You Can't Buy Relevance - Nick Miaritis

Speaker A: Uh, hey, welcome to the CMO Whisperer Show. I'm your host, Steve Olensky. Part marketing practitioner, part ad agency veteran, part journalist. I was a writer for Forbes for 10 years. I've had so many insightful conversations over the years with business leaders to athletes to celebrities, to, of course, CMOs. The only difference now is instead of sharing those insights through written form, I'm doing it this way. My guest today is Nick Burritos, Executive Vice president and Chief Brand Officer of the Scotts Miracle Gro company, where he oversees an iconic portfolio that includes Scott's Miracle Gro, Ortho, and Tomcat, while leading the company's brand growth, media, creative, social, digital, and e commerce efforts. Now, uh, prior to joining Scott's Miracle Gro, Nick served as Chief Global client officer at VaynerMedia, leading global brand partnerships and helping build the agency's integrated capabilities across creative media, strategy, analytics, production, and commerce. Before that, he spent 12 years at Saatchi and Shotgi, where he helped lead some of the advertising's most recognized work, including the Cannes Grand Prix winning It's a Tide Ad super bowl campaign and Miller High Life's legendary one second ad. Top of all that, he's also an entrepreneur, investor, board member, and creator who has generated billions of views with a B as the one and only omelette King, which I can safely say makes him the first guest I've had who can build both global brands and flip 26 egg whites into the air without destroying the kitchen. Nick Martis,

Speaker B: Nick Veritas,

Speaker A: Nick Burritis. As I told you, all fair. I'm going to mispronounce it. That's the most diverse intro I've ever made. Welcome to the show, my friend.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, and since that, you know, 26, you know, we've upped the game. I think I've done 48 eggs, and they've done an omelette off a third story rooftop. So, you know, the egg game is. Is evolving. Yeah.

Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. If we have time, we definitely got to get into the Omelette King. For sure.

Speaker B: It's related to marketing. So if we

Speaker A: go. Yeah, well,

Speaker B: it's

Speaker A: a

Speaker B: good story.

Speaker A: Everything's related to marketing. Come on.

Speaker B: All

Speaker A: right, I want to start here. You spent much of your career helping major brands earn attention, navigate change, and drive growth. This is a very different chair. Right. So what made this the right moment and Scott's the right opportunity for you to move from advising brands to being directly responsible for building and growing them?

Speaker B: Uh, thanks. First to the audience. It's a real joy and privilege to be chopping it up with Steve. Big fan of the CMO whisperer. Love what you do, and it's, uh, an honor to be on the show. But for me, I'm about two and a half months in of living on, and I'm doing air quotes for everybody who can't see me on the brand side. Right. And what's really fun for me with my role at Scott is I've actually been around the company since 2018. So I had the privilege of being the agency for the first few years through the unprecedented moment that that Covid was where we saw Lawn and Garden get a ton of momentum. People were at home in their backyards rethinking what they're doing with their time and investing heavily in our categories to then joining the board for a couple of years, and then now two and a half months into being chief Brand Officer. And I would say one of the most seamless kind of transitions I think you could have imagined from the agency world for almost 20 years into this world. Because I just love the brands, I love the people, I love the culture of the company and have become so fluent with it. It kind of felt like the back of my hand. And I think for me, you know, after doing, you know, many, many years in the agency world, I think what really got me excited about this was, number one, the team, number two, the brands. But number three is, I think, just the focus, where when you get to a certain point when you run an ad agency, there's hundreds of clients. You know, you want to go deep on every single one of them. Like, it's just your nature. Anybody listening to this who works in marketing is like, how can you not? It's a compulsion, you know, like, you know, if you're working on a car brand, you want to think about the car brand all day. If you're working on a snack brand, you want to think about the snack brand all day. And I found myself kind of almost like, uh, yearning for what I used to have when I started, which was just pure focus into one thing. And as this presented itself pretty organically, being on the board to. To partner with our now CEO Nate Baxter, um, and the amazing leadership team that we have, it just felt like the right time to be like, let's just go all in and focus again on one thing and see what we can do. And so that really drove the decision more than anything. Uh, that plus a little bit of lifestyle stuff, which was, you have a kid, you start rethinking priorities and living in New York City. I have my now three and a half year old touch grass for the first time and realize that like, might be really nice to have a lawn

Speaker A: move

Speaker B: out to New York City. And it just was like one of those moments where you're just like all stars aligned and like this, this is just like the universe speaking to you, man. So lean into it and uh, it's been a blast so far. The team is amazing. Being in Ohio, back and forth between New York is awesome. I've known the company for so long that, you know, the onboarding was, was pretty simple relative to what most people would experience. And then the pure fun of it is just, you know, with the team, you, you think of something and then you do the thing versus kind of what you do

Speaker A: in

Speaker B: the world, which is the, the awesome churn of a lot of decisions and you know, stakeholders and PowerPoint decks and things that are required to, you know, get something made. And so, you know, I kind of see my role in that way, which is, which is helping green light and unleash creativity in our company in every way that I can. And it's really cool to see that there's so much receptivity in our own organization and with the agencies we, uh, work with to just get work out into the world. And I think like that if there was one thing I've noticed, it's become harder to get the things made. And anybody who's worked in this industry a long time knows what I'm talking about. And so as a quote unquote client now I am excited about that transition of just seeing ideas and manifesting them, um, as fast as humanly possible so we can win in the market.

Speaker A: So sitting in the chair now you are. Has it changed what you believe marketing leaders actually need from their agencies and partners?

Speaker B: You know, I would say a little bit and not really is I always had such great empathy for the CEO, the cfo, the cmo, and had the privilege of having the best clients. You know, I seldom even use that word as the chief client officer back in my life as an ad, uh, agency exec, because we just always were sitting first chair with them, feeling like equals in the boardroom together. And so I always felt like I got a really good taste of what reality was versus, I think, how some people in the agency world are kind of treated like a project vendor or something like that. We always had really amazing partnerships with the agencies and the brands I worked with. But that said, I, uh, would say what's interesting about this is there's a whole other crop of stakeholders outside of the marketing world that matter in such unique ways that once you sit in the chair, you start to just realize the enormity of the scope and as you make those decisions, the impact that they have all over the business, both internally and externally. And so I would say, like advertising agencies, you get to be a little bit more myopically focused on, on like the thing and getting that thing out. And, and here is, you know, as a chief brand officer, you know, I say this to the team all the time, is internally, we are the brand. You know, the brand like it echoes and it vibrates based on how we all behave and how we show up in the world. And you'll hear, you know, Nate, our CEO, talk about this transition in SMG 2.0 into more of a lifestyle business. And that really starts within our own four walls. And so I really see like, marketing and brand building happening every single day and every single function. And so I think that's probably the thing that's, that's the biggest difference for me is just seeing how Omni, um, marketing is in big companies. When done right, it just, it permeates every facet of the organization. And it's just so cool because, you know, at smg, you know, speaking with the team and the plant who are making our amazing products, like they have a vested interest in the marketing, they represent our company. The product that gets made, the efficacy of it, the love they put into. Into it, is something that I need to know about and represent the best way I can externally. So I think that that for me has been both like, whoa, there's a lot there that you got to really process. But B is like a true joy of seeing that when done right. I actually believe that the best brands on earth, you know, and the CMOs that get this awesome chair, just kind of have to funnel that energy out into the world and make sure that it's. It's representing the people and the brand as best as it's can, who are, who are behind, you know, uh, making the products.

Speaker A: Yeah, and, and, and I know what I'm about to say you're going to agree with, because the consumer will see right through it if it's not.

Speaker B: Yeah, that, that's. I think we're in that age of. And it's become so boring in some ways. So I apologize to the audience of authenticity. Again, air quotes. But I think in our business, like, we, you know, the purpose of our company, we talk about it out loud. A lot in our investor day is, you know, we care for living spaces that care for us. Like your lawn. I don't know. Did you have a lawn? You know,

Speaker A: I do.

Speaker B: Or do you have a lawn? You know, like, think about it. You close your eyes, you think about the memories, the things that happened in that living space called a living space gets alive. You know, graduation parties, you know, your kids, you know, partying when you were there, you know, when you weren't there, you know, weddings, this. That, you know, sports moments, the stuff that happens there is where life happens. And so I just think, you know, it's a. It's an. It's an awesome category. And we. We just have this amazing opportunity in front of us to kind of show people, like, the significance of these living spaces. And so that's what. That's what we're doing every single day. And, like, that's. That's how people inside our company live every day, which is really fun.

