Something I’ve been seeking and placing a lot of value in these days is perspective. The news is jarring and disorienting. I’ve been finding more use and comfort in longer term views, even though those are no more certain when looking forward.
I’ve been thinking about the other economic shocks my career has bounced along in. The dot com bust and the ‘great recession’ (can’t we come up with a better nickname for this yet?) we turbulent, and definitely had causes and controls that were beyond my comprehension. The current state of flux has the added variables around public health and uneven leadership at all levels of government.
I wanted to talk to someone else who had the long view. Like me, Åsk Wäppling has been working in advertising since the 90’s. On her site Adland, and across the web, she has been meticulously cataloguing the industry. You may know her (as I did for a long time) as @dabitch Who else would have a more interesting perspective on how this might affect the industry? In Åsk’s opinion, the changes may be more driven by our individual opinions and choices than by industry mandate.
Links
Episode audio: https://specific.substack.com/p/18cf8f8d-459a-4638-be18-1788675bc693
Åsk on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dabitch
Adland: https://adland.tv/
Adland Podcast: https://adland.tv/podcast
Transcript:
Adam Pierno 0:11
Alright, welcome back to another episode of the strategy inside everything. I am here with my old Twitter pal. I’m going to this is a funny thing about knowing people from Twitter is you read their name, but you don’t know how to actually pronounce their name. So I’m gonna do my best here. Åsk Wäppling Hi.
Åsk Wäppling 0:28
Hi, I’m doing great. How are you? Yeah, it’s Åsk. Åsk, please. Yeah, everybody thinks it’s just like “Ask the bitch.” They think it’s really funny. But no, it’s Åsk, it’s Åsk Wäppling.
Adam Pierno 0:39
I am positive for the first five or 10 years that I knew you. You know, in commenting in chat rooms and Twitter and Instagram, that I thought it was a cheeky handle as well, until I was saying, Oh, no, that’s a real person. That’s a real name. That’s who they are.
Åsk Wäppling 0:54
Yeah, now, everybody does and and it’s it’s difficult to explain but The best part is I actually ran a mailing list for a really long time I still do. But to get on this mailing list, you have to send me an email and introduce yourself so that you would be invited to it. And so this one guy, his his name was Jake Bisch. But you know, it was an “sch” at the end. And he he was asking to get invited to the mailing list, and I just sent an email back on, you’re having me on? Yeah, right.
If you like this conversation, have I got a podcast for you. The Strategy Inside Everything is available everywhere, including direct to your inbox.
Adam Pierno 1:27
Then, you know, he was messing with you.
Åsk Wäppling 1:29
Yeah. But it’s because he was Danish. And I was like, he can’t have a Serbian last name if you’re Danish. But of course you can.
Adam Pierno 1:35
There’s there’s lots of workarounds for these types of things. Yeah. Now, in addition to Twitter, I know you from Adland, which you found it and have been the curator, the head curator of for how many years? How long have you been operating that amazing site?
Åsk Wäppling 1:49
I don’t even want to think about it. It’s 23 years. So I mean, it started in 1996. And then it was just a meager little homepage where I was ranting about twin ads, basically, but the ones that were good exactly identical to each other. And I, I needed to talk about that with somebody. And then I decided that in like using that we were always sharing ideas and ads that we we liked and and stuff we wanted to see with each other, I thought it would be great to just make a website where everybody could do that. And so that’s why Atlanta became and so you could put up ads not just because there are ads that you can watch, but also as a student, I always remember that it was really difficult to get into like the DNA B’s and all the other awards shows that were really expensive. You couldn’t see them, you can you know, subscribe to churches archive or something. And this is what you wanted to see because you’re studying advertising and it was only if you got a placement at some ad agency that you could sit there and go through all those archives in the middle of the night. And so I really wanted to be that but for students just to help them see more ads. And
Adam Pierno 2:51
how long has it been the form that it’s in now? I mean, I know it’s recently moved I followed the saga of of the move Your old host to the to the new host, but and the ridiculous takedown order. But how long has it been in the form where you have, you know, writer, I’ve contributed a few articles over the years, you know, to have the writing and all the data that’s
Åsk Wäppling 3:14
that’s been since 2000. Yeah. So like, yeah, members could post an article these days I approve them. But it used to be that it was actually a free for all. But that had to end at some point when people started posting stuff that had nothing to do with advertising and sometimes had nudity in it.
