YouSaid · the spoken record

Neal Arthur

lines on the record: 80
first: 2022-08-23
most recent: 2022-08-23
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

“For us, we just spend a ton of time thinking about what are all the different ways that creativity can manifest itself differently. And it's like, I think the canvas has gotten broader. And so how do you do interesting stuff that feels like it, I think redefining the way that brands show up is what's interesting to us. People are dominating social media. Brands need to act and feel more like people. We need to be able to take more risk to be able to do things that feel more genuinely interesting and take more of the edges off of what it means to be a corporation. So like we spent a lot of time just talking about how do brands show up in an entirely different way, no matter how big or small the company is. And that's the stuff that we get excited about. So it's just taking our thing, the thing of kind of taking big ideas and creativity and putting out in the world and just using the canvases that we have to do that more interesting ways.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's like, wait, this is a monstrous grizzly bear. We're going to just get some honey. And so we had to have like this really delicate conversation that was like, how do I say that this is not? And he kind of refused the idea that that could be, are you kidding me? Of course you get money out. So yeah, that wasn't great.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fix it okay. All right, listen, it's a great question because every shoe, if I'm being honest, in some way is a disaster. It's such a weird thing that we do. We like talk about with real seriousness about the metrics that we're in and we agree. And it's like, it's all, it's very analytical. And then you find yourself on a set with like a grizzly bear. And it's like, wait, what? Like, you know, it's just not even set up to go smoothly. We had a shoot where the grizzly bear thinks no joke. It was for a client where it was a live grizzly bear and very few of them who are kind of actors. And on this day, the grizzly bear was kind of like lethargic, as one would be. I don't blame. And one of the clients suggested that we give it honey.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had a series that was sponsored by a company. I was at a John Mulaney show in New York City. It was the radio city shows the special. And I got a call in the middle of the show from somebody freaking out that the logo bug was white instead of red. And I was like, I truly don't care. And I hung up and went back to the John Lady Show. And I found out later that everyone had worked like all night to figure out because the video was not such that a red bug would have worked so it was white. And I was like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. But everyone had to scramble all night to fix”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The idea of measurement is one of the bigger conversations that we're having, right? And you can look at it because like before, whether you agree to whether or not it was a really simple mechanic of like Nielsen really, you know, TV and all your kind of big traditional media. Now there's lots of data and lots more measurement. And the argument is what's useful, you know, what's actually indicative. And so we have a lot of conversation about what are the right metrics. And so when we start at any sort of new sort of brand platform or campaign, we'll sit with our clients and go, all right, so what success is going to look like? That's probably the question we ask most. And we talk about most. What success will look like? Is it that my mom and my dad see this thing and talk about it? Is it that we move more product X? Is it that we see people talking about the brand more often? Like those are all things that are valid. And you just have to get really kind of clear and hopefully ideally agreement on what that looks like.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're always trying to cobble together the clearest indicators of genuine engagement. So you can't really look at any metric on its own. You can't just look at fuse. You can't just look at likes. You have to look at all of it together because you want to see a proof that the world has seen and is responding to things that you've created on behalf and with your clients. So you look at Twitter trending topics. You look at aggregate views. You do look at like, but you just look at it all together and you're trying to get a sense for sort of first of all visibility, like how many people have seen exposure. Then you're trying to look at sentiment. Was it a positive sentiment or negative? By the way, there are instances where negative sentiment doesn't, is not a bad thing. As long as you have positive sentiment with the right audience, right? And Nike's an example, a client that does that really well. It's like there's a distinction.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just think it's at rest right now in the world of bad tech. And it's a huge conversation there. It's less in the world of brand and culture because it's more of a performance marketing sort of dynamic and immediate concern and issue. So it's just different sides of the building.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Strategy session and a very serious meeting. You've got the fate of the world and somebody talks about cookie apocalypse. No, it doesn't come up as often as you may think.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So then we go to larger corporations, it's less about measurement in terms of like advertising effectiveness, but to be able to track, that's going to make things trickier because your ability to follow people and kind of have an ongoing conversation will be harder. But again, for us, purely from Widen Kenney perspective, that's not really our game, right? Our game is kind of operating at a above the line level where you're having, you have ideas that people are talking about and sharing themselves. That conversation does happen, but we still are kind of focusing on the larger idea that's going to drive the business in all aspects of the kind of media sphere.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Guess I would say first of all, the marketing and acquisition at a small business level is very different than large corporations. I'm saying you know that, right? But like in a small business level, that targeted advertising is like, it's not just like an ad. It's like a sales tool, right? It's like there's direct conversion oftentimes.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you. I feel like there's a lot of companies that are feeling that way right now, and they might have to scale past it. But the thing that really strikes me in all of that is what really enables that is targeted ad spend. You're a small company, at least until recently you could buy Facebook ads, target them with extraordinary precision. You could measure the conversion of sales with extraordinary precision because of all the tracking that's happening. Apple famously blocked that on iOS, Facebook says that cost them $10 billion, which is just an amazing result for one settings change on one platform. The argument is that really hurts small business owners, right? Their ads spend gets more opaque. It's harder to target. They get less sales. There's firing more money into things. Those are lower value conversions. Do you feel that too at your level? Hey, we can't measure things as well as we were before clients are a little more antsy.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, you're gonna need more stuff, and you're gonna need to figure out how to have an ownable position for your brand and respect to the category. And you're going to then need to be able to talk about why that brand's different and why that brand's relevant and a lot more spaces with a lot more nuance. It's a full-time job. It's not dissimilar to like, you know, when you're coming up, like monitoring your own finances, but like as you become a big corporation, you need help, you know. So it's a service that becomes more applicable and useful as complexity grows. And complexity comes with competition. Complexity comes with maturity, comes with complexity comes with scale. So no, I don't see companies being like, oh, in 10 years when I'm the size of huge company X, I'm still just sitting there doing my TikToks, you know.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is the product growth and the category start to mature, that inevitably means competitors. That means new entrants, at which point, being dismissive for the sake of humor, but it's like the founder's tweets aren't going to get you very far.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can never say never, but the short answer is probably not because oftentimes when a company starts, the primary battle is for awareness because you have such an ownable difference that if you can just let people know that you exist, you're good. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Like that's kind of the thing, right? So like if I don't, I gave a good example, but if I think of the three second abs, you know, it's like I just got to tell people I got three second apps, you know.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd be lying to you if I said that's the competition that happens. I think it's competition that's in the background maybe, but it's not something that we sit and talk to clients about a lot right now. Not because there's a laissez-faire nature to it, but I think there's a sense that those issues are being decided in other places in DC and other areas.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, listen, everything you're saying, I'm fully cognizant of. And it's just a difficult conversation because in the business that we're in, you're kind of really trying to follow where people are. So like by that, idea, TikTok is where a lot of people are. And you have to acknowledge that. Now, in terms of the future of where we go from a regulation perspective and kind of what it means for privacy and information, that's a space that we just continue to watch. And I guess the only thing I'd say I think from if you're just asking me from a business perspective, it's a little harder, right?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He'll come back on the show. We'll talk about it. We can put our kind of media pressure on him, Kim Kardashian can put pressure on him. TikTok is a black box, right? There's but one executive anyone really knows, Vanessa Poppas. She reports to bite dance. Bite dance is an even darker box of opacity, right? How do you think about that relationship? Do you think, okay, TikTok is growing. It's where the young people are. I'm spending money there. But there's actually like a geopolitical tension with allowing a very opaque Chinese company this much access to American's collective consciousness.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, again, this might be our unique thing, because it's what we do, but it's like, our conversations are more to do with instead of spending for influence, you have to earn it. And you have to earn it by creating something that people give a shit about. So I guess my thing would be don't think you can spend your way into either to change or to control or an intended outcome, you know.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're right, there was probably more control from a spend perspective in terms of what you got from our spin perspective in traditional media. You're right. But I don't know that when we talk about control and governance and regulation and social media space, I don't know that it's because we want sort of corporations to be taking that control. You know what I mean? So I guess I don't think the answer should be that spend should equate to more control.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's funny, even as you were saying control, it's not a feeling I have. I mean, it's like, I don't, even with, you know, sizable investments. And I think this is a good thing, by the way. It's like we don't have a level of control where we get to dictate the changes in algorithms. And I think that's right.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From our perspective, we try to think about that much more from an organic perspective than from a paid. Because ultimately that's the content that gets passed around, right? Ads that are paid and for the sake of ads don't get passed around. We take huge pride in creating the content that people want to consume and actually seek out and then share. So we focus more on earned. But yes, there's certainly a paid investment that's happening right now.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely not the latter. The fun vertical video strategy is just deadly at this point. If it smells like, and I don't even say it smells like an app because you can actually feel like an add on platforms and get some license, but like you have to kind of really be overt about that. But what you can't do is just be like, it smells like the TV ad that you ran, you know. It smells like the Instagram post that you made that's now on TikTok. Like people are super sensitive to understanding how platforms work. And if you can't demonstrate a basic understanding of the differences between the platforms and how they're consumed, you're done so. But I think, yes, our clients spending is starting to talk about and spend more on TikTok. Yeah, that's happening at the moment. And who knows what the future is, but that's happening at the moment.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is that where brands want to spend? Right, so they come to you and they're like, we need a TikTok strategy. You've got your playbook of moves. You've got your great creatives make the stuff. And then you go and you're running it on TikTok. You're paying TikTok for promotion. You might have like a paid TikTok strategy. Are you saying note, it all has to be organic? Or is it more like we're going to make fun vertical videos and put them on all the platforms?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes, it comes up a lot. There's a little bit of the, I want a viral video effect from 10 years ago. There's a little bit of that. It's what's, what are we doing in TikTok? Kindle may or may not be there.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The rise of TikTok is wild. And it's been a short amount of time, but to have the cultural resonance that it does is really crazy. I think the thing that's interesting about TikTok is that it's no longer just a platform, right? It has behaviors really distinctive and ownable behaviors that are attached to it. And I think one of the things that's interesting about it right now is that people are starting to use it for all sorts of different functionality, right? It's not just like clearly not just dance videos. It's a how-to for life in many ways. a really great platform for video, as we well know in a business that's kind of that thrives in video and can communicate so much through video, it's a great platform. So TikTok, yes, undoubtedly a big part of our conversations every client wants a strategy, a social strategy for all platforms. But like I think this is what's different is that now you'll go, what's my TikTok strategy? What's my Insta strategy? What's my et cetera?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, again, I'm Gen X. I'm instinctively pushed away. I think famously, we're completely resistant to advertising, right? It's not the old cliche. We're talking about young people, we were talking about social platforms. We have to talk about TikTok. Every social platform, every company, every media company is like TikTok is the future. Instagram is blowing itself up to be more like TikTok. YouTube has shorts, which are TikToks on YouTube. How much of your time are you strategically spending on TikTok?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a great point. Now, I would say that Gen Z gets outsized share of the conversation in our meetings, et cetera. Dan used to say this, but it's like you're always trying to make work that you can kind of whisper to somebody and they could be overheard by many others. So I think the thing that we try to do is to, while whatever we're doing is supposed to resonate deeply and most clearly with the audience that you're talking to, it should feel like it's got broad resonance. So you try to tap into these larger cultural zeitgeist issues that everybody can have a perspective on. We're never trying to push you away.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no, no. I'm going to challenge that because I feel like as long as I've been in this business, we're always getting a brief. It's like we got to win with, you know, Genexi. You know what I mean? That's always the brief, you know. But I will say that it does feel like the collective conversation around Gen Z is bigger. It doesn't feel like it's just a brief anymore. It feels like it's a worldview. And there's huge, I don't need to say this to you. It's like there's huge cultural shifts and sort of impact that are happening right now because of what's being led by the generation. And so it's weird to experience it in the workplace with clients, in the work, in the media. You know what I mean? It's just like, has a much larger impact.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some sort of No one did this around like Gen X. I did not get the full weight of the media and advertising industries. They were like, you're a slacker. Like, please get a job. And then, like, the money all showed up, and I was like, we have to think about them. And now it's like, we have to think about Gen Z. Like, that feels new to me in some way.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. It doesn't feel like that. It doesn't feel like that. Avertising so because it's such an of the moment industry, like it just feels like it's always that. You know what I mean? Like I feel like I'm always in some sort of like cultural storm.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ran the New York office during what I would call the millennial wars. Now you're the global CEO, and everyone cares about Gen Z. Are you kind of like, yeah, we're just like doing this shit again? Because we all lived through the millennial wars.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So much nuance, and I won't get too crazy with this, but like, you're right, brands are wild in. Like, it's like. Word authenticity is overused, and you and I both know that, but authenticity is kind of everything. When I say brands should show up more like people, I do not love it when brands are mimicking behavior of others online. What I do love is when a brand has a clear sense for what it believes in and then knows how to show up accordingly. So I don't mean like the sub bro tweets from clients. That's cringe all over. What I do mean is knowing that if climate change is a huge pillar of your company, figuring out how to use social media to like actually advocate for those positions and to garner support and to create conversation. So I think it's acting more like people in the sense of having passions and individual personalities that can come through, not mimicking what's going on in whatever version of Twitter that you.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More brand related. We talk about brand health. We talk about brand engagement. We talk about brand relevance a lot. We want to see the clients that we work with. We want to see their brands show up in the most loved brands in the world. And then it's almost always the case that sales generally follow.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, in our world, we deal as much as anything in brand, right? So brand health, and I know that sounds like a soft measure, but it's an incredibly important one, right? So our thing is to first talk about what is your brand and how will that show up. And as your brand resonating with the audience that you choose, right? If you're like, I want my brand to be more relevant with young people, with Gen Z, then it's like, okay, that's the task. That comes before needing to, you know, sell more widgets, right? Is you have to first go, okay, what's your brand about? Why will people talk about that brand? Why will they have an emotional relationship to that brand that will then make me more open to buying products? Because if you just skip the step to going straight to product, you're only as good as the time that you're spending. You know what I mean? So you'll benefit from that short term. But then once you kind of turn the faucet off a little bit more, then you're not going to see that same benefit, worse invested brand. It has a long tail. So our metric is actually”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The metric you measure, obviously, right? You go and you pitch your values, and here's Wyden. We can do all these things for you. At the end of the day, you're saying we can increase your sales. Is that The key number at the end of the day. The bottom line sales go up for clients.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Honestly, I need to think about that more, but I think that's certainly a worthwhile hypothesis for sure. The demand for content is as high as ever, but do you necessarily need to spend to see that ROI? Maybe not. And I think right now a lot of clients too are also kind of like really looking at their media mix and like placing bets. That's the thing I'm seeing a little bit more of. It's like rather than just kind of blanket spin, it's kind of like, oh, maybe I'll put it on that number or on that number, you know, and look at looking at the roulette table a little bit differently, you know.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good quarter and optimistic. And that's not grounded in anything. I just to be super clear. I don't want to get a sense that I'm an oracle of any kind. But I think the models changed a bit because I think even the notion that the minute that you have a hint of a recession, you cut ad spending, it's a little different now because just the way that media works and the always-on nature of brands, I don't think you can look at it the same way. You can't just be like, oh, never mind. I'm just going to not show up in public anymore. Like, you know, like, you know, it's like, yeah, so yeah, you may not buy the Super Bowl this year, for example, you know, but like maybe, but like, you still got to show up at every day, you know, and you have to have something to say and you have to have content to be driving that conversation. So like, it's just a very different thing. I think that the always on nature of brands kind of demands that we stay salient, that we stay sort of engaged in conversations, even in a recession.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but let me focus on the dollars for a minute. I want to ask a lot about the creative and differences in how you plan for the platforms. But economy is in a weird place. I don't know if it's a recession or not. Ad budgets are the first to go, usually when things go south. The platform companies that sell the inventory are having bad quarters. The publicly traded ad agencies that I can look at, they're having good quarters and they're optimistic about next quarter. There's a weird...”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For a long time, it was like, what's your social strategy? And it was just kind of like taking a TV commercial and putting it on the social platforms, right? But now each social platform is getting more distinctive for good and for bad. And I think there are opportunities for us when we look at creatively to really kind of, I don't want to say exploit that, but take advantage of it.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Doing well, and we feel bullish on the future, and connecting it to where the social platforms are going. I think obviously it's no secret that there's a lot of issues around trust, right? And context, media context, making sure that what I pay for shows up in the right places, control is part of this. It's a bit of a battleground. Everybody's trying to figure it out. I think if you're looking at from our perspective, we think about it less as kind of like paying for all of the sort of digital and social inventory and more still using those platforms as sort of creative opportunities. There's just so much interesting stuff that you can do on the big platforms that are integral to gaining the collective conscious, right, to making a cultural splash. So we think of them less as kind of like advertising revenue businesses and more about creative canvas. I think that's one of the things that's a bit of a misnomer is like.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're back So there's two sides of your business the creative side and the distribution side. Let's talk about the distribution side. I am very curious how you think the platforms are doing and how the distributing on the social platforms are affecting you. The big ones, Facebook, Snap, having bad quarters, their businesses are down. I can't see your financial results, but I look at the big agency financial results because they're public companies. They seem to be doing great. And they're very optimistic about next quarter. How are you guys doing?