Imteaz Ahamed

In today’s fast-paced world, where change can feel like a whirlwind, Mark Adams’ insights stand as a beacon of clarity—during his conversation on the Applied Intelligence Podcast, Mark, a trailblazer in digital transformation with over 100 global brands under his belt, shared his heartfelt views on creativity, leadership, and innovation—all with a deeply human touch.

1. The Journey Through Creativity and Influence

Mark’s story is full of vivid contrasts: his beginnings in electronic music and his transition to working with global brands. He beautifully describes the dance between left-brain logic and right-brain creativity. “The left brain imposes order,” he says, “but the right brain explores.” This balance fuels groundbreaking ideas, like Lady Gaga’s “Little Monsters” campaign. What started as a genuine connection with fans grew into a cultural phenomenon.

2. Human Needs: The Heart of Innovation

Mark believes true innovation comes from understanding and addressing human needs. “Only compassion can create,” he emphasizes, quoting Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings. Whether it’s transforming a live music experience to prioritize connection over spectacle or something as simple as installing mirrors in elevators to improve the user’s experience, the secret lies in empathy.

3. Culture as a Catalyst for Transformation

“All transformation is cultural transformation,” Mark declares. For businesses to evolve, their cultures must evolve too. He speaks passionately about how infusing fresh perspectives can spark meaningful change. One shining example is L’Oréal’s digital transformation, which saw a global beauty giant become agile and future-focused—all thanks to bold leadership.

4. The Power of Networks in Digital Transformation

“Your network effects are your destiny,” Mark states. Social, corporate, or personal networks have a profound impact on success. He highlights how understanding the dynamics of these networks can amplify growth and opportunity, but doing so requires a clear strategy and vision.

5. Overcoming the Modern Trap: Mastering Self-Command

Mark doesn’t shy away from discussing personal struggles, like ADHD, and how they’ve shaped his approach to productivity. He shares practical advice on maintaining focus in a world filled with distractions. Strategies like pre-commitment—creating boundaries and limiting options—help individuals and organizations achieve long-term success.

6. The Ethical Side of Innovation

Mark passionately advocates for ethical innovation, warning of the dangers posed by unchecked corporate power and the addictive nature of social media. He calls for leaders to prioritize long-term societal benefits over short-term profits, urging them to be stewards of trust.

Key Takeaways

• Creativity fuels innovation: Balance structured thinking with fearless exploration for groundbreaking ideas.
• Empathy drives progress: Understanding and addressing human needs is at the heart of successful innovation.
• Culture is transformative: A company’s culture sets the stage for lasting change and growth.
• Networks amplify success: Leveraging the dynamics of networks creates powerful opportunities.
• Discipline is vital in a digital age: Mastering self-command helps individuals and businesses thrive amid distractions.
• Ethics matter: Leaders must prioritize societal well-being and long-term impacts over short-term gains.

Closing Thoughts

Mark Adams’ insights are a refreshing mix of inspiration and practicality. His emphasis on empathy, creativity, and ethics reminds us that successful innovation isn’t just about technology or strategy; it’s about people. As he wisely puts it, the future lies in rediscovering compassion and staying grounded in what truly matters. For leaders and dreamers alike, Mark’s wisdom offers a powerful guide to navigating the complexities of our modern world.

Hosted by: Imteaz Ahamed

Video Transcript:

Imteaz Ahamed [00:01:34]:
Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Adams [00:01:36]:
Thanks buddy.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:01:37]:
The way I love to start my show is I ask this question to everyone which is if there was an autobiography of your life and it had five chapters.

Mark Adams [00:01:46]:
Whoa.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:01:46]:
What would the chapter titles of each chapter be in your autobiography?

Mark Adams [00:01:51]:
Wow. Chapter five would be Disgraced Death. Fully intend to die in a utterly disgraceful way. I just don’t know how yet.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:02:04]:
Okay.

Mark Adams [00:02:04]:
Trying to figure it out. Dubai is a good place to figure it out. The first one would be thank God for mum, because I have a wonderful dad who’s one of the smartest guys in the world, but I also have a mum who’s got the kind of spiritual intelligence.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:02:17]:
Okay.

Mark Adams [00:02:18]:
And it’s that classic like divine mother. I think my dad gave me a lot of get it done and that was good. And my mum gave me a lot of love. And then I guess the second chapter would be adhd. Kind of realizing that when you get to your teenage years and you’re just realizing that like you’re a bit different. And then the third one would be electronic music because by completely committing and obviously we’re in the studio here, like just being obsessed with electronic music was the only reason I ended up doing anything. It was never about business or money. And I guess then that leads the fourth chapter would be where we are now, which would be the.

Mark Adams [00:02:57]:
I refer to as kind of the new world. It’s a new world for me, like being in the Middle east, traveling. I’m going to be in India next week. I was in Pakistan last week. Like, for me that is by far this is the most exciting period of my life just because I’m just being immersed in so many new things. And yes, I’m very grateful for that.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:03:18]:
So you work with so many incredible brands, so many incredible celebrities. When you’re working with all these crazy people.

Mark Adams [00:03:25]:
Yeah, they are crazy as well.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:03:28]:
And you know, you have this past as well where you’ve gone through so much struggle, so much learning, so many ups and downs.

Mark Adams [00:03:36]:
Yeah.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:03:37]:
How do you take all of that and work with such high profile people who, you know, seemingly from the outside in, it looks like they have their together. But you know, when you get to know them and when you understand how human they are, everyone’s got issues and problems. So how do you take that learning and knowledge that you’ve had in yourself and then apply it to your work?

Mark Adams [00:04:01]:
I think the best thing I’ve ever heard is in a meeting that I had really early in my career with Usher and he said, dude, everyone’s just making it up as they go along. And that is so liberating because they really are like nobody. Honestly, I almost down to the point where, like, I like to think I’m a strategist in some ways and we all like to think that. But sometimes I think not having a strategy and being honest about it is the strategy.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:04:30]:
Do you know what I mean?

Mark Adams [00:04:31]:
Yeah. And I think honestly to God, one of the things I noticed, you know, when I was in Hollywood for nearly five years, six years, I swear to God I would not you. There’s no amount of money you could pay me to be a famous person in the music industry or the film industry. Like, it’s a mind destroying journey and it mostly damages you more than it does anything else. So I think if you’re like anyone listening to this who like really wants to be famous, like, trust me, you don’t. You don’t. Yeah.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:05:04]:
So let’s dive into that deeper, making it up as you go along and not necessarily always having a strategy for everything.

Mark Adams [00:05:10]:
Yeah.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:05:11]:
I think when we live in a, at least in a business world where everyone expects you to have a plan, everyone expects you to have a plan on a page, a strategy document, a mission statement, all this stuff.

Mark Adams [00:05:22]:
Yes.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:05:23]:
And you’ve been doing it day in, day out, especially for companies that have existed for decades. The strategy that you had 10 years ago, 20 years ago, can’t keep reapplying that right now. So how do you think about, or what do you think the essential qualities that a leader needs to have to drive digital transformation within a company today?

Mark Adams [00:05:46]:
Yeah, I think this is kind of the if you think about business in so many ways, and I think Silicon Valley is a really good example of this because Silicon Valley has somewhat of the kind of artistry of the right brain, you know, but it also has the kind of fundamentals of business on the left-hand side of the brain. It’s the same in Hollywood. You know, people are first and foremost, they like to think of themselves as artistically, you know, imbued with something. But on the other hand, it’s a big business. And so one of the things I noticed was that maybe what the left brain tries to do, which is, you know, impose order on, on the world, Right. It’s okay to do that, but I think there needs to be a pretty deep exploratory right brain face where you get to go, right, we’re just gonna try this like with Lady Gaga. No one said, oh yeah, we’re gonna create this thing called the Little Monsters. Like we did one post saying, you little monsters.

Mark Adams [00:06:44]:
And people went nuts. And we went, oh, maybe we should call it that, you know, like, so we’re always kind of testing the fence, right? Like everyone’s just like, you came up with a little Monsters. And now the junior intern person, social media just typed it one time and that was the answer, you know. So I think the right brain Is really good from an artistic point of view of like, I would call it like low cost, low investment. Testing, just fucking testing. Like reiterating. Testing, testing. And then the left brain goes, aha.

Mark Adams [00:07:14]:
I’ve seen the five things that work. Now I’m gonna go deeper.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:07:18]:
Measuring this all out is, you know, where a lot of companies go wrong. Right. So like if in terms of making investments in innovation hubs or innovation centers etc.

Mark Adams [00:07:28]:
Yeah.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:07:29]:
So many people just throw money at this thing, have a very short expectation for when it’s going to deliver roi. But you don’t just create value because you had a whiteboard session, right?

Mark Adams [00:07:42]:
Yes.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:07:42]:
So how do you kind of coach people to think about innovation specifically? Not just as a thing that you do as part of a planning cycle or annual training cycle.

Mark Adams [00:07:53]:
Yeah.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:07:53]:
But a muscle that you develop so you. That you can do it at the right time when the opportunity or, you know, the opportunity or like the market signal is there to do it.

Mark Adams [00:08:04]:
Yeah. Well, you nailed it with market Signal. I mean, I think in a way, if you think about that difference in the right and the left brain, again, like, I’ve probably got it here. Like I probably wrote it on a sticky note somewhere. But only, you know, this, this is my ADHD brain. But when you really look at it, there’s something a little bit spiritual about innovation.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:08:25]:
Yeah.

Mark Adams [00:08:26]:
Right. And that’s like potentially just gonna sound nonsense, but I really believe this. The thing about trying to create something from zero. Right. Like something that is unmanifest, that becomes manifest.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:08:37]:
Yep.

Mark Adams [00:08:37]:
Is ultimately you can. You can hang your hat what you’re trying to do on any peg you like, but eventually, once you’ve experienced enough trauma and pain of getting it wrong, you’re going to start to hang your hat on human needs. And the beautiful thing about human needs is it doesn’t matter. I have a need for things. And you might have a need for different things, but actually underneath is the same human need. Right. So there’s something really universal about human needs. And I think when you start, when a company.

Mark Adams [00:09:12]:
I’ve seen it, we’ve all seen it. Right. When it’s like, we’re gonna put things into the world and we’re gonna do this and you’re like, you’re fucked. It’s not gonna work. But when people start with, okay, we’re really trying to find human need. And the bigger the need, the more pain, in a way, the bigger the business opportunity. And so you end up with this quite interesting thought, which is kind of Lord of the Rings. Right.

Mark Adams [00:09:38]:
Like Gandalf says to the other bad wizard guy, you don’t understand. Only compassion can create. So only understanding somebody else’s unmet need can create something that’s worth creating. And so that’s kind of that synthesis between the left brain, like, business world, and the right brain, art world. That people needed that catharsis. They needed to see that, they needed to hear that. They needed to. So I kind of always come back to that.

Mark Adams [00:10:06]:
And I wish I’d learned that earlier. I spent so long luxuriating in ideas I thought were great. There was no human need for them. They might have been really good ideas, but there just was no human need for them. And all innovation, that fails kind of the same for sure.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:10:24]:
And there are so many people, you know, building so many hammers, but there are no nails to hammer those nails completely, or you’re thinking.

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Have you ever wondered how tech leaders predict the next big trend? Or how creatives thrive in a data-driven world? If so, this episode of Applied Intelligence with guest David Shing is a must-listen!

In this episode, David walks us through his incredible journey, from surviving a near-fatal accident to becoming a major player at AOL Europe. He breaks down the most pressing tech trends of today and shares key strategies on how to blend creativity and data in digital strategy.

Key Takeaways:

1. Trendspotting 101 – Discover why predicting technology trends isn’t as simple as it used to be. David explains how the rise of AI and platforms like ChatGPT are reshaping the landscape, while trends like the Metaverse are falling flat.
2. Creative Strategy in the Age of Data – Balancing data with creativity can be a tricky act. Learn how David leverages creativity to make a real impact in a world driven by algorithms and analytics.
3. The Power of Being a Polymath – Why limit yourself to one field? David encourages embracing multiple disciplines and explains how it has fueled his success.

Miss out on this episode, and you’ll miss the chance to learn how to thrive in the rapidly changing world of tech and creativity.

Hosted by: Imteaz Ahamed

Video Transcript

Imteaz (00:03.741)

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Applied Intelligence. I have a really great guest today, David Ching, who had the pleasure of meeting at Khan’s Lions earlier this year. David, welcome to the show.

Shingy (00:13.588)

Hi mate, thanks for having me.

Imteaz (00:15.611)

Lovely to have you. the way I start my podcast, is I asked my audience or I asked my guests the question of, know, if, your life had, if you were writing the article, Brian, if it’s your life and add five chapters, what would the chapter titles for each one of those periods of your life be?

Shingy (00:33.878)

wow, what a fantastic question. I’m really glad I didn’t look at the questions. I probably should have now that you said, don’t come into this interview unprepared because now I’m an audience member. I’m clearly not the one being interviewed, but if I was going to do five chapters, let me just start. My introduction would be number eight. I would start with chapter one saying number eight because that’s my birth number. So my birth order is number eight out of 10.

That would be my first intro, be welcome number eight. And I think the song of the year at the time was Bridge Over Troubled Water. So maybe I could title it Bridge Over Troubled Water. So perhaps, let me start over. My first chapter would be Bridge Over Troubled Water. My second chapter would be You Can Recover. Because I had a very bad car accident when I was 11 years old. I got hit by car and dragged for two blocks and spent a chunk of time losing the bottom of my face. So that was a very important time.

I would say the next chapter would be Crossroads. And at that point I had this interesting impasse when I was 20 -ish, where I’m a classically trained graphic designer. The industry was taking a massive hit at the time with the version of AI of my generation was DTP, Desktop Publishing. So when that thing turned up, it sort of rip snorted its way through the industry and created these crazy rip effects. And then I would say the fourth…

The fifth chapter would simply be, am at three or four? Do you know, are you counting?

Imteaz (02:02.707)

Yeah, we are on Euro4 chapter 4.

Shingy (02:05.118)

I’m up to chapter four. Okay. So chapter four would be, you don’t know what I don’t know. And that quote is my daughter’s quote. And I would say the reason why that would apply into my life is that at some point in time throughout my design and technology career, I ended up running media and marketing for AOL Europe, being responsible for millions of users, which is pretty amazing. And I didn’t understand that I had the competence to do something pretty incredible, but that was

all due to a person who actually put me in that position because I didn’t really think I had that confidence. And the last bit would be you are the polymath. And what I mean by that is reassuring myself that if you can come into this world doing something radically different, like being a designer and still truly being that designer, but you’re designing life differently, then the last chapter of that book would be really about doing things that I care about in a portfolio of ideas and can they be commercialized? Yeah.

Now if I’d actually planned that, I wouldn’t have given you such a such an answer. Are we good? Does that sound like something you can riff on?

Imteaz (03:03.058)

Wow.

Imteaz (03:08.935)

I mean…

I’ve asked this question to like, tens of guests that I’ve had, you know, think close to 20 guests on the podcast. No one’s been able to come off and riff something like that. Everyone’s prepped that prep for that question. So for you to come up with, know, a bridge over trouble, you can recover crossroads. You don’t know what I don’t know. And you are a polymath in like five seconds. That’s pretty cool, Ben.

Shingy (03:40.394)

You

Imteaz (03:43.259)

Super impressed and I know this is going to be an amazing conversation. So, your experience and background, what’s the biggest challenge do you think in terms of predicting technological trends?

Shingy (03:48.267)

I appreciate it.

Shingy (03:58.562)

yeah, okay, so as a forecaster, it’s my job. The hardest challenge is predicting where we think those trends go because there’s no longer these curves you can watch. And the reality is those curves, those curves of adoption, which everybody used to look at, they’re gone since the 60s, mate. So the advent of television, colour TV just went, whoop, hockey stick, whoop, hockey stick, whoop, hockey stick. More like rockets of trends. And the challenge with that is it’s either gonna be really hot or not. Really hot or not.

And so to sit on the fringes is quite hard today. The good news is if you observe consumers or people, consumers is not a word I really like to use, but it’s early for me. And thanks for that. But the idea of doing things. I did. I must be traveling at the time. Who would do this time of morning? This is ridiculous. Anyhow, the sun is up just. But what I think is crazy, if you actually observe people in the wild, you get a sense of where they’re headed.

Imteaz (04:37.987)

You picked the time man, not me! But it’s okay. Yeah you did.

Imteaz (04:47.559)

Just.

Shingy (04:54.25)

And you get a sense of what it’s like. And there are those that are going to push against it and create something really unique and those that just go with the flow. And I think it’s, it’s hard to always get it right. And there’s a couple of crackers that I clearly didn’t get right. And I’ll give you one right now. So back in the day, I was quoted, I think at the time, maybe it was Forbes or something. They said that I had said that apps are crap and what I meant by that.

was not that apps are necessary, it was the quote by the way, but what I meant is the whole operating system of the mobile phone is a cake. It felt like the desktop transposed to the phone. It wasn’t really native to the device. And I thought that mobile web was gonna outpace app development and boy, did I get that wrong. So yeah, they’re not always right, mate.

Imteaz (05:45.779)

But when you do spot something, what are the key signals that you look for from an adoption point of view before something explodes? Just before chat GPT, we had metaverse and that went nowhere very fast. How do you think those two technologies are fundamentally different from an adoption point of view? And they don’t have to be the examples, but

Shingy (06:04.981)

Right.

Imteaz (06:13.639)

What are the key things that you look at from an adoption point of view is the question.

Shingy (06:16.95)

Yeah, well, I love both those examples, but understand that the metaverse isn’t new. So it’s been around for quite some time in the form of gaming. There are three billion gamers, So it’s not new. And gaming is really the metaverse. It’s just that everybody wants to transpose it into a of an 8 -bit version of it, guess, or more of a lagged version of it. And I figured that was never going to be adopted because it already has.

So that hasn’t interrupted anybody in the gaming experience. So if you’re a Fortniter, you’re still in it. And that for you feels like these immersive technologies, which really is what meta is. If you flip that around and talk about chat GPT, remember way back in 96, IBM versus Casbros, is that how you pronounce his name? can’t remember. The number one chess player in the world. That was like 96. So AI was already starting to put some pieces into the puzzle and I mean, literally moving pieces.

And then we see other stunt versions of it where there was Jeopardy as an example, or if you look at Rover on Mars, it’s using AI. These things aren’t new. What’s happened is that when it’s democratized, when there’s a graphical user interface, when there’s a web version or a mobile version of the metaverse, when these things turn up to allow people to engage with it, if it has feedback that allows you to feel like this is really edifying to me as a human on planet Earth,

then we know engagement is gonna take off. ChatGPT is a very good example of it, or others, is it just allows you to have value. Because if I’m gonna give you data, the output of that data should be really impressive. And it’s not just chat, mean, it’s mid -journey, it’s runway. There’s so many different versions of how AI can actually be utilized for your life, that it feels like, this is not just adoption, this is actually part of the flow that I wanna be in. So it was the right timing for that. Metaverse, not so much, it’s additive.

And particularly metaverse with goggles on. mean, wow, I still much rather watch the content of seeing people wear the goggles than I do the content in it. And then if you look at something like Vision Pro by Apple, the adoption of that, you know, probably isn’t a runaway success, but not all of them are. Their first crack at a utility was back in sort of Apple Newton days. The user interface in that was just, it stank. But not too many years later we had

Imteaz (08:22.276)

Yeah.

Shingy (08:42.762)

the iPhone and that was the right time, right place. So in fact, the iPod was really the runaway success, the precursor for smartphones. So there’s lots of these trends that look like, does it, bottom line brother, in this whole preamble is if it adds utility to the life, and if I give you data, you give me back something even more impressive, then that exchange continues to grow, so will the interfaces. And that’s where I think it’s impressive.

Imteaz (09:10.269)

So you have a background creative strategy. How do you see creativity influencing digital strategy in an age where data often dominates the decision making?

Shingy (09:20.234)

Yeah, I quite like data being the friend to creative. We hated it back in the day because it’s like, clearly my choice is the best choice. Undisputed. But the truth is that’s kind of your CYA. That’s the cover your ass. That’s the piece that gives you the nugget of creative idea. It’s the execution that’ll make it successful because of the, the points that we put around it, the KPIs we put around it.

Imteaz (09:32.284)

Yeah.

Shingy (09:46.998)

If we just said, could this great idea be exciting if one person saw it? Nine times out of 10, the answer is yes. If you say at scale, then that decision and that conversation is different because then you have to also put an audience bias around it. So it absolutely plays into it because here’s the other hidden annoyance of this industry is that media

which is the scale to get an audience to see a piece of creative. The creative that they’re seeing is typically considered the non -working part of the media budget. So it’s this thing that sits to the side of it. And that’s very annoying to me because without it, you actually don’t have creative. Does that make sense? You don’t have the audience’s attention anyway because without creative, there is nothing for people to react to.

Imteaz (10:39.923)

So it goes back to the two cardinal sins of marketing is having beautiful creative that nobody sees and crappy creative that everyone sees, right? So how do you make that?

Shingy (10:48.246)

And that’s called the internet, man. And that is the internet. And we also, I think we copped it up. At one point in time, we invented these things called banner ads, know, for 68 by eighties or something. Mate, it is early and I’m trying to tell you about pixel sizes. This is brilliant. We’d have leaderboards and MPUs and these terms that people probably don’t care about today. We had cut these portholes across the internet and said, that is your bit. If you’re a brand, you advertise in this porthole. Good luck.

Imteaz (11:02.392)

You

Shingy (11:16.566)

And we never really adapted those experiences beyond the experience because we then had scale and then scale democratized creativity. Anyway, that was really, really, really boring. I remember about maybe 15 years ago, there was this and it was a campaign that I thought was genius. Somebody had built to scale banner ads.

and they stuffed a band in, was called Band in a Box, I think, and they put these players on the side and put a drum kit in there and somebody, and this band would play live across the internet in this leaderboard and an MPU. So you had guitarist and drummer up here and somebody stuffed down here and it was a way to say, if this is what you’re going to get me to conform in, I’m gonna create something really quite magical and look out as opposed to, know, blinking monkeys and whatever else was sending down the pipes back in the day.

Imteaz (12:06.763)

So what role do you think intuition and human creativity play in increasingly well driven by artificial intelligence and automation? In terms of like thinking about, you know, the example back at Khan’s lines that really resonates with me was the Snickers ad of you want you when you’re hungry. That failed all the testing, right? But the management team at Mars thought, you know, we should still go ahead with this. How do you think?

executives should balance the choice between going with all the data and making a call on this is what we’re going to do even though the data says no.

Shingy (12:41.184)

Yeah.

Shingy (12:46.23)

Yeah, really smart leaders understand that there’s a fine balance. So if I remember, I did this interview series with Wendy Clark back in the day, which was Coca -Cola. And I think at the time they had a 70 -20 -10. 70 % applies to creative that isn’t going to get you fired. 20 % goes to stuff that feels like it’s intuition -based, but it’s pretty safe. And then 10 % is innovation. The only thing that wins awards where you and I met are things, you you take Coca -Cola, which was the number one celebrated brand at Cannes this year.

The thing that won’t work was a crumpled up version of their can, but the logo crumpled. So you take the can away and you just had this logo that looked all bent and distorted. Whoever signed that off was brave ass. And if you roll back, you know, if you think about the things that the creativity that that that makes absolutely no sense, mate, that it makes perfect sense because what it does, it reinforces things like iconography. It reinforces things like things that people relate to your brand, which is the simplicity of it, perhaps.

but the complexity of the category. There are many things that it applies to. So creativity and the idea, I think is paramount. Otherwise, we’re just going to have this homogenized blindness, brother. I mean, if you think about, you said Snickers, go the other side, they’re a competitor. I look at Cadbury, the gorilla in the air tonight with Phil Collins drumming. If I tell you that, you know exactly what I’m talking about, right? That was pitched, I promise you, probably 50 times before it got signed off. Same with the Snickers ad.

Imteaz (13:59.357)

Yep. Yep.

Shingy (14:09.588)

I’m sure of it. But if you have a leader that says, look, what we’re looking for is absolute stuff that gives you tonnage, that will give us the ability to drive the awareness simply because we’re putting our brand in front of somebody. But the pause effect, that isn’t fair everybody because we’re interrupting their day. But if we can add value to their day by giving them a surprise, that’s the secret ingredient, brother.

Imteaz (14:34.003)

One of the favorite campaigns for me from Coke at the Shears Alliance was actually the one where they celebrated the shops and vendors that run their own ads for Coke, where they actually appropriate the Coca -Cola logo based on whether it’s the language or how good their artist is that’s doing that. To me, that’s again, a celebration of brand iconography, brand color.

Shingy (14:48.768)

Mmm.

Shingy (14:59.328)

Yeah.

Imteaz (15:03.635)

commission, et cetera. But for an executive to make the call that we’re actually going to support almost like plagiarism or support, you know, people taking our logo and doing something with that, again, is quite ballsy and goes back.

Shingy (15:15.838)

Yeah, you just don’t. Yeah, go ahead. I’m sorry.

Imteaz (15:20.048)

I’m just going to say it’s quite a risk to take a call like that.

Shingy (15:26.306)

No, it isn’t. It’s smart. And here’s why it’s smart. You don’t own your brand. If you’re super smart about this and you understand that Coca -Cola’s brand is so democratized that the person who owns that bodega, who’s selling that product, they’re so proud of their, of your brand that they’re going to actually translate it in a way that communicates to their community. That’s genius, brother. So how do you do that at scale?

Imteaz (15:28.028)

Okay.

Shingy (15:52.682)

Take Coke as another example. I think this is made, don’t know why I’m pulling out these relics, but allowing me to do that, maybe it’s because my brain hasn’t woken up yet and I have myself to blame for that. Here’s the challenge. If you look at that, they democratize it by saying, I could have a can of Coca -Cola that doesn’t say Coke, it has David written on it. How genius, you think I’m gonna buy one of those? No way, man, I’m gonna buy a case of them and I’m gonna give it to all my mates.

You know, just to piss them off. But I think it’s pretty amazing when you think about ownership over access. If you’re a top town brand, ooh, that doesn’t work anymore, man, because here’s what’s up. It’s no longer about authority. Me telling you this is my brand? No way. It’s about affinity, which is how do I stand beside you and say, what do reckon, mate? Is this gonna work or not? What do you think? You think it should be green or blue? you think it’s blue? Great. It’s no longer green. We’re now blue. Ripper.

They’re the sort of things that make them not just cultural, not just geographically cultural, it makes them part of colloquial, makes it part of the rhythm of that community. And that is the key to it because this is not about mass audiences anymore, it’s about niche audiences. And I have this quote, it’s mine, so I’m gonna continue pushing with it, which is niche is the new mass. So if you’re able to take those niche audiences and create a real community where people love or hate you, but they actually

Care about your brand enough to voice either one of those opinions? Genius. Last thing you need to be is platonic. Where you’re just like, well, it’s homogenized, man, whatever. Green, blue, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. we gotta move away from that.

Imteaz (17:35.527)

Who do you think is doing Niche very well at scale?

Shingy (17:41.14)

Well, okay, from a theory perspective, niche is happening in the platforms in self -order. So every brand has outsourced their brand to third parties that they don’t own. Okay, I don’t necessarily think that’s always great, but not a lot of people are promoting their .com anymore. They’re promoting their Facebook and their Instagram and their TikTok and their Snap.

and their Pinterest and their Reddit channel perhaps. But what I’m saying is that all of the niche is happening because the platforms are forcing it. When you go to Reddit for example, you go and hang out in the subreddits. You go and hang out on TikTok, you hang out in a channel that you care about. You don’t go to the homepages anymore. So niche is already doing it that by itself. And I would say,

on brands that are doing that incredibly well. You’ve got brands that communicate to an audience that care about them. So feels like a mass brand, but it communicates to you. I mean, look, a classic example of that is somebody who understands the ethos around needs of young audiences. And that would be Patagonia. One, would say that they need a better designer because the fintech boys need to lay off that thing, man. makes that brand very uncool for me. whatever, God bless them. But as a brand, incredible. Why? Earth, sustainable, authentic.

Imteaz (18:58.611)

Yep.

Shingy (19:05.11)

They talk about their audiences, not their brand. Awesome, awesome, awesome. They do it in 12 minute movies, they do it in 30 seconds. Incredible. Or they do it in two seconds if they get it right. So Patagonia all day, every day. They also wear their values literally on the label. Love that. On a micro, somebody like Oatly. So those guys got a hit because of the ingredients of their product. And when people start getting into your brand so much, they’re passionate about the core ingredients and start to, you know.

tear you apart, so be it, so they need to react to that. But the way that they actually humanized that brand by taking something from the Nordics, I think it’s Swedish, and then they translated it into English and human speak, and they made this beautiful characterization of this brand, it sticks out not just on the shelf, but their actual target audience was the barista. So it wasn’t mass audiences, it was tiny audiences that liked to be able to make the artwork on their latte as perfect as their curly moustaches make.

Going after those audiences, it allowed them to target their core to get to everyone else. So they’ve reversed engineered it. Pretty cool. I’m having coffee this morning too. It’s probably has Oakley in it. So I just wanted to compare it.

Imteaz (20:13.075)

Give him a plug. You’ve been involved in changing brands perception across various companies. What are the key elements to successfully transforming a brand in today’s landscape? And where do you think most transformation initiatives fail?

Shingy (20:32.043)

Yeah, okay, most transformation initiatives fail because they’re looking for just pure disruption and it hasn’t always been like that and it doesn’t have to be like that moving forward. If you think about the evolution of what happens when people are like, wow, this industry is so much change, we need to disrupt. I’m like, wow, but do you? Do you deserve to disrupt? Or should your experience just be so much better and that will help transform it because we’re all looking for transformation.

Transformation is a byproduct of audience change. So that’s kind of a reaction to that. And where I think it is the loss is the focus on the wrong things. It’s like AI, for example. When people talk about AI, they don’t talk about the problem they’re solving. They talk about the tool they’re using. I’m like, what? What’s the problem? What’s problem you’re solving? So that’s really, for me, the same thing about transformation is that do you really want to transform? Or actually, should you evolve? Because if you evolve, it could simply be democratize your brand.

Imteaz (21:16.167)

because it’s like

Shingy (21:28.842)

What does that mean, It means, don’t know, give somebody else the voice of the mic and stand beside them, as I said, with affinity. You know, how do you actually come on the creative community and not just this content that you’re producing and expecting people to enjoy it? What are you doing to sort of help that vernacular if you deserve to be like that? So part of it is until you do a proper audit of the things that you are as a brand, you can’t even start to transform and people like, well, things are happening so quickly we can’t pause. You can’t afford not to. And that’s really the biggest challenge.

Imteaz (21:59.987)

How do you approach communicating complex digital concepts to diverse audiences? I’ve watched a few of your TED Talks and presentations and I would say you’re like a master of formulating analogies and buzzwords. How do you do that?

Shingy (22:14.842)

Hey, I’m a pretty simple dude. So the idea of breaking that communication down to a bite -sized snack that I can grab, awesome. Also, I treat my audiences like they’re super smart because they are smart, man. And so if I can give them a nugget of truth that allows them to say, hmm, I’m just going to grab that for now and I’m going to use it later, God bless. I had somebody ping me recently.

He said, Chingy, I saw you speak 10 years ago and I thought you were absolutely crazy, dude. I wanted to not like you. I thought you was so polarizing. I just didn’t want to like you, dude. And I thought your theories were rubbish and I probably hacked on you and trolled you. And I apologize because 10 years up, you were right. So can I quote you in my book? Verbatim, brother. That’s how that went. Like, okay, rip up. Yeah, thanks very much for the backlash, dude. That was awesome.

Imteaz (23:05.331)

Wow. That’s nice.

You

Shingy (23:12.406)

But here’s what’s amazing for me. It’s just distilling these ideas down that allow people to feel much more invigorated about the bits that they care about on the way out. I’m not here to explain it end to end. I’m not here to tell you how you can come up with 15 different prompts to make you a better prompt engineer across AI. But I am here to tell you that AI can actually mine your data to potentially create some deep mind reading technology that allows you to feel like you’re very different.

What do do with that nugget? Go think about it before you sit there with a prompt just prompting you the whole time. There’s a quote by somebody and I don’t know who it is. Forgive me for not being able to say who this person was that quoted this. There’s this engineering quote that we used to throw around all the time, which it’s easy to make things complex. It’s complex to make things easy. And so buzzwords for me allow me to anchor on a theme.

Imteaz (23:51.313)

As someone

Shingy (24:11.552)

that I can riff on till I’m blue in the face, mind you. But typically that nugget is enough for us to say, yeah, that’s it, Nisha’s a new mouse, got it, what do I do with that?

Imteaz (24:22.813)

Super cool. Like one of the people I study in terms of breaking down a technology and making it very relatable is Steve Jobs. In terms of how he processed all the technological advancement that was being made at Apple and then simply broke that down into what it really meant for his users. It was insane. Rather than going about talking about,

processor speed and blah, adds no value to any typical user. You know, just breaking it down into a thousand songs in your pocket. Something insanely easy to understand and grasp is, you know, the best way to connect with your audience, right?

Shingy (25:13.366)

Yeah, isn’t that amazing? Because when you have a sea of computational bits and bobs, a 486 PC with a whatever hard drive with a whatever, you know, it’s like, my goodness, we start to eye roll it at the get. And you think about that concept, as you said, which is the ability to plug in your phone and suddenly all your photos are on your device as well. It’s like, great. Who cares how big the device is until you run out of space and then you get there.

Imteaz (25:37.106)

I got it.

Imteaz (25:42.867)

But then you upgrade your iTunes space to like 50 gigs or not. There you go.

Shingy (25:44.902)

Yeah. Yeah, yes, you do. I actually pulled out a couple of old iPods. I’ve got two iPods that I pulled out recently. I’m going through an audit of my old tech. And, you know, because one of the trending apps of last year was an app that turns your iPhone into an iPod and thought, wow, how ironic. So I’ve cracked open a couple of these old iPods. It’s ironic also to see the music that’s been stored on this device. It’s like a time.

It’s like a beautiful time capsule. I thought to myself, this slow movement of this device is really quite beautiful. And the sound engineering out of this tiny device is, it’s, it’s, it’s inspiring to be honest. I’d like to see that inspiration back in sort of engineering terms today in the physical devices. We live in a very homogenized time. So this analog experience was really quite powerful for me.

Anyway, that’s a byproduct of my misspent youth. think when I think about my time as a radio DJ, the ability to turn over on LP and still hear the crackle, there’s something very, not that an iPod is any way near like that, but it is. It’s something really quite amazing when we’re coming into an industry in infancy and to have that engineering feel like it’s an experiment. Remember when…

Imteaz (26:47.652)

you

Shingy (27:08.598)

Bang & Olufsen came out with an MP3 player that was round, like a round disk and silver and gorgeous, absolutely stunning piece of engineering, but a woeful interface because it had no screen on it. Or I think Microsoft came out with a round phone for like three and a half seconds. You think to yourself, wow, that was an amazing engineering. Samsung had a flip phone. One of my first flip phones, I think, was a Samsung, not just a Motorola, but it had a rubberized back.

die for rubberized back today. You know, think to myself, this bone is delicious, but it’s going to slip right out of my hands and just thinking about it’s going to slip out to everyone. know, nine out of 10 people put a case on it. I just spent a thousand dollars put a case, a rubber case on his phone. I mean, it doesn’t that tell you something? Anyway.

Imteaz (27:57.715)

One of my one of my favorite collaborations from back in the day was when Dolce and Gabbana did a collab with Motorola Razr. So they actually did a gold Razr phone Yeah, yeah that flip phone and then Motorola brought the Razr back a couple years ago as well. Yeah, it’s

Shingy (28:08.816)

I had that. Now I have that phone. Yep. That flip phone? The Razr, yeah.

Shingy (28:18.4)

which I thought is amazing. And I think the Samsung flip phone is delicious, but moving from iOS to Android is a whole nother anxiety attack that I just don’t want to deal with it right now. It’s like PC versus Mac. can’t live with both ecosystems. I have a PC, a little Surface tablet, which is pretty amazing, but I got to learn it every single time I go into it and think, wow. And if you look at the Windows OS for mobile, I thought that was super expressive. I thought that was actually headed in a really interesting direction.

Imteaz (28:25.555)

Too hot.

Imteaz (28:40.911)

It’s too hard.

Shingy (28:47.848)

as opposed to where Apple was going, which is a bunch of icons on a stage. I mean, Windows was big tiles and anyway, what are we talking about?

Imteaz (28:57.875)

So as someone who constantly engages with the future, how do you personally stay grounded in the present?

Shingy (29:08.098)

what a great question by not hanging out in the future. Because I think a lot of things that we look at, if you look at the past, if you look at the past to influence your future, I think that’s kind of where it heads, mate. So one thing I’m really scared of is nature. I try and spend time in nature because it’s something that I don’t really understand, but it’s at its core, the most radical thing we have is nature. So I tend to try and spend my life in analog so I can, you know, observe people that are

Imteaz (29:12.435)

Yep.

Shingy (29:38.834)

existing between the wanting to create or let me me paraphrase this wanting to produce but are also being looked upon so the watched is being watched if you know what i mean and that i find to be a really interesting place which is hey if i’m going to produce content that’s amazing but do know that somebody else is watching me produce that content and that for them is part of their entertainment so there’s this whole ricochet effect that’s happening that i just find to be

Fascinating. So I like to try and push against it. Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It certainly doesn’t happen in a boardroom. So go and spend time looking at the paintings I care about at MoMA, for example. There’s one particular room where I can see Sy Twombly and Jackson Pollock all in the same room and I can spend the entire day in that one room in MoMA and force my daughter to do it too, where some people just walk in, take a snap, they’re never gonna see that video again and wander off. And that’s crazy to me.

Imteaz (30:37.191)

Looking back on your career, is there a particular piece of advice you would give your younger self or to anyone looking to enter the world of digital strategy and innovation?

Shingy (30:46.836)

Yeah, what you come into this industry as is not going to be necessarily what you’ll do your entire career. And that for me would allow me to have relaxed if I was younger. However, the core dimensions of who I am are absolutely still ringing true. I’m still a designer. I still touch every single deck that I produce. I still think about narration. I still think about story. So all of those core tenets as a creative that’s absolutely embedded in what I am.

but I’m very far from how I entered it. So calm down, just understand that it’s not that intense. And if you are thinking about one particular domain, open that up. The aperture needs to widen so much wider that you can need to be super interested. So if I was actually coming out of school as a designer today, I would go and probably study urban planning, not just continue studying fontography and graphic design. I would go somewhere else and think about landscape architecture or light velocity or something completely different.

That’s still core to the tenets of Kreative -E.

Imteaz (31:48.231)

The last chapter you talked about in your five -part autobiography is, you are the polymath. So expanding on that last question, in terms of becoming a polymath and being in terms of understanding multiple things and looking at how people adapt to them, specifically with new waves of technology that are coming, how do you learn? How do you pick

Shingy (31:55.279)

Hmm.

Imteaz (32:17.671)

you know, what to study or what to learn about how people are adopting to these new technologies.

Shingy (32:24.854)

So I would turn it around the other way and say some of these technologies aren’t new, they’re technologies of the day. And some of them are old. The technology of the day was a pencil, technology of the day was a brush. So how do you adapt to those? Is if you have an instinct to curiosity around those, then can you make the economics work? You how many people have you met? I used to do this program where I would take kids just about out, just out of high school and thinking about going to college and saying, what are you interested in? Like, I just want to be a graph artist. That’s amazing. But do you know that graph arts,

is the basis behind graphic design and street art could translate to being poster design and doing, you know, so show an actual, think I used to pull up monster .com and say, you could get paid this to move font around. Pretty much. you like sound? Incredible. Could you imagine if you did that sound across gaming? Let me show you a, here’s a job that you can do. You can be a gaming engineer. How amazing with that for sound. Or if you want to be the number one, you want to be Beyonce? Awesome. Do you know what you can do? You can actually also be a backup singer, go on tour, you know, so I just.

Imteaz (33:04.541)

to do this,

Shingy (33:24.768)

There’s this ability to say you’re already interested. You don’t become a polymath brother, you are it. But can you make that portfolio of things that you’re interested in something that people care about? Look, and the reason why I think about this all the time is that people are already a creator. They’re already a critic. They’re already a curator of their experiences. So can it work? It’s not just for the few. That has been democratized. If I think about somebody

who’s working a job today and I ask them what they’re interested in. They might tell me part of the job they’re interested in, they want it. They’re much wider than just their job. And more people want to be the things that they do outside, inside and make their job also part of what they care about even more widely. So that portfolio of ideas, can it be distilled one in the one company? Maybe, but also in the multiple curiosities, I would say, yeah, it’d be incredible if they can continue doing that.

So it’s not about technology. Technology is an outcome. If a technology helps you open up the aperture, great. Change your lens. If it doesn’t, well, don’t use it at all. Just focus on sound. It all depends on the curios. Hmm. The curious? The curious. I thought that.

Imteaz (34:39.027)

How would you, I’m not sure if that’s the right word. What advice would you give in terms of finding people to help you find what you’re good at or find where you should be headed?

Shingy (34:55.656)

If you sit down and you yourself write the things that you value most, and this sounds so trite, and you determine that the thing that you value most isn’t what you’ve reflected on what you’re doing today, then that’s probably enough to think about change. It starts with you. But spending all your time discovering all these new tools to do all this other stuff, but at the core of it, you just think, wow, just…

it doesn’t spark, then you’re wasting your time. You’re spend 80 % of your waking life at work. You better make that matter. It translates to like 90 ,000 hours of your life. So making it matter works. And now look, your day to day is not always going to be a ripper. It’s not always gonna be super exciting. I respect that. But the bulk of it should be. And if it isn’t, then maybe that’s your own change. So for me,

What’s the number of one thing you value and does it translate to what you do and if it isn’t, maybe that’s enough to think about change.

Imteaz (36:00.275)

Amazing. Shifting to on a personal front. What are the habits or productivity hacks that you use to make your life easier?

Shingy (36:11.153)

Hmm. Productivity hacks. Yeah, good one. So there’s a couple of things for me. I have a newsletter that I’ve been doing for like 10 years. It’s private. And part of it is that’s just me having a voice of my ideas somewhere. I should probably open that up, by the way. But anyway, it is what it is. And I will now that I just said that was it still private, what an idiot. But my point is, for me, that’s just really making sure I’m articulating ideas quickly.

If there’s a community that wants to listen to them, great. So just like you’re doing, perfect. That’s one thing. The second thing is I would like to think that I have a really healthy relationship with not always being at work. Given I work for myself, I feel like if I don’t clock in a ton of hours, then I’m not doing enough. But the truth is time away from the things that are based around work is even better for your mind, heart and soul.

Being a father has allowed me to actually balance that in a way that makes me feel like, I’m very conscious of that now. So that’s a productivity hack is not to always feel like I’m being productive. If I’m not productive using technology, my productivity hack is presence. And that’s even more valuable than just pretending to be present, which is what technology masks.

There’s a bunch of automation tools that allow you to do some of that. But I also find that there’s, if it doesn’t have a tonality that is based on your personality, then you’re going to see through them. And then you’re part of the overwhelming amount of information that people receive. And I don’t want to be that. I want it to be hyper -personalized. It’s almost like the days of couture versus fast fashion. I would prefer for it to feel like it’s coutured as opposed to fast fashioned.

Imteaz (37:59.147)

I’m kind of the same, think the real thing that we have from productivity point of view is focus and what can you deliver when you have focus. And for me personally, you know, I only have let’s say two to three hours of focus per day. And the rest of the time is kind of like attending meetings or attending, you know, tasks, et cetera. But in that core time, how do I get the most amount of value?

Shingy (38:08.992)

Hmm.

Imteaz (38:28.857)

out of my brain as possible. And the rest of the time is just either absorbing or doing the menial things that need to get done, but really prioritizing my focus, attention in the hours that I actually have in the day to do it.

Shingy (38:47.36)

You know, there’s something really interesting about that. And for me, EG equals presence and presence is actually a trained position for a better word. It’s easy to be distracted and pretend to be present. Super easy to do that brother. Cause there’s not just one communication channel anymore. You’ll hit me up on email. You hit me up on texts. You’ll hit me up on WhatsApp. You’ll hit me up on Instagram DM. You’ll hit me up on whatever the hell you want to get LinkedIn. We can, can, we can pretend to be present.

But presence is really amazing. And when I watch, you know, young adults together, their lack of presence is bothering me. So I see the opposite of that where people, you know, a bunch of kids that I know and help mentor that don’t have any phones, don’t, know, that all they want to do is read books. They don’t care about the social medias of this world. You know, they’re there and they seem incredibly confident. But presence to me, the ability to look somebody in the eye and spend time with them, that’s, that’s got to be a priority. I found it very difficult, particularly in the middle of COVID to be present.

because I’m always on the move. And when I got grounded, it was like, I have to really relearn this. So I’d like to sit here and be more Zen -like. The truth is that all happened later when I realized that presence is the gift that I can provide. And honestly, when I’m not, happy hands, I really like to just be quiet and thoughtful and just mind my presence. And hopefully that allows others to feel it, but it’s practiced.

Imteaz (40:16.093)

for sure. What are the books that you like to gift the most to your friends and family?

Shingy (40:22.48)

great question. I hope it wasn’t one of the books you read because I’m like bloody none. But the book I like to gift is a book called Wabi Sabi. It’s for writers, poets and lovers. It’s a beautiful little quick read. It’s a little book of inspo. And what it does, it just creates calm in the chaos. Because the last thing I need to do is give somebody a book that’s all about something else.

that is just going to clog their day to day. If somebody said to me, well, what about a business book, Chingy? Not something that feels like poetry. One I’d say get stuffed. Just kidding. But if I was going to do one, it would be Designed by Motion, which is Greg Hoffman’s book. I think it’s Designed by Motion.

Let’s make sure I look that up. But it’s, I love that book by Greg. I’m not going to get the title wrong, am I? Emotion by Design. I got it the wrong way around. Emotion by Design, yeah. His book is amazing. He’s also a beautiful human.

Imteaz (41:24.179)

Motion by design. Okay.

Imteaz (41:31.635)

We will make sure we put that in the show notes. Who’s that by?

Shingy (41:36.394)

But they’re well -be -sobby one, man, for sure. Amazing.

No idea. But if I close my eyes, I can tell you the title. I can see the cover. Isn’t that amazing? But let me tell you who it’s by.

Imteaz (41:42.149)

Okay.

Shingy (42:04.86)

And the title of the book, the total title of the book is Wabi Sabi for artists, designers, poets and philosophers. And it’s by Leonard Coran. Wow, I never knew that. I even know who that is. But this, you know, little craft paper cover. Lovely. Anything. Beautiful.

Imteaz (42:25.563)

Amazing. Closing out, Xingyi, how can people reach out to you if they want to learn more about you?

Shingy (42:32.882)

I can be found on the interwebs, mate. But if you want to hang out on the LinkedIn’s of this world or the Instagram’s or the email, whatever, mate, I’m easily found. So see you on the interwebs.

Imteaz (42:42.259)

And your newsletter, I didn’t know you had a newsletter. We’ll make sure, you know, if you want me to spook that on applied intelligence, I’m more than happy to do so. I’m pretty sure the audience would be lovely to connect with you through your newsletter as well.

Shingy (42:55.094)

zero.

Shingy (42:59.434)

Yeah, I’ll open it up. I’ll promise that to myself. Yeah. I also have a… I’ll just tell you something. I told you quickly before we close out, I challenged myself to write a book as a birthday gift to self and it’s at the press. And it’s one of the things that I have been thinking about is a slash generation. So it’s just called the slash gen. And what I love about this principle is that…

Imteaz (43:03.995)

Super cool. Thank you

Imteaz (43:09.853)

Tell me.

Shingy (43:26.442)

There is this time of the Renaissance for the creative. And it is about the ability to say that people have these multi -dimensions of themselves, that they’re articulating the two dimension of digital. But it’s really the foundations of all this is that’s happening in 3D. I think it’s, yeah, it’s just a little book of inspo that I wanted to sort of throw on myself. But I love this concept of the slash gen because I…

You know, when you think about it, you’re a slash photographer, slash designer, slash father. You know, there’s many things that you have and it’s truly the polymath. So yeah, mate, it’s been, it’s been shits and giggles knocking that thing out.

Imteaz (44:03.581)

That’s amazing. Like personally, you know, I, I studied art in high school and coming into college. I was also very good at math. I’m no longer good at math because there’s Excel and data scientists do a number crunching for me. And then obviously getting exposed to business and marketing and advertising, et cetera. But I’m also at this interesting period of my life where I’m trying to figure out.

Shingy (44:15.626)

Hmm.

Imteaz (44:33.255)

had a piece, all of these things together. And rather than going down a very straight corporate career, with a very distinct end point, I’m trying to create value through one sharing the experiences that I’ve had thus far through this podcast to creating, creating products and or services that

Shingy (44:35.636)

Hmm.

Imteaz (45:02.351)

mold all of those passions and skill sets together. And then three is building a community of people that can help me along this journey as well. So, you know, it’s very inspiring to hear your story in terms of how you put all of this together. And I think it’s quite important that people like ourselves continue to share these stories so everyone can do the same, right? Because I think

Shingy (45:26.536)

Absolutely. Thanks for sharing. Let me tell you one other thing that I would suggest. If somebody’s inside an organization today and they’re like, really love the idea of this. I’ve had this constant debate, the entrepreneur versus the intrapreneur. Can you actually be somebody who helps influence inside an organization? Because the structure of an entity and enterprise is designed to be able to provide that to you. You just have to have the permission. Now that permission can only come.

from somebody in that organization identifying you as a super talent and giving you the ability to have that opportunity. And that doesn’t happen often. It’s more encouraged today, but it tends to happen with those with the happy hands. But what about the quiet achiever in the corner? Have they been identified? It happened in my career and so it can happen in others, is if you have an incredible person.

who is your champion inside an organization that can give you the wings to fly, then that’s worth staying for and working in that environment, in my opinion. And maybe that’s the right path for you than just cutting yourself loose and trying to try the entrepreneur. Entrepreneur versus intrapreneur. And so that’s just something to wrestle with, which is how do you identify? But the only way to do that…

You don’t just look for a mentor, you have to be a great mentee. It has to be a two -way relationship. That’s to say, what will I get from you? This is what can I, so what can I learn from you as opposed to what can you give me? It’s got to be a two -way street. And I’ve had a bunch of mentors who quickly taught me that that’s what I needed to be is what value am I giving them as another human existing on planet earth? Yeah, you got to do. Thanks.

Imteaz (47:01.715)

Super cool. Super cool.

Thank you for being on the show, man. Really appreciate your time. All right, take care.

Shingy (47:08.598)

Appreciate you brother, thanks.

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Insights from Jonathan Taylor Miller on Maintaining Balance, Authenticity, and Cultural Fit in Recruitment

Recruitment and work models are undergoing significant transformations in today’s rapidly changing business environment. During an enlightening discussion on the “Applied Intelligence” podcast episode hosted by Imteaz Ahamed, guest Jonathan Taylor Miller shared invaluable insights on various topics ranging from balancing remote and in-office work to the critical role of cultural fit in recruitment. This blog post delves into the key points discussed in the episode, providing a comprehensive look at navigating the evolving landscape of recruitment and remote work.

The Importance of Balancing Remote and In-Office Work In recent years, remote work has become a staple in many organizations, offering employees flexibility and autonomy. However, Imteaz Ahamed and Jonathan emphasize maintaining a healthy balance between remote and in-office work. Imteaz points out that physical interaction in the office is crucial, especially for early-career employees, as it provides opportunities for mentorship, learning business etiquette, and building relationships. Yet, it’s essential to recognize that different career levels may require varying degrees of remote work flexibility. Jonathan supports this view, emphasizing that employees should have a choice in their working arrangements. This balanced approach ensures productivity and caters to individual preferences and needs.

Productivity Habits and Work-Life Balance Jonathan shares his productivity habits, which include a one-week rule for tasks, underscoring the importance of time management. He highlights the value he places on spending quality time with his family and interacting with animals, indicating a unique approach to work-life balance. His ability to customize his business to fit his desired lifestyle exemplifies the importance of prioritizing personal well-being alongside professional success.

The Role of Authenticity in Business Relationships One of Jonathan’s core beliefs is staying true to oneself. He suggests that being authentic, even if it means being disliked by some, can attract like-minded individuals and strengthen business relationships. In his experience, putting his authentic self out there has not negatively affected his business but has instead fostered deeper, more genuine connections.

Evolving with AI and Technology In the age of AI, staying relevant and adaptable is crucial to avoid becoming obsolete. Jonathan and Imteaz discuss the limitations of AI in recruitment, particularly in assessing cultural fit. While LinkedIn plays a pivotal role in Jonathan’s work, he acknowledges that AI cannot fully understand and integrate the human nuances essential for recruitment. Jonathan underscores the need for businesses to embrace technological advancements while valuing human connection and cultural understanding. This balanced approach ensures that companies remain innovative and relevant in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Diversity in Hiring

Beyond Corporate Marketing The conversation also touches upon the often superficial nature of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Jonathan criticizes businesses that claim to promote diversity but fail to genuinely live out these values, resulting in a disengaged workforce and higher turnover. Imteaz supports this sentiment, advocating for diverse hiring to foster innovation. Both agree that achieving true diversity requires strategic buy-in from the top down and a shift in hiring manager attitudes. Jonathan emphasizes that most managers are slow to adopt diverse hiring practices and often exhibit age biases, limiting their organization’s potential for growth and innovation.

The Million Dollar Questions in Recruitment

Cultural Fit and Company Values Understanding a company’s culture and value system and assessing candidates for cultural fit are pivotal in recruitment. Jonathan refers to these as the “million dollar questions” that can significantly impact employee retention and success. He leverages his network and knowledge to discern a company’s culture and uses this information to recruit candidates who align with these values. By focusing on cultural fit over merely assessing skill sets or salary bands, Jonathan ensures that his recruitment processes add value to his client’s businesses, saving them time and emphasizing quality over quantity.

Conclusion

Navigating the Future of Work In conclusion, the insights shared by Jonathan Taylor Miller on the “Applied Intelligence” podcast offer a valuable perspective on navigating the future of work and recruitment. Balancing remote and in-office work, valuing authenticity in business relationships, evolving with AI, fostering genuine diversity, and prioritizing cultural fit are crucial elements in this journey. As businesses and individuals adapt to these changes, focusing on human connection, understanding, and authenticity will be vital to achieving long-term success and relevance in an ever-evolving world.

Hosted by: Imteaz Ahamed

Video Transcript

Jonathan [00:00:02]:

Welcome to applied intelligence, a conversation at the intersection of people, technology and getting stuff done. Now here’s your host, MtS Ahmet.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:00:18]:

Welcome, everyone to applied intelligence. I have Jonathan Taylor Miller with me today. Jonathan heads up the Taylor Miller group. In terms of recruitment. We’re going to have a conversation today in terms of recruitment and what it means in terms of the age of AI. And the question that I always love to begin my podcast with is, what’s your story, how did you get here? And if your autobiography had five chapters, what would they be? And, yeah, welcome to the show.

Jonathan [00:00:44]:aa

Thank you very much. Thank you. It’s lovely to be on. Really good. Thank you. So watch my story. It’s pretty, pretty simple. You know, I grew up in Warrington, which was kind of a new town development.

Jonathan [00:00:58]:

My parents were very. I mean, look, I had a great childhood, but my parents were both teachers. They were both, you work, you save, you work, you save. You don’t take risks out of that environment. The goal was always go to university, have an amazing career, but very much within that lane. So that’s kind of what I did. I love junior. I did it twice.

Jonathan [00:01:21]:

I went to Glasgow for the first section and did sociology, which I quickly realized coming out of university was a completely useless degree to obtain anything. So then had the genius idea that I’d go do HR. So I went and did a master’s in HR at Leeds. And then probably while I was doing that, did absolutely no research into any of this. But while I was doing it, I realized that I was probably going to spend. If I went to work in HR, I would probably spend the rest of my career being a service to a business without having any real influence on the result. And as much as I love people in HR, you never see any studios who started off their career in HR. You know, it’s all sales, sales and sales and sales.

Jonathan [00:02:08]:

So randomly, I just decided to get into recruitment and found for some reason that I absolutely loved it. I mean, I still do. And my recruitment career has been literally a game of two halves, because for the first ten years, I worked for the people. I did the whole staff as a grad. Loads of cold calling some of the phones, pick up your client, do all that type of stuff that you want to do, all in the FMCG space. I’ve only ever worked in the FMCG space, and I made it up to a director at that business. I was running multiple teams across different countries, kind of like, was that right? I need to go somewhere else and do something else. Joined a business.

Jonathan [00:02:49]:

That was a disaster. So I. Look, this is probably why I can empathize with a lot of people when I’m talking to them about making job moves, because I made a very silly decision and joined the wrong business. What was completely wrong time, didn’t do any research, didn’t do anything. It was just purely born out of the fact that I wanted to go somewhere else. And what you do when you want to go somewhere else because you’re unhappy where you are, you don’t focus on. You want to get out of joining something, you just focus on leaving something. So you see so many people make these mistakes of this job and it’s wrong.

Jonathan [00:03:25]:

Yeah. So I lasted there for about a year, went to work for a multi million pound engineering recruitment company who specialized in oil and gas, and they wanted to build an FMCG division. So I went to that up, went to work for them, and then I just had this kind of light bulb moment one day of, look, my goal of my life, which is to live the way I do now, which is in a forest, you know, we’ve got. I’ve got chickens, I’ve got horses, I’ve got cats, I’ve got dogs. I’m pretty much off grid. Bar electricity. That was never going to happen. That was never going to happen.

Jonathan [00:03:59]:

If I followed the corporate route of X, Y and Z, I was never going to get them. So I decided ten years ago, ten years in November, I decided. Sorry, last November, I decided to go, Mary and, yeah, it was interesting. It was really, really interesting. I was really lucky. Loads of clients came with me and said, jonathan will work with you. And that was amazing. But unfortunately, at that point in my life, I knew nothing about running a business.

Jonathan [00:04:28]:

I knew nothing about finance, particularly. I knew nothing about marketing. I knew none of these things. So I got myself into a complete mess. I’m not going to lie, it was a complete disaster. I ran out of cash after about six months and I ended up having to work in the. In the post office. I worked in the post office for a year, doing 60 hours a week, doing six in the evening till six in the morning, sorting parcels, going home, getting about 2 hours sleep, getting up, doing some recruitment, and just eat, sleep, repeat.

Jonathan [00:05:00]:

Eat, sleep, repeat until I made the business work in terms of cash flow. And it was really funny because while I was doing all this, I had the call with his bloke and he said to me, look, dom, I said, I’m, you know, I want to. I need a new job. And I was like, right, okay. So what’s up? And he said, well, I’ve started this business. It’s about, it’s an app and it’s about recommending restaurants. And I’m not going to say the geographical area, but it was a bit weird, even though I thought there’s no legs in it. And he said, I’ve done it for four months now and, you know, we’ve run out of money, so I need to go get a job back in the corporate world.

Jonathan [00:05:32]:

And little did he know that at the time I was speaking to him, I’d had probably 2 hours sleep. I was absolutely on my backside. My feet were killing because I’ve been pushing cages around all night. And it just gave me the thing that I. One of the key lessons that I will always take in life is that if you want something enough, you will make it work. Because at that point, it was a bit like a sliding doors moment for me because I could have been that guy who I was talking to, he was going back into corporate world, who would have said, well, I never got the life I wanted because I didn’t do it. Whereas I’ve really put the graft in to make sure that that happened. So story wise, I’d say, yeah, it’s been a bit of a.

Jonathan [00:06:15]:

It’s been a bit of a roller coaster. It’s been a bit of a journey. It’s taught me a lot. It’s taught me a lot about people. It’s taught me a lot about people who, particularly people who reach out and help you, because when you run your own, when you make a move into sort of an area like that, you are completely on your own. You have no network. I, and particularly because of my upbringing, I never knew anyone who ran their own business. So it wasn’t like I could phone my dad and say, dad, what would you do in this situation? Dad, do you know really good accountant that.

Jonathan [00:06:47]:

Do you know where someone who’s really good at market, you know, someone who can make me a website. I couldn’t do any of those things. Do you know what I mean? I couldn’t do any of those things. Wow. I just kind of had to figure it all out. And I love it, and I love the challenge of it, but when I look back at it, it’s like, yeah, but it is true. You can do anything. You can be anything.

Jonathan [00:07:06]:

You can get to wherever you want in life. I mean, I’m really lucky. I’m kind of where I want to be. You’ve got to put the effort in to want it how did you pull.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:07:16]:

Yourself out of those dark places when it felt too hard?

Jonathan [00:07:19]:

You focus on where you want to be. You focus on. You have to focus on. It’s not forever. And I could have easily, at any point, I could have easily picked up the phone and gone and got a job as a talent acquisition person or gone and got a job in recruitment doing exactly what I was doing. But you just have to go now. The end point is that. The end point is that.

Jonathan [00:07:42]:

And if you want that, you have to just roll your sleeves up. There is sometimes, there is no. There is no magic pill, there is no silver bullet. There is no anything other than just work. If you want something, just work. And it will come. And it did. And I remember the day of.

Jonathan [00:08:00]:

Right, I don’t need to go to the post office anymore. I’ve got enough cash in the bank for the next six months. I don’t have to go and do that. And it was lovely. It was really good. And I’m not. I’ll never. I met some amazing people there.

Jonathan [00:08:12]:

I made some really good friends I’m still in touch with now. But, you know, that was the kick for me. I thought, I don’t want to do this, but I also don’t want to go back and do what I’m doing. You have to make this work because if you want that life, you want the chickens and the horses and the whatever that is, whatever your end goal out of it is, you have to work to get there. And I think something that, that is something I will be making sure. I’ve got two daughters and that’s something I’ll be making sure that I will instill pretty hard into them is that particularly in an age of. It is a very, you know, consumer driven, not much attention Spanish. You can be an influencer.

Jonathan [00:08:49]:

You can. And look, being an influencer is work. People don’t get anything for nothing. But it is a very. There is a sort of mentality now of you can achieve these things without getting this. And I think that is probably because of what people see on social media all the time. But yeah, they will understand the value of work. They will understand of working for something and getting to where they need to be in life.

Jonathan [00:09:13]:

That comes sometimes a bit of a trade off of could have weighed your arse.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:09:17]:

So, drawing a parallel with, in terms of all of the disasters that you’ve kind of had to manage, as well as the changes within the recruitment and HR industry coming off the back of things like LinkedIn launching, how do you think in that change when recruitment and talent acquisition kind of changed, when LinkedIn kind of blew up. What parallels do you see with what’s happening right now with AI companies popping up left, right and center trying to say that they can do all of these things with the automation, like what are the key challenges that CPG companies and your customers are kind of seeing right now when it comes to this sort of stuff?

Jonathan [00:09:51]:

Well, they can’t. I’m going to be straight. AI is not at a point yet when it can do this. Yeah, LinkedIn is brilliant for me. I make all my money out of LinkedIn. I spend all day on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is someone for me where you don’t even have to own a database because LinkedIn is effectively alive. It is a live database that updates itself.

