The Corvus Effect

Ep. 90: Disney Magic Meets Brand Rebellion with Peter Jude Ricciardi and Jeff Litcofsky

• Scott Raven • Episode 90

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Episode Links:

Brandartica - https://brandartica.com

LinkedIn: Peter Jude Ricciardi - https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterjudericciardi/

LinkedIn: Jeff Litcofsky - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlitcofsky/

Where the Dogs of Society Howl - https://www.linkedin.com/company/where-the-dogs-of-society-howl/

Free eBooks: Make Weird Work & The Mess That Makes the Magic - https://brandartica.agency/ebook-download/

Summary:

In this episode of The Corvus Effect, I welcome Peter Jude Ricciardi and Jeff Litcofsky, the dynamic duo behind Brandartica. Peter brings 15 years of Disney creative direction while Jeff provides operational brilliance from 23 years at Boston Acoustics and his own web development business. They explore why safe marketing no longer sells in a world of digital noise, how their complementary partnership mirrors the structure of great music, and why embracing chaos is essential to the creative journey. Peter and Jeff share insights on breaking clients out of their comfort zones, the role of AI as a creative accelerant, and what true success looks like when you prioritize life integration over corporate climbing.

Episode Chapters:

00:32 Guest Introduction

02:33 Branding Without the Agency Bullshit

04:42 From Shipping Department to Global Director

07:11 Creative Solutionists

08:40 Creativity and Strategy: A Beautiful Symphony

10:15 Safe Doesn't Sell Anymore

13:19 Trust Meets Function

15:07 The Mess That Makes the Magic

17:04 Where the Dogs of Society Howl

18:10 Breaking Clients Out of Safe

20:33 Voice of Reason

24:42 Creativity is Not Linear

26:20 AI as Creative Accelerant

29:34 Life Integration and True Success

32:15 Choosing Your Tribe

35:20 Advice for Next Generation Brand Builders

38:57 Final Thoughts

Intro

Scott Raven: Welcome to The Corvus Effect, where we explore what it takes to succeed professionally and truly enhance all parts of your life. I'm Scott Raven, Fractional COO and your host. Each episode we go behind the scenes with leaders who've mastered the delicate harmony of growing their professional endeavors while protecting what matters most. Ready to transform from Chief Everything Officer to achieving integration in all facets of your life? Let's soar!


Guest Introduction

Scott Raven: And hello everyone. Welcome back to The Corvus Effect. I'm Scott. Today I'm fired up to welcome not one, but two creative powerhouses: Peter Jude Ricciardi and Jeff Litcofsky, the dynamic duo behind Brandartica.

Peter is what happens when Disney magic meets brand rebellion. He spent 15 years as a creative director and producer at Disney, but he's also a left-handed bass player who plays a right-handed bass upside down, a former traffic reporter who didn't own a car, and has now turned that need for rebellion into being the Chief Creative Officer at Brandartica.

He has written two books, Make Weird Work and The Mess That Makes the Magic, and he is on a mission to help brands stop playing it safe and start playing to win.

But he has his important partner. Jeff is the operational thinker who makes the magic scalable as the Partner and CEO. He brings 25 plus years of technical marketing and UX expertise to the table. He spent 23 years at Boston Acoustics, founded and grew a successful web development business for eight years, and now ensures that Brandartica's wildly creative ideas actually drive revenue growth.

Combined, they co-host Where the Dogs of Society Howl, 58 minutes of unapologetic LinkedIn live conversation every Thursday that's raw, hilarious, and uncomfortably true. I think we're going to have a good episode. Peter and Jeff, welcome to the podcast.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Thank you my friend. Appreciate it.

Scott Raven: You're welcome. You are welcome both.


Branding Without the Agency Bullshit

Scott Raven: And Peter, I'm going to start with you because as we said, you went from creating magic at one of the world's most iconic brands to founding Brandartica with the tagline "branding without the agency bullshit." Alright, so what was the moment you realized you needed to blow up the traditional agency model?

Peter Jude Ricciardi: You know, the truth is that before Disney and after Disney, I had never actually worked within a traditional agency at all. But through multiple interactions with different agencies, and to be honest with you, I have nothing against the traditional agency. In fact, some of our best friends and buddies are owners, founders, creative directors, and team members of traditional agencies. Coopetition is a thing I love.

So I mean, just for me coming out of Disney, I always did things kind of my way. And you know, sometimes I had to acquiesce and sometimes I had to really, let's say, make great friends out of the legal department to get some concepts through.

But one of the things that I always found odd about the agency world was that there were always so many people involved in every single element of everything, most of the time. Many of them had absolutely nothing to do with that piece of work. So when you have office admins writing copy, things like that as an example, I go, you know, no offense, and maybe you're a great copywriter and that's cool, but that's not what the client paid for.

Brandartica came out of a place of going, look, we can do stale, we can do safe, but we don't want to. And we would prefer to take clients on a slightly more elevated adventure. And in our world, the people that are really good at what they do are the ones that do the work and do the job.

Scott Raven: Yep. And you mentioned the word "we," so we would be remiss in terms of talking about the "we," which is you and Jeff, and how you all initially collaborated to start Brandartica in the first place.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Yeah. Jeff, you want to field that?


From Shipping Department to Global Director

Jeff Litcofsky: Yes, so my background's interesting. My background was in consumer electronics in the audio industry. And the reason why I ended up there is because I was a musician wanting to be a recording producer, and that just wasn't panning out for me in terms of what I saw happening in that industry at the time.

And so I took an entry level job position at this loudspeaker company in the shipping department. I was a materials coordinator, but I was around people that enjoyed music. It was a loudspeaker company. So the engineers were engineers from MIT and stuff, but they were all musicians too. So it was a good crowd.

Scott Raven: You could speak the same language. There you go.

Jeff Litcofsky: Exactly the same language. And what I found was that I was just immersed in the whole manufacturing process, the business process of it, and all the different departments.

Long story short, thirteen job positions later, I found myself being the Global Director of Marketing for the business. And from there, it was interesting because that space kind of started going downhill a little bit in the loudspeaker industry. People wearing headphones, more AirPods and stuff.

And so I left there for a startup for a few years, and then in my forties I was like, you know, I think I'm ready to do my own thing. And I started my web development business. The big thing for me was always partnering with other agencies and independent marketing people. Peter was one of those independent marketing people, and we started doing some projects together for his clients. I was building some websites. I think that's where we kind of hit it off.

And from there it became more of a discussion around, what can we do to bring the two forces together and have both that amazing creative side, but also have this technical web dev part of the equation?


Creative Solutionists

Scott Raven: Yeah. Let's delve a little bit further into that because you two have a term that you coined as the pre-Brandartica era, which is "creative solutionists," right? And how the two of you merge your relative strengths so that one plus one was truly greater than two.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: So that creative solutionist thing came from right after I left Disney and was trying to figure out who I wanted to be and what I wanted to be, and if I was ever going to grow up, which by the way, I did not.

I ended up naming my role, it was sort of a fractional CMO kind of role, which I didn't even know that term existed. "Your Creative Solutionist," frankly, it was just such a mouthful and I had to spell it out all the time, and it was a headache.

But that said, what that blended into becoming Brandartica with Jeff was that we were really a great balance of creativity and strategy. And you cannot have great impact if you have fabulous creative and shoddy strategic thinking. It won't work. And vice versa, the best strategy plan, the best tactics in the world will fail if you don't have creativity that's up to snuff.

So that's how that came into play. Everything that we do has to kind of pass muster, if you will, on both sides of the fence.


Creativity and Strategy: A Beautiful Symphony

Scott Raven: Yep. And Jeff, that kind of plays into the Brandartica methodology: creativity and strategy colliding into a beautiful symphony. When you think about what that symphony sounds like, and yes, I am being punny given your musical background, what does it feel like? What does it look like? What does it sound like for you when it comes together correctly?

Jeff Litcofsky: Yeah, that's great. Because I think on both sides, you know, Peter and I are both musicians, so this falls right into place. What makes a song really popular? Well, there's a lot of different things going on, right? There's some amazing storytelling usually. There's the hook as far as that burst of creativity in something that you hear and you're like, wow, that's amazing sounding.

But underneath that, there's a lot of theory, right? There's a lot going on in terms of the meter of the song and the changes. If it's well organized, just like a business, it works like a machine. It's a well-oiled machine. And those songs are not all random. There's a lot of really amazing sort of, if you want to get to it, math behind it that makes a difference in the song.

Scott Raven: Yeah. I mean, back in my misspent youth, I was a software programmer, and we actually said that one of the majors that you wouldn't think of being good software developers are music majors because of exactly that.


Safe Doesn't Sell Anymore

Scott Raven: But Peter, you would be quick to say that you can understand the meter and the time and whatnot of a piece, right? But if it's too safe, it's not going to sell. And the same goes for the core philosophy at Brandartica. Safe doesn't sell anymore. Why?

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Safe doesn't sell anymore because I think it's just been bludgeoned over the head with a thousand soft hits over the head. I think what happens is you've got so much competition and so much digital noise in the world. So many things are available to distract us.

And I come from an age where, and it's funny because I have young kids, things have now only amplified. You know, I remember back before MTV, well when MTV was a thing, and then all of a sudden they started to kind of go into the business of Real World kind of reality programming. And it was always kind of quick and cut and quick and cut. And I used to say, you know, our generation was being racked because everything we see and everything we consume is so quick, quick, quick, quick, quick.

But we got used to it and we've lived on and we've pushed forward. Now you've got, let's just say...

Scott Raven: You got YouTube Shorts, you've got TikTok doom scrolling, right? Yep.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: It's even faster. Kids can't pay attention to anything more than like seven seconds. So you can't play it safe.

Now on that point, I think that Brandartica is able to do both well. Safe does not have to be boring. Safe does not have to be stodgy or dodgy or anything else. Safe can be a lot of different things, but what really matters, what kills the safety, is allowing that creative freedom to happen and tapping into the emotional aspects of things.

And our job as an agency, and maybe this isn't for everybody, and that's okay, our job as an agency is to help our partners, they're not clients, they're partners, to help a partner go into deeper waters than maybe they've ever been used to or gone before. We can always reel back in. But we can't cast short and then reel out for a bigger fish.

So that's why when I say I think safe marketing is ineffective, it's because you're taking all emotion and risk out of the environment and the experience. Banks are a great example of that. Many banks, especially on a local or community level, they like to play it safe. I get it that they have guidelines and restrictions. Totally respect that. But it doesn't mean, you know, fun for some of these people means mom jeans on Friday.

And it really doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to over commit, but you can stretch a little bit further. And some of the bigger banks have already realized this and they're doing it.


Trust Meets Function

Scott Raven: Yeah. And Jeff, that must be something that you have to take as part of your mantra in terms of where your core strength is, which is taking these dreams and turning them into real life entities. And to a certain extent, allowing yourself to forget what the technical limitations may be and say, how can we do this? How can we bring this weird concept to life?

Jeff Litcofsky: Exactly, exactly. Because you know, what's amazing is the technology that's available now is obviously light years ahead of when I started on websites and whatnot.

But even if we were to divide it up a little bit, right? If you look at an ad or if you land on a homepage, something has to grab you. There has to be something compelling for you to stay there, right? Because our attention span is so low, and we're quick to leave and do something else. So you have to have that front end that is doing something different like what Peter's saying.

But on the other hand, in order for them to stay, they have to feel trust too. So it can't all be just show and things moving around and whatnot. There has to be function to it, right? To make them feel really confident in terms of buying from you.

Scott Raven: Yes, yes.

Jeff Litcofsky: Especially for e-commerce, because the storytelling is going to guide the consumer through that journey, right through your website. But all of the functionality needs to be there for them to feel confident to press buy.


The Mess That Makes the Magic

Scott Raven: Yeah. And you know, the funny part, Peter, is that in today's Insta-famous society where all you see is the 1% of people's successes and you either get your huge dopamine hit or your depression that you are not like that, you have a very strong statement to this in your book, The Mess That Makes the Magic. It is the journey to get to that end destination which makes the true value at the end of the day.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Yes. I mean, my desk is a train wreck on a daily basis, and I'm okay with that. And that's what Magic and the Mess is really about, because it's okay to have chaos. Chaos can be great. Not everybody thrives in chaos.

And it's funny because Jeff and I are very different people. Jeff's very organized, which is great. And that's one of the reasons why we get along so well. And sometimes I'm sure my chaos must drive him up a wall.

But the point being is that there's a process and there's a journey. And when you watch these little tidbits and snippets of virality, or "everybody can be famous," there's a lot of things that go on behind the scenes that nobody's privy to. And that's cool too.

I mean, the reality is, when I first started at Disney, I was doing a lot of radio production and I was the guy that would call people to tell them they won.

Scott Raven: Yes.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: You know, I'd be like, "You won front row tickets to Britney Spears."

Scott Raven: Well, you got the voice for it. I'll put it that way.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Thank you. And you know, a lot of times you'd get either hung up on or like, "Yeah, hey, are your parents home? I'm not going to talk to you. I need to talk to your parents." And then you would explain to them and they'd be like, "Who are you? What the..." And at the end of the day, once we came to this understanding of like, "I'm legit, this is for real," I'd put Johnny on the phone, or Sally, and I'm going to tell them what they won. And then you'd do it and they'd be like, "Oh, okay. Thanks."

And you're like, "No, no, no, no, no. Back up. Alright, I'm going to tell you again, and this time I want you to scream as loud as you can and go crazy." And they would do it.

We would record it, put it back together, and then put it out there. And what you hear in the world is a huge reaction. But my point is that there's a lot behind these huge reactions or these massive impact creators. Something often is taking place that leads up to that final part that you get to see.


Where the Dogs of Society Howl

Scott Raven: And you guys practice what you preach through your LinkedIn Live, Where the Dogs of Society Howl. How you described it, 58 minutes live on LinkedIn with no safety net, no script, no censorship. This is y'all bringing the practice of what you preach in terms of we're going to make it messy. It's going to be fun and it is going to be informative and valuable at the same time.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Yeah, I mean, as a producer I was always obsessed with getting every little click and little breath and everything. Get, let me get it all out. And we did do that in our first podcast, which was called One Seventh of the Podcast.

And you know, Jeff and I came to a conclusion one day. I said, "Jeff, I'm editing this and producing this thing, and it's so much fricking work for like, what? Nothing's happening."

Yeah. Where the Dogs of Society Howl became, let's do it live, let's, we're going to make mistakes, we're going to flop. We're going to say things that maybe we regret, but let's just let it go and put it out there. And that's just, we are being who we are.


Breaking Clients Out of Safe

Scott Raven: There you go. Now you know you guys have worked with a variety of different entities, including brands or concepts that are quote unquote "boring." You've worked on caskets before. You've worked on coffee brands before, right? I could imagine that these owners are like, "Where the hell are you taking me? I make coffee. I make coffee. I don't want to be bold. I want my coffee voice." How do you break them out of their resistance to the boldness you want to bring for them?

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Sometimes, Scott, you just can't. Right, Jeff? I mean, sometimes it just doesn't work. They just don't hear it.

And at the end of the day, again, we're here to lead you into a deeper, darker forest where the full riches are, right? The greatest, most ripest, sweetest fruit is at the end of a really thin branch. And if you're not willing to go out there and get it, that's okay. You could pick up the unripe, under-rotten stuff on the ground, that's fine.

But like we said, with the strategy, we try to bring a sense of that strategy to the creative. And like you said, there was a casket company. I remember seeing all their ads and I was like, "Oh my God, this is the funniest thing I've ever seen."

And I did a campaign for a pet crematorium or cremation service, and I was like, "How am I going to, what am I doing with this?" Let's just embrace the crazy and go with it. Let's not try to make it something that it isn't. Let's just embrace the fact that it's dark, it's creepy and sad, but we can make it a laughable moment.

In doing so, I think that's the part that's most important, is to figure out when it's appropriate, how it fits into the bigger scheme, and how do we break them out of it. I mean, if you can do it, the point is that the founder or the CEO, they are not the audience. And sometimes you must remind them repeatedly that they are not the audience.

It's okay for you not to like it. I always used to tell people, "I don't design this so that you'll like it. I mean, if you like it, that's fricking great. That's a sidebar, but I'm not making it for you. I'm making it for your audience. I want them to love it. And if we know that they're going to love it, why would you stop it?"


Voice of Reason

Scott Raven: Now, Jeff, you sometimes I imagine have to be a little bit of the voice of reason in these discussions in terms of, "I love that point on the horizon that we're contemplating, but that's just too damn far away and we've got to find something that's a little bit more efficient that we can get to faster that's closer to who they are today." The progression, if you will, in terms of how that brand evolves. So how from your chair do you balance that in these iterative conversations?

Jeff Litcofsky: I think actually both Peter and I have a good handle on when we are looking at like a bigger picture as opposed to what's right in front of us. The bigger picture can, that's where the chaos starts with us coming up with ideas and riffing and brainstorming. And sometimes maybe we shouldn't do that in front of the client.

But we always come back down to earth. I think both of us in terms of like, what do we need to do now? What do we need to do next? Because there is an order to things.

Sometimes, often people come to us and say, "I need a website." But when we start digging in a little bit, we realize there's other things that have to happen first.

Scott Raven: Yep.

Jeff Litcofsky: Because a website, we could build them a website. But what we're looking to is build them a brand, right?

Scott Raven: Yes.

Jeff Litcofsky: So sometimes we have to take a step back and say, "We really need to do this, this, and this first before we start talking about the website," because it's really going to define what the website's doing, who it's doing it for, what the messaging is, what the color palette and some design cues are. All those things have to happen really ahead of a project like that. So we try to steer them into, what is it that we need to do first?

Scott Raven: Yeah, and Peter, you have talked about this offline in terms of, "Don't take me to be a complete Wild West person." There are constraints in terms of what you put into the creative process to make sure that it is focused positive energy, not just wild energy all over the place.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Yeah, you can't be just spraying the room with a Gatling gun. You've got to have some kind of intention. And you know, I can be the wild card, the loose cannon. That's just who I am. But at the end of the day, I've got 25 plus years of doing this. I'm not an idiot.

Scott Raven: I didn't say you were!

Peter Jude Ricciardi: No, I'm not saying to you, I'm saying, you know, and I used to tell people, this was funny. I would say things and people would be like, "Whoa, whoa." And I'd say, "I spent 15 years at Disney. I didn't mess up their brand and I'm not going to mess up yours. So relax. Take it easy."

And what Jeff was saying too, there's that important part where a lot of times where this comes into play, where Jeff and my balance again reveals itself as an effective tool, is that there are things sometimes that I want to do. "Oh, I've got to do it just like that." "That doesn't work on this platform, Peter." And I'm like, "Why? How come?"

But even at that, we just recently finished up with a new client. We built them a brand new website experience and all that fun, happy stuff. And the truth be told, their branding material collateral was spectacular. We didn't need to touch it. It would never even cross my mind to touch it.

So we're not really of the ilk that, "Oh, everything's broken and we're the only ones that can fix it." You look at things and you go, "Look, if it's working and it's well done and you're happy, let's not fix that. Let's do the job that you came to us for." It's as simple as that.


Creativity is Not Linear

Scott Raven: Right. Now, you guys offline talked to me about this very important concept that creativity is not linear. And I think with a good amount of people who listen to this podcast, who are going through their journeys towards their dreams, and sometimes they forget that along the way, you're going to have your good days, you're going to have your bad days, you're going to have your crappy days. You may go three steps forward, you may go two steps back the next day.

You would say from your own experience in terms of how you work, not only as leaders of the firm, but with your clients, that it is not a linear journey to get to where you're supposed to get to.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Yeah. I think that anybody, you want to have milestones, you want to have accountability on a project. It can't just go on forever.

But I've worked with other people that have said, "You know, I'm going to need to think about this. I need two weeks before I can cut." And I'm like, "Two weeks. What the hell are you going to go do?"

And then the reality sets in that you go, you know, lots of stuff can happen in that time and that is a period of, sometimes, for an artist or a designer or a writer, that is a period of internal reflection. They have to kind of go in and go deep and think about things.

And frankly, like you said, there's no way to put a limit on that and say it has to be tomorrow. It can be tomorrow. I can whip you up a brand tomorrow, tonight, today. It's done. There you go. But I guarantee you three days from now I'll have way better ideas. And you'll wish we had allowed the time for that to happen.


AI as Creative Accelerant

Scott Raven: Now, Jeff, I know that part of what you bring to that process is the integration of AI and how to use it as a proper accelerant into this creative process. In your view, how does it help, and where does human creativity still hold the big hammer in this process?

Jeff Litcofsky: It's funny, we have these discussions around AI. And so this is where I think AI is right now: it's kind of a garbage in, garbage out thing. Okay? So let's just say for just the basics. Prompts are only as good as a knowledgeable human that's creating them.

So in other words, you have to have something in the front end, and then on the back end, you have to have that same knowledgeable human to be able to edit the results that are coming out of it.

Is it making things more efficient? A hundred percent. Especially in terms of creating workflows and things like that that could happen automatically, you know, the drudgery of your day, right? To try to use AI to help make that streamlined and more efficient.

But in terms of creativity, it's getting good, but I think a lot of the best AI that's being done right now is by creatives. It's not by people who are just like, well, you know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of when the Wix and the Squarespace came out as do-it-yourself websites.

Well, I used to get calls all the time because people would actually see the ad. They would say, "Oh, I could do this myself." And then they hit a brick wall somewhere where they don't have that skillset. They don't understand. It is a tool, right?

Scott Raven: The person using the tool.

Jeff Litcofsky: Yes. And so I think where it's happening, where it's really happening well, is with those people that are already equipped.

Scott Raven: Right. And Peter, you would probably add on to that, that when we're talking about the people who are able to use those tools, it's the people who can craft effective stories at the end of the day.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Yes. I think that the story comes in so many ways. There's reading a story, there's telling a story. There's listening to a story. But also stories come in visual format. Stories, films are stories. Imagery can be a story. Music is a story.

And when you start to find ways to combine all of those elements, that's where I think the real magic blooms from the chaos that's behind it.

And excuse me for, just so you know, we have an addition being worked on out back. It sounds like my house is under attack.

Scott Raven: You're fine.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: I'm fine. I just don't want anyone to think...


Life Integration and True Success

Scott Raven: Actually, it's a beautiful segue because part of what we have as one of the standing principles with the Corvus is that life integration is one of the six dimensions of freedom. And Peter, you in particular, not only with the work that you're having done at the house, but the way that this has allowed you to be able to spend time with your family and be present with them, I know that's a big part of what your wealth is, your true wealth.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: True. I mean, honestly it's because I'm not built for corporate settings. I can't have nice things like that. I'm not allowed.

No, you're right. Kidding aside, when I left Disney in 2014, my job was going to go out to Burbank and I'd spent enough time in Burbank to know that I didn't want to be there. And I was married, we were... The day I quit was the day I found out that we were pregnant with our first daughter. And I was like...

Scott Raven: There you go.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Good timing.

But yes, it has allowed me to live the life that I find to be successful. Success comes in so many ways, and when I was younger, I thought success was billions of dollars, mansions, travel, screaming people on stage, you know...

Scott Raven: Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Yep.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: But now I go, successful means I have a roof over my head. I have food in my refrigerator and I've got a family whom I love and I believe love me. And I have the time to do the things, pick up my daughter, be there when the school calls and says she's sick and not feeling well. Can you come get her? I can just go and go get her. And that's a huge joy to me.

And I think someone once in a networking setting kind of commented, I don't think they meant harm by it, but their comment was, I was saying work-life balance, which again, I find to be a little...

Scott Raven: Yeah. We don't use that term here because balance is a myth. It's like Atlanta weather. If you don't like it, wait five minutes, it'll change.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: The term is bullshit. But I was saying that, you know, I said I'm able to go out in the garden and do garden work or just go out into the forest and take a walk or mow my lawn. And that's because I work remotely. I'm from home and I know how to get my work done. And those extra moments of being present with my family and in my life, that's where the true success comes in.


Choosing Your Tribe

Scott Raven: There you go. And Jeff, I'll throw this to you and then Peter, you can add to this. Part of what I propose as part of that with Corvus is getting to work with a tribe of your own choosing. As Peter alluded to, these corporate brands, they're beautiful, big, they have a lot going for them, but you don't get to choose your tribe in most cases. In fact, your tribe is constantly changing.

And Jeff, I'd love for you to go first. The fact that you got to choose a tribe with a true partner in Peter in order to create beautiful music together.

Jeff Litcofsky: Yes, absolutely. Matter of fact, when I first started my business, I had proclaimed that I would only work for myself. I would never work with anyone else. I would only work for myself.

And of course Peter proved me wrong. But it had to be this sort of situation for me, connecting with Peter the way that I did, just being friends. I think that's what it took for me to change my mind on that position.

I always view our partnership as unique because I've heard other people say, "How could you have just two partners? What if you don't agree on something? Like you should have a third."

Scott Raven: Rock paper scissors, right.

Jeff Litcofsky: That's right. But I think both of our personalities are more in tune to having this work. It might not work for everybody, but it works for us. But yes, in terms of understanding where creative is needed and where also some process and workflow is needed, right? So that balance, I think, is what really makes this work.

Scott Raven: Excellent. Peter, anything to add there?

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Yeah, I was just going to say, the truth is, I made Jeff an offer he couldn't refuse.

Scott Raven: You're the Godfather.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: I told him, "You know, you will either work with me or you will meet me on the battlefield and I will show you your way. I will introduce you to the path to Valhalla."

Jeff Litcofsky: Right.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: No, we used to hire each other for a bunch of different stuff, and frankly, I was coming out of what was essentially a bad marriage with my partner before this. Nothing against him. It was just a bad fit.

Scott Raven: Good people may not be good for each other.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Yeah. And I knew Jeff enough through our workings together to go, this guy is like, he's smart. He's even-keeled. Sure, we all get upset. We all have moments, but he's really transparent and he wants what's best for Brandartica. And it's not so much about him. And it's not about me.

So yeah, that's why it was a really good fit and it's been a great fit.

You know, we have a small team. None of this would be possible without our project manager Ashley. I used to think project managers were just like, "Wha, wha, wha, what is this? It's just slang for what?" But really, you can't do everything and be everywhere at once. You can try, but you're not going to do it all well.

So we have a small team. We probably have about six to eight independent contractors who are consistent. They're the people we choose to work with. They have their own businesses. They're really specialty people. They're like creative ninjas in their own unique ways, and that's why we keep them here.


Advice for Next Generation Brand Builders

Scott Raven: Yep. So as we move to the traditional close of these episodes, I always do a tip of the cap to Randy Pausch's book, The Last Lecture, and his final passage, which "this message was written for my kids." And I always spin it a different way depending on who I'm talking to.

But let's look at the next generation of the brand builders, the creatives, the ones that are just coming into the game, if you will. They've heard this episode. What's the biggest thing you want them to take away?

Jeff Litcofsky: Oh, so these are people just starting off, freelancers?

Scott Raven: These are bright eyed, bushy tailed, and you guys have wisdom. They have opportunity. I mean, you guys do have opportunity, but they have a longer stretch.

Jeff Litcofsky: I guess the nugget that I still carry from when I started my own business is create funnels, right? Create a network of people because just you going out and finding new business yourself is so hard. It takes up so much time.

But if you can do good work for someone that could refer other people to you, that is going to be the key for you growing. One of the first things I did when I became a WordPress website developer was to partner with agencies. I had about four or five agencies at one time, and they would feed me projects. And I had direct, mostly local businesses would be what I did direct. But if you don't create that network of people, it's really going to be tough.

And that would be, I think, one of the best pieces of advice for someone just starting off in their own business.

Scott Raven: Amen. Peter?

Peter Jude Ricciardi: I would say to those people, do not be afraid of creativity. If you become afraid of creativity, good chance your ideas will find out and begin to misbehave. So do not be afraid of your creativity. Go with it. Let the freak flag fly.

And most importantly, it's like exercising your body. Although, I'm not in the greatest of shape. But work on things because you love them. Continuously work on passion projects. You don't have to get paid to make stuff all the time. Don't work for free. But even on the side, of all the ideas I have, Scott, or the pitches or the concepts that we've put forward, many of which fall by the wayside, but that doesn't mean I'm over it or they're done.

I will go back and complete an entire brand guide and campaign for something that I know was going to be fabulous, because I want to, and it's an opportunity to really keep muscles in check and in flex.

Scott Raven: Yep. I hear you. Doing the reps. And then three of my favorite words in the English language are "not right now." Just because it is not happening right here and now doesn't mean that it won't happen in the future, right? Allowing yourself the latitude in order to develop that.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: There are no bad ideas. Only the wrong time, that's all. You have an idea. It may not be its time. So set it aside. Put it in a box, put it somewhere where you can keep an eye on it, and the time will come when that idea comes back and is very useful and everyone will celebrate you and carry you down the street on their shoulders.


Final Thoughts

Scott Raven: I agree. So speaking of the people who want to get to know you and hopefully have you carry them on their shoulders, let's talk about how people can find out more about Brandartica and y'all and Where the Dogs of Society Howl. Give us the deets, guys.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Okay, we are Brandartica Agency. That's the URL. And we are all over LinkedIn. Jeff and I are all up inside LinkedIn's business, so if you can't find us there, you ain't going to find anything.

And then of course Where the Dogs of Society Howl is our LinkedIn Live. We do it every Thursday at 1:30 PM Eastern. And as I like to say, don't mess it up. Get the Eastern part right.

And that show can also be found on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. And then there's the newsletter where people can follow along. Same name, Where the Dogs of Society Howl, comes out every week about a bunch of different things that I think would be helpful, if not interesting, and hopefully provide somebody a chuckle. Jeff, did we miss anything?

Jeff Litcofsky: No, I think that's a pretty good list you got there.

Scott Raven: Uh, wait a minute. You forgot the two books on your website.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Oh my goodness, right? How unprofessional. Take three. Look out!

Yeah, there's the, I've fancied to take some of my shorter form ideas and my longer drudgery ideas and put them into an ebook. So on our website, you can click on there and go find, you know, they're free downloads. I'm not going to charge you for this, but basically what they're about is how to keep that creative spark going and where to find that creative spark in the chaos of life.

Okay. Magic and the Mess. It's a lot of the stuff that I learned through my time at Disney and just in life in general. And gosh, the other one...

Scott Raven: Make Weird Work.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Make Weird Work. You are a Godsend, Scott. Take two Scotts and call me in the morning.

Yeah, Make Weird Work is about, don't be afraid to just embrace the crazy. Get in there, man. Just get weird. Stale, safe advertising and messaging, eh, anybody can do that. If you want to beat the competition, out-weird them.

Scott Raven: There you go.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: So that's where you can find that stuff.

In fact, I think I'm going to do another one relatively soon about sort of the story arc that I learned at Disney and how it taps into emotional shortcuts and how any brand, any message, anybody's branding can take advantage of that emotional shortcut. Like the way Disney always kills the parents right in the beginning, there's a reason for it.

Scott Raven: You know, I agree. The happiest place on earth definitely interlaced its dark moments from time to time. I'll put it that way.

Jeff Litcofsky: Bambi's mom.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: That's the part that I remember telling directors and managers and bosses of mine that were like, at the annual review saying, "Your work is outstanding. It's just that sometimes you just seem a little, I don't know, passionate, maybe you're yelling at people."

And I'm like, "I'm not yelling at... you know what? I'm yelling." And I told them, I said, "When you do what I do, there is a bright, shiny, attractive side to that penny, but that comes at a cost, and that cost is the other side of it can be kind of dirty and grimy and dark. And that's just part of life."

Scott Raven: It's the duality of life.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: That's it.

Scott Raven: You cannot know good without bad. You cannot know happy without sad. If you don't have the polar opposite, you would not know the positive emotions of today.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: That's right. Hey, can I ask you a question on this podcast before we go?

Scott Raven: Sure.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Yeah. If you had to pick a soundtrack for the rest of the week for you, what would that music be?

Scott Raven: So I actually have on my phone a playlist called the Running Playlist, and this is the playlist that I used when I ran for Dana-Farber as part of their Marathon Challenge team. Did it seven times on the Boston Marathon, also raised over $125,000 for cancer research. And it has roughly 175 songs on it.

So it got me from Hopkinton to Boston, which was important. But I always, always, always, when I was at the start line of Hopkinton, started the playlist with "Uprising" by Muse.

Jeff Litcofsky: Oh nice.

Scott Raven: That was the very first song that I would play, and then I would let the rest shuffle.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Nice. What happened when you got to Heartbreak Hill?

Scott Raven: Uh, well...

Peter Jude Ricciardi: What were you listening to then?

Scott Raven: It was anything that was going to let me know whether I was running, whether I was trotting, whether I was walking, that I was slowly getting to the top. And that the moment that you crest and you see the start of Boston College campus, that it's mostly downhill from there.

And that was just my, you're there, because when you're going through that, you know, you've been through the rolling hills of Newton for like five, six miles. Your legs are cooked at this point. And that is the, "My goodness, I actually got through this hell," for lack of a better term.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: I grew up in Newton and we used to go stand on the side of many miles of Heartbreak Hill and watch people endure.

Scott Raven: Yep, yep. But hey, look, you know what...

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Thanks for having us, man.

Scott Raven: You know that enduring is very, very minute versus the enduring of those people I ran for, my patient partners who, one of them was five years old and dealing with leukemia, right? That's endurance. At the end of the day, what I did is small compared to that.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Absolutely. So well said. You just cashed in the Golden Karma ticket, my friend.

Scott Raven: There you go. Yeah. I try. Some days I succeed more than others. I'll put it that way.

Peter Jude Ricciardi: Don't we all.

Jeff Litcofsky: We all do.

Scott Raven: Peter and Jeff, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time. As always, subscribe, comment, share with those people in your circle who could use this wisdom.

Until next time, I'm Scott. We'll see you on The Corvus Effect. Take care.


Outro

Scott Raven: Thank you for joining me on The Corvus Effect. If today's conversation sparked ideas about how to free yourself from overwhelm, visit TheCorvusEffect.com for show notes, resources, and our free Sixth Dimensions Assessment, showing you exactly where you're trapped and how to architect your freedom.

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