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Selling Direct to Brands with Thig Gishuru
176 Plays1 year ago
Meet Thig Gishuru, a creative director with over 10 years of experience in both the agency-side and client-side of advertising; primarily creating, producing, and marketing content in fashion. In this episode, Thig candidly shares his story, needs, and tips about what he wishes he heard more often when being solicited for projects.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Crossing the Axis'
00:00:06
Speaker
You're listening to Crossing the Axis, the podcast that explores the commercial side of film production with your host, James Kebles.
00:00:25
Speaker
welcome listeners, and thank you for tuning into the show. You're going to see a theme in the next few episodes of Crossing the Axis, where I'm having these kind of client side conversations. That is to say, I'll be talking to the decision makers at ad agencies and brands, the people who could potentially be hiring you. The goal in these conversations is to unpack the best ways for film production companies to add real meaningful value to these clients, right?
00:00:54
Speaker
In some ways, this is both a conversation to benefit clients as much as it is the production companies, because ideally it produces better work that gets better results for everyone. But rather than speculate about why we think a client or what a client is looking for from your services, why don't we just ask them?
Meet Thig Geshuru: Creative Journey Begins
00:01:12
Speaker
That's why I'm excited to talk with Thig Geshuru today. Thig has over 10 years of experience in both the agency side and the client side of advertising.
00:01:21
Speaker
primarily creating, producing, and marketing content in fashion and tech and kind of lifestyle categories. Some of his stops along the way include brands like Nordstrom and T-Mobile and Solani, which is a travel-inspired unisex clothing brand that he created from concept to delivery. Very impressive. His agency stops include creative leadership roles at places like Publicis and Auxiliary.
00:01:46
Speaker
Fig is currently a creative director at Zulily, the family fashion and hub goods marketplace giant. And I should say in full disclosure, it should be submitted for the record that I have tried unsuccessfully in the past to get business from both Fig and Zulily. So let's start these questions off with the first one, WTF Fig. Oh, and welcome to the show.
00:02:13
Speaker
What up? I'm so glad to have you. I'm glad to be here. I'm honored to be a guest on your, on your podcast. I'm excited to have this conversation. Yeah. I've been wanting to talk to you for a long time and it should be also be said that you and I have actually never met before, but we've been through so many similar playgrounds primarily in the music scene in Seattle. Am I right? Is that how you think of it too?
00:02:37
Speaker
Absolutely, absolutely. Music is my first creative love and really the genesis for my creative career. It all started with music.
00:02:46
Speaker
Well, let's go there. So you've worked in agencies and brands, as I mentioned. You have a type, maybe, in fashion. And that probably relates to music as well. So where does your journey begin? How are you here right
From Music to a Creative Career
00:03:02
Speaker
now? And where does it all start? Yeah, it's a really good question. It begins, like I said, with music. Going back to high school. In high school, I started a hip hop group with my best friend.
00:03:15
Speaker
called the physics. And we attempted to make music because we thought that we could compete with the best of the best out there. Truth be told, when we started out, we weren't that good at all. But we loved it. We loved the process of creating and making music and putting it out there in the world and just knowing that that was a reflection of our creativity.
00:03:40
Speaker
So I graduated high school, me and my buddy, we actually went to the same college, so we continued on the path of creating music, even while going to school and trying to balance that with classes and all the other responsibilities. And that sort of was a precursor to my professional career, because when I graduated from college,
00:03:59
Speaker
You know, I didn't really have the slightest idea of what I wanted to do for a living. But what I did know is that I loved being creative and I loved making music. And graduating college was a big milestone for us because we were finally out of school. You know, after going to school forever, you're finally out. There's so many things that you want to do. And what was important to us was actually releasing music, making albums.
00:04:24
Speaker
Well, the thing with music, too, if I mean, my perspective on it is, especially these days with music, you create music because you love music and you have something you want to express. But music is tied into so many other things. And with tools available, you become a designer, you become you're making music videos. So then you're thinking about production and then you're then you have to write a script for a music video that matches them. And you become more than just a musician, you become a career. I'm imagining your story. And that's what I see is you became a creative as a result of just
00:04:53
Speaker
being a musician.