Adam Pierno 3:32
People, everything
Åsk Wäppling 3:34
they do. I mean, it was like, the whole point was that you should be able to post your ads. They’re sort of like, you know, you could come there and go, I made this campaign and it was just working on the trust network. We are ad geeks and we would honestly post the things that we have done. And but then you know, somebody would run in there and ruin it or try to take credit for somebody else’s campaign that happened about two and I just got tired of that.
Adam Pierno 3:58
Yeah, and in addition to Running ad land. You’ve had a, obviously a long career in advertising, which is why I wanted to talk to you today. You want to give people a sense of some of what you’ve done.
Åsk Wäppling 4:09
Goodness. Yeah. I’ve worked in London. I’ve worked in Amsterdam. I’ve worked in Stockholm. I’ve worked in Copenhagen. So it’s, you know, and everything from butter to cars. Like this is I’m saying better because it’s like, one of the first campaigns I was doing was for butter. And I remember what hell I thought that brief was. And, and yeah, even like, laundry detergent, which was horrible back in the time.
Adam Pierno 4:40
Oh, yeah. I can imagine a bad briefer butter or laundry detergent, for sure. Yeah, it’s Yeah. So he written a bad one for detergent.
Åsk Wäppling 4:48
Yeah, now, so you know. So all the unglamorous things as well as some of the cool stuff like car stuff, of course, is usually cool, but not depending on where you are. Because you’re going have like 15,000 little car and law people trying to agree on one campaign. That’s extremely difficult. Yes. Especially in smaller countries.
Adam Pierno 5:10
It depends on the part of the world depends on the brand. It depends on the dealer network. And yeah, you are in the, in the pecking order what you’re creating. Yeah. There’s there’s probably two teams that could to create something really imaginative.
Åsk Wäppling 5:24
Yeah. But I mean, most recently, I work on apps these days, because, well, basically, for the for the longest time, while I was working in the big agency networks, they were like, Oh, she knows how the computer works. Let’s just put her on the like the you know, the E letter or make her build the website or something and
Adam Pierno 5:42
they want to turn you into an operator as soon as they know you can operate.
Åsk Wäppling 5:44
Yeah, and and, and I always found that incredibly insulting. So I was always sort of kicking and screaming my way into those areas. And then it’s like, well, now I’m working on apps because yes, I do understand how these things work, but I need to think bigger like you do with a campaign. I mean, you’re not when you’re making TV commercials, it’s not just oh, this is a script. It’s also, this is the the main idea that goes for the entire campaign. I really don’t like it when they silo people into it. You can only do direct mail or you can only do radio, or you can only do this that just, that’s the wrong way of thinking for me.
Adam Pierno 6:18
Yeah, that’s always a challenging place for creatives, especially in those big shops where there’s a need for order. But people want to cross lines, or they want to have ideas and show talk about how the idea translates and not just work on the assembly line and say, Oh, I got the DM part of this. So I’m going to create the direct mailer version of this huge idea that came from television. Yeah, work.
Åsk Wäppling 6:44
I mean, that’s, that’s why people, I think, grow faster and smaller shops because you do get to touch more areas of things, and you will understand how a 360 campaign works because you get to actually do it.
Adam Pierno 6:55
Yeah. I think that the way a brain develops Inside a holding company shop versus a small shop is a lot different that either person can’t get to the same place eventually, but it’s just that the pace of the development is a lot different. The shape of it. But what I was hoping to talk to you about today was, since you’ve been doing this since the 90s, as have I, we have come through some pretty crazy ups and downs in the from an industry standpoint, we saw the.com boom and bust every brief I had was a.com that was some new thing that was like it’s this but on the internet. And then the boss, as you said, and then it was like, Oh, am I still gonna have a job? What happens now?
Åsk Wäppling 7:41
Hmm. And I was freelancing for a moment there too. And I was offered shares and everything that was fun. Oh,
Adam Pierno 7:50
dodged a bullet.
Åsk Wäppling 7:51
Yeah, I was like, I’m not taking shares. I can’t pay rent with shares. That’s not happening.
Adam Pierno 7:55
I even remember a friend that I had was working at agency.com and so that was the the worst of both worlds. But I remember she was at a party where they I think they went public and it was like this huge party. And then it was like three months later the.com bust started and the shares just were worthless. Yeah, it was the worst. Bad luck bad. Yeah. But then after that, we took a little while we pumped it back up, and we got back to the great recession was the next downturn for and I know we both lived and work through that.
Åsk Wäppling 8:32
Oh, yeah. I made sure to have babies through that. That was fun.
Adam Pierno 8:35
Yeah, now that I did, too. I had a one and a three year old when that all started when I realized like, Oh, I couldn’t have possibly time this worse.
Åsk Wäppling 8:44
So I buy a place to live have kids? Yeah. Did you do? Yes.
Would you like to hear more from Adam? Book him as a live or virtual speaker
Adam Pierno 8:51
I think we’re under the same cursive moon here. And then but now this this downturn that we’re in now or whatever the hell this is. It feels different for a variety of reasons. But there’s a lot of similarities to both of those, just the existential dread portion of it that I’m making similar. And so I’ve been talking to different people and asking their feelings and thoughts about some about forecasting and thinking about the future. But I wanted to talk to you, well, maybe thinking through those past downturns and comparing how this one feels compared to those or your perspective on them, since you’ve not only lived and worked in all three, but you’ve been cataloguing the work along the way for all three, so I thought your perspective would be really interesting.
Åsk Wäppling 9:42
Well, I think the work itself will definitely change because every time something like this happened, the styler advertising has changed quite a lot. And but I think we have to look further back to the Great Depression to see the thinking and how That’s going to change. Because I brought up with you earlier about what was going on in the Great Depression where some guy decided that he was going to put patterns on flower bags, because he Yeah, he thought it was a great idea that the housewife is going to show choose the bag that has the best pattern on it because she’s going to use the bag to make children’s clothing and whatever on it. So he actually patented that in 1922. And I just think this kind of way of thinking is really smart because that birth another industry, it’s the flower bag pattern guys. So that makes you know, the people who used to do just cloth for sale, they’re now selling to the flower bag distributors, right. And, and that way you could keep industries going. I mean, we have to think more in that kind of way, how you connect with other industries in order to make things work. And some of the great ideas during the Depression. I mean, they were Burnett had that idea that he would always have the apples in the reception of red apples. And then it was like anybody can tell me, I don’t know the story. Well, Leo Burnett opened in Chicago during the Great Depression. And so he had this advertising agency, and he would like, do advertising for any client who came in. And anybody who came in there would always be able to take the red apples from the reception. So you know, no matter what they did, they would always go home or the bread, apple, you know, they’d get something. And these are like, these are really hard times where people might actually be hungry, right? So a shop owner who hadn’t had a snack for a while, at least, you know, he spends half an hour talking to this guy, maybe we can do advertising with you. He gets a red apple. And people were saying to him, this is a ridiculous thing to do, because you’re gonna be selling those red apples on the street and like six months, you can’t start an advertising agency during the Depression. It’s not gonna happen. The worst downturn in
Adam Pierno 11:56
history at that point. Yeah,
Åsk Wäppling 11:57
exactly. But he attracted enough people to come in There, maybe it was the apples maybe it wasn’t, but just by his attitude that he had so many clients from the teeniest tiniest ones to the big ones, that were that still exists, right? So I think it’s it’s a shift in attitude that we really have to think about now.
Adam Pierno 12:14
It was a massive lead gen campaign.
Åsk Wäppling 12:19
Yeah. I mean is if you look at it now, there’s there’s a lot of agencies who are holding on I mean, you’re gonna you. Another thing that we were, Burnett said was that 75% of my inventory goes down the elevator every night. He knew it was the people at the advertising agency that was worth something. So if you look at what’s happening today, and with people being laid off, left and right everywhere, and then there’s agencies that are holding on to everybody just because they know that they can get some sort of bailout and be they are going to drop these people later because the business is not going to be the same, right? We’re going to keep track of these agencies. We’re going to know who did that. Bend, I think a lot of people who are sort of hangers on in the business sort of blagged their way in and don’t really know what they’re doing. They’re not going to be here in six months.
Adam Pierno 13:13
Well, let’s remember during the Great Recession, having a similar thought that you can’t, you can’t you’re not going to be able to bullshit your way through this. You know, everybody was getting laid off in in big chunks, big waves. And I remember thinking like, how, how are these people that I that we know are the people you just described? How are they still hanging on and some of them some of them did make it through and still survive, but I This feels like a much steeper cliff. And advertising has a weird it’s not even advertising people have a weird short memory, short term memory thing. Yeah. The next generation of people who want in Don’t, don’t care so much about the last generation that got booted out to make room for them. Always it’s not that, that you and I wouldn’t remember what happened at agency A or B. But the students that are graduating this year next year, they just want to work. They just passionate about advertising. So sometimes they’re forgiving, maybe it’s something about Gen Z, that they do care. And they do have that cultural conscience where they’re paying attention and looking forward and say, Nope, that’s a bad shop. I’m not going there. And I will reward them with my time and attention. But I think you have to say,
Åsk Wäppling 14:30
I don’t know. I mean, the youngest generation has been spending so long now. claiming to have fire for causes that I don’t even know so many causes recently that every time you look at an ad, it’s like it’s cramming in all these different causes. And and you’re wondering what the ad is about eventually. But all of that is going to disappear. So the question is, if that young generation are still going to be like, Well, you know, we still care more about the causes. than anything else? I mean, will they really do that when there’s only five jobs left and 27? Looking for them?
Adam Pierno 15:08
That’s the that’s the question. I mean, any cause based, anything I’ve researched about it or read about it is that all things being equal, they prefer the cause they prefer sustainability. They prefer XY and Z. This isn’t doesn’t just apply to the young generation. But if it’s $10, more, like, well, $10 less I can get something that, you know, spits carbon into the air like crazy. By saying that 10 bucks.
Åsk Wäppling 15:33
Yeah, exactly. No, but I mean, I remember in the 90s it was like such a big deal that everything had to be recycled. And, you know, every single item that you ever use, from your, your, your books, to your paper, to your hairspray, whatever, always had to, like have to do with something with nature, and it had to cost more. And I was traveling around the world, and I saw that this happened in America, and this happened in the UK, and this happened in Sweden, but at the same time, it was like, It’s awful. More. And right, I can’t spend this money
Adam Pierno 16:05
in some Something’s got to give. Yeah, right. I want I want both. I want it to be affordable, because I would like to continue eating and also do the thing I need wear clothes, for example, or have hairspray.
Åsk Wäppling 16:18
I think it’s actually a good thing now because it’s like I’ve been really fed up with all these ads that are more or less all about the causes instead of the product. And you can you can see the the agencies that do it and the clients that do it by looking at their COVID ads, because they’re all like piano, we’re feeling like this bad. We’re all at home together. We’re all in this together. Everybody’s doing the same app. And it’s, it’s annoying, but it’s also at the other side of it. We’re going to have to be doing things that are different, we’re going to have to be thinking different and I’m really looking forward to that because
it’s just all the same at this point.
Adam Pierno 16:56
I’m not that interested in knowing that a soda company is standing With me
Åsk Wäppling 17:01
you know, nobody cares. I don’t care. There’s a there’s an agency called lucky in Atlanta and they have this bank regionals. I can’t remember the name of the bank regionals something or other and what they did immediately was that they donated from regional bank all of their media by to regional like food banks.
Adam Pierno 17:22
Oh, that’s, that’s a real thing. That’s a real thing.
Åsk Wäppling 17:25
Exactly. Actual to help people. Yes. So that’s a real thing in and I think that’s the kind of thing that is going to make people notice especially locally because now everything is going to be hyper local again, I mean, everybody travelled the world forever and we were having like, you know, Christmas and Thailand and go into Fiji for our little getaways and whatnot.
Adam Pierno 17:47
So like you were I did not do any of these things, but it sounds amazing. Jesus,
Åsk Wäppling 17:55
I wasn’t I wasn’t but the the Instagram influencers were and and now they’re sitting there. booing over their Instagrams with their giant lips going, I can’t go anywhere. It’s too bad. Nobody else
Adam Pierno 18:05
can either. I was thinking, Oh, it’s funny. I just walked in this room from from the other room where my wife was lamenting that there’s no celebrity news. She’s like she was looking on. She was flipping through the channels. And she’s like, Entertainment Tonight has nothing to talk about. And I’m like, do you think some of the celebrities are pretty worried that they won’t be famous when this is all over? Because where they’re found out that they you know, the, the US Weekly, they’re just like a section. It’s like, Oh, that’s really the truth. And most most celebrities unless you’re in that upper stratosphere of movie stars, they really are just people that don’t deserve any special treatment or any special all.
Åsk Wäppling 18:43
Yeah, it’s it’s fascinating how much like how quickly Hollywood dropped into nothing because la suddenly shut down and you’re not even allowed to go out on your classic pack walks, which is when you walk in slow motion in front of a guy, a bunch of guys and pushes Carolina’s because you are I’ve seen pap walks they literally do that.
Adam Pierno 19:02
Yeah. And they’re trying to fuel the machine they’re trying to fill.
Åsk Wäppling 19:05
Yeah. Pretending to walk a dog. Right? And they’re doing this thing like, don’t take a picture of me. It’s it is and then they they share a little bit of the profit from that. So now they’re nobody’s left outside. I mean, it that’s not an essential business so they can’t go out and do that.
Adam Pierno 19:21
I wonder how soon it’ll be before I don’t even recognize some of the quote unquote celebrities. You know, there’s some there’s some that are that are, you know, movie stars that I would recognize. But there’s there was already a number of people that are famous for being on reality shows and things that I just could never, I hadn’t connected with. Yeah, for three months off, how many will just fade away?
Åsk Wäppling 19:41
I mean, it’s interesting. I mean, I have one of the kids is a teenage girl. And so she’s going through her Instagram and she’s getting upset with how much that is focused on what you look like. And so she just decided to delete it. A couple of weeks later, I come into her room and she’s reading every book in the house. Like, that’s, you know, that’s a good development. That’s nice.
Adam Pierno 20:04
That’s a nice turn of events, isn’t it?
Åsk Wäppling 20:06
Yes, it’s great. And it’s like, that’s exactly what we should do. I feel that some of these apps are literally programming our children. And it’s not something that we should be encouraging. I mean, it’s not a coincidence that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t let his kids do it.
Adam Pierno 20:21
Yeah, that should tell you everything you need to know. I think, theoretically, theoretically,
Åsk Wäppling 20:27
theoretically, but yeah, so the Instagram algorithm is constantly following you and and if you look at the advertising on this, too, I have several accounts just for the fun of it. And I’ve created these accounts to be different people and I see if the advertising is directed to the different people. It has no clue what my different people are. Yeah, cuz like the one where I’m normal. Just me. I’m still getting like ads directed to men. And it’s like, yeah, that’s that’s not for me. That’s you know, and then sometimes it will be directed to man, but It would be like something that I would actually like, like, here’s a scotch subscription. It’s like, Yeah, I would like that.
Adam Pierno 21:05
But the ad wasn’t written for you.
Åsk Wäppling 21:07
Yeah, it was written for a date. So I’m like, yeah, here we like, here we are with all this powerful stuff. And our to our advantage, supposedly, where we were supposed to be able to target perfectly and we can’t target. I mean, that’s, that’s what I was looking forward to when it came to internet advertising that we would be able to actually reach the actual target market. I would take that trade off. I still get ads in Spanish language on Twitter.
Adam Pierno 21:35
You do? Yeah. Which I’ve been using since 2008. I think. I mean, I’ve only spoken English on that.
Åsk Wäppling 21:43
Wow, you should mention that reference. You should go and check your language things because I used to get I had some Tagalog for some reason. And it turned out it’s because of people I follow and that I like stuff that they write in that language.
Adam Pierno 21:56
It could be I do I’m pretty I’m pretty fair with the follow back. So could I’m sure that there’s I know I see stuff in Spanish but I don’t write in Spanish. I would think that would be the cater but who knows. So back to the wonderful world of ads, and the ad industry. Do you did you when you were going through the Great Recession Did you think much about Did you compare it much to the.com bust? Having been through now a
Åsk Wäppling 22:25
lot of other people I knew did, but I didn’t, because I thought it was quite different. the.com bust was like, letting air out of a balloon that really shouldn’t have gotten that big in the first place. Right. But the great recession was basically it hit the us more than hit Sweden, for example. It hit other countries in Europe pretty hard as well, and I didn’t think it was that bad.
I mean, it should you didn’t think was that bad? Oh, you mean the Thirties? No, I thought I thought you meant like when when the bank market went out and
Adam Pierno 23:01
yeah, I mean 2011 versus versus 99 2000.
Åsk Wäppling 23:06
Yeah, no, it was it wasn’t it wasn’t that bad. It didn’t hit the certain areas of Europe in the same way that it hit the US where it was absolutely disaster. And at the same time, I mean, in in Sweden, for example, we had a bank recession in 9495. And that’s right when I had taken student loans. So the Swedish krona went like this drama has been around all the time. I’m just like, every 10 years, I’m supposed to get used to it. So like in 94, I borrowed money to go to school in New York. And back then, the Swedish kronor to $1 was about five. And I think the semester at Parsons was about $5,000 and I got to borrow, like a whole bunch of Corona. So it was not only I would pay for my semester, I would be pay for my apartment. Everything was great on this loan. And then by the next semester, the Swedish krona was 13 to $1 and Then they raised the price of the semester at Parsons. So it was $7,800. And like half of everybody who studied with me, they had to go home. And once you go home interrupting your studies, you’re never able to borrow money again for that topic. So, you know, they were starting as putting, you know, designers or illustrators or anything that they started as they could never continue. So they would have to quit their studies and just go into another field.
Adam Pierno 24:29
Were you able to hang on?
