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CIM Marketing Podcast - Episode 55: Transform creative energy into productive outcomes
- 14 April 2022
Unlock the mystery of insight
This podcast will:
- Reveal the secrets of creativity in marketing
- Examine the false conflict between productivity and creativity
- Explore the real drivers of insight
Podcast transcription
Ally Cook 00:01
Welcome to the CIM Marketing Podcast. The contents and views expressed by individuals in the CIM Marketing Podcast are not necessarily those of the companies for which they work. This series is currently being recorded via web conferencing. We apologise for any issues with the audio.
Ben Walker 00:18
Hello everybody and welcome to the CIM Marketing Podcast and today we are discussing something which is of interest to everybody in marketing, which is the nebulous idea of creativity. And to discuss this fascinating topic, we are joined by a superstar of marketing, Mr. Anthony Tasgal, known universally, exclusively as Tas. And Tas as many of you will be aware as a trainer, author, speaker and lecturer and the author of the upcoming marketing book the 'Storytelling Workbook' to us how're you today, sir?
Anthony Tasgal 00:18
I'm very good. I'm not COVID ridden So I'm very thankful for that.
Ben Walker 00:22
Yeah, well. He's hinting that I do have a dose of COVID. It's not too bad. And just to put everyone at rest. I'm not in the same room as Tas. And nor am I in the same room as Mr. James Farmer who's joining us direct, hotlinked from Moore Hall in Berkshire, which is CIM HQ. And James, as many of you will know, is head of brand and marketing at CIM itself. James, how are you sir?
James Farmer 01:27
I'm very good. Thank you very good. Also COVID free so touch wood that that continues. But um, yeah, it sounds like you're feeling okay for today.
Ben Walker 01:35
I feel fine. Yeah, not too bad. Sorry. It's like a mild cold. Marketers. We were the CIM Sustainability Summit last week. And one of the things that was mentioned by one of the droll guests and they were many droll and entertaining guests was that marketers are seen as being the colouring in department. But creativity is much more than that. It's been if you do a quick Google it says it's the tendency to generate or recognise ideas. This is quite high polluting this, but I thought I'd read it anyway. Alternatives or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others. So very similar to the exact job role or what the job role should be, perhaps as marketers. Tas, how can we harness this magic thing called creativity when we're also being asked to be the not so magic thing and rather mundane thing which is productive?
Anthony Tasgal 02:34
Well, I'd like to start off by saying, why, why on earth should they be opposites? They are complimentary. Getting thumbs up first, so that's good. I spent my time in previous century working in advertising agencies in London, as a planner, as a strategic planner. So I sort of saw both ends of that spectrum. On the one hand, I was dealing with people with stubble from Shoreditch. And then the other hand, you know, clients who were saying it, just make sure you mention my brand name a lot. And one of the reasons I got interested in storytelling and behavioural economics was, was actually trying to reconcile both ends of that spectrum. Clients who wanted to sell stuff or promote their brand awareness, or whatever, and agency folk who basically saw the need for salience in differentiation. And for me, that is all creativity, that it's all the same, it's the means to an end. So I definitely, I'm definitely not an either or on this one on the both end. And I think afterwards, we can get on to talking about for example, I think how marketing exacerbated this problem. By choosing to be the wrong type of science.
Ben Walker 03:43
The wrong type of science sounds like the sort of fascinating idea that I want to explore more, but I'm going to ask you, before we get to the wrong type of science, Tas, if we agree, then we should be both and productive and creative. Is creativity, the something we can learn or is it something that marketers become marketers because they are naturally creative?
Anthony Tasgal 04:01
I think one of my problems with this again, this sort of polarity, or this polarisation is forcing people to be in different camps. You know, I've written books, I do a bit of writing, some comedy. But am I creative? I don't know. But my title has never been creative. So again, working in agencies and working with marketing people. Anyone can be creative with a small c, once you start making it a capital C, and compartmentalising it and saying only you can be creative with a big C, you automatically sort of limiting and ghettoise it. And I'm all against that because I think marketing is at its heart, a creative endeavour. And I think the more the merrier.
Ben Walker 04:43
So we've come into this industry, James Farmer because we have some creativity in our bones or we are interested in being creative. If we want to improve our creativity, make ourselves more creative or make ourselves behave in a more creative fashion, at work are there any ways we can go about doing this?
James Farmer 05:01
Absolutely, I think I would agree, I think a good idea can come from anywhere. And whether it's a new job title, your job spec or not, is a bit of a moot point really, for me, but I think absolutely we can do I think we've all got an inherent element of creativity built into us. I think, for me, it's, it's one of the elements that makes us, you know, human, the ability to have sort of imagining create something that doesn't already exist. Imagination, for me is at the heart of this, as adults, we don't use our imagination enough. And I think linked with that is playing, we don't play enough, you know, societal pressures on us, as adults, you know, tell us to grow up to not mess about Stop playing around. You know, there's the judge the George Bernard Shaw, quote, "we don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old, because we stop playing", I think is, is very pertinient here, I think, you know, my advice would be be less adult, play, you know, play, play more, spend more time playing with children. I've, I've got a five year old daughter, as I think I mentioned before, on this podcast, and my imagination goes through the roof, when I'm playing with her, you know, her sense of curiosity, and her imagination is so purely infectious, I think we can all do with using our imaginations more and also just sort of analysing. So an exercise that we like to do here is you know, pick a piece of creative you've seen that you've not worked on, could be a TV ad press ad, display, Banner, whatever it might be, and work backwards, unpick it. So try and guess what the single line of proposition was, who the target audience was what the objective was. And I think that really helps to form a bridge between strategic thinking and creative thinking. So that would be a tip, I would I would certainly pass on. That's a way that you're bringing creativity out of your teams, your head of Brand and Marketing, so your your job function is to be creative, but you're saying that there are ways of bringing that out of your teams without being sort of boxing yourself in and boxing them in, get into play and explore and think a little bit more. Exactly. And I think what it comes down to is, you know, allocating time for creativity. And that's not only time to create, but also time to share and absorb ideas. So people do need to be in the right state of mind to absorb ideas or to receive ideas, otherwise, you know, that those good ideas can can be wasted. So you know, whether that's allowing sufficient time for ideation in a campaign timing plan, or allocating focus time in you know, your busy diaries to be creative. It's about allocating time to properly share those ideas, and absorb them through trips to museums, art galleries, and just opening your mind to new thinking
Ben Walker 07:32
Tas that's probably the right kind of science or the right kind of art, the way that James Farmer is bringing creativity to the to the fore in his organisation, which is CIM and the way he thinks about it. You said earlier that you think that that's not the case in lots of agencies and marketing departments. And actually, they think it's a science and it is a science but is the wrong kind of science.
Anthony Tasgal 07:56
Let me get my rant out of the way. I love rants. Get everyone to stand back at least, that's all you need. Actually, before I do, I agree with James what James said. So by being a strategic planner in ad agencies, a strategy is a what if it's a hypothesis, what if we talk to these people in this way, who currently believe that and we try and make them think that? So all of creative thinking, all of strategic thinking is imaginative. It's imagine a world where so I absolutely agree with him. And again, it goes really to my point earlier about stopping to delineate the the huge gap, allegedly between strategy and creative. And later on, hopefully, we can talk about my favourite word, of course, insight. But on the science thing, the reason I rant a bit about science, and I've written a lot about this in various books and places. My point about the wrong type of science is a while ago, marketing decided it wants to be more like a science. And it decided it wants to be in my world anyway, more like physics. Because physics is much more about systems. It's much more about predictability and control. You know, atoms are all the same. As someone once said, you see one atom you've seen them all. And if you know where an atom is a new project force on it, you know roughly where it will go. That's not how human beings work. And I think when marketing took a wrong turn, in its search for perfection and laws and accountability, was trying to make as I say marketing and creativity more like physics. Science, the right science for marketing is biology. Because biology is organic biology is unpredictable. Human beings are random and chaotic, and messy. And behavioural economics. They're very emotional. So the point I want to make about science is, I'm not saying it's either or a lot of marketing accountability, finance is probably in that physics, but creativity is not creativity is in the other space. And we need, I think, to bring more of that biology, culture, psychology, a word that James didn't use, but was on the tip of his tongue, curiosity, I think, to all of our marketing, endeavours, wherever they may be. And that's, in a nutshell. Anyway, that's my view about the wrong type of science.
Ben Walker 10:16
That's really interesting, this idea of the wrong type of science, James Farmer, and you, it should be said to the audience, that you're at the top of CIMs marketing directorate now, but you worked across agencies and you spent a lot of your career in agency life, is that something that you've butted up against as someone who prefers the sort of art and craft of it all, and the curiosity that actually too often, regimented from the top with a need for accountability and treating it like physical science, like physics, that x plus y is going to equal Z every time, immutable And of course, that isn't the case?
James Farmer 10:50
Absolutely, yes. And I've got a bit of a skewed look on all this anyway, because I went to art college and studied graphic design at university. So I actually started off on the creative side before then going into client service agency side. And I think the often objective of client service is to substantiate creativity and to position it in a way to clients that it is a science when we all know that it isn't, you know, subjectivity around creativity, you know, renders it, you know, almost completely unscientific in the sense that it's, you know, it is quite random, in terms of what appeals to whom. I guess, you know, the the nugget lies in trying to make your target audience really like, the creative that you've come up with, therein lies the true marketing challenge, doesn't it?
Ben Walker 11:38
It, we hear a lot of lament over the last two years, particularly where there has been a real focus on getting the job done, you know, we're under terrible conditions we can't meet. It's harder for us to be creative. Let's set up an online meeting space like this one we're using at the moment, because I've now famously got COVID. And you told everybody and the feeling that everything is around getting the job done under difficult conditions. And surely, that's hampering creativity, isn't it Tas?
Anthony Tasgal 12:09
Well, firstly, I think no. Let me just have one of the just if I can just re regress a bit. One of the things as well that I do, sort of have a sub rant about is data. Now I spend a lot of time I still do with with data qual, quant and obviously, the whole big data machine learning algorithms, etc. And I think this, again, has had a bit of a pernicious influence on marketing. Because I think the problem is that a lot of people now think that the answer to everything is data. And again, for me, creativity and curiosity, are not simply staring long and longingly at research. Again, at some point, maybe we can talk about insight. So I just want to make that point clear as well, because I think too many people in marketing, and some pockets of marketing, think that creativity will come simply just from a deluge of data. And my experience is it just doesn't work like that. Yes, it might be an input towards creativity. But creativity is about leaps. It's about having that ability to sort of see connections or see ideas when no one else has. So I do want to just sort of pick up on that. But getting back to your point about sort of last couple of years and hybrid. Again, I think it's a false distinction. One of the things I talk an awful lot about in storytelling, in terms of how you write presentations, there's a very famous quote, by I think, 17th century French philosopher who I'm sure you're both familiar with Blaise Pascal, who said, I'm sorry, I've written a long letter, I didn't have time to write short one. And it's the same thing with this. It's a mistake to think that because you're in a hurry, you don't need creativity. It's the exact opposite. You know, the more under pressure you are the more creative an answer you will need. Otherwise, you end up in this deadlock of of in undifferentiated homogenised brands and creativity and advertising. So for me again, yes, time pressure is an issue. But it for me, it makes creativity all the more important.
Ben Walker 14:10
So don't if you want something done, give it to someone who's busy. If you want something creative, done, give it to someone who's busier.
James Farmer 14:17
I completely agree. You know, and I think I would tend to agree that the last two years haven't really hampered creativity. We're very fortunate here that the philosophy has been a shift in focus from hours to output. But I think that in a way has helped many people to be more creative. Like it's given people more of those, those sort of me time moments. So when you're actually not working or when you're doing the washing up or when you're doing a bit of gardening during the nine to five hours, which you know, we wouldn't normally have done when we were office bound and and often that's when creativity and new thinking comes to you when you are not clogged by the day to day works, you know the office distractions etc. So You know, a lot of a lot of ideas I get when I'm gardening or in the shower, whereas that's complete antithesis of other people I know, you know, but whether it's walking or just quiet time, whatever that me time might be. I genuinely think that there have been more instances of those during working hours, working from home. And I think that's only been a good thing for creativity.
Anthony Tasgal 15:20
But one of the things that I've researched of the second book, the inspiratory, about insight, if you look at creative people, scientists, artists, they all talk about what are called the three B's, where suddenly they have an aha moment or eureka moment. The three B's are bed, bath, bus, people go to bed, they wake up in the morning, suddenly ta-da. Or they're having a bath. Famously, Archimedes literally said in Greek, Eureka, I found it probably apocryphally, in a bath, and you've got scientists talking about molecule pictures coming to them literally, as they're stepping up on the bus so absolutely James, you're right. Those are moments where, where we can create this sort of serendipity that makes insight. The thing we're not going to disagree exactly, but I just want to open up another line. My daughter has been working for a year now in her first job. And she's one of these people that started during the pandemic started at a job where the idea that she works more than one a day is like an anathama, why would I go more than one day a week she's living with her friends in the house in Shoreditch living her best life. Now, what that links to is the fact that I think one of the things that we have missed, as human beings, social human beings, people who are curious, is bumping into people unexpectedly in an office, which you can't do at home. And I absolutely agree with everything James there. But for me, I'm really very sort of passionate about this, not just my daughter, but generally, I think that is something that we've lacked. And I'm sitting currently in a place called homegrown, which is a lovely club in London. And one of the reasons I'm here is I'm bumping into people some I know, some I don't. And I'm chatting and as I'm chatting to them, new connections are being made in my brain, which is the golden road to creativity and curiosity and insight. So that's why that's why I think we do want to get people back into offices bumping into people having chats, in lifts, talking over the watercooler over a cup of Earl Grey.