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, definitely. In fact, it's built in Darbest Week. This is a little known thing, but we can't sell the company. It's like it's impossible.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the question would be, shouldn't why did Kennedy start to build out more of those services? Because there's revenue opportunities there and business growth opportunities there. The reality of it is we kind of only look at our growth should only come from creative opportunity. If there are more functional marketing services, we're just better off finding partners who do that. So we try to stay focused on things we do well and partner with people that can do others things better.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that's fairly accurate. But first of all, I would say that the administrative work that we do is very little. We try to stay lean and focused on the thing that we do really well and we partner with people and companies on the things that we don't do very well. So interestingly enough, we work with a lot of holding companies. So there are clients where we are the creative or strategic lead and then we have tons of partners that exist as part of holding companies because there's a bunch of services and a bunch of stuff that we don't do. And so we just try to be super honest about what we don't do and then cool about all the different partners that we're open to working with because our independence does allow us to say like, oh, it's cool. And holding company X, if you've got a direct marketing arm that's really good, then great. Let's work together.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talking about being publicly traded versus independent, a lot of your biggest competitors are gigantic public companies, WPP Omnicom, publicist, whatever. They're structured as holding companies. There's like boutique ad agencies and the Omnicom monster shows up to eat them. And the promise, at least as so far as I've heard, is they say, look, we'll take all the boring parts away. We'll run your finance and your HR and you guys can just be creatives. And we'll have a huge library of creative shops for people to come into. And like, if you don't like them, you can go to someone else and like you'll stay inside the holding company, even out the revenue. And this is the promise. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You still have to retain all of that administrative function, right? And it seems like inside of your job as CEO, you've got the big creative partner and it's a creative company. So a lot of what you must be doing is like making sure the business is operating so the creative ed culture can happen. Do you ever think?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think so. I think, in fact, I think more and more companies are thinking about their brands and they're thinking about how their brand shows up in the world and they're having to fight for attention in a way that we've never seen before. And so there's actually more value to what we do. So yes, I don't know, at least for the near term, I don't loosely leap over sort of the upside potential of our business.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we kind of think, and this is what might be totally backwards and maybe bad business. And there are times when that opportunity is abundant and you have the types of clients and the types of people that are into the creative nature of what we do. And then sometimes it's a little harder. But like we know over time that there's huge value in the thing that we do. And so we try not to get thirsty. So when we show up in new business, I feel like our goal in a new business environment is to, again, as clearly as possible communicate who we are. That's the goal. It's not to try to convince you of something. I would never say Eli, this has come over and I'll show you all the things that maybe we could do and I'll do anything to it. It's like it's more just that if I can get you to understand what we're about, then we'll have the safe space for a good decision. So yeah, to your point is like, is there a cap on growth because there aren't enough companies in the world that want to do interesting creative stuff?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You go to pitch clients. Do you say, Look, this is who we are? Like, if you want it, you got it. I mean, there's only so many clients with the budgets to afford you in the world. Are you just thinking, okay, they're all just going to rotate through us at some point? Or are you thinking, man, we got to, I hope there's more competition in DTC because those companies are going to need ad agencies when the competition heats up? Like, how do you think about growing the business?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then, in terms of how do we make those decisions, I think our first thing is actually to go, have we done everything that we can to demonstrate what we do and the value of what that would be? And as long as that's understood, and then there's like, you know, we're in an impasse, then it's like, okay, cool. We're all good. It's making sure that you've reached that point, that you've made what you do and what you're about super clear so that at least the decision is clear on both sides. If we've done that, then at that point you just have to, you know. be confident and comfortable in that decision.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I have to acknowledge one thing that's a differentiator for us that helps us make those decisions is that we're still independent, right? So we're not publicly held. We're not held by a holding company. That takes the quarterly pressure off of us and allows us to make decisions for the long term. And ultimately, our brand is defined by our creative integrity over the long term. And if we start to mess with that, that really erodes what we are and what our long-term success will be. So if we're going to be in a position where that thing's in jeopardy and the opportunity to make something really great on behalf of the client, then it's better for us, even though it might have short-term sort of downside to go, well, you know, all good, let's focus on the long term. So I think us not being a part of a helding company, being independent allows us to make those decisions.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT