Neil Barrie- Global CEO and Co-Founder- 21st Century Brand

Neil Barrie didn't take the conventional route into brand strategy. After studying modern history at Oxford, he spent six years trying to make it as a musician, a detour, it turns out, was a training ground for what came next.

As the co-founder of 21st Century Brand, Neil has worked with some of the most interesting companies of the last decade, including an early, formative stint helping build the Airbnb brand alongside Brian Chesky and Jonathan Mildenhall. That experience changed the way he thought about brand: not a storytelling wrapper, but the entire company as a creative canvas.

In this conversation, Neil talks about the craft of brand-building in an era of platform companies, AI disruption, and a marketing discipline under serious pressure.

Why strategists need to hear this

1. The clearest explanation of what separates brand consulting from advertising you'll find anywhere. Neil lays it out simply: great ad agencies want to get the client out of the way so they can make great work. Great brand consultancies put the client in the way because that's where the real brand lives. 

2. A genuinely honest take on the existential moment for brand strategy. Neil admits he spent part of last year in crisis mode, asking whether brand strategy even has a future. What he found when he went and talked to a dozen CMOs is both reassuring and clarifying: intelligence is everywhere, but conviction and wisdom are in short supply. The role isn't disappearing, it's shifting, and he's specific about where the value is migrating.

3. Machine-readable brands This is where the conversation gets genuinely forward-looking. As LLMs increasingly mediate how people discover and choose between companies, Neil argues that brands need to be built for two audiences simultaneously: humans and machines. 

4. Why the "durable and dynamic" tension is the central challenge of modern brand building. Platform brands like Uber and Amazon have made the old CPG playbook look quaint. Neil talks through how you hold a brand together when the business is expanding in every direction at once, and why archetypes and distinctive brand assets matter more, not less, when a company's remit expands.

5.  What being a strategist means today. Crunching data into neat answers is increasingly commoditized. What's genuinely scarce and valuable is the ability to move a group of people toward conviction. Neil is refreshingly direct about what that means for the kind of strategist who thrives going forward.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the latest episode of Inspiring Futures. My guest today is Neil Barry, co-founder of 21st Century Brand. Neil, welcome to the pod.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

It is very good to be here. Very exciting. You've got a great lineup of people you've had on here. So I thought I'll come in very good company.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Well Yeah, it's long overdue. You should have been on, you should have been on here years ago. Um but uh you're on now, which is the main thing. So cool. So uh what you usually do, and I try to make this less pedantic as possible, but um what's your what's your little uh 30-second career trajectory if you could do it in 30 seconds or maybe 90 seconds?

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Yeah. Uh bailed rock star is the first part. So I spent uh I got a good degree, good degree in modern history from Oxford, but then veered off. I had a misguided epiphany interviewing Radiohead for the student paper, and decided that's what I should do too, along with my student band people. And yeah, spent six years uh really trying to do it properly, released quite a lot of stuff, got lots, achieved lots of dreams, but no money, sold less than a thousand records. Um, and from there I used to freelance writers doing market research, analyzing markets while on tour and at weekends and things like that. And at a certain point, I realized that I would be better placed um going into something which combined a sort of more synthesis and commercial stuff that I was doing on the side with creativity in a different way. So converted myself into that and then worked uh in brand consultancies, uh, uh, had a formative experience with BBH, leading strategy on their innovations and brand ventures division, uh, which really got me into tech. Uh went off to the Silicon Valley, San Francisco, LA to really get involved with tech more and uh got a job at Shiat Day, where I uh was a planning director, and then there I had another formative experience where we we won the Airbnb brand, which was very nascent. And there was a guy there called Jonathan Milden who was very ambitious and didn't have much team. And I got pulled into his sort of group of people who were really trying to build the Airbnb brand and make it into a sort of super brand with Brian Chesky and folks, and that was just incredibly formative and taught me a new way of brand building, uh, which really, yeah, still shapes my work today, really, when you're putting brand, product, customer experience, policy, everything into one thing, not just a storytelling wrapper. And we found a 21st century brand uh with some folks from Airbnb to do that type of work, and that got me to that was 2018, and then opened up the business in Europe 20, 2019, 2020, and here I am today talking to you.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

So, what what would most people who uh who read history at Oxford be doing as a career, typically? What was a career?

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Um, well, some of them are quite involved in the some challenging things around what's going on with uh the uh uh government and Keir Starmer and uh pieces like that in terms of appointing. Certain people, some people are involved in that, some people are teaching, some people are um yeah, it's a real range of things, you know. Like it's I think what history teaches you to do, which um is basically synthesize a load of conflicting arguments and data points and turn that into some sort of coherent story and argument about something. For sure. And so, yeah, so that so that's what um it that's what I still use. Basically, a lot of my work is basically you know reducing th lots of complexity into something clear and then expanding it out again, ultimately. And so yeah, it's it's a pretty pretty useful, it's a useful thing.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

So but when you um so kind of like really interesting um the whole being in a rock band part of it.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

I was gonna be really pedantic. I would say I would say indie electro, very being really specific. Because you're pedantic, I'm gonna be pedantic as well.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Indie electro. Could you put could you a genre what other bands would be fitting in that genre?

