A History of Marketing / Episode 53
Nick Asbury is a creative writer, one half of the design partnership Asbury & Asbury, and the marketing industry’s most persistent critic of brand purpose.
He’s the author of The Road to Hell: How Purposeful Business Leads to Bad Marketing and a Worse World (And How Human Creativity Is the Way Out). It’s a title that tells you exactly where Nick stands.
For 15 years, “Purpose” was an idea marketers weren’t supposed to question. It dominated creative briefs, advertising awards, and TED Talk stages. Brands from chocolate bars to social networks climbed what Nick calls “the ladder of abstraction” until they settled on something like: “we’re here to make the world a better place.”
The Road to Hell is a rarity: most marketing books tell you how to do something right. Nick wrote one about why a whole movement got it wrong. He also argues there’s a way out: human creativity, lateral thinking, and humor.
In this conversation, we cover:
* How the 2008 financial crisis kicked off the capital-P Purpose era, and why the 2024 election may have ended it
* Why even Dove’s Real Beauty, the most celebrated purpose campaign ever, doesn’t hold up to scrutiny
* Why the most prominent purpose advocates are late-career marketing legends
* Why AI can’t make the lateral leap behind slogans like “Just Do It,” and why that’s good news for human creativity
Listen to the podcast: Spotify / Apple Podcasts
Special thanks to Xiaoying Feng, a Marketing Ph.D. Candidate at Syracuse, for reviewing and editing transcripts for accuracy and clarity.
Why Write a Whole Book Against Purpose?
Andrew Mitrak: Nick Asbury, we’re here to talk about your excellent book, The Road to Hell. I love this book, I read it cover-to-cover in one sitting, and I hope marketers everywhere read it. And it’s all about how purposeful business leads to bad marketing and a worse world, and how human creativity is the way out. And I wanted to ask you about this because most books about marketing focus on how to do marketing the right way versus why a certain approach is wrong. And so I’m wondering, why focus on why the purpose movement was a mistake? Why write a whole book about this?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, that’s a really good question and first of all, yeah, thanks, thanks for reading it, thanks for having me on to talk about it. Yeah, I think, I think first of all, there is a, I hope, a kind of noble tradition of books that argue against something rather than for something. Like, I know Bob Hoffman has done some brilliant stuff against ad tech and advertising. You can even look at books like No Logo by Naomi Klein—books that are kind of polemics against prevailing wisdom. And I, I guess I would put this book in that category. I mean, it is arguing ultimately for something, in that the last of the five sections is arguing for creativity and humor and humanity. But yes, most of the book is an argument against purpose.
And I guess it’s just been a kind of, you could almost say a kind of unfortunate fact of my career, I think, that I happen to be working at a time where I do think this huge idea of purpose has dominated the industry for, well, you know, 15, maybe even 20 years. I think you could say that period is, is waning now. But, yeah, I just found it was a very omnipresent idea that was affecting almost every kind of brief coming across my desk and was dominating industry awards, industry conversations. So, it felt like a—and I guess, one thing I’d add is it also felt like something you weren’t meant to question that much. There was a slightly taboo feeling about, you know, how could anyone be against this? And I guess when I sense that taboo, I do almost feel drawn to challenging it. Not for its own sake, but just because—
The Risks of Challenging the “Purpose” Orthodoxy
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah, it still somehow, to me, it feels a little bit riskier than something like No Logo, which was sort of like punching up. It’s sort of like taking aim at the brand bullies, or something that is anti-tech. Like there’s so much anti-tech, or is sort of more consensus to, like I feel like there’s more people to nod along. This one somehow feels almost a little bit riskier because how could you, how could you have an argument against purpose? Purpose sounds so nice. And did you worry at all that this might alienate potential clients or colleagues who had embraced the purpose-driven marketing?
Nick Asbury: I guess, maybe on one level, I think I am, I’m maybe fortunate in that it’s fairly low risk for me because I’m basically a lone traveler in the industry. I’m a self-employed writer. So, it’s not like I work for a big employer who might be unhappy with it. I, ultimately, as a writer, only need enough work to keep one person busy. So, if a few clients don’t call me because of the purpose position that I have, then, you know, there will equally be clients who do call me because they like the arguments being made.
But I didn’t really write it as a, as a kind of strategic business career move for myself, really. I just felt the urge to write it because I felt there were important things to say. I guess on that kind of punching up, punching down thing, which, you know, I, I would definitely think of it in my own mind as a kind of punching up exercise in that—and this kind of brings us on to the whole subject—but I see purpose actually as quite a big corporate, top-down kind of movement. I kind of consider myself, I guess, arguing for the smaller businesses and the consumer who kind of often gets slightly patronized by some of this stuff, I think. So, yeah, I would see it as kind of challenging an orthodoxy imposed by powerful people.
The Origins of Capital-P Purpose
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah, fair enough. And let’s, I think that is how it comes across, it’s just that at a high level, it seems like such a sacred thing. But as you’re saying, let’s get right into it because I think that, taking this sort of historical lens, you start with a moment as you’re seeing purpose and typing it out. And I’m wondering, when in your mind does this, does purpose become a movement? When does it become sort of the big behemoth omnipresent thing that you’ve experienced?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, well, I think the simple answer is I see the kind of purpose with a capital P movement, I think, started after the financial crisis of around 2008. So, I think—and that’s not to say that none of these questions ever existed before that, I think you can see purpose as the latest manifestation of very old arguments about kind of stakeholder versus shareholder capitalism arguments that Milton Friedman was having back in the 1960s. You can basically take it as far back as business itself, really. People have always argued about the ethics of business and, you know, how they relate to the—can capitalism be ethical? You know, there’s all these big philosophical questions that have been debated for a long time.
But I think the purpose movement in advertising, and in the kind of corporate boardroom, really did take off post-2008 when, I think, the story I would tell was there was kind of a reputational crisis for big business. A lot of people were turning against business, kind of blamed them for the excesses that led to the crash. And, you know, you had the Occupy Wall Street movement, kind of quite a large, widespread, anti-corporate kind of feeling in the world. And I think, I definitely sensed this at the time, even in some of the clients I was working for, was there was this sense that, oh, we need to tell a better story about business. Rather than people thinking of us as the enemy, we need to kind of tell a story about how we can actually be a powerful ally to important social causes.
And I think that became a really persuasive, powerful thing that people wanted to believe in. There was this whole mantra of “do well by doing good,” which was kind of the slogan of the purpose movement, I guess. But this idea that you could, yeah, do good things in society, and that would, through a kind of virtuous circle, it would lead more consumers to buy from you because consumers, so the argument went, consumers are more concerned about ethical issues these days than they have been before. And therefore, the more good you do in the world, the more profit you will make. And that really was the argument coming from TED Talk stages and the industry press and, you know, no doubt many podcasts as well. So, yeah, that’s where I think it came from.
Before Purpose: When Ads Were Absurd
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah, so the great financial crisis, it happened right when I was sort of a graduating senior in high school and then just entering into university. And I kind of, I do remember this moment, and I do remember sort of the vibe shift, you know, with TED Talks taking off. And I feel like things got much more serious. And if I recall, I’m wondering, did this feel like a counterreaction to anything that came before it? Because if I also think of the ads that came before it, there was sort of this era of the Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like“ that was all very silly, you know. There had been a Betty White Snickers Super Bowl commercial where, you know, an old woman in her 90s was tackled by a football player. And there was this era that in hindsight feels pretty brief, but there was this moment where ads felt very silly and irrelevant and random and absurd. Skittles had surrealist ads. And I’m wondering, did you feel like this seriousness, of course there’s the great financial crisis, but does it feel at all like a counterreaction to you to what came before it, or do you want to speak to what immediately preceded the sort of this capital P purpose movement?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, I think, yeah, it’s an interesting point. And I guess I don’t explore that much in the book, but I think you’re right that the kind of early 2000s, and certainly the 1990s, were full of a kind of, yeah, as you say, often quite absurdist, postmodern kind of advertising. A lot of humor, a lot of larger-than-life kind of stuff. A lot of which was very good and worked very well.
But I think you’re probably right that there was a yearning for, well, two things, really. I think one was, you know, advertisers are always looking for something, some new angle. Because at the end of the day, you know, a lot of the great ideas have been done in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s. And there are only so many ways to sell beer or chocolate or washing powder. So, I think partly when purpose came along, it was a relief to people to think, oh, we don’t actually have to talk about your teeth being whiter than white or something. We can talk about, you know, mental health or something instead. So, there was that kind of aspect to it where it just felt like a different thing to do, I guess.
And I think also there’s always been this kind of angst within the ad industry that, oh, are we really doing anything serious here? It’s all talking animals and catchy jingles and memorable characters and slogans, and it’s all great, but sometimes, I think maybe particularly kind of older generation people in advertising think, oh, is this all there is? You know, I’m a serious person, I want to do serious things. And so maybe there was a bit of that as well, wanting advertising to seem like a more noble thing to talk about at a dinner party or whatever.
Simon Sinek, Jim Stengel, and the Books That Built the Purpose Movement
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah. Let’s talk about that. When purpose first showed up, there were, you know, there were people who were proponents of it. And I don’t think it’s any one individual’s fault to blame. I don’t think you assign like this is the single person. But if you were to speak to, how did it show up in the market and who was sort of promoting it most, and what are some of the key cornerstone examples of purpose sort of becoming a thing? Who would you say is sort of behind that? Where were you first observing it and who were you hearing it from?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, I think you’re right that there’s no single author of it, really. It’s not like it all came from one influential book or intervention by some one. I think there were a kind of a cluster of people in the early 2000s who were starting to use this purpose word. So, it was kind of there in the ether when the financial crisis hit and people kind of grabbed onto it.
I think purpose has never been just a marketing and advertising movement, but it’s surprising how much of it has roots in that world. So, you know, certainly Simon Sinek, for example, he came originally from the advertising world. And his TED Talk, you know, still one of the most viewed ever, and the whole “Start with Why“ ethos, that certainly played a role in this kind of purpose, kind of grandiose idea that you need to be driven by a larger mission and, you know, it just so happens we make computers, or whatever it is, but really we’re driven by this grand, grand mission in life. So, that was one of them.
But I think also you had a guy called Jim Stengel. You may have talked to him before, I’m not sure, but he was at Procter & Gamble. He wrote one of the more influential early books around the same time as that Simon Sinek book, a book called Grow, which was making this case for the commercial effectiveness of purpose-led marketing. And it made, very specific and sweeping claims about how purpose-led companies outperformed non-purpose-led. But it was, you know, it was almost immediately dismantled by some quite smart writers. Byron Sharp, actually, way back in 2012, I think it was, wrote a deconstruction of it. So did a guy called Richard Shotton, really good article.
Andrew Mitrak: The gist was that he had like kind of cherry-picked certain companies that were the top performers and it’s almost sort of like a confirmation bias type thing, like, oh, you, you pick the top ones and just attribute it to purpose. And there is like, you know, you can almost do that at any point in time in the market, you can like pick certain things as the winners, and then if you play it forward, well, hey, we should just invest in that portfolio. Oh, it happened and turns out you don’t really beat the market that way, right?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, no, absolutely. It really was as simple as that, really. He just picked the, I think, 50 best-performing companies and then went looking for anything in that company that you might call a purpose, and said, well, it must be because of that. And he never even looked at the, you know, the 50 worst-performing companies to see if they also had something called a purpose. So, there were all sorts of flaws with it.
But I know the back of that book had a glowing tribute from Martin Sorrell, who, certainly at that time, was the most powerful person in advertising in the UK. So, I think the ad industry really did get behind it and really wanted to push this story to their clients. I’m certainly not saying it all came from the ad industry, but I think that was a big part of it. And we’ve seen it in the ad industry kind of institutions as well. I think, you know, Cannes and D&AD and places like that have all pushed this narrative pretty hard as well.
Andrew’s Awkward Run-In with Simon Sinek
Andrew Mitrak: As an aside, you mentioned Simon Sinek and I have a funny Simon Sinek story I’ve never told before.
Because his whole idea is you start with “why”, right?
I was at a conference and it was actually in London, and it was a pretty small conference. It was a fancy exclusive thing called Founders Forum. And Simon Sinek was among the people there. And I was at a technology startup doing some fundraising. And he came by our booth for a demo and me being a marketer for the company, I’m like, “Oh, I’ve got to, I’ve got to talk to Simon Sinek, not just about the company, but I also want to tell him about myself, and I tried to start with ‘why’ for myself.”So I’m like, “I’m here, and my purpose is to tell stories that really connect…” And it just felt like everything came out so jumbled.
Then I felt, “Poor Simon Sinek, people must always be coming up to him telling him about their why, right?” Because I must not be the only one who’s trying to start with “why” with my own story as I’m greeting Simon Sinek.
Nick Asbury: Yeah, it’s probably only in paragraph five that they say, anyway, I’m a dentist, or whatever it is. They spent the rest of the time talking about how they’re driven by improving health and well-being for everyone or something.
Andrew Mitrak: I still cringe when I think about how awkward I was about it.
Nick Asbury: Oh well.
The Ladder of Abstraction: Why Purpose Makes Brands Sound the Same
Andrew Mitrak: But yeah, so, so one of the things I also want to dig into is you sort of break down why it leads to bad marketing and positioning for a company. It leads to everything sounding the same. And could you sort of make that articulation of why is it that purpose leads to things sounding the same, or what are sort of like the key reasons why purpose is actually sort of detrimental to marketing and to business and to advertising?
Nick Asbury: Actually, one of the earliest things I kind of wrote about this whole subject, I used this phrase, “the ladder of abstraction,” which I think is what brands tend to climb up when they start thinking about purpose. So, you’ve got your kind of mundane product, which is, you know, a bar of chocolate or something. And in order to get to your purpose, you have to keep asking more and more abstract questions. So, you know, it’s not really about chocolate, it’s about delivering a tasty experience. But then it’s not really about that, it’s actually about delivering a tasty experience you share with someone else, so it’s actually about community. But it’s not totally about community, you know, it’s about X, Y, Z.
And you, you kind of end up in a place where just about every brand is saying, “We’re here to make the world a better place,” because that’s where that ladder kind of ends, in a way. It just ends in this kind of, yeah, we’re here to make life better and happier, and we just happen to do it by selling bars of chocolate, or we just happen to do it by selling toothpaste, or whatever it is.
And it may sound unfair or simplistic to say that that’s exactly how it turns out for every brand. But I think on a kind of mass level, if you consider all the millions of brands in the world, I think it is this big pressure that’s pushing them in that more generic direction rather than a more specific direction. Because often the most interesting thing about a brand can actually be something quite quirky or very specific to that brand, something about the product itself. And that kind of gets lost a bit, I think, when you go in search of this higher purpose. So, yeah, I think that is, it’s not the only reason that I would give against purpose marketing, but I think it is one of the big ones, yeah.
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah, that everything ladders up to making the world a better place, in some combination of happiness or some connection or shared experience. You give examples of Airbnb and Starbucks and other major brands, like Nike, that all just kind of, if you read their purpose, it almost sounds the same, even though they provide totally different services, totally different products. There are different reasons for going to them, but if you look at their purpose, it’s connecting the world, right? It’s like, oh, that just sounds the same.
Nick Asbury: Yeah, no, I used to have a slide when I did fairly frequent talks about this, and one of the slides was exactly that. It was taking the purpose statements of Airbnb, Starbucks, and Facebook, and putting them all together, taking the brand name away. It really was very hard to tell them apart or tell what they did, you know. Yeah, it’s a strange thing for marketers to do.
Andrew Mitrak: Well, this also applied even to startups because again, at this time, I was at the same company I was at when I told my Simon Sinek story. I was at a startup and I was doing our pitch decks, and there was all this pressure to add like, “But why are you making the world a better place?” to your deck. And there was even this TV show on HBO called Silicon Valley and they had this episode where every startup that’s doing their pitch is like, “We’re making the world a better place through optimizing data centers,” or, “fine-tuning your targeting algorithm, we’re making the world a better place.” And there’s even competition like, “Oh, I don’t want anybody else to make the world a better place before we make the world a better place.” It’s a silly thing that was just part of the whole ether of like, “Oh, you can’t just raise to make money and have a good product. You have to make the world a better place.”
“Purpose” Theater in Startup Pitch Decks
Nick Asbury: Yeah, but the irony, of course, is that all of this is happening in a context where you are raising to make money. You’re literally telling a story to venture capitalists trying to get them to give you the next round of funding. But yeah, in order to get that, because it was in vogue at the time, everyone is telling these kind of moral, societal kind of stories. It’s been a really distinctive part of the culture. What’s gone on at WeWork, what’s gone on with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, and all these people with incredibly grandiose ideas of their purpose and then it falls apart pretty dramatically.
Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi Ad and Other Purpose Disasters
Andrew Mitrak: So, do you have any favorite examples? Sure, there’s WeWork and Theranos, but are there other examples within advertising or marketing where it goes obviously wrong? What are some of the key points where you can, because when people see a certain ad, they’re like, “Oh yeah, I get that. That’s why purpose is bad.” Any favorite examples of yours?
Nick Asbury: There should almost be a game show where I have to answer that question without mentioning Pepsi. Because it is always the one that gets mentioned, and you know, I’ve mentioned it myself, but I think it is such a good example of the genre. It came out in 2017. It was this ad featuring Kendall Jenner. It actually only ran for one day because it was withdrawn because of the outcry. But yeah, it was basically projecting this story about a protest march, and then Kendall Jenner hands a can of Pepsi to the police officer and defuses all of these tensions. It was just an almost charmingly ridiculous ad looking back in a way. But it did cause an outcry at the time and I think that showed some of the dangers.
And there was a wave of stuff around that time. This is like the earlier purpose years, 2017 kind of time. There was one for McDonald’s. It may have only run in the UK, but it was a young boy and his mother, whose father has sadly died as part of this script, and the boy is eating, I think, a Filet-O-Fish at McDonald’s, and his mom says, “Oh, that was your dad’s favorite.” And there’s this kind of bonding moment. And it’s meant to be a story about how McDonald’s stands for so much more than food—it’s about connection and memories and family. But it actually just came across as so crass and manipulative.
So, those were early examples. There’s obviously been countless ones since. I mean, just most recently, certainly in the UK, there’s been a wave of—it’s like everyone in the ad industry has decided that toxic masculinity is the subject du jour, right? And everyone has started doing ads about it. One of our biggest telecoms companies, EE, is doing a campaign about boys and men at the moment. McCain Foods, who are a big supermarket cooking brand, are doing something similar. John Lewis, you know, their annual Christmas ad is one of the big events in the UK, that was all about a father-son relationship.
And it kind of fascinates me in a way that—and I guess it goes back to this question of why brand purpose tends to lead brands in a similar direction—because another dimension of it is brands tend to latch onto whichever socially purposeful issue is currently in vogue. So, they’re all doing toxic masculinity ads right now. But in a couple of years’ time, it might be ads about girls’ mental health—or I guess we’ve already done that with Dove and so on, but they tend to flock to the same issues at the same time.
The Case Against Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign
Andrew Mitrak: I was going to ask you about Dove as well, because I think that one came out at a time where, if you think of magazines from the 1990s, the models were just absurdly thin, and there was photoshopping. There was a lot of attention around that, and I think that the Dove Real Beauty—which you, I think is great that you take aim at it in your book because you’re almost like taking aim at the king there. That’s one that I feel like is revered and has gotten so much attention, and is very recognized and awarded over the last 25 years. It is one of the ones that you kind of highlight in the book, I think because you don’t want to just make a straw man argument, you want to find the best examples. So, how would you sort of describe where even Dove Real Beauty is wrong? What is sort of the argument against that one?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, no, you’re totally right. That’s really why I tackled it, because you could write a book just making fun of Pepsi ads or something, but those are kind of easy targets. I think the more interesting question is apparently successful campaigns like Dove. And you’re right, it is continually cited as the outstanding example of a long-running purpose campaign. There are multiple things I find interesting and kind of objectionable about it. Obviously, with all purpose marketing, you’re kind of asking two questions. One is, did it work commercially? And the other is, is it actually delivering on the social purpose it claims to be delivering on? So, those are two questions to have in mind, I guess, while talking about it.
But yeah, I find with Dove, first of all, you’re right that it came on the back of lots of ads with photoshopped, almost anorexic models, and there was a reaction to that, which is a perfectly worthy thing to have in mind if you’re a beauty brand. But it was quite clumsy at first. One of the earliest executions was a series of posters where they would have—there was certainly one with an older woman, maybe in her 60s, and it had two options: wrinkled or wonderful. And the idea was you had to pick which one she was. Which, maybe at that time felt progressive in some way, but actually, you’re still putting a woman’s face on a billboard and asking people to judge her by her appearance. And I believe there was even an interactive one in Times Square where people could vote and, predictably, trollish people voted for the wrinkled option.
And then they did other ones where they did a kind of purported social experiment where there was a door marked “ordinary” and a door marked “beautiful,” both entrances into the same office building. And they kind of monitored which door women chose to go through.
They read a lot into the fact that women were walking through the ordinary door because this was somehow scientific proof that they weren’t beautiful enough or didn’t consider themselves beautiful enough. But actually, again, I find that a pretty manipulative, kind of pop science stunt, really, that doesn’t tell you anything about what women really think about themselves. It might just be that they have no self-esteem issues, but just don’t want to appear vain and show off.
But yeah, there were lots of the Dove ads where I kind of think the overall vibe is that you’ve got this brand which thinks of itself as extremely important and morally upstanding. And it’s kind of talking down to its customers and, you know, sitting them down in these cavernous rooms, making them the subject of these social experiments and kind of teaching them a lesson. You get women kind of weeping at the end when they realize, “Oh, actually I am beautiful. I didn’t realize it.” And it’s all like the wise, all-knowing voice of Dove has kind of taught women that they need to have more confidence and more self-esteem and so on. I find it—and I know I’m not the only one because there’s been a series of articles, especially by women journalists over the years—there’s lots of people who find this stuff very uncomfortable. Because it’s doing that purpose thing of kind of saying, “Hey, your looks aren’t important, beauty is not just about how your skin looks,” whatever. And yet, it’s all with a goal of selling more beauty products, because that is just structurally what Dove is and what it has to do. Marketers can kind of convince themselves there’s no contradiction there, but I don’t think consumers see it that way. They still think, “Yeah, you’re still trying to sell me soap, though, aren’t you?” I find it a really interesting case.
Andrew Mitrak: I think it’s a really interesting case. One of the criticisms of purpose is that it’s so navel-gazing and inward-looking, and that brands are kind of thinking, “What’s my purpose?” instead of being customer-focused, instead of thinking, “What does my customer need? What do they need to hear?” And to this campaign’s credit, I think that it is a little more customer-focused in that it is interviewing women who are their target market. It does feel like it is a little less inward-looking for Dove, at least. That said, it’s almost like adjacent to Dove. It’s almost like looking at something that’s not really Dove at all in some ways, because it feels so far removed from the actual product they’re selling. But to its credit, I think it is at least looking at the consumer and putting the customer at the center of the story versus putting Dove at the center of it.
And I think that, even though it’s manipulative and even though it’s skewing data, at least it’s telling a story with it. And even if the music’s heavy-handed, at least there is music that’s trying to create an emotion, where I think a lot of purpose stuff is so corporate and about ourselves, and is emotionless in a way. Those are, I guess, some of the strengths. Not that I have to defend a thing that already gets a lot of attention and awards, but I think if I was to take the other side of it, those are things that I think the ads sort of have going for them. Would you react to that, or any thoughts about that?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, no, I know I come across as the hardened old cynic. But I would dispute that they put customers in the focus of it, because I actually think the hero of every Dove ad is very clearly Dove itself. Dove is the wise, socially purposeful actor that is kind of using members of the public in a performative way to make a point, by conscripting them into these kind of contrived scenarios. You know, the one where the women sit down and describe themselves to a male sketch artist who draws them, and then I think the partners come in or their best friends come in and describe them and the sketch artist does it in a much more attractive way, I guess.
And that is supposed to be making some point about women, but I think that’s not listening to women. That is actually just manipulating them to take part in this story, this kind of brand stunt, which is all set up on Dove’s terms, I think.
There’s a fundamental lack of honesty about it, I think. Which, you know, maybe honesty is a strange word to use in marketing where we don’t expect every ad to be sincerely honest. Obviously, all marketing is about manipulation to some extent. But I think there’s a real difference between—you can have all kinds of exaggerations and manipulation and distortion in ads. You can say your beer is the tastiest one ever, or your biscuits are way better than someone else’s. But once you’re making ethical claims, I think it gets really uncomfortable. And I think when Dove is setting itself up to be a kind of social actor—because they really do, I know some people see this as a strength, but I think it’s a bit weird that they go into classrooms. They have classroom packs about how to teach girls self-esteem and this kind of thing. And this is a corporate brand, you know, from the same company, as many people point out, the same company that owns Axe and various brands that aren’t so progressive.
But you know, they’re kind of going into schools and teaching about really delicate issues involving mental health. And I think, by common consent, all those issues have kind of got worse over the last 20 years rather than better, which, you know, you can’t blame Dove, but it’s not evidence that it’s, despite all the plaudits in the marketing world, it’s not like it’s solved any problem. I think, if anything, it is raising the salience of this self-esteem idea which can have unforeseen consequences and can actually just spread that insecurity more than it actually fixes it. But yeah, I dig into it in the book in a bit more detail if people are interested.
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah, no, you’re right. And also, you just brought back a memory. I definitely saw the Dove advertising, one of their three-minute videos, in school—in high school probably at the time—because I think it was among the early sort of YouTube ads. I remember distinctly it being played in the classroom, and in hindsight, it’s like, “Wow, that’s weird. Why am I getting this ad?” Because it has this veneer of science to it, and that’s probably just not a good thing. How do you think it went down in the classroom?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, how do you think it went down in the classroom?
Andrew Mitrak: I don’t recall. I think at any school, it’s like, “Oh great, we’re watching a video instead of listening to the professor.” So, we probably enjoyed it for that. Maybe there were some tears in the eyes, I don’t remember, but it was seen as almost—it wasn’t seen as watching an advertisement, that’s for sure. It was seen as some research video or something like that that almost seemed like some other sort of documentary film you might see in a classroom. So, I think there is some perverseness to that.
Nick Asbury: Yeah, yeah.
Pepsi’s Protest Ad vs. Coke’s Hilltop: What’s the Difference
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah, it’s a strange one. I wanted to come back to this—was it Kendall Jenner or Kylie Jenner? It’s one of the Jenners in the Pepsi ad.
Nick Asbury: I think it’s Kendall Jenner, yeah.
Andrew Mitrak: Kendall, it was Kendall. It was Kendall. And I’m wondering with that advertisement, something that came to mind was comparing and contrasting that with the Coca-Cola Hilltop ad, which is also among the more kind of iconic ads.
If you Google some list of greatest advertisements of all time, that might be in the top five by some people. It seems almost like there’s actually a lot of similarities between those as far as the message: our soda is about bringing the world together. And very poorly executed on—Coca-Cola wasn’t tied to an ongoing protest that was sort of related to civil rights, it was more like just kind of... but there are a lot of common themes to it. And I mean, if Coca-Cola had released Hilltop within the last 10 years, it could very well be in your book about part of the purpose movement. I’m wondering, do you feel like you would put the same kind of criticism towards Coca-Cola Hilltop, or do you feel like it points to purpose being a kind of nuanced thing where a lot of it is in the details of how you actually execute the ad? Just any kind of reaction to that sort of comparison?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, it’s a really interesting one because I’m sure you know that ad was used in the last episode of Mad Men, you know, Don Draper kind of dreams up that ad, you know, within the series. And it’s a brilliant—it’s such a well-chosen moment, I think, by the screenwriter because he’s been going through this crisis of this emerging ‘60s hippie youth kind of culture, a kind of anti-commercial culture. And yet, he’s an ad man.
So, he’s going through this kind of crisis, and then he has this kind of Zen-like moment while doing the yoga and the meditation where effectively he works out how to commercialize this anti-commercial vibe. Where, you know, you actually embrace it and lean into it. And it’s a very, within the drama of Mad Men, it’s a very heavily loaded, symbolic kind of moment.
And I do think you can look back at advertising history and see that ad as a kind of precursor to the purpose movement, because it is, yeah, it is a kind of moment where a big brand is kind of doing that ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ kind of thing. Let’s, rather than being worried about this kind of anti-commercial hippie kind of spirit, let’s embrace it and let’s lead the charge. You know, we can put a bottle in the hand of everyone who’s singing. So there is—there are, you know, all sorts of interesting philosophical points you can make about that.
I think what it retained though, because I actually noticed that Coca-Cola ad got—the Hilltop ad got remade, I think, just in the last few months, I think a new version came out. Maybe it’s the anniversary or something, I’m not sure.
But they reshot it, obviously with different actors. But it had a very different vibe because I think the thing about that original one was it was a communal thing, you know, there was no like lead singer or something. It was just a group of actually quite weird-looking people on a hill singing this song in unison.
Whereas the updated version is very—I don’t know, if you want to get into the kind of pretentious semiotics of it all, it’s got a very different feeling where there’s kind of a solo singer who’s singing very performatively, and the crowd are kind of joining in, but there’s a sense of kind of hierarchy in it that there isn’t in the original Hilltop ad. So, I think there’s kind of a thesis to be written on what’s happened in those years since.
All of which is a long way of saying I think you’re right that there’s interesting parallels to be made between, yeah, that Hilltop ad and the purpose movement. But I think, I guess, a key difference is “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing“ is still occupying this kind of happy, apolitical, humanitarian, inclusive kind of vibe. It’s not Coca-Cola purporting to solve a social issue or intervene in politics in some way. It’s more just embracing a vibe of a generation, really.
Andrew Mitrak: And people, and they sing “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” at some point. So, it’s almost not hiding itself that it’s an ad. It’s like saying, it’s saying “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” and it’s not like hiding—it’s not trying to pretend to not be an ad, in a way. It is, so I think that is almost by acknowledging that it’s an ad, it kind of—it’s not like it’s pretending to solve the Black Lives Matter or Occupy Wall Street protest or whatever. It’s like, hey, at the end of the day, I want you to buy a Coke.
Nick Asbury: Yeah, there’s an honesty to that, which I think consumers actually, you know, respect, whether it’s like conscious or not. But yeah, you know, they’re—”I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” I’d like you to buy a Coke. You know, it’s, yeah, so it didn’t—it never forgot that it was an ad.
Can Small Businesses Do Purpose Better?
Andrew Mitrak: We did—we, you had mentioned startups and entrepreneurs like WeWork, Theranos. Although I don’t know if those two always belong in the exact same sentence together. Like, I don’t think they both crashed and burned, but you know, Theranos seemed to be a little bit worse than WeWork. But anyway, there are startup founders who kind of embraced the purpose movement.
But I’m wondering, like, do you feel like purpose has a place for like people who are newly founding a business? I think Unilever and Dove, it’s—or Pepsi, these are very like old brands where the people who are now embracing purpose, it feels like more of a management decision where they’re doing this kind of from strategic management, kind of inheriting a brand versus newly forming a brand and having a purpose with like... there’s a founder or a set of founders, they have a shared purpose to build a company. Do you feel like it could belong in either whether it’s a startup or even like a local small business that’s not necessarily like trying to raise a bunch of money? Do you feel like purpose has more of a place there? Or do you feel like it’s equally whether it’s a large company or small company or any... an old company or a new company, purpose can still kind of lead people astray?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, good question. I think I would definitely make a clear distinction between the kind of local family business and the typical startup. Because I think, as we were kind of saying before, startups are very much in that world of venture capital and, you know, they’re part of that self-reinforcing system where everyone thinks purpose must be important because everyone else does, if you know what I mean. So, VCs kind of ask, “What’s your purpose?” the startup founders kind of feel like they should have one. It’s just part of the kind of game everyone’s playing, really. So, I think if anything, startup founders are more susceptible to getting carried away by grandiose ideas of purpose in a way that can actually lead them to do some quite dodgy ethical things.
I think in the case of more just kind of down-to-earth local, privately-owned businesses, yeah, I think there is something more interesting there. I think, in theory, a privately-owned business can take decisions that put principle before profit, you know. They have the freedom to do that if they want to. If you’re a publicly-held company, you run into problems because if you’re continually overtly saying that you’re going to put principles and purpose ahead of profit, then the shareholders are probably going to have something to say about that. And, you know, ultimately, when the calls get tougher, you always end up having to put the commercial interest first.
But yeah, a smaller family business, I think, can maybe have more freedom to do that kind of thing.
But one thing I would say, certainly in the UK context, is you do see businesses that have a very good ethical record. There are various ones like Timpson in the UK, is a chain of franchise kind of operation where it kind of repairs shoes, cuts keys, all this kind of humdrum stuff. They actually have a very good record on employment practices, you know, employing former prisoners and this kind of thing, doing useful stuff.
But they don’t make it the center of their marketing. They just market the fact that, you know, they fix shoes and cut keys and they’re nice people. And so, you won’t go to their website and find a massive purpose statement claiming that they’re, you know, making the world a better place. Even though, arguably, they’re doing more on that front than some of these big purpose businesses.
And I think that’s not a coincidence, in a way. I think, if you are doing good stuff, you’re doing it because it’s good stuff, you know. You’re not doing it so you can make more money, necessarily. That’s the whole thing that makes it good in the first place, really. And I think this idea that you do something good and then you go and make it the center of a massive global marketing campaign, you know, it naturally makes people cynical about, well, what’s your real motive here? You know? If you’re so keen to tell us how good you are, that kind of makes me doubt the claim, somehow.
Is Elon Musk the Most Successful Purpose-Driven Founder?
Andrew Mitrak: I was asking about founders and entrepreneurs and one who comes to mind is Elon Musk, who I’ve avoided talking about him on this podcast so much because he already gets so much attention on so many things and he’s everywhere. But, kind of unavoidable. And with this, I would say, like, he’s probably the most single successful entrepreneur of the purpose era that’s covered in the book, if you kind of just look at the number of companies, the rise of those companies, the market cap of those companies, his general mindshare of things.
And do you think that he or his companies have purpose in some ways? Because if the reason that I ask about this is actually, you know, you tie purpose to like Occupy Wall Street. And SpaceX, my—I have a family member who used to work at SpaceX. And one of the employees have like a shirt that says, “Occupy Mars.” And the idea actually is like it’s also stenciled on, almost a play on the Occupy Wall Street movement. And people will say, like, “Oh, our goal is like, Oh, I’m working here because I want to make life multi-planetary,” which kind of sounds insane, but I think they kind of believe it a little bit, right? And, and of course, he also, you know, he’s become extraordinarily wealthy, and of any of his employees have, and that, you know, probably also helps them kind of stick around. But it does seem like there is at least some purpose tied to it. And I guess, would you, I don’t think he appears in your book at all, and I’m just wondering if you have any reaction to whether he has a purpose, or how, or if he’s bringing purpose to his marketing in kind of a different way.
Nick Asbury: Yeah, no, it’s a fascinating question because I think he’s been on, obviously, a very particular kind of journey in the last 10, 15 years. And, you know, I think anyone who called themselves a purpose advocate these days would be horrified at the thought that he’s an example of what they mean. He’s probably the exact opposite. But I do think he is quite—there’s a lot of heavy irony in it all because certainly if you went back to like 2010 or something, he would be seen as a kind of purposeful leader who was making a lot of money by selling, you know, pioneering electric cars and so on.
And I think at that point, lots of purpose supporters would say, “Yes, this is exactly what we want. We want big, successful business people to be purpose-driven, to bring their politics to the workplace, to not separate out these kind of business from making a kind of social impact.”
And obviously, he’s then been on a trajectory where, you know, he’s now been on the side of Trump and, you know, a much more kind of right-wing coded figure. And I think at that point, all these purpose advocates who have previously been saying, “Yes, bring your politics to work and, you know, enact your political beliefs through your businesses,” they would all suddenly say, “No, that’s not what we meant, you know.” Because really, the underlying, I guess, ethos of purpose is, yes, bring your politics to work, but make sure they’re the right politics, you know, with... it’s only the approved causes that we really want chief execs to be pushing in their work.
So, I think he’s become a kind of—you know, he long ago, I guess, became a kind of embarrassment to that purpose movement, and is now, you know, public enemy number one.
Why Ads Got Serious — and Why Funny Is Coming Back
Andrew Mitrak: That’s right, because, and I don’t want to like, personally, share any opinions on the political aspects of this, but like, purpose as it evolved, it also kind of coincided with like other broader trends that were sort of in the general zeitgeist of purpose. You know, there’s the rise of things like DEI, ESG, which is sort of purpose-related. There’s sort of, you know, the quote-unquote woke, there’s generally like, I’d say, like a decline in like the R-rated comedy movie, and sort of a rise in like prestige drama TV, and there’s all these—all these things that kind of come together in this era, and leads to ads also being sort of more homogenized as well.
And when somebody like Elon says, “I have a purpose,” he probably thinks he has purpose, his employees probably think they have purpose, but it’s a very different purpose than sort of the rest of that sort of, you know, zeitgeist stuff that was sort of tied with purpose. It’s like, well, is it purpose that’s wrong here, or was it more of all that other stuff? Could there be an argument for like, sure, have a purpose, but also like, you can, you know, as long as your purpose is original and distinct and not being undifferentiated, in a way, could there be a place for purpose to be successful?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, well, I think, yeah, you’ve made many good points there. I do think, I totally do think all of this, purpose within the business and advertising world, I think all of it is connected to that larger cultural shift that we’ve been going through over the last two decades, I guess. And I think you’re right that the same cultural shifts that have made Hollywood films or TV dramas kind of more serious and less funny... there are connections between that and the same thing happening with advertising where, you know, there’s a real urge to be, to be kind of more serious and to have a kind of some kind of purported political message in what you do.
Ironically, I think the take-out for marketers there should be, you know, consumers are craving a bit of light relief, I think, you know, in a very serious world, where, yeah, you know, everything from stand-up comedy to films to music to other forms of culture are getting more and more serious and more and more kind of tight about stuff. You can at the very least just have a few funny ads in the ad break. And ads that you can laugh at and enjoy, whether you’re a Biden supporter or a Trump supporter.
That’s, I think, ads can be actually quite therapeutic and, you might even say purposeful that way with a small p, in the sense that they just add a bit of entertainment to life, they create a bit of common ground that people can agree on. And, yeah, not everything has to be loaded with this very earnest sense of purpose, I think. And I think that’s where advertisers have really kind of let people down, I think, in recent years. I think it is turning round. I think there’s been a shift in the last year or two.
But, yeah, it remains to be seen to what extent or, you know, where that will evolve to next.
The Vibe Shift of 2024: Are we past peak “Purpose”?
Andrew Mitrak: Coincidentally, I think it did shift right around the time you published your book—maybe not coincidentally.
Nick Asbury: Oh yeah, it was all down to me.
Andrew Mitrak: I wanted to talk about that because I think there has been sort of the vibe shift, I guess, right around 2024. And I think it is hard to decouple whether that’s a marketing or business purpose shift, or more of just a general tone in a cultural counterreaction to what came before it, more broadly. Some people kind of call it the Overton window of what you’re allowed to say is kind of shifting open again. And I guess, do you have any thoughts on sort of, are we past peak purpose?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, I certainly think a lot of the power has been kind of drained out of the purpose movement by all sorts of shifts that have taken place. I think if some kind of historian of advertising or of business was writing about this in 100 years’ time or something, I think the basic bookends to the purpose era, if you like, would be the 2008 financial crash at one end, and I would say the reelection of Donald Trump at the other end in 2024. Regardless of your politics, I just think there was a real sense of that being a real marker culturally where people kind of felt, “Okay, certain narratives haven’t been working.”
And it kind of gave the lie to a lot of these things that were fueling purpose, you know, the idea that younger generations were craving businesses to get involved in politics and push progressive causes, and then it kind of turns out that more than half of them are voting for Trump, or certainly on the male side, and a large proportion on the female side as well, and the vote was increasing rather than decreasing.
So, there were lots of sobering realities that came home, I think. And I certainly think now, if you go into a boardroom and start talking about purpose, regardless of your position on it, it will just feel like a bit of an old, yesterday’s idea, kind of thing. Which isn’t to say—one thing I’m always very anxious about with this is that I don’t think that at all means that suddenly we should just not talk about ethics anymore, or trying to advertise responsibly, trying to do business responsibly. I think all of that is a permanent conversation. If anything, I would hope that conversation can happen more clearly and seriously and in a more grown-up way than this kind of purpose fantasy that people have been living in for too long, I think.
So, yeah, I do think it’s shifted, but I also just wouldn’t want to overstate it because it’s very much woven into the fabric of a lot of industry institutions. The award shows, you will still find, are full of purpose work—maybe not quite as intensely as they were, but certainly there’s a lot of of it still there. And a lot of people still fundamentally hold the same belief, even if they know it’s not quite as fashionable to talk about now. So, yeah, I don’t think the argument will go away, but I think the most intense period of it has maybe passed.
Why Are Purpose Advocates Mostly Late-Career Marketers?
Andrew Mitrak: A question I also wanted to ask about is, I think that you kind of alluded to this, that a lot of the people who are proponents of purpose tend to be a little later in their career. They tend to be maybe even almost retired, or kind of in a reflective mode. Maybe they’ve been very successful business leaders and have spent a lot of time in the office, and they might be thinking about their own purpose in life. They might be thinking, “Oh, well, I spent a lot of time making silly advertisements, did that do anything?” Maybe these advocates—and I don’t want to speak for any individual exactly, but they think that if they can inject purpose into business, it might give their life more purpose, as well, or justify their time spent on advertising.
I will share one example, and it’s somebody who I’ve interviewed on this podcast two times, who is kind of a mentor to me, and that is Philip Kotler, who’s in his 90s. He has written articles that say, you know, he’s famous for popularizing this idea of the Four Ps of marketing: product, price, place, promotion. He has written articles saying, “Oh, the fifth P is purpose.” He is a very accomplished person, who legitimately wants to make the world a better place, and has that top of mind. And I’m wondering—not just to respect our elders, but these are people who probably have some wisdom, or who knows, in several decades’ time, you might have some conversion yourself, who knows. Does who it’s coming from, or where they might be in life, does that change your view at all? Do you agree with the premise of my hypothesis here, and what is your reaction to that hypothesis?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, I think it’s a great point. And I would totally share the same observation that a lot of this has been driven by people closer to the end of their careers than the start. But I would take a very different kind of reading of it, I guess.
The way I would see it, like in the UK, for example, just looking at the advertising world, the kind of D&AD world—and this is not to personalize it too much, but just to give a couple of examples—there would be guys, the generation of kind of a Steve Henry, who’s a bit of an advertising legend through the ‘80s and ‘90s, and Tim Lindsay, same kind of generation, who’s now chairman of D&AD and has been a very vocal advocate of purpose. They and quite a few others come from a certain generation where they’ve actually had immense fun in their careers. They’ve flown around the world, making fun ads for Levi’s and inventing silly characters that have caught on, and just having fun doing commercial advertising, famous commercial advertising. And then, towards the end of their careers, there’s a kind of sudden discovery of conscience, in a way, where it’s suddenly like, “Oh, well, we personally now want to rebrand ourselves more as kind of guru-like figures at the end of our careers who are now going to impart some wisdom about the importance of being ethical,” and so on.
But I actually think there’s something a little bit, what’s the word, self-serving about it, in the sense that, yeah, fine, that may make a good positioning for you as a kind of elder statesman of the industry, but actually, in a way, you’re pulling the ladder up behind you. You’re saying, “It was okay for us to have fun. It was okay for us to make silly ads that were funny and enjoyable to make. But all you lot now, you need to be super serious, and you need to cut down your carbon emissions, and don’t make silly ads, make worthy ads, and otherwise you won’t get an award from us,” and that kind of thing. I’m putting it in a slightly simplistic way there, but I do think there’s been a real sense of that. It’s easy to say that now that you haven’t really got a stake in the game in the same way.
But having made your name, and made lots of money doing that kind of work, I think to then turn around and say, “Ah, but now everything’s different, you all need to be ethical and purposeful.” I just think there’s something a little bit convenient about that. And I’ve got great respect for Philip Kotler’s contribution over the years, but I do think this kind of—I know he’s written versions of that “fifth P is purpose” article. It first came out in 2013, and has come out every two or three years since in various forms. I just find there’s something a little bit opportunistic about it, if I’m being unkind. Which doesn’t undermine his previous work at all, but I think it’s maybe just an attempt to feel more relevant given the cultural climate, and it’s not really being done with the same rigor that he would have brought as a practicing marketer back in earlier times. So, yeah, and all of that may sound a little bit unkind, maybe. But I do think, given that the movement often portrays itself as a kind of youthful uprising, I think it’s surprising the extent to which it’s led by actually quite men getting on in their years, and kind of rebranding themselves late in their careers.
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah, for sure. And I think there’s almost sort of like a survivorship bias to it where, “Oh, we’ve made it this far, I’ve already done the hard work in my career, you can kind of give that advice later,” but it actually doesn’t work in the moment in the same way.
Nick Asbury: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Mitrak: And it’s not what got you to where you are now in order to be in a position to give that advice. It’s kind of a post-rationalization, really.
Nick Asbury: So, but yeah, I do think there’s something. I actually, you know, I write my Substack, and I think I have had something in the drafts for a while that I never got around to finishing, but it was kind of about this issue of, I guess, the more psychological reasons that some people get into this stuff. So, yeah, maybe I’ll get around to finishing that at some point.
Human Creativity, AI, and Lateral Thinking
Andrew Mitrak: Yeah, I’d definitely read it. As we sort of approach the end here, you mention how about 80% of your book is more of sort of the takedown of purpose, and that’s where we’ve spent most of our conversation. The last half, as in the subtitle, is about how human creativity is the way out. And you specify human creativity, not artificial creativity. So, I guess on that last bit, and sort of on the more optimistic, forward-looking note, what’s so good about human creativity? Why is that the way out?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, I do think—first of all, I’m very glad you asked, because I know I can sound negative sometimes. But I hope there is a very positive argument in the book. And I think human creativity—if you go back to so many of the great brands, the real magic comes from moments of human creativity. Someone, somewhere, comes up with the line that defines the brand, you know, the “Just Do It“ or the “Beanz Meanz Heinz,” or whatever it is. And it’s a moment of human inspiration and lateral thinking, and verbal or visual creativity that actually gets endlessly post-rationalized. People build strategic arguments around things, but really it starts with a creative spark, I think.
It’s always been a difficult thing for the ad industry to talk about, because how do you quantify creativity and sell it without just sounding like some kind of hippie weirdo in the boardroom? But I think that is the truth about advertising: it’s quite hard to predict what will work, and it’s often the little lateral step, the little play on words even, that can end up building a billion-dollar brand.
So, yeah, I kind of think brands need to center themselves around that, really. I talk about purpose being a closed mindset and creativity being an open mindset, in the sense that as a business, I think if you’re defining your purpose in advance and you narrow in on it, it’s a goal-oriented way of looking at the world. Whereas I think if you put creativity first, it’s actually about being curious about all the little side routes you might go down, and what other opportunities there might be, and it just leaves you open to serendipitous things happening, in a way that I think purpose doesn’t. Purpose tends to squash you into a particular place where everything has to be very earnest and worthy. So, yeah, there’s a lot to say on that, but I essentially see creativity as the flip side to purpose, really. And, yeah, I think we should talk about it much more than we do as an industry.
Andrew Mitrak: A phrase that you used a few times was lateral thinking and taking lateral steps. I think that’s actually one of my favorite concepts, and I think it’s such a useful one. It’s also one where you kind of emphasize human creativity, especially looking forward in this current era of artificial intelligence. For all of how powerful and useful AI is, it’s not actually very good at lateral thinking yet, or bringing together disparate ideas. I think it might actually be, sometimes, how the models work. They are “thinking models” that kind of go down a train, and you can feed it a lot of disparate information, but I feel like humans are, at least at this point, the ones that are able to make lateral moves and lateral ideas, and kind of take side steps. That’s so much of where lateral thinking happens.
“Just Do It,” I think, was inspired by Gary Gilmore, a person who was about to be executed, saying “let’s do it.” No AI—I doubt it, I’d be almost worried if an AI was looking at execution records to inspire my ads. But it’s something that is so uniquely human. And as you say, AI models are trained almost on the purpose era of advertising. I think they probably are pretty good at helping your brand purpose if you wanted them to. But also, I feel like lateral thinking and creativity are ways to stand out now more than ever, both to differentiate from the purpose era and from the current AI era.
Nick Asbury: Yeah, totally. I’m a great fan of—there’s a book, which may be more famous in the UK than elsewhere, called A Smile in the Mind. It’s kind of a classic book that came out in the ‘90s all about witty thinking and lateral thinking in design and advertising, which I always thought was a brilliant book. Actually, in 2016, I was lucky in that I ended up co-editing a kind of updated edition of the book. But it’s all about that kind of work that relies on a twist of some sort, some kind of lateral leap.
I think that’s a really powerful way of looking at the business world and trying to—because so much of it is about taking familiar messages and trying to make them feel a bit new again. So, if you can think in that kind of lateral way, I think it’s really powerful. And I think you’re right that AI—in theory, AI should be good at it because it’s full of all these reference points; it knows way more than any human can fit in their brain. So, you would think it could generate more of these connections, but I think where it falls down—and I’m actually a big fan of AI, I think it’s quite exciting to be living in this period—ultimately, it is making statistical probability-based judgments about which word to put next. So, it’s never going to take the most surprising lateral leap. It’s going to take one that maybe has already happened somewhere before. So, yeah, maybe it will take humans to make those connections. Yeah, interesting times.
Where to Find Nick Asbury
Andrew Mitrak: That’s right. By the way, I’m a big fan of it too. I use it quite a bit in my work. But also, I think that, at least currently—and hopefully for a long time, as a humanist and a fan of humans in general—we’re at this moment where it’s sort of the humans plus AI that can do really interesting things. Maybe humans can still sort of find the lateral moves with AI as an amplifier tool. The combination of the two is really exciting to me today. When it’s all AI, you recognize it as slop. And when it’s all human, that’s great; it’s great that there are still humans doing things entirely. But also we’re at a unique moment where there’s a chance for the two to blend in interesting and surprising ways, and I agree it’s an exciting time to be in.
Nick Asbury: Absolutely.
Andrew Mitrak: You mentioned A Smile in the Mind, and I’m going to pick that up. I hadn’t come across that, so I’m going to order it. And also, you mentioned your Substack. Can you tell listeners where to find you online and read your work?
Nick Asbury: Yeah, at the moment, Substack is the best place. I’m not a regular poster, but when I post, I tend to go long. So, nickasbury.substack.com. And then LinkedIn is probably the one social platform where I’m most active, although for some reason, I haven’t been in recent months. But yeah, I’m quite often involved in all sorts of arguments on there if you want to go and join in.
Andrew Mitrak: Great. Yeah, listeners should definitely check out your Substack, and also find you on LinkedIn and read the book, The Road to Hell. I think, of all the books, just as far as how impactful it could be to how you think and see patterns, and how great it is as a marketing book—I hadn’t come across it until recently, I think I maybe saw Byron Sharp post about it as well, so it came across my feed and I was like, “Wow, this is actually really great.” I hope more people read it as well, because it’s a really exciting read. If you’ve listened to this conversation, you should definitely, definitely read that book. Well, thanks so much, Nick. It’s so great to connect. I really enjoyed this, and I feel like we covered so much ground. I learned a lot from you and feel very inspired by the conversation, so thanks so much for your time.
Nick Asbury: Oh, thanks. That’s very kind, Andrew. I appreciate being asked on. I know you’ve had some great guests, and, yeah, really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.
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