Episode 142 / David Byrne / Aviva / Brand Marketing Lead
Keeping Your Brain Nourished And NFTs
David Byrne is the Brand Marketing Lead at Aviva, where he creates above the line campaigns. His career spans brands such as Diageo and BT, start-ups, his own photography studio and the BBC. With such a varied CV, it’s no wonder David keeps himself curious and abreast of all new developments, and it’s why his Shiny New Object is NFTs.
Speaking to David about being overwhelmed and relaxing and removing yourself from the digital screens, he talked to me about a combination of activities as wide-ranging as riding his bike, meditating on the insignificance of one individual in the grand scheme of this earth, and reading poetry. A wide range of interests to help get away from computer screens and refresh the brain at all times.
As part of this effort of refreshing the brain and switching off, David has got better at saying no to meetings where he doesn’t need to be present. He believes in just saying when he cannot help and being brutal about what he wants to get from a situation.
David’s Shiny New Object is NFTs – non fungible tokens, collectible digital assets that hold value. Like a piece of art, this value can grow so that the NFT becomes an investment. But how does this relate to being a marketer? In David’s view, it all circles back to keeping the brain fresh, learning new things, and staying curious. It’s a new way of experiencing communication and “good communication should change the way you think about the world.”
To find out about David’s many favourite marketing books, how he deals with being overwhelmed, and how marketers can stay curious and keep learning, listen to the podcast.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:00
Hello, and welcome to the Shiny New Object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative. And this is a weekly podcast where I interview the industry's leaders about the future of marketing. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with David Byrne, who is brand marketing lead at Aviva. So, David, for those in the audience who don't know who you are and what you do. Could you give us a bit of an overview?
David Byrne 1:17
Yes, I am, well, right now I make marketing I make up online communications for Aviva. Historically, I spent five years working on brands like HSBC and Diageo and BT. And then I started my own company up north in a photography studio. So did that. And then I came, I worked at the BBC. And I worked at Leo Burnett for a while. And I worked on a startup, I've worked at media agencies, design agencies, broadcasters. Now, Aviva.
Tom Ollerton 1:59
Wow, man, that's comprehensive, no employer stone left unturned there. Fantastic. So in your journey across all of those different disciplines and different types of employers, what is the best thing that you've spent your own money on that you use for work?
David Byrne 2:22
I have, right. That's a pretty easy one. It's, it's my bike, the bike to work scheme, and I got a beautiful bespoke Condor and, before lockedown, I could cycle into Hoxton every day for about 45 minutes, 45 back and it's not actually the bike itself. It's the time that it buys you to think. And so quite often, you know, when you have that silence, we're not surrounded by other people where you're kind of focused on the road or just physically trying to cycle faster against the rain, or the wind. Just lovely, lovely, quiet time. So that I think two hours a day of quiet contemplative time is really valuable.
Tom Ollerton 3:10
So that's interesting. I interviewed Michael Lee from Oatly on the podcast a few months ago. And he said a very similar thing. And he comes with all of the ideas, riding on a bike along the way at work. So So you've, you've done all these different jobs, and you got a super senior job at Aviva. Now, and as you say, like responsible for above the line campaign. So there must be lots of different people to, to manage in your team and also manage above you, I can imagine it getting quite stressful. So how do you how do you deal with overwhelm? How do you deal with the pressures of the job when it gets too much?
David Byrne 3:53
It's weird that I've got a little book that I bought years and years ago at Magma which was like the little loft in Covent Garden, and it's a it's called "The powers of 10". And it's a Charles and Ray Eames thing. And if anyone that's listening to this podcast has got a moment I strung it, you can get it on YouTube. But I've got a little flick book, what is it starts out kind of in someone's hand, and then that's magnified by 10. And it gets to a cell in someone's hand and then magnified by 10. And it gets his thoughts your hand, you get the picture, right. And you see a person lying on a piece of grass made to next Lake Michigan, in Chicago, and then you pan out again, you see Chicago, and then you see Michigan, Ohio, you know, Midwest and then you see kind of the earth and then you know the solar system and then the universe and it's really nice when you when you kind of feel overwhelmed by things that quite often aren't that important in the scheme of things. Just have a little flick through that or what for up to four minutes in, you just realize how insignificant Your place is in the hole. And I think, yeah, that. Or the other thing that I did that is a new thing. And this is probably a little bit more pretentious podcast, someone bought me a book of poetry, I don't really know that much about Ted Hugges, but I'll read a bit of his poetry and he just talks about animals a lot. Actually, again, you can just read that and you're transported to a completely different world, and it just kind of fresh into your brain. You know, take a breath, and you can get back on that. Yeah, if you if you haven't heard, again, on YouTube, try that Ted Hughes reads his poem with one of his most famous ones called pike. Fantastic and beautiful. And his, his voice is incredible as well. So again, if you want to just remove yourself from presentation or a spreadsheet or some Teams messages, then...
Tom Ollerton 6:04
Yeah, because what that strikes me is, is that you're removing yourself from being in a stress situation, which is kind of fight or flight or freeze into a sort of different state of being right, you're thinking about the bigger picture, you're removing yourself from the feeling of being under attack, which think, psychologically, is quite interesting. Are you consciously doing that? Or is that just two techniques that you happen to have stumbled across?
David Byrne 6:33
Well, you know, it's kind of all the interesting people that you ever you ever meet. And I'm not saying I'm particularly interesting but you have the interesting people that are interested and interesting themselves, they tend to find the time to find odd objects. And they're kind of slightly tangential, or very tangential. And I think, you know, especially with all this work that I'm doing around screens, where you might not even look up for a couple of hours to just kind of step out, because, again, the point about the bike earlier, you know, you're meeting new people, you're seeing the environment constantly under a new challenges, you might lose your life in the next second if you're not paying attention. And I think, because we're often just locked around a laptop screen or in a certain room, because we can't go into the office, then taking yourself off to another world. I think it just decompresses your brain. So now it's not a conscious thing. It's just a thing I found myself doing over time. And again, now again, you know, I'm sure other people do this as well. But to get away from sort of digital, I'll just find all the books are in this room with me. And I'll just go and read one for a little while. I'm really interested in sneakers, or what else is over there. Try not to read the marketing books. But there's a whole bunch just read a passage of something.
Tom Ollerton 7:57
So in terms of marketing books, but which ones do you have in your room? This is a podcast, so I can't see. But what are your... do you ever like to reread marketing books, or is it a one and done type of category?
David Byrne 8:10
Yeah, now I'm kind of you know, Richard Shotton's mind, you see, I see that on LinkedIn everyday or Twitter if anyone follows him. And what he does is he kind of annotates favorite famous marketing books. And you'll just take a little picture of a passage, which is really useful, and he just posted probably showing my age but that's that's exactly what I do. So I can go back to I've got Perfect Pitch over there, Eating the big fish. There's a The delusions of brand, that's over there, they can see the moment Hey, we'll squeeze this is stuck on the piano. Yeah, it's kind of but the one actually the one that I would say that I use the most, and they will like me for this, I think, is How to make better advertising and advertising better. And as you know, advertising's best kept secret, I would say this, there's two guys called Andy Palmer and Vic Polkinghorne that I used to work with quite a lot at Sell! Sell! and I work with their amazing gateway. It's like a it's kind of a really lovely tiny studio, I suppose. And in Shoreditch, and they wrote a book and all the wisdom's in there and I thoroughly recommend 20 different, no about 40 different sections. And it's just, it's just really amazing wisdom in it. I think, one of the quotes on the back, I think Dave Trot says this book is full of common sense, which is where so it's actually full of Uncommon Sense. And, you know, I strongly recommend is just a page on each topic. And this you know, the topics are sort of things like you know, why people buy truth. Stop exaggerating what's in it for? Get your hands dirty, bullshit free, Death to the committee, no, yes, man, simplify, Mavericks and characters. But you know, it's just, it's wisdom that they've collected from big agencies from smart people. They're very smart themselves. And they just, they've written it down and given it to you, and you can probably buy it for about a tenner is I'm sure it's worth much more than that. So, yeah, that's my favorite book.
Tom Ollerton 10:41
So what have you become better at saying no to in the last five years?
David Byrne 10:47
Yeah, meetings, I think is the is the name. I was in a meeting at Viking Cruises, which is in Wimbledon, on I think it was like a Monday morning, about years ago, I was working for an agency that was based in LA, but we were working in London, and my Chief Exec was supposed to join the meeting. And it was it was like 10am in Wimbledon, 3am on a Sunday night or Monday morning in LA. And late. And I'm thinking shit, the chief exec's joining, that's going to be a problem. And they just went, "hey, Chris". My boss said hello. And he said, "Hey, we don't need you in this meeting. And clearly, Chris, you've been working on the deck with us and wanted to speak and had a point of view in each way. So so I'll speak to you soon, right?" and put the phone down. I just thought, "wow, that's punchy!" and um, what it taught me is, you know, as a character, I try and be nice to people. I'm a pleaser, I want to help everyone and nurture the team. But sometimes, you just gotta go. You can't help here. And actually, the meeting was fine without Chris, he would always add value. But uh, but yeah, the guy was just did not care about feelings or inconvenient. He was just brutal. This is why I need to get from the meeting and we don't need you. So off we go.
Tom Ollerton 12:17
That's a fantastic story, and impossible to do a segway between between that and your shiny new object.
This episode of the Shiny New Object podcast is brought to you in partnership with MAD//Fest. Whether it's live in London or streamed online to the global marketing community, you can always expect the distinctive and daring blend of fast paced content, startup innovation pitches, and unconventional entertainment from MAD//fest events, you'll find me causing trouble on stage recording live versions of this podcast and sharing a beer with the nicest and most influential people in marketing. Check it out at www.madfestlondon.com.
Your shiny new objects is NFT's or non fungible tokens, I was so surprised that this is going to be your shiny new object. So I'm going to pass over to you to explain to the audience what an NFT is. And then we can discuss why it's relevant to the marketers listening to this podcast.
David Byrne 13:30
Okay, so I'm going to read from some things on my screen, which I can quite useful, right. An NFT is, in essence, a collectible digital asset, which holds value as a form of cryptocurrency, as a form of art or culture. Much like art, it's seen as a value holding investment. So what are NFTs? And my understanding is that you can attach I'm doing my hands here, but it's it's very, it's very difficult to wrestle with I put the file format that you can add all the files to, that won't change over time. So you can, the way that someone described it to me the other day, when I first started, he was talking about a hotel room, way that we see hotel rooms in the world, right? Is that through a booking site, probably right? So you'll go when you go. When is that? You know, when do I want to go on holiday. So I want to go away on Tuesday, and I'll come back on Thursday. And, you know, again, show me a trouser press is really important for me in my hotel room or I don't know a beach view, whatever it might be. And what started happening in the hotel industry, but also in the art industry and obviously financial services. You can take these files, let's call them files go, how better, tokens, maybe I think it's probably a better way to describe them. And you can attach rich media to them and build up the value. So at the moment, you know, can you imagine if you have an NFT that had a piece of art on it, but then every one so when you I guess, when you search a hashtag on on Instagram, or all the metadata that you can get on, on on film these days, it can be attached to a token, and so that every part of that experience will say that hotel room, so maybe on that token, every every person that ever visited that hotel room could attach pictures, or their experiences, or they can read a poem from Ted Hughes maybe and attach it to that particular hotel. And I just, I think that, and then what you're able to do is that IP resides, my understanding is within that token, and then you can sell access and reference to the elements on that token, in perpetuity. That is my understanding of it Tom.
Tom Ollerton 16:10
What amazes me about your choice is, and we've been chatting now for a couple of years, we've done Advertisers Watching Ads together a couple of times, but you are the most... How can I put this strategic of brand marketers that I've spoken to, and you're you always on a very high level. And yet, you've become fascinated with NFT's, which seems to be the opposite end of the interest spectrum, when, you know, we're talking about how to make the perfect 30-second or 6o-second TV spot for an insurance company. So what is it about NFT's that captures your marketing brain?
David Byrne 16:46
Well, it's always got its classic, isn't it? It's kind of Yeah, again, so just the other week MAD//Fest, right? So Noel was there, Noel Mac, and we were chatting about him and he was one of his points on his presentation was "get your towel down early". And what what he meant by that is, when you see a new phenomena, really explore it, pick it apart, you know, you, you get some people that until a long time ago, they get a new thing, and then they take it apart because they needed to understand how it worked. And I think this time, you know, this, right, there's a real lack of that in marketing, right? People are getting on with their job, right? So no one's got time to get on the side and unpick something and take it apart. And, and therefore you just listen to your agencies, and they tell you what you want to hear. And then they've got their margins and their forecasts, and everyone just slides along and everyone makes incremental gains. And what I loved about what Noel Mac said was, you know, when I first heard about TikTok, I got on what what could I How could I use it? How could I apply it even if my audience weren't there yet. And the thing, again, as I get older, you think, well, I stopped doing that, for whatever it probably is time poor, but when I was chatting to the person that introduced me to this male chief exec Ronald, I was just I was just fascinated by it. And I think kind of, you know, that's what good communication is, as well as that kind of good communication should change the way you think about the world. And again, as I get older, there are fewer and fewer things that surprise you, you become cynical. And that's, that's a terrible thing to be, you know, if you're going to do great work, if you're going to get people excited. Like all great art, you always have a kind of a new book quite resonant and truthful take on part of the human experience. And if there's a new way of packaging or experience through a token, then that's fascinating to me, can I sell more insurance, again, also, my job is to flog more insurance or more financial services products. But you know, if we if we had some sort of crypto token that Aviva could make, and then you could ascribe more and more of your data points to that, and therefore get a discount on the risks that you might take. That could be a really interesting product, right?
Tom Ollerton 19:09
Yeah. And there's a number of things I want to explore from what you just said that but something has really stuck in my head and it's just gonna start boring people on this podcast but there's a real tension between those of those of us in marketing who are obsessed with the new and like the other Noel Macs of this world he like, they'll see a new shiny thing and they'll and I'll want to dive into it and get you know, up to their elbows and work out what it is. But then you've got the other end of the spectrum. You've got your you know, your Jerry Daykins of this world who's been like, no, it's you know, it's all about penetration and just getting your brand in front of people at a massive scale. And gradually over time, you'll build up the memory structures will that will end up in favourability at the point of purchase, right? And so but I see both of those things as being valid, and one of them is a lot more fun than the other. That is for sure. But then the one then this also a lot more appealing to people who are younger. So I remember when I first got in industry like 10-12 years ago, and social media was really kicking off, and I sort of jumped on that, because I thought it was fascinating. But I was, I was native to it at that age. Whereas, whereas now it's like, I'm a lot older than that, and it's more difficult for me to be native to new things. So paying myself in recording here without really a question, but but what I need to know is, what should marketers be doing about NFT's? Should they be thinking, you know, how does how does Avivacreate an NFT? How does McDonald's, Nike, what do they do with it? Or is it just a case of observing at this point in time?
David Byrne 20:49
Well, no, it's not you're right, it kind of indulge yourself, you know, indulge yourself and say, Well, you know, I'm constantly busy with teams meetings, or wherever type of meeting it is. I give myself an hour and get a bunch of other interesting curious people. Again, that's what Tony Davidson was saying about, you know, widens that, you know, come to work curious, come to work, stupid, they, you know, an hour, that little mannequin world big mannequin man with a blender for a head. And it's just all of the time. And again, you know, Devono passed away. Recently, I think what he was saying about ideas, his ideas are kind of two or three disparate things that come together, that haven't been blended before to make a new thing, right, and new meaning and again, you shouldn't we shouldn't fetishize new stuff, right? We shouldn't, you know, because, again, the whole podcast is new shiny thing, right? And some of those that, you know, all that glitters isn't always gold, right. So, but, but I think to keep yourself fresh to keep yourself interesting, and and know what you're saying about Native as well, because you get to a certain age where you can't naturally just consume that stuff, because you're not part of that ecosystem of that community. And you've got different things you need to do in your life. But you know, smart, smart people, interesting people always interested in new stuff. So I think for each brand, there was a there was a great thing. What was it? I think was it called they were like an art collective. And they used to go bang rec, they were called bendrick. And apparently, The Guardian used to commission them and every Monday they'd go in, and they'd do some sort of weird thing about what happened in culture the week before and present to them to just kick off the week. And they like the bendrick. Did they sit? Sorry I'm going down. This is I'm sorry, to everyone that's listening. But situationist app, right? So is it kind of is based on local data. So you would open up your, your settings, and you would put into the situation up here you happy to meet? And what they would do to you should they meet you? Right? So and there were like, eight different things, slap you on the head, or high five, you will shake your hand or golf and kiss you or something right or say a special word, right? But it was just what it was. I'm trying to try to illustrate how slightly bonkers these people were, how interesting and provocative they were. And I do think that as a marketer, giving yourself the opportunity to be surprised and to have your brain changed or something unconventional. It's not just about incremental growth, every week is valuable. And whether it has an impact on the bottom line, or whether it just has an impact on your mood. And the way you perform as a as an organization is interesting. And this little section is when I first started if ever we had the digital campus, and we're loads of little kind of digital startups that were sort of hothouse within that environment, and quite often sort of them were, you know, small gambles, they weren't ever going to do anything. They were little side projects, or 5% of people's time, to keep them fresh, to keep them curious to keep them learning to keep kind of momentum going. And that's I think that's valuable in any organization. Full stop.
Tom Ollerton 24:22
That is so beautifully put, and we are gonna have to draw this conversation to a close, unfortunately, but it reminds me of my favorite bit of TikTok wisdom. That said, your diet isn't just what you eat, it's everything that you consume. And if you apply that thinking to what you just said, they're like, if if part of your brain diet is new, even if it is non fungible tokens or weird sideline quirks of the industry that there is nourishment in that,
David Byrne 24:51
yeah, and that presumably, that's how random odd anomalous work they cut through and make fantastic advertising and that's why you get a gorilla eating chocolate or playing the drums. That's why you get I don't know, Harvey Keitel sorting out, you know, he's essentially a hitman. So it's just kind of those random connections that you get filtered out in a lot of the crap research that goes on today are the things that cut through and get exponential growth for brands rather than just incremental growth.
Tom Ollerton 25:24
David, if someone wants to get in touch with you up to discuss these ideas, how'd you want to do that?
Yeah, just I think people can can tweet me just @byrne75 on the Twitter and they can just send me a message.
Brilliant. Thank you so much.
David Byrne 25:42
Thank you, Tom. It's really interesting. Thanks.
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