00:04:55
Speaker
100%, you have to wear a lot of hats as an artist. And actually, there are a lot of transferable skills from being an independent artist to a professional working creative. So for me, getting a job out of college was really just a means to help give me the resources that I needed to work on music and be creative and do the things that I love. And so that's what I did. My focus was music for a very long time. And we put out albums.
00:05:23
Speaker
We collaborated with other artists in Seattle. We were fortunate to do a lot of shows and festivals in the area like Bumpershoot, Sasquatch, Capitol Hill Block Party, playing at venues like the Crocodile, Numos. I remember the physics around. Yeah. You might have played at the VAR project. Were you involved in the- We did a few shows at the VAR project. Definitely. Do you know that I am one of the co-founders of the VAR project? I did not know that. I'm not surprised. That's amazing. It's one of my greatest legacies in life.
00:05:53
Speaker
Absolutely, as it should be. The Bird Project is a staple. So music for the longest time was my focus and my main love because it was my outlet to be creative. After doing it for so long, we actually became pretty good at it. So there was satisfaction in putting great art out into the world. But I hit a point around 10 years ago where
00:06:18
Speaker
I was looking at my life and my career and the trajectory of it and where I was professionally and where that was, was a day job that I wasn't necessarily very passionate about at all.
00:06:30
Speaker
And initially when I graduated college, like that was fine. I was fine spending eight hours a day at a job that I was indifferent at and then going home and making music and making my art. But at some point you get a little bit older and you have to start thinking strategically about your career. And so that's what I did. And I had to like sit with some hard realities.
00:06:54
Speaker
really taking a hard look at like what I wanted to do with my career and how I wanted to make money and if I wanted to use my creative talents beyond music and I decided that I did and I decided that it was important to me to try and carve out a creative career and so I took a leap of faith and I
Fashion Line to Content Production
00:07:13
Speaker
I stepped away from my day job, which was in health care administration and research, and I pursued being a creative professional. And even then, I still didn't really know what I wanted to do. I had some ideas. I was really into photography, and I was really into fashion. And I set a goal for myself that I wanted to work at Nordstrom, and I wanted to be a creative there. The problem was I didn't have any experience
00:07:40
Speaker
or anything in my portfolio that someone, a hiring manager at Nordstrom would look at and say, oh, this guy's perfect for this job because I hadn't really done anything yet. Let me ask you, when you projected yourself working for Nordstrom, what role was it in your head? Oh man, it was probably some sort of like creative director slash photographer slash content creator.
00:08:02
Speaker
closer to the front lines of the fashion than the actual brand. During this time, so this was like, I don't know if you remember Tumblr. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So this was like during Tumblr's heyday and like Tumblr was like the scene for like menswear and fashion and I would literally just like geek out on fashion for like hours a day. So quickly, fashion was sort of
00:08:29
Speaker
catching up to music as far as my creative passions and interests. But like I said, I didn't have anything to stand on as far as a resume or work experience in that field. And so what I did was I decided to create my own fashion line from conception to delivery in order to showcase my abilities as a creative and as a marketer. There it is. Yeah.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah, so I collaborated with a production company to put out a capsule collection. I created the brand Solani, which was inspired by travel in the three cities that I spent the most time in, which were Seattle, LA, and New York. I created a lookbook, a marketing campaign, a social media strategy. I had to wear all of these different hats.
00:09:18
Speaker
Micro Nordstrom. Yeah. It was crazy, and it was sort of a sprint because I had this sense of urgency. But a year later, I had that to show for me. And I parlayed that into an interview at Nordstrom. And I got a role as a senior content producer. And I was in a role at Nordstrom where I got to do exactly what I wanted, which was create content, be creative, come up with fun strategies.
00:09:46
Speaker
try and help the brand in that way. So that was really my first start in sort of the creative world. And that was the first opportunity for me to really take my creative passions and talents and pursuits and translate them into a lucrative paying job, which for creatives is really hard to come by. Yeah. And so that was a great start. And from then I
00:10:11
Speaker
I made a few moves to grow in my career.
Creative Success at Publicis and T-Mobile
00:10:16
Speaker
I saw the agency side. You were like, let's see what that other agency side looks like. Yeah, I dabbled in the agency world, which is really interesting because it was new to me. And I worked at Publicis where the main client I worked on was Aflac.
00:10:32
Speaker
And what was your role, creative director? Yeah, so I was a creative lead. So I was helping with concepts for campaigns and things of that nature. So I did the agency thing for a while. And it was a fun, but it was a contract role. So it had an end date. And so after the agency world went back to the brand side, my career is just like yo-yo from brand agency world.
00:10:56
Speaker
But I went back to the brand site at T-Mobile, and at T-Mobile I worked in their in-house studio as a creative lead, and so I was working on content for their campaigns. I was coming up with ideas for social, paid social. It was really a fun role because I got to touch a lot of different parts of
00:11:16
Speaker
the business and i learned a lot and i was i was in-house and got to work with a big in-house team. T-Mobile's at the time their in-house in-house team was 50 which is not which is not that big right but it's all it's all relative. So were you in charge of putting out a particular product or service for T-Mobile?
00:11:37
Speaker
No, I kind of bounced around. I sort of hopped from project to project, so I could be working on concepts for Instagram or a digital marketing campaign for the new iPhone drop or something completely different. It was really interesting and fun in the fact that I got to gain a lot of experience.
00:12:02
Speaker
And I also got a lot of experience being at a lot of sort of high level exec meetings and conversations. Yeah, this this will I want to hear more but come back to the idea that you're creating this content for brands and things like that and and how that how you see content creating value and how you can measure that value in some kind of not output but outcomes if you ever get into them. That's what's something I want to unpack in this conversation as well.
00:12:31
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think I can think of T-Mobile One project in particular. I think I was brought in to help with the launch of Stranger Things 3. It was a partnership with Netflix that we were working on.
00:12:46
Speaker
And I was tasked with coming up with a fun social media engagement tactic to help with brand awareness. Myself and another art director, we had like three days to work on this project and we came up with this really fun idea of leveraging a contest in a microsite where
00:13:04
Speaker
we would give people these different codes because if you watch stranger things like part of season one was they were trying to crack a code and so we created this code on social and gave users the opportunity to try and crack the code and win fun prizes and get a sneak peek into the new season of stranger things and.
00:13:24
Speaker
Really, we didn't have a ton of expectations, but we ended up getting 1.5 million social engagements. Oh, there it is. Yeah. At the time was like the highest ever for T-Mobile. So that's an example of, I guess, not having a firm idea of what the outcomes are. And then I think kind of surpassed it. Right.
Leading Ox Creative: Challenges and Triumphs
00:13:46
Speaker
So any takeaways of what it took for that video to rise
00:13:52
Speaker
above the other ones that you did? Why did it get so many engagements? Yes, I would say the takeaway is know your audience. I think that that was successful because we played to our audience and people who were fans of that show and that was sort of like the heart of it. There was like an element of exclusivity
00:14:14
Speaker
there because people felt special. They felt like they get it. This was really resonated with them because of the connection to the show. Yeah, it sounds like you're almost playing into the idea of the fan fiction engagement, right? You're like, hey, we're all in. We're going to be fans with you and we're going to have fun with this. Exactly. T-Mobile was great. Again, it was a contract role, so there was
00:14:42
Speaker
an end date, it felt like an agency in some ways where you're living in the agency world. You live and die by your clients and what's forecasted for this quarter and the next quarter, the next quarter after that. So at some point, that role ended. And so as I was looking at what I wanted to do next with my career, I thought about the different opportunities. I thought about maybe staying on the brand side, maybe
00:15:11
Speaker
going back to the agency world. And I was presented with an opportunity to lead a new creative agency, Ox Creative, which is now called Auxiliary, but at the time was called Ox Creative. And I was presented with an opportunity to lead a scrappy new startup creative agency. The creative agency was owned by a larger digital marketing agency called Ad3. That's Brian.
