Ben Perreira is learning through repetition

How often do you look back at your old work? A funny thing happened during the recording of this episode. My guest, Ben Perreira began describing something he had done earlier in his career and made an off-hand joke about a decision he made. But we continued to discuss, and he arrived at an insight about what he learned from that experience. I got the feeling he hadn’t thought much about that before, as in, he hadn’t consciously recognized the lesson that he had clearly internalized.

This week, someone posted a photo of something from a book on Twitter. And when I saw it, I smirked. “That’s clever,” I thought before reading the caption, in which I had been tagged. Because I had written it. It was a quote from my first book which was released in 2017 and I forgot all about it. It has literally* been five-hundred years since that book. It got me thinking about going back to our old works, the lessons we’ve already learned. The lessons we already created. In the meantime, I’m creating an online course for small businesses, based on the work I do for larger brands. Going back through my writing and work, it’s a ridiculous amount of knowledge to sift through. Do you realize how much we have to know to make these decisions seem so simple?

If you’ve been doing this strategy thing for a while, you’ve probably already thought about the request that just landed in your inbox. More than once. You might have already written about it, and almost definitely created some slides on it. I’ve been going back through the archives to remind myself all of the challenges I’ve already faced, which I believe gives me confidence for the next challenges to come.

Links:
https://twitter.com/ben_perreira/status/1372244956606132224
https://twitter.com/ben_perreira/

Here’s a transcript of the audio. Want to hear it first-hand? Just head here or wherever you get your podcasts: add link

Adam Pierno: All right, welcome back to another episode of The Strategy Inside Everything I am excited today because we are going to talk to someone I’ve known for a while but in typical digital fashion I haven’t really met until just now so we’ve been talking for almost 20 minutes and then I remembered we have to record an episode and make this a productive conversation. So, well if you would please welcome my guest today is Ben Perreira, then how are you?
Ben Perreira: I’m doing great. I’m really glad to be be talking to you
Adam: Great spending time with you and thanks for making time to join us.
Ben: Thanks man. It’s my pleasure.
Adam: So Ben you are currently senior manager of integrated digital strategy at Mattel, but your career. You’ve been in a lot of agencies you’ve been at Condé Nast agencies, big and small and a lot of different roles you’ve freelanced around as well. So I’m interested in hearing how you kind of the shape of your career before we get into the topic and how you got to Mattel if you wouldn’t mind giving people a little background.
Ben: Yeah, of course, it’s been a bit of a wander. I started when I got out of undergrad, I wanted I wanted to work in marketing but I didn’t know how to you know how to get into it, I didn’t know what agencies were I studied sociology and was kind of just in this bubble where I was really interested in the academics of it, and I was interested in surfing, and that was it. And so I got out, and, you know, the real world, kind of hit me and I was working odd jobs and I ended up working on this project that that eventually became what is now the World Surf League, but it was at that point was just kind of a pipe dream that a few people had.
Adam: Did you think it was going to work.
Ben: I didn’t think it was going to work. I thought it was a really good idea.
Adam: But what did you think? You didn’t think the appetite was there.
Ben: I didn’t think, well, I guess it was one of those things that became really clear, as we as we went through it, that there were just a lot of structural barriers you had. There were a lot of people who had a vested interest in keeping things the way they were.
Adam: Yeah, that might that make sense.

Ben: So we kind of, we tried to storm the castle, we failed. The, but it was two or three years later, a few of the same people got back together. And the idea of rose from the ashes. And it’s been really cool to see. Yeah, I can’t take any credit for what you know for what it is now but it was it was a really cool thing at 23 or so to be thrust into, and I was, you know, I’d like on the phone or emailing with tourism boards and Ireland or Barbados and we are trying to come up with this separate tour and meeting sports agents and kind of the you know the plan was the next year to be gone, the whole year, you know to be on this tour that I was planning so I’m like, okay, Ireland, you
17:18:15 know sounds cool Barbados sounds cool all these Morocco, I think we were planning on.
Adam: You got to plan it all but you didn’t get to go.
Ben: Yep. And then, so I was trying to figure out what to do next and I you know I knew that I you know I didn’t have any formal business education I’ve never taken a business class. And so I wanted I wanted that that base and one of the people that I’ve worked for was a Harvard MBA and I saw his confidence and you get a lot of a lot of knowledge that I felt like I, you know, would benefit from. So, I was, you know, I was unemployed, I was like, Okay, I’ll go back to school, you know I had planned I’ve been planning on getting an MBA at some point. I think I was 24, I was too. I was just about three years out of school when I started at LMU. So, I would recommend, I get asked a lot. I would recommend you wait. If anyone out there is listening I recommend, knowing what you want to do, having a really clear sense of what an MBA will unlock for you as opposed to, you know, doing it because you have a lot of free time and you can’t figure out what to do, but do you do it.
Adam: Did you do it full time or do you do a part time around a job?
Ben: I did it full time. Yeah,
Adam: Okay, that’s a big commitment.
Ben: Yeah, so it was, I kind of dove in headfirst and met a lot of interesting people obviously learned a ton, and became really interested in the startup world, you know, at that point, Google, had been in LA, but they had just moved to the west coast. Snapchat hadn’t quite opened up in Venice yet but it was sort of around the time that there was this nascent tech scene silicon Beach was just, you know that that that term was just being applied there, so I ended up working with this guy who’s x Google X YouTube he was the first kind of YouTube’s first creator focused salesperson, you know, this is 2011 that I met him so it had been, I think he started Google in 2007 or so.
Adam: Wow.
Ben: And he had this idea to connect to that at the time we talked about it as cloud needs Kickstarter. So, it was to kind of which kind of dates it appropriately. It was the idea was to let content creators reward their fans for getting getting views or getting getting follows. I worked for him for a few months just says, you know basically as an MBA in turn, and he ended up building the company and then selling it for years later and he’s still one of my mentors and I’m lucky to call them that, but you know I fast forward to me finishing school. I still didn’t know what I was going to do. I had met a lot of people who worked in agencies, and it’s kind of a funny story. So, I met this girl who was, I think she was an account director at Saatchi LA, and she had an account executive opening. And I’m like, I need a job, you know, I need something, and I think paid. It was starting to get, you get to that degree and you’re like okay now it’s time like I’ve got to use this knowledge are going to pay off this degree here how are we going to do this. And you know, to put it into perspective, I think. Up to that point, I got it, I got a letter from the IRS at one point, that outlined what I had made like the previous five years, and it was like 17,000 13,014, like it was not.
Adam: They were like “We don’t believe that you don’t want to admit this much. You’re not reporting something.”
Ben: It was just like, you know, I was figuring out how to get by, you know, and I was living in Venice at the time. Now you have to be a multimillionaire to live in Venice but at the time, and, you know, whatever it was working. I think the job that say it paid like 50 grand or 50 I was like “This is incredible. This is more than I’ve made the last three years combined. I just need this job.” So I’m interviewing, and they’re, and they’re talking through the day to day and talking through all the different departments, and they’re like, you know, there’s like production and this is what they do creative, you know what do and then we have this other department that does they go they do research they go into people’s houses they interview them, and I’m like, and you really didn’t know what was what no I didn’t know what any of this stuff was and I’m like, I’m like, that’s cool that’s, that sounds really interesting but I don’t care I need this job that I’m interviewing for because I need to make some money, you know, within a month. I didn’t get the job. And then, like a month later, I get an email from a recruiter at Conill, which is Saatchi’s Spanish agency which was in the bottom floor of that same building.
Adam: Yeah.
Ben: And she’s like, “Hey, we have this planning opening on on TMobile, we’re doing a rebrand of T Mobile”. And I’m like, “Oh, this is that job that that down director it’s talking about.” So, I tripped and fell into this profession, it’s, it’s pretty you know it’s pretty absurd.

Adam: I think we all do. I think it’s all kind of an accident.
