100M People in 10 Years: Tom De Blasis on TAB KIT's Big Ambitions
100M People in 10 Years: Tom De Blasis on TAB KIT's Big Ambitions
Doing more with less is an evergreen Challenger principle and a common theme when it comes to working in the social innovation space. Our latest interviewee, Tom De Blasis, founder of social innovation design practice ATMOSPHERICAL, took this to a whole new level when creating his TAB KIT (TARP and BARREL). TAB KIT is a rainwater harvesting system that is composed of a tarp, barrel and rope — materials readily available to communities everywhere. With an ambition to bring clean water access to 100 million people in 10 years for under $100 per kit, Tom spoke to eatbigfish founder Adam Morgan and research and insight lead Sarah McAllister about how he created his own constraints to design a product that would work for global communities in need.
Tell us about TAB KIT — how did it get started?
For the last 10 years, I've had my own design practice, working across many sectors, like clean energy, clean water, refugee crisis, global health, gender equity and women's rights. So, TAB KIT came about when somebody asked me to look into the water space because of my background in it. Having worked in clean water for roughly 15 years, and seeing that even with all the investment, all the energy, all of the money and time spent up to that point, we hadn't made much progress. Numbers-wise, we're hovering around 800 million people without access to clean water and we have been for the last 20+ years. So, for me, that's incredibly frustrating. But with this brief, the ask was basically wide open: just look into this, see if there's any opportunities. So, I had to create some constraints, which was interesting as a designer. Often, constraints are gifts, but they're also challenging and you struggle against them, because the orientation of the project or the partner or the brief is not as ambitious or as wide ranging as you hope it would be. But here I had wide open constraints, which was great, because it was the first time I was really in a position like that as a designer, to create my own brief.
You were in a unique position being able to create your own constraints. Can you tell us how you came up with them and how they impacted the ultimate TAB KIT product?
I took on the task of creating this brief and constraints, probably because of my experience at Nike where, working in football, I designed something that was estimated to reach 2 billion people, because the football itself is Nike's most visible product. So, I had that kind of horizon, and I looked at that relative to the water space, with the projections going forward of the clean water crisis (that it’s going to get much, much worse) and I asked myself the question, ‘How do you work at the scale of the need, and not just work at the scale of the existing capacity of the organization or coalition that you're working with, or even their potential future capacity?’ So, I set the brief for this project: something that could reach 100 million people in the next 10 years. And then that led me to rainwater harvesting as a solution for sourcing water. Right now, when you look at the water issue, most of the people working in clean water are trying to expand the grid as fast as possible. Historically, a lot of effort has been put into wells and digging bore holes, but it’s been reported that 30% of those that are in Sub-Saharan Africa are broken and they're not being repaired. Those take a lot of investment, and they don’t deliver long-term, sustainable, permanent gains. So, within that context, the only other options to fill the void, is heavily polluting diesel water trucks or women and young girls that are walking long distances to dwindling water sources.
So, instead I looked at the opportunity of rainwater harvesting, which nobody was really looking at, even though you have a substantial volume of water falling from the sky in most places in the world where you need improved access to clean water. But no one's using it. And when I then looked at rainwater harvesting at the household level, I saw that they're very complicated systems, and there's a reason that they're not widely adopted. They cost roughly 1,000 US dollars. There's roughly 100 pieces in the system. You need a trained technician to install it. You need a lot of knowledge and expertise around monitoring and working with the system. So, then I set the third constraint of my brief, 100 million people, in 10 years, and it has to cost less than $100. If I can do that, that's something that can actually work at the scale of need. So, I talked to a lot of experts in rainwater harvesting and permaculture experts and everybody said I was crazy. I even talked to an organization that has installed 40,000 household rainwater harvesting systems in Mexico. They're a fantastic organization, and they eventually became a key implementation partner on this project. They've been around 10 years, and at first they didn't believe that you could design a rainwater harvesting system for less than $100. So that's what got me into it.
So, you created your beautiful constraints as we call them — serve 100 million people, in 10 years, with a system that costs less than $100. What barriers did these constraints then throw up and how did you navigate your way through them?
My background is in industrial design, so this was right up my alley in terms of it being a tangible product. And it was fascinating. I started to realize that there's a number of things in play with those constraints that immediately ruled out probably 95% of what designers traditionally would do to solve this problem. The first thing it rules out is a supply chain — manufacturing a product, warehousing it somewhere in a capital city, and then building a distribution network throughout the country to try to get to the communities and villages most in need. It rules all that out, because that immediately gets you above $100 and would never scale to reach 100 million people in 10 years. So, then I started looking at, how can this be assembled from materials that are readily available to people everywhere? As a solution, TAB KIT is made of materials that are readily available within 15 kilometers of any village on Earth. So, suddenly, you have something that's hyper scalable, with no barriers, relatively speaking, and it allows you to work anywhere in the world. So, that's what got me excited, from a design point of view.
I live in Oregon where it rains a lot, and so I installed my own rainwater harvesting system on my home and got to play with traditional, existing systems. And they're cool, but they're a little finicky and they're a little fussy, but at their base level, they're very simple tools. It's about catchment and storage. That's it. They use the roof of your house for catchment. You use the barrels for storage, and you have a bunch of plumbing to connect the two. That's all that rainwater harvesting is — you need to catch the water before it runs off the ground into the river. You need to have a place to store it, so you can use it as you want to use it. And what's the simplest way to catch and store water? Tarps and barrels. All you need is a tarp, a rope to hang the tarp and a barrel to store the water. That's what led me to the solution, and I wouldn't have got there without the constraints. I never would have even got anywhere close to it without the constraints I put into the brief.
One of the things that Challenger brands do really well is understand who they are for — how did you make sure that you not only got buy in from the people who TAB KIT would be used by, but also that you really understood their needs?