Åsk Wäppling 24:30
Yeah, I worked at Starbucks. Yeah,
Adam Pierno 24:33
we so we found a way to make it work. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That’s amazing. That’s incredible.
Åsk Wäppling 24:41
So it’s like, there’s always there’s always some drama. You’re just gonna have to be able to roll with the punches.
Adam Pierno 24:47
And were you in the states for the Great Recession?
Åsk Wäppling 24:52
No, I wasn’t. I was in Malmo. I was in Sweden.
Adam Pierno 24:55
Okay, and it didn’t hit as hard there.
Åsk Wäppling 24:57
No, it did. I mean, I just bought a place and everything but
Adam Pierno 25:00
Yeah. So do you think, based on what, you know? Is this this? How is this differently shaped than than the last downturn? Do you think?
Åsk Wäppling 25:12
I think this is actually going to change a lot of things because of this has impacted every single class it’s it’s not just you know, the working class, it’s impacted everybody on higher levels, rich people, they watched all their stocks drop, and I think people are, you know, personally affected in a different way. So I think they’re, they’re, they’re gonna there’s a lot of things that people are going to reconsider. Now. It’s like if they’re going to place a factory to make something somewhere and they’re not going to place it. In a far off land. I think people are going to concentrate more on locally produced things in every way, shape and form, not just, you know, items and food because now we realize, wow, it’d be great if we grow food in our backyard and now that we can’t leave the house today. Go the grocery store. I mean, it’s just really making people think about this. Yeah. Or I don’t want to have to stop making cars so that I can make ventilators. Right. So I, I think people are just going to reconsider all of this and re strategize.
Adam Pierno 26:16
Yeah, I’ve also been thinking a lot about maker culture and all the maker labs and and workshops that have all of a sudden been cranking out PGP and all kinds of different tools and things that are needed. And for a long time, I remember, I remember maybe five or six years ago, 3d printers started getting really cheap, and everybody’s saying they’re going to get one. And if those Maker Studios started getting popular, but never quite got over the hump, people really engaging in them and and figuring out how they could grow and become culturally important as wired wanted you to think they were. But this this is the moment where I say, oh, they’re looking it devalues right there. Very quickly there’s a market need and they’re producing things at breakneck speed that industry, you know, industry that is protected by the government couldn’t figure out how to do.
Åsk Wäppling 27:12
Yeah, it’s pretty incredible. So it’s it is definitely a pivotal moment for them. But it’s also for forgotten skills, like anything that you we were able to do 20 years ago, can be brought back. I mean, it’s like, even simple stuff like growing your own food. We could have done that on our balcony at any point.
Adam Pierno 27:33
You just didn’t. You didn’t have take the time to do it.
Åsk Wäppling 27:36
Yeah, exactly. Not that we didn’t have the time. We just didn’t take the time. Yeah, I think Yeah, people are gonna like reconsider time a lot, too. There’s a creative director, friend of mine are like 90. He’s not a creative director. He’s an ECD at this point, but he hasn’t spent this much time with his family before in a long time. And he suddenly realizes that, wow, I should, this is this is a good thing, and I really enjoy this and I should spend more time With my family, and maybe that will change how people have always considered advertising. It’s always like, oh, the one who’s their latest. He’s the most ambitious, which isn’t true. I mean, I go and work. I don’t have to sit in the office to be the most ambitious one there. No. And the
Adam Pierno 28:18
the next step of that thought process is I just go home. You know, it’s six o’clock, I’m done for the day, my brain is done. I can’t think of any more ideas, or I finished what I needed to do. And I’m just gonna go home and be with my family. I mean, think about that a lot. You know, they don’t have to keep that that crank turning all the time.
Åsk Wäppling 28:38
Oh, yeah. I mean, people I’ve always been complaining, Oh, we don’t have enough women in advertising. That has to be because you can’t take time off and actually be with your kids if you have them and all that stuff. And I don’t think that’s the reason. I mean, it’s true, though, that a lot of women in advertising they they sort of swerve off and become freelance designers instead of like becoming CEOs but I That’s because women in advertising, they’re usually on the design side. And that’s not an uncommon route. Whereas it’s copywriters that climb up to the CEO levels. And you should look more at like, what area you’re in, first of all, but second of all, it’s like, there’s a lot of people that I know in advertising who have kids at home, who are dudes who are like, yeah, I’m going to go freelance because I don’t like the fact that I’m not spending enough time with my kids. So if we’re going to look at it, we should look at it more of like, why don’t we have like more flexible hours for people who have families like Why? Why are we always acting like for 20 year olds, we can work 24 hours a day.
