Legacy, reinvented: a tale of creativity from inside one of the world's most well-known brands

[00:00:00] Lindsay Rogers: Hello, and welcome to the Brand Hunch podcast, where we explore ideas and hunches around how marketers are growing great brands. It's a look under the hood at how much is marketing science and how much is built on a hunch. A huge shout out to everyone who has recommended the podcast recently. It really means the world to me.

I meet so many interesting marketers along the way, and I just follow ideas and topics that interest me to get a fresh perspective. So the feedback from you that you love these conversations as well is hugely encouraging personally feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. If you have any ideas for speakers or questions, things you'd love me to dig into or brands you'd love to hear from.

In today's episode, I'm joined by Adam Ross. Adam is the Senior Director of Creative Strategy at Coca Cola, spanning Southeast Asia and the South Pacific region. Coca Cola, one of the most successful brands in marketing history, needs no introduction, but I'm excited to learn today how a brand steeped in such heritage stays continually fresh and relevant in such varied markets.

Adam's been at Coca Cola for seven years, and I'm really excited to have you on the show. Welcome Adam. 

[00:01:08] Adam Ross: Thank you. Thanks for having me. 

[00:01:10] Lindsay Rogers: What I find really interesting and I'm keen to start by digging into is your early days in agency land when you were over at Mindshare, I was reading up that you were in the national leadership team and you sort of had this mandate around injecting inspiration and creativity into the business.

I think it culminated in you developing this training program, tell me a bit about those days and what it's taught you. 

[00:01:30] Adam Ross: For sure. I might go further back than that, if that's all right. So I actually started at Mediacom in London. Well, before that I did a marketing degree and then finished that and applied for anything and everything that I could and got an interview at a place called Mediacom.

I had no idea what it was or what a media agency was or did. I managed to get an entry level position as a, in a planning team under a guy called Chris Binns, who I still work with to this day. I'm now a client of his now, which is really weird, but he was my first boss and mentor and someone I massively respect and look up to.

And so really learned the craft of media planning, communication strategy, but was hugely lucky to have as one of my first clients, the Metropolitan Police. So the kind of briefs that I was learning my craft on weren't about getting people to buy more stuff, they were, how do you reduce inner city black on black gun crime in London? Or how do you get 16 year olds to stop carrying knives and see the dangers of doing so and things like that. 

So I was exposed very, very early in like my formative years to communication strategy, communications planning, but also the raw power of creativity and ideas to cut through and make a connection with people who in this client's instance is hell bent on ignoring you. You're a criminal and the client's the police, like you can't get any more ignore advertising messages than that. So that was really formative in my thinking and something I've carried through my whole career. So I was at Mediacom I think for about five years in London and then I moved to Australia in 2007, where I joined Mindshare and in a strategy team as a strategist, I'm a strategist. And again, just, that's just how I thought and still think and how I approach things. So it was a typical strategy director, I think it was on a, on a whole range of clients, but always brought that perspective to things of yes, it's communications and strategy, but it has to be incredibly creative and have an idea at the heart to cut through.

And then after a few years, Mindshare, honestly, I think I got a little bit bored of being a day to day strategist on client accounts. And I recognized that I was bringing less and less of a fresh external perspective. You get sucked into thinking like a client and knowing what they necessarily want and will buy.

And so I was having a chat to my boss about it and she challenged me. with a blank piece of paper to write a job description of what would address that, which then gave birth to what was called a co creation team. And as you say, that role on the leadership team at Mindshare, and really my role is to inject creativity internally, externally to all of our clients, not necessarily starting with a brief, but as sort of corny as it sounds, starting with culture, which then led to, yeah, this applied creativity training that we rolled out across Asia and just, yeah, really elevating the capability of creativity and creative thinking across the mindshare. 

[00:04:31] Lindsay Rogers: So I'm assuming that you sort of insinuating there that culture has to start first for ideas as a jump off point? 

[00:04:36] Adam Ross: Yeah, well I think it's two things.

I think it's absolutely understanding the audience you're trying to connect with and really understanding the brand essence and brand architecture, so what the brand is about, the positioning and finding a way to connect those two together and what sits in the middle of those two things, you can call connections planning, strategy, an idea, but that's how I viewed what media is, I don't necessarily view it as, oh, it's outdoor or print or TV, it's, it's the gap between who you're trying to connect with and the message you're trying to relay.

[00:05:10] Lindsay Rogers: It sounds like so much of your work's been around behavior change and shaping new ways of somebody applying a new idea. Have, have you been formally trained in that or is that just self explored? 

[00:05:20] Adam Ross: Yeah, I think I've just had a very keen interest and appreciation for advertising in its broadest sense, really engaged with who's come before and set the principles of how people work and therefore how advertising works and how memories work. And so I don't think necessarily we spend enough time on that versus getting distracted by the new and shiny things that are exciting versus understanding the enduring principles of how people and brains and memories work. 

So that's always fascinated me. People have always fascinated me. I'm an avid people watcher. And so, yeah, that, that's probably where it's come from. And just, yeah, I, I enjoy just reading about it, watching loads of stuff, podcasts yeah, just, just trying to really get into that constantly.

[00:06:10] Lindsay Rogers: And how much of that sort of fresh import is outside of your natural passions or interests? Do you read wide or do you have sort of streams that you're interested in? 

[00:06:20] Adam Ross: I try and read very wide. I think the more diverse the stimulus going in, the more connections your subconscious can make, and therefore the more ideas you can come up with. So the last two books, for example, that I read, one was 1984 by George Orwell, I haven't read it, so I was like, oh, I really need to read that, especially in the context of today's world, what's going on. So I read that and that was incredibly bleak. And then I followed that up with a, a Korean book, funnily enough, recommended by Chris Binns, who I mentioned before. 

[00:06:48] Lindsay Rogers: And the guy that we really should have on the podcast.

[00:06:49] Adam Ross: Yeah, you really should, he's awesome. Called the DallerGut Dream Department Store, which is a beautiful book about dreams. And when you fall asleep, it's your sleeping self that goes to this department store to pick a dream off the shelf. And then you pay for it when you wake up based on the amount of feeling that you have.

So completely different, different things. And then in and amongst it, yeah, I enjoy reading, you know, books related to our industry, to really get into that, but yeah, as, as diverse as possible. 

[00:07:17] Lindsay Rogers: And so back to the sort of Mindshare and this applied training program, how does one apply creativity? 

[00:07:23] Adam Ross: I mean, it's linked to the book thing we were just talking about now, Dave Trott's written a whole range of books, one of which is called Applied Creativity. And the intro to that, he talks around the difference between maths and pure maths and then creativity and applied creativity and raw creativity being described more, you know, more as art.

It doesn't necessarily serve a tangible purpose towards a business outcome. It serves obviously a very important purpose outside of that, but then there's applied creativity around channeling it towards solving a problem or driving an outcome or seizing an opportunity. So that's sort of the difference between the two, which is why we went down this applied creativity route, because it has to have a purpose.

[00:08:04] Lindsay Rogers: And do you think as a marketer or as an agency person solving commercial problems, we should spend all of our time on the latter, or is there an element of raw creativity that's required for the diversity of thinking? 

[00:08:15] Adam Ross: That's a great question. I think it's both, as in we need to be absolutely clear on what the problem is we're trying to solve and spend a disproportionate amount of time on that.

If you get the problem or question right, the brief is more than half answered by the time you've done that. But then you need the raw power of creativity to approach that problem or approach the solution to that problem in a way that you could never see because you're too close to it. So I think that's, that's where I see the two coming together to unlock something incredibly powerful. 

[00:08:51] Lindsay Rogers: So thinking about this sort of training program and your, I guess, mandate in this new role, how did you go about keeping friends but, you know, pushing culture? I imagine it's quite a jarring change in terms of way of thinking or way of working.

What's been your approach there? 

[00:09:05] Adam Ross: Well, I'll fast forward to when I started here at Coke to go into that a bit more because my first role here was the creative lead for Australia at New Zealand in the South Pacific. And I came in with, I was really daunted to be honest, because it's like, you're coming into Coca Cola. I'm like, who am I to.. 

[00:09:21] Lindsay Rogers: Yeah, don't stuff this up. 

[00:09:22] Adam Ross: Yeah, like who am I to come and talk to Coca Cola about creative excellence and stuff like that. So, I put a lot of pressure on myself in the first year or so, and I channeled it really in the wrong way of going, I need to control all creative output, which after a year or so became very apparent that A, that's impossible and B, it's not collaborative and it's, it's not the right way of doing it.

And you know what, it took a conversation with, I was having a coaching conversation with Brent Smart, who reminded me to just do what I did in my agency days. And that wasn't necessarily controlling client decisions. I can make, you know, recommendations and put strong arguments forward, but I can't control the outcome.

But what I can do is play the longer game and inspire people with what great ideas look like, inspire people with the sort of landscape we're trying to cut through again, inspire people with what amazing creativity is to better influence their own decisions rather than try to control every decision.

And so that was a real sort of waking up point and turning point for me. And yeah, it's, definitely helped with the stress as well. 

[00:10:35] Lindsay Rogers: How much of creativity do you think is inherent to a person and how much can be taught? 

[00:10:39] Adam Ross: That's really interesting as well. I think everyone is born with a high capability to be creative.

I have two young children and I think just watching them reinforces that belief that children don't have anything restricting them, they don't have any constraints to the way they approach problems or things. And they just find creative solves to everything. And they're incredibly imaginative and playful and create these worlds. And that's all they do is just play and be creative.

And somewhere along the lines that, you know, it gets sort of pushed out of you as you progress through the school system, I guess. So I think everyone has the capability. I think everyone's born with this innate ability to be creative. 

But then I think when you know, get into a professional sense. I think it's about understanding creative capabilities and what ideas are and where they come from and how they come about and really understanding the ideas are simply connections of different pieces of stimulus. So the more diverse stimulus you can put in your brain, the more connections you can make, the more ideas you have, the more creative you can be.

So I think you can be quite conscious about it, to train that muscle, if you like, but then, yeah, there are some people that are just born different, like, what's that, the 'Get Back' Beatles documentary. I don't know whether you've seen that, but just watching Paul McCartney, I mean, you know, that, that's not something you can teach. That's just someone with a freakish talent, you know? So yeah, I think you can develop an appreciation of how it works and can probably elevate your own capabilities, but yes, there are some people in the world that are just born, you know, magic. 

[00:12:22] Lindsay Rogers: You mentioned before around when you started in this role, sort of acting out of a, you know, a place of sort of control and wanting to see all creative executions.

Where have you journeyed to? And what does it look like for you now? What kind of ethos do you have around your role? 

[00:12:36] Adam Ross: I think it's all about people first. So really connecting with people internally, externally, on just a human level, and really understanding where they're coming from, understanding what gets them excited and trying to be the person that excites, inspires, channels that helps them feel the confidence they need to lean into things that are uncomfortable, giving them a safe space because creativity is, some would argue it's risky.

Yeah, it's, you know, it's unknown. A lot of it can be unknown. And so kind of giving people the confidence to step into that unknown. You know, the support that they need and the encouragement that they need, whether that's, you know, my team, people that I work with or our agency partners as well, kind of giving that safe space.

[00:13:27] Lindsay Rogers: So if it's all about people and connections as a sort of baseline foundation, is fitting in important to you? 

[00:13:34] Adam Ross: To a point, I think you need to be able to connect with people in a way, you want to be someone that people want to work with. I read a great post, I think it was by John Steele, talking about how the two things he looks for in people is, is obviously, you know, capability.

Can you do the job? But the other thing he said is the five hour flight test. Are you someone that I'd be happy to sit next to on a five hour flight? And I thought that was just such a lovely way of summarising it. So I think, you know, you want to be that person that people want to work with because to, create those conditions for creativity, you, you want to have those vulnerable conversations where you share half thoughts and half ideas and things that this might be ridiculous, but, and just know that you have someone on the other side to bounce off of and play that ball back over the net and keep the rally going. 

So yeah, certainly here, I wouldn't necessarily say I fit in, I wouldn't say I don't fit in or stand out, but I do think it's important that I bring a different perspective to everybody else. I'm ex agency. I still call everyone I work with internally the client. I don't necessarily consider myself a client, which is kind of strange, and so I think it's more around if I'm just bringing more of what everyone else is bringing, then I'm not really offering much value. So yeah, I'm happy to bring a different perspective and a different question to the room, and that, you know, that might mean I don't necessarily fit into the conversation as such, but, that's fine. 

[00:14:58] Lindsay Rogers: So tell me a bit about what you and your team are up to now, how do you think about brand, especially a brand steeped in such heritage? How do you think about the job to be done and how what success looks like?

[00:15:08] Adam Ross: You're right, we are very privileged to work on a globally iconic brand as Coca Cola, but it's only as iconic as it is because of what's come before. And we spend a lot of time sort of recognising in ourselves and catching ourselves and going, well, we've got to make Coca Cola iconic to the next generation.

You know, we grew up with it in a certain way, which gave us certain connections with it and memories with it. And it's our job to refresh and reinforce those memories and making sure that the timeless brand of Coca Cola is timely to today's generation, and they feel the same thing that we feel.

So yeah, it's, an absolute privilege to work on, on a brand, such as coca cola and have that responsibility. 

[00:15:53] Lindsay Rogers: I'm jumping ahead to a bit of a sort of next phase question. But how do you find your own permission to play in culture authentically? Is it largely linked back to sort of history and nostalgia?

Or are you creating those fresh sort of neural pathways or fresh memories you want people to have in the future? 

[00:16:11] Adam Ross: It's about really understanding what your brand is about and going back into its history to understand where it's come from and the fundamental values upon which it's been built.

They're the things that are timeless. But then making sure that you dramatising or demonstrating those values in a way that's timely to today's generation through today's passion points, you know, subcultures and making sure that we're staying true to those values. I think if we're very clear on what our values are, you can then be more free in how you express those, because if everything comes back to what you stand for and what you've always stood for, then that's the memory structure that you're refreshing rather than trying to recreate.

[00:16:57] Lindsay Rogers: And so how do you then map that against the geographies in which you operate? Your role is obviously across Southeast Asia, so how is, and South Pacific, how is that creative excellence and true brand values expressed across? Thailand to Fiji to Singapore to New Zealand, like, how do you keep the local relevancy but with the same heart? 

[00:17:18] Adam Ross: Yeah, it's a really good question. It's a really interesting challenge. And certainly for me, growing up in the UK, living in Australia for nearly 20 years, and then being in this regional role where Coke isn't how I've grown up with Coke in some parts of the world that I work in and really respecting that and not taking it for granted that people necessarily know what we stand for or who we are. So it's, it's taking the essence of the brand and the essence of the persistent platforms that we work with, but then really understanding local culture, local codes, local symbols, local nuances, and our place in their world and being able to find a way that we can create a meaningful value exchange in whichever market we turn up in.

That doesn't necessarily mean doing different things for different markets, because at the same time we are a global brand and you need an element of global consistency. It's very easy to go, oh, we're different because, but I think it's, it's also really important to find what unites us as people, what are the, the enduring human truths that don't change across cultures, across nationalities, across markets.

So I think it's, it's finding the right balance between those two things. 

[00:18:34] Lindsay Rogers: And how do you find those new sort of consumer tensions? Are they often locally driven or are they globally sort of what unites us as people and they'll work in any market? How do you know when to flex up and when to flex down?

[00:18:46] Adam Ross: Yeah, there's universal truths, human truths that you work with, but then it's also about spending as much time on the ground as you can to observe and understand people is a great phrase of, you know, if you want to understand people, go and observe them in the jungle, not in the zoo. And so again, we don't do enough of it, of stepping away from our desks or our offices, but walking the streets and really hanging out in the places where your audiences are hanging out, understanding what they're doing, where they're going and why. And then being able to link that universal truth to the reality of what you're seeing in the street. 

So one of the most meaningful things I did last year, I spent some time in Indonesia and I'd read 20 different research decks full of data, full of insight, but then I had two 20 year olds take me out for a day and they just took me to places that hang out. Showed me where they go, what they do, who they talk to and that was from morning till night and just, that was so illuminating versus reading 20 decks.

