'Put a Dent in the Universe': Creating Iconic Ads with Jeff Goodby & Eamonn Dixon

0:00It's Fall in America, make it count. At the Ram Drive-In to Fall Sales Event, make it powerful with our strongest Ram 1500 ever. Make it move with the Ram Heavy Duty with an available Cummins diesel and make it go to the distance with a 10-year or 100,000-mile powertrain limited warranty. Hurry and now for great deals during the Ram Drive-In to Fall Sales Event. Excludes fully electric vehicles applied to 2026 model-year vehicles non-transferable. Visit MoPAR.com for complete details and a copy of the powertrain limited warranty. Cummins is a registered trademark of Cummins Inc. Ram and Hemi are registered trademarks of FCA-US LLC. You might not think that it's good. Five, four, three, two, one. This is a very special edition of admission. We've got Freddie over there in New York, Freddie Young. But in the studio, we have got Jeff Goodby, of Goodby Silverstein and Partners. Jeff, it is a thrill to have you here in the studio. And we also have Aiman Dixon, who is also from Goodby, Goodby Silverstein, New York, the ECD of the New York office.

1:02Well, I don't even know where to start, other than to say, to have you both here in the studio with us to talk on admission, is a genuine thrill for me, so you're very welcome here. We're so happy to be here. Thanks for having us. And this has been such a good time to come here with this NFL game going on. We're having such a good time. Well, it's big. I mean, I don't know whether you've noticed, but certainly our media has decided to really go for it with regard to NFL, the NFL promotion. But the good news is that both of you called a tram here. So I just, you know, so Aiman, you are a Melbourneian, correct? I am, yep. So did you persuade Jeff that it would actually, you know, the way to get to throughout W, or the admission studios is via a tram? I think, well, we were talking about last night. I think a friend of his, a friend of ours, Esther might have been the one that sort of said, if you come to Melbourne, you have to go on a tram. You have to go on a tram, so I'll lean forward. I've been on it before. I've been on it. Okay. And so you've been to Melbourne before, or you've been on the San Francisco tram a lot. A lot, but I've been to Melbourne before, and I've taken this round.

2:05Okay. There's some advertising companies along the route here. Yeah, that's it. And so it turned me when I, one of the, well, enduring memories of, I've only been to San Francisco once, which is sort of mid 80s. And yes, I did get on a tram. But the people that were driving the tram, they played a big role in sort of the atmosphere, the atmospherics, because they, they play it, they're ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, is that, is that, is that true? Is that still happen? Certainly does. It happened right outside our office for years and years. Loud banging and the sound of the wheels, and it's just part of the life there. It's great. Oh, and Jeff, so 1983, am I right? That 1983 is when you and your partner, Rich Silverstein, decided to go into the ad game. Is that correct? Well, we're in the ad game. We were working at an agency in San Francisco, Ogame and Meyder, which was run by Hal Rani, who was like the premier creative guy in the country, if not the world at that point, and very difficult character to work for.

3:07But I learned everything that was valuable to know and advertising from that guy. Tell us more about that, because I, you know, El Middle Notes, you'll notice Hal Rani tell, I've written here, tell. Because it's a name, it's a name that those of us that are into the ad world, you know, we've read a lot and, you know, we've had lots of conversations in lots of wonderful forums. Hal Rani, of course, is a name you hear, you do hear a lot. So maybe just for the admission listeners, not everyone, maybe not everyone, would have heard of Hal Rani. I mean, Freddie, have you heard of Hal Rani? No, I have not. There we go. Wow. What is the Rani story? Well, imagine a guy that looks like Ernest Hemingway, okay? And he doesn't look like an advertising guy. He dresses in khakis, smokes constantly, and he's got a great voice, you know, his voices, made for TV and radio. He did his own voiceovers a lot. And at the time that I got there,

4:08I just remember, he, first of all, he called me up, and I didn't know who he was. I'm like, Freddie, didn't know who he was. And I went back to Jay Walter Thompson, where I was working. I told one of the writers there, and he said, you have an interview with God. I said, oh, okay. So, I have to believe that. Believe about this, right? No, no. I'm not sure. Right. So, I go over there and talk to him, and he had seen some work that I had done. And he said, well, maybe he'd like to come work here. And I said, definitely, very much. And he said, well, how much money would you like to make? And I said, I don't know. I said, I want to come work here, you know, and he gave me a number. And he said, we will pay you $26,000. And I said, holy shit, that's great. Yeah, not a 90, not a 90, cold. 83? 83. Yeah. And he said, shit, that's not so much money.

5:08So, I knew I should have asked for more. Yeah. But anyway, I came in. Oh, so there's no further communication from the guy. And I go and quit my job at JWT, and I'm waiting to hear from him. And finally, I called there. And I got his assistant, Nikki, on the phone. And I said, Nikki, hell hired me the other day. And I quit my job after, like, know what happens next. And she covered the phone up. But I could hear what she was saying. So, how there's a Jeff and Good be on the phone. And he says, you hired him the other day. And he said, I did? I don't remember that. And he said, I haven't come in on Saturday. Wow, I can't. So, I did. I came to work on Saturday, and they were doing a pitch. Of course. And I went in there, and I went into the conference room, and I put a lot of money in there. And to the conference room, and I put the real into the machine. And I was like, holy shit.

6:09And this is like another level, is expected of me here. This is like stuff I'd never seen before. It was so good. So, a Saturday. You're in there on a Saturday. So, I'm in. I think, my view, I'm sure Freddie aligns with this. Avertising's got to be a certain obsession. So, being in on a Saturday to win a new business pitch. I'm sure that that's still the case. But, so, just tell me about your New York goodby experience, and whether that sort of obsession is required. Well, I wouldn't say it's every Saturday that we're in at work. But, yeah, I mean, I've been out there for three years. I was in the San Francisco office for six years, with the tram's dingin' passer offices every 10 minutes, annoying hell out of us, but it had such a charm to it. And I moved out to New York with my two little kids. And it was a pretty big leap, but it's been an amazing experience so far. You know, when I left Jeff and Rich and Margaret, who's our CCO, sort of just said, go out there and see what happens. I actually remember the day when Margaret took me to the Ritz,

7:12which is just up the road and sort of said, hey, do you want to go out to New York and see if we can make something of this out here? And I walked back in and Rich Silverstein, who, if you know him, he's every time you see him, he's got something to say. And he said, and I was walking in the building and he said, what, so what do you say? What do you want to do? And I said, oh yeah, I've got to go home and ask my wife about it and see what she thinks, you know, classic. And he said, oh well, if you go out and you screw it up, don't worry about it. And so having that kind of confidence, I guess, just to be myself out there has been pretty amazing. And we're built a pretty great group of people. There's a lot of ex San Francisco people that have come out and we're trying to maintain the soul of what, you know, the agency, the legacy of the agency in New York. But it's a different place, but it's been really fun. Well, I'm a new Roman boy, so, you know, we love it. When Melbourneians get into the Northern Hemisphere, like our friend here, Freddie, and you know, take, I mean, ECD of Goodby's, New York City, pretty damn good. And of course, there's another Melbourneian who we have had an admission discussion with only 48 hours ago,

8:14which of course is Brett Gospur. Brett Gospur being, you know, all markets, but the USC, he's a Melbourne boy as well. Yeah, so it's pretty interesting. And Freddie, Freddie, of course, isn't Melbourne Boy in New York City. So, Freddie, I know you've got a couple of questions. Why don't you fire away? Oh, thanks for us. So, guys, thanks so much for coming. But Jeff, I've been burning to ask you this one. So, you've made so many, like, let's call it, like, canonical pieces of advertising. That are so, like, ingrained into, like, the minds of creatives as they're up and coming. They've sort of, like, become rules, or, like, maxims for, like, how to, like, playbooks for advertising. Like, you think about, sort of, got milk. That's been in every textbook I've ever read, and it's like the whole, you know, we don't sell milk. We sell the panic of, like, when you run out of milk, like, don't sell the drill, sell the whole, that sort of thing. You've created all these campaigns that have birthed these rules. Do you still, do you think in terms of those rules? Do you find, like, the pieces you've made in the past

9:17are helpful to you and your teams coming up with new ideas today? Well, I got to tell you, I'm very lucky to work with people like Amon, that, you know, constantly bring me this stuff. And my job is to really just go, hey, is this something that really is going to, like, change the world when we put it out there? And that's the goal, you know, or just Steve Jobs called it, put it in the universe. If you think that you're best friend, or your sister, or brother, or your mom and dad, or anybody that, you know, think of this idea, then don't do it. It's got to be better than that, you know? It's got to be, and really what we're doing in many cases is taking something that everybody knows, like, the panic of running out of milk and dramatizing it in some way that has never been seen before. So, that never been seen before part is very important. You know, we're not necessarily saying something new. We're saying something that people have heard before and so it has to be heard in a different way.

10:19So, I mean, when you're looking at a book for someone that wants to come and work for you, it could be New York City. What are you looking for when you go, actually, I can see that particular cat can fit in. Well, it's a great question because we're on the lookout for great creatives all the time. I think truthfully, ideas, people who can speak in the language of ideas and not just executions. I mean, we talk a lot about, like, what's the angle? I kind of like that way of looking at it, you know, to Jeff's point, just sort of showing, you know, here's somebody using a product in an interesting way or there's a celebrity slapped on or there's some, you know, funny, executional detail, some tinsel. I'm a bit more focused on the Christmas tree a lot of the time and trying to figure out if people can actually come up with real ideas because at the end of the day, I mean, you know, like, especially these days, there's just a lot of no sayings out there. There's a lot of things along the way, especially in the US, there's a lot of testing as well, a lot of consumer testing. And so, if you've got a core of an idea that's strong enough and simple enough and you can explain to somebody in a sentence and they go, well, never thought about it like that.

11:19It, you know, not only to Jeff's point, is it going to be something that's going to resonate with other people but I think it's also just going to be something that other people can actually add to and build from versus just having to, like, delicately hold on to. Is originality hard to find? I think it's lying around on the ground all the time and people don't pick it up. I mean, I tell that story about gut milk all the time, it was on a, I told somebody to scroll it on a board as part of a meeting that we were doing and I was just looking at it going, that could be a tagline. It's so little and stupid. And if there were great stories before it, it would just be amazing. And, you know, and like you said, it's really, it just immediately encapsulates the feeling of the paranoia that you don't have milk. I love the use of the word stupid there. Yeah. I do, I do. Because there's something very charming about a lot of the work. I think would this be fair? A lot of the goodby work. There's a stupidity. I don't really mean that. But you know what it's up there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a nonsense to it. There's a nonsense.

