Cannes Lions CEO Simon Cook Breaks Down The Festival’s Inaugural Global CEO Forum

Forbes

In this conversation, I sit with Cannes Lions CEO Simon Cook, to talk about what we both heard at the Festival’s inaugural Global CEO Forum, which I moderated and facilitated. Some 50 CEO’s from around the world took part (Under The Chatham House Rule), and in this episode Simon and I explore what we heard from them, creativity as a financial engine, and why CEOs who don’t embrace it may be quietly choosing stagnation.  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the show. Today's show is a little bit different, but

00:10of course, absolutely related. Today, I am sitting with Simon Cook, CEO of the Cannes Lions. Hello,

00:16Simon. Hello. Thanks for being with me. Thanks for having me. So what Simon and I are going to

00:21talk about today is the Lions inaugural Global CEO Forum, which was held as of this recording

00:28about a month ago at the Cannes Lions. And Simon and the team were gracious enough to have invited

00:35me to help facilitate and moderate the conversation that took place that afternoon. So I want to kind

00:42of set it up for our listeners and our viewers so that you understand what happened. What happened

00:47was under the Chatham House rule, some 50 CEOs from around the world from a portfolio of categories,

00:57industries from airline, media, entertainment, technology, CPG, beauty, retail, fashion, QSR,

01:03companies enormous and smaller still, came together to talk about creativity. But to talk about

01:11creativity, not just in the context of marketing, but as a strategic business imperative and an

01:17essential, but often as as came out more than once overlooked and underutilized lever of growth

01:25and value creation, the conversation went in a handful of areas. And Simon and I are going to

01:32touch on what we heard, what surprised us and what we think is next. But broadly, it was a conversation

01:40about what creativity is, who's responsible for it within an organization, and how to ensure that an

01:48organization is better organized to ensure that creativity is facilitated, not stifled.

01:56But with that, Simon, and thanks again for being here. Tell us why why you started this? Why was

02:04why was there an inaugural CEO forum? Well, thanks for having me, Seth. Yeah, thanks for being there on

02:10the day and facilitating things so graciously. It was it was not the easiest room I've ever worked.

02:16You did a gallant job, that's for sure. Yeah, it's a really interesting one. So if we we go back a few

02:23years, we started to notice that more and more CEOs were coming to the festival than ever before.

02:29And when we spoke to them and asked them, why are you here? Now, we're obviously used to the CMO

02:34being in town. Really interesting shift to see lots of CEOs showing up. And what they told us is that they

02:41were interested in understanding how they could leverage creativity as a growth driver. So a natural

02:49extension of that, why not pull them together? Why not host, as you said, the inaugural global CEO forum

02:56to explore it in more detail. And as you as you look back on that kind of overarching question, how do we

03:04better leverage creativity as a growth driver? Do you do you think that they were saying, okay,

03:09it it has been siloed within marketing, and therefore, we want to kind of understand it from

03:16a marketing context, and thus push it out from there, more horizontally across the enterprise? What do

03:22you think was behind really behind their inclination, which is to better understand it?

03:28I think the role of it within marketing is is one aspect, but also the role of creativity as a new

03:36frontier for growth. Because let's face it, and we spoke about this on the day, we talked about the

03:42immense pressure CEOs are under that we're all under to deliver incremental growth every year,

03:48pressure to deliver growth for shareholders, especially. And what we discussed on the day was

03:54the fact that some of these old levers for growth have been somewhat exhausted, depending on the

03:59profile of your company and where you're at. And what are you thinking of there?

04:03Well, it's transformation, M&A, scale, efficiency, all the classics, right?

04:09Yeah.

04:10So interesting to get together. And, you know, it was it was great to see that people were really

04:16engaged with this conversation, because they also wanted to explore how to leverage creativity.

04:22And interestingly, one of the CEOs told me that during their latest investor meeting that came

04:29up for the first time. So he was asked, what is your strategy around creativity, which had not come

04:36up previously. So it's it's obviously a shift that we're seeing. But we also discovered on the day

04:44that world class creative marketing outperforms the stock market by 8% every year. And it's it's was

04:52also about giving some of these CEOs.

04:54So sorry, unpack that data point, because it's really interesting. So companies with world class

05:00creative marketing, right, are outperforming their peers by 8% year over year is a stock increase.

05:08Exactly. But who sourced that?

05:11So that was by an independent study done by one of our contributors. But I think the point we were

05:18trying to make because we've heard these stats over the last decade or even longer. This is fresh

05:24information, fresh data points and new ammunition, if you like, to to do something about it. One of the

05:31things we explored in the room was this idea that I think all of the CEOs there were there because

05:37they truly believe that creativity could be leveraged. But of course, CEOs and businesses

05:42have lots of competing priorities. Yes. So creativity marketing more broadly, sometimes,

05:48as we know, slips down that priority list. Do you think that that goes back? And I think it was

05:53the first question that we we asked them. And we asked, in fact, some of them in advance of getting

05:59together a handful of questions, which was, you know, how do they define creativity? Who's responsible

06:05for it? How does it express itself? One of the things I was struck by was that I would say,

06:13and it really was a really, it was a difficult room in some respects, but it was a very attentive,

06:20present and engaged room still with only a handful of exceptions. So in a universe of 50,

06:2990 percent, I'd say, really understood that creativity was the responsibility of the entirety

06:35of the organization as opposed to just marketing's job. And they looked at it as that kind of broad

06:42imperative. Were you surprised by that? I was. I was really surprised by it. I was even more surprised

06:48that it was seemingly not apparent to some of the CEOs that they could also play a role in this.

06:55And they could become, as I think we said on the day, the architects of commercial creativity within

07:01the organization. Yeah, that was your language, I think. And I quite love it because if it doesn't,

07:08creativity is either facilitated or stifled by organizational design, organizational incentives,

07:15the permission to fuck up. Because as one of the CEOs in the room said towards the end of the

07:23afternoon, most ideas are bad ideas. That's just the nature of ideas. Yeah. Right. If you don't have

07:30the permission to have bad ideas, you're not going to have many good ideas. Yeah. And that led on to a

07:36conversation around urgency as well. Everyone was in that room because they signed up to the premise,

07:42understood why they had to be there. But the provocation right from the outset was around,

07:47you know, you need to go on this journey. Yeah. But what is the cost of not now?

07:54There are lots of competing priorities, but what is the cost? What is the growth that you're leaving

07:58on the table by not addressing it today? Yeah. You actually ended your remarks with what is the,

08:06with that phrase, what is the cost of not now? And it, it, it, it, it really hit me quite hard. I

08:14wasn't, I didn't know your remarks going in. I'm not sure I knew my own. You'd never know.

08:21Which, which, which, which, which are frequent listeners and watchers know. But, but that what is

08:27the cost of not now is, is, is I think a, a, um, a question we should all be asking ourselves about

08:35all kinds of things all the fucking time. Yeah. Um, and your point about that urgency that was

08:42implicit in their attendance, right? Cause it wasn't just curiosity. It was, it was urgency. Is that,

08:49does that take us back to what you were saying before about kind of the traditional levers of

08:54growth? There's certainly, you know, more efficacious in some instances than others,

08:59but just kind of a, a almost desperate search for what is next and what in this very, very difficult

09:07and ever evolving climate will be the unfair competitive advantage. Yeah. I think it's partly

09:12that. I think it's also to your other point, the reframing of creativity, there's creativity,

09:20there's creative marketing. A lot of people are really talking about output there. They're

09:24thinking about campaigns. They're thinking about pumping more advertising into the world.

09:29That's not what this is about. What we were really talking about was creativity as infrastructure.

09:35No, really thinking about how you can embed creativity and innovation, by the way, across

09:40the entire organization so that it isn't siloed or just sits at the door of the CMO or the creative

09:47department. You've just brought up two things that I think are, are worth, worth talking about for a

09:51second. One, I think your, your, your point, I'm not sure I was as clear on this as, as you just made

09:57it, which is creativity isn't an output. It's an input. Yeah. Um, and actually, um, we did have a

10:05speaker who may not have been Chatham, um, who talked and we're, we're just, we're outing you Tor and you

10:15can, we'll get your permission, uh, to just to be sure. And we'll edit if, if not, but, but Tor Myron

10:22from Apple, who was, um, Apple being your creative marketer of the year, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, in a

10:28conversation with me opened, opened the forum. And one of the things that we talked about was, you know,

10:34Apple today is, is, um, well known for being well, Apple actually, and everything that surrounds that

10:45for being a, a, um, consistently creative enterprise from product to marketing and everything in

10:52between. One of the things Tor talked about, um, was, was how that was facilitated from an

10:58organizational perspective, how that was protected, nurtured, prioritized. Did, did you have any

11:04takeaways from that? I think, uh, it was interesting to see the takeaways and the reactions to the

11:10conversation that you were having because I think someone very adeptly observed, and this is sort of

11:18cheating the system of it, but they mentioned that for some organizations, maybe it would be better to

11:24reframe creativity as innovation because when you do that, suddenly you're talking to organic growth

11:31growth and your organic growth strategy. Yeah. Innovation speaks the language of CEOs and the

11:35shareholders. One of the things we talked about to your point, and that was going to be the second

11:39thing I got to, which is does in fact the word creativity have a branding problem because there

11:45were CEOs who exactly to what you just said, you know, you use the word innovation, you use the word

11:51disruption, maybe even imagination, um, uh, you know, get trite and cliche thinking outside the box, embrace it and

12:00understand it differently. Um, and it's, it's one of the things that we talk a lot about on this show is, is the

12:08danger of synonyms in business, which is I say creativity and I mean innovation. You hear me saying

12:15creativity and you think, you know, jazz hands and pretty picture ads. Exactly. Um, one of the things

12:21that, that I was struck by, um, the tour said, which was inside Apple creatives only report to creatives,

12:28which is to say those who understand create their own kind of language and ecosystem and self-perpetuating

12:38culture of creativity that because tour of course reports to Tim, um, um, is protected to our earlier

12:47conversation and nurtured and facilitated from the top throughout the enterprise, which of course,

12:54you know, uh, began before Tim, uh, with Steve, but, uh, continues to this day. Yeah. I think he called it,

13:01uh, a daily masterclass, which is with Steve. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but as you said, it's something

13:08that is fiercely protected. Yeah. And I think we, as the conversation opened up, got to see

13:15the full spectrum of that within the room where those people who it was clear felt they had more

13:21to do in that area and those who were very proud of where they've got to when it comes to protecting

13:26the infrastructure that enables the kind of creative we're talking about. I mean, it's a very hard thing

13:31to do. Absolutely. Right. We, while it's very easy to conceptualize that one must do it, um, and even

13:39to have kind of systems in place that if you do not live it, um, you know, what's, what's that, what's

13:48that old line? Um, um, a reputation is, uh, is built over a lifetime, but torn down in an instant.

13:55Um, so to a creative culture, right? Like the moment people feel like, oh no, I'm, I'm actually,

14:05and let me see if I can find in my notes, there was a great quote from one of the CEOs about this.

14:11I really thought I'd captured this. My notes, my notes are incomplete. I have failed you yet again.

14:17Um, um, but it was a great quote, which is just about, about the, the costs of not taking that

14:26risk, the costs, uh, and going back to the cost of not now, right. And that reframing,

14:33not just as a lever of growth, but as a, um, not just as additive and accretive,

14:39right. But as dilutive in its absence and arguably destructive, at least a value creation

14:47in its absence. In the, um, the questionnaire that we put out before, as you said, we put questions to

14:53the participants to, to get a sense of what was going to be important. So many of them came back

14:58saying they were excited to, to learn from Apple at the same time, um, wanted there to be an

15:07acknowledgement that there were a complete range of companies within that room. I guess the argument

15:12is in a company like Apple, you would hope that creativity is at the center of the business.

15:17We also had participation from the likes of who was in the room, Adobe, Apple, as we said,

15:23British airways, New York times, Twitch, Saudi tourism, and then challenger brands like who gives

15:29a crap. Yeah. So depending on the nature of the organization, for those, for those of our,

15:35I believe, uh, uh, us based listeners in particular, who gives a crap as a toilet paper,

15:41UK based. Um, I was, I will confess not familiar with them myself, but really liked the CEO. He had

15:50some really interesting perspectives. Exactly. And regardless of the category,

15:55I think what became really clear is that some of the case studies that emerged, some of the experiences

16:01that were shared, they were transferable, you know, you could see people going, okay, well,

16:06I'm, I'm not in airline or I'm not in, uh, hospitality, but I can see how that can directly

16:12apply to my business. You're, you're, you're spot on. And I've always described it as one of the great,

16:18before I tell you what I was about to describe, I found the quote I was looking for. I knew I had it.

16:23Um, the line was you won't get fired for the risks you don't take, but you will for the mistakes you do

16:30make. And that ties oddly, I think to the point you just made, which is that is human nature and

16:37that is human fear. And that is why fear is oftentimes the greatest inhibitor to creativity

16:43and the greatest perpetuator of the status quo, right? Because status quo didn't kill me. I'm just

16:49going to keep doing it. I didn't get fired. I'm just going to keep going this way because I don't

16:52want to get fired. And, and what I think is so interesting about the ability to extrapolate

16:58lessons across categories, territories, markets is it was the great experience of my career,

17:05which is client side, agency side, when you're on the agency side, you realize how actually

17:13first time I noticed this, I had had a meeting with Apple. This is a long time ago. Uh, and I'd had

17:18a meeting with degree deodorant right within about a week of each other. And this is my first time on

17:24the agency side, consultancy side. And I was flying home from the second meeting and I was like, oh my

17:30God, they actually have so much in common in terms of the problem at that moment in time they were

17:35trying to solve for, because we're all selling to human beings, right? Whether a $10 billion cloud

17:43computing contract or a can of soda, um, the architecture of the brain is the same. The

17:50reasons we buy are largely the same. Um, and yeah, that, that kind of cross-pollinization was really

17:57kind of palpable in the room. But to your point earlier around, um, system and operational design,

18:03some of those challenges are exactly the same. Yeah. You know, uh, McKinsey were there. They talked about

18:08how the gap between CMO and CEO in terms of metrics, what is important to those respected

18:15parties, that gap is only widening. Yeah. Which is alarming. Yeah, no, it's, it's quite terrifying.

18:23And in fact, I'm going to have a McKinsey on the show, I think in a next week or the week after,

18:28but again, forgive me for those who are watching, uh, as I look, oh yeah, the data and McKinsey has

18:35released this data. Um, they previewed it at the forum and then released it subsequently. Um,

18:40there was a 20 point in the last 12 months, there was a 20 percentage point decrease

18:45in the percentage of chief executives who said, quote, I'm clear on the role that marketing plays

18:50in my company. Um, really to me, that is a shared responsibility between the CMO and the CEO,

18:59although mostly on the CEO, because you get to walk into the CMO's office and say, why aren't you

19:05doing what I, you know, why aren't you delivering against the objectives I laid out for you?

19:10And what the fuck are you in fact doing if not that? And, and so it's just, it's, it's, uh,

19:16one of my other favorite points. And I will talk about this with the McKinsey team, uh, in more detail,

19:21but 80% of chief executives and just under 80% of CMOs, uh, from, from their reporting said they

19:29should be investing more in marketing. If the CEO is telling us that they don't know what the CMO and

19:37marketing does, why do 80% of them want to invest more in what they don't know, which is its own form

19:45of, of divide, um, and, and kind of dissonance. Like that doesn't make any sense intuitively.

19:52I think what you actually said in the room is what is the other 80 or 85% doing? Should they be fired?

19:57Uh, yes, I think I might've said that. Um, I might've, uh, well, actually that was a different data

20:03point. Um, Oh really? Yeah. Sorry. It was, you know, I just want to say to our audience, it's like you're

20:09here with us, isn't it? This is, this is how raw and real it is. Um, this was, I think, who owns the

20:16customer? Cause that came up a lot. Yes. You're exactly right. Something like only 15% of CMOs

20:24in that study said they own the customer. And I, uh, that they took a customer centric view of what

20:31they did. And I, I asked the McKinsey folks, I was like, well, should the other 85% be fired? Because

20:36like if you're not thinking about the customer and you're not customer centric, what the actual

20:41fuck? Um, however, they did, I believe, correct me and say, it's actually to your earlier point,

20:48it's not that I don't take a customer centric view. It's that the, uh, responsibility for the

20:55customer. There is no holistic view. It's been bifurcated, trifurcated owned by a chief customer

21:02officer, chief revenue officer, chief data officer. Right. And it, it is the abs it is

21:08dis integration. Yeah. They distilled it down to this great point, which was when everyone is in

21:13charge of the customer growth and acquisition, no one owns the customer. Yes. Yes. Um, well,

21:21actually it takes me to this, this other point, which are the costs of dysfunction, right? Which we've

21:26been talking about, but there was, there's such clear data. You cited one, one data point earlier

21:35on the 8% over performance versus peers. The McKinsey report is filled with clear, um, evidence of

21:44business building, commercial impact of not just alignment that kind of goes without saying, but of

21:50creativity well applied broadly across an enterprise, not just in marketing. And yet, despite the data,

21:57it is so often siloed and despite the data, um, if not in the room where we were, certainly as we look

22:05out more broadly across the, the corporate marketplace around the world, it, it isn't yet

22:15an organizational imperative in the way it should be, which once again, brings us back to what's the

22:21cost of not now. Um, one of, one of the, um, folks in the room said that, you know, your creative

22:31intelligence is fast becoming your moat. Was that actually, that might've been you.

22:35That was me at the top of the day. Yeah. Yeah. See, it was so Chatham House that, um, it didn't come,

22:40uh, attributed. Um, what, uh, were there things that surprised you?

22:48One of the things that really surprised me was the, the lack of cynicism in the room, actually.

22:54Yeah. You know, number one, it was encouraging that we had 60 powerful CEOs, billions of dollars,

23:02billions of dollars in budget, trillions in market cap. Yeah. Yeah. And influence and,

23:09and everything that comes with that, um, showed up number one, because they bought into the premise,

23:14but then were actively engaged. And I think the counter to that, if I'm thinking about what

23:20surprised me more broadly was, it was encouraging to see people showing up and really engaging with

23:27something that we truly believe in, that we, that creativity is going to be, well, there you go.

23:35It's kind of in our wheelhouse. Um, but then to accompany that, going back to the, the disconnect

23:40that we're seeing with some of the internal operations is that the, I was surprised at the

23:46lack of movement there. Yeah.

23:48So the will is there. The lack of movement is even taking a step backwards, according to the data.

23:53You know, it reminds me of, of, uh, a quote, um, that somebody shared with me very early in my

24:00career, which is vision without action is nothing but a hallucination. Right now I'm a fan of a good,

24:07uh, you know, well-protected hallucination recreationally. In business, there is no upside

24:15to hallucinations, uh, any more than there is in AI. In fact, like in AI, it's kind of dangerous.

24:21You know, I want to, I want to share one of the lines that, that I haven't stopped thinking about.

24:27We were talking about the organizational imperative, talking about how, how one might,

24:33if you haven't yet, um, create that space, that permission, that culture for creativity,

24:39to thrive for innovation, to thrive, et cetera. And somebody made a comment. They said middle

24:45management is where ideas go to die. And well, before I tell you what I thought of that and what

24:51I've been thinking since any, did you have any kind of visceral reaction to that when it was said,

24:57did you shake your head? Yeah, that's my experience too. Or was there, um, any kind of a implicit pushback

25:04on it? I think it's, I think there's a lack of accountability that is inherent to that statement.

25:09Say more. Because I think it does sit with the leaders of the business to identify that and do

25:15something about it. A lack of accountability amongst them. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with

25:21that. If something has been pushed to the middle to be figured out or solved with, without the right

25:27direction, infrastructure, as we keep saying, or the tools to, to make a success of it, then the whole

25:33thing falls down anyway. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I will say that that was, um, where I got,

25:40it wasn't where I started. My first reaction was, um, as a former agency person, I'm like, oh yeah,

25:48it's true. Right. Like the number of people, if you, if you, if you represent an, you know,

25:52if your client is a broad, a company across brands, you know, a big global enterprise,

25:58the number of people who can say no to an idea is, is almost infinite. While the number of people

26:04who can say, yes, you can count on, you know, sometimes two fingers. Um, and so middle management

26:10is often not where ideas go to die, but where they end. And to, however, to your point about

26:16accountability, the job of middle management, and even kind of the phrase I recognize, I want to put

26:22it in quotes because it sounds implicitly pejorative and, and it ought not be, is in fact

26:29only to surface what they think is in the best interest of the pipeline to do what they think

26:34is in the best interest of the business. And to your point about the absence of accountability,

26:39if they are not clear on how they are responsible for moving the business forward, then yeah,

26:44it's not where good ideas go to die. It's where bad ideas go to die, right? That's their job,

26:49or an element of their job. But it, I've, I've really, um, I've continued thinking about it

26:57because I think maybe that's the opportunity, which is to ensure again, in quotes, middle,

27:02middle management is where creativity, um, like so many other organizational imperatives,

27:10either lives or dies. Yeah. I think it's, it also follows quite a, um,

27:15archaic, uh, view of how companies work as well that, you know, you have senior, uh, leadership

27:23up here, which pushes a problem to middle management to figure out versus giving the

27:29permission for middle management and the tier below, by the way, to have such a culture of

27:35innovation that ideas bubble up organically. It's interesting to your point. I I've been reading

27:40a book lately. It was written about 15, about 15 years ago, maybe not quite called the outliers.

27:45And it, uh, I, the author will forgive me for not remembering their name, but the outliers took a

27:51look at, um, I think nine chief executives who, based on their definition, um, the author's definition

27:58had completely outperformed their peers, um, in a given time period, uh, on, uh, shareholder equity,

28:07um, created value created. And through, I knew a handful of the chief executives. I'd never heard

28:14of the others, um, that their results were remarkable and only sad that I did not have

28:20the opportunity to invest in them. Um, one of the clear through lines was decentralization

28:26as an organizational philosophy, which is, you know, very few people kind of at the quote unquote

28:32corporate level. Now these were with a handful of exceptions, not global enterprises. So it's worth

28:38saying that. Um, but decentralized pushing decisions down to those closest to the customer,

28:46the market, the consumer. I don't know that it's made me rethink my own management perspectives and

28:53philosophies, but it's certainly making me think about them anew. Um, well, I have a team of just me.

29:01So we're very, we are both top heavy and very decentralized. Um, were, were there any other,

29:10there were like a couple of other things that leapt out to me, some verbatims, um,

29:14anything that, that resonated with you? Um, I think about, you know, some of the other speakers

29:20and, and many thanks to all of the speakers that took part in our inaugural forum. Um, it became really

29:27clear or certainly I saw eyes light up or people lean in when they were genuinely speaking the

29:35language of the CEO rather than, you know, some of the arguments that we may have heard previously

29:42or that might resonate more with a CMO, for example. And I thought interbrand did a really good job of

29:48that when they talked about the analysis that they'd done of, I think 50 of the biggest companies

29:53in the world, how they are performing when it comes to their creative output this time, not necessarily

30:00infrastructure and how that output. In other words, those campaigns or examples of creativity

30:07are outperforming competitors, um, when it comes to EBIT and when it comes to market cap.

30:14Yeah. Um, which is not always the way this kind of thing is presented. Yeah. So I think very

30:21refreshing for a CEO to sit up and say, okay, now you're talking. Well, I think, I think, you know,

30:27what, what they spoke to, what you're talking to now is the imperative to, and it really should go

30:34without saying, but it does not the imperative to make a business case first, second, and always,

30:41because what do we, what is marketing, but a business strategy? Um, that's all it is. Yeah. Um,

30:49by the way, I don't think that's easy, but yeah, unless there's a commercial case, you, you're just,

30:55you're not speaking, you know, what's the first rule of comedy and marketing? Know your audience. Yeah.

31:00And too many marketers do not know their audience. And they go in talking about things that

31:05just don't matter. And, you know, I, I, I've been thinking a lot. We, we talk about culture

31:10as marketers constantly, by the way, appropriately, I can't think of the last time I heard five marketers

31:18in a month, talk about commerce, talk about commercial returns, talk about commercial efficacy.

31:23Um, and, and it's, it's, we, because the art and practice, even in its own silo, which it should not

31:33be, um, it should not live, marketing should not live within marketing alone. Um, we can confuse the

31:42strategy that is the business strategy as our own objective. And in that moment, things get lost.

31:48I agree with you. What did you find surprising? What stood out?

31:52I think, um, I don't know that I would describe this as surprising, but I love the illustration,

32:00um, where one of the chief executives, uh, said, and I, and I am quoting creativity is solving

32:06regulatory issues in 50 countries with imagination, right? Um, there was another who, um,

32:15who talked about the efficacy in how creating a culture of creativity meant staff, uh, found

32:21staff satisfaction scores going up, the ability to recruit and retain talent, improving the

32:28relationships with customers becoming, um, more facile and better and all of their quality metrics

32:35going on. Um, which again, takes us back to, you know, the earlier point, which is despite the data

32:41that, uh, anecdotal and, and, um, quantitative, fewer are embracing it than our understanding it.

32:50And I wonder if it's, I wonder if it's what I said earlier about the status quo, which is, you know,

32:55chief executives, they're just people too, just like us. Um, and they don't want to get fired.

33:02They don't want to get, you know, crushed. They're not out there taking unmitigated risk. Um,

33:07well, they may take on mitigated, but certainly not, um, uh, on strategic risk, at least in their

33:13own minds. And I wonder if, if they too just hold to a status quo because, you know, you referenced

33:19this early, right? You know, the, the lever that is changing transformation that typically fails more

33:25often. Transformation exercises fail more often than they succeed because it makes sense on paper,

33:31but then it comes down to the people who have to execute it. And there isn't a lot of people

33:36management. Janet Bayless, uh, BCG talks a lot about that. I think that's why this,

33:42perhaps this is why so many of them showed up. They know that we talked about some of

33:45the exhausted levers and how difficult that can be. Yeah. And when the metrics coming through,

33:51when the data points coming through are so compelling on what, as you say, not what it can

33:55do for your business and your growth, but how it can affect the internal organization,

34:01which in turn affects the business and the growth. Exactly.

34:04Is pretty compelling. Yeah. It's super compelling. All right. With that,

34:07a final question for you. Uh, year one is, is done. It feels like, uh, three years ago,

34:14but it's only, uh, four weeks. Um, what's next? Will there be a year or two?

34:19Do you know what? I think so. This started with

34:22an appetite. We saw more CEOs coming to CanLions than ever before. This year was about creating a

34:27forum and a space where they could address the issue that was coming to us indirectly.

34:32Yeah. And I think it's important that we continue to create these spaces and these forums where we can

34:37dig into this stuff a bit deeper so that the CEOs, especially the CEOs have the tools, the data,

34:44the ammunition that they need to be able to act upon this. And hopefully they will.

34:49Yeah. I thought it was, uh, I thought it was fantastic in particular as a year one event.

34:55Thank you, sir. You know, we ought, we ought never expect year one to look like year three. That would

34:59be foolhardy. Um, and I'll, I'll, um, end the show by kind of quoting, uh, you, uh, on the record,

35:09um, as opposed to everybody else who was Chatham. Um, your point earlier about, um, creativity as an input,

35:19not just an output. Now in the world of marketing, creative output had creative input. We all

35:25understand that, but as an organizational imperative, um, as a growth imperative to, to use your, your,

35:32as, um, the chief executive as an architect of commercial creativity. Um, and, and I think, um,

35:40um, as, as, as I, uh, applauded it earlier, I would, I would again, urge all of us, um,

35:47all the time, uh, both professionally and oftentimes personally to ask ourself what the cost of not now

35:53is. Yeah. Love that. Well, thank you for playing your part. Thanks for wrangling us on the day as

35:58well. Oh, it was, it was, uh, it was a privilege to be part of it. And, um, thanks for being with me for

36:03this conversation and to, um, to our listeners and our viewers. Uh, thanks for hanging out with

36:11Simon and me on, uh, what's, I'm not going to lie, an absolutely stunning show offy day here in London.

36:18Um, the weather is, is, uh, just chef's kiss. Um, if you are a, uh, fan of the show, please, um,

36:29you've heard me say it before, uh, uh, uh, smash that subscribe button, give it five stars,

36:35and, uh, please give it a review because that is how others just like you will find it. We appreciate

36:41you. I appreciate you. And, um, see you next time.

36:48Bye.

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