Ben: So, you know, of course I get that gig. And three weeks later I’m, you know, in the back behind the glass in New York watching focus groups in Spanish, which I speak enough Spanish to get in trouble. But, you know, I’m kind of just, just straight into it, just immersed into being a planner. And, you know, fast forward, you know, a couple years I work for Conill for a little while for about nine months I was on this kind of permanent month to month freelancing freelance at a couple different Hispanic agencies because, you know, you kind of once you’ve done that, you’re, I was kind of Hispanic marketing guy. And then got found out a better job at Innocean. And they had, you know, they’ve, they’ve had Hyundai forever they had never really had a planner on the retail business. And so, you know, they did just use strategy and put it against calm and brand and doing product launches but you know the retails just this machine and your budgets like 40 bucks.
Adam: I know,
Ben: And you just kind of its strategy light right but for me it was a perfect gig at that time, because it was reps, you know I was writing several briefs a day it was like okay we’re doing an out of home thing in Connecticut. All right, Well, who, you know, what’s who’s driving by. What are we trying to communicate what do they care about what’s, who’s our client, you just got like the quick, let’s let’s bang through it, that’s okay I’m.
Adam: Let me quickly figure out what do I need to know what can I know what can I know what do I need people to do how who’s available to help bring something to life.
Ben: And how do I how do I feed the creative process you know without slowing it down is what ultimately what I what I learned how to do. So, did that for, I think it was there just under a year, and then I got recruited to go to toys to work and Volkswagen, and then six months later, diesel gate hit, so I got, you know, baby’s first crisis, which was which was a wild ride. I made a lot of great friends there, I was there for four years I worked in Volkswagen for three of that we defended the business a couple times. The last, you know, a losing battle, but then got to work on H&R Block, and Solo and do some, you know, some positioning and product launch work on that cool and then one day and, in a nutshell,
Adam: What do you see as some of the differences going from, so you’ve been at startups you’ve been at agencies. You’ve been at Conde is it in house job but it’s also a publisher and they have serious hardcore brands in their portfolio. How do you see the difference between agency world and being inside a brand like Mattel where there’s these. I mean, the, the brands inside Mattel how every one of them is household name or you know there’s there’s just so many famous brands in there.
Ben: It’s dramatically different. It’s, you know, I think I was talking to. I’d reach out to Katie Dreke, who’s just incredible if you, you know, I’m sure you’re familiar with her, and we were talking about this because that that she had, I think she started as a plan I think she went back and forth, actually, I think she was a planner and then Adidas and and planner again and then Nike. But the way she described it really stuck with me, which is the metabolism is really different agency. At an agency you just burn hard, you know you’re like, Okay, you Everyone knows your product, it’s the simplest business that your product is just coming up with great ideas can you do it and can you execute it on our site there’s a lot you know what I didn’t realize, then, is we’re getting the ball on the, you know, like on the goal line at an agency you’re getting the ball in the goal line the client has done. We’ve had a million meetings about this stuff we’ve. You know, I don’t personally but someone’s you know has talked to legal is or it has, has secured a budget the budget it’s been revised. You’ve got way more stakeholders than your quote unquote client, when you’re on the agency side, you know, that’s just the person who’s, you know, giving you instructions and it should just be one or two people on. So, the speed is way different, and and the the the creative expectation, I think everyone you know even the, the, you know, people at the entry level or receptionist or whoever and agency is expected to, you know, kind of have a little bit of a creative edge, you’re supposed to kind of push yourself to, and and read on on demand.
Adam: Yeah.
Ben: I don’t think that you know that’s just not, that’s just not the expectation on this is the expectation is to be to be buttoned up to have, you know, to create a business case. And I think for me it’s like, let’s create a business case, that leaves open you know that crack for creativity to to come in. Yeah, because otherwise you’re just kind of you know the word I hate the most is anniversary. You know, “we’ll just like anniversary our plans.” You just, you’re just like, we’ll just change the day. All right, 2021.
Adam: Let’s not do that. Unless Unless last year, deserves an anniversary that we run it back like,
Ben: Let’s not do that that’s not a good.
Adam: That’s not a good thing. I think the word I hate more than anniversary is compliance. I think when I get into something and in strategy I’m writing it’s all about compliance I’m I go though, this is not going to be an enjoyable project for anybody.
Ben: Yeah, so it’s it’s you know it’s an adjustment right because we’re used to, you know, and there, there are plenty of us at Mattel at least tour x agency, but you kind of get used to like on an agency you’re like, I guess maybe, maybe an analogy is like a soccer team versus a baseball team, like, like an agency, you’re playing soccer and it’s just like we score, you know we have, we have roles we have a set play but are you know the it’s relatively simple, how, how we try and win. Where baseball, you’ve got a closer, you’ve got a right fielder you’ve got you know you’ve got like, like everyone has is so fucking good at and there’s an established role
Adam: For sure, like everybody has a spot that they are in that is their particular corner of the field, that’s, that’s a definite distinction from a lot of agencies, where you know people are really really tight and in the responsibilities that that they have.
Ben: Yeah. And if you and, and for most definitely not all, but for a lot of agency people if you moved everyone around the work would get done, it would still be, you know, 75% is good that I don’t think that’s the case on the, on the client side. Now we would cause chaos. For most for most brands that I’ve that I’ve been inside of it. That’s what I’ve observed.
Adam: But is the process of strategy similar like you posted a tweet that I have on my screen here and you’d said that it takes a ton of repetition for clients colleagues and creatives to ingest the strategy fully. You said as a rule of thumb, repeat it simply and clearly until they tell you to shut the hell up. And is that, and I, I read it and that resonated with me immediately. And I can think back to times in the agency where I had to do that where I had to keep saying, remember guys were doing this. Okay, that’s good two seconds later but we’re doing this right. Remember, we’re doing this is that this Do you find that that’s the same across you know startups and across the different types of agencies that you’ve been at because Deutsch is a lot different than Innocean, you know just the volume and speed it at work. Is it the same mechanism of repetition?
Ben: I think the more. Yeah, if anything, it’s more on the client side, it’s more the more compliant on today was the same way, because you have, the more different interests you have, the more you have to kind of thread that needle and make sure you go okay this is the narrative. Now if something’s going to change that let’s change the narrative. But, you know, I think when you’re on a brand. Like, I never worked on Subaru, but I always think about a brand like that or Apple, you know, brands that are probably a little bit boring to work on, because the, the, the, the strategy the creative kind of personality, it’s so consistent, and that’s what it’s nailed down so tight.
Adam: Right.
Ben: I don’t know that the repetition is necessarily as important there because everyone, it’s kind of gospel. At that point, yeah,
Adam: That’s interesting I think Apple and Subaru are great examples to compare to each other too because it for Apple, you could see that it becomes, you’re right that the core strategy is the same. You know that’s nail down tight, but then these are the features we have to talk about it we have to figure out a way that the strategy for an individual communication becomes what feature will we promote and show delight, you know, how are we going to animate that and then for Subaru it’s just like how we’re going to get a dog and is that you gotta, gotta figure out a way to get a dog and
Ben: Well there’s a couple are they like 36 and we’re like 38. No, no, I think they got to be 37 this year. Last year.
Adam: Yeah, exactly. It’s so good.

Ben: I mean it’s got to be maddening I’m sure the creatives are like, it’s probably, it’s probably really boring to work on but but again I think that that’s the, you know, I kind of aspire to work on a brand like that. It’s so consistent that so itself, that everyone kind of gets it right but that that’s that that I think is what we’re chasing in some ways with. And I think within Mattel’s portfolio their brands that are closer to that, that people just get, and probably don’t require a lot of a lot of education they have their own histories they’ve kind of created narratives and worlds that live in in YouTube and advertising and in the product itself outside experiences. There are others that you know are kind of like trying to figure out what they are and have done a lot of really cool things but needs need some pruning to get to be the shape that they should be. Yeah, and, and I think for us on the client side, we have a lot more things pulling us in different directions. You know we have different we have three different insights groups, for instance, so you always have, you know, we have this this embarrassment of riches when it comes to information. But that also means that you know any report that comes out can be a little bit of an inkblot test that can pull you off the strategy so I think having a clear sense of what that narrative is and just continuing to beat that drum, so you know you can assume that, you know, the 75 people or so that you that you interface with remember who you are, what your, what, what you do, you know for us as a new department that’s. I have a, I have a strategy that I you know I like kind of a tagline that I just repeat for our department, I’m like, just think of it like this, like, okay, let’s start there, then this is how you kind of bring us in.
Adam: Yeah, that’s funny. I, I’ve definitely experienced coming into a room and having everybody look at me like, and who are you and what do you what do you do. Oh yeah, let me tell you.
Ben: Every strategist has heard that,
Adam: Yeah, let me explain what what I’m doing here, because I, I know you see my notebook in my glasses, and you’re wondering why I’m here.
Ben: So does that you start the repetition right that. At that point, you’re starting to remind them reinforce even the role of your team and your, your department, kind of what you’re doing. And then about repeating it is we, you know, we came in, and what you know we’re building what is essentially a comms planning function. I think at it at its simplest and then there there are some other. There’s some tentacles that come off that. But functionally that that’s kind of where we sit, because we have different. We have different groups that have different creative and media responsibilities so bringing those things together is. Ironically enough requires its own department
Adam: That is delicious irony. How does, how do they, so I actually can understand why comms planning is yet another spin on strategy it’s another way to. It’s another place where you do need strategy, but I’ve been at agencies that didn’t have comms planning so I get a brand, especially a kind of a brand that has a storied history. I could see confusion of it, how do you message that how do you how do you, how have you effectively explained it to them.
Ben: I don’t know that it’s been effective yet. So I’ll stop short of co-signing on the premise of your, of your question, but I will say what I’m trying to do is, I say that our job is to make creative and media work better together.
Adam: That’s a solid explanation so that, that’s it.
Ben: And, you know, they’re obviously there are a lot of implications to that, but we don’t. You know, I don’t have any decision power over either, so it’s really making sure that the right people are in the room at the right time, that we’re surfacing the right question so we can move forward and that those things can work in sync. But yeah it’s a challenge, you know you have everyone has, you know, kind of back to the baseball analogy Everyone has their own. You know, the kind of their own goals, their own their own KPIs so getting, there’s also that that part of the language of making sure that we acknowledge that you know the the personal side and it’s not to belittle it like I have my own KPIs too. But making sure that we account for the human side of it, that these are people and we. Everyone should be recognized for what they’re good at and should be part of the process,
Adam: Because that’s the same even you can extend that from in the brand organization through the agency. And then the agency has their own KPIs they have their own goals the creative team wants to do something different. Probably the art director might want to do something different than the creative director, and then the agency owner may want to do something different if it’s a small shop or, you know, the account director may be trying to do something unique with the portfolio to go pitch something else, then you hire a director production company, guess what, they got opinions to, they have different things They have different things they want to do so, it’s, are you extending all the way out through that or, or do you kind of put the ship in the, in the water and just set it off? And hopefully, it got far enough with the agency concept that you can, you can trust that it’s going to be executed the way it was intended.
Ben: I think at this point, you know I work with our agencies a little bit but my role is not really to comment on the agency’s work and to get it takes, definitely not to get involved in like rough cuts, or, you know, any of that, that level, even even, you know frankly on the, on the agency side, I would my engagement with the creative process and and I guess post conceptual creative process varied very widely. Where some would want. You know, we were friends and we would just be talking about stuff and I might have feedback on something. Others, you know, for me, is that, as I might have opinions on things. But I would try and stay objective on like does this do what it’s supposed to do, can it do what it’s supposed to do, you know, do I need to get in the kitchen and like tell the chef to, you know, take the chicken out or, you know, can we trust that that
17:40:46 the creatives and then all the different production partners they hire can bring this to life in an incredible way. So I would always choose the latter, you know and and if something gets fucked up that’s a conversation that later.
Adam: Is that is that your nature to be able to remain objective or did you learn that in practice.
Ben: I think it’s probably more my nature, I don’t know, that’s a good question. It’s, it’s definitely something I work on. Yeah, like, Rob Campbell who was at Deutsche for for part of the time I was there.
Adam: He has no opinions whatsoever.
Ben: He never, never has opinions. I just love Rob so much. But he would he would talk about that, you know, if we ever we were kind of hitting a wall or whatever just weren’t, you know, like the strategy wasn’t working, whether it was clients or creatives or whoever he would always just push us to be the objective voice. And, and also to be interesting. Right, not just not just calling balls and strikes to keep using baseball analogies but you know to be to deliver an objective interesting voice which kind of sound is a paradox, in a way, but to surface the you know the facts in a way that that people find compelling and usable.
