Nils Leonard of Uncommon
What are you fed by?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 258: Nils Leonard
Here's a question. What are you fed by? I'm Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I'm asked to help their leaders discover what they're capable of, and then to maximize their impact. Helping them to unlock their own creativity, as well as the creativity of the people around them.
Welcome to the intersection of strategy and humanity. This episode is the fifth in a series of conversations that I'm having in partnership with the Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity. For the weeks leading up to Cannes, we're focusing our study of leadership through a single lens. The impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Creative Industries.
Are we moving fast enough? Are we going far enough? Is this an opportunity to fundamentally redesign the creative industries, or should we adjust and iterate, slowly and carefully? Do we follow the puck, or skate to where it's going? There are opportunities, and risks, around every corner.
This episode is a conversation with Nils Leonard. He's the Co-founder of Uncommon, a global creative studio based in New York, London, and Stockholm. I invited Nils into the series because I suspected he would have a strong point of view about what AI is, and isn't, when it comes to creativity.
Nils has strong beliefs about many things, which is why I ask him back on the show regularly. One of those is the emotional leap of faith that every creative act demands. It's a deeply and uniquely human investment. So, when I asked him about the threat of AI to creativity, he said this.
“It's not fed by tragedy. It's not fed by loss or by a heart attack or by a lover that's left you. It's not fed by a night on red wine and weeping and music. And it's not fed by sudden and dramatic radical change in somebody's life to lead them to do something.
And so as a result, yeah, it can offer up great alternatives to average problems and average solutions and offer those mediums, but it will never give you that. It'll never write "Push the Sky Away". It'll never write "Grief Is the Thing With Feathers". Because it just simply won't be able to understand or comprehend or even play back the leap that was required to do that type of work.”
At the end of the series, I'll offer some thoughts on what we've heard and learned, and where we might go from here. In the meantime, thanks for joining us.
Here's Nils Leonard.
[00:02:39] Charles:
Nils, welcome back to Fearless. It's always so great to have you on the show.
[00:02:42] Nils Leonard:
Thank you, Charles. Lovely to see you again, mate.
[00:02:44] Charles:
Let me start where I've been starting this particular series. What's your relationship with AI?
[00:02:49] Nils Leonard:
Okay. That's a question I wasn't ready for. Mixed. You know, look in a weird way, of course the studio, like any tool, is already using it. I think hungry creatives of any sort want a competitive advantage, so we're all over it. We're using it to build our decks. But in a way, I'd liken that to the onset of Photoshop or any other brilliant technological leap or tool in our belt at the moment.
The overarching effect in my relationship with AI for our industry, I've spoken about a little bit, and in many ways I think it's the saviour that we couldn't be for ourselves. I mean, in many negative ways, but essentially, in a nutshell, I think what it's going to do is remove the average, the quick, the logistics, the consistency, the low cost content.
It's going to remove all those things that I think our industry has convinced itself we should be selling, and it's going to do them better. And the short story is, it's going to leave the only thing that we can actually do brilliantly, which is the act of creativity, of radical creativity. And it's going to leave that, because it won't be able to do that.
And I'll talk a bit about that in a minute as to why I don't think it will, but it's going to leave that to a bunch of people who arguably can do that like nobody else. So I think if you are, I think if you stop the industry at the moment, say, "Hey, are you in the business of creativity?" Everyone wants to take their hand.
But I think if you ask them all the separate question, which is, "How do you make your money?" A lot of them would say, low cost content, integration, consistency, synergy. And that's not the same thing. And so—
[00:04:16] Charles:
Programmatic, right? That would definitely--
[00:04:18] Nils Leonard:
Yeah, all of that.
Pick a word, man. I mean, and there are many other words that people have convinced themselves, by the way, mean the same thing as creativity, and they definitely f*cking don't.
So, that is going to, they're going to get eaten, probably, in some capacity, and some people are going to make tremendous amounts of money, but most of them are just going to disappear. And that's going to get eaten up, and then it's going to be very, very liberating, I think, for a bunch of people. Because instead of making pleas for creativity and pleas for difference, it's going to be the only thing left.
And brands are going to be scratching their heads going, okay, I've got all the systems in the world, everything runs like it should. Except things are still sh*t, help.
[00:04:50] Charles:
So where's the line going to be? Because I've been reading a lot of stuff about what AI can do and how sophisticated it becomes. It looks like it's harder and harder to see the gap between human creativity and what AI does.
So maybe this isn't a perfect analogy, but let me give you this. 149 actors playing patients, texted live with one of 20 primary care doctors. The AI beat the primary care doctors on 28 out of 32 characteristics, tied on the other four, and they won on 24 of 26 scales of empathy and judgment. So I know that's not creativity in the way that you and I might think of it, but there are elements of that that you and I would have, six or 12 months ago said, "Well, yeah, empathy is a creative attribute or required for creativity."
How are we going to recognize the line?
[00:05:36] Nils Leonard:
That's a good question. I've got a different way of looking at it. I mean, empathy is a human characteristic, but really, how you quantify empathy probably isn't, right? And so, I think it's going to win on those. Let me put it like this. It's like, AI is fed by the median and the most popular desires of human experience.
That's what it's fed by that. And so as a result, that's what it serves up. It's not fed by tragedy. It's not fed by loss or by a heart attack or by a lover that's left you. It's not fed by a night on red wine and weeping and music. And it's not fed by sudden and dramatic radical change in somebody's life to lead them to do something.
And so as a result, yeah, it can offer up great alternatives to average problems and average solutions and offer those mediums, but it will never give you that. It will never write "Push the Sky Away". It will never write "Grief Is the Thing With Feathers". Because it just simply won't be able to understand or comprehend or even play back the leap that was required to do that type of work.