Luckily, the design process guides you through these kinds of things. I had a concept of something that I thought could work, so got these materials in my home, built this in my backyard and tested it, to see how much water I could catch from a single rain event. So, at that point I was excited and thought I potentially have something here, but I need to demonstrate it, prototype it and prove it. And similar to my ambition of 100 million people in the next 10 years, I knew we were going to need to work across every continent and multiple geographies. So, in my prototyping plan, I wanted to work in five countries across Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and South America, just to show people that it can work anywhere.
I worked with partners that I knew that were already in communities working around the world and asked them what communities they thought would be either best suited or most interested in this and I really let them guide me into where we went. Ultimately, we went to Nepal, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Mexico and Uganda. It was a very simple prototype, and a very simple approach, where we just went to the villages and talked to them about the idea. I would demonstrate the idea with a handkerchief and a cup and ask if they would be willing to work with us over the rainy season for a couple months, to use the kit in their home. And then we would come back and they can tell us what they liked about it, what worked, what didn't work, give us their ideas to improve it. And then at the end of these two months, we said if you like the system, you can keep it. If you don't like the system, we'll take it away.
It was a very simple arrangement, and we really wanted to learn what they would do with it and how they would use it and have them teach and guide us. And what we learned after two months, in all the places, was that it was incredibly useful. It stopped women and girls having to spend hours each day to go fetch water. They had water abundance. For the first time, they had more water than they could use. We also learned something very clearly about pricing. In some places the system cost $50, others it was $30 or $80. But all of them were under $100.
One thing I asked the people who used it was, why haven't you done this before? And there were two reasons. One, they just never had the idea. They never thought of using a tarp to catch rain in a barrel to store it, which shows you the value not always assuming that people can solve all their problems by themselves. They can tell us what their needs are, and then we can show them an idea, and we can co-develop it together. Then they can do it themselves. And then the second thing is that for most of the communities of highest need, they can't afford to buy the barrel, because the barrel is the most expensive part, and they don't sell them on credit at the hardware stores or the kiosks. People don't have the cash on hand to buy them full price, so they need some mechanism for financing to be able to buy a barrel large enough (at least 200L) to catch all of the rainwater from a typical rain event.
Your constraint of having to develop a system that cost less than $100 also led to some incredible knock-on effects for people in these communities. Can you tell us about how and why some of those things occurred?
One of the big problems with a lot of initiatives in social innovation, is the education needed to use these systems. But people know how to use the materials from TAB KIT already. So, we would show up and generally introduce the idea and give some best practices verbally if they were interested. But in general, they would just get the materials and use them, and everybody hung them differently. Everybody installed the kit differently, because everybody's home was different. Everybody's needs were different. So, TAB KIT gets around this huge barrier of training, which a lot of interventions have, because everyone already knew what to do with the materials.
And I didn’t expect or even think about all the ways they could use the system. They were using the tarps to dry crops or to dry clothes or to create a shaded porch or outdoor living space, or even things like keeping their animals outside, because in most of these homes, they would keep their animals inside at night on the first floor and they would sleep upstairs. One woman turned the downstairs of the first floor, where she was keeping the animals previously, into a bar and now had a business and an income that she never had before. It gave people so much more living space. And it’s fascinating as a designer or problem solver, to see people solving their own problems their own way, with a little bit of assistance, and being very resourceful. These people are masters of doing more with less and we can learn so much from them.
You set your own ambitions and constraints for this project. How did you know what level to set them at?
In some ways they needed to be in that sweet spot of really meaningfully impacting the crisis without being absurd. So, saying my brief is to reach all 800 million or a billion people, that would have been absurd. On the flip side, to talk about 10 million would be a step in the right direction, but it's not impactful enough. How would you get from 10 million to reach a billion, right? So, for me, 100 million was right in that area of impact. But it also couldn’t be 100 million people over the next 50 years. You have to do it quickly enough to show you can meaningfully impact this crisis, because it’s going to explode over the next 25 years. So, the next 10 years is important.
Before starting your own collective, you were the Global Design & Innovation Director at Nike. How do you think your previous experience working at a massive global brand like Nike influenced the way you approached the TAB KIT project?
One of the through lines that came from working at Nike was just this audacity of ambition. That's in their DNA. So, having the ambition to even as an individual designer work on something like this, to have the audacity to even scope out a problem at that kind of scale, that’s from Nike. And I think the second is from working in football and traveling, particularly to South Africa in 2007, when I was leading the work for Nike down there before the World Cup, but also, when I was doing work in Brazil and other places, going to these villages where they're so passionate about football, and their dream is to be a footballer. You see the kids playing and the balls are made out of a trash bag and some cloth or banana leaves and things like that. So, that through line directly impacted TAB KIT, because I saw how resourceful people were, and how humble, simple materials that are readily available can be so useful.
Lastly, what’s next for TAB KIT?
The point we are at now is that we’ve proven it works, over 3,000 people across 5 countries are currently using the system, and we’ve won some major design awards, and the design meets the audacious constraints of the brief. But we don’t have a massive organization behind us to scale it, so I’m currently figuring out who the right partners are and the right vehicle to push this out further whether that’s an NGO, micro-enterprises, or local government involvement or something else.
Tell us about TAB KIT — how did it get started?
For the last 10 years, I've had my own design practice, working across many sectors, like clean energy, clean water, refugee crisis, global health, gender equity and women's rights. So, TAB KIT came about when somebody asked me to look into the water space because of my background in it. Having worked in clean water for roughly 15 years, and seeing that even with all the investment, all the energy, all of the money and time spent up to that point, we hadn't made much progress. Numbers-wise, we're hovering around 800 million people without access to clean water and we have been for the last 20+ years. So, for me, that's incredibly frustrating. But with this brief, the ask was basically wide open: just look into this, see if there's any opportunities. So, I had to create some constraints, which was interesting as a designer. Often, constraints are gifts, but they're also challenging and you struggle against them, because the orientation of the project or the partner or the brief is not as ambitious or as wide ranging as you hope it would be. But here I had wide open constraints, which was great, because it was the first time I was really in a position like that as a designer, to create my own brief.
You were in a unique position being able to create your own constraints. Can you tell us how you came up with them and how they impacted the ultimate TAB KIT product?
I took on the task of creating this brief and constraints, probably because of my experience at Nike where, working in football, I designed something that was estimated to reach 2 billion people, because the football itself is Nike's most visible product. So, I had that kind of horizon, and I looked at that relative to the water space, with the projections going forward of the clean water crisis (that it’s going to get much, much worse) and I asked myself the question, ‘How do you work at the scale of the need, and not just work at the scale of the existing capacity of the organization or coalition that you're working with, or even their potential future capacity?’ So, I set the brief for this project: something that could reach 100 million people in the next 10 years. And then that led me to rainwater harvesting as a solution for sourcing water. Right now, when you look at the water issue, most of the people working in clean water are trying to expand the grid as fast as possible. Historically, a lot of effort has been put into wells and digging bore holes, but it’s been reported that 30% of those that are in Sub-Saharan Africa are broken and they're not being repaired. Those take a lot of investment, and they don’t deliver long-term, sustainable, permanent gains. So, within that context, the only other options to fill the void, is heavily polluting diesel water trucks or women and young girls that are walking long distances to dwindling water sources.
So, instead I looked at the opportunity of rainwater harvesting, which nobody was really looking at, even though you have a substantial volume of water falling from the sky in most places in the world where you need improved access to clean water. But no one's using it. And when I then looked at rainwater harvesting at the household level, I saw that they're very complicated systems, and there's a reason that they're not widely adopted. They cost roughly 1,000 US dollars. There's roughly 100 pieces in the system. You need a trained technician to install it. You need a lot of knowledge and expertise around monitoring and working with the system. So, then I set the third constraint of my brief, 100 million people, in 10 years, and it has to cost less than $100. If I can do that, that's something that can actually work at the scale of need. So, I talked to a lot of experts in rainwater harvesting and permaculture experts and everybody said I was crazy. I even talked to an organization that has installed 40,000 household rainwater harvesting systems in Mexico. They're a fantastic organization, and they eventually became a key implementation partner on this project. They've been around 10 years, and at first they didn't believe that you could design a rainwater harvesting system for less than $100. So that's what got me into it.
So, you created your beautiful constraints as we call them — serve 100 million people, in 10 years, with a system that costs less than $100. What barriers did these constraints then throw up and how did you navigate your way through them?
My background is in industrial design, so this was right up my alley in terms of it being a tangible product. And it was fascinating. I started to realize that there's a number of things in play with those constraints that immediately ruled out probably 95% of what designers traditionally would do to solve this problem. The first thing it rules out is a supply chain — manufacturing a product, warehousing it somewhere in a capital city, and then building a distribution network throughout the country to try to get to the communities and villages most in need. It rules all that out, because that immediately gets you above $100 and would never scale to reach 100 million people in 10 years. So, then I started looking at, how can this be assembled from materials that are readily available to people everywhere? As a solution, TAB KIT is made of materials that are readily available within 15 kilometers of any village on Earth. So, suddenly, you have something that's hyper scalable, with no barriers, relatively speaking, and it allows you to work anywhere in the world. So, that's what got me excited, from a design point of view.
I live in Oregon where it rains a lot, and so I installed my own rainwater harvesting system on my home and got to play with traditional, existing systems. And they're cool, but they're a little finicky and they're a little fussy, but at their base level, they're very simple tools. It's about catchment and storage. That's it. They use the roof of your house for catchment. You use the barrels for storage, and you have a bunch of plumbing to connect the two. That's all that rainwater harvesting is — you need to catch the water before it runs off the ground into the river. You need to have a place to store it, so you can use it as you want to use it. And what's the simplest way to catch and store water? Tarps and barrels. All you need is a tarp, a rope to hang the tarp and a barrel to store the water. That's what led me to the solution, and I wouldn't have got there without the constraints. I never would have even got anywhere close to it without the constraints I put into the brief.
One of the things that Challenger brands do really well is understand who they are for — how did you make sure that you not only got buy in from the people who TAB KIT would be used by, but also that you really understood their needs?
Luckily, the design process guides you through these kinds of things. I had a concept of something that I thought could work, so got these materials in my home, built this in my backyard and tested it, to see how much water I could catch from a single rain event. So, at that point I was excited and thought I potentially have something here, but I need to demonstrate it, prototype it and prove it. And similar to my ambition of 100 million people in the next 10 years, I knew we were going to need to work across every continent and multiple geographies. So, in my prototyping plan, I wanted to work in five countries across Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and South America, just to show people that it can work anywhere.
I worked with partners that I knew that were already in communities working around the world and asked them what communities they thought would be either best suited or most interested in this and I really let them guide me into where we went. Ultimately, we went to Nepal, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Mexico and Uganda. It was a very simple prototype, and a very simple approach, where we just went to the villages and talked to them about the idea. I would demonstrate the idea with a handkerchief and a cup and ask if they would be willing to work with us over the rainy season for a couple months, to use the kit in their home. And then we would come back and they can tell us what they liked about it, what worked, what didn't work, give us their ideas to improve it. And then at the end of these two months, we said if you like the system, you can keep it. If you don't like the system, we'll take it away.
It was a very simple arrangement, and we really wanted to learn what they would do with it and how they would use it and have them teach and guide us. And what we learned after two months, in all the places, was that it was incredibly useful. It stopped women and girls having to spend hours each day to go fetch water. They had water abundance. For the first time, they had more water than they could use. We also learned something very clearly about pricing. In some places the system cost $50, others it was $30 or $80. But all of them were under $100.
One thing I asked the people who used it was, why haven't you done this before? And there were two reasons. One, they just never had the idea. They never thought of using a tarp to catch rain in a barrel to store it, which shows you the value not always assuming that people can solve all their problems by themselves. They can tell us what their needs are, and then we can show them an idea, and we can co-develop it together. Then they can do it themselves. And then the second thing is that for most of the communities of highest need, they can't afford to buy the barrel, because the barrel is the most expensive part, and they don't sell them on credit at the hardware stores or the kiosks. People don't have the cash on hand to buy them full price, so they need some mechanism for financing to be able to buy a barrel large enough (at least 200L) to catch all of the rainwater from a typical rain event.
Your constraint of having to develop a system that cost less than $100 also led to some incredible knock-on effects for people in these communities. Can you tell us about how and why some of those things occurred?
One of the big problems with a lot of initiatives in social innovation, is the education needed to use these systems. But people know how to use the materials from TAB KIT already. So, we would show up and generally introduce the idea and give some best practices verbally if they were interested. But in general, they would just get the materials and use them, and everybody hung them differently. Everybody installed the kit differently, because everybody's home was different. Everybody's needs were different. So, TAB KIT gets around this huge barrier of training, which a lot of interventions have, because everyone already knew what to do with the materials.
And I didn’t expect or even think about all the ways they could use the system. They were using the tarps to dry crops or to dry clothes or to create a shaded porch or outdoor living space, or even things like keeping their animals outside, because in most of these homes, they would keep their animals inside at night on the first floor and they would sleep upstairs. One woman turned the downstairs of the first floor, where she was keeping the animals previously, into a bar and now had a business and an income that she never had before. It gave people so much more living space. And it’s fascinating as a designer or problem solver, to see people solving their own problems their own way, with a little bit of assistance, and being very resourceful. These people are masters of doing more with less and we can learn so much from them.
You set your own ambitions and constraints for this project. How did you know what level to set them at?
In some ways they needed to be in that sweet spot of really meaningfully impacting the crisis without being absurd. So, saying my brief is to reach all 800 million or a billion people, that would have been absurd. On the flip side, to talk about 10 million would be a step in the right direction, but it's not impactful enough. How would you get from 10 million to reach a billion, right? So, for me, 100 million was right in that area of impact. But it also couldn’t be 100 million people over the next 50 years. You have to do it quickly enough to show you can meaningfully impact this crisis, because it’s going to explode over the next 25 years. So, the next 10 years is important.
Before starting your own collective, you were the Global Design & Innovation Director at Nike. How do you think your previous experience working at a massive global brand like Nike influenced the way you approached the TAB KIT project?
One of the through lines that came from working at Nike was just this audacity of ambition. That's in their DNA. So, having the ambition to even as an individual designer work on something like this, to have the audacity to even scope out a problem at that kind of scale, that’s from Nike. And I think the second is from working in football and traveling, particularly to South Africa in 2007, when I was leading the work for Nike down there before the World Cup, but also, when I was doing work in Brazil and other places, going to these villages where they're so passionate about football, and their dream is to be a footballer. You see the kids playing and the balls are made out of a trash bag and some cloth or banana leaves and things like that. So, that through line directly impacted TAB KIT, because I saw how resourceful people were, and how humble, simple materials that are readily available can be so useful.
Lastly, what’s next for TAB KIT?
The point we are at now is that we’ve proven it works, over 3,000 people across 5 countries are currently using the system, and we’ve won some major design awards, and the design meets the audacious constraints of the brief. But we don’t have a massive organization behind us to scale it, so I’m currently figuring out who the right partners are and the right vehicle to push this out further whether that’s an NGO, micro-enterprises, or local government involvement or something else.
Putting the joy back into work (with Bruce Daisley)
If work takes up so much of our lives, and so much of work’s output is down to discretionary effort, how do we make work more engaging - as leaders of teams, and as workers ourselves?
Bruce Daisley has become a world expert on it. Previously the MD of YouTube in the UK, Bruce was the European Head of Twitter when he started exploring the meaning and future of work in a podcast, Eat Sleep Work Repeat. His first book, The Joy of Work, was a Sunday Times number one business bestseller and an FT Book of the Month. He is also the host of the hugely successful podcast ‘Eat Sleep Work Repeat’.
In this episode Adam and Bruce first discuss how to get rid of the things that suck the joy out of work, and then how to create a positive buzz in our engagement, as an individual and as a team.
They talk about:
- What the really big disruption in work has been (and it’s not wfh)
- The essential foundations for making any impact whatsoever on engagement in a culture
- The two key indicators of real engagement at work
- Why idle time is so important
- The real enemy of productivity in an organisation
- The power of Positive Affect
- The surprising importance of laughter
And why, when so much is known about how to drive up engagement at work, so little of that knowledge makes it into the leadership meetings of big organisations.
Listen to Eat Sleep Work Repeat:
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/eat-sleep-work-repeat/id1190000968
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5KUW5Lu36O4nnfIFqIIUh4
Bruce's books:
The Joy of Work: 30 Ways to Fix Your Work Culture and Fall in Love with Your Job
Fortitude: The Myth of Resilience, and the Secrets of Inner Strength
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Follow Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish. Thanks to our editor Ruth, our producer Travis, and to Tiny Podcasts.
Lessons, Frameworks, Power and Sex (a look back at Season 1)
In this bonus episode Adam summarises the key themes and learnings across all the guests from the first season, to make it useful and usable for you.
He breaks his conclusions into five sections:
1. The Cost of Dull and the Value of Interesting
2. The Four Kinds of Dull
3. Finding the right way to be interesting for you
4. Common themes and key ideas across all the guests
5. How to use it
Read the full transcript of the episode at The Challenger Project.