You just read this whole thing? Hmm. If you’ve got time on your hands, you might like Specific or Under Think It.
Adam Pierno 29:39
I missed I both missed those days and do not miss those days of having that drive. So sometimes, three o’clock, I’m like, well, that’s the end of this. My brain is
Åsk Wäppling 29:48
like I even used to say when I was younger, it’s like your bad planning does not make my emergency. Like I am supposed to be able to go home and have dinner.
Adam Pierno 29:56
Yeah, yes, that’s what most of my 20s We’re figuring out how to solve a problem overnight.
Åsk Wäppling 30:03
That was, yeah. And it’s like, I’m not gonna figure out that problem. I have concert tickets. Yeah.
Adam Pierno 30:10
Yeah, now you can afford half concert tickets. Exactly. Once you’re out of your early 20s.
Åsk Wäppling 30:15
Yeah. But at the same time in your early 20s, I mean, everybody thought that the only way to get ahead was to always be at work. And I was like, No, I’m getting these concert tickets, and I’m going and then it’s like, I come back to work. And I’m like, I have this great idea. And I saw this musician the other night, because you will only get inspired if you actually have a life.
Adam Pierno 30:32
If you don’t have a life. You can’t do anything. No, if you’re 100% insulated in your day at your desk, nothing. Nothing great really happens. You can fill out the form but yeah, filling it out in an interesting way.
Åsk Wäppling 30:43
Wow, exactly. So if you get stuck there, you’re just gonna fill out the form the same exact way all the time.
Adam Pierno 30:48
Yeah, I’ve been wondering since people have had, you know, have been isolated and have had time to kind of be idle. Whether whether you’re actively idle Whether you’re pursuing some kind of a hobby or whether you’re just able to be around your family, how much that will change people’s actions and decision making going forward. Because it’s almost trite at this point to say things would change when we come out of this. But I don’t know for sure how long people’s memory is, I guess it could depend on how long were isolated.
Åsk Wäppling 31:22
I think it depends on what generation people are to because younger generations seem to not remember anything that happened before 2000 which is fascinating to me.
Adam Pierno 31:30
Yeah, well, it’s I don’t remember it or they weren’t alive.
Åsk Wäppling 31:36
Yeah, they weren’t alive. So therefore nothing existed. And it’s just like really?
Adam Pierno 31:42
It I’m the same way about the generation immediately before I was born. I don’t have any
Åsk Wäppling 31:49
any inkling of what’s actually happening now.
Adam Pierno 31:51
I don’t understand it. There was like the Beatles and then a blind spot and then I was born.
Åsk Wäppling 31:58
Yeah, no, I’m I mean, I guess I’m I’m sort of blessed in a way that might like I’m from a family where everybody’s from a different generation. So my brother is an actual Boomer, which I think is hilarious, because when everybody started saying, okay, Boomer, it’s like, haha, now I got something I can tell him, because we’re still doing that thing where we tease each other. So it’s just, it’s just strange because he lived through an era that I didn’t see.
Adam Pierno 32:22
Yes, exactly.
Åsk Wäppling 32:23
And, and yeah, so for him, it was like, Yeah, when he turned 18 they gave him an apartment and car, you know, when I turned 18, nothing like that happened. I was paying my way through college. Completely different story. So just a different world. Yeah. And and it’s just it could be five years, but 10 years is a big deal. But it’s still even five years makes a huge difference when you’re young.
Adam Pierno 32:47
Yeah. Do you think or have you already noticed changes in the way you’re working? Or do you think you’ll be
Åsk Wäppling 32:53
No, I’ve been working from home since forever. So the only thing is that I’m working more for some reason. Because it’s always like you don’t know If anybody’s going to be able to pay you at this point, so you take on more work,
Adam Pierno 33:05
just to fill the pipeline, and
Åsk Wäppling 33:06
yeah, just to make sure. Oh, that’s scary. Yeah. But at the same time, it’s like, I see a lot of opportunities happen, I see a lot of ideas that I’m getting, and I’m like contacting people going, this is great. We should absolutely, you know, make use of this time. Because I think a lot of things can change. And I have a really positive I like idea that the future is actually going to be better. And a lot of people are like, being really down about it. And, and sad, but I’m like, we can localize we can change things. And I think that if we actually do it the right way, there’s there’s going to be massive differences.