Speaker A: So let's. Let's focus on, like, what are the biggest objectives you're kind of focused on right now over the next 12 to 18 months kind of thing?

Speaker B: Yeah, I would say, like, number one, where I was just going. And. And it goes back to that. That authenticity piece of. Of. Of keeping it real. And it. Nate, you know, I'll just repeat it because you can dig into it as much as you want is, you know, I think going from a iconic branded product company, you know, I would say, like classic CPG model to more of a lifestyle business is easy to say on a podcast, but most interestingly is it. It has to be lived and. And believed in the core to actually get there. And so I would say, number one, and we've talked about it a little bit outwardly, but now we're trying to live it every single day is we see the growth of our company, you know, recruiting net new households in for all of our different categories around, like, you know, the appeal of the lifestyle, you know, and so, you know, where, uh. Do you golf at all or. No,

Speaker A: I do, like,

Speaker B: you know, in context, at a bar or something, you might tell people, yeah, I'm a golfer. You know, you identify with that as a. As part of who you are. It's a lifestyle choice. You're a golfer. I'm a surfer. This. There's millions of people who are a gardener, you know, millions of people who view these categories beyond what's just in the bottle that they bought. And I think that's what's so intriguing about it. And from somebody who you know, who sits in this chair is you get to lean into those things. Beyond the traditional CPG benefits of just a greener lawn or it kills a weed, there's something way higher order that people are drawn to. And I don't know how deep you are into gardening or taking care of lawns or any of that stuff, but mental health, physical health, like, these are wellness businesses. And when you sit and talk to somebody for 10 minutes, you realize they do it not for the reason why, or they buy your product not for the reason you think they're buying it. And I think that for us is really mission number one, which is pivoting around becoming more of a lifestyle business. You know, the way that some of the more famous lifestyle brands operate is like they. They know who they are and they operate outside of purely the functional aspects of the product or service.

Speaker A: So, by the way, I'm a big vegetable gardener and I use the products. And you're right, it is so much more. I use the word cathartic all the time. Right. Because I'll go out and I'm looking at my. My backyard and I have tomato plants going and some other. It's kind of winding down now in September, but just to go out and see when I started back in, whatever it was May till now. And it's the cathartic. I use that word all the time. And I'll just sit out there, too.

Speaker B: Are you a morning garden walk guy or are you an evening garden,

Speaker A: evening

Speaker B: drink in hand or. No?

Speaker A: Well, I drink coffee, so I don't drink out.

Speaker B: Coffee's good. Coffee. Coffee is evening.

Speaker A: M. But yeah, I'll take my phone, I have my chair, and I'll sit there, I'll harvest, you know, what needs to be picked, and then I'll just sit there.

Speaker B: Yeah. And that's what makes it different than classic cpg. You know, like, we're not. We're not a soap brand. You know, people aren't going on Instagram, you know, by the millions to post about soap today, but they are about that. The six tomatoes that they picked while walking around last night. And therein lies the unlock for our company and business.

Speaker A: That's it.

Speaker B: It's really leaning into what, again, authentically human beings are doing the world over and have done for millennia. And so it is one of the most, like, universal global phenomenons is people growing things and taking care of these living spaces.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: And it's. It's pretty cool. So, like, it's really fun to just. Just lean into it because it's it's different for cpg.

Speaker A: So is that kind of. I'm going to summarize the greatest opportunity for growth. Tell me if I'm wrong. Is. Is changing perceptions. Is that fair?

Speaker B: I think it's. It's changing perception as well as, um, you know, from more of a CPG into more of a lifestyle.

Speaker A: Lifestyle. Yeah.

Speaker B: But also, I would say just. And again, by. By you telling that story to somebody because of how you engaged in this category with our products. Therein lies, I think, how we do the main thing, which is continue to. To recruit new people into these categories. Like if I could, if I was on a megaphone that was loud enough, starting here right now is like, uh, you don't know what you're missing. You know, like, golf's awesome. Do your golf thing. But I'm telling you, the way Steve feels right now and the way that he just said, it's cathartic. Like, those are things you don't say about traditional CPG businesses. And so really the goal is, you know, because we have this amazing position with all these number one brands, you know, we're the market leader in most of our categories, is to recruit new households into it to show the next generation, you know, this is an awesome thing that you should be participating in. Like, it will enrich your life in weird ways you don't even know. And, you know, I think we're in a cool inflection point where there's, you know, a lot of the, you know, kind of older millennial generation are starting to buy their first home homes. Starting to think about, like I did, you know, I have a kid. What's going on out back. And I think that's really the focus is, you know, if you put in more business terms, is. Is keeping the legacy customer that we have, which is awesome. And we love. They. They know us really well. But it's re. It's. It's kind of introducing us.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: To the new consumer who. Buying a house and rethinking all of what they do with their. Their free time. So that. That's really as simple as I could put it in terms of, you know, plan on the page.

Speaker A: It's a great segue to my next question, which is you're inheriting ridiculously iconic brands. Right. But by the same token, you have to modernize, if you will them for the new generation, but you have to maintain the existing base. That's a fine line.

Speaker B: You know, as, uh, much as a fine line, I think it's not the hardest challenge that anybody who sat on your show has had to go do. So, you know, with respect towards challenges, it's big, it's bold, it's ambitious. But when you've been around since the 1800s, you do this, you know what I mean? And that's what's so cool about the Green Ola Scotts or Miracle Grow is these brands because they are well built, because you know, they're distributed everywhere. Where someone wants to, you know, engage with this category at the point of purchase is, it really is, is a, you know, an introduction, you know, for all the net new emerging. So this is who we are, this is why you should care about us and the values that we represent, what this lifestyle means to us. And at the same time what's really interesting about what's going on in America right now on the legacy side is that you know, a lot of the boomer, the older Gen X are not selling their houses and just you know, downsizing tomorrow they're, they're, they're spending and investing in these categories in their homes like generations prior hadn't done the same way. And so yes, it's a little bit of a, we gotta do both. But I would say, um, you know, the fun and the challenge is I do believe both categories there, emerging and legacy, want very similar things, at least from the products they do. And I would say we're, we're evolving to meet the needs of, you know, creating net new products. You know, we have like amazing Miracle Gro organic soils. You know, we have rethought, you know, our, our Scott's business and product lineup there. We are addressing definite white space and need from a product standpoint based on preferences. But unlike, um, some other businesses is we exist to serve everybody. You know, we're not trying to have a niche business that just serve, you know, sells three, three bags of soil in the, you know, you know, at a farmer's market down the street.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: We're trying to appeal to everybody. And so I would say like, you know, again, only being two and a half months into it now is extraordinary. The breadth of the business and if anybody's out there, walk into it. A Home Depot, a Lowe's, a Walmart, at Ace any spring weekend when it's sunny out. And you'll see what I'm talking about is like it's, it's a melting pot hodgepodge of human beings from 85 year olds to 8 year olds. And it's just rare that categories function like that. You know, you don't see that in the detergent business, for example. And so in that respect, that's why I always say it's. It's a tough challenge, but. But one that we've done before and one I'm confident we'll do again.

Speaker A: So I mentioned your. Your remit covers a lot of different channels like media, creative, social, digital. How are you thinking about bringing those disciplines really together so they operated as one connected versus the dreaded silos.

Speaker B: Yeah, like one of my like hallmark things to do. It's uh, you know, I uh, like the song blurring the lines. You know, I think that marketing got so complex these last 10 years because of the proliferation of discipline. And I would say that the biggest big watch out that I've had working with so many big brands and now I've just solely focused in SMG is there's one end customer, you know, and the way you show up and you know, what they see here, you know, smell for us, you know, when they go to the store. Like it's one experience. And so I would say in principle, down in the dirt, pun intended on the how is number one is make sure everyone is present together and that everyone's goal is singular for what we're trying to do. Right. I think what happened in the marketing discipline, again this is deep in the dirt of the marketing world, which CMO whisperer, I think we can go there is so many parts of the marketing apparatus got separate KPIs so somebody could be wildly successful and green over in media when in comms, you know, it wasn't performant or they had a separate set of KPIs. And from there like you basically got like to what you were just saying, a siloed architecture of success versus just one holistic view of are we actually driving this business? Does the consumer love these brands and how do we measure that? And so just bringing, you know, working to bring all of those amazing capabilities together under the sun at smg. And I would say what's nice about this business, you know, since we're North America focused,

Speaker A: it's

Speaker B: different than, you know, some global organizations where there's this giant matrix of things going on is there's really little bureaucracy. And what I would say like the normal Fortune 5000 corporate thing, which is one of those org charts you can't understand. And so I would say in my experience that's usually tactically the singular thing that somebody in this chair needs. And it's really cool to see that just a few months in, there's very little reluctance to everybody cooking together in one room, understanding the greater good of the organization. And so just doubling down on that and not getting confused about who we're speaking to. And the fact that, you know, it's an old, you know, AG Lafley quote is I think it goes like the uh, you know, the execution is the only strategy the consumer ever sees, you know. And so I think it's

Speaker A: just

Speaker B: getting every, everybody to remember that at the end of the day. Because I think sometimes we're building monuments to internal meetings and PowerPoints and that's something we don't have very much of at smg. But for anybody listening, if you got that is dive into it and try and remove it as best as you can because it creates a bunch of fake work streams and fake outcomes or just activities that people are put up on pedestals for in companies.

Speaker A: I think you're uniquely qualified to uh, talk about this next one. And that's between the outside partner world and inside, right. Are there capabilities, Nick, that you think absolutely need to live inside the organization versus our, uh, outside partners can bring in something internal teams can't.

Speaker B: I would say that, you know, our strategy is, you know, is pretty simple to understand is I am the biggest believer in, you know, internally we are the general contractors. You know, we're building the building like we understand the full architecture, we understand a lot about engineering, a lot about lighting, a lot about electric. But in no way, shape or form are we the world's most qualified electrician. And I think knowing oneself is really important when you build internally capabilities which we have world class capabilities and knowing where those capabilities end. And then when you bring in partners, the electrician, whomever, when you're building the building is making sure they understand what their role is, get the best out of their expertise versus try and make them into a general contractor.

Speaker A: And

Speaker B: I think like therein lies the sweet spot for our company and how we work with partners is being very clear from the upfront on that you are this tool for this job. We're not asking you to become something that you're not. And I think in the agency world, having come from that, the last two decades is man, like the scope creep of what agencies are is hilarious because agencies just became the Everything app. We're good at everything. Don't worry. You know, like the creative Ars became PR shops, the PR shops became social shops, the social shops became media companies. And I think like you understand that it's a business and you know, you can also see it practically, which is the complexity of managing partners, you know, gets really hard for a lot of people on the brand side. But with us, I would say we're going at it more like that, like general contractor, subcontractor. And we have a world class roster of people. And internally, just an amazingly talented group of people who come from so many different walks of life, from the entertainment world, from the garden world. People who have been there six days, people have been there 16 years. So we have a nice blend of talents and diversity, um, of skill set and people

Speaker A: I want to touch on. We kind of touch a little bit on it about that. And I'll call it the sea of sameness. Right. Which if you've been in this industry more than 30 seconds, you know what that means. And every leaping ad starts looking the same, um, across industry, which is really scary. Um, I don't want you to name names, but why do so many smart companies and AI, it's even becoming easier, right, to look the same, sound the same.

Speaker B: I think like, uh, just like when you go to an ice cream parlor, vanilla is the, you know, most popular flavor in most ice cream places for a reason. I think that what's happened in marketing, and maybe I'll take a different tack than most would take because I think what you get from most people is people are afraid to take risks. You know, like they need bravery. I think it's a little bit different is I think that what happened was the medium changed so much the context of the platform and the cohort that's unique. Hearing or seeing something from a brand is so hard for people to wrap their head around the what, what needs to be made to address that person versus if you grew up in this industry, is we actually created vanilla because the media was vanilla. You know, this podcast is an example of it. There's a very unique group of people listening to this podcast, different than might be watching the NFL broadcast of, you know, opening night whenever it is next Sunday. And I think that what didn't change was, number one, philosophically understanding the change in media. And this is, you know, you open your TikTok app or your Instagram app, your feed is 100% different than my feed.

Speaker A: Your

Speaker B: ad experience is 100% different based on what, what you're interested in. Yeah, it's no longer social media and we call it interest media. It's programmed television for you based on what you watch and what it thinks you want to watch more of. So if you really go consumer first as a marketing function, you have to reverse engineer off the back of that truth in the media, a system of making that allows for an abundance of creative for which what is vanilla to Steve might be chocolate or rocky road to Nick. And I think that being able to basically be Baskin Robbins, now let's just stick with it and have 31 flavors. That's usually having audited hundreds of marketing organizations. Usually the sticking point because what gets caught up in the world of marketing is subjective opinions, especially from people like me at the top of companies, I think it's blue and this next person thinks it should be green. But more interestingly is we live in a world now where blue and green can be relevant to different cohorts. Therefore both need to be made and underst they work or don't work based on some system of evaluation. And so I think that's kind of the transition period most companies are in, which is why sea of same happens is it can't wrap their head fully around yet the volume of creative needed to address the audience in the pipes of where media went. And I think the next 10 years will be even more profound on that than the last 10. So if people weren't really getting it these past 10, what I think will happen with AI is the explosion from brands who would make hundreds of things a week to thousands of things a day. And that really is going to be like a weird, ah, Rubik's cube for people in terms of control, subjective opinions, things like that. But if you can see what meta and other platforms are starting to introduce with their tools, which is just give us the assets themselves and we will organize them and the permutations around them into the ads that will actually perform best based on our algorithmic understanding of what humans do or do not click on engage with View. And so I think we're just at the beginning of a seismic kind of revolution in the game. And it excites me, but it also worries me for a lot of my marketing friends. And I think, you know, sea of same was a thing you could fall back on because it was very, you know, reminiscent of the television industrial complex. I think if you do that moving forward, you're gonna be in real trouble. Like in so much as I don't even think your ads will be served. That's how far I would take this conversation.

Speaker A: Interesting

Speaker B: is that like eventually this conversation becomes mood because the ads won't perform because these platforms don't want to put spend against something that people don't actually engage with or watch because that ruins their platform because they're

Speaker A: all

Speaker B: they're selling is human attention. And if you're putting something in front of somebody that does not garner, you know, um, dwell time views, clicks, you know, conversions, it is in their best interest to not serve that. And so I think that's going to be the thing that nobody is talking about at big advertising events. But I think that's the future of where this goes. And it already has been kind of happening, but it's going to go exponential the next decade.

Speaker A: Now I agree completely and I can even push back. It may not even take ten years. Uh,

Speaker B: that's conservative at this point.

Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. So you mentioned AI. I got to pick your brain at least a few minutes on where is AI creating real value for marketers today in your opinion?

Speaker B: I can't speak for everybody. I can speak for myself, our teams. Number one is if you work in the creative side of any business to not have your personal, I use the Avengers analogy, Jarvis working alongside you for efficiency, for ideation, for stress testing an idea you had. Has anybody done this idea before? How would you make it better? Is I would just say like stop what you're doing on this podcast. Don't listen to me and Steve and just start by starting having your version of Claude or GPT or Gemini always with you in the room, establishing all of the context from who you are, how you behave, what your ideas are, so that it can learn from that context and contribute to your process, whatever that process is. Whether you're a songwriter or an ad maker. There's just, you have to just almost start there with like never be without your AI would be my first principle on it. And it will become very obvious how to use AI more the more you do that first thing versus kind of being stuck in neutral, which I think a lot of marketing folks are. Number two is I would just say for if anybody's not gone deep on it is just, you know, establish a baseline and it depends on what platform you use. But let's just take Gemini, Google's, you know, Notebook lm, um, product like go and just upload all the context of whatever project you're working on into a notebook. That's the second thing to do so that you can ideate and ask it questions, so that you don't have to use mental cycles trying to piece together facts and, and fact patterns and data patterns in your own company. It will do it for you. So you will cut out the whole research part of what you normally do in your job just by giving it the context that your company has saved on share drives so that's like just like hygiene almost in terms of you just getting on the field with AI. And then I would say is what's really fun is that when you start concepting so this is like purely in the advertising world trying to come up with ideas. Things like that is really like almost allow. And it comes through your style of how you prompt and work with it, but is go there with everything you have, feed it that information. Steve and Nick come up with an idea for CMO Whisperer event series or something. Have it be your red team, have it beat up your assumption, don't have it appease you. I think this is a thing that, because it's how almost the early Internet days were when email first happened. The use case and how we all use it is funny and so different than it is 30 years later. But one of the things you have happening is not the hallucination as much in AI, but it's the, oh my God, Steve, that's the best idea I've ever heard. You know, like all of a sudden you and I are the most brilliant people ever creatively. And so I would say for anybody who's out there, it's like almost like go this far. And Sergey Brin said this from Google, founder of Google. He said like you have to threaten your AI. You have to actually tell it. Like, don't just appease me, act as if you were Steve, a journalist who was going to rip me apart about this idea that I have right now. How would you know he behave versus how would you? Validating all of my thesises. Because that's kind of how you're programmed to do is to tell me how good I am. That's what I would say is kind of holding back. I think the merit of thinking that people get creatively in marketing from AI that makes them wonder, is this actually a good thought partner? So that's like the third thing that's just if you're going to go there, like go there with that intent, otherwise you're the most brilliant marketer every single day on every single platform. But you're not, you know, it's just you're getting a vanilla version of those platforms back and it leads you to believe that AI kind of stinks. And it does. It's just how you use it is kind of stinky.

Speaker A: Exactly. It's a tool.

Speaker B: Yeah. And, and then there's like the, the image creation, there's the video creation. But I would say four, if you're in the, in the image making business at all, especially the Static image business making is just go there, you know, like, do not try and be the horse and buggy industry.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: It is, you know, a resounding, like final verdict that at least in the static image world of reorienting elements, the way that we all used to do in Photoshop, which was kind of how I came into this industry, like that part of what we do is evolving so fast, you know, whether it's with Adobe, Gemini, M GPT. But I would say that that's pretty much going to be ready for prime time next year for Fortune 5, uh, hundred companies where the hallucination factor is controlled. There's enough, you know, big tech that's built around big enterprises to make it safe. But I would say, like there is a real advantage, whether you're an SMB or a big enterprise to leaning into those tools and just completely reducing the churn, the cost. All of those things that go into what most companies have, which is thousands of pieces of collateral and static imagery that you can effectively start to autopilot or autopilot light. You know, you still need someone looking over the shoulder of AI to make sure it's all good. But that I would say is it's happened so fast that it makes me think it's going to happen with video in the next year. And pretty soon you won't be able to tell the difference between a real thing and an AI thing. And that's going to create a whole other host of conversations. But I believe, like we're probably a year, maybe two years away from this era of AI slop video being a thing that we used to talk about because now people are just making full motion pictures with, you know, uh, a look that you can't decipher the two,

Speaker A: which

Speaker B: puts you into a really weird place as a society and as a marketer, you know, when you can't tell the difference, you know, then it becomes like, what are we doing? Why are we still doing it the other way? And there'll always be a use case for both. I'm not an absolutist at all, but I think you can see the patterns in the technology that it's going to get there. And so I, uh, imagine like there's going to be the same way that people thought the streaming companies, you know, like Apple would never be winning Oscars or whatever, you know, or Emmys. I think like AI pictures are going to have their own categories and then eventually they're just going to win. That might take 20 years, but I think there's a Whole generation of people, especially young people, who won't even care the way that we all care

Speaker A: the

Speaker B: way that they, you know, like eight year olds today watch YouTube shorts, you know, YouTube social, uh, product on TVs. And you and I probably don't do that, right. But like that's their experience of what television is very different than ours.

Speaker A: But

Speaker B: you can't judge it. It just is what it is. And so I tend to just kind of sprint, you know, consumer back on where, where it's going versus holding on to yesterday and praying that, you know, the horse and buggy continues to persist outside of being in museums.

Speaker A: Dude, I'm looking at the time. There's so much more I want to talk to you about. We got commit to a part two fair.

Speaker B: I'm in.

Speaker A: Okay. But I can't leave this one. The omelette king.

Speaker B: All right,

Speaker A: talk to us. How did it come about?

Speaker B: All right,

Speaker A: are you, are you self proclaimed?

Speaker B: Self proclaimed? No, that has been. At first it was, but it's been validated. You know, I,

Speaker A: uh,

Speaker B: have the trade, I have the trademark. I would say the, the short story on this one is a fun one. So I grew up in the restaurant business and learned how to cook pretty, pretty early on. And just anybody out there is in the restaurant business if you're a chef or you work as a waiter or something, if you get the opportunity and you get kind of like roped into working breakfast, which is a horrible meal period. Uh, because like the tips aren't that good, the bills aren't that big. Is if you want to get the easiest gig in the game is go, go to the omelet station. It's the least amount of work and you get a good interaction with the customer. They're usually pretty happy. And so I, from a very early age were cooking eggs, understanding how to cook eggs. And my brother taught me how to flip omelets, you know, a very young age. And then I found myself in the advertising business. Twelve years into the the business. I joined up with Gary Vaynerchuk to help him with VaynerMedia. And if you know anything about Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary V. Colloquial in modern pop culture, um, is he's one of the best creators of all time. You know, he invented a lot of the things that everybody's doing. You know, just like earliest to the world of podcasting, earliest to social media. You know, really, you know, made hundreds and hundreds of episodes of Wine Library TV on YouTube before anybody knew what YouTube is. And 50 people watched it. And when I started working with him, he gave me this prompt of like, you know, for all your Cannes lions and your, you know, your big initiatives, he's like, without your production money and without your media money, have you ever actually tried to do something that people actually wanted to watch that they opt into that one organically without all those millions of dollars behind it? And I was like, you know, Gary, it's not really what we do. You know, like, we have budgets and we have paid media. That's kind of the brand world. And he's like, well, it's not. Your whole industry is like, it's not that creative. You should try it sometime and see how creative you actually are. And it was such a shot fired. And I was like. One of the reasons I went to work with him was just inspired by that, you know, of, uh, like, how does a person actually, like, compete in the open Internet every day and for 15 years remain relevant, hard. You know what I mean? Like, people come and go just like in Hollywood and in. And in the Internet age, there is a, uh, you know, a star a minute that gets a million views here and you never see him again. And so what Gary's done is truly one of one. And so many people have benefited from his model and, you know, like, creating their own stars off the back of it. And so basically to. To evolve my approach and rethink and recalibrate who I am as a marketer. I went home that weekend. I downloaded an app called TikTok, which was a dancing app for eight year olds. And then time in 2019, it'd just be renamed from, um, musically to TikTok. And I noticed that he was all in on it. So I was like, I'm gonna go all in on it. And I started, you know, by starting again with, what am I gonna post as a TikTok? I'm not gonna dance. And I just was like, huh, Jen, could you just film me, you know, breakfast before everybody comes over? And so I filmed like 10 of them. I posted 10 of them. I got like six collective views. And I was like, shit. I was like, Gary, really, you know, he was right on this. Maybe I am not as good as I think I am. Uh, I should stick to advertising with big budgets and everything. And then I did a 360 spin in a Santa outfit, uh, in 2019, in December. I missed the pan. And I wasn't going to, you know, the omelet got all over the floor. I wasn't going to post it. And my wife said what would Gary do? You know, like, stop being a perfectionist. So now I got Gary and my wife gang up on me and how bad I am creatively. And so she posted it, which I would have never posted to this day. I would have never posted it. We go, we eat breakfast, our friends come over. I turn the phone back. Over four hours later, I have 14 million views on an omelet flip. And from that moment, you know, and credit to Gary really is I've created probably 10,000 different permutations across seven platforms for the past six years and been featured on the Food Network, Sports center, everywhere. So, like, if anybody's out there just. Just, you know, thinking about creativity marketing is the one thing I would tell you is you have to make the actual thing, post it organically and see the response. If you really want to play the game anymore, you can't buy relevance. You can buy reach, but it's kind of fake because, you know, who's actually watching the ad? Who didn't get up to go to the bathroom, who's not looking at their phone. But when you actually put yourself out there organically, whether it's a podcast, whether it's on TikTok or Instagram, is you learn more, and you learn at an exponential rate relative to sitting in a boardroom or looking at a PowerPoint deck. And so really, that's the ethos I bring to everything to every single day at smg. It's like, what are we making? What do we learn today? Did anybody care about it? Are we more relevant today than we were yesterday? And so, in many ways, the omelet king was the unlock for that next phase of all this. So that is the story.

Speaker A: That's amazing. And I will leave it on this. It's even more. That was 2019 juxtaposed over the world we're living in now with AI. We've talked about where those lines are just constantly blurring. To be real and transparent, Authentic that you were back then is even more Paramount today.

Speaker B: Thank you. Um, and thank you for having me on. This is so much fun, and I'm a big fan of everything you all are doing. And, um, I look forward to part two.

Speaker A: Well, that wraps up another episode of the CMO Whisperer show. I hope you shared this episode with your friends. And if you have not already pleased, please subscribe to be kept up to date on all the latest episodes. And if you're so inclined, leave me a review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you.