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Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
With thanks to our editor Ruth and producer Ross.
Leading the world towards hope (with Gail Gallie)
We’re at an inflection point in how we engage people about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, Gail Gallie believes: we now need a completely new model – ‘The gloves are off’. Gail left a successful career in advertising and at the BBC to help set up Project Everyone with campaigner and film director Richard Curtis – their aim: to communicate the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to everyone in the world in one week. 10 years later, she remains a relentless campaigner and innovator around communicating the SDGs, including the podcast she hosts with Loyiso Madinga, ‘An Idiot’s Guide to Saving The World’.
In this week's episode, Gail and Adam discuss:
- How the combination of a big ambition and a fierce time constraint drove breakthrough solutions for Project Everyone
- The new context: how the whole world has changed, and we need to move on from the old model now
- What this new model of impact campaigning should look like
- The role of surprise here, and how to get the most value from it
- Why the creative campaigning community now has to go for broke
- What it means to engage people in the conversation where they care when it comes to the SDGs, and in language they can relate to
And, in Richard Curtis’ words ‘What is the sound of hope we can make against the noise of despair?’
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Follow Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish. Thanks to our editor Ruth, our producer Travis, and to Tiny Podcasts.
Giving up the gold (with Nick Reed)
Named ‘one of the most 10 influential Brits in Hollywood’ by The Sunday Times, Nick Reed has been a successful Hollywood agent, won an Oscar for a documentary called ‘The Lady in Number 6’, and co-founded the most successful viral content company in the US.
In this episode, Nick discusses with Adam what makes something not just more interesting, but interesting enough to share – along with what it’s like to celebrate winning an Oscar with Bill Murray, how to get cast in a Steven Spielberg film, and how to get a Hollywood studio to buy a writer that nobody wants to buy. And at the heart of Nick’s philosophy is what he calls ‘giving up the gold’: giving value to the other person early, without expecting anything in return. A longer episode that ends this first season, we hope you enjoy it.
Nick's company - Shareability: https://www.shareability.com/
Follow Nick on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-reed-79269731/
Watch Nick's Oscar winning film, The Lady in No. 6, here: http://nickreedent.com/
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Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
With thanks to our editor Ruth and producer Ross.
Interesting at the speed of culture (with Nick Tran)
Is TikTok the most interesting platform in the world? What’s at the heart of its success – and what does it mean to be more interesting in a post TikTok world, when the audience on TikTok is “10x bigger every day than the Super Bowl”?
In this week’s episode, Adam meets Nick Tran, former Global Head of Marketing at TikTok and advisor to a new generation of Challengers, including tech company Nothing. Nick brings his experience as a marketer, advisor and investor to discuss:
- How TikTok has changed the playing field for a new generation of brands
- How he led ‘Project Cheetah’ to reduce TikTok’s campaign development cycle from 10 weeks to a few days.
- The creativity that financial and time constraints force you to develop
- Why he always looks for win-win-win partnerships
- Learning how to create a ’must-see’ piece of creative work
- Why he believes in moving creative in-house to speed up social
- The need for a balanced diet of marketing measurement beyond KPIs and ROI
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Connect with Nick on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholastran/
Follow Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish. Thanks to our editor Ruth, our producer Travis, and to Tiny Podcasts.
The third American art form (with Russell Davies)
Powerpoint has become the poster child of Dull – can even this most maligned of mediums really be a tool to be more interesting? Russell Davies not only believes it can, but that it’s the third American art form, along with jazz and hip hop – but only if we think of it and use it in a very different way. It seems such a symbolic flip for the cliché of ‘Death by Powerpoint’, that we’ve given it its own short episode. Here Russell shares his very simple rules for really engaging an audience through Powerpoint.
Russell's book: Do Interesting. Notice. Collect. Share.
https://thedobook.co/products/do-interesting-notice-collect-share
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Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
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With thanks to our editor Ruth and producer Ross.
Creating character at Dishoom (with Sara Stark)
For 10 years Sara Stark was part of the team helping the founders of Dishoom build their restaurant brand and business – a brand that is as rich, engaging and layered as so many other restaurants are superficial and glib.
It’s a conversation about stories, and curiosity, and inventiveness, and layering, and pushing the idea. About a continual commitment to exploring and digging and experimenting and keeping things fresh. About thinking about what it means to be different, genuinely different and engaging, in a way that seems entirely unlike the rest of the business.
If you are remotely interested in brand building, experience or culture the Dishoom story is an inspiration.
Connect with Sara on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-stark-creative-marketing/
Explore the layers of the Dishoom story at https://www.dishoom.com/
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Follow Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish. Thanks to our editor Ruth, our producer Travis, and to Tiny Podcasts.
Making the magic more probable (with Russell Davies)
One of the most stimulating speakers in brands and communications, Russell has been thinking about what it means to be interesting for over 20 years. In his new book Do Interesting – Notice. Collect. Share. Russell has codified the practice he’s used to make the world more interesting to him, and to make himself better positioned to bring interest to whatever topic he finds himself working on, inside and outside the world of brands. In this episode he shares how we can do it easily, too.
https://thedobook.co/products/do-interesting-notice-collect-share
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Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
With thanks to our editor Ruth and producer Ross.
The question is more important than the answer (with Warren Berger)
Warren Berger began exploring how to ask better questions through a journalistic interest in innovation. He’s come to believe the importance of questions is much broader than that, and has come on to champion the development of better questioning skills in everything from education to our personal relationships.
He has written widely on the topic, including ‘A More Beautiful Question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas’.
In a discussion of some of his central findings and ideas we talk about:
- Why the question can be more important than the answer
- What makes a question dull or interesting
- How a good question shifts things
- The power of ‘Questionstorming’
- How a good question ‘attracts’ answers
- His three part model to asking better questions
- Why businesses should think about having Mission Questions, rather than Mission Statements
And the power for all of us in having three big questions that guide our lives.
Find out about Warren's books on his website: https://warrenberger.com/warren-bergers-books/
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Connect with Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish. Thanks to our editor Ruth, our producer Travis, and to Tiny Podcasts.
Lashing the world with story (with John Yorke)
While storytelling isn’t the automatic answer to every kind of ‘dull’, if we’re going to learn how to tell more interesting stories we should learn from the best. John Yorke founded the BBC Studio Writer’s Academy after a career that included being Head of Channel4 Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production, working on and producing some of the world’s most widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama, from EastEnders to Shameless, Life on Mars and Wolf Hall. In this episode, he shares with Adam his learnings about how we can all tell a story that will really engage our audience.
Read John’s book: Into The Woods: How stories work and why we tell them
John’s company and training services: https://www.johnyorkestory.com/
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Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
With thanks to our editor Ruth and producer Ross.
How to tell a big story in just 90 seconds (with Louisa Preston and Luisa Baldini)
How do you engage an audience in something that really matters in just 90 seconds? Where do you start? How do you overcome the ‘curse’ of everything you know?
In this episode Adam talks with two former BBC reporters, Louisa Preston and Luisa Baldini, about how they become experts in being compelling in 90 seconds, in careers where they covered everything from the 7/7 bombings and the Amanda Knox trials to interviewing Richard Gere on the red carpet. They now have their own business, Composure Media, that helps executives become brilliantly succinct themselves.
They discuss:
- Their model for engaging in 90 seconds: ‘Hook, Line, and Sinker’
- Why you should always start with your strongest ‘picture’
- Overcoming the curse of expertise
- The importance of the story that only you know
- How to manage a confidence crisis
- What to do when your Hollywood star goes rogue on live TV
And we close by discussing a big part of their work today: helping female executives develop a more confident elevator pitch and presence.
Find out about Louisa and Luisa's work here: https://www.composure.media/
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Connect with Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish. Thanks to our editor Ruth, our producer Travis, and to Tiny Podcasts.
The interesting Squiggle and the long ‘Aha’ (with Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis)
The Squiggly Careers podcast has been hugely influential and useful for anyone interested in Career Development community. In this episode I talk to Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper, the brilliant pair behind the podcast, the two bestselling books that have come out of it – Squiggly Careers and You Coach You – and the company they have founded, Amazing if.
We discuss:
- How, in looking to throw out the old model of the ‘career ladder’, they arrived at that fascinating idea and language of the ‘squiggle’
- How they’ve found a much more engaging way to talk to people about confidence issues, and why it works
- Why dullness in large organisations is often a kind of conformity
- How to be a ‘helpful rebel’ in big companies if you want to help shake up dull practices
Along the way, they talk about a fascinating idea: ‘the long aha’ – that realisation that comes to you sometime after an engaging moment in a meeting, prompting you to question something you are doing, when you realise how pervasive that practice and issue has been in your life. As fascinating and useful as you would expect from the inimitable Sarah and Helen.
Listen to the Squiggly Careers podcast
Find out more about Amazing If's work
Helen and Sarah's books:
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Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
With thanks to our editor Ruth and producer Ross.
The five components of interesting (with Jeffre Jackson and Dave Nottoli)
This week Adam talks to renowned planners David Nottoli and Jeffre Jackson about their research into ‘interestingness’ in advertising.
Drawing from their experience David and Jeffre share their definition of the five key components of interesting:
- How incongruity reinforces memory
- Why Don Draper might be wrong about emotions
- The significance of fish sticks
- Why authenticity isn’t just a buzzword
- Why the details really matter, even if 99% of people don’t notice them
We also learn why we should avoid chasing empty spectacle in the battle for attention, why Nike’s legendary work with athletes can’t be replicated by just any sports brand, what the classic Cadbury’s Gorilla ad teaches us about mystery, and the risk of being sucked into the ‘boreplex’.
Watch Jeffre’s 2006 video on Interestingness: how interesting ads work differently, and what value Interestingness delivers for marketers.
Nike x Charles Barkley “I am not a role model”
Nike x Tiger Woods "I Am Tiger Woods"
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Connect with Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish. Thanks to our editor Ruth, our producer Travis, and to Tiny Podcasts.
Two thousand years more interesting (with Professor Arlene Holmes-Henderson)
In this episode we talk to Professor Arlene Holmes-Henderson, Professor of Classics Education and Public Policy at Durham University, about her fierce belief in the enduring relevance of classical rhetoric to today’s world, and why its value in helping disadvantaged children find their voice in a more engaging way is fundamental to how schools need to develop oracy, alongside literacy and numeracy. And at the end, she gives a 10-minute masterclass in classical rhetoric that we can all use to make a speech more interesting.
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Arlene's books Forward with Classics and Expanding Classics
The ‘Shy bairns get nowt’ project https://www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/latest-news/2023/05/shy-bairns-get-nowt/
Arlene's work in The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jun/04/brucey-and-caesar-can-help-children-improve-oracy-says-classic-professor
Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
With thanks to our editor Ruth and producer Ross.
Does our attention define us? (with Faris Yakob)
Faris Yakob believes that attention is not merely the first step to engagement with something, but a fundamental shaper of who we are: if ‘we are what we eat’, then what we pay attention to comes to define us.
The author of ‘Paid Attention’ and co-founder of Genius Steals, he and his wife Rosie have spent the last ten years as modern nomads, consulting, speaking and writing. In this episode Adam and Faris discuss:
- How Faris’ diverse career and nomadic life has been ‘a quest for interesting’
- Why attention is part of the substance of our existence
- Why it is impossible to buy attention today …
- …And yet everyone is still competing for our attention all the time
- Strategies for earning attention in a saturated media age
- Why the ‘most interestingness’ comes in the connection of domains that are not obviously connected
Follow Faris on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farisyakob/
Subscribe to Faris and Rosie's substack 'Strands of Genius': https://geniussteals.substack.com/
Connect with Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish. Thanks to our editor Ruth, our producer Travis, and to Tiny Podcasts.