James Farmer 17:18
Totally agree with that. Absolutely. Yeah, I think, you know, limitation on visiting museums, galleries, or even other people has been detrimental to looking at things through a fresh perspective and pair of eyes, I would definitely agree with that, for sure Tas yeah.
Ben Walker 17:34
this isn't an anachronistic plug or reverse plug for event has already happened. But CRM sustainability summit last week, which was absolutely excellent. I spoke to someone there who said, I've had 20 conversations or more than 20. Today, that simply would not have happened if this was done online. So there is something there isn't there, that there are more opportunities to activity through incidental encounters. But nevertheless, interesting that the actual function of the difficult two years we've had generally not related necessarily to the hybrid or to working from home but generally hasn't necessarily hampered our creativity. We've just got to be a little bit more honest, perhaps about where our creativity comes from. The bath, the bus and bed, actually sometimes doing less, or at least doing something different to our stock in trade will help us get that inspiration and that insight, Tas, that you were talking about.
Anthony Tasgal 18:32
Yeah, I mean, I have a recipe where it's a recipe, certain certain ingredients, which for me go into making insight one is anyone who's listening, one of my CIM, training courses, behavioural economics spend a lot of time talking about the big six emotions, happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise disgust, since you ask, but for me, the key emotion, especially an insight is surprise. And again, I'm fascinated about how our way our brain works. And that's what happens, is we make surprising connections. So again, James has already mentioned media, creativity, entertainment. I was a trustee of a Cinema in North London, the Phoenix, oldest continually running cinema in the country for many years. And Charlie Kaufman who was one of my heroes, famously, was talking about Being John Malkovich. He just said 'One day, I had this idea in my head of just somebody opening a portal into John Malkovich's his head'. And I had another story about two people at work two colleagues who didn't get on. And I put those ideas together. And suddenly, boom. Suzanne Connings was once flicking through television, and watching war pictures. And then she flipped over to another channel, which had a reality show, put them together, Hunger Games. That is how our brains work. So the idea that you try and create new surprising connections is absolutely at the heart of creativity and insight. And one other element which again, sort of James I think hinted at, is what I call being an outsider. If at all great sort of revolutions and changes in art and thinking most of them were done by people who were outsiders. And again, I think it's really important in marketing. And I say this an awful lot to my clients. If you happen to work for Yorkshire Water or Kenwood, or other people I've been training with, or you work in yoghurt or cars, it is absolutely essential that you do not spend all your day just thinking about yoghurts or cars, you have one foot in that market, but you make sure one foot is looking at human behaviour or trends or because otherwise, all you do is think about the conventions in your own particular market. And that is death to creativity.
Ben Walker 20:41
It is death to the creativity, and we've all been there, I dare say, when the boss comes in and says, go away for a day and think of some ideas. How on earth James Farmer do we tackle that as marketers, when being told to do something is probably the last thing that we want?
James Farmer 21:02
And it is a tough one because I mean, for the majority turning on the creative tap isn't possible. But I mean, I think there's certain environments, you can put yourself in which foster creativity, more so than others. And, and again, that's a subjective thing, really, I think, you know, ultimately, you need to be in an environment that inspires you and can can generate ideas. And that is, you know, you've got to you've got a higher chance of coming up with some some new thinking. And for some, that's, you know, what, a quiet walk in a gallery or in nature, for others, and for many a creative, I've worked with agency side over the years, it's a noisy session in the pub. So you know, it really can vary in that in that regard. But I mean, I think ultimately, it's around getting close to your audience, depending on what the challenge is that you've been set, you know, I would always advocate getting closer to your audience, talk to them and gain that, you know, gain their latest perspective what's going on in their lives, you know, get those golden nuggets of insight so that you can produce creativity that will really resonate with them. I think, we don't talk to our audiences enough.
Ben Walker 22:08
So have more conversations to have and the ideas will naturally come.
Anthony Tasgal 22:13
Yeah, I think I'm going to do a yes and again, with James, if I literally did a session the other day on behavioural economics. And I talk an awful lot about research. There's an awful lot of research that marketing people do I'm afraid, is very system two, it's very rational. It's very factual. It assumes that human beings only make decisions on on the rational grounds, which we know from, from behaviour economics, from Kahneman and Tversky nundge, etc. doesn't happen. So I think we need to do more of the sort of thing that James has said, he's effectively described ethnography. So not just qualitative research, actually observing people, not just asking questions of unreliable witnesses. But also we may need to take a leap away from that as well. Because we know that if you ask people questions, especially ask them to predict the future, or ask them what their future behaviour will be, or whether they intend to buy this brand, or that, we can't rely on them, again, we just that's just how our brains work. We don't know. System one Kahneman called the secret author of our choices, and system one is largely unconscious and implicit. So what I would say and this is this famous quote from Henry Ford, he said, If you'd asked me what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. Yeah, if we no one could predict cars. Again, famously, Steve Jobs said, it's not the consumers jobs, to tell us what they want. So I do think as well, as well as asking people and getting close to the consumer, and which is absolutely the sine qua nom, it's the basic, I think we also need to as I said before, just take a bit of a leap, go outside our market, play around with different stimulus material.
James Farmer 23:54
One of the one of the things that we do here, when we experience any sort of creative block is just completely shake it up, break the routine, talk to strangers. There's a fascinating man that's at my local supermarket, who I've always wanted to talk to. And I've started talking to him. And it's been a really refreshing way to A). come out of my comfort zone in a small sort of way, but B). just to talk to somebody who I've always looked at and thought he's interesting. I wonder what wonder what's going on in his life. And actually, I found that really rewarding and it's sort of made me think in a slightly different way and I think shaking it up, changing your perspective is absolutely paramount importance to blasting through any blockages or coming in at something in in a new creative way.
Ben Walker 24:39
Why did you find him interesting? By the way.
James Farmer 24:41
he's got quite a funky pair of glasses. He's got quite a coiffured haircut for a gentleman of his age, and he just, he just shouted personality. And yet that in contrast with the supermarket uniform that he was wearing that muffled his personality, I just thought the sort of there was quite a nice bit of friction there
Ben Walker 25:01
as interesting, isn't it. So you're gonna try and find paradoxes and interesting experiences by introducing yourself to people you don't know strangers talking to people Tas
Anthony Tasgal 25:12
the last three or four years, I've been lucky to work with the Royal Albert Hall. It was the 150 anniversary last year. And they happen to ask me to help them tell their story. Given that that's one of my things. And it was a fantastic gig, some great people. And two things, one is they said, we don't just want to talk to our visitors, because we know them and there are loads of them they're foreign whatever we want to, we want to just sort of take some leaps. And one of the things that was really interesting as a case study for this was, one of the things that I also resent about marketing is the obsession with content and facts and rationality. And I have a saying, which I bring up pretty much every 10 minutes, which is in marketing and creativity and communication, we spend way too much time thinking about content, what we say and then we're near enough time thinking about form, how we say it. So again, clients will come up with you know, give me a value proposition. And usually, you know, in my mind somewhere, a fairy dies when they say that, because it just always feels like it's gonna be a lowest common denominator, reductionist fact that no one will argue with, but it's completely bland. So the Royal Albert Hall were in a meeting where they came up with some propositions, we discussed it, but I had a word cloud chart. And there were three words that I just put up one day, I said, actually, what the whole album seems to be about is three words. Eccentric, because it's a bit bonkers and a bit sort of English. Eclectic, because they put on everything from like, the gigs, the Remembrance Day Service, to The Proms, to all sorts of one offs. And when I spoke to people that perform there, they called the stage electric. So I had those words on a chart, eccentric, eclectic, and electric. And everyone went, Yeah, that's it. And they said, oh, forget, all this proposition stuff. And that's what they ran with. And I just thought it was interesting example, where things don't always have to be a get, again, agreed by committee, and reduced to something that is inoffensively bland, and good luck to them, because that they did use it. And it was part of, you know, the sort of wonder and 50th celebrations. And I think that may be an example of where marketing can have perhaps just escaped some of the prison of its conventions.
James Farmer 27:30
I can think that's really interesting story, actually, because the the, you know, the guerrilla drumming isn't the first thing that springs to mind with chocolate is it? The destination isn't always the expected.
Anthony Tasgal 27:43
The current thing is a brilliant example, I worked on Cadbury, in what I slightly bitterly called the pre-gorilla era. And all they had was like very rational, you know, it's full of this. And it does that. And after I left Cadbury to get off on my own do other stuff, they realised that the emotion of chocolate is happiness and joy. Just unadulterated bliss. And it was a it's a famous story, as you know, as you mentioned, James, and there are all sorts of issues about how successful it was, and whether it promoted the whole of chocolate rather than Cadbury. But actually just honing in on something unequivocally emotional, you know, there's no one, there's no sort of person biting, you know, a bar of chocolate, putting it in their mouth, because obviously before that no one knew how to eat chocolate. There's no sort of rational facts about where it comes from. It's simply the bliss and the tension and the story of chocolate. And the reason why we're still talking about it now, after all these years, is it was just sort of almost unparalleled and unprecedented in what it did. I do know firsthand, secondhand, how hard it was to get that through. So half the process is getting the insight, talking about joy and happiness. The second half is getting a client and a system of clients who support you. And I know that there was a lot of you know, debate and argument about that. So again, going back to almost where we started, creativity is something I think that has to be valued all the way through an organisation top to bottom. It's not a niche, it's not a ghetto, it shouldn't be relegated to a few people, as I say with stubble from Shoreditch, it's got to be something that everyone appreciates, and values within a company.
Ben Walker 29:25
It's something that everyone appreciates and values that you're able to sell in James Farmer. So once you get the creativity once we do this thing called creativity that we've had a fantastic discussion about this afternoon, we've got to somehow sell it into the client and make it reality.
James Farmer 29:40
Exactly. I mean, back to my earlier point, the environment has got to be right for the absorption of ideas, you know, the ground has to be fertile for the seeds of sort of flourish. And I think you know, therein lies one of the eternal challenges of agency client relationships because often agencies are looking to push a very creative agenda And whether it's for their own benefit brackets awards, you know, or whether they truly believe it's the right thing for the client. But often, there is an element of fear client side and going into new territories, which the agency has to sort of hold their hand with. But, you know, being being creative is, you know, I think he's often the highest form of productivity, introducing new ideas that are good, really isn't easy. Regurgitating old ideas is easy, but not very productive. So I think there's sort of balance between creativity and productivity, that doesn't exist in my mind.
Ben Walker 30:36
Loops us right back to the start where you said tears, they aren't opposites. They are complementary. One is actually going further and say actually, creativity is if we're marketers productivity. Yeah,
Anthony Tasgal 30:47
I think one thing is one, I just add to what James just said, that I found as my way in often when I'm talking to clients, and I want to sell in creativity. But one of the things that I've learned and probably James as well from experiencing is certain words you don't use you don't use the word risk, you don't use the word brave, because that just makes people leave the room screaming. What I tend to say is, okay, what are the issues with this brand, and very often they come down to one or two, the brand isn't salient, been forgotten about it, or they don't have a feeling towards it, or there's a lack of differentiation in that market. So most markets you think of in terms of communications, cars, yoghurt, financial brands, a lot of the time they all look the same. And you look at tracking data, you look at Brand data, and I say to clients, okay, look, you're spending 10, 20, 30 million pounds a year, but you're getting very little awareness, you're getting very little distinctiveness. So what I say to them is okay, you need to find out ways of being distinctive and salient and standing apart from your competition, don't you? And almost no one will disagree with that. So I say okay, if you don't want to look like everyone else, you have to look at those conventions. You have to understand what the assumptions are. And you have to work out which ones you can break. And we've mentioned Cadbury and that's what they did Gorilla did, but that again, Specsavers said, just because we're about eyesight doesn't mean we have to be serious and dull. Meerkat said, we will play with the word market. So there are ways of doing it. So I think one is to say, Okay, this is the theory, the theory is you have to be saying it. The second is to point it to examples, like, compare the market or Specsavers, or Apple, whichever brand you want, and say, Look, that's what they've done. They've had the courage to be creative and stand out. And no one can question the success that they've gained as a result.
Ben Walker 32:38
And that James farmers go back to your point is what we're here for as marketers, we are here to be creative. We're not here to sort of ride two horses of productivity and creativity. Creativity is productivity. And we should be well to remember that
James Farmer 32:53
Completely agree. I think that you know, there are three mantras that marketers should live by, be curious, exercise empathy and seek inspiration. I think that understanding well professionally, but also individually.
Ben Walker 33:06
Absolutely. James Farmer, Anthony Tasgal, Tas, Thank you very much indeed. It's been great to speak to you both. Pleasure, Cheers Ben.
Ally Cook 33:15
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