Adam Pierno 33:45
And I think like what’s the response that you get to that? Are people do they buy it when you when you present
Åsk Wäppling 33:50
it to them? Or are they small companies that are local or just jumping on it? They’re like, yeah, this is the only thing we can do. I mean, it’s like if you take like three Local burger joints in Burbank, for example, they started up. What do you call it in? When you have these roller skater surfers, because nobody’s allowed to go into the burger joints anymore. They brought back the roller skater hops. Yeah, yeah, car hops. They brought them back. They just like put them up in uniforms with masks and gloves. And now they rollerskate out and serve people. And so it’s like a Yeah, it’s a throwback to the 50s because these places have been around since then. So they’re bringing it back. And just making this is how we serve you know, and so that becomes a thing. We love it. Yeah, of course. So now they’re getting more people coming there to get their burgers on the drive thru. Because some phony Yeah, because you could have gone anywhere. You could have gone to one of these modern burger places, but they’re going to the old school ones because the old school can bring back the old school. Do you think there’s a will be a favoritism for or a preference for experiences because what you’re describing to me sounds like more experiential and interesting fan the modern experience of what we’ve come to know as the fast casual burger that stand in line, put together, get whatever the cool is not going to be the touch the same computer screen that everybody else touches. You know, we’re gonna drop all that for a moment. I feel like I keep coming back to the world local, I know. But it’s, I feel everything that’s historical and local is coming back. Because if we’re not going to be able to travel for a moment, everything that we haven’t seen that’s actually close by is going to be our little vacations, our little day trip to like if we before went to Fiji or Thailand or whatever. Now we’re not going to do that for a moment. We’re going to actually seek out what was really cool near us. So if you’re in Arizona, where could you drive you could go see the Grand Canyon zoo.
Adam Pierno 35:56
was already done that yet. We have we have done it but I haven’t taken my kids yet. It was on our list actually, but we didn’t get to do it because of this. So maybe we’ll go.
Åsk Wäppling 36:04
Yeah. See, that’s, that’s a huge thing. I haven’t seen the Grand Canyon. I’ve seen it. I flew by once, which was pretty impressive. So but I should do the thing where I actually look at
Adam Pierno 36:12
it. That’s amazing. You should do it. Yeah. All right. When this is all over, we’re going to the Grand Canyon. We’re doing it. Yeah. All right. Cool. To family trip. We’re going
Åsk Wäppling 36:22
but that’s the thing. Yeah, camping those like, those normal like 1970s kind of things. I mean, 1970s was also recession. There were gas lines in the United States. Yeah. And in Sweden at the time, there was always people saying that. We have to turn off the lights in like, in the city, in the malls and stuff. So you wouldn’t have lights on in the window shops, like so. Because you don’t want to waste electricity when there’s a gas shortage, right? So I lived through that too. It’s just every 10 years, something’s gonna happen. It’s just a cycle. It’s a cycle. It’s a thing. It’s like, you know, Mother Earth is a woman. It’s a cycle.
Adam Pierno 37:04
I’m not touching that. That’s why it took me a while to say and you can barely get it out. I will. This is fantastic. Thank you very much for making time to chat with me. I appreciate it. And I appreciate this. So thanks for having me on. Where can people find you online besides Atlanta TV?
Åsk Wäppling 37:21
Well, it’s always on atlanta.tv. But they can also find me online and on well, Atlanta on Twitter, and then I have
Adam Pierno 37:30
a podcast Actually, I know, tell me about it.
Åsk Wäppling 37:33
It’s pretty fun. The only thing I do is that I just call up somebody that says has something to do with something that’s actually happening right now. And it was thanks to this woman named Billy Wilson. And she was talking about Harry and Megan, the Royals, and I decided to gossip about them. So it’s always like some sort of topic that is current that we talk
Adam Pierno 37:54
about. Is it always like extremely day of current events or is it
Åsk Wäppling 38:00
Some time for you. It’s just top of mine and like how advertising has to do with it kind of thing. It could be anything.
Adam Pierno 38:07
What’s the name of the podcast?
Åsk Wäppling 38:09
Adland Podcast, it’s pretty simple.
Adam Pierno 38:13
Where can people find
Åsk Wäppling 38:15
Adland.TV? And on iTunes and on Spotify
Adam Pierno 38:19
go? You gotta tell people, they will not find it unless you tell them exactly what button to push.
Åsk Wäppling 38:24
I know. That’s so good.
Adam Pierno 38:27
I will definitely link to it in the notes on this show, for sure. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much for making time. Good to chat with you again.
Åsk Wäppling 38:34
Good to chat with you too. Cheers. I’ll see you in the feed. All right.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai