Lightly edited for readability. Speaker 1: Welcome to The Business of Marketing. My name's John Horsley, I'm the host at this particular episode today. We are recording live at Cannes Lions from the beautiful surrounds of the DEPT Secret Garden. Today, I'm absolutely honored to have Dimi Albers as a guest on the show, who is CEO at DEPT. Welcome to the show, Dimi.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Glad to be here, and glad to host you guys.
Speaker 1: Ah, thank you. Um, what would be really great for our listeners is if you could briefly explain what attracted you to the world of marketing, tech, advertising. So what was that moment that kind of grabbed you and you thought, "Yeah, that's me. I'm interested"?
Speaker 2: Um, interesting one. Uh, so my dad, when I was a little kid, used to be the CMO and then chief growth officer of a company called The Yellow Pages, which you and I will know, but for young audience, was a big yellow book with a bunch of companies and telephone numbers in it where we would search for stuff like we do on Google now. Um, and which meant that we always had like- always had like trade press lying around the house, and then he would launch a new campaign, It would be like a big thing. Um, and I always was a bit mesmerized by it and, and somehow I think that's the sort of the, the, the moment where I got caught, and then I always loved this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, myself reflecting back, actually, they were a client of mine some time ago when they came up with their online proposition. But prior to that, they were almost envied worldwide in terms of the quality of training that they installed into the staff. Um, and certainly, the, the sales training was, was second to none at the time, uh, and revered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, my dad was obsessive about that. Again, growth piece, which essentially is what I love to do for our clients as well, obsessed with it, the quality of it, the rigor of it, always keep delivering on it, and also trying to then... In later in his career, trying to bring that into new media, so your Videotel and your Infoboxes and whatever it wa- uh, whatever it was. They totally missed the boat-
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm
Speaker 2: ... but I know he fought hard for the new technology, and some dudes in America were like, "No, we're not putting our money into that."
Speaker 1: Ha. Brilliant. Um, and along that tip as well, this is, you know, nice in terms of legacy, I guess. Um, you said that growth isn't something ... Well, is something that you engineer and not just execute. Tell me a little bit about that and, and what that means in practice.
Speaker 2: I think there's... It, it's fairly straightforward. Most of the brands that are out there will grow anywhere between, I don't know, 3% to 8% at the moment. It is largely because the world economy, of course, is not going, uh, through the roof. It's also because there is a complex, um, uh, let's say, marketing playing field and all the technology w- whi- which is there. But I think mainly because a lot of people are repa- repeating a lot of playbooks, and we believe that if you want to grow faster, than we have to do new things. We need to understand technology across the full customer journey and find these new ways of growth, and that's what we call growth invention.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's very exciting, actually. Um, unfortunately, many agencies look like a much of a muchness. They struggle to differentiate their propositions. Um, their pricing is normally just time material billings and, and kind of look the same. Um, in terms of that, do you see a, a, a shift in terms of business models, um, for agencies moving towards more out- outcome focused billing?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, I, I think there's definitely a lot of talk about it. Um, I think you'll be hard-pressed to see anything of that change already at scale anywhere. So y- you can, like, go through all the quarterly reports and look at all of them. There's no place where these changing models are truly at scaled. If you look at our business, um, I don't wanna say outcome based, but output based has been a staple in our business for a very long time, both on the hardcore technology side of our business, as well as on the more marketing, and creative, and content side. Um, I think the, um, uh, outcome based models are starting to get more and more interesting as you can cover more of the customer journey, but it's still a super large challenge for clients to figure out, how do I then do that? How do I procure that in the right way? Um, so I think it's a super interesting space, but also, we are a big proponent of humans. W- we believe that they will remain really important, which means that part of the time and material model will always be there. You just need to understand how to adopt technology, and in the places where you can go for outcomes and outputs, uh, really help the client by doing the right price.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Tell me a bit more about your business as well, so, you know, the specialisms you have, the practices, types of technologies that you work with, the, the systems integration as well that I think-
Speaker 2: Yeah
Speaker 1: ... you also do. It'd be brilliant to understand more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course. So, um, uh, what is-- What makes us slightly different than most of our competitors across the globe is that we are a global company, so it's around 4,000 people, 25 plus countries. Um, but we are 50/50 split across, um, marketing services and technology services. So you can, like, literally take our revenues and our FTEs, and we can go right down the middle. So we've always done that because we feel that if you want to work across that full customer journey, you need to understand both equally, and you cannot have one be a first class or a second class, uh, uh, citizen, right? Um, so that enables us to, on the marketing side, focus on everything you do to get your brand out there, get the right attention. So that is a lot of creative, that is a lot of media, that is a lot of content. That connects then into the technology ecosystem. So for us, tech is a lot of engineers. We have close to 1,000 across our full business. A lot of people who are focused on, uh, um, uh, experience, focused on strategy to really work from not only, let's say, technology that you and I would touch as in, in an app or on a website or whatever, but also deep into data infrastructure and some of the backend systems that our clients have.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We're g- We're gonna come back to that for sure. Um, often look at CEOs, particularly yourself, as not just leaders of businesses, but also Chief Story Officers, I think is a kind of nice way of describing it Do you have a sort of a, a mantra or a motto, a rai- raison d'être for instance that is kind of instilled within the, the DNA of the business and, and the, the, the members of the crew as it were?
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course. So I, um, I think there's two things important there. So before what I think is the sort of genesis and the mantra of the business, the one thing which is important is we are a partner-led company, which means we have 175 people who have their own money invested in the business. It's really important for our culture and our mantra because it means that any client of ours has a personal relationship with an owner, and any Depster person who works at DEPT will have a personal relationship with one of the owners. It makes it feel more boutique, it makes it feel direct, it makes it feel personal, longevity and everything around it. So that is really important to the model. And then the, the essence of our business is really straightforward. Um, essentially a business like ours does two things. One is, you know, you spend some time here to do the very best work of your career that helps clients grow faster than the competition, and you do it with really good people that hopefully you have a relationship with in 20 or 30 years. Like you just said about, hey, Yellow Pages was one of my earlier clients. I am sure that you can remember one or two people that you did a pitch with, or when you landing the first work that you guys did, right? Which is something special. Um, so I think the genesis of our business is obsessively about the work that makes our clients grow, and then obsessively about a really nice culture that will give you, um, uh, memories and relationships for a lifetime.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In terms of client side, has there been much shift and change over the last few years in terms of the maturity, um, not just of understanding but also capabilities within those businesses?
Speaker 2: Um, I would say 100%. I, I think every client is, is on that journey, right? Um, and I think that w- without almost exception, if I were go to any of our clients they will be at a, at an advanced level now versus a, A year ago. However, I do think that the, the main challenge that, um, clients on our side are having is, is kind of how do we, how do we make sense of all the chaos, and specifically when it comes to all the technology that is creeping in, how do we make it all work together? So I don't think that there's a, um, a massive problem with finding some really great tech that can do something. I think it's about how do I activate that across the customer journey so that my brand is truly living in the same way across that journey, which will make m- uh, more consumers, uh, um, uh, connect to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it's making me think back to probably around about 2003, 2004, thereabouts. Uh, I had a client which was a company called Alterian. Um, I forgot who they're part of now, that since sold. Uh, they had a technology that was, uh, an analytics technology all about generating a very robust single, single custom- um, single customer view, um, and being able to do kind of lightning speed trainer four style segmentation data. Um, and then I was, I was fairly surprised, you know, maybe 2015, 2016 perhaps even, um, 2020, that so many companies out there still hadn't actually achieved that, that vision of that company. Uh, and now I'm looking at... We're going into the era of AI, as it were, that, you know, surely for AI to help you in terms of go-to-market or various other activities within the business, it's all underpinned by good quality, uh, robust clean data in the first instance.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the, um, I think that i- it kinda comes back to the point of, you know, if you're on that journey and you're essentially, you know, improving every year and more understanding, you bring capabilities in and everything, I think it's ultimately about whenever there is a transformation happening, which percentage or percentile are you in, right? So I think what you were speaking about is definitely like 2003, 2004, s- the beginning of-
Speaker 1: Yep
Speaker 2: ... let's say the digital transformation thing that everybody-
Speaker 1: That was the promise and dream of the business at that point in time.
Speaker 2: Exactly. And for 20 years we've all been working hard-
Speaker 1: Yeah
Speaker 2: ... to get to a place where now essentially we have to jump on the next train-
Speaker 1: Yeah
Speaker 2: ... which is the AI transformation, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think that, um, that does this thing which I think is really exciting, which is you just spoke about a business that was probably really early on these things. They were in the 20%, right? Because essentially for me, whenever transformation happens, there's 20% who's gonna be winning, 20% who's gonna be losing and are gonna go out of business, and then 60% which are slow. And I think it's really interesting to think about how can I learn from earlier signs of transformation and apply those in the AI transformation that is coming.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because I, I understand, right, that any CMO or CIO for that matter, will be receiving, you know, X's or X messages, um, uh, WhatsApp messages, emails, whatever Slacks about what the new technology is. They want to go fast, it has to go faster, but it's ultimately, it's a transformation of an organization. How do we align the processes? How do we align the people, et cetera. And for that, there's like a ton of lessons that we've had from digital transformation. So if we can apply those, we can become part of the 20% at the top who's going to beat out the competition and again grow faster.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What are the biggest requests at this point in time from the client side?
Speaker 2: So, um, I would say that there's two. One is super prevalent and the other one is, um, starting to bubble up now. So the first one is obviously if I am a team or anybody in that team is how do I organize myself for the future? So what does the tech stack look like? What kind of people do I need? How do I need to retrain them or not? Do which processes? That's, that's the very obvious one. Like the past three years, we've been essentially talking about how do I optimize the factory How do we make the work? What do we churn out? 100,000 pieces for the price of 100 pieces or whatever it is. T- two times faster or eight times faster. Um, so I think that's still a super, um, explicit one, um, that we work with a lot of clients on because figuring out that future of work is super complex and they haven't figured it out. The other one which I am more excited about, and I think is the really relevant one where you're going to be part of that 20%, is not the how do we do the work side but how is the consumer and their behavior changing, right? So we all know that by now we are using agents in different ways. It's finally a relevant conversation in any boardroom because the CEO is seeing, "I have lost 5 to 50% of my direct traffic in the past 6 to 12 months." If I translate that to my either top or bottom line or both, it's gonna be this business impact. I cannot buy myself out of it anymore, so how do, how do I solve for that, right? But the interesting thing is that is like the f- very first touch point in the journey. How are people searching for something? Now take that effect and pull it all through the journey. I search in the beginning then I have probably 71 average consideration points before I press a button. How... What happens there? When I press the button, am I as a human pressing the button or is an agent doing part of it for me? Then once I am a customer, how does delivery for that customer, how does support, what does loyalty look like? What does churn look like? All those things are going to be as impacted as that very first part, and that's the future of the customer journey as we call it. And I think that is the one which is starting to drive more and more demand because there's a pain point at the beginning but they have no idea what the rest will look like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this is a brave new world isn't it, to say the least that we're entering.
Speaker 2: It is, right? And, and ultimately th- the next step is then okay, how do you figure out what that is going to be looking like, right? And, and, and I think that, um, what for us is really important is how can you give a, um, uh, essentially a, a process to clients which is, um, part grounded in that very long experience in digital transformation that we have. And then part grounded in what we like to call the empathy first framework which essentially tells you per touchpoint, uh, consumer touchpoint, um, what is going to be fully human, what is going to be fully agentic and anything in between, right? S- so if you're able to take those 71 points on that customer journey until they buy, right? Let's take that part. If we're able to start to understand which we can do based on the framework whereas everything's sitting, then apply, uh, a cost and value model to it where you can say, Okay wait a second. In these four points there's massive value at low cost," then you have step one of your roadmap. So, we create the strategy for it, you know what the pl-- points are where you can make money and then we can start to, as we say in Dutch, make chocolate of it which essentially makes means understanding where as a business do I have to invest in 2027 to jump on this consumer behavior which is going to give me outsized growth versus the competition.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, I mean I love the idea of thinking about human and machine. Um, and at the same time as well, and we should have done this a long time ago, it means that our ac- our accessibility standards need to increase enormously at the same time.
Speaker 2: It is ... And, and the int -- Wha- wha- what I love talking about is the... Because w- we work across the full journey, right? So we do a lot of commerce work. So we get teams within clients together with clients who have been over the past 10 years obsessing about pushing this button to the left. Should it be blue? Should it be yellow? Th-- Is it this? All that consideration to just optimize and squeeze 0.2% on the conversion or whatever rate.
Speaker 1: See. That was great.
Speaker 2: And, and all for what? For a human. All for a human.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And now the thing is gonna be, okay, I've designed this whole thing for a human. How do I design it that the agents, the different agents that people will be using in different t- parts of the customer journey, that are going... How is the con- uh, conversion going to be optimized for them?
Speaker 1: Mm.
Speaker 2: And when is the human in it? When, uh, uh, is the agent fully in it? And I think again, that's what makes it interesting, right? Um, uh, how the conversion changes and again, how it's super simple for 100 years or more. If you had a brand, you were making things for humans. Doesn't matter if it's a TV commercial, something in digital, the way on my phone an app works, everything was made with the idea of how do humans interact. And now we have to make that change. How do humans and agents interact?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Which is like a super exciting time.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: Freaking br- everywhere... I, I ... By, by the way, I noticed that this, uh, talking about Cannes for a minute, I think it's more upbeat than it was a year, uh, a year ago generally. Mm-hmm. I think it's still a lot about AI. Yes, there's a lot about production and cost and whatever, but it's starting to feel, at least to me, a bit more upbeat. Um, but still I, I would say be even more upbeat about it because there is so much to be done and so much to win for brands. It's just, it, it's super exciting.
Speaker 1: Well, you know how we had the year of the mo-... Is it the year of mobile? Is it the year of mobile? Is it here yet? Is it the year of mobile?
Speaker 2: We've had three years of AI already.
Speaker 1: Uh, and we've, we've, you know, we've had, and AI has been around for quite some time-
Speaker 2: Yeah
Speaker 1: ... and we've used it in our tech flow for the last 10 years but, um, you know, different when we've obviously got GenAI AI and, and we're coming from an enormous transition and so on. Um, and you could say this Cannes is probably yeah, the Cannes of AI for the very first time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, uh, it is all ab- It, it's also a bit unfortunate, you know, y- it's tough to find a panel or a d-whatever it is that isn't talking about it.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Um, but it's, uh, look I see it as a massive opportunity for all the businesses in our industry. And I know everybody or a lot of people are having a rough time. We are fortunate that we are in a really good, uh, good position, good growth tr- trajectory and everything around it. But yeah, I, I think there is massive opportunity.
Speaker 1: What's the spread of your clients like in terms of, um, categories
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we, um, we essentially, we don't specialize on specific categories. The biggest one that we have are, um, tech, retail, uh, consumer goods, uh, banking and financial services, um, and healthcare. So those are the, the five biggest ones that we have. And then our business is, um, sort of we do roughly 4% or 5% in Asia for our business, and then the other two parts are spread evenly between EMEA and the, and the US.
Speaker 1: Okay. So let's, let's take myself as a consumer, and let's just take retail to start with. Um, you know, I, I did a huge transformation of, of my house over the last year, literally destroyed the entire downstairs, rebuilt it after a ca-a catastrophe that we had but had to do it anyway, uh, and massively improved it at the same time. I, I'm not an architect. I used AI to assist me. I had a vision. I knew exactly how I wanted it to come together. Um, I couldn't really convey that very easily to my wife, she's not such a visual person, so it was great. I was mocking things up-
Speaker 2: Yep
Speaker 1: ... "It's gonna look like this," and she's like-
Speaker 2: Awesome
Speaker 1: ... "Wow, okay, fine." Um, and then the procurement of everything as well, um, the materials, the fixings, the fittings. You know?
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Absolutely every component I had to source, um, I was using ChatGPT mainly. Uh, and you know what I noticed was that it was more niche retailers were coming up rather than the, the large ones. Uh, and I would imagine that's because the proliferation of content and expertise and subject matters that they have around, I don't know, tiles or, or something that is relatively unexciting. Um, and it was the niche ones that were rising to the top, uh, and would be cited in the, the answers, um, and where I'm, I'm getting the links to their products and, and so on, rather than the large mainstream.
Speaker 2: This is the, this is the thing, right? It is-
Speaker 1: But it's leveler, right? If, if, if you don't get it right, uh, you're gon-- and you're losing so much traffic, then you're not gonna have a business yet.
Speaker 2: It is exactly, it is exactly the case, and it's, it's funny, w- um, uh, we work for, uh, uh, uh, one or two large DIY retailers, and this is exactly sort of, you know, taking them through how this customer journey works, and I think the way you went through it is still relatively rudimentary because you used a lot of chat.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But there were-- And there were mentions there, but there wasn't for, let's say, there wasn't a, a mature ad model yet, which I think if you look at a mature ad mo-model, a mature commerce model, that's where it becomes interesting for also the bigger brands, how do we become relevant again, right? So, and they can work from two sides. So one is, how do they make sure that, you know, the way they create content is, um, how do you say that, fit for now and the future, which is indeed much more niche. It's in much more different places. They need to make sure that they are mentioned in the right places, et cetera, et cetera, so that the machines know that the humans are valuing them as much as the niche, uh, niche players. Um, and the other part which will continue to grow is how can the big players utilize their advertising budgets? Because as chat starts to mature their, uh, ad business and as Google, of course, infuses it in everything, that's where they can wake-- where they can play and where they can win.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, there's, there's another, you know, question here in terms of ads anyway with inside, you know, AI search, let's call it. Anthropic has said absolutely no way. Um, okay, they're going for the, the business professional and, and various other use cases as well. GPT is doing it in the US at this point in time. Um, and then it comes down to trust as, as well. So, you know, as a consumer, am I gonna trust ChatGPT to do the same piece of work that I did, now knowing that I'm gonna get bit based outcomes also, uh, within the answers that I'm being provided?
Speaker 2: I think quite passionately that consumers will trust Chat, Gemini, if needed, Claude, as much as we trust Google now-
Speaker 1: Yeah
Speaker 2: ... and as much as we tru-trust anything which is on our phones now. I really think that it is very logical that we might be skeptical about it. I understand why Anthropic would say that they don't want to do it, but I-- There's like, there's no human evidence literally in the past 80 years since ad-, or 100 years since advertising properly started, that consumers will distrust and will not let that into their worl-worlds. It's logical. It's like litera- all of us grew up with advertising in some way, shape, or form, and we all ultimately, except for maybe a few of us, we trust what is on our phone. We go to Google or we went to Google if we wanted to find something. So it's, uh, yeah, I, I just think that that is how the world works.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I actually find that it becomes better anyway because i-advertising is then becoming a utility, which is very, very different.
Speaker 2: Exactly. And, and I also think that one of the things that I, I view differently than when my dad was sort of, let's say, doing advertising, is that, um, you used to have product here, for those who's not watching, like product at the bottom, and then somewhere all the way at the top, you would have the advertising, right? But nowadays, because the journey is much more connected, it essentially, like how well a, um, a brand has their advertising now in that full journey, like the content and how it's connecting and everything, it says something about the level of what the customer experience is like. Because they have, if they have that part right, you can bet your bottom dollar that some of the technology is there to also make sure that as a customer, I am serviced in a better way. So I oddly enough also think that, you know, the more sophistication you bring into that ad, uh, um, platf- uh, in, ad ecosystem, it also says something about how product experience is going.
Speaker 1: Let's take, uh, another one of your client base. So let's say tech as an example. So that's a, you know, a heavily research-based customer journey, as we know, um, that they have never expanding buying committee. Um, so a number of tech companies I've spoken to recently are saying that they've got up to 20 decision makers that, uh, they have to influence here, et cetera, in one way, shape, or form. Um, and now w-we have those individuals also using AIs, um, and getting a whole myriad of responses. So what advice are you pro-providing to your tech co clients?
Speaker 2: Um, I, I think the... At least in the conversations I am having, is the core of it for tech, but actually also m-most of the other industries, is all around-
Speaker 1: You could say B2B, couldn't you really?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah, or, yeah, B2B or actually tech B2C as well. I think it's all about starting to understand and map that customer journey and what it will look like.
Speaker 1: Mm.
Speaker 2: Because it ... If, if you don't start there, then you don't know where to start, and if you don't know where to start, you're going to be having a team that is doing seven different things of which you have no idea what the actual value w-will be, where you are probably just driving on speed or getting costs down, all of those things that are not going to be growing your business. So I, I, yeah, I really feel quite passionately that step one is start to understand what the customer journey in two, three years will look like because that will inform you, and that will get you on the transformation track faster.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you see that there would be a rise as well in terms of investment in, how to describe this, research, um, proprietary data, um, the ability to be able to create stories and story arcs that, that are research-based a-and underpinned as, uh, LLMs or-
Speaker 2: Yeah
Speaker 1: ... you know, light fresh new content, like statistics, like various, uh, aspects of research data for purpose of citations?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, um, I, I would, I would agree that that will become a, um, a bigger and bigger influencer on everything that we're doing. I think especially, you know, as you think about digital twins and as you think about synthetic audiences and how you can utilize those across not only the full customer journey, but also now and the future, um, uh, I think that that is where mapping out what will sort of, what the future will look like, I think actually those two things are gonna be paramount, and doing those is what you need the right data for, and then once you have that, you can start, um, uh, uh, uh, to build those probabilistic models, which we feel are, are really strong because they are, um, more current, and they are more faster than many of the deterministic models that are, that are being used today.
Speaker 1: I mean, all businesses exist within an ecosystem, so, you know, B2Bs have, you know, resellers, they have partners. Uh, they might work with agencies. Uh, they have trade media, you know, e-et cetera, et cetera. Uh, do you feel that B2Bs now start paying more attention than they have in the past because of AI, um, to the, the ecosystem that they exist within?
Speaker 2: Um, wow. I, I don't know if I have a, a, a direct answer to it. It's one-- Look, I think maybe we can look at it this way. I, I, I think that, um, as it impacts the bottom line more, the answer is yes.
Speaker 1: Mm.
Speaker 2: And I think that ultimately that is starting to happen, right? Which again gets back to the search behavior, which many of the decision-makers are doing in different ways, and they are utilizing different technologies. So I think in that sense, yes, there is more activity there. There's more sort of, uh, curiosity there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, 75% of revenue for, um, B2B businesses comes in direct through partner channel anyway. Um, I was thinking more in the context of signals, so AIs are, are looking for signals and amplification of signals and verification. You know, you walk into a pub, someone tells a story, um, and you go, "Hmm, that sounds like maybe a little bit of a tall story." You ask Billy who's stood at the bar, and Billy says, "Yeah, that might be right," and then someone fact checks it on a, you know, and Googles, uh-
Speaker 2: Yeah
Speaker 1: ... et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh, whereas, you know, I believe that AI is not working such a dissimilar manner, um, to check something that's-
Speaker 2: It works exactly in that-
Speaker 1: ... on a website
Speaker 2: ... it works exactly in that matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The, the, the only-
Speaker 1: There we go
Speaker 2: ... the only change would be sort of, you know, in your bar example, it might be somebody with a, the, a blazer of the company saying, "Hey, maybe this is interesting."
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: So, uh, uh, the way that we often also speak with clients about it, and a-apologies if it's very rudimentary or, and if I'm kicking in an open door, but it's like sort of, you know, you have your own channels. The AI will essentially go there to f-to get the first set of information with the assumption that it is correct. This is correct data on your product. There's 70 specs on it, whatever it is. They're gonna get all that information, and then they're going to go down the lane of how do I verify that, right? Which is, which is where it gets interesting on, on, on who is going to sort of, in which places in the internet am I going to find your equivalent at that, for, of that guy at the bar who has used it before, and then is saying, "Well, what I actually think..." And I think that's also why it's, it's cool that a place like Reddit, which you could call the most human place on the Internet, because it's literally just people talking about what they feel and, uh, about different things, communities. That is the mo- Still, I think it still is the most quoted, um, uh, platform in the world because it's the most human one.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: And, and I think that idea of it's, it's really relevant for, again, decision makes us think, okay, wait a second. Everything I al-used to do Was like my own channels is, here I'm gonna lay out some facts. But then how do I make sure that what is in the rest of the world where A: the models are getting their verification? How do I make sure that that is becoming a, a realistic reflection of, of how good I am as a brand?
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's also made me think back to God maybe 2007, 2010 and so on. And at the time we were talking about the idea of atomization of, of content. Um, and it's never really, you know, really happened at scale. Um, and surely that's where we've- we have to go next as well at the same time.
Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, I think it... Uh, uh, and that's again right, also seeing the, the, the positive side for an industry like ours is, is, is to make that happen. You know? That, that's, that's a ton of work.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And there is very empathetic work in there. And there is some creative work in there. And there is understanding human culture work in there which I think is, is i- is such a large challenge for brands and such an opportunity for us as well as different tech platforms to help those brands do it better and grow their business faster.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've actually liked about the conversation, you've used the word empathetic a number of times. And less so than other individuals that I've spoken to during Cannes. Why is that and, and what context are you using the, the empathetic term?
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, um, so for us ... So we use it a lot because, um, A: we, we believe quite passionate sort of in the importance of humans in everything we do. Um, a- and because we, we use that framework whe- right? Where we essentially say, you know, um, humans are really good at empathy and add context. So if we hear something in a certain tone or if we walk into a room, we will understand what the context is. We will have empathy for what it means. And, and AI is really good at other stuff, right? Canonical effects. What is undoubtedly, well one plus one equals two tends to be right, that. And then at dispassionate volumes, like stuff that we could never comprehend. And I think that it, it's those two ac- accesses where you can figure out, you know, if it's really empathetic that's where the human element will be the most important one forever whereas if it's more canonical, um, uh, where it is more about those dispassionate volumes, that's where the agents are, are super relevant. And I think you can put that on what a customer journey looks like but you can also put it on like literally what you and I do every day, right? Our way of work. If you were to say, "What are the jobs to be done today?" To do this whole podcast just make a list of th- the 28 things that you're doing y- Every point you can put on that little quadrant and it'll tell you, hey, is it really empathetic halfway whatever it is? And it'll tell you how you can utilize technology and the human element in the, in the best way possible. And that is really interesting, right? Because you can transform your teams that way, and you can understand the transformation of, uh, how the consumer thinks and works.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I, I love that. I love the response. I can see the glint in your eye as well-
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: ... which is great. Passion. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's good stuff, right?
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've, I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation so far. Um, I'm painfully aware and I don't really wanna stop though anyway I have to build up towards close. Um, hey look we're in Cannes. There's obviously a lot of brands here. Um, are there any brands that you feel that are an exemplar at this point in time in terms of creativity or the way that they market themselves?
Speaker 2: Um, I don't know if would call out like, like one or two. I think may- m- m- to make it slightly broader, um, I think, um, oddly enough, uh, brands investing in, um, let's say the offline cultural experiences. It-- I think the ones that are doing that well are, are... And, and, and really understanding that, you know, as so much of our consumer behavior becomes more and more agent driven, the importance of those offline human moments will increase. I think those are the brands which are, which are doing some things really, really right. Um, and then I think the other side of coin is those brands that understand the dynamic of 'I have some facts here,' and those are gonna be checked there. How do I influence where, uh, the fact checking is being done and how humans are speaking about me? I think those are examples of the ones that are making the right decisions.
Speaker 1: Love that. Um, a go-to resource. So I know that you can't go and find inspiration. Inspiration often finds you but, uh, you know, something you might do or a place you go, or it could be a podcast you listen to or just something that maybe a little bit further down the line you have that kind of in the shower moment and yet there's a spark. There's an idea that flies.
Speaker 2: So one of the, uh... So thi- this is not like a direct question to the answer, but I... One of the things that, that I r- thoroughly enjoy doing, like one of the mo-... In, uh, how do you say that? En- enjoy most in the world is, um, I love to go to the football with my kids. So I support a specific team. So we love to go to the stadium quite often and then when w- when we go on holiday, so we went like earlier to Mi- uh, Milan, uh, and Co- Lake Como for a week, and then we go to San Siro and whatever. And I love to do that. Why? Because A: it's that human experience like undoubtedly, and B: you can see consumer behavior in its rawest form. And C: it tells you something about how, how's that customer journey working.
Speaker 1: Mm.
Speaker 2: And it... You see also the brand, right? Some teams are very far with it. You go to San Siro and it's very old fashioned. You go to some of the newer stadiums you see... So it's this, this... What happens is you see how brands are acting, what does the journey look like, um, how are they utilizing the different channels. But also you see people like super passionate about something, and you built this, in this case memory with my kids which will never go away, right? We anticipate before we go. Then we are going, then we went and we have these stories about it. So I think every inspiration happens right there because there's everything from what we do from our jobs, there's the personal thing, and there's memories that you'll never forget.
Speaker 1: Beautiful answer. That's actually a really good segue into my next question which is a piece of advice o- or wi- or wisdom that you might offer to a younger individual that perhaps they've just graduated and looking at our industry. Or perhaps, uh, they're at the start of their career journey. Um, so is there a, a piece of advice that you would offer, uh, an individual who's looking to enter our world?
Speaker 2: Eh, I... Am I allowed two?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Please.
Speaker 2: The first one is really small. I would always say be as progressive as you can with the use of AI and technology. It'll help you monumentously if you do that. And but then the more important one is, um, be the person in the room that delivers. Because it doesn't matter both in, by the way, your personal life as well as your pro- professional life. If you are a person that says I'm gonna do A and then always comes back and does A, and doesn't go, "Yeah, it was kinda B because of whoever told me," whatever, that's when you get it right. And anywhere in the world no matter how many agents and machines we'll have, people will always look for people who deliver. So that's my advice. Whatever you do, be the one that delivers and you're gonna do great.
Speaker 1: Brilliant. Brilliant advice. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Thanks so much for being on the show today, Dimi.
Speaker 2: Same here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: You're welcome