ERP004 - Advertising & Speeches w/ Marc Stoiber

Welcome to Evolved Radio where we explore the evolution of business and technology. Today I'm joined by Mark Stobar. Mark is an expert in marketing and advertising field. His work helps brands define a simple and effective message that connects with its audience. Mark has won a number of awards for work he has done on local brands as well as huge international campaigns. One of his current projects is helping individuals write amazing speeches. Your ultimate speech is a program he developed to turn a boring keynote into a memorable and lasting message. From corporate conferences to the Ted stage, Mark is on a mission to help people deliver their ultimate speech. Hope you enjoy this one and here we go. Welcome to Evolved Radio. I'm your host Todd Kane. Today we have Mark Stober joining us. Welcome Mark. Thank you. Thanks for having me. If you want to start, give us a bit in your background and your history and how you ended up where you are currently in your career, Mark. Um, well, I I'm an advertising guy. Uh, that's what I was trained in. I um, I I got my start in advertising in Hong Kong working as a copywriter. And after a few years there moved to Europe and uh, worked there as a writer and then a creative director, moved back to Canada. And uh, got a taste for companies that were on the rise, turnaround stories. I I joined a company called Palmer Jarvis just as they went from being an unknown backwater agency to being the best agency in Canada. And while I was there, the team we assembled was incredible. We got agency of the year four of the five years that I worked there and it was incredible high. And um, went there, uh, went from there to a big agency called Gray, uh, prominently featured in Mad Men, one of the big Mad Men agencies. And um, at Gray, I helped turn them around in about three or four years. Then moved back to Vancouver and got a taste of sustainability. And uh, quickly realized that my entire existence was comprised of selling people, um, planned obsolescence. So if I did my job really, really well, the landfill would get really, really big that much faster. And so I set out on a journey to, um, make sustainability sexy. And uh, started an agency that sought out clients that were building sustainable stuff and uh, helped them market it. The problem is that sustainability at the time around 2005 was uh, interesting, but people weren't buying it because the majority of the stuff that was being built was either too expensive or not very good. So it was a bit of a cursed proposition to try and market something when you're already on your back foot like that. And I moved from there into innovation. I sold my company to an innovation agency and I set up a green innovation practice. Green is a wonderful tool for innovation because it puts a whole other filter. It gets you asking a whole bunch of other questions and gives you different insights. And the products that you create, like the Toyota Prius, they just come out looking different. Whether you like them or not, they just do look different, they behave different and uh, people thrive on new. So, uh, with innovation I got a taste for how to make green sexy and new, which was very cool. I uh, moved from the innovation agency to a private consultancy after a couple of years, where I just tried to help clients do what I called futureproofing brands. That is creating brands that are resilient enough to thrive and survive in times that are chaotic. That is our times. And uh, moved to Bali for six months, wrote a book there called Didn't See It Coming. Which is all about the slow death spiral of advertising, which I think we're going to talk about today. And uh, what is coming to replace it. Came back here and realized because of Bali that I wanted to start a company. That I could work anywhere at and take anywhere around the world with me and have a network of people working with me who are all around the world and have clients all around the world. And that's where the idea for your ultimate speech came, which is also I think what we're going to be talking about today. This newfangled model of creating a bigger, better, cooler speech for executives. Awesome. That's a great background. So innovation, um, did they work on the Prius as a part of the the the campaign for that? No. No, no. What we worked on, uh, we worked on a lot of financial products, which on the surface sounds really boring. But if you think about it, what is, you know, what is the most painful thing in most people's lives? It is filling out healthcare forms, insurance forms, working with insurance companies. If you can streamline processes like that, you make a whopping big difference in people's lives. But we also worked on, I worked on Unilever, um, helping them, uh, create a new type of soap that used sustainable palm oil. Uh, we worked on agriculture products. We worked on a whole bunch of stuff all across the map. Yeah, very cool. So, uh, you touched on, um, what I've, I've heard referred to as the digital nomading strategy and that the the the rise of expertise. And the the the function of the internet that people can really be anywhere. And you see a lot of this in in the younger generation, people backpacking around the world and carrying their business with in their laptop. And then brag and then bragging about it on uh, on medium. How cool they are because they're earning $5 million a day in, you know, Indonesia or something and it's like, shut up. Yeah, it's definitely a change in the in the industry. You know, we've gone from just remote working from home to remote working from another country. Well, you know, it's it's funny because the perception, I I I I work in perception, that's my business. And the perception of the person who is freelance on their own, working from a home office, working from anywhere, has shifted so dramatically. Uh, when I was a creative director, I I brought in a lot of freelancers and freelancers always had the stigma of being people who were over the hill. And not very good and could never find a regular job. Otherwise, they would be in the big flashy ad agencies. And in my time, I have seen that perception shift 180 degrees. To where people who are on the outside, freelance or starting their own startups, are perceived as pioneers and bold and adventurous and not constrained. And the people who are inside the four walls are looking at them with envy and I'm going. That is a profound shift and I've been around long enough to see it happen. Because a freelancer in the 1990s did not come across as somebody who was really cool. Yeah, that's that's really interesting. It hits on something that I've noticed that entrepreneur has become such a hot word that, you know, people used to be just called business owners. Now, anyone that that does absolutely anything that revolves around them owning a business is somehow considered entrepreneurial. So, Well, you think about it. I mean, even the people, I I teach at university, I teach marketing at university, and I teach entrepreneurial marketing. And it's funny because all the students want to go out and be entrepreneurs and the ones who naturally don't have that bent, because it is, it's a twisted masochistic sense of self that that drives an entrepreneur. But the people who don't have that bent are saying, no, I want to be an intrapreneur because they want to be with the cool kids, but they want to be inside a big company because they're, you know, they're dumb enough to actually want a steady paycheck and dental benefits. Yeah, it's it's funny. Everybody wants to be the entrepreneur, but uh, you really have to know what you're getting yourself into. At the same time, I wouldn't have it any other way. Yeah, absolutely. It's the uh, the roller coaster of the highs and lows and those highs and lows come in an hourly rate rather than a daily rate. I think it's interesting what I've found is uh, if I've learned anything, it's that you want to have stocks and bonds. And so I I I can I plan to continue consulting. I mentioned that I teach at university, that's another income stream. Um, I do a lot of public speaking. Uh, that's another income stream. Um, and now I have your ultimate speech and I'm also working on another startup. So I want to have diversified income streams, which again, back in the 1990s, people would have looked at that and gone, you're schizophrenic. But now it seems like a smart insurance policy. One goes up, the other goes down. You've always got a stream of income. Yeah, I mean, it really hits on the point that that I've always traditionally loved about consulting is that you you get to change the pace every once in a while. You know, you can change sort of the products that you're working on, you change the people that you're working with and and that exposure to different ideas and different projects, uh, kind of keeps things fresh. It's a lot more fun that way. It is. It's super fun and what I also like about it is that it forces you to learn. Um, when I worked in in mainstream advertising, it it was a model. I talk about this in didn't see it coming, the book. Uh, we had we had a model that had been innovated in the 1930s and 40s. You know, you had an ad agency where account people brought in the business, the creative worked on it. They gave it to the account people to sell the stuff. And then it went to the media people. It was a it was a model that had been honed and perfected in the 1940s and 1950s. We were just keeping it up. Um, and it was good because you got a certain sort of comfort with what was going to happen next. And then digital, I I you know, I remember when I built a a digital agency inside our ad agency, it it upended the Apple cart. You know, everything changed and people, it was so it was so disconcerting to see people just totally not know what was coming next. But that's kind of life now and if you're if you're into that, it is kind of a fun ride. Yeah. As I've told people in in my industry, uh, in technology, things have a six-month shelf life. So if you're ever stagnant, you're already behind. Yeah, isn't that disturbing? You know, it's just it just makes you think that as soon as you get off the escalator, you're going to fall flat on your face or like that treadmill at the gym. You just sort of take one wrong step and you go flying off the back end of it. It's very, it's very, it's very disconcerting and you don't look very cool when it happens to you. Cool. So, uh, let's talk about uh, ultimate speech. This is a a really cool thing that you've you've put together and I've uh, heard from a few people that have been through your program and absolutely love this. In fact, uh, we're starting to see some of the the people that you've worked with showing up in in the Ted community, in the TEDx and I think probably some of the the the the mainstream TEDs as well. So, want to tell us a bit about that? Yeah. Well, it it started because I even back in advertising. Um, I'm I'm a shameless promoter. So my boss would always bring me in to write the speeches because I, you know, I'm a I'm a I'm a sales guy. I like to I like to put a pitch out there. And I had fun doing it. So I would write speeches. I'd give between 10 and 20 speeches a year and I would write them all myself and I enjoyed doing that. And I would write speeches for other people. And then I thought to myself, especially coming back from Bali, I go, you know, I've got the consulting business, which is me and a client. And then I finished that gig and me and another client, and then me and another client. Is there any way that I could create a different business instead of writing one speech and then another speech and then another speech? Why couldn't I write 100 speeches at the same time? And that was the brief. Then I thought to myself, I don't want to have a staff because I've done that before. I had my own ad agency, the green ad agency. And um, why can't I hire the best talent in the world who just don't happen to be in my office? I could never get the best talent in my office anyway because they're all over the world. So I looked around and I discovered that more and more people were getting bounced out of journalism, getting bounced out of PR, getting bounced out of ad agencies, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. And so you had this tremendous talent pool of people who didn't know what to do. They were writers, they were designers, they were presentation coaches. These were fantastic caliber people. And they were sitting around on their hands and they didn't know what to do. They also didn't have the get up and go to go and be entrepreneurs on their on their own. They like the old model where somebody would feed them some business. So I had this talent pool, this latent talent pool sitting there and it could expand or shrink depending on how many clients I had. Then I put myself in the middle, almost like a an hourglass uh tipped on its side. You've got a huge pool of clients, then a very narrow part, which is me in the middle. As the creative controller and business person. And on the other side, you've got another huge funnel, which is clients all over the world. And I put a model together, a methodology. We wanted to guarantee a few things. One, that we could get the job done extremely quickly. That is, we can craft a Ted caliber talk inside of 10 days. That was the first point. Two, that it had to be in the presenter's words. I've seen a lot of people give speeches written by writers and they have to read them out and it sounds like they're reading the laundry list. It's terrible. You want it to be your stories in your own words. So we figured out a methodology whereby we could actually get capture the person's words and then put them down uh digitally and then clean them up and transcribe them into a speech. So when they got up on stage, I always make the promise, if the slideshow goes slideshow goes down, if you forget your speech, if you're jet lagged, you can sit up there and tell stories and still be the best presenter of the conference. So, one, we make it very quick. Two, we make it in the person's own words. And three, you can do it whenever and wherever you are. So we have a six call system, uh, or a six touch point system. Where we plan six calls with you. One, we lay out the structure. Second call, we put meat on the bones, so we put the stories in. Three, we start to hone. Fourth call, we keep on honing and put the slideshow together. Calls five and six are then presentation coaching done via Skype. So we built this machine and we said, all right, let's road test it. And by by happen chance, our first client was uh, a very successful business person in China. She was uh, a lawyer out of Australia who had set up three of the largest carbon funds in China. That is uh, environmental green carbon reduction uh, funds, investment funds. Um, she was a successful business person, uh, ran a few groups of young presidents organizations and she was on the World Economic Forum, a very, very heavy hitter. And she needed a speech to present to the world because she was also an ultra marathon runner. And her plan was to run seven deserts on seven continents in seven weeks, the equivalent of 35 marathons. To help raise awareness about water waste. And she has a charity called thirstforwater.org. And her brief to me was to write a speech in six phone calls that would convey the power the problem with passion. That is, how do you discover your passion? How do you channel it properly and how do you make it bigger than yourself? So we wrote and art directed and presentation coached that speech, uh, over six calls that were in South Africa, London, and Beijing. And it worked like a charm. She got a standing ovation at a at a global young president's organization, uh, meeting in uh, South Africa. And she was hooked. She she went on and said, now we've got to write the book. And as a matter of fact, we we've now written a second speech for her. Which she got another uh, standing ovation for. Uh, she is now since completed this uh, this this run, this record setting run and she put a speech together, presented it, another standing ovation. Now we're putting a whole business together. But we've gone on to create speech after speech after speech all across the United States, Europe, Asia, our clients and our talent similarly is scattered all across the world. And we've just gone live uh, since January with the product. We were tweaking it before then. And the momentum is starting to pick up. So I see this as a product that is very much in demand. Uh, because like a funeral director, there is never a shortage of corpses. Uh, in my business, there's never a shortage of people who do really, really bad presentations. Yeah, it's definitely an aware a huge part of the industry that the speeches and presentations are a place that people usually go to nap. And I think that this is why uh, it's interesting to see sort of the rise of Ted in in pop culture. And the fact that people will, you know, go home and sit down on the couch and watch presentations. I mean, if you described that to people 15 years ago, they would have called you absolutely crazy. Like I don't want to come home and walk watch presentations from from people. Why would that be interesting? So it is amazing to see the this change that that's come through this. And uh, not that your uh, your system necessarily is is geared towards Ted, but it's taking sort of the ideology of what makes those presentations great. Why Ted speeches are so interesting and applying that in everywhere else in business, right? Yeah. It's it's it's a phenomenon and I put it down to um, marketing. Where I've heard this again and again and again that people's faith in institutions is declining. Because we've seen institutions lie to us again and again. You look at Enron, you look at BP, you look at FIFA. You look at so many organizations, they put on a beautiful shiny veneer with great million dollar commercials and they're rotten underneath. And people's faith in those institutions is on the decline. Aided and abetted by online journalism. Because now it's easier than ever. If somebody's lying behind that veneer, you can find out and you can tell the world they're lying. It's it's a sort of a six satisfaction you get with calling out the cheaters. Um, at the same time, people are looking for something to trust and guidance to take and they're seeing that in individuals. And we're seeing that in the rise of the companies that I call the green giants, companies like Patagonia with Yvon Schnard and companies like Virgin with Richard Branson. Where, you know, the company is the person. That used to be a bad thing too. You used to want to hide behind the veneer of the corporation. It was all of us in gray flannel suits. Now it's Richard Branson and Yvon Schnard. You know, and and these are guys who live this mission. Yvon says, all I want to do is go out surfing. And hiking and skiing and I'll make this stuff the best stuff in the world for hikers, skiers and surfers to fund my sort of passion. And people are gravitating towards people like that because it's like Simon Senick said in his uh, talk, you know, start with why. Um, people want to believe in you before they give you their money. They don't want to believe in a corporation because they know corporations are just very facile and easy and uh, superficial. They want to see the actual person. Ted and the rise of the presentation is a direct reflection on this desire to believe in a person. They want to see somebody in this setting where they're up on stage and naked for all intents and purposes, you know, you're up there putting it out there, very vulnerable. And they want to see if you're the sort of person they believe in, you know? And uh, you're seeing the importance of live presentations go through the roof. So that's the that's the trend that we're tapping into. Interesting. So we've moved away from kind of the the slick marketing and and good visuals and things like that to actually attaching a personality to the message. There's a there's a fundamental disconnect in advertising. And I never noticed it until a few years ago. You might say, well, it's blatantly obvious. But advertising, the model is based on you, the producer of something, paying me, the professional in communication, to communicate on your behalf. Now, that doesn't sound very sincere because you're actually paying somebody to tell somebody something. Why aren't you telling me about your product if you believe in it so much? That is what is happening. You know, so we're seeing uh this shift away from advertising and slickly produced messages on behalf of someone. To the people actually going out there themselves and saying, I'm Yvon Schnard, this is my company. If you like me, we're going to get along. I got some stuff. And uh, I think that that's a a fundamental shift in the way things are being done. And I mean, you want to take it online, fair enough. I still think that it's more valid to somebody like a consumer like me to hear a message from you about your company online. Rather than hearing it from somebody you pay to write a blog or do podcasts or do webinars for you. See, even if it's a bit rough around the edges as most podcasts, I know I do them myself. People like to hear it because it's real. You know, and that is that's the new marketing. Yeah, absolutely. No, that's great. So you you touched on kind of the the online piece. And how much of that plays a role? You know, social media gets a huge amount of attention, but there's still a lot of question about the the actual translation that that produces in business. And is that an effective form of advertising if done correctly or is it kind of a current fascination in your opinion? It's it is like the old ad model. Um, 99% of the stuff that I produced in advertising was absolute crap and didn't move the needle at all and the 1% was brilliant and that's what we put in our portfolios. I think that the internet, uh, the online airwaves are saturated with 99% absolute garbage that isn't going to move the needle and 1% pure brilliance. That's why everybody knows about Simon Senick, everybody knows about Ken Robinson. They only know two Ted talks. Um, Al Gore, you know, they only know a few Ted talks. They're absolutely brilliant, brilliant content. Um, it's the same as movies, you know, you remember half a dozen great movies and all the rest kind of blend into the background. So, yes, it comes down to content, but not just any content, not curated content, not reappropriated content, not clever sound bites that you've just taken from someone. It comes down to having something of value that you've thought about and you've put that out there to people in a way that where they go, wow. You know, Todd is a smart dude. I like what he says, I think he's a cool guy. I'm going to check him out. You know, it's not just, hey, here's a story I saw. Right. It's the same as always, you know, 99% garbage. Yep. Interesting. So, the the venue has changed, but the the product and the message maybe hasn't. The garbage bins are just as full as they've always been. Right. And I I think it's even worse now because we have an always on culture. You wake up in the morning, you go to the bathroom, you turn on your phone, you check out your emails, you go check out a couple of stories. Uh, there is no break. So if anything, I think we're being more inundated with more crap. And getting more and more catatonic about the whole thing and having a harder time finding the good stuff. So, yeah, it's a it's a big chore, it's a big job, but it isn't impossible. I also, I also at the same time believe that while the online medium is extremely important, nothing replaces the live show. That is why Ted is also $8,000 for a weekend. Um, because people love that combination. There's a speaker, there is the stage, there is the theater, there is the audience. And in between all those elements, you can either have really good magic or really bad magic. But there's something that you can't replicate on a TV screen. And the more people uh, go to their screens, the more they like live presentations. Mhm. Because it is something, you know, it's still a high wire act with kind of no with no net, you know. I think that's still exciting for people. It's I would guess it's similar to the fact that, you know, people can sit at home and listen to their favorite music and their favorite band. But they'll still pay a a a fairly large sum of money to go see them live because of the experience, right? Yeah, there's a sort of a an intangible thing there. And uh, you can, I mean, you can make or break a company, uh, based on a live presentation. Now, I'm not discounting the online thing because I think online, if you've got great content, you've got a great presentation. You can break that down into tweets, you can break that down into sound bites, into a into a video, and then you can spread that to a wider audience. And that's a wonderful amplification tool because it's real, it's authentic. It's you talking about what you believe in. Um, but at the same time, I don't I still don't think you're ever going to be able to replace that theater where people go and hear a presentation live. Definitely. So you you're working with groups and with individuals to establish an emotional message that cuts through the noise and really reaches the person so that it pulls them in, right? You know, that that's a that's a funny thing because um, one of the comments that I get all the time from happy clients is, I didn't know I had that idea in me. One of the first things, I'm going to jump on a a pre-interview call with a with a new client after we after we hang up. The first thing I always cover is, um, okay, you've given me your topic, what you want to talk about. Now, what would JFK or Martin Luther King or Steve Jobs say? Would they say what you just said? And they look at me stunned and what the process brings out in them is a huge vision, a big idea, this sermon from the mount. Or a fantastic movie plot that they can recount the story of how I started this company as as told in the way of Star Wars, you know? That people sit in the front of their seats go, wow. And that is something. I don't care how good you are. I don't care how smart an executive you are. That's a pretty rare talent and you kind of do need a reflector. And that's what we provide really, really well. It's the emotional thing. It's it's taking a success story or an obstacle story or a hardship story and turning it into a movie that you really, really want to watch. Yeah, very cool. Well, appreciate the work that you're doing, Mark. And uh, if people want to get in touch with you to uh, discover their ultimate speech or work with your team, where can they reach you? Yeah, well, I mean, the best place to start is your ultimatespeech.com. That's a neat thing about thing I learned in advertising is come up with names that might not sound so clever, but actually people can remember. Uh, your ultimatespeech.com. Go there. There's a form uh, at the bottom and you can also get a telephone number and an email address there. Drop me a line. Uh, as a matter of fact, I mean, I'd love to reward the people who are listening to this podcast. We have a special sort of teaser, a taste of what your ultimate speech can do. It's called presentation polish. It's a $250 value. And if somebody writes us and says, hey, I heard about you on Todd's podcast, make sure to write this in the email. You'll get a free $250 value presentation polish. So I'd like to offer that up to your listeners just as uh, a little reward for getting to the end of this podcast. Awesome. Appreciate that. We will pass that on. Awesome. Okay, thanks for your time, Mark. Have a great day. Thank you very much.