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Springboards: What do we got?
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Springboards: UK, London, heaps in the UK, Wisconsin, France, Argentina, Miami… Germany…
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Springboards: So, an Aussie in Dublin, Berlin, Philly, India, Lisbon…
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Springboards: I've got a couple around the world.
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Springboards: Alright, we might just get it going.
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Springboards: I don't know if everyone's been to one of these sessions in the past, I think this is our third or fourth that we've done. And so the point of these sessions are not to tell anyone about AI, because I think everyone's kind of…
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Springboards: Over AI, to a degree. But it's instead to share people's thoughts, how they think, to help develop your own craft.
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Springboards: Because for us, that's always been kind of the most interesting thing. And so we're super, super lucky to get Mark to come in and share some of his thinkings from around the world today.
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Springboards: And I think it's kind of particularly apt, given…
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Springboards: A lot of the advertising in the world at the moment is in France, in one tiny part of the world.
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Springboards: And we get to do something online for everyone else talking about their experiences around the world, so I'm super looking forward to this. But for those that don't know Mark, and I'm guessing everyone does, but he's obviously been probably one of… I would argue probably the most influential strategist in the world over the last 10 years.
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Springboards: Obviously starting as…
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Springboards: a strategist himself, but then doing his podcast into his book and his teaching. And the reason why I say the most is that he actually spends the most time teaching people. And so there's not many more astrologists in the world that I know he's actually hands-on teaching people day in, day out, all around the world. So, mega excited to get into this, so I'm gonna shut up.
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Springboards: Throw it over to Mark, and I'm gonna try and fix, sound issues in the background while he gets into it.
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Springboards: And I will go on mute. Peace.
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Mark: Awesome. Well, I haven't used Zoom in a couple of months as well, and I refuse to accept that I'm the most influential strategist in the world, standing on the shoulders of giants, as we all are. Good to see a few familiar names in the chat.
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Mark: So I've got a slightly different format today. I'm gonna do a talk. I don't often do talks. I made this decision about 15 years ago, going to some conferences in the US, so it was just talk after talk after talk after talk.
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Mark: talking point after talking point after talking point, I'm like, I'm not doing that. This sucks. But I'm gonna do it to you today. I'm gonna bounce between a few different applications, and I hope that keeps you on your toes, keeps you engaged. I've read a little bit about teaching and how changing format is actually quite useful, so I'm gonna apply the things that I've
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Mark: learned. Hopefully we get some sound. If we don't, it's not a game changer at all.
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Mark: So, also I'm gonna share, and I'm gonna put myself over the shoulder, I've never done this, I feel like I'm finally getting advanced. Remember back in 2020, all of you, how we were all scrambling to get green screens and microphones, and watching Substacks, and podcasts, and on Clubhouse, and…
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Mark: I don't know if I've technically or technologically advanced since.
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Mark: So this is what we're going to go through today. It's called How the World Thinks. It's this little idea that I've been sitting on. I've got about 7 book ideas, and this is one of them where… I guess it would be a little bit like an Anthony Bourdain, but it's a strategist traveling around the world, teaching strategy.
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Mark: feeling the energy in the rooms and the airports, and various other places in my travels, and then, you know, I get into some weird situations.
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Mark: And it's really taught me quite a lot.
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Mark: But I want to start with this very quick story. So the guy in the middle there, his name's JT, he's English, and a few weeks ago, I was in London. I did a whole bunch of events from Dublin, London, Amsterdam.
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Mark: Belgium, Borovins, in Croatia, had a couple nights in Zagreb, up to Vienna.
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Mark: Lynn's, etc. Anyway, so JT, we worked together when I was in my late 20s at Leo Burnett in Sydney. He's English, and we catch up every few years, and I think that's something that's really cool about the advertising industry.
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Mark: It was never an industry that I thought about having a career in. I never even thought about having a career. In my 20s, I was publishing a hip-hop magazine. I had a hip-hop radio show, did it for 5 years every single week. I wrote for 70 magazines. I didn't really think I fitted in anywhere. All I knew is that I liked to write and make websites.
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Mark: And fortunately, people watched and pulled me into agencies several times, actually. I'm really, really grateful.
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Mark: Leo Burnett in Sydney, where this photo was taken.
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Mark: It was probably my peak advertising experience for the Aussies here, Todd Sampson, who's super famous now, gave me this job where 50% of my job focused on account planning or strategy, largely creative briefs, brand planning, etc, and 50% focused on information architecture, user experience for, for example, the Robobank website, or Kimberly Clark.
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Mark: Products as well.
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Mark: And I was reflecting about this for JT, because we had a really good crew, very high expectations, everyone was young and expected to go to Cannes and win awards for effectiveness and creativity. And when I moved to the US later, which I won't really go so much into today.
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Mark: things just for different. You know, people who ran agencies would meet me to hire me and say, yeah, we really like the work that you all do, Aussies, why don't you come here and do that? And then you would get there and realize that's not really what's gonna happen, or it's much harder to make that sort of work happen, the bold, provocative, cheeky work that I grew up with.
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Mark: And JT, while we're reflecting about this, he pulls out this photo, and he goes, oh, do you remember this party? I got married young, this is important information. Married young and had kids young, and so I would go to parties, but I wouldn't party party. And you know exactly what I'm talking about.
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Mark: And he pulls out this one photo, and he goes, dude.
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Mark: Do you remember this party at Leonard? And I go, JT, I'm in the background of the frickin' photo.
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Mark: I didn't know how to take this moment, because I didn't want to be egotistical, but literally, he chose one photo while reminiscing about some stuff 20 years ago, on his phone.
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Mark: And didn't know that I was even in the backgrounds.
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Mark: And there's something that struck me quite specifically, because growing up, I didn't really like a lot of photos of myself. I grew up a little bit sad, bit of a sad boy, poetry, raps.
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Mark: Divorced family, etc.
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Mark: And didn't like seeing photos of myself, because I would see photos of myself and kind of connect it to the stuff that was going on in my head at the time.
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Mark: And for a very long time, I sort of… I was… I made this agreement with myself that I was a people watcher. I analyzed things, I tried to understand things, I played chess. In soccer, I was a central midfielder. In basketball, I was a point guard. I was, you know, trying to understand stuff and orchestrate stuff.
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Mark: But over time, I think I paid a price for it.
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Mark: And when JT pulled this photo out, without even remembering that I was there, let alone the fact that I was in it, I was like, oh man, I have lived a background life in so many ways. And there's a…
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Mark: The concept that Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way, the book The Artist's Way, she talks about this shadow artist. The shadow artist is someone who is creative, who was creative, and then they put themselves in the shadow of artists.
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Mark: Someone who makes a music magazine, someone who, perhaps runs an art gallery, and a guarantee.
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Mark: Probably 90% of strategists.
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Mark: Who know that they're smart, not in an arrogant way, but who know that their brain's a little bit different.
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Mark: They love observing the world, but sometimes they spend time observing the world rather than being in the world.
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Mark: And it just led me to this… Quaint thought that, like.
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Mark: you can live without seeing, but you can also see without living. And all I'm doing here is really punishing myself for allowing myself to be happy in my people-watching stance, as opposed to being in the middle of a party.
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Mark: At the front of an audience, in a crowd, watching music, etc. But it took me to travel to realize this.
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Mark: So the first place I'm going to take you to… well, the first places I'm going to take you to, they really happened in 2023. You know, by then.
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Mark: I think I was 12 years in New York? I was not happy.
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Mark: Had a young family, just grinding.
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Mark: Pretty intense soccer schedule, ballet schedule for the rest of the family, chess, 50 hours, 60 hours a week, flying around the US, trying to do good work, but it was difficult. And then I eventually set up my own company. But it was through these photos right here that I'm going to show you.