How to win a peacock show (with Gemma Parkinson)
This is a podcast for people who can’t afford to bore their audience. And in this episode we talk to Gemma Parkinson, a Global Marketing and Business Director at Moet Hennessy, about how to elevate a presentation into an irresistible performance when you really need to carry an audience with you. A fresh, energetic and charismatic thinker, Gemma shares her advice about how to elevate the interest when it really matters.
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Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
With thanks to our editor Ruth and producer Ross.
A healthy dose of horror (with Mathias Clasen)
That’s enough about humour and the lighter side of interesting.
It’s time to step into the dark.
This week Adam meets researcher Mathias Clasen, co-founder of the ‘Recreational Fear Lab’ and author of Why Horror Seduces and A Very Nervous Person's Guide to Horror Movies, to talk about what he’s learned from haunted houses and horror movies, and how to find the ‘sweet spot’ of scary.
Adam and Mathias discuss:
- The definition of ‘recreational fear’, and why it’s not just for horror film fans
- The evidence that shows why fear is good for us. Why children need more ‘risky play’ for their development than we are giving them, and the surprising results of Mathias’ research into fear on our immune systems
- The physiological and cognitive relationship between fear and enjoyment
- Why we should all make friends with Mr Piggy
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Read Mathias's books:
A Very Nervous Person's Guide to Horror Movies
Watch Mathias's TedX talk: Lessons from a terrified horror researcher
Connect with Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish. Thanks to our editor Ruth, our producer Travis, and to Tiny Podcasts.
On Saturn it’s raining diamonds (with Addison Brown)
How can we be interesting enough to stick in our audiences’ long-term memory? In this episode, Adam speaks to Addison Brown, the science teacher who was the star of a recent Department for Education recruitment film. They discuss the four key principles that underpin success in every lesson – from cognitive load to dual coding – and how shorter pupil attention spans and higher expectations have driven a ‘blossoming of imagination within teaching'.
'Every Lesson Shapes a Life': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGd_Rrs-qNY
Brian Cox asks 'what more do you want?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uqa2TMzag4
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Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
With thanks to our editor Ruth and producer Ross.
Stand up and make me laugh (with Chris Head)
Last week’s episode made the business case for humour - but how do we start to find our funny? This week Adam Morgan meets standup comedy writing and speaking coach Chris Head for a comedy masterclass.
Chris shares practical experience and techniques he uses when working with comedians, how he helped stand-up Stepfania Licari push her personal stories for the biggest payoff and coached Richard Lindesay to become a headliner (and TikTok star), all while punching up Adam’s jokes along the way,
They discuss:
- The power of comedy to help engage people with serious and challenging subjects
- Simple techniques to build humour and surprise into anything from a story to an internal announcement
- The importance of making an immediate connection with the audience to break the tension
- The craft involved to go from a joke-shaped thought into a bigger, funnier routine
- The power of misdirection (but not the magic kind)
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Contact Chris (or sign up to a course): https://www.chrishead.com/
Chris’s books:
Creating Comedy Narratives for Stage and Screen
A Director's Guide to the Art of Stand-up
The Complete Comedy Script Toolkit
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Connect with Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish. Thanks to our editor Ruth, our producer Travis, and to Tiny Podcasts.
The secret of Elmo’s success (with Norman Stiles)
In this episode, Adam talks with Norman Stiles, for 20 years the Head Writer on Sesame Street, about the pioneering pairing of entertainers and educators that changed the educational life of a generation. And how success lay in a very simple ambition that has fascinating implications for us all. Sesame Street made something possible that people thought couldn’t be done. What can it teach us about the audiences we want to really engage?
Watch the classic Sesame Street scenes that Norman refers to during the conversation:
- Grover really wants us to learn near and far
- Ernie answers the Count's telephone
- Telly tries to help Elmo get over his fear of clowns
- Big Bird learns about 'just because' and says goodbye to Mr Hooper
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Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
With thanks to our editor Ruth and producer Ross.
The commercial case for humour (with Bridget Angear)
Is our business leaving money on the table by being too serious? In this episode, Adam speaks to Bridget Angear, legendary strategic planner and co-founder of Craig + Bridget, about her recent research “The Business Case for Humour in Advertising”.
Adam and Bridget explore the evidence for the business effects of humour as revealed in the IPA database, and the different values that different types of humour can have for us if we’re looking to be more engaging.
They look at why marketing and communications might be less entertaining now than it used to be, and they consider why agencies and clients seriously need to have a bit more fun.
Because, despite the business case for humour, have we all become just too scared to be funny?
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Connect with Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Watch Bridget deliver “The Business Case for Humour in Advertising” here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=r91B08Xebtg
Bridget's books -
- The insiders' guide to advertising: How the business of advertising really works
- Creative problem solving.: A useful little strategy book by craig+bridget
- Revolt: A movement owner's manual
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Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish. Thanks to our editor Ruth, our producer Travis, and to Tiny Podcasts.
Who Are You Really? (with Ross Buchanan)
In this episode, Adam talks to national radio presenter Ross Buchanan (Absolute Radio, Radio X) about what it takes to be interesting for four hours with an audience you never actually see. How much is it about being more interesting in what you say and do, and how much is it about what you share of yourself? And why shouldn’t you talk about biscuits?
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Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
With thanks to our editor Ruth and producer Ross.
Break that routine (with Simon Peacock)
This week Adam meets award-winning improviser and director of the iconic Assassin’s Creed video games Simon Peacock to explore how the element of surprise makes his work and life more interesting.
Beginning with Simon’s early success as a professional improviser in Montreal, they discuss the 10 commandments of good improvisation, why routine and repetition ruin a performance, and what happens when you apply improv principles to your own wedding.
In the second half, Simon shares what it takes to give a more interesting audition, his experience as a director in the world of video games, and why audiences crave surprise.
We find out what preparation it takes to direct 2,000 lines of dialogue in one day, why it’s always a good idea to deliver a unique take in an audition (even if it doesn’t land you the job), and the terrible fate of a canvas sack called Bob.
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Connect with Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish. Thanks to our editor Ruth and our producers at Tiny Podcasts.
Why Your Dog is a Better Producer Than You (with Maz Farrelly)
In this episode, Adam speaks to reality TV producer Maz Farrelly. Maz has made some of the biggest shows on 3 continents, including Britain’s Got Talent, Dancing with the Stars, Big Brother and Celebrity Apprentice – interviewing 12,000 hopefuls along the way. She now works with businesses to help them make themselves more interesting.
Maz shares her learnings on what it takes to really engage an audience, the three secrets of great content, and how to be interesting enough to get cast in one of her shows. Along the way, we discuss:
- Why, if you’re ambitious, you have to see everything as a ‘production’
- How your dog produces you to get what it wants
- What ‘white noise’ is, and why it matters
- How to interview well enough to get into the Big Brother house
- Why many of us have become lazy producers, particularly in big companies
- When ‘fine’ isn’t good enough if you want to be the Number 1 Show
- Asking the questions to discover the interesting story in everyone (and how to make a dull person interesting for a TV audience)
- Why you can only last for a week before you ‘leak’
- The power of subverting expectations as a producer
- The recipe for great content on television (and how to play Susan Boyle Bingo)
- The importance of really ‘scratching’ to get to what’s interesting
- Three bits of advice on how to be a great producer and be more interesting
- How to apply this to our business and personal life
Maz is as fascinating as she is funny. We hope you enjoy this wonderfully stimulating conversation with someone who makes everything she does a little more interesting.
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Find out about Maz's work here: https://www.mazspeaks.com/
Follow Maz on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maz-speaks/
Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
With thanks to our editor Ruth and producer Ross.
Why you need a third Spider Drop (with Heather McGill)
In this episode Adam talks to Heather McGill, Head of Spectator Experience at London 2012 and previously Tour Manager for the Spice Girls, about how to create more interesting shared experiences.
Heather shares lessons about how to create more engaging spectator experiences for live tours and ‘global mega events’ such as the Olympics and Paralympics, large industry expos like Dubai 2020, and her current project, the Harry Potter Forbidden Forest, which has sold over a million tickets.
In a wide-ranging conversation that spans her career Heather reveals insights on:
- The real competition when you are designing experiences
- How to structure the development of an experience
- The importance of the lull, as well as the high
- What exponentially changing audience expectations really means for being more interesting in experience today
- Sir Jonny Ive’s one piece of advice on designing the London 2012 experience
- The three ways to tackle a problem in the experience
- The value of creating common ownership
- How constraints make the experience better
- How to build wonder
…Oh, and why the third spider drop makes all the difference.
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Find out more about Heather’s work: https://www.unifyexp.com/
The Harry Potter Forbidden Forest Exerience: https://hpforbiddenforestexperience.com/
Connect with Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
The Cost of Dull in Business (with Peter Field)
In this opening episode, Adam discusses a new analysis that reveals the real financial cost to a business of being dull with Marketing Effectiveness expert Peter Field. Exactly how much more expensive is it to run dull communications than engaging ones? And what can we learn from people who can’t afford to bore their audiences?
Adam and Peter's conversation explores:
- Why we should be much more intolerant of dull external and internal communication than we are
- A simple test: ‘The six slide rule’
- How we can make dull itself more interesting to those we need to change - by putting a concrete cost on it
- Peter’s new analysis, and what it reveals
- So why is it that so many well-intentioned, smart people are choosing to be dull?
- A look ahead to the future guests on the podcast: people whose job it is to make dull subjects interesting, and the two kinds of things we’ll learn from them
- 3 things you can do tomorrow
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Download Peter's slides on The Cost of Dull here: https://thechallengerproject.com/blog/the-cost-of-dull-with-peter-field
Follow Peter's work here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-field-20110120/
Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
With thanks to our editor Ruth and producer Ross.
When Kerosene met Dull (with Peter Field)
A year into the project, what have we learnt about the real price of being dull? Adam opens Season 2 with one of the core collaborators on The Extraordinary Cost of Dull, marketing effectiveness expert Peter Field.
Peter and Adam share how the Extraordinary Cost of Dull has grown from an idea that kickstarted our last season to a 3-year research project with multiple contributors. One that has been sparking a vital conversation within the marketing and communications community over the last year.
Starting with their reflections on the response to the project so far, they discuss new developments including:
Data from the DMA that reveals what dull is costing us not just in TV, but through the whole funnel
Upcoming work from Dr Karen Nelson-Field, another core collaborator, on the real cost of choosing lower attention media platforms and channels
Peter’s latest findings on the business effects of dull, and its impact on brand trust
The development of the practical strategic tools to help marketers avoid dull from the start
They finish with a look at their ambitions for The Extraordinary Cost of Dull in the year head.
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The Extraordinary Cost of Dull Project is open to contributors. Do you have a data set to share with the project? Get in touch at hello@eatbigfish.com
Follow Peter's work here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-field-20110120/
Connect with Adam on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-morgan-3a473a/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
Trailer: Let's Make This More Interesting
Do you have moments in your business or personal life when you simply can’t afford to bore your audience? What can we do to hold their undivided attention when it really matters? To find out, Adam Morgan, founder of eatbigfish, speaks to fascinating people who excel at engaging their audience – be they distracted social scrollers, bored schoolchildren or cynical CEOs – and learns from them how we can all be much more interesting.
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