Gabriel Schmitt of Grey
Why Are You Doing What You’re Doing?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 268: Gabriel Schmitt
Here’s a question. Why are you doing what you’re doing?
I’m Charles Day. I believe leadership offers us the greatest opportunity of our lives, to make a difference. I’m asked to help leaders discover what they’re capable of, and then to maximize their impact. Welcome to the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This episode’s conversation is with Gabriel Schmitt, who has just celebrated his one year anniversary as the Global CCO of Grey.
Grey’s proposition is that they have been coming up with famously effective ideas since 1917.
Gabriel is somewhat younger than that, but over his career, has learned one of the most important leadership lessons that I think often gets overlooked.
The importance of context.
“I think that it's naive to think that you can do amazing creative work if you are not very sharp on the business side of things, because clients know better and there's not a lot of money. So if you're not sharp in the reason why you are trying to make that wild idea, if the idea has no rhyme and reason from a business point of view, just not going to fly, in my experience.”
A few years ago, I wrote an article for Fast Company called The Four Weapons of Exceptional Creative Leaders.
I got some pushback on using the word “weapons” in the context of creativity. My response was that if you’ve ever done battle with the status quo, then you already know that you need to bring some serious weapons to that fight.
Context is the beginning and the end of the leadership journey. Without it, you have no ability to answer critical questions, like where are we on our journey? How much further do we have to go?
Context is the reason why you are trying to make that wild idea.
It is why you hire that person.
It is why you invest in that technology.
It is why you make that decision.
It is why you come up with the answer.
It is why people follow you.
And without it… everything else is just a guess.
So why are you doing what you’re doing?
And are you sure?
Here’s Gabriel Schmitt.
Charles:
Gabriel, welcome to Fearless. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It's good to see you in person.
Gabriel Schmitt:
Very good to see you in person, as well.
Charles:
When did creativity first show up in your life? When are you first conscious of creativity in your life?
Gabriel Schmitt:
When I started watching Disney movies, I pretty quickly realized that there was an arc, and a rhyme and reason, for the types of emotions that they wanted the audience to, or me as a kid, to feel. And I remember the duality of it, because on one hand, I was like, oh, everything's fine now. I'm sure in five minutes something's coming. And I got annoyed by that because I knew, I was like, these people are trying to trick me, and I would fall for it. And I knew that, after something was coming, and a crescendo will come. And I have distinct memories of me being, I don't know how old, like, five years old or something, like, kind of realizing that I'm like, that's odd and interesting, and I'm not sure what to make of it, because it's rational on one hand, because it's fabricated, but on the other hand, it works. (Laughs)
So there's that. And then when I was a little bit older, sports was the most important thing for me. And, not to be a cliche, but I'm from Brazil originally, and football was the most important thing in my life. Not only to watch and have my idols and stuff like that, but also to play. I was a pretty serious player, almost 10 years of my childhood, and then early to mid teenage years. But I wouldn't see a lot of creativity on sports. But for some reason, I started to see and get impacted by advertising and kind of love it. You know, at that point, this is early, early to mid nineties in Brazil. Advertising in Brazil was going through a boom, I think, because there was a few agencies that were doing extremely popular work, that was also very good.
One thing was not associated from the other. And I remember kind of knowing the jingles by heart and kind of looking at, again, the arcs of the stories that, the short stories that they were, they were telling, and being, finding that interesting. So that's, I guess, applied creativity, which is a lot of what we do in our industry.
And then when I was older, and I realized that I liked to write, and I realized it was somewhat natural for me to write some stuff that felt decent. And as I started getting some validation, at school from teachers and stuff like that, I thought there was something super interesting there, because it was easy for me to be visceral, but see things on paper that, again, that felt okay. And as I grew a little bit older, now I'm talking about mid teenage years, I’m starting to, fall in love, but more importantly, have my heart broken, which now led me to poetry. And I started to write some probably idiotic poems. But then again, who was going to read them. And as I read them, I was like, this is, I'm biased, obviously, but that's not that bad. (Laughs)
it's interesting because it was always through words. It was not that visual, my discovery or my slow burn on creativity. And nowadays I'm obsessed with art, and fine art and contemporary art. I'm a very modest art collector myself. And so things have shifted a little bit. The world probably shifted, as well, from a more word driven world to a way more visually driven world, and maybe there's something to do with that. But that's how I started paying attention and creativity, and kind of feeling it and welcoming it in my life.
Charles:
You grew up speaking Portuguese, right?
Gabriel Schmitt:
Not really. I was born in Sao Paulo. We moved to Colombia. My father used to work at Unilever. He got transferred, and off we went. So my first language is actually Spanish. We lived there for four and a half years or something like that. And when we came back, I would barely speak Portuguese. I speak Portuguese at home. But, you know, if I was in a social context, I wouldn't speak Portuguese, I could only speak Spanish. And so it took me a while to then learn Portuguese properly. And then it helped when I, years later, started learning English because I feel like my ear was already used to odd languages or weird languages and, yeah, it was Spanish first.
Charles:
So when you started writing, and then when you started writing poetry, what language were you thinking in?
Gabriel Schmitt:
Oh, definitely Portuguese, because that's 10 years after I came back to Brazil.
Charles:
So when you conceive an idea now, when you write now, what language is in your head now?
Gabriel Schmitt:
English. But I've been in the US for 12 years. And English is such a great language for advertising for its concisiveness, if that's a word. Actually, yesterday, I was going through a piece of work with Grey Brazil. and I didn't love the setup that I was seeing and the idea and, but they had a client presentation. So I was like, let me try. And I started writing the setup in English. I'm like, no, oh, I can't. (Laughs) And it was hard for me to write in Portuguese. Because Portuguese, it's such a beautiful language, but it uses a lot of words. The arsenal of words that you have to convey a feeling or to convey an idea is immense, which doesn't help much, I think. At least doesn't help me much now that I've been in the US for 12 years, and train, and I'm used to use less words to convey what I need.
Charles:
So is all your work in your head now done in English? Everything?
Gabriel Schmitt:
Everything.
Charles:
Wow, that's fascinating.
Gabriel Schmitt:
I think in English nowadays, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but that's, it's just, it’s probably the shortcut. I would say, Spanish wise, I understand a hundred percent or close to it. I would say I speak good 65%, which is pretty good. because my vocabulary is not that large. It's not that wide. It's a toddler and kid vocabulary. But the funny thing is, if I start speaking Spanish and I don't know a word, I go straight to English and the conversation usually gets messed up.
Charles:
Have you ever considered whether you ideate differently because you ideate in English?
Gabriel Schmitt
Yes. Well, not exactly that, but I think I… the fact that I was, I learned Spanish then Portuguese, and now I've been living in English for a long time, I think can only be a good thing. Because there's a, I assume there's an amalgamation of reference point, and way in which syntaxes happen, and the construct of synthesis go, not only from a writing point of view, but from an idea point of view, from a storytelling point of view. that I think that all these amalgamation can only be good, I think. When I was at FCB New York and after I started working, when I became Co-CCO there, that's when I kind of realized I was somewhat talented for taglines. And my partner there, Michael Aimette, who is a quintessential American brilliant writer, he would make fun of me because like, “You just write everything backwards and then it works.” (Laughs) It's a little bit of a Yoda thing and I love it, it's fun. And maybe make it for interesting ways of conveying a idea in a short, in a short way.
Charles:
So going back to when you were five, that perception, that your awareness of the story arc, that they were taking you through the hero's journey, in many cases, right? Which is what a lot of Disney movies are built on. Did you share that insight or that observation or that awareness with anybody, that was purely, you were coming up and recognized this. You didn't say to your parents, this is not fair, or they're gaming me, or they're playing with me?
Gabriel Schmitt:
I don't remember saying that. No, I think I started sharing this as I started doing podcasts. (Laughs) No, I don't. I remember being annoyed by it, but then also kind of mesmerized by it, and also manipulated by it. (Laughs)
Charles:
And then using it to your advantage.
Gabriel Schmitt:
Oh yeah, well, you know?
Charles:
What was your relationship with your parents? What is your relationship with your parents like?
Gabriel Schmitt:
Today's very good. They've been, they still live in Brazil and they will remain there. We… I used to go a lot to Brazil before pandemic, but I don't feel I'm distant from, at least my family, that much. Which, and I know I'm stating the obvious here, but as someone who goes through it, and almost every day, because my parents are not here, my sister and her family and her daughter are not here, my wife's family is also not here. And we are all talking constantly, being Latinos, we're all talking constantly.
Charles:
And were you guys close growing up?
Gabriel Schmitt:
Yeah, I was super close to my mom. I had some interesting banters with my father while I was growing up, which I know is probably the common case, but yeah, close. My father used to travel a lot when I was growing up, so it was an interesting dynamic, because he was out of our house very often and always coming back, right? So in a way, I was used to be only with my mom and my sister, and having that unit there, and then my dad would come back, and obviously then that would be the real or the official unit. But it was a little bit of a two… there's a little bit of two worlds on that. And the irony is that I travel a lot nowadays. (Laughs) And I think I have, I hope to have some tools and some knowledge to be with my now son as much as I can, and even more than my dad was, or was trying to be when I was growing up.
But the relationship, obviously, he helped me, and it influenced me immensely, for learnings of things that they taught me, but also by observation and seeing things that they were doing that I… a lot of things obviously I admired and I learned from. But also seeing when they were not doing things that were pro— that I didn't agree with or they were clearly not the right path, that they were choosing either professionally or whatever. And just observing those and kind of trying to absorb and learning from those so that I wouldn't have the same types of potential missteps.
Charles:
Were they ambitious for you?
Gabriel Schmitt:
Interesting. I think they were very respectful. No. So I would say no, but in a good way. They… my father was a high achiever, he was very good at what he did, and he was very clear about how good he was, you know, what he did. But they never told me, you’ve got to be the best at school or anything like that. They always said, just do your thing and make sure you don't f*ck up, because it's school and it shouldn't be that hard, kind of kind of mentality. So I never felt pressured to be extremely well succeed at school or anything like that.
I went to a school in Brazil that was a little bit experimental. And when I got to high school, I went to this program that was an experimental type of high school within experimental school, so it was pretty experimental. And we had all sorts of different classes and subjects that we were studying and going through.
And at that point there was this, you know, this is many years ago, so it was that big divide of, these are the nerds and these are the cool kids. And I was a little bit in between them, because I had a bunch of friends, but I was put on the nerds one, on the nerds group, completely against my will. I really didn't want to do that. And I thought it was a colossal waste of time and of my time as a teenager. But it was amazing, because I think I learned how to make friends and environments where I didn't really felt I belonged, and also helped me learn how to build bridges and be a little bit of a connector between different types of people, which was something that I exercised a lot in my early adult years. And obviously as someone that works in our industry and has that type of job that now I have, and the challenge that now I have, I think a lot of the other things that we do is connecting people. You know, it's not only connecting ideas, but connecting people, and making sure that the right types of people are talking to each other from inside the agency, to the different clients and people in between them. And that's something that I learned from that experience.
Charles:
So I had a father who was a high achiever and was traveling a lot and was gone a lot, as well. What kind of impact did that have on you, did that combination have on you?
Gabriel Schmitt:
I never wanted, at least rationally, I never wanted to be more of a high achiever than he was. I don't remember thinking about that. “I'm going to beat you, I'm going to be bigger,” or whatever. But it's undeniable that had a huge influence on me because, from beginning of my career, since I was in college, I wanted to not only in my own way and humbly try to be successful, but I had this thing of I want to be successful earlier than the average age of success, whatever that means, because that's not a thing.
Charles:
It was a clock.
Gabriel Schmitt:
There was a clock for me. And, which meant I started working in advertising kind of way earlier than all my friends, for example. You know, I started when I was maybe 18, and while I was on like first year of college or something like that, and everyone was padding, I was already, padding also, but already working in the advertising agencies and trying my hand in the first internships and so forth and so on.
And it's interesting because I, and I think that's, there is a huge influence of my father because he used to work in marketing. And I realized very early that I wanted to be a creative. And I thought being a creative in an advertising agency was the coolest thing on earth. And I was challenged by how hard that thing looked. And again, at that point, now, this is 20 years ago, Brazil had five or six incredible agencies with incredible creatives and incredible work. And those people felt so far from where I was, and they were so far from where I was, I was just enticed by that idea of trying to be, someday, maybe as good as some of them were.
But at the same time I realized that if I didn't exercise the other side of the creative spectrum, which is the more business driven side of it, it didn't really matter how much talent I could have. I would have a ceiling. And I realized earlier that I had to understand the commercial side of things and the business side of things. And that was my father in a nutshell. So I started exercising that side, as well, even while I was at college and trying to work on my first internships in agencies. And I think that really came in handy. Cut to 20 years later, you know, I'm running, I used to this as famously effective, so I think it worked. (Laughs)
Charles:
So both of those skillsets feel like they were pretty instinctive to you, the ability to write poetry, in—
Gabriel Schmitt:
Bad poetry, bad poetry.
Charles:
Bad poetry, but in two different languages, by the way, right? And then the ability, as you said, to be able to analyze a business, understand a business problem, recognize what the solution might be, and then to apply a creative approach to coming up with that solution. Those two things feel instinctive. Is, does that, am I reading that correctly?
Gabriel Schmitt:
I think so. I think I tried really hard to evolve Type A and Type B type, you know, both sides of my brain and both side, having those side of the experience. So I don't know if it's natural or not. I know it was intentional. I think I had some talent probably on both ends, but it was an intentional effort that I've had since ever, because I realized it would probably come in handy, and I think I was right on that one.
Charles:
So have you consciously developed both sides? And you still do?
Gabriel Schmitt:
Yeah. And I think more importantly, more important than than that nowadays, well, it's been happening for a few years now. That is exactly the encouragement, and almost the framework, that I ask from my teams and from the companies that I work on. I think as creatives, the best creatives, the best creative leads, and then the best creatives there are, I think they inherently understand businesses. Conversely, the best business people in our industry are the ones that truly understand creative and what it takes to do great creative work. I think that it's naive to think that you can do amazing creative work if you are not very sharp on the business side of things, because clients know better and there's not a lot of money. So if you're not sharp in the reason why you are trying to make that wild idea, if the idea has no rhyme and reason from a business point of view, just not going to fly, in my experience.
And that's something that I realized as I was growing in my career when I became ACD and I started to work a little bit with the more junior creatives with me and started to go into meetings and get to know clients and had to sell, I'm doing air quotes here, but “sell” work that was not mine. I think my instincts from back in the day of, oh, I have to understand the business side of things, we started to proofwrite at that point, and that's when I doubled down on, okay, what is the business side of this? What is, exactly, what is the strategy and why this strategy is better than this one? And how can I help or influence the strategy work so that we get to better briefing, so that we get to solutions for the business problems that the clients have?
Because they realize that, if you discuss a problem at length with a client, and more importantly a meaningful problem, a problem that they truly care about, not the problem that they have in the briefing, more times than not. But if you have a relationship that is close enough that you can discuss those things with them and get to the bottom of what they're concerned with, or what is the challenge, or what is the opportunity that they see ahead, and you really, truly, meaningfully agree on what that is, then you write a concise briefing. But then when you show the work, half of the work is done, because you already agreed on the problem. So you're not showing things that makes no sense or that clients are not interested on.
Charles:
And are you willing to push clients on the brief? Are you willing to challenge them that they understand?
Gabriel Schmitt:
I do that a lot. Yeah.
Charles:
You're willing to suggest that perhaps the problem they're looking at is not the problem they should be looking at?
Gabriel Schmitt:
Yes, but I think what I learned is, if you're not really present in their lives in the day-to-day, and you show up to a meeting and they have the briefing and then you question it, it's probably not going to go too far. What I learned is that the relationship with them is the most important thing. You’ve got to be someone that shows up and they just fist bump you. They don't have to hug you because they just saw you a couple days ago, kind of thing. So that when those briefings are starting to bubble, or the problems that started to bubble, you're already there and you're discussing with them. I'm very interested in the iterative relationship with people, so that things don't feel so formal and so stiff. Now we have a briefing and now you go and you disappear for a month and you come back with the solution of my problems and it's going to be great. I honestly never done any work or participated on any work that I'm proud of, that had that nature. Literally never happened. So that's just my experience. But I think it's naive to think that they will not have a close relationship with you, trust you, give you a question, and you'll show up with an answer a month later, and the answer will be right for them and amazing for you and for your agency, and inspiring and fun to work with. I mean, that's a tall order.
Charles:
So you are really focused on having a dynamic, interactive, very present relationship with your clients.
Gabriel Schmitt:
I think it starts within the disciplines in the agency. I think creatives need to be very close friends to the strategists, and to the account people, to the data people, so forth and so on, in a way that those silos don't happen within the studios, within the agencies. And then as you grow in your career, as a, not speaking as a creative, and then a creative lead, I think it's paramount that you have those relationships with them. Otherwise, why would they trust you? You know what I mean? It's people, it's a people business, right? And I know that's a cliche, but it's true. I learned that any client in the world, good and bad, willing to do great work or not very interested in doing great work, every client has one agenda. You can boil it onto one thing, and the agenda is growth.
All of them are there to grow their brand. Some of them for pure financial reasons, some of them for financial reasons plus ego reasons, some of them because they love creativity, some of them because of all of those. But it's very complicated, complex to grow a brand and to be truly helpful, to do that, if you're not with them, and if you don't live the brand, if you don't understand the brand. In my position now, impossible to do that with every client we have, obviously, around the world, and nor that should be expected from Laura or me. But that's exactly what we ask and expect from the leaders of our studios around the world. And then what we ask them to expect from their benches, and their people, and their leaders within each studio.
Charles:
When you get it wrong with a client, what does that look like?
Gabriel Schmitt:
Usually it doesn't look that bad because… well, let me take that back. Sometimes it looks really bad. (Laughs) But well, it depends. If I am, I, me, Gabriel, if I'm close to the client, usually it's not that bad because the relationship is strong enough or close enough that they know that we have the best, we have our, the agendas are shared and, you know, we may have a misstep here and there, but the overall goal is the same. We're aligned in what we want to do. So, sometimes it happens that we get things wrong because everyone got something wrong, because the relationship is so entangled that you can't really separate much where the mistake started and who did it.
I think the problem is when you are building a relationship or when you build the relationship in a way that the agency becomes more like a vendor than anything else, which I absolutely despise, then it becomes really very easy to blame your vendor that something went wrong.
And I think there lies a lot of the issues that our industry has had in the last, I don’t know, maybe 20 years. And then I do think it start to shift in the last five, a little bit pre-pandemic. And I think it's shifting now, I would like to believe to towards a better place. Because I feel like the industry as a whole, has been more wired to meaningfully understand the business problems of our clients have, and then use creativity as a competitive advantage to overcome those. Some what I'm saying here, I'm sure you've heard from other people, and nowadays, I feel like each agency has their own version of what I'm saying here. I don't think that's bad. I think that's important, because at the the end of the day, we're all defending the same thing, right? We're all defending the creativity as, is a weapon. And it can be something that can be used for a competitive advantage. And I feel, I see more and more that clients from big companies and big brands are very interested on that, and want to be part of that, want to be part of the creative development.
Charles:
Part of the challenge of a job like yours is that there's an inherent tension between having that kind of intimacy of relationship with a client that allows you to develop the kind of trust that enables them to buy riskier, ostensibly better, more effective work, and protecting the needs of the agency and the people who work for you, right? Because, obviously, when you become that connected to a client, the instinctive desire to want to solve their problem, deliver for them like crazy, comes at a price, because you've got people behind you who are being pulled into that equation. How do you navigate the tension, the natural inherent tension that has to exist in the job that you do? How do you navigate that tension between wanting to make sure you deliver for the client and wanting to make sure that you're protecting the people that work for you?
Gabriel Schmitt:
I like to… the people that work with me, I don't like them work for me. Because yes, there is a hierarchy, but I like to frame things as, we're working together and they work with me. I think the best articulation I can come up with now is that their family and the clients are friends. And I have to protect the family, And I need to make sure that the family is well-fed and they are happy with the opportunities that they have. I want to make sure that my friends are always hanging out with me and they are happy to be hanging out with me. But if I have to protect someone, unless something extraordinary happen, we'll protect the family first. And I think that as a leader, it's important that they know that I'm there for them and we're going to protect them.
Again, it's a people's business in the sense that the relationships are probably the most important thing, and it also means that if people don't feel compelled and comfortable and excited and encouraged, they are not going to come up with the best ideas, or they're not going to protect the process or invest on the process that then lead to the best ideas. Which then will mean the clients, or the friends, will not get the best piece of work. So it is delicate. But again, if you have a good relationship with clients, even though that blurred line, although it's blurred, I think it's easy, it's not that hard to put boundaries on. Because they will agree with, “Hey, I think now we're done,” kind of conversation. It's easier to have, right?
Charles:
Talk to me about the clock. What's the impact of the clock on you, the clock you have on your success, your achievements? How has it affected you, as you look back?
Gabriel Schmitt:
Well, I was always very goal oriented. And as I said, I wanted to potentially accomplish things that I thought that for me were valuable and were big, in my perspective, were big. And then just to make things more complicated, I wanted to do it earlier than the average. I think it's served me more than not, because… and again, I don't, I'm not suggesting that people should behave this way at all. But it, in the end of the day, it is a framework, right? I always understood right or wrong that, if I'm here now and I want to be 1, 2, 3 steps ahead in X amount of time, probably what I need to do is go that way, and then the other way, and then the other way, which more times than not was unorthodox, was not a very linear kind of path.
And that made my career, I would like to believe, a little bit different from what you would expect. Because I end up choosing paths that were not very obvious when you look from outside. But I was always, more times than not, I was placing some bets. Some bets were not that high, some bets were higher. And you know, another thing that I learned in my career is that decision isn't, making decision is an interesting thing because, once the decision is made, the only thing you can do is make sure that decision was right. So I've been in few crushable moments in my career where I had to decide on path A or path B, and path A was obviously the sexiest one, or the sexier one and more interesting one and probably the path that more people would have chosen. But I go towards the other one because if that other one worked, that would probably mean that I would be able to get to the next one maybe quicker or maybe in a cleaner way.
And again, I don't know if that's healthy, that is. But I was always very clear, I always had a very clear and well-oriented way of seeing things and where I wanted to get to. And that helped me.
Now that also puts immense amount of pressure, self pressure, and that's not healthy at all, especially when you are talking about an industry that is already pressure oriented. So, in that sense, I think there's decisions and ways in which I could have done things that could probably be, had been more gentle with myself. I'm getting older now, as well, so I have the benefit of perspective, and I lived through a bunch of personal things and obviously professional things, as well. And I think I know better now. But the short answer is it serves me. I don't know if it would serve other people. I don't think it would serve everyone. And I think ultimately, you have to choose what works for you, and be comfortable with it, and then invest on it.
Charles:
Do you look back and think you would've made different decisions, knowing what you know now?
Gabriel Schmitt:
No, I don't regret any professional decision I've made. I am very humbled by the opportunity that I have nowadays of being such a legendary agency, and having the opportunity to run this agency, and be responsible for the creative product of Grey, and be doing that with such an amazing partner that Laura is. And what got me here was all those decisions that I've made throughout my career. And then, like I said, making sure that those decisions were paying off. So I think it's, I think I don't regret them, I wouldn't change them. But again, that's just my experience and just the way I knew how to do it, and I used my gut to do it. I'm sure there is a million other ways of doing things, and things that would make other people happy. The way I chose was, I was not always happy, but I was always challenged. And that in a way helped me move forward and accomplish some interesting things.
Charles:
In every career path, every step on the ladder creates a new set of challenges, new opportunities, for sure, but new challenges, personal development, obviously being central to that. The jump you made last year when you left FCB and came to Grey, is perhaps the hardest jump to make, because suddenly you're playing three dimensional chess with multiple offices, clients from all over the world. Not just the size and scale of your responsibilities changes, but the kinds of skills you need to bring, you need to develop. What have you found to be the biggest challenges in making this step?
Gabriel Schmitt:
You're responsible for everything, but you don't really run anything. And that dichotomy is complex. The irony is, when you get to this type of role, although you are able to control anything, you think you could control anything you want, if you're a control freak, you have no life because it's impossible. Physically impossible. Literally impossible. So I think as I, you know, I've been in the role now for a little over a year, so I think I learned so much in this past 13 months. And I also became a father for the first time in the last 13 months, which is not a good idea to do both things at the same time.
But I think that also teaches a lot about trying to be in control. And I think that it's… I learned how to get to some kind of universal truths that feel pretty attainable, not only for me, but for everyone who are running their studios, and that I think that serve well their businesses and their creative output. And I've been saying, what I'm going to say now, I've been saying to everyone at Grey around the world, which is, and I think it's universal true for our industry: When in doubt, just focus on the work. Because the good news is, the world is complex, from a macroeconomics point of view, from a political point of view, from a societal point of view. Our industry is going through all the ups and downs that we all know. But, if there's one universal truth, I believe, what we do is that, great creative work, or as we say here, famously effective piece of work, points the company towards the right direction and attracts the right type of people that want to be part of that, from a talent point of view to a client point of view, and starts the right type of conversations around what we're doing.
So yes, it's incredibly complex. Yes, there's all the layers and the different, and the cultural nuances, all the different inputs and stakeholders that I have to manage, welcome, and take into consideration.
But at the end of the day, we're here to do f*cking great work. And everything we do, every decision we make—the easy ones, the tough ones—happen in service of, is this going to help us get to better work? If the answer is yes, then we go ahead and make the decision. If the answer is no, we keep thinking and decide, more times than not, otherwise. And that's… that makes me feel good. That is, again, that is a common denominator, right? And I think it's interesting that as a creative, you grow always so protective and really caring about the work that you are doing. And then as you grow, you’ve got to be protective and caring about the work of that other people are doing with you. And today we have thousands of people doing that type of work, and the message for everyone always is: When in doubt, just focus on great work and everything will fall into place, and the culture will be built around that. That helps me keep me somewhat sane.
Charles:
If you could roll the clock back and sit down with that teenage version of yourself that was just starting out in the industry, what would you tell him today?
Gabriel Schmitt:
It can be fun. I don't think I had as much fun as I could. I don't think that working in advertising agencies, quite honestly, is always fun. Because the pressure and it's high and, you know, sometimes I get briefings or have challenges that are not that fun to solve. But I was always so driven and so interested in coming up with the right things, accomplishing some tasks that I have put to myself that weren't even external but were internal-oriented, that I do think I forgot a little bit to let loose. To me the most interesting thing and the most, and the coolest thing to do is to sit down with the creatives and just see work and discuss. After we finish here. I'm going to do exactly that on a pretty big thing here in at Grey New York.
And I can't wait to do that. And I still remember, few of the ideas that I was, that I led or had or participate on, the conception or the moment of the conception of the idea, or the moment that you tell the idea to the client and they fall in love with it, or you have to fight for it. That is amazing. And the feeling that you have when you see something that you care so much about out there in the world. And sometimes being recognized by, oh, that's cool, that's interesting. And people talk about it and share. That is amazing. But that is 0.1% of the time, right? And I think that it's possible to have fun in more than 0.1% of the time. And I don't know I always allowed myself to have that. And I think I should have.
Charles:
If you were to roll the clock forward five years, what would you want people to say about the experience of having worked for you? How do you want your leadership to be remembered?
Gabriel Schmitt:
That I helped them grow. That when we started working together, they were at a stage in their careers, and then we no longer were working together, they felt like they had evolved and accomplished things that were important for them, and that now they could pay it forward.
Charles:
And as you look at the future, two questions. First, what are you afraid of? What are you worried about?
Gabriel Schmitt:
I'm afraid of being dismissive. I think from an industry point of view, obviously everything is changing, even faster now than it has always changed. And the present and the near future are going to be interesting, and we're all building this, and some of us are reacting quicker to it, and some of us smartly are being proactive about it, which I think is the most important thing. As another rule I created for myself is, always be proactive, never reactive. But I inherently believe in human ingenuity and the magic that we all can create as human beings. And I know technology is obviously much quicker than we are now, very soon will be as creative or as capable of coming up with different synapses as we are. And I think we need to do a better job on that and to embrace that and then jujitsu it and make sure that we are using it and not being used by that. And I don't think I'm being as fast on that or as attentive to that, as I could. So being dismissive, I think it's a problem.
Charles:
And as you look at the future, what are you hopeful for?
Gabriel Schmitt (39:35):
I'm hopeful that, on that, Blade Runner doesn't happen. (Laughs) I think it's, I know it's extremely naive, I'm going to say. But I don't think that because we as human beings, we can do something, that we should actually do it. I don't think that because we could take technology to a place that is incredibly dangerous, but could also mean incredible profits, I don't think we should go there. I know how naive that is and I know that what I'm saying, you know, it's irrelevant and we'll go there anyway. But I hope we understand that these are tools that we use, and these are not tools that are going to use us. And I'm not, I don't mean that literally. I mean metaphorically. I think it's fair to sit, you know, we are all victims of technology, so to speak, nowadays, and I don't think that's that healthy. And I think that keeping the checks and balances on that will be important. Now, if anyone tells you they know well how the world will be in 10 years, they're… a couple people will be right, but they're probably lying because they're all guessing. We don't know. And I hope that human ingenuity and creativity are still key parts of those, so that we can control it a little bit.
Charles:
I really want to thank you for coming on the show. I've always been struck by your willingness to look at yourself and take on board different perspectives, be open to the possibility that you're not seeing everything in the way that you necessarily should be, and then to use that as a personal reference point to guide your own development. I think that willingness is powerful. So thank you for joining me. It's great, as always, to see you.
Gabriel Schmitt:
I'm honored to be here. Thank you, Charles.
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Frances Harlow is the show’s Executive Producer. Josh Suhy is our Editor. Sarah Pardoe is the show’s Producer.
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