0:02

Hello everyone. I'm Tom Denford, co-founder of

0:04

ID Comms. Welcome to episode 31

0:06

of #MediaSnack Meets recorded

0:09

each month in New York. We get to meet the

0:11

individuals and organizations doing great

0:13

work to inspire success and drive

0:15

change within the global media and marketing

0:18

industry. In each episode we find

0:20

out what is behind that success, what

0:22

it takes to make change in the industry, and

0:25

what the rest of us can learn from that experience.

0:29

My guest for this episode is Tom

0:32

Goodwin, the author, provocateur and

0:34

award-winning voice in marketing and

0:36

innovation. By day you can find

0:38

Tom working at the Publicis Groupe, media agency,

0:41

Zenith Media, where he is head

0:43

of innovation based here in New

0:45

York. Otherwise, he's likely to be en route

0:47

to delivering a keynote address at

0:49

one of the leading marketing conferences around the

0:51

world. Tom calls himself "a

0:53

pain in the ass with good intentions",

0:56

which is his humble way of acknowledging

0:59

that he is certainly one of the industry's most prolific

1:01

and articulate thinkers. For example,

1:03

if you follow him on Twitter and you should,

1:06

you will witness an incessant stream

1:08

of humorous observation, startling

1:11

lateral thinking and tons of

1:13

simply good ideas written succinctly

1:15

and unpretentiously. I have always

1:18

enjoyed time with Tom for being one of

1:20

the most skilled talkers I know

1:22

and therefore he makes a wonderful podcast

1:24

guest. Tom has the ability to talk as if

1:26

he's reading aloud with a calm,

1:29

consistent rhythm that allows his

1:31

ideas space to form as

1:33

he speaking them, and it's a remarkable skill

1:35

that I hope you enjoy in this interview. In

1:37

2018 he published his first book,

1:40

'Digital Darwinism', which explores

1:42

how businesses are coping with transformation

1:45

in a digital age to be better

1:47

companies. It h as also been scientifically

1:49

proven that Tom has the best hair

1:52

on the internet, which I think he has already

1:54

registered as a trademark. In this episode,

1:56

we discuss how we should be radically

1:59

simplifying digital marketing, where does

2:02

Tom get his inspiration from? What

2:04

happened w hen he recently interviewed S

2:06

eth G odin and what is his advice for marketers

2:08

for the year ahead? You can check the show notes

2:11

for this episode at www.mediasnackpodcast.com including

2:14

a full transcript and links to resources

2:17

that T om recommends that you read. But

2:19

without further delay, please enjoy this entertaining

2:21

and mind broadening interview with

2:24

Tom Goodwin. Tom,

2:28

welcome to MediaSnack Meets.

2:29

Thanks for having me on the show.

2:30

We've been trying to get together for a little while. Some listeners

2:33

might recall, I might have mentioned this on MediaSnack before,

2:36

is that we, I think we did

2:38

record a show two years ago in London

2:40

and you had a really bad cold. Then we

2:43

completely cocked up on the audio

2:45

recording and we never managed to put it

2:47

out and we've been trying to schedule it ever since I think.

2:50

It's going to be good to come back and emulate some

2:52

of that success from before the session.

2:54

That was pre-book I think. I

2:56

think you were still writing.

2:58

I think it was I the ideas of the book

3:00

in my head and I think you asked me about it

3:02

and I didn't do a very good job of explaining it. So maybe

3:04

today I'll be better I'm not sure.

3:06

So we'll come on to that, I want to talk about the book because it's

3:08

been out a year or so, but that's done phenomenally

3:11

well and it's really interesting and now you're flying all over

3:13

the world talking about that and other things, which is

3:15

keeping you very busy. As I've explained

3:17

in the intro, apart from

3:19

being a successful marketing book writer, which is

3:21

not an easy thing to have achieved, you

3:24

work at Zenith Media based here in New

3:26

York, hence the accent, as

3:29

EVP Innovation. Is that right?

3:32

You're sort of frowning

3:34

as you're asking the question so I know that

3:36

you're gonna ask me what that means. Yes,

3:38

it's worth noting that this is a word that gets

3:41

used a lot and it has absolutely no

3:43

defined meaning in a way that really

3:46

connects with people. I think often it's the

3:48

kind of spirit, if anything, it's become

3:50

sort of synonymous with this need

3:53

to demonstrate to the world that somehow

3:56

you get 'change' and that somehow technology

3:58

is making a profound difference and

4:00

it's become a sort of experimental unit

4:03

that is kind of bolted onto the side of agencies

4:05

or clients. My take on

4:07

it is actually that's the wrong way to go about it and

4:09

to treat it as this kind of garnish

4:12

or this kind of Double Art on

4:14

Friday afternoons of the calendar is

4:18

massively inappropriate. Actually we need to take it much more

4:20

seriously, but that's extremely difficult

4:22

to do. So I think part of my role is to try and elevate

4:25

the kind of conversations that we have and move

4:27

up to more senior clients

4:29

and get people to take this

4:31

as much more of a sort of existential

4:33

threat or profound opportunity.

4:36

More than being an opportunity to give

4:38

a startup $25,000 and

4:40

get your name in Tech Crunch.

4:42

What does it mean to you though? Innovation

4:44

is, again it's one of these really

4:46

horrible cliched overexposed

4:50

and badly understood

4:53

words but that's

4:55

what you do though, you're out there. What's

4:57

the purpose of that? Trying to just get

4:59

people to open their minds to think

5:01

a little bit differently? Is

5:04

there a structure to that? Is it really, is it a creative

5:06

feel it, f reeform thing or is

5:08

there a framework

5:11

of innovation that you can really follow?

5:12

I think when you look at different types of change

5:15

that happen within businesses and happened within

5:17

design processes, most changes are quite

5:19

incremental. So they kind of follow quite linear

5:21

patterns and they involve lots

5:23

and lots of established ways

5:26

of thinkings like

5:28

an evolutionary funnel where things

5:30

improve towards the sort of common goal.

5:33

And I think there are periods in a design process

5:35

where you see this leap of faith and you see

5:37

this kind of jump across

5:39

to a totally different way of thinking about things or

5:41

a totally different way to solve the same problem. That

5:44

for me is innovation. Like for me it's

5:46

about getting different types of people

5:48

and different types of thinking and thinking about technology

5:51

in new ways and then

5:53

having a complete step change in the way that

5:55

you go about that. You know, our industry

5:57

is kind of obsessed with the sort of current paradigm

6:00

of CPMs and measurements

6:02

on spreadsheets and optimization.

6:04

To some extent everything I

6:09

do is almost the antithesis of that stuff. So it

6:11

is actually saying that we can't measure how successful

6:13

this is or that this does involve huge

6:16

amounts of genuine risks or

6:18

that this has never been done before so there is no case

6:20

study. So in a way, this spirit

6:23

of what I do and what actually I do about

6:25

getting people to be very open minded

6:27

to radically different ways to, to do our

6:29

jobs, that's quite difficult.

6:32

Yeah. There's the work that you do at Zenith Media,

6:34

right? So I mean most listeners will know

6:36

that is one of the world's largest big media agency

6:39

networks and then you've got

6:41

the book and you've got your platform or

6:44

your audience, community, whatever you call it, where you

6:46

have a voice and you talk about these things

6:48

and lots of them, those aren't related necessarily

6:50

to Zenith Media and you're out there talking,

6:52

you get hired to travel around the world

6:55

and deliver speeches to inspire

6:57

people around . Is that around innovation?

6:59

Do feel that that's your thing?

7:02

Yeah, the

7:04

role that I do in the broader world that's

7:06

less attached to Zenith is

7:08

much more about a wider aperture on

7:11

innovation , and more

7:13

general business changes and

7:15

marketing changes and retail

7:16

changes and it's looking

7:19

further ahead into the future. So the kind of conversations

7:22

that I might have as part of that environment

7:24

are things like the future of mobility

7:27

or what should cities become

7:29

or how does governance change in the

7:31

future?When I'm

7:34

thinking more about my role at Zenith it's

7:36

much more about what is the meaning of that and

7:39

what does it mean for our client's businesses? I'm

7:42

quite lucky to have different relationships with

7:47

our clients through Zenith. So the kind

7:49

of conversations I'm normally having and the people that I'm

7:51

speaking to are not there because of my

7:53

incredible knowledge about CPMs or DSPs

7:56

or CRM platforms or tech

7:58

stacks. Cause I don't really understand any of that.

8:01

I'm there to try and bridge

8:03

the broader changing world

8:06

and what that means for these people's roles.

8:08

Often those people a re CMOs or

8:12

strategic planners more than they a re media people.

8:15

But there's no sort of tension there between

8:17

them. I mean what I learned from

8:19

being on planes and shopping m

8:21

alls and talking to interesting people at

8:23

conferences, is very much material

8:26

that then can get synthesized into my

8:28

more everyday job.

8:31

As you are saying that I'm just thinking this podcast

8:34

is not going to open up a new audience for you.

8:36

Most people that listen to this will be familiar

8:39

with you or something that you've written maybe that

8:41

you've done. People kind

8:43

of know what Tom Goodwin is. I think

8:45

the first thing I want to talk about is a lot of listeners

8:47

will have been to conferences heard either

8:49

you talk or people let you talk and it's energizing

8:52

and motivating and fun and

8:54

it's good stories

8:56

to tell. It's a shared moment like a really

8:58

great speaker. You get

9:01

back to your desk on the

9:04

next Monday morning and it's the same thing. So how

9:06

do you bridge that delta I think you call

9:08

it, between inspiring people

9:11

from a stage and then actually engendering

9:14

some kind of change in the business.

9:16

It's a very difficult thing to do. I'm

9:19

aware as I do this more

9:22

that it's not getting any easier. So if anything

9:24

I've done a better job of coming to terms with

9:26

the reality of the frustration. It's just

9:28

hard. I think there's an interesting point

9:31

of kind of generations I think where by

9:34

definition, and this is something I posted

9:36

on LinkedIn the other day, by definition, when you become

9:38

sufficiently important that

9:40

your voice is heard and perhaps you have a budget

9:43

and that people will listen to you and follow

9:46

the path that you set, by

9:48

definition you are probably quite old and by

9:51

quite old, I'm deliberately being vague, but you're probably

9:53

at an age where you start having kids and you probably own

9:55

a house. And then the moment that you have

9:57

those fixed costs and those risks

9:59

in your life, you also then have much less

10:02

to gain because actually at that point you start

10:04

managing the decline of your career more than

10:06

the ascent. I think

10:08

there's a sort of cruel irony really, and the fact

10:10

that the people that do come to

10:12

conferences and sort of clap the most loudly

10:15

and enthusiastically come up

10:17

to the end and say that, you know, you are correct

10:19

or that you're wrong or something. Those

10:21

normally are people that are probably three or four

10:23

levels below the point where

10:26

these decisions really get made. So

10:29

it'll be interesting to see what happens when these people get older.

10:31

Like will they just age into

10:33

conservatism will they

10:35

realize that actually they are a product

10:37

of an age where there was huge amounts of

10:39

disruption and where small companies can

10:42

come from nowhere to challenge big ones and maybe

10:44

they'll keep that spirit alive. But it's gonna take

10:46

a little bit of time.

