had our Toy Story Pixar moment of a great work that everyone agrees is a is a wonderful film that that is completely produced by AI.
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So, I find that fascinating.
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Almost the opposite, right?
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In terms of like some of the some of the big ubiquitous internet moments coming out of uh AI, people have been quite negative about them quite quickly.
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Like, for example, when we saw those um beautiful Japanese drawings that were aping that the great Japanese creator, they were flooding the internet and that was a very negative immediate response of people going this is kind of derivative, it's ripping it's ripping the artist off.
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It's been the opposite of that Pixar moment, I'd say.
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Yeah, and related to that again very lucky to spend time with with some amazing organizations.
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I was with the CEO of one of the biggest gaming companies in the world a couple of weeks ago and one of the aspects again is fascinating is that every time they've produced a character that's been created by AI the testing with humans has been that the character has failed and the humans don't know it's made by AI.
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don't know it's made by AI. So I get I I think that's also pretty pretty fascinating that until the until AI is brilliant at ideas and storytelling and some of those aspects that I I think that the the obviously humans will
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continue to to to have it but I think what's tending to happen is the humans are being made to feel claustrophobic about these new tools rather than be liberated by them and what they can help them to achieve and I think that's where there's an opportunity to to change the narrative. I found this brilliant quote
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I found this brilliant quote from Frank Herbert who wrote the Dune movies and the quote is once men turn their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free but that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
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And I think that's what we really have to be careful of. Wow, okay. Very very powerful. It is, isn't it?
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Cuz it Cuz the thing that's powerful is the brain scans they've done on people who ha- have used AI to write their essays versus the people who didn't use AI to write their essays, and it really is numbing people's brains.
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That's kind of terrifying. Terrifying.
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>> it's exactly what Frank Herbert is saying.
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It's a But that only permitted other men with machine genes to enslave them.
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But I think everyone has to have agency to use these tools to to achieve their dreams. >> Right.
33:20
Jaz, I want to end by asking you a little bit about your journey.
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[snorts] So, you you've got this amazing life story.
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You founded AKQA incredibly young and built it up over many years.
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You ended up selling it to WPP.
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I think eventually you did, you know, over a billion in revenue.
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Uh you stayed at WPP a long time, an unusually long time for the founder of an acquired business.
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Most people kind of run away as soon as they can and they've done their earnout and they leave.
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You stayed there and continued to build the the brand and the business within WPP.
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You now left to start your own business again, Studio One.
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What do you think it is about you that has allowed you to have this extraordinarily successful career over such a long time across different technology eras helping to build brands?
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I where where I've been extraordinarily lucky is the team the team the we've built Studio One with is just an absolutely extraordinary and brilliant team, and that team of incredible individuals is what motivates and inspires me.
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And it was the same at my previous the previous organization that I founded.
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And it's always the you're very lucky where where You're very lucky if you get to work with people that genuinely inspire you.
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And that's certainly been the case in in my career that I've been I've had amazing clients and amazing people to work with.
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I definitely agree you have had amazing clients and I can attest to the quality of your team at both organizations.
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I've worked with both of them.
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But you're being way too modest. I'm going to push you.
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What do you think it is about you specifically and your strengths that has that allowed you to maybe if you go back to the early days, like you must have had a extraordinary amount of self-belief for that age.
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Were you 19 when you started it? 21. >> 21. Okay, yeah.
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I suppose that you know, when we started the first company, we we had a desire which was to end what we called multi-mediocrity.
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That we just look at a lot of the work and just stole the audiences deserve better.
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And and I think, you know, with launching Studio One, we're launching this as a you know, partly as an antidote to what exists already.
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And our belief is that clients deserve better, employees deserve better, and most importantly, the work deserves better.
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So, by having the singular focus on the work we produce and the contribution we're making, it has been an extraordinary journey and it's given me a new lease of life.
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And it's also there's a lot of other aspects of Studio One that I'd always wanted to do in the previous place which we couldn't do for whatever reason.
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So, you know, one of the aspects is that everyone in the company is a part owns equity in the company.
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So, I love the fact that everyone is an owner in the company. That makes me happy.
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>> Which is very common in sort of technology startup world, but less so in ad world and creative >> So, and and that ownership, you know, people talk about giving people agency.
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Well, if you want to give people agency, make them an owner.
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So, they can act like an owner.
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And so, that that and then, you know, there's other aspects.
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For example, we don't have any timesheets.
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Timesheets just waste a ton of time for the employee.
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And and it also means that you can continue to craft the work until you're until it's ready, until you're proud of it, rather than working to a clock.
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So, I suppose some of those inherent values and and and the other aspect about Studio One, of course, is uh is AI native.
37:14
So, we've been able to build the company with these AI tools as part of what we do, rather than needing to retrofit them.
37:22
And rather than And so, everyone is on the tools, and everyone has has embraced the technology.
37:27
So, Jazz, if you look forward with Studio One, what do you want the legacy of the company that you built to be?
37:36
So, I think the legacy, the only the only legacy any of us ever have is how we've impacted other people's lives.
37:45
And as long as we're impacting other people's lives in a positive way, then there's there's that that's a wonderful legacy to to aspire to have. Love that. Awesome place to end.
37:59
So, Jazz, thank you so much for sharing your giant ideas. Thanks, Tommy.