Breaking conventions: How Slather took on sunscreen
Breaking conventions: How Slather took on sunscreen
Should clients get to keep all the good ideas if they don’t use them? Creative director and founder of the agency SICKDOGWOLFMAN, James Orr and his partners asked themselves this very question, and thus Slather sunscreen was born. Throwing out traditional sunscreen branding tactics, Slather is a brand created for a demographic who was being left behind by the category. eatbigfish Strategy Director, Liston Pitman caught up with Orr to find out how they broke with category expectations to create a truly standout product.
Why did the world need another sunscreen brand? What about the category are you fighting against?
It wasn't about creating another sunscreen as much as it was creating another way to talk about it. There’s an elephant in the room, especially in Australia: there’s a love affair around the sun and our time in the sun but no one was saying the hard thing, which was ‘the sun is not actually all that good for you when you don't have sun protection or you are outside for too long.’ And no one wanted to say that, because brands were afraid of people going indoors and not using the product altogether.
When we say ‘the Sun is Not Your Friend,’ it's about that. In a way, Slather's a PSA that has a product attached.
Who is Slather — and that PSA — for?
There’s a legacy of Australian SPF advertising, which is very much bronzed Aussie women on the beach applying sunscreen. The female market is a lot easier to target because it's already aligned to beauty and looking after skin. Males got left behind.
It's such an untapped market. When we started really looking at how big the gap was in Australian sunscreen usage, it was crazy. Only 3 in 10 use it regularly but, when it comes to males, it's only 1 in 5. And then 2 out of 3 Australians will get skin cancer at some point…
So, what we're fighting against is that men have been left behind in the category — no one spoke to them because they were a harder target market. Females are already open to sunscreen, where, on the male side, we have to bend their will and get them to understand why they should use it. We're fighting against the apathy of having to apply sunscreen.
Guys like us, who started this brand, we're absolute idiots. I'm a guy who lives in Australia who didn't grow up wearing enough sunscreen and has had brushes with skin cancer and now I've got young children. I wish I could turn back the clock and apply sunscreen all through my teens and all those years where I was outside. But there's just this behavior of apathy with this audience.
It’s a hard task — you can't turn a no into a yes, but we can turn maybes. And we're going after 50% of the country so, even if we get a little bit of that, we still get a lot.
How did that goal of behavior change impact the way this brand has come to life?
We’ve worked a lot in our careers in road safety and in health and spaces like that and, when you’re aiming for real behavioral change, people can switch off really easily — distance themselves and say ‘I would never’ or ‘that’s not me.’
So, our tone of voice had to disarm people. We're going to tell them some pretty heavy stuff, but we want them to be open to listening to us.
It isn’t ‘you’ll be coping with some really horrible skin cancer,’ you have to respect the audience enough to know they can get the takeaway without you having to be too heavy handed. When you wrap it up in a horror movie or you wrap it up in fun or entertainment or silliness, people still get the message but they're thankful that you didn't bring their mood down.
What we're doing is selling a PSA with entertainment. It’s eating your vegetables, but you’ll get desert in there too. I want them to be excited to see what comes next from the brand, knowing full well we're going to be telling them that they should be wearing sunscreen because we have an epidemic of skin cancer in this country.
I think most people would follow your logic so far, but I’m not sure most people would take this as far as you all have tonally. Is there a limit to how far that can go?
For our first live spot, we had the script and we said to the production director, ‘Go push the boundaries.’ And they came back with some outrageous stuff, and we started getting scared. But the truth was, once we released it and people enjoyed it all, all bets were off.
We'll find where the line is at some point. But we don’t do crazy or crude for the sake of it.
When we look at levels of engagement and what people are gravitating towards, it's not the grossness or the extreme nature of the advertising that people buy into. It’s the comedy, it’s the entertainment but, if it's not an insight on the category or on Australian behavior, it's not worth it.
As long as people see their behaviors in the ads and they go, ‘I've done that’ or ‘I'm prone to doing this’ or ‘I know someone who could do that,’ then that's the job done — we can wrap it up as extreme as we want.
To that point, your communications tend to show different occasions and people than most sunscreen ads — less aspirational and more everyday. Can you talk a bit about what led you to that?