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Okay, well, maybe that's the problem, but no, at least is it all extra manifest in this book? Yeah, we weren't quite 80s tinged, but you know, you would you would look at it people like Franz Ferdinand or that that that type of stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Yeah, yeah. So I mean there's a lot uh there's a lot of learning from that in terms of like how how to how to try and I mean you're creating a brand in a way, right? And you're trying to build an audience. So you're you're you're you're fundamentally involved in a creative pursuit. So there's like a lot, a lot from that, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:00

Yeah, there's a there's a lot of things that I've you know realised that I learned during that time, which have been really useful. I think it's just I think it's really useful to come into things like brand building and advertising a bit later, you know, because I just think it's helpful to have been shaped by something else. I just think it's really helped me, like having to set, you know, I've had to set up record labels, had to like, you know, try and create scenes, you know, and all that kind of stuff. So I think a lot of the a lot of the principles that we're trying to teach for brands, you've probably if you experience them first hand, and probably also dealing with creatives when you've been a creative and put yourself out there and know what it's like to get pillaried. So I think it's taught me quite a lot of things, which have hopefully helped be relatively different as a consultant, because consultants can be quite, you know, scary, cold type people, you know what I mean, who've been brought in. And so hopefully it's given me a bit more empathy and a bit more soul, maybe than a lot of people who might be doing um the work that we do. Um, specifically, you know, a lot of my work is like founder whispering, like trying to trying to deal with founder tech founders, and actually quite similar to the playbook for dealing with drummers in my in my experience, right? Because drummers are always quite hard, you know, they're cat you know, they're carrying a lot of the load, uh, literally. They have quite a lot of baggage, literally. And I think that it that has helped me quite a lot deal with some of the founders.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

So you didn't go through 11 drummers like Spinal Tap in your band.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Well, we probably did. We probably did at least at least do that because they're they're holding all the power. Because if you've got drums and a and a way of getting around, uh, you know, you're in high demands and you're a decent player. So yeah, it taught me a lot.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

I realized so I was listening to uh an interview with Colin Greenwood the other day. Yeah who said that um when they first started, they didn't have a drummer, they had a drum machine.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

Yeah, that's that that's interesting. And yeah, the Greenwoods, I interviewed the young, he was was partly responsible for my misguided epiphany, was interviewing Johnny Greenwood, um his brother, uh, which and he was so nice, that's probably what encouraged me to go after it. Tom York refused to speak to us anyway. We could go off, we could go off. Yeah, yeah, we can go on.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Well, let's let's just let's let's let's pivot away to um why set up a consultancy. Um what what was the impetus behind? Did you think there was was it people that you got along with who saw the world in the same way? Was it that you saw a white space?

SPEAKER_02 7:34

What was yeah, um but yeah, both both of those things. Um I I think the Airbnb was I think for there's a whole load of people involved with Airbnb, the Airbnb Airbnb experience, and it it just lit a fire in a in a lot of people, uh, myself included. Um and we felt there was a gap in terms of the way that brands were being built that was combining the for a lot of tech companies, it was sort of marketing and brand were seen as sort of uh things that were quite resented, that you shouldn't really need them, uh, but they were sort of tolerated. Whereas I think what we saw with the Airbnb folks is that they from leading from the top branch really embraced this is a this is a this central story, this central theme, belong anywhere as it was at the time, can really help create a moat for us versus a booking versus a you know a VRBO and higher spending competitors. And so we felt there was a gap because it wasn't really a top-tier brand consultancy that was designing brands for the modern era, as it was in you know, 2017, 20, 2018. And so we were really clear at a start with that. The company is the creative canvas. We want everything integrated into one thing, and we're gonna make it a complete leadership concern. We are only gonna work if we have CEOs and founders, uh, uh not signing off the work, but like with their signatures on the work and you know, collaborating on the work, and that because that's the way you get the compounding results. And we were very clear on that at the front and at a start. Charge decent, you know, sort of serious heavyweight consultancy rates for it and and and sort of backed ourselves. And you know, my my my co-founder Jonathan Builderhall, you know, he he has a healthy dose of rock star um confidence slash arrogance, uh, I'd say. And that was his his call. And I was very grateful that he that he really went with that. I don't think I'd have had the confidence to be so bold out of the gate without his sort of uh confident conviction there. But I'm glad we did, you know, because I think it's help, I think it's helped the market, and there's other people who've come in and with you know was uh a similar stance.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah, I think definitely. I mean, don't it it it seems that um there's something different between what do you think the difference between uh consulting and advertising is? It seems like there's a I mean it's sort of I'm it's sort of a stupid question because it's kind of bleedingly obvious, but you know, having worked both sides, yeah. There's a big difference, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Yeah, I think it it's subtle in some ways, certainly on the planning side. It's that the subtle things, but I think that's there's a few big differences. One is just the lens, going back to the you know, great advert advertising agencies, at least in my era, they're driving towards telling some amazing story. They're telling a story through a piece of content. Yeah, that is what they really want to do. That's what everyone goes to work is to make a great ad. Or not even a great ad like a great film or you know, a long form piece of that, they're looking to tell a story through a new thing. Whereas I think for the difference for a good brand consultancy is that they are the the canvas is the company, the canvas is the experience, and that it's all creative, you know, the all the different, you know, the way your signature interactions, the way you're going to market, the way you structure your partnerships, there is room for that. So it treats brand as a very much the horizontal thing rather than a vertical sort of lens of storytelling. And I think that is the single biggest thing. The second thing is that you're going, you you want if you have to position yourself to go in higher than mid-level marketing, if you're going to really make a difference to the brand. Um, because it's really hard to create a great brand reversing in from marketing. And so there's just a sort of where are you, you know, what's your opening in the company. And so you do end up with a lot of people in creative agencies who are trying to put, you know, they get a brief and then you you go back and go, this brief's not ambitious enough. We, you know, we've got a much bigger idea, we want to reinvent your product, do all these things. And and and and but most level marketers, they've got big jobs, but they're but they also got a very specific remit and they don't actually want to hear all this other shit that you're that you're really excited about, at least until they've you know passed all their reviews and got hit all the KPIs they need to hit. So I think there can quite often be a mismatch match of altitudes. Um, so those those are probably two big things. And and thirdly, um I think certainly for 21st century brand, like the it's not our job to create what the brand narrative, we're trying to reveal it, you know. We are really trying to pull it out of the people and then stick it, you know, and create them quite often. We'll make a leak. Quite often one of the one of the clients will really articulate what it is that we'll put it together in the right way, you know. And so the best brand work feels like surprising but inevitable because it's like, oh yeah, of course we're that, you know, whereas I don't think a great creative agency wants quite traditionally wants to sort of blow people, disappear for a while and blow people away, you know, that sort of heroic thing. And so it's it's just a different, it's so it's a it's a different type of, even though there's some similar things, it's a different mindset, culture, and and it's a different sort of craft. Um, you know, when I used to speak to people from great agencies, but quite often they would say, well, our job is to get the clients out of the way so we can make great work. Was that whereas we're we're literally trying to put the clients in the way, you know, but get the best out of them and unlock the best out of them.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Well, I I read, I don't know, it was sort of maybe a year ago or so. I read this pretty interesting theory that Silicon Valley has sort of an aversion to marketing, that it sort of it fit felt it was the dark arts, and that as an engineer with an engineering mentality, you believe that everything is a problem that can ultimately sort of be solved and be visible and transparent, whereas marketing can't necessarily be explained because it's got too much sort of art to it, and therefore there's a big level of distrust because they can't because they can't compute it.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

Yeah, yeah, I just think there's huge cultural differences between most and you know the culture of an engineer, like you say, engineering or even a product-driven company, and and the way that a lot of marketers show up. And certainly, you know, when I first started working with Airbnb, there was a lot of just speaking the same language, like everyone was running around shy, going, we can't speak Chesky. Who can speak Chesky? Like literally trying because he would just be like, I don't understand what he's every week. We'd go, Well, look, we've got the KPIs, look, it's it's this and this, and we're gonna build trust on it, and it'd be like and it it took a while to grasp what the sort of got literally the language of goals and things like that in a way that a sort of product-driven org has. I think they're incredibly sensitive to inefficiencies of their time, and a lot of you know, a lot of us, you know, and planners can be the worst at this end, right? You know what I mean? They they take 15 slides to say something that could be like in a sentence and stuff like that. And so there's so I think there's there's I'm not sure that it's they think it's too artistic necessarily. It's just that they, yeah, they just have frustrations with it.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

But but I also find that a lot of a lot of people actually really do respect people who they think are good and but need them, and then they realize that growth is existential, but culture, I think we've made it quite hard for them quite often, you know, to I did a I did a I did a session, like a mentoring session with someone who's uh spent a lot of time strategy side and went client side, and he said he said you said he spent a ton of time explaining that he wasn't the person who made the ads.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah there is a sort of a a one-dimensionality to people who work like the perception of what advertising is.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Yeah, yeah, and you know, and I think and when you can have great results, you you know, when you when you do a great campaign that where a company really feels like the agency's got really grasp them, you know, they they can absolutely love it. But it yeah, it's uh yeah, it's it's a whole podcast in itself, I think. But I sense the relationship as getting better because I think you know the advertising the advertising industry has obviously had to make a lot of changes in the last 10 years and and become a lot more, I'd say, accountable.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

So what about the um I was um I was listening, I was listening, I've forgotten the name of this company. Oh Shark something. What are they like a this shark? Uh they make appliances. Actually, really super interesting company. Like they make little like things that make ice cream and oh yeah. Um this guy was this guy who's the founder. I mean, basically this was a sort of a a really shitty company that made mops 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Okay. Um Shark Ninja, I think they're called. And um yeah. They're just super smart. They have like a hundred like a hundred ethnographers in-house. They they um they really know how to develop products, they kind of got Dyson-like level engineering with sort of meta-level social media understanding and Proger and Gamble like ethnography. So really interesting company. And um, yeah, he was this guy was saying, you know, the most important thing is flexibility and admitting failure and being able to move on. Yeah, and you sort of see that as a you know, you you see that as classic Silicon Valley, you know. Yeah, it's almost like, yeah, you know, we sat in a meeting six months ago and agreed what our brand was. Well, we changed. Yeah. Is that something that it becomes uh becomes a challenge for people who want to who believe in sort of a brand, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

I think there's a few, there's a few things. Yeah, I think modern brands need to be like durable and dynamic at the same time. Like you can't be too but you you can't be too fluid and you can't be too fixed. You've got to find the right you really care about what's durable and what's what's gonna be flexible. Because I think if you it's great to keep iterating, but actually it becomes exhausting for everyone. And and you know, people who try to try to sign off work, scale things, and you're trying to integrate marketing and product like if you don't have a set of words, yeah. You know, and it makes life really hard, yeah. Yeah, and you're not gonna get that compounding effect of like you know, the best clients we've like people like Pinterest or Monzo or brands that are, you know, they've they've committed to things and been very dynamic, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Those brands who took it who've taken a position, right? They've decided that they're not something, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Yeah, and and and I think that's what that's really uh really important. Um I think what but I think equally you have to be pretty nimble to work with a lot of those companies in the sense that you might right until the last minute get quite knocked off your your your pace and and have to justify it or argue people around and things like that. And I think it's partly what people are testing out in those cultures, I think is just conviction. It's like it's like shark, sharks in the water. Now they're testing for sort of fear, and if they sense that, you know, as a lot of people are in in marketing and branding, sort of projecting on quite shaky ground, you know, it's really important you're able to stand your ground. And I think that's with how a lot of product and engineering cultures work anyway. Like they they they they collaborate by beating each other's work up to find faults, and so that can be quite disorientating. Um, and certainly what's the point. Is that kind of back to the sort of like we don't trust fluffy qualitative anecdotal in where's the data kind of a bit it's a bit about the something just like where's the conviction? And like where can you really stand behind this? Like it's you know, I think a lot of you know, the whole things around not everything that matters can be measured and all of those things. Like, I don't think it's always about you can't cite you know five pieces of quantitative data. Just can you, under pressure, just in really plain English terms, that anyone would understand, explain why this is a good idea for this business at this at this moment, like how is it gonna help us make money and things like that. And obviously, data can be really important as well, but it's I think it's something even more you know human than that, is actually like, is this are these people real?

SPEAKER_01 20:14

They can believe in it, which is interesting because that's very much like a uh VC angle on founders, right? It's you know, it's sort of like mistakes what they do, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

Exactly. And the VC thing is exactly that. It is quite a lot, it's quite qualitative, actually, but based on you know, people's 10,000 hours or whatever, or 10,000 weeks of building amazing companies, and so it's yeah. But yeah, I I think it I think it is one of the most interesting areas in terms of my career. Like just the lights really went on when I started working more with tech companies, and I work with a range of companies now, but it just I just think the role of brand for those companies in terms of like explaining what they do, helping them cross into like new markets and make sense of stuff is that the integration between brand and product is just so fascinating. Whereas I was always, you know, one of my first jobs in America was like helping on you know diet Pepsi and things like that. And I would spend ages trying to get to these product through the creation and go, I think I found that like Pepsi's bubbles are slightly bigger than Cokes, and isn't that amazing? Because we can justify excitement as a position, and they'd be like, What are you talking about? Like I was just like totally overthinking it. Was they like just give us some cool cultural trends? It's all soda. That's you know, and um, and I'm generalizing, but you know what I mean, versus when you're thinking about it for like a product driven companies, it's a different thing. And I like to do both, but it it suits my brain better because otherwise I was in danger of like, you know, working on things like Buffalo Wild Wings and just overthinking it.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Yeah, yeah. Um which is interesting right now because you can't you can't get on the subway in New York without like being surrounded by all kinds of AI companies which are just meaningless. Right.

unknown 22:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

So when they when they go to they there's sort of a desperation, right? You know, this this is the new gold rush. We've got to be out there. We've got to and they're they're trying to get are they what are they trying to do with all this stuff? Are they trying to get Wall Street people? Are they trying to are they you know they're just trying to get visibility. I mean I I see this Gen Spark thing everywhere and it's like greater presentation in 10 minutes and I'm like no I don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Yeah I mean it's seems like right now we're at this next wave of just like a flurry of new AI focused tech brands that are sort of like scrambling.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Yes. Yeah I I think it like it's fascinating the way everything's playing out because I I think you know everyone was raising money for these companies probably about 18 months ago or two years ago when it's like and every VC at that point was looking for AI plays. So I think a lot of things probably got backed that are quite similar. You know what I mean and and and now you're just seeing that all play out so there's going to be this huge I think um uh well bloodbath probably that's what you have to yeah yeah but that's a bit a lot of them will come together there's going to be some brilliant companies that come out of all of that and and and and a lot of them will pick up a lot of the other the other companies because right now yeah like it's it's it's AI everything. And I think it's it it is actually an interesting time for creative storytelling and brand companies because I think it's very hard for you know a lot of these companies are B2B solutions the ones like the one you're talking about great presentations in 20 minutes. And so and I think a lot of the people signing the checks don't necessarily fully understand what the product is doing because the products are changing so fast and everything. So I think it you know having a really clear brand you know proposition story those pieces to help decision makers navigate all these choices of seemingly very similar companies of similar jargon and so on is is really important uh right now so I think it's a you know there's it's a good there's a there's a real need for good uh brand thinking right now for these companies like it's one of the few things they've got to differentiate.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

And I think what's so what's so interesting is the sort of the dynamic between the people who really have the power in this space because they're the the people who are investing all the capex and with one like press release they can just sink a whole legion yes of wannabes right oh we're just actually we're announcing today that we're doing presentation suite who does it and suddenly it's like why does these why do these companies matter anymore it's you know and it seems to be it seems to be happening with increasing regularity is like even folks like Salesforce are like coming under pressure and that's I mean I would I would say is one of the bigger B2B brands here.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

Yes and they've you know they've got one of the strongest brands you know in in the marketplace if they're you know so if if they're having and it and not not everything is entirely rational I think you know at the moment in terms of the way you know there's some brand you know I'm not a specialist in investor narrative and so on but there's there's a lot of companies that are maybe unfairly being branded like AI losers at the moment when it's not actually correct. So it's yeah there's a real thing shaking out. But it's it's also a very exciting time I think as well so I do I do see the positive side of it all.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

What's what what's your thought on I mean one of the things that's a you know classic brands you know sort of the 50s Madison Avenue classic CPG brands kind of usually had a pretty clear swim lane. You know they they kind of worked an angle and they sort of you know that became what they stood for and yeah they had to be dynamic and they had to make that contextually relevant as culture changed. But um now you got something like Uber I just think a platform brand you know it it it's really really hard as these as these companies place a lot of different bets on the future to really nail them down as to what exactly they are and it seems like the more time and the more technology changes the sort of broader their remit becomes and therefore it sort of becomes a real challenge to say okay what is your brand really about is that an opportunity or a threat because it seems like they want it there's a lot of head hedging bets we want yeah we're kind of in autonomous it's like I was thinking the other day about Amazon. It's like what what the hell is Amazon as a brand now? Yeah it's sort of got this legacy of like being the the consumer I mean I think they have this on the website or something like you know the consumer centric the most consumer centric brand in the world but I think you know you people might argue with that right now as to whether that is in fact true. I mean so much of that doesn't it's it's like one of those things where the the companies moved faster than the brand and the brand sort of like playing catch up. And I want and it seems like you've got that problem and then you've got the we're expanding into so many different spaces we're a platform and you can't really nail us we used to be about transportation and mobility in the case of Uber but now we're not really about that we're about something else but we you know so I I I wondered if that was an observation that you'd had with with I mean obviously it's it's sort of this platform economics thing that's everyone's going for scale and they want to kind of is it the they want to find the largest TAM total addressable market.

SPEAKER_02 28:02

Well I mean from a yeah it's fascinating I mean I think the sort of commercial strategy and a brand strategy I think you know it feels like commercially a lot of you know like at the sort of the era of these sort of lifestyle utility brands are like hugely expansive roles trying to be essential in people's lives and so I don't think we've had a similar sort of level of like combination of us you know standing for a lifestyle attitude but also just being so across every area of life. And so I think you you end up with fairly traditional tools being incredibly useful. Like obviously missions would useful so something like archetype you know for these brands just like showing up with a similar vibe across a whole range of that those become so important I think like so so tools like that are actually probably easier for these companies to actually like operationalize you know you you know like manso for example who are not that broad but like the them as a magician for example like that's that's incredibly helpful for like customer service and product design and things like that like so picking these sort of you know archetypal things which cut through all of that you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Yeah and they give people sort of a lighthouse type of thing to to like to internally okay this is what we're trying to do and um yeah yeah all that stuff so you did so in terms of distinctive brand asset for pieces like that I think that those sort of big picture things are really important.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

But then you also obviously you brands now need to be built to be machine readable you know with the LLMs guiding a lot of the choices that people are making about where to who to travel with and and pieces like that. And so you're also having to do really deep specific types of machine readable brand building which I think is quite a new interesting to me is one of the most interesting things for us now.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

What do you think about that in terms of like what what what do you what have you learned so far? Because it's like it's sort of like a Pandora's box.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

I think like there's people um yeah I actually surprisingly I mean I think I was inspired by your conversation I know put that like LinkedIn up which is just sort of caught fire and um interestingly one of the people who um responded is at Diaggio and is responsible they have it's like a job you know making sure the brands are machine readable it was like oh really yeah no I yeah that that that um I love that area I think it's I think it's really fascinating. And we we went really big on it probably about 18 months ago partly because we were trying to honestly just find what is the role for brand strategy in this new area when you can get a brand strategy in 10 seconds you know in theory like so I spent quite a long time just trying to understand what CMOs and our network were like struggling with. And it people were consistently saying well we don't know we know the funnel's sort of dead but I don't know how to plan around it but I don't know what to I'm quite confused by the alternatives and that was like oh okay and so we yeah I think we're just trying to try trying to make it really simple for people to have a really it's never been more complicated from customer journey point of view. That's true, but actually can we make it simple in terms of orchestration so we just have we just think about two jobs two audiences humans machines you've got to be priming for humans which is a lot of it's which is a sort of classic brand building upper funnel total available market yeah and and then emotional storytelling distinctive brand efforts and then proving for the sort of machines so when people are working with LLMs to make these decisions and really making sure that whatever you're trying to stand for it it's being delivered in a way that is machine readable and that can be converted into like authority signals and pieces like that. And that that's a pretty new thing and yeah I I I love it. And we've actually got a lot more analytical in our work we've got a good partnership with SEMrush analytics so we sort of understand the query and landscape for the majority of categories from working with them and I think it's what's great about it is for me is it it fits the same thesis that we found with the company with which is like the things that really separate the brands doing really well in LM visibility I believe are a low it's not just content optimization it is about product excellence about community advocacy about CEO visibility like a lot of those signals that really compound those are those are the things which come from when you're really like integrated around a brand so I actually feel like I'm a 52 year old quite rational guy at heart and like it this feel like the world is moving a bit more in a direction that I I can understand. So I'm excited about it and we love we're doing a lot of work in that space.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

So but we're all trying to figure it out and you posted some great stuff on it Ed which um yeah well my whole thing my whole thing was my whole thing's been sort of like um really about the the recognition that brand is really the problem with with the problem with marketing people is that they talk about brand and advertising all the time and that's not what the C suite wants to hear all the time and they don't rarely they rarely use the term brand. If you listen to most analyst calls it's almost like it's been banned from the boardroom. But um you could actually I actually a while ago created a sort of like a AI tool that could sort of translate uh a an analyst call and actually look for signals where brand is mentioned but not mentioned. So you could actually you could actually say 65% of this call is really about brand or they just they just haven't actually they didn't want to mention the word um so yeah I think it that seems to me kind of interesting that when you look at um what companies like Palantir might be doing is they're a lot of what they're doing they know they never use the word brand at all but when they do their forward deployed engineering and um they're looking at how decisions are made from the like the from the bottom up through the organization they always seem to be challenging uh why what is a no-go decision what is a non-negotiable what are you prepared to put on the line what can't be given to a machine and so I think what's really interesting for me is like we come from a world where like woolly brand guidelines exist you know it's like oh just create some bank lines and no one adheres to them and actually how brand how brands actually work in the real world is there's sort of a series of human-based negotiations that happen in meetings off sites and contact reports that people getting scolded for doing something that was so off brand. And um but if you if you have like machines now making those decisions and humans are out of the loop how do you make sure that they're going to make the decisions that are the right ones so that takes you back in my mind to like you better understand what the hell your brand is and what your differences are and you sure as hell better try to protect them.

SPEAKER_02 35:15

Yeah and and have real author exactly I totally agree and you know the things that move the needle on the proving side for us like authority and advocacy like the two biggest things that authority comes from you know a lot of it's like third party sources really trusting that your product works properly that it that it is excellent and that that you are a lead thought leader in that space and the community the advocacy comes from people saying the experience was good and it matched up to the promise and those things. So those are things that yeah I I think it gives marketers where we've worked on projects it's helped the marketers get more authority and influence in the company because it's not just talking about being on brand now it's been talking you know you're talking about being machine readable you're talking about being it's about the positioning of the company with these new arbiters of just of decision making so I think it's a real opportunity um for certainly quite a few categories.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

And if you look at the look at the companies who are most visible in their visibility rankings is people like Slack, you know Lego, Patagonia, Notion, Rocket, who I mentioned before like all of them have got they're all in on a sort of integrated story and and brand uh so yeah we've got a paper coming out about this I'm I'm full of full of wisdom here so I mean I the the thinking I'm thinking the way I'm thinking about it is when um you have simple like things like created briefs or brand guidelines the old artifacts they don't have any um there's no penalty for not obeying them right so and there's no sort of like corporate orgo so if you went to Nike and say okay how if you had to actually test how much the company is prepared to put on a line for its beliefs so you know we inspire and I keep it's like we provide inspiration and then innovation for every athlete and then the you know the asterisk is if you have a body you're an athlete. Well if you start to deeply interrogate that it's like well there are going to be boundaries right I mean you know what is inspiration as soon as you start to define the you start to see that what the companies prepare like you know it's easy to when you don't have to be accountable and um it's easy to be woolly and not to be um specific um but when you have to be accountable um then you really have to put you know you have to put you have to put money on the line and I think that that is going to be an important part of like the companies that really do that and really make those commitments. And I that's why I've done these case studies on like Ferrari I mean even Costco right Costco has like an embedded margin. I mean it's existed at 14% margin is ingrained in the company no CEO no CEO can come into Costco and say I'm changing the margin.

unknown 38:18

Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

Yeah so I think those things something can become really really interesting the comp the the companies and brands that have really um yeah you know made these things these differences they know they don't even call them brand things they're actually corporate differences. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

That that that's exactly right because it's sort of like philosophy level like company philosophy level pieces and that I think that's when you get that that really hardcore differentiation and I think um it it's powerful. So when so I think it's what most companies need to make sure like you I'm glad you said that you have sort of like quite often it's it's lots of people running in it with lots of energy in different places of the company at the moment like you know this building responsibility no so trying to have those integrated like jobs to be done across the priming improving is or whatever your go-to market model is I think that's really important. So I think with the work we're doing here, you know a lot of it is not about like saying brand strategy a lot of it's just about facilitating the people that matter to a coherent point of view you know right and and a coherent set of actions that they all know what they're doing because in a lot of companies it's just all over the place right now. So I think yeah so I think the the companies that you're talking about probably have a massive advantage because they've always sort of operated that way I'd imagine same with Lego and so on.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

What's your what are your thoughts on just marketing as a discipline in general right now? I mean it seems that you you know you look at these surveys and stuff and you see that um there's sort of like no juniors are coming in the sort of like bandwidth is really tight the senior people are doing a thousand jobs and yeah that makes it really really hard if you're like trying to kind of get time and you're trying to collaborate and you you you know you said you said you said before you know a strategist explaining uh something that could be said in one sentence in 10 slides uh it just doesn't it just doesn't fly right now there's there's there's not a lot of um attention available right yeah I I think the CMO role you spend a lot of time with CMOs um and we I think the the role has never been more vulnerable but also never been more valuable to companies when it's when it's done well and you know because if you just think how many roles in the C suite where you're you you know you really deep knowledge of marketing stack really uh sort of nuanced understanding of culture being able to really orchestrate a whole creative um ecosystem really tight on the the the ROI and the numbers like it's a two or three roles the modern CMO role for a lot of these companies and so it's um so I think the collaborate what that means is I I think we're gonna see more actually the the good CMOs like I predict this generation CMOs there's gonna be more going to CEO again because it's just such a sophisticated broad role now and and the courage it takes to do well so I do think that the the good ones are going to go further than ever before and we've seen you know we've seen quite a few CMOs step up to CEO recently so that's that's one thing that's and that to me that's an optimistic uh piece of the of the puzzle I think um I think what's really hard I hear a lot from people is that it's very hard for their teams not to get distracted because there's just so many buzzy things.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

Tiny objects yeah exactly terminology tools you know practices or frameworks all of that sort of thing you know there's various you know holding companies releasing quite complicated things there's just a ton of stuff distracting people and that's the biggest danger right now I think is that the that with good intentions marketers end up you know having less credibility and they need to be building credibility so that the people that can really keep their teams focused on the stuff that really matters and cut through all the noise and build the cultures that will do that is really important. And I think I think it's more important than marketers listen. You know I was at um the uncensored CMO event last week and AJ coin CMO Monzo made a really good creating team creating cultures where your teams will actually listen because if you sit in any meeting he said this you know you can always see the people who are speaking to be heard and to be performing you know oh well you know and actually the people we need people just to listen more than ever and reflect and then synthesize and join up with people. So I think creating those cultures where people can really differentiate the signals from the noise listen and then move in concert quickly that's going to be critical. So but there's but there's also a lot of things to be I think really interested and optimistic about in marketing I believe.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

What's your what are your thoughts on sort of like the uh the future of the strategist or the future of kind of like consultants, smart people I mean you know every every sort of report you read is like you know the knowledge work the demise of the knowledge worker that you know there's never been there's never been so much like you go on Substack and it's just like there's never been so much like really good writing and thinking I mean you some people may argue that it's not all great but there's a lot of it and um I mean I'm getting literally I get pictures pretty much every day from some PR person who's like you should talk to Bill Smith. He's an expert on jet fuel you know he's been he's been in the industry for 25 years and there's probably like these all these like one man One woman consultancies who had a really nice business. They had regular clients, and you know, they just did projects on a regular basis, and now it seems like everyone's sort of like facing the realities of you know, maybe maybe it's a temporary thing, um, but it just it feels like the the the pressure is on these knowledge workers and these smart thinkers to you know, do they have a role, do they have a future?

SPEAKER_02 44:31

Yeah, yeah. No, uh look, I I definitely last year was in a bit of an existential crisis about what is is there a role for grand strategy? So I you know, I saw out a lot of our you know, about 12 different CMOs or marketing groups, VCs and so on, just to just do like level, can you level with me? It's a huge bit of business, like a big telly onism, because it was it was challenging for a moment there, and actually the response I got was pretty good, pretty good actually. The sense I got was um look, there is now intelligence everywhere, but we actual conviction and wisdom were in short supply. Like so there's there's stuff everywhere, there's answers everywhere, but a trustworthy strategic partner that I trust to actually care about the growth of my brand and my business, that is absolutely as necessary as as ever. Um, and I don't think people, I was like, just don't you know, don't tell me what I want to hear. I really need you need to tell me this. And I it was very consistent that. So I think that what that tells you for me is it's it's the softer sides of the role are going to are more valuable than ever, you know. So can you build conviction? Can you make teams feel bigger as part of this process and more convicted? Are you actually bringing reflection time for people to get to actually conviction and wisdom versus just stuff everywhere and options? So the facilitation side, the soft side, that I think that's really important. And and still, what a lot of marketers need is facilitation of them and their peers towards a committed solution.

SPEAKER_01 46:14

So so a lot of the objectivity has a lot of value, right?

SPEAKER_02 46:18

Yeah, and also the facilitation. Yeah, like so so if you so it's not a good time maybe for introvert strategists to if you if you know what I mean. I think that the people who are really prepared to like enjoy the process of wrangling the human side. I I think that you know, obviously you still need great introverts as as well, but I think it's you know, a lot of a lot of just the crunching of stuff to get to really neat answers is is probably people are less concerned around that right now because you can get great answers from LLMs, I'm supposed to but you've got to move people. It's always been about moving a group of people to conviction about something that they've got a good chance of being good at, and then getting everyone to embrace it. Like that's ultimately what strategy is ultimately about.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

Yeah, which is interesting because it reminds me of like the when I did this Camp Thrive event.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

Um yeah, I love that that you did this.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

It was really interesting because it was all about sort of the stuff that no one teaches you, really. You know, like yeah, you can get creative brief templates anywhere and you know, brand pyramids and all that stuff. But if you've got to set up a business tomorrow on your own, um it's not that easy. So um, but I had Michael Michael Fanuel spoke and um at the end, and he he had this I he I mean he's kind of has this shtick thing, but he's been talking about for a while, but I think it was really smart. It was like, you know, the the problem with a lot of of and it goes back to your point that you heard about earlier, which is as soon as you get he's he's sort of saying, as soon as you're in a meeting and people are writing notes, you kind of lost it because they're like they're putting you in the box that they want to put you in. It's the way you want to be is this audacious enough and bold enough to kind of give them a vision that doesn't conform to where they are exactly, so it's not like uh incremental improvement from the status quo, it's a bit, it's like you know, you've got to get to a leap. And leaps are emotional. And I thought that was kind of like what you're sort of talking about a little bit. It's like the it's sort of yeah, it's it's the wrangling, it's the facilitation, but ultimately it's the person who's gonna come in and say, pick a side, here's the side you need to pick and hit the way.

SPEAKER_02 48:46

Yeah, you need to get those things, and then in service, you still want that that you know, because obviously any kind of change is is is hard and is a pain. So you do need that sense of like, wow, we're running towards this as well, so totally. And I think as long as I don't think you're going to employ robots to do that, you know, from what I've seen. Do you know what I mean? Like I so I do think I do see a decent future for strategists who are prepared to listen and facilitate as well as strategize, and that that is the strategy of how they run stuff is as a it needs to take them that almost as seriously as the strategy itself, you know what I mean? Just the strategy of the experience you're creating for people. How are you literally like the fucking icebreaker? You know what I mean? Like the ice icebreakers can unlock so much. There's a woman called Vicky and our team who's the art of them, but that that is why people win pitches. That is why people win people over, because they got them to stop uh projecting and just actually be themselves and see each other as humans and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 49:49

So everywhere, like you know, the great, the great focus group moderator. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:55

And so I don't want to underplay all the you know the high octane thinking that is needed and that you know, great stretch, but but you know, I think those other things are becoming disproportionately more valuable now because people are more stressed and overserved of intelligence.

SPEAKER_01 50:10

So, like empathetic wisdom, you know, I mean, is I think is the way to yeah, it was a really good example example of that. Years quite a few years ago, I was invited by the ANA in New York to present with my mini client on tech innovations that we'd done, uh tech advertising kind of things. And yeah, it was a great, I mean, I would say it was a good presentation, but the the room was basically bankers and insurance people, and they kind of like threw up a red flag at Mini, oh, it's too radical, we you know, regulators, we're not be allowed to do that. Right. Um 10 minutes later, the sky from IDO got on and he was talking about Quicksilver or some project they'd been working on the surfing and how they'd driven up the west coast from like San Diego all the way up to Seattle and hung out with surfers and the clients had come with them, and and all these like left brain insurance people were going, I want to be in that bus. And you're like, that's not what you said. No, but it it was it was the whole thing, it was like the journey. It's like, yeah, we take us on a journey, and that's a sort of that you know, it can't be a metaphor, right? It's like yeah, take us on a journey where we're gonna experience something and and go to some place, um versus versus telling us stuff.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

Yes, yeah, that's right. They're sort of like it it's partly uh making them the sort of heroes of it rather than us, I think.

SPEAKER_01 51:44

Yeah. Uh any final thoughts or questions or something that I hadn't asked that I should have covered?

SPEAKER_02 51:51

Um no, I I don't think that no, I don't I think I I guess it's like if we're thinking about, you know, a lot of your listeners are validists and like what are the qualities that people need, I think, you know, to to thrive. And what in terms of thinking positively about the future, you know, I I attended recently helped at the London Interdisciplinary School, and so that that's an amazing new wave, you know, interdisciplinary university. And rather than just the the caliber of the the way these 19-year-olds, 20-year-olds they were presenting, you know, sort of community-driven campaign platforms and things like that to the students. It was just it was brilliant, it was far better than it would have been my generation of of people, and just the way that they were making connections.

SPEAKER_01 52:36

Why is that? They because they get because they get they they understand they're not in a narrow frame. They're like they're thinking about it.

SPEAKER_02 52:43

Exactly that they were making those connections, I think. Yeah, and so but they were applying in a very disciplined way, and the research was great, but it it just made me very optimistic about you know their ability, if we give them a chance, their ability to really add value quite quickly. And so I'm I still think there's a there's a huge role for for it, and we we we as an industry need to make sure that we empower these folks, and so yeah, but I'm I'm optimistic whilst also being aware that it's that it's that it's harder than ever. So I think we've all got a duty just to make sure that we do pave the way.

SPEAKER_01 53:16

Very cool. Well, thank you so much. That was a great conversation. Appreciate you taking the time. All right, Ed, thanks very much. Thanks so much.