How to turn virality into value – with Dean Joffe (ENGL)

[Music] Welcome back! In this new episode of "Agency Life Deutschland" Robin and Luís take over the mic and talk to Dean Joff from Studio B, an UK agency that regularly develops viral campaigns for brands like Netflix, Pixar, and Amazon. Together, they take a look behind the scenes of advertising that does not annoy, but excite. How do you manage to create content that does not feel like advertising, but rather like good stories that are often shared? It's about brave ideas, maximum attention, and how to bring creative handwriting and reach into the context without losing yourself. And now a lot of fun listening in. Let's go! [Music] At this point, we would like to tell you what it is about us and our partner Teamleader in this podcast. We upload exciting personalities from the agency scene to each episode. With their knowledge and experience, we would like to create inspiration and motivation at the pulse of the time for the agency world. And that's where Teamleader starts with its powerful agency software. This already helps over 4,000 agencies to keep an appointment, control budgets, increase profit margins, plan capacities, and much more. So that you can fully concentrate on your creativity. From agency to agency. And here we go with our today's episode. [Music] I think the hard question with creatives, and this might not just be for us, but any creatives, is a creative is, it is art. And how do we know if art is going to work? How do we know if this song is going to sell? How do we know if this movie is going to? And so we're doing that in micro form, right? In a small form. We're making the cinema of today because that's where the eyeballs are. And how we often get hard questions of how do we know it's going to work. Luckily, we have enough data to showcase that the formula we use, the way we create videos, that it does work. Going viral with your ads. It's an advertiser's dream. But for today's Agency Live guest, it's at the core of what they do, or at least try to do, daily. Welcome to Agency Live, the podcast for agency owners and C-levels navigating the ever-evolving agency landscape. My name is Luise. And my name is Robin. Creating ads that people actually want to see, that's setting the bar high. Creating ads that get shared in a group chat, now that's aiming even higher. And it can be easy, or else every other agency would be doing it. So today, we're exploring the inner workings of an exciting young UK agency. Studio B. They're the team behind that squid game-inspired ad for Netflix that over 220 million people saw organically, and a Pixar social media campaign, good for over 35 million views. They also had world champion heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury step over London Bridge like Godzilla. Frightening stuff. Very frightening. Studio B. started as the YouTube channel of creator Brandon B. Since then, it has grown into a full-blown creative production agency. Today, Studio B. makes content for big names like Netflix, Pixar, Amazon and Sony. Their secret sauce? Ads that don't feel like ads. Content that entertains first and sells second, and often goes viral in the process. Joining us today is Studio B.'s business development director Dean Joffe. He's on a mission to grow revenue and scale the studio, all without losing the creative spark that they're known for. What can we learn from a young, creator-led agency like Studio B.? How do you build a business on taking creative risks? And what does a modern growth strategy look like in a world where content is everywhere? We'll dive into all of that and more with Dean. Welcome to Agency Life. So, Robin, we're about to talk to Dean from Studio B. Masters of making ads that don't feel like ads. And yet here we are, ready to deliver an ad that feels very much like an ad. Awful. But yeah, despite all this pressure, someone has to pay for the mics and the oat milk. So here we are. Because yes, this episode is once again brought to you by Teamleader Orbit. But what we can say is, if you're running a growing agency and you're drowning in limited tools, spreadsheets and vague reports, Orbit might just save your sanity. It gives you real clarity on workload, profitability and capacity. So you can actually run your agency like a business. Go check it out at teamleader.eu/orbit and book your free assessment. And now back to the agency that makes everything look cool, Studio B. Hello, Dean. Welcome to the podcast. Great to have you here. Great to be here, Robin and Louise. And thanks so much for having me on this sunny Friday afternoon, at least where I am. What is Studio B and how did a one-man content brand turn into a full-blown agency? Brilliant and great place to start. And exactly as you said it, Brandon B was a one-man content creator. He had done some previous editing and directing for a various number of companies. And during COVID, when he no longer could do that job, he said that he'd just create one video a day, you know, just during lockdown, which was two to three weeks. That obviously was ended up becoming about three months, but he kept to his word and in that time grew from zero to a million followers and subscribers. Today, he's sitting on over 25 million. And in the course of that time, obviously, his brand started approaching because of his unique and viral VFX and CGI effects that initially he was just creating on his phone. He's now built an entire commercial studio that we work with the likes of Netflix and Apple, Sony to create some of the most viral campaigns globally. With a fully-fledged production studios out in North London and a brilliant team made up of everyone from editors, VFX artists, CGI artists. We have two guys that their