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[00:00:28] Hey gang, it's Monday, June 15th. Max, Nate, and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, a new market podcast made possible by Rocked. I'm Marcus, and joining me for today's conversation we have two principal analysts. Joining us from Philly, Knicks fan, it's Max Wolins.

[00:00:41] Max Willens: Go New York, go New York, go.

[00:00:43] Marcus Johnson: We're also joined from New York, uh, by kind of Knicks fan.

[00:00:46] He's happy when they do well, uh, much like myself, Nate Elliott.

[00:00:50] Nate Elliott: Go Syracuse Orange.

[00:00:52] Marcus Johnson: Oh, okay. Yeah. Cool. Today's fact.

[00:00:58] Nurses walk [00:01:00] about a marathon a week. So my friend just went to a Banksy exhibit in Austin, and her favorite piece was called Game Changer. I hadn't seen it before. Uh, it's, it's amazing. It, it depicts a young boy. Uh, it's made by Banksy, the artist. It depicts a young boy playing with a nurse superhero doll.

[00:01:18] Uh, and it's got Batman and Spider-Man in this ... like, discarded in this basket next to him. So he's prefer- he preferred to play with this nurse superhero doll. It's got a cape and everything, and it's a tribute to healthcare workers, um, as the real h- heroes during the pandemic. And so, uh, when I found, uh, some facts about nurses, and there was some NHS research, that's the UK healthcare system.

[00:01:39] Uh, NHS found that nurses walk about 6-0 thousand, 60,000 steps a week. That's roughly 26 miles or a marathon's distance. ER nurses often walk even more than that.

[00:01:56] Nate Elliott: Is that, uh, just on the job, I take it?

[00:01:58] Marcus Johnson: Yep. Also, don't

[00:01:59] Max Willens: [00:02:00] nurses mostly work, like, three or four-day we- work weeks? I, I have a, some friends that work as, like, physician assistants, and they

[00:02:07] like, they're not doing nine to fives. They're doing, like, 12-hour shifts, so- They are doing 12-hour shifts, yeah ... I'm imagining piling all that up in the space of, like, three work days.

[00:02:15] Nate Elliott: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:16] Max Willens: Remarkable.

[00:02:16] Marcus Johnson: Um- Remarkable.

[00:02:18] Max Willens: Um- That's why they care about their shoes. Oh, yeah. You wanna find sh- shoes that are good for your knees and back, you talk to a nurse or a- Yes.

[00:02:23] a physician assistant.

[00:02:25] Marcus Johnson: Absolutely.

[00:02:25] Nate Elliott: Marcus, can you make that the next fact of the day? What's, what's nurses' favorite shoe brand?

[00:02:31] Max Willens: No free ads.

[00:02:34] Marcus Johnson: To the over five million, uh, actively licensed registered nurses in the US, thank you. Uh, to you folks, there are probably none listening, but if you know one, tell them I said thanks.

[00:02:43] Today's real topic, the most interesting conversations we expect to hear at CAN 2026. By we, I mean them, 'cause I'm not allowed to go again.

[00:02:52] Max Willens: You know what you did.

[00:02:55] Marcus Johnson: That's fair.

[00:02:59] For the [00:03:00] episode today, we decided to look at some of the most interesting sessions being put on this year and talk about a few of them. So, uh, Max, you picked The Evolution of Creativity. Uh, it's on Tuesday, June 23rd, 12:45 for people who wanna go. The session description outlines how contemporary artist Daniel Arsham and Instagram VP of Product Tessa Lyons will explore the evolving nature of creativity, looking at the intersection of art and tech from AI-powered experiences to next generation creative tools.

[00:03:27] Max, what interested you most about this session?

[00:03:29] Max Willens: Well, I was initially... I have a sort of a, a glib answer, and then a more serious answer. The, the glib answer is that I thought it was very funny that, uh, Meta chose to, uh, pick as their kind of, um, you know, guest an artist whose, you know, oeuvre is basically defined by taking very familiar objects and corroding them.

[00:03:52] Um, which seems like a really funny, uh, metaphor for the automated creative tools that, uh, [00:04:00] Meta is trying really, really hard to sort of legitimize, uh, within the- among the people that are going to be crowding the Croisette, uh, next week. I, I bring this up because the, the more sort of serious answer to this question is, you know, Meta understands that there's pretty wide uptake of a lot of portions of Advantage+, their, their automated, uh, campaign suite.

[00:04:25] And they are obviously well pleased with, uh, lots of that uptake because their, their ad business has just been on a r- rocket ship for the last couple of years. But they also are clearly really keen to try to drive more use of their creative tools among, you know, multinational, omni-channel advertising, uh, companies, their brands, uh, the agencies that they, that they pay lots of money to make their creative for them.

[00:04:52] And, um, you know, they understand where the gaps are, but the, the... It's really interesting that they, I think, [00:05:00] are s- staying so committed to try to m- make the case that these tools can, you know, help, uh, big brands differentiate in a way that's, that's kind of remaining harmonious with all of the activation that they do elsewhere.

[00:05:12] Marcus Johnson: Mm-hmm. Max, you have some data on this, right? Do you wanna throw that in here?

[00:05:16] Max Willens: Yeah, sure. I mean, uh, the, the kind of broader backdrop that I think speaks to, uh- this situation in more concrete terms is, you know, we are right in the middle of a, uh, pretty weird, uh, era of mismatch between the, uh, kind of creative needs, uh, or the, the need for creative assets and creative raw material, um, that brands have and, and what they are able to produce either on their own or, or, you know, uh, via their agency partners.

[00:05:50] Nate Elliott: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:50] Max Willens: And, um, I would say this has been a problem-- This mismatch has existed for, um, I would say at least a decade, um, depending on how you wanna think [00:06:00] about the rise of certain digital channels. But the, the rise of these automated campaign systems that the social networks have rolled out has taken a, you know, a gap and turned it into like a chasm, uh, for, for brands that are, are really precious about their creative assets.

[00:06:17] So a good kind of way of illustrating this is with, uh, data that I, I used in a presentation that I made a couple of months ago, which shows that before, uh, Pinterest rolled out, uh, its Performance Plus, uh, automated campaign suite, they recommended that each campaign have a minimum of two pins. They now recommend if you're doing an Advantage Plus campaign that each campaign have a minimum of 10 pins.

[00:06:38] Um, and then you think about Meta, where this is even more pronounced because, um, what Meta now wants is rather than a lot of different variations on one kind of coherent theme or creative idea, they now want multiple, um, kind of creative ideas. So imagine like if you're a coffee brand, um, instead of just, you know, six or seven different versions [00:07:00] of You know, a, uh, a farmer in Guatemala, you know, holding up a big, uh, straw bag of beans.

[00:07:08] You now need six or seven of those, six or seven of, uh, the mountains, six or seven of, um, you know, two fit people at work smiling and laughing, drinking coffee, six, seven more yada, yada, yada. And the, the visual representation of this is from a case study that they, uh, you know, Meta touted on their own website where they had this one brand that went from producing three pieces of content a week, uh, for their output to 50, uh, to over 50.

[00:07:33] Um, and you know, if you're a, a CMO or even just someone who's several tiers down and thinking about how to feed these, these beasts every week as you- Mm-hmm ... you know, try to drive progress, you're probably fumbling around for, for anything that's gonna make that easier. And, um, you know, I don't know if, um, this contemporary artist is gonna change anybody's minds, but it is important to sort of, uh, point to the, the, the [00:08:00] tension and the pressure that is being exerted on the creative community from another angle.

[00:08:04] Mm-hmm.

[00:08:04] Marcus Johnson: Let's talk about the next session, Nate, the one you picked, f- uh, Forward, Not Flawless: The Creative Tension Between Values at, uh, and Scale. In this session, Alex Weller, uh, VP of Creative at Patagonia, will explore how brands can stay true to their values whilst operating at global scale and grow their influence without losing sight of who they are or why they exist.

[00:08:27] Uh, Nate, what made you pick this one?

[00:08:28] Nate Elliott: A couple of things. Um, first I'm a Patagonia stan. I, uh, own far, far too many things- ... with their little mountain logo on it. Uh, I do a, a decent amount of hiking. I've been lucky enough to sail across oceans a few times, and, uh, and their gear has, uh, has kept me in good stead on those adventures.

[00:08:48] So I'm just a big fan of the brand, and, uh, honestly, uh, kind of would hope that maybe I would walk away with some free gear. Okay. Um, but, uh, I'm also a big fan of their values. Uh, [00:09:00] and I think it's really fascinating to see what happens when a company leads with values even more than they lead with product.

[00:09:08] I mean, I, I don't think there's a lot of debate that Patagonia products in general are, are very good. Um, you know, there is definitely debate about whether it's worth the price tags they, they put on those products, but- The products are, are generally very good, but they don't lead with the quality of the products.

[00:09:24] They lead with what they stand for, and it just is a really fascinating dynamic to watch a company say, "We are not the things that you buy from us. We're something bigger than that." It's- Mm-hmm ... you know, I, uh, in a quarter century advising brands and, and a lot of technology vendors, I've, I've had a lot of conversations with technology vendors who are trying to go beyond the thing that they do really well and look for ways to expand their offering and grow their business.

[00:09:51] And, and I've gotten a lot of quizzical looks in that quarter century from CEOs when I've said things like, "You're really good at this thing, and there's nothing wrong [00:10:00] with being really good at this one thing that's important and profitable and not trying to become something else." Yeah. Um, most founders have the drive where they don't understand that idea.

[00:10:13] Uh, and I l- love that this company, whose products I really appreciate, um, has a founder and a current CEO who do understand that it's not just about getting bigger, but it's actually about standing for something and being really good at the thing you stand for. And I think it's a, you know, it's a cool story, and I'd love to hear more about it.

[00:10:34] Marcus Johnson: As, uh- A fan, a customer, and an analyst. How, how, how have they been able to communicate those values, um, better than others? What, what are one or two things that they do that really stand out to you?

[00:10:49] Nate Elliott: I mean, more than anything else, I think they're just fearless. I, I think they have, you know, very few flips to give to make this a podcast language friendly.

[00:10:59] Um, [00:11:00] y- you know, you're willing to publish full-page ads in newspapers and, and industry magazines, uh, calling elected officials, uh, out for, uh, deceitful, uh, statements and, uh, harmful actions. Um, that's pretty remarkable. There are not a lot of companies who would be willing to just completely alienate half of the country potentially by saying, "You know, this politician lied to you, and it's bad for our planet, and we're not gonna be quiet about it."

[00:11:33] Um, that level of fearlessness is pretty remarkable and, you know, among other things, uh, tends to engender even greater loyalty amongst the portion of the population who agrees with those statements.

[00:11:46] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. Um, all right. I chose two sessions. I'm gonna flip them. I was gonna go with Max's first, but I'm gonna flip them based on we're talking of talking about, um, having a brand that, you know, that has such a loyal following, and [00:12:00] Patagonia is a good example of that.

[00:12:01] And so one of the sessions, one of the two that I chose I wanted to talk about with the gents here was, um, one that was called Stop Listening To The Customer, uh, Build Brands That Last Forever. Uh, and so, um, this session has folks from Vacation Inc. and Thinker Bell, and they're gonna talk about why the strongest brands don't listen to the customer.

[00:12:21] They put the brand at the heart of the business. Uh, when the brand is powerful, clear, and ritualized, creativity shifts from advertising to the entity itself, reducing, if not eliminating, the need to advertise. And so Nate, back to you for this one. Um, what's your take on this session, Stop Listening To The Customer, Build Brands That Last Forever?

[00:12:39] Nate Elliott: Well, I, first of all, I, I, uh, would imagine you would get some very, very short odds on how quickly, uh, Apple was mentioned in this session. Yes. Um, by, by far the most cited example of a CEO and a product development team that doesn't listen to customers supposedly.

[00:12:56] Marcus Johnson: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:57] Nate Elliott: Um, you know, there, there are probably a handful of [00:13:00] others.

[00:13:00] Uh, Harley Davidson tends to get thrown around- Mm-hmm ... a fair bit in conversations like this as well. I, I, I don't know what to think about that. I mean, i- if you happen to be a product genius along the lines of Steve Jobs, then by all means feel free to ignore your customers and do whatever you think they should have in their hands and whatever you think they'll buy from you.

[00:13:22] I don't know that that's a replicable playbook for most companies, so I'd be curious to go just to see if it- Yeah ... if it is as I suspect it might be, uh, look at what Steve Jobs did, you should do the same thing. Which I- Yeah ... unfortunately I don't think is terribly realistic. But, um, as I said, I'd be really curious to hear more and see how much further the thinking goes than, than what I just said.

[00:13:44] Marcus Johnson: Max, will this fall on deaf ears just because people will say, "I can't..." Very few companies can relate to that way of thinking?

[00:13:51] Max Willens: I think on some level, but I also think that maybe it's, it's valuable for brands to, you [00:14:00] know, look at sessions like these and, and engage in some self-reflection where, you know, there are some brands for whom, you know, quality and, you know, kind of timeless craftsmanship are, are frankly secondary, right?

[00:14:14] Like, some people turn the lights on in the, you know, in the office every day going, "How can I make this as cheaply as humanly possible?" And so that's, you know, something that sort of needs to be, be reckoned with. But I, I do, uh, maybe naively kind of cling to the hope that a lot of the stats you see about, you know, Gen Z for example sort of making their purchase decisions based more on a company's values versus, you know, things like price, um, I'm hopeful for a, a world where that, uh, you know, shapes m- more, more purchasing decisions than I, you know...

[00:14:49] A- again, to what all three of us have said, I don't know how- universally applicable it is, but I, I can, you know, a guy can dream, um, out there in France. [00:15:00]

[00:15:00] Marcus Johnson: Um, Monday, June 22nd, 1:00 PM, that's that session. And the other one I had was a session called Stop Working in Advertising. To engage, you need to entertain.

[00:15:09] That's on Thursday, June 25th at 11:15. In this session, Sir John Hegarty, co-founder of the Business of Creative, discusses what it takes for a brand to stop behaving like an advertisement and start acting like a movement. It says, "To create work that doesn't feel like advertising at all, but like something you choose.

[00:15:27] A song you'd play again, a film you remember, an idea you believe in." Max, what's your take on, on this session, the stop working advertising, focus more on the entertainment side of things?

[00:15:38] Max Willens: I, here again, I have kind of a, a glib answer and a serious answer. Um, when I ... We were preparing for this, it rem- uh, seeing this, uh, session description reminded me of a, a thing that happened to me approximately years ago when I was, um-

[00:15:54] working as a social media strategist. And, you know, the ... At the time, there was this [00:16:00] really big push, uh, by Facebook at the time to, like, get every brand and company out there to, to start their own Facebook page, and I was explaining this to my mother and she was like, "W- why should my toilet paper have a Facebook page?"

[00:16:13] And I remember thinking like, "Well, uh, uh"- ... "O- okay, fine. Fine. Fair enough. Fair enough. They don't ... Y- you know, uh, maybe Orca Pacific doesn't need to have, uh, you know- She's making good points ... 600 Facebook pages." Um, but I, I bring all this up to say that, you know, there are some brands for whom, you know, this kind of call to entertain is gonna sound a little silly.

[00:16:33] But I think that the, the kind of more interesting, uh, industry-level story that this aligns to is the pressure that, that CMOs face, right? Like, w- we have ... There's always been kind of an ambient- Uh, you know, uh, uh, not hostility, but an ambient sort of dissatisfaction with, you know, how much money every organization spends on its, on its [00:17:00] advertising and marketing.

[00:17:00] But we are in an era where, you know, if you, if you are committed enough, you can build a measurement framework for, you know, where you wanna drive your organization. And I do think that it is possible now to measure the downstream effects of being funny or being heartening or being inspiring, you know, as, uh, Sir John Hegarty would call them all to do.

[00:17:24] Mm-hmm. But you've gotta develop a coherent vision of how you, you measure it. You can't just kind of take all the raw material- Mm ... outputs from- Different points, yep ... the different channels you invest in and go, "Well, is this working?" Mm-hmm. And so I think that, you know, I doubt there's gonna be a lot of discussion of, you know, like media mix modeling in that session, but, like, I do think it's interesting that we are in an era where i- if you're, again, kind of resolute enough, it is possible to sort of take a, an entertainment, uh, first approach to, to your media and marketing strategy.

[00:17:56] Nate Elliott: It feels like a huge stretch for so many [00:18:00] companies. Yeah. I mean, Max, you talked about toilet paper, you talked about, you know, B2B, but, but just e- even on the B2C side, so many companies simply cannot do this effectively. Think about the Super Bowl. Every company who makes an ad for the Super Bowl spends millions on the media placement and millions more, in most cases, on the creative, and the vast majority of them fall flat, and that's been true ever since, once again, Steve Jobs showed the world how to do it 30-something years ago, well, geez, 40-something years ago now, um, with, uh, with the original Mac ad, 1984.

[00:18:35] Uh, I can remember maybe one advertiser who I think did a great job at this year's Super Bowl. Uh, I think most other people who watched all the ads would have a similar number in their head, and that's out of dozens and dozens of executions by dozens of advertisers. So this notion that you need to make everything entertaining is great until the rubber hits the road and [00:19:00] the ads aren't entertaining and the brands aren't entertaining.

[00:19:03] But because I mentioned odds in, in, uh in one of my other answers, I'll again say you'd get very short, uh, odds on, uh, on seeing the Cadbury gorilla Phil Collins drumming ad, uh, that has to come up in this conversation.

[00:19:19] Max Willens: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:20] Nate Elliott: And it's a great example of how well this can work when it works, and if you want an example of how poorly it works when it doesn't work, again, just watch all the Super Bowl ads this year.

[00:19:32] Max Willens: I, I do think it's interesting though to sort of tie this together with the previous sessions. Like, if you ... One of the things that I think contributes to that phenomenon that Nate just described where, you know, y- you watch the lion's share of the Super Bowl ads in any given year and go, "Really?" And, but then if you kind of sit with, with most of them for a l- even a half second, it's pretty easy to sort of understand [00:20:00] what they were going for, you know?

[00:20:01] Like, it's an ad that's gotta appeal to moms in the Midwest, but it's gotta have something a little, you know, more contemporary so that the, the zoomers that, you know, the CMOs', um, you know, children talk about all the time will also find it relevant. And then all of a sudden you've got this kind of, you know, Franken-ad that n- nobody really finds, uh- Mm

[00:20:22] relatable or Interesting or, you know, en- engaging in any way. But if you instead kind of tune the customer out and just speak purely from, this is gonna sound really silly, but, like, you know, your truth as a brand, then, like, maybe what, what comes out doesn't necessarily, uh, isn't necessarily relevant, you know, to hundreds of millions of people, but it might be r- relevant to, you know, a, an incremental chunk of your, you know, pos- potential consumers.

[00:20:49] God, I'm not even in France yet and I'm already sounding like- ... you know, someone who-

[00:20:53] Nate Elliott: You're, you're there, Max. You're there.

[00:20:54] Max Willens: I am. I'm like half rosé and half sunburn and, you know, it's, it's happening to me [00:21:00] already.

[00:21:00] Nate Elliott: Don't worry, I'll be all rosé and all sunburn by, uh- ... by next Friday. But, uh, y- so if you think about the ads in this vein that do well, if you think about the Apple 1984 ad and the Cadbury gorilla ad, I mean, those are bananas ads.

[00:21:16] Who would make either of those? Uh, and most of these companies who are gonna sit in the session just simply don't have the willpower or the organizational support to make a, a two-minute dystopian ad based on a George Orwell novel, or to put a guy in a gorilla suit behind a drum kit to sell chocolate. I mean, these were really weird ads, and that's what tends to work in this category.

[00:21:46] Yeah. And I just, I don't see the amount of bravery in, in marketing at this point for that to be something that can happen every day.

[00:21:54] Marcus Johnson: But even if you can't, I think you guys are right, and even if you can't reach that level [00:22:00] of disruption in terms of creating something that's entertaining, I found a couple of charts that really speak to just how important the idea of being entertained is, uh, to folks.

[00:22:10] Uh, and so there's a chart on the screen. You can see entertainment is the content type that makes US adults feel more favorable towards brands the most according to April data from Ipsos, more than your sports, news, political, AI-generated, controversial, et cetera. Then the second chart here you can see the most popular social media content type across every age group is entertainment according to impact, um, .com, an EMARKETER survey, and more so than authentic content, storytelling, educational.

[00:22:41] So-

[00:22:45] I mean, we've seen this movement towards, uh, you know, away from social media towards social entertainment. It just seems, Max, that you can't stress enough this import- important, uh, point of, um, or the importance of people want to be entertained, and a way to maybe get around, um, you know, people [00:23:00] feeling exhausted being advertised to is to focus on entertaining them first, and then the product kind of, uh, gets through to them by osmosis.

[00:23:08] Max Willens: Yeah, I mean, uh, not to talk my own book too much here, but I, I think that all this kind of broader 10,000-foot conversation definitely, uh, you know, has shaped the significant investment that we've seen the industry make in creators, right? I mean, if these big problems are we have a significantly expanded need for creative raw material, we need to be entertaining, we as brands, uh, you know, themselves and maybe as, um, you know, middle-aged, uh, frazzled, overly busy, uh, executives at those brands are not entertaining and don't know what's cool or interesting.

[00:23:52] How do we solve all these problems? I know, we spend a ton of money on people who have, like, built their whole careers out of being [00:24:00] entertaining on the internet. Mm-hmm. And let's throw money at them, and if one of them says something that's out of bounds or it doesn't land, we can just blame them or just, you know, people will forget it in 45 seconds-

[00:24:10] and we'll hire 25 more of them. And so I do think that these kind of pressures and anxieties that are, are weighing on, uh, you know, the creative community and on the, the ad or marketing community, uh, y- you can see why there's been such an embrace or at least a, you know, increase in curiosity about creators as a sort of investment, um, opportunity.

[00:24:33] At the end of the day, it really does come down to s- a really amazing idea, and I, I'm, I'm excited to be in France and, and sort of see and hear people talk about where those big ideas come from. 'Cause to me, that's still kind of the, the engine of this whole thing, um, and people lose sight of that all the time.

[00:24:51] Marcus Johnson: Mm. Well, that's all we have time for for this episode. I hope everyone, uh, enjoys Cannes. Uh, the two folks, uh, on this episode who are going, uh, I hope you have a [00:25:00] great time, uh, and thank you so much for being here. Thank you first to Max. A bientot,

[00:25:03] Nate Elliott: au

[00:25:04] Marcus Johnson: revoir. And, and and to Nate.

[00:25:06] Nate Elliott: You totally stole my gag, Max.

[00:25:08] But thanks, Marcus, it was a pleasure as always.

[00:25:12] Marcus Johnson: Uh, safe trip, gents. Uh, thanks to the production crew and to everyone for listening to Martin and the Marketing Podcast, made possible by Rocked. Suzy will be here Wednesday talking to the head of marketing at ThredUp, and I'll be back Friday discussing Americans' summer travel plans.