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Changemaking Creative with Dr Zac Posada-Baynham & Shereen Ladha
75 Plays1 year ago
What makes people tick? Shereen and Zac delve into the value of understanding consumer behavior and cultural nuances, and reveal how these insights can lead to more authentic, diverse, and impactful campaigns.
Thank you to Greg Pistol for the edit, Maite Moreau for the design and Leah Taub for the music. This podcast was produced by Hannah Quick and Lucy Doolan.
Enjoy!
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Transcript
Universal Resonance of Cultural Stories
00:00:00
Speaker
Often the things that we uncover within these groups are just universal truths. And just because we're telling somebody's story that exists within a particular cultural context, it doesn't mean that it won't resonate with others. It doesn't mean that the brand won't play a meaningful role within this context. And it doesn't mean that that piece of content or work won't do well outside of that one group.
00:00:27
Speaker
This podcast
Introductions and Backgrounds
00:00:28
Speaker
is brought to you by Spark, a global community at Berson for female and non-binary creatives. I'm Shireen Lada, Vice President of Creative Strategy in Toronto, and for this episode, I was joined by Zach Posada-Bainem, Head of Behavioral Science in London. We talked about Zach's love of people watching, how understanding humans and diverse cultural nuances fosters richer and more authentic storytelling, and the barriers to creating more inclusive campaigns. Enjoy.
00:01:02
Speaker
Hey, Zach. Hey, Shireen. I'm so excited to be chatting with you today. Me too. For all our listeners, I want to do a quick bio of who Zach is. Dr. Zach Posada-Bainem, he, him, head of behavioral science at Hill and Norton. Zach leads behavioral science in London, where he specializes in designing campaigns to change behavior.
00:01:25
Speaker
Zach previously worked at the UK Government's Behavioural Insights team and gained his PhD from the University of Edinburgh. His research has been cited over 400 times, very impressive. I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure it's been read 400 times, I can tell you that. I'm sure it has been.
00:01:44
Speaker
I'm very happy to welcome Shireen Lada, she, her, Vice President Creative Strategy Lead at Hill and Alton Canada.
Interplay of Strategy and Creativity
00:01:50
Speaker
Shireen Lada is an award-winning strategist with a decade of experience working on global brands like IKEA and Google. She has worked at a creative agencies in the past, including McCann and Rethink. She is a graduate of the MBA program at the Schulich School of Business. Shireen embodies the combination of creative and strategy.
00:02:09
Speaker
She is also a professional dance artist and the director of popular YouTube channel, Dance With SL, and named by Google as one of YouTube's Canadian stars on the rise. Shireen was a finalist on Canada's Got Talent and has produced installations at the Nuit Blanche and the Toronto International Film Festival. What a bio. Thank you for that intro. So, Shireen, can you tell us a little bit more about your interesting role at H and&K and a bit about where you're based?
00:02:39
Speaker
Yeah, so I am the National Creative Strategy Lead at Hill & Knowlton in Canada. I'm based in Toronto and creative strategy is exactly what it sounds like. It is the merger of strategic thought with the output and intention being creative ideation and creative output. I love that way of defining it. Can you describe a little bit more about how that relationship between strategy and creative is changing?
00:03:09
Speaker
Yeah, well, in my world, creative strategy, the bow both of those things are just... coming closer and closer together. I've worked with a ton of creatives who think very strategically, and I've also worked with strategists that were great in creative ideation. And in my role now, I play part business strategist, part creative strategist, and sometimes creative. I think being a good strategist means being able to think like a creative. You need to be able to offer them something in your strategy for them to be inspired.
00:03:46
Speaker
And unless you understand what they're looking for, you're not going to be able to give that to them. yeah My creative director is my BFF. We're not precious about where ideas or strategy come from. we We just want to do the best work. When I was reading your bio about the work they do outside of Guess Hill and Alton work, all the YouTube work, the film festivals, I was like, wow. But how does that inform your strategic and creative opinions for the work work that you do, I guess, in the PR world? Yeah, I think I'm naturally attracted to the creative space given what I do outside of work, but I've always looked at these two seemingly disparate parts of my life as actually very similar and complementary at the heart of both dance and strategy is the idea of storytelling, right? Dance and creative strategy fundamentally operate
00:04:42
Speaker
on this premise of narrative orchestration and at their best and their most skilled, they're both such powerful forms of expression. They both require this craft and communication of stories that resonate with audiences on an emotional and you know sometimes even visceral level.
00:05:00
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That's really nice. That actually
The Evolution of Storytelling in Strategy
00:05:01
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reminds me of something I read quite a long time ago, which was before humans could write, we still told each other stories, maybe around a campfire or wherever. But it meant that the stories which are the best stories, the most memorable, maybe the most emotive, were the ones which people remembered and and passed on. So stories basically naturally evolved to get better over time as we passed them through generations and generations.
00:05:22
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i I love that. and i you know To take it a step further, when we talk about and we talked a lot about diversity too and and the kinds of insights that really resonate with particular groups,
00:05:36
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there's There's a constant pressure on strategists to find this unique insight to drive our stories, but often it's just the way in which we tell these stories that's going to leave their biggest marks. Those are the stories that are the most memorable and have the biggest impact. Absolutely. So maybe we maybe we switch it over to you now, Zach, if I can ask you a couple of questions. Okay.
00:06:00
Speaker
First of all, you have a very interesting role at Hill and Norton. Can you tell us a bit about it and where you're based and what's the type of work that you do? I guess I'll describe myself as a professional people watcher. One of my favorite activities if I'm at a train station and I've got time to to wait for my trainers to sit there and just watch people and I guess that's why I get paid to do my day job, try to understand why people behave the way that they do, what are their motivations and for our clients how best to create stories or create campaign messaging that's going to reach them. Right now based in London it's nice and sunny and there's lots of people to be
00:06:43
Speaker
Sweet watching. I love that. So it's such an interesting role and such an interesting field. What attracted you to this field initially? Yeah, it's a good question. Because when I was, I was doing my PhD learning about human behavior that was particularly focused on environmental behavior. I wasn't thinking PR was the obvious place that I'd end up working.
00:07:09
Speaker
I actually after, but well, during my PhD, I heard a talk by Ogilvy Consulting and their behavior science team of of which Rory Sutherland is one of the founders. He's quite a charismatic leader in the behavior science field. It was really interesting talk. It's all about how to motivate people to take care of the environment. And from the but on the back of that, I got a placement at Ogilvy for about three months, which was great in the WPP network. And then kind of fell in love with practical behavior science, trying to actually solve problems or create communications that resonate with people. I moved to the behavioral insights team, which was part of the UK government, after my PhD and worked there for nearly three years in behavior change, again, quite environmental. And it's from there that I i shifted into PR, again, trying to understand why people behave the way they do.
00:08:07
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But unlike my previous roles, which are all about behavior change specifically, PR has got a secondary function, which is how do you perhaps raise awareness about an issue first before you're going to try and change people's behavior about it. So try now to think about what's the science of earned media, for instance, what gets people and brands attention for the right reasons.
00:08:30
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And again, what's going to change people's attitudes and ultimately behaviors? I love that so much. there's There's so much overlap between all of our roles within this space and and that is just this deep interest in in humans and why we do the things we do and make the choices that we make. What role does behavioral science play within this industry? That's a good question. I tend to say that Our team does three things. We try to develop quite rapid insights, maybe for a pitch or for a client. Maybe they want to understand what's the maybe the trend in and in travel behaviours amongst a particular audience or something. Or the what the different motivational drivers to why people go on holiday might be
00:09:18
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to go get some sun if you're living in England, have nice food, but also to go take a selfie to show your friends that you've been somewhere. So we can try to, you know, unpin those kind of things. But also to do deeper research. So this might be primary research like um surveys, focus groups, or looking at the the existing literature to try to generate some evidence to back up our strategy.
00:09:42
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And if we can, where they where there's sort of buy-in to actually test things, to try to test, to see what's working. So that might be doing an online experiment, testing different versions of a message, or finding clever ways to try to track whether our campaign has actually had the behavior change that it intended.
Challenges in Research and Diversity
00:10:02
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So when within this world of of understanding people and and constant test and learn, what are the recurring challenges that you see in this space?
00:10:14
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Some of the biggest challenges, I think, involve getting buy-in to do deep enough research, because sometimes it can take a a lot of time. Sometimes it's quite costly. So there can be a tendency to do a bit of quick and dirty research so that we can sort of fill out a slide and have something to go on. But it still may may still just be a bit of a hunch.
00:10:37
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so really making the case for why ah testing, for instance, is really important is continual challenge. But there, there's a big opportunity in that, when I talk about behavior science with colleagues and other people, generally, people are excited about it, they're interested in it. And clearly, understanding humans is something that we all need to do and that we are doing. I mean, creative strategy is all about understanding humans. So I think there's appetite for developing paper science more in the industry. Absolutely. what What is the industry or maybe our clients not understand yet about the potential of behavioral science and what it can really unlock?
00:11:21
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Maybe not our clients, but our our colleagues maybe don't fully understand that I don't have all the answers. and My team doesn't know the answer to every behavior science question. ah but when When someone asks, comes to me, and they they say, what's you know what's the behavior science of of eating potatoes? I don't know, whatever the question is. I'll say, well, I don't know. that so that's That's the point. no Individuals don't know don't know the answer. So what you do is you use tools. You go to the literature, see what other people have studied and what they've said.
00:11:48
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or you do your own research to try and find the answer. So maybe that's the sort of the principle of the answer is not obvious. It doesn't actually always make it neatly onto a slide. And ah the answer can be quite messy, but you have to go and find it. Sure. Humans are complex. Yeah. So how has inclusion and diversity played a role in your work thus far?
00:12:15
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I think one of the main roles that inclusion diversity has played in my work, in my in my career, is earlier on in my career when I was at the Pable Insights team, we had quite a lot of briefs around promoting gender equality in the workplace, um amongst so other diversity and inclusion sort of focuses. And our role in that was really assessing the evidence for different interventions. So there was one piece of research we did around If you're a woman and you're re-entering the workplace after an absence, so you haven't been employed full time for, say, like three or four years, is it better on your CV to say, to explain the gap, for instance, to say so not say anything about the gap?
00:13:01
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Or in one trial, we tested whether it's better to just have your experience in years rather than dates. So rather than say, I worked until 2014, and then I've had a 10-year gap, you just say, I've had 10 years experience in this field. And I guess, fortunately, we tested it and found that showing that you had 10 years experience was was better than saying that you had a 10-year gap, which is good news in the sense of we found a way that if you're a woman and you're re-entering the workplace, that might be a a useful finding for you. The bad thing, obviously, that is exposing there's a bias that's punishing women entering the workplace if they havent if they've got a gap. So it's kind of developed the evidence to try to support
00:13:46
Speaker
some of these sort of behavior change interventions around promoting inclusion and diversity in the workplace. That's so interesting. And it's also so interesting because we we read so many think pieces about these things and, you know, based on anecdotal evidence and and what you do really unlocks the science behind it and some some hard data behind it. Yeah, exactly. Often we we have hunches. everyone Everyone has hunches. I always have hunches.
00:14:15
Speaker
um Often they're wrong, so that's why we tried to test them. For instance, last year there there was quite a lot of sort of commentary around unconscious bias training, has as that's been rolled out widely across workplaces in the UK and the US and Canada, I'm sure. And there's many very good reasons for doing it.
00:14:38
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which definitely is a great first step in the company if you're not already doing it, seems like a great thing to do. When testing whether it changes people's biases or their behaviors, the evidence isn't so clear. So it's an example of where keeping testing is clearly a good idea, trying to work out what's actually gonna shift the dial, what's gonna work, where should you put your um resources.
00:15:01
Speaker
Can I ask a kind of a random question, but has there been anything in your work where you haven't been able to explain it? You haven't been able to explain the human behavior behind something? ah Probably everything. and well I mean, I can't like explain my own behavior more than anyone else's. Every time I try to choose something on a menu to eat at a restaurant, I make the wrong decision and have buyer's regret five minutes later. So I don't know what it is about if you study other people's behavior, maybe you're worse at understanding your own. Maybe your own instincts are off. Yeah, but I've got a few more questions for you. Yes. How do you think the conversation around inclusion and diversity has evolved in the creative space specifically?
00:15:47
Speaker
Well, I do understand that you know diversity means something different in a global context. There's there's different ways that it manifests in different countries. I'll speak to inclusion and diversity in the market that I'm from, in Canada, and we we talk a lot about diversity in this market first and foremost is cultural and ethnic diversity. And we're moving really slowly in markets like Canada. I think some of us in the industry and a lot of marketers just have the wrong idea of what what it means. They're just a little bit misguided. It's not just about casting the people in our creative pieces.
00:16:28
Speaker
or in our content pieces. It's about telling their stories, their unique stories. And our our industry stays away from it. um They think it'll be too niche or it won't resonate with the masses. But like we talked a little bit about before,
00:16:45
Speaker
often the things that we uncover within these groups are just universal truths. And just because we're telling somebody's story, you know, that exists within a particular cultural context, it doesn't mean that it won't resonate with others. It doesn't mean that the brand won't play a meaningful role within this context. And it doesn't mean that that piece of content or work won't do well outside of that one group. So I think there's a lot of fear when we talk about inclusion and diversity in the creative space because our industry doesn't quite understand what it means yet. Interesting. And maybe on that a little bit more, what are some of the standout pieces of work that you've seen maybe in your either in your market or elsewhere that embody inclusion? Well, one
00:17:39
Speaker
I hope it's not too vain to talk about my own piece. for But like I said, i mean inclusion and diversity really leaves a mark on the work that I do. It's the lens through which I craft a lot of my strategy. I
Campaigns Highlighting Cultural Celebrations
00:17:56
Speaker
did a piece of work for IKEA a few years ago um and their their brief to us was holiday campaign in Canada. And you know client and client I have to give client a lot of credit for this. They they wanted to focus on a South Asian family you know being one of the the biggest cultural groups growing in the Canadian market. And what we did between the crafting of the strategy but also in the creative ideation, so kudos to the creative team on this one, was
00:18:29
Speaker
Understand that the celebration of Christmas or the holidays in Canada has become more secular and a lot of immigrant families are adopting those more secular elements of Christmas putting up a tree, having a holiday meal, exchanging gifts. They're adopting those elements of of Christmas as a celebration of belonging to this country. So that it is celebrated amongst you know a lot of a lot of different cultural groups. But for them, it is it's a mark of belonging to a country.
00:19:10
Speaker
that they felt like they didn't belong to in the past. And what we did for this IKEA campaign was portray a South Asian family mixing those more secular elements of of Christmas and the holidays, the tree, the dinner, um the lights with some of there more ah some of the marks of their their cultural celebrations. So you know the type of food that they were eating was was very specific to the to the South Asian community.
00:19:39
Speaker
um The lights that they put up were Dias instead of Christmas lights. um The song that we used in the spot was a Bollywood song. And it it completely reimagined what a traditional holiday spot would look like because it brought in so many of these cultural elements. It was a was a sign that what Christmas looks like in Canada is changing. And it it didn't need to say that. It's its impact in that it was coming from this big brand.
00:20:08
Speaker
it did it. I would say you know another another standout piece of work um that I really loved working on was a piece for KitKat, where we created a 30-piece KitKat bar to celebrate a break that has gone uncelebrated before, which is the breaking of the fast um every every day of the month of Ramadan at Iftar. And we created a 30-piece bar called the KitKat Iftar bar um where people could you know break off a piece um every every evening at Iftar and have it with with dessert. And it was
00:20:52
Speaker
It was so obvious from a creative standpoint, the notion of the break and how KitKat has always been about the break and the breaking of the fast. It was just such a perfect combination. um you know We created these very bespoke products for that community specifically. But again, to what we were talking about before and and these insights resonating beyond.
00:21:15
Speaker
This campaign had a mass impact in Canada extending way beyond this group. I think people from from other religious or ethnic minorities were we're really proud to see KitKat playing in this space um and and and hopeful that that they would be represented too.
00:21:34
Speaker
That's fascinating. And I learned recently from one of our creative colleagues, Spark colleague, Lucy, that Maltesers ran an advert, I think nearly not quite 10 years ago now, or a campaign and championing people with disabilities in the UK. And they said it was their most successful campaign for a decade in terms of some of their engagement metrics. Yeah. And, you know, these are communities that that go so often overlooked.
00:22:03
Speaker
And to to do something and to to represent people and tell their stories in these in these mass campaigns, in these mass awareness plays, it extends beyond that community. We all love to see it. Why why is it, Zach, that you think so many teams shy away from this type of work? What do you think are the challenges here? It's a tough question. It's a good question.
00:22:29
Speaker
In natural behavioral science fashion, I start from the point that I don't know the answer. So I talked to some people, some people from our cultural advisory board in in the UK, and looked at some of the literature. And I could probably package it into maybe three things. one would And this is for any behavior, and one of the barriers. We often think about people needing the capability, the opportunity, and the motivation, those three things.
00:22:56
Speaker
And under capability, it might be as obvious as if your team members don't have a diverse range of cultural experiences and even diversity of thought, I guess, you might not come up with that idea to break a KitKat into 30 pieces for Ramadan if you don't know that Ramadan is 30 days. I mean, it sounds so obvious, but a lot of people wouldn't necessarily know that. So firstly, you've got to actually have diversity of experience and people coming up with these different ideas. Under opportunity, ah I'd focus more around maybe the social opportunity, which is, do you see colleagues, peers in your network doing these kinds of campaigns and celebrating them? Because we do often follow the role models in our and sort communities and what they're doing. Sometimes it's actually hard to to break the mold and take a risk maybe take a risk.
00:23:54
Speaker
And by risk, what do I mean by risk? That probably comes down to motivation. When I was speaking to one of our colleagues on the Cultural Advisory Board, they were saying that sometimes clients feel that they don't necessarily want to put their head above the parapet, as it were, or expose themselves to more questions. Rightly, I think, if if you're, for instance, doing a campaign around championing people with disabilities or the barriers that they face,
00:24:21
Speaker
If you're not doing anything to change your own accessibility for your own product, then you might come under fire for doing that. So that's maybe those some of those three things might explain some of the barriers to doing more inclusion and diversity campaigns. Yeah, you certainly need to have the proof points to back it up in many cases. But how could we use data to support these inclinations that we have to more inclusive work and inclusive storytelling?
00:24:50
Speaker
I would say
Data-Driven Inclusive Storytelling
00:24:51
Speaker
that data can be powerful in two ways in this regard. The first is a little bit about what we've talked about already in finding examples of campaigns which have been hugely successful and having the data to back that up so that you can go to whoever's signing off a campaign and say, look, this similar campaign has worked really well in that that place. um You can do it too here. That'll be the first thing. And the second thing would be more in the maybe the strategy phase or the creative phase, which would be testing an idea. So this could be message testing. For instance, you could get quite a quick online sample of your target audience
00:25:29
Speaker
and show them different versions of a campaign or or messaging to understand how it's resonating with that those audiences. So that if someone, maybe your client has reservations, whether they are unsure that your campaign is going to play out the way you intended to, you can come to them and say, we've we've tested it. We know it's it's going to be a successful campaign.
00:25:52
Speaker
um and you can learn from that. So ah those those two things, showing what other people have done with data and and using your own research methods to test your ideas. I love that. I guess, how can we in the PR world achieve better, more authentic representation in the communications campaigns that we create for clients? Yeah, I feel that there's there's always a constant pressure on strategists to find that unique insight to drive our stories, right? We spend a lot of time digging for the one truth, the one insight that's going to spark creative thought in our briefs traditionally. But often it's it's the unique story we're looking for. When you look at movies, for example, they often tell the stories that have or the kinds of stories that have the same takeaways. There's those epic fights of good versus evil or
00:26:44
Speaker
the triumph of love in the face of adversity or the heroic adventurer who meets their destiny, right? They all fall into these archetypal patterns, but it's the way that they're told by whom. And for our work, it's the way that we as individuals with our own unique lived experiences, our own unique cultural influences and our own unique understanding of the world are going to enrich the narrative in a way that only we can. But while it is about this this understanding of ourselves, it's not only about ourselves. And I think this is where so many get it wrong. It's also about the collective.
00:27:24
Speaker
We have to truly understand ourselves within the world and the contexts we operate in, but we have to look at our peers, our families, our friends, our communities, and truly seek to understand the cultural contexts that they operate in to be a true driver of culture and not just a mere reflection of it. I would also maybe a little bit provocatively would challenge anyone who is interested in this space or who want to understand this space more fully and and design the kind of strategy and the kind of work that is diverse and inclusive, I would
00:28:02
Speaker
I would ask them to look around at their groups, their communities, their friends. What do you see? And take that as your starting point. Look at the diversity around you and incorporate it a little bit more of it into your life. On that note of, you know, we've talked a lot about the intersection of behavioral science and inclusion and diversity. What makes you excited for the future in this space?
Future of Personalized Storytelling
00:28:29
Speaker
One area which makes me excited as a communicator and a behavioural scientist, but slightly scared as well, is yeah is the ability increasing ability to tell really personal stories to our audiences. There will always be the need for big out-of-home messaging so that everyone knows everyone's seen the same message. That's really important. like Everyone likes to talk about the same films. We don't want to always see separate films.
00:28:53
Speaker
That's important. But we now have technology that allows us to create personal stories and tell them to individuals in a way that we've never really done before, which is exciting. The bits can be a bit scary too, but I'm really quite fascinated to see where that's going to develop in the future. Love that. OK, I guess it's time for our quick fire questions. um I will start with give one piece of advice to a young woman or non-binary person starting out in their career in the creative industry.
00:29:22
Speaker
My
Advice for the Creative Industry
00:29:23
Speaker
advice would be don't take my advice. And by that I mean, actually studies have shown the best advice often is the advice that you would give your peer about something. So if you're not sure what to do, pretend someone's asked you, write that down as if you're giving them advice and actually listen to your own advice. That's probably the best thing to do.
00:29:43
Speaker
I love that. And back at you, quick fire question. What piece of creative work are you most proud of? I am most proud, and i've I've talked about these at length, so I won't go in detail, but i' am I'm most proud of that IKEA holiday spot and the KitKat Iftar bar. Just two wonderful examples of not only representation, but really getting at the at the stories um and the the really meaningful cultural contexts and insights behind the creative work. Nice. I'm going i'm going to keep going. Our next quick fires, a question for my last guest, Jay Shree. If you had a theme song that announced your arrival whenever you went socially and at work, what would it be
Personal Theme Songs and Contacts
00:30:25
Speaker
and why? This is such a great question. Okay, I don't want to spend too long thinking about it because it is quick fire. So off the top of my set off the top of my head, I'm going to say, Pure Honey by Beyonce off
00:30:36
Speaker
the new Renaissance album, just because that album has made a big impact in my life over the last year. I love it. Go take a listen and you'll understand why. And Zach, same question back at you, this because it's just so good from Jai Sri. If you had a theme song, what would it be and why? I'm terrible with music, but I like Bowie and I know Bowie's got a song, Changes, obviously, hugely popular. And my work's all about behavior change, so it's got to be Changes.
00:31:03
Speaker
I love that. i'm going to I'm going to think of you every time I hear that. So where can we find and follow you, lastly? LinkedIn. and That's why I post sometimes rather annoying messages, hoping people read them. How about yourself? Typical behavioral science to only be posting on LinkedIn.
00:31:23
Speaker
um Well, you know given that I do a lot in the creative space outside of work too, you can follow me follow me on Instagram. my name at Shireen Lada. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, um my website, www.shireenlada.com. Basically, it's just my name everywhere. um Message me, let's have a chat. Excellent. Zach, thank you so much for our chat today. That was really inspiring. I love listening to you speak. Likewise, Shireen. I mean, the some of those campaigns that you were talking about, they're really fascinating and I hope people learn from them and maybe get inspired by them for future client campaigns coming up.
00:32:02
Speaker
If you'd like to connect with Zach or myself, you can find us on LinkedIn. We'll include links in the description of this episode. This podcast was produced by Hannah Quick and edited by Paolo Rao. The cover art was designed by Maite Moreau and our music composed by Lea Taub. Thanks so much for listening.