Adam: That’s the job. That’s the job and what’s interesting in an agency is a hell of a lot different than what is interesting inside the brand I mean just the, the facts that you would surface that would become interesting on a slide or interesting in a hallway conversation or just totally different things
Ben: Dramatically could not be more different.
Adam: Yeah, you’re working on such different ends of the challenge where I can’t imagine being inside the, the group that is producing the toy or producing the content at Conde and having to the number of things you’re solving there. And the difference between the no less valuable, but totally different challenges you’re solving inside an agency that somehow we’re on the same continuum, you know they’re on different ends of it. And there’s there’s roles that are related, but the, what’s material and what’s not material to each of those parts of the conversation and sometimes it’s interesting to see what what was decided early on that pops back up. At the end of the process when you’re, you know, creating a print ad or something where you go, oh yeah all of a sudden this decision that we had no part in really shaping a lot of what we’re doing.
Ben: Yeah, there are there are a lot more things to consider on this side but I think the basics are still there, like you can’t you can’t overcomplicate communication. You know there are things that, like, sometimes you know what you love about yourself isn’t what other people are going to love about you. So you still have to, you know, have that insight function that that guides how you communicate the you know the thing that you really want to say, because you may think you have something that’s incredibly innovative and what people may love about it might be something much more pedestrian or simple and you have to kind of let that surface.
Adam: Yeah, I mean how do you do that with something like, if it were nostalgia. How do you manifest that into something that drives – Because you’re trying to get it to, it can’t, it couldn’t just be nostalgia you’re trying to get to like what’s the insight beside behind that I’m sure that’s what some of the sites teams are, are driving and and trying to figure out is, how do you know which is the insight that you go with, and which is one that you could say they’re not this one?
Ben: You know, example from a few, it was my last, I think, I don’t even think Deutsch made any work against it, but we were launching the Arteon for for Volkswagen and it was just kind of an evolution of the CC, it was like that. It was really low volume so a lot of people probably haven’t even seen it but it’s, it’s, it’s like, it’s a four door sport back.
Adam: I remember I remember the CC I don’t remember the Arteon very well.
Ben: So it was the CC was just a regular trunk, that the big difference was it was a Lyft back but it was really sporty looking and the, you know, the, the, the Germans we’re really, we’re really proud of it. And just wanted to tell everyone. Basically, look. Look at this beautiful yeah they wanted to show it off. And, of course, we were going to show it off because it was a beautiful car. It looks great from a bunch of angles, you know, if you’ve worked on automotive you do these angles studies and it’s I mean, we did focus groups, what was interesting was the type of person who would be attracted to a you know a $40,000 sport back from Volkswagen the car made no sense. It didn’t like why would you buy that. because you buy it because you think for yourself. So, what you know and we never got to the point that we may work so it’s hard to, you know, kind of, Monday morning quarterback it. But to me, that was the interesting thing about it. That was the, you know, you can’t just rather than just say, Look how pretty we are show how you’re interesting in a you know in this pretty. You know, sculpted architecturally designed vehicle,
Adam: right.
Ben: So, I don’t know if that answers your question but it’s a little bit of like what are the layer, what are the things that go together and we did a lot of, we did a lot of consumer research, you know, Volkswagen as a, as a brand at least at the time that you know they’ve, they’ve changed a bunch of things, but you know historically it’s, it’s basically a tone for a long time. I think up until 2016 or 17, tone, I think anything for decades before that was Simple, human, cool. So, anyone could write to or good, great copywriters and great creatives could concept to simple human cool it was just even just that was like, that was so sticky. When you talk about repetition. Um, so it’s basically a tone. That is meant to be magnetic toward a certain type of person you know someone who thinks, you know, who has refined taste but doesn’t need to show off the right kind of, you know, it’s like you want you want nice things you appreciate things you don’t have to be ostentatious about it. So we did a lot of with the creatives would say certain creatives and say we overlapped completely on audience insight. But, to me, that was always the most interesting thing it said the cars are just, you know, our cars that and they speak for themselves, and we’ll show off to your point on Subaru, or Apple you know will will show off the features that we know matter in the segment, say
Adam: you’re going to get the yeah you’re going to get the specs and the engineers are going to tell you and with the client, what are the features you need to you need to call out and some to some extent that’s going to drive, at least some portion of the creative. You have to communicate the turbo, you have to communicate gas mileage or whatever the features.
Ben: We’re going to be responsible, but we also want to find a story that you know is a little bit unexpected for the category. Yeah, I really remember presenting to our clients at the time the first draft of the first brief that I wrote for already on. And I forget exactly what it was but I but I was talking about how the car doesn’t make any sense. That was just full of contradictions, and that that was what people would find interesting. And there was a long enough pause on the phone, and there was no video that I thought they hung up. They were just like, What are you thinking, you know, this is, this is a car that we’re proud of that we want and it was just, we eventually got there, you know, and I actually used around the time, it was a little bit after that Snowbird one-star review work had come out, where they found all these one-star reviews and people were like, you know, the, it’s too steep the snows too deep. You know, whatever. So, I use that as sort of this like cheeky example of, you know, let’s be something facing but also kind of bragging it’s the same time.
Adam: Yeah, what yeah you found a way to make something interesting to people that is maybe not so interesting on its own, because as you said, Of course it’s going to be lit beautifully for two days. And of course we’re going to get the angles right and of course it’s going to look beautiful. But we have to find a way in for people to have an emotional like care about it, versus just saying oh here comes another. Here comes another car commercial right now that you’re on the brand side, wow would you have received that brief from either internal or external or how would you position it differently if you were going to – Did you learn anything about the way you sell strategy and the way you communicate strategy?
Ben: I think, yeah, I have. At the time.
Adam: I can see you. I can see the resolve you’re like, Yes Actually yes,
Ben: I know that you know you have to sometimes you have to mess up a couple times to, you know, I think at the time. I was trying to break from what is my instinct as a strategist which is to be very factual, and to be pretty straight. And to find interesting things but sort of leave it 80% done, and let the creative finish it, and not, you know, I’ve always thought, you know that to me like I put the way more work in the top of the brief in the bottom in defining the problem. Exploring who the audiences, then align, you know, then this like strategy line. I just you know those are, they’re kind of disposable and creative sometimes cm is competitive with coming up with a campaign line or whatever.
Adam: Sometimes they do, yeah.
Ben: So, but I think I was, you know, exploring other ways to to do strategy and trying to be a little more bombastic. And I think, actually. It was the problem was less that it was just that I didn’t have a very good landing point. And I didn’t have that, the way I had articulated what we were going to say about it just wasn’t quite right. And so I think my clients were right to not, you know, jump on board. Yeah.
Adam: Yeah, you didn’t give him the resolution, the end so therefore, that means we’re going to do something that could be like thisSo there that was resolved feeling that it’s been solved versus.
Ben: Maybe that sounds like you’re presenting us a problems. Yeah, like I’m giving them a political mess. I think you just said this doesn’t make any sense and we don’t know what we’re supposed to do.
Adam: Although as as talking to you. I know exactly what that brief is. And the way you explained it, But I think you’ve had time to simmer on it,
Ben: I thought about it a lot sense yeah maybe that’s not how it got. I didn’t present it yeah I didn’t present it. I wish I had it still, but I didn’t present it exactly like that. Yeah. So I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.
Adam: Nice. Well then this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for making time to join me It’s been a pleasure. Just kind of talking through the process and learning a little bit more about your path and the differences between some of the fun places you’ve been, what, where can people find you online?
Ben: I think I have at Ben underscore Pereira on. I definitely have it on Twitter, definitely an Instagram so if anyone wants to see a bunch of photos if I don’t know places around California that’s pretty much all I take Twitter you get some, you know, some sizzling hot takes at times, some raw takes sometimes some, you know, some more earnest take so I you know I try and mix it up a little bit. I like it, uh, you know, LinkedIn, I’m one of two Ben Perreiras- I’m not the fashion blogger yet given time. Yeah, you can. You’re going to get, I do get, I do get a lot of invitations every year during fashion week so I need to just, I need to cash in.