Question 1

What initially sparked your interest in advertising?

Accepted Answer

So truthfully, I never really considered advertising as a career option until after business school. The long answer, if you will, is I didn't really get into marketing until I started company and before going to marketing school where I had to do it, I had always been into the arts, putting things into the world like a song writer, producer. So the notion of putting communicative notes into the world that people gravitated toward, gravitate around always kind of struck me. And again never thought about advertising as a means to do it at. I remember my last year of business school, so in my MBA program last year, thinking about jobs because I saw that my job at Apple was going to be changing and I might not be going back. So I was looking at what other options there were and someone said "how about advertising?" And I said I really want to be in music, I want to stay in music so, despite how interesting, no. It was not until I saw the show Mad Men, truthfully. I watched Mad Men and like most people I gravitated towards the character Don Draper. He was a creative director, putting things in the world that people gravitated around, rather the way he sold it or the work itself, it had the same sort of bravitas that records did, that music did. I thought that would be interesting. I said in my mind, this is in 2009, watching Mad Men, you know, I might want to do this, but that would be like five, ten years down the road that I would ever consider it. Fast forward two and a half years later, I'm in the world of advertising.

Question 2

What do you think makes an advertisement successful in terms of audience engagement?

Accepted Answer

It's complicated. It's complex because we're talking bout humans here and humans are complex in school or in life. We try to think of models called frameworks. We use these models to describe or explain or predict certain outcomes but we live in a complex world so one model won't do it. It takes multiple models to try to explain a complex situation. Complex models for complex situations. The perfect advertising, the most effective advertising requires these complex models. But at the core of it, the most important part is people. Understanding people, having radical empathy about people and some causality-based theory as to why people do what they do is of the same as affects, permissions, values, beliefs and behaviors of people. At the core, the core function of marketing, our singular job as marketers is to move people. That is to influence behavior adoption. Everything we do is to root for that. Whether its to buy something, whether its to vote, whether its to go see a movie, whether its to talk, whether its to share, whether its to boycott. Everything we do is all about getting people to adopt behavior, and you want people to adopt behavior and to understand why they move. So as marketers we have to truly understand the causality of behavior, understand the biology of decision-making, which has a lot of complexity to it. But at the core, the best advertising that works is the advertising that is the most human.

Question 3

What is the most dynamic change you have noticed in advertising since you have been a part of the business?

Accepted Answer

The interesting part is that the most dynamic change I've seen in advertising is the exact same dynamic change that I saw in the music industry. There is a massive disruption happening in advertising that mirrors almost like step by step the exact same disruption happening in music. It's not just the medium changes i.e. digital, it's all the implications that come from it. I call it agency apocalypse. These changes, these shifts in the industry that will ultimately change the face of advertising agencies and make the way we do business now almost obsolete. Much like the way music industry record labels did business changes two years ago. There are essentially five shifts that have happened that are completely changing advertising, at least the business of it. It results from this notion that, back in the day, the creative director, the advertiser was the authority of ideas. They were the best mass storytellers. They were the best attention grabbers. But now, though they were the best content creators, now everyone with a phone or a computer or an iPad, they are content creators. Not only that, but, some of these people are better storytellers than advertisers are. Thinking about what is being shared the most in this world… they're memes, and memes are created by regular people. They're not beautifully art directed or have amazing font typography. They're grainy pictures with ridiculous fonts, but they communicate or transmit a story or a perspective that other people share. They begin to get propagated, which means that these amateur content creators have something seen more than advertisers do. And these amateur content creators, their budgets are zero in most cases or very very small and advertisers spend hundreds of thousand of dollars to millions of dollars on communicative notes that none one sees or no one talks about. Ultimately no one takes action and that really starts to create the idea of: What you do 'advertiser' doesn't move people, so why am I spending so much money with you? There are so many content creators in the world, why should I only have one agency? You see this disruption happening where scopes are black or declining. There are more entrances into the agency world. More instances of creative services for brands that aren't just advertising agencies. They're publishers like BuzzFeed. They're content creators of what we call quote on quote influencers. They're channels like ESPN. There are so many players in a space that was once dominated by advertisers, much like record labels were the authority on identifying talent. But now the democrization has allowed for anyone with talent a shot to get seen and find a mass following.

Question 4

What is your favorite advertising campaign that you have had a part in making and why?

Accepted Answer

The one I'm most proud that I've worked on was probably the launch of the Brooklynettes because I had the chance to launch an NBA franchise. Not only that but the work that we did - it had a massive impact on culture. When I think about myself as an advertiser, the barometer that I measure myself to, or the benchmark that I measure myself to is more than, its beyond moving the clients objectives, right, the clients business objectives to make sure we impact their business. If we impact their business that's great, that's good. But the thing I'm looking for is having an impact on culture. I know if we impact culture we're going to move business because brands that lead culture are more successful than those who follow. And the culture wake is why I put things in the world in the first place. As a song writer, I wanted to things that impacted culture and as an advertiser I want to put things in the world that impact culture. I think about the work we did on the Brooklynettes. We had a massive cultural impact. The brief was very, very, very difficult. So I pride myself on the work we did with the Brooklynettes. It really met at the intersection of practices today - understanding behavioral science, understanding culture, understanding media and where they all converge. My runner up, my honorable mention would probably be the work I did with the launch of the Cliff Paul campaign for State Farm. But I'm most proud of the Brooklynettes and the work that I've done.

Question 5

Is there a particular advertisement you saw or listened to as a kid that you can still remember today?

Accepted Answer

My favorite advertising of all time, my favorite campaign of all time is the Blair Witch Project, hands down. It the dopest thing ever done and that's what I aspire to attract. The Cliff Paul campaign was me trying to do the Blair Witch Project. My runner up would be... it's a tie. They're both the same brand but it's a tie. It's a tie between Apple's 1984 and Apple's Big Dipper. The crazy part about 1984 is that you could run that today and it would still be, I would say, just as powerful. The same thing with Big Dipper. Just as powerful. Those spots, not only were they massive for Apple, but they also had this ridiculous wake in culture and, like I said, brands who move culture are more successful than those who follow. Those are my honorable mentions... huge honorable mentions. My favorite of all time is Blair Witch Project.

Question 6

Do you have any predictions about the future of advertising? Both in terms of platforms and content?

Accepted Answer

I'm a firm believer that the technology that's available to us.. they're only extensions of our current behavior. It's a very Marshall McLuhan point of view. Technology extends our current behavior. For me then I think that the future of advertising will be human, it will be people. What you'll find probably more than before is that there will likely be more emphasis on understanding human behavior, which probably will result in technology trying to get better at understanding people. Hopefully you'll see more advertisers becoming more empathetic about people. But here is the thing- the interesting part is that marketers suck at understanding people. Truthfully, most people are better at understanding people because if we are people then we know people. If you look at the brands or the companies who are now leading advertising, it's not the agencies. It's the Facebooks, the Googles and Amazons of the world, and the people that they employ at those Facebooks, Googles and Amazons of the world are PhDs in behavioral science. They are learning people, they know people, and they design accordingly. For me, if advertising is going to weather the storm and prevail, as it will, the industry isn't going to go away, it's just going to change the way it behaves or the way it is normally done. You will find much more human elements to it, that is, with much more of a focus on understanding people.

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