Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision and global business. The dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism. Right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and six clearing houses around the world. And now welcome, Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
A few weeks ago here at the New York Stock Exchange we had a unique event. It's called a direct listing, and it's when a company doesn't need to raise new capital, which is the usual Mo of an IPO. But it's ready for its equity to be liquid, so that early investors and employees can sell if they want to. The company can use their stock to hire new employees or make acquisitions, and a new round of investors accessing the public markets can all participate in the company's next wave of growth. The company doing the direct listing was Slack, and it followed a similar path that Spotify took last year with their shares. Their brands were so strong, so well known that their name itself helped generate a lot of interest among buyers of their shares. In some way, both Spotify and Slack had created movements under themselves well before their NYC ticker symbols SPOT and WORK respectively, ended up on the trader screens on our exchange floor.
Josh King:
And here's how Seth Fiegerman of CNN described Slack. "Think of AOL instant messenger, but for people with jobs. And better yet, think of coworking space provider WeWork with its promise of delivering office culture as a service. Slack does that too, but online rather than in a physical space. At a time when most people are working jobs behind screens, sometimes remotely in distributed workplaces, Slack is the new office water cooler."
Josh King:
I thought about that, the new office water cooler, or perhaps the new office movement. Our guest today, Scott Goodson, knows all about corporate movements. He wrote the book on it. He's the founder and chairman of StrawberryFrog, a global cultural movement firm, and the author of, Uprising: How to Build a Brand--and Change the World--By Sparking Cultural Movements. He's worked with leading worldwide brands, including IKEA, Pfizer, Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Mitsubishi, Smart and Microsoft. In his book he argues that movement marketing is the best and perhaps only way for companies to connect with consumers in an age of social media. And when done effectively, the interaction between companies and consumers can lead to positive social change. Our conversation with Scott Goodson, right after this.
Speaker 3:
Now a word from Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty. NYSE ticker symbol PD.
Jennifer Tejada:
PagerDuty is a digital operations management platform leveraged by developers, customer support, IT and security to help ensure the brand experience for their end consumers runs perfectly all the time. Our organization reflects the diversity and the richness of our community. We're really excited about global impact. We chose the NYSE because it's a place where iconic companies are truly born in the company of giants.
Josh King:
Scott Goodson started his advertising career in Stockholm, Sweden, launching Bjorn Borg's fashion line, and is among a group of marketers who emerged from the Swedish advertising industry in the late 1980s and 1990s. The inventiveness and visual style of this marketing did much to shape the evolution of contemporary advertising. Goodson and his co-founder Karen Drakenberg moved to Amsterdam in the late 1990s to start StrawberryFrog with the launch of the small two-seat Smart car as their founding client, along with IKEA and Ericsson smartphone. Welcome Scott Goodson, Inside the ICE House.
Scott Goodson:
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.
Josh King:
Your first visit to the New York Stock Exchange?
Scott Goodson:
Actually, it's not. It's my second visit.
Josh King:
What was the first?
Scott Goodson:
Well, I was here a couple years ago when Magnus was running the New York Stock Exchange. And I had the opportunity to come in and see him. It's changed a lot.
Josh King:
Yeah, no.
Scott Goodson:
There's new lighting.
Josh King:
New lighting, when it was bought by Intercontinental Exchange in 2013, they completely got renovated the floor we are on now, which is the sixth floor, and the floor above us, the seventh floor, which had always been the province of our members, the people who had owned seats in the New York Stock Exchange. These floors have been given completely over to client use. So many of the companies that I think you've worked with in the past, who are not based in New York City will use the New York Stock Exchange as their headquarters for their major events.
Scott Goodson:
Fantastic. Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, it's coming in these walls, it's like being in living history, it's exciting.
Josh King:
Living history is one thing, but the future in technology is another, do you use Slack?
Scott Goodson:
We do actually, because we collaborate with a lot of partners. Not only people within our organization, but in today's world it's all, you have to take a page out of how great research universities work together with different researchers around the planet.
Josh King:
You once wrote, and I'm going to quote you here, "We built the agency around an open room principle, and from this platform emerged speed, friendship, respect, and the all important things that are needed to make it happen." Can any form of technology, let alone Slack, replace that kind of interaction?
Scott Goodson:
I think it's part of it, because you need to have the opportunity to connect with other individuals. It accelerates the speed with which you can work and connect with others. If you think about where we were five years ago, the open room principle of course is a place in a building where you've got a team of individuals collaborating together. I think what we did when we started, we blew the doors off of the old traditional advertising industry as we said, "Okay, we don't want to have just people in one room. We want to work with basically individuals in freelance, talent across the globe." So, one of our first clients was the launch of el.com for El Ah of Paris. We didn't have any designers in StrawberryFrog. We worked with-
Josh King:
StrawberryFrog was just 20 people that was this vast network of freelancers?
Scott Goodson:
Correct. And we had studio in New Zealand, in Australia and San Francisco and London, Amsterdam, all working together. And we had this new technology called the internet. And we could actually collaborate over that. Today Slack basically accelerates that way of working so we can work faster. And it allows smaller premium organizations to work and challenge the dominance of these huge corporations that have their workspace inside their companies. And they've got dots on the map across the globe. I'll give you an example. We did a project last year for the launch of a new city in Dubai. The CEO wanted us to launch us with a real bang. So he wanted us to develop the world's first three-dimensional hologram. And there was only one example that had been done prior to that. It was for Mark Jacobs in China. And we hired the creative director who did that in China. How do you do a three-sided hologram unless you have an expert who knows how to pull that technology together? So just, I mean, that's an extreme example, but-
Josh King:
Can I ask you though, a three-sided hologram is great, but you also got to do the rest of the city. And I've read this about you too. What was involved? And I wasn't going to go here this early, but I'm fascinated.
Scott Goodson:
Okay.
Josh King:
Launching a city for Dubai. What's StrawberryFrog's role in this?
Scott Goodson:
So we started working with Dubai back in around 2010. We were asked to present our credentials for the global Emirates Airlines business against the large, big corporate advertising agency at the time, WPP and Omnicom. The leadership of the company hired us. They were very interested in the idea of creating a movement for their brand. And we ended up being appointed and we worked to launch a movement inside the organization to change the culture, and then we did externally.
Scott Goodson:
It was kind of like being the strategic and creative partner for Apple's launch in America. If you put yourself in Dubai, Emirates is the Apple of Dubai. So from that time on, the most prestigious, the biggest marque brands have come to us and asked us to do work. Sheikh Ahmed, who's the chairman of Emirates is also responsible for the launch of this new massive airport that's opening on the border with Abu Dhabi. The new city is being built around that airport. And so our relationship off of Emirates led us to be asked to come in and work on the launch of new a city. But this city, they're very incredibly forward thinking. They want to improve quality of life. They want to have, if you've read up on Dubai, they want to have happiness as a core, focus for their citizens and the people living in, residents of Dubai. So this city was designed around the human. And so we came up with a movement which called, the City of You. We came up with a name for the city, which-
Josh King:
What's the name of the city?
Scott Goodson:
Well, it used to be called DWC, which was the actual acronym for the airport. And we felt that was not a great name. So we came up with Dubai South. We, for a number of reasons, if you think of South Kensington in London or South Beach, from a real estate perspective it's a great name. It gives you a sense of quality, and. But it also does another thing. It gives you geographical perspective of Dubai. And one of the big projects we did was the launch of the Burj Khalifa and Imar, which is this huge real estate organization that built the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.
Scott Goodson:
We created something called Downtown Dubai, which was the first time we kind of established the idea that Dubai actually has a center. So that from your mind's eye, you can picture where the Burj Khalifa is, which is downtown in the center of Dubai. So coming up this new city, which is, as I said, on the border or Southern part of Dubai, adjacent to Abu Dhabi, we said, "Okay, let's call it Dubai south, because then you can just imagine where you know where it is."
Josh King:
Let's go from, because I want to come back to Emirates and Dubai in a minute, but I want to go back to Stockholm for a second. You spent the bulk of your-
Scott Goodson:
It was a world tour.
Josh King:
Oh, believe me, we're going to go all over the world-
Scott Goodson:
Can I come?
Josh King:
... to be where it started for Scott Goodson, who in fact is a Canadian and aspired to be a lawyer. It brought you originally to Stockholm where Daniel Ek also got his start in business. Do you use Spotify?
Scott Goodson:
I definitely know Spotify. I know several of the people involved in that organization and a lot of the young techno rebels who have started Spotify in many other organizations, a very small town, Stockholm. So my son is actually heading off tomorrow to do a two-week internship at a AI startup in Stockholm.
Josh King:
So here is what Ek said, told Freakonomics Radio recently. I want to have a listen to it.
Speaker 6:
The argument Daniel Ek is making sounds good in theory, that digital distribution should make it easier for lesser known artists to find listeners and get paid. Remember how Ek defines the Spotify mission?
Daniel Ek:
To inspire human creativity by enabling a million artists to be able to live off of their art.
Josh King:
So Scott, 217 million people now subscribe to Spotify and a 100 million people pay for it. And it's the first subscription service I think, to make it to that plateau of a 100 million. Sound like a mission to you, or a movement?
Scott Goodson:
I definitely think it's a movement. It has the power of freedom and it reflects this new generation's desire for access to great content. And it brings the greatest artists from around the world at moment's notice. So in a sense that the technology releases them, but if there's a level of freedom involved in that I think is very much a part of the movement. And I think it's part of this kind of mass upset of traditional brands and traditional sectors, this mass disruption, which is highly appealing to a new generation who are no longer loyal to the old ways. So it also represents that. I also think you have to think, I was a Pandora user for a long time. And for the life of me, I'm like, "Why is Pandora sitting there, and why is Spotify?" Which in a sense is pretty much the same thing, exploding.
Scott Goodson:
And I think the difference is that Spotify was super cool and it just took on this attitude. And just had this kind of vibe that connected with youth around the world, whereas Pandora felt it wasn't connecting. And it had more of a personality that just didn't feel aligned with this new generation.
Josh King:
Is there an essential Swedishness to Ek's success? I've heard you say that when you showed up in Stockholm, traditional advertising had barely emerged. The Swedes had to get their message out in other ways.
Scott Goodson:
I think the Swedes are incredibly aware of culture, and they know how important it is to be cool. And that coolness is a way for brands to succeed. Sweden is a hot bed of young technology, young engineers. It also is one of the world's largest exporter of music. K-pop, some of the greatest K-pop tunes are written by Swedes, not a plug for my niece, Freja The Dragon, who's a great musician. She plays in a band called Peter Björn and John, you may be familiar with. She does tons of music for K-pop bands in Korea, and LA is full of Swedish music. People like writers and producers and singers. I was just recently with Aloe Blacc, who is a singer for Avicii, who unfortunately passed away recently. Avicii is still such a dominant force globally as a DJ. So the music industry, a lot of models come out of Sweden, technology. They're just connected with the currents of where the world is going.
Josh King:
Talk about Swedish cool. One of your first clients, Bjorn Borg. I can see him across the court right now from Jimmy Connors or Johnny McEnroe today, stoic, determined, dressed head to toe in Fila, so dashing in a way. How do you translate that encored style into the brand that people want to own?
Scott Goodson:
Working with Bjorn Borg was before Michael Jordan ever had a line. This was the first celebrity athlete to do a fashion line. And it was, you had to separate the individual from the name. So the name carried a certain cache. And as you said, sex appeal and aspiration. And we wanted that. I mean, Stan Smith probably was before Bjorn Borg. So it was on a shoe of course for Adidas. But I think what we wanted to do was really capture the attitude of Borg. And we brought that into the brand. So it was definitely a challenger. It was taking a stand for a lot of social issues that are progressive. So a lot of the campaigns at the beginning wasn't just regular fashion. It was a stand for progressive issues like increasing reproduction in Sweden, because there's a low birth rate. So it needs to be dealt with, that's what Borg would do. So the ideas that people could connect with, rather than just product.
Josh King:
The products in Sweden are also so renowned for the messages that they've sent. Talk about Volvo and the way it went from product into movement?
Scott Goodson:
I think that Volvo did one thing that I think is really important. It took a stand for something. It didn't try to be everything to everybody. They realized they had a pretty boxy kind of somewhat ugly vehicle, but this thing was a tank. This thing, if you ever rammed into a Volvo, your car would not leave a scratch on it. And so they turned that, I guess some extent negative into a positive and said, "Yeah, okay, we're boxy, but we're super safe." And being able to have that type of humor and because it is a little bit humorous to be able to think that way, and turn into a positive is, I think a very Swedish way of thinking. It I think became something that people, just like with Volkswagen 10 or 20 years earlier, they just aligned with, they were like, "I'm proud to be part of this community of Volvo drivers." And it became a cult.
Scott Goodson:
And prior to movements, it was being part of a cult. Like Volkswagen was really a first movement in America. It was a value-based movement. When I was in Sweden, back in the late '80s and the early '90s, consumers wanted more from their brands and their companies that they were buying from, they didn't want just great product. They wanted companies to take care of the packaging. They were concerned about the environment. They were concerned, they wanted more women on boards. They wanted more progressive social issues to be dealt with by these huge corporations. They don't want as much pollution and so forth. As a result of that, companies started talking about creating a purpose. This is back in '80s and '90s. And that worked really well in Sweden for those years that we did, we did purposes for everybody.
Scott Goodson:
But when we started to launch for Ericsson, for example, Ericsson mobile phone, and we did, we launched it in Scandinavia. We went to Germany and Greece and, but then went to Poland and people, this is like when the wall came down and people were like, "What's the purpose? What are you talking about?" And then Thailand, people were like, "What?" And Brazil. And even in the U.S. people, it was just like, "No, it didn't work." That's when we said, "This idea of a purpose is a little too theoretical, a little too intellectual. We need to turn into a movement. We need to make it feel super simple and it touch your heart." Just like any societal movement. That's where the idea of movement came out of.
Josh King:
I want to unpack a little bit of what you said and really go back to one of those first examples that you offered because you begin uprising with a meditation on one of the world's most famous advertising campaigns. Its legacy is more in print than on television, but they did make a spot for it, and I want to hear it.
Speaker 8:
This year just about everyone's coming up with a brand new small car. So this year just about everyone will be telling you about this great new idea to think small. It is a great idea. We at Volkswagen have been working on it for 21 years.
Josh King:
So Scott Goodson, what made think small so big?
Scott Goodson:
It took a stand, like Volvo I mentioned before, so that people could get behind. And they also did it at a time when there was a lot of social change. People were questioning society, questioning the way things were done. This was the middle of the civil rights movement. The middle of the Vietnam War, people were coming out in the streets protesting. And so the old way of doing things wasn't acceptable anymore. So a brand that stood up and said, "Hey guys, we are small. We are not big. We're doing things differently." That's something you should be proud of, people where responsive to that message. And it was a new generation exactly like it is today. People that were tired of old loyalties, looking for new brands.
Scott Goodson:
Nothing changes. It's the same thing. It's people who are disenfranchised or feeling like they need something new, looking for that. And that brand talked to them. And in those days it was a value-based movement. People didn't come on the street and protest for or against something, they just aligned with that point of view. And for many years that was the way of defining a movement, people aligned with values. Today of course is a whole other ball game. That's why people responded back then.
Josh King:
It's a whole other ball game, but the recipe for success has certainly proven, and it's no secret that Volkswagen has had its challenges in recent years. In fact, its new campaign with a memorably licensed song doesn't shy away from it. Let's listen to the beginning of hello, light.
Speaker 9:
More details in coming involving Volkswagen in the growing scandal, the world's largest car manufacturer under scrutiny as the emission-
Speaker 10:
Dissatisfied customers filing complaints against the German order.
Speaker 11:
(singing)
Josh King:
And within the sound of silence in Simon & Garfunkel's iconic song, you see pictures of an engineer late at night, working on a blueprint, going back to that original design for the VW bus, and eventually coming out with the quiet of an electric car. The tagline is, Scott, in the darkness we found the light. Are they too late to spark a new movement?
Scott Goodson:
So, there are a couple things I want to say about Volkswagen today. The first is, the new CEO of Volkswagen in America is a brilliant marketer. Scott Keogh, who I met years ago when he was at Smart in Mercedes, then went on to run Audi and now as a VW, is a brilliant, brilliant marketer. So I expect sparks and great things coming from VW. I think this first execution, they had to pay pennants for the naughtiness that Volkswagen did in the United States. And the first half of the commercial is them admitting to some extent that they were bad actors. I do think they're missing at this time the legacy of activism. And I think the times are the same as they were. The music is probably relevant to take a nod to what was in the past.
Scott Goodson:
But I'd mentioned before that in the 1960s was a time of great social change. Today is a time of great social change. I mean, I recently ran into a surprising statistic according to Gallup, Gallup poll, 2018, 36% of Americans say they have felt the urge to organize and participate in a public demonstration in the past year. That's up only from 10% last time Gallup did their poll, which was in 1965. Time, of course of great social change when Volkswagen launched. Another poll from the Washington Post recently found that over 20% of Americans had actually attended a political or social protest in the last year. People are looking for activism. They want to be part, they want to do something. If Volkswagen can ignite those people, that brand is going to come alive like it was when it was in its great days. Right now it's too early to tell.
Josh King:
Back to activism. I want to go back to how you got your start, because I've heard you talk about being that young man at Western University in Canada, maybe being guided by your parents or your family to take up the law and be the next Pierre Trudeau, but what drove you to leave Canada and eventually end up in Sweden?
Scott Goodson:
I guess, basically curiosity. I mean, my dad was in the Canadian Air Force during World War II. He spent six years in Europe. He came back to Canada and he was instrumental in Expo 1967 in Canada. And then he was hired by the Japanese to help in Osaka in 1970. So his life was working with marketing internationally. And I guess growing up I wanted to be like my dad. So when I graduated from university, first thing I did was I went to Japan and I worked there for a little while. I was in Asia for two years, and on my way back to Canada I stopped in Greece and I met my wife, who happens to be Swedish. And so I made a right turn and went north and went for a couple weeks and ended up spending 10 years in Sweden. As you said earlier, my first job in Stockholm was launching Bjorn Borg, and that became a incredible calling card for me. It was a very successful marketing campaign. And I was then-
Josh King:
How did you connect with Borg? Were you, I mean, he's a, I remember interviews with him. I mean, his English was good. You wouldn't think he'd immediately bond to a Western marketer, but I'm curious, how did that relationship actually launch?
Scott Goodson:
Yeah. So, I mean, when I went to Stockholm, I was hired by a company called [inaudible 00:25:49], which is a hard one to pronounce, but it's an advertising agency.
Josh King:
I won't try.
Scott Goodson:
They were working, they had just won the Borg account. So they hired me as a non-Swede to help them launch it globally or internationally. And so I was part of that team, and if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't worked on that business. So it was just like anything, when you're a young person, you start off in the business, you're like an empty vessel. When you do a piece of work, it gets a lot of attention. Then all of a sudden people call you. And the next call I got was from an agency called Wellender that had the global Ericsson account, which in today's world is, you may not remember, but not that long ago, it was 60% of the world's cell phones where Ericsson, they-
Josh King:
We had the chairman of Nokia right in here talking about the battles with Ericsson.
Scott Goodson:
And Nokia took over from Ericsson and then Apple took over from Nokia. And that happened in this blink of an eye. I worked with the Ericsson business and ended up spending 10 years in Sweden. And what I learned there was, you don't need a huge organization to do global marketing. So after 10 years I ended up being a partner in an agency in Stockholm, and then we sold the business and I moved to Amsterdam and started StrawberryFrog with the idea, first of all that Vikings can take on the world and you can do anything.
Josh King:
And the scene of StrawberryFrog, because I've heard about it, four floors on a warehouse by the river and saunas inside the building and an intensely-
Scott Goodson:
Debauchery.
Josh King:
... creative environment of debauchery. Is that everything? It sounds like it's cracked up with me?
Scott Goodson:
Yeah. I mean, I also DJ'ed for late every Friday evening, but that was prior to kids.
Josh King:
Well, you and David Solomon, who's the chairman of Goldman Sachs. He does it too, so DJ is fine.
Scott Goodson:
It's great. It's great. At the time, Amsterdam was like the hot bed of creativity. I mean, it was the most creative city on the planet. It was just the coolest place. And it's a bit like San Francisco in the '60s for poets. Everybody moved to Amsterdam and StrawberryFrog was one of a handful of creative organizations that started at that time.
Josh King:
Why did you call it StrawberryFrog first?
Scott Goodson:
We wanted it to be challenger to the big, huge corporate bureaucracies and the frog versus the dinosaur. There was an article in Advertising Age that called the big corporate advertising companies dinosaurs. And so we said, "Well, let's be the opposite. Let's be the frog." And StrawberryFrog is actually the rarest frog in the world. It's a red frog with blue legs, also is poisonous. So if you lick it, it's very effective.
Josh King:
I won't be doing that this week.
Scott Goodson:
You don't want to lick any frogs this weekend. And so that was the name. That was the namesake of the organization. It also was born at a time when brands like Smart and Google and Yahoo were being born. I was in a meeting not that long ago in New York for a very large organization. And the CEO looked at me and said in a boardroom, "Why would we ever hire StrawberryFrog? It's such a strange name." And I said, "Well, you use Google, don't you?" And he then laughed and we ended up getting the business. So I think it was born at a time when also things were starting to disrupt the old Schulz, Dinkelspiel and Smith in the old sort of style. That was really what StrawberryFrog really represented.
Josh King:
We were talking about your work in Dubai earlier, sometimes movements have a lot of work to do. Emirate's Airline wasn't a household name in many parts of the globe, but I want to play just a part of a spot that you did for them.
Speaker 12:
We believe anything is possible. Tomorrow bridges will fly high above the earth and an entire world will be connected and share. We are the bridges between people and places, between cultures and ideas, between what is imagined and what is real. The world is an amazing place, full of endless opportunities. Tomorrow we can be anywhere and everywhere, and everything is within reach.
Josh King:
Now, Scott, that might have been a spoken adaptation of a purely visual spot that you did, but how do you take a brand like Emirates, match it with imagery of global travel, maybe that was informed by work and stories from your dad of Expo '67 and Osaka, and use that to spark a movement?
Scott Goodson:
You have to put yourself in the position of Tim Clark, the CEO of the company and the leadership of the organization at the time. They were the fastest growing company on the planet, like Google. I mean, they were hiring 7,500 new pilots a year. They had $70 billion in aviation aircraft on order. They were hiring flight crews and tenants from every city and country on the planet from Dubai, which really only has been around for about 35 years. So, how do you bring all these individuals? How do you solve that issue? Think about it from a business problem. So, it wasn't about branding. It wasn't, "Let's do an ad campaign and make Emirates cool." It wasn't about that. It was, "How can you help Tim Clark manage growth?"
Scott Goodson:
And so we said, "We need a movement. We need to do a movement inside the organization that then goes externally." And the movement was very simple, we are making the world smaller, and by doing so, we're overcoming misconceptions and misunderstandings between people. Now that had a direct bearing on the culture of the people inside. It changed the mindsets and that behaviors of flight crews that had people from 20 different countries. They now collaborated as one team. And then externally, it was a big idea to say, "We are all connected on this planet. We want to make it a smaller planet. There's a lot of social good. There's a lot of benefit for humanity in making the world a smaller place."
Scott Goodson:
And so Emirates stood for an idea that people wanted to get behind. And we saw that in the research we did that people found that idea fascinating. In today's world, it's not about spending a fortune trying to persuade people to buy something. People have points of view. People already believe it. The trick is connecting with them and bringing them together, who share your point of view, are part of it and enjoy it and participate in and share it with others. That's the key.
Josh King:
The imagery that you're picking for that campaign is not about the hub, it's about the spokes. It's about all the places that often don't even have tarmac or pavement, but are dirt roads in country places, and all these spokes of the earth that an Emirates plane could take you to. How hard was it in the boardroom in front of Tim Clark and Sheikh Ahmed to say, "I know how proud you are of everything that you've built in this small country. But what we're trying to talk about is the rest of the world."
Scott Goodson:
They're already there. I mean, I think the challenge was they were at the time the dominant flyer of Airbus A380s. I mean, some airlines had a couple, but honestly the bulk of the orders went to-
Josh King:
I'm so despondent on the decline of the A380.
Scott Goodson:
Yeah, I know it's a great plane. And so it was difficult to convince them not to feature that, obviously in the marketing. We ended up doing that in some, but that's okay. I mean, some parts of the marketing you should play, show the great innovation that you have. And we did some great work. If you go on YouTube, you can see a spot, which is, you think it's an ad for the most, the coolest hotel on the world. And then you realize actually the woman in it is actually on an aircraft. So we did some really creative work there. I think they were already there though. They did not want a traditional brand campaign.
Scott Goodson:
They wanted to make a mark, even when we did the launch of Imar and the Burj Khalifa, we didn't talk about the world's tallest building. Rather the movement is called The Center of Now. And it was all about, it was a nod to the rise of the developing world and saying that, that world's axis have shifted. It's no longer Fifth Avenue and Piccadilly Circus. And the Champs-Élysées, it's now in Dubai. And if you live in Africa or Asia or Latin America, this is a place for you. And also if you're from the U.S. and everywhere, we welcome everyone, but it's a new generation, a new world. And we welcome you to The Center of Now, which is this whole new concept of the world. So again, it wasn't about the product per se, but it was about a bigger idea.
Josh King:
Being empowered, a new generation, a new world. When we come back with Scott Goodson, we dive deep into how companies can advance their brands through movement marketing. That's right after this.
Speaker 3:
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Speaker 13:
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Josh King:
Back now with Scott Goodson, CEO of StrawberryFrog and author of Uprising: How to Build a Brand--and Change the World--By Sparking Cultural Movements. So, let's talk about movements. Did you always have an activist model yourself?
Scott Goodson:
I think that deep down I've always believed in fighting for the underdog. Maybe that's-
Josh King:
Essentially Canadian.
Scott Goodson:
... my Canadian thing. I think Canadians grow up realizing that they're not the best in a lot of things. And you look out to the world and you can compare-
Josh King:
Hockey.
Scott Goodson:
... yourself. Yeah, and we lose this year. We won the NBA, but we didn't win the NHL. Although, many Canadians were on the St Louis team. But generally speaking, Canadians look at the world and they realize that we're not the best. And so in some things we are really good. And so we're always looking at it and seeing what is happening in the United States, what's happening in Europe, what's going on in Australia? And we always, just fascinating about learning about what was going on, and it makes us competitive for sure, but we definitely feel like a challenger and an underdog. And I think I've always felt that way.
Scott Goodson:
In fact, when I was at university, there was a young woman from Barbados who wanted to be the president and it actually switched me from law to marketing. And she confided in me one day that she wanted to be president of the university, was a full-time job. Her father was a carpenter. She was from Barbados. And there'd never been anyone like that for president at this university in Canada. And so I said to her, "All right, well, if I say jump, you say, 'How high,' and I'll do it." And so it was a very unconventional campaign. They didn't even write about her when we launched, because they didn't think she had a chance. We won 68% of the vote. I created a movement for a woman who had new ideas, and it completely changed things for me because I realized, "Wow, this is tremendous power in this idea of social change." And felt good for me.
Scott Goodson:
Also, I also felt early on when I was doing my studies at university that the role of corporations in the world is to do good. That if companies solve some of the bigger issues we face it's in their best interest. Why would companies want to pollute the environment and kill people? Why would they want to have people living shorter lives? It's in their interest, they sell more stuff if they help people live better lives and be more financially secure. So that point of view led me to my, I guess my activism with my current way of thinking about marketing.
Josh King:
Power in the movement for social change and the role that companies can play. And that's, this really is the meat of your book Uprising, and both the examples that you cite of that other firms have done and that StrawberryFrog has done. I want to start on one, I think that another firm did, but you spent some time in the book talking about its import. A campaign for Dove called Real Beauty. I want to hear a cut from some of the sketches from that campaign, the thoughts of two women, Olivia and Melinda.
Audio:
I always thought people were so cute and they have the little cheeks and they're rosy, but mine are pretty plain.
Audio:
If I was going to change one feature about my face, I would say that I would want fuller lips.
Audio:
I'm definitely a person that looks tired when I'm tired. And when people say that, I immediately I'm like, "Oh man." I'm starting to already get little crow feet and stuff, which my mom has, so yeah.
Josh King:
Scott, these are beautiful women, but not super models. How can movements align with one of the oldest tasks of the advertising business, which is selling soap?
Scott Goodson:
That was an amazing piece of work that was done by woman by the name of Nancy Vonk out of Toronto, another Canadian who did the first real beauty work. I think in Nancy's case, I mean, I can't speak for her, but I know she has a young daughter. I think a lot of that came from her own personal experience with her daughter. Think about it this way. How much are people going to talk about soap? I mean, on a podcast or in an article, or the CEO of the soap company, what is he going to do? Stand up here in the New York Stock Exchange and talk about how great the bar of soap is. It's boring. Yes, we know it's a great bar of soap. Yes, it does cleaning. But what else? After we've seen the 700th ad of how great the soap bar is, it's what it's not doing.
Scott Goodson:
So we need to tell stories that are bigger. And the best way to tell stories, not about how great the soap is, but rather what is important to you, what is relevant in your life? And then, how do we tie that back to the brand benefit or the brand purpose? That's how you create a movement strategy. You identify what is going on in our culture that is provocative and interesting. And when you have grit and it's kind of, you build a pearl, you build something that is fantastic. And when that happens, it's like being at Churchill Downs and the gate opens and you fly out of the gate and the wind flies through your hair and things just start to work and your momentum starts to build.
Scott Goodson:
That's what happens with the movement. You're not fighting against people's hatred of advertising, you're with them. They're already there. You're just crystallizing it so they can get behind it and share it and be part of it. That's what a movement is about. We see it every day now. We see it with MAGA. We see it with Me Too. In this world of movements, it's everywhere. That is what Dove is doing. It's exactly the same thing.
Josh King:
Another one of the oldest jobs of advertising is I think selling diapers. Pampers, from Proctor & Gamble, that's NYSE ticker symbol PG, is one of those iconic brands. And we all remember the adorable photography that went along with that, but we don't commonly associate a diaper with the community. I want to hear a cut from Pampers Village.
Rachel:
My name is Rachel and I have a very active two-year-old son named, Bodi. Being a mom is crazy on a good day, juggling work and him and household activities. It can be a challenge some days. Pampers Village is an online community for mothers or expectant mothers to go to define information about a variety of different topics. I joined Pampers Village as soon as I found out I was pregnant. It was sort of a place that you could go and ask questions that you didn't know who else to ask.
Josh King:
I want to move to Pampers Village. How did you create a movement among the challenges that mothers face?
Scott Goodson:
So Pampers was a poop catcher, great engineering, and getting to the next level needed a purpose. The purpose was baby development. Who can't get behind that idea? It's relevant to parents. It's relevant to everyone. We also wanted to tackle a lot of the taboos in parenting. One of the ways you do that is you build a community of like-minded individuals. So, Pampers Village was our way of, first of all competing against BabyCenter, which was Johnson & Johnson's community. We realized it was really important to build these communities because mothers are passionate.
Scott Goodson:
First of all, the key thing about mothers, they're truth seekers. The minute you find their parents, the minute you find out that you're going to have a child, you start searching the internet. So you don't have to advertise. You just have to have content out there, the right type of content, the right type of tools, and you're going to get millions of people following you. So one of the first strategies we had was called capture conception. So we created something called Hello Baby, which was a pregnancy calendar. We launched it. And what it did was the minute you were pregnant you put in your due date and you could watch the evolution of your baby. We bought all the photography that existed of babies developing. So you could see when the nails were coming out and you could see when the eyelids were coming out and so forth. And you could share it with your friends and your family. And that allowed us to build a community as well.
Scott Goodson:
So we were all about community, and our strategy, the movement strategy was called joining, J-O-Y-N-I-N-G. And the whole idea behind the movement was first of all to reintroduce the joy of parenting. Because one of the things we saw on a global basis was there's a lot of guilt, those from social pressures in general, against mothers. Mothers felt, we found in our research, mothers felt incredibly attacked because they weren't doing the job properly or there was high expectations and anxieties were just outrageous, and even fathers were feeling the same way.
Scott Goodson:
So we said, "No, we want to take a stand for the joy of parenting. And we also want to take a stand for building joining, joining a community of like-minded people." So Pampers Village, Hello Baby and others, other type of platforms allowed us to do that. And Hello Baby, for example, the first month we launched it, I think we had 25,000 people download it. After that it was a 100,000, that was just in the United States. Then we roll it out in all Pamper's markets.
Scott Goodson:
So think about it. You launch an app, you have millions of people going on. The minute they find out that they're going to have a child, and you have a relationship with them for the next nine months minimum. How does that change your business trajectory, versus prior to our work where people would be going to the hospital, because that, Proctor doesn't advertise to non-customers. So unless you have a baby, they're not going to advertise to you. So when you have a baby, that's when they would have handed you a brochure. So those nine months prior to that, there was no relationship building. And so we changed that.
Josh King:
So from diapers to bankers, I want to resume our conversation on something that you tweeted about yesterday. An article from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with the CMO of Truist, merging SunTrust and BB&T and having to come up with something totally different, like Ally Financial or Voya when they faced name changes similar in the financial space?
Scott Goodson:
We've been working with SunTrust for about six years now, and we launched a movement for SunTrust called onUp. And onup.com today has over 4.5 million participants. It is a movement against financial stress and for financial confidence. And it has resonated, and today Momentum onUp is being used by Delta and Home Depot and other large organizations. We also created the onUp challenge, which is an online game that teaches you how to budget, and again, find financial footing. And think about it, financial insecurity is a thing that's plaguing America. It's a great epidemic. Yes, some people are doing well financially, but a lot of people aren't. And even if you have a lot of money, everyone feels financial anxieties. So, dealing with that is what we wanted to take a stand on with onUp as a movement. So, that's really what I can talk about from the SunTrust perspective. In terms of naming, I mean, coming up with a name for me is always great opportunity to do something different, and that's what ends up being memorable and successful.
Josh King:
Going back to SunTrust for a second, the CEO of SunTrust, that's NYSE ticker symbol, STI, is Bill Rogers. And he has a long career with a company that would eventually become SunTrust. Talking about names. Originally the trust company of Georgia, where Intercontinental Exchange is headquartered, the convincing process in the boardroom, going back to any examples you've had, going back to Sweden or Sheikh Ahmed. There you are in the room with Bill Rogers and you're saying, "Trust company of Georgia needs a movement, man." How do you do that?
Scott Goodson:
Whether we're working with Microsoft or Google or any organization for that matter, leaders have strong visions. And in the case of SunTrust, the leadership of that company had a purpose, which is extraordinary for a financial institution. They have been a purpose-based organization for a long time. Lighting the way to financial wellbeing is the purpose that they crystallized. We had a much easier job because our job was to activate that purpose. And the challenge today is really about that. I think today, modern, bright, smart CEOs realize that that purpose has to be activated. That a brand purpose that isn't activated is BS. You need that purpose to do something. And onUp was activating the purpose that organization had. So it wasn't as difficult as you described it. They were already there. And we just, we learned a lot actually from them. They taught us a lot about the rule of purpose and what it meant to them. And our job was really just about to take and turn that into a movement, which we did with onUp.
Josh King:
Looking for a purpose. In a lot of parts of the United States there have been huge squads of the population that have been left behind, that couldn't find their purpose. Donald Trump created a movement exactly six years ago when he moved down an escalator in Trump Tower and picked the least aesthetically pleasing red for his hats. And this time Romans typeface for the words, Make America Great Again, that a graphic artist would probably scoff at. So there's nothing artistic or visual about that campaign, but why did it work?
Scott Goodson:
It worked because we are living in the age of activism. People want to participate. They can participate, think about it. We are living at a time of massive change where we now have control over pretty much every aspect of our life. We didn't have that before. What MAGA was all about was articulating a vision of the future. Doing it in a passionate way, provocative way, which people like, people do like that. And then asking them to participate.
Scott Goodson:
Building a movement needs some basic tools. You need to take a stand for something. Sometimes movements can be for something, sometimes they can be against something. If you create an enemy, there's nothing like creating a monster. Like the old movies from the 1920s and '30s, when Dracula would show up in the village and or Frankenstein and everyone would go home and get their pitch fork. That's what creating a monster, creating an enemy is. That you create this monster, everybody has to go and get their pitchfork to fight out of the village. That unites people. All those tricks have been used to get people to feel passionate, feel angry and get up and go out and participate.
Josh King:
So, how can a movement come from any one of 23 Democrats trying to establish distance from that pack and ultimately take on Trump? These are 23 different bars of soap, one of whom needs to create a movement that people are going to get behind, Scott.
Scott Goodson:
One of these Democrats is going to articulate their point of view as a movement. If any of the Democrats look at how they're packaging themselves and they say to themselves, "Wow, I'm a product. And I'm positioning myself as I'm this great thinker. I have a unique point of view and so forth." They've already lost. They need to look out into the world and find an idea that already exists among millions and millions of people. And they need to crystallize that and they need to put it out that so people who are already there can join and be part of it. I think the idea deep down inside of all Americans is the idea that we are one family. Yes, we bicker like sisters and brothers sometimes do, or fathers and sons. But the reality is, we all share common values and share many things together. I think that is a really powerful idea. I mean, throughout history, the greatest leaders of all time have brought people together.
Josh King:
Have you seen any green shoots of a movement from any these 23 yet?
Scott Goodson:
I think a lot of the marketing still remains very traditional in the way that they're articulating who they are. I've seen a little bit of that come out of Kamala Harris' group. And Elizabeth Warren has spoken also in that respect. I haven't seen it in Biden yet, but I think he certainly could talk in those terms, because he would say that he stands for those, that point of view. But I think coming up forcefully and saying it and building momentum behind it, that to me is the way of thinking about it. And then as I said to you earlier, thinking about a modern election race is the key and not thinking of it in the old context.
Scott Goodson:
The other thing is perpetual provocation. I think one of the things we're realizing, one of the successful tools that Trump has used is this constant lobbying provocation zone in order to catch our attention. Because our attention is very difficult to catch today. The reality is that what we once thought ideas as things that people would remember forever. They don't remember those things anymore. They, people will say something shocking and they will forget it. We will forget it in 24 hours because the next thing comes out. So that whole approach is really critical, like pounding that every day, every day, but under this macro idea of a movement. So everything you say needs to build up to that bigger stand for, as I said, bringing this all together.
Josh King:
Scott, we recently had on a guest, Chris Burggraeve, who wrote a book, Marketing is Finance is Business. And he developed a rocket method where one of the fundamentals is the purpose. In his case, it relates very directly to a company's mission and linking to corporate social responsibility or social impact activities. I've read a quote from you where you said, "Purpose is dead, long live movements." And considering the fact that the idea of purpose is very relevant today, why did you say it's dead?
Scott Goodson:
I said it's dead because I think unless it's activated, doesn't do anything. We're not here to, we're not a university. We're not creating theory. Unless you're able to do that, then your marketing is dead in my opinion, it's just advertising. Unless you can activate that purpose and turn it into a movement that people inside the organization can rally around, in order to change mindsets and behaviors, in order to engage your consumers. And also people that aren't even thinking about. Think of it that way, a movement is, if you think about advertising, it's about targeting a very specific target group. But a movement reaches a much broader group of people, which is key because you always want to bring new people into the brand. When you have a purpose, that's one thing, but then you have to put it up against the question, "What is your enemy?" I'm not talking about your competition.
Scott Goodson:
Like in the case of Emirates, the enemy was a big world where people are isolated and they don't connect with each other. In the case of Pampers, it was a world where people felt anxiety around being a parent. In the case of Jim Beam, which we worked on a movement against the patriarchy and for equality, where we featured Mila Kunis in a lot of the marketing, it was a movement against the old way of male-dominated whiskey drinking, and took a brand that had 60% of their users over the age of 50. And today, 70% of their drinkers are under the age of 40 and a majority of them are women.
Josh King:
Yeah, I want to hear just a little bit of that campaign?
Audio:
History ask questions of us all, even the Beam family.
Audio:
Would you lead the way when disaster strikes? Would you fight for what's right?
Audio:
Would you guide your time?
Audio:
Would you chase fashion, or stay true to yourself?
Audio:
Two centuries, one bourbon. That's how Jim Bean makes history. How will you make yours?
Audio:
Jim Beam, make history.
Josh King:
I mean, Scott, even if you think about the visuals in that spot, which were all sort of this large swath of American history, you'd expect an actor like Sam Elliot to be narrating it, but you got a young woman.
Scott Goodson:
Yeah, like I said, the movement idea was taking a stand against the patriarchy anda stand for equality. And just saying, modern brands are about opening it up and letting more people into the room, into the tent. And that's what we wanted to do with Make History. The leadership of the company wanted to make history. That was what we really wanted to say. And we were the first bourbon, the first American whiskey to use a female as a lead spokesperson. And it completely transformed the brand. It increased household penetration. As I mentioned to you before, the consumer today is a completely different consumer than it was when we started, which were like a bunch of old guys. And it's a vibrant brand. It has since of course been acquired by a Japanese company-
Josh King:
Suntory.
Scott Goodson:
... Suntory. But I mean, I think the key thing to think about is what I talked about earlier was this idea that in today's world 36% of Americans say they felt the urge to organize and participate in a public demonstration.
Scott Goodson:
The data to me says that there's a new social climate, that people want brands that are taking a stand. They want to be part of that. And this has been obvious, for a while we talked about Trump and MAGA. There's obviously been Me Too, and several other movements that have just become cultural phenomena in our society. And we're growing up, we're living through this. You can't separate marketing from culture. It is culture, actors and entertainment and advertising. All of it is culture and society. It's the world that we're navigating. We are building this architecture that we live our lives, and it's all things that aspire, we aspire to or inspire us by people that we look up to. Or people that say intelligent things that make us think about things, or politicians that make us feel passionate.
Scott Goodson:
That is the world we're living. We don't separate the boxes. People, consumers don't stop and say, "Mila Kunis is an actress." They say, "Wow, she's really, she's modern. And I like her because she represents this modern person, and I think that's cool." And the brand, as a result of that is respected and brings in a whole new community of individual. But I think, activism on brands is lagging. Think of all the companies that are sitting around spending millions of dollars and months trying to come up with a purpose that never leads to the type of marketing we're talking about.
Josh King:
You've been at this a long time, Scott Goodson. There was a time when Bjorn Borg represented a very distinct part of the culture and had a face known around the world. And that's sort of where you got your start. And here we are today, 2019, 20 years from now, will movement marketing have a place in the marketing world as well?
Scott Goodson:
Absolutely. I mean, it's going to be easier, because then everything's going to be completely automated, you know?
Josh King:
Everyone will be on Slack.
Scott Goodson:
Everyone will be on Slack and everyone will be using autonomous vehicles and we'll have so much time. Think about once the metadata chip has been planted in our brains, we're going to be able to blink and then align with some organization that we feel passionate about. But absolutely, people will be moving across ideas with the help of digital technology at light speed, and they're going to move back and forth. And I think it'll only get faster. And I think the job then of brands and organizations is to have a much, much sharper movement idea.
Scott Goodson:
It's going to go from values and relatively safe and bland ideas to really sharp points of view. Because if you think about how the arms race of purpose is going, how are brands going to distinguish themselves if they're all saying the same thing? They're going to, the brands that are going to stand out are the ones that are going to have much sharper, strong points of view, much like we see with politics. The sharper the point of view, the more people are aligned behind it. And I think that's going to translate it into the way marketing is going in the future. And you're going to see brands taking stands in ways, because it's going to be the only way you're going to be able to engage with people.
Josh King:
So the sharper the point of view, the more people are going to want to be aligned with it?
Scott Goodson:
Correct.
Josh King:
So Scott, as we head toward this bold new future, how do people stay in touch with you and keep following your sharp point of view and reach out in case anything they've heard here on this conversation is something they want to follow up on?
Scott Goodson:
The idea of activating brand purpose is near and dear to me, because it's what we specialize at StrawberryFrog. And the best way to reach us is looking at strawberryfrog.com. There's some great examples of both movement inside, which is how companies can transform mindsets as well as behaviors of employees, and then movement outside, which is what we've been talking about, which is marketing, a marketing framework within which you can connect and sell more product and grow your business. There's been great examples there. And I'm actually working on a new book, which will focus on movement inside more. Because I think, like I said, every macro trend, which today is about these new disruptive companies and startups, there's a micro trend, which are all these existing companies that have been around since the 1920s.
Scott Goodson:
And think of all the people working in those organizations and the CEOs and the jobs that they need to do to motivate all those employees to feel like they're in a modern organization, it's going to be an overwhelming challenge. And a movement inside an organization is going to foster great trust and does foster trust and motivation and participation and creativity much better than top down mandates. In the old world top down directives worked, now it doesn't. So I'm working on a new book around that.
Josh King:
Can't wait to read it. Scott Goodson, thank you so much for stopping by 11 Wall Street, visiting us here at the New York Stock Exchange and spending some time with us inside the ICE House. That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Scott Goodson, CEO of StrawberryFrog, an author of Uprising: How to Build a Brand--and Change the World--By Sparking Cultural Movements.
Josh King:
If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us at ICE House podcast. Our show is produced by Theresa DeLuca and Pete Ash with production editing from Ken Abel and Steve Romanchic. I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
The information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content hearing, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, or a recommendation of any security or trading practices. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
