Episode 1: Computational Creativity / Alex Jenkins / Editorial Director / Contagious
Alex’s Shiny New Object is ‘Computational Creativity’. We spend the first part of the podcast getting to know Alex and why his biggest failure "was most of my career" before looking at how AI is shaping the future of our industry.
Here is an AI driven transcription of the podcast. It’s not 100% accurate but should give you a sense of what was covered.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, bit, book, writing, marketing, creativity, film, called, technology, computer, creative, shiny new object, literally, thought, work, contagious, brand, question, person, podcast
SPEAKERS
Alex Jenkins, Tom Ollerton
Tom Ollerton 00:00
Hello, and welcome to the Shiny New Object Podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. This is a show that investigates the latest marketing technology and makes sense of them for brands and their agencies. It's a series of interviews with interesting people. The first of which is Alex Jenkins, who is the Editorial Director of Contagious. For those of you that don't know, the way that Contagious describe themselves on their website, is that Contagious continues to navigate the complexity of modern marketing. We provide an intelligence platform briefings, quarterly magazine, advisory service, and live events across the globe, to champion brave, innovative creativity across the industry and equip companies to achieve it for themselves. Alex is an excellent public speaker, I have spoken at events with him in the past, and every time, he has literally wiped the floor of me in front of a room of hundreds of people, and it's been an embarrassing experience every time. And, but we're friends no less. And so we're going to talk about Alex's money careers, including writing intelligence reports for the military, we're going to touch on African marketing, how to be a better writer, Lord of the Rings, unicorns, and what unites the Terminator, and Christmas. And then we'll get on to Alex's shiny new object, which is computational creativity. So I will start that now. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you. So Hi, Alex, how's it going?
Alex Jenkins 01:30
Good. How you doing?
Tom Ollerton 01:33
I'm good. I mean, they're the office of Platform 360, where I've been working on my project for the last couple of months. They've been very generous to give me that space for free. I'll have fallen out with a doorstop on a number of occasions, but apart from that it's all been hunky dory. So, thanks to those guys.
Alex Jenkins 01:51
Good sponsor messenger is...
Tom Ollerton 01:53
I'm not even paying for that. Maybe that's, maybe that's the thing I should address. And you just got back from Ethiopia.
Alex Jenkins 01:59
Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 02:00
Can you talk about that?
Alex Jenkins 02:02
Not a lot. It was for client thing. But it was a bit of a, an SAS job is sort of in, stay in a hotel for a very concentrated period of time, deliver a presentation to a bunch of African marketers, and then straight back to the airport and leave. So, I did not really see Ethiopia.
Tom Ollerton 02:21
But you told me a couple weeks back that you were looking for the best of African case studies. Is that right?
Alex Jenkins 02:28
I was, yeah, we were looking at what we thought was, yeah, the kind of standout marketing from Sub-Saharan Africa.
Tom Ollerton 02:34
So, I know precisely nothing about modeling in Sub-Saharan Africa. What was the cherry on the cake of that?
Alex Jenkins 02:41
Where there was something which I quite liked, I think there was somebody weirdly, like everyone else there, really like there was some really interesting work from a beer brand called Tusker in Kenya, which did some really interesting stuff on a kind of feature phone, and mobile. Which, to be honest, to be quite long winded to explain exactly how it worked.
Tom Ollerton 03:03
Look on give us a, talk about it in the podcast and say, "I saw a really good thing in Africa. But I can't be asked to tell you about it."
Alex Jenkins 03:11
I'm desperately trying to remember how it actually went. And it was all it was in the run up to the Olympic Games. In 2016. That was when the Olympic Games were, I think, and they were trying to generate a little bit of national pride. And Kenya, Tusker is a local, so beer, and they got a lot of import stuff coming in kind of eroding their market share a little bit. And, but, the local attitude in Kenya towards Kenya was a bit kind of "meh," people didn't really care that much...
Tom Ollerton 03:45
Into Kenya.
Alex Jenkins 03:46
Yeah, Kenya wasn't that into Kenya. And so they wanted to, you know, try to leverage that a little bit, kind of turn it round, especially in the run up to Olympics and get behind kind of Team Kenya. So, they set up this service on feature phones, we could just opt in just get alerts about anything good, which was happening in Kenya, good news, kind of alert. And so you opted in for this stuff. So you got little kind of text messages saying "Hi, you know, like our bobsleigh team has won."
Tom Ollerton 04:15
So, good stuff about the Olympics, and Winter Olympics, given the said bobsleigh.
Alex Jenkins 04:20
No, it wasn't bobsleigh, this was a terrible example. It was nothing. The news was not so good. It was to do with other stuff, right? Okay, apart from the Olympics, so I was very jet lagged in Ethiopia, and that's probably writing here on podcast. But they also tied into a little bit of just kind of a promotional price sampling drive. So, they would actually send you, effectively money, to then go out and buy a Tusker beer if you opted in for the service via a service called M-Pesa.
Tom Ollerton 04:52
And if the listeners don't know M-Pesa is, can you just give a...
Alex Jenkins 04:56
It's like a feature phone, money transfer service. So, if I owed you five Kenyan shillings, I could literally send the digit five to your phone, and that would just transfer the money to you, right? So, while we're all kind of patting ourselves on the back, you know, in the UK about being able to transfer things via things like Barclays Pingit, and stuff. These guys did it years ago on feature phones. In fact, I think M-Pesa transfers more money just in Kenya than Western Union does across the entire planet. So, it's really, really too big there. So, they tied this kind of good news thing anyway into something like this sampling drive. And it had great results, which I can't remember being put on the spot. And jet lagged about it...
Tom Ollerton 05:37
And put you on the spot. Oh, sorry.
Alex Jenkins 05:39
Yeah, but that was my particular favorite one. The thing they all really liked, which is quite weird, which actually wasn't from Africa, which is from Japan, which is weird thing, this kind of apparel retailer done. It was like a wits of an Instagram hack. Whether it's on Instagram stories, you know, you get the full ads, you swipe up for more information. So, they have these ads for the sneakers, which were on sale. And they'd artificially put like a hair on the ad. I saw that. Yeah. And it was just, and people just thought it was on the phone. So, they swiped up to get rid of the hair, and then it took them into the sale app, which they thought was amazing. They are absolutely loving it. Absolutely loving.
Tom Ollerton 06:17
And you think that's not very good. It's not.