whole job is just to make things blow up. And of course, there's someone like me who heads up the commercial division, and that's in a nutshell. OK, what about your open journey? Because I read that you wanted to go to acting school and you wrote shows for Amazon Prime. But today you're a business developer. So how does a creative guy end up in business development? Firstly, where did you see such things? I'm joking that that those are all those are all true things. I suppose where I am now, my journey has kind of been a culmination and a combination of both creative and business. So, you know, whereas I did want to go to acting school, didn't really make it, didn't get to make it past the first 20 minutes. And I have done things like write TV shows for Amazon Prime and a few private sales, etc. But I've always loved the world of business and business growth. And working in a team as well, obviously being a writer is quite a lonely journey. And where I found myself now with these guys is a unique position where I'm in this creative world. I'm dealing with literally one of the most viral content creators in the UK and Europe and even globally. You know, we work with the likes of your Mr. Beast and biggest creators in the world. And but also still on that business side where I can help grow, use my expertise in the advertising space and grow that business. So this is kind of the best of both worlds and how I've ended up here. So, Dean, you as the master of business development, what's your big goal now that you're on board? So our big goal is that you basically just said it is massive growth, massive growth in all areas, massive growth in the amount of content we're producing. I mean, the quality is there, but the massive growth in the amount of brands we're speaking to. We've already committed to massive growth in terms of studio. So we've tripled the size of our studio now. And, you know, all the passion and everything we're doing is going in the right direction. So I'm really excited about it. OK, well, let's dive into those ambitions a little bit later. But for now, I'd like to know a little bit more about Studio B and the work that you do. You're specifically known for making ads that don't feel like ads. What's the thinking behind that? Yeah, I love that line and, you know, I hadn't really heard that before I arrived at Studio B. I think the whole meaning behind ads that don't look like ads is if, you know, if I were to ask you, Louise, today, tell me the best ad you've seen today. Could you mention any off the top of your head? That's a good question. I saw I saw an ad, but it's maybe not really an ad by Gaia, which is a Belgian organization for animal rights. Sure. Yeah. OK. They have they have this ad now, which starts as like it's like a fairy tale. Like everything is going great for this. I'm not sure what it is, a chicken or a pig or something. And they make it seem like it's a children's movie and everything is happy. But then in the end, of course, the animal dies. So I don't know. I like that ad. Yeah. And I think and tell me if I'm wrong or right here, but it seems like it emotionally connected with you. Perhaps. Are you an animal lover yourself? Well, yeah. Isn't everyone? Yeah, I know some more than others. But Robin shaking his head. But yeah, no, some people hate animals. These people exist. But it emotionally connects. It also sounded like it entertained you. It was creative in its approach. It wasn't just throwing a product at you. And that's the whole thing of an ad that doesn't look like an ad. It's there to entertain, to to capture your attention, not just to sell you at the end of the day. Everything we do is to try and sell. But if you you package in a way that it gives value, whether that is entertainment or information, but entertaining, if it doesn't entertain, you're not going to get the attention because our attention spans less than a second. It's the first frame. It's the thumbnail. And that I suppose I can go to a huge tent and we talk about this for a whole hour. But that that I think is the essence of it. Yeah. In essence and in theory, that all sounds, of course, pretty great. But that also means making entertaining work, making daring, bold work. How do you actually sell that to clients who are perhaps used to more traditional, less inspired, less brave? Yeah, absolutely. That is that's our day to day battle. Robin, you've nailed it there. We are very fortunate that what Brandon B did was learn how to own virality, which sounds very cheesy. And sometimes we go to the agencies and they're like, don't come with, don't come to me with virality. Everyone's to go viral. But we've literally as a weave, I can't take too much credit. Brandon B takes credit. He learned how to make things go viral where, you know, our videos for our brands have achieved over 18 billion. It's billion with a B organic views for our brands. So Brandon learned how to do this and then how to replicate it with brands where the average view on a video for a brand is over 15 million, 15 million organically, organically. So, you know, where a lot of brands don't get that with paid and that's kind of the world I actually come from. So, you know, I've come with this unique perspective of how do we merge both this paid knowledge, but actually this organic tools. And yes, we do have formula formulas that we have created. Again, love it. Love that I'm taking credit here. It's Brandon B and the creative minds, which I can share some things and some things, you know, it's like Kentucky Fried Chicken. Like you can't share all of the sauce. But is that something I should share? Something I should go into just so I don't tangent this to left. You can you can share some of your sauce with us. We're not we're not against that at all. Spill it. Spill that sauce. So, I mean, I think two key things, which I think everyone knows, but maybe doesn't apply. The one is the first frame. Everyone talks about, you know, capture the attention. It used to be seven seconds. Then it was three seconds. It's no longer three seconds. You don't have three seconds. You have a frame. You have that frame. Maybe we can apply this to our thumbnail for this podcast. And so what what brand and the team have really owned and become experts in, become experts in is in that first frame, that first frame has to tell a story. There needs to be almost a question needs to be asked in the in the audience, viewers, watchers head that they want to answer. How do they answer? They watch. And so you're capturing that again in in frame zero and again, like different platforms like YouTube will have a thumbnail that will do that. Mr. Beast obviously has owned that space and he's you know, he's you know, probably the kind of benchmark of what to do. And then as who work a lot with shorts, work a lot on TikTok and Instagram, it's where there might not be a thumbnail is a frame. It's that first image before that brings me to the next point, which is looping what we call looping, which is opening these questions. You had that first question, which was asked in that first frame, but you need to continue continuously. It's a hard word to say continuously. Ask more questions, create new hooks, ask new questions. I watched a great film that I can't think of the name right now. So this is going to sound really good to your viewers. Oh, you know what it was? I was just on a plane to Australia. I watched. I'd never seen it. And it was Tom Cruise film, The Last Samurai. Fantastic. I've never seen it. It was on the plane. So I had to watch anyway. The historically accurate movie with Tom Cruise being The White Last Samurai. Historically accurate. I'm not here to debate that. But as a film, it's fantastic. And what it does, which is what we do in 18 seconds, is it keeps creating new questions. It keeps asking new questions that you need to answer. And how do you answer? You keep watching. Now, we will do five to six of those in 18 seconds to a minute. They do it in an hour and a half, two hours. And that's the difference. So there's a little bit of a source, I suppose. Okay. So grabbing attention and keeping it grabbed until your viewer is totally in the loop and just can't click away anymore. Well, thanks for sharing that, Dean, some of your secret sauce. I was wondering, though, when you propose this idea of making ads that don't feel like ads to clients, what kind of objections do you typically hear in those conversations? Do clients have hard questions for your team? I think the hard question with creatives, and this might not just be for us, but any creatives, is a creative is... It is in a way, it is art. And how do we know if art's going to work? How do we know if this song is going to sell? How do we know if this movie is going to, you know, be worth profit? And so we're doing that in micro form, right? In a small form. And then it's known to take away from what we do for us that we are making the cinema of today because that's where the eyeballs are. And how we often get hard questions of how do we know it's going to work? Luckily, we have enough data to showcase that the formula we use, the way we create videos, that it does work. Again, we're, you know, it's like 90% of the time, all the time. I think the biggest objection comes in we have a very unique style that a lot of brands have never tapped into. What we do have on our side is eyeballs. Everyone knows right now you need to be on social. You need to be on TikTok. You need to be on Instagram. You need to be on Shorts. You need to be on YouTube. And we have enough data from what we have done to back that what we are creating will work. Of course, the creative has to be original. It has to be unique. It has to be exciting. And that's what our whole creative team is for, which is the biggest team in our whole company. And then from a brand, it does take a bit of bravery because we're not we're no longer in the world of, you know, the infomercials. If you remember the guys on TV selling things and holding up things of price and you can call to buy it. And ironically, that is still happening today in the new form with influencers. If you think about it, they're just the modern day tele sales kind of people. We're saying, OK, that has its place. Everything does have its place. But if we could get a brand to get a viewer to fall in love with your brand, with a story, with a narrative, we can entertain. We can get them to share it with their friends because it didn't even look like an ad. Sometimes they didn't even realize it was an ad. Of course, it all does say ad because you do have to specify that. So we're not trying to be sneaky or anything like that. But when they actually entertain them and that's how we kind of push a history client kind of through that through that funnel. When you say we have the data to back up that it works, these kinds of viral short form content, does it work for both short term sales objectives and for long term brand growth? In your opinion, can you prove both of those things to clients? Absolutely. And in different ways. So in a short, if we start with a short like short term, you've got a you've got a campaign. It's kind of a short turnaround. We're going to create something that's exciting, that gets attention and delivers the results, whether it's we're trying to engage or trying to create awareness and reach, whether we're trying to actually get them some kind of call to action. But then the long form, that's really where the exciting work happens. It's all exciting. But what we're really falling in love with is a word or a term called branded entertainment. So I don't know. And I'm sure you guys in Belgium have soap operas. Now, I don't know if you know where soap opera is, how they started or why they're called soap operas. Do you know? Because they were they used to be meant to sell soap to housewives. Robin, you're too good. Yeah. So you get it exactly. And they were funded by the soap companies, by the PNGs, by the Unilevers, et cetera. And that in essence was the origin of branded entertainment, where people fell in love with characters. And often the shows, they don't even the brand will be there, et cetera, and the sponsor. But they're not talking about the brand. It's its own story. Now, we 100 percent see that's exactly where we're going back to. But no longer a soap opera, you know, on old school television. But we really see the frontier now as YouTube, where any brand could be there. There's no barrier to entry. And the real opportunity is now that the quality of content, there is good quality, but it's few and far between. A lot of it is UGC. And again, there's a place for that. But if you're trying to create a branded entertainment piece, whether it's a format like a show, a reality kind of show or an actual narrative series, that is where brands can make a huge move. And right now it's an it's almost an untouched space. Do some clients ever worry that their brand might get lost in the entertainment? That is a worry and that is a concern. And it's our job as the creatives to make sure that doesn't happen. Again, we have to always remind them we're creating entertainment and the idea is to entertain and sell. But it can't be pushing the product down the throats of the viewers. Otherwise, they're never going to watch. So the whole thing becomes another void. I'm going to follow up with another extra question. Is Studio B for everyone? Or does your agency only work for like a specific niche market by design? I would have to say it is for everyone because of how we have learned to grab various different attentions. So that depends on the market, the audience, et cetera. And every video will look similar, but could look vastly different. It's all about really. And this is where we spend a lot of time is understanding who is the audience really trying to talk to? What are they really trying to do? What is what are they? What is their problem? Where are they falling short? Understanding that and then and then going forward. And now that doesn't mean we haven't turned away campaigns because we felt that there was a misalignment that what they really wanted to achieve actually our kind of entertainment style was not actually the perfect style for that. They maybe needed something more aligned to an infomercial, something more aligned to a classic B2B kind of talking head, which again has its place by not saying that they couldn't use us for perhaps a different campaign or a different objective. We ask this question frequently with advertisers and people in the advertising industry, if they sometimes turn a client away because they feel this is not going to cut it, perhaps the client wants it, but we will not be of our optimal value to this brand. Do you have that sometimes? Absolutely. Like we know where our speciality, we are a creative production studio specializing in virality, VFX and CGI. And we've had companies come to us and be like, we want to do a series of straight interviews just in chairs. We want to keep it really straightforward. This is just an example of something like this. But we really want to keep just it's just basically an interview style, but we don't want to bring in any flavor. We want to keep it kind of real business and smart. That is kind of, for instance, a campaign that would be like, well, that is an idea and it can work, but we can really elevate and take it to the next level. Now, perhaps they don't want to do that. That's probably a campaign we wouldn't really take forward because it doesn't bring out the best of us and we think we can bring out more. And so it's just not an alignment, which is fine. It's not all going to align. Yeah. And I suppose that's a good example. OK, that was the creativity department. Now let's talk about your specific part of the shop, which is developing the business. We heard you're setting up Studio B's commercial department entirely from scratch. What is that like for you? So it is a daunting task, but one that I'm up for. And we work with a lot of other sister agencies, which has got Studio B to where it is today. And a lot of those agencies are in place. So thank goodness I've got the support and the learnings from these companies. But it's also a task I'm really up for. I mean, I've done this several times in my career, where if it was like Snapchat back in South Africa, where I was the first sales rep and it was my first job in advertising. And I really didn't know how any of it worked, but I knew how to sell and I was happy to learn and I use Snapchat. And we did that then. We grew that team to a team of about 20 across Africa as well as Ireland. And that was really exciting. But it taught me a lot that I've taken forward into the next thing and then to the next thing and then to now. And as long as I, as anyone, can understand the product and know and see that it works and that we're actually providing value, solving problems, not being, you know, a quick, what would you call it, a blind side, you know, trying to sell and run, you know, that's never going to work and that's not a company I'd want to join. If we're providing value, we're making a difference. We're turning the needle. Then we can grow it. Then that's that's something anyone can work with. And as long as you have some of those kind of little bit, not more boring, but like, you know, old school sales techniques and processes and you understand how to build those processes, which I've learned, obviously, through the course of my career, then you can go ahead and and and flourish. And like anything, it takes time. You know, Rome wasn't built in a day. So like anything, there are relationships to be built. There is networking to be done. There is pitches to be to fill out and you're not going to win every pitch. But at least hopefully every pitch we're just learning and every brief, we learn something new. And if we don't get it, we understand exactly why. So we can constantly improve. I can imagine since you're focused on these short term short form video formats a lot that you often have to collaborate with other agencies to offer clients a complete package. Am I getting that right? Absolutely. Do you get a lot of business? Should you be through other agencies, through like a network of agencies? How does that work? Absolutely. So it we find ourselves in quite a unique position where we don't really ever see ourselves fighting against other agencies. We see ourselves collaborate, collaborating where we often provide skills they can't. And likewise, they can provide skills that we can't, for instance, a paid media agency or an influencer agency. And working and we have built this almost like brotherhood or sisterhood of agencies that are all working together on really big campaigns to make a difference and provide a full solution, kind of like you said. And doesn't that make it harder to build a long term relationship with a client when you're just one of the agencies in a full campaign? That's my job, I suppose, to come in and understand the client on a personal level. I think that's that's half of what old school sales. I mean, we're not really in the mad men days anymore, although we all wish we were. And I think that's why we all joined advertising. But it's to really understand what it what is the client want to not just the client is in the brand, but the client is in the person. And that is that's that's someone like me that would come in and, you know, obviously, the creatives look after the creatives. The ops look after the operations. And I come in to make sure we're building long term growth. This isn't a once off. How do you prefer approaching new business? Do you prefer to start small and then grow accounts until they get bigger? Or do you prefer to go big from day one and go on the pitch route and go for the big shots? Go big or go home. I just had to say that. So every client is different. And it depends on the capabilities and possibilities. Also, budgets is a huge thing. Bigger brands have bigger budgets means their starting point will be a lot bigger. With every client, there is a and us being not the newest kid on the block, but they may not have done what we're doing. Oftentimes it will be OK, let's do one campaign, show you the success and grow from there. Yet in saying that we have had big clients have come in and become a retainer client because they've just seen our work instantly. So that's why I know it's a very generic answer, but it it is case by case basis. Again, understanding the objectives, maybe they just need something quickly. And so that will be our first campaign or they need a whole series, which is going to take three or six months. I can imagine because the work that you do is viral content. So a lot of clients probably just see the work that you do for big brands. So how much of your work comes from this inbound? How much of Studio V's pipeline comes from inbound and how much comes from classical outbound hustle? I can't share the exact ratio because it does vary literally on a month to month basis. Not that I'm not. I can't share it. But at the moment, it's almost seeming like a 50/50 where and that will vary dramatically month to month. But because we're on a big growth phase, there is a lot of of going out there, meeting new brands. The traditional outbound kind of exercises, as you've mentioned, in saying that another one part of my job and something that I've realized where true value, where true value lies is once you do a campaign with a brand, brands often have several teams that all are doing different things and sometimes don't even talk to each other. And the amount of opportunity for both parties in just one relationship is massive. And that's I do believe that's a skill anyone can learn. But it's knowing, OK, that was one campaign. Yes, but that's a company of eight thousand fifteen thousand people, you know, with marketing being whatever, 10 to 20 percent. That's hundreds or thousands of people itself there, each one looking after different campaigns, different departments. I mean, if you just take a traditional company like a Samsung or a Coca-Cola, I mean, how much is going on globally with just one of those that could keep you busy forever. So it's also understanding that for sure. So what we've been hearing in podcasts and other places a lot is that the marketing budgets are heavily under pressure. You want to grow the Studio B brand and you want to grow it strongly. So what's your take? Are you feeling that pressure? Are brands opening their wallets less willingly? Maybe I have an interesting, maybe controversial opinion on this. OK, I think that's an excuse. I honestly think some brands might and they very well may their budgets may literally have shrunk like literally paper. It was one hundred thousand or let's say ten million last year. This year it's seven million, five million, whatever it is. There is so much business out there to be gotten. And if you solve the problem, specifically the bigger brands, I mean, we're not necessarily talking about the mom and pop shops, et cetera. The money is there. If the idea is worth it, the money is there. If you can actually solve the problem that they're facing, the money is there. And so not to be this hard sales guy who's like, you know, keep pushing. No, I'm not saying I'm not saying you're going to win everything. And definitely that may be a legitimate excuse, but the relationship never killed the relationship, never burn a bridge. And if that's not the avenue, you find another avenue. It may come later. Divert your attention. See where, you know, see where the smoke is because the smoke this fire. There's a lot of cliches today. We can handle it. So, yes, I think that's that's my opinion. Talking about money with a bit cheaper for a client to pay you guys to make viral viral content that can go viral organically so they don't have to invest in paid advertising. I don't think it's one or the other. And we come from a perspective of quality. So brands could potentially find a supplier to make a video to make video content that could be cheaper than us. We're not coming in and saying we're the cheapest in the game. We're coming in with quality and saying we'll get you the results now. You mentioned a good point, which brands often ask us. So then, OK, we don't need paid. No, two different objectives, two different strategies, because we can get you the organic reach. But that's either on the clients you have and the followers you already have or our followers, et cetera. But if your target audience is completely different, you're going to need paid. Those are two different strategies. And I do believe that both should be used for most campaigns. Some campaigns don't need it. Some campaigns maybe only need paid. Some campaigns maybe only need organic. It goes down to the objective that paid is there for a reason. And it's also understanding where do you get your most value for money? Where does the dollar get the most reach? I mean, right now, it's probably TikTok and LinkedIn. Although LinkedIn is expensive, for instance, there's huge value and you get this huge reach in terms of finding your exact consumer. But again, not for every brand and not for every client. OK, interesting. Maybe a final question on this topic, on landing new clients. Do you have a dream client in mind that you haven't landed yet that you would like to add to the portfolio? We work with it sounds silly, but we work with most of them. A lot of the brands I love personally, your Netflix, your Apple, your Primes, your Disney. I'm big into entertainment as you know, I've written stuff. I do love sports and I would say my favorite team is Arsenal. And we've done a lot of work with sports teams. We've done a lot of stuff with Man City, New York City FC, DP World Golf. I'd love to do work with Arsenal just because on a personal perspective, I'd love to do some work with them. And what helps is that pretty much the entire leadership team are all Arsenal fans too. So I think that is one on the radar. OK, so no Chelsea or Everton scarves during your meetings? No, we have a big Man City sign shirt just because we do a lot of work with them and we do love them and they are great. But from a football perspective, it's mostly Arsenal. OK, we're already kind of there with the next topic because we want to look a bit behind the curtain at your creator led studio. Who works there? Does Gen Z dominate? Are you perchance the oldest? I'm not the oldest, but I am one of the oldest. I did think I was the oldest because the other two look younger than me. I'm not sure why, but I am one of the oldest. It is Gen Z led, which is brilliant. And I had an interesting conversation literally today with a 23 year old who gets flown. He's part of our studio, gets flown literally all over the world shooting content for huge brands. Your big hotels like your Four Seasons, your Emirates, your biggest brands in the world. And he was on a shoot in Sevilla in Spain, I think of a yesterday or whatever. I mean, he's going out to use next week. He was in Thailand two weeks ago shooting for White Lotus. And he was there with two 40 year olds who also brought in the job and they didn't know his age. And eventually they found out his age and they were like, what? You're 23? And he showed me and it's like they couldn't believe it and they also couldn't believe what he was doing. And he showed me what they did, which looked great. And then he showed me what he did and it looked so much more applicable to a Gen Z audience because he is it. He's a social creator creating for social where they come from old school film. I don't know who they are and I'm sure they're amazing. But they were creating that kind of content for social. So it didn't look, it didn't match, it didn't click. You weren't going to stay on that watch. So it is big Gen Z focus because I think that is our audience and that's obviously will change to Alpha, etc. So I'm guessing that these Gen Zers also don't have a lot of traditional agency experience, is that right? Yeah, absolutely. A lot come from actually a lot of a more cinematic kind of world of films and series. A lot of our team has actually been flown in from around the world because they're the best at what we do. Half of our studio is CGI and VFX artists. And I suppose, you know, obviously it doesn't it means they don't have necessarily that experience. But it also means that they're very fresh and they haven't been nothing. There's a jadedness that comes with being an agency. But sometimes you are, you know, the corporate world can squish one. So they don't have that. Can I deduct from that that Studio B is not exactly run according to the traditional agency playbook? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. You come in. You think this is the funnest, most social playground you've ever been into. Everyone is super professional, so it doesn't take away from that. But when I first joined, I was like, people are getting paid to do this. Like what? And like the laughter. I mean, it's loud. There's always music going. It's like this table tennis that I'm in the classic kind of startupy kind of stuff. But it's like it's it's it's definitely not run, which is so great. But I suppose that's where I've come in in terms of a bit more traditional advertising experience, but more Agency Life. You know, this is what this is called, right? Agency Life plug. The original Agency Life started in April 2021. Is that, you know, those traditional CRMs, processes, pipeline building, et cetera. But again, there's so much I can learn and take to the team, to the sales team as we grow it in terms of the creativity, the freshness, the excitement, et cetera. So you are kind of bringing some of the more standard way of ways of business development for agencies to this young creator led table to professionalize in a way. I'm not sure if professionalize is the right word. I agree with what you're saying, because everyone is super professional. But it's almost to there's so much excitement. It's just to make sure we're on top of everything and to make sure there are systems that can run and remind us rather than us having to remember. And obviously, that's what a CRM does is what pipeline. So that's what automation tools do. And I mean, I is I mean, that's something I've learned a huge amount of. And that's probably just being a millennial, not Gen Z, is how much AI we use. But we've created our own our own AI. So all of the stuff that we do is actually based on our own information, our own creative, but also just utilizing the AI tools that are out there to automate mundane tasks and make things just easier and quicker. That's a big part that I've learned. So what you're saying is that some of some of the old school or traditional agency playbook stuff on a business development on business development is relevant for you guys. And that's what you're bringing in to to professionalize that in sort of a way. Is there the other way around something that you feel traditional agencies can learn from the way to do be operates, which is a lot less traditional. There are a few things I'm trying to figure out which one is is the most relevant to what you've asked, because the answer is yes, definitely. I think one of them is actually just culture, perhaps where the culture is so uplifting and like every idea matters. Good or bad, because, you know, we welcome bad ideas and look agencies. I'm not saying they don't do this. They definitely do. But I think because we are that is the core of everything we do is to create content, create ads, don't look like ads, create entertainment that is seeped into kind of the blood and bones of Studio B. That's perhaps something. Basically, what you guys are trying to do is what in a nutshell or in the essence, most advertising agencies should want to to be doing is make stuff that people want to watch that they want to consume, which is, as we all know, not exactly true anymore for any of the millions and millions of ads we see every day. So what advice would you give to other creative agencies trying to shift towards more daring, more eye catching, more show stopping work? I think it's almost like say no more. So say no to the bad ideas. So even if the client wants it now, I get it. Not every company or agency, specifically if you're an independent, if you're a startup can say no. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think we all want to inverted commas make cool shit. So we want to we want to be able to help our clients. And sometimes they know best and sometimes they don't. Because sometimes you've got someone two generations away, but you're trying to talk to Gen Z, for instance. And we know how to do that. That's how we've become who we've become. And so sometimes you do need to just say no to campaign, even if that means, you know, you're turning down, whatever it is. Thank you for sharing your perspective on the industry today and for sharing your story from Studio B. What really stuck with me is how intentional your business model is. It's not just creativity for the sake of it. It's actually strategic risk taking. You're trying to sell more by making cool shit that grabs attention. And if you actually solve the client's problem, the money is always there. That's something that I will remember. And the way Studio B blends creator culture with commercial thinking. Pretty cool, pretty cool. Thanks again for joining us, Dean. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Thanks for taking the time. It's been really fun. And where can people find out more about you and about Studio B? So, I mean, firstly is check out our website, studiob.net. All its info. I mean, happy to mail me directly, dean@studiob.net, if you want. I mean, I can give you my address as well. I'm joking, obviously. He's very approachable. I am too approachable. And also you can check out our socials. We've just started a whole new social media team, so it's really exciting. I find a lot going to be coming out now. Probably by the time this is out, a lot of stuff will be out. Also, just check out Brandon's pages, Brandon B, across all the different socials. You'll see literally hundreds upon hundreds of videos and campaigns. And you'll see some of the epic work that we've done there. I'll make sure to do that. And for you, our lovely listener and/or viewer, thanks listeners and viewers for listening or watching. 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