So do I— I mean, your question is slightly different, too-- do I think it's going to eat up a lot of other jobs based on decision making? Probably, yeah. I mean, if you're a medical professional, you're about balanced decision making, you're about listening, you're about facts, so will it scoff some of that?
Probably. But it won't create heartbreaking works of staggering genius, and it won't create... If I want, I know I'm looking to the most extreme and sad versions of events, but a plane crash in New York City was devastating and has caused all sorts of other stuff, but one output of that are the tributes and the monuments to that.
And they are heartbreakingly beautiful, when you see that. Eternally bottomless, flowing, just incredible things. And that's not AI, man. It's not going to give you that. It's not going to understand that.
[00:07:28] Charles:
Well, and to your point, they're not only stunningly beautiful, but they create an atmosphere. If you go down to Ground Zero, and you stand there, and you look at the physical beauty, the thing you walk away with is a sense of the place.
I mean, the image is in your mind, yes, but it's actually the atmosphere.
[00:07:45] Nils Leonard:
And just imagine the pitch. It's endless staggering loss at its most beautiful, in its most beautiful form, without saying any of those words. Everyone else's pitch, bet you 20 quid, "We're going to build these monuments, they stood so proud, we're going to stand proud, we're going to go up," and someone else was, "No, no, we're not going to do that, actually.
We're not going to do that. We are going to go down. And we're going to go down for f*cking ever." And I just think those types of things have a relationship with the human spirit in a way that no average medium possibly could. And nothing that played back our behaviors to us would ever get there. I also think, one other thing on that, Charles, is, I think great ideas aren't made to play a natural and comfortable part in culture.
They're made to cut through it. And literally that's what a great idea does. So by its nature, the behavior of what we term creativity-- and by the way, everyone has a different version of that, so we should talk about that, because if by creativity you mean seven second video, starts with a logo and a sonic mnemonic, probably yeah, you will get replaced, if that's your version of creativity.
If by it you mean the physics of culture can be shifted, because there's a new thing, a narrative object or a conversation that you've created that just cuts straight through the meta and the internet and the way things are, then I just don't see that coming. Yeah, so good news.
[00:09:00] Charles:
So let's ask that question.
How do you define creativity? How are we going to know it when we see it or experience it or feel it?
[00:09:07] Nils Leonard:
Oh man, I've got a few. I've got a few. The best way I can describe it is a story. And maybe you'll let me do that in a minute. But Daniel Ek said, "The value of a company is the sum of the problems it solves."
And I've always loved that. And so when you look at creativity and the most radical forms of creativity, they are a response to a crisis or a problem or a... a common quote we use uncommon is "The woods are burning," from Death of a Salesman. I've spoken to you about this before. Really, that's there to get people to look at the world and see what woods are burning for them.
Because what that does is, inside the human, it creates an emotion, which is, I don't sort this out, if I don't conquer this, this thing is going to get us. But to conquer it, I need to be less afraid of change. And I am of doing this thing, you know what I mean? And I think that's the ultimate, that's the ultimate spirit of creativity, is moments of radical change that, you know, are fueled by this sort of impending fire.
And I think those are the biggest leaps we've ever made. Netflix was born of our frustration with waiting weeks for a series. Spotify was born with our frustration of paying 12 pounds for a CD in a shop. Uber was born with our frustration with local taxis being disgusting and unsafe. All the companies we would cite as innovative and the most creative companies are born of that spirit.
So I think creative ideas are born of that. But, way outside of that, can I just tell you the best story about creativity I've ever heard? I'm going to get this horrendously wrong and sum it up far too fast. Yves Klein, brilliant artist, rock star back in the day. He was known for this blue, this lurid blue, it's like a madgerelle blue that you see.
And he made his own color, AKB. And he would paint objects and stuff in it, and people would go to his exhibitions and be like, "Oh my God, Yves Klein's such a badass." And he would paint women, and he was like a right old rock star, and everyone's like, "Oh my God." So there's one show he hosts in Paris called The Void.
And he asked people to come, and they're all waiting outside, and they're being forced to wait. And they're like the Jay Zs and Beyonces of our day, right? They're like cultural royalty. And they're being fed drinks and stuff like that, and they're like, "Yeah, it'll be open in a minute, I'm really sorry for keeping you, have a drink, chill out, it'll be open."
Two hours they're like waiting outside, like, what the f*ck is this? Eventually, eventually, two by two they're let in. And they're looking around for that ping of blue, there's nothing, it's a white room. And they're like, "What's going on, where is it, where is it, the wall's going to cave in." They've fed more drinks and they're wandering around and they're like, "Hang on a minute, this guy's just taking the piss."
And eventually, the human spirit gives up and they're like, enough. They've been there like four hours, they're quite drunk by this point, nothing's happened, they're in a white room. They're like, "Arrogant bastard, he asked us this thing, the arrogance!" And they go home, they go back to their hotels, and they're like, "What a bastard," and whatever, and they're getting ready for bed. And just before they go to bed, they go to the toilet, and they piss and a jet of pure blue comes out.
Because all night, the drinks were laced with IKB. They became the art. They became the blue. Can you imagine, no phone, no camera, no way of capturing that? You would stare incredulous at your toilet thinking, "F*cker." That is my best version of creativity, dude. I don't see AI poisoning you with a drink that makes your piss blue.
[00:12:03] Charles:
That is a fantastic story and provides me with a visual that I will never forget. I might try, but I will never forget. Okay, so against the context of that, you are a business owner. You are now the owner of a larger business than the last time we spoke. You have to make all of this make sense within an economic construct, that makes it viable. How do you go about that? So presumably, I don't know your business model intimately, but the industry is set up by charging for labor on a marked up hourly rate, right? That's the model. It doesn't actually get paid for creative value. So is that fair?
[00:12:43] Nils Leonard:
Then say, look at it. I think the business is brilliant at doing two things.
One is, yes, setting itself up for failure by selling things that shouldn't be. But the other is arguing about this how we get paid thing. There is another way of looking at how we get paid, which is the way the artists look at it, which is, "This is worth whatever the f*ck I say it is, and I'm going to put it in a room," and the Damien Hirst story, right? He gets that skull, he covers it in diamonds, and he covers it, doesn't he, I think in something like a million pounds worth of diamonds.
And so someone then calls and says, "I want to buy it off you, Damien. And I'll buy it for 1. 5 million." And he's like, "No, no, no. I'm selling it for 10." And he's like, "Yeah, but it's only got a million pounds of it." He's like, "Yeah, but I'm selling it for 10." And it's up to Damien Hirst to sell his creativity for what he wants to sell it for.
There is a simple equation, which we can do if we want to, by the way, which is, if what you sell is the genuine top tier or radical, most game changing version of creativity, and you're in that business and that's all that you sell, then you do get to have a conversation about the worth of that, and they can charge for hours if they like, they can charge for bodies, they can charge for people, they can charge for departments.
I don't really care. What I've worked out is, after many years in this industry, here's what we think we're worth. And if you want to charge by the amount of bottles in our fridge, I don't care, but we think it's worth this. And so, what I would say is, for Uncommon, we've been lucky enough to establish a business or not lucky enough, depending on stuff.
To establish a business that just sells creativity, really, there are practices within it. Of course, there are, there's design, there's brand design, there's strategy, there's all that other stuff. But the Alp of Uncommon that we are known for, the reason clients come to us, the reason brands come to us, is for the power of the creativity we can bring to their brand and the change it can create, positive change it can create on their behalf.
And so, we are... thriving is a strong word, but we're succeeding in that economy because most of our business is not about and hasn't been built with the crutch of a low cost studio, or... by the way, these are temptations that the industry put in front of itself. Remember when everyone wanted an in house studios, they could do all that local stuff for clients.
These are addictive things because you become a factory, but of course, like any factory, someone else can offer it, and someone else can do it quicker. Someone else can do it cheaper. So there's a race to the bottom. It has been a race created by ourselves, really. So at the moment, Uncommon are focusing on how AI can supercharge that vision.
We're not having an argument about whether we should or shouldn't use it. It's all in service of the larger vision, which is, imagine the biggest, most important way to leverage creativity. Our original mission, Charles, was to be on the receiving end of the most important and influential briefs of our time.
That was our, that was the guff we wrote seven years ago. So imagine all of the tools at our disposal in the company we now have, using creativity for those briefs. I would imagine we will need AI, but it's AI in service of something bigger.
[00:15:36] Charles:
So am I hearing you correctly in that you have established a business model that allows you to charge for the value that you place on the output that you create, and however a client wants to reverse engineer that amount of money into their model, that's up to them?
[00:15:52] Nils Leonard:
We spent a year between our old jobs and this one, arguing and kicking this idea around and shall we charge for ideas and what does that mean? And what I realized is, what do you really want? Do you want the headline of a different model of charging, or do you want to make some money?
And we were like, well, of course we wanted both. But the truth is, we were like, actually, if the output is just, we make the money we think we deserve, then that's fine. And we're all worried too much about, "They charge for time. Oh my God, like a plumber." I'm like, yeah, but one plumber gets paid $1,000 an hour, and one plumber gets paid $100.
So which one do you want to be? At that point, I'm like, fine, I don't care. No one's going to lie on their deathbed. Remembering how clients charge. They're just going to remember what they made, and the companies they worked in, and the time they had, and I just, so I think they're worrying about the wrong stuff.
[00:16:42] Charles:
The three of you have a particular level of self confidence, I think it's fair to say. And, you've now got enough years under your belt that you've proven the fact that what you believe can be brought to the real world, right?
[00:16:53] Nils Leonard:
The challenge has been validated by all the people at Uncommon, by, every one of us entered this experiment a bit worried, too. And every one of us every now and then needs a good talking to, to remind us that it's still what we do. And you look at the evidence of things like the EAFC rebrand, Britain Get Talking, the biggest mental health campaign in the UK, SiriusXM work, which is just, and I'm like, that's it, that's the evidence.
So all the guff over here, fine, you may or may not agree with. The evidence of that are our relationships here, the business performance here. So, I do need that validation. I do need to wake up sometimes and go and look at my phone and go, "Yeah, we did that. That's okay. It's all right. You'll be okay."
[00:17:32] Charles:
Yeah, but I guess my point is that you guys started from a powerful premise, and you have had each other and you've hired talented people and you've got enough evidence now to give you the confidence to keep going and push that model further. What I'm curious about is, AI is going to be, I think we would both agree, so completely massively disruptive that the old model, which, I don't know what the percentage is. Let's make it up. 90 + percent of the industry are working on a paid by the hour model, right? AI is going to change that, because you're not going to be able to make enough money doing that, because you won't have enough people to actually do the stuff that people are getting paid for at the moment.
So, given the fact that you have crossed this chasm already, what advice would you have for people who are still yet to make that leap, who want to be part of an industry that celebrates and is valued for the original thinking, the problem solving, to some extent the art that it can create but doesn't create often enough?
What would you offer them to say, this is how you make it over to our side of the chasm?
[00:18:32] Nils Leonard:
I think there's so much here, Charles, and this is why I love talking to you. It's like talking to myself in many ways, as well. I would say that there are some people running companies that know they're under threat and that's their woods burning, and I would use those woods burning to motivate you. Instead of sticking your head between your legs in the praise position, I would use those woods burning to just go and try something, because the world loves new things.
Alongside that, what you're seeing are reactions to nevermind AI, just culture in general, social, the platforms, meta, right? And what you're seeing is, it's harder and harder and harder to find what you would call counterculture, point of interest, or new things. It's harder, actually, not easier. Despite all of this talk of new things are all out there, they're not. We're all watching the same sh*t. And that's brilliant because when you watch a brand like Cortier's or someone else come out, the way that they cut through culture, dude, they shoot something on a mobile on a fence in Wembley. And it's ugly as sin and you can't see anything. And the typography is woeful.
And then they launch it out back of a truck in Part Royal and they make a million quid in 20 minutes. No. If that's not inspiring, if you don't look at that and go, I could, never mind servicing the ad industry. I could go and create a brand new brand with next to no tools and next to no money and develop a completely relationship with the people and the fans of that brand.
That's one example. And completely cut through all that other crap. So I guess what I'm saying is, the rules have changed. The targets have become somewhat easier. The middle now has never been so visible. It's never been so served. It's never been so obvious. It's never been more the same. So the clues are there.
And I think whether you're talking about AI or whether you're talking about connective digital stuff, like Zoom was the conversation du jour during COVID. It was like, oh my God, what video conferencing are you using? How are we all meeting each other? There've been others. That in service of something else, I think is the answer to your question, which is, the value of a company is that some of the problems it solves, what are our biggest modern problems?
That we're all seeing the same crap, and that we've got apparently everything we've ever wanted except we've never been less happy. What? Right? Like, these are the problems of our day, not where the f*cking AI is going to take some guy doing a low cost content's job. And so all of this stuff I think is where the people in our industry who care and have brilliant brains and are creative, want to play. I play there. You know, I wouldn't be trying to start an alternative version of Hogarth. I would be thinking about launching a meaningful brand in the world that might reintroduce human happiness. Launching a physical shop that didn't have an online presence, it's creating the scarcest brand in the world.
What is that? Like, all these things are far more interesting to me. And you'll see to the point about Courtier's sales, a million quid in 20 minutes, like that is unprecedented and there isn't an algorithm for that. That's human interest and desire and scarcity and brand, all that good sh*t. So I would, just basically, what I'm saying is, I've looked at all the biggest problems and I'd find some magic in there and I'd use the threat to find a new way.
[00:21:42] Charles:
And presumably be encouraged, if not inspired, by the fact that it's never been easier to start your own business, you've never had more access to tools, right? The ability to create on scale is democratized now in a way that never has been is going to get larger and more expansive. And so, don't limit your imagination in terms of what you can create, either by yourself or with a couple of other like minded people.
[00:22:05] Nils Leonard:
And draw not just those lessons, but the lessons that the brands that people want most now are the brands that are the most homegrown, the most real, the most personal, the hardest to get. We have been, we taught ourselves as a race recently, that if we don't work hard for something, it's not really worth anything.
Because everything has been served so much. Modern luxury is tough. It's ice baths and it's climbs. It's not beaches and cars anymore. And the reason I make that is, that all the things that people now want and all the desires we have inside us now are pointing back toward things that start. You haven't got to be a genius anymore.
You don't need a massive stack. You don't need verticals and other companies and blah. Are you quite the opposite? All those things are often a signifier that you're probably not. And so I just think that's some really fascinating. I find that very heartening.
[00:22:56] Charles:
So if you were starting again today, how would you build it?
Like, what would you do now?
[00:23:04] Nils Leonard:
So I told you the thing we wrote when we started, that would still be the same, to be a company built for the biggest and most influential briefs of our time. I was unsure how to accomplish that, and opening in New York has been a part of that, and Stockholm, too. I saw this other thing the other day which just made me really think, and it was an engraving of the School of Athens.
Like, I'm not educated, okay, so I'm going to get this wrong, but I was like, okay, what the fu*k's this school about? I looked at it. I was like, okay, right. There was a period in time where basically the best thinkers on the world were in one place. That was the deal with the school. It was like Plato, somebody, someone, someone, I was like, oh my God.
And can you imagine the stories of that? It would have felt, wouldn't it? Like, the heat of the world and all its radical change and all its new ideas were in one place for a period of time. That must have been wicked to behold. And then I thought to myself, well, if I were starting it now-- which by the way, is always our kind of model anyway-- I would try and build a modern School of Athens.
I wouldn't worry about the stack or the shape or the service or the thing. I would imagine a photo of the 25 best thinkers of our time. And I would just try and put them together to do something incredible. To do lots of things that we're in. And I think that that would be a beautiful thing to have built.
That's what I'm trying to do.
[00:24:22] Charles:
And would you do that in multiple places?
[00:24:24] Nils Leonard:
Yeah, man. Yeah, I would. One weird version of that, and love or hate this, our Chief Creative Officer in New York, down by his work, is called Sam Shepard. He's brilliant, annoyingly, and he did a piece of work called The Lost Class, which was phenomenal.
If you've not seen it, go and look at it and it's got a magic trick inside it. All the best stuff does. And I saw that piece of work and I was not just excited by it or jealous, I was venomous with rage that Uncommon hadn't made it. It was one of the only things I've ever seen where I felt like that.
I was just like, oh my God. And so I tracked the guy down and he turns out to be not a d*ckhead and also very bright and I was like, oh my God, okay. So we get Sam in the mix. Thomas Tetherwick's a friend now and a colleague, and we work together on many, many things, the humanized project that he's made and Unlandmarks, which is a project we did recently where we re-imagined iconic British buildings, but through the development of the last 50 years of cities.
So turn them all into decidedly average structures. And I just remember Thomas basically saying he's grown his studio over 20 odd years. But he has arguably six or seven people inside that studio that speak his language, are his right hand, understand his DNA. And I just thought, can you imagine if we could just wake up and just assemble these souls that all point, really, at the similar stuff, just in different fields, and find a way to just be in that energy and to assemble that, that would be absolutely brilliant.
And to point it at the biggest problems of our time, be it for brands, or not. I would argue that Johnny Ive would love a Furion. Everything he's done is eminently looking at the world the same way. I know his work with the Prince's Trust is doing a load of that. So, I just look at all of that and go, that would be a really interesting thing in this field to pursue.
But if I were genuinely doing it again tomorrow, I'd probably launch a brand. And it would have creativity at its heart, but it probably wouldn't be in this industry.
[00:26:15] Charles:
Wow, really?
[00:26:17] Nils Leonard:
Yeah, I'm going to launch a fragrance. I'm desperate to. Or a few of them. I mean, I'm serious.
[00:26:22] Charles:
No, I'm sure. I'm quite certain, I'm quite certain you are.
Why a fragrance?
[00:26:26] Nils Leonard:
Because the category is ready to be turned on its side. All they are is story. Their art. Imagine I just make one and I tell you it's worth a million pounds, someone will buy it, man. And imagine I just make one and I tell you it's worth 25 pounds, someone will, like, and you can democratize that feeling.
You can play with human desire. It's an ephemeral, powerful scent that no one's worked out, and the entire category of communicating it has been stuck in a rut for 25 years. All those reasons.
[00:26:55] Charles:
So, would you use AI to help you create something that, in the way that you've just described?
[00:27:02] Nils Leonard:
I love the idea that the studio within the company that needs to put the fragrance story into the world, would be powered by AI.
If you told me that I didn't need, you know, a huge photographic studio and I was able to do that, then I would, but I would bet you 20 quid that me looking for originality and for new ways to appear in the world, probably wouldn't use tons of AI. So maybe I would, if I could find a way to hack it and to almost argue with it's help, then possibly, yes.
[00:27:32] Charles:
Inevitably, these conversations never quite go the way I think, but I want to pursue this for a second. So, take away the marketing aspect of that. So you're talking about one of the human senses, and one that, I mean, we can see that AI has eyes and it definitely has a mouth, but no one's talked about AI having a nose of any kind. But we also know that how we respond to smell has a deep scientific base. It triggers certain areas of our brain. Given everything you believe, given the way you show up in the world, given your deeply human view of creativity and all the power, could you imagine using artificial intelligence to create a scent that would be more desirable and more popular?
Or do you think that in and of itself has to be an act of creativity that has to be uniquely held by a human being?
[00:28:16] Nils Leonard:
I think it's a gun. It's like the hand that holds the gun, dude, that's all it is. And everyone's losing their sh*t about it, but it's a gun, and a gun can't fire itself. And I'm just like, I would happily use AI.
And I like the idea that it would offend everyone. And I love it. I do. And I love that there is, there's artificial fragrances, actually, which are very new and they are incredibly effective. One of them smells literally like electricity, actually. And it's incredibly powerful. But, of course I would.
But, ultimately, you need a tastemaker, you need a vision or a view behind it to inform that. And I would argue that these days, marketing, whatever word you want to use, you are in the world and every decision you make is a version of marketing. And if there is a fragrance in the world and I want people to know about it, I think it's a really interesting conversation to think about how fast I want them to know about it.
Because the next thing I do is not in a rush. I think... there's a magazine, there's Fast Company, there's a magazine called Fast Company. Like, what about Really Slow Company? Or, my own company? And I just think, I think people want a different relationship with brands and products, so I think I want a different relationship with a company and a thing I run.
And I think the things you're seeing now, that are homegrown with care and with craft and with taste and with patience, are becoming the things that people are more desperate for. And all of that's lovely. There's a craving attached to this very old human timeless value. I was trying to find a knife, a cooking knife the other day.
And so I'm looking online, and I'm going down the rabbit hole of Japanese knives and what chefs are using, well, of course, I am because I'm a wanker. And a lot of reviews, I use Mac knives and I use these knives, and there's one guy that goes, I use a knife made by, name goes here, he doesn't have a brand and you can't get in touch with him and you can only be introduced to him through a friend.
And I was just like, immediately, every pore of my being, every fiber in me that doesn't deserve it, by the way, wants a knife made by that human. So, and that, I don't think that's a value solely linked to me. I think that if you put that experience into culture now, and that's the response you would see, hype beast, that word, that word "hype", that's linked to that.
You can't have this because it'll be gone soon.
[00:30:34] Charles:
When we were building our film editing company, I was never brave enough to do this, but I wanted to get to the point where we were so good that we had an unlisted number in their website, which, right, which was not really very helpful for a service business looking for clients across four cities, but it was a representation of what I wanted.
[00:30:50] Nils Leonard:
Look at our website for the first five years of Uncommon. It was a bouncing flag. I mean, it had no work on it for five years, and it was one of the best things we ever did.
Because it forced anybody that had heard of us to go hunting. And people are lazy. They don't like doing that. And the moment they're doing it, of course, their brain's telling them we must be worth hunting for. There's all this mad stuff behind it that I wish we'd meant. We definitely didn't mean that.
But now we eulogize it, of course. Yeah.
[00:31:16] Charles:
Okay, so your clarity of vision, your clarity of ethos as a partnership, as a company has always been a competitive advantage for you. You're willing, prepared, able to incorporate AI into your process in whatever ways you feel are appropriate, relevant, helpful, constructive, stimulating.
There are a lot of companies that aren't willing to do that because they see it as risky, right? And I read an article recently that said that there was a CEO of an independent agency, clearly not you, that he or she weren't named. But they said, we won three pieces of business recently, and in the master service contract, we've had to commit to the fact we will not use AI in any area of these clients' business, either in idea development or in final delivery.
That strikes me as, what's the word I'm looking for? That strikes me as not very helpful towards evolving their business and making it relevant. Based on all of that, do you think it makes sense for companies to build the risk, at least as they perceive it, of AI into their business?
[00:32:15] Nils Leonard:
Sorry, you just wound me up with that comment.
That person thinks they won, and they didn't. Because they basically publicly told the world they were willing to make a compromise that they didn't and possibly couldn't understand, just to win a few bits of business. And we shouldn't be that desperate. That's the, I know it's a mad equivalent, but we get offered work a lot, and the contracts often say things that we don't align with, be it payment terms or other things.
And the value of your company, and the integrity of your leadership rests on those decisions. And so I'm just saying that the AI is going to ask loads of questions like that, not just our industry, of every industry. And I think that someone agreeing to that in some crazy principle where we've had to do it to win this business, is like some, they don't know whether they've sabotaged their company or not.
Certainly haven't aided their world view. And I think any radically experimental media in that format, I think is always going to challenge all of us. But I'm not sure about the decision making there, sorry.
[00:33:21] Charles:
No, no, I think that's a valid point. And I would agree with you. I guess the underlying question, all of that is, do you think, because different businesses obviously have different appetites for risk, right? Different risk profiles. Do you think companies should be building the risk factor or the risk cost of AI into their business model?
Should they say, look, maybe we're going to infringe on somebody's trademark. Maybe we're going to get sued. We can't afford not to be in this game. We need to figure out how to use this stuff. I had PJ Pereira on, and he is a big advocate of, you've got to use it, right? You just have to be in it to use it.
You've got to be using this stuff all the time in every way. Yeah, things might go wrong sometimes, but that's how you learn.
[00:33:57] Nils Leonard:
A hundred percent. And you should be willing, if you are going to be the future, to be the one playing at the edge. And you, again, weirdly COVID is an example of this, but you saw brands that had worked out their worldview, and I think this is all linked back to something at the heart of the brand, which is your purpose, your leadership, where you see yourselves in the world.
Category leaders are the ones that are happy to turn the category on its side or change it or challenge it. And that can involve failure and success. But during COVID, what you saw when it all kicked off, and now there are LinkedIn posts about, nothing is going to change our innovation pipeline quicker than COVID.
Well, you're like, yeah, right. At the time, a bunch of brands went in and said, no, we are going to matter in this moment. And we're going to do X, X and X. And a bunch of brands just sat there, didn't they? Went quiet, completely unsure of how to behave and act. And just stultified for 18 months. And I think the same is true of this, which is, you just have to, it's just happening.
And whether or not you're embracing it in your business, you don't have to make a big decision about whether your kettle is going to boil via AI, but you do have to think about your business and everything else AI is going to throw at it. And just the challenges it's going to offer your employees, what could it speed up?
What could it damage? Why would someone go somewhere else? All these questions are questions you ask daily anyway, if you run a decent business. And so it's either going to fuel you or it's going to, or it's going to damage you. But I think you have to roll with it. Uncommon aren't sat with our hands over our ears going, don't worry about it.
We're just sat going, it's actually pretty ace, but we've got to put it to work and we've got to be, where are we going to be tomorrow? What are people going to say about us in three years? Is that vision still intact with the arrival of AI? Can it be sped up?
[00:35:32] Charles:
So given this disruptive nature at a fundamental level, right?
This is going to be massively disruptive. How do you, how are you and how will you adapt your leadership of the people that work for you?
[00:35:42] Nils Leonard:
Well, at the moment, I think we've got a natural characteristic at Uncommon of embracing new things, which is, I'm just lucky that we do. And maybe as a creative company, that's a lot, a lot of people have, but...
We're not mucking about, there's lots of people come in and talk to us about new ideas, we have black books of people who float about and go, have you seen this thing? All our creatives are playing on different platforms. There is a race, an unspoken race, in Uncommon Reviews to bring the hottest, newest, most borderline offensive deck to a meeting.
And by that, I mean, people originally were bringing films to reviews, they were bringing whatever, and they were like, I edited this last night, and I did that, and it was all kind of like, okay, f*cking badassery. Now I'm seeing fully fledged retail stores in a 3D mock up made in AI that you can walk around, for an idea they just had two and a half hours ago, and I'm like, okay, this is f*cking great.
Because if you can make something more tangible, it has a higher likelihood of becoming a reality. It really does. Like that's the act of articulating an idea to a client. So AI isn't this kind of, "Oh, it's this tech tool." It's like, if this makes it easier for me to articulate something that this guy's paid for from us, i. e. massive new creative idea, if this tool makes it easier for me to do that, and by the way, for this person to then sell it upward, sell it onward, sell it to their CEO, about it, then Jesus, we should be grateful for it. I think what I'm trying to summarize is, we've built, and I wouldn't say an openness of AI into our business, we've built openness into our business, and we've built the idea of either traditional and non traditional methods of articulating ideas, building ideas, representing ideas into the framework of Uncommon. We're a makey, makey place. We make lots of stuff.
So if there's a new toy, we're going to make with it. I think there will be some parts of our business, because we're a bit big now with two hundred and eighty odd people or something, that the AI will challenge, and I'd argue they're probably the more systematic, and back end parts of our business, probably.
But at the moment, I think an openness to it, a willingness to see it as a threat. I think it really serves, Charles, at its best as a reminder to be who we set out to be.
[00:37:47] Charles:
Thank you for running with the segue, because I think that's such a great point. I mean, you've built a culture that is incredibly open minded, essentially, and adventurous by definition.
I suspect that people don't do very well if they're not adventurous in your environment.
[00:37:58] Nils Leonard:
Well, no, but we leverage the same threat at ourselves. So that woods burning is a constant threat at Uncommon, which is, if we wake up smug or complacent or comfortable, actually, we should really worry about ourselves. And if we have the same year twice, and we're talking about the same stuff, like, "Oh," we should worry about ourselves.
And so I think our attitude to AI is the same as our attitude to anything, which is, is this work good enough, is our thinking radical enough, is this new? Is it new? Is this idea new? Those fundamental things I think worry us daily. So AI being a part of that is fine.
[00:38:34] Charles:
So you've described AI a number of times as a tool.
Do you think that's enough? Is it enough to see it as a tool? I mean, it feels to me like, under one scenario, it's going to be an army of robots walking down the hallway, sweeping up everything on the left hand side of the aisle, and not worrying too much about what's on the right hand side of the aisle for now, until 18 months from now, when it decides it can do all of this stuff.
And we've been, we've been unwise in how we've developed it, and not put any restrictions on it, right? Somebody was telling me a story a while ago about, one of the risks of AI that somebody had come up with was, if you tell it to, to plant strawberries, it will go on planting strawberries forever until the entire world is covered in strawberries.
But do you think that it's enough to think of it as a tool? Does that place us, does that give it enough urgency? Does that give us enough urgency, to figure out what's coming next and where is this valuable and where potentially is it not?
[00:39:26] Nils Leonard:
Think of it as a threat if it pushes you forward. Like, think of it as a bomb that's going to go off your business if it helps.
Just don't sit there whinging about it. I'll tell you the biggest risk to me about AI at the moment is I'm not going to get a single seminar, speech, magazine article, or program that doesn't involve it. That's my biggest worry. I'm like, I'm just like, Christ, can we talk about something else? Not in this conversation, just like, in general.
I'm like, okay, I get it. But, I've always believed you just, half of our positioning is threat and half of our positioning is optimism. And I think that's basically the creative task. And be threatened enough to risk things, to try new things, but be optimistic enough to believe that they're going to f*cking work.
And I look at AI and go, whatever business you're in, call it what you need to call it to push you forward. If it's a tool and that helps you feel less threatened, call it that. If it's the biggest threat you've ever seen to humanity, then what's the solution and how are you helping build that? And I just think, like, all these moments, like a car, like the personal computer, like space travel.
A bunch of people saw it as a threat and a bunch of people saw it as an answer. And I think we just have to take that personally. Like all the biggest stuff in the world. And ask ourselves where we sit, where our families sit, where the workers we care about sit, where our ideals sit in that.
[00:40:47] Charles:
I mean, so, okay, let me just push you back on that for a second.
So the only difference, maybe not the only, the difference that I see with those comparisons is that none of those things had agency. You had to turn the car on every time. And even then, back in the day, didn't always come on. This thing is on, and the question now is, are we actually able to turn it off?
I suspect the answer to that is no. I suspect that it is so embedded already into our society, into our culture, into our day to day operating system. If we were to try to turn AI off, I suspect society would fail. There's a classic Twilight Zone episode where the lights go out in the neighborhood. And within 25 minutes, they're literally killing each other.
They're literally killing each other. And we've all been in situ, and COVID was some version of that. And we could see how quickly we went from, "Oh, everything's fine," to three days later, "Are we going to survive?" So we changed pretty quickly. I'm just wondering whether it's enough to say this is just another example of human innovation, and let's treated the way we've treated those in the past, and just have enough confidence that we're going to come out the other side if we don't act with more intention around it.
[00:41:58] Nils Leonard:
I mean, mate, it's a really good point. I would say two things. One is, big up the Obamas, who have been, I don't know, I mean, they've launched a production company.
Did you know that? And they're making films now. I think they got sick of the fact that when Barack was in power and he was trying to warn people about the rise of a pandemic and about the rise of that stuff, no one listened. And so now they're basically a production company where they make doom laden movies, but they're all very, very heavily linked to events that could and probably will happen.
So there's, I can't remember the name of it, but there's one where basically a terrorist attack using a cyber attack comes in and ruins the whole f*cking world, and it's like borderline 75 percent of it is a truth you could imagine happening in about a week's time. So I just wanted to mention that because I think it's hilarious because they've always gone, what's the quickest way to give the public information about this type of stuff?
It's probably not a public service broadcast, it's probably a movie on Netflix. To your earlier point, man, I'm going to say this, I've just got more faith in us. And, you don't have a switch for it, Charles. I don't either. And maybe a single person doesn't. And I just think that we also didn't have the keys to nuclear weapons.
And we rely... and all of these other threats, massive, huge threats to our lives. And I just think that the human race, and believe that the human race, if it came to that point, would save itself, all the world would save us for it. I really believe that closer to my orbit, that AI has changed the industry and the world of creativity I work in, in a more positive way.
I just do, man, whether that's delusion or not. And I think the world pivots and changes. And it's always offering you a way to see it as a good thing. It is always there, and you just have to choose to see it sometimes. And I, there's no doubt about the potential threat of it and the terror of it. We all grew up watching Terminator, dude.
But I also think that people are amazing, and I think we'll find a way to save ourselves and the world will find a way to save it with us. And I think when it is a major threat and we're all living less good lives, that's that. But I think there are closer problems. I used to work with the WWF, and we found this insight that was quite terrifying, which was... They're trying to get you to save animals and save wildlife and all this sort of stuff. And they were like, here's a reason why people won't actually be quicker to donate. And it was because cancer is closer, heart attacks are closer. And it was like, wow, what an amazing way to put it. The animals are here, they're in Africa, and actually cancer is right here.
And so the things we worry about, and their proximity to us, are easier to deal with. I think AI at the moment, and this type of conversation, is stopping us dealing with larger, more urgent, more pressing problems, man. Like our children's mental health. Like our relationship to small screens. Like our inability to be together.
Like we've forgotten how to be awkward and turn up at an event without a prop in our hand. We have bigger problems, man, right now. Immediate ones that we can actually play a part in, I think, through behavior and communication. And I would rather, I would much rather we were worried about those than the potential threat of an army of vacuum cleaning robots.
[00:45:11] Charles:
So we are the authors of our own future. We are the creators of our own.
[00:45:15] Nils Leonard:
And we have to believe in each other, too, a bit. I'm not saying be selflessly thinking the whole world is going to be amazing. Of course not. If you get the chance to act or vote, do it. Don't be a passenger, ever. But, equally, have some faith. My biggest problem is I'm going to go home, and I've got Jet, Noah, and Finn, and they've all got a phone in their hand, and they're dealing with the biggest problem of their generation.
They're not getting together, they're not meeting, they're not talking. The human race is having less sex than ever before. I know that's mad, but that's linked to the distance we are placing between each other. Which, by the way, is completely at odds with the whole f*cking narrative around, "Oh, we've never been so close, we've never been so able to exchange information."
And I'm like, yeah, but we haven't been so close. We've never been so silent with each other. It's terrible.
[00:45:58] Charles:
We don't actually exchange anything. We just postulate, right?
[00:46:01] Nils Leonard:
Well, we all sit by the way, watching a modern version of the old television in American living rooms that they used to worry about, which is Instagram.
And we're all sat just watching the same shit on Instagram and everyone's whinging about a new experiences and whatever. They're there, man. They're just not on that. And so we have to. We have to teach each other and remind ourselves and give ourselves a bit of a slap and get out there, because I think if we did, we'd also worry less about AI, because by the way, fear is also a deeply attractive algorithm.
[00:46:31] Charles:
All right, so I'm going to ask you my two last questions, but I'm going to flip the order for you. So, as you look at the future, what are you afraid of?
[00:46:50] Nils Leonard:
A numbing and settling of the human race, created by the way that we're living, and what we would consider to be a spirit of comfort, but I think it's stopping us living to our fullest. And I don't mean, still on top of a mountain top in Sweden. I just mean, awkward conversations, mortality, arguing.
Like, simple human stuff that we think we still do and we've stopped doing. Worries me. And I want us to, I f*cking love humans. And I want us to be in that place. I saw this amazing old movie. It's a Japanese guy. And he basically said, we've lost the ability to die dramatically. And I was like, I only, I mean, only the Japanese, of course, discuss, like, the poetry of that f*cking statement.
But he was like, we all die in hospital now, or we die at home. And I'm not saying we should all be arguing for dying dramatically at all, but I think what we're seeing is a numbing and a comfort that we all think we want, and I'm not sure it's good for us. So I worry about that. It doesn't keep me up at night, because again, I think we'll all be alright.
[00:47:56] Charles:
And as you look at the future with AI, what are you optimistic about?
[00:48:05] Nils Leonard:
More... literally, because of the context of it, because of the nature of culture in front of us, because of how bland and obvious things are and the way we're being served things, we are going to see far more radical shifts, far more new experiments. We're going to fall in love far more quickly with new ideas.
We're going to, we're going to see more challenging stuff and become more comfortable with it and are tolerant. And in fact, almost like an immediate infatuation, I think, with new will reach a level it's never been at before. And I think it's going to be incredibly inspiring. And I'm not saying that with a view to the ad industry, by the way. I'm just saying that with a view to the world.
And I think that spirit is going to be caused by some of the other bad things in the world, but it's going to be incredible. I think the next 10 to 15 years are going to be mad. And I think we're going to find new words for the oldest human values. And I think we're going to find new behaviors that we think we discovered, that are pretty much the ones we were doing a thousand years ago, probably.
And we're going to do it in the context of our lives. And it's going to be f*cking amazing. And there are going to be heroes that have been a part of that, that created that way of living for us, and fix the problems of our time. What an amazing chance we all have to be those people.
[00:49:20] Charles:
I want to thank you, as always, for coming back on the show.
I don't know if you know this, but you and I have been talking on this podcast for about seven years now, which is crazy, right? Isn't that crazy? And every time I talk to you, your sense of optimism and possibility fuels me, personally, going forward. And so I just value your input, I value your provocation, and I value your energy.
Thanks so much for coming back on.
[00:49:43] Nils Leonard:
Thanks for talking to me, Charles. And I'm annoyed at how you don't appear to have aged and I look like Ricky Gervais's damaged uncle. So yeah, thank you, mate.
—————
If you’d like to know more about the podcast, or about our leadership practice, go to fearlesscreativeleadership.com, where you’ll find the audio and transcript of every episode, and more information about our work with some of the world’s most creative and innovative businesses.
Don’t forget to share Fearless with your friends and colleagues, and to leave a rating and review.
Fearless is produced by Podfly. Frances Harlow is the show’s Executive Producer. Josh Suhy is our Editor. Sarah Pardoe is the show’s Producer.
Thanks for listening.