Alex Jenkins 06:19
It's not as good. But I think you kind of there's a lot of you getting, like an interesting talk about, you know, the longevity of ideas like that the fact that like you make people feel a little bit tricked, you know, it's like, it's probably great if you get the kind of the Instagram equivalent of a click through rate up. But maybe that's all you need. Like we're having a sale you're in look, we've got this do you want or not, but...
Tom Ollerton 06:42
Yeah, it might not work quite so well. The second time around, it reminds me a bit of the Carling iPint.
Alex Jenkins 06:48
The iFind that? Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 06:49
So, for those of you don't know about that, it was one of the first branded apps that's very successful where the app was a pint, and then you can tip it as if you're mimicking, yeah, drinking a pint and it would kind of glug away down your throat. And I remember someone showed me that and me thinking that was incredible.
Alex Jenkins 07:09
What it was, it was really early days in my iPhone version one. And it was right at the time, like early adopters were really showing off, like, look what I can do. And it was just some bullshit. But it was actually really I think it was just for calming. I think it was really successful.
Tom Ollerton 07:24
And I might try and download it. Right. So, and okay, so I am gonna just come completely clean here. So, I listened to the Tim Ferriss’ podcast a lot. Have you come across this?
Alex Jenkins 07:39
I don't listen to Tim Ferriss’ podcast.
Tom Ollerton 07:42
Alex, he's like, he basically interviews overachievers, and kind of asks them why they're so ace, and what, I mean he's a really kind of...
Alex Jenkins 07:51
This is a four-hour workweek guy.
Tom Ollerton 07:53
Same guy, yeah.
Alex Jenkins 07:55
I hear a little bit of gossip, that he does significantly more than four hours a week actually.
Tom Ollerton 08:01
And while his podcast claims, just shy that seven weeks to be honest. And so basically reaches out to people that he really likes, and then, or admires, and gets them in and asks them about the kind of tools or the trade. And, he has a list of questions that I'm basically going to rip literally off, but put a marketing spin on them.
Alex Jenkins 08:21
Sweet.
Tom Ollerton 08:22
And so if this doesn't work, then this might never go out. And it's gonna go really serious based on the conversation we just had. But we'll run through a couple of them. And you can also say, no answer, or, you know, don't record this type of stuff. But let's, let's see how we get on. And then at the end of the episode, where we will touch on a subject I'm super interested in, which is creative, artificial intelligence as your Shiny New Thing.
Alex Jenkins 08:50
Yeah, definitely.
Tom Ollerton 08:51
So, it'd be really good for the audience to get to know you a bit better through someone else's questions.
Alex Jenkins 08:55
Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 08:56
And then we'll get onto the tech bit, and then we'll go for a beer. So, a beautiful triptych of happiness. So, first question, what is the marketing book that you recommend the most often?
Alex Jenkins 09:11
Right, there is kind of talk around this a little bit.
Tom Ollerton 09:15
Yeah.
Alex Jenkins 09:16
Okay.
Tom Ollerton 09:16
So, like a one word answer with an author will be a bad podcast answer.
Alex Jenkins 09:25
Alright, so there's because basically, the book I recommend, probably most isn't actually a marketing book. If I was to recommend, like a marketing, it'd probably be like, "Influence" by Robert Cialdini, which is like back in the 80s, and it's sort of a precursor to some of the behavioral economics stuff. Which, yeah, it's a great book. But I think actually the one that, there's two books I recommend a lot. I think one is "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy" by Richard Rumelt, which is more of a business thing. But actually, right at the top of the book, I recommend more than anything else, is nothing to do with marketing. It's actually about writing, and it's specific actually about screenwriting. But I think it's totally applicable to anyone who works in marketing. It's just about good structure and good communications. So, it's a book called "Invisible Ink" by a guy called Brian McDonald, who is a screenwriter, he's a story consultant, he sort of does, you know, the stuff in kind of graphic novels as well. But he was like, you know, he goes in, you know, he sort of advisors people like, you know, Lucasfilm and Pixar. I think, you know, Andrew Stanton guided Finding Nemo, base, look, if my next films six is a success, it'll be in a large part down to this guy. And it's just a brilliant book, it's very, very short. It's really good fun. It's really an enjoyable read. But it's just about clarity of expression and clarity of communication as to how you structure a really clear narrative. And you can see, and really, I mean, I, I'm kind of at the periphery of marketing. So, I'm on the editorial side, you know, so I'm the team, I work with our writers, mostly, so I kind of recommend to them. But so much marketing kind of fails or not even fails, but falls down on like, clarity of communication, that it's just a lovely book to read, to do that. And it's really like good fun as well, he'll totally convince you in like, no space, like one page, that the "Terminator" is basically the same film as "It's a Wonderful Life." And when you read it, you go, Oh, my God, how did I never see this before? He's totally right.
Tom Ollerton 11:25
So, if someone is listening to this, for whatever reason called buy the book, or, you know, doesn't have time or money or whatever, what was the kind of key thing that you would take away from?
Alex Jenkins 11:39
I think the key thing is just being absolutely crystal clear on the message you want to communicate, and then finding kind of creative ways to do it. So, to come, which I think is like, you know, advertising comms in a nutshell, like, what do you want to communicate? Do it creatively. So, you know, to illustrate, you know, the "Terminator," "It's a Wonderful Life" thing. You know, "It's a Wonderful Life" is kind of, it's writ large, kind of what it is, like, I think my life doesn't matter. It's a guy that thinks that. And then an angel comes out and shows him what his life would be like, if he hadn't lived. And it's literally the same in "Terminator," like, there's a point where the Linda Hamilton character, she's a waitress, and I think she says somewhere towards the start, you know, it's like, I know, I could just be wiped off the face of the earth, and no one would even notice, like, wouldn't matter. I'm such a small communist machine, my life doesn't matter. And then what actually happens is a Terminator comes into it, which basically proves the point, you're actually the most important you possibly the most important person, because you're the mother of the future of the human race. And the whole story kind of, like, plays that out about how, how important you are a person. But it comes back to like, the kind of the moral, if you will, brahma dunkles, the amateur is, you know, you're probably significantly more important than you think you are. And one way is very kind of saccharin, you know, kind of Christmas classic. And the other is like a brutal kind of futurist technology, you know, kind of horror, sci-fi, same message.
Tom Ollerton 13:04
So, how does that lesson or the theme, they impact the work that you do?
Alex Jenkins 13:11
I think I mean, the work that we do, obviously, is like, kind of writing about brands and startups and campaigns, but it's just having that clarity of like, "What are you talking about?" And then once you are clear on what you're talking about, how are you going to structure that argument, to make that point to deliver it and communicate as clearly as possible.
Tom Ollerton 13:27
And as the writer just told me through the blow by blow how that works. And so you go the point of, can you the point I want to communicate is that this campaign was great, or wasn't very good. And then you go, right, how am I gonna argue that and you do all that other kind of high level, and then you go into the writing detail?
Alex Jenkins 13:47
I think, I mean, you can do that, like that. And you can do some of the core story spine. So, you know, which is, like, basically, any story can be boiled down to probably like about six or seven sentences, you know, so it's in the classic again, once upon a time, there was a fill in the blank. And every day, they fill in the blank until one day something happens. And because of that, that and because of that, and because of that, because up until finally, thing happened, and then from that day forward, you know, they were just a little bit smarter, but wise, you know, you can kind of go literally the most basic one I can think of is like incy, wincy spider, like once one time there's a spider, and every day went up this downward spout until one day the rain came down and because of that into and down and then blah, blah, blah, until finally sun came out, he went back up again. That story is literally like six, seven might be taped, like the most epically long thing like Lord of the Rings. And you know, once upon a time, you know, there was a hobbit called Frodo and everyday was happy in the Shire. Until one day, he found out he'd inherited, like the One Ring of Power, which would destroy his entire earth. And because of that, him and his mates had to go off on an extended walking holiday. And because of that, you know, he met Gollum, and because of that, You know, they found your Aragorn and because of that, he actually rose up and became the king. And you know, until eventually they defeated him in the ring away, and you know, they're all happy. And that's the story. Like, we can't argue that is the story, but it's told over thousands and thousands of words, but you can condense it down. And, so, to get back to where I dimly remember is your question about how it helps.
Tom Ollerton 15:23
How do you use that technique specifically in your job?
Alex Jenkins 15:27
Well, I think I, in theory, you can use it up front, you're right, the thing I want to say is, you know, whatever, like, you know, for marketing, like creativity is like, probably our best shot at effectiveness. But there are significant things like, kind of what we think was empty creative forces, which, you know, are gonna hamper your ability to get that. And it could be, you know, clients to promote the budget, like kind of creativity by committee, like knocking off all the bits, which are good about it, blah, blah, blah. And in theory, you can kind of structure it and then go in and write it and go in depth. So, say, creative is our most effective thing. Let's expand on that opening sentence, your studies from the IPA study from McKinsey, blah, blah. In reality, you tend to have a bit of a vague sense of what it is you want to say like, you're kind of like 80-90% sure what your key messages are, often do very research and kind of start writing. It's a lot messier than that. So, I personally use it as a tool to see if I'm writing something is going wrong. Just reduce it right back and look at if you can condense like every page or every paragraph down to like one line, but what is it what I'm actually saying here. And as an editor, when I look at the kind of copy of coming in, that's what I do. If I'm reading something, it doesn't really make sense. I kind of do that zoom out here, right? Little line in the margin. What's this paragraph back? What's this one about? What's this one about? And you seem to go, alright, let's set up the challenge. And then jump to the solution, and then come back to the challenge again, and actually, when you're reading it in detail doesn't really come through when you zoom out yet, right? So, it shouldn't go challenge, solution, challenge; solution should go challenge, challenge solution, solution, conclusion. So, it's, you can kind of use it in different places, I think you'd need to be super, you know, prepared to just have that initial seven sentence. This is what I want to say, you know, but it's a handy thing.
Tom Ollerton 17:16
So, what I'm going to do is, stay in that kind of sort of practical space. So, remind me of the book...
Alex Jenkins 17:24
"Invisible Ink" by Brian McDonald.
Tom Ollerton 17:26
Put that in the show notes. So, you'd recommend that to anyone who has writing as part of their job. So, what would be and what would be the kind of thing that is the most useful thing that you've bought with your own money that you've used for work? So, not something you've expense? Like a flight?
Alex Jenkins 17:46
Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 17:47
What is the thing that you bought? So, maybe like, I don't know, like a smartwatch? Whoever's you never missed a meeting again, what is the one thing you bought with your own money that's had the biggest impact on your job?
Alex Jenkins 17:58
I think hands down with the exception via Kindle. I know some people don't like these things, but bear in mind, like I'm gonna achieve every day, the ability to like read a book without your own hold on with another hand. So, you don't have like your turn pages. That's quite useful. But I think it's like, a couple of years ago, I interviewed a Professor of Machine Learning, guy called Pedro Domingos. He was very, I've been working in this area for like, decades. And he was talking about, you know, kind of cortex, artificial kind of intelligent stuff. He said, there's this, there's this notion of like, the EXO cortex, is it you can just outsource part of your brain. So, a notebook is an EXO cortex. It's like, I'm not gonna remember this one, just write it down. For me, like the Kindle is an EXO cortex. So, I read, like a huge amount of stuff on it. And the ability to just highlight passages, and we'll just go, that'll be useful at some point in the future, this quote, yeah, about storytelling, I've done a better job if I'd had my Kindle. Yeah. Or about, you know, AI, or whatever it is we're looking at, I know, I can just go back, I can find the bits I thought would be useful. I can search through it. It's just an insanely useful thing for me.
Tom Ollerton 18:46
And, how do you choose what to read on your Kindle? ,
Alex Jenkins 19:15
I think there's, I mean, I started I got a Kindle. I think soon after I joined Contagious. I've been there about eight years now. And, you know, it's very much you know, a knowledge business, you know, sort of like tilting your knowledge workers in a knowledge economy. If we don't know more than the people we're trying to sell stuff to. Why would they buy what we've got to tell them? So, sort of like, like, literally like a month or two after joining Contagious, got the general, permanent fear, just like kind of just got to know more than people. It's got to acquire knowledge by aggressively and continuously. And I think I start off looking like a lot of what behavior economic stuff, what kind of Dan Ariely and things and then because I thought that that'd be brutal applicable to any marketing. It's just a framework for looking at, you know, how marketing is going to work and work on people. And I've been lucky enough to interview people like Dan Ariely and Daniel Kahneman and people like that, you know, over the years, I think in terms of how I select stuff, I honestly don't really know. I think there's sometimes just a bit of like, huh, I sort of think like, sometimes Amazon recommends a thing, sometimes, like, you get a recommendation within a book, something I know, you should all check this out. And then a Cait, like, very rarely, I just feel like I'll treat myself as by Philip Pullman. I feel like that is almost like an obligation to just constantly be reading work-related stuff.
Tom Ollerton 20:40
So, those two things you talked about that helped you be more successful. So, whether that's a book that helps you write better or an electronic book that outsources storage of information from your brain. So, to various words, at this point, go a bit dark and down, which I'm struggling with, but anyway, let's do it. And what has been your biggest work failure that has set you up for subsequent success?
Alex Jenkins 21:09
I think my biggest failure is probably like most of my career, and like doing really weird, odd stuff throughout my career. So, I've had like, I mean, it's broadly been kind of related to writing I suppose. But you know, so I've done like I was a business journalist for a bit but I've worked in the likes of film production, I was a production coordinator on a film called "Morvern Callar." Lynne Ramsay directed the film. She's got the new Joaquin Phoenix film. I've worked for the military for a bit like writing obituaries and doing kind of intelligence report stuff. I worked at the IPA and like the knowledge department, like kind of like really, like nothing I worked at a DM agency briefly doing like copywriting for like, you know, those leaflets and banks, like you should get a mortgage 2.9% APR, some some of the, that's right, I was that idiot. And kind of stuttering along and doing things while also having like the second track, kind of evening crib stuff I wanted to do, but trying to be in a band, which got like, minor success, not enough success, minor success, but publishing a book got minor success, not enough success. So, you kind of stumble your way and, and all kind of like came to a bit of a headache Contagious with like, the kind of the creativity of some of the evening stuff. And you know, kind of some of the knowledge and the process just working in different places. And seeing like, you know, working in film production, being right up close to how a film is produced, gives you a different perspective, when you're there kind of analyzing your creativity and marketing campaigns. They're writing like obituaries for Second World War veterans, you know, or like, what's happening in Iraq at like, you know, sort of post-9/11. Gives you an interesting perspective, on, you know, just kind of a spinal tap from me a bit too much perspective on like, just how important ad industry stuff really is. No one's literally died today. So, all the stuff, which at the time kind of felt a bit disparate and disjointed does feel like it kind of set me up for this slightly odd role that I've found myself.
Tom Ollerton 23:19
So, take that one step further. If you were giving advice to some bright grad, he or she just left uni, and they were desperate to get into digital marketing, would you advise them to follow a similar approach? Or would you give them completely different?
Alex Jenkins 23:40
I don't think you could follow that approach. If you tried. I think like, if you actually try, you couldn't follow that career. Yeah, you'd probably be quite deranged. I think the thing which, I guess has always struck me and stuck me, with just, you know, like, making opportunities a little bit. And, you know, just constantly trying to do stuff, I think, you know, I'm an old enough person to remember kind of the pre-internet age where, if you wanted to write a book and get it published, you couldn't just self-publish on Amazon, you know, you had to go through a gatekeeper. And, you know, at a publishing house, and someone had to, you know, if you wanted to make a film and actually get seen by the world, you couldn't just do it, you know, with your phone and stick it up on YouTube. I think the opportunities for people to kind of, be creative and do stuff, are so great. And just, you know, suppose you learn anything from my inverted commas, "career," it would be that, you know, you can go at it straight on, but you can kind of make your own way a little bit and just keep trying and doing stuff because you're bringing experience that other people won't have.
Tom Ollerton 24:54
Right. To go into that in a bit more detail. So, that's the key thing for you, for creatives who want to get into digital marketing, creating experience that no one else has.
Alex Jenkins 25:06
I think so I mean, it was an intro we interviewed a guy who was doing an interactive VR thing about a year or two ago. And he'd come from a reasonably traditional production company background. And he was saying, like, this project was mad, because it was said, you didn't know which way they were trying to tell a story in VR. And we didn't know if someone had turned around and looked the other way. They wouldn't see the moments we had to have. Like they said it was the most nightmarish task of storyboarding it. So, they showed me the storyboards and like, it was insane. It was like almost 3D storyboarding. And you know, the book I wrote, which is related to it, was like a grownup's choose your own adventure book was like, this is exactly what I did. That was precise, like that storyboarding you've done. That's right. So, like, the ability to actually talk to these people. I know, I know what this feels like. And then to ask questions about it. Because you have that knowledge of like, I can see and did you come across? Like just a sneaky suspicion? Like, did you find this was a surprise problem, surprise opportunity? Oh, my god, yeah. How would you even know that kind of this similar, like, a couple years back. But it's that kind of breadth of experience, which if you take a very linear path, you know, you kind of put yourself up against other people who will also just be very, very comparable. And I think, you know, I think there's like an old Elvis quote, but none of us are diabolical exactly like anyone else, you know. And if you take a very linear path, you can end up looking like everyone else, you know, and if you take a slightly more left field, bizarre route, you might find it harder, but you will bring something which no one else can bring, you will have that uniqueness.
Tom Ollerton 26:41
So, I'm going to go a bit off-piste here and change attack completely. And I love this question. And I've prepped on this, so I'm expecting things. And if you had a digital media budget of 10 million pounds to get any message out to anyone, anywhere, on any device on any media, what would it be? So, you could spend that 10 million quid on just taking over the YouTube homepage for I don't know how long but could just be "Merry Christmas, mom." But what would it be?
Alex Jenkins 27:15
Well, do you know? What springs to mind is like, just because I'm thinking about it knocks I'm bitter about it. And anyway, this book I wrote, I wrote it with a lovely guy, as well. We co-wrote this book. Guy called Stephen Morrison, it was a comedy choose your adventure book for grownups.
Tom Ollerton 27:17
What was it called?
Alex Jenkins 27:31
It was called "The Regional Accounts Director of Firetop Mountain." Yeah, you can see the writer, and we had a proper publishing deal like Transworld. So, big publishing that does like Dan Brown, does like Terry Pratchett. We sort of somehow walk into a nail, like the first pitch. And right at the point then publishing it, they pulled all the marketing budget off it and gave it to Girls Aloud, because I think they were about to split and they needed to, like get this book out quickly. And so I always felt like this book, which I put a lot of time and effort into bloody 3D storyboards on. No one ever heard it? And the people who bought it on Amazon, and you should buy it. It's long.
Tom Ollerton 28:12
How much is it?
Alex Jenkins 28:13
I've no idea at all. Someone read recently, sent me like a message saying, "Were you on acid?" But yeah, I never felt like got a firecracker. So, I feel like life owes me something.
Tom Ollerton 28:30
You would blow 10 million quids worth.
Alex Jenkins 28:33
I think that is the worst thing to spend money on. I’d just keep it. I'd embezzle it. I would take the money. I'd buy myself a Tesla.
Tom Ollerton 28:41
I think you've, I think you've said enough. Okay, so, and right. So, a few more random Tim Ferriss questions. And, alright, slightly more seriously. In the last five years, which new beliefs or behaviors have improved your work life.
Alex Jenkins 29:01
I think if I had to pick one, it would actually probably be like the ability to reduce stuff and simplify. Is, is huge. It's so important, like the huge isn't the right word. It's like really, really important. It's very powerful. I think when you're, when I was younger, anyway, you kind of think you kind of look almost metaphorically above you at people above you and think, it must be so complicated, must be so complex. It must be wrangling, all this crazy stuff, and in a way they are. But, you know, I think the temptation is always to make things more complicated. Why is that?
Tom Ollerton 29:35
I see that work a lot. Remember doing a deck for a brand that should be remain nameless. And I showed it to the Account Director and he said, "Yeah, well, you know, you just need to bulk it out a bit more." You know, he was a group account director, bless him. I thought, "Why on earth would I need to bulk this out? Why do we feel the need to make stuff longer or more complicated. What is that solving for us?" Because we know that simplicity is a...
Alex Jenkins 30:10
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like because people can do things with simplicity. But I think people do it because certainly when you're a bit young you think well, that's, that must be more valuable, like more slides in a deck, it's got to be worth more than fewer slides, more words on a page. It's got to be with what you get when, when we sort of recruit people in Contagious, we do edit tests, and we kind of phonics, we're not straight up journalists, when it's a very fine slice, but we also writers, you might say them, journalists. And we kind of want people with knowledge, like add theory, knowledge and stuff. So, straight journo will be great at the writing but won't know a damn thing about you know, Byron Sharp's theories or whatever. And then you get like people move from a planning background great, but maybe need a bit of hand with the writing stuff, because I've haven't done a lot of articles, whatever. Certainly, not going to turn out like 10 pages, which doesn't need anyone looking at it. What was the question again? Sorry, derailed myself.
Tom Ollerton 31:12
No, no, God knows the point. The question was, why do we exalt? Verbosity?
Alex Jenkins 31:20
Yes, I think that the temptation when people think I know who are a writer must use like the long words, if you've been paid for it, you're gonna use like, the fancy words, you know, the, you know, the 50 pound words, not the not the 50 pence words that the rest of us eat. And actually, it's just like, you don't want to be reading an article or having to pull out your damn dictionary. Every two lines go. I never really got into like, well, self-books, this one incredibly verbose, like, this isn't, this is, you know, a hindrance to understanding. It's not helping at all. But the temptation to think, well, I've got to like, throw in all these like, the big words, because that will make me look more pro. I'm more like a professional writer.
Tom Ollerton 31:58
And so that's in gripe mode now, which is good. And so, what are the other bad recommendations that you hear in your profession? Along the lines of we should bulk this presentation up more.
Alex Jenkins 32:13
Bad recommendations that we hear, I mean, I don't know how many recommendations we personally hear. We tell, we, our version of like recommendations as we get sent like a lot of work, which people think is great.
Tom Ollerton 32:27
This book case studies for major case studies...
Alex Jenkins 32:29
Like we've done a campaign we want to write about this, we think we've done some really interesting and the big thing was like we did a world first, you know, it's like and people think like the world first, the be all and end all of like doing a good campaign. You know, you can be the first person to be a shitty unicorn. But alright, let's maybe not go into but being a world first isn't, that is a terrible terrible. Being worldfest isn't the be all end on? The problem we have is that people often have quite a small kind of, I suppose, like sphere of knowledge and wave not like, their injury or what's gone on in their industry. So, are we done with this world first yet? Yeah, we've seen that seven times so far, actually.
Tom Ollerton 33:08
So, what's so give a bit more detail about that? What is the classic? We've done this first, but we've seen it before.
Alex Jenkins 33:16
I mean, I'm trying to think like, the Warm Springs, which is probably a couple of light years old. It's like we've done like an AR, like a treasure hunt with lights, on mobile, and yet seen, done. That's probably not the best. We've probably seen, like a lot of that's not even a particularly recent kind of example, but nothing really springs to mind. But you have to like let these people think like the kind of genuine guy you saw in Argentina, or in like 2009. So, it's all I'm like...
Tom Ollerton 33:42
Yeah, we have this thing in agencies. And I'm sure I'm speaking for a lot of other agencies where you get different ideas in brainstorms, or from creatives that come back all the time. So, the Spotify playlist has room for about five years. I think every pitch that I worked on for like four years, their new business was like, "Oh, we're pitching for Pizza Hut. How about like a Pizza Hut Spotify playlist?"
Alex Jenkins 34:09
Yeah, the thing at the moment I've been involved in, we sort of get brought into an either an agency and our clients were independent like, yeah, we should do maybe we should have a look at this. We got no skin in that game. If we think you should do something in AR, it's because we think you should not because we're going to do it for you. So, we get brought into lightner kind of hackathons and like innovation brainstorms and kind of agitate and like show some cool stuff.
Tom Ollerton 34:29
And it's a product that you sell that you hire us to come in and...
Alex Jenkins 34:33
Yeah, exactly.
Tom Ollerton 34:34
Okay.
Alex Jenkins 34:35
And, and the thing which I've had like, like, so far in the last year, I've had like four times before different sessions is we could do a Netflix documentary about our product, basically. And just trying to like this issue. And again, that was one group that was like trying to talk to them I was like, "Yeah, I can see why, why you would want." I can guarantee like, you know, documentaries are maybe not the best way to kind of educate or raise awareness about the things like, I can guarantee more people learned about Dunkirk from the Chris Nolan film than a documentary about it. But probably more people know about "Titanic," James Cameron film than a documentary. The list of these films go on and on. But like, have you thought about entertainment, but they're all fixate on this damn Netflix documentary. Like that is like a turnkey solution to all the problems.
Tom Ollerton 35:23
I think in years gone by it was flash mobs that were...
Alex Jenkins 35:27
Flash mobs, yeah.
Tom Ollerton 35:29
A little bell that will go off in the brainstorm session where, "We could do a flash mob, like T Mobile..."
Alex Jenkins 35:34
And then we'll do a viral, we'll do a viral off the back of it.
Tom Ollerton 35:37
Come on.
Alex Jenkins 35:38
Let's do us a virus.
Tom Ollerton 35:40
So, your Shiny New Object technology is viral videos...
Alex Jenkins 35:47
And flash mobs, yeah.
Tom Ollerton 35:49
Playlists. And so, thanks for all those questions. I'm sorry, they're weird. But now that was, I was really interested in all the books including your own, I'll put in the show notes. So, I will, I will. I will lead with that. And so, in terms of the Shiny New Object, obviously, the promise of this podcast is that we'll talk about a new bit of marketing technology that people are getting super excited about. And so, as an innovation director, you're kind of peddling this stuff, right? It's your job to be able to say, for everyone else, look at this thing. chat bot knows, I've seen this before, and it was, oh my god, and then you sell it into the client.
Alex Jenkins 36:28
Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 36:28
And as an innovation director, you have to...
Alex Jenkins 36:30
But I'm not an innovation director.
Tom Ollerton 36:32
I'm talking about....
Alex Jenkins 36:32
I'm sorry.
Tom Ollerton 36:33
I'm talking about myself. And you have to be super optimistic about the potential of every bit of technology. So what I really wanted to do with this podcast is to kind of sit on the other side of the fence and try and understand someone else's view of new technology for what kind of skeptical kind of claim or account manager perspective. So, your Shiny New Object is Computational Creativity.
Alex Jenkins 36:58
It is, yeah.
Tom Ollerton 36:58
So, can you start off and explain what that is?
Alex Jenkins 37:02
Yeah, it's the ability. Basically, the consultant taking the piss out here, is the ability for computers to be creative. But I think you can break that down into, I guess, a couple of areas. There's like generative stuff, where they're actually generating their own kind of creative work. There is a kind of evaluation, whether evaluating creative work, and also the third one, maybe we'll just say the two.
Tom Ollerton 37:30
It will come back.
Alex Jenkins 37:31
We'll come back.
Tom Ollerton 37:31
And so this is computers making art.
Alex Jenkins 37:36
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. They make advertising. That's not that's not over promise.
Tom Ollerton 37:43
Well, there's a whole community around computational creativity. There's a huge number of people in academia using machines to generate art.
Alex Jenkins 37:53
Yeah, I guess.
Tom Ollerton 37:53
Well, where does art stop and advertising takeover?
Alex Jenkins 37:57
Yeah. I mean, I'm sort of the bit I was when I said that my shiny object was the odd bit of it. But yeah, there's, they've been doing this for decades, decades do it and like art, and like games, and music, and all kinds, but I think really like the academic and was very much, you know, it kind of we're doing it. Because we can, we're exploring this area, but no great kind of commercial purpose to it, but some really interesting and crazy stuff going on there. So, an amazing example of someone who built, it was like a whodunit, kind of murder-mystery thing, based on Wikipedia articles, and the kind of hierarchy of links between them. So, you choose a person, so say, choose Justin Bieber. You say Justin Bieber's been murdered, who's murdered him? And we make a game out of it and go, Well, he was you know, and based on Wikipedia links get well here he came like number two in like that week's you know, charts against Taylor Swift, so Taylor Swift's a suspect. But could it be like a local Canadian, kind of pop style? Well, he was Canadian as well. So, they become a suspect, and might know his play. But some of it could even go dark, like, well, he was like, first propelled to fame. But as mothers and mums or subs. There's no real, you know, kind of commercial output. beyond that. Let's just see if computers can do this stuff.
Tom Ollerton 39:12
So, computational creativity sounds very interesting in that Biba link I've seen, and imagine that game passed around someone in a brand. But I, the CMO of Boots, and so I see that article, and what does that have to do with me as a marketing person?
Alex Jenkins 39:34
Well, I think this one, ignore it, ignore that there's two there's two bits, right. There's a generation of creativity, there's a valuation of creativity. I think the generation end of things from what I have seen, I think it's still kind of in the novelty phase. Almost. It's like, you can do stuff and it's, it's kind of right but it...
Tom Ollerton 39:53
When you could be specific about what you mean by generation. I know...
Alex Jenkins 39:57
Okay, so...
Tom Ollerton 39:57
We talked about this before. You're there. Marketing Director of Boots and you have no idea what...
Alex Jenkins 40:02
Okay.
Tom Ollerton 40:02
Generation of content.
Alex Jenkins 40:04
So, we're talking let's, yeah, let's think about traditional ad, like TV ad, you can get a computer to generate your script, you could get it to generate, you know, visuals, generate soundtrack, generate the audio, edit it, but the whole whole nine yards. And individually, there's technologies which will do all of those things. And some of them are more advanced than others. And like on the music side of things, you know, there's some actually genuinely quite credible and good music being generated by AI. On the script side of stuff, and kind of the narrative end of things. Like it's, there's some comedy examples. They're not intended to be comedy, but they're funny because they're, they're not, kind of right. And the same with the visuals, like yet, like they can generate some stuff, but there's always it's kind of uncanny valley, kind of stuff. So, I think in terms of generation, the idea of, like, I'll press a button on my computer and power TV ad will come out the other end, we're not there, but the pieces are in place for that to almost be an inevitability. Thing I think, which are more pressing. More ready today is like the evaluation stuff, the ability to, you know, kind of look at certain types of creative and go, this will be more effective than another type.
Tom Ollerton 41:27
So, so, who's doing that?
Alex Jenkins 41:31
So, I mean, on the, again, I'm sort of talking on the, you know, let's think of it as the lower down the ladder of kind of marketing comstor.
Tom Ollerton 41:40
Okay.
Alex Jenkins 41:41
So, what email marketing things, you know, there's companies like Persado, and Phrasee, which will generate emails for you, and think like Persado claims, it can write copy, which will be more engaging, more effective than any human could write, copy for you. But only in certain sectors, I think it's just like retail, just in financial sort of constant work. And they base it on, you know, emotions and things like this. And they'll do huge amounts of testing and feedback and optimization. And they'll create your email, which you can send out. And then there's, on the more visual side, there's companies like, you know, Picasso Labs. Yeah. Which will take like any of a brand's visual assets, like their photos, also videos as well, and just analyze it and tell you what will work or work better.
Tom Ollerton 42:32
And they spoke at your event, Most Contagious?
Alex Jenkins 42:35
They did. Yeah. So, really interesting, really interesting. They, and it's kind of important, like we interview a lot of people in this space. And they do. And maybe you say, well, they would say, all them kind of, to a man or woman will say, you know, we're not trying to replace creative directors, what we're trying to do is augment them and give them kind of the data and the proof to show that they're correct, in a way. But catalogs, like it's really interesting. So look at like, you know, all of your visual assets, but also all your competitors, ones to kind of scrape off the internet wherever and tell you what they think will work for you based on you know, someone else. And, you know, we asked them, Do you, you know, surely if you're is this just a race for everyone to end up looking exactly the same? And they said the test I think on to airlines, they put in like British Airways and Virgin Airlines, and actually recommended totally different things based on what the brand was all about what they wanted to achieve, and kind of, you know, how they perceive how they want to be perceived. So, you don't get this, "Our computer says you should all have, you know, smiling stewardesses..."
Tom Ollerton 43:42
Did she do the game on stage?
Alex Jenkins 43:46
I don't even know if she did do the game, actually.
Tom Ollerton 43:48
Because I know, Anastasia very well. And I know one of her colleagues came to speak at my event. I'll be back every month, we get people together to discuss the intersection of AI, creativity and ads. And no, I came down and presented and he's brilliant. And he said, "Well, we use this technology to work out which images work best." So, we did a quiz. So he said, right, in a room of 60 people that came down which of these three photos of a car do you think drives the most engagement from behind, from the side, or in front? And I think out of five different examples, the audience only got it right once. So, you have this idea in your head. You know, I work in advertising. I've been around this technology. Yeah, know what's going on here. And you know, your instinct is quite often wrong, certainly in the room of 60 people.
Alex Jenkins 44:39
Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 44:39
The median was definitely wrong.
Alex Jenkins 44:41
Yeah. And that's something to point out if you are like, your Marketing Manager at Boots, or somewhere. The idea that you could just be right, is like very reassuring. And it's like, well, I can go with my gut. I could go with the agency saying, or a bug or it will just ask the computer when the computer is right. You know, and if it's wrong, just optimize and make it right. You know, when you got so much other uncertainty, you know, in your job and you're trying to do so many other things, just like, suddenly you can just grab onto a wall. That'll be right. It's very attractive, I imagine.
Tom Ollerton 45:13
And what kind of pushback are you hearing about computational creativity.
Alex Jenkins 45:19
So, that's interesting. I did, while I've talked about this, I've given talks about this a fair bit, and like quite a few Q and A's over the last 12 or 18 months or so. And there's a real oil and water split. In terms of age group, I think there are the, you get above a certain age, and this is like being very, very, like broad, I don't want to be like, you know, ages about this, but this was my experience it was, you get above a certain age, and they just deny it, they just refuse like this, this technology does not exist, even when you show it to me, it does not exist, even when it's been proven, I do not believe it will do it. Because, you know, there's an element of, you know, I've got a couple of years left in my career, you know, I'm gonna retire soon, I don't really care. But this is not the narrative that I want to hear right now, I do want to add to this. In sort of the other way, I tend to, like, if I'm talking about it, it's like sort of sum up is like, you guys aren't going to lose your job to a computer, you'll probably lose it to a human that's better at working with a computer than you are someone who actually kind of wrangle the systems. And my advice is generally like, bring it in, like use it now be the person who knows how to use this stuff. Don't be that kind of like person a couple years down, like he just denies it, denies it and then suddenly finds that, you know, they've been optimized out of a job, almost. And the problem is like, the people at the top are sort of denying it again, I don't want this to be true. But I have the clout at our agency to bring this in. But I'm going to cut like that off, I'm going to like, cut our neck up on that one. So, the younger generation coming up is not getting an opportunity to get their hands on this stuff.
Tom Ollerton 47:03
And so let's talk about a couple of scenarios. So, five years from now, computational creativity, doesn't work, works a bit, or works incredibly well. Talk me through what happens in each of those scenarios.
Alex Jenkins 47:18
I think, I'm going to kind of like, you know, say it doesn't work. I'm gonna discount that. I think we've seen it. And it is working in areas so we're at a really low level, maybe not even really low, but at a certain level it is working a bit. I think it may just never progress beyond a certain point. So, like, you know, looking at so you know what image short put up on my Instagram feed, which will get the most likes, fine, outsource that. Computer says yes, says no to the other four. We go with that. If it's, you know, and it may just kind of take up that kind of like the day to day volume of, yeah, let's be blunt about it kind of filler, advertising stuff like shit, we've got a, we've got a social channel, I'm just gonna keep this is the volume of stuff is gonna keep putting out there. Fine, we'll do that, we're gonna do some, like banners and some email marketing, fine, let the computer do it, no one really wants to work on it. And the problem there is that that's like a thin end of the wedge. And if the computer gets better, and it starts leveling up, and leveling up and taking on more stuff, I think that's the big unknown. There's a really interesting, you know, people always underestimate you know, how good things are gonna get, it's, there's really interesting reasons for that if it was about the deep fake things going on deep fakes. So, it's something which started on Reddit based this guy developed this algorithm. And it's being used to put the faces of celebrities onto porn stars, in films, like not like, not just like, I saw a Photoshop job, actually, like, you get a cornfield. And it's got, like Daisy Ridley from Star Wars or Gal Gadot from Wonder Woman. And, and it's them and it looks exactly like them are very, very, very like them. Like the voices and things are all off because they're not doing that. And, and so it's using the same type of technology, which Jimbaran then stole from Rogue One, when young princess Leia comes in and kind of brought her back from the dead. It's kind of using that stuff Hollywood spent, like millions on CGI budget to do that, basically a couple of people have just like the response algorithm is machine learning. So, it teaches itself how to do it to get better and better. And it's free. It's just on the internet. So this is a ridiculous subreddit called r/deepfake or r/deepfakes. This guy was posting. And so you need a couple of things to do. One you need, where you don't just need to film basically doesn't have to be porn, but it's all porn, Tom. It's all porn. Then you need it in order for it like the face to kind of map to the other face. You need hundreds of photos of a celebrity or other person you want to put on it, which is why it works with celebrities, because there's just hundreds of photos then available on the internet. And then it kind of maps them on in 3D and it tracks it around. And what's weird is like, so this thing got like, good, crazy quick, because of the speed of AI just working on it. You know, people always underestimate how good this stuff's gonna get and how quickly it's gonna get. And the subject is so weird, because it became a shopping list. This guy was like, hey, I've done this, I've done like, there is one, it's like, it's literally like Daisy Ridley, you know, on an appointment. And then people just aren't right, I want, this is the person I want. I want this person, do this person do this person for me. And they just like putting in requests, like a shopping list of celebrities, they would like to see improve us. And so you can download this app called the Deepfake App. And then people were uploading these, like very realistic, fake slow porn films onto Pornhub. So, in the last, like, couple of weeks, a lot of these big kinds of internet porn providers have banned it. They're now like saying that this is a step too far. Even for the porn industry. It's a step too far that we won't allow computer-generated fake porn, and they've taken it all off.
Tom Ollerton 51:17
I was not expecting to hear those words. Okay, wow.
Alex Jenkins 51:24
So. I'm guessing, yes, well, crap, reasonable, good, good. To the point with the deep fake things, it got good, so much quicker than anyone thought, you know, and it's not that I encourage people to go looking for it if you search for it on the internet, that you can see GIFs, so you don't have to go watching porn. You can just see GIFs of this person's face just on a clothed actress.
Tom Ollerton 51:46
Yeah.
Alex Jenkins 51:47
And you're like that. Totally, and like...
Tom Ollerton 51:50
So, in a marketing context, the Marketing Director of Boots might go right, "Well, and we can't afford this actress or actor for a whole day. But they're given us license to use their face. So, we'll use the body of someone else to get." You know, an hour of work after work in verb 75 quid a day to do multiple takes and then will transpose or deep fake their faces...
Alex Jenkins 52:16
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You can go, you know, we want Morgan Freeman. We can't afford Morgan Freeman. Let's get some of the same body, kind of size, shape. And we'll just fill this out. And then, we'll just stick his face on it. Like, where's the law on this? And then, I mean, you must have heard like, you know, the kind of voice generation stuff, there's startups like Lyrebird.
Tom Ollerton 52:33
Yeah, yeah.
Alex Jenkins 52:34
We can literally type in text, and it comes out in the voice of the person you want to make a liability claim, they need 30 seconds of sample, 30-second sample of someone speaking, to just replicate that voice. And so, you know, you've got Morgan Freeman for free, using his likeness, his way, and at the moment, like, it's not particularly ethical, but the law has not caught up for that.
Tom Ollerton 52:56
But he can equally sell that as a package. Couldn't he?
Alex Jenkins 53:00
Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 53:00
Go, well, "Here's my voice prints..."
Alex Jenkins 53:02
Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 53:03
"I will say whatever you want. I won't say these words. He can't carry on these topics." So he will have his own, like a parameter and AI that allows him to speak. And I was listening to the Flash Forward Podcast.
Alex Jenkins 53:07
Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 53:16
She was saying that there was this kind of future where Tom Cruise's money after he dies, have already sold his visual and audio rights so that he can carry on making more Mission Impossible.
Alex Jenkins 53:26
God, help us!
Tom Ollerton 53:28
You know, some stunt guy comes in and represents him and they just keep making more and more of these films, which means that someone could be more successful as an actor after they die. And I don't know if you saw the example from Microsoft, I think is at the start of January, they've they've created a tool where you can type in yellow bird with a short beak, and it will create a photo real image of chaffinch with it, yeah, with the beacon, you can see it sort of chop it together. So, I'm not spending a lot of time experimenting, thinking about this space. And, you know, the sort of end of it. But really, yes, you're absolutely right. There's technology there that can produce cinema, fundamentally. So, if you can chop together an advert, like on a, you know, in a browser that...
Alex Jenkins 54:18
Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 54:18
Why is the brand gonna spend?
Alex Jenkins 54:21
Well, that's what I mean, it's, it's incredibly fast, it's going to get incredibly good. And it's crazy cheap, but that's the point like this guy on Reddit doesn't have the budget of Lucasfilm behind it. It's like a guy with like, a Dell desktop, moves like that. But, you know, like, the barrier to entry on this stuff is just so low, you know, because a lot so much like the processing can be outsourced to the cloud. You know, like, say, it's just a browser, it's kind of all you need. It's, that's, you know, the, also the event horizon. We can't see beyond this like, so when it's almost the point of being free is insane. It's going to get very high quality so we can do anything. You know, it's, you can't, that's when you kind of want and it's I know you've had a bit of a musical background as well. But it reminds me a bit of, you know, sometimes creative limitation is a good thing. So, like, you know, when The Beatles caught at Abbey Road with a 4-track recorder in fairness, they also had Abbey Road and George Martin, and they were The Beatles, but they had a 4-track recorder. Now, you know, you can probably get free music recording software, just download it and it has infinite tracks, you can record as much when you can sample, you get free drums, anything on. The music being produced is not mostly better than The Beatles. Now, we have infinite creative freedom, I think in a way that's going to be the challenge is when you can do anything, the hell do you do?
Tom Ollerton 55:43
Alex, I'm gonna leave it there. If you can do anything. What the hell do you do?
Alex Jenkins 55:49
Promote your crappy book. So...
Tom Ollerton 55:56
So, thanks for telling us about Ethiopia in the hottest digital marketing campaigns in Sub-Saharan Africa, which I knew nothing. You told us about your favorite book, which I'll link to, and you know, how important to you that, you know, the value of writing is, and your interesting career. And now you, you know, you'd recommend someone to go out and get new experience so that they're not comparable to the person who's just going through the process of maybe a big agency. And I'd love to hear your view on computation, creativity, and you've opened my mind, again, to the idea that actually, we're gonna blow right past direct response adverts into kind of full blown ads.
Alex Jenkins 56:40
Yeah.
Tom Ollerton 56:41
Quicker than we think.
Alex Jenkins 56:42
And the porn. Sorry about the porn, but you know, and doesn't tend to drive a lot of innovation.
Tom Ollerton 56:50
So, as Tim, who's the inspiration for this show, Tim Ferriss would say, how can people get in touch with you or reach out? Or where do they find you online?
Alex Jenkins 57:00
Like you can contagious.com for work. On Twitter, just @A_J.
Tom Ollerton 57:06
That's a good one?
Alex Jenkins 57:07
Yeah, I was a pretty early adopter on Twitter.
Tom Ollerton 57:10
Cool. All right. Well, thanks very much.
Alex Jenkins 57:12
Cheers. Thanks for having me.