00:15:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And so I came on as creative director at Ox and really truly one of the most impactful roles and parts of my creative professional career because we had to grind. You know how it is. We were a new agency. Nobody knew who we were.
00:16:08
Speaker
and we had to get business. And we had the benefit of having some connections and contacts because the larger agency that we worked under at 3, they've been around for a really long time, have a really great reputation and contacts at different companies. So we always had sort of
00:16:27
Speaker
some leverage and being able to at least get a foot in the door and get a conversation to be able to make a pitch, which was helpful. But this role was really my first like leadership role and it allowed me to lead a team. But it was the team was like five people. Yeah, yeah. So it was myself and then my counterpart was the director of operations. And then we had three designers. So total of five people.
00:16:54
Speaker
And is this a full service agency or primarily a design? For the most part, full service. We're full service. And if there were things that we couldn't do, then we would partner with to make those happen. But we definitely advertised ourselves as a full service creative agency. But like I said, I don't think I've ever pitched as much as one that was in that role.
00:17:19
Speaker
Well, that's one of the things when I was thinking about you for the show and it was looking at your career. And I was thinking, I bet you think it has had to hustle as a creative voice in trying to land new business in so much of what
00:17:34
Speaker
I want these conversations to pull away from is how do you get new business in a real meaningful way that fits? And you're not convincing, but you're actually doing really good work together. You've been through that. You know, the grind, you know how hard it is with these sales cycles. You're in a hurry, but the client's not, you know, like your whatever might be right. Like you think you have it all, but they're not responding or
00:17:57
Speaker
great things come out of nowhere and all of a sudden you're on to something really fun and you're making things and signing SOWs. You've been through all of that, right? Yeah, I've been through all of that. I've pitched through more capabilities decks than I even know to various companies.
00:18:18
Speaker
I get it. I get it. It's hard. Definitely lost more pitches than we won, but we're able to win enough to keep us afloat and to keep us going. I will say, I'm going to talk a little bit about the Zoo Lily role because I think there's even a little bit more substance there for you to sink your teeth in on this topic.
Zulily: New Role, New Opportunities
00:18:42
Speaker
But to sort of bridge the gap i was created for about two years and i made the decision to leave because pitching was getting exhausting i missed working for big brands.
00:18:58
Speaker
And although we pitched to big brands, it was harder to be in a position actually to win those pitches. And so I miss working for big brands. I wanted to get a little bit more of that back under my belt, under my portfolio. And so a creative director role at Zulily popped up during that time where I was considering making a move and the stars aligned. And I ended up at Zulily and I'm here today. So now I'm in that role where
00:19:23
Speaker
People are pitching to me. There you go. It's so much nicer, right? It's nicer and less stressful. I'm trying to make those decisions, but one thing that I would say is if anyone is approaching me about potentially partnering with us or working for us as a vendor or whatever the situation is,
00:19:50
Speaker
The most important thing, I think, is having an understanding of the current climate that that company and that person, in my case, that creative director is in currently in the retail space.
00:20:06
Speaker
We're in a recession. People aren't spending money. Virtually every consumer brand out there is struggling and trying to find a way to make money because consumers are being a lot tighter with their purse strings and they're being a lot more thoughtful than they were two years ago. Pandemic, everybody was at home on their computer buying stuff like crazy. It was a gold mine. Everybody was making money.
