Shann Biglione, Head of Strategy at Zenith, on creative strategy in advertising

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Shann Biglione is the Head of Strategy at Zenith USA, and has previously worked at Walt Disney Studios, Doco, and Publicis Media in China. Brian and Shann go behind the scenes to talk about Shann's career in media and agencies, the different aspects of creative strategy, launching new products, and how campaigns can work effectively across different channels.

Full Transcript:

Brian Bosche:
Hey everyone, welcome to creativeBTS. This is Brian Bosche, and today I have a very special guest, Shann Biglione, the head of strategy at Zenith in New York. Shann, welcome to the show.

Shann Biglione:
Hi, Brian. How's it going?

Brian Bosche:
It's going fine, I guess.

Shann Biglione:
Fine, Yeah. It's been a weird few days, hasn't it?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, a global pandemic, insurrections... It's a lot to take in while maintaining a work schedule, that's for sure.

Shann Biglione:
Yeah, I know. I just came to the US a couple of years ago. "Welcome, motherfucker." Is basically-

Brian Bosche:
Yeah exactly. I know. It's so funny looking at the news coverage from other countries of what's going on here. It seems to be the most unbiased and like, "Okay, what's going on over there?" The German coverage is hilarious. But if hilarious is our misery and doom, but yeah, it's been quite a few weeks.

Shann Biglione:
I am very optimistic, Brian. As I was-

Brian Bosche:
That's good.

Shann Biglione:
... when we met a few months ago about you. I am very optimistic about this country. I think this country is going to go in the right direction. We're going to have a vaccine and your president and your Senate... Breathe. It's going to get better.

Brian Bosche:
It's moving. I'm [crosstalk 00:01:15] we're trying to. I know. I was a venture for America Fellow. So we were all about like, "We're going to bring jobs, and we're going to do..." So yeah, I've definitely had the Kool-Aid. But today-

Shann Biglione:
I believe in New Year's.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, exactly. But today, I want to just go... Strategy is a pretty amorphous term in marketing. There's a lot of different things that it can cover. So I just wanted to kick off just going through a quick background. You've been in a lot of positions in a lot of different countries. So a lot of coverage area. And so just quick background on yourself and what your current role is.

Shann Biglione:
Sure. So I started in digital creative content, working mostly for entertainment companies, Disney Studios in particular. Did a lot of work for them. Led digital strategy for digital marketing for Disney Studios in France, where I'm from, as you probably picked up from the accent. And I worked in London, Los Angeles, Shanghai, where I switched into media, when I moved to Shanghai. I worked from the agency called ZenithOptimedia at the time. Stayed five years in Shanghai and about three years ago, just moved to New York for Zenith. A part of what used to be ZenithOptimedia but part of the Publicis family, basically. Big agency group, basically, for those who don't follow the agency, well.

Brian Bosche:
It's hard to keep track of with all the-

Shann Biglione:
It is very hard. I'm not going to lie. When I got offered the job at ZenithOptimedia in China, I'd never heard of them. And it's one of the biggest media agencies in the world, but I just didn't [inaudible 00:02:42]. So I will not hold you accountable for this. I think this is just fair now. There's too many of us. But yeah, so that's been for the last eight years, basically, within Publicis. When I came back to the US, I worked a lot on a brand called GlaxoSmithKline, who does a lot of over the counter and pharmaceutical products. So working on brands like Sensodyne, and Theraflu, and things like that.

Shann Biglione:
And so, I do love strategic planning for brands. And I tend to be more of a hybrid of creative content and media. I'm not a pure media planner by trade. This is not where I grew if you will. But I've been here long enough to understand how media operates, I would say. So I like to think of myself more as a marketeer than anything. Something I forgot just like, if you throw something at me on marketing, I'll probably come back with at least an opinion if not the right one.

Brian Bosche:
So what are the other different types of strategists? Can you define for the audience? What are the different parts of strategy?

Shann Biglione:
So the world of advertising is on a really good job at slicing and dicing strategy in many different pieces. And which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine because I'm from the school... Strategy is strategy, and a strategy is integrated by definition. If you work in communications, you have channel planners, the ones who really try to understand where to spend the media and look at the numbers in terms of the kind of reach you can get the kind of conversions you can derive, and whatnot. You're going to have brand planners. You're going to have engagement planners. So engagement planners tend to be the ones who work in social media or in a digital creative content, which is what I grew up as pretty much.

Shann Biglione:
And then you have all sorts of specific channel strategist, e-commerce strategist... So, basically, I think we've gotten to a stage where strategy just means the people who tried to think a bit harder and conceptualize things. And I think it's a bit of a misnomer. And I actually would hope to see strategy getting back to what it's about, which is about being truthful, being willing to take risks, and understanding what not to do. I prefer a more universal definition of strategy than, what I'll call, a tactical definition of strategy.

Brian Bosche:
I've heard interviews with you where you talk about it doesn't make sense to be called a digital marketer anymore. And-

Shann Biglione:
I do not [inaudible 00:05:08].

Brian Bosche:
... that's just a channel. So what is a better way, like you just said, about describing what people do in marketing now?

Shann Biglione:
A lot of nonsense. Oh, I think-

Brian Bosche:
It gets so [crosstalk 00:05:22] at a certain sense. It's nice to nail down some tactics at some point.

Shann Biglione:
There's a lot of bullshit going around in the advertising industry, that's for sure. Generally speaking, when it comes to strategy, I think a lot of people are just... I think we're confusing the slideware with the actual output sometimes. So a lot of man-hours and my hours are spent just making slides and just offer a discussion with a client. Not a discussion. A forum from one of my clients. The CMO was basically... He kept banging like, "Yeah. Strategy is correct. We have a strategy, but it's all about execution." I think people are too precious about being cold strategists, or what strategy should be about sometimes. And I think it's become such a multitude of different tactical planners all around that I think this is really where things have been going. And I think you know that really well with the things you do. It's like, at the end of the day, I think people are more interested in buying your tactical understanding of the platform and how to utilize them.

Shann Biglione:
And I personally believe that we have, by putting strategy as a term on this pedestal where everyone wants to be called the strategist, we have many people with title strategy in them. Because I think there is a bit of a sense that it's the smarter thinking, which I don't think it's about. But I actually think we have somehow, from a title perspective, devalued tactical planning. And I think the value of tactical planning is as, if not more important as ever because there's so many options out there is that the tactical application of things is critical. So I think there's a lot of tactical stuff going on. And I think sometimes, sadly, it means we've lost sight of what the bigger marketing strategy could be about. But I do think there's a lot of good stuff going on there. And it's a natural phenomenon.

Shann Biglione:
There's just too many channels, too many options. And that's what a lot of people do. And I don't think we should be shy or embarrassed about saying, "I'm really good at tactics." I wish I was sometimes. It's just I feel like I've become a bit useless to be completely honest in some extent-

Brian Bosche:
I know. You hear strategist, and I think you're right, where people want to be associated with that because they're the fortune tellers, the future tellers, the influencers, the thought... Whatever, the thinkfluencers, whatever the name is where you want to be a... You like thinkfluencers? Is that a good one?

Shann Biglione:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I'm really good-

Brian Bosche:
Shann, thinkfluencer.

Shann Biglione:
Yes.

Brian Bosche:
Or smarketer. Oh, man, there's so many-

Shann Biglione:
Oh, god. Fuck. All right, that was nice to see you.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, I got a great podcast. Let's wrap this up. It's this term where you're like, "Okay, I'm on the pulse of what's going to happen in the future. I have a better understanding of all these new channels and these new ways of approaching it." But do you find that there is a difference between strategists at agencies versus in-house? Does it seem like in-house maybe takes on the more tactical approach and execution side more than the agency side?

Shann Biglione:
No, I don't think so. I would probably say that, interestingly, I mean, unless you talk about in-house agency of a client, for instance. There's client-side, in-house agency, and agency. I mean, in-house agency, and agency is just the paycheck is different as far as I'm concerned. And the strategist tend to be doing quite similar work. There will be tensions in-house. I find more tensions in-house because they feel like they're part of the client, but also they are of the agency, and sometimes it can be either liberating or quite castrating to be on the dual hand. Because getting to the truth can become more complicated.

Shann Biglione:
What I have seen in terms of in-house, very often strategy over the years gets devalued because they're more and more seen as the execution teams, basically. Versus the agencies on the slide can still throw bodies and stuff and everyone in. You can have a head of strategy just walks in and looks at things. It's harder in-house, but then if you look at the client-side, generally speaking, I mean, what I appreciate very often client-side is that strategy is very often tied more to business strategy. And a bigger picture of it. And I think this is something that sometimes agencies get a bit wrong. Or at least we struggle with because we have defined ourselves narrowly and in a very, very accelerated fashion. We think more and more about strategy in service off the creative brief. You know what I mean? Rachel Mercer and I have a podcast, and sometimes I like to talk about this, but it's...

Brian Bosche:
The overthinkers can listen to it.

Shann Biglione:
Thank you very much-

Brian Bosche:
They [crosstalk 00:09:56]. Yep. Love it.

Shann Biglione:
... Apple podcast, Spotify. There you go. No, but it's very often when we think of strategic planning in the world of advertising. People think of the guy who writes or the woman who writes the brief for the creative. It's in service of creative and don't get me wrong. I'm a huge believer in value of creativity. I think we've not put enough emphasis on this in the last few years. But strategy is much more than just that. And I think the way we just narrowly put the strategist in charge of just this aspect, or just communications... Marketing strategy used to be the four Ps. And nowadays, most strategic planning is spent on figuring out the communications aspect of things only. And then in the communications aspect, you have areas where they just think of the engagement expert, as we've just talked about. So you have this narrowing of the role, which can be tricky versus client-side. As I said, I think, and sometimes, they have to look at the bigger picture.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Especially B2B. That reminds me a lot of B2B customers I work with is to match my focus.

Shann Biglione:
I do not work much on B2B brands. So I've not had too much experience there. But I would believe you. I'll say the counterpoint to that is I find that B2B organizations to be extremely sales focused.

Brian Bosche:
Yes. I think that's why-

Shann Biglione:
And honestly, marketing focused.

Brian Bosche:
Not brand focused in a lot of cases.

Shann Biglione:
[inaudible 00:11:13] really brand-focused, yeah. But it's sometimes that's the miss you have. And that's very often the tension you've got is if you match a brand strategist with a B2B client, it's two different worlds colliding. The chemistry is not always there. Let's just put it this way.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, well, at Smartsheet, where I currently work, I think they went for 10, 12, 13 years without a brand campaign. And they got hundreds of millions of revenue. And when I joined a couple years ago, we launched our first national brand campaign. And so it's just there was such a focus on sales and execution, and every single marketing dollar had to be tied to revenue, that the brand and the strategy is just, "All right, this is DemandGen. This is long-form. This is long-tail content. Let's get as many leads as we possibly can." Yeah, it's interesting distinction. But to go a little bit-

Shann Biglione:
Do they see some returns?

Brian Bosche:
For the brand? Certainly.

Shann Biglione:
Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
For perception, yeah. I think when you start playing in a space with a lot of competitors when you're especially in the work management space, there's Asana, and Monday, and Wrike and Workfront, and there's all of these competitors. And when people say, "Which tool should we move forward with?" It's which one pops into your head to actually go search. Before, there weren't as many competitors, so was much more, "How do I build out a content calendar in Excel?" And then Smartsheet would come up. So they weren't looking for this category as much. So as the category has grown, the brand awareness in the category has gotten a lot more important.

Shann Biglione:
Interesting. Well, I mean, and I think it's been a pattern we've seen a lot on the West Coast, where for a long time, the idea of branding was just looked down and frowned upon. I mean-

Brian Bosche:
Especially a task...

Shann Biglione:
And Elon Musk will tell you that advertising is useless and whatnot. And I think the tech industry, ironically, is waking up to it and is now becoming one of the biggest advertisers in the advertising industry. So I think they've definitely seen the light a little bit on this.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, well, if we pivot to startups a little bit, because last time we spoke, it was about startup marketing where you have to do both the strategy and the execution. You spoke in other interviews about what to focus on first at a startup. So that's my question. If you're starting out, because a lot of startup marketers that listen to this podcast, should they start with building their brand first, create that signup page without a product? Should they go with product marketing first and expand into their brand? What's your outlook on how should startups approach their marketing?

Shann Biglione:
I am of the belief that you should always start with a product.

Brian Bosche:
What if there is no product, Shann.

Shann Biglione:
Well if there's no product you have a problem, my friend.

Brian Bosche:
I've been there.

Shann Biglione:
Welcome to my world of bullshitting your way through. I would always advocate for product first, on the very basis. And I'll get back to some academics behind this after that. But on the very basis that people need to know what they're buying, as they're buying it. And startups very often are selling products, which are disruptive, right? And so understanding what this product is about is something that people are going to need to get an understanding of, and that's why it always... And if you look at the history of most big brands, let's be honest, they all start with a product, even in the world of luxury. It's always fascinating to me because I worked a lot for LVMH and Kering and those companies when I was in Asia. Most of the ones who make it big are the ones that get famous for a specific product.

Shann Biglione:
It's the CELINE handbag that gets you there. It's the Louis Vuitton travel luggage that's going to... It's all things like this that ultimately you are built off, and then you tend to grow the brand around it. And I'd say the seed really is the product, not the brand. The brand is the flower. Quite literally, it is the thing that's going to signal to the world that "Hey, look how sexy I am." But you're going to be starting very often with the seed of the product. You want to have your chops in product marketing, most likely. You're going to want to have forced acquisitions. You need to have that flow of cash basically, coming in. And I think realistically, brand advertising tends to have a longer-term return, which is not always compatible with this.

Shann Biglione:
The problem is that very often what works at the beginning is seen as the path to future growth. And that's not always the case. You need to pivot, and you need to pivot pretty quickly once you start to see you have some traction. And so the way I look at it is if you look at the research behind this... So there's these two guys in Enfield who are very famous in the world of strategic planning and advertising agencies where they looked at the balance between brand building and activation in marketing. And what they see is that generally speaking, you want to be spending, on average, about 60% of your ad spend on brand building and 40% on activation. Now, there is one, and I mean, one exception. When they looked at all the cases that they've run where you flip that number, and it's when you launch a product. When you launch a new brand.

Shann Biglione:
So when you're in the launch phase, you tend to be more in the 70% towards conversion and activation and 30% towards brand in year one. Year two, you're going to start talking about 60-40 again, or at least going back to that norm. And I think this is a good indicator of what the dynamic is about. It start with a strong seed of the product, let it grow a little bit, but be ready to make a flower out of it pretty quickly. And don't wait too long for this to happen. And I'm not saying because you're not going to be able to grow, you will most likely be able to grow to the point of what your company has been through. But you will be faster in growth once you're able to activate the brand part of your business. And so this is where I think, and I see for myself looking at the job descriptions for people and startups is always frustrating to see.

Shann Biglione:
They're always looking for the person who can just run SEO, SEM, and social activation. And it's great. And don't get me wrong, these are important chops to have. But if you're at the stage, you're hiring for a CMO-style person or head of marketing, you should be at the stage where you're able to have people who can help you navigate the brand question as much as the other questions. And so that's the part where I'd say, "Start with a product, build a brand and realize brand is not about a deficit in your product. It's just about accelerating the way you're going to be going through mental shortcuts [inaudible 00:17:24] to think about it." That's all.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Especially with launching new products. And we found this at [Slope 00:17:29], and I've seen this with a lot of other startups I work with where you learn a lot about your brand by launching your product. And by how customers use it and how customers talk about it. And what you thought your brand could be originally changes drastically a year into a product launch. Do you see that there's a benefit to creating a more broad brand so that you can pivot a lot easier from the start, or how important is it to nail down your brand before launching that product?

Shann Biglione:
I would definitely advise to not overthink it. I think to this day-

Brian Bosche:
That's your podcast name though.

Shann Biglione:
Yes. I know.

Brian Bosche:
You're going against your brand?

Shann Biglione:
That was the point. It was self awareness, Brian.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, got it.

Shann Biglione:
But the thing is that even the biggest brand I tend to find over... I see some of the work that goes into brand planning, I'm like, "Jesus! we're drowning." And you can have like 80 slides of the meaning of that little comma in the things like, "Okay, guys, I respect your craft, it is good that you put that level of detail, but you are overthinking it." And in this case, the primary purpose of the brand is to make you recognized and to make you easy to remember, right? So you're working in the world of memories in this case. So it's about memorability. And so how do you make it simple for people to gather, to capture, to recognize is a key part. The distinctiveness part of your brand.

Shann Biglione:
And frankly, I think most startups do an okay job because they know how to build a visual identity but make sure you can get something, and people can notice you pretty easily, and they can recognize pretty easy. The second part of it is less about overthinking the meaning of your brand or exactly what it means is trying to find ways for you to have an emotional resonance. Because what we know is emotions tend to have a much stronger effect on memories than rational facts. So you could be drowning the market like Grammarly is right now with ads to just tell you how Grammarly is changing everything. I think they've been throwing money out of the window instead of at some point giving a much more emotional journey for the Grammarly brand.

Shann Biglione:
So yeah, just don't overthink it. Look Aviation Gin... I'm going to tap into one of the best examples. So clearly, not everyone can do this. And not everyone is Ryan Reynolds. But I don't think the guy went and overthink it. He just went like, "What makes me famous?" That was literally his question like, "What makes me famous?" So he has fame built in because he's Ryan Reynolds. But that aspect of just, "Is he overthinking it?" Like, "Is he doing the right thing by taking the Peloton girl kind of..." This is complete no, no in this category, right? But I think sometimes we tend to overthink. Getting noticed is fucking hard. It is really hard. There's just like, "We're drowning in messages and whatnot."

Shann Biglione:
So if you can figure things that help your brand to be noticed and recognized, you've done a lot more. So after that's thinking of the third layer of the onion of your brand, and what meaning it has to people, and the purpose it's going to drive in the universe. I think to me is secondary.

Brian Bosche:
And that's not just for startups. That's for any company launching any new products.

Shann Biglione:
Absolutely.

Brian Bosche:
Right? I mean, it might be harder to, if you have an overarching brand, and you're launching new features, or new products within your platform or portfolio, but that's a good use case. And that's a good example of how any company can do that.

Shann Biglione:
It's 100% true. And to be honest, it's funny for me to see that startups have thought so hard about the mission statement and what they want to stand for in the world. It's like a [inaudible 00:20:54] rate but-

Brian Bosche:
Before they've sold anything.

Shann Biglione:
Yeah. Tell me something interesting first. I don't want you to solve world peace to be able to want to buy your product. And I think it's worth thinking a bit harder about. What makes you interesting, rather than what makes you hyper-meaningful and deeply purposeful? I think this is good for your own staff. I don't think it's necessary for your buyers.

Brian Bosche:
And I've heard you speak before about having competitors in ads is a big no, no, because it's just association.

Shann Biglione:
Yeah, It's tricky.

Brian Bosche:
Can you talk about that a little more? That's an interesting-

Shann Biglione:
Sure.

Brian Bosche:
... topic for me.

Shann Biglione:
Don't get me wrong. There are occasions where it works. But here's the thing you have to remember. People are exposed to many, many, many messages. And as I said, being noticed is hard. Think of it this way, when you look at your ad, you know exactly what your ad is saying. You know who your company is, and you know who your competition is and whatnot. But whenever you advertise somebody else, you give them an extra share of mind. And on the moment, if you ask consumers straight away, they might say, "Oh, yeah. It's a different company." But five days down the line, five weeks down the line, this becomes a blur. I mean, how many times have you thought about, "Oh, do you remember this ad by this brand?" And [inaudible 00:22:09], "No, it wasn't this brand. It was another brand."

Brian Bosche:
All the time. Especially for insurance companies.

Shann Biglione:
... as well, because they all look the same; car, automotive, same problem. And so whenever you do comparative advertising, just remember that you are giving free share of mind to your competitors. And so you have to be very, very careful as to how you use it. And for me, I think there could be time and places to do this. Like comparative ads, which is when I'm on your website, and you show me why your product is better before I say, "Click and buy." I get it. This is useful. But if you show me an ad, which is just here to try to get into my brain, and you start mentioning the competitors, be careful. It can work, but I don't think it's magic. And I'll tell you. I mean, one of the [inaudible 00:22:51] CMO is Fer Machado, who runs Burger King. I think the guy's obviously brilliant. I still question the strategy they've gone for. Just referencing McDonald's all the time.

Shann Biglione:
And I may be wrong. I'm sure Fernando and his team have seen some metrics that show it. But you know, when you look at it, McDonald's is still doing pretty fucking great, despite all the Burger King stunts that we've seen against them. And I think part of that is it's they've done things consistently, maybe boringly sometimes, and maybe they could go a bit further. But they're there, and they're still being expressed as they're the number one. That's what you do when you say like, "Oh, they're the guys that we're trying to beat." You're saying, "They're the number one."

Shann Biglione:
And I'll just close on one perfect example of comparative advertising. And I think it was Avis against Hertz. I can't remember which one it was at the time. But I think Hertz was number one, and Avis was number two. And basically, they run an ad, and they said, "We're number two. And the reason you should come for us is because we try harder." It was a fantastic line. And what they did that was brilliant there is they never said Hertz. They just inferred, "We're number two." You saw the ad there was nothing that said, "Hertz, number one." Or "Number two." They just like, "We're number two." If you know who number one is great, but we're not going to tell you. You're going to figure that out yourself. So I think it can be done subtly. But generally speaking, I'm always very careful. And I think many many startups struggle a little bit with this. Just stop giving free mindshare. One anecdote as well, which I like, is because I've worked a lot for Disney Studios.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. I've heard this one. I love this one.

Shann Biglione:
You would be pretty surprised.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Shann Biglione:
They'll be extremely surprised. But one of the things we found out when we're looking at the research, or I found out [inaudible 00:24:32] the guys at Disney had known that already, but most people thought that Shrek was a Disney movie because it was an animation. Like it's DreamWorks. I mean, for me, the fact people will confuse Disney and DreamWorks was just like, "How?" Shrek is-

Brian Bosche:
But it's an animated movie.

Shann Biglione:
Just that it's animated, people think [inaudible 00:24:48] is Disney, and therefore it's a Disney movie. And there was like a massive portion of the population who actually believe that. That's the misdistribution we go through. So remember that whenever you try to think of mentioning your competitor. If people can think that Shrek is a Disney movie likelihood is people who've barely paid attention to your ads might not remember which one was superior of the two products that they've heard. And they'll remember the competitor as well.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, absolutely. Side note. Are McDonald's better in France than in the US? 100%, right?

Shann Biglione:
I will make no commentary on this.

Brian Bosche:
Okay. Great. Next-

Shann Biglione:
I have learned hard that we [inaudible 00:25:25] to have clients all over the world. And so I don't make comments in quality on other parts.

Brian Bosche:
That's very fair.

Shann Biglione:
I Will just say that I personally am a very big fan of Shake Shack. That's what I'm going to say.

Brian Bosche:
Okay, I love Shake Shack. I think the best McDonald's I've ever been to is in Paris. So that's why I note that. It was a different world.

Shann Biglione:
Look to be fair with myself, it's hard for me to tell you the answer because I grew up vegetarian. And when I left France, I left vegetarian.

Brian Bosche:
Makes sense.

Shann Biglione:
So McDonald's was never high up on my list. So I can't really say that I've compared them. But generally speaking, when I've had McDonald's, it was fine all over the world.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Let's shift gears a little bit to how companies can take bigger risks in their advertising. So you've said this before. We've talked a lot about this on this podcast, where you just... A lot of companies just go with what everyone else is doing in their category, what everyone else is doing in their industry, same tactics, and type of messaging. What's the case for taking these bolder risks? Even if you're in a traditionally risk-averse company?

Shann Biglione:
Well, I mean, for me, the basic case here is, being boring is expensive.

Brian Bosche:
A lot of money, not a lot of return.

Shann Biglione:
You can be boring. I think the auto industry is an interesting one. Like when you launch a new car brand... You can be Kia, who for years and years and years were just trying to belong. They were sponsoring World Cups and whatnot. And they were just doing like, "Look, we are car. Even though we're Korean." And remember, back in the days, when I was a kid, Korean didn't mean much in terms of quality. But you'd think they wanted style. But no, they don't want style, just want to say like, "I belong, I'm part of this category." And so, for them to show they had the norms, they were able to attack on price. That kind of hide works. But that's what I mean. It's expensive for two reason. One, because, well, usually you're going to have to fight people on price. If you just belong, then your only saving grace unless you're like massively superior is going to be able to be on price. So your profit margin is going to be slimmer.

Shann Biglione:
And second, you're going to have to advertise more. Because advertising that doesn't stand out needs repetition. Advertising that does stand out still needs repetition. Don't get me wrong. But not necessarily as much, and it's not noticed as much. So generally speaking, I think the most risk you can take is to not take any. And so for me, it's very important to remember that as marketeers and as a strategist, my job is not to remove uncertainty. It's to really make you comfortable with the level of risk we're going to take. Your job is to stand out, and it's not to fit in. And yes, sometimes that means we don't use the code. I'll give you an example of fitting influences.

Shann Biglione:
The movie industry is a very interesting one there. It's very hard to advertise a romantic comedy using the codes of science fiction. You want us to have something that tells you I belong and I fit in, right?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Shann Biglione:
So there's definitely merit and value and worth in making sure you're going to be belonging to this category. Likewise, you don't want to advertise a luxury product using too much of a... I don't know. You're not going to use a CPG food company strategy, usually to go and advertise things. You want to have things express that which belong. So how you play with it is down to you. But you need that element of surprise and creativity to be able to take it that step further when it becomes a bit more interesting and exciting and unexpected. For the buyers to go like, "Huh, I've noticed you." And again, I remember-

Brian Bosche:
I remember.

Shann Biglione:
... getting noticed is one of the hardest things to do and-

Brian Bosche:
Remember that it was-

Shann Biglione:
... to achieve. Yeah, exactly.

Brian Bosche:
You mentioned-

Shann Biglione:
I would like to claim it. But no.

Brian Bosche:
You mentioned Aviation Gin. Were there any other companies over the last year that you saw take bigger risks that you appreciated?

Shann Biglione:
Taking bigger risks... I mean, I love Burger King's moldy burger. I thought that was just insane. I know there's people who think it was a terrible idea. I think it was just really brave. And symptomatic of a company that is willing to take risks. And so I think that was great. But maybe a little trite of me to mention here. You know what, I'll give you the opposite one. Someone who thought they were just playing it very safe and ended up against their own.

Brian Bosche:
Okay. I like it.

Shann Biglione:
Intense. [inaudible 00:29:45] Peloton. I mean, we've all seen what happened with Peloton last year. And it was just this ad which is... I'm sure the creatives, when they were doing this, they're like, "Oh, this is nice. And this is easy." It was almost a bad brief execution. It was just like, "Oh, lets-

Brian Bosche:
This is the OG one, right? The original Peloton commercial ad where the... Yeah.

Shann Biglione:
Yeah. With the girl who's-

Brian Bosche:
Yes, the Peloton, girl. Yeah.

Shann Biglione:
And I don't want to insult the person if they're listening, but I think this is the textbook of a creative who takes the insights at face value. Just doesn't add anything creative to it and just ended up with something so cliche and weird it just didn't work.

Brian Bosche:
So flat.

Shann Biglione:
It was extremely flat. The thing is, it was one of those things that was so total, it became good. And I think you can see how-

Brian Bosche:
Unintentionally though.

Shann Biglione:
... even something that was. Exactly.

Brian Bosche:
They did not fill that in.

Shann Biglione:
It was unintentional. There was not built in risk. It was just serendipitous risk. And let's be clear, you cannot plan for this. I'm not saying to you, "Do it." I'm just pointing out that this company had something that was panned. I mean, when it came out, we all were mocking it, and I think we've all seen how successful that it was for the company. What did it do? It put it even higher up on the map. It got publicized. People talked about it. And it's not like it was incredibly damaging. It's not like they said something racist to anything. They just came up with something that was just a bit meh. Is pretty shit.

Brian Bosche:
And now it lives on.

Shann Biglione:
And so that level... Exactly. Lives on, and the business also COVID hasn't helped since but ever since the commercial came out... I mean, I remember seeing some numbers they were tracking. Peloton was going up thanks to this shitty ad. So that's, for me, a great example of risk-taking without wanting to take the risk. Now, be careful. What they did was pure luck. It was just like what happened to them. But it's definitely something worth highlighting that taking risks can be noticed, even if you think it was wrong, actually helps.

Brian Bosche:
There's something there where you can strike gold. You can get lucky and find something that works. That worked unintentionally. You have things like Ocean Spray on TikTok going viral, and then all of a sudden, the Ocean Spray CEO is on TikTok. We'll go into TikTok in a little bit and the rise of that. But I like the creatively sourcing ideas for those campaigns where Ocean Spray saw that it generated on social pretty organically, and then they hopped on that trend. What other ways Have you seen companies really figure out how to create these campaigns, get creative inspiration from to source some of these ideas to take advantage of things that are happening in the world?

Shann Biglione:
I don't have many examples to be honest. I-

Brian Bosche:
You did one with Oreos where the dunk challenge.. Where something happens organically.

Shann Biglione:
All right. So let's talk about... Sure, okay. We can talk about Oreos. But I think Oreos is an example of another mistake. And those who worked on the campaign will tell you about it.

Brian Bosche:
So maybe this just can't happen? There's no way to do it intentionally?

Shann Biglione:
No. I mean, it did. The idea of it was beautiful. The tweet was beautiful. It was seen by 80,000 people total.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Shann Biglione:
That's the problem. I think there's about as many Oreos sold in the world in about three seconds as the number of people who saw that tweet entirely when it came out. That's the reality of it, right? So Oreos' mistake, and this is something they've learned, and they've publicly explained is that they just thought because they had a great idea because it's started making some buzz in some circles, it was enough. And it was not. They'd not scaled it up. My answer to your question here is there's rarely been, I think, people who've been able to tackle something so reactively in the short term and scale it very, very fast. I don't think I've seen lots of great examples. And I think most of the time, the problem that we've had is almost like the opposite thing. Like this agile marketing thing where we just keep track of what's going on, and we just react to it.

Shann Biglione:
We've seen the flip side of this with COVID where granted it was a more dire setup. But people trying to react to things in real-time just creates this sameness or this trick of everyone trying to do something.

Brian Bosche:
In these trying times. Yeah.

Shann Biglione:
Yeah. Well, yeah, we've all been through those trying times. But I think it's rare. And I think most of these success stories we see are the Oreo tweet, or what social media managers love to point out and think, "This is a great space for it to operate." But the problem is, very rarely has this been something that's [inaudible 00:34:04] build something at scale. Or that really became a tenet of the brand moving forward. So I'm always a bit like, "Yeah, it's cool." But this is not what excites me the most, to be completely honest with you.

Brian Bosche:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay, interesting. And then going on the TikTok, the influencer, the creator economy... There's all these where every single person is a brand. We used our slogan at [Slope 00:34:25], to convince companies that they needed to put in some sort of infrastructure to streamline their content operation. So okay, you can't just get by with email and spreadsheets and Dropbox because you have to produce content at a scale you've never done before. So we would say every company is a media company, and need to operate that way. Now it's like every human being is a media company and everyone is producing content like this. So how do you see the rise of these influencers, the rise of these creators where it seems like, at least in my smaller TikTok influencer world, that brands are trying to manufacture this virality? They're trying to borrow the virality from these influencers, and that's becoming a big part of their strategy.

Shann Biglione:
I just see them as a media channel.

Brian Bosche:
Just a channel?

Shann Biglione:
Yes, a media channel. And I think everybody's better off just acknowledging it. I think consumers are not stupid about that. They know what's going on. I think influencers will do better and more scalable business by embracing the media nature. I'll tell you why. Because when I was in China, so the influencer Okay, well-

Brian Bosche:
It's crazy over there. It's so much more developed than it is here, right?

Shann Biglione:
Yeah. It's huge. And, look, we've seen all the world's luxury brands. I've seen some of these influencers can make or break a brand, or they can put something on the map, basically. And so I personally really believe that there is power and its creative decentralization in a way of where the media power was being held into the hands of individuals. And I think there is a great craving right now for people to get that influence from a person specifically, or at least have these impressions from a person. Sometimes it's just an entire media team behind him. But I think there is definitely a trend towards that. So for me, I'm somewhat hesitant to present it as the new paradigm. I'm not going to put it as a new paradigm. I think there is a role for it. And I think it's completely feasible to do great things with those influencers. I think there's definitely a greater benefit when the entire ecosystem just treats this as a media channel to be completely blunt. And I think that's mostly it.

Shann Biglione:
Then, of course, is content creation or things like that. And you can strike gold every now and then. But at the end of the day, it's like working with a celebrity. A celebrity, never forget. I mean, I'm always nervous working with celebrities define a brand. I always advise my clients against celebrity marketing, because usually it just creates more tension, the sort of which is going to have a say in what they want, and say don't want to [inaudible 00:36:59] stuff. It just takes away the chance to go and find your own voice. And, I think, in the long term, it's better for a brand to find its own voice than just rely on the crutch of a celebrity. And I think for influencers I'd probably put in the same bucket. It's a great channel at scale, and you can do good things with those. But it's not going to be, I think, the new paradigm.

Brian Bosche:
What if a company creates one of these influencers that's not even real, one of the AI generators? There's these influencers now who are not real human beings. And there's just the brand team or the creative team behind them.

Shann Biglione:
Well, okay, so my answer to that because I remember being asked a while back by a trade press, "Is Captain America real?"

Brian Bosche:
They're these characters-

Shann Biglione:
No.

Brian Bosche:
... that you build around. No.

Shann Biglione:
Does it stop us from using them to sell products or engage people? No. So why would this be very different?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, the king at Burger King there's always been this character-

Shann Biglione:
There's plenty of things. And I think it's just people know that they're not real. Look, I love video games. There's plenty of virtual characters that we love to engage with. And I see Louis Vuitton using Final Fantasy characters in Asia for advertising their handbags. Why not? Of course, there's something a little bit uncanny quite literally about it. But if you think a bit about the world you evolve in, it is actually not far away from things we're very familiar with. And once you to try to attach them to those familiar constructs that we use in our daily lives, you realize, yeah, why not? Is it what I would bet all my eggs on? No. It's not to say that's going to change future of everything. But it exists, and why not?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, I'm going to start marketing myself as "I'm not an influencer, I'm a channel. Just use me as a channel." I'm a tactic.

Shann Biglione:
Brian Bosche channel.

Brian Bosche:
Brian, yeah. Oh, that's pretty good. Let's do some housekeeping to close this out. A lot of you that listen to this are getting started in the marketing world, they're early in their career, what would you say to someone who's trying to break in and become a strategist and try to get these roles?

Shann Biglione:
You still have time to change up your mind. No. What would I say? I think-

Brian Bosche:
How do you break into it?

Shann Biglione:
Well, first of all, academia still works. And I know a lot of people who are anti-academia. I went to a marketing school, I got a master's in marketing, and it helped. And it's not because you're going to be taught everything you need to know. I think there's big gaps in the curriculums. But it is a useful way to get and increase the networking effects. This is the way your CVs get in front of people. So, first of all, I would always recommend to study marketing. I don't think it's a waste at all. Now, other ways to get into it, because I've seen people doing it, is getting to the businesses and being seen and doing things.

Shann Biglione:
But honestly, it's to the point you're discussing what you're doing with your own personal brand and whatnot. I think people are able to create this magnetism or at least to create platforms or channels. Just create content. Put yourself out there. Be visible. This is the best way to attract attention anyway. The same way a brand wants to. Interact with people. Just go and ping Brian every time he post something.

Brian Bosche:
I love it.

Shann Biglione:
And react to it.

Brian Bosche:
Please, DM me. I want more engagement. Just fires off that little dopamine hit. Just give it to me.

Shann Biglione:
It does. And I'll tell you what, a lot of the people I know now in this industry are people I've bugged and bothered on social networks. When I was in China, I just didn't have access to them. Some of them have become some of my best friends since. Go and be an itch with the others and just say something and just disagree or agree or share, or be enthusiastic or thank and whatnot. Create that network. That's a good way to get into it. And then after that, I would just say, if you really want to get into marketing, have an interest in marketing. Do read about it. Some people think it's fancy not to read marketing books. I think it's a mistake. I think it's good to know what people have been thinking, the theories... You will be very surprised how much of what you think is new has been said 20 or 30 years ago in this industry.

Shann Biglione:
I think if you take the [inaudible 00:41:19] of this world, or the [inaudible 00:41:21], you will find that the genius was there 30, 40, 50 years ago. And a lot of the things we're doing are reinventing or reframing the wheel. So just pay attention to it. Just read up. I won't say educate yourself. But intellectualize yourself is usually a good place to be. And that's something, by the way, when I interview people I look for. I can try to understand who's influenced you? What did you think? Or what is your view on topic A or B? It's just that I think is interesting. So yeah, that'd be my recommendation. Academia is good. Putting yourself out there is good. Having the curiosity to read up about things that have been said in marketing industry, old and new. Not just new is a really good place to be.

Brian Bosche:
Well, you were in IG live with Matt Kobach. And hopefully, I'm pronouncing that right. But he asked, "What is going to work in 20 years?" And you said, "What worked 20 years ago?" It's the same thing. We're still humans. We don't evolve that fast.

Shann Biglione:
No, we do not. Of course, the tactical executions are going to change and the channels we're going to be using [inaudible 00:42:31] change. I like to think of marketing as brands are Darwinian. They exist because of us, not because they were imposed onto us. And I think it's something people very often forget. It's become fanciful to think that brand was a construct of the 20th century that was just rolling, shooting to glitter type thing. This is not what brand and marketing and all this is or is about. It's never been that. At some point, we realized how the brain works. I mean, the Catholic Church understood that very early on. And they've been capitalizing this over the centuries. It is ingrained in the way the human brain works, and to what you just quoted for me, "Our brains don't evolve that fast." So we'll have slightly different ways of understanding things, communicating things... But the broad foundations of how marketing operates will not change in 20 years. I am very sad to know that.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. That's a podcast hot tip for you, quote your guests. They like it. They typically agree with it. We'll end on that. That's great advice, Shann. Thank you so much for coming on. And hopefully-

Shann Biglione:
Yeah, okay.

Brian Bosche:
... we get through this early part of 2021, and it gets a little bit better from here.

Shann Biglione:
And good luck with your journey, Brian.

Brian Bosche:
Thank you.