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

“Not the model for most client service type companies, right? You're trying to attract business, retain business, slowly raise your fees over time. I'm not saying that I know anything about client service businesses, but, you know, there's like a game. That's very different for Wyden, right? Widen's known for moves like that, for acting against its revenue interests in terms of its cultural interest. How do you think about that? Not to bring it back to founders, but something founders are very able to do, right? They retain the capital inside the organization to make decisions like that. You're in a new spot. How do you think about those trade-offs and communicating them and making sure everyone buys into the trade-offs?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those things aren't easy, but if you take the principle, like the philosophy is always you want to work on things where people want what you do. It's a little bit like dating You know what I mean? Like you can kind of try and show up to be the person you think somebody wants you to be or be who you are and see if that works. And we're always, I think we try to be very cool and accepting of the idea that we may not be the thing that you want. And that's cool, you know, and in that case, it was like they had a new team in place and they wanted to go a different direction. And it's like that's cool. And so we'd rather say go forth and wish them the best of luck instead of try to fight and pretend to do something that we don't do, 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
“So let me put this into practice for you with kind of a big recent decision Wyden was famously Bud Light's agency for a long, long time. Lots and lots of famous commercials. I saw reports in the trade. Bud Light said, hey, we're going to reopen this account. You can pitch us again if you want to. And you all declined. You said, we're not going to do that. We're walking away. That's a huge account. I'm assuming lots of money. How did you make 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
“Yeah, yeah, totally use it all the time. Because before you'd go to Dan and be like, actually, what should we do? And he'd tell you. And so that was the access to Buddha. And I'm obviously not trying to give an exalted sense of where we are in the totem pole. But it's difficult, I think, if you try to operate as if there are rules. And if you're trying to take the actual words of the founders and apply them, that can be problematic. But if you can apply them as philosophies, then it kind of works. So it's like we know that we're creatively led. We know that we want to make work that people talk about in the world. It's like there's some very general principles that in today's context might mean something different. But as long as you have those, you hold true to those, then it's okay. So I feel like our job from a decision making perspective is to tightly hold the philosophies and be light on the rules.”
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 one of the things that's really positive is both Carl and I, my partner, Carl and I've grown up in close proximity to the founders, right? So Dan and David, we got to grow up around them and with them and we were very close to everything and the way that they made decisions. So I think that's the most formative thing for us. It's not as if it's like we're coming in off the street and trying to figure out the place. It's in our DNA. I've been here longer than anything else that I've done in my life. It's like all my formative years have been at Wyden Kennedy. So I think at a certain point, it becomes second nature to have a sense for at least what why didn't Kennedy's about and what you're supposed to be upholding. Listen, it's tricky. We talk about going from Buddha to Buddhism.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this is like the set of decoder questions. You have been at Widen for a long time. I think you were in the planning department, then you were the managing director, then you ran the New York office. Now you are the global CEO. You also have the new CEO after the last founder left. So there's a new team in charge and the founders have exited. They were very famous. They set this culture. When I say it's the coolest ad agency, there's a lot of them in that mix. How do you make decisions? And how has it changed as you've gone up in the company and now you're in this new role?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely the best part and a unique part of Wyden Kennedy because it is, that is our whole thing. We get to spend a lot of time sitting and talking about work. We get to sit with themes and with clients and talk about ideas a lot of the day. It's the reason I love this place. It's the reason I love my job. If I had to put in percentages, I'd say that's 40 to 50% of the job, which is cool. Just sitting and talking to people about ideas. We say it's a culture of debate. And we try to create as many forums as possible for groups of people, right? The team who's working on it like day to day, like by the second, the team who's leading. And then us in an officer agency level and be able to sit and have those debates about what's great about that idea and what can make it better. That's kind of the sauce. So a lot of time.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talk about the structure of the company a little bit. There's U to CO, you've got a chief creative officer. How much time do you get to spend on the creative? How much time do you spend reviewing campaigns and giving notes and all that sort of thing?”
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 are 1600 globally, and we have offices all over the world, but we started in Portland, Portland, Oregon. We've been in New York, and we're in Amsterdam, we're in London, we're in Shanghai, we're in Mumbai, we're in Tokyo, we're in Sao Paulo.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To come in and go, oh, I get it. I get the wide dynamics. Now I'm going to apply that to this client. And you could scale it that way. So if we create the sort of cultural foundation and get the right people, it kind of scales itself. I think if we were to try to mandate a way of doing things, I think we'd be very limited in our upside”
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 I would say that we kind of think about that as like a goal of kind of managing to a size or a ratio or to a dollar. The challenge, I think, for any agency as it scales is oftentimes agencies are built around the creativity and the talent of its founders or leaders, right? And they oftentimes have a style that comes directly from that. One of the things that we've tried to do at Wyden is to create more of a foundational approach that gives people the space and the environment to kind of like figure out what their version of creativity looks like. So we don't say there's a fixed way of doing things. We have goals. We have intentions. We have things that have worked for us in the past. Then you find really talented people, give them the space, and then that scales. So it scales through kind of creating the environment. And I think that's what we spend a lot of time talking about the environment of creativity and the culture.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Feel bad sometimes How do you think about managing the size of Widen overall? Because you've got these central production teams. I'm sure you have central business administrative functions, finance, HR, all that. But as you get new clients, you've got to build new creative teams around those clients. Do you have like a ratio in your head of how big the sort of central team should be as you get more clients? Is that a cost that you manage?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wouldn't recommend that for companies at every different size. But once you reach a level of maturation and size, it's really helpful to have an agency that a partner that does that and understands what a voice should really sound and operate like, 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
“Yeah, and you can feel that sometimes, you know what I mean? So that's one model, right? You have other models where clients have sort of in-house agencies or kind of in-house social capabilities where they'll manage that themselves. But we find that as an agency that's had some success in the past around creating a voice for a brand, owning that voice is actually pretty natural. And so we have lots of different dynamics where sometimes we own the entirety of a brand's social presence and others we own more of the voice and personality and then they might handle some of the consumer response sort of like customer relationship type stuff. And so there's lots of different models. But I'd say it's still very valuable to have a partner who understands the voice of a brand really, really well and can talk about things that are happening in the world outside of your silo as a company grows.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are lots of different models. Some clients, they do that themselves. Sometimes the CMO or the CEO does it themselves for clients. Oftentimes the founder-led companies, the voice of that brand comes from the founder themselves. I would say that.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me ask you about that because we, you know, we just had Katie Welshan from Rare Beauty. That's Selena Gomez's beauty brand. It's a much smaller company than I think many companies you work with. But their whole thing is, look, we're direct to consumer. We're doing that ourselves. It's an 80 person company, 23 of them are like online all day. That's what they're doing. They're marketing the brand direct to consumer and platforms. Other brands are doing that now, right? If you run any kind of company bringing the, okay, we're going to talk to our customers on the internet function closer to the center of the company seems really important. But you're describing your agency as doing that for people. What's the split?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, kind of caught on fire that you didn't expect, and so you're kind of feeding those flames. So it's a much more dynamic process, you know what I mean, where it's less about kind of you launch a campaign. And then maybe take a couple weeks off and then start to figure out what the next campaign is. It's very much an always on your thinking about the brand and how to respond to what's happening in the real world all the time.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, totally. That might be the biggest shift that has happened in the industry. Like before it was all about big, you know, and you had big moments and big budgets and big everything and it really picked your, like you had very confined deliverables. So like let's make up a, again, Brandex that has a back to school moment that's important holiday. It's your goal, let's say. You would have developed campaigns with TV print out of home radio for those windows of time. But a modern brand doesn't function like that at all. It's a little bit like fashion where you used to have kind of fall and spring fashion shows and assume that people shop around those times. But like a modern brand kind of operates in real time. So when we're working on clients, yes, you will still have Windows, but on top of that, there is day-to-day engagement that's happening all the time. So you're managing the social presence every single second of the day. There might be something that happens in the world that you're responding to. There might be something that took off that.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So those teams built around certain clients. I know that the answer is they're busy all the time. You already said they're busy all the time. But I always wonder, right, like a big company will come to you, a huge airline company will come to you and say, we need a new ad campaign. And then you like make it. You're not immediately on to the next ad campaign. What happens with that team after the Super Bowl ad ships and like the assets are out in the world?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Times. They have strategy. And those four functions are always kind of client-facing. And then there are a lot of other functions that kind of make everything work. You have production. You have studio. You have design, you have project management. You have a lot of different departments that are kind of there to help support the creation and making of work. So at the top level, it's kind of business and creative. And then from there, you have teams that are built around certain clients.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In terms of structure, you've got a very traditional structure of how an agency works where you have the top level of kind of executive management. You've got somebody who kind of oftentimes represents the business side, and then somebody who represents the creative side. That's pretty traditional. Now, Wyden Kennedy, it's a creatively led agency. So that makes it very distinct. So even though I'm the CEO of the company and I represent kind of the business side, my partner, Carl Lieberman, he's the chief creative officer, you know, he has the greatest say. He has the definitive say on kind of what we do and don't do. Wyatt is known for that. That's our kind of hallmark. So at that level, you're kind of trying to create a foundation and space for the culture of creativity to exist. But actual accounts, you know, things like our clients, their teams built around those clients. And those teams have some basic functions. They have account management. They have creative leadership CDs, creative directors, and creatives. They have media.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. That is very familiar to me. Welcome to this podcast. We live it every week. So you're talking, you've got some people dedicated to some clients. You must have some central functions. How is Wyden and Kennedy structured?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Agency doesn't function that way. We are very much a creative idea driven agency. And a lot of what we do is a labor of love, right? So when we think we're close to making something or coming up with something really great, there's no way we'd go to a client and be like, oh, we're over on hours. Because that's actually prohibitive. That's not beneficial to them or to us. So we worry far less about ours. It's just not a game that we play. We're much more focused on output. And so our thing when we're talking to clients, we want to make sure that we have the right people on their business. And then from there, it's kind of you can unlock a lot of different things. And hopefully you'll get far more output than you ever anticipated because you got the right team on it. It's more about securing the right team and then from there not worrying about hours or nickel and diming or being too specific about deliverables. Because in today's world, you know, you never really.”
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 how you think about it too? Like, okay, we're going to sign a big car company, we're going to put 10 people on their account, we're going to bill out their time. And if they go over, we're going to build them more. Or if some, you know, if you have like a central planning team or something gets involved, we'll build for that time too. Or is it a little fuzzier?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, my background was as a lawyer, my wife's still a lawyer. Lawyers famously bill in six minute increments, which is very great for the business side of the law firm, like totally nuts for the actual lawyers at the law firm.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A service model, it's kind of, I guess, similar in nature to like other service industries like law firms. You're paid a retainer or a project fee by a client and you determine the scope of services, the scope of work for that engagement. And then from there, you have people who are oftentimes dedicated to that business, right? So you're paying full time for labor. And so we make money through that agreement. They pay us for labor and time. And then our output as a point of view on the brand and how that shows up in advertising and all sorts of different services that come with that to your point. Some of it's paid, some of it's earned, some platform, some of it's on others, et cetera, et cetera. So the money is retainer-based and it works similar to other service-based companies.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there's that part, right? I'm going to come to you and say, hey, you need to advertise something to increase my sales. You're going to come up with a pitch and some smart creative people are going to like make some advertising. That's going to turn into all kinds of assets that then you distribute onto various media platforms. Famously in the sort of the madmen days, the buying the space is where the agencies made money. You would buy the time from the TV networks. You would take a cut of that cost and that's your money. That's not the case with the Instagrams of the world, I don't think. How do you make your money?”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the time for making and production and kind of out into the world is like compressed dramatically. So the impact of that on the agency is that there's less time just kind of sitting around doing mad men things and much more like working, figuring stuff out. I think there's a lot more time spent making and producing than you would have had at that time. It's similar in that the ideas and kind of coming up with ideas is kind of still the name of the game, but like the manifestation of how that works is very different.”
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, in some ways, and this is semi-controversial, in some ways it's not that dissimilar in the sense that Madmen, you know, you have people who sit around in a room and talk about ideas that can kind of capture the collective imagination of people. So it's similar in intent and design and idea, but the notion that there's like tons of time and people just kind of hanging around and drinking martinis in between is where it kind of goes awry, right? Like that's not really the business anymore. And for lots of reasons, cultural change, you know, societal shifts, but also because there's just so much more to do. So if I'm in 1960s advertising, I might have three months to figure out a TV spot that goes on the air for brand X. But now you've got social post. You've got down funnel direct marketing and advertising. There's a million things that need to get made every single day.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm very excited to talk to you. I want to start with some basics. I think a lot of people work with a picture of agencies in their head that more or less comes from Madmen. But that's not how it works anymore. Give people the short version of what a modern ad agency does.”
2022-08-23 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Advertising is everywhere. Wieden+Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur explains how it works · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT