Highlights from the episode:

On how a brain surgeon’s brain works

What’s the first thing Dr. Schwartz does in the morning? Where does he typically get his best ideas? What’s his morning drink? Favorite snack for a healthy brain? In this rapid-fire section of the Quad video series “Building Blocks,” featuring in-depth interviews with marketers, creatives and other cultural leaders, Manhattan neurosurgeon and critically-acclaimed author Dr. Theodore Schwartz answers these and other questions posed by Quad Chief Marketing Officer Josh Golden.

Highlights from the episode:

On how journalists build trusted relationships with sources

“It’s not rocket science. It’s just being human. I was always able to walk that line as a journalist [and] maintain editorial integrity. If anything, building and forging those relationships with people at a human level, that engenders trust because you know you obviously create that construct where you’re like, ‘This is off the record, but let’s just have a conversation.’ You literally just have to spend time with people you are writing about, otherwise you won’t really understand who they are, what makes them tick, what keeps them up and night, what they are challenged with.”

John Hope Bryant remembers the moment things began to fall into place.

He was 9 years old, living with his family in Compton, California, and had already experienced enough tragedy and loss to last a lifetime, including the murders of two friends.

One day, a banker visited his elementary school class to discuss the importance of financial literacy, Bryant tells Quad Chief Marketing Officer Josh Golden in the latest episode of Quad’s Building Blocks, a video interview series with leaders in business and marketing.

Fascinated, Bryant asked some pointed questions and heard the word that changed his trajectory: entrepreneur. The seed was planted. Within a year, he’d started a candy-selling business.

Since then, Bryant has launched more than 40 other organizations, entities and companies, including the one he believes has the potential to change everything: Operation HOPE, which champions financial literacy, inclusion and economic empowerment among youths and adults across the United States.

Founded six days after the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992, Operation HOPE is a “radical movement of common sense” geared toward “unleashing untapped human potential at scale,” Bryant tells Golden.

Through his work as an entrepreneur and philanthropist, Bryant has advised three U.S. presidents as well as countless senior corporate executives. He is credited with helping the U.S. Treasury design the pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program; after 9/11, he and Operation HOPE worked with the Bush Administration to develop a new federal policy framework for emergency financial disaster preparedness, response and recovery work.

In his appearance on Building Blocks, Bryant discusses his origin story, why he sees financial literacy as the “civil rights issue of the 21st century,” the powerful economic rationale for inclusion and diversity — and his advice for young people (to “ignore the noise”).

In addition to serving as Founder, Chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, Bryant is also Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Bryant Group Ventures and The Promise Homes Company, the largest for-profit, minority-controlled owner of institutional-quality, single-family residential rental homes in the United States.

In the latest episode of “Building Blocks,” Quad CMO Josh Golden engages in a heartfelt discussion with marketing legend Antonio Lucio. 

Quad’s interview series “Building Blocks” features wide-ranging conversations with industry leaders about how they tackle marketing challenges — while also giving us an insider’s view of the building blocks they used to forge success. 

Lucio has been a brand leader for decades, most notably in his global CMO roles at Facebook, HP and Visa. He also served as Chief Innovation and Portfolio Transformation Officer for PepsiCo. He was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame in 2022. 

Some highlights from the episode: 

• On building a team: “At my core — at my core, core, core — I am a teacher. So that means that I always, always, in every single company that I went through, I always started with the team that I had. … Most people, when you give them this challenge — and when you actually are able to articulate, and you don’t let go of the standards — are going to come up with you.”
• On learning from failure: “You only grow if you make mistakes. For some reason, that’s the way as humans we’re built. You learn a lot more when you fail than when you are incredibly successful.”
• On the value of mentorship: “The moment that I began to cultivate mentors outside of my companies, my life changed, because you feel significantly more support.”
• On building a successful career in marketing: “What I tell everyone is, in order to find the love the job you love, love the one that you have. I didn’t get to love marketing until I became really good at marketing. You don’t know what you’re going to love until you get good at it. … You have to get really, really good at your craft. The better that you get at your craft, the higher positions you’re going to achieve, the more difference you’re going to make in people’s life. And if you do that consistently, really good thing things are going to happen to you. You’re going to have choices.” 

 Watch the full conversation here.

In the debut episode of “Building Blocks,” Quad CMO Josh Golden engages in a fascinating discussion with Flowcode founder and CEO Tim Armstrong. Armstrong is the perfect guest to kick off this new video series, which features free-wheeling conversations with industry leaders about how they tackle the hardest marketing challenges — while also giving us an insider’s view of the building blocks they use to forge success.

A marketing-world legend and media/tech visionary, Armstrong first came to prominence at Google, where he was credited with helping the search giant build its advertising business into a multibillion-dollar juggernaut.

He went on to take various transformative leadership roles at other companies. These include serving as the co-founder of hyperlocal news platform Patch; taking the helm of AOL as CEO; and serving as chairman and CEO of the Verizon Media subsidiary Oath, following the telecom giant’s acquisition of AOL for $4.4 billion in 2015.

He launched Flowcode, his latest venture focused on leveraging an advanced QR code platform that connects the digital with the offline worlds, in late 2019. (Full disclosure: Quad was an early investor.)

His wide-ranging conversation with Golden touches on everything from Armstrong’s early morning routine to the most important piece of advice he would give to a young person starting out in the business world.

“Every year since the time I was 22 ’til now, every Thanksgiving Day weekend, I sit down and write my goals out for the next year… If you write your goals down, even if you don’t look at them, you’ll attain 80% of them every year.”

Armstrong says his No. 1 building block for success is setting goals. He not only does it annually, he does it daily — planning every day the night before, blocking out time for each thing he wants to accomplish.

“The lesson I learned early in my career is that risk-taking is like building a muscle, like going to the gym or learning a language.”

Armstrong says one of the most valuable skills he learned as a young entrepreneur was risk-taking. “Most people never say, ‘I did everything I wanted to, I took every risk I wanted to take.’ Most people say they have regrets,” he observes. “I have zero regrets.”

“You’re an average of the five things that you ‘eat’ — the information you consume —and what you ‘greet’ — who you’re around. You become an average of those things. Most people don’t think that way and they end up in spots they don’t want to be. So, before you do anything, ask if it will raise the average of five or lower it.”

When people starting out in business ask Armstrong for advice, he emphasizes the importance of seeing themselves as part of a bigger puzzle. Each person is born with certain skills and aptitudes. They’re a piece of a puzzle and there are other people out there who are a perfect fit. “Young people are very competitive, but I say be in charge of the things you’re good at and hug the people who are in charge of the things you’re not.”

Part of that approach involves surrounding yourself with people and information that make you better — the average of five. “I learned that later in life. I wish someone had sat me down when I was 12 and told me,” Armstrong says.

“I meditate first thing when I get up, and then after I meditate, I usually start [studying] subject matter. By the time I get to work, I’ve already been an hour-and-a-half on one subject. And I don’t just skim the surface; I go super deep.” 

Armstrong says he believes in being prepared. “I’m like, ‘Here’s how seven different companies do it. Here’s the research on it. Here are the things that I read and saw.” That’s the way to improve a company, he says. 

Watch Tim Armstrong’s full interview with Josh Golden to hear more.

Quad is helping to drive the conversation about the future of marketing. At the Brand Innovators Evolution of Retail Summit held during Shoptalk in Las Vegas in late March, Quad VP of Strategic Sales Marcus Lancaster led a fascinating one-on-one conversation with Ben Yahalom, President of True Classic, a global menswear brand that started in Calabasas, Calif., as a direct-to-consumer T-shirt company in 2019. The title of their fireside chat offers a hint of just how wildly successful True Classic has been since its launch: “How We Bootstrapped True Classic From 0 to 9 Figures in 2 Years Profitably.”

You can watch their full conversation in the video embedded below, but to start with, here’s a key excerpt from their conversation:

Marcus Lancaster: Your target audience is men. What were the vehicles you used to target those customers, and how is your audience evolving as you’re growing so rapidly?

Ben Yahalom: Our TAM, or total addressable market, is very broad — we’re very inclusive by nature, we’re not fashion-forward, we sell essentials, core staples. And even if you’re not the guy wearing it, we actually have a very substantial group of customers who are females who buy for, fill in the blank, significant other, dad, brother, nephew. So, we have always targeted very, very broadly, because we truly believe that our products can sit in pretty much anybody’s wardrobe. And we also were very inclusive in sizing. So, we went all the way from small to 3XL, now we’re developing 4XL, and we’re really trying to make everybody, irrespective of their body type, look good and feel good.

That really was a big advantage for us because what it allowed us to do is advertise very, very broadly. We were able to find product market fit with just a lot of different types of segments and consumers out there. And if you think about some of the industry challenges — the most recent ones in the shape of iOS 14 or the evolving privacy landscape — we weren’t really impacted by that to the same extent that some others have because we are not in a niche market. We really can attract and retain almost anybody.

Lancaster: One of the questions that we run into with the brands that we engage with is many times direct-to-consumer brands reach an inflection point where Meta alone isn’t the path to the next customer. So, they’ve really expanded an omnichannel presence. You’re doing that now. Can you tell us a little bit about how you’ve approached that, and also how you’re measuring it?

Yahalom: We started on Meta, and we grew and tried a lot of different channels, right? So, Google and YouTube and TikTok and podcasts and direct mail and TV — name a channel, we’re either running on it or tried it in the past. Affiliates, influencers, programmatic…

The measurement piece is actually pretty critical, because that’s the absolute foundation of our strategy. And what we do is — or the saying that we kind of follow — is that wherever performance goes, budget flows. We don’t play favorites when it comes to what channels we advertise on. Every channel needs to prove themselves.

And we also don’t look at it so much from a mix [perspective], as we look at it as, How can I maximize the opportunity presented to me on any given channel, and spend up to a point where it doesn’t make sense to spend any more marginally?

The excerpt above has been lightly edited for clarity and space.

An ongoing interview series between Quad and marketing leaders from some of the world’s biggest, most successful brands, as well as thought leaders from cutting-edge marketing research firms. 

David Shing (known as “Shingy”) is an Australian futurist, speaker, creative director, strategic digital consultant, and entrepreneur.

As one of ten kids growing up in rural Australia, David Shing, aka Shingy, was heavily inspired by the arts, he told Quad CMO Josh Golden in the latest episode of “Next Level.” And when it came time to pick a career, he naturally gravitated towards his twin curiosities of fashion and design. But a piece of advice about design as a communication device, with the potential to impact millions of people, influenced his design tilt.

Graduating at the cusp of the desktop computing revolution as a classically trained graphic designer, he understood that disruption would always be essential to creativity. So, Shing embraced the future and picked up a new set of tech skills to start his career with AOL (America Online).

“I got to sit back and think what the real value of communication is,” Shing says of his time at the then-dominant web portal, where he helped build sites and worked across territories in media and marketing, with a focus on understanding and anticipating cultural change.

Shing’s reputation as a forecaster of trends — a career that he’s continued post-AOL as a consultant — comes from his track record of advising brands on the unique opportunities afforded by emerging digital, social and mobile technologies.
“As a forecaster, I skim across the things that are culturally relevant and gravitate towards the things that pull me in as a subject matter of interest — a mile wide and an inch deep,” he said.
Commenting about social interaction in today’s Web 2.0 world, Shing said that “1% originate an idea, 9% contribute, but 90% observe.” He added that he’s focused on helping brands move beyond their broadcast-era thinking, using their digital footprint to have a more even exchange with consumers.
As with successful interpersonal relationships, brands participating in communities need to know how to act in a culture if they think they deserve to be there — and that bec. “If you know who you are as a brand, then you know how to behave.”

When asked by Golden what it takes to be a change agent, Shing listed three key attributes: performance, “feel” and story, each of which are relevant for both brands and individuals. Brands, he said, tend to over-index on emphasizing performance, because it provides an opportunity to hit consumers with data — “bigger, badder, better,” as he put it. But Shing recommended focusing on feel — “What’s the feeling I get?” —to regain our intuitive human instinct for sparking a connection. And when it comes to story, Shing says the best way to keep it inspiring yet grounded is to pick a personal narrative.

An ongoing interview series between Quad and marketing leaders from some of the world’s biggest, most successful brands, as well as thought leaders from cutting-edge marketing research firms.

Pranav Yadav is global CEO of Neuro-Insight, a company at the forefront of studying the deepest level of consumer decision-making — the subconscious mind.

Yadav knows that all too well. As a teenager, he came to the U.S. for a college degree, and landed what most would consider a dream job on Wall Street with Goldman Sachs.

But he quickly realized that it wasn’t the right career for him. What he truly wanted was something more fulfilling.

And Yadav’s next job would become the inspiration for Neuro-Insight and his exciting work today.

While working with a Danish innovation strategy consulting firm, he talked to people on a daily basis for six to eight hours about social-scientific studies, trying to identify patterns and make connections to the decision-making process. He soon realized, “What people said in the first hour is different from what they said in the second hour and was completely contradictory to what was said in the fourth hour.”

Yadav admits that human decision-making is more complicated than most of our current tools allow us to assess. But the idea of tapping into the power of the subconscious mind is nothing new. There’s mention of it in ancient scriptures from older cultures, “in which the ones who have mastered their minds are truly enlightened,” he notes.

“So, in a way what we’ve tried to do with the groundbreaking research of Dr. Richard Silberstein, chief scientist of Neuro-Insight, is quantify the subconscious mind,” Yadav explains, while also showcasing the technology the company uses to measure cognitive brain activity.

While most neuroscience electroencephalogram (EEG) studies include relatively few people, Neuro- Insight sessions typically involve 60 people watching a 30-minute visual reel while 24 electrodes measure electrical activity in their brains. “That’s millions of data points versus 2,000 people being sent a 20-question survey. There’s really no comparison in terms of statistical significance,” Yadav says.

In a multichannel world where many marketers are putting the same ad on Instagram and TikTok, this work can help show why context matters, he explains.

When it comes to ad metrics, there is no better competition than the Super Bowl, where marketers try to crack the winning formula year after year. Yadav compared an iconic Budweiser Super Bowl spot – 2015’s “Lost Dog,” an Admeter #1 ranker — to a 2021 Oatly Super Bowl spot that some found downright annoying.

According to Yadav, while the Budweiser spot tugs at the heartstrings with a great storyline, it fumbles by introducing the brand after the story has reached its crescendo. The Oatly spot worked harder as a creative from the get-go with its message recall far higher than any other spot aired during the 2021 Super Bowl season.

Yadav warns that what people say doesn’t correlate to what they do. Unless the audience has committed your key message or brand to long-term memory, they’re not going to act on it.

In calling out the secret sauce that makes great creative a more compelling piece of communication — one that drives behavioral change — Yadav notes how advertising can play a crucial role in shaping culture.

“Culture has always been built on myth, stories, songs and rituals. As a human race, we need to have a 1,000-year plan rather than a five- or 10-year plan.”

Watch Pranav Yadav’s full conversation with Josh Golden to learn how marketing metrics can be refined, and how true impact will come from studying what kind of society we want to be — while creating new myths, songs and rituals to inspire us to get there.

Entrepreneurship requires humility, tenacity and respect

Mark French is a serial entrepreneur who’s built and run several businesses in the sports, consumer goods, media and technology industries. The world-class athletes he’s partnered with in roles with MISSION, The Players’ Tribune, Healthy Together and NBC Universal include such household names as Serena Williams, Derek Jeter and Dwyane Wade.

Mark is now CEO of X2 PERFORMANCE, guiding the energy drink brand during a critical and highly successful period of growth.

The road to this point wasn’t smooth, though. Having superstar athletes in a pitch doesn’t automatically get you a win — failures and losses are part of entrepreneurship.

They don’t hold Mark back anymore, though. Setbacks have taught him how to respond — and they’ve taught him humility.

This started at a young age, when he turned academic challenges into a life-changing opportunity. His father told him that if he got his act together, he’d take Mark to a Knicks game. “You gotta get your grades up, you gotta focus, you gotta go to school.”

Mark did. At the game, he informed his dad that he was going to walk down to the court and talk to his favorite Knick, Mark Jackson. Security didn’t deter him. Neither did the bright lights nor the presence of his basketball idol. He introduced himself to Jackson and asked for a job as a ball-boy. It worked. Jackson pointed to the man Mark would need to talk to.

“It’s also a business lesson,” Mark notes as he looks back. “Act like you’re supposed to be there.”

But others in that moment saw more. “He showed the same amount of respect for the security guards at the arena as he did for the NBA All-Stars,” Jackson later said of the encounter. “That’s what made him unique as a teenager. And that’s what makes him a success today.”

Mark French returns the compliment, adding that he’s humbled that Jackson noticed.

Business instincts that get noticed

Humility is necessary in entrepreneurial careers where losses can outnumber wins. “In today’s ventures, there are a lot more bad days than there are good,” he says. “Being punched in the mouth when you’re an entrepreneur happens a lot. The more you know how to take shots, the better you’re going to be at reacting to them.”

Mark’s roles have always been with disruptors, never starting at a company that was an industry leader. “I get humbled all the time.”

This even applied at a giant like NBC, where ratings were down when Mark worked there. He pitched an idea to executives called NBC Everywhere, bringing content to captive audiences so it added value to their mundane experiences. In the days before always-on connected devices, he suggested screens for those riding in cabs or pumping gas.

How failure can fuel success

“I couldn’t get arrested in that building,” Mark says of that time when NBC Everywhere was only a well-researched concept. But persistence and a believer on the executive level paid off.

“Instead of giving up, he was energized,” NBC Universal’s then-president of integrated media Beth Comstock says of Mark’s early tenacity. Why did failure light a fire under him?

Confidence in the concept. “I was getting enough assurance from the marketplace,” Mark says, “from outside the building, to know there was something there.”

Watch Mark’s conversations with Josh Golden to learn how his ideas take shape, more about failure as a master’s class in persistence, and his entrepreneurial thesis of, “Try to solve a problem that hasn’t been solved before.”

Multicultural marketing begins with internal transformation

An ongoing video dialogue between Josh Golden and marketing leaders from some of the country’s biggest, most successful brands.

Debbie King landed her dream job as the NFL’s vice president of marketing and brand strategy.

Her Michael Jordan fandom in the ‘90s set her down the path of working in sports and entertainment. “I loved the behind-the-scenes part of sports, the business.”

Debbie spent more than 11 years bringing the NFL brand to life. “I felt so blessed to say I work in my passion. And once I did that, then it became, ‘OK, I’ve done my dream job — now what do I want to do?”

Why authentic multicultural marketing is a necessity

A strong culture was at the core of the role Debbie wanted. She found it with what is now ViacomCBS. Today she’s instrumental in further strengthening the company’s quickly growing, changing culture.

“Six weeks after I started, we merged with another team. Then Viacom and CBS merged about a year and a half after that.”

In making her transition, Debbie learned that she wanted to help more people be seen and heard, especially young people. “That’s why I do this work. I don’t do it for me. If I can help other people find their voice and grow, that’s as satisfying as what I thought was my passion.”

Her work building a more multicultural external marketing story starts with the internal culture she fosters through DEI programs.

“I do wake up saying, ‘How am I going to make that these people feel like they’re a part of this world, that they’re included and being heard?’”

Driving cultural change from inside

Debbie notes that the demographic landscape in America is more diverse than ever and media companies need to reflect that in content. “You have to be ready to serve those diverse audiences and do it authentically. That means on the inside, your teams have to have that expertise. You have to be diverse. You have to understand other communities and have empathy.”

She cites prominent challenges that affect everyone in media today. “There have to be hard looks internally at our programming to say, we really need to have people who look like our audience behind the camera… Who’s writing, who’s directing — who’s making the decisions about what goes out over the air. All of those things go into transforming our business for the future. And the future is diverse.”

This transformation starts with internal education. “It’s baby steps. You don’t undo what people have been doing their entire lives through three training sessions. But every bit of progress matters.”

Living diversity’s ‘learning moment’

Debbie hopes her role extends well beyond ViacomCBS. “As a media company, we recognize that we help inform people’s perception of other groups,” she says. “I also think, this kind of work is transferable. I don’t need to do DEI work in my life, but I am taking that and impacting people to help them get to their full potential.”

Learn more about Debbie’s journey, and what she’s building in a leadership role that addresses some of the most universally relevant challenges in business — and in all our lives.