Embracing Marketing Mistakes

How to Redefine Advertising with AR Technology - Jed Hallam

• Prohibition PR • Season 2 • Episode 5

Share episode

Send Us Your Feedback!

How can brands leverage cutting-edge technology and creativity to connect with their audiences? Join us as we sit down with Jed Hallam, the former Global Head of Strategy Arcadia at Snap, for a captivating discussion on his career and his innovative work at Snapchat. Jed's journey from agency life to the tech world is filled with invaluable insights and lessons in brand marketing and strategic planning. Hear first-hand about his passion for culture, community, and creativity, and how these elements have shaped his approach to redefining advertising strategies at Snapchat.

Jed shares an intriguing story of a bold collaboration with Coca-Cola, transforming their vending machines into interactive AR experiences. Discover the revolutionary potential of repurposing existing technologies to create ground-breaking applications. We also dive into Snapchat's unique appeal to Gen Z and its distinct approach to user engagement, which stands apart from other social media platforms with its emphasis on private interactions over publicly visible content. Jed provides a detailed analysis of how Snapchat has maintained strong user retention and continued growth, offering great insights into the future of social media marketing.

The episode concludes with a deep dive into the future of Augmented Reality (AR) and the inception of CultureLab, a venture aimed at helping brands engage with audiences through cultural connections. Learn about the challenges and opportunities AR presents to smaller companies and the importance of integrating cultural insights into brand strategies. Jed's vision for Culture Lab is an exciting look at the future of marketing, making this episode a must-listen for professionals eager to stay ahead in the ever-changing digital landscape.

Follow Jed:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jedhallam/edit/forms/next-action/after-connect-update-profile/
X: https://x.com/jedhallam

Curious if your social media and content strategy is ready to crush it in 2025? Let’s find out together! Book a free 15-min brand discovery call with Chris to get tailored insights that can skyrocket your brand’s growth. Ready to take the leap?

👉 [Book your call with Chris now] 👈


Follow Chris Norton:
X
TikTok
LinkedIn

Follow Will Ockenden:
LinkedIn

Follow The Show:
X
TikTok
YouTube

Chris Norton:

Will and I are joined by the very, very entertaining Jed Hallam, who is the Global Head of Strategy Arcadia at Snap, eg Snapchat. But he has an exclusive for us today that he's going to reveal in the show. Jed is obsessed with culture, community, common people and creativity. He's also the co-founder of Common People, which he covers, and he's the co-founder of Love Will Save the Day FM. He's a keen runner, a reader, a writer and a self-professed culture obsessive.

Chris Norton:

Prior to working for Snapchat, he was CSO at Initiative, helping rebuild the agency, before being head of strategy at Mindshare, and before that, he was the planner at VCCP, digitizing its entire planning department. And, to top it all off, I actually gave Jed his first job in marketing after he threatened me and the team to hire him as part of a role, so I'll leave that till later in the show. I know you're going to enjoy this episode because Jed shares a brilliant up from me and him back in the day. So, as always, sit back, relax and let's hear how you can improve your brand marketing without having to spend hours and hours learning from your own mistakes. This week, we have a good friend of mine. He is the global head of strategy for Arcadia Snap, aka Snapchat, or was Hi Jed? Welcome to the show.

Jed Hallam:

Hi Chris, Thanks for having me. How enigmatic, what an introduction.

Will Ockenden:

Yeah exactly We've really hooked the audience in now.

Chris Norton:

So Jed, why don't you tell us about what you were doing for Snapchat and what you've been doing while you've been there, and just give us a bit of a lowdown on what it's all about at Snapchat at the moment?

Jed Hallam:

Yeah. So I went to work at snapchat. So, chris, obviously you and I met about a thousand years ago when there was dinosaurs roaming the earth, and since then um spent a bunch of time at creative agencies, media agencies, in various different strategy roles and ended up. I walked into the agency at one time and I I looked around, I was 34, I think I was, I know I like looked around the agency and I genuinely felt like I was the oldest person in the world and I just there was nobody around me bar my boss at that time. He was like the uk uh, ceo of ipg. There was nobody around me that was like older and I just kind of thought maybe this is, maybe this is. I'm ready for the glue, I'm ready for the glue factory right where do I go from here?

Jed Hallam:

like, what do I end up doing?

Jed Hallam:

I was a planner and still I'm a planner, and, um, it was just I didn't really know where I was supposed to go, and so I, um, I started having conversations with people that weren't agencies.

Jed Hallam:

Uh, I had a bit of stockholm syndrome, thinking that being a planner meant you could only ever work in an agency, and I thought that's some kind of you know, strategist planner, that's, that's where you belong, and, um, so I started having conversations about with a few different places, about where where could be interesting. And snapchat came up and I'm quite I mean, chris, you'll remember this from when we, when we spent a lot of time together, I've got opinions and lots of lots and lots of opinions, um, and some of them I hold quite strongly about certain technology companies, and so there was only really a few that I was thinking about talking to yeah um, and I'd heard from a couple of friends that, like going to a tech tech platform was an interesting experience and there was loads of different types of stuff you'd get to work on and, like as a planner, all you really sort of like want to do is basically fix problems in new ways, old problems fixed in new ways.

Jed Hallam:

It's kind of it really. So this guy from snapchat called up and basically said I've got a favor to ask you, um, we've got this role. It's a bit nebulous. It's called, uh like, emir, head of comms planning. And, um, we're not. I know that we need this person, this type of skill in the business, but we'd like that's about as much as we've got. You know anyone that'd be interested. I was like, is there a job spec? And he was like no, and I was like this sounds insane, like you're gonna have to get a very specific person though, because there's no.

Jed Hallam:

Yeah, I was like yeah, I know one person that would be really interested in this only one person. Um, you're talking to him. So I went. I went to meet a bunch of different people. I did this sort of very typical tech company thing of like interviewing by. I could be interviewed by about 900 different people and, um, it was just really interesting. There was just loads of going on and, like, there was loads of interesting stuff where, like, there was all problems that no one had been able to fix, and snapchat is renowned for being, like one of the world's most creative companies. It's the company where, like they invent the, everybody else then goes off and copies. It still happens today. Like it's um, it's it's kind of amazing that they don't get more frustrated about to be honest with you and um. And so I was like, well, it's a great environment to go and work in, and if these people can't fix some of these problems and I can then that's like a great, that's a challenge, it's a good challenge. So I end up going in.

Jed Hallam:

Yeah, I ended up joining six months later after what I thought was going to be a really dreamy six months of gardening leave, but was so boring it's insanely boring to just sit around doing nothing.

Jed Hallam:

I didn't end up sitting around doing nothing, but, yeah, just really really boring. So I went in and helped around product placement advertised, like repositioning the ad, like the brand for advertisers, starting to think about like how we put together sales packages. I just basically wandered around trying to make myself useful, cause I think on on some of the conversations that we were having beforehand, like what are the mistakes that you've made when it comes to jobs? And I'm like to your point, chris, I'm not like a job spec person which a lot of people would see as a pretty drastic mistake of not getting clarity on what you're expected to do in order to measure your success in the role that you're doing. But I've always kind of believed that if you just wander around just asking, if like just asking questions and trying to fix things, that eventually you you know you might fix some stuff and that's useful and valuable.

Chris Norton:

I actually still tell the story of how I recruited you many, many well, you recruited me essentially years and years and years ago. I still tell that story to execs now about how you got my attention out of all the cvs we used to get. Do you actually remember what it was?

Jed Hallam:

I do, I do, and I think I've only just stopped cringing you said you.

Chris Norton:

you basically was in the very early days of and Will's probably heard this story. Have I told you this story before, will or not? I don't think so. No. So basically, jed, we were agency of the year, we were winning loads of awards, where I was working previously, where me and Jed met, but basically Jed sent an email through to our recruiter alias or whatever saying I would like to work here, and nothing happened.

Chris Norton:

So then what he did was he went out on Twitter very early days. We were like some of the first people on Twitter, and then he went and connected to everybody who was key, so in, in in the PR sphere. It was like all. It was like Stephen Waddington and all the big hitters, wasn't it? You went out to various people and connected to them all and built a community. I can't remember if it was on Facebook and it was called 10 Reasons why X insert agency name Should Hire Jed Hallam for this Position, and it was like one, two, three and it was to Chris Norton. It was the 10 reasons, and he got all these big hitters in this community so he demonstrated he could build a community online. And then it was like ten reasons. I can't remember nine of them, but the final one was and ten is because if he doesn't hire me, I'm going to hire a fucking barbershop quartet to sing these nine to him. In the office and I was like we've got to get this guy in the art.

Chris Norton:

We didn't even have a job. I was like we've got to get this guy in. So that's how me and Jeb met, and there you go. No job spec Classic.

Jed Hallam:

I had actually found a barbershop quartet in Leeds as well that I was like I was legit having conversations with. I was like this is I think it was like my last 80 quid is going on this. I'm going to live to my word on this.

Chris Norton:

I mean brilliantly creative, so okay. So what happened next? Back to Snapchat.

Jed Hallam:

So just to add one point of context as well, so people don't think I'm some sort of tragic character. I graduated in 2007,. So I was coming into the job market in 2008, which, as many of you will remember, was not a particularly cheery time for getting a job as a grad. No, and it was like something ridiculous, like a thousand applications for every single job. So, yeah, I went to Snapchat on this no job spec job, had like a really, really good six months of just like wandering around, like metaphorically wandering around because this was in lockdown, just basically going, hey, have you looked at this Like this sort of like philosophical, like, have you looked at this Like this sort of like philosophical, like the sort of metaphorical equivalent of like a broken vending machine, and going, oh, that's that doesn't look very good. Should we see if we can fix that? I was just wondering around whether it was like the world cup sales strategy or whether it was like the global brand positioning for snap. Just trying to be helpful. Yeah.

Jed Hallam:

And, um, six months in, I got a, an email from my boss's boss's boss to say I'd like to have a chat with you. And I was like, oh, I knew this was coming at some point. I knew this was gonna happen. I've been rumbled it's only taken 16 years, but I've been bloody rumbled and um, so I went and sat down with this incredible woman called Jeremy Gorman, who was the chief business officer at Snap at the time, and she basically said look, you're doing a great job. I'd like to bring you into a different type of role. And I was like, okay, and she proceeded to then give me another non-job spec job, which was come in and help set up Arcadia, which was the sort of google labs equivalent of snapchat.

Jed Hallam:

It was entirely focused on creating, working with partners, brands to create ar experiences, that sort of revolutionize how their business worked. Um, that was the sort of premise it was set up by. The original idea came from evan and bobby, who were still like super, super involved in the running of the company and they thought that this was a. Arcadia was, uh, like a sort of great idea at leading the way, like I think the line that I came up with in the meeting. Uh, that kind of stuck was like if snapchat is the, the rocket ship that's powering ar, then arcadia is the nose cone, like it's the thing that's right at the front doing all of the sort of like really cutting edge stuff, um, and that line kind of stuck. So, yeah, then I spent two years there really, um, working on different projects, working with people like coke, uh, with disney, uh, who else we work with, like l'oreal, nike, uh, orange, like a bunch of different advertisers, uh, like, just what kind of things were you doing?

Chris Norton:

obviously they're all big blue chip consumer brands. Everybody's heard of them. What were you, what sort of stuff were you doing with them, like making augmented reality lenses, things like that?

Jed Hallam:

yeah. So it's less lenses and more like how can? Because because ar is one of those things like it's like spatial computing, right. So if you think about, like every technology goes through this similar sort of cycle where it gets introduced, it feels like a bit of a novelty and and then everyone kind of stops paying attention and while no one's paying attention, there's a bunch of people that are working on it to try and figure out what's actually useful for. So the phone went through this where people were like well, no one's got a fucking phone, who am I going to phone? Like when the phone first got, like who are you?

Jed Hallam:

phoning. No one else has got a bloody phone, so who are you phoning?

Chris Norton:

That one in doubt.

Jed Hallam:

And then but yeah, but who are they phoning Like?

Jed Hallam:

no one else has got a bloody phone. And then, slowly but surely, people go like you know, it's a novelty to call someone up and hear someone's voice down the phone. Same with the newspaper, same with the printing press, same with like. Same with it, like the internet, like this shit. When it first gets announced and gets launched, people go, well, that's just a joke. And then, slowly but surely you can see this happening now with metaverse, you can see it happening with vr, you can see it happening with ai to a degree as well like stuff gets launched, people get really, really excited about transforming the world. Then it looks like it's just a bit novelty and then everyone, everyone disappears onto the next big thing. But when they disappear onto the next big thing, all of the work starts to actually happen to make this stuff useful. And that's what we were doing at Arcadia.

Jed Hallam:

So the work with Coca-Cola that we were doing I remember being in a meeting with the global CMO of Coke and towards the end we were pitching some ideas around Coke Studio and it was really interesting stuff. And towards the end of the meeting we were doing that sort of like wrapping up the meeting in person, where everyone's kind of like emptying the last dregs of coffee and putting their laptop away and the global cmo coke comes over and he's like I've always thought that we could do something really interesting with the vending machines that we've got. And I was like, oh yeah, that's like kind of being a bit like oh yeah, yeah, the vending machine is really exciting. And then he said to me we've got 72 million of them that we own. They're all Wi-Fi connected and smart so you can put things in them.

Jed Hallam:

Like you can track inventory and you can like they're all Wi-Fi connected so you can keep them connected to the Internet and the penny sort of drops that we could do. Rash, my boss and me were like both staring at each other just having exactly the same thought, which is like that's like a massive new media network for Coke that if you could do something interesting with could create. Like vending machines are absolutely everywhere. There's 72 million of them. There's literally a vending machine I reckon you probably come into contact. Well, we did the research. You come into contact with 12 vending machines a day on average, but you probably pay attention to none of them. So there's all like there's this massive sort of network and, um, so we took it away and started to kind of like think about what you could do with the vending machine and and technology.

Jed Hallam:

And we bought a vending machine so like, well, let's play around with it. And we then rebuilt, we built a prototype vending machine that was like the entire front screen. Uh, the entire front of the vending machine was a screen and we put a camera in it and then we changed all the software in the back, we changed the form factor for the vending machine and we turned it into effectively a giant AR experience where you could like it was all hands free you could vendor Coke, but you could also you could play games you could try on, like exclusive coke merch and stuff like that, with the idea being that what would happen then is slowly, over the course of the next few years, coke would roll these out around the world, so you'd have, like every coke vending machine would be a hands-free, interactive, immersive experience, um, so that it's that sort of stuff like it's the slightly sideways briefs I can see, can see massive companies working with you guys to deliver really kind of cool, exciting activations and things.

Will Ockenden:

From a kind of consumer perspective, how many people are actually on Snapchat? Because for me it's one of those platforms. A few years ago everybody was talking about it and we often have conversations with our clients, particularly in kind of higher education, so very much that kind that Gen Z audience, and they say, look, we know people are on it, but we just don't know really how to get into it. So, from a consumer perspective, how many people are actually on it and actively using it in the UK and globally?

Jed Hallam:

Oh God. So because the bit of the business that I worked in was focused purely on innovation, it's been a while since I've seen the stats. I don't think I can give you like accurate absolute numbers and it also grows at ridiculous rates.

Will Ockenden:

I suppose I mean we don't need specifics, I'm just. I'm just curious, you know. So in a high street in shoreditch you've got a coke vending machine. How many people are going to walk past it with snapchat on their phone and actually use?

Jed Hallam:

it, I suppose yeah and here's here is hopefully a good answer. What we were doing was not stuff that was just purely for snapchat. It was stuff that you could experience, anybody could experience.

Jed Hallam:

So I kind of are sort of like objective really was like bring ar out into the world, not bring people into snapchat right, okay and so everything that we built, really like, we built a bunch of experiences, for there's a l'oreal gen z brand called nix which is like they're sort of like marquee uh, gen z brand, and we built a like, effectively like a digital assistant that was beauty focused and so it would. Every day it would learn more about you and your like. Your like your preferences for different beauty trends. It would surface different ideas for things for you to try. It would let you try on things and the original idea with that and the sort of like the, the sort of north star on it, was how do we bring this into the vanity mirrors in the next stores, rather than how do we get more people using snapchat?

Jed Hallam:

because there's a bunch of people that are like super, super experienced and highly skilled and talented at like bringing people into snapchat. Snapchat still grows faster in almost all markets than tiktok and has done since day dot, like it is a massive, massive sleeping giant, um, but far out dwarfs uh.

Chris Norton:

Twitter and tiktok anything out dwarfs twitter right now, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it was our choice at one time, because Snapchat is predominantly Gen Z, like Will said there. It says 18 to 24-year-olds, but it's 13 to 24-year-olds, would you say. Has the demographic changed? Is it shifting to older people on Snapchat as well, using it? Because I think what Will was getting at is we're noticing that not the big companies use it, like you're talking about the innovations, but for small businesses. We don't see tons of small businesses using Snapchat to do social media marketing, if you know what I mean.

Will Ockenden:

No, they default to TikTok every time wouldn't they?

Chris Norton:

Yeah, they default to TikTok or Instagram. Do you know what I mean?

Jed Hallam:

I think there's a few things it's probably important to point out. So it's aged up quite considerably. So, like the people that joined snap uh, that, like when it first launched 12 years ago largely stayed with it. You know, there's some dips in usage, I'm sure, but in in general, like it's aged up and brought more people in.

Jed Hallam:

I think there's a sort of pretty fundamental difference between snapchat and a lot of the other like social media apps, in the sense that snapchat was born out of a desire, like bobby and evan so I think evan's like three years younger than me, something like that like when they were coming through college and university, like a lot of the major social platforms were around and if you went to a party and you did something stupid, it was captured and it was, you know, everybody could see it and comment on it and like share it and it was everything, was everything, felt like it was on show yeah and the reason, the reason for opening, for creating snapchat in the very, very beginning was they wanted to try and find some way that would replicate the ephemerality of a conversation.

Jed Hallam:

So when you and I used to have a chat in the office, chris, if some of those things would have been recorded, we would be deeply embarrassed about them, whether they were like nerdy conversations or whether they were stupid conversations, yeah, but like the beauty of friendship and the beauty of community is that, like, not everything is left to be able to be pulled over again at some point in the future.

Jed Hallam:

Like I think the the sort of living your life constantly in public is terrifying. And then, when you start to get into the world of feeds, of competitive liking, of comments, like we can see what's happening in society. People are turning away from the places that have feeds, places that have likes and comments, because it's damaging. Like these, these, these sorts of functions are the equivalent of like being in the casino, like they're bright lights. They're they're they're built to trigger, like a dopamine response. It's the same as addiction. It's the same as cocaine. It's the same as gambling. It's the same as sex. It's the same as booze that they are built to keep you staring at them and not paying attention to what time it is, what time of day it is.

Jed Hallam:

I'm sure we've all done it, but you've also seen people. I, I am, I got into running a few years ago, so spend a lot of time like trying not to fall over. And when you're out running, you see people walking towards you and they are so locked into their phone that even as you get closer and closer to them, no headphones on, just staring into their phone, even with a sort of like a physical presence, they're still staring at the phone and it's not until you're past them, 25, 30, 40 meters down the road, that they turn around and they've noticed something, because they're just locked into this sort of this death stare effectively. And um, snapchat doesn't have a lot of those features. It was built to try and counter a lot of those things.

Jed Hallam:

So there are stats and this, this is, this is global, so they're market by market. There are stats that show that, in comparison to other platforms I think it's 94 was the last stat that I saw, but 94 of snapchat, I say they feel happy when they're using the service versus, uh, angry or anxious or depressed or sad. And um, the stats for I'm not naming them by name because that would be very unprofessional, but the stats for the other platforms are in the single digits- yeah because people don't want to feel like they've wasted 45 minutes staring into 60 different videos of somebody I don't know.

Will Ockenden:

Whatever it is like the shit's, like mcdonald's for your brain what I found interesting was you talked about the ephemerality of Snapchat, so before Instagram Stories launched, which is obviously the you know, 24-hour ephemeral content feature.

Chris Norton:

Copycat of Snapchat.

Will Ockenden:

But Gen Z users were actually deleting their feed posts, weren't they? And they were actually going back and delete, so they were manually creating an ephemeral feed and I find that fascinating that obviously snapchat started that and there's obviously a demand for that jen.

Chris Norton:

So, before we forget, right, the whole point of this show is about everybody listening to the show. They're in marketing right, with some senior marketers, some people starting out, and the point of the show is marketing fuck-ups and failures, things that that you've learned from, things that you've done wrong, that A are quite funny and B that you've learned from, and I know a couple of things from you which I'm not even sure we can broadcast some of them.

Chris Norton:

So I just wondered if you've got anything you can share with our listeners. That would make for a good mistake that you can share.

Jed Hallam:

I have got fucking loads of these, as you very well know, and I mean you can share. I have got fucking loads of these, as you very well know, and um, I mean I made the joke years ago that I think my life is just is kind of like best described as like a collection of mistakes, just connected by apologies from one to the other of some stupid stuff that I've done. My favorite one, and the one that I talk about all the time, was that when I was at working with you and um, I got given my first pitch and I was so excited and I was like, oh my god, this is like big time because when I when I joined like the agency, I was like right, you made it.

Jed Hallam:

This is the best job you're ever going to have in your entire life, don't fuck it up. And so I put a lot of pressure on myself not to get fired, uh, and fortunately I mean, I don't know if it's a reflection on you or me, but I didn't get fired in that time that I was working.

Chris Norton:

No, you were good. Do you remember the giant shoe?

Jed Hallam:

I mentioned that giant shoe reference on such a regular basis and also, interestingly, your with the place that I went to work post. I was working together. Uh, there was also a very creative, like lead who at one point mentioned doing a giant shoe, and I honestly swear to god. I asked him if you'd spoken to you and he was like what I feel like um, I feel like you owe us an explanation for the giant shoe jared.

Chris Norton:

Um, you can't leave that one dangling well, that's not his mistake, but that's probably my mistake. We were basically in a brainstorm and we were coming up with a campaign. It was the days of um it was not a brainstorm, it was every brainstorm, yeah, and we used to do it as a joke.

Chris Norton:

So we'd get into a brainstorm and then, if we couldn't come up with because we were doing cutting edge social media when it was when social media was brand new 2008 is what you're talking about credit crunch but we were doing like campaigns with what can we do to launch, and I can't remember which uh trainer brand it was, and and we were like, oh, we could do this cutting edge parkour, um, the world champion diving off a building, rolling video cut cut out to a you know whatever. And then it was like, oh, we could just create a giant shoe and float it down the tens and it was always the idea that we used in every brainstorm to make everyone laugh and move on.

Will Ockenden:

And ironically that would have probably worked better than a cutting-edge social idea half the time A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

Jed Hallam:

And I remember I can't remember who it was but a few years later somebody did it Because it happens on a regular basis now, and I think Lush did it a few years ago where they rolled a tank through like Oxford Street and it's like it's just the giant fucking shit it's become such a go-to for me where I'm like it's just a giant shit, that's all it is. No one else gets the reference, yeah, so um, and it was K-Swiss was the client oh right yeah, k-swiss, yeah, yeah.

Jed Hallam:

And the guy, the guy who was the K-Swiss ambassador at the time for them, the guy the parkour guy then went on to be, uh, one of the actors in one of the James Bond films. You know the scene where he jumps from one crane to another. Oh yeah, same dude.

Chris Norton:

Wow, I didn't know that.

Jed Hallam:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, again another moment where I sat there I was going it's just Giant Shoe, Dude the Giant.

Chris Norton:

Shoe. It was not the.

Jed Hallam:

Giant. Shoe Dude, they don't get that. Yes, sorry sorry.

Jed Hallam:

So I oh God, I would have been like 22, 23, like proper whippersnapper, had been bugging the founders of the agency and you for ages about leading a pitch and was super excited about it. Put loads of work in, like intentionally, like burning the candle at every bloody act, Like there was just a puddle of wax on the floor by the end of it. Very, very excited. It was for Discovery Channel. It was like a big marquee, like holy shit, this could be amazing, like game changer for like the work and for the agency and there's loads of money and like this will be front page of like pr week. So like spent like three weeks putting together so much stuff. Like really like felt like proud of the work.

Jed Hallam:

Got on the train, uh, to go to because they're in chiswick. Got on the train like everything's, everything's really good, everything's going perfect, like lots of nervous energy. Get to chiswick all the team are like really hyped up, everyone's at about 30 coffees and so everyone's kind of like vibrating around and really excited. And, um, go over to the reception. I was like, oh, could you let uh claire, uh claire, know that we're here for the pitch, the social media pitch? She goes yeah, yeah, I'll just call her. She said take a seat and I'll come over shortly. She's going to sit down and we're all getting a bit excited. Everyone's like chatting, it's a bit sort of like bantery. And then I get a call from Nat, who is one of the account execs, and she said oh, discovery, have just got here to see you. And I was like, oh amazing, and I like looking around and I can't see anyone. And then the penny dropped that Nat was in Leeds and that we had asked Discovery or I had asked Discovery to come to the Leeds office for the pitch.

Will Ockenden:

That is painful yeah, and we were 300 miles away and also, you'd ask them to leave London and go to the north, which is never well received. Is it?

Jed Hallam:

I think I don't think I've ever felt so terrified. I've, like ridden through waves of layoffs, I've seen awful things happen, I've done stupid things. I don't think I've ever been so scared about losing my job in my entire life. And all the way because, obviously then, because it's not just the moment where you're like I fucked this up real bad you then have to get on the train with the founders of the company and your boss and go all the way back to leeds, knowing that the discovery client is going the opposite direction, in a sort of metaphorical, like the pitch is disappearing from your hands in literal real time.

Chris Norton:

You should have said we'll meet you in peterborough could you imagine yeah, we'll see you in grantham.

Jed Hallam:

Uh, we've found like a real nice greasy spoon in grantham up across and grantham, oh god, so I'll take it.

Will Ockenden:

You didn't get it, so that was we did so.

Jed Hallam:

We went down the week after, reorganized the meeting, went down the week after and it was one of the most fun accounts I think I've ever worked on met bear grills, met stephen hawking, like, launched like programs, but it's just so, so good. But and then, and actually ironically, one of the clients I thought he thought I was a real dick when we I mean he would be, you know, forgiven for thinking some of those things. One because it's largely true and two because of the environment in which we'd started our relationship but actually stayed in touch with him and, um, he was one of the co-founders of the radio station that we launched last year and so there's like it's just this sort of that moment was like this catastrophe but has kind of led on to a bunch of different things that have been really good and the sort of the learning that I came out of with all of that. So it's very american way of putting it. Like the thing that I learned off the back of that was like you might be the planner and you might be the strategist and you might be the one that everyone thinks is a bit fucking weird and wacky and wild.

Jed Hallam:

But if you don't get your details pat down. It's not worth shit. Like you, can be the sort of like the weirdest person in the office. You can have the biggest, best creative ideas and strategic ideas, but if you can't remember where you're supposed to be for the fucking meeting, none of it matters I saw somebody quoted the other day and there was it was it was.

Chris Norton:

You can be as creative as you want and come up with as many ideas as you can, but the power, the power of creativity, isn't in the idea, it's in the fucking execution. So if you can't execute the idea, it's in the fucking execution. So if you can't execute the idea. There's loads of people with loads of ideas, but if you can't execute the idea, are you turned up to the pitch?

Will Ockenden:

It's also about legitimizing an idea, isn't it? Because you could get someone off the street to come up with an amazing idea for Coca-Cola, but they can't walk into Coca-Cola's office and pitch it because they've got no legitimacy, have they? So it's?

Jed Hallam:

it's that kind of exactly legitimizing an idea as well.

Will Ockenden:

It's it's interesting what?

Jed Hallam:

because what's fascinating like the more planners that I met, the more creatives that I met you would often meet people and they would.

Jed Hallam:

In general, they tended to be white, middle-class dudes who would say oh yeah, I'm no good at, I'm no good at a lot of that uh, a lot of that sort of admin stuff, the logistic stuff and what it is. It's not that they're no good at it, they think it's beneath them and they think it's like it's like it's something that they shouldn't waste their time on. And what the discovery thing taught me is like you've got, you've got to look after your own fucking details, look after the seconds and the hours, look after themselves, like, don't worry about that shit. And so when I see people now they're like oh yeah, we've got an ea for that. Or like I don't really look after my own diary. I need someone to like I need a suit or a client person to take me to meetings and make sure I get there on time. I'm like you're lazy and it will come through in your work and I know, it so I'm not working with you definitely got opinions.

Will Ockenden:

So um, that was a great fuck up, by the way I enjoyed that it kind of make a snippet and a half it kind of made my blood run cold because I feel like I've been so I've been so close to doing that story so

Chris Norton:

many times I've been so close to that myself.

Will Ockenden:

I've told the giant shoe story so coming back to ar, because I found that really interesting. So, um and ar again. It's one of those things I feel like we've been talking about for ages and you occasionally see these really cool big brand activations doing cool experimental AR stuff. But is it fair to say AR is tipped, you know? Is it now a mainstream concern or is it still that kind of niche innovative thing that only the coolest of brands, edgiest of brands, are doing? What's your view on that?

Chris Norton:

There's a lot of museums using it.

Jed Hallam:

Yeah, do you know what are doing? What's your view on that? There's a lot of museums using it. Yeah, do you know what I should? I should preface every. I should have prefaced everything that I say.

Jed Hallam:

Uh, about ar and snapchat, as the the fact that I left. I left like a couple of months ago, um, and so it's all personal opinions rather than professional opinions. I think my sort of personal opinion on ar is it's like it's going to. It's like the the apple vision pro headset is a big is a big step forwards because, again, like it follows a sort of curve. It's a bit like when the watch came out and a bit like when the phone came out. To be honest with you, everyone goes like oh, it's amazing, and then there's no apps for it, and so there's a sort of moment where you're like it's amazing, I can use it as a calculator. It's like I had one of those like what's that? Psion, the palm pilot things. I had a fucking calculator on it as well. It was shit. Um, and then the apps come through and then the usage slowly trickles through and before you know, it's like integrated and embedded in the fabric of everyday life. But I think these things take time.

Jed Hallam:

I remember having a conversation with um I think it was philip sheldrake uh, this is about 10 years ago and we were talking about like what social media as a sort of like, as a as a sort of technology was doing to people's brains. And the sort of the popular narrative at the time which was definitely across all of the trade press and in a lot of pitch decks was like social media is like fundamentally changing people's attention spans. And I remember sort of like going along with this and being like, oh yeah, it's real bad, isn't it? It's always so terrible. And then philip sheldrake sat talking to me at dinner and he was like that's not how evolution works. Evolution takes place over hundreds of thousands of years. It's why we've still got little fucking fingers. We don't use little fingers. They're slowly but surely disappearing. They have no functional benefit. But it takes time for those things to change and your, your neurological makeup is exactly the same.

Jed Hallam:

And I think what sorry, that seems like a real roundabout way of saying like I think what happens is like these technologies get introduced and it takes time for people to learn what they're to be used for. You can put all the use cases in the world and you can do some like incredible things that push the boundaries of what people think is possible. But until it starts to become like my mum using it to scan a bus stop to see what time the next bus is, like with a live Like, until that sort of stuff happens, it kind of doesn't really take hold. The reason why I think the vision pro headset is a game changer is because we'll just start to see it more like when you can physically see, like an embodiment of a culture, which is the headset.

Jed Hallam:

Like it's the same as with the white earbuds and the like, the sort of the uh, the original ipod. Like when you can see something on a regular basis. It has tangibility and to your point, but like it's got legitimacy all of a sudden. And so, while it looks ridiculous now seeing people on the tube with a fucking apple vision pro headset on, looking like they're like doing some sort of cooking lesson, slowly but surely it will just become normal and then, when it's normal, they all have like, yeah, it just. It's a game changer. And the white airpods is probably one of the biggest, biggest technology innovations that I think we've ever seen, as a great example of where a physical embodiment of a technology became very, very, very quickly adopted because people could just see it. So I think that's yeah.

Chris Norton:

I've got two words for you, Jed. Google Glass.

Jed Hallam:

Yeah, do you know what Google Glass got killed by? In my mind was that dude who took a shower with it on and then posted the picture to Twitter, because nothing will kill a product faster than seeing some dude use it like waxing, lyrical about how incredible it is in his shower, like it was just the most like oh.

Chris Norton:

No one needs to see that do they what?

Jed Hallam:

what jed in the shower? I'm trying to remember. I think it was richard, uh, robert scoble. I think it was like one of those first like proper, like pioneers, visionary pioneers, but like and I don't think you would mind me saying this but like nerds, yeah like a proper boffin. Yeah, um, you can, yeah, and that's how easy I think it is to kill something like that.

Chris Norton:

AR technology feels like it is for big companies. How can small companies make the most of AR and Snapchat, for instance? If you're a small brand or a small company, how can you make use of it?

Will Ockenden:

Yeah, and should they care? Because it feels prohibitively complicated and expensive from what you've said so far, so far. So you know, mid-level marketing manager or director that's listening to this pod, should they? Should they care? Should they try and get into it?

Jed Hallam:

the sort of pitch story that we built arcadia is was unashamedly like, direct. Like if you're coming to arcadia to build something that's jazz hands and exciting, that does not have a genuine purpose in real life, then we will not work with you, and it was like one of the first, like first conversations we've had with people is like we're not a fireworks factory, but that's not what this is about, what we want to do, and my role as, like, uh, head of strat was like what is the? What are we trying to fix? So most technology is a solution, looking for a problem, like design thinking, uh, insights research is. So, again, it's a broad generalization, but those, the skills and the industries that sit behind like insight research and and like identifying actual challenges and problems is so underdeveloped. It really is like when we talk about like a universal challenge, often we're just talking about business challenge, not a consumer challenge, and if you're introducing some technology to solve a business challenge, that's probably a b2b thing rather than a b2c thing. Um, so my, my big push with these things is one there are loads and loads of different ar suppliers out there now. There's loads of little shops big, big shops and little shops that will like do it like, stack it high, sell it cheap, um, so the cost has come down. Like, do it like stack it high, sell it cheap, um, so the cost has come down massively.

Jed Hallam:

You can integrate this stuff into your website. There's like web, web ar, kits, all sorts of things like that. Now. So if you were I don't know jim toddy shoe shop in, uh, basildon, there's nothing to stop you like now going okay, well, we've got a website and that was really expensive to put together back in the day, but actually it's really cheap to put them together now. And, um, we can just put in like snap ar, snap, let's call camera kit, and we can just embed camera kit into the website and you can try the shoes on at home. So you don't need to come to jim toddy's actual physical store. You can try the shoes on at home.

Jed Hallam:

So I think there's all of that comes down to like what are you trying to use it for? Because just doing it for like the sort of split that I think people often get slightly hung up on is there are technology companies as media platforms and technology companies as technology platforms and as a media, like if you're advertising on Snapchat, it's because, or Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or wherever it's because there are people there that you'd like to see the thing that you're selling, the widget that you're selling, and that's like as straightforward as it needs to be, and some people's ability to sell a widget is better than others, based on context. But from a technology perspective, perspective and we're seeing this kind of all play out with metaverse stuff and ai stuff, ar, vr, all of that stuff now, like you, should be building technology that solves a fucking problem, not makes more yeah like.

Jed Hallam:

So if you're like, if you're a company and you've got this, all this amazing kit, you should spend, I would say, as at least half the amount of time that you've spent building the kit as trying to figure out what the fucking thing does for like, for humanity first so on.

Will Ockenden:

That then come on. Um, it's probably going to be quite hard to generalize this, but in a consumer context, what are the kind of classic use use cases or problems that they are solved? So I can see in a retail context. You know, trying on sunglasses, trying on clothes or shoes, that's really compelling, isn't it? Are there any other kind of major use cases that you're seeing in consumer markets?

Jed Hallam:

So there are a bunch of these and that's sort of like the business goal that we honed within Arcadia was like how do we demonstrate that AR can transform industries as well as consumer experiences within those industries? So there's a few. There's education is a massive one. Education like being able to map, like use spatial computing to map information and visuals onto things. So we did this project with uh Orange, where the when the Cathedral of Notre Dame burnt down a few years ago, orange was a massive investor in trying to restore the Notre Dame Cathedral. Um, and so one of the things that they spoke to us about is can you help us to to show people that like the iconic history and the importance of the history and cultural heritage of the notre dame? So we used ar to map every inch of the notre dame cathedral in its old version and then rebuilt it in front of people but showed it how it's evolved over time. So you could go to the cathedral, you could map it and whole thing and you'd you'd see like it's it's cultural significance. We also did the sort of the flip of that, which is we had we create a version that you could look at anywhere in the world and it would come up in your front room and you could walk around it and all sorts of shit like that, where my favorite by long chalk is the work that we did with live nation.

Jed Hallam:

So one of the biggest universal problems that people have at live music festivals is they're dark. There is zero mobile reception and usually I'm not saying everybody, but usually what a lot of people may do is go and over consume some substances, whatever those substances are, and you know you need to go to the bathroom or you'll go and see a different set or you'll go and see a different like artist and then you get lost. So what we built? So we were talking to live nation. We're having a conversation with them about all the different sort of challenges they face in building like a festival brand, like how do we make sure people have the best experience whatsoever?

Jed Hallam:

We were like what's one of the biggest problems people face? And we went through like a big old list but they were all quite like sort of like, not like shallow problems. In a sort of like aesthetic sense, they were just. They weren't massive problems, they were just little things. And then, as again, as we were like coming out at the end of the meeting, the global head of partnerships turned and said you know what? The one thing we've never been able to fix is helping people find their friends. And I said yeah, wouldn't it be amazing if people were getting lost in the music rather than lost in the crowd? And from that we then went and figured out how we could create a low latency edge connected experience that existed on Snapchat that would point you as like a visual compass. It would take you through a crowd of people to a foot accuracy. Wow.

Jed Hallam:

So what's that? Like a third of a meter, and it would help you find your friends in a low level environment with almost no mobile reception Amazing. And it would help you find your friends in a low-level environment with almost no mobile reception Amazing.

Will Ockenden:

I must admit, some of the festivals I've been to, even if I was within a foot of my friends, I still couldn't find them.

Chris Norton:

No, you wouldn't be able to find them. I was going to say I could have done with that at Hacienda in the late 1990s.

Will Ockenden:

So that's a really interesting application because that actually can be applied in a retail environment. It can be applied in a retail environment. It can be applied in any kind of large crowd environment, couldn't it so fascinating?

Chris Norton:

So now you've left Snapchat, that's an exclusive for the show, right?

Jed Hallam:

Yeah, so I don't know when this show airs, so it's going to be difficult to put an actual time. I suppose I could put dates on it. I left in early March.

Chris Norton:

Okay.

Jed Hallam:

And so left. Snapchat had a couple of days off. It's really funny when you leave somewhere and someone goes oh you're going to take a bit of time between jobs and you're like how much money do you think I've got? Who's out here working? Who's out here doing? Like two months of just sitting around not getting paid and paying them?

Chris Norton:

Who's got that money?

Jed Hallam:

It's called gardening leave for a reason, jed, are you gardening? I know, but yes, no, zero gardening for me, absolutely zero. I'm actually looking outside I'm in Essex at the moment and it is tipping it down as well. No gardening for me, yeah. So I left Snap at the start of March and joined a uh, a holding group, a new holding group at the beginning, like, literally two days later, um, to set up a new company called Culture Lab, and Culture Lab is a technology company which is focused on mapping, quantifying and analysing popular culture.

Chris Norton:

For what reason? On mass, what reason?

Jed Hallam:

As you and I both know and have known for a long time, like the most iconic brands, the most successful, the most powerful brands are those ones that understand culture. They're the ones that become part of it. So, whether that colin kapanik, whether that's red bull music academy, whether that's the flug tag, whatever it is like, the brands that we love and hold dear to our hearts are those that understand us on a more intrinsic level, rather than they're like oh, chris, you're in your 30s, here's like here's, here's what you should see in your 30s, and here's your like your, your salary bracket and your postcode, here's what we think you should see. Now. That's bullshit.

Jed Hallam:

Like that demographic stuff is just disgusting. I don't want to be anywhere near any of that stuff. Um, and I've seen, I've, you know, I've fucked up enough campaigns over the course of the last 15, 16 years by building them on demographics to know that it's it's. It's just like throwing up at the wall and hope something will stick. Um, and so the purpose is to help help brands understand and quantify culture and what it means to them, where the opportunities are for them, how they can do things that are, you know, more resonant and more relevant to people like. The world is literally filled with advertising and a lot of it's rubbish a lot of it is absolutely, yeah, like there was.

Jed Hallam:

Um. There's an iab research paper came out a few years ago that showed so. In the 70s, people would be exposed to 400 ads a day. 400 pieces of advertising every single day. Now would you like to take a guess at what number it was when? They did this research a few years ago. Yeah, 400 000 it's what a sandbagger. It's 12 000.

Chris Norton:

You see 12 000 advertising so you're saying that the average person sees 12 000 ads per day? Yeah, yeah and how many do you think?

Jed Hallam:

they actually comprehend and take in and like yeah so is that going up in another 10 years?

Will Ockenden:

is that going to be another four times?

Jed Hallam:

well, everything becomes a media format, right, like eventually, like if we continue in the way and I don't think we will continue how we're continuing now but like the monetization of stuff invariably means turning it into an advert. And because the stuff that we put in those like, oh, media format, the stuff that we put in those media formats tend to be really boring, non-descript, non-risky, plain ads, no one's paying attention to him. But then we have like runaway brands like lego and google and nike, disney, coca-cola, pepsi and all the rest of them that create stuff which is really interesting that people pay attention to.

Chris Norton:

So what are you going to do then? What, what, what's your plan for the year, then, with the new role? What's your day-to-day?

Will Ockenden:

my day-to-day, so we are drifting around and solving problems, I bet just going around, going, yeah, I mean basically over there trying to trying to find some problems.

Jed Hallam:

Well, look, there's a massive tech build that's got to be done. So there's a bunch of different data sources that need to be pulled in there, needs to be actual. There's a platform to be built like a sort of Salesforce for culture. Effectively, all of that stuff's got to be built. There's also a bunch of different products that we're building on the platform that have all got to be designed. There's all sorts of stuff to do, but we are, yeah, launched, uh, towards the beginning of april, and as part of that launch, we spoke to a few partners that we were excited to partner with on a sort of development level, so like people that can kind of contribute to the sort of product development but also get early access to the products themselves. Uh, and so we've been working, like, yeah, hand in hand with some of the world's biggest brands to try and figure out what's useful for them and help them really to understand why culture not necessarily why it's important, but how it can be really powerful for their brands and what they're doing and how they think about people.

Will Ockenden:

So this is, I'm sure, going to pique some interest when you're talking about this. So where can people kind of find out about you, find out about your new venture and connect with you, In other words?

Chris Norton:

does Jed Hallam, Jed Hallamcom still exist?

Jed Hallam:

It's a it does, but I think it's dormant. I think the last time I updated it was when I was yeah, I can't. Yeah, it's probably about 10 years old now. Um, so the company's called Culture Lab and the website where you can find more information is culturelabco. Um, I'm Jed Hallam, and so you could always search for me, but you'll probably find some highly embarrassing photos from 2007-2008 that the Daily Mail published of me wearing that yellow jumper. Um, but that's because I live my life very visibly. Um, yeah, so if anyone, so if anyone is interested in having a conversation, always up for trying to figure out how we can fix some problems, just making a career out of wandering around going, I reckon if you kick that on the side, it might work again.

Chris Norton:

Yeah, thanks for coming on the show, Jed. We'll definitely have to get you back on when you've rolled out some of the products to show us maybe us an examples of what you found out about culture or something to come on the show, because that that'd be interesting what marketing people could get from your new venture and culture labs.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Chris Norton

Host
Head Shot

Will Ockenden

Host