00:20:32
Speaker
Now we've reached the point where people are not spending money. And so we've hit what I think, technically, I don't know if it's a recession or not, but it sure feels that way. It is. Yeah. I'm reading this in a lot of different places as well. Yeah. It's consistent. Absolutely. Absolutely. So for me,
00:20:50
Speaker
I'm constantly thinking about that as a creative director. I'm thinking about this climate and this recession and what it means for my business and how I can add value to our customers or how I can find creative ways to communicate what that value is that Zulily brings to consumers in this climate. I do get a ton of people like in my inbox all the time, you know,
00:21:15
Speaker
And it's pretty standard cold email approach template. I could have just been anybody. That's what it feels like for 9% of the inquiries that I get. And I get at least 10 a week. And I think the most important, as I think about it from my standpoint, how could somebody approach me and actually leave me with something that would be like, huh?
00:21:42
Speaker
What I'm hearing so far, and I know you're going to give us more, and I think this is a fantastic conversation. I'm so glad you're opening up like this. This is exactly what I hoped for. It sounds like you want, you know, see the world through your shoes. Look at, imagine what you might be facing in the context of you and even more you than Zulily, because you're the one with the pain product you're selling, of course, and you have a responsibility there, but it's you that's personally feeling pressure, right?
Empathy and AI in Creative Partnerships
00:22:09
Speaker
Right. Exactly. Exactly. And I have to,
00:22:11
Speaker
Regardless, I still have to sell everything through to my CMO and my partners, but still, if it starts with me, make me feel like you understand what I'm going through. What I'm going through currently is, like many other companies, unfortunately, people have had to let people go and people have lost their jobs, so resources are tight. In general, budgets are tight. I'm trying to figure out how to
00:22:40
Speaker
make compelling creative to really like distill the value of Zulily in this landscape. And it might have to be scrappy. It might have to be out of the box. It might have to be a little something different, but that's sort of like where I'm at. And so I think for, I would say for anyone who's approaching a company, an in-house company or an agency or someone,
00:23:07
Speaker
Just showing that understanding of, I think it comes down to empathy actually. I think that's a good word. Just showing the understanding of what's happening right now in that company's world and then speaking to that just very like open and
00:23:24
Speaker
Honestly, let me let me see if I can unpack that a little bit. I think that's a fantastic advice, first of all. And my mind immediately goes to, you know, if I were to do that, like right now, I would I think of it something more strategically, right? From a business strategy. I see a white space over here or I see some really looks like it's missing something or, hey, this just occurred to me. Have you considered from a strategy point of view or
00:23:54
Speaker
or in the end, or it doesn't have to be one or the other. Creative ideas without the context of knowing enough information. There's always a danger, I mean, almost call it malpractice sometimes to prescribe creative onto something that you have no business doing because you don't have enough information. But we all are guilty of
00:24:16
Speaker
projecting on that. I mean, you know, we all do that. And sometimes it is right. And maybe even a lot of times that's right. But you it's a very dangerous game to kind of play. So I always kind of lean towards strategy and really thinking of the business kind of dollars and cents to try to uncover that because that's where you will find where where struggle really is where you really can great value. And then that'll dictate the creative that I mean, but but maybe creative is a way to go. I don't know.
00:24:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, sort of what you said was an interesting approach. The, hey, was thinking of this, have you tried that? Like that's, if done in a thoughtful way, like that can have a lot of impact. I would love somebody to say that to me.
00:25:02
Speaker
I would love somebody to look at my brand and what my brand has done over the last year and say, hey, this brand has not gone viral or done accomplished this. Like, hey, have you thought of doing this? Because as a creative director, what I want more than anything is I want to make an impact. But as a creative director, I want to differentiate myself from all the other creative directors. So I want to do the big things.
00:25:27
Speaker
I'm also beholden to a marketing budget and lots of stakeholders and lots of partners.
00:25:35
Speaker
Most of the time, a lot of big ideas sort of get watered down. But what I want to do, I want to do those sort of big, fun things. I just need help making it happen. I need help selling it through. I need help distilling the value. I need help painting the bigger picture of what it could be, seeing it that way. But all creative directors, at least the good ones, they all want to
00:26:04
Speaker
Do cool shit. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. That's spot on, man. I think this is amazing kind of insight. Have you been approached by anyone where that has happened? Where someone is, I don't know, whatever, they reach out to you on LinkedIn or they send you an email or you get a text message from someone. Actually, I'm going to back it up.
00:26:28
Speaker
from someone you don't have a relationship with reaches out to you and says something profound enough for you to go, all right, I'll bite. That's interesting. You got my attention. Does that happen to you? It does happen. Not often though.
00:26:47
Speaker
It's rare, but it does happen. It's also sort of, there's an element of luck to it. So the last time it happened, I believe was, so something that I've been like really interested in lately, like most people, for better or for worse is like AI and generative AI. And as a creative director, I'm trying to figure out like where that fits into
00:27:10
Speaker
my process and where that fits into my team and where the opportunity is there. So that's something that's been top of mind for me lately. And recently, the last time what you're talking about happened was when someone had reached out to me to pitch services related to generative AI and design. So I think a lot of it was that the timing just happened to be
00:27:36
Speaker
Really good they were really good.
00:27:40
Speaker
You know what I'm saying? They got it in your head. They knew. Honestly, they probably saw that I had liked some post on LinkedIn that was related to that and strategically sought me out. I'm only half joking there. They could have been exactly what you're talking about, right? They took the time to figure you out to some level, some insight, and then said, oh, if he's into that, then check this out.
00:28:10
Speaker
No, no, exactly. And that speaks to me as like, you know, I spoke about like being a creative director and wanting to put out like great work, but I'm also a creative leader. So in that moment, it spoke to me as like also a creative leader and like doing the right thing for my team. And so
00:28:28
Speaker
So that person that reached out, we actually, we set up time and like had a call. I try to avoid meetings as much as I can, but if it's compelling enough, then I'll make it happen. But yeah, I think that was a combination of probably someone being very strategic and smart and good timing. And again, speaking to my needs as a creative leader and a creative
00:28:52
Speaker
director. And even taking another step back and saying, hey, I've been paying attention to what's been going on in this space. Other companies are probably losing money. Consumers are being a lot more frugal. Here's something we created for so and so to communicate the value of this. And there are some similarities with your brand and their brand. And here's what we were able to do for them.
00:29:21
Speaker
something something like that that just helps me really easily like make that connection then then like my ears are sort of perked a little yeah yeah man all right well that's man for the listeners that are listening to this episode we just went through a little chunk there that that's gold and i really appreciate you talking about that yeah i want to switch over to another topic a little bit here and talk about
Zulily's Collaboration with Agencies
00:29:43
Speaker
So like just take a company like Zulily for instance. Do you have an AOR ad agency? What I want to try to unpack here is when do you work with ad agencies in the classic sense versus
00:29:57
Speaker
direct to a film production company? Do you expect them to do the creative development? Or do you have your own in-house team that does that kind of stuff? Or you have an agency that does that? Where are you making decisions? Is it for the brand of Zulily and the kind of
00:30:14
Speaker
Awareness marketing using agency but when it comes to a specific product launch or line or something like that you would use and you know it's going to be a video forward campaign if not exclusively then you just go straight to the production company where do you make those decisions how do you go about that business.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll tell you, I'll sort of tell you how it works right now. And right now is, you know, I've actually only been here about a year. And so this is how it's worked since I've got here. But this is not necessarily, I don't think this is the future state of how it will work. We don't have necessarily an AOR. I don't think they have the title of AOR, but they are the agency that we sort of
00:30:55
Speaker
is our main partner, I think right now, and they're an agency. I would consider them a full service agency based in North Carolina, and they're great. They're really great to work with. For example, we recently put out a commercial, a TV spot for a new campaign, an Evergreen campaign.
00:31:16
Speaker
And we partnered with this agency. The agency came up with the concepts and the ideas, and they also came up with the script for this commercial. We aligned on it, signed off on it, and then the agency brought in a production company, a film product, so basically you, brought in your company to basically take a look at everything
00:31:38
Speaker
Work on production, finalize everything, and then actually do the actual shooting of everything. And we actually shot in Stockholm, Sweden, which was pretty cool. So in this particular case, we worked with an agency. The agency subcontracted, delegated certain pieces of the project to that film production company, and then we
00:32:01
Speaker
all worked together. Kind of a classic relationship. Yeah, kind of a classic relationship. You know, I'm creative director, so like I would love to do like mostly everything in-house if we could, but we can't. I think my preference would be to have, you know, at that point you're dealing with like three different creative entities, right? There's Lily, then there's this agency that we work with, then there's like the production company. And I would probably prefer to
00:32:30
Speaker
remove one of those just for ease and also, you know, it's going to be less expensive. I don't I don't know what the future state of our relationship with agencies will be. I would love to explore different agencies and different specialties. Well, and there are so many production companies now that aren't just
00:32:55
Speaker
cameras anymore, right? They're, they and gear and, you know, and technicians in the, with a crew, they are, they have creative directors. They have, they do strategy even. I mean, actually there's a off it out of Chicago. They also are doing media buying. So they're making the stuff and making sure that it gets out there. That's one of the, I thought was a really interesting approach to adding value to clients. I mean, their whole point was, listen, we, we think our work is really good.
00:33:24
Speaker
you're not maximizing it because you're not doing very good media buying with the work that we're making and we're making this we know how to put it out there because you know and then they do the whole thing and it's really paid off for them so production companies are expanding all these interesting ways would you hire a production company you know where you look at it and at face value like that's a production company but when you
00:33:46
Speaker
open it up a little bit more, you see, oh man, they're really doing a lot of the creative work and really putting the muscle in for the strategy and the business case and goals. Would you hire that or is that too risky? No, no, absolutely. I would love that. I would love that because if you look at many creative departments and like marketing orgs right now, they're a little thinner because layoffs have happened and there's a lot going on. And so my time is, it's even more scarce and
00:34:14
Speaker
When I can have sort of an outside perspective that is also reliable in terms of their expertise and whether that's like marketing or creative direction or media buying or whatever it is, like having another person to consult with and collaborate with, it makes my job.
00:34:33
Speaker
easier. And I'm not, I'm not, I don't definitely don't have a huge ego to where like, I have to make all the decisions or that has to be my opinion, I value other opinions. And so something like that would be would actually be super appealing to me.
00:34:46
Speaker
One of the things I can hear you saying, but not fully saying it, is that money matters a lot too.
Budget Constraints on Creative Decisions
00:34:52
Speaker
So is that true? Is money driving things more than other factors now? Absolutely. I will say money matters for two reasons. Number one, it matters because there's a finite amount of it in budgets.
00:35:08
Speaker
And, you know, budgets get tighter during times like these and spending money on one thing takes away money from another thing. And so you need to be able to justify how that cost is going to lead to value. The other reason that it matters is because of optics, right? Because a lot of companies are
00:35:27
Speaker
unfortunately having to let people go and so spending a gajillion dollars on like a tv commercial could optically not like look good for for the companies so so for that reason you know we have to be thoughtful about where we're choosing to spend money so yeah money i mean
Conclusion with Thig Geshuru
00:35:47
Speaker
it's a huge driver no doubt well man this has been a fantastic conversation i feel like we can go on and know that you're pressed for time so i don't wanna push you too hard you've been honest and candid and i'm sure there's gonna be a million questions that.
00:36:05
Speaker
will come up after this, or maybe we'll do something online, or maybe we'll do another episode down the road or something like that. Absolutely, man. Now that we've connected, let's make it a regular thing. Okay. Well, everybody, you've been listening to Thig Geshiru talking about his experience and what you can do to get his kind of business. I think there's been a lot of great insights. Thig, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you, James. Appreciate it.
00:36:36
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Crossing the Axis with James Keblis. If you're interested in joining the conversation or have a topic you'd like covered, please drop a note at keblis.com. That's K-E-B-L-A-S dot com.