YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Beresford-Hill

lines on the record: 172
first: 2024-01-11
most recent: 2024-01-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“My father is a very ambitious teacher and he became a headmaster and became a professor and he pursued a doctorate. So we kind of would move around every couple years. To wherever fit. But it made me, you know, it kind of made me, I think I wasn't a great athlete. I wasn't a great student. I was small. So I felt like, okay, I'm not going to kill it in seventh grade. So I'm going to bide my time. So I probably spent a lot of time observing people, which helped me as a creative person. But what would happen is I lived this double life where at school I was this kind of quiet, nice, invisible kid. And then I would chase my passions and take these moonshots in my personal life. I love the New York Knicks. They were great in the 90s. I don't know if you're an old school hoops fan.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was this very shy kid. You know, I was very little and we moved around a lot. So I was kind of every couple years, I was the new kid.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So after this whole four hours is over, we go to the front to sign out and we were rewarded with two super crisp day passes to Universal Studio. So my father figured out that that was another way to get access. And so we burned rubber, got to the park, and we rode the back lot tour until they literally kicked us out of Universal Studios. I think that was what we're getting at with this story was this is my father kind of taught me the definition of creativity, which is really just looking at any situation and finding another way because he didn't overextend himself and buy tickets he couldn't afford. He didn't get mad or upset that he couldn't get them. He bypassed all of that and he was just always going to figure out another way. And that's who he is. And that's how he lived his life. And my father is a guy who kind of has never let his situation ever determine where he was going to go. It rubbed off on me and in a number of other ways, it kind of made me a little audacious or precocious. And so.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All that stuff, like the sheets, and it was a four hour timeshare meeting for a new development in Anaheim. And it was a hard sell. I mean, they were coming in. They were talking about these are going to go fast. And people would raise their hand and get up and buy into it. And then after they left the room, they would like lower the price. And I mean, it was really, I was worried, I didn't know what was going on. I was worried my father was going to buy one of these things.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nine or ten So it blew my mind. So we go home, we go to the hotel and call my mom and report on the day. And I said, look, I know we can't go back, but I would give anything to go back. And that was that. And I appreciated it. And then the next morning, my father wakes me up, you know, maybe at 5 or 6 a.m., which is really early to a nine-year-old. It's pretty early. A lot of people. Pretty early for a lot of people. And we get in the rental car and I don't really know where we're going. And we drive 20, 30 minutes. And we wind up in some kind of a strip mall. And we go into a storefront. I remember this, and there's a row of chairs and like an old school projector. I guess at the time it wasn't old school. It was just a projector because it was 1990. It's like over.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Playing with the other kids. I was watching TV. I was watching movies. So that world was extra important to me as a child. And I'd never been anywhere near where these actors were, where these things happened. And so we took the tram tour and I saw, you know, the actual house from Psycho and the real Mill Valley Town Center from Back to the Future, which was my favorite movie ever. And even the empty water tank that was, you know, I still remember this. It was also cross-purpose as a parking lot, but had a giant painting of an infinite ocean behind it. And that's where they filmed the water scenes for jaws and a dozen other movies and all this stuff. So I was so excited and I just never, in many ways, I've been kind of chasing that rush to production and to sets and to where it's happening ever since. But I mean, the guy walking past the tram with the paint bucket. I want it to be him because he was doing something. So anyway, it's just it just blew my mind.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, this is something a formative experience that I only really put together a couple years ago on Father's Day when I kind of felt like I wanted to tell my father how inspiring he is for me because, you know, your dad's your dad, your mom's your mom. I don't often take a step back and let him know the things he showed me when I was young, how much I value them and how much they help shape me. So when I was 10 years old, we took a father-son trip to California, and it was the first time I'd ever been to the West Coast. My father's a teacher. It probably would have been a family vacation, but I think maybe it was like a, let's just send the two of you. And on the docket was we were going to go to Universal Studios and then we were going to go to a water park and then we were going to go to the beach or what have you. And obviously Universal Studios was the big ticket item because those were really expensive and that was the highlight. So we go to Universal Studios and my mind was blown. Grew up a little bit of a shy, reclusive kid. So I did kind of, if I wasn't out.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, before that, by the way, I think in that email, and maybe the big thing about it, because we also, when we pitch as an agency, we show up with 10 people and a 100-page deck and our capabilities and the ideas we're going to bring forward. But the thing you never can lose sight of is whomever makes their idea easier to buy will sell their idea. Whoever makes their product easier to buy. So I think anytime either I position the work or our company or myself, I try to give you a couple reasons for a yes rather than relying on someone else to put together my Cinderella story for me.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Honest answer I think I have the muscle memory now, so I don't think I had to really sit down. I think I made the connection. I thought, boy, I really want to talk about this with a broader audience and I want to get more people thinking about advertising. And I want people to think about it as a career. So I had that thought. And then I found my way to UVA or mutual friend Zach because that's part of it. But the muscle memory for me is not only coming up with ideas. The other muscle memory is actioning and executing them. It's one thing to have all these great thoughts. I know people that are so much smarter and more interesting than me, but it's also pairing that with this knowing how to do it. So I hope I had a good subject line and I hope I was brief and didn't oversell because no one likes that. And I think that's probably what I would have stuck to. I think I was kind of doing what I do.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I literally stumbled on the doorstep of just one of the most thoughtful emotional writers ever. So I learned my taste from him and I learned the bar and the standard and I learned what was acceptable and making everything feel brand new and interesting. You know, he could write a line about a car. And it would make a car. We know what a car is, but he could make a car sound like this really exciting thing that you really needed to get one of. And that's the art of it. So I learned that from him and the best gift you can ever get is a first boss that has great taste or high standards.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so he had struck out on his own and opened this ad agency, unbeknownst to me, Modernista. So when I walked in, they had accrued, you know, maybe 20, 25 people there, but I didn't know that I was going to effectively be interning for one of the best, most poetic writers in the industry ever. So that was dumb luck. But what I got out of that is the one thing you cannot quite step back and get from the start is your taste level. You know, at the end of the day, it is a skill, it is a muscle, it is an ability, but ultimately you're making choices on the ideas you're coming up with and the ideas you're approving and putting forward. And that's all on taste. And I don't think there's anyone on the planet that says they have bad taste. Everyone thinks they have good taste”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so he had created that campaign while working in Boston at an agency called Arnold. And he'd done all these famous ads. I don't know if you remember there was an ad. I don't know what the name was, but it's that da da da song. A couple guys just killing time, driving around in their VW golf. I think they pick up a chair and they drive around a little further. They realize the chair smells because they picked it up off the street and they let it back out and they drive around and the lion said, you know, the VW Golf, everything you need for your life or your complete lack thereof. But things like that. So there's all these amazing ads and there was years and years of them.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So interestingly, when I kind of found my own quote unquote voice, Modern Easta was one of these ad agencies that was very stylish, very European. Everything was very cool. And they would put out work that was very avant-garde. I think I later became a little bit more mass, a little bit more comedic in the work that kind of came out of me. But what I got at Modernista is the owner was a guy named Lance Jensen, and he, for any Ad nerds, you know exactly who that person is because he had written one of the best advertising lines of all time, which is on the road of life there are passengers and there are drivers, drivers wanted for VW”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I graduated from website copy to the smallest of creative tasks. And so I think there was, you know, you could write the welcome signs for the GM convention and try to make that clever. So there's all kinds of like little things that weren't the big brand stuff and they weren't the big TV spot or anything where all the focus was and you kind of had to work your way up to those things.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was I will do anything because I had nothing to offer. And I think later I would get my second job and I would go to someone.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everything's luck. You can be prepared for it. You can have some gifts. But you're an idiot if you don't think that chance and fate and all those things because there were a number of ad agencies in Boston and I was sure I wanted to be an advertising creative person. But again, Googling wasn't a thing to do. Like the computer with the internet was at the library, you know? And I think it was like yellowpages.com. And I think modern ESA was the name of the agency. So that's like kind of in the middle. That's not like the first one. I think I tried Arnold advertising in Boston and they didn't want to meet with me. I think I just worked my way down. And I think they were, it was just the right place, right time where they were like, yeah, we'll take free labor. You couldn't look up what the client lists were.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was killer. So I've definitely learned that your first impression is kind of your only impression. So maybe I appealed to his kindness. Maybe it was desperate unpaid intern. I don't know. I don't know what, but it's something.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know what? I don't remember the subject line, but I'll tell you this I think it was good and considered because I to this day I receive a lot of email that's not from people I'm looking to hear from and I know the power of a subject line. So, I think very hard on these things because everything is the communication. So, for example, when I worked at TBWA Shy, I would sometimes cold email clients. We'd have an idea for Audible or an idea for IKEA, and I would find the client and I would reach out. And I figured out the perfect email subject, which was hi from Apple's ad agency because TBWA is Apple's ad agency. And my response rate on that.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe there were other emails he didn't want to write back to, but maybe this worked for him. And so I remember I printed out the ad and then I printed out the email from him and I put it underneath and I showed my boss Lance. And he laughed at that ad and then said, you know, the requisite, like we're never going to be able to do it. But thanks, kid. And then, you know, he turned the page and there was the email. And I think that, you know, more than any creative idea I'd ever shown him, and I was doing my best to show him everything, I think I showed him that I was going to solve every problem with creativity, not just the assignment. And so we ran that underwhelming ad, but that was enough for him to give me a job offer for $22.5 thousand dollars a year.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which was that Mark Cuban had an email address that if you could find it and you emailed him, he like wrote everybody back. So I kind of put together a very short, concise email pleading my case. I'm an unpaid intern. This would mean so much if you would let me put this ad into the world and I made a little PDF and I attached it. And like true to magic about an hour later, he just wrote back and he just said.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Unpaid to paid, barely paid. But at that time, and we could touch on this, it was much more competitive to get into the ad viz because they're just, you know, there weren't as many creative options for career. So we had an assignment for the Dallas Mavericks 2000 and two NBA program, like the magazine that people would buy when they went to Mavericks Games. At the time, Mark Cuban was this very besides just being Mr. Sharktank, he was this very outspoken NBA owner. He was always criticizing the league and the officials and he was always getting fined. And that was a big theme. So I wrote an ad and it wasn't a particularly good one. It was okay, but I wrote even Mark Cuban has nothing bad to say about it with a picture of the truck, which I thought was clever. I don't know if it's really standing the test of time, but I knew that getting a billionaire to give you the rights their name was probably something that had to be thought through. There's probably some people that would weigh in on that. And I remember this urban legend, again, very like web 1.0.”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My first job was at a very cool, very trendy ad agency in Boston called Modernista, and I convinced them to let me be an unpaid intern because they were so small they didn't know how to say no to me coming in and offering to work for free. So I just graduated college and I got really lucky because there was kind of no high-speed internet or anything. I just found them in the phone book literally and I walked around and it was this cool office and so I kind of by virtue of that I found my way there and they let me be an unpaid intern and they let me write website copy very web 1.0 copy for general motors for the hummer truck when that was brought back with the h1 and the h2 and i decided this was my dream maybe write a ton of web copy and that was making me really excited maybe do a print ad back when there was magazines everywhere maybe put an idea on the back cover of a magazine and that would really be massively fulfilling so as soon as i got that internship i just i had to figure out how to get hired but they”
2024-01-11 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #715: Chris Beresford-Hill — A Master Ad Man on Superbowl Confessions, How to Come Up with Great Ideas, Cold Emailing Mark Cuban, Doing Naughty Things, Poetic Mind Control, Creative Process and Insider Tips, How to Negotiate with Bosses and Clients, and The Power of a Stolen Snickers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT