ACOB S3 E5 London 2012
Sairah Ashman
00:00
The sense of responsibility to get it right was really high. And, you know, we felt it as a company. And the team really felt it. So, if you didn't show up and dial it in at all, there was never going to be a moment where you could relax. Because you know, right up until it being delivered really felt like you were at 110%. Every day you wanted to do your best job. We always want to do our best job, but you just absolutely wanted to make sure that you had left no stone unturned, and you've done the nation proud. That's just a next level of responsibility in the work.
Blake Howard
00:49
Hey, everyone, welcome to a change of brand, the show featuring behind the scenes stories of rebrand glory, drama, or disaster. I'm your host, Blake Howard. When I first wanted to start this podcast a few years back, I was most excited about documenting the oral history of well-known moments in graphic design and branding, especially those caught in the rise of the Internet culture, perhaps something that future generations of designers could listen back on and hear firsthand the thinking and the process that went into the work. Something to get inspired by today's story falls right into that category. Some of the most famous and historical graphic design comes out of the Olympic Games, Mexico, ‘68, Munich, ‘72, Tokyo ‘64, all legendary, and some would say, London 2012. Many of you know that designing the identity for the Olympic Games is a big deal. First off, it's more comprehensive than just a logo. And secondly, it might be one of the most complex design problems you could ever solve. Imagine being tasked with simplifying the essence of a city and a culture into graphic forms for all of the world to see and judge. On top of that, imagine the sheer number of approvals and committees involved in the process. It would be a Herculean effort, like a gold medal of graphic design. That's why the London 2012 brand identity is so interesting. It left some wondering what were they thinking? And other saying how did they pull that off? Well, today friends, we get to find out. For more backstory on the Olympic Games and what led up to the London 2012 brand identity, let's go to brand strategist Tracy Clark for our briefing.
Tracy Clark
02:46
The modern Olympic Games, the sporting event of all sporting events, a quadrennial chance to celebrate and gawk at the world's most elite athletes. It's a time-honored ceremony, full of stately pomp and circumstance that can sometimes come off as dusty, dated and fairly predictable.
But along with the snowboarders, sprinters and gymnast's there's also some pretty good graphic design. Baron Pierre Cooper, founder of the modern games created the timeless five ring logo that endures today, in a simplistic stroke of genius, the interlocked rings of blue, yellow, black, green and red sit against a white background, symbolizing the union of five continents bringing athletes together. Though the rings were first conceived in 1913. They didn't make an official debut until the 1920 Summer Olympic Games in Antwerp. The first modern Olympic games were played in Athens in 1896. And without much branding to speak of. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Olympic Games had a few graphic design elements, but none were cohesive or officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee until the 1920s. The first example of what would come to be known as the Olympic emblem was for the 1924 games in Paris. The emblem depicted a scaled back version of the city's 14th century coat of arms, a drawing of a ship traveling on the sun, paired with words describing the date and location of the Olympic Games. This would be the template that all future Olympic emblems would follow, noting the location, year and a distinctive design element that symbolizes the host city. For instance, the 1968 Summer Olympics held in Mexico City cleverly combined the Olympic rings with pop art and pre–Columbian Mexican art. The emblem for the 1972 Summer Games in Munich is often cited as a prime example of modern Swiss design with spare lines and a restrained color palette. The 2014 Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia oddly incorporated a web domain extension into its emblem design. And of course, there's London 2012. In an attempt to make the Olympics accessible to the everyman, the 2012 emblem did something right. It had almost everyone talking about it, love it or hate it. The abstracted logo is certainly a memorable one in the pantheon of Olympic brand identities. Wolff Olins, the firm behind the 2012 Olympic Games brand, wanted people to reconsider their notions of the Olympics and think about them in a new way. And boy, did they ever. Get on your marks everybody, it's time for a very sporty change a brand.
Blake Howard
05:45
Okay, so we know the London 2012 logo and visual system was pretty different. But let me try to describe it to you. Whereas many Olympic Games logos and visual programs are simple in nature. This one is best defined by its complexity. The logo is made up of five jagged, flat shapes that suggest a 2012. It kind of looks like the early stages of Pangea, the theory that the world was once just one large continent then broke up into many. The logo primarily uses magenta, but the full color palette has many bright and vibrant colors. The London letters and the logo have a choppy, angular feel with rectangles making most of the shapes. The same aesthetic is found in additional imagery, posters, banners, etc. And what's remarkable about this work is it was actually designed in 2006 or 2007. But even today, many years later, it still stands out. Be sure to see the change of brand for yourself at a change of brand.com. Love it or hate it. This identity system made headlines and likely goes down as one of the most infamous pieces of design in Olympic history. The work was led by Wolff Olins, a brand consultancy with Studios in London, New York and San Francisco. We actually heard from them already this season in episode one with the Uber rebrand. To get the inside scoop on how Wolff Olins pulled off this colossal effort, I got to speak with Sairah Ashman, their global CEO, who was also the global CEO at the time. She was a delight to speak with and she's been with the firm for nearly 30 years. But she kind of fell into it.
Sairah Ashman
07:35
And it was serendipity really, that brought me to Poland. So, I had tried on quite a few different moves in different places, I always knew I wanted to be in the creative industries. And I'd also lived in quite a few different countries. So, I had a lot of, sort of, life experience before I turned up at Wolff Olins. And lots of experiences from PR advertising, working at NGOs before I've applied for the role. And the thing that I really loved about and I still love about Wolff Olins is just this kind of complete marriage of strategy and creativity. So, you get to do you know, really deep and meaningful, impactful work that is built from sound sort of business sense, strategic sense, but also super creative. And I hadn't found many places where you had that particular blend, I remember when we originally found out in London, that we were going to be the host city. I just remember all of us congregating in the rec room in our studio and Kings Cross at the time. And we were all on the edge of our seats, because London had been the host city for, I think it was our third time in the previous decade, we'd had a lot of runs at this. And I think everyone was kind of thinking if we don't get it now, we're not going to bother applying again. And so, it was down to the wire between us and Paris. We didn't know if we were going to make it. Everyone was meeting in Singapore to do the big presentations. And then we were going to hear at the end of the day. And you know, we all kind of got into the room together. And we were on the edge of our seats just kind of like thinking could it happen to us? This would be amazing. We're in London, it would just you know, be incredible. And then of course we got it and the whole city just went wild. And then later further down the line, we then of course were invited to bid and to get involved in the creation of what would become the 2012 Olympics brand.
Blake Howard
09:37
Before we keep going forward. I think it's important to lay the foundation for how the Olympics work. You have the IOC, the International Olympic Committee and the NOC, the National Olympic Committee, which transitioned to the LOC the London Olympic Committee, once the host city was selected. To navigate in these levels and come out on the other end with any design work that is decent, would be respectable. The LOC was chaired by Lord Sebastian Coe, a former Olympic athlete, a baron, a politician, and a generally well-respected chap about town. He was the London 2012 Olympic Committee's torchbearer or the brand instigator, you could say.
Sairah Ashman
10:23
The chair of that committee was a chap called Sebastian Coe, or Lord Sebco as he’s kind of known these days. He is an Olympian that's really well respected in the nation, he went on to go into politics, and he has he's had a stellar career and track record. They had had plenty of time thinking about, you know, what they were going to try and do with the Olympics in London before we arrived on the scene. And I think they did a very smart thing, which is, they obviously invited who they thought would be the very best folks in the UK, to create a brand, not just a logo. So, there's a tradition, the thing that we probably all see an awful lot from the Olympics, a kind of logo creation, through putting kind of, you know, a national competition. And people tend to submit even if they're not asked, I think, because we're all you know, we love to contribute and create. And they tend to be constructed around a sort of national emblem, something to do with the host city or notion that you can recognize, maybe put the, you've got the rings that need to be in there. So, there's a kind of formula for how you put those things together. And the thing I will say about Sebco, and the Organizing Committee is they had already decided that this was going to buck that trend. Because that meant that we could think about this having roots and having depth and being meaningful beyond just a moniker or advantage. So, it was a well written brief in the first place. And it was a two-part brief. So, it started with, how are we going to position The Olympics for London? What's it going to represent? What's it going to mean? What's it's going to stand for? And what kind of legacy is it currently? So, like I said, it was an exciting brief to be asked to get involved with,
Blake Howard 12:22
Why do you think they selected Wolff Olins?
Sairah Ashman
12:26
We did a couple of things that helped us to stand out. The first was we like, we would try, we wanted to turn the idea of the Olympics on its head in terms of what it had been known for. So, we're, I think, well known for defying convention and not being afraid to break rules and try new things. So that was obviously why we were in the mix, I would say, and our kind of brand and our pitch was centered around that. So obviously, there's a lot of stuff you have to fill in because its government led, which, you know, there's a technical requirement, and we passed that bar. And then once we got into being able to pitch our thinking, we talked very much around a couple of things. One, London is really well known. So, promoting London as a city to the world, perhaps there's not an awful lot of value in that because there's, it's already a destination. So, let's think about what else we could inspire. And let's also think about not just the athletes who are involved and why you come to watch the competition, but also how you can participate and how it can leave a legacy in the nation. And I think that combination really appealed to the to the ambitions of the organizers. There were a couple of other things in the brief that were really appealing. And that we, I think, gave a strong kind of submission on which was around sponsorship. So, it costs a lot of money to host an Olympics. I mean, it costs an absolute fortune. And if you want to make sure that you're leaving something for the nation, but if you want to raise money, you've got to create an entity and a brand. In this instance, that sponsors would be part of and would encourage their participation as well so that you could, you know, pay for this thing. So, we made that a strong part of our pitch as well, you know, let's make the sponsors involved. Let's leave this legacy. But let's also make this really special for sponsors so that they want to really get involved and put a lot of investment into it. Oh, and by the way, and this was a big part of it, too. Let's make sure that we don't have the Paralympics feeling like they're a sort of echo of the regular Olympics. Let's just make it one big party where all of that is celebrated and communicated as almost one thing.
Blake Howard 14:56
So do you remember when you found out that you won the project, the engagement.
Sairah Ashman
15:04
So again, the good old rec room, we all got called in and, and heard that we'd been successful, hence more celebrating. So that was just incredible. Obviously, we couldn’t stop smiling and felt super excited about that. And then of course, the reality of what it was going to take to deliver this thing set in. So, we went very quickly from punching the air and not being able to be live on luck, to wow, we've got to do this thing now.
Blake Howard 15:36
Indeed, it was go time. One thing that was unique for the Wolff Olins teams was how they had to work, essentially, under lock and key. This very public work was super confidential, which led the project team to be annexed from the day to day of the rest of the firm. As they started to do research or prototype ideas, there was no asking your friends in the firm what they thought, unless they were part of the quarantined crew. Having an NDA and being very quiet about your work is not unusual for a firm like Wolff Olins, but this was next level.
Sairah Ashman
16:13
Starting point was, let's, let's get to the idea behind this as a start point, then let's start to create a direction for what that will mean in terms of the narrative, and the experience that will support that. And then let's look at the expression. And then we'll worry about the rules, if you like, and whether there might be they might be bendable. That once we've got the foundations of what we're trying to create here, because then there's a sound logic, there were already inputs available that we could drill down on. And there were also thoughts from the Organizing Committee and Lord Sebco. Around what he wanted, to help kind of communicate and deliver as a result of hosting the Olympics. And he talked about engaging people. And he also talked about engaging young people. And we had already identified with them that the Olympics had become known for elite athletes and sports at the highest level, but it also made it kind of untouchable, and like it lived in a different realm. And it wasn't for all of us. And so, we quickly came to this sense of, if we want to derive participation, it needs to come out, you know, down out of the gods as it were. And it needs to live on the streets. And it needs to be something that we can walk, get involved in, in some way. The positioning that we captured in the end was around, this is an Olympics for everyone. And everyone can be an Olympian. And so, there was a, think of it as a coin, really, there were two sides of this coin. So, one about everyone's Olympic. And this is everyone's Olympics. And that was the strategy in a nutshell. In the end, the theme of it for us was let's defy convention, because that's what London has been about for so many years. So, you had those three sorts of concepts coming together. We then started to explore creatively how that could be exemplified, which is no small feat. When you think about it, this thing was launched in 2007. But it wasn't actually going to be delivered in 2012. So, there was a certain amount of crystal ball kind of gazing going on here in terms of if we throw this ball into 2012, what do we think the world is going to look like then? And we drew on London as a city, London, it's a, it's a beautiful mess, you know. So, it's an interesting city that has evolved over, all of these years. And so, it's not neatly planned, and it doesn't run in a straight line. It's very quirky in its tone. It's been the birthplace of all sorts of interesting cultural kind of revolutions, whether it's music or fashion. And so that was also kind of part of the brief. So, you know, how do you make this thing futuristic, but not cliched? How do you exemplify some of the really kind of interesting roar aspects of the city? As if you're trying to present that visually to people who haven't, don't know, that haven't been exposed to that before. In this particular instance, we did a lot of exploratory work in that locked room. We asked a lot of the hard questions that any client would before anything escaped the room to be presented. And we had a really strong rationale in each instance. And then we were very confident about what we were presenting, knowing like, can you imagine if we didn't have that confidence with all of those committees that I just mentioned earlier? So, you've got to get through your local committee, you've got to go through the International Committee. They, and all of these people have a huge job on their hands organizing this thing, and they've got, you know, convention that they want to fall back on and all these other things. So, it's not helpful to be giving them lots and lots of different options. At that stage, you want a very clear strategic line, you want a really clear narrative. You want to have done your homework around how this thing is going to express itself beyond the visual, you know, how are people going to participate? How are sponsors going to be involved in this and you want to be able to exemplify that individual expression. And that's what we did. So, if you think about the final expression, you can use that as a sponsor and become integrated with the logo for example, and that was part of the story and the sell for how it was created.
Blake Howard
20:47
Okay, time for a quick break. When we come back, we'll hear more about Lord Sebco and his role as the anchor in the relay race of approvals. All that more after the break.
Tracy Clark
21:03
Hey, listeners, we have some exciting news here at a change a brand HQ. Blake, our fearless podcast host and dad joke expert has written a book. What? Yes, it's totally true. It covers a range of brand identity topics and solutions to help CMOs and other brand leaders uncover a more radically relevant brand. In fact, that's the name Radically Relevant. And since we all love to take quizzes, it comes with an assessment to so you can see how your brand stacks up against the competition. The book officially launches this fall, but you can take the Radically Relevant assessment today for free and buy the book on presale, just go to www.radicallyrelevantbrand.com. We'll also link it in today's show notes. Last but not least, don't forget to join the conversation on Instagram. See more about today's episode, share with a friend or send us an idea you have for a future episode at a change of brand.
Blake Howard
22:03
All right, let's do a quick recap here. Wolff Olins got clear on the strategic foundations for the London 2012 games. They set the tone as one to defy convention, then they started to design off of that tightly defined framework. The creative process details and big presentation moments are a bit foggy, and perhaps lost to history. But Sairah remembers clearly that Lord Sebco, the chair for the London Games committee joined their side and pushed for their efforts to go big.
Sairah Ashman
22:34
He was a big driving force the whole way through. So, he was there in all of the dramatic moments. And once he was on our side with the with the visual expression, and the logo, he then went to bat for it. And with all of the stakeholders that were involved, there was obviously an awful lot of questions back and forth about how to make it work, whether it was the right thing, you know, right, tonally, but also right as to whether we could break some of the conventions that had been there before and why we should be able to, you know, the he was in the trenches with everybody else in that regard.
Blake Howard
23:13
There had to have been some concerns with how unconventional it was, was it pretty difficult to continue to make the case at sort of all these levels and, and then eventually get it officially approved?
Sairah Ashman
23:26
I think, and this was no exception, I think there are some key ingredients that help you get to this kind of outcome. The first is that you've got a tight leadership team, who believes in what you're trying to create and achieve overall. So, if we didn't have sponsorship on our side to do what we were doing, obviously, we wouldn't have got very far at all. So, we had that in place. And that's great. Also, there was a stakeholder sort of management job happening in parallel with the actual work of designing or developing the strategy going on. So, it wasn't as if we were ever going to be in a position where we just cold entered a room and said, I'll tell you what, let's take you through a few ideas here of how we could do this in a different way. We all agreed that level of change that we haven't seen before is going to need to take place. So, you go through that process and it takes a long time. So, you start that from the outset and then you are prepared to answer questions along the way. So, we already had the kind of as I said the kind of robust roots of this thing if that makes sense. But then you have to answer considerations that come up along the way for the IOC. You know, if we do this in a different way does that open the door for the people to do it differently, is that a good thing or a bad thing? How would we react to that? So, the different constituents within the mix, were going to have to ask themselves different questions. And therefore, we were going to have to answer those questions. Either through the work we were doing, or the sponsorship of the work was going to have to have closed quarter conversations about why they should be moved and make an exception of some kind.
Blake Howard
25:26
Okay, so we don't know the exact presentation or moment that the logo was officially sold. But we do know that the IOC and the LOC in the OMG somehow agreed and Wolff Olins got to work finishing the race.
Sairah Ashman
25:41
In order to make sure that the work was fit for purpose in the first place, we had to obviously apply it to quite a lot of, a whole variety of things, all the things that you would expect that you see in the Olympics, you know, every time the Summer Olympics come around, but also some new things. So, we came up with some experience ideas of how it might live in playgrounds, for example, or ideas about how it could be integrated into different aspects of city life and different sports communities on down and countries have all those kinds of things. Also, in sponsorship situations, because I've talked about already, I think, how important it was that the investment came in, and that it worked for sponsors. So, our start point was always very optimistic in terms of let's create something that everybody wants to use, and therefore everyone's going to want to make it work in some way. And then if it's not working for them, let's figure out how we retain the spirit of what we're doing. There's a whole ecosystem of partners that get involved in this as well. So, we always knew that we were the sort of point of the spear, if you like, we were at the very beginning of it, the genesis of creating this thing, but we're never going to be the people who are delivering everything. And so, a big part of our work was also to create the tools and materials to help other people really springboard off the original work. And it does take an absolute army of people, you know, think about the opening ceremony by Danny Boyle. And you think about all of the implementation of it, we didn't get involved in an awful lot of that work, but you can see the spirit of it all the way through. So, I think we did a good job of transmitting that spirit so that it was easy to interpret, then pick up and then and then make work, or I hope that was the case anyway.
Blake Howard
27:24
In 2007, the work debuted, what were the preparations like to get ready for that public announcement of the London 2012 visual identity?
Sairah Ashman
27:36
It was exciting and a little daunting. The launch was being managed by the client, as it were not by Wolff Olins. Although we've done the work, it wasn't our thing. At the end of the day, we were commissioned by them, and they were going to be doing the launching of it. And they had very particular ideas about how they were going to do that as well. And so, we then created the materials with the narrative and everything that went with it. It turned out that the launch in the end seemed to focus on the logo more than anything else, which I think is a shame and also part of what sparked some of the controversy because it meant everybody just sort of commented on the logo as opposed to on the brand on the entire piece and the possibilities of that that that kind of got overshadowed, I think by the shock of the new. Quite frankly, I think when the logo got unveiled, everyone just sort of went whoa, where's the Union Jack, I can't see, you know, Big Ben or any of these other sort of emblematic things that perhaps people were expecting.
Blake Howard
28:47
Who knows what people were expecting, but they sure weren't expecting what they saw in June of 2007. Almost before the internet knew what branding really was, it exploded, and of course, the reactions started pouring in. Dozens of blogs, headlines, etc. were all commenting on the logo. It was discussed from water coolers and dining rooms across the globe. Some suspected the logo was the source of a conspiracy with the jagged 2012 letters, actually spelling Zion and embedding a pro-Israeli message. Others suggested perverted references of Marge or Lisa Simpson. Others just said mean things that I won't really repeat here. In fact, the blowback mounted and peaked with a petition to change the logo just a few days later, and it actually received 50,000 signatures. Luckily, the effort was in vain. However, it did foreshadow what was to come for the Tokyo 2020 games when the original logo was scrapped in 2015 following accusations of plagiarism. As blowback melted Sara in the Wolff Olins team had to coach Lord Sebco and the respective committees to remember their training and stay the course.
Sairah Ashman
30:19
It would have been easy I guess for less confident clients or teams to go have we, we made a mistake here. But I go back to the start, really, and that the foundation for this thing was just unshakable. And it was built on a really solid understanding of what this, the Olympics, was setting out to achieve. And that, that made it easier to stand by the work knowing that the nation just hadn't seen the full story. This is just the beginning, you know, and by the way, you know, if everyone had loved the logo component of the brand when it was launched, then I don't think anyone would have been happy with that. I don't think the client would have been happy with that, that wasn't the brief, you know, we set out to help create. Something really quite different that represented London, which is quite an unusual, quirky city in the world. So, if we'd had something that was very expected, and dare I say, like, dull as a result, I think we all would have just thought, you know, I'm in the wrong job. And we weren't being controversial for the sake of it, we knew there'd be, it would create some controversy, because it was like nothing that had been, that we've seen before. And that was the intent. I think there was a kind of a sustained level of it, the velocity of it was kind of breathtaking, you know, and I don't think any of us were quite, , quite prepared for that. I remember the day of the launch, again, we all got together, like a big family to see the launch. And we were so pleased to have our escapees out of the room that they've been locked in for so long, so that we could talk about this thing freely again. And Head of Marketing at the time and said, oh, yeah, we've updated the website, just in case we get a few hits today, you know, probably going to be a big news day of one sort of another. Anyway, our website had crashed within like 20 minutes of that thing just blew up in a way that no one had quite expected. It was very polarizing, super polarizing. I was working with clients in two different hemispheres at the time. I remember one of them called me and said, oh, my God, what's happening over there? Are you guys going to get fired, and the other client said, Oh, my God, this is the most exciting thing I think I've ever seen. We just need to keep working together forever. So, you know, it had an impact in a way that was quite unexpected, but also kind of started to self-select, I suppose for a while.
Blake Howard
32:45
Alright, let's talk about some takeaways from this story. I think the Wolff Olins approach of blending strategy and design is dead on for a project of this magnitude. Of course, the expressive nature of the London 2012 brand turned out like it did because the strategy demanded it to be, so they set out to create something that was decidedly different and the metric for success was felt in the controversy itself. You know what doesn't make headlines, boring, generic safe design decisions. Additionally, and we blew past this pretty quickly at the beginning. But I love that they created one identity for both the Olympics and the Paralympics. Having two separate identities suggests separation and this suggested inclusion. Overall, they had two things going for them one heck of a slide deck to pitch and sell this identity to all of the committees. I can envision loads of setup slides analyzing the expected tactics of 100 years plus of Olympic visual identity trends, and then boom, the wild, crazy 2012 angular abstraction, as well as the full story of what it represented in its entirety. And it would be hard to disagree with that. Secondly, they had a knight in shining armor, Lord Sebastian Coe, I guess technically not a knight, but maybe, it sounds good. Regardless, having a client champion that is willing to battle it out for the work is everything. It is the difference maker of work that is historic, or work that is forgotten. Lastly, I'm impressed with Wolff Olins, courage and commitment to the assignment. They didn't shy away with safe design solutions, and they were deeply committed and carried the weight of that responsibility.
Sairah Ashman
34:35
The sense of responsibility to get it right was really high. And you know, we felt it as a company, and the team really felt it. So, if you didn't show up and dial it in at all, there was never going to be a moment where you could relax, focus, you know, right up until it being delivered really felt like you were 110%. Every day you wanted to do your best job. You, we always want to do our best job, but you just absolutely wanted to make sure that you had left no stone unturned. And you've done the nation proud. And that's just a next level of responsibility in the in the work.
Blake Howard
35:15
With so much visibility into the branding of each Olympic Games, I was curious if Sarah had some sneaky or snarky opinions about the work that has followed in their footsteps of the 2012 effort.
Sairah Ashman
35:28
I love I love watching the Olympics, summer and winter. So, you know, I find it hugely enjoyable seeing what comes around each season that they're on. We’ll never, those of us who were kind of here when we were working on the Olympics, Wolff Olins will never forget quite how difficult it is. And so, there's a lot of respect for anyone who takes, you know, picks up that brief and does something with it. So, you don't you won't hear us kind of criticizing in a big way. All of the kinds of body of work that's done, we know exactly what's involved there.
Blake Howard
36:00
A big question for you is, would you consider leading another Olympic identity project?
Sairah Ashman
36:07
Oh, 100% Yeah, we're down for it. So yeah, if there's anyone out there who's got another job like that, then you know where we are, we'd love to.
Blake Howard
36:17
If anyone's listening and you get a project, we get like a referral recognition or something. If they hear they're like, you know, what we should get Wolff Olins is to do our Olympic identifier like they did for the 2012.
Okay, that is a wrap. Thank you for listening and special thanks to Sairah Ashman and Wolff Olins for giving us the inside look into this historic change of brand. To see more visuals from today's episode, head on over to a change of brand.com. And if you liked today's show, share it with a friend or leave us a review on Apple podcasts.
Today's episode was edited by Gabe Kitzman, fact checked by Jill Jefferies, written in part by Pamela Hinman, and produced by Patrice fielder. Special thanks to Tracy Clark for the brief-in and Rachel Jackson for today's artwork. I'm your host, Blake Howard, signing off