12:19There's a stupidity. There's a, it can be observational, but I was observational to the point where it's just completely crazy or silly. Right? Is that fair? I, you know, anyone was talking about making things that connect to clients and that can be, that people are excited to work on. I mean, that's what I want. I want people to be excited to come in the building and work on Cheetos, Orange Dust, or work on Got Milker. Have things where, where I can come into the middle of that and make something better than anybody's ever made. Yeah. I love that feeling, you know. Wonderful. Duretos. I mean, we better cover it off. We're here. We're here because it's NFL time. So we've got the 40, I assume you're a 49ers man, Jeff. Not really. I grew up in the East Coast and I'm a New England Patriots fan. You're a Patriots guy. So that was, okay, are you here? I was running out. Well, I'm not here. We're actually here because we want to go to the football game. It's as simple as that. I like it. He lives here. He grew up here.

13:19He just wanted to go home and see his parents. I wanted to come to the football game. Okay. And Super Bowl. So Super Bowl Duretos. 23. This is a great story. And, you know, and, you know, you might think that everyone's heard it, but not necessarily. So, so why don't you, why don't you tell us your really super life story? In fact, your grand children, even your great-grandchildren will be telling this story. Yeah. So, so we're, you know, we were lucky enough to have Frida Leia as a client of ours and, you know, done some really amazing work for them, including a lot of Super Bowl ads, which are, which is also a beast unto itself when you go through that process. And, you know, I've been in the States for 10 years at that point and really grown to love the NFL. And, you know, and like sort of the culture of it. And I think just the Super Bowl is just, it's such a spectacle. And it's also just as a big sports fan as anyone in from Melbourne is. I always really just wanted to go to a game. And so I remember we were going through the process of making a Super Bowl ad. And I sort of said to one of the clients, if any tickets become available at any given point in moment,

14:21you know, just let me know. And of course, you know, wake up on Super Bowl Sunday and there's no tickets, you know, that have come away. So I'm sitting there with my wife trying to plan out what we're going to do for the day with our kids. And I get this call from our clients saying, oh, somebody's dropped out. There is a seat at the stadium. Now I was in San Francisco at the time and the Super Bowl was in Arizona and Phoenix. And she said, you've just got to get here in time. And so, you know, again, like the story of moving to New York, I went to my wife and I said, Hey, I want to go do this thing. What do you think? And she said, yeah, go for it. If you want to do it. So I quickly got a flight and I landed in Arizona and raced my way to the stadium. And by this point, you know, the fanfare of the whole city had been built up kind of like Melbourne is right now. And it was just, it was like a, it was almost just like a barren wasteland. There was nobody around because everyone had gone to pubs or homes or to the ground itself to watch. So I've just got this Uber going through the city, get to the ground, walk in, you know, and the sort of national anthem's being played. And I was like, wow, this is pretty wild. Let's think that like three hours ago, I was just sitting in my living room.

15:22And anyway, so the game goes through and we were sort of in this, in these seats are kind of right behind the goal post in the end zone. And it came down to one final kick and the ball was kicked by this guy called Harrison Butte. And it went over the thing and I caught this, this ball, the Super Bowl ball. And very good. And so, and but he also had a Doritos ad in the Super Bowl as well. We did. Yeah, we had a, an ad that was actually also one of the only ads because they only run a few in the stadium, which run in there as well, which was pretty, it was a pretty crazy experience. How's he going, Aiman, hey, Jeff? He's had some luck in life, isn't he? Or he works hard, I'm sure. A little bit of both. Yeah, a little bit of both. It's funny you guys talking about the work that your shop is produced. And I think another word instead of stupidity might be, I think restraint is very much a theme. And that's running right from Got Milk to NBA's. I love this game, even Cheeto Dust. As a, like, you know, a fellow ad person seeing these ideas out in the world,

16:24I feel a sense of like almost concern for them. Like as they get pitched, like they feel very vulnerable to a client perhaps saying something like, I was that it? Like, is that all you've really presenting? So I'd like to know how you guys go about, or think about selling what are in essence really simple ideas and how you protect them throughout that process. Well, we make Freddie and we make them sound really complicated and smart. That's real one. It's real odd yet. No, I tell my guys all the time, you have to take your own head off and put it on the head of the client and see yourself presenting this stuff. And go, what are her concerns? What does she want to do in life? What's her goal? What does she want this thing to be? Is she afraid of going to a party and having people talk about this thing? So you've got to have all those fears in your head ready to feel it, like through her eyes, through her brain. And that's how you sell. You don't really have to sell.

17:26That's how you discuss difficult ideas, crazy ideas. It's very hard to do what you've done, right? Lots of people try. Lots of people try. And yet you've done it. So 83, you started. Now, 10 years later, Omnacom came into the picture. So my assumption is that that contributed to how did you do it? Well, it's kind of a long story, but we wanted... Jay Shiette had brought over this form of strategy that they called planning at the time, which was invented at an agency in London called Bosnian policy and Sydney Pollett had this idea of going and talking to real people about an advertising strategy of a challenge. And we wanted to incorporate that somehow into what we did. So we want to be MP, which we thought, frankly, in 1983 was the best agency in the world. If you know them, their work was ridiculous. And did they become BMP? Did he? Did he? Did? And that's part of the story.

18:29So we went over there and they asked if they could buy some stock in our company, because we're an independent company at the time. And we said, sure, but we want John Steele, your planner. And so we got a player to be named later in this trade. And Steele came over and became our vice chairman or something, but had a planning. And he brought that in. And he was the best planner in America for many, many years. You've seen the books that he wrote and stuff. Yeah. So we're now 30% owned by BMP. Well, BMP is publicly traded at the time in London. And there's a hostile takeover from the French agency, B-D-D-P, if you remember that name. Yes, I do. And the last thing that English agencies want is to be fucking taken over by the French. Yes. So they started looking around for somebody else to buy them, to get them out of this.

19:31And Omnichom came in, Bruce Crawford, who was then the... And he was a wonderful guy, just died last year. He Crawford came in, who had been the head of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He's a really elegant guy, very good at talking to English people. And he said, well, we could buy you and say, and so they did. And so they were 100% owned. They became part of DDB. And Crawford came to me at a financial thing and said, OK, we own 30% of your agency. We don't want to own just 30%. We either will own none of it or 100%. And so you could buy the 30% back for whatever they paid you for it, which was not that much. But it would have been good, you're a younger man. And therefore, you got some coin, and that was good for your mortgage, or whatever. Yes, so I thought that was a good idea. So I went back to my partners and they were like, oh, man, I just bought a summer house and I got a boat. And my kid is in private school now.

20:32So I went back to Crawford and said, well, how much were you to give us for 100%. So he gave us a number and I went, that sounds good. And you know what else? There's another thing going on at the time, which was in Berlin. It was the third partner besides me and Rich Silverstein. A really good guy that maintained a good relationship with a really smart, great writer. And great presenter. Like, was a big force in the company when we started it. Thought big. And you know, it was a big part of our success to start out. We started, Rich and I started not really wanting to expand the company as quickly as Andy wanted to. He wanted to sell to people. He wanted to open offices. He wanted to be global. And we just wanted to make shit. You know what I mean? We were like people that made things. And so we got a little scared of that. So this was a way to divide up the value of the company without having an NDB. Somebody that took me to court for the rest of my life. I not so silly as I did get to work with John Steele.

21:34So I know exactly what you're talking about when it comes to trapped or strategic brain. And back to Got Milk. He was involved with Got Milk. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah. I think he was the guy that was in a focus group out in the Central Valley of California. Where a woman said, the only time I noticed milk is if I run out of it. Bang. He came back and said, this is it. Yes. Yeah. But the part that was so magnetic about that was that it was to advertise the product by the absence of it. Which was really strange. Well, there's my peck shot of course. I mean, we don't actually get to say a bottle of milk or a count of milk do we? Well, there's always an empty one, but that's about it. Okay, because I've just got the milk on the lip in my mind. Yeah, and we were not the milk on the lip people. We were the the empty. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, the milk on I got to tell you a story about that. So we did a leave behind when we pitched the business that had everybody working on the business with a with a milk mustache. So all of us were head milk.

22:34And so we ended that in one of my creative people came to me and said, you know, this could be like a print campaign or something like. And I said, now it's a good presentation piece, but it's not a campaign. The campaign's over here. So another agency actually took the got milk thing didn't use got milk with it. They took they they made the milk mustache. And then they convinced the national people to to rent got milk. The two words got milk from the California milk people. This is too much too much of an answer. It was a million dollars a word. Oh yeah, wow. Two million dollars a year. Well, so John Steel of course is you know like the planners planner. And so Freddie, I'm sure that I've shown you John Steel's book around planning. And if I haven't, you better get on Amazon right now. Truth lies in advertise. Truth lies in advertising. Absolute superstar. And he used to when he was working at WPP, he used to put on a event at the shadow tofu,

23:34which was David Oglefish at home in France. He did that every year, I think. That's pretty good. Pretty. Yeah, it was funny. You were saying I now realize Russ, it wasn't a you that told me about John Steel, but my current, um, chair, Steve, who talking about truth lies and advertising told me there is only one book on advertising that's worth reading. And that's it. So that's a it's a good recommendation. But looking around the table, guys, I think we have you know pretty well accounted almost like every sort of era of advertising over the past sort of 40 or so years. We have, you know, sort of very like print art direction led through to the sort of like self-referential stuff of the 90s, like visual maximalism, um, and to today. So like, amen. If I could challenge you to describe sort of the era of advertising that we're in like right now. Like, what are we up to? What's advertising up to as an industry right now?

24:35It's kind of funny. I don't, you know, we, we, the problems seem to be the same that we always have had. And the challenges are always in communicating, connecting with people. Um, and, uh, and obviously the media has changed a ton. You know, I think social media, especially, you know, the doom scrolling world that we live in right now. And I think especially with younger people, I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges of like how to connect with them when they've sort of grown up in a space where they've probably been told they're doomed. And they don't have much to live for most of the time. Um, you know, I don't understand too dark, but you know what I mean? I think the era we're in right now is, is, is still the same. Like I look at the Got Mill campaign, the depravation strategy that Jeff was talking about. It's, it's, you could still do something very similar like that right now. It's just the sort of like the form and the shape that it takes in communicating with people and connecting with them is, is going to be different. And I think that that's, you know, that's something that, you know, over my time in the industry, and so I've, I've, you know, had the, had the joy of working at this agency, just the ability to sort of always strip it back to what is the challenge we're trying to create. And then when you start to think about the medium that we're sort of putting it through,

25:35having people who can sort of do that in a way that actually is going to shop and that and connect with people is, is, is it? So I don't know if that answers the question. Freddie, because it's a bloody big question you've just asked, but um, but I think that we just always just try and try and look at the actual problem we're trying to solve and then try to figure out how do you do it to Jeff's point earlier in a way that's actually getting people to remember it, because I think it's, it's probably harder than ever in terms of just the amount of content that's started each other. So I'm, I'm, I'm looking at the George Lois, Lois, George Lois book, you know, Celebrity. I love looking at that. And, uh, and the very idea that you get yourself a celebrity and back in the piece of advertising. And I, I think the advertising world went through a period where it said, I need, you don't do that at Pirates the Brand, which I've always thought was all shit actually. So I'm just, is there something that's going on now with regard to like the resellability of advertising? So you think about the, you know, the Johnny Walker campaign with Carpenter, you know? So is there something going on there? It's almost, and when you look at that piece of advertising, I feel like I'm looking at something that was done in the 60s. So is there something going on in that front?

26:36I think there was a period where we were cynical about using celebrities. We thought it was kind of a crutch that, you know, idiots use. And, uh, and now it's quite the opposite. I think, and, and by the way, the celebrities are much more willing to do it than they were then. Um, and it's, it's kind of a cool thing to do among celebrities. And in Amon, you should talk to him about it because he's done more celebrity advertising in one year than I've done in my entire career. Well, I think celebrities are going to be the, the, the raw use of celebrities. Um, I was talking to someone recently about, I met in the Snickers campaign, if we're talking about great campaigns, you know, you're not, you're not, you're when you're hungry. That first spot in the use of Betty White and that spot in the Super Bowl was just like the most genius use of celebrity. You know, it wasn't just whacked on there. It was done in such a way where, you know, obviously the strategy back to the point I was saying is was just perfect. And that execution showing up in that way on the Super Bowl with, with such a beloved personality, but used in just the most brilliant way.

27:36And so I think that that's always the challenge. I think, you know, I'm sure Jeff sees this a lot. There's a lot of teams that just like, they just ride in a celebrity and they're like, oh, we get this to do it. And we work with a lot of partner agencies that say, oh, if you just put celebrity and that you're going to get X amount extra hits or, you know, I balls on it, it's got to be about the right use of celebrity. But that, that brings me to the origin of that, that orange dust campaign for Cheetos and the MC Hammer thing, you should tell that story. So I mean, Freddie touched on this before, but, but the Cheetos campaign, which about in 2019, you know, we'd had the client for a while. And I think it's sort of like, I don't know, the work, the work that was showing up on TV. And I guess the brand in the way is just being embraced by culture at the time, we're just adults with each other. And so the, the same at the time, who was a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant person, she just said, let's start to reassess this, you know. And she didn't say the dust at the time. Actually, the dust was a thing that we were told not to go anywhere near it was disgusting and gross, no one wanted to touch it. But, but, you know, I was given the opportunity to come in and sort of like see if we could figure it out and I remember.

28:41So it's about, yeah, let's magic when you think about it the right way. And I remember there was this, this, this teams, the amazing Brazilian team brought this idea of this, that when you've got the dust on your hands, you can't do anything else. And of course, you get to MC Hammer's can't touch this and we're talking about the Super Bowl and a way we go. Here we are. So I remember we went to this meeting and not before actually that a lot of the team that have worked on the brand for a long time were like, they don't like dust, we shouldn't present anything to do with dust whatsoever. And so we had this, the classic sitting in a hotel lobby at 3am, the not before a presentation arguing about what we're going to present. And when I've gone forward with it, I remember when I presented that spot and you know, I was singing the song and doing the whole song and dance of presentations. And, and, and you know, the same at the time just said, that's it. That's, that's a spot. And of course, then whenever you're on a celebrity spot, you've got to go and get celebrity and MC Hammer, I think, who, you know, you know, is obviously, you know, a huge star in the late 80s and early 90s. I'd probably been parodied, you know, in different ways over time. And I remember when we presented the script to him, he just said, this is this, first of all, he thought it was hilarious, but secondally thought, this is the first time I've done anything where it feels like you're actually like giving, giving to, to and building on it versus taking away and making a joke out of it.

29:56So it was pretty cool. We had to then persuade him to dress up like his, you know, early 90s self, which was another whole story. But, um, but again, I mean, that was just a really good use of celebrity in the sense that it was just kind of fun and surprising and interesting versus just whacked on there. You know, it was great about that. Anyone is a 30 second spot in 30 second spots are rarely remembered on the Super Bowl anymore. I mean, I tell clients, yeah, spring for the 60, you know, I mean, it's makes a big difference. So, I mean, and I'm just told us about the, you know, the role that clients play, you know, sometimes I think in the, the ad world, we forget that it needs a buyer, you know, you can have as many ideas as you like, but someone's got to say yes, and then rather check. So just, you know, some thoughts on some great buyers of advertising, if boy, we've been lucky to work with a lot of great buyers of advertising, you know, I was telling somebody last night about the working on Norwegian cruise line. We have to be old to remember that, but we, we did a campaign for them that was beautiful black and white TV, black and white print ads and the line was it's different out here.

30:56And it had beautiful shots of them, the ship and stuff and the buyer of the advertising, interesting that you ask, his name was Adam Aaron, and he came in as the CEO and sort of marketing guru of the place. He took me to dinner and he said, I don't like any of the advertising you're doing. I'm going to fire you. I'll give you one last chance. That's good. That's good. It's good. Right. And I said, okay, well, what do you think the next thing should be? I just wanted to get a feeling for what you're thinking. He said, I don't know, but I think that people go on cruises to get laid. I said, what, what are you talking about? Well, yeah, he said, that's what it's for. Even if you're like 80 years old, you think you're going to rekindle this wonderful relationship with this person out on the ocean. And if you're not, if you're 25, you think you're going to meet somebody new. Well, it's either going to be funny or it's, and you said, I don't want funny. Okay. I said, so it's going to be like elegant. It's going to be, and I said, it's going to be like a Calvin Klein ad. It's going to be like black and white. It's going to be sexy. And the business wouldn't crazy. And people went on the ships and they actually went like, I didn't get laid.

32:06Yeah. Yeah. So, so you know, the test, the luck of just the vegetables. It's not really a fair test. Come on. I'm just measuring the asterisk on the headliner. The daddy, you may not necessarily get laid. You know, like, if there's not going to be the money back Freddy. It's, it's funny. I mean, you're talking before about celebrity and how, and also Jeff, what you said about how they're like willing to participate in advertising nowadays. I mean, one of the biggest shocks for me coming over to the US was suddenly this was a tool that was available to us. Like back in Australia, you could never envisage saying, oh, should we get, you know, Russell Crowe. And that being like a legitimate option on the table. So as I moved here, like two years ago, that was one thing that just blew my mind. I'm curious to hear of any other sort of like, I don't know, cultural shock transition stories of yours about moving from Australia to the US. And how you went about navigating that as a creative. I mean, there's so many. Like, I, first of all, the, the size and scale of everything just blew me away. You know, I moved. I was at an agency before, before could be, could be service in opponents.

33:14Sorry, sorry, Rich. We're called AKQA in San Francisco, which was a innovation, you know, technology sort of. Yeah, very much in that pocket. And my partner and I at the time, we really wanted to stretch ourselves and see if we could sort of like move further into that space. But just we were working on an house of bush and and Audi and Levi's and coming from Australia, where especially Melbourne, where you're working on brands that don't quite have the size, the size and scale of that. That was one thing that just blew me away. And then to be honest, before years later when I moved up up the road into China town to work with Jeff. I think just like even more so, just the ability to like to sort of like come up with an idea and then, you know, in the right idea, I have one client that always used to stay money for as good ideas. And that they're always sort of stuck with me as well. And so you could write like that. Write that down. You could write a script where you could say, we want to do this. You know, say the budget was originally, I don't know, a million dollars to a shoot. If you had the right idea, you could, you could turn into anything. You know, it could go from. I just want to do a campaign to it's it's going to be a ginormous, massive thing. I also, the one of the biggest things I think that I think one of the reasons the trains do so well in the US is Americans, and especially in California, people are just so nice to each other. There's just a sort of, there's a sort of like people say a lot, but they don't necessarily say everything. And I think that I found over time that you had to sort of like really read between the lines of what people were saying.

34:39You know, of course, when you're around the right people and you work with with the right, the right people over there, like, you know, talked about some today, but they just just brilliant at the way that they can sort of like find their way through things. But I that was probably one of the biggest culture shocks I found because in Australia, we will just say, whatever I'm on it any given time, you tell something, something shit or you tell something you're really excited about it. Whereas in America, people like, oh, that's really interesting. And you like, what does that mean? It's Paul in America, make it count at the Ram Drive-in to Fall Sales event, make it powerful with our strongest Ram 1500 ever, make it move with the Ram Heavy Duty with an available Cummins diesel, and make it go the distance with a 10 year or 100,000 mile powertrain limited warranty. As Jeff knows, I'm fascinated by the seal commercial. There's something so interesting about it. It's like, you know, we're going to get seal, but we're going to make him look like a seal. And then, and then in a way, you know,

35:48and I don't want to be, say the wrong thing, there's a certain formula to it as a piece of advertising, the way it's structured, you know, so you have that moment, you drink it, then you go into a new world, etc. Right. And then you've got seal as a seal. So I just want to know that it worked exceptionally well. That's my hope for that campaign. Oh, it worked. So, you know, it was the number one Google, Google thing on the Super Bowl. Number one. And I think a lot of it was like, how did they get him to do that? Exactly. Yeah. So seal as a seal. I mean, honestly, I mean, is that one of the ideas? So it comes across your desk, you're the boss, you're the boss. And you go, seal as a seal really well, I mean, I would love to take credit for the campaign. I didn't actually work on that, but I know the did right. No, no, no, no, but all the people I know that worked on it was one of those ones. And again, this, the team that wrote that spot, the same Brazilian team that worked on all of the Cheetos work with me just, they have a way of coming up with the most stupidly simple and sticky content. And I think that that was one of those ones where, you know, it's probably one of those briefs that was very complicated. It was probably like, oh, we're trying to connect with this audience. We're trying to do this. We're going to do this and the Super Bowl. There's all these rules and.

36:58And then you just come up with an idea like that, which just is so visually striking. I also, what the other thing that I think is you'll see these days that there's a lot of, and Freddie, I've been to see you're taking this, but there's a lot of trends towards this more cinematic dark moody kind of like way of filming things, like trying to look. Almost like Oppenheimer, whereas that spot was so bright and loud and almost just embodied the brand in itself and the experience of it. And I think on the Super Bowl, it just, it just sort of like, it was just grabbed everyone's attention. And I mean, talking about things that like, you know, we're in the zeitgeist straight away. I mean, like, I listen to a lot of podcasts outside of advertising. And that was the spot that everyone talked about. That was the one thing everyone talked about. And there's a million other brands that were on there that probably had much bigger budgets, much bigger, you know, sort of lengths like Jeff was saying, but it just, but I think that key visual, I think they presented a key visual and everyone said. What the fuck is this? I got to say that the beauty of it was that song because you know, you take the idea of steel as a seal and you go, that sounds really stupid.

38:03But then when you have him sing that song and he looks good, he looks good as a seal. And you are thinking the whole time, how did they get him to do that? How did they get him? He's like an older guy. He's smart about his career. He's been really good. And then he did this. I think what's so interesting about that is the consumer, the consumer rewards the advertiser. Right? So the consumer says, thank you. Thank you for getting seal to look like a seal and giving me that complete and they buy it. Right? I don't know. Sometimes I think it's no more complex than that. They reward the advertiser. But there's something about him singing that song in the words of that song. That you're right. It captures like high caffeinated kind of feeling. The whole look of the thing is highly caffeinated. I think what was really interesting about that spot, and if you think about a lot of advertising, it just went for it. It said, we're going to do this and we're going to go. We're not going to try and be something that's not. It just was so extreme in the way that they went for it.

39:06And on the Super Bowl, I mean, when everyone's just like vying for all the eyeballs and all the attention, people do probably try to show too much strain, I think sometimes. Or they try and do it in a way that's disingenuous to the product or the celebrity they're using whatever it might be. That's right. It's funny. I mean, as you were saying before about this sort of cinematic kind of serious thing, there was a real joy in the key visual of that. And to get on the biggest stage as well, I think the Super Bowl, I've noticed a trend, yeah, like you were saying before, people trying to undercut the moment a little bit. I'm thinking of a certain sort of what do we call Bitcoin trading platform that went with sort of like a karaoke, only spot. So people are trying to subvert expectations. And so I think there's something really quite distinct nowadays, like to get up and be joyful and to be loud and almost to be like happy that this is an ad. And we're going to have fun for the next 30 seconds. I love it. So back to Jeff, how did you do it?

40:06So 1993, Omnicon gets involved with your business. Now, so that's that again, that's a long time ago. And yet, you've managed to keep the brand. You've managed to say this is still good be Silverstein and Partners. That in itself takes a lot of skill. Because as all of us, well, those of us that have been involved with advertising and those of us that watch advertising, most of the groups, WPP, Omnicon, Havas, etc. In effect, they've got an Excel spreadsheet. And they are forever merging agencies in order to try and make the PNL work. And they're burning seemingly famous brands like WIND AR comes to mind. So part of how did you do it? How did you actually stick to not dealing with that silly spreadsheet? And they do have the spreadsheet. It's not in effect. They do have the spreadsheet. Partly by making money, frankly. And making money inoculates you against a little bit of the meddling that you might otherwise get.

41:11We never make enough money for them. But luckily we attract people. Like I made this analogy to John Ren, where I said, listen, we're like the clownfish in the reef that leads all the other fish to the reef. And then they all get eaten. But the clownfish never gets eaten. That's the important part. And you want the clownfish to not get eaten. And I would write him notes that were signed to the clownfish. And I think he thought I was out of my mind. Yeah. So the other thing which you've got you've done unbelievably well is say, you know what? We're going to do these cars, West cars. And so no, we're not going to do the Hong Kong or the Shanghai or the Sydney or the London, etc. So they must have been pressure over a long period of time to exploit the brand, I suppose. Oh, there always was. I think the reason why Bruce Crawford, the original CEO, was interested in us as he saw it as the beginning of another network. Yeah, sure. So you had DDB, you had BBDO, he thought we were the third network.

42:13And I think that's what was really the problem is the original I resisted that network and Andy embraced it. You know, that's what kind of broke us up in the 93. I wanted to maybe finish up with this guys. I imagine a huge part of your job now is just talent development as well as idea development. I saw something the other day about a guy, you know, a very wealthy man saying he's in a room full of people and he can tell you who's going to be a millionaire. But he can't tell you who's going to be a billionaire. I'm wondering if you're looking at a room full of creatives. Are you able to spot sort of, you know, as they're starting out their careers? Who are the ones that are going to shoot right out? And what do they, if so, what do they look like? They're so different from one another. I mean, there are some people that are just great in a room and they can make anybody believe anything. And they're not necessarily the best creatives. And then there are other people that are great creatives that can't do that thing. And you look for somebody that can kind of do both.

43:16And, you know, Amin was talking before about, you know, looking at people's books. I think I've found that I hire people on the basis of one thing, like just one crazy thing in their book. And I go, wow, that thing is a 10. The other stuff in your book is like three or two, but that is a 10. And I'm going to figure out how to make you do more of those, you know? I mean, there's people who are to Jeff's point, I think just really great writers or author actors or designers or whatever they might be. And then to a point, there's great, there's people are great presenting and that's what you were saying before. That's like a big part of our job is being able to go to a room and a group of people and actually like persuade them to sort of like, by what you're saying. I personally think when I meet a lot of creatives, especially when you get them in a time to know and interview sometimes, but when you actually get them in, people who really give a shit about what they do, like they actually really take it seriously, because it's very easy to be cynical. It's very easy to sort of like have one, you know, just come up with an idea and someone knocks it and says, now they're going to do that and you go, oh, well, whatever, everyone's an idiot. I'm really smart, but people who actually like are open to really trying to listen to other people and actually sort of like move things forward and try and find solutions.

44:24You have to sort of give a certain amount of a shit to do that. And I think that that is an underrated quality. I really do. I think it's an underrated quality. I think it's one thing that Australians do extremely well is like, we don't take opportunities for granted. And I think that, and you know, and to Jeff's point earlier around the size and scale of these clients and like, you know, they're looking for a partner. They've got huge things they're trying to achieve and they're coming to the solution from you. And people are willing to sort of invest in that and take it seriously. I think it's pretty underrated. What I'm hoping is that we're going to get back into a nonsense territory, like writer territory, because I suppose like discuss. Is there a, are we going to get back to, you know, what advertising has always been about writing? And we're going to double down on writing. I think writing is what makes, which, what drives advertising in many ways. I mean, it's the difference between things that look good and, and don't stick with you and things that look good and do stick with you. And I do have an anecdote about that with AI because we were working for twisted tea, which is like an alcohol based tea thing that people drink on boats.

45:32And so we're working on this and this is the human element. So somebody said, okay, we have this idea that this stuff is like intensely refreshing or something. It was because some kind of phrase like that. So we put it into the AI and it came out with a hundred, this hundred headlines that were terrible, but it took a human to find the one that actually was good. And it was, it's what they drink on the sun. No human would ever do that. It took a human to go, that's funny. Yeah. I agree. So it tells us about I'm in, it tells the, the role that I always playing in your, in your ad world. Yeah, it's, it's kind of hard because, you know, the visual side of it is incredible. It really is like we can build like we had a picture couple of weeks ago and it was a fast pitch ride. It was probably like a week to get to a tissue session, you know, where we sort of shared a bunch of ideas. And then we had like a week to get to the final presentation. And the quality of the visual world that we could create now.

46:32You know, I started calling our directors sloppers, but which is probably not probably not a problem. I don't like that very much, but that the, that using the AI sloppered the craft that you can get into it now so quickly is incredible. So that's a big part of it. I, you know, like we're talking about writing the first meeting that we had we didn't show any visuals whatsoever. We just presented ideas and lines. We just presented like here's territory one. Here's like a summary of what it is all manifesto. And then we probably and I just presented 10 lines that were written, you know, by, by, by credit is both both, both directors and writers. And to me, that is the best way to get to like what do you actually want to say? What's the tone you're trying to create? What's the world you want to build? Because it's so easy to get distracted by the visual side of and see something shiny and sparkly and you want to sort of like right run towards that. But then it just becomes super hollow if it doesn't actually have any sort of like wake behind it. So the whole thing of AI and there's, you know, you get the world of production and all of those different things and where it's going to go on the future. But I mean, I agree with Jeff. I think that sort of like that idea about like identifying what is actually the point of it is still the human skill of the whole thing,

47:36whereas you can get, you know, you can get into this world of, of the production, but more on the creative side and all the concepts are, I think that that's where it's, it's, it's still our job. Only humans know what's going to work on a human. I think, and that that's our job. And I think that people use the AI too much, too early in the process of, of ideation. And what you get is stuff that people have already thought of. I mean, the AI scrapes stuff that's already been done, already been thought of, it doesn't give it to you in a new form or anything. It is a prediction machine that just tells you this is, this is liable to be the thing that you should think of when this happens. And, and that's not going to give you a new way that's going to charm another human. It's, it doesn't, it's not going to do it. So, amen, Jeff, to be in a room with, and Freddie here, of course, live from New York City, to be in a room with you guys to talk about advertising. Well, I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. I could go on for, you know, at least another hour, quite easily.

48:37Because there's lots of stories when it comes to this world that we, that we live in, oh, I have lived in, I live in still a little bit, but there's so many stories that come as a result of this incredible creative enterprise that is the world of advertising. I'm in, I'm in Dixon, Mel Burningen. Congratulations on being ECD of Could be Silverstein, right? That is, and partners. That is an amazing achievement and look how young you are. So this is just the beginning. And Jeff, Jeff could be Hall of Famer, of course, you know, advertising executive of the decade, only a decade, right? Advertising executive of four, four decades. One of the icons of the advertising business, and I suspect how Ryan would agree as well. Great to see you both. That was fun. We're very lucky to be in this business. Thanks for having us. Thanks for listening. You can subscribe to Admission, wherever you get your podcasts. And follow us on Instagram at AdmissionPodcast. You can send us a message and add an idea. Anything you reckon we should talk about. You can also follow me, Russell Howcroft on X or LinkedIn.

49:39And of course, you can hear me on 3W Breakfast every morning with the inimitable Ross Devinson. Tchaatian, next week, Freddie. Say, or us.