Similarly, I was in Tokyo last week and we just spent the first day, we had a talk around what, what are the values that sit at the heart of, Japanese culture. And then we had people take us out all around Tokyo to show us expressions of the things that we just talked about. And again, it makes it come alive. It makes it real. It makes you humble because you can read everything that you want and read all these trend reports and this kind of stuff, but it's when you step out into the real world.

And also give yourself that important reminder that you're an incredibly little thing at best people's life and people's world. The thing that we think about all day every day and know, like the back of our hand, you step out into the real world and it's a lovely awakening to the reality. 

[00:20:29] Lindsay Rogers: Back to your first point around the human element.

Do you think it's possible to jump to your end insight or strategic jump off point for the work without one or the other, without the research decks or without the in person experience, or do you think it's the magic of the two together? 

[00:20:44] Adam Ross: It is the magic of the two together. I think you, you need data, but that data can take you so far.

I think we, as an industry, struggle with the word insight. You see a data point called an insight, you're like, no, that's just, it's a data point. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's just a fact. That's fine. So I think you need to dig into that to find the knowledge and understanding of what's behind it. 

[00:21:04] Lindsay Rogers: So what is an insight to you?

What's a good insight? 

[00:21:06] Adam Ross: I'm really a fan of, ironically, the McDonald's Fan Truths approach. And I'm making this up because I don't work at McDonald's, but I imagine they've got all the data in the world of when people go to McDonald's, what they're ordering, instant rates, how the weather affects it, blah, blah, blah.

But listening to how the team just, I think, just got on a bus and drove all around America for a couple of months and watched people and then created this book of fan truths, which are these illuminating observations, I guess, that influence the decision you make next, I think that is something so powerful.

And I love their most recent campaign where they're just then highlighting those fan truths and they're really delivering on their approach of we talk fan to fan, we connect fan to fan. So, you know, showing the behavior of licking cheese off the cheeseburger wrapper or dipping chips into your milkshake and stuff.

You then see yourself in that communication, therefore you connect with it. And that, that would only come from watching people. I can't imagine that those two examples would come up on a spreadsheet. So yeah, I think it is, as you say, bringing the two together to find knowledge and meaning and understanding that really, I think the more understanding and the more knowledge you have, the more freedom to be creative that you create.

Because people are safe in the knowledge that what you're doing is to connect with the truth, therefore, let's step into it in a, in a really disruptive way. 

[00:22:34] Lindsay Rogers: I want to loop back to something you mentioned before, which was around the importance of asking the right question - solving the right question, your brief's half developed.

How do you know when it's the right question to be solving? And is that the translation of corporate, you know, quantifiable components through into creativity? Or are you setting your own problems to be solved? 

[00:22:54] Adam Ross: Two things that come to mind; one is, you know, from a technique point of view is, you know, the five whys of like, yes, you can come up with a question, but then ask why, and then ask why to that until you run out basically.

And it just forces you to go beyond the obvious. And the other thing is when you stumble upon a question that just makes you go,' Oh yeah, that's really interesting'. So you can, you can get a, you know, a generic question, like, yeah, okay, but then if you get a question that in itself moves you, and if it can excite a creative team to go after that question, then that's another metric of, is this a good question?

[00:23:31] Lindsay Rogers: I think there's such an underappreciated sort of respect that I have for a pregnant pause when you're not convinced. And, you know, I think it's easy to present and kind of continue on with a train of thought and largely people will go with it until you stop, question, just have that slight longer pause around whether you agree with something or it's true.

And if it's not, is there a better articulation? So yeah, I love your 'five why's' approach to really getting to the nub of the problem at hand. Tell me a bit about some of the work that you've been most proud of in your tenure at Coca Cola. 

[00:24:01] Adam Ross: There's a few that come to mind. I've been there a while, but most recently, last year, we made an interactive music video in Thailand with a Thai rapper, and it came about from wanting to drive Coco Meals in Thailand.

And we really created an ode to the Bangkok street food scene. So we brought in a guy called F.HERO, who's Thailand's biggest rapper. And he wrote the song with lyrics that read like a menu. And then the music video was full of real venues, real food, real moments, and we made those interactive. So as you were watching along, you could click on them and get the food featured directly delivered to you via Grab.

Or you could click on an element of it and unlock an Easter egg of a ticket to an exclusive Coke event at one of our partner restaurants and things like that. It stands out as an example of, yes, the brief was how do you drive Coke and food? But then again, going back into the audience. How do they discover different places and food to eat and the importance of playing in the intersections of music and food and fashion and bringing it to life through entertainment.

So that one was really fun to work on for sure. Similarly, last year in the Philippines, we were launching season eight of our music platform, Coke Studio, and Coke Studio has always been about the creative collisions and collaborations between local artists over there. And to launch season 8 we wanted to do something to remind people that it was coming back.

And then we, we dived into the audience and we saw that young people were the primary driver of the vinyl record industry growing and going a bit deeper into that for big fans, for fandoms, they use vinyl records as a tangible visual expression of, of their fandom. And so we brought those two things together and we went into the back catalogue and bought the best of previous seasons onto this one record, but then part of a different artists and illustrators to bring to life the artist featured as the record turned, the visuals would come to life and tell a story in itself. And again, full of different visual Easter eggs that only the fans would notice and appreciate. So that was pretty cool. 

We just did last week, actually an activation in Malaysia. So I talked before around the need to make the timeless timely with Coke and the importance of playing in the passion points of music, art and fashion. And so last week in Malaysia, we created a pop up laundrette, which sounds quite random, but we partnered with the K pop band NewJeans. and turned something mundane into something remarkable.

And we did that by having a 'so fresh, so clean' Laundrette, lyric in one of their songs. So again, a little nod for their fans. And you could bring your old jeans in to turn them into new jeans, which we do with, Coke branded patches that have RFID technology behind them that would then have personalised video messages from the girls in the band.

So again, something for the fans to really enjoy, come together and experience from Coke to again, create those memories of an iconic brand. 

[00:27:24] Lindsay Rogers: Sounds like the intersection of creative thinking, brand building, technology, and then culture. Sort of all of those converging? 

[00:27:31] Adam Ross: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, Coke's got the history and the right to, to play in those intersections and bring them to life in a way that we can co-create and collaborate.

[00:27:41] Lindsay Rogers: How do you get the best out of your internal creative team? What are some sort of ways of working that you've honed over the years?

[00:27:47] Adam Ross: Keeping them inspired with what great work looks like, and it's something that I do myself. I'm very passionate about putting as much into my brain as I can, and so I like to share often.

And so I come into conversations a lot when we're talking about, you know, a problem we're trying to solve or a campaign that we're creating and, and try to bring as much stimulus into that conversation as possible, because I mean, there's no, there's really no such thing as a new idea. It's just a new combination of existing ideas.

So the more examples and from, from inside and outside our industry, I say industry, I mean, advertising. So, you know, what have other brands done, but then beyond like, you know, what is going on in music, fashion, technology, and just try and give them as much stimulus as we can to make the connections from, and to try and make conversations more tangible.

It's much easier to talk through examples of work than just say, oh, I want something really creative is that I don't necessarily know what that means. But when you give examples, it, it helps tangibilise the conversation and make things easier to move forward. And then it's what I was saying before of, of allowing them the safe space to be vulnerable in, in pushing for new things and, and encourage them to go through the discomfort that comes with that.

[00:29:09] Lindsay Rogers: I imagine that takes a whole lot of trust, right? It's a long leash to sort of go and explore and come back with elements you find that might be of interest. And we'll see if there's sort of, you know, a gem that we can uncover and sort of, you know, polish as part of the problem to solve at hand. 

[00:29:24] Adam Ross: Yeah. My time at Mindshare, I introduced something called 'Long Wave Wednesdays' where you get sucked into the day to day so much and just focusing on what's in front of you right now that you don't take the time out to fuel your brain.