10:47

Media agencies have been run by the same

10:49

handful of white,

10:52

middle class British or American men

10:54

for the last 15, 20 years. And that just hasn't

10:56

really changed and is changing a

10:58

little bit in the last few years. We've seen some of the turnover

11:01

of that. When you get to that level, I

11:03

think that's your point is that you, you're motivated to protect

11:05

the status quo.

11:06

It doesn't mean that these people are evil

11:08

or that they're stupid. It means that they're

11:10

acting in their own interests and the interests of what's

11:13

actually the mandate that they've been given from above.

11:16

And generally speaking, our industry

11:18

holistically exists in a sort of manage decline as well

11:21

where generally speaking, it's about managing

11:23

costs to ensure profitability is

11:25

maintained rather than managing

11:28

investments to make sure that growth is maintained. Um,

11:30

so that does create quite a difficult scenario.

11:33

Uh , like I'm definitely aware that the most common thing

11:36

that people say to me after my presentations

11:38

is, well, it was great,

11:40

but he didn't really tell me anything new.

11:42

You just all connected the dots in a different way

11:44

and you would just sort of saying what we all think.

11:46

But we're a bit afraid to say and I

11:48

find that interesting because it is completely right

11:51

and it's slightly offensive in its correctness um,

11:54

but it makes me realize the thing that I have going

11:56

for me, which is different to other people is actually I do

11:58

have a degree of fearlessness and

12:00

actually that kind of comes from the

12:02

way I was brought up. And it also comes from the

12:04

fact that actually if I did lose my job tomorrow, in

12:07

like the worst case scenario is still kind of fine.

12:09

Like there's no kids that are going to get thrown out of school

12:11

and there's no houses that are going to be taken

12:14

away from me. And I think it's

12:16

worth remembering that what

12:19

has been useful to me has been fearlessness

12:21

and that perhaps that should be a characteristic

12:23

that we look for in people

12:25

that work around us as well.

12:27

Yep. We've discussed on previous shows, we have this thing

12:30

where we hire clearly, you've just immediately qualified

12:32

yourself for. In every single

12:34

job brief are the words 'fearless not

12:36

reckless'. Now, I don't like reckless people

12:38

because they get you into trouble and they say things and not supposed

12:40

to and they over promise and under deliver. But I

12:43

think it's a really, really good to have

12:45

a fearless challenge of authority to

12:49

be grounded enough to be able to stand

12:51

your ground with the CEO and make

12:55

a case. I love that.

12:56

I think in intentions are very important

12:59

to me. I can't remember if it's still in my Twitter bio,

13:01

but at one point I called myself "a pain in the ass with

13:04

good intentions" and it's

13:06

important, like there's a big difference between trolling

13:09

, um , where you're being inflammatory

13:11

to try and get people to notice you because you

13:13

want attention , um, and

13:16

being quite punchy and provocative because you are

13:18

actually staying, trying to start a debate or

13:20

to listen from other people that know more. Um

13:22

, or to get people talking about something that we should talk

13:25

about. And I think , um, it

13:27

would be great if we could do a better

13:29

job of realizing that often

13:31

people that are quite difficult and challenging

13:33

and are strong minded if their intentions

13:35

are actually purely good and there's a good chance so they will

13:37

be, and that's a very useful force

13:40

. But it's something that people have to kind of manage somehow.

13:43

What do you think is going on in the in media

13:45

agency world? Are agencies

13:48

innovating? Is there innovation

13:50

in media agencies, are they stagnating?

13:52

You know, we went down a rather

13:54

dark path for a moment talking about they're managing a

13:57

decline and this kind of stuff which I think is understood.

14:00

I didn't mean that to sort of sound depressing. I just think

14:02

it's , um , it's a good context to understand the sort

14:04

of reality of the situation. Cause you know, there were

14:07

very few phone calls where the person's saying, Hey,

14:09

I'd like to spend more money with you this year and

14:11

I'd like to be sure that we can give

14:13

it to you in a way which is more profitable. Um

14:16

, so we have to be cognizant of the reality.

14:19

The weird thing I think about

14:21

the industry environment is

14:23

we tend to do a lot of mirroring each other.

14:25

So everyone's kind of in service

14:28

of each other. So as an agency we feel

14:30

like we're somewhat intention to our clients

14:32

, um , vendors, which is a horrible term,

14:34

but the people that we work with to help invest

14:36

our client's money feel like they're somehow serving

14:38

us. And I think that creates quite

14:41

a , a sort of loop of complicitness

14:43

in a way where we feel like, who are we to

14:45

challenge the client structure and who are we

14:47

to challenge the spreadsheets they fill in?

14:50

Um, so think we have lots of good explanations

14:53

for it. I just think that

14:55

they're not good excuses. And

14:57

, um, I mean I feel like sometimes I

15:00

sound like an old person, but I grew up

15:02

in an environment where as an agency you

15:04

were paid to be a trusted advisor and

15:07

the value that we added , um,

15:09

was to bring in outside opinions

15:11

and to be fearless

15:15

in telling the client that their , you know

15:17

, proverbial baby was ugly. And

15:19

I think somehow it doesn't feel like that anymore.

15:21

And I think that's partly the media side and that's partly

15:24

the modern age and it's partly an overserved market,

15:26

but it's a very ironic thing because we ended

15:28

up losing all of our value when

15:30

we become easier to work with the more complainant. That's

15:35

when we see the move towards in-housing and,

15:38

u h, bringing other elements back from the agency.

15:40

So we've, we've entered this a ll very ironic spiral. I think

15:44

the trouble is that t he current environment actually

15:47

works quite well for lots of people as well.

15:49

So I don't think, u m, I mean w e're k ind o f talking about

15:51

it before, b ut I don't think most people over the

15:53

age of forty look at this industry and

15:55

think this is terrible, there's

15:59

an easy way to change it and I should be that

16:01

person to do that. Like instead, you know,

16:03

TV companies are quite happy with the fact

16:05

that their viewership is declining c ause it means

16:07

t hat their media becomes more scarce. It becomes more valuable.

16:10

Like no one at a big TV c ompanies thinking,

16:13

how can I provide my stuff over

16:15

the internet free of charge and then start

16:17

making money from video based

16:19

addressable advertising. C ause they know that's such

16:21

a huge leap of faith and such a big risk

16:24

that immediately they'd be fired for suggesting

16:27

such a thing. So we, we, u m, we

16:29

probably, in theory should see this sort of

16:31

inflection point where the entire industry becomes

16:33

very digitally oriented and we

16:35

think about media planning and buying in a totally

16:38

different way. And we start thinking about words

16:40

like programmatic in a positive way

16:42

rather than a negative way. Cause it just means

16:44

using algorithms to make good

16:46

decisions.

16:47

What do we think about that? You think that's possible? [Mark Ritson

16:50

is absolutely convinced, I think

16:52

we even had a bet about it, that the word programmatic

16:55

was so toxic that it could never

16:57

ever be recovered and re-positioned.

17:00

It probably needs a rebranding job. And

17:02

probably the way to do it is to change the words. I think

17:09

he's right in terms of the branding of the word programmatic.

17:11

But he's wrong if he thinks that the

17:13

notion and the philosophy. Some

17:19

sort of snazzy company will come out with,

17:21

I mean addressable is a pretty crappy word. Um,

17:24

I know they'll probably use AI, they'll just be AI

17:26

driven advertising and then everyone will think it's

17:28

the future or something. But yeah, I mean

17:30

like all of these concepts should be very helpful

17:33

to us. But somehow we kind of, we shy away from

17:35

having these conversations because we're worried that

17:37

people will think that we're saying

17:39

something different to what we're actually saying. Um,

17:41

so the entire world of media, I mean, you

17:43

look at the magazine owners , um

17:46

, they've done an absolutely terrible job of changing,

17:48

like they're terrified. The, the

17:50

abundance of time that we spend on online

17:52

means that inventory tends to infinity,

17:55

which means that prices tend to zero and

17:57

they continue to sort of operate

17:59

their structures in a way that has digital

18:01

departments and digital media sales

18:04

executives. And they, I mean, they do

18:06

everything that's wrong. I'm

18:08

a very optimistic person and somehow my tone is quite negative

18:10

at the moment, but I think we are at this sort of weird

18:12

period of time that I call the interim of things

18:15

where we kind of have the business

18:17

models and the structure and the processes

18:19

and the culture of the past.

18:21

And then we've sort of added to that legacy

18:24

infrastructure, all of this modernity

18:26

and tech stacks and algorithmic

18:30

buying, but we've kind of added it to the kind of crumbling

18:32

foundations of the past and it's

18:34

probably gonna get a little bit worse for

18:37

maybe two or three years. And

18:39

then the whole thing will just start having existential

18:41

cracks and sort of break quite quickly and

18:44

we'll suddenly enter a new paradigm where actually, things are better

18:46

for everyone. So we'll see that we get

18:49

targeted with ads which are actually more helpful to

18:51

us and more relevant to us, but they're not personalized

18:53

because no one really wants personalization.

18:56

We'll figure out a way that those ads will be worth more

18:58

so we'll see fewer of them and because they're worth

19:00

more people will spend more money on production

19:02

and make sure they're more um,

19:04

so that they value our attention greater and I

19:07

think this will end up with lots of virtuous

19:09

circles, which work really well for everybody.

19:12

I just think somehow people haven't seen

19:14

that.

19:14

I think that's exactly right. The

19:16

great test of that is, you know , the marketers

19:18

saying is this

19:21

working? Are we selling more stuff

19:23

? Are we growing share? But figuring out actually

19:25

what does work and what doesn't work, doing more

19:27

of that stuff. That sets

19:29

then all of us that were partying and high

19:31

fiving over kind of success of VC

19:33

money coming into adtech thinking that was the future.

19:35

Greater complexity means greater

19:37

money for everybody else. No, we

19:40

just get back to really simple things like what sells

19:42

shampoo. People will come up with

19:45

technologies driven by really simple principles

19:47

exactly as you're talking about. And those are things

19:49

that marketers are gonna want to buy.

19:50

I think so. And I think , um, the wonderful

19:52

thing is I've done quite a lot of thinking about this and

19:54

I can't see that anyone loses from this.

19:57

Like I'm actually the interests of publishes

19:59

the interests of technology companies and

20:01

platforms and brands and agencies

20:03

and people like every person

20:05

on the planet, they're actually very aligned.

20:08

Um, so there's no logical way why it can't

20:11

happen . I think somehow the ad tech thing became

20:13

this thing where everyone felt vulnerable unless they

20:15

were also making , um, complicated

20:18

, um, charts with lots of logos

20:20

and people feel vulnerable if they don't appear to have

20:22

a process, which seems to be very, very technologically

20:25

driven and complex. And you feel

20:27

vulnerable if you don't have somebody that shows 29

20:30

different sources of data being smashed together

20:32

and um, forming some big

20:34

data sets that you then do snazzy things

20:36

with. I'm prepared

20:38

to be completely wrong on this and I'm prepared

20:40

to seem like an idiot, but I think we

20:42

massively overcomplicate things and I don't actually

20:45

think we need that much data. I don't actually

20:47

think that the technology needs to be that significant.

20:49

I don't even think we actually need to use as much attribution

20:51

as we do, because I think most of it is nonsense. The

20:54

number of times you see these incredibly complex

20:56

way to establish someone that's quite

20:59

interested in cars. You know, we'll

21:01

use location data to scrape through

21:03

someone's , um, sort of recent

21:05

Google maps history to find out they'd

21:08

been to a car dealership. And actually if you

21:10

just find someone that's been on a car website, like

21:12

that's the same, just figure

21:15

it out they went on a car website or if they're watching top

21:17

gear on Amazon prime, then they'd probably be

21:19

quite interested in cars. And actually

21:21

, you know, most people will be buying cars based

21:24

on brands that have formed opinions over

21:26

decades in their life. So this idea that somehow

21:28

we have to get so precise and

21:30

so surgical about it. I think it's nonsense.

21:33

This endless search for personalization,

21:36

for attribution, for complete

21:38

accountability. That

21:41

never actually made sense of course

21:45

that's not possible. As Bob Hoffman calls

21:47

it, there's sophisticated surveillance

21:49

operations not serving anybody at all other

21:51

than the platforms, and the infrastructure

21:53

believes that that's what marketers want. Marketers

21:56

have been demanding it because they've been told that that's what they should

21:59

demand, its gone around and around in circles.

22:01

I think that now they're pulling back is my observation,

22:04

slowly from that, and realizing

22:07

the need to invest some time in their brands a bit more.

22:09

I think that is where we're getting to . I mean you would have

22:11

more exposure to those kind of conversations

22:13

that I have. My sense is that it's

22:16

a bit like a kind of movement in architecture like

22:18

postmodernism where for so

22:20

long modernism was the kind of trendy new

22:22

thing and you almost had to sort

22:25

of build that way otherwise everyone thought you were an idiot

22:27

because they thought you were just naive and stupid and you hadn't learned

22:30

about this new technique. Then postmodernism

22:32

came away and kind of, because people were confident

22:34

enough in modernism, they are able to sort of

22:36

, um , subvert it and to

22:38

sort of retreat back to more traditional

22:40

principles that actually worked for years. And

22:43

I think we're seeing the same in the digital landscape,

22:45

which is why I call it post digital, where for

22:48

so long if you didn't have

22:53

a presence on Twitter, people just assume you'd never

22:55

heard of Twitter. They didn't think that you decided

22:57

against that they thought you were ignorant. And

22:59

for so long, if you didn't spend a lot of money on digital

23:01

media, the assumption was that you were stupid. And

23:04

I think we saw all of this glancing

23:07

at each other and making sure that we were doing the

23:09

same thing collectively. That you felt

23:11

stupid if he didn't have tons of data and

23:13

you felt stupid if you weren't doing everything that seemed modern

23:16

and then now we're getting to the point where people are happy

23:18

to say no and to say no

23:21

knowing that they've tried it and knowing that the

23:23

rest of the industry won't think they're stupid. And

23:25

I think that could be a movement that sort of gathers momentum. But

23:28

there's this sort of vulnerability and simplicity as well

23:30

as as an agency I think we feel quite scared

23:32

if we just make it seem like it's not that complex.

23:35

You know we have to stick in 25 different charts

23:37

to show our strategic planning approach cause

23:39

you feel like that's what people spend

23:42

money on. But actually I just think being

23:44

confident enough and empathetic

23:46

enough and understanding people enough, people can buy that.

23:49

It's just quite hard to demonstrate that with charts

23:51

.

23:52

I really liked "the interim of things".

23:55

Is that a Goodwin-ism? That has got to be the

23:58

next book. It's

24:01

a very nice way of describing kind

24:04

of where we are, I agree it's just going to last a

24:06

couple of years as the system almost purges

24:09

itself of all of this complexity and we get back

24:11

to actually listening to what marketers want and then build

24:13

around that.

24:14

It's happened with every single technology

24:16

that's ever existed. So steam engines

24:18

were first used to pull up water to

24:20

drive water wheels . And the first

24:23

electrical motors we used to sort of replace

24:25

steam engines in quite stupid ways. It's

24:27

quite normal to go through this period where no one's really

24:29

figured it out. And then we reconstruct for the new

24:31

age. It just takes us quite a long time.

24:33

So let's just talk about you for a second.

24:35

So you did the book. So for

24:37

those that haven't read Digital Darwinism, so that was about

24:40

a year and a bit ago.

24:42

It's all about change in the world and change

24:44

that matters, like there's lots of people that go around

24:46

saying 5G, internet of things, AI,

24:49

image recognition, deep learning, blah blah blah. And

24:52

it's almost like their job is to try and get us confused

24:54

about stuff. And while I tried to do is a very

24:57

sensible , logical take on the changes that we should

24:59

really be thinking about , uh , the ones

25:01

that we shouldn't be thinking about and how companies can

25:03

really do that. It's looking at

25:05

sort of the notion of disruption, and

25:07

I hate that word, but looking at companies

25:10

that should've changed it didn't, is looking at companies

25:12

that did change and how they changed. And

25:14

so it's still designed to be a sort of manual to

25:16

help people at all levels in

25:18

business think about technology in a way

25:20

that allows them to change for good.

25:23

Following that Darwinism

25:24

theme, that makes

25:26

sense then when we start talking about the stuff

25:29

that we were just talking about, which is we are in a mess , but we'll

25:31

figure its way out at some point because

25:34

it's natural selection.

25:37

I didn't like the title . The publisher gave me the title

25:39

and then because I couldn't come up with a better one , I had to learn

25:42

to love it. And increasingly I realize it's not

25:44

a terrible title, even though it doesn't still

25:46

feel that remarkable. But this idea that,

25:48

I mean evolution needs mutations

25:50

and it kind of needs errors and there kind of needs there to

25:54

be significant changes that happen. Otherwise

25:57

you do sort of die . And I think we

25:59

need to be careful that we don't go around saying every

26:01

industry is screwed. Cause the reality is

26:03

that, you know , if you're an airline,

26:05

like you're probably fine right now. Like,

26:07

you know , VR is not gonna change the future of your

26:09

business and just make it easier to bloody

26:11

change flights for goodness sake. Um, so

26:14

it's not like everyone needs to be paranoid, but

26:16

often the people that should be paranoid are not,

26:19

and often the people that are paranoid shouldn't be. I'd

26:22

like to think that my book is a useful

26:24

guide through the degree to which

26:26

people should be thinking about this and how to think about

26:28

it . It doesn't involve this whole like death

26:30

and everything screwed kind of narrative.

26:33

It just involves a kind of let's

26:35

be thoughtful and let's take our time

26:37

and let's figure out the right time to jump on the right

26:40

technology in the right way and to

26:42

do everything you do with the kind of relentless

26:44

focus on the customer / People

26:46

/ consumers because most of the

26:48

innovation that's done more often than not is really

26:51

about signaling to each other. Um,

26:53

which is something I can't stand. So and just

26:55

doing simple things well often as well.

26:58

What's the most interesting or best comment

27:00

you've heard about the book? Are there moments where

27:03

you've just thought I'm glad I wrote that?

27:05

Well you feel very vulnerable when you write a book.

27:07

Like I mean, I didn't go to school and have lots

27:09

of people applaud me all day long saying I was

27:11

clever. So you presumed

27:13

that you have no right to write a book.

27:15

And the other people have come up with the same

27:17

concepts before and that actually

27:19

you haven't done enough research and you

27:22

presume that you've made massive errors and that you'll feel

27:24

like an idiot. And I , I'd never would have

27:26

written a book if it wasn't for having a publisher

27:28

that approached me and , and

27:30

sort of gave me the confidence to do it. So

27:32

the main thing I've felt is

27:34

relief that there are not lots of people

27:36

that have sort of shouted

27:38

at me saying, I'm an idiot for writing it . Um,

27:41

people seem to find it quite funny, which is quite flattering.

27:45

I slagged off management consultants,

27:47

quite a lot. Like I do have this , um, deep

27:50

loathing of everything about

27:52

the entire industry. Um,

27:55

and I presumed that by being quite

27:57

, um , mean spirited about consultants

27:59

and been quite mean-spirited about Clayton Christensen.

28:03

I thought that'd be a bit of a backlash. I thought

28:05

they'd just be people that were sort of try and take me down.

28:08

Um, and I haven't heard that so far. So there

28:11

will be more of that in the

28:13

second book.

28:15

Have you finished promoting that?

28:17

It's a weird feeling when you finish your book cause you're

28:19

obviously supposed to promote it. But I thought maybe this

28:21

is shit and maybe the more people that buy

28:24

it, the more stupid I'll seem

28:26

to be. So I just thought let it sell itself

28:28

and it sold quite well. Um, and

28:30

, and now it seems quite strange to promote

28:32

it. So I'll write a few articles that are based

28:34

on their principles just cause I think they're quite interesting

28:37

things to write. Um, and it

28:39

was never like a huge part of my job. Like it was

28:41

a kind of weekend and evening thing. Um

28:43

, so I've always been doing my job. So yeah, at the moment

28:45

, um, I don't quite know how public

28:48

this is supposed to be, but I spend most of my time working

28:50

for Zenith , um , in the US but

28:52

increasingly I kind of talk about

28:54

, um, the themes and the trends from

28:56

Zenith , um, across the

28:58

world. And I'm doing more work for

29:01

the Publicis Groupe as well. Um

29:03

, like there is a realization that

29:05

our industry does need to change and that people

29:08

like me are quite good at getting people to think differently.

29:10

So I'm doing various different things to try

29:12

and create a culture of change within

29:14

the group itself. But I think I can't

29:17

be more specific than that.

29:18

I think I know what you're talking about. The businesses

29:20

has realized that there's a Tom Goodwin in the building

29:22

and that's quite nice. It could be quite helpful.

29:24

Slowly, it's a very odd thing where you have

29:26

, um, everything in the world

29:29

from most people not knowing

29:31

you exist and certainly not caring you exist

29:33

and knowing nothing about you, which is great. But

29:36

then there are sort of small pockets of people that seem

29:38

to think that I must walk around sort of signing

29:40

friends , um, sort of breasts

29:42

and stuff all day long and get noticed on the

29:44

street. And that's not really true at all, but

29:47

there is this weird situation where you

29:49

can enter a room and sometimes people think

29:51

that this wonderful thing has happened

29:53

and I'm this notable sort

29:55

of quote unquote thought leader that they're lucky

29:57

to have in the room. And that happens very rarely.

30:00

Sometimes people just seem quite visually

30:02

irritated by the fact that I've come to a meeting,

30:04

which is understandable and I get it . But

30:06

more often than not, there's this weird thing where most

30:08

people have not heard of you and you don't know if they should

30:11

have. Um , and then you can't quite figure

30:12

out how to behave in that room?

30:14

So that's nice. Then you have the opportunity to delight. How

30:18

do you consume content stuff?

30:21

So you talk a lot,

30:23

right ? You speak a lot, you write a lot, you

30:25

are constantly putting things out there and

30:27

challenging. What is your

30:30

approach to consuming stuff? Is it completely

30:32

random or do you have certain go to

30:35

places?

30:36

I mean it's basically my Twitter feed and what

30:40

I like about that is it, it's quite democratic

30:43

actually Twitter. I think people don't realize that. But if someone

30:45

writes a really good piece, like it

30:47

doesn't matter who they are, it certainly doesn't

30:50

matter what gender they are, despite what people think. It doesn't

30:52

matter what country they come from. Like obviously if

30:54

you have followers it means i t's more likely to

30:56

spark in the first place. B ut I actually t hink that

30:59

w hen something sparks, like if you write something well

31:01

it'll thrive. U

31:03

m, so yeah, I spend way

31:05

too much time on Twitter, just reading random

31:07

articles, so

31:10

that's pretty much everything. I

31:14

have become extremely, u

31:16

m, impatient. So if there's

31:18

an article that in any way

31:20

appears to be quite unimaginative

31:24

and quite cliched, I'll just stop reading it

31:26

s traight a way. U m, and I've now

31:28

learned that there are just c ertain publications

31:30

you never have to look at. So anything

31:33

ever written on Forbes is a complete waste

31:35

of time. U m, increasingly,

31:38

u h, sorry about all the media deals that I'm, I'm

31:41

screwing over by saying this but its just a personal opinion.

31:45

U m, things like fast company. I think is actually

31:47

quite a lot of recycled crap anything that's

31:49

written and appears to be sponsored by

31:51

a company. U m, complete nonsense.

31:54

U m, even things like Harvard Business Review actually, like

31:56

I feel like the quality of that h as declined, whereas

31:59

on the other side, anything that's in the Atlantic appears

32:01

to be amazing. And there are particular

32:03

a uthors, so it's not a surprise, but

32:05

people like Rory Sutherland or Scott

32:08

Galloway, u h, people like Derek Thompson, Maria

32:10

Konnikova, t here are

32:14

people who every time they write something,

32:16

you feel like you've learned

32:18

something remarkable and

32:21

that's worth reading 10,000

32:24

other articles. W hat I love about all of those

32:26

writers is they tend to sort

32:28

of bring together ideas from disparate w

32:30

orlds. So they'll be s ort of combining a theory from

32:32

coding with a theory from behavioral

32:34

science with another theory from a

32:37

rchitecture o r design or something. I think i t's that, t

32:40

hat altitude o f thought, which I find completely

32:42

compelling and the degree to which are often learning

32:44

from a peripheral and

32:47

adjacent industries, which are not our own.

32:50

U m, it's a kind of world away from the Deloitte

32:53

Digital piece about how 5G will

32:56

change everything that goes through the same

32:58

examples of smart cities and the

33:00

internet of things and self driving cars.

33:02

And you know, that piece kind of almost looks

33:04

like it's written by an AI every time you read it. U

33:07

m, so I think, u m, t here, there

33:09

is a skill to getting people's attention quite early

33:11

on. And I think it's a, it's a quite

33:13

a traditional journalism skill

33:16

of t he sort of, u h, the notion of a

33:18

headline that sucks people in.

33:19

So I've just remembered you just sat with the master

33:22

of that, didn't you Seth Godin?Didn't you

33:24

just interview him?

33:25

I got

33:28

asked to interview him by his publisher

33:30

, uh , which is quite

33:32

an interesting experience. Um, he

33:34

was very media trained. I mean, you kind of felt

33:36

like you're in a sort of convey about really , um,

33:38

even though it was just me on it. But I mean

33:41

he's very, very, very good at articulating

33:43

thoughts in a condensed way.

33:46

Um, I mean there's a whole interesting conversation

33:48

here, which is how do people create content

33:51

and do thought leadership for the modern age and

33:53

what should people strive

33:55

to do to create their own personal brand. And

33:58

I kind of , I don't really like that whole world,

34:00

but I think it's interesting to have

34:02

something novel to say.

34:04

I think you are in it, I've said to you

34:06

before, I think that whether you choose

34:08

to embrace that or not is a different

34:10

t hing. But what Seth has

34:12

done, I guess we've learned over the last 10, 15

34:15

years i s he's saying some

34:17

really smart common sense things,

34:19

but presenting them in really nice digestible

34:22

ways and he's very presentable

34:24

and articulate and charming

34:26

or charismatic or something, and that's a

34:28

thing.

34:28

That will get you most of the way.

34:30

Yeah, I mean it's , it's fascinating cause I do

34:32

quite a lot of events now where I speak at

34:34

events and I listen to people and also program

34:37

events. And you realize that

34:39

the really good speakers are actually not often

34:41

people that have the most

34:43

credibility in the field and they're

34:45

often not people who have had a particularly successful

34:48

career. Um, so I

34:50

would never want to listen to a CEO of

34:52

a fortune 500 company

34:54

speak. Um, and I think

34:57

that there's a lot to be said about the skill

34:59

in communication and

35:01

the skill in getting people's attention and

35:03

in particular the skill in the modern age of

35:05

making points very clearly and

35:07

quickly because no one really has

35:09

an attention span.

35:11

We're doing really well at that. It's way, way, way,

35:13

way over. I'm flashing.

35:15

I should

35:20

have said this already five times, but you're listening to

35:22

#MediaSnack Meets, you can go to

35:24

www.mediasnackpodcast.com to

35:26

get the full show notes, which we

35:29

will link to some of the many resources

35:31

that Tom and many of the writers that Tom's been

35:33

talking about,

35:35

Faris Yakob as well as another one. Sorry to interrupt, but Faris is

35:37

brilliant. And he wrote basically everything

35:39

that's contemporary today in about 2002

35:42

which is quite strange to me.

35:44

He's literally committed himself

35:46

to delivering this message. Right. Isn't he literally

35:48

like traveling the world?

35:49

Yeah. He's one of these sort of digital

35:51

nomad types.

35:56

Good for him. So Tom, your advice for marketers. Let's

35:59

think particularly about media directors , right

36:01

? You and I know a bunch of those. So

36:04

dealing with change, if we are in the interim of

36:06

things and there's lots of change kind of happening,

36:08

what from your perspective, what's your advice and how to

36:10

deal with that and what have you seen how

36:12

people can deal with change in the best way?

36:14

I think the main thing is to focus on people a lot more.

36:17

We've become very introspective in this industry. And

36:19

we tend to focus at technologies or

36:21

processes. Just look at people. I look

36:24

at how they're behaving, look at what their expectations

36:26

are, look at what they would like from us.

36:28

Um, and focus only really on

36:30

that. And that means actually saying

36:33

no to a lot of stuff. Like the reality

36:35

is that you don't need to have a voice strategy

36:38

and a VR strategy and an AI strategy

36:40

and a 5G strategy and an AI

36:42

strategy, you could just focus doing

36:48

really simple things well. I mean

36:50

like we have this thing called a mobile phone and every

36:52

single person who we're interested

36:55

in talking to is on it endlessly , um,

36:57

all the time. And we still haven't found a way

37:00

to connect with people there. I mean, that's a huge

37:02

opportunity. Another one is e-commerce. For

37:04

some reason we think that our jobs

37:06

are about a spreadsheet like brand

37:08

awareness or favor ability or um,

37:11

you know, brand recall, actually we're really

37:13

in the business of selling stuff and like,

37:15

you can now buy anything from anywhere on the planet

37:18

with the touch of your finger. Um,

37:20

so we can't be afraid to take areas

37:22

like that and really, really explore the hell out of

37:24

those as well. Um , so focus

37:26

on people, focus on doing simple things that matter.

37:29

Um, focus on your own mission. I think

37:31

often clients don't really know why

37:34

they're innovating. Like some clients are

37:36

doing it because they want to get famous and win at Cannes, some

37:38

clients are doing it because they want to get famous and get promoted.

37:40

Some clients are doing it because they think they can get better business

37:42

results that way. Some people are doing it because they want

37:44

to look busy. And I think , um, it's

37:46

important to genuinely know why you're

37:49

doing it because then you can optimize

37:51

around those particular sort of criteria. Um,

37:54

and then I think finally don't

37:57

get overwhelmed. Um, like

37:59

there is this , um, pervasive

38:02

sense that the world is changing faster

38:04

than ever and that everything we learned before it's

38:06

nonsense and it's not really true.

38:08

It's all, I mean pretty much every

38:10

core principle of advertising if

38:14

not every single core principle ofadvertising

38:16

is exactly the same now as it was a

38:18

hundred years ago. And actually the effect of a sorts

38:20

of beautiful story that's well told

38:22

or an experience that feels compelling

38:25

and emotional and exciting. Like

38:27

those principles are all the same. We

38:29

have slightly different ways to do that now. So

38:31

we can use things like dynamic creative optimization

38:34

or we can use the programmatic

38:36

stuff we were talking about before. But the reality

38:38

is that that's kind of the weeds. I mean, like

38:40

the most important thing really are the

38:44

principles that we've always understood before.

38:46

Give us some hope then if we look back

38:49

in 12 months time, if we were sat here again and

38:52

looking back, what do you, would

38:54

you hope that's happened in

38:57

the media industry specifically, which is going through this

38:59

wrangling kind of crisis at the moment.

39:01

The context for that hope is that our jobs

39:04

have never been more important. There's

39:06

this horrible sense that somehow brands are less

39:08

important or they're dying and that's just complete

39:10

nonsense. Brands have never been

39:13

more powerful and more valuable. And

39:15

as choice proliferates brands

39:17

become even more valuable. Um,

39:20

and the technology that we have makes our

39:22

jobs much more exciting. Like, if we were

39:24

an architect and someone invented steel,

39:27

like that's a pretty good day to be an architect.

39:29

Um, you know , we, we have all of these amazing new tools and

39:33

somehow we are not enthusiastic about it. So the thing I

39:35

would love to see is I

39:37

would love to see us being

39:39

more imaginative

39:41

in how we bring together this stuff in a way

39:43

that is more helpful to people.

39:47

Um, you know, the reality is that

39:49

people need advertising in their life

39:52

and they need to make decisions

39:54

they feel more confident about and

39:56

they need to be told about products that are exciting

39:59

and different and they need to buy stuff. So

40:02

we have to stop being sort of defeatist.

40:04

And I hope we can get to a place where

40:06

we just start making really great advertising

40:09

experiences and we start having

40:11

ads that do not

40:13

ask you to click to find out more

40:15

about a type of olive oil

40:17

and instead let you click to add it

40:20

to your shopping basket. Um, so I think,

40:22

I think we'll start to see in the

40:24

next year some of the green seedlings

40:27

of a new

40:29

advertising environment and

40:31

one which we could call the post-digital age and it is one

40:34

rooted i n more confidence and more,

40:37

u m, persuasion and more premium n

40:39

ess and more consideration for

40:41

the kind of way that people want to see advertising.

40:44

Sounds like a very good solution. Tom

40:47

Goodwin. Thank you very much.

40:48

My pleasure. Thank you.

40:51

Who would you like to meet on future episodes?

40:53

Please let us know at www.mediasnackpodcast

40:56

.com where you will also find previous guests

40:59

including leading media executives

41:01

from companies like P&G , L'Oreal

41:04

and Mars , and many more plus some of the industry's

41:06

most provocative thought leaders, people

41:08

like professor Mark Ritson and Gary

41:10

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41:19

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