Jonathan [00:10:10]:

Yeah. So as long as you pay your recruit license, you recruit fee and maximize everything out of that, you do it for me, it will store all your data, it will store your messages, it will store anything you don’t need. So for someone like me, once AI is able to assist me with recruitment, it will be fantastic because you don’t then need to be a big corporate, you don’t need that. I think what you will see is you will get a lot of smaller firms, a lot of more one man bands like me who step up and say, you know what, if I’m smart, if I’m really clever with this, I will use this technology to enable me to do my job a lot better. Now in some areas it might be, you might be able to do that because if you are say doing contract recruitment where it doesn’t really matter about cultural fit, it doesn’t really matter about all of these things. You are just looking for x to y for 6912 months. The ability now to search through a lot of CV’s to the ability to get through a lot of stuff is amazing. It can, yeah.

Jonathan [00:11:14]:

As in anything. It can chew through a hell of a lot of data for you incredibly quickly and give you the results that you want. But in terms of can I tell you about if a person from a cultural fit is right for this business? No, it can’t do that. And that for me is I’ve had sleepless night. Of course I have. I’m not that though, you know, he’s going to destroy my business. Am I going to end up back in the post office or probably, probably, probably won’t be a post office, that’ll be an Amazon warehouse, you know.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:11:44]:

Yeah.

Jonathan [00:11:45]:

But I think until AI comes up with an issue of being able to solve that problem, then I’m nothing massively concerned about what I do. And it will get, you know, I can use it. I already on LinkedIn to do assisted searches. I mean, it speeds up my day. So, yeah, it’s a great tool, but it can’t get the end point of. Yeah. So I’m a Miller. I’d give you a really good example.

Jonathan [00:12:09]:

Right. I had an offer for a candidate this morning, right? That was a candidate. I put so the brief runner job, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I put one person in and that one person has got the job. Right. And that’s all. All I did. Because they knew from the businesses that they worked, I knew from speaking to the person, I knew from the setup of their, of their organization that they would be right for that job.

Jonathan [00:12:34]:

And they’re set up for the business that they’re going into. I knew that. So I was like, well, I don’t need any more. I just need to do this. I need to make sure this AI can’t do that. AI can’t do that. And I don’t think because in order to find out if someone’s the right cultural fit, you have to have a conversation with someone. There aren’t any.

Jonathan [00:12:50]:

I can’t give you ten questions that is going to say, what is this person the right cultural fit for this business? I can’t give you 20 questions. You have a conversation with them, a bit like this. You probe them around certain areas, you then probe against their answers to get that out. Yeah. AI isn’t at a place where a, you can do it, and b, and this might be different for future generations, but certainly if I said to one of the people I’m trying to place in a job, yeah. I need you to go and talk to this AI for half an hour to an hour. Yeah, just go now. Do you know what I mean? They just turn around to me and say, no, I’m not doing that.

Jonathan [00:13:26]:

People, people do not have a trust of. People do not have a trust of that yet. That will be, they want to speak to a person. So.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:13:35]:

And I think this is the point. People are missing. Right. Like, in terms of your role in recruitment and the business that you run, all of the process driven things have become a lot faster simply because of LinkedIn, simply because of all of the tools that we have. AI is just another tool that’s helping you get faster at doing the mundane, boring, process driven stuff. When it comes to that placement that you just made this morning that’s come off the back of years of experience years of relationships, years of understanding multiple company cultures, etcetera. And you knew that person and you just placed them right now for an AI system to learn all of that stuff, and then for the hiring manager to have that level of trust in that AI. Right now, I don’t see it happening at all.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:14:24]:

So I think there’s still the major thing that AI I don’t see impacting anytime soon is human relationships and human connection. So I think with all of the work and future that we have when it comes to the future of work, I think humans need to get better at human connection and fostering relationships and focusing on that element rather than thinking that all work is just process and automation, and AI is going to kind of take it all over. So just leaning on this point, when it comes to understanding a company’s culture and values before placing a person, how do you approach that? And how do you kind of understand a company’s culture? And then similarly, when you’re looking at candidates, how do you assess them to see if they have that fit?

Jonathan [00:15:12]:

That is the million dollar, I mean, that is the million dollar question. First of all, you’ve got to, you’ve got to drag out companies. So this, again, this is another thing that I find absolutely bizarre. Right. So I will go and get any job brief for any client. Yeah. And the job brief say it’s an hour. Yeah, I’ll get 50 minutes of them talking to me about, this is the job, this is what they want someone to do.

Jonathan [00:15:40]:

This is what we’ve got going on. This is how we need to do it. These are the people you need to find us. And it’s always the same. It’s always robot, but not a robot. There’s always a template of we want someone to be the next CEO, we want someone who’s got ten to be the next CEO. You get ten minutes at the end when I go where they say, is there anything else you want to know, Jonathan?

Imteaz Ahamed [00:16:00]:

And I’m like, well, actually there is.

Jonathan [00:16:02]:

What’s the culture of the business like? And for me, that is the most bizarre thing because the culture of the business is the most important. The culture of the business is what makes the person. You get that, right? Yeah, it’s what makes people stay. It’s what means that they get promoted, and it was what means that they’re really successful. And it means that it’s a really successful match for the client, and it really means it’s a really successful match for the candidate, which is the fundamental, crucial bit of any recruiting process. I can find you x amount of people who’ve all got the same skill set. Yeah, there’s always going to be x amount of people with the same skill set, but there’s going to be less that fit your culture. So the first big point is you have to pull it out of them sometimes, like with a pair of players to get them to talk about culture.

Jonathan [00:16:48]:

And I’m, I’m lucky enough that because I’ve done this for 20 years now and I talk to, you know, I spend my life either messaging people on LinkedIn or talking to people. And because I know inherently what a culture of a business is like now, because you don’t get the culture of the business from someone saying to me, you know, we’re all about flexible, working out this, we’re all about blah, blah, blah. Again, if you ask people what the culture is, they will just drop stuff from their website from there. Well, these are all our key values. And you get, I understand the culture of a business from my network, from knowing what that business is like, from knowing what they’re doing, from knowing how they’re performing, to knowing the individual line managers within businesses to be able to understand that. Yeah. And then how do I make sure a candidate is a fit? Well, look, there’s one, there’s one easy, there’s one really easy metric, and then an easy metric you can use to just filter all of this down is go. If they want someone from that.

Jonathan [00:17:51]:

If the culture of the business is x. Yeah. You go and find someone from a business who works at a similar culture because there is, you know, like, if you look at, like Mars after Mars is most successful external recruiter for the past ten years in the UK. And I’d say most of the people I’ve got from Unilever because they have a similar culture. So it’s really easy to go X to. Yeah. You’re taking from that outside. If you’re taking from outside of that environment.

Jonathan [00:18:20]:

Yeah. So if I were, say, if I was working for a business and speaks to a candidate from who’s at the opposite call, what you’re asking them what you’re flagging into then is stuff all, you know, why do you want to leave? Do you like the culture of where you work? Yes, no. Yes, no. And then you filter it down that way. There is no. You take from a candidate perspective, you take your lead from what the candidate is saying, because it doesn’t matter how good they are, it doesn’t matter if they can change the world, if they’re not going to fit in the culture, right? They’re never going to. They’re never going to stay ever. And I’m really proud of the fact that if you were to go, go my LinkedIn and go and see all the people I’ve placed over the years, and they’ve all got, you know, they’re all trading on at least three promotions within their core business.

Jonathan [00:19:04]:

That’s how I know it works. That’s how I know. And that’s probably, I’d say why I’ve been successful is because I place my first emphasis on any hiring process, on getting the cultural fit right. And I don’t think a lot of people do that. I think a lot of people will do it. It will be very transactional and be more about, well, is it the right skill set? Does it fit within this salary bandage? Da da da da da. And they don’t do that. And it has to be a bit, you gotta be a bit pushy as well, because the companies don’t want to really tell you about the stuff that’s bad within the business or the stuff that doesn’t.

Jonathan [00:19:44]:

Maybe they don’t want to, you know, this is not a, we don’t buy all this data. We actually don’t do this actually off to get down and dirty and do all this work. And it said, well, that’s the stuff I need to know.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:19:54]:

So in terms of driving your success, and, you know, it’s very impressive, your LinkedIn following of over 30,000 people. By the way, how do you think, in terms of building your reputation, both in the offline world and in the online world, what do you think drives that success, like, from speaking to you, Jonathan, I think a part of this is authenticity in terms of the way that you tell your stories and the way that you’re building your relationships. But what else is it that you do that makes the work that you do so special?

Jonathan [00:20:26]:

I think I’m really straight. I think I’m. And I would say I am pretty much. I wouldn’t say filter free, because, you know, everyone has to have a filter. To some point, you have to have a filter. Yes, but I think I. I’ve reached a point in my life where I am very comfortable with who I am. I’m very comfortable with what I do.

Jonathan [00:20:47]:

I’m very comfortable with the business I run. And I think that allows me a certain, I won’t say flexibility, but that sort of mode allows me to be very truthful to people. I don’t care if I’m speaking to the CCO or you know, a sales exec or whatever I will tell them all the same message. I might wrap it up slightly but I will tell them all the same message. And I think that’s probably what I think people find quite refreshing is that I am able to do it in such a way. And then I think the second part is if you go and work for. So if and I know, and I know this because I worked in corporate recruitment it’s that they will all have KPI’s. You want to send this many CV’s, you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that, you’ve got to do that.

Jonathan [00:21:34]:

Because there if you look at way, the way that they operate it is very numbers driven. It is very. You have to do so in order to make a placement you’ve got to send this many cv’s, you’ve got to do this many interviews a week, you’ve got to do this many phone calls, you got to do this, you got to do that, you’ve got to do the other. So what you end up doing is you don’t value at right. You can’t be bombed stuff because it is very much the case of well we’ve got to stick, you know my manager says I need to stick three cv’s into this job and get three interviews out of it to make it successful. Yeah. Now the whole point of me being in a. The whole point I feel of me doing what I’m doing for a client is that I will save them time, right? And the time is if I can give you one candidate instead of three why would I give you three? And that for me it’s a big thing and I think people are.

Jonathan [00:22:28]:

I think there’s probably some metrics behind it to say that, you know, a lot of your micro page or whatever you know they don’t want to do that so they’ll shove everything on it. And then also I think along with that is that takes and I’d say when I dealing with clients that is the first thing that takes them a while to get the head round is the fact that look I’m here to save you time. Like I am here to save you time. You will get the CV’s when you get the CV’s and that’s it. Tell me, interview them, offer them. You know it’s very. It’s very rare I work on a role that I don’t place. It’s very rare because of the way I do it.

Jonathan [00:23:06]:

It’s just very straightforward and very you know, I’ll add value to your business. I’ll add value by saving you time. That allows you to get on with what you want to do. And I’ll add value because the person want to place in your business will probably get promoted three times.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:23:21]:

So it’s all about quality over quantity.

Jonathan [00:23:23]:

It’s never about quantity. And that’s why I don’t think, you know, going back to what we were talking about earlier about AI, AI isn’t at the point yet when it can deliver that. It can deliver the quality. Right. It’s at a point where it can crunch you through number, crunch you through 300 CB’s that have applied for this scrum, master, whatever, whatever, whatever job. It’s at the point where it can do that. What it can’t do is then provide the quality at the end, which is why for now, is not going to steal my job.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:23:55]:

Talking about diversity and inclusion, you’re an advisory board member and 100 allies. How do you advocate for diversity and inclusion in recruitment? And what impact have you seen from these efforts?

Jonathan [00:24:09]:

So I would say my. And this is. I’m really glad you’ve asked me this question because I think this is something that I find incredibly paradoxical between in businesses, is that as a recruiter, and I’ve been really candid with you now, as a recruiter, you can have an incredibly tiny impact in this space. Which is when I. Which is why when I saw they were setting up 100 allies, I was really keen to get involved and, you know, fortunate. I’ve been fortunate enough to be right onto the advisory board of that because I can say what I want. My message can be what? Be what it is. But I think there is a disconnect between what companies say and what they actually do.

Jonathan [00:24:51]:

So if you go onto any big CPG company website, it will say all the right things, all about diversity. But when you actually get down to the nuts, Baltimore, do they live and breathe that? No. Although. Are there in house recruiters trained in recruiting in a diverse way? No. Right. They are. And if I’m honest with you, it’s the line managers more than the recruiters, because the in house recruit. So the talent acquisition person.

Jonathan [00:25:19]:

Yeah. They are there to deliver a service to their line manager. Right. And their line manager wants. Their line manager comes to, says, I want to. I want this person. I need someone to fill this. Yeah.

Jonathan [00:25:29]:

And they’re always like, I need someone who’s done it before. I need someone who doesn’t want any training to. Minimum training. Yeah. I want them to be capable of being the next year. So what happens is that they constantly fish from the same pool. So while the company can say it’s committed to diversity, it’s not. And that is a really blunt and really truthful answer.

Jonathan [00:25:55]:

They are not committed to diversity because there is no diversity in any of their hermit practices at all. It is. Just get me what I’ve had before. Get me a junior version of me. Yeah. I mean, I saw. And it was really bad. I saw.

Jonathan [00:26:10]:

I’m not going to shame anyone because, you know, I’m not. That’s not.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:26:14]:

This is widespread. It’s not exclusive to anyone. Right?

Jonathan [00:26:17]:

No, no, no, it’s not. It’s right across the board. But I saw a picture on LinkedIn a few weeks ago and it was. And I need to be careful how I say that, but it was the celebration of some form of achievement. Yeah. And I looked at the picture and the first thing I thought is everyone in this picture is white. Yeah. Probably 70% of them are males.

Jonathan [00:26:41]:

They’ve probably all got a degree. They’ve probably all been a grad. They’ve been a grad scheme. Now, I know that this is a company that has diversity all over its website. Yep. And many of these companies will win, you know, they’ll win awards for their diversity policy and. But in reality, it’s nothing. Which is why when I saw the opportunity to join 100 allies, I really wanted to do it.

Jonathan [00:27:09]:

And I’ve, you know, I’ve put some, you know, put some efforts into this. And we’re having a huge launch, I think, in. In October, start October, because I think in order to really change diversity, the diversity of thought and diversity of hiring and, you know, diversity of experience within the industry, you are going to fundamentally have to change things within businesses. You can’t just put stuff on a website and say, we are now diverse. We now have this policy. We now have this policy because if you don’t do it in practice, it means absolutely nothing. I mean, I was talking to, you know, this is how. I mean, look, this is how even.

Jonathan [00:27:48]:

Even in insights. Right. This is how narrow the field is. Yeah. So say I get a job for a insights from. For example, I’m using insights as an example. This could apply to any other sector or any other function, but insights is a really good example. So I’ll get a job from an insight.

Jonathan [00:28:06]:

Insight as well. And one of the questions you’ll ask them during the process, well, would you take anyone from, you know, an agency, a data agency, business? And the answer is always no. The answer is always. The answer is always no. The answer others is, well, not always, but I. 90% of the time the answer is always no. The answer is no. We want someone from another big CPG business who’s done this before.

Jonathan [00:28:29]:

So if you are, that shows you how narrow diversity is, that they won’t even consider someone. Never mind that. Never mind anything else. Never mind. Before we even get down to that, that track. Yeah, but they won’t even take someone who could do the job from a sector that they’re working in because they’ve not worked for a client before. So then when you start to look at the building blocks of this and how ingrained it is within businesses, that’s when you start to see, well, actually, how are these. Unless you do fundamental training with hybrid managers, with the C suite, with all of this stuff, how are you ever going to get a diversity policy in that works? You are fundamentally going to have to go in and change attitudes because it is, at the end of the day, you can have all the diversity policy you want, but it’s the hiring manager that makes the decision on who is hired.

Jonathan [00:29:25]:

So therefore, that is the person that needs to be educated, reformulated, reprogrammed, whatever you want to call it, because that is the person that is going to gatekeep whether that business will be a diverse business or, speaking from experience, the.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:29:42]:

Most innovative teams that I’ve ever been a part of, I’ve had a previous hiring manager who would have on purpose hire outside of CPG to fill roles, mainly because we’re like, we need to think about things differently. We need to think differently to what our competitors would actually do. And if your competitors are only hiring CPG people or FMCG people, and you’re doing exactly the same thing, you’re not going to get new ideas. You’re going to get what everybody they’ve always done, and you’re most likely going to recycle ideas from three or four years ago that didn’t work somewhere else and magical is going to work now. It’s amazing how it almost feels like a lot of DEI initiatives are corporate marketing to say that we’re doing the right things, but in reality, not that much has changed, unfortunately. And there’s only, like, very small pockets where we’re seeing the real shift actually happening. And I agree with you, it has to be from the business side and or the hiring manager side, because I think the recruiters within an organization are enacting what the business is asking them to do, fill this particular role like, outside of getting, I guess, a people strategy from the top down to ensure that we have a divergence or we have diversity. To really do diversity, you need business.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:30:58]:

Buy in, top down, buy in. And that it needs to be a people, an overall people strategy that recruiters are a part of or the HR team is part of, rather than just receiving a brief right at the end of the hiring process and then just go find me more people that look like this.

Jonathan [00:31:15]:

I would say that the manager you probably worked for then, that has created this diverse team, it’s an outlier because most of them aren’t like that. Most of them are not. Most of them are forward thinking in to go right, well, we need to get somewhere else. And what you find is that particularly what I find, because, you know, CPG businesses, they’re all slow adopters of tech anyway. They always have been and they always will be. So what you then find is you find like, no one is going at any pace because everyone is like, well, I’m going to get someone from here to do this, but they’ve never done it either, really, to any extent. And then there is also an age thing of, well, we don’t want to take that person because they’re clearly too young to do that. And you’re like, yeah, but you don’t understand that they’ve used that tech for whatever amount attorney, so really good at it and they’re going to be way better than you’re ever going to be.

Jonathan [00:32:08]:

So you need to sort of go, yeah, let’s just kind of up this. I mean, I saw, I saw, I was doing some post for LinkedIn yesterday about what you achieve in life by certain goals and just basically saying, look, don’t beat yourself up, because, you know, what’s the point? You know, everyone achieves things at different times. And one of the. One of the things I saw was the fact that the average new direct in the UK is 50 fahrenheit. And to me, that’s just criminal. It’s like, how is that? How is that? How are you ever going to keep on top of what you need, particularly when the world’s changing so fast, when you’ve got at the moment, you know, you’ve got. We’ve not just got AI, we’ve got completely new ways of selling through TikTok, through Instagram, through all of this stuff. You’ve got a generation that has completely different values.

Jonathan [00:32:59]:

And we look at. Look at the state that Unilever’s at the moment, he’s trying to divest itself of everything in that Unilever venture team is trying to buy up any new up and coming brand that it thinks might be valuable in the next 20 years. And you kind of think you’ve got all that going on if you’re only making people a director at 55, where are all these people who understand what’s going on now and what their generation are going to want to buy for the next ten years? What the hell did we do with all of them?

Imteaz Ahamed [00:33:27]:

That’s an amazing point. Coming back to perception versus reality, one of the things about Gen Z is they really look at the difference between what you say and what you do. And as an employer, if you have all of this positive messaging around Dei, you’re not actually doing it. The next generation of workforce is really going to call you out for it and they’re going to be disengaged with you, and they’re going to keep flipping and switching companies and not stay with you in the long term as well. So again, coming back to authenticity, you got to walk the walk. You can’t just keep talking about it.

Jonathan [00:34:04]:

Well, I. So I have, and again, not name a name. I’ve noticed that over the past five years, there’s been a huge trend of businesses that I could never extract people from. Yeah. They would never want to leave because they were, you know, they were perceived as being the best out there to work there. Now, some of these big. Some of these businesses are now on a massive soldier because they’re not. They’re putting the stuff up on the website, they breathe it, and then the people get in there and they find that out and then they’re like, well, I’m gone.

Jonathan [00:34:39]:

When they go work somewhere that actually lives and breathes what they say they’re living, breathing. It’s interesting, I think, to see how the landscape is going to change, because I think there’s. I think there’s a few. I think there’s a few big CPG businesses that are functioning at the moment in what I would say is a huge bubble of, we’ve always done it this way, we’re always going to do it this way. Yeah, we might change some brands out, we might swap some brands in, we might do this, we might do that. But I don’t think they understand that what they’re building currently is completely, a, they’re building a very disengaged workforce and b, the talent that they would want to usually attract is not going to come and work for them. And I don’t think they understand that within a few years that company can go for. But if you don’t get these things right from your moral point of view, you should be.

Jonathan [00:35:36]:

That is, anyway. But if you don’t get these things right from a business point of view, you ain’t gonna be there. It’s nuts.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:35:43]:

It’s really crazy. Shifting gears a bit, balancing a high pressure business like recruitment with living in the forest, out in the woods with your animals. That sounds kind of one, fun, two, unique. How do you manage work like balance, given all these things that you do?

Jonathan [00:36:03]:

I have a very random work life balance, I would say. So. My work schedule is really, really erratic. So I’ll work all day. But then I’m very clear on the fact that whatever time it is after 05:00 we eat as a family. We always eat as a family. Doesn’t matter what. I have to physically not be here for us to eat, not eat as a fun.

Jonathan [00:36:28]:

We will always eat as a family. We will always, you know, I will always do a bedtime story. I always do a shower, whatever needs to be. Then I’ll go out and mess around with the animals and, you know, do the feeding, collect the eggs, water, whatever that is. And then, you know, most nights I wait till midnight. Yeah, and I only wait till midnight on a Sunday. I wait till midnight probably five days a week, not on a Friday. I’d say the only day I don’t do any work is Saturday.

Jonathan [00:36:55]:

And again, I think that goes back to the fact that if you want something, you got to put it working. Do you know what I mean? I want, this is the lifestyle I want. So I built probably my business around the lifestyle I wanted to achieve because I could hire people. I’ve got enough contacts. I can get enough business. I can go and hire people if I want. That’s not really an issue. But I don’t want to.

Jonathan [00:37:19]:

I don’t want to be driving somewhere, to be in an office every day telling people what to do. You know, I was a manager before. I hated it. I was terrible at it. I love doing recruitment. I love talking to people. So I really like my job, and I really like my life. I don’t really ever want to mess for that.

Jonathan [00:37:39]:

So, you know, but you have to. You work out a structure. And again, this is why I’m lucky that I don’t, I don’t exist in a corporate environment because I couldn’t do what I do if I existed in a corporate environment. And in some ways, it was really funny because during COVID everyone would start working in the same way as me. And I was like, oh, you finally caught up. Yeah, I’ve been doing this for years. You don’t need to see the benefits of it. To me, I’ve been doing this for years.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:38:04]:

Yeah. So I had a corporate, I had a remote team for five years before COVID and Covid was just like, oh, so we’re just going to keep doing what we’ve always done. So wasn’t much of a switch for me either, but I think for many other people it was.

Jonathan [00:38:23]:

Yeah, but I think the irony is now is the companies now are pulling people out of that and, you know, they’re being a lot more hardcore. What, you back in the office four days a week, five days a week, three days a week. There seems to be. There seems to be a huge crackdown on it. It was the business in the states where they said, we will not hire you, we will not promote you if you work. Is it Dell will not promote you if you work remotely as a tech. As a tech company? I think you might. I think it might have even been dealt because I remember laughing about it going, so you’re a business that is going to sell me stuff that enables to wear remotely, but you actually don’t want your employees? No, but I think they’re employees and I really love this.

Jonathan [00:39:08]:

Their employees made a stand and said, we’re not going to accept that. Because they were like, if you don’t come back to the office, won’t promote you. Yeah. And I think over 50% of their employees surround us. Well, no, and they’ve actually overturned. Now, the thing of we won’t promote you, which I think is really good, is, you know, you’ve got to stand up for. You aren’t for sure.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:39:27]:

But I do think specifically when you’re at the start of your career, coming into the office and physically interacting with other people is very important. Like, I remember at the beginning when I was a grad, I thought I knew it all. Coming fresh out of university, doing very well at university, all this stuff. And then I got a dose of reality, you know, cut down to size into the corporate world. But I really needed that right now. You know, if you work in a remote space and you don’t get that mentorship and you don’t necessarily understand business etiquette, relationship building in the physical world, I think you’re going to struggle as well. So I think there needs to be a balance at, you know, multiple levels of your career. But I don’t 100% remote personally, not for me, but there needs to be a balanced approach to this as well.

Jonathan [00:40:20]:

No, I agree with you on that. And I was talking to someone this about this today because they were talking, they were saying, look, we need to do some stuff and change the culture, the business and stuff. You are going to have to, even if it is for x amount of months or a year or twelve months, you’re going to have to hire people to bring them in and make them be in the office a little bit more because you cannot build the culture of a business. Everyone is 100% remote.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:40:45]:

Yeah.

Jonathan [00:40:46]:

There is no culture in a business. So there has to be a healthy balance. There has to be a healthy, you know, the watercolor conversations. There has to be a, there has to be a healthy balance. But I think it’s getting the balance rapidly and also making the way I’ve seen it handled is it’s not great. You want to make people feel like they have the choice, not just do this or get another job, don’t do this, don’t go. You know what I mean? That’s not the way to do it. You know, you know, their parents, you know, everyone’s an adult.

Jonathan [00:41:16]:

We should kind of be able to have these conversations, pretty open book and just say, well, love what’s going to work and what’s not going to work.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:41:22]:

On a personal front, what habits and productivity hacks make you or make your life easier.

Jonathan [00:41:29]:

So these are things that I’ve had to become really, really brief and I mean really ruthless about site I, because there’s a one, one round chicken ran flock. What? Around? Right. I actually get really busy doing this. It for one. So I have to be really, really, really focused on stuff. And look, all of my, all of my recruitment is on success only. So I don’t charge retainers, I don’t do any of this. So it’s get some nuts and bolts.

Jonathan [00:41:59]:

I’ve got to put people in jobs, otherwise the chickens aren’t getting fed. It’s as simple as what we might be eating at. You know, you’ve got a, you’ve got to have some base rules. So I’m pretty clear about what I do. And I, you know, there’s some stuff like, so I have a one week rule. I have a. Unless someone’s got a lot draconian, there are always exceptions. But pretty much I have a one week, one week rule of anything that I do with anyone in it is if it takes you more than a week to do something, you’re not that asked about it.

Jonathan [00:42:31]:

So it takes you more than a week to write your cv bar, it takes you more than a week to spend it. To send me a job spec buy. If you can’t write a presentation for a job interview in a week, bar, because I just think if you want something enough, you know, and I get told, oh, that’s currently. Listen, too busy. I’m too busy. I’m too busy and I’m like, no, if you want something enough, you will make the time to do it. If it is that important to you, you will make the time to do it. So I use that barometer as is this worthwhile me doing, because it, you know, I’m very, I very much, look, if you put the effort and I’ll match your effort, I will help you get that job.

Jonathan [00:43:09]:

I would, I will get you the right person. I’ll do all of this. But I’ve got to understand that it’s your priority. So my one, my one week rule is very clear. Look, it. Sometimes it does ill or whatever as a personal thing, it’s going to change. Like. But, um, yeah, pretty.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:43:25]:

Essentially that.

Jonathan [00:43:26]:

Yeah, no, it’s water version. Yeah, it’s how much do you want it? And, you know, I spoke to someone on the end of last week and they were like, well, you know, I’ve really busy and I went with bought, we’ve got some stuff, you know, we bought some new furniture for house and, you know, I’m not going to do everything. We get time to my cv and I was really blunt with it and I can be pretty blunt sometimes. And I just said, well, look, let’s be honest. If you, if you want it, you’ll stop putting your jeans in a wardrobe for an hour and sort your cv out. If you don’t want it, you’ll, you’ll carry on sorting your jeans out and that’s, that’s life. And you know what? I’ve never heard from him since. And I thought, but, you know, I failed the job.

Jonathan [00:44:05]:

So I kind of just think, well, I want to deal with people who want it. You know, I want to deal with people who that is a priority for. So that is, that is really, really key. And I think sometimes when I tell people, because I do tell people, I tell people it all the time, I’m pretty, yeah, I’ve got bean on it, Instagram for got six. I’m pretty straightforward. And I think when I tell people that there are big shots, but I’m like, well, it is what it is. The rule is something, if you want something, you’ll make a chance to do it. So.

Jonathan [00:44:36]:

And then I think next is very much. I’m a big believer in the valuation of type at a really, really expensive currency, right. Because it is the only thing I can make more money. I can make whatever. Yeah, you can always make more of something. Can’t make more of time. Every day my currency of time gets less and less and less and less and less. I really figure if people want to waste my time, they get rid of it, because I’m only interested in people deal with dealing people who value it.

Jonathan [00:45:08]:

And it’s exactly the same to me, though. If I’m a deal with you, I will value your time. I will give you my 100%. I will do this. But you have to surround yourself in life. The people that a, value what you say, but b, more importantly, they value your time because the most precious thing that you’ve got. So I get a really bugbear of, one of my biggest bugbears is, but in time to speak to someone or something like that and they just don’t show up or, you know, whatever, I’m just like, we’ll see them because you don’t value it. You don’t value me, you don’t value the job, you don’t value the conversation.

Jonathan [00:45:41]:

See you later. It’s one strike. It’s pretty much, unless someone’s got a decent excuse, it’s pretty much one strike out and just go. Because there’s always someone who wants to talk about something and that person might be really engaged and really keen about what you’ve got to say. So. Yeah, and I think other ones is evolution, evolution, evolution, evolution. You go back to talking about AI if, and it does, this doesn’t matter how big or small or whatever size you are, but if you do not evolve, what you’re doing, how you do it, and sometimes evolution to me is painful because particularly a lot of stuff around social media, I’m a lot greater. But if you don’t evolve, you’re gone.

Jonathan [00:46:22]:

You are like, you are gone, gone, gone, gone, gone. And that will come back to any, it’ll come back to a brand, it will come back to a business, it will come back to a value stream, it will come back to anything you are. You very quickly, you can very quickly become obsolete. You know, if I look at phases of my evolution, the business in terms of what areas recruited and they’ve changed, how I do it, how I adapt and how I respond is completely changed. And you have to be. And I think the big thing, another really big thing for me, which I use as a massive filter is me. And I know probably sounds really weird but it is just what I am really comfortable in who I am. And I saw this phrase always bashes around in my head which is I’d rather be disliked for who I am than be liked for somebody that I’m not.

Jonathan [00:47:17]:

Yeah, huge believer in this because I think if you are you and you are you too true to yourself in terms of what you put out there in the universe, how you, how you are and stuff like that, you will attract the people that, what work would you. You’ll attract the people that want to spend time with you. You will attract the people who just want to do stuff with you. All the people that you. That don’t just won’t even approach you. So then you immediately get this filter off which you know what, I don’t have to deal with all that stuff that maybe people think I’m a bit nuts or a bit weird. You don’t have to deal with all that anymore because you only end up speaking to the people who value what you’ve got to say. I want to be in your orbit.

Jonathan [00:48:08]:

So for me since I started being annex this is something I’ve always been comfortable doing. You know, there was always this big fear of well if I say this, if I do that, if I truth bomb in this way, if I give my opinion in this way, you know, am I going to have people who say well we don’t work with you? And I kind of think well as long as I’m, I’m not saying offensive. I’m not saying anything offensive. I’m not being anything offensive. I’m just being authentically me. And I kind of think well that’s all worry.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:48:38]:

Sure.

Jonathan [00:48:39]:

And that for me was probably a massive penny drop moment in the fact that look, you can be who you want. You will attract the people that you want to work with and the people don’t want to work with you. I mean look, since I started putting pinches of me holding a chicken up on the Internet, yeah, I’ve not lost one client. I’m not turned around and said to anyone that said I don’t want to speak to you. I’ve not had anyone ask me if I’m in say, right, I’ve not had any of those things. What I’ve found is a lot of people say to me, yes, alright, quite like what you’re doing video out where you’re saying it and all those things. Yeah. The problem is a ton of people out there who don’t want to work me don’t want to speak to me but I’ll leave a good into my orbitz so it cares.

Jonathan [00:49:22]:

And then I think linked to that and this is from roasted port, but I keep bashing it, I keep saying it all the time on my like social media read just click and do it right. At some point I’ll probably guess, well, hopefully if ever make it that big, I’ll get a cease and desist letter from Nike. That’s my goal then to write to me and say, jonathan, you cannot say just booking it.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:49:47]:

I think I know some people at night, they could reach out to you.

Jonathan [00:49:51]:

Because I’m sure content and all that. And again, you can link this back to what we were talking about right at the start with AI and CPG companies and this general fear there is. You get a paralysis of analysis of what if I do this? What’s going to be the endpoint? What if I do that? What’s going to be the endpoint, what’s going to be the worst that can happen? And you know what? Nothing really, nothing bad is that going to happen? So just, just fucking do it. Just get on with it. So I mean, just do it. Just like stop messing about, stop thinking about it. Whatever it is, a post, a bit of tech you think, you know, introduce into your business, whatever that thing might be a person you’re thinking asking out about on a date, just do it. Just fucking do it.

Jonathan [00:50:41]:

Because if you do, apart from the cease and desist later, I’ll probably get to nothing really bad is going to happen in life and you’ll probably end up being a little bit better for doing it.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:50:51]:

Love it. Jonathan, it’s been an absolute pleasure speaking to you today. And how can people reach out to you if they want to find out more about you?

Jonathan [00:51:02]:

Best things always LinkedIn or probably WhatsApp or just send me a DM on Instagram, don’t email me because my inbox is flooded with emails from people trying to sell me a to improve retreat.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:51:24]:

I love it. Love it. Joyce. And again, thank you so much for being on the show today. I wish you all the very best and all the, all of Jonathan’s links to his social media and all the wonderful things that he does will be in the show notes as well. Thank you so much.

Jonathan [00:51:39]:

Thanks, buddy. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Other Links

Navigating Change in the Era of Digital Transformation Through Targeted Innovation, Customer Understanding, and Courageous Leadership

Understanding the Challenge of Legacy Companies

One of the most significant obstacles faced by legacy companies today is their tendency to optimize existing successes rather than innovate. As Steve Dennis, a seasoned retail expert and author, points out, this stems from leadership structures that reward managers for maintaining the status quo. The conversation highlights the prevalence of incrementalism driven by a natural aversion to risk. This becomes a significant hurdle in environments where fast-paced disruption requires more audacious steps.

Dennis shares a poignant example from his time at Sears, where the focus was on defending the status quo instead of embracing substantial changes. This attitude is deeply rooted in organizational cultures that lack incentives for challenging the established way of doing things.

The Seven Mind Leaps for Mastery in Leadership

Dennis introduces the concept of the “seven mind leaps” essential for current and future leaders to succeed. The first and perhaps the most crucial leap is to crush the ego. Leaders often struggle with admitting that they do not fully understand new concepts, fearing vulnerability or appearing weak. Dennis openly discusses his battle with imposter syndrome during his tenure at Neiman Marcus and how overcoming this enabled him to take greater risks, such as transitioning to entrepreneurship and authorship.

Leveraging Human Connection in a Technology-Driven World

In the conversation, Dennis emphasizes the necessity for leaders to understand both the emotional and practical aspects of customer experiences. For instance, shopping fulfills emotional needs just as much as practical demands. Leaders must carefully distinguish areas where efficiency is vital from where human connection should be prioritized. While technology can make humans more effective, powerful brands appeal to our irrational side and forge deeper connections.

Generative AI, discussed by Speaker B, illustrates this pivot. AI amplifies business efficiency but should be seen as an enabler rather than a replacement for human creativity and connection.

Toward Targeted Innovation and Customer Segmentation

A recurring theme in Dennis’s discussion is the necessity for companies to narrow their focus and aim. Instead of striving for vast scale and scope, businesses should zero in on a specific customer base, providing a “wow factor” that deeply resonates with that niche audience. Tractor Supply Company is cited as a prime example of this targeted approach. By honing in on its target market, it has evolved into a powerful retailer.

Restoration Hardware’s RH gallery stores are another example where delivering a “wow factor” for a specific clientele has proven to be a successful strategy. This concept of “Brandwow” champions going deeper and becoming more meaningful to a smaller set of customers.

Balancing Core Business and Innovation

Dennis emphasizes the importance of crafting a balanced approach to transformation. Traditional businesses must adopt a portfolio approach, incorporating both cutting-edge innovations and core business considerations. This involves a culture of experimentation, where prioritizing smaller transformation projects becomes critical. Organizational processes and mindsets must be geared towards saying yes to innovation and allocating budgets for early-stage initiatives.

Both speakers underscore the necessity for agility and disciplined innovation. Companies should approach innovation as a core discipline, ready to adapt to changing circumstances.

Courageous Leadership and Navigating Challenges

Courageous leadership is a recurrent theme throughout the conversation. Dennis discusses the importance of awareness, acceptance, and action in navigating the inevitable changes in customer dynamics, competitive landscapes, and technological advancements. The journey from acceptance to action is fraught with challenges and requires a realistic understanding of an organization’s limits and opportunities.

Leadership must not let ego inhibit effectiveness. Instead, it should prioritize the most crucial objectives, avoiding distractions and fighting through perfectionism. Dennis also touches on personal growth, citing his struggles and eventual path towards confident, effective leadership.

Conclusion and Continued Dialogue

In conclusion, mastering leadership amidst disruption demands a nuanced understanding of current market dynamics, a targeted approach to customer engagement, and the courage to innovate and adapt. Steve Dennis’s insights offer invaluable guidance for leaders striving to navigate this complex landscape.

Future discussions promise to delve deeper into these themes, offering continued learning and exchange of ideas. For those interested in more of Steve Dennis’s wisdom, he can be reached through his website and is active on LinkedIn and other social media platforms.

Stay tuned for further insights from the world of applied intelligence, where the intersection of technology and human creativity continues to unfold.

Hosted by: Imteaz Ahamed

Video Transcript

Steve Dennis [00:00:02]:
Welcome to applied intelligence, a conversation at the intersection of people, technology and getting stuff done. Now here’s your host, Imtea Ahamed.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:00:18]:
Welcome to implied intelligence. Today I’m excited to have Steve Dennis on my podcast. Steve is a retail luminary known for his insights and innovative ideas about growth, innovation and digital disruption. He’s also a bestselling author and his book remarkable how to win and keep customers in the age of Disruption has been celebrated across the world for its fresh take on consumer behavior and the future of shopping. We’re here to talk about his latest book, leaders transforming your company at the speed of Disruption, which has recently hit the shelves. Steve has a rich history as a c suite executive at major Fortune 500 companies and now lead sageberry Consulting. His experience has given him a unique perspective on driving customer growth during constant change. Besides being a senior contributor to Fords and hosting the top rated remarkable retail podcast, Steve dynamic keynote speeches have captivated audiences across six continents.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:01:11]:
His deep understanding of market dynamics and consumer engagement makes him a go to expert for navigating today’s complex business landscapes. Before founding Sagebrey Consulting, Sae was the chief strategy officer at the Newman Marcus Group where he led efforts in customer insight, loyalty and multi channel marketing. Join us today as we dive into the key insights and transformative strategies from leaders leap with Steve Dennis hi everybody and welcome to applied intelligence. Today I have the pleasure of speaking to Steve Dennis. Steve, I’m going to let you tell your story as the introduction and we’re going to open with a question that I ask all my guests, which is if your autobiography had five chapters, what would the chapter titles of each section be?

Steve Dennis [00:01:55]:
Well, it’s a great question. It’s not one that I’ve been asked too much, but in that way I think the first would be some version of kind of lost and afraid. My childhood was very difficult. I had a mother with mental illness and so there were a lot of things that quite challenging in many respects. Then probably chapter two was something like wandering because I was trying early in my career, well, and as I went into the professional life to try to find what I was excited about and one of those kinds of things. Third would be probably something like me, me, me, because I got very selfish, ego driven, success driven, really decided to try to focus on working my way up the corporate ladder. Once I went through a series of jobs, I guess fourth would probably be something like awakening or wake up where I realized some of things I was doing were not really super helpful to me and tried to understand what I really wanted to do and explore a different path and get moving in that direction. And then the fifth, which is the last bit here, is probably like growth and transformation, something along those lines.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:03:05]:
So when it comes to having life where, you know, you start off with a lot of adversity, you start off with a lot of challenges in that as a child or in your teens, what motivated you to work hard and do the things that you got to do in your career?

Steve Dennis [00:03:20]:
Well, I think some of it was trying to find a path that got me out of some of the things that weren’t so enjoyable and, you know, get attention or success. So for me, that was initially around athletics. Then it moved more towards academics, some leadership kind of positions. So both high school and college, I was kind of an extracurricular overdoer or whatever. And, you know, that got me affirmation and attention and those kinds of things. And so I could kind of compartmentalize aspects of my life over here and, I guess double down on saying I had some success or get the kind of attention I desired.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:04:00]:
And as you start to achieve things, how do you notice or how do you realize that you’re very good at something and double down on that?

Steve Dennis [00:04:07]:
Well, I suppose it’s. Well, early in my life, earlier in my life, I would say I did a lot of things that my dad did to get into some psychoanalysis here about why that was. But to the extent I looked up to him, I probably leaned into things that he was successful at. And then in particular with sports, he was a much more successful athlete than I was. So I tried that for a while to see that, well, I’m never going to be as successful as he was. Maybe moved to something else, which is more about academic leadership, but that’s certainly a little bit of trial in our. Was pretty willing to try at a fairly narrow range because I was willing to try things. And then, you know, I get some positive feedback and then I just do a little bit more and more.

Steve Dennis [00:04:54]:
If it doesn’t go, things don’t go so well. I’m like that know less of that or maybe stop. So there’s definitely an aspect of trial and error and encouragement. I had a few mentors of sorts that also pushed me in a certain direction or helped me get better at some things.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:05:09]:
So I had the pleasure of reading your book, which recently launched, which is leaders leap, transforming your company at the speed of disruption. For me, the book, it tells your story, and it tells the story of how organizations really need to adapt and change and how they could possibly do that. And so for me, the beginning part of your book, you advocate for a complete reset in leadership mindset. So could you share, like in a story and an example of a time where a traditional leadership approach failed and how a reset could have really changed the outcome?

Steve Dennis [00:05:44]:
Sure. Well, part of my background was when I first got into retail, which was several years into my career, and I joined there’s Red Buck and company, which I imagine some of your listeners would know at one point was the world’s biggest, most profitable retailer. When I joined, they had lost the top position to Walmart, but was still a very huge company with lots of struggles. And I spent twelve years there, the last few years particularly working on trying to turn around the company. And aside from that’s just a sad story, and it demonstrates how very successful companies can fail over time if they don’t evolve. The leadership mindset there was largely around protecting the core business, even though we were quite aware of many of the struggles and many of the things we needed to do to get on a better path. In most cases, when push came to shove, we protected the core business, we defended the status quo or we did very incremental things. And since then, I left there 20 plus years ago.

Steve Dennis [00:06:44]:
So. But you know, what I’ve observed is lots of companies, lots of organizations, in many cases even the most successful ones, struggle to make that transition to the new world order, so to speak. So I think I was affected pretty early on in my career by seeing how a large successful company could really struggle to navigate disruption. In Sears case, it wasn’t so much e commerce or digital. Obviously, what we’ve seen more recently in last 15 years or so has been much more affected by digital technology and other forces.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:07:15]:
So what do you think in terms, and you had a beautiful term for me in the book, which is about incrementalism, being married to incrementalism rather than taking step changes. Right. That safe space of just changing one or two things and not doing anything big, what do you think really drives that within a big organization, considering the impacts of doing transformation has. It’s expensive. There’s a lot of people around that. Why do people just play safe?

Steve Dennis [00:07:43]:
Well, I think there are at least a couple of things at work. The first, which is out of my lane of expertise to a certain degree, is that as human beings, we’re wired, generally speaking, to avoid risk. So as I talk about in the book, that’s super helpful when a bear is charging towards you, but not so helpful in lots of everyday or more strategic kinds of decisions. So I think we actually have to be very intentional and very focused and work hard to overcome how most of us are wired. Obviously people are along a spectrum of how risk averse are not. They are. But it is something, I think that requires a lot of attention and intention. I would say in the corporate world or bigger organizations, most people, myself included, that have success within a more bureaucratic kind of organization, you generally don’t get rewarded for rocking the boat.

Steve Dennis [00:08:36]:
You generally get rewarded for perpetuating the organization, meeting your quarterly targets. If you’re a publicly traded company, being focused on continuing to do what made you successful in the past. So if there needs to be a shift, it’s not automatically something that people gravitate to a lot of this. Some folks may be familiar with Clayton Christensen’s work, his book the Innovator’s Dilemma, which I try to update in many respects. He basically says part of the reason why legacy companies don’t innovate is leadership gets rewarded for optimizing what they already have, and that often makes them blind or even if they see it, unwilling to compete with themselves. And so disruptors come along and they find a little weakness or opportunity, which might be just two or 3% of the business. That’s the wedge in, and that allows them to expand and get scale and scope to perhaps totally remake an industry. So I think this is a pretty well understood phenomenon.

Steve Dennis [00:09:38]:
I don’t think I bring a lot of insight necessarily to the problem. I think the question is, what do we do about it? And what I try to do at leaders leap is provide a different perspective than some of the territory that’s been covered by others.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:09:51]:
So you describe the seven mind leaps that leaders must undergo to succeed in the future. Which of these mind leaps do you think that leaders most struggle with and why?

Steve Dennis [00:10:02]:
Well, I would probably say the first one, and maybe I should explain a little bit what I mean by a mind leap. I try to make the distinction between a set of mindsets that, generally speaking, leaders have and then to contrast that with a pretty different place to move. So that’s the leap, and which, depending on your situation, may or may not be more or may or may not be super significant. But the first one I talk about is crush your ego. And I would say, I don’t know if it’s the one that most people struggle with, but in my experience, it’s pretty foundational, because as leaders, if we’re gonna change what our organizations do, we have to change ourselves first. And I think in many cases, ego is the enemy to steal Ryan Holiday’s title of his book. But I start off the chapter with a quote from a different author, which is, there is an enemy and that enemy is you. And I think we’re often our own worst enemies.

Steve Dennis [00:10:56]:
And sometimes that’s because we relentlessly cling to power. Sometimes it’s because we have to be right. Sometimes it’s because we’re unwilling to see that what made us successful in the past actually may not serve us very well in the future or actually might get in the way. So it may play out differently for different people. But I think in a lot of cases, the unwillingness to challenge your ego, get over yourself, so to speak. I’m the problem. It’s me to channel Taylor Swift, that great leadership and thought leader. So that would probably be the one.

Steve Dennis [00:11:28]:
But it’s related to fear, which is one of the other chapters.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:11:32]:
So for me, I’ve been in many instances, especially being on an e commerce and digital media journey in my career, where I’ve been presenting to a lot of senior stakeholders and most of them had no clue what I was talking about, but they would never say that in a public forum, in a business meeting. So, you know, later on, some of them, not all of them, some of them would reach out and go, hey, can you explain ABC to me in terms of what you were kind of explaining in that presentation? But a lot of people wouldn’t.

Steve Dennis [00:12:05]:
Yeah.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:12:05]:
And they were very happy to just continue at the status quo. And as of the latest that, you know, typically how that don’t necessarily progress and adapt well.

Steve Dennis [00:12:14]:
Yeah, I do think being a little bit older than you, so this is a bit of a generational thing, but not completely, is that I think there was this kind of militaristic, like, top down command and control sort of model that many of us grew up in. That was definitely my experience at Sears, to a lesser degree at Neiman Marcus. And I see it to varying degrees with organizations that I consult to and leaders I work with. But if you as the leader are supposed to be the source of all wisdom and it’s not to your advantage or not perceived to your advantage to be vulnerable, because to admit that you don’t know what’s going on when you’re supposed to be in charge and in control and so skilled is often a scary thing to do. But it’s perpetuated, I think, by a lot of the way I was taught and I was brought up and what made me successful. So to, oh, and I guess the other thing is, which I talk about a little bit in the chapter is imposter syndrome, right. That I think many of us, and I’ve talked to colleagues and people I’ve advised, you know, if you get them in a vulnerable moment, they may say, you know, a lot of times I’m deeply insecure, you know, like, I may look like I’m in charge or that I’ve got everything, but I’m projecting an image partially to protect myself. But in many cases, that’s what makes you successful.

Steve Dennis [00:13:36]:
I talk a little bit, though, not too much, about my experience at Neiman Marcus. And during that time, my personal life was a mess. At one point, I was separated from my wife. I had health problems, I was depressed. I never told anybody at the company that how bad struggling. I was just going to fake it, fake my way through. And, you know, it turned out that for a bunch of reasons probably not worth getting into, was a bad path to take. It neither served my job.

Steve Dennis [00:14:07]:
It didn’t serve my family. It didn’t serve me personally. So, but what I made up there was that the last thing I’m going to do is let anybody know that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m struggling. I’m just going to grin and bear it and muscle my way through it. And that was certainly not the right path for me. And I would argue that generally speaking, that’s not a good way to show up at work, much less show up in your personal life.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:14:33]:
So you also discuss fear and biases can lead to timid transformations. Can you talk about a time when overcoming these personal challenges led to a breakthrough in your career or a company you advised?

Steve Dennis [00:14:46]:
Well, when I left the corporate leadership positions, which was 1516 years ago now, I had really been on a pretty great trajectory. I was the youngest vice president of a division over a division at Sears, 100 plus year old company, joined the Neiman Marcus senior leadership team, was getting more responsibility, making a ton of money. But ultimately, I wasn’t very happy and I wasn’t doing the kind of work that I felt was bringing out the best in me. And as I said, some of that had to do with what was going on in my personal life, but a lot of that had to do with trying to understand where my interests and my skills really sat. And when I left and I took some time off and dealt with some of my personal stuff, I started to get to the point where I said, well, you know, what, what are my skills? What are the things I really do? What brings me joy? What kind of impact do I want to make? And fortunately, I was at a place that I was relatively financially. So I realized that I found myself in a position that many people don’t find themselves in. So I’m very grateful for that and try to have some humility around that. So that was a big advantage for me, to be able to go in a different direction.

Steve Dennis [00:16:03]:
But I try to really understand how I was my own worst enemy, what limited beliefs I had, and kind of open the aperture in terms of possibility. And I’ve taken a couple of pretty significant risks. Stepping off the corporate ladder to be an entrepreneur was a pretty big risk. Deciding that I was going to try to be an author and a speaker, which wasn’t something that I had been doing in the first 50 years of my life or something. I mean, a little bit, but not in this particular way. You know, that was a risk. Even writing this book, I’m pretty comfortable in the retail lane and talking about strategy from a more academic perspective, but to talk about leadership in a broader basis, to write in a less argumentative left brain sort of way as a stretch for me. So, you know, I think it’s easy to say, oh, just take a leap, you know, let go of the past, all those kinds of things.

Steve Dennis [00:17:00]:
I mean, those are very trite things to say, but I say them all the time. But there’s an element of truth in it, I think, for many people, definitely has served me well, and in many cases where I wasn’t willing to walk through my fear or take some of those chances or trust my intuition, that’s kept me stuck.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:17:18]:
A lot of CEO’s right now, they’re under a lot of pressure to deliver rapid transformation. But how do you balance that rapid transformation or the promise of delivering transformation with strategy development at the same time?

Steve Dennis [00:17:34]:
Well, so one of the concepts in the subtitle of the book, transforming your company at the speed of disruption, is to really understand and accept the speed of disruption for your particular situation. So in retrospect, I probably could have been a bit more clear about this in the book, but there’s plenty of industries where the speed of disruption is more or less non existent or quite slow. I keep using the example of my dry cleaner. I don’t know that my dry cleaner is going through a ton of disruption, but I don’t know, maybe there’s robotics or AI or something like that. But my sense is they don’t need a bold transformation. If you’re in the department store industry, you’ve needed a bold transformation agenda for 20 years so you have to understand how quickly you need to adapt, as well as the degree of change you need to deliver. So your mileage will vary, so to speak. But I think that’s part of what I get at in chapter two about waking up, which is you have to, number one, open the aperture.

Steve Dennis [00:18:37]:
Cause many companies, of course, get blindsided because they define their business too narrowly. Just go back to the department example. If you said, well, my business is I sell a bunch of different merchandise from brands, in a regional mall, in a two or three story building with escalators and departments, then your focus is on optimizing that. If you look at it from what the customer ultimately wants, there’s lots of ways for customers to get the cosmetics sell. For example, Ulta is a company that started 25 years ago, and it’s now worth more than the top five department stores in North America combined. So some of that is understanding your domain. What business you end is kind of the cliched way people have talked about it. So a lot of it is doing the homework, accepting the reality, what’s changing, seeing how fast and how and boldly you need to move, and then being willing to do it.

Steve Dennis [00:19:37]:
But you’re always, or shouldn’t say always in most cases, you’ve got a balance. Moving the core business forward, optimizing, turning the dial while investing in that next set of things that are going to determine your future. So again, that’s a portfolio approach. It’s going to vary depending upon where you find yourself. It’s just the worst situation, which, unfortunately, I’ve experienced this years I’ve experienced as an analyst and studying different situations, is some companies get so far behind that they can’t come back from it.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:20:11]:
That’s always a struggle. I think the analogy that I’ve always gifted once is, and I worked in a very small team within a rotary company. And the analogy given to me was, think about yourself as a small cog in a clock, right? You’re spinning, but you spin faster than the large clock. Sorry, the large wheel within the clock. But eventually your wheel, if you maintain your growth rate, is going to catch up to the big clock. And then we’re going to need to work out how do we integrate all of this stuff. Right?

Steve Dennis [00:20:51]:
Right.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:20:51]:
How do you take a bet on which of those small clocks or which of those small cogs in the watch that you need to take? So how do you prioritize those smaller transformation projects to start with over just doing everything that technology or other companies kind of push you to do?

Steve Dennis [00:21:15]:
Well, it’s not always easy, particularly since things are moving so quickly and we live in a, for most of us anyway, a more complicated world. So I think the starting point is to do your homework, understand very realistically break through any denial you might have about your situation, understand your threats, understand your opportunities, try to assess the stage of those. But in most cases, it’s going to be a discovery and experimentation process. Like usually you don’t go from a place of doing nothing to a bold moonshot. Moving at the speed of disruption is not about being reckless or a bunch of Hail Marys, the situation you want to avoid. So, like I said, I think it’s typically a portfolio approach where you’ve got some research kinds of things, you’ve got some probes, minimally viable products, prototypes, what have you, as well as more pilots and everywhere in between. So again, depending on your situation, you’re going to need a more robust pipeline business that is purely sunsetting. You’re going to have to fill your pipeline and be moving many more pipes through.

Steve Dennis [00:22:25]:
Maybe you need to make an acquisition to jumpstart that. If youve gotten so far behind other companies where things arent moving so quickly, you can take a more leisurely pace. But I think the key is to develop the knowledge, develop the discernment, to be able to separate things that are the bright, shiny objects. I was giving a speech the other day and I said, well, there was a point when I was at Neiman Marcos where we were trying to figure out our strategy to deal with second Life and MySpace, because there was a time where that seemed like those might be big things. And I think actually we took a very good approach, which is we studied them, we tried to understand them, we talked to people who understood the market. We compared that to our knowledge. We tried to say, are we thinking about this too narrowly? Are we being dismissive of it? So we did a low level about approves. And so when it turned out that those didn’t go anywhere ourselves too badly, had they turned out to be more promising, we were a year ahead of where we might have been if we just sat back and watched.

Steve Dennis [00:23:27]:
I think you could say the same thing about metaverse. And where we are with AI is a different kind of thing. But if you go back a year ago, where most people weren’t doing very much about AI at all unless you were OpenAI or Microsoft or some others. So I think it’s doing your homework, it’s building agility, it’s test and learn. Being willing to step on the gas when you have to. That tends to separate the great innovators from the companies that, that struggle.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:23:53]:
The piece here for me is if you’ve always done what you’ve always done, and you need to start taking school bets. Typically, getting the time and attention of a senior executive to make $100,000 bet or a $500,000 bet when they’re usually dealing in magnitudes of tens of millions is very different. Right. So, yeah, in terms of having a portfolio approach, how do you segment a senior executive’s time or a team to kind of go after these smaller things and still be abreast of all the things that are going on?

Steve Dennis [00:24:32]:
Well, the pithy answer to that is very carefully what I would say first and foremost, and I often start with potential clients with this question, which is, is your organization wired to say yes, or is it wired to say no? Because if fundamentally your organization is wired to say no, it’s going to be a struggle forever. So there’s an attitude, a mindset about playing offense versus playing defense. As much as I hate to use tired sports analogies, that’s the starting point, and the leader has to model it. I think if you look at the organizations that consistently innovate and stay at the head, that there is this culture of experimentation, there is this acceptance of failure as a part of innovation and all those kinds of things. So the cultural mindset and support is very important. Then you get down to the actual processes. How are you organized? How do people get money for early stage things? What’s the gating process? What percent of your budget every year is laid out against this portfolio approach? I can tell you I’ve worked at several companies where there was essentially no R and D budget. So the most significant thing that we did at Neiman Marcus, without getting into the weeds on this too much, is.

Steve Dennis [00:25:52]:
But because we had essentially no budget for new stuff, when we had a pretty significant idea that was going to require several millions of dollars, we basically had to go find the money to do it. And in this particular situation, the only way we got the money, because, frankly, our CEO was kind of rope it, doping us, and wanting to do anything, was one of the other senior executives said, I will find the money in my budget. And that’s because she felt so strongly that we had to do it. It was to the disadvantage of her personally in the short term, and to her organization, because having to find the expense meant their annual budget not be as good. So it’s a very courageous thing to do, and I’m very appreciative that she chose to do it, but that’s demonstrably a bad process. So if you can’t work in innovation, see it as a discipline, see it as an expertise, you’re very unlikely to have any real success.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:26:51]:
I’m transitioning into one of my favorite topics right now, which is generative AI. And AI in general, you emphasize human inspiration over AI in leadership. How can leaders cultivate human inspiration in their teams, specifically in tech savvy industries?

Steve Dennis [00:27:09]:
Well, I’m not sure that’s exactly what I meant, because that’s not really what I believe, but I think that what we need to understand, and this is a little bit overly black and white, is there are things that lend themselves to very left brain approaches, and there’s things that lend themselves to very right brain approaches. And just to pick one example, a very famous venture capitalist made this statement quite a few years ago that in the future, all retail would be done online, that stores would go away, which I don’t know if it’ll prove to be the dumbest thing anybody ever said, but it’s one of the dumbest things that anybody said. But I think the reason he said it, other than it was probably in his interest to set, given all the investments they were making in tech driven companies, was that he didn’t understand the emotional need of shopping as well as some of the practical benefits of physical stores. So all these years later, since he said it, physical retail has grown positively, even though e commerce has grown more quickly. So, I mean, you have to understand where human connection, emotion, et cetera, is important to accomplishing what you need to get done versus where, say, efficiency is most perfect. Technology is generally really, really good at efficiency. Sometimes it’s quite good as effectiveness. When I think about AI, I think there are absolutely plenty of applications where rote tasks can be automated, where the machine can do things much more efficiently than a human being ever could.

Steve Dennis [00:28:43]:
And we’ve already seen that with other technologies. It’s not that AI uniquely serves to do that. There are also going to be cases where AI can help human beings be more effective. So you may still have that face to face kind of or direct with a human being kind of interaction, but it’s fueled and made more powerful by technology. And there will also be times, at least in the near future, where, because we are human beings, that crave connection, where we’re just going to want that face to face. Now, can machines eventually mimic that? Yeah, probably, but I think you would just. I guess my point in all that is we have to be very careful about where we’re striving for efficiency, speed, convenience, low error rate, and where we’re striving for connection. Most of the powerful brands, whether we’re talking about retail or a cruise ship or whatever, the ones that earn the greatest returns, play to our irrational side.

Steve Dennis [00:29:47]:
It makes no sense in one way of looking at it, to spend $3,000 on a handbag. LVN Reach is one of the most valuable companies on the planet because they sell. I mean, we used to say this in even Marcus, we don’t sell anything anybody needs. It’s all about want, desire, etcetera. So you can’t line up the left brain thinking with the right brain thinking and explain how some of these things exist, and I think will continue to exist. But technology absolutely can enable things in much more powerful ways than we could imagine a few years ago. I can’t even imagine what AI and some new generation is going to be able to do in a few years time.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:30:31]:
So I think this is the point people are missing, right? In the sense that AI is just another tool. It is just another tool, part of the toolkit of how we are going to continue to do business. We’ve always been doing things more efficiently. Now it’s just accelerated. And as we think about Moore’s law and computers getting more powerful over time, this is just the acceleration of what’s already been happening, just in a new fallout. And rather than just linear tasks, it’s grappling more complicated problems for us now.

Steve Dennis [00:31:04]:
Yeah. The thing I might add to that, I’m not really disagreeing with you, but I think if you look at what’s happened with the Internet broadly, there’s a series of things where you say, okay, we’re able to do more or less what we already did in a better way. So if you think about, we used to sell mail order catalogs, now we can put that on the web, save the paper cost, change it more quickly. It’s a vastly superior mail order catalog. That’s one way of looking at it. The thing that I think also happens with the Internet is it did reset fundamentally certain things like the ability. If you think about Uber, Uber can match supply and demand virtually in ways that just weren’t remotely close to possible. I think there are these step functions, businesses that are enabled by leveraging technology in a profoundly different way.

Steve Dennis [00:31:57]:
So theres the continuous, though, to your point, Moores law, kind of exponential slope. But theres also sometimes these big step functions. And those are the ones that tend to really shake the incumbents because they just cant anticipate it or they cant get their investors to support that to go after it, or they just get caught up in defending the status quo. So theres really, in some respect, no excuse to the more exponential progression. I kind of understand sometimes why the step function thing catches many companies, not that they still shouldn’t be prepared for it, but it is a harder, you don’t see a lot of success. Every business, as many people said, is ultimately going to fail. It’s just a question of how fast.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:32:44]:
So in terms of sharpening customer focus, what are practical steps that companies can do to better understand and anticipate the.

Steve Dennis [00:32:53]:
Requirements of their well, it’s funny that so many companies still struggle with this because I feel like there are different forces, I guess, social media, et cetera. But what I see with most companies aren’t good at this is they don’t have a workable customer segmentation. They do it by catchy sounding Persona titles, or by spending or by RFM or some other technique, but they don’t have, in many cases, what we were talking about earlier, which is the emotional overlay. They have behavior, but they don’t have intention, wants, desires, what tribes I want to affiliate with myself. So you need to have a workable customer segmentation, and then you need to be able to track. And this sounds really simple, but a lot of companies don’t do it. How are you doing with each customer segment in terms of awareness acquisition, average purchase frequency, net promoter score, whatever, but there are certain levers for each of those segments that you should really understand how well you’re doing. And if you aren’t performing as well as you aspire to, or if you see a weakness in where you need to be or hope to get what’s the why, and you need that whole system of measurement and understanding and response, and then ultimately the willingness to do something about it.

Steve Dennis [00:34:12]:
So lots of companies don’t even have the foundational elements, much less the capability or the desire to go after them. But I do think it’s getting harder and harder because there’s so many other factors that might affect how you’re doing with a given customer base. And it’s not always to piece together, like even in a pre social media world where we’re affected by all sorts of forces, it could be pretty complicated. When I was at Sears, we didn’t have to worry about TikTok or whatever, but it was still often hard to understand the drivers of purchase behavior. Some were quite straightforward, others were a bit more nuanced but again, you have to do the work. You have to be willing to dig deep, challenge maybe some of the beliefs that you’ve held for a while. I’ll give you one example. I’ve had any number of clients that acted as if the customer journey hasn’t changed much in the last ten or 15 years.

Steve Dennis [00:35:11]:
It’d be like, well, we would run a radio ad or tv spot and then customers would come and check out our store, or we’d have the big sale of the year or whatever. Or we’re in a mall, customers are walking down, and then we’re successful based upon how well our sales associates close to sale, right? As opposed to saying, well, customers may not even know about you because you have no presence digitally, right? Or even if they know about you, they come in, they’ve already done research, and in many cases, they may even know more than your sales associate for all sorts of reasons. And so as soon as the sales associate looks like he or she doesn’t know what they’re doing, then they’re out. Like, I’m going to go someplace. We’re just going to go online because I don’t have to deal with this incompetent person who’s trying to sell me a maintenance agreement or open a credit card or whatever. So it comes back to one of the quotes that I don’t include in the book, but I found myself saying, which is, if the world has changed so much, why have you changed so little? Because I think most of us, even if we’re not a great student of strategy, just observes all this change. Yet so many companies and so many leaders say, oh my God, the world is so different. Oh my God.

Steve Dennis [00:36:24]:
TikTok. Oh my God. You know, shein, taemoo, whatever, AI. Yet they kind of keep doing the same, the same set of things, and most cases that’s going to catch up with them. Or like I said earlier, you get so far behind that your options become.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:36:41]:
Constrained in terms of Persona definition and really going after the target markets that you want to focus on. Who do you think does it really.

Steve Dennis [00:36:51]:
Well, one company I would point to is tractor supply company. I’m not sure how many of your listeners would know them. I think there’s a company that is in a lot of categories, that product categories that are available from all sorts of other retailers. You know, Home Depot, Petsmart, et cetera, Cabela’s, bass pro shop. Like, you know, there are plenty of places to go buy physically and online the sort of products that tractor supply offers. But what tractor supply understands really well is who’s at the center of their bullseye. And they, it’s the mix of things that they put together for their target customers that is so powerful. So they’re not trying to be a little bit of everything to everybody.

Steve Dennis [00:37:36]:
And they’ve managed to go from kind of a niche player 2025 years ago to one of the most powerful retailers in the US anyway. So I think they really know who they are. One of the benefits, by the way, which is a challenge in e commerce is that a tractor supply is very focused by the size of their stores. So if you want to contrast tractor supply to say a home Depot or a department store which has ton of space and the luxury of having a lot of space, physically, again, you know, the Internet can be different, but physically is, you’re not that constrained by space. Tractor supply though is, is constrained and it’s a real benefit because they don’t get talked into, well, maybe we could offer a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Maybe we could go after some of Home Depot’s customer if we had 5000 worse square feet. Now that’s not to say, and I don’t know, I have worked with them in the past. I don’t know what their current plans are for bigger stores.

Steve Dennis [00:38:39]:
But that discipline of being special, not big of narrowing your aim, but really being stronger on the things that you stand for, that can be a real advantage.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:38:50]:
I like that special, not big because, you know, the incumbents, there’s so many of them, right. And I think in order to stop that, you have to be special. Which leads me to, well, and one.

Steve Dennis [00:39:01]:
Of the challenges just quickly, one of the things I get to in the book is I believe this era of kind of massification is over. Not that Walmart, Costco, Amazon are going away. I don’t mean that at all. But I think that when you look at in technology, the kind of money that Google and Amazon and Microsoft, et cetera, are spending for this enormous scale and scope to try to chase that in the technology world, to try to change that in the retail or chase that in the retail world, good luck. You’re not going to out Amazon Amazon, you’re not going to out AI Microsoft or somebody. So I think for most of us we have to figure out how to narrow our aim, go deeper and become more meaningful to a smaller set of customers. It doesn’t have to be small. Tractor supply is not a small company.

Steve Dennis [00:39:59]:
RH is not a small company. Lululemon is not a small company. So there’s plenty of brands, retail and otherwise, that can be quite powerful and significant. But they’re not trying to be a little bit of everything to everybody. They’re not trying to win on price and scale and scope. They’re trying to work on doing something special and powerful for a narrower set of customers. And that’s the moat, the competitive moat you can build.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:40:28]:
Which leads me to the question of Brandwow. And Brandwell is a significant thing in your book. Can you provide an example of a brand that successfully achieved this? And what can other leaders kind of learn from that?

Steve Dennis [00:40:40]:
Well, one example I use in the retail context is what restoration hardware has done, both in terms of transformation, but in terms of delivering wow. If you’ve seen the RH gallery stores, there are a couple things there. One is, I think it’s very clear who it’s for and who it’s not because of the price points, it rules out a lot of people. Because of their style point of view rules out a lot of people. But for the, I don’t know, half a percent of the home furnishings market, they have really amplified the wow. They’ve taken the typical furniture, you know, use a little spinal tap strategy, turned it up to eleven in terms of the environment, in terms of the breadth of assortment, having a coffee shop and a beautiful restaurant, and in some cases a pool on the roof. So for the people that are kind of in on the joke, it is a must visit store. And I think if you can get to that point where almost subconsciously you’re saying, if I’m in the market for X, I’d be an idiot not to check this store out because it has such a powerful place in the real estate of the mind.

Steve Dennis [00:41:51]:
So I think they’re a good example. And they’re also somebody that went from a store model, these little stores with random hardware and gifts and tchotchkes and something to moving over about, I guess it’s about 1012 years now to a really different business model. So there aren’t that many examples actually in retail of companies that have gotten into trouble and have been able to really get themselves out of it and in fact thrive. So visually, I think people have seen it. You can get that. I think a lot of the luxury fashion retailers with some of their flagship stores deliver a real wow. Again, not for everybody, but for the people that aspire or love the brand. It’s just a place that people love to go.

Steve Dennis [00:42:32]:
If Gucci or Chanel or LV opens a new store, their fans are going to go there.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:42:39]:
So looking forward with the constant evolution of disruption, what are the following significant challenges you foresee leaders facing and how do you think they should best progress?

Steve Dennis [00:42:50]:
Well, I would sort of go back a little bit to. I don’t know if this directly answers your question, but I think a starting point is the psychological principle of awareness in action. So you have to become keenly aware and a real student of how you’re doing. And what are those factors which could be changes in customer dynamics, competitive dynamics, technology regulation, climate change, I mean, others, a lot of factors that could affect the prospects of your business going forward. So you really have to be a student of that. Like I said earlier, you have to develop a capacity of discernment, not necessarily personally, but bringing people into the equation on your management team, advisors, whatever it might be, to have that discernment and open the aperture so you can see some of the possibilities. The acceptance part, because I see a lot of companies, and my experience at Sears and Neiman Marcus and with some clients is there was plenty of awareness. We do a ton of research, we did lots of analysis.

Steve Dennis [00:43:51]:
We throw a few million dollars to McKinsey or Bain or BCG. There was no lack of awareness, really. But then there’s the acceptance, breaking through the denial, really understanding the charge, I guess the change platform that you really, really do have to change and understand at what rate. Then ultimately there’s that action. So I think sometimes, very simplistically, I say to people, well, do you have an awareness problem? Do you have an acceptance problem or do you have an action problem? Many cases is that transition between acceptance and action, that’s the hardest one. And then you have to be also just really realistic about your degrees of freedom. Like, I look at some of the retailers that are struggling right now, and this is what’s totally unhelpful at advice. I think there’s several retailers that will not recover from their struggles because they started too late.

Steve Dennis [00:44:44]:
So I often say, well, since I don’t have a time machine, I don’t know what kind of advice to give you because you should have started earlier, because now, particularly if you’re a publicly traded company, you may not, even if you have the most brilliant strategy. I’ll just go back to my own personal experience at Sears. I’d love to tell you that we came up with a strategy that I was absolutely convinced to turn the company around. We couldn’t figure that out. But I could tell you, even if it existed, it would have been incredibly expensive, risky and time consuming, and there’s no way our board would have approved it because we didn’t have the credibility, we didn’t have the balance sheet, we didn’t have investors that would support that. So when people say, oh, Sears could have been the Amazon, they missed that opportunity. I always say, well, that’s a cool story. That sounds pithy.

Steve Dennis [00:45:33]:
But what people forget is that Amazon was a fast growing startup company, was able to lose many, many billions of dollars in retail for over ten years, and there was no way we were going to be able to do that. So you have to be really realistic about where you stand in terms of your organizational capacity. And in many cases that comes down to capital structure and investor support. So the sooner you can head off things before you get to crisis mode, generally speaking, the better off you’re going to be. Or wait for that time machine, in which case you can go back and kill Hitler and do a bunch of other things.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:46:10]:
So moving on to a personal front, Steve, what habits and productivity hacks make your life easier?

Steve Dennis [00:46:16]:
Oh, the. I don’t know if this is a productivity hack. One thing is just don’t sweat the small stuff. I mean, that’s don’t take things personally. Realize, I just had a conversation with this about this morning with a few people about how the need to be right gets in the way. Like not everything is worth a fight or trying to be right. So usually it gets back to what we were talking about earlier. My ego is usually the thing that gets in the way of my being productive or effective.

Steve Dennis [00:46:59]:
I more focus on effectiveness than productivity per se. But pick the most important things. Don’t get distracted. Don’t let your ego get in the way. Fight through perfectionism. I have a quote from Anne Lamott in my book about perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. You know, keep you stuck and miserable your entire life or something like that. That’s not the exact quote.

Steve Dennis [00:47:25]:
You know, most of the time, a pretty good thing that you actually do is better than waiting and spinning for the perfect solution. I’ll tell you, with a book, maybe this is a really obvious thing, but one of the scariest things about writing a book, which is maybe kind of anachronistic at this point, is I finished this book six months ago. I couldn’t touch it substantively after about November 1 or something. So here we are many months later, and now it’s a thing. And I worry that some of the things I might reference turn out to be stupid references or what have you, but there’s a point at which it’s got to be shipped. And I could spend forever trying to make this book perfect. And, you know, I got to the point with my first book and this book and speeches and other things that I put out in the world that if I’m really going to make a difference, I’m going to have to take some chances and I’m going to have to be willing to be wrong or look foolish or what have you. And, you know, when you sign up for certain kind of leadership things, whether it’s running a company or launching a podcast or whatever, or doing a dance or writing a song, whatever your particular form of expression is, that’s an act of courage.

Steve Dennis [00:48:48]:
But you’re never going to be able to get stuff out in the world if you’re not willing to look foolish and be wrong. And easier said than done. But when I see leaders struggle, it’s often because they’re putting their ego first and they’re afraid to look weak or unskilled or just silly, you know, in some cases, super cool.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:49:15]:
What books do you usually gift out the most to your friends?

Steve Dennis [00:49:20]:
I almost never give what I would call serious academic books. I shouldn’t say serious, but I love books on courageous leadership, like Brenny Brown’s work. I love Adam Grant’s, pretty much all of Adam Grant’s stuff. I’m also very interested in eastern philosophy and things. So, you know, Dalai Lama, thich, nhat Han, mainly because that helps me get out of my own way more, and I see a lot of my friends. Well, first of all, I don’t. I try not to give books that are too heavy handed and saying, like, if you would just read this book and do this, you would be better. I usually just say, I actually don’t give them any books.

Steve Dennis [00:49:58]:
I usually recommend books or say, I found this to be interesting for these reasons and let people grab it if they want to. I used to give out a lot of books, but I felt it was kind of a manipulation. So I don’t. But, no, if you look at my acknowledgments in this book, you’ll see the sort of people that I think are great thinkers. I definitely, though, have been affected by blue ocean strategies and, you know, those sort of books as well. I just feel like they are often overly sort of academic and prescriptive. And so I’m trying to kind of buffer, but that’s because I’ve been overly academic in my plan and pull myself, I guess, to a different side. Very cool.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:50:38]:
Thank you for being on the podcast, Steve. How can people reach out thanks for having me. How can people can. How can people reach out to you if they need to find out more?

Steve Dennis [00:50:46]:
Sure. Well, of course, I have a website which is Steven P. Dennis. Steven with a v. The correct way to spell Stephen. And I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, on most of the socials. I’m even P. Dennis.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:50:58]:
Super cool. Thank you for being on the show and hopefully catch up.

Steve Dennis [00:51:01]:
Thank you. I enjoy the conversation. Hopefully.

Imteaz Ahamed [00:51:03]:
We’d love to catch up with you at a future conference sometime.

Steve Dennis [00:51:07]:
Yeah. This thing we call real life. Bye.

Other Links

Introduction:

The consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry has seen remarkable changes in the digital age, driven by advanced technologies and data-driven strategies. My journey in this dynamic field has been exciting and rewarding. I’m Imteaz Ahamed, and I currently work at Reckitt, a multinational company known for brands like Lysol and baby formula.

Journey to Digital Expertise:

My career began as a graduate in Sydney, Australia, where I joined Reckitt. Starting in sales operations and account management, I focused on developing essential skills like PowerPoint and Excel. These early experiences laid the groundwork for my later transition into e-commerce and digital marketing, fields that were just beginning to emerge in the CPG industry.

E-Commerce Evolution and Career Growth:

One of the turning points in my career was moving into e-commerce. I helped develop new business models, such as direct-to-consumer sales, which significantly changed Reckitt’s market approach. My roles took me across the globe, from Europe to the US, where I worked on direct-to-consumer e-commerce and performance media, driving growth and innovation.

Understanding Retail Media and Data Clean Rooms:

Retail media networks are becoming vital in the CPG industry. One of the innovative concepts I’ve explored is data clean rooms. These secure environments allow for the privacy-compliant matching of first-party data with retail media data, enhancing marketing efficiency and customer insights. This technology enables us to create highly targeted and effective marketing campaigns.

Case Study on Effective Media Strategy:

A memorable project involved using Amazon Marketing Cloud and data clean rooms to optimize our media strategy for baby formula. By targeting specific audiences and segmenting our campaigns, we saw significant improvements in purchase rates and return on ad spend. This project highlighted the power of data-driven strategies in the digital marketing world.

Key Takeaways for Marketing Professionals:

From my experience, I’ve learned some valuable lessons. First, becoming fluent in data is crucial. Start small with your initiatives and scale up as you learn what works. Continuous learning is essential in our ever-changing industry. Understanding market dynamics, customer behavior, and how different media channels influence purchasing decisions are key to successful marketing.

Conclusion:

The CPG industry is constantly evolving, with data and technology playing a critical role in shaping future strategies. My journey has shown me the importance of embracing digital technologies to drive growth and innovation. I invite fellow marketing professionals to connect with me to share insights and explore the transformative impact of these technologies on our work.

Hosted by: Imteaz Ahamed

Video Transcript

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:22:05 This is Imteaz everybody say hi.

Students: Hi.

He is awesome. We met at this conference over here on what was it because you were packaged goods, right? Yeah. And we just happen to be both looking for lunch and we start talking. And he’s an expert in data and digital and AI and he says we need somebody to speak. And I said, Hell yes.

00:00:22:05 – 00:00:46:10 So he works for a company called Reckitt, which makes everything from Lysol to baby formula. Yeah, that’s pretty cool. So he’s going to give you a whole thing on what he’s doing and all the stuff he’s talking about. So ask questions, but let’s give another round of applause.

Imteaz: Good morning, everyone. So in terms of what we’re going to go over today, I’ve I’ll give you the agenda first and then we’ll cover of specifics.

Imteaz: 00:00:46:12 – 00:01:08:01

So who am I? How did I get here? What is retail media and which is what I really focus on right now for a Joe for a job. What is a data clean room and how does that impact how we do marketing today at as a at a global CPG. Thirdly, I’ll show you for our show you a case study in terms of how we’re using a data cleaner.

Imteaz: 00:01:08:03 – 00:01:37:04

And then I’ll give you some takeaways from that. So firstly, who is Reckitt? Reckitt is a multinational CPG. We have a whole heap of brands across multiple categories. So if you think about the business, there’s three parts to the business. One is infant nutrition. So baby formula, which is where I work. We also have a household cleaning business, so we make everything from finished dishwashing tablets to earwig to Lysol as well.

Imteaz: 00:01:37:06 – 00:02:01:21

And we also have a personal care and health care business as well. So everything from Mucinex, Dell, some airborne, etc.. Okay, So in me in particular, I’ve been with the company since I was 20 years old. I started it in Sydney, Australia, and have moved across the world with with Reckitt.

Imteaz: 00:02:01:21 – 00:02:08:13

So in terms of my experience, I started on the field as a grad with Reckitt.

Imteaz: 00:02:08:15 – 00:02:29:22

Then I moved into sales operations, which means looking at the field teams that we have selling our products in to customers all across Australia. I then moved into account management, which means maintaining our business relationships with the likes of Woolworths and Coles back in Australia. And then this thing called and a bit of trade and shopper marketing in there as well.

Imteaz: 00:02:30:00 – 00:02:54:08

But then this thing called e-commerce pops up for about nine or ten years ago, which was relatively new to the CPG space. And I was kind of pushed into that role by my senior leadership in Australia, not because I knew anything about digital marketing or e-commerce, but because I was good at PowerPoint and Excel. So, you know, right place, right time and right opportunity.

Imteaz: 00:02:54:10 – 00:03:24:11

From there I was the first e-commerce manager in Australia and we launched new business models. So, you know, Reckitt is traditionally a B2B, so we sell to other retailers who then sell on to other customers or our consumers. I was then setting up new business models like direct to consumer e-commerce. So how do we cut out retailers and then shipped directly to consumers and then market directly to consumers using things like Facebook and Google?

Imteaz: 00:03:24:13 – 00:04:00:18

Then I got shipped to the UK where in a global role. So in global, we look at, you know, how how can we support multiple markets from cross market learnings and scale up things that are working and then scale things that aren’t working. So if, for example, China is very, very advanced when it comes to e-commerce, if you think about Alibaba and Teamviewer, etc., how do we take some of those learnings from China and then apply them into other other markets as well from from a global role?

Imteaz: 00:04:00:20 – 00:04:38:08

I transitioned into specializing in direct to consumer e-commerce, which is where I’ve been for about four years of my career thus far, both in looking after Europe from a regional role as well as moving to the US at the height of the pandemic in March of 2020, looking after baby formula in that time as well. So, you know, in this transition that I’ve had from going to school in at the University of Sydney, studying commerce and marketing and then transitioning into a sales career and then transitioning into an e-commerce career through the DTC experience.

Imteaz: 00:04:38:08 – 00:04:59:14

I’ve also had to pick up a lot of technical stuff when it comes to understanding software and understanding how to use technology. And now I look after performance media, and what Performance Media is, is looking at media, but specifically within Amazon, Walmart, Target, and how do we actually directly market to consumers on those platforms and get them to purchase.

Imteaz: 00:04:59:16 – 00:05:26:08

So it’s not DTC anymore. It’s looking at total e-commerce marketing, but at at the retailers in particular. So that’s my corporate experience on on one half of a slide on the right hand side. Beyond corporate, I am I have a podcast called Applied Intelligence where I talk about generative AI and the applications of that within the CPG space.

Imteaz: 00:05:26:09 – 00:05:51:03

I also do some stuff with the Harvard Business Review in terms of contributing into generative AI content. I have some passions around startups as well. There’s a thing called startup buzz. You guys should Google that. Everyone should do the startup competition. I’m not going to go into a detailed today, but is basically a hackathon on a bus where you build a business in 72 hours, launch it, pitch it, and then get going from there.

Imteaz: 00:05:51:05 – 00:06:04:18

So even if you don’t do the business, the whole learning experience that you get from that process is super valuable to anyone doing growth marketing marketing today. Okay, cool. So

Imteaz: 00:06:04:18 – 00:06:19:18

if you think about the CPG category or the CPG industry vertical over the last, let’s call it 5 to 10 years, it’s gone through two massive shifts. The first one is in distribution.

Imteaz: 00:06:19:19 – 00:06:41:14

If you think, let’s say 20, 30, 40 years ago it was all about brick and mortar sales. If you’re talking about CPG goods, every category was being bought at a physical retail location over the last ten years. E-commerce has taken off, Amazon has taken off here in the US. Alibaba and the likes have taken off everywhere across the world.

Imteaz: :06:41:16 – 00:07:11:01

But now we’re coming to a place where from a marketing point of view, we’re thinking not just about the digital retail, where a lot of the growth has come from over the last few years. But we’re thinking about the holistic journey of consumer when it comes to where are they actually shopping from. Right. So when the pandemic kicked off, you know, people like Instacart or companies like Instacart, by the way, the two founders of Instacart bet on start up us as well.

Imteaz: 00:07:11:03 – 00:07:41:01

Fun fact, but we’re thinking about the holistic consumer journey. What are those digital media all marketing that are touching the consumers along that journey and where are they actually shopping it? Where are they actually making that purchase? So we don’t just care about, you know, did they purchase online or did they purchase in offline? What are those touchpoints in that consumer journey that we can actually expose media to and we actually can influence to make them buy our brand versus somebody else’s brand?

Imteaz: 00:07:41:03 – 00:08:09:07

The second piece here is that digital revolution when it comes to media. So, you know, 50 years ago, reach and frequency media across television, print, radio, you didn’t really know who who you were marketing to or who those actual consumers were. You just knew the the audience titles. So, you know, people who watch the news at 7 p.m. have a certain demographic profile.

Imteaz: 00:08:09:07 – 00:08:31:06

That’s what you were buying from a media point of view. Digital kind of changed that with with the likes of Facebook and Google in terms of getting clearer signals, in terms of who people are. So someone who’s typing in baby formula on Google is obviously very important to or is obviously very interested in in buying baby formula or interested in understanding what baby formula is about.

Imteaz: 00:08:31:11 – 00:08:56:18

We didn’t have those signals when we were doing analog media before and now this. This third wave is retail media, which is, you know, an interaction of both media and shopping in the one place. So Amazon is not just a it’s not just a shop. It’s not just a place where you buy stuff. It’s also a place where you’re being influenced to buy stuff as well through media.

Imteaz: 00:08:56:18 – 00:09:21:14

And Amazon owns lots of things like Prime video. There’s a football free V, etc. and is becoming a much bigger media organization and not just a retail destination as well. And similarly, I think, you know, if you think about retailers like Walmart, this is why they’re doing media partnerships with the like some of Paramount plus Roku, etc. as well.

Imteaz: 00:09:21:14 – 00:09:40:15

So retailers are evolving and digitizing their not just their store footprint, but also the media footprint and how they influence consumers. So delving deeper into what a what a retail media network is,

Imteaz: 00:09:40:15 – 00:10:13:19

if you think about the major retailers here in the US, all of these retailers have a wealth of first party data. They have transactional data on who is purchasing what at their physical stores as well as their digital stores and even more on digital, right When you’re when you’re signed into when you’re signed into your Walmart app or your Amazon app, they know everything about who you are, where you live, what frequency are you buying certain products, what frequency are you seeing

Imteaz: 00:10:13:19 – 00:10:42:02

certain ads before you’ve actually made that purchase? So for us as a CPG, there are certain media tactics that we play across the retail media ecosystem, starting with Page Search. So when you’re typing in baby formula, for example, on Amazon or you’re typing in any product category that’s relevant to one of my brands, I’m trying to actively make sure that my product appears at the top of the page.

Imteaz: 00:10:42:02 – 00:10:50:20

So you click it. The higher up on the page that you are, the more likely you are to be clicked on, the more likely you are to to win that search. Right.

Imteaz: 00:10:50:20 – 00:11:10:13

The second part of it is targeted display and video ads as well. Similarly, on Amazon, when you’re making that search or when you’re interested in a particular category and you haven’t converted, you’ll start to notice that those ads, those visual ads are following you around the Internet trying to trying to get you to convert.

Imteaz: 00:11:10:15 – 00:11:34:17

So the retail media network has seen the signal that you have searched that you did not purchase within a certain timeframe. So companies that are actively advertising to you, trying to make you convert into into that brand. And then thirdly, what is this actually doing for us as a CPG is giving us a whole heap of customer insights that we never had before, right?

Imteaz: 00:11:34:19 – 00:12:01:16

So again, remember I told you, you know, we’ve always used to be a B2B type company. We’ve always had retailers maintain that relationship with consumer when it comes to transaction and purchase that data now is way more accessible to us than it was ever before. So we’re actively mining that data and trying to find use cases and uses of that in order to continue to grow our brands.

Imteaz: 00:12:01:18 – 00:12:24:22

And then finally, is data clean rooms. And we’re going to go into more detail in the following slides. But basically what’s happening now is there’s a framework or a technology available for us for brands to take their first party data. So the data that we have on our customers match it in a compliant way with retail media data and then activate that accordingly.

Imteaz: 00:12:24:22 – 00:13:12:16

And we’ll go into detail in, in the case study. So what are clean rooms and how do they work? So on the right hand side of this chart over here you have retail media network. So data clean rooms are places where ad publishers. So Google met Facebook as well as Amazon now, as well as Walmart Connect. They’re sharing their aggregated data rather than their customer level data with advertisers such as myself whilst exerting strict control because you can’t Walmart when you’re signed up to Walmart or when you’re signed up to Amazon in the privacy agreement, your agreeing that sorry, Walmart is agreeing that they’re not going to share your data with somebody else in a

Imteaz: 00:13:12:16 – 00:13:44:07

very explicit manner. Right. There’s privacy controls in place. So in terms of that first party data to match that compliantly with a brand advertiser such as myself, it’s that data is actually put into a clean room. What that means is all of your AI, all of your personal information is hashed in a way that I can’t identify who you are, but I can use certain signals and understand certain behaviors that you have on that platform to match up to my data.

Imteaz: 00:13:44:09 – 00:14:15:02

So say, for example, I want to look at over the last 30 days, I want to see people who searched for Nike shoes but did not purchase. Okay, so keyword Nike shoes did not purchase. I can go into the data clean room and create an audience of people that search for that keyword that did not purchase. And the data clean room will give me back an audience of 2000 or 20,000 identities.

Imteaz: 00:14:15:06 – 00:14:41:21

I don’t know who these people are, but I know that they had a certain behavior on that retail media network and then I can advertise against them. Okay. So from there, we see how different datasets match up and look at any inconsistencies between the two to understand if we’re over serving ads, if we’re giving too many ads away, or what activity do we actually need to run.

Imteaz: 00:14:41:23 – 00:15:05:08

So the three ways that you can use a data cleaner, one is through measurement. So you can look at historical performance of your ads within that retail media network. You can use it also for media planning. So if I change the media tactics that I’ve done, what happens? It’s like a scenario planning situation and then you can also use it on the fly.

Imteaz: 00:15:05:14 – 00:15:34:11

So from a media activation point of view, which is where the case study is going to head go, I think I’ve covered this one. So to to make it really easy, a dairy clean room is akin to a middle school dance. So one on the left side and left hand side. Here you have your own or your brand or the advertiser’s first party data on the right, right hand side there you’ve got someone else’s first party data, right?

Imteaz: 00:15:34:13 – 00:16:06:18

And there is a heavily chaperon temporary interaction happening in between them. Okay. So after you’ve done that interaction, everyone goes back to the wall and remember, who owns the gym isn’t as important as you know what you’re dancing to in the music, what the music is, right? So this is a very new way for advertisers or CPGs for us to match our data with other people’s data in a compliant way and activate against it.

Imteaz: 00:16:06:20 – 00:16:38:09

Okay, guys, if you have any questions throughout my slides, please, please feel free to ask as well. So the retailer that’s leading data clean room activation here in the US is Amazon. Amazon has a product called Amazon Marketing Cloud and in this case study, we’ll go over some of the things what we’ve done with them. So the objective of of the of this initiative was to shoot more bulls eyes with our media.

Imteaz: 00:16:38:11 – 00:17:00:11

Right. If you think about the baby formula category, if you don’t have a baby, you’re not interested in this category. So there’s no point of me exposing my ads to people that don’t have a baby. In the US, there are 10,000 babies being born every day, and then there are 10,000 babies leaving this product category every day. There’s only 1% birth rate growth in the US.

Imteaz: 00:17:00:13 – 00:17:34:00

So like and breastfeeding is increasing. So from a volume point of view, there’s no volume growth in this category. It is all about how do I acquire more customers from other people’s brands as well as how do I extend that lifetime value within people that are built. My brand as well. So in terms of the how, what we did was create weekly cohorts from our own database, from our own first party data that we have, and we put them into Amazon Marketing Cloud and delivered sequential ads to these consumers.

Imteaz: 00:17:34:01 – 00:18:04:02

And we measured the difference in conversion versus control groups. Previously, we also built lookalikes within the Amazon audience layer as well to find shoppers that had similar sorts of behaviors as well to further get to more consumers. So in terms of how we activated this, so we did a specific we did some specific campaigns around our infant vitamins portfolio.

Imteaz: 00:18:04:04 – 00:18:29:14

So consumers that fell into the audience behaviors that we were looking at would deserve display creative across. We started with our vitamins range, then we moved onto to baby formula as well. But to give you some perspective of some of the ads that people were looking at, and then what were we optimizing and testing against? So as a performance marketer, I really want to drive two things.

Imteaz: 00:18:29:18 – 00:19:06:18

One is I want a direct purchase. I want I want more people to buy my brand. And secondly, I want to optimize against cost, which means I want to spend less money acquiring those customers into my brand. Right? So the way this this kind of works is across the three these three vectors or these three levers, we were either upgrading or downgrading things two, to find the optimal way to acquire, acquire new customers, 10,000 babies every day, acquire more of those customers in the most cost effective way possible.

Imteaz: 00:19:06:20 – 00:19:30:04

Okay, so how do you kind of do that? So firstly, you start with audience. Who is the right audience to target? So you go into the data clean room, you look at what are these behaviors that people display when they’re shopping on Amazon, for example? Search is a very good one, right? Because if you searched in the last 30 days for baby formula or you’ve searched in the last 30 days for a bit.

Imteaz: 00:19:30:06 – 00:19:53:06

Sure. Go ahead. So it’s just about what is the right budget to spend? How do you what’s the process for that? Like, how do you find the right budget if it’s not? You start with a seed budget. You start with $10,000 a week, for example, and you see the performance against that. And if you want to scale that up or down, you can.

Imteaz: 00:19:53:08 – 00:20:13:17

So you just start somewhere. Obviously, it needs to make sense for that category right? So if you’re in $1,000,000,000 category, you’d spend a lot more money than if you were in a category. And if your brand is only like $1,000,000 big or $10 million big, your advertising budget would be significantly different versus someone who’s, you know, shipping billions of dollars worth of product.

Imteaz: 00:20:13:17 – 00:20:24:08

Right? So you’ve just got to pick a number that that kind of makes financial sense for you to start with. And then based on that performance, you can scale up with that.

Imteaz: 00:20:24:10 – 00:20:53:10

So you start with audience. So what are those signals that you can take out of that retail media network? So search is one of them. But you could also think about things like, you know, if someone’s buying Lululemon gym pants, they might also be interested in sweatshirts from Lululemon, for example. So you’ve got to think about what are those correlations between behavior on a on a platform and then create that audience and then test against it.

Imteaz: 00:20:53:12 – 00:21:20:01

So right budget. So to your question, you start with something and you say if you need to scale up or down. But also what’s very cool about this is the machine is actively making decisions on do I spend my entire budget today like that $10,000 if I’m spending, let’s say, $20,000 a day right now? Do I spend that all of it today, or do I hold on to some of that budget and optimize for total sales?

Imteaz: 00:21:20:06 – 00:21:44:01

Right. So it’s not just about spending your marketing dollars today. It’s also thinking about what’s the best way to spend my dollars so I get the maximum return. And then finally is settings. So when you’re setting up Amazon campaigns, you can do things like frequency caps. So what a frequency cap is, is the number of times somebody is exposed to an ad, right?

Imteaz: 00:21:44:06 – 00:22:12:09

So let’s say for a particular category, if you are exposed to nine or more ads, anything above nine doesn’t increase conversion anymore. So why would we want to do a frequency of 24 that has no impact? So I can cut down my frequency and cap the number of times that the same person sees the same creative and save money and, you know, share my ad to somebody else.

Imteaz: 00:22:12:11 – 00:22:34:20

So the machine was doing all of this stuff for us to look at how the model actually works. So on the left hand side there, we have our CDP. A CDP is basically a database where all of our first party consumer information sits. The second part is we looked at Amazon ads, we looked at our how our historical campaign performance was happening.

Imteaz: 00:22:34:22 – 00:23:04:12

And then within our media platform. So we used a specific software to buy our media. We’re looking at the audience reports. All of this information was fed into our ad optimization model, which processed all of this information, created new campaigns for us. It served those ads into Amazon ads. It monitored the performance of those ads in real time, and then that information gets sent back into the optimization model.

Imteaz: 00:23:04:14 – 00:23:34:06

And it continually optimizes on the fly. So it’s using machine learning to do all of those three things that we talked about in the previous slide in real time on the fly with real budget at all times, right? So instead of me having to have multiple performance media managers sitting there like updating certain budgets down, weighting budgets, looking at which audiences to create an all of these and number of things that they could be doing.

Imteaz: 00:23:34:11 – 00:24:07:11

The machine is doing that for us because machines are better at process driven tasks versus humans. Right. Any questions on this lot? So, all right. So what did it what did it achieve? So across the key metrics that we were tracking for this particular case study, we saw significant improvement on the first KPI, which is purchase per dollar spent on what purchases per dollar means is for every dollar that I spend, how many transactions did I get from from that?

Imteaz: 00:24:07:12 – 00:24:36:07

Right. So, you know, in the benchmark periods, we were getting very low conversions per dollar spent versus when we were looking at the cumulative performance. In the case study, we significantly improved against the baseline in terms of purchase rate, which you could also is is similar to your conversion rate in terms of total total sales coming across from a conversion point of view that increased as well.

Imteaz: 00:24:36:09 – 00:25:15:08

And then finally, when we look at the return on ad spend, which is your sales divided by your ad spend, it significantly improved as well. So across from a result point of view in performance media, this is exactly what you want to see. You want to see higher sales and you want to see lower cost, right? Because typically when you scale spend, especially in the old world of traditional media, your performance drops very quickly because you’ve already if you’ve already if you’re already spending too much money, spending that next dollar might not necessarily be a good thing.

Imteaz: 00:25:15:10 – 00:25:31:09

This model kind of showed us on some of our paracatu diaries. We were already spending too much money. It didn’t improve our sales, but it cut our marketing in half, meaning that I could take that savings and then spend it somewhere else.

Imteaz: 00:25:31:11 – 00:25:57:03

So to some takeaways. So by using a clear data clean room, you can deliver that right creative to that right audience at the right time. You can optimize your media and optimize what as you’re showing to everyone in real time. And you can do all of that through AI and automation at scale as well. So what does that mean for for you?

Imteaz: 00:25:57:05 – 00:26:24:05

So if I was in your shoes, what I would be focusing on right now is how and understanding how data flows through multiple things or multiple pieces within an organization, across sales, across marketing, across consumer insights, across all of these things. So improve your data fluency. I would also learn how to start small and cheap and then walk away if it doesn’t.

Imteaz: 00:26:24:07 – 00:26:48:16

And this is something I learned by doing Start Up, by the way. But this project that we started off initially, we didn’t know if it was going to work. It was a very big risk that it wasn’t going to work, but we thought, What’s the cheapest way to get started? What is the smallest category that we can kind of get, you know, throw a little bit of money that wouldn’t hurt us to get started with and see if it works.

Imteaz: 00:26:48:18 – 00:27:13:10

And then you can scale up from there and ask for more money from the business. And then finally always be learning, which is, you know, this stuff didn’t exist when I was when I was in college. I also I also took AI data science course through Harvard Online a couple of years ago because, you know, when I studied marketing and commerce, data science wasn’t really a big thing back then.

Imteaz: 00:27:13:10 – 00:27:21:03

Right? But now it’s a very important thing to learn as well. Cool. That’s it for me. Any questions?

Imteaz: 00:27:21:03 – 00:27:47:02

What what’s the project on this topic? What was my project? Okay, so this is back in 2014 before Pokémon Go Made air. Like augmented reality a thing. So Mike, my team, we made this thing called Spec See Me, which is custom designed 3D printed glasses using augmented reality from your webcam laptop.

Imteaz: 00:27:47:04 – 00:28:16:04

So yeah, so we actually had built a functioning product. I had a girl on the team. She was 20 years old. Atlassian had already hired her. She found out right then had some open source software allowing you to put glasses on someone’s face, you know, within the browser. This is like nine years ago. This is like revolutionary at the time, another person who was a mechanical engineer, he found In-Browser CAD.

Imteaz: 00:28:16:06 – 00:28:51:08

So we were customizing the look and feel of the glasses. Another person on the team who was building e-commerce sites, so he built a functioning website and then a go from Spectrum PR, who managed the PR for Samsung in Australia, and she did all of our content marketing. She got us into 3D printing news and we did all of this with dodgy wi fi traveling from Sydney to Melbourne, which is about 700 miles and back in in three days.

00:28:51:10 – 00:29:14:20

So, you know, if you want to build stuff using technology, it’s very accessible now to do and with such a pity with all of these no code solutions as well, I think it’s really important to understand the problem you’re going to solve for consumer or your target market more than it is the technology. The technology now is just becoming even more and more accessible.

Imteaz: 00:29:15:02 – 00:29:39:00

It’s I don’t want to say it’s not important to learn code or not important to learn data fluency or data science. But the bigger challenge that we have is how do we actually create stuff that’s going to get used and make money and add value?

Student: Yes, I’m going back to that slide that has like three different circles. Yep.

Imteaz: 00:29:39:02 – 00:30:04:16

In terms of like jobs and how that works through your team. Like, yeah, that one like, is the oldest a one person job? Like how does it flow through like your company? Great question. So there are two teams that were really instrumental in making this happen. One was my performance media team and the second team was our data partner.

Imteaz: 00:30:04:18 – 00:30:37:13

So an external agency that we worked very closely with. So we had three dedicated data scientists, a a business analyst and like a project manager who kind of orchestrated all of the technical stuff or the data science, building the product, understanding and connecting the APIs and the data points. And then a commercial person or a marketing person who had to clearly define the problem that we were trying to solve and what the output kind of needed to look like.

Imteaz: 00:30:37:17 – 00:30:53:07

Right? So again, you know, the technical stuff, there’s a lot of technical people out there in the world. But clearly defining the problem that you’re trying to solve is the tricky stuff which, you know, everyone in this room can do,

Imteaz: 00:30:53:07 – 00:31:09:17

Student: Like how do you determine when to change the parameters of the benchmark? Okay. Good question. And this is this comes down to studying your category and studying your brand and studying your competitors.

Imteaz: 00:31:09:17 – 00:31:32:20

Right. So, for example, if your competitor comes in and start spending twice as much as you do for no apparent reason within their particular category, you have to respond to that. Right. But you need to know that they’ve done something. So on a on a monthly bi weekly and then quarterly basis as well, we monitor our market share.

Imteaz: 00:31:32:22 – 00:32:08:23

We look at how are our brands performing against all of the competitors and the total market. And if there is a significant change, we determine what do we need to do about that. Is that answer your question?

Student: I think you go,

Student: When you have like an industry that’s a very defined like customer life.

Imteaz: Yes.

Students: How much of like when you’re looking at data, like deciding how to go on, how much it is focused on like new customer acquisition, the 10,000 babies entering like every single day versus, you know, trying to take you with your competitors And like any market share that way.

Imteaz: 00:32:09:04 – 00:32:44:08

Sure. Great question. By the way, because I’ve worked in the baby formula category is very different to most of CPG, right. If you think of CPG toilet paper, yogurt, all these other different categories where, you know, promo price your for your traditional full pace, play a huge part of your purchasing decision. Right? Baby for me is different because you’re buying this one category for nine months and you’re spending between 400 to 1200 dollars in nine months.

Imteaz: 00:32:44:08 – 00:33:15:13

That’s a lot of money versus toilet paper an average household might spend, I don’t know, 120 to $150 on toilet paper on a on an annual basis, which is completely different and is heavily influenced by who’s on promo that week, for example. Right. So it comes down to understanding the shopping behaviors that we talked about. What what is that path to purchase in terms of choosing the brand that you’re going to go with or and what priority does brand have?

Imteaz: 00:33:15:15 – 00:33:38:04

What priority does media have in that equation to actually make a purchase? Right? So let’s say I’m picking on and this is a hypothetical example. I don’t know is the toilet paper category in the US that well, but let’s say media doesn’t matter in that equation, right? It doesn’t matter who is doing as many display ads as possible.

Imteaz: 00:33:38:06 – 00:34:10:23

The customer only cares about who is on promotion. This week. Yeah. Then promotion is more important than media. So then you have to change your strategy and really, you know, compete against your competitors who might be on promotion, promotion every single week and then determine how do I differentiate myself against everybody else. Maybe for this completely different, highly emotional category doctors, health care professionals, your midwives, everyone has a huge part to play in terms of making the decision of which brand you’ll pick for your baby.

Imteaz: 00:34:11:01 – 00:34:48:16

So yeah, the answer is it depends.

Student: Do you mostly target or focus on getting new or find new customers? Or is it like, what’s your customer base stick with that? Is the experience I don’t know about big. Yeah. Because that the only time you use this formula then you’re just more so your experience is that once a customer has become a customer because they stay for nine months or they experiment with different, you spend money and

Imteaz: keep keeping them on that so this is like the general customer behavior within baby formula.

Imteaz: 00:34:48:17 – 00:35:13:23 So you get when you, when you’re at hospital and if you’re having feeding issues, the hospital will typically give you a formula. And all of the companies are trying to be that formula of choice, that hospital, because that’s the first interaction that we have. We also we all do sampling programs as well. So we actually sample products to to to the home as well.

Imteaz: 00:35:14:01 – 00:35:36:04

So we want to be that brand that’s there at that moment of need. Right. Secondly, what happens is one in three babies in the US has a feeding issue, which means digestive issue, cow’s milk, allergy intolerance to something whatnot, and one in three babies are switching within them in the first, let’s call it 60 in the first 60 odd days.

Imteaz: 00:35:36:04 – 00:36:07:10

Right. And sometimes people switch twice, depending on the severity of the food allergy or intolerance to the formula. After that, after baby is comfortable with the formula. Switching behavior is not there anymore. It’s a very high, highly loyal category. So for us, even though you might have a nine month baby who can still drink formula for another three months or another six months, once you’ve bought the same formula for 90 days, another switch.

Imteaz: 00:36:07:12 – 00:36:24:00

I don’t need to market to you anymore. I’m not going to convince you to buy anything else again. Comes back to understanding your category dynamics and understanding how your consumer is buying into your category and what can you actually do to to change that.

Imteaz: 00:36:24:00 – 00:36:36:10

Speaker: All right, how awesome is this? All right. So let’s spend about 20 minutes on a project and you guys can get out of here for the holiday segment. There you go.

Imteaz: 00:36:36:12 – 00:36:50:06

All right. So, yeah, if you guys want to learn more or reach out anything, please do.

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