And so make sure that Wednesday mornings were free and is, you know, before COVID and before working from home, but like, don't come into the office and do what you need to do to fuel your brain. If that's, you know, reading all those things that you save in your inbox to read later, if that's going to an art gallery, if that's going for a walk, if that's having a lie in, because, you know, your best ideas come in your sleep, like whatever it is to fuel your own brain and your own creativity do that. 

So giving them the safe space to do that. And what was interesting was if we were talking about, you know, a brief or a problem to solve or ideas and stuff, and people were getting stuck, my, often my first question would be, when was the last time you took a long wave Wednesday?

And it could be, Oh, well, you know, I've been busy, but you could tell, it was like, okay, go and do that, don't force a solution here cause you haven't got enough stimulus in your mind. So go and fill your mind again and then come back. It just energizes people and yeah, I found that really powerful. 

[00:30:38] Lindsay Rogers: What are some resources that you, where do you go to get inspired?

I know you mentioned reading books, what else do you do? Do you listen to stuff? Do you get outside? Personally, what works for you? 

[00:30:47] Adam Ross: I love going for a walk in nature. That's, that's probably, I'd say like most people where the best ideas come from. But I think, yeah, trying to, trying to fill your mind with, whether it, yeah, whether it's books, whether it's reviewing current work at the moment, I love going through old award archives and just every problem's been solved before in unique ways. And so yeah, filling your mind with that, podcasts, art galleries, and then yeah, just just going for a walk, just spending time in nature is incredibly powerful, to do that.

And then often you come back with a whole heap of notes to write before they fall out of your brain again. 

[00:31:22] Lindsay Rogers: My version of nature is the shower for sure, I get like a long hot shower and I come out and all of a sudden I've got a lot of ideas. Who do you look up to and admire as brands? Who do you think is doing a great job of brand building?

[00:31:32] Adam Ross: I mean, I mentioned McDonald's before, their fan truths approach, but also just their ability to play with their distinctive assets because of the investment they've made in them, they can now be very playful with them. Heinz, too. They've done that recently. I love their work, it's amazing. 

And so those two really stand out for me. I'm quite impressed with what Budweiser have been doing recently. I hope I get this right. I think their platforms along the lines of the brand that's always been there. Oh, sorry. The beer that's always been there. And they've definitely done some amazing things in the past, like with the Budweiser tag words and things like that, but it seems that they're really leaning into that in a bigger way at the moment and coming up with some really interesting ways of bringing that to life. I love the new Tesco campaign back from the UK. That's, that's really beautiful. Yeah. I mean, loads to be honest. 

[00:32:22] Lindsay Rogers: Lots of input. 

[00:32:23] Adam Ross: Yeah. 

[00:32:24] Lindsay Rogers: Tell me about Creative Sparks. How did you come up with the idea? How can people learn a bit more about it? 

[00:32:28] Adam Ross: Yeah.

Creative Sparks is, is it comes from me, as I said, just trying to absorb as much amazing creative work from any brand in any market that's out there. Yeah. And just a being personally quite geeky about it, really interested in it. I love ideas. And so I'm always just hunting for them and stumbling across them.

And then I just, I selfishly was just collating them because I, I find them, find them interesting. So there's a reason I find it interesting to try and decode that and then use it as inspiration for, you know, when, when your brief arrives and it's great to look into different types of work. So I started collating it and then.

I'll talk about it. You know, I'd offer it in conversations and meetings. Oh, have you seen this? Have you seen that? That's quite interesting. And then it was here at Coke. I started, I just emailed some stuff like, you know, once a week or something just to a small group of people going, Hey, here's some cool stuff that I've seen for these reasons.

And that seems to be really welcomed. And so then I started emailing more people and then I started sharing it across the entire marketing network locally, then regionally, now globally. And then I thought, I'll just share it with everyone actually. Why not? And it's quite, it's almost like a creative outlet for me.

Not that this is an incredibly creative task, but you know, you can get bogged down in the day to day and all of the, you know, challenges in front of you and the meetings that are coming up and it's quite nice just to be like, okay, cool. I'm just going to step out and I'm just going to really indulge myself in some great work from other brands, from other markets, from other parts of the world and and just pull that together and share it.

So yeah, it started as a selfish thing, to be honest, it's just something I share on LinkedIn. So I try, I try to give myself a deadline of doing it at least once a month. So I force myself to keep doing it rather than it become the thing that you never get to, so yeah, that, that's, that's it really.

[00:34:21] Lindsay Rogers: What do you think one thing senior marketers should start, stop, or continue to do? What is one thing that you think, gosh, if I had a billboard for marketers, this is what I'd be wanting to say. 

[00:34:32] Adam Ross: If it doesn't get noticed, nothing happens. You know, the Bernbach quote, if you're advertising that doesn't get noticed, everything else is academic.

We can spend an incredible amount of time and energy on crafting what we're trying to say with the assumption that people are going to see it and notice it first. So I think that would be number one. It's just really challenging ourselves of 'Is this really going to create an impact?' And then we can work out the rest after the Dave Trott thing; impact, communicate, persuade in that order. 

And then I think the other thing, 'Will people know that this is us talking?' Because again, as, as marketers, we're so close to the, to the brand. And we're so close to what makes us us. And I think we forget how obvious we have to make it that is us talking and however that you have to be and not make assumptions that A, people will notice it and B, people will know it's Coke.

I think those two things are probably the most important questions to answer first. 

[00:35:38] Lindsay Rogers: Looking at the future of brand building and marketing, what excites you? 

[00:35:42] Adam Ross: People. And I mean that in terms of, you know, the audiences we're trying to connect with, they're just multifaceted, interesting, unique people. And so the opportunity and the challenge is always to understand them.

And that's, you know, as a people person, that's, that's always interesting. So yeah, more on the people side than anything else. I think there should be a huge amount of optimism around people's behavior and how you channel that. 

[00:36:08] Lindsay Rogers: So I believe you went through the Marketing Academy. Tell me a bit about it. 

And what did you learn? 

[00:36:13] Adam Ross: I did. I was lucky enough to get on the first cohort of that, which I think might have been about 10 years ago or so now, but I didn't really necessarily know what it was about. I was at Mindshare. I'd gone through all of the, you know, various. WPP leadership training courses and stuff. I was like, okay, what, what, what's next? And there was this thing called The Marketing Academy that was just launching in Australia. And so, yeah, I put my hand up for that, not necessarily knowing what it was, is the best thing that I've done, it's absolutely amazing on a professional and personal level from a access point of view.

So I was on a cohort with 29 other people, who to this day, literally this morning, we still have a WhatsApp group, we're still connecting with each other, helping each other, supporting each other. But just really going in there not knowing what to expect and sort of really learn it. I mean, this sounds really culty, but really learning so much about yourself and your values and really centering on what your values are and therefore how they become a lens for your decision making. That was incredibly powerful. And as was the invitation and appreciation of bringing your whole self to everything that you do. So we talked a lot around, you know, the mask, how you bring the mask to work versus the power of being your true, authentic self.

And the more powerful the connections you make with the people you work with because of that. And when you have a deeper connection, you can have better conversations and have better conversations, you get to better relationships. So yeah, it was, it was incredibly powerful in that sense of learning a lot about yourself and how you can live more to your values. 

But then from a professional point of view, access to some incredible speakers, a coach for a year, so you had a professional coach to navigate, to help you navigate your way through all the learnings you're absorbing throughout that year, and still to this day, you know, there's access to the virtual academy, the virtual campus, sorry, events that they put on.

So yeah, it's, it's So, so valuable for me, I can't speak highly enough of it, I must say. 

[00:38:25] Lindsay Rogers: Amazing. It has been such an interesting conversation, I so appreciate you coming on the show and sharing all of your wisdom. 

[00:38:31] Adam Ross: Oh, thank you. I'm not sure about wisdom. Thank you. Thanks for inviting me on. It's been a lovely chat.

And yeah, hopefully, hopefully I've said something that someone might take something out of. So yeah, thank you. It's been, it's been great.

[00:38:41] Lindsay Rogers: One of the things I loved most about Adam's interview was this simple idea of getting out and walking a mile in their shoes. I absolutely love that he headed overseas in different situations to be taken out by locals. I think any of us in a white collar metro marketing or agency role could do more of is getting out amongst the customers that we are talking to.

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