The only time I probably would have used sunscreen growing up was at the beach. And I think that’s a behavior that was built from the category — ‘you're at the beach, put on sunscreen.’ But it's the same sun if I'm in the backyard or I'm playing cricket on the weekend or I'm just hanging out. But those occasions weren't shown because it wasn't as glamorous and it wasn't aspirational.
In the first animated piece we put together, there's a guy who's sitting on a chair at a work site. The reason it was at a work site is that I'd never seen a sunscreen brand at a work site. It’s like, “you work every day in the sun. Everywhere you look, they've just got their shirts off or a singlet on. How has no one said, ‘hey, you should probably wear sunscreen’?”
And showing people that haven't been seen in sunscreen ads before is a really big thing for us as well. It’s not just sexy people, regular people matter too. If people can see themselves a little bit in the creative, they're happy to take on the message.
The other constant in your ads is the evil sun mascot — a sort of living embodiment of ‘the Sun is Not Your Friend’ tagline. What moved you to create that?
‘The Sun is Not Your Friend’ line came first — it was the closest we could possibly get to what we wanted, legally.
Early on, we spoke a lot about the power of mascots — about having a device that isn’t just always product but can be an extension of the brand. Then it came down to what we could execute — we don’t have bottomless budget.
And so, we started throwing around sketches and kind of going, ‘we might able to make a cartoon series out of this. I've never animated, but I'm willing to give it a go. Jess, you're going to have to be the voice of the sun.’ The mascot was created on what we drew and what we could execute. When we were shooting the film, it was almost an arts and crafts project to create the head of the character — we built the helmet.
It’s all rudimentary, but it also means we’re not having to wait around for something to create the content that we want. We don’t have to go and do a full production every time.
And, yeah, it’s pretty wild looking, but it’s actually a really good device for us. It says everything about the brand quickly — it’s a visual shortcut for repositioning your relationship with the sun. And there’s a level of engagement that comes with it. People were terrified of it, but I saw them smiling and laughing.
I think a lot of readers would assume that, because you work in advertising, doing such daring things would come fairly naturally — was that the case?
Honestly, we were terrified. Because: are we allowed to speak like this? Are brands allowed to swear or have a sniper rifle with a UV ray or a melting face man in their ad? But we had to be brave.
A big part of it was having to face what we preach every day. We talk a lot about brands having to be brave if they don't have a huge budget — ‘you need to create work that people will care about or will steal eyeballs, because you can't just throw money at the problem.’ We knew we couldn't afford to be safe.
And you can't have a statement like ‘the Sun is Not Your Friend,’ and then not sell it when it comes to executing it. We couldn't afford not to swing — otherwise, why did we do any of this?
How does the rest of the category enter into how you’ve been thinking about all of this?
Apathy is the competition — it's not other sunscreen brands. We don't look left and right and go, ‘Oh, but that brand's doing this or that.’
There are some great brands like Vacation, but they're not us. The people we're going after don't use those brands. It's crazy that there's a category that’s worth as much as this is and is as important to Australian culture as this is and, if you asked men ‘what's your favorite sunscreen brand?’, they wouldn't have one.
In every other category that we feel really strongly about, — what we wear, what we eat, what we watch — that isn’t the case. Sunscreen is a category that doesn't have a favorite, and that’s why apathy is the enemy. And entertainment is the way to fix that.
What about the pull of the category beyond specific competitors — how have you engaged with codes and conventions in this space?
We went through a million designs of what Slather should look like on the packaging, but the cues were really important because, at some point, this will sit on a shelf in a stockist amongst other sunscreen.
So, you go into the market and squint and see the color codes. A lot of white, a lot of blue, some yellow. So, what's going to stand out? And more importantly: how do you make a sunscreen that doesn't feel like a sunscreen, but people recognise that it's a sunscreen?
So, there's a level of discoverability, which was important — in a bar or a pub or beer garden or outside, you want to be able to see it from across the room and recognize it as sunscreen. We didn't want to choose yellow at first but, in the end, that was a shortcut to sunscreen.
But then, the black wordmark could be bigger, bolder and probably a little bit aggressive, so that was different to the rest of the category. The logo has a strong masculine vibe while everyone else has a flower, an umbrella or a beautiful script. And we have an evil sun on the label — a cue to sunscreen, which is good, but it's also a twist because it's not a happy sun.
