Episode 17: Data and Time, recouping the powers of Artificial Intelligence

Speaker A: Hello and welcome, everyone. This is Mark Kapsinski with Guden and our, uh, podcast today, Coffee With a Purpose. We have Brad Behrens with us today. Brad, say hello to everyone. Welcome.

Speaker B: Hey, Mark. Hi everybody.

Speaker A: So much enthusiasm.

Speaker B: I'll work on it.

Speaker A: There you go. Uh, for folks that don't know you, Brad, uh, you and I have known each other for a long time. You have an amazing history of being a researcher and an industry thought leader in so many different ways in media and advertising and more. And I really appreciate you joining us today and hopefully sharing a little bit of, uh, some of your insights into the future as well as maybe, uh, share, uh, with us a little bit about what you're working on as well these days. Um, do you want to.

Speaker B: I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Speaker A: Do you want to start maybe just letting people know a little bit about your background and some of the things that you've been doing over the last few years?

Speaker B: It's not a short story. That's the, you know, and it's not an easy story. I have a screwy.

Speaker A: I think it's an interesting story though.

Speaker B: Well, thank you. Um, uh, that's the last bastion of the incompetent, I suppose, is to be interesting. But the things start. I started my professional career as a Shakespearean and I was teaching Shakespeare at UC Berkeley in, uh, the English department. There I got a PhD in, uh, Shakespearean studies and stage history. Uh, at the same time I was hand building websites for my students. This is in the late 90s and at a key moment I got so interested in the Internet that I kind of got sucked in and it never spat me back out. And I've been dealing with the Internet ever since. I, I worked in Hollywood for a few years and then some startups. Uh, then I went brand side and learned about marketing. I was part of the marketing department at earthlink, the old isp.

Speaker A: Oh, right.

Speaker B: I was the managing editor of Everything Digital there. I got recruited to become the editor in chief. I think this is when you and I met, uh, of imedia Connection, which was a native early daily publication about the collision between the Internet and advertising. Uh, we got acquired by a big company called dmg, which was part of the Daily Mail group in the uk. Uh, and shortly, because to no one's surprise more than my mother's, it turns out that I have practical skills. And so within a relatively short amount of time, I was the worldwide head of programming for DMG's suite of, uh, digital Events which included the IMEDIA Summits and ad tech at the CMO Collective and the Digital Collective. So 54 shows a year, all over the world at the same time. I never really got the research bug out of my system. I became close with the center for the Digital Future, which is part of the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. The center does longitudinal social science where we really, uh, examine the impact of technology on behavior. We've had the same panel of people in this country for 21 years. There's a new, exciting Covid Reset project. For many years, uh, I've been associated with the center. I was the chief strategy officer. I led things like the Future of Transportation project. Uh, and then on top of that, I'm on a bunch of boards. Uh, and most recently I was the first ever editor in chief at the iab. Your audience is one of the few that probably doesn't need me to translate what the hell that means, but, uh, I will anyway. It's the Interactive Advertising Bureau. So it's one of three big ad trade associations. There's the ANA, the Association of National Advertisers. There's the four A's, the American association of Advertising Agencies, then the IAB. Uh, and so I did about 18 months there, um, ah, launched a bunch of things, including their regular video show, a show called IAB There, which is a dad joke that I'm still proud of. IAB There, um, and left over the summer for a bunch of reasons. Uh, one of the most pressing was, uh, actually a return to Shakespeare. But I'm working on a book right now called the Shakespeare Startup, which we can talk about later on. Um, but it's the thing that's taking up a bunch of my time. There's a bunch of other things that are also taking up my time. I'm on the board of a company I'm very excited about called AD Fontes Media, which is a company that measures media for both accuracy and bias. Uh, I'm an advisor to a venture capital company called Glasswing. Sarah, uh, Fay, who I believe you know is one of the three amigos, um, running that particular group. Group, uh, and a few other things as well. And I'm a consultant.

Speaker A: Uh,

Speaker B: as a practice. My goal is to gently detach CEOs from their delusions. That's sort of what I do. Uh, or what I try to do sometimes. They're holding onto them with a really tight grip. That's the short version.

Speaker A: Man, there's so much to go in there with that last Comment.

Speaker B: You've got to be crazy to be a CEO, right? There's just no alternative. There's so much pressure and so many perspectives. Uh, and so, um, I think that it's. It's just an impossibly difficult job, uh, and where you have to be a little nuts and a little diluted in order to get through the day.

Speaker A: I was talking to a friend of mine recently who's a CEO of a startup, uh, you know, kind of mid stage startup, and he's like, how come people only bring me problems? And I never hear anything good, like, welcome to the top. Kind of lonely there. It's like, that's the world you live in.

Speaker B: Yes, but it's also, uh, you know, the nice way to reframe that. By the way, all I do as a thinker, uh, is I untangle things and I reframe things. That's it. I do it with my kids, I do it with friends, I do it with clients. I do it as a writer. So, uh, the lovely thing to say to your friend is he, um, is clearly doing something right, because, you know, at his pay grade, it means he's effectively delegated all of the stuff that's functioning to people. So what's left is the stuff that only he can deal with, which, uh, is usually the problems.

Speaker A: He just wanted to hear more good news. I told him to join more meetings, like, uh, uh, of his team. I was like, just pop into more meetings. I'm sure you'll hear more stuff like, you know, or at the very least

Speaker B: hear a lot of sphincter snapping shut if he suddenly pops into Zooms and people are wondering, what, what's wrong because he's here.

Speaker A: Exactly. It'll. It'll spook some people. But, you know, like, but that was just an interesting side point, uh, that we were talking about because, you know, with people not, you know, back in offices collectively. Right. Like, if you were. Like, if I was holding a marketing team meeting and our CEO walked by, like he would just. And just, hey, how's it going, guys? You know, what are you guys working on? And, you know, just those little moments. And now with everything on Zoom and everything scheduled out and everyone booked all day, um, you don't have those little moments where you just pop in and really, you know, see what's going on within a business.

Speaker B: The Internet, uh, long before COVID the Internet has been trying to kill serendipity, uh, as much as it possibly can. And then with COVID and with Zoom, uh, you know, the water cooler is Gone. Our randomness is gone. There's so much deliberation around sending a message. You don't bump into somebody on slack. Uh, and so it's really hard, um, to create that kind of chaos, which ultimately is what leads to that conversation that leads to something, that leads to something, that leads to a new idea. Uh, and so, uh, yeah, there's so much in our culture, uh, in our lives, so much confronting, uh, humans as a species right now, where big things are on the table. How do you work with other people? Um, do you have to go to school to go to school? Um, what does it mean when you have to negotiate with. I live with, uh, two adolescents and my wife and a dog. The dog does not use the Internet, but the bandwidth is hotly contested with everybody else. And so, you know, there have been moments where I've had to say, no, no, I'm on a podcast, no, everybody else has to get offline for 45 minutes. And telling an adolescent to get offline is like saying, please chop off your left leg. And so it's, it's really complicated.

Speaker A: So true. And I don't know if you found this, but, like, with, with, uh, you know, having to do everything basically over zoom these days, like, I feel like I've lost a lot of creativity and moments of creativity where, you know, you could just grab a couple people, let's go into a huddle room in front of a whiteboard and think about something or problem solve or just be creative. Now, like you said, it's. I think you're right. It's like, you have to be more structured because now it's like, okay, if I'm going to share a creative idea, I got to, like, put it in PowerPoint and, like, think about it all all by myself. And then, like, then somehow I get feedback and it doesn't feel as collaborative.

Speaker B: It's also that digital technologies and digital culture are biased against friction. And so that's a problem because friction is actually good. What you're talking about is the friction of having some people in a room. Uh, one thing you can do as a solo practitioner, uh, is go analog, which is what I do. Um, anyone who knows me knows that I have these little note cards and these Japanese pens, uh, and I'm a frantic note taker. Yep, yep, yep. Also, uh, my friend John Wilshire created these things called the Archetype cards. And they're these little blank, blank playing cards with different colors on them. And if I'm doing, and I do this with clients as well, right which is, you know, you dump, uh, and clump, right? You have one idea per card. You dump them on a table. Then you start, you know, clumping and sorting and rearranging. Uh, and those are all ways that friction is good friction also, like every single one of us has come to be because our parents engaged in some healthy friction. And so, you know, if you think about most of the moments in life, you know, your first kiss, the first time you hold a person's hand, the first time you hold your child, first time they drive a car, uh, those are all, uh, moments of friction. And so business friction. When you're talking about, you know, making a supply chain easier, when you're talking about getting things out of the way, which is what Guten does.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Guten, your company is extraordinarily good at taking the kind of nasty sort of friction out, uh, of the process for people who want to make stuff. Um, but interpersonal friction, cognitive friction. Not like, I hate you, you hate me friction, but the kind of collaboration that you're talking about, that's in short supply. And conferences are coming back. I'm going to my first professional conference in about 10 days. I'm so excited, uh, just to see people. It's a little shocking, uh, to see people sometimes, uh, but it's exciting because those moments where you're like, hey, you know that guy? Oh, yeah, that guy. Or she's really got a good idea about this. That stuff is great.

Speaker A: I hear it. So, uh, I gotta ask. Which conference are you going to?

Speaker B: Oh, I'm a longtime, uh, advisor to an investor in the Ascendant Network. So, uh, Susan McDermid is the CEO. Her, uh, partners are Marty Funk, who's the CMO, and Karen Kirkwood, who's the COO. They are the sort of three fates that run this. This conference. And there's a gathering or two in New York.

Speaker A: That sounds great.

Speaker B: I'm interviewing. Who, uh, am I interviewing? I'm interviewing Melissa Grady Diaz, who is the, uh, global CMO of Cadillac about her career. Uh, she's great. I interviewed her once before. She's just fascinating. So I'm super excited to do that.

Speaker A: That's awesome. Uh, well, good luck and, uh, safe travels as well for that. Thank you.

Speaker B: Yes, I have the N95 on the plane because double masking only, and then one N95 is more than enough. It's.

Speaker A: It's just.

Speaker B: I feel like Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. Exactly.

Speaker A: All right, well, um, you and I were talking before you, um, you were sharing with Me an interesting quote, uh, that you dug up from Bill Gates's, uh, the Road Ahead book. Um, do you mind sharing that with our listeners and kind of talk about what you think it means to you and where you draw inspiration from?

Speaker B: Ah, absolutely. Gates, although he's having some troubles, uh, right now, I don't think anyone doubts that he was an important innovator and an effective executive. The Road Ahead is a book he co authored. Nathan, uh, Myhrvold and somebody else, uh, who I can't remember right now, came out in 95. They immediately revised it in 96. But this quote from afterward is really critical. It's this, people often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in 10. What it means is we get super excited about the potential for something and we think that the world is going to change quickly. Uh, and then, uh, when it doesn't, we get disappointed and we go into sort of the trough of despair that things are happening. And then we can lose track of how big things are and how much has changed. Uh, and then ten years later, um, it's a big deal. We get very mired in the messy middle and often lose track of the big things that are going to change. And so I find that to be a very useful quotation because when I'm having conversations with people, those are the two timelines. I was just interviewed by a researcher in Germany a couple of days ago, and she was talking about five year, 10 year and 20 years out. And I said, look, you know, five years is like kind of. Yeah, you can talk about that. No one's going to have a really great idea about what's happening in 10 years. We can try. And then 20 years is science fiction. Uh, so I was urging her to think about 2 and 10. Uh, but, you know, she has her framework.

Speaker A: It's sort of like, uh, I use, um, maybe the phrase with the startups that I work with, you know, is your idea coming or is it arriving? Right. Is it arriving, you know, kind of like the train, Right. Is it arriving in the station or is it still coming down the tracks? You know, or worse.

Speaker B: Worst of all is when it's like, whoops, it arrived. Right?

Speaker A: You know, like, well, fair enough, I missed the train is clearly the worst situation. But I think you're right. Like, we get so, uh, excited about, you know, this near term. And then, like you said, it leads to that disappointment if it doesn't manifest in the exact way that we anticipated it or wanted it to.

Speaker B: Occur well, also dealing with today's emergencies can sometimes, uh, blind us to tomorrow's potential. And so, uh, right now in the industry, since you have an advertising, uh, people in your audience, everyone's talking about Universal, uh, ID2, UID2, all of the replacements for the third party cookie that Google keeps on threatening to remove from Chrome and then it backs away and extends the deadline. So the poor third party cookie is on death row waiting for its appeal in front of the supreme court. Uh, and UID2 is a lot of time and a lot of attention is going into both that and all of the other replacements. Um, but ultimately that is just, uh, it's the debate between death by lethal injection and death by electric chair. There are bigger things happening around, identity around. I mean we used to call it targeted advertising and somewhere along the line people started calling it addressable advertising. Because that sounds a little bit less creepy, I think. Um, and that's the big stuff, right? The big stuff is really, are we, do we need to do this at all? Why are we doing this? Um, should we be doing this? And Most of the UID 2 stuff is okay, we're not allowed this toy. So we need to get a replacement toy very, very quick, quickly.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, it seems like, um, you know, for many years with, with the third party cookie especially, that a lot of marketers and advertisers, you know, got pretty lazy. It was easy to just be, let's just do cookie matching and then like let the machines take it from there and do everything for us. And you know, there wasn't really much strategy is, you know, like kind of the evolution. Right. Was programmatic. Right. We'll just let the machine match the cookies up and we don't even have to do any marketing or planning or create bring creativity to the table. And I mean for me, I love that the cookies going away and it's forcing me and certainly my colleagues to challenge ourselves to be better marketers to truly understand who are our customers and where do they hang out on the Internet and how do we get genuine conversations with them in wherever those communities and pockets are that they hang out in. And that's not easy.

Speaker B: No, it's hard and expensive. But also it leads to real, uh, relationships, uh, or real loyalty on the part of your customers. The other thing is that your customer, uh, is different at different times. So behavioral economics talks about things like that you always want to get sentenced by a judge after lunch, not before lunch. Judges give harsher sentences when they're hungry and waiting for their Sandwich than they do after they've had a.

Speaker A: Is that statistically true?

Speaker B: Uh, it's. That's in Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow, or possibly Richard Thaler's book. But, I mean, just, we are a collection of different identities. You're different with your wife and your kids than your best friend and, you know, than you are professionally. Uh, and, you know, the problem. The problem with a lot of the targeted ads.

Speaker A: The problem.

Speaker B: It's been this way, um, since, you know, sort of the earlier days of behavioral targeting was by the time I see an ad, that's who I was five minutes ago. Uh, that's kind of like the original version of square, which was always, like, where somebody had just been.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: It was always like, no. Oh, they're not there anymore. You know, and so that's a lot of programmatic advertising. It. It's trying to capture. It's chasing someone, but by the time you get your ad in front of them, um, they're already an entirely different person.

Speaker A: Yeah. That's interesting. So how do you then, I guess, see the future of some of this, uh, shaping up? And, I mean, I know there's been a ton of talk around AI for every little piece of advertising and media. Um, what do you think of artificial intelligence as it relates to, uh, advertising and. Or depending on how you answer, what do you think, uh, advertisers should be worried about and thinking about, uh, going forward?

Speaker B: Wow. Uh, I mean, it's.

Speaker A: Interesting question.

Speaker B: Well, AI Sorry. Well, we know. It's okay. We were talking about behavioral economics just a moment ago. Uh, Amos Tversky, who was Daniel Kahneman's best, uh, friend and research partner, famously said that he was more interested in, uh, natural stupidity than artificial intelligence. Which. Which I've always thought was great artificial intelligence. Uh, one guy at a conference said we should really just call it something else. Right? Like, uh, you know, kind of something around programmatic statistics. Uh, you know, that the whole notion, like just the metaphor of intelligence for these extraordinarily powerful algorithms. Algorithms, Pardon me, I've rented lips today.

Speaker A: Uh, are. Uh.

Speaker B: Ultimately, it's quite a bit. Quite a distraction. AI Is fantastic at doing things very, very quickly that humans can't do. It's fantastic at finding patterns that humans, uh, can't find. Um, however, it's so easily gamed. And, uh, ultimately there's a science writer named Clive Thompson, and he talks quite eloquently about centaurs. That humans and algorithms in partnership are ultimately a much stronger way, uh, of approaching any problem than just thinking that somehow the magic AI is going to deal with it. Some of the problems that Facebook is dealing with right now, uh, with Francis Haugen's testimony, Both first in 60 minutes and then in front of Congress, uh, saying that they just turned the algorithms on and they, uh, cared more about profits than about people's safety, which is how she described it. And what happened is that people, um, what the algorithm went to do is it tracked engagement and it poured gasoline on any flame of engagement in order to get more engagement, because that led to more time on platform, which led to more ads, which leads to more money for Facebook. Uh, but because it was algorithmically driven and either poorly programmed or unattended by humans, uh, it turns out that that engagement was often things that would lead to, uh, not our better angels, but quite the contrary to racist, hateful, uh, hate speech, misinformation, you know, spreading the lies that get people going as opposed to, uh, the truth. You know, the famous quip that, you know, the lie can circle the earth while the truth is just putting its boots on. Uh, and we've seen a lot of lies circling the earth, um, uh, aided by algorithms. So, um, I don't think algorithms are neutral. I think it's how they're programmed. But I think that ultimately, whenever there's a black box and you just sort of go, we're just going to let the algorithm take care of it, you're courting disaster.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think you're right. Um, I've been looking at artificial intelligence from the standpoint of just purely automation. Uh, and I think that's what the point is. Maybe one of the points that you're making, which is it can help me do things that I never could do before on my own, or I couldn't scale with a team well enough that I think it does provide a layer of automation more than I just want it to figure out everything for me.

Speaker B: Well, yeah, but, but just let's take, let's take your, your example for a moment and pull it out, pull it forward. One of the problems with working with artificial intelligences is you have to ask the question, who is the artificial intelligence working for? Uh, Alexa is not working for you. Alexa is working for Amazon. The Google Assistant is working for Google. Siri is working for Apple. That until we have readily accessible artificial agents or digital assistants that are working for us, uh, that, uh, our relationships with all of these entities are ultimately compromised because we don't know that our interests in Amazon's apples, Google's etcetera um, Cortana through, uh, Microsoft, Bixby through Samsung, Uh, the number of digital people who are trying to help us keeps uh, on proliferating. But they're not really trying to help us. Uh, they're trading some forms of assistance for access to our data. There are three big things I think that are on the table, all of which wrap into one theme. The theme is that in the best case scenario, which is a long shot unfortunately, uh, more and more of the power in digital media is going to start moving towards the end user. Right now the power exists and it's all in the platforms. But what we're seeing with a lot of the legislation, things like the California Consumer Privacy act or the successor the cpra, with the general data privacy regulation out of the EU with other work as we see governments are starting to put pressure on that. If we're very, very lucky, then we're going to get two nos and a yes in the future. All of which will help, uh, as I said, power move to the end user. So no, you can't track me anymore.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: It's my data. Uh, you mentioned artificial intelligence. I'm uh, on the board of Glasswing, which is a venture cap company focused on artificial intelligence. They wrote the first check for Inrupt. And Inrupt is a company that's founded by Tim Berners Lee Sir Tim the inventor of the World Wide Web and John Bruce. And Inrupt is a company on top of an open source technology. So the technology is called Solid, the company is called Interrupt, kind of like Linux and Red Hat. And what they want is to give people a place to put the data. So instead of ah, Facebook acquiring your data, uh, you'll have your data and you can give revocable access to other entities. They have this extraordinary relationship they've just founded with uh, Flanders, a region in Belgium where every citizen in Flanders is getting a part of a pod. So you have sort of your digital identity. Um, that is yours. Uh, so it's my data. It's not your data. That's the first no. The second no is no, you can't steal my time anymore. Uh, it's my attention. So William James, the philosopher and kind of creator of psychiatry and psychology, said I am what I attend to. And it used to be that there was a notion of a value exchange which. Oh, you want to watch Night Court? Which, uh, is being rebooted. I just found out, uh, you want to watch Night Court?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: It's so odd. Uh, and you can do it for free. Um, You've got rabbit ears over the air, but you're going to have to see an ad for Viagra, an ad for McDonald's. Um, value exchange, I think, is largely, it's more of an attention tax at this point. There's so little value being exchanged and it's so hard to tell. So I think that, uh, the second, no, no, you can't steal my time anymore. Uh, I think that we've already seen it with ad blockers where people are just saying, enough, enough already. I think ad blockers, if you take that and you stretch it forward a little bit, ultimately everyone, I think, in your audience will know Terry Kawadra's Lumascapes, where, you know, you see a dollar emitting from a brand and then, then it's the death by a thousand cuts as everybody takes a little bit of it and then a little tiny bit of the money eventually gets to the publisher and then the ad gets shown to the person, the end user. I loathe the word consumer, by the way. So, um, customer, end user, citizen, person. Uh, ultimately, I think that we have an opportunity for end users to start charging people for their attention. Um, I wrote a piece about this called the Modest Proposal, uh, suggesting that you should be able to charge people to send you an email, right? You want to get rid of spam really easy. You want to send me a note, it's going to cost you a penny, right? If I'm not worth a penny, then I don't want to see your email. And that could be the case, uh, with display advertising and other kinds of advertising as well, where like, oh, you really. You add supported media, great. Good for publishers. However, uh, I, as an end user, I expect my cut. If you're going to be doing that or, um, I'm going to put the ad blocker on, it's my attention. So that's the second no and the yes. These, uh, are the big things that are on the table, right? The things that I think are beyond just fussing with 1 3rd party identifier or another. The yes is yes, I will spend my dollars on the things that I care about. Um, it's my values, not your ads. Uh, we have a couple of really big things that are on the table. Um, another company that I advise is, uh, uh, I think you know, Ana McGilvray. Her company is called Purpose Worldwide. It's a brand strat and PR company. They do extraordinary work, you know, purpose driven marketing. We're hearing more and more about brands saying, this is what I stand for you're hearing uh, about um, uh, ESG kind, you know, like just the, the idea that advertising is not neutral and where you put your advertising, uh, sort of like clean supply chain. It's a clean attention chain. And I think that on the advertiser side that's becoming more important. What's really interesting because I always think about things from the behavior side is today brands are a proxy, a substitute to thinking like I need toothpaste. Crest has been advertising in my uh, head for over 50 years. I'm going to get Crest, you know, I'm thirsty, I'm going to have a Coke. Right. Those are, those are salience exercises. There's a certain amount of tonnage of media impressions that have gone into everyone's heads in order to associate this. So brand is a proxy for thinking. What I'm excited by is the idea that purpose or values could be a new proxy. So we have all the filters ultimately are the next wave of technology that are going to empower people like you and me. So golly, uh, I care about sustainability. I'm just making that up. I do. But I have an electric car. But like, you know, but coming soon, I think that instead of I need to buy X, I need to go do some research or who I've seen an ad for. Instead I'll just an agent, ideally one working for me, not for Amazon will say, oh, uh, you need new jeans. Okay, Brad, well you can buy these jeans that you bought before. However, you've told us that you really care about sustainability. These jeans cost about the same plus or minus 10% and they fit with your values. So that barrier between me and my dollars, uh, I think ultimately the filter will be saying um, that it's about my values, not just about who happens to advertise their way into my awareness. Those are much bigger, bigger changes I think that are going to be facing how we deal with commerce and advertising and media and detention than just third party identifiers.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Uh, I definitely like how you put that because I do think those kind of filters are definitely working their way into the, certainly the E commerce ecosystems right now where people are demanding certain products of certain either types like you said, sustainability or causes that they support and so on. And uh, I think the element to that. Right. Is those things also have to be genuine, not, not just pure marketing. Right. And I think people are getting called out when it's purely just marketing and not, you know, truly sustainable.

Speaker B: Right. It's called purpose washing, sort of like greenwashing. Uh, and Guten is a great platform, uh, for this because, you know, you can say this is sustainable, this isn't. You guys are at the middle part of it. You know, D2C brands I think are ultimately trying to get to a sustainable audience or customer base and they can be a little, they can choose to specialize in the hopes of getting to sustainability faster in that way, um, than when you just want to be on the store on the shelf in Walmart.

Speaker A: That's right. All right, Brad, we've been going here for a little bit. I want to hear about your book. Uh, uh, as you mentioned, moved on from the IAB and you're taking on this new endeavor to write your new book. Uh, can you tell us a little bit about it?

Speaker B: Yes, thank you so much for asking. So the book is called the Shakespeare Startup and it does two things at the same time. So it's a kind of yin yang. First, it says that if we look at how startups work today, where you have to be super flexible, you have to figure you have an idea to start with, but then as you get more and more, uh, evidence from the world, more input, and as circumstances change, you have to pivot, uh, and uh, be open to innovation and to moving very, very quickly. Um, uh, and that, that stance, that kind of point of view really helps to illuminate a bunch of things that were happening, uh, to Shakespeare in his company specifically from 1597 to about 1599. So there's two, two and a half years where they lost their lease on the theater. Uh, uh, they went and built at huge expense another theater in a new neighborhood that was going to be kind of going uptown where it was going to be an indoor theater with cost more, smaller audience, work less hard. And then there was a huge letter writing campaign where everyone said, not in my backyard. It was Elizabethan nimby, including one of their patrons who said, nope, can't be in my backyard. So suddenly they're like, okay, we'll go back to the other theater. Nope, they lost their lease. They're working to figure out, oh my God, how are we going to get operating capital. They had to then pivot into a new relationship where they sold a bunch of the, uh, there was the company, the theatrical company, but also there were the buildings they played in. And the Burbage family had to sell 50% of the building in order just to keep going because everything was in hock. So then they're trying desperately to get, I mean this is stuff as nail biter, nail biting from time to time. They're trying to get, uh, a, ah, lease extended on the place where they've been working for 21 years. And the very last minute in October of 1598, um, the guy says no, right? He won't accept their credit line. And they're devastated. What are we supposed to do? Shakespeare just bought a big house in Stratford. He was trying to make it as a poet in addition to being a playwright. They're all freaking out. What do they do is they wait until December 28, 1598, the Monday after Christmas. So during the holidays it's London and so it's rainy and foggy. They show up at the building, the old theater building, with a bunch of carpenters and they knock it down and they take all of the timbers and they carry them across the Thames to this new, uh, plot of land they had acquired. And that's where they build the Globe. The Globe, the theater that became, you know, the, the site of the most successful theatre company in the history of English theater. It was considered larceny. There was a huge lawsuit. And so all of this was happening and the lens of looking at it from a business perspective, where they suddenly had to pivot, go, go from uptown to the private theater back downtown to the public Theater, where they had to reformat their entire business relationships among them as a group in order to achieve what they wanted to achieve. And then, oh my gosh, look what all of these things unlocked. So that's the way that startup culture today can illuminate Shakespeare, but the reverse is also true. And if we look at what Shakespeare was seeing because of the economic relationship he had with the conditions of his work, we've been looking inside of these plays to see what makes them so long lasting, even if you hate Shakespeare. And a lot of people are like, oh, God, save me from having to read this stuff. Oh, no, I had to read that in the 10th grade. And I've never been the same. There are a lot of people who hate this stuff. No one is going to argue that this is a four centuries long brand success story. When Trump was elected, shortly after he was elected, there was a production of Julius Caesar with a guy wearing a red wig and a long red tie. You know, that Shakespeare's a plasticity and an adaptability to Shakespeare that allows it to be deployed. The plays, the brand, the stories, the characters to be deployed into so many different places, uh, that is coming out of the new economic conditions, this crucible that was happening from 1598 and a little bit before and a little Bit after. So not only does startup culture today illuminate what Shakespeare was doing back then, but the reverse is also true. And we can use the kinds of things that Shakespeare was doing to illuminate the successes around things like the Marvel Cinematic Universe 21, 22 Movies that are all interlocking. Uh, things like what? The platforms that Apple and Amazon are creating. Where. Why does prime exist? Why does Amazon prime exist? Why does Amazon spend so much money on creating content for its prime video on demand, on, um, integrating prime to whole foods? Well, it's to create this kind of interlocking relationship with the gestalt of Amazon, not just with when you want to buy a book. So that's what the book is about. It's about using this lens to see differently back then and then to use what was happening back then to see things differently now.

Speaker A: That sounds amazing. I'm already, uh, enthralled in wanting to, uh, read it. So when's it going to be done? When are you going to release it? How can we all get it?

Speaker B: Uh, well, you can certainly follow me on Twitter, which is my name, Brad Barrons. You can go to bradbarrons.com uh, which is where I post things. Um, and I will be, uh, making as big a human cry as I possibly can. I am, uh, at the beginning of this stage of it, which is say, like, I wrote a 400 page, ah, doctoral thesis around something kind of like this years, um, ago. And then I went through my business career, which sort of started in 1998 with, uh, DreamWorks, uh, and then into EarthLink and the rest. Um, and then over the last couple of years, really it's really started. If you want to get an appetizer for, uh, the argument. I did a TEDx talk in Norway of all places, which you can find on my website called the Shakespeare Strategy. But the short answer is, uh, I wish I had an answer, but I don't.

Speaker A: All right, well, we will play along and you will have to keep us posted and we'll make sure, uh, as soon as it's ready to, uh, help you amplify it out there to, uh, let people know that it exists.

Speaker B: Please do. Thank you.

Speaker A: And if you need merch ever made, I know a great company that can help you with merch.

Speaker B: Really Rhymes with wooden.

Speaker A: Perhaps has a tie into the printing press too.

Speaker B: Right? That's always good.

Speaker A: Um, Brad, uh, awesome stuff. I wish you obviously, the best of luck with continuing, uh, to write this book and bring it out. So, so we'll be eagerly awaiting, uh, Its arrival. So thank you for sharing a preview into that. Um, if you're ready, I'd like to shift now.

Speaker B: Oh, the lightning round. Yes, yes. I'm terrified.

Speaker A: It doesn't go that fast, so I guess it's more like a gentle breeze round. Okay. Um, so just some fun questions to learn a little bit more about you and, and what makes you tick. Uh, what was your first paying job?

Speaker B: Um, outside of things like watering the neighbor's lawn, uh, when they were on vacation, which I.

Speaker A: Forced labor from your parents doesn't count, right?

Speaker B: Well, I forgot to do it and the lawn died, so that was a bad sign. Um, uh, uh, I worked at the Dalton Booksellers, so.

Speaker A: Which.

Speaker B: Which, uh, many of your listeners will not have any idea what that was, but I.

Speaker A: That was a bookstore, right? That had books that you could buy,

Speaker B: go into a place, and you wander around and there's. And no snow. There were no. This was before computers, before mobile phones. Yes. You wandered around.

Speaker A: I could go there with my Kindle and download the book. Yeah.

Speaker B: Wouldn't that be funny? Um, yeah. No, that early, you know, my first job, my first real job was, uh, appropriately given how obsessed I still am to this day with books, was, um, working as a clerk in a bookstore.

Speaker A: Nice. Awesome. All right, uh, next question. Sir. Um, what's your favorite restaurant? What city is it in? What do you order there?

Speaker B: Oh, so I, um. That's one of those things. Like, my children constantly try to trick me into revealing which of them is my favorite. And the answer is, of course, neither of them. Uh, they're both. You know, I love them both equally. I love food. Just look at me and you can tell. Um, what came to mind is a place that I haven't been in many years, uh, but was, uh, absolutely my favorite when I was in graduate school. Zachary's Pizza in Berkeley, California, has Chicago style stuffed pizza and the chicken, tomato and basil pizza. And Zachary's is, uh. Well, I saw God the first time that I had it, and it's. It's. So that's where I went. I, uh, could come up with other things as well. Um, there was an exquisite sushi meal I had in Tokyo many years ago. There was a crazy place called the Carnivore in Nairobi where, uh, these gigantic guys with these skewers that are like scimitars walk around and they lean in and they say in these deep voices, would you like some wildebeests? Or, like. Sure. And then all of a sudden, there's a hunk of wildebeest on Your plate. I've eaten my way across.

Speaker A: What sauce goes with wildebeest by the way?

Speaker B: I don't remember.

Speaker A: Chimichurri? A mayonnaise in Nairobi.

Speaker B: Wouldn't that be interesting? It was uh, it was more protein than I've ever seen in my life, I'm sure. But yeah, so, but, but if I had to pick, the uh, first one that came to mind was Zachary's pizza.

Speaker A: That's awesome. All right. I gotta remember not to do this question after lunchtime when I haven't had lunch because then I just like man, that pizza sounds really good right now.

Speaker B: Well, from where you're sitting, it's about

Speaker A: a six hour drive a little too far right now. Um, so uh, I know we kind of talked about conferences before but uh, um, you know, what conference did you miss? You know, uh, um, over Covid. The That I guess you're excited to have back. It sounds like maybe it's one we were already talking about. But uh, I know I always enjoyed going to those like IAB conferences and so on. Other people suggested other things.

Speaker B: Well, I mean the, the I mentioned earlier the Ascendant Network conference which I'm very much looking forward to. I love those groups. Um, there's a, there's uh, an IMEDIA reunion which is not a conference but is a. Just a bunch of people who used to go to those conferences that got together at one point and are talking about getting them together again. Uh, um. It's another tough one for me because I've been to so many conferences. I'll tell you that. Here's the question I'm going to answer rather than um, the one you asked because um, I can't answer this one. Over the last several years I had one extraordinary experience which was my friends, uh, who run Ad Tech Tokyo. We're running a new sort of CMO event. And they said uh, could you come give a talk? I do these in my capacity as a futurist trend guy, do these big trend presentations. And I said no because I've been to Tokyo so many times. And they said please? And I said no. And they said no, no really, we want you. And I said fine, I'll take you, I'll come, but I need to bring my son. And there's this long pause in the conversation which is very typical, uh, when you're negotiating with a Japanese company. And then they said here. Basically they pushed all of the money they had towards me and they said here's what we have for travel budget for you. If you can make it work. Then please come and bring your son. And I'm like, I can make that work. So I got to go and give the.

Speaker A: The big.

Speaker B: What's happening next, you know, AR, VR5G, 3D printing, AI, you know, presentation. I do. And my, uh, my son, who was, uh, 13 at the time, and then he and I got to go travel around Japan for a week afterwards. He just, two days ago, he said, are you giving any more talks in Japan, Dad? Because he wants to go back.

Speaker A: That sounds amazing. Uh, I know. Um, my son now is, uh, just turned 13, and it's exciting for him to understand what I do for a living. And, yeah, I did a. I've been doing a couple TV interviews around all the supply chain problems that are happening right now. And so he saw me on tv. Uh, like, it was like, wait, that's my dad.

Speaker B: Isn't that great?

Speaker A: It was good. It was bad, it was confusing. It was like all these emotions all in one. Right?

Speaker B: Well, you know, when kids are teen, when kids are like, in kindergarten and they have to fill out, like, what does dad do? And it's like, he talks on the phone and he writes a lot of email. It's nice that, like, eight years later, they're like, oh, well, he was on TV talking about supply chains.

Speaker A: I saw him. Now, you know. All right, uh, I know you're very active with different technologies, so, uh, the question I was going to ask was, what technology or service, um, did you find most useful over the past year and a half? Um, uh, the kind of. The examples, like, I used, uh, and actively used Lunch Club. I love doing a lunch club meeting every week to try to stay connected with people. Um, we. We tried Clubhouse a little bit. That never really caught on for me. Um, I love Product Hunt, the website, you know, that, uh, an editorial site that surfaces, uh, new products and stuff. So was there something in particular that stood out over the past year and a half that you're like, I really love this service.

Speaker B: That's a really, ah, interesting question. Um, again, one thing that pops to mind is an app called Just Watch. And Just Watch is a free app, uh, for iPhone and Android. And what's fantastic about it is that, um, if you're like, I really want. And I want to see Free Guy, right? Is it streaming yet? You know, can I. And they'll be like. And you type it in and it says, here's. Here's where it is. Uh, here's. It's. And it optimizes. So you put in, uh, we have all of the services, but it's like, oh, it's on Hulu, it's on Crunchyroll, it's on hbo Max. So it tells you where it is or where you can rent it. So that's something that I've used a lot because. And then I don't know if you can see it over my shoulder right here. Um, this is, uh.

Speaker A: You're blurred right now.

Speaker B: I'm blurred.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Well, what you would see if I hadn't tried to conceal the mess that my home office is, um, is a stand, a motorized standing desk. And it comes from a company called Fully, um, and Brian Weiser, who is another person you should have on the show.

Speaker A: I reached out to him to try to get him. Maybe you'll have to put in a good word for me. I reached out to him.

Speaker B: I will send him this one and say you should be next. You got it.

Speaker A: Perfect.

Speaker B: Uh, but Brian, uh, had. He had just, uh, just put one together for himself and one for his wife Amy. Uh, and I had a standing desk, but it was not motorized, so I had to climb under it and unlock and everything. And so this thing just goes up and down and up and down. Honestly, it's a life changer, uh, when you spend as much time as we all do working that just being able to stand and read, stand and take notes, uh, put my iPad up and stand and do a video conference rather than be chained to this desk.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you know, my wife, Erin, we, uh, we share an office. Uh, so she's actually like just over there listening.

Speaker B: Hi, Erin.

Speaker A: She says hi. Uh, we both, um, we both got electric or motorized standing desks and new chairs. And I was like, like, where was this all my life? You know, Right.

Speaker B: By the way, these things here, the AirPods Pro, another life feature. I couldn't. I wouldn't use the normal AirPods because who knew? I have preternaturally large ear holes and so, uh, the normal ones would just fall out of my ears.

Speaker A: The pros work better.

Speaker B: They have the adjustable foam thing so they stay in. And they have some really interesting noise canceling functionality. And wireless headphones are. It's a quiet technology, but it just frees you from being tethered to things, from tripping over chords, um, just being able to take it out and the music stops. I mean, they're quietly revolutionary.

Speaker A: I'm gonna have to check those out because I got these headphones and they fit me well and they're very comfortable. But, uh, I think I have the same challenge that you do with the, uh, earbuds and pods and stuff always falling out, so.

Speaker B: And those also get kind of hot.

Speaker A: They do. After you have to take them off. You can't have them in all day or on all day, so. All right, final question.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: One person you could meet dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I've met so many incredible people. Um, and, uh, so the obvious thing that you probably think it must be Shakespeare. Right? And I'm like. Because I'll tell you, you already know his story. Well, no, it's just that meeting your heroes can be so disappointing. Um, and so, uh, I mean, there are. I've been blessed meeting people and seeing people. Seeing people who you wouldn't think would be nice, be extraordinarily kind. See, uh, people who you would think would be kind being assholes. I mean, it's,

Speaker A: uh.

Speaker B: Uh, so I would have to say, again, I'm just going with what springs to mind. I'm so terrified that I would be disappointed by Shakespeare that I won't or that we would not be able to understand each other. Uh, because, uh, his accent would be, uh, a bit thick. Um, the Elizabethan accent is sort of closest to a really thick Kentucky accent these days. So think Mitch McConnell only not evil. Uh, and, uh, you get kind of what they sounded like back then. I would have to say Mark Twain. Um, I've been fascinated by Mark Twain. Uh, wrote large research pieces about him. Uh, he led such a life and he was so clearly difficult that I wouldn't be disappointed by him. Right. If he was difficult or impatient or whatever. Um, that it would be like. Yeah, I kind of figured it was gonna be like that. So.

Speaker A: So that's.

Speaker B: That's who came to mind. Do you think what's the most exciting thing that you've. What have been good answers that you. Or memorable.

Speaker A: You know, like, when I first was coming up with these lightning round questions and I, I wanted to ask this question in my mind, it was always like, kind of from a. Maybe like a business sense of, like, people, uh, just tell me kind of like who they wish they could be connected with. You know, that maybe that was maybe my original spirit in my head for this. And I started doing these podcasts and, uh, like one of the first ones, like, someone was like Napoleon. I was like, you know, I was like, okay, didn't see that one coming. You know, and then I think I mentioned someone else mentioned, you know, Jesus Christ. And other people were like, gave historical figures that meant something to them or that they felt they could learn a lesson from. And, uh, so it's been really interesting to see over the course of our series, uh, all the different kinds of, uh, people. I would say most people have, uh, have sided with someone, you know, who is no longer with us. Yeah. Very few people have said, like, here's someone in the real world. Obama.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. We had one person. Yeah. That said that recently was Obama, Uh, uh, that we just recorded. So, uh, that was. I think that's probably one of the only people alive that I've gotten an answer to, which is interesting.

Speaker B: It's a cool question.

Speaker A: I think it's fun. Well, Brad, I feel like I've taken up too much of your time today. Uh, but I, uh, really, really appreciate this, and, man, so many great insights. I have, like, my page of notes here of things I want to follow up with you on. Um, we'll certainly follow your progress on your book and excited to help you promote it once you have it available. So. So make sure you let me know when it's ready and we'll, uh, pump it out through our channels for you. And, uh, really with that, I just want to say thank you again for joining in today and for everyone out there. Uh, thanks again for tuning in. And stay tuned for new and exciting guests here on Coffee with a Purpose.