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Mark: That you'll notice.
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Mark: A smile.
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Mark: This is in Ecuador. On the right is my friend Andrea, she's an events entrepreneur down there, she's a killer.
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Mark: In Bulgaria. Smiling.
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Mark: On the far right, by the way.
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Mark: In Brazil, far right, you've got a friend who set up Hacktown, this amazing conference down in Brazil, and Ian on the left, so Carlos on the right, Carla on the right, and Ian on the left.
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Mark: Hanging out again in Brazil in Hacktown, 3 hours north of Santa Gita dol Sapucay, with some of Brazil's most creative people.
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Mark: On the far right is the guy who's written, I think, some of the most famous music soundtracks in Brazil. He wrote the soundtrack for City of God. Bottom right is a guy who had two of the top most watched Brazilian shows on Netflix year after year. So these are amazing people, just hanging out.
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Mark: In a way that I did not do in the US, because in the US, you go to these events, there's VIP, there's VIP, that, people are super special. Brazil, everything was flat, you just got to meet people, it was really cool.
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Mark: Over in Georgia, our Black Sea account
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Mark: 4 or 5 of these people as relatively close friends now. When we travel, we catch up with each other. It's more than four or five, actually.
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Mark: I was scared to go to Georgia when they asked me. I was like, what am I going to go there for? It's right under Russia, and I'd heard a little bit about it. Obviously, having traveled there a few times now, twice. I've heard a lot more about it, but I was scared, yet I found myself smiling.
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Mark: This is in Turkey, with the crew at Nike.
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Mark: The day before I got a hair transplant, Tuigen.
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Mark: Better strategy, TBWA. Look at the smiles. Look at the smiles.
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Mark: Back after the hair transplant in, in New York.
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Mark: And for the first time over a few months, I saw these photos where I was happy, and I was like, okay, what is happening here? I need to do some strategy with… on myself. And typically, what I found is a lot of these places were near the equator, they had open, more communal, it's easy to romanticize, but more communal cultures than what I'd grown up with as… in sort of a more Anglo-Saxon-dominated culture.
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Mark: And over time, I started to pay more attention to how I was feeling in these environments. I'm going to show you very quickly
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Mark: some stuff, to do with the four points. I'm gonna fly through this. I've got 7 or 8 examples with some videos.
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Mark: It's a little framework. Frameworks are frameworks. There's no one best framework. I disagree with the point of view that came out of this survey published, I think, last year by Walk, that 50% of strategists said frameworks are useless. I think that's completely naive, and it sounds very Oxford and Cambridge.
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Mark: you can put anything into a framework. Some of the biggest movies and novels in history have been written to frameworks that the authors admit, so I don't understand what this issue is with frameworks. For me, it's probably the way that people use frameworks, and even though I talk about frameworks and ways of working, I'm not dogmatic.
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Mark: Luckily, I've been in places where amazing work has come out of a conversation in the corridor, and I was there or contributed to it, so I know that frameworks are fine, they're not the be-all and end-all, but they do help us with a little bit of due diligence, and if you're selling into people who are not used to buying ideas or buying strategy, frameworks help people understand
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Mark: The thinking that's… that's happening.
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Mark: And so, problem here, we're looking for the barrier that's presenting… preventing someone from doing or buying something. That's what I'm looking for here. Insight, I tend to use this word sparingly.
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Mark: Looking for an unspoken human truth that sheds new light on the problem. It opens the problem. Slightly abstract, but you'll see examples here. Advantage, this is about the brand, what makes your brand unique and motivating in people's minds. Nothing original there. Strategy, a new way of seeing a brand based on all of that. So the strategy solves the problem by putting the insight and advantage together. It's just one tool.
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Mark: whenever I see people talk about the amazing prompts for AI, and honestly, I feel… sorry if there's anyone here, I feel like there's a correlation between the people who talk the most about the prompts, and who think in the least interesting ways. I mean, prompts are tools, they're just tools, but if you're like, oh my god, here are the 10 prompts that are gonna change your life right now.
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Mark: are they? Are they? Just relax, relax, just… these are all tools. And a lot of the sort of dogmatic thinking about the best framework, the worst framework, the best prompt, the worst prompt, a lot of this stuff is like saying there's one best yoga pose, there's one best joke, there's one best song. I just don't think it's useful. These are all tools, and we just use the things…
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Mark: And see, what works.
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Mark: So I'm gonna take you to Columbia now.
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Mark: when the very first photo that I showed you that week.
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Mark: Let me show you this people again.
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Mark: With Andrea, we did 3 talks. I got a soroce, or vertigo, in,
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Mark: Cuenca, because they drove me up, I think, 4,000 meters in a couple of hours, and then I got out of the van. I was like, oh my god, I can't breathe, so I had to bring oxygen tanks on my talk, it was quite funny.
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Mark: But on the last night in Quito, for Andrea's 40th, she invited some friends, and for the first time, this is 3 years ago, 2023, I think, for the first time, I found myself dancing to a reggaeton on a rooftop, in a rooftop bar on Quito, and it changed my life.
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Mark: I did get into Bad Bunny, he changed my life, I will defend him. And I decided to learn Spanish, and I started to think about moving to South America. And I spent a lot of time, a year or two, just watching a lot of the travel videos, people buying apartments, renting apartments, and started to circle around a few places, like Medellin and Colombia.
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Mark: And then last year, I went there for the first time. I did events in Bogota and in Medellin. This is Hatsusoda.
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Mark: So, it was interesting doing this workshop, and please keep in mind that I'm not presenting this thinking as amazing. I will point out where I think it's weak, I will point out where I think it's okay.
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Mark: And also, a lot of the things I'm sharing with you were done in multiple… well, at least two to three languages within an hour in a foreign country where I'm trying to understand Spanish and all this sort of stuff for the Spanish-speaking examples.
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Mark: I don't mind this one. So, Hatsusoda is…
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Mark: sort of exotic soda, according to the people in Bogota, with Japanese flavors, etc. And as we dug into why they weren't buying this, they said it was for pretentious people, or it would make them look pretentious. We landed on this as the problem, that Hatsu's exotic flavors make people feel stupid.
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Mark: Insight? Not a found insight, we're making this up. It's stupid to let a flavor make you feel stupid. Hatsusodo flavors don't test how smart you are. Strategy will show that Hatsusodo is not a test of intelligence.
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Mark: And it leads to a small campaign idea. It's a flavor, not on my IQ test. When I'm working with people in the space of an hour or so, again, often in two to three languages, my goal is just to bring
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Mark: the mechanics of what I'm teaching to life.
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Mark: If we are working together, obviously we're going to have more than an hour.
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Mark: And we're probably going to come up with 10 to 20 different strategies. Some might fit the four points, some might fit the four C's, some might come from just a simple problem definition that you flip into a strategy. It doesn't even matter where they come from, and what framework they fit or don't fit.
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Mark: But this, I don't mind it. It's okay. It's solid.
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Mark: Next one is from Medellin in Colombia. Nikki is a newish bank there. Well, it's sort of got some new stuff to it.
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Mark: Bogota is the political capital, and the industrial industry capital, like, for our industry. I think there's about 10 million people there. Managing is probably around the 3 mil mark or so.
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Mark: was one of the most dangerous cities in the world, or the most dangerous city in the world, and you can still find danger. I got… I got, robbed there, so you can still find danger if you're not careful there.
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Mark: Yes, there are a lot of passport pros, there's a whole nightlife that I'm not interested in at all. I'd rather go dance to Pachata, or salsa, or hang out in a…
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Mark: Bodega, like, a corner.
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Mark: Bar type of thing, with lovely music, rather than going into nightclubs and the nightlife just doesn't interest me at all.
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Mark: For NECI, we were talking about trying to get people who don't bank that often, or at all, to use NECI, possibly as their first bank, and this is where we landed. Problem, if people can see their cash, they can use their cash.
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Mark: Insight, if they can use their cash, they will use their cash.
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Mark: Advantage, Nikki will make you pause before using your cache.
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Mark: strategy will show that with Nikki, money will leave your hands more slowly. So we can… we can see a theme appearing here, and obviously there's research that I think even Oprah discussed years ago about how in many economies, probably most of them.
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Mark: When money goes into the hands of men, it gets spent more quickly, often, than when it goes into the hands of women, so we could probably find some third-party research to support where this is going. But essentially, we're trying to get people to realize that they can slow down how they're spending money.
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Mark: Had a couple of things here that I can show you from… this is from Bogota, really cool, up in the mountains. Bogota is known for being much colder than Medellin, which is known for being warmer.
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Mark: the Pisa culture, if you come from…
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Mark: Well, if you, sort of, were born in Medellin, or you've been there for a few generations, you're probably going to be referred to as a Pisa.
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Mark: And a few reflections about that, because I was thinking about moving to Medellin. I spent about 3 months there last year.
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Mark: managing that is… it sits in a bowl.
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Mark: Right? And so, if you do the sort of work that we do, you probably went to a handful of schools, you probably went to the same churches as people that you work with and live with. They talk about there being a lot of recycling of boyfriends and girlfriends.
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Mark: And so what that can lead to is when you go out with local people, and when I travel, I try to mostly hang out with local people. There could be eyes just watching, you know, for me, they're like, what kind of gringo am I? What kind of white guy is this guy? Is he in that other kind of nightlife, or is he here to actually make a contribution? Because
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Mark: Most places I go to, they're not used to seeing foreigners interested in their local community, or trying to make a contribution. Many places I go to, they're used to being talked down, or talked down to, or they can be, probably less so managing, there can be this concept of the white savior. You know, I'm going to go to Africa and save it, for example.
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Mark: So people are very wary of these things, and in a lot of the countries, Colombia is different, right? There can be this colonial overhang where people were not treated very well by people who colonized them.
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Mark: So Bogota is known for being a little colder, culturally.
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Mark: And I found out. I've been there two or three… two… twice now, and I found it harder to connect with people and to go out with people. Medellin was warmer, but the Paiser culture, anyone around my age, within 10 years or so, they're gonna have stories about
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Mark: Losing loved ones. You know, one of my strategy younger brothers.
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Mark: Matteo, I think I can talk about this, like, his dad was killed in front of a nightclub when he was a kid, and these are not unusual stories, and so there can be a wariness in Colombia, even though Colombia is known for being very expressive, music everywhere, which is really, really important to me as well.
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Mark: Alright, so that's Columbia.
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Mark: Over to Nigeria.
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Mark: So the other thing that I wanted to mention is.
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Mark: Probably 3 years ago, I did about 10 events around the world, and then the next year, I was like, okay, I need to pay attention to this, because I wasn't feeling great in New York. I was…
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Mark: lightly depressed most of the time, just stressed and depressed, it's so expensive.
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Mark: Found it very transactional. Friendships often felt…
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Mark: like, business meetings or business interactions. I was like, oh, I need something with more depth.
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Mark: And in going to some of these countries, and I know a lot of you in the US will identify with this if you've been lucky to go to Spain or Portugal.
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Mark: You're hanging out with people for 7 hours, like, it's a proper hang, and it's cheaper to do that in many of these countries. It's easier to get around, yeah. But I didn't experience that in New York. I'm catching up with friends. The coffee's at 10am on Sunday. I'm like, why are we having business meetings? We're supposed to be hanging out.
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Mark: And then in the following year, 2024, so you can see this is August.
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Mark: We decided… the team and I decided to do more events in places that I hadn't done events in. So, this is Jakarta. We had two events this size, I think.
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Mark: 250, 300 people in total came.
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Mark: there were lines, you know, people lined up to get me to sign stuff, which doesn't happen in every country. I'm looking at you, England, Australia.
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Mark: It's all good. This is in Ho Chi Minh City.
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Mark: So, just an amazing turnout. I've never been there before. Again, I think we had about 200 people.
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Mark: This is a bit, just read that, yeah.
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Mark: A little bit funny, I won't play the audio.
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Mark: Around that time also, young people were encouraging me to post thirst traps, which I think is horrendous, but I did it, and… sometimes, awkwardly, we learned that the content we're making is not the content we should be making, and…
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Mark: All I'm saying is thirst traps did surprisingly well for an old guy like me. This is Malaysia, the first time I went there again.
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Mark: A couple hundred people.
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Mark: Really earnest. Really fucking earnest as well. People want to learn, they want to get ahead.
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Mark: Super amazing. And so, having a few of these experiences, they laid clues for me, and I was like, okay, I've got to do more of this, and became emboldened.
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Mark: To do, to do more of these trips.
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Mark: And then, last year, towards the end of the year, I did Africa. Within probably 3 months before, I had not thought seriously about going to Africa.
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Mark: And it was largely because I'd had a couple of long-term students in Kenya,
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Mark: messages from South Africa over the years. Not a lot, you know, we're talking 10, where people are like, you should come to Cape Town, you should come to Joburg, you should come to Nairobi.
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Mark: And I'm like, is it really gonna work? Is this expensive to do some of these events?
22:12.560 --> 22:17.620
Mark: And so in December, from an Africa point of view, I did Johannesburg in South Africa.
22:17.990 --> 22:25.670
Mark: I did Lagos and Abuja in Nigeria, I did Nairobi in Kenya, and I did Cairo in Egypt.
22:25.890 --> 22:39.279
Mark: And it's really interesting, the makeup of the audience and the energy there, it's really, really different from Europe. I just went through Europe, and the energy here is really, really different when it comes to me on a personal level, or potentially even what we do.
22:39.820 --> 22:41.720
Mark: So, this strategy here is…
22:42.560 --> 22:46.420
Mark: you know, I'm not going to give it a big score, right? This is just a quiet one.
22:47.940 --> 22:56.030
Mark: But we had 200 people come to this event in Lagos, and it was after I was at Applejo. I'll show you some photos and videos in a second. Childeck is a food delivery platform.
22:56.340 --> 23:16.070
Mark: when I do these workshops, I really don't like doing things like food delivery platforms, or even airlines, or shoes, just those really big, vacuous brands. I find them very hard to do something interesting with in a short period of time, especially if we're working with multiple languages. But here, people said that they don't want to use this app, this food delivery app, because it would
23:16.210 --> 23:18.600
Mark: Encourage them to make impulse purchases.
23:18.700 --> 23:35.519
Mark: But here's the thing about impulse purchases, they snap you out of mindless routines. Sure, this is fine, it's convenient, it's not like, oh my god, I didn't see that coming, but it's fine. Advantage, the good news is that Chardec has been spicing up routines for 5 years. We've got the word spice, spicing, spicing up.
23:36.520 --> 23:45.450
Mark: Getting into food puns, nervous about puns in strategy, but it's fine. Strategy here will show that child act will help you smile through your daily routine.
23:45.710 --> 23:49.690
Mark: Wouldn't say it's strong, don't want to say it's weak.
23:49.720 --> 23:59.350
Mark: But it's fine. You know, if we're coming up with something, and this is the first one, it's fine. But the energy in… and I know you won't be able to hear the sound, the energy in… in…
23:59.360 --> 24:16.790
Mark: Nigeria. Nigeria is one of the biggest cultural influences in Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa for sure. South Africa and Nigeria are the beasts. South Africa is seen as being more reliable when it comes to businesses, so there are more headquarters set up in South Africa. Nigeria is really tricky to do business in.
24:16.910 --> 24:23.540
Mark: This was in Abuja with this really cool agency called Rage, run by George. They took me out for…
24:23.890 --> 24:29.420
Mark: for one big night that seemed to never end. We danced. Love me some Afrobeats.
24:30.610 --> 24:45.090
Mark: they took me to the club and got me bottle service. I'm like, guys, I don't need my name up on a screen, probably in front of politicians and gangsters, but thank you very much, and I don't do bottle service, so I just blushed as the people came out with the bottle. I'm like, I'm not looking, I'm not looking, I don't want to know.
24:47.060 --> 24:51.530
Mark: But if you've not been… and I recognize some of the names in the chat here.
24:51.940 --> 25:06.579
Mark: we've got people everywhere. People like us are everywhere. You could go to countries and probably find strategists or people who work in advertising who are just really, really excited. This is one of my favorite moments of my travels. I finished the session I was doing in Lagos.
25:06.910 --> 25:10.879
Mark: and was swarmed by 200 people, and
25:11.870 --> 25:20.100
Mark: I know it's temporary. It's not that I'm fully loved by all of these people, but compared to how I was feeling in New York, it felt really, really good. Felt really nice.
25:22.030 --> 25:36.750
Mark: What was also interesting is I started to make a little bit more… so you can't hear this, but I started to make a bit more content, cultural observation content. I started a travel YouTube channel last year, I'd watched travel YouTube for years, and I wanted to do it, and I thought, you know what, I'm gonna go to 40 cities in 2025,
25:37.060 --> 25:44.139
Mark: And I'm gonna do a video in each city, and unless you're a crazy narcissist, it is so difficult to do, or unless you have a team of 5.
25:44.350 --> 25:53.089
Mark: Because if you're on stage for 4 hours, and some places I'll go to, it could be 2 to 3 events in 2-3 days, and sometimes I've done 7 events in 6 days.
25:53.360 --> 25:57.490
Mark: I don't have the wherewithal to also then make a video, I find it really, really hard.
25:57.590 --> 26:13.479
Mark: And so I was just playing with different formats, and in this particular video, I was in Malaysia at the time, and I was just thinking about how everywhere I went in Lagos, I was asked for money. I think I was asked for money 10 times in the airport, leaving. And I just posted it. Look at me, I just woke up.
26:13.620 --> 26:19.499
Mark: I'm not dressed, just rolled over and filmed this thing. It's kind of lazy content, but in a way, really relieving.
26:20.020 --> 26:21.639
Mark: This went viral.
26:21.910 --> 26:26.270
Mark: enough on TikTok and Instagram for me to then, and I know you can't hear this, but…
26:26.990 --> 26:35.930
Mark: to then appear in an interview on the news… on their main breakfast show. So, I was in Mombasa in Kenya, and ended up doing this interview
26:36.830 --> 26:39.889
Mark: During peak… peak hours, I guess, in Nigeria.
26:40.060 --> 26:46.399
Mark: In a way where… I mean, I want to go back, but it does… it does feel like a dangerous country, and I'm not…
26:46.510 --> 26:48.120
Mark: If you are from Nigeria, I'm not…
26:48.380 --> 26:54.170
Mark: slandering. I know the comments that I get when I talk about things that I see and feel in these countries, I'm not slandering.
26:54.570 --> 27:07.909
Mark: You know, I had my boy George put me… my boy, my friend George, put me in Range Roaders in Abuja and Lagos, just to make sure that I was safer than I would have been, possibly, if I was getting around by myself. So there's a lot of stuff going down there.
27:09.890 --> 27:16.950
Mark: connected to this is just coming across… because, you know, obviously a lot of you are using AI tools, and
27:17.180 --> 27:28.260
Mark: The travel's been really interesting for me, because sometimes I start to see patterns. So for Nigeria, the post that I did, the question I asked is, is the entire country of Nigeria set up to shake down people?
27:28.380 --> 27:42.540
Mark: entire, I know what I'm doing there, I'm pushing hyperbolic, okay? But the answers were like, yeah, it is, it's really frustrating, we live here. And I didn't try to make it about me. I'm like, I've got friends here, it must be so exhausting, like, that's kind of the angle, because I get to leave, right? I'm not…
27:42.640 --> 27:47.160
Mark: I'm not colonizing, which is a third of my comments. Go home, colonizer.
27:47.740 --> 27:59.180
Mark: But also, sometimes I get into things where I understand something much better, or I just have more questions. So again, this one you can't necessarily hear, but I asked a question like, Africa, what's up with African money culture?
27:59.310 --> 28:09.900
Mark: Now, I know that if I use the word Africa, people will say, don't you know it's X number of countries, it's not one country, and then you do have a split, I believe, between Black Africa and more Muslim Africa, although that's…
28:10.190 --> 28:18.089
Mark: more complex, and that's… it's not binary, obviously, in some parts, especially, yeah, especially East Africa, which can be black animals.
28:18.360 --> 28:31.030
Mark: But there are definitely splits there, and these things come through sometimes during massive soccer tournaments. A lot of racism from the Northern Africa parts towards the sub-Saharan parts in the most recent African
28:31.830 --> 28:33.020
Mark: Championship.
28:33.650 --> 28:45.770
Mark: But, you know, I was coming across things for the first time, what was referred to me as black tax, that if you do well, you've got to send money back home, or people will start to come at you for money. I've heard about that in other cultures, islander cultures near Australia.
28:45.800 --> 29:02.510
Mark: A lot of send me money, send me M-Pesa, which is the main digital payment thing in Kenya, or give me money in Nigeria. Literally, I heard send me money in Kenya, give me money in Nigeria. Girlfriend allowance. I know someone who is dating someone, and they will get paid $1,500 a month just to date them.
29:02.710 --> 29:16.440
Mark: Sponsor culture. You can tip someone here on a credit card, and the owner will keep the money. Some people have to pay to get a job. There are these things called facilitation fees, where you might sign a deal, but to actually get paid, you've got to cut a few people money.
29:16.890 --> 29:19.879
Mark: Some people say it's, like, 10% for everyone type of thing.
29:20.230 --> 29:23.260
Mark: Do you have anything for the boys? Do you have any tea for the boys?
29:23.620 --> 29:28.050
Mark: And… again, I'm… I'm… Open to sharing this.
29:28.500 --> 29:31.139
Mark: These thoughts as a reaction, as a foreigner.
29:31.410 --> 29:37.539
Mark: But in a way that I'm trying not to judge them, because it's easy for someone to say, oh, piss off back to your own place.
29:37.750 --> 29:43.859
Mark: Because being in Africa, Systems are not set up for the people.
29:44.170 --> 29:52.869
Mark: And there's still much more, easy to romanticize, as you said earlier, it's still much more of a communal vibe, where if you do get ahead, you want to bring people along. Like, I see it.
29:53.240 --> 29:57.469
Mark: And so, you could take this particular observation around African money culture.
29:58.410 --> 30:03.799
Mark: And be like, who are you, white guy? You don't understand anything going on here, you're a colonizer, just fuck off, right?
30:04.090 --> 30:12.470
Mark: But then I see why some of this stuff exists in a way that I really respect as well, right? And it's not that it's one thing or the other.
30:13.780 --> 30:23.970
Mark: I don't know if Shirak's here, but when I was in Thailand, I spent 3 days at my first Indian wedding. I've never done that before. Interesting… most interesting behavior there is that the…
30:25.120 --> 30:29.069
Mark: The white-faced among us would arrive at the events on time.
30:29.760 --> 30:34.899
Mark: I think Sharag won't mind me saying this, he's a strategist based in Dubai. I think they had about 8 events?
30:35.170 --> 30:50.589
Mark: 6 to 8 events. Each event was bigger than any single wedding I'd ever been to. I was blown away. But I would get to the event at 5pm, and it wouldn't start till 7pm or 8pm, despite us getting messages that the bride and groom are about to enter right now. And so that was kind of, like, one of the big
30:51.050 --> 30:56.759
Mark: cultural things that I was trying to understand through this massive Indian event in Bangkok, but…
30:56.940 --> 31:04.529
Mark: Yeah, and also, in a lot of places I go to, see, dressing up like this, I will ask people, is this cultural appropriation? Because people will encourage me.
31:04.660 --> 31:13.070
Mark: In Saudi Arabia, I bought a taupe, because I was doing a talk there, and I had probably 20 guys, including in the bathroom, say, I respect you wearing that, you're respecting that.
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Mark: Our culture, so thank you, right?
31:15.390 --> 31:27.840
Mark: In other places, I probably wouldn't do it. In New York, am I dressing up like this? No. But in these other places and other cultures, people do see it as a sign of respect. So again, the travel gets you to question the thing that you think you know.
31:29.870 --> 31:31.580
Mark: Alright, let's talk about Kenya.
31:32.340 --> 31:40.250
Mark: So you can see I'm wearing this, sweater here, which is now… it's globally famous. I get recognized on the street. If I wear the sweater, or jumper, I'll get recognized on the street.
31:40.460 --> 31:42.670
Mark: Could be 5 to 10 times a day, to be honest.
31:42.810 --> 31:50.179
Mark: Kenny Kane is a sugar molasses drink, and it's really strong, so they've got a bunch of different flavors. The original flavor is just…
31:51.410 --> 31:57.189
Mark: They call it Casey Smooth, it's about 40%. The one I like is lemon and ginger, like the Dawa.
31:57.850 --> 32:09.800
Mark: It sort of punches you from inside the mouth. And I ran this… I ran people through these exercises in Nairobi, and I said, why don't people drink this beverage in fancier places?
32:10.070 --> 32:19.459
Mark: And it was really, really interesting. None of this is really my language, this is me borrowing language. And again, we see the effect, or the influence of Nigeria here. So…
32:20.000 --> 32:23.279
Mark: Yes, Nigeria, unfortunately, is known for
32:23.500 --> 32:31.909
Mark: scanning. Everywhere I go, people are a little bit nervous around Nigerians, but Nigerians are also known for being big spenders, sometimes spending money they don't have.
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Mark: Very confident, etc.
32:35.340 --> 32:44.869
Mark: Canyons, generally speaking, there's energy, but it's a little bit quieter, a little bit more stoic, so there's a real difference there. And people said that one of the main issues is that
32:45.210 --> 32:50.610
Mark: they don't see these princes. Well, they said Nigerian princes, I… I'm uncomfortable saying that, but…
32:51.450 --> 32:55.679
Mark: to think about it, but the Nigerian princes drank drinks from the West.
32:55.800 --> 33:14.319
Mark: And what you see when you come to Kenya, especially in clubs that are designed not for dancing, which is most of them, is there are a lot of high-top tables, bottles of liquor on every single table, a bottle of liquor might cost $50 to $70 US. I've never bought one in the US or in the UK, but here, UK, can make it work.
33:14.920 --> 33:26.759
Mark: And people kind of sit, and maybe a few people start… a few people start to dance, but a lot of these places are built for people to consume bottles of liquor without necessarily dancing, and they might move to a different kind of club if they want to dance.
33:27.660 --> 33:28.940
Mark: But being here.
33:29.120 --> 33:48.420
Mark: And this stuff's on my mind. My sister actually works in alcohol as well, but being here and watching these nights happen, you know, we're talking six, seven hours of, like, why is everyone just sitting here now? Oh, there's some people dancing over there. Oh, now they're not. Oh, now there's a different drink happening. Oh, now people are moving to a club, and then another club, and then another club, and oh, it's 6am all of a sudden.
33:48.520 --> 33:56.929
Mark: It's a very different lived experience. The observations you get from the lived experience are very different from what you would come up with, if you're just maybe even talking to people.
33:57.120 --> 34:04.700
Mark: As well. So, problem here, the princes drink drinks from the West. Inside, a lot of these princes just act like princes, but they can't actually afford their lifestyle.
34:05.500 --> 34:13.199
Mark: Advantage, most Kenyan princes grew up on KC strategy will show that KC is for Kenyan princes who don't forget where they come from.
34:13.320 --> 34:21.640
Mark: this is okay, it feels familiar, because it's going to take us into a campaign that talks about roots being proud of where you come from. I've heard it before.
34:21.860 --> 34:25.640
Mark: There's actually a bigger idea, though, like, in Kenya.
34:26.420 --> 34:28.949
Mark: And for those who don't know, Kenya's
34:28.980 --> 34:42.800
Mark: East Africa, capital is Nairobi, it's under Somalia, South Sudan, east of Uganda, above Tanzania, not that far from the Arabian Peninsula, and there's a lot of really interesting cultural influences here. On the coast, more…
34:42.800 --> 34:50.120
Mark: Arabic and Muslim, with some more Indian influence. In Nairobi, I think there's about 300,000 people from Indian descent.
34:50.179 --> 34:57.939
Mark: You've got a UN headquarters here, there's a lot of soft power happening here. You won't hear about it, probably, in the UK, or the USA, or Australia.
34:58.190 --> 35:04.460
Mark: A lot of people are trying to get their hands on the… the, minerals.
35:04.890 --> 35:12.530
Mark: And yet there's about 55 million people, median age around 19 or 20, heavy users of TikTok, hilarious in the comments.
35:12.660 --> 35:17.409
Mark: Even friends that… local friends that I've had, I love just watching them talk, because they'll… they'll…
35:17.760 --> 35:22.710
Mark: They might… They'll use metaphors that are quite… African in origin.
35:23.010 --> 35:29.550
Mark: were bought based on their own tribes, but they'll say it in English, and it's just this beautiful storytelling. I just love it.
35:30.240 --> 35:39.080
Mark: But for Kenya Kane, they've got elections next year, people are protesting, the process can be pretty dangerous. Even, like, a simple Kenya can could be a nice way.
35:40.280 --> 35:43.070
Mark: to rebrand, or to relaunch Kenya.
35:43.370 --> 35:44.800
Mark: Kenny Kane.
35:45.530 --> 35:49.700
Mark: Let me just show you some stuff from Kenya, and then I'll speed through one or two more and end up
35:49.810 --> 35:51.440
Mark: I've interviewed Hadjabbajuice.
35:52.260 --> 35:54.089
Mark: I wish I could see the comments.
35:54.320 --> 36:04.570
Mark: So, the first time I had debut juice was New Year's Day. I caught up with a guy who's asleep there, Adrian. He runs Nairobi Design Week and runs a design studio here. He's been here for maybe
36:04.770 --> 36:06.400
Mark: Maybe 10, 13 years now.
36:06.720 --> 36:18.020
Mark: They said it's a naturally occurring stimulant. It does come from the leaf cut. I think it's K-H-A-T-T. If you see people usually man-eating that leaf, their teeth will be kind of not nice, and their eyes will be quite red.
36:18.270 --> 36:32.340
Mark: But Jabba Juice, people are doing a really lovely design of Jabber Juice bowls, and it will keep you up if you have a lot of it. It will keep you up for a night or two. The nightlife here is kind of crazy. Again, I know you can't hear this,
36:32.830 --> 36:47.420
Mark: Kenyans go outside. They go out. They go outside. They stay outside. Lots of stories of people going out on a Thursday night and not coming home till Monday. They joke about there needing to be a day between Sunday and Monday, just for a day off.
36:47.560 --> 36:53.590
Mark: And it's funny, because I started to do these reviews of Kenny K, and my friends were like, just do a review of this drink, I hadn't heard of it before.
36:53.970 --> 36:57.129
Mark: And a bunch of these videos went mini-viral.
36:58.070 --> 37:05.860
Mark: And I was like, wow, what's going on here? And then, going out, I would see a lot of the places I would go to, there were not many, obviously, foreign people, like, white people.
37:06.610 --> 37:11.819
Mark: I know there are other kinds of foreigners, please relax when I'm speaking about topics that I'm trying to be…
37:11.940 --> 37:13.329
Mark: Might get canceled on.
37:13.620 --> 37:24.039
Mark: But there are sort of areas in Nairobi where you do get a lot of NGO people, a lot of foreigners who are visiting, or immigrants, I don't use the word expat.
37:24.900 --> 37:30.349
Mark: And then, where I go, often there's only one or two people who are obviously from, like, Europe or the USA.
37:30.880 --> 37:33.190
Mark: And I was like, wow, so…
37:33.940 --> 37:49.890
Mark: possibly as an overhang of colonialism, there's an appreciation when foreigners talk nicely about these countries, or about this particular country, or the culture. I talked about Jabba Juice in one particular video, and I had a lady from the UN come up to me, go, thank you for talking about our culture.
37:51.490 --> 38:04.630
Mark: that felt weird, because, of course, like, why wouldn't someone talk about your culture? And then I was, like, watching venues I went to, restaurants I went to, clubs I went to, bars I went to, I'm like, oh, okay, because it's still quite separated here.
38:05.400 --> 38:17.439
Mark: Anyway, Kenny Kane sent me this little box of some stuff. I think they'd sent 30 of these out, and this, again, went viral on TikTok and on Instagram, and I get recognized for this. I get… people yell at me from buses, you know, it's quite funny.
38:17.630 --> 38:23.639
Mark: And in the comments, there are really famous people saying they've never… I've been drinking this drink for 20 years, but they never sent me one of these things.
38:23.800 --> 38:28.230
Mark: Sorry, I tried to be respectful, but yeah.
38:28.540 --> 38:32.749
Mark: And then you get, like, I don't know if any of you are in a country where they have
38:32.890 --> 38:36.830
Mark: magical doctors, but there's lots of these posters up around Kenya.
38:41.780 --> 38:45.410
Mark: And then finally, this is from one of the events that I did in Nairobi.
38:50.120 --> 38:55.340
Mark: And I'm showing you this because maybe a lot of you haven't cuddled as much, but it'd be pretty unusual if you had.
38:57.900 --> 39:00.540
Mark: We got people everywhere. Awesome people.
39:00.710 --> 39:10.299
Mark: people who might wish they had the job that you hated, the last job you hated, someone where I go might wish that they were fortunate enough to get that, and I just think it's worth
39:12.030 --> 39:15.659
Mark: pausing and… Appreciating that, to be honest.
39:18.750 --> 39:24.510
Mark: Alright, let me show you one last one, and then we can do Q&A if you would like.
39:28.100 --> 39:36.610
Mark: So I was in Belgium, I didn't have too many photos in… from Belgium, and I've done a lot of events in Europe. The energy's always much quieter. People are…
39:37.970 --> 39:39.629
Mark: Maybe more shy.
39:41.150 --> 39:44.190
Mark: More regimented, more routine.
39:44.810 --> 39:47.510
Mark: But this was interesting. We had about 60 people in a…
39:48.010 --> 40:02.290
Mark: in a room in Brussels. It was my first time there, I didn't really get to see any of it. I think I was there for two nights. Stayed in one of those typical European hotels, where you're like, ugh, why is this small, smelly room so expensive?
40:03.100 --> 40:05.459
Mark: And we workshopped this thing called Kriekapot.
40:06.250 --> 40:14.120
Mark: And where we landed is a pretty obvious problem, where people say Creek pot is too Flemish. And now, we've got 60 to 65 people in this room.
40:14.560 --> 40:26.720
Mark: I might get some of this incorrect, but obviously you have the Flemish in Belgium, you have the Walloon, you've got recent immigrants, you might have German speakers, French speakers, etc.
40:27.030 --> 40:30.540
Mark: I mean, for a small country that you… we don't hear a lot about, honestly, right?
40:31.440 --> 40:42.020
Mark: the debate about this product was so complicated that I just… I wrote this insight observing 15 minutes of discussion where nobody could agree to anything.
40:42.270 --> 40:46.660
Mark: And so I was like, wow, the Flemish can't agree, or the Belgians can't agree.
40:46.670 --> 40:54.259
Mark: about what it means to be Flemish, and this product's super Flemish, so that was a starting point for this. I don't know if we've landed on a…
40:54.260 --> 41:11.410
Mark: usable strategy, but the observa… but the insight and the thinking came from me observing this room, not agreeing about anything that was Flemish, and just finding it really hard to talk about. So, problem, cricketpot is too Flemish. Insight, here's the thing about being too Flemish, it makes it hard to even talk about being Flemish.
41:11.430 --> 41:15.829
Mark: Advantage Creek pot is so Flemish that nobody knows how to talk about it.
41:16.130 --> 41:20.659
Mark: Strategy will show that Krikapot is the only awkward Flemish thing that Belgians can agree on.
41:21.030 --> 41:30.159
Mark: So this needs tightening. There's something here. We've sort of got… nobody knows how to talk about it, so awkwardness. There's… they're competing things. They're close, they're cousins, but they're competing.
41:30.180 --> 41:46.599
Mark: So I want to take this away and write it out a little bit more, but I just like this example because it came from my observation, and I don't mean this in an egotistical way, but, like, it just came from my observation of this entire room, struggling for 15 minutes to say yes to each other, because they're representing different parts of Belgium.
41:49.560 --> 41:53.810
Mark: So then, just to conclude on, like, how I've been thinking about things,
41:54.630 --> 41:58.180
Mark: And I showed you the photo at the start, where I was in the background.
41:58.420 --> 42:00.430
Mark: And then last June, I went to…
42:00.610 --> 42:12.840
Mark: Brazil, specifically. I said, if I land a particular contract or two, I'm going to reward myself by going to my friend's 40th birthday in Brazil. Her name's Ma, she's a strategist, she was one of my students, and she works at TikTok.
42:13.710 --> 42:24.560
Mark: just being one of those guiding… gentle guiding lights in the distance. You know, if I post something about me dancing, because I didn't really dance much for 20 years, and now it's something I try to do most… not every day, but, like, most weeks.
42:24.660 --> 42:34.900
Mark: she'd be like, yeah, just keep dancing. She'd send me these little pieces of encouragement. And I went to her party, and didn't know anyone. People knew me, but I didn't know that. No one spoke to me the night before.
42:35.270 --> 42:41.450
Mark: I showed you a blonde-headed guy earlier, Ian. He happened to be in Brazil at the same time. We nearly got into a fight with 10 dudes in a club.
42:41.930 --> 42:48.129
Mark: Ian still thinks he's a 300-pound rugby union player, but he's not. He's, like, the blondest, most gringo-looking guy there.
42:48.300 --> 42:53.739
Mark: And I was just in this really weird mood, so I'm here in the middle, I came to travel, and then again, I just stood
42:53.860 --> 42:55.570
Mark: On the… on the wall.
42:57.220 --> 42:58.140
Mark: That's mine.
43:01.750 --> 43:06.369
Mark: And so ever since then, I've decided that if I hear my music, even if other people are not dancing.
43:06.600 --> 43:16.110
Mark: If I feel good, then I'm gonna dance. And this is kind of where I'm at with… we could call it my guiding thought right now for me. I know I've gone a little bit long, but I'll finish.
43:16.750 --> 43:34.860
Mark: So the situation for me is that I was traveling a lot, trying to work out where I felt alive, but I was still in the background. I wasn't necessarily dancing. Yes, I'm on stage, etc. I don't find being on stage particularly difficult. I know a lot of you will identify with that. A lot of people who are a bit more introverted, a bit more in their heads, they can find it easier.
43:34.860 --> 43:39.699
Mark: To be on stage, but maybe harder to be in a group of 10 people at dinner, right?
43:39.880 --> 43:50.829
Mark: incident. So, as mentioned earlier through the photos and videos, I was seeing of myself smiling, I was like, oh my god, I was noticing places that changed my body before they changed my mind.
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Mark: This is sort of an insight, right? I'm not…
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Mark: I don't care if it's a 10 out of 10 insider or a 1 out of a 10 insider, it's something that I'm using.
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Mark: This is my main thought right now.
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Mark: I hope it's not a mistake as well, but I need to live where I love the music.
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Mark: And so now, the way that I've changed my behavior is not just, sort of.
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Mark: paying more attention to how I feel in different places, and not just dancing more, but possibly even basing myself in a place or two that I really love. Last year, I thought it was going to be Columbia, and right now, it looks like it could actually be
44:23.160 --> 44:35.859
Mark: Kenya. All right, so I just wanted to share some of the travels, and I think there's something cliche about how travel can change you. In my 20s and 30s, I don't think I would have been ready. Like, I think I needed to go through the…
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Mark: repeated crises.
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Mark: And… Years of not… I'm not even… it wasn't that I wasn't listening to myself, because I didn't know.
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Mark: I didn't know that being on a rooftop in Quito, dancing to reggaeton with a lesbian for 3 hours was gonna change my life.
44:54.980 --> 44:59.639
Mark: Right? I needed to have those experiences. So, super privileged to have done that.
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Mark: And hopefully…
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Mark: Those of you who identify with the idea that you are living in the background of your own lives, hopefully over time, if you can.
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Mark: You come to the foreground of your life.
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Mark: On that note… I'm gonna wrap up.
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Springboards: Thanks, Mark.
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Springboards: I loved some of that stuff in there, but my first question for you, and if anyone's got questions, please chuck them in the chat, because I don't want to just be asking a heap of questions. But, my first question for you is, what's your ELO rating?
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Springboards: Do you still play chess?
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Mark: Well, I was playing it because my kids were playing it. Chess is really good in New York, especially through winter. I think…
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Mark: I think I was around 1500 to 1600, but my kids were maybe 2,000 and 1700.
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Springboards: Oh, fuck. Yeah, they're decent. Sweet.
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Springboards: Can I ask a couple… can I ask a personal question for you?
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Springboards: If you don't mind.
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Mark: Yeah.
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Springboards: Where's… you said you're gonna land in… in Kenya, you think, but where's… where's home? Like, you've lived… you've lived around a bit now, and where does home feel? Is it… is it where music is, or is it… is there a place that you still have?
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Springboards: And you don't have to answer it if you don't want to, I should say.
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Mark: Yeah, I don't know, I'm in this in-between phase right now. I was just in Sydney, a lot of friends and family there that I love.
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Mark: it's a bit quiet for me, a bit familiar for me. Technically, Washington DC and New York also qualify as home.
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Mark: I've been living out of a backpack for 12 months now, so…
46:35.070 --> 46:37.870
Mark: I'm gonna be cute and say my backpack is my home right now.
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Springboards: Cool.
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Springboards: I'm gonna steal one of your questions that has been etched into my brain of what's the most important thing you've learned, and the most interesting thing that you've learned over the last 12 months.
46:53.220 --> 47:02.829
Mark: I'm gonna repeat the stuff that I've mentioned. So, most important thing is that I think I need to be where my music is. You know, I don't want to have to go travel for an hour to go find my music.
47:03.510 --> 47:19.540
Mark: And what does that mean? Well, where my music is, it means there's my music in the streets, it's in all the cafes, it's in the restaurants, it's in the clubs, it's not tucked away in Brixton, if I'm in London, for example. It's not playing one night, and in those cultures, they're more expressive. For me, they're still more communal.
47:19.740 --> 47:24.310
Mark: They're more collective, they're more sensual, there's more dancing.
47:24.440 --> 47:26.669
Mark: And I really need that in my life.
47:28.050 --> 47:31.939
Mark: And then… The interesting thing is just…
47:32.530 --> 47:41.169
Mark: So, I don't mean this in a narcissistic or egotistical way, either. It's just been interesting seeing how different places react to me as a human, because I'm… me.
47:41.960 --> 47:45.540
Mark: And then in different places, they will perceive me in…
47:46.540 --> 47:55.939
Mark: You know, I could be the number one target on a street in one place, or I could get mobbed by 200 people who really enjoyed my class in another place. So I find that interesting.
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Springboards: Yeah, sweet. I'm gonna go to one of the questions in the chat,
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Springboards: As someone who comes from one culture and now lives and works as a strategy leader in a totally different culture.
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Springboards: This person often finds themselves a misfit to the person in the corner of the room, like in your photo. What advice do you have for that person, so they can get to dancing in the center of the room of my host country? And so.
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Springboards: Yeah. Someone who's gone from one country to the next, yeah.
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Mark: It's really hard. This is something that I used to get asked a lot by people who wanted to do strategy in Australia, because Australia can be quite parochial, and we're, like, really arro… we're quite arrogant about, you know.
48:36.190 --> 48:49.709
Mark: you know, there are 50 different ways to say mate, did you recognize that we just said it in way number 3? No one talks like that. But I know a lot of people who, 20 years ago, wanted to do Australia in Australia, but found it very difficult to get jobs unless they were English, because we were like.
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Mark: Well, we're gonna teach you the whole culture from start, like, we're exhausted already.
48:54.780 --> 48:59.500
Mark: And so, you know, if it's about being in the middle.
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Mark: Of the room, which is one particular goal.
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Mark: then you've got to try to find things that no one else is finding, but in a way where you're asking it as a question, or posing as a question. Because if you are an outsider.
49:14.770 --> 49:27.069
Mark: granted online, when I'm talking about outsider observations, I do state them in a kind of direct way to get a reaction, but if I was in a room, I might say, hey, this is unusual for me. There are these five things that led me to this thought, what do you think?
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Mark: And it's allowing people to embrace your thinking. They need to understand that you care about their culture.
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Mark: Because if you're… if you're foreign, whether you're literally from another country, in a new company, or let's say you're a head of strategy in one city, and you go to be the head of strategy in the same city, but in an agency that's never had a head of strategy, the whole organism is looking for excuses to get rid of you.
49:51.820 --> 49:58.450
Mark: So I think you've just got to work out how to do it in a way that's strong, provocative, and caring.
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Springboards: One of the things that struck me, just to follow up on that, as you're going through that talk, is that you clearly learn a lot about the place you go to, and the place you're in.
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Springboards: And so, just curious, is like.
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Springboards: How do you learn about a place?
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Springboards: And has the way that you learn changed?
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Mark: Well, first thing, don't hang out with foreigners that often.
50:24.950 --> 50:31.300
Mark: And don't forget, I do have the advantage where I will hang out with strategists or people from advertising, and…
50:31.370 --> 50:42.380
Mark: even after an event, we might go out for 4 or 5 hours, and they'll tell me… tell me all about their lives, and what's going on, and it leads me to other more provocative observations that I've not shared today. For example.
50:42.380 --> 50:58.659
Mark: Most countries… don't hate me for saying this, most countries I go to, the local women do not like the local men, according to the people I talk to. I was like, what? What's going on here? Connected to that, most countries I go to where there is dancing, women don't have enough to… men to dance with. I know this is a heterosexual…
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Mark: Thank you.
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Mark: But I just listen, you know? Also, I'm exhausted after my events, so I just listen.
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Springboards: Along.
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Mark: And final thing on that one is, like, I try to say yes. If I feel safe, I'll try to say yes.
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Mark: To any invitation.
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Springboards: Yeah.
51:18.760 --> 51:24.950
Springboards: Nice. Another question from the chat, what are some things that people get blatantly wrong about strategy?
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Mark: I think it's very easy to over-intellectualize it.
51:32.870 --> 51:39.090
Mark: We worked on a strategy for a SOAP in Mexico, and the language we used in the workshop
51:41.110 --> 51:59.139
Mark: it's like the language of a 12-year-old, and I was a bit embarrassed by it, and I was like, hang on, we're gonna have to communicate in a way that most of the country gets. The average level of literacy in the US is around 12 to 14 years old, so why would I go back and make this strategy more complicated just to feel good? So I think over-intellectualization.
51:59.310 --> 52:02.160
Mark: is, a big issue. And then…
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Mark: You know, a lot of creative teams would say a lot of strategy is not very usable.
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Mark: Partly because it's overly intellectualized.
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Springboards: You ended, kind of, the talk
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Springboards: Saying there's lots of strategists around the world.
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Springboards: There's lots of people like us, I guess, around the world.
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Springboards: How different or similar are they?
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Springboards: And how big of an impact is culture?
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Mark: Well… Let me just get a… I've got a plugin, give me 2 seconds.
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Springboards: That's too easy, right?
52:49.070 --> 52:53.900
Mark: I think that's a tough question to answer, other than…
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Mark: A lot of countries I go to feel a little bit embarrassed that they're not sophisticated in strategy in a way that they would say Australia, the UK, the US, Canada.
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Mark: Maybe even India, parts of Latin America, Western Europe.
53:11.320 --> 53:18.120
Mark: people have said to me, well, after training, oh, thank you, we just needed some Anglo-Saxon thinking. I was like, what?
53:18.430 --> 53:19.400
Mark: What?
53:19.530 --> 53:23.000
Mark: I was like… Okay, I guess, I guess in your mind.
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Mark: London, account planning, advertising, white people back in the day.
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Mark: Also, I didn't… I was at an advertising event with 100 people in London the other day.
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Mark: I think there were two non-white people, that was super interesting.
53:38.670 --> 53:47.689
Mark: Yeah, so I think people are a little bit embarrassed, and they often will apologize to me about the level of strategy in their countries when I'm teaching, which is not something I need to hear.
53:48.380 --> 53:50.979
Mark: So, I think that's an answer to the question.
53:51.410 --> 53:56.510
Springboards: Yeah. There's two… there's two questions in the chat I want to get to. Do you have a couple more minutes?
53:57.070 --> 53:57.840
Mark: Yes.
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Springboards: Awesome. So the first one is, have your travels changed or challenged the frameworks you've developed? So your four points, or any other?
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Mark: Not really. Look, you can put anything into a framework. I've worked with strategists who've… don't DM me to do this, but look, I've worked with strategists who were working on their portfolio and CV, and based on their own belief, we just created a little framework for them to be able to explain their thinking through.
54:28.010 --> 54:34.760
Mark: I do think in some of the emerging markets, and forgive me if that's not the correct language that people like, but in some of the younger
54:34.920 --> 54:37.110
Mark: Call them emerging markets.
54:37.460 --> 54:45.620
Mark: Sometimes the frameworks… They might feel too…
54:46.710 --> 54:52.929
Mark: too advanced or sophisticated, like, they just have more basic things to fix. You know, like, how does this business make money?
54:56.860 --> 55:07.570
Springboards: Last question we've got here is, what are you looking for when building a team of strategists? How do you evaluate if someone has great strategic chops from Ashley in the chats?
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Mark: Yeah, look, I…
55:09.590 --> 55:16.629
Mark: I set up a few teams and ran a couple of teams. I never sort of did it through to fruition, because I just got sick of corporate America.
55:17.810 --> 55:25.240
Mark: I think if I was running a strategy team now, I would have a ridiculously heavy bias towards good riders.
55:25.440 --> 55:29.549
Mark: Yeah, we definitely need people who are amazing at numbers and various other things.
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Mark: But…
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Mark: the amount of time I've spent on decks or creative briefs where the writing just wasn't what it could have been or needed to be, despite maybe the person knowing culture.
55:40.710 --> 55:59.100
Mark: I… I don't think we have enough time for that now. But I like… I like people who are super nerdy, who are maybe running a subreddit, or who've published a zine, or done a podcast. Like, I like to see some kind of creative self-expression based on nerdery and being infatuated with stuff. I like to see good writing.
56:01.590 --> 56:08.669
Mark: you know, I had… we had an intern that we ended up hiring who went to a wedding and talked to men about losing hair, like, initiative.
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Mark: So they're things that I would usually…
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Mark: Look at, and you can, you know, you can often understand how someone thinks based on their writing, assuming that they're actually doing their own writing these days.
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Springboards: Which is probably more important than ever, given that it's so easy to…
56:27.090 --> 56:29.580
Springboards: blurt words out these days.
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Springboards: And so, the craft of it actually gets more important, the easier it becomes.
56:36.010 --> 56:44.260
Mark: Yeah, but there's definitely something with craft, but I think also with craft, we can overcook our roll a little bit. You know, just being able to write a sharp.
56:44.390 --> 56:47.069
Mark: heading for your next presentation. That's craft.
56:47.480 --> 56:56.969
Springboards: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's one that's coming in the final minute, and I think it's a nice one to end on. And so, I'm gonna go to a question from Fabio.
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Springboards: of… When thinking is your strength.
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Springboards: How do you keep it from becoming the thing that paralyzes you?
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Mark: Well, what's the opposite of paralysis?
57:09.280 --> 57:13.120
Mark: Action. How do you take action? You get your thinking.
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Mark: together. So, first of all, commit your thinking somewhere, to a piece of paper, whatever you work in. I still like paper, right? Or a half-page document, or a little note. Give yourself a word limit if you need it, just get your thinking there.
57:27.490 --> 57:40.310
Mark: And, use numbers to trick your brain. So, some of the strategies I showed you right just today, they might be briefable, but a lot of them would need more work. The way that I would get my ego to pause is go, okay, let's come up with 10 of them.
57:40.520 --> 57:52.699
Mark: We've got one that, generally speaking, works, I can see what kind of content might come out of it, great. Put it up on the wall, literally or figuratively, and then we're going to come up with another nine, and later, we will edit our work.
57:52.960 --> 57:55.800
Mark: If the overthinking is to do more with your own life.
57:56.010 --> 58:02.380
Mark: Action. It's always action. You know, I was in a funk on Monday. I've been sleeping… I feel like I'm in jet lag for 3…
58:02.770 --> 58:08.299
Mark: months now, I slept till 4.30pm on my own birthday in Dublin, I was just exhausted.
58:08.790 --> 58:12.879
Mark: And definitely identify with the functional freeze thing from COVID, and just…
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Mark: Stress for years and years and years.
58:16.050 --> 58:17.900
Mark: And I knew that I had to go for a walk.
58:18.250 --> 58:25.179
Mark: I made that deal with myself in New York, that if I recognized I was in a funk, if I… if I recognized, because sometimes you don't recognize.
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Mark: I've got to move, literally have to make the body move.
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Mark: So, hopefully those sorts of techniques are useful.
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Springboards: Yeah, sweet. I'll leave it at that, unless there's anything else you want to say, any parting words, or advice, or anything, and otherwise, we'll let people go, because we're a couple minutes over.
58:44.620 --> 58:45.310
Mark: Perfect.
58:45.600 --> 58:51.649
Mark: No, no, I mean, no real final words other than just forget that you are your main and most difficult client.
58:52.440 --> 58:59.070
Springboards: Yeah. Perfect. Thanks, mate. Very, very much appreciated. So, thank you, and thanks for everyone that's sticking around. Peace.