And then there's the stuff that falls flat. There’s a lot of skincare brands for females that do a lot of product shots — in situ people holding the product and applying sunscreen. We went ‘oh god, we probably have to do that and do it in that way. That's what sunscreen brands do.’ But it fell flat because people were like, ‘we’re here for entertainment, we’re not here to see people put on sunscreen.’ So, we have 50 years of sunscreen brands to show us what we don’t want to be. Every time they do it, go the other way. We thought ‘real sunscreen brands have to show these things.’ No, they don't — they don't have to do anything.
What about the product itself? Did the logic of the category apply at all to formulation or ingredients?
The earliest conversations for Slather were ‘we can't get people to engage with this brand if the product wasn’t amazing.’ So, we asked ‘why don’t I use more sunscreen?’
We put up a board with “what do we hate about the products?” They’re runny, scented, too hard to apply, oily, greasy, and they leave a residue. So, we created the product for us on all levels.
Therefore, we can hand-on-heart say that it's not a flash-in-the-pan, fun brand that you love but don’t like to use.
On top of the normal category ‘shoulds’, sunscreen is also a regulated industry. Coming from outside the industry, what were some of your experiences like working within those constraints?
The best thing that happened was with the back of the pack. Jess Wheeler, our Co-Founder and creative director, wrote some amazing copy with a beautiful tone of voice that summed up the brand. The first draft went to our legal team, and they called us up and said, ‘This is the best thing we've ever read. We're so excited. We think it's amazing. We've shown everyone in the office. But you can't do any of it.’ It came back redacted with color coded absolutes — ‘you're not allowed to say these things because it's a pharmaceutical product.’ It was about pushing boundaries, but it was also us naively trying to figure out how the industry works, and why people hadn't said any of these things before.
Because of our history in branding and advertising, we question everything. When we were speaking to people we knew in the industry, they would say, ‘You could never do that.’ We'd ask, ‘but why not?’ and the response was, ‘Because no one's done that.’ But that made us excited — was is it because of legal reasons or were they just scared? It turned out you can say it, it's just no one had yet.
For example, we felt the T&Cs should be considerably different to any others that have ever been done. We don’t just put in what everyone else does, we look at it and go, ‘is that a chance for a little surprise? Is that a chance to say something different?’ On the caution, it says ‘Don't put it in your eyes. Don't swallow it. It's pretty self-explanatory, but we still have to say it.’ The legal team asked, ‘Why don't you just use what we sent you?’ And our response was, ‘Do we have to?’ And we didn’t.
We were trying to be jarring at every point because everyone was just doing what everyone else had done before. They only knew the category as it stood.
You’re a smaller player in a sea of bigger fish. A lot of businesses would let the constraints of that limit them — how have you avoided that?
Our constraints are all the best parts of the brand, because it means we can't afford to not have a swing — we have to be able to do more with less. There are things we need to say but we need to do it in an entertaining way and to push boundaries in an extreme way. A lot of brands don't get that opportunity.
We’re so jarring that we can't help but stand out and that means we're having bigger conversations with more retailers, more festivals, more places than we probably deserve to, purely because we're speaking in a way that's quite different. We're lucky in that way, because that's what's getting us through the door, not spend.
We can't afford to not be the brand that we want to be, because we don't have the spend to get away with that.
Any advice for other folks trying to get their own challenger brand off the ground?
Being ‘extremely something’ is a thing that we speak about a lot in the agency and in Slather. Someone in the industry said that — it's definitely not my quote. The idea is that a lot of brands have got a checklist of so many things they want to be, who they're aiming at, and all those elements. But the art of reduction — of simplifying — is at the heart of everything we try to do. You have to kill everything else and just go all-in on one particular thing.
Why did the world need another sunscreen brand? What about the category are you fighting against?
It wasn't about creating another sunscreen as much as it was creating another way to talk about it. There’s an elephant in the room, especially in Australia: there’s a love affair around the sun and our time in the sun but no one was saying the hard thing, which was ‘the sun is not actually all that good for you when you don't have sun protection or you are outside for too long.’ And no one wanted to say that, because brands were afraid of people going indoors and not using the product altogether.
When we say ‘the Sun is Not Your Friend,’ it's about that. In a way, Slather's a PSA that has a product attached.
Who is Slather — and that PSA — for?
There’s a legacy of Australian SPF advertising, which is very much bronzed Aussie women on the beach applying sunscreen. The female market is a lot easier to target because it's already aligned to beauty and looking after skin. Males got left behind.
It's such an untapped market. When we started really looking at how big the gap was in Australian sunscreen usage, it was crazy. Only 3 in 10 use it regularly but, when it comes to males, it's only 1 in 5. And then 2 out of 3 Australians will get skin cancer at some point…
So, what we're fighting against is that men have been left behind in the category — no one spoke to them because they were a harder target market. Females are already open to sunscreen, where, on the male side, we have to bend their will and get them to understand why they should use it. We're fighting against the apathy of having to apply sunscreen.
Guys like us, who started this brand, we're absolute idiots. I'm a guy who lives in Australia who didn't grow up wearing enough sunscreen and has had brushes with skin cancer and now I've got young children. I wish I could turn back the clock and apply sunscreen all through my teens and all those years where I was outside. But there's just this behavior of apathy with this audience.
It’s a hard task — you can't turn a no into a yes, but we can turn maybes. And we're going after 50% of the country so, even if we get a little bit of that, we still get a lot.
How did that goal of behavior change impact the way this brand has come to life?
We’ve worked a lot in our careers in road safety and in health and spaces like that and, when you’re aiming for real behavioral change, people can switch off really easily — distance themselves and say ‘I would never’ or ‘that’s not me.’
So, our tone of voice had to disarm people. We're going to tell them some pretty heavy stuff, but we want them to be open to listening to us.
It isn’t ‘you’ll be coping with some really horrible skin cancer,’ you have to respect the audience enough to know they can get the takeaway without you having to be too heavy handed. When you wrap it up in a horror movie or you wrap it up in fun or entertainment or silliness, people still get the message but they're thankful that you didn't bring their mood down.
What we're doing is selling a PSA with entertainment. It’s eating your vegetables, but you’ll get desert in there too. I want them to be excited to see what comes next from the brand, knowing full well we're going to be telling them that they should be wearing sunscreen because we have an epidemic of skin cancer in this country.
I think most people would follow your logic so far, but I’m not sure most people would take this as far as you all have tonally. Is there a limit to how far that can go?
For our first live spot, we had the script and we said to the production director, ‘Go push the boundaries.’ And they came back with some outrageous stuff, and we started getting scared. But the truth was, once we released it and people enjoyed it all, all bets were off.
We'll find where the line is at some point. But we don’t do crazy or crude for the sake of it.
When we look at levels of engagement and what people are gravitating towards, it's not the grossness or the extreme nature of the advertising that people buy into. It’s the comedy, it’s the entertainment but, if it's not an insight on the category or on Australian behavior, it's not worth it.
As long as people see their behaviors in the ads and they go, ‘I've done that’ or ‘I'm prone to doing this’ or ‘I know someone who could do that,’ then that's the job done — we can wrap it up as extreme as we want.
To that point, your communications tend to show different occasions and people than most sunscreen ads — less aspirational and more everyday. Can you talk a bit about what led you to that?
The only time I probably would have used sunscreen growing up was at the beach. And I think that’s a behavior that was built from the category — ‘you're at the beach, put on sunscreen.’ But it's the same sun if I'm in the backyard or I'm playing cricket on the weekend or I'm just hanging out. But those occasions weren't shown because it wasn't as glamorous and it wasn't aspirational.
In the first animated piece we put together, there's a guy who's sitting on a chair at a work site. The reason it was at a work site is that I'd never seen a sunscreen brand at a work site. It’s like, “you work every day in the sun. Everywhere you look, they've just got their shirts off or a singlet on. How has no one said, ‘hey, you should probably wear sunscreen’?”
And showing people that haven't been seen in sunscreen ads before is a really big thing for us as well. It’s not just sexy people, regular people matter too. If people can see themselves a little bit in the creative, they're happy to take on the message.
The other constant in your ads is the evil sun mascot — a sort of living embodiment of ‘the Sun is Not Your Friend’ tagline. What moved you to create that?
‘The Sun is Not Your Friend’ line came first — it was the closest we could possibly get to what we wanted, legally.
Early on, we spoke a lot about the power of mascots — about having a device that isn’t just always product but can be an extension of the brand. Then it came down to what we could execute — we don’t have bottomless budget.
And so, we started throwing around sketches and kind of going, ‘we might able to make a cartoon series out of this. I've never animated, but I'm willing to give it a go. Jess, you're going to have to be the voice of the sun.’ The mascot was created on what we drew and what we could execute. When we were shooting the film, it was almost an arts and crafts project to create the head of the character — we built the helmet.
It’s all rudimentary, but it also means we’re not having to wait around for something to create the content that we want. We don’t have to go and do a full production every time.
And, yeah, it’s pretty wild looking, but it’s actually a really good device for us. It says everything about the brand quickly — it’s a visual shortcut for repositioning your relationship with the sun. And there’s a level of engagement that comes with it. People were terrified of it, but I saw them smiling and laughing.
I think a lot of readers would assume that, because you work in advertising, doing such daring things would come fairly naturally — was that the case?
Honestly, we were terrified. Because: are we allowed to speak like this? Are brands allowed to swear or have a sniper rifle with a UV ray or a melting face man in their ad? But we had to be brave.
A big part of it was having to face what we preach every day. We talk a lot about brands having to be brave if they don't have a huge budget — ‘you need to create work that people will care about or will steal eyeballs, because you can't just throw money at the problem.’ We knew we couldn't afford to be safe.
And you can't have a statement like ‘the Sun is Not Your Friend,’ and then not sell it when it comes to executing it. We couldn't afford not to swing — otherwise, why did we do any of this?
How does the rest of the category enter into how you’ve been thinking about all of this?
Apathy is the competition — it's not other sunscreen brands. We don't look left and right and go, ‘Oh, but that brand's doing this or that.’
There are some great brands like Vacation, but they're not us. The people we're going after don't use those brands. It's crazy that there's a category that’s worth as much as this is and is as important to Australian culture as this is and, if you asked men ‘what's your favorite sunscreen brand?’, they wouldn't have one.
In every other category that we feel really strongly about, — what we wear, what we eat, what we watch — that isn’t the case. Sunscreen is a category that doesn't have a favorite, and that’s why apathy is the enemy. And entertainment is the way to fix that.
What about the pull of the category beyond specific competitors — how have you engaged with codes and conventions in this space?
We went through a million designs of what Slather should look like on the packaging, but the cues were really important because, at some point, this will sit on a shelf in a stockist amongst other sunscreen.
So, you go into the market and squint and see the color codes. A lot of white, a lot of blue, some yellow. So, what's going to stand out? And more importantly: how do you make a sunscreen that doesn't feel like a sunscreen, but people recognise that it's a sunscreen?
So, there's a level of discoverability, which was important — in a bar or a pub or beer garden or outside, you want to be able to see it from across the room and recognize it as sunscreen. We didn't want to choose yellow at first but, in the end, that was a shortcut to sunscreen.
But then, the black wordmark could be bigger, bolder and probably a little bit aggressive, so that was different to the rest of the category. The logo has a strong masculine vibe while everyone else has a flower, an umbrella or a beautiful script. And we have an evil sun on the label — a cue to sunscreen, which is good, but it's also a twist because it's not a happy sun.
And then there's the stuff that falls flat. There’s a lot of skincare brands for females that do a lot of product shots — in situ people holding the product and applying sunscreen. We went ‘oh god, we probably have to do that and do it in that way. That's what sunscreen brands do.’ But it fell flat because people were like, ‘we’re here for entertainment, we’re not here to see people put on sunscreen.’ So, we have 50 years of sunscreen brands to show us what we don’t want to be. Every time they do it, go the other way. We thought ‘real sunscreen brands have to show these things.’ No, they don't — they don't have to do anything.
What about the product itself? Did the logic of the category apply at all to formulation or ingredients?
The earliest conversations for Slather were ‘we can't get people to engage with this brand if the product wasn’t amazing.’ So, we asked ‘why don’t I use more sunscreen?’
We put up a board with “what do we hate about the products?” They’re runny, scented, too hard to apply, oily, greasy, and they leave a residue. So, we created the product for us on all levels.
Therefore, we can hand-on-heart say that it's not a flash-in-the-pan, fun brand that you love but don’t like to use.
On top of the normal category ‘shoulds’, sunscreen is also a regulated industry. Coming from outside the industry, what were some of your experiences like working within those constraints?
The best thing that happened was with the back of the pack. Jess Wheeler, our Co-Founder and creative director, wrote some amazing copy with a beautiful tone of voice that summed up the brand. The first draft went to our legal team, and they called us up and said, ‘This is the best thing we've ever read. We're so excited. We think it's amazing. We've shown everyone in the office. But you can't do any of it.’ It came back redacted with color coded absolutes — ‘you're not allowed to say these things because it's a pharmaceutical product.’ It was about pushing boundaries, but it was also us naively trying to figure out how the industry works, and why people hadn't said any of these things before.
Because of our history in branding and advertising, we question everything. When we were speaking to people we knew in the industry, they would say, ‘You could never do that.’ We'd ask, ‘but why not?’ and the response was, ‘Because no one's done that.’ But that made us excited — was is it because of legal reasons or were they just scared? It turned out you can say it, it's just no one had yet.
For example, we felt the T&Cs should be considerably different to any others that have ever been done. We don’t just put in what everyone else does, we look at it and go, ‘is that a chance for a little surprise? Is that a chance to say something different?’ On the caution, it says ‘Don't put it in your eyes. Don't swallow it. It's pretty self-explanatory, but we still have to say it.’ The legal team asked, ‘Why don't you just use what we sent you?’ And our response was, ‘Do we have to?’ And we didn’t.
We were trying to be jarring at every point because everyone was just doing what everyone else had done before. They only knew the category as it stood.
You’re a smaller player in a sea of bigger fish. A lot of businesses would let the constraints of that limit them — how have you avoided that?
Our constraints are all the best parts of the brand, because it means we can't afford to not have a swing — we have to be able to do more with less. There are things we need to say but we need to do it in an entertaining way and to push boundaries in an extreme way. A lot of brands don't get that opportunity.
We’re so jarring that we can't help but stand out and that means we're having bigger conversations with more retailers, more festivals, more places than we probably deserve to, purely because we're speaking in a way that's quite different. We're lucky in that way, because that's what's getting us through the door, not spend.
We can't afford to not be the brand that we want to be, because we don't have the spend to get away with that.
Any advice for other folks trying to get their own challenger brand off the ground?
Being ‘extremely something’ is a thing that we speak about a lot in the agency and in Slather. Someone in the industry said that — it's definitely not my quote. The idea is that a lot of brands have got a checklist of so many things they want to be, who they're aiming at, and all those elements. But the art of reduction — of simplifying — is at the heart of everything we try to do. You have to kill everything else and just go all-in on one particular thing.
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/
Follow eatbigfish on Linkedin and Instagram
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
How to start the Google Creative Lab (with Andy Berndt)
What does it take to make iconic work with iconic founders – when nobody out there cares about you or your product? And why might having ADHD be a gift in helping you think about how to overcome that?
In our Season 3 opener, Adam Morgan sits down with Andy Berndt, former agency leader and the founding force behind Google’s Creative Lab. Andy has worked alongside some of the most uncompromising figures in modern business — from Steve Jobs, Phil Knight and Michael Jordan to Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai — and has been at the heart of some of the most celebrated and impactful creative work coming out of America in the last 30 years. As account director, copywriter and client. A unique perspective.
Andy reflects on:
- Why “nobody out there cares” can – and perhaps should – be the beginning of any great creative work.
- The particular talent that Steve Jobs and Phil Knight brought to assessing the work they were presented with
- How humour in the room is often the doorway to the breakthrough idea
- Whether clients get the creative work they deserve
- And how Google’s Creative Lab grew from small stickers to Super Bowl spots
Along the way, he explains how his ADHD became a creative advantage, why briefs are sometimes best answered with a poster instead of a presentation, and how “kids with crayons” built some of the most celebrated work of the digital era, including the now-famous “Parisian Love” film.
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Let's Make This More Interesting is a podcast from eatbigfish: the strategic consultancy that helps ambitious Challengers to grow.
Follow Adam Morgan on Linkedin.
Thanks to our editor Ruth and our producer Rachael. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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