Episode 150 / Rob Bullough / Electronic Arts / Director, Global Brand Marketing
Podcast: Why Brands Need to Create Pressure to Draw People In
Rob Bullough is the Director, Global Brand Marketing at Electronic Arts (EA), where he looks after all upstream and downstream marketing processes. His career with EA started many years ago when he created music for their games, which points to his varied interests which he has pursued through his work. Music has also taught Rob about the importance of pressure – his Shiny New Object.
How can pressure be a good thing, especially in creating a brand? Rob thinks of pressure differently: he recalls being at a music gig where the DJ had everyone “under a spell,” then lost that when he dropped a record. Pressure went out of the room and the spell was broken. In the same way, brands need to weave a web to attract consumers, creating a coherent and “relentless” brand message and image. If they ever “drop the ball,” that’s when they lose that pressure.
And this pressure can mean lots of things: authenticity, coherent message, creative design. Nike is a good example of a brand that does pressure well, or the British cycling brand Rafa. It’s all about successfully building a universe that consumers want to be part of, that attracts and retains their interest, without ever losing that magic.
But how did Rob discover this connection between pressure, music and marketing? Our conversation started with Rob talking not about building a marketing career, but rather pursuing passions and learning skills every time he felt that his work was stagnating. From learning to design websites to doing that for work, then making music and ending up working for EA to create the soundtrack for their games, to finally looking at programming and drawing parallels between coding systems and the equivalent in everyday life, Rob is constantly drawing connections, learning and developing.
To listen to Rob talk about his various passion pursuits, his favourite book and his top marketing tip, listen to the podcast here.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:00
Hello, and welcome to the Shiny New Object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative and this is a podcast about the future of marketing. Every week or so I have the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing one of our industry's leaders. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with Rob Bullough, who is Director global brand marketing at Electronic Arts, I was introduced by Rob by the Future conference. So Rob, for anyone who's listening to this podcast, he doesn't know who you are and what you do. Can you give the audience a bit of an overview?
Rob Bullough 1:23
I can. Hey, Tom, I yeah, so as you say, my my role is director of global brand marketing, management, it seems to be relatively interchangeable. And ultimately, ultimately, my role kind of sits, it sort of starts upstream. So kind of figuring out what it is that motivates our players to play our games. And indeed, what they expect from us as a brand and being able to articulate that, articulate that in a way in which I can, I guess, excite other teams so that they can develop products, which will make sense to that player, both in terms of what they're looking for from us as a brand, but also you know, what they want, generally from from gaming, and then ultimately, going downstream to help our communication teams figure out how to talk about it as well. So that's more or less the way my role is constructed at EA, I began life, or rather I began my career after leaving school, tried art school for a bit, but didn't last very long. I think I did about half a foundation year before realizing that it wasn't, I don't know, I guess I just wanted to go and get a job and go and do some stuff. I'd sort of done, I was done with education, which more or less, became a bit of a blueprint for me for the rest of my life. Because the I don't know, I put a lot more for whatever, for good or bad, better or worse, I put a lot more credit in learning things myself, as opposed to being taught things. I'm not very good at being taught things but I really really love to fail and learn shit myself. And so that's kind of guided thinking. So anyway, I suppose I got really lucky, actually, truly honest, because the because the internet was becoming a thing. And I and I found myself after working in numerous shops. I was actually at Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus for many years, but eventually got myself work a job working at a broadcaster and convinced them to let me design a website, which I learned because I used to throw parties like in, you know, old warehouses in the in inner London, and had figured out how to use Photoshop and all kinds of other tools in order to build websites. And so so and said, Hey, I can do that. And eventually they let me have a go. And then that became a job, which was fun. And, you know, I learned a whole bunch of stuff, I was around some really exciting people, and then ultimately got a little bit bored of that. And so and music as you know, like hence the pies in around London, musics always been a big part of my life. So at one point, I just decided to kind of reject that career in design and go and follow music instead. So did I was a professional musician for I guess about four years, which actually is the way I met EA, because they were looking for somebody to do a soundtrack to Need For Speed carbon. And I knew a guy who I'd done some work with on some other projects. And so he now is at EA. And anyway, like so I ended up doing the title track and a number of other chains for Need for Speed carbon, and I guess, gosh, I don't even know how long ago that was maybe 15 more 15-18 years ago. Hmm. And then then that kind of run its course because ultimately, the problem is is I love music too much. I'd like making it and so writing it to brief was kind of killing me a little bit. So I decided I need to do something else. Which kind of had to be sort of tied to design Or something which at least I had some kind of record of experience with. And this is around the time when, you know, flash was a thing, everybody out there remembers Flash, before we all hate Flash. But I decided I wanted to learn Flash and, and so I got into programming so I taught myself how to program and, and went back into the, you know the role of working within kind of digital creatives in order to, to build Flash experiences people which eventually landed a job at an ad agency and there I, I had a lot of fun actually being around some people who are crazy smart, like way better at stuff than I was. And, and I learned a lot about a lot of things and eventually kind of transitioned away from programming and more into just being a general creative.
And, but along the way, like working with loads of different brands, and particularly Nike, like, was one of our clients, I learned a whole ton of stuff, which actually fundamentally changed the way I perceive brands, you know, because I always been kind of interested in building brands, you know, building my own brands, building myself as a, as a company when I was a musician and, and indeed, you know, like when I was running these pies, and so there was always this, this kind of desire to, to be to create things which are meaningful to people. And I suppose that was what I ended up chasing. When I eventually continued talking to EA, and eventually found myself actually working a full time on a, on a brand in a position of trying to build this brand up. This is this sub brand of Need for speed, which is one of our big video games, called speed advantage. And that was, that was a pretty interesting journey, which eventually resulted in me transitioning into a full brand marketing brand management position. EA looking after Niva speed and a number of other different things. And so, you missed out a few things along the way, though, but I guess, the kind of general the general journey that I followed is one of just, I don't know, like, as soon as things get a little bit dull or plateau, or get a bit uninteresting. I've I've kind of voraciously tried to learn a new skill, and then gone after that. But with I never really had kind of a blueprint or a plan. But I guess I found myself here and now doing brand marketing. And this feels the most right but anything that I've ever done, because it's definitely become a culmination of all that experience. Now all of it is incredibly useful for the work that I do. At EA, so it must be a terribly bad plan.
Tom Ollerton 7:35
That must be so annoying. Well, when I was a designer, when I was a creative Well, when I used to write Yeah, you Yeah, that's gonna be tough. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're enjoying your job. And you know, you're not hunting, you know, as in on a podcast, although that would be entertaining in its own right. But a couple of quick questions for you in that quilt of a career. A weird thing to say Anyway, you know what I'm trying, it's patchwork of a career. Let's go with that. What is the What's the best thing you've spent your money on, that you use for work?
Unknown Speaker 8:13
So it's actually a book that I bought, when, when I was doing the music, you know, and I realized that it was killing my love music. I'm like, Oh, shit, I need a new thing to do. And so I kind of got interested in programming, because I suppose I was interested in my dad was an engineer. So I suspect I've got a bit of that brain. And programming was kind of pulling me in. But the, the only programming I've really done was relatively basic stuff. And anyways, people would when ActionScript, three came out, which was this, I don't know, the next step in the program, programming language flash, they introduced object oriented programming. And so I figured, well, I should probably figure out what on earth that is, it sounds cool, so I should probably find out about it. Anyway, so I bought a book called Design Patterns in ActionScript, I think it was called something along those lines. Anyway, it the content of that book was explaining these, sorry, excuse me, these. I would approach programming as you creating these living systems, you know, by writing code, you're creating these living systems, which are made up of all these various different pieces. And it introduced a whole load of really interesting language to me around things like capsulation. So basically, the idea that you can kind of issue one command from one place, and a number of things can react to that in turn, but without you having to tell them explicitly what they need to do because you've defined their behavior in advance. And the more I got into understanding these patterns, the more I started to see, I don't know similarities between that and the things in nature. You know, the way biology works, the human systems work, you know, the way that independently all this mad shit happens inside of our bodies. And the cells No, they have explicit knowledge of what they're supposed to be doing. And it was I've really found this book, like, incredibly fascinating because it was, it was more or less offering programming to its readers in that form and object oriented programming, you know, those of you who are programmers will know that this is not, this is not something which was invented by flash. It's a, it's a, just a way that certain programming languages are used. But it was new to me. And I suppose I bring it up, because I've retained that. I guess that framework of looking at systems beyond programming, so I still think about things in terms of systems. So now when I look at brands, I think about them as a complete living system, which requires very, very similar pattern thinking as, as does proper object oriented programming. So it was a really, it was a real milestone for me in a in terms of learning stuff. And it's, it's super applicable way beyond programming. I mean, I haven't programmed anything in years. But I still very much used the principles that book taught me for loads of different other things, which is kind of cool.
Tom Ollerton 11:21
So what is your go to top marketing tip that you always find yourself sharing with your team? Or anyone who's prepared to listen?
Unknown Speaker 11:33
Yeah, well, the this to some people listen, but they get bored pretty quick, either, or I happen to talk to them. So I'm just kind of vaguely interesting. But for me, it's just you don't know anything, you're wrong most of the time. The reality is, is that I mean, this is one of the reasons why I would never really recommend you read any marketing books, because they're all bullshit, the moment they're printed, the I don't really, truly believe that there is any, there's some certain kind of key, you know, psychological, human insights, which, which hold relatively true, which are worth, you know, it's all kind of understanding, I'm not going to try them out, because I'm not even sure I can bring any to mind. But I suppose the thing that I'm always excited by is learning that I'm wrong. And that we've been doing wrong, because there's, as a society moves forwards, you know, the way people make decisions about what they're going to buy changes every single day, the channels, they tune into the things that influence them, everything changes so much, from hour to hour from season to season, you know, from year to year, that all of our knowledge is, is useful in the sense that we can use it to do the next thing a little bit better. But we sure shed don't have methods, which are necessarily solutions that are evergreen. And so, so yeah, like continue to remind ourselves that we're wrong, for the most of the time and to challenge challenge ourselves to find out and to test our theories that we that we believe to be correct, regardless of the fact that it might have worked a week or two ago, is, I think, an incredibly important part of being a successful marketer.
Tom Ollerton 13:19
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So we're roughly at the halfway stage now. So we are going to talk about your shiny new object, which is pressure, which doesn't seem that shiny new to me, but I want to tell the audience why you've chosen pressure as your shiny new object and why you think it represents the future of the industry.
Unknown Speaker 14:13
Cool. Yeah. So I think that I chose it because it's relatively abstract. And it's something which kind of hit me in the face a little bit, once again, kind of through musical means. So it probably helps with I kind of explain where, where, what, what, what had me arrive at this. And so I can't remember when it was, I think it might have been at a bunch of years ago. I think it might have been on a who's like a sort of tech house DJ, I suppose was, and also an incredible musical force was DJing at some fun club. I remember very few details apart from this moment. But anyway, let's let's say . I was playing, there was some kind of crazy hour in the morning. And his set was utterly fantastic. And the but there was this moment where he dropped a record. And it, it just it was I don't know whether it was slightly out of key, or it was it was, you know, like it was perfectly mixed with the previous record, but it was flights and I was slightly wrong about it. And it was really, really fascinating that I mean, you know, anybody who spent any time in dance clubs will know what I'm talking about when a DJ has cast a spell on a room of people, we're all loving it. And then suddenly, that spell is broken by a bad mix, or the wrong track or whatever it happens to be. And suddenly, all that magic is gone. And the why what I felt at that moment was this profound sense that the pressure had kind of left the room that Ahmed had managed to produce this extreme pressure where there was nothing else, nothing else existed in that room. Other than this spell that he'd cast upon the audience, there was no there was there was no anything else. And the moment he kind of put that next record on, suddenly everyone woke up, the pressure vanished. And, and I was just thinking, wow, shit, you're going to, it's going to take you a while to build that pressure back up again, you can't just switch it back on, again, similar to the way in which you would feel pressure, you know, in any kind of chamber, you, you need to do the same thing. You know, in the in as a DJ, for an audience, anyways, like I could this kind of kind of haunted me for a little bit, like for a few more weeks. And I started to realize that actually, this is super applicable to the way in which I think about brands, in the sense that we, as brand, marketers, if our success is, as far as I'm concerned, entirely reliant on us being able to build some form of platform, which represents us as a brand. So we have a very clear understanding what it is that our brand represents. And so we can kind of broadcast this abundantly clear signal so that people understand exactly what it is that we that we stand for. And so what they can expect from us. But that's not really enough, we then need to start to build this pressure. So that whatever channel is we've chosen that we exist in that, we start to build pressure through our actions. And I suppose this is where that kind of object oriented approach starts to come in, where you can start to find ways to to, it's not just about being consistent, but it's about creating that spell, where this is kind of relentless wave of, of brand signal coming from us where it all ties up it all ladders towards the same thing. And we can develop our you know, our position with our audiences without ultimately, dropping that pressure through whether whether it be one key cut, or death by 1000, wounds, you know, they're both going to ultimately equal the same thing. By paying close attention to how and where we're going to be building that pressure, I think we can, we can grow really exceptional and exciting experiences for our audiences who choose to engage with us. But
Rob Bullough 18:33
it relies, of course, upon building the correct foundations, for their work for the communication for the product and everything else. So it all kind of ladders up to the same place. And if we haven't done that, we were not able to maintain the pressure. But we did it nonetheless, it remains that that I believe, is a helpful way at least for me, this may be totally meaningless, but I do use this with my team. And they're all they're all on board. So unless I just happened to have a team who have just decided to drink this bizarre form of kool aid that I've invented, I do find this an incredibly helpful concept to keep us on the rails and to keep us excited, more importantly, about the work we're doing. Because it's been it's not just this kind of, it's not just about like, you know, how do we increase engagement or like, you know, what are we doing for acquisition or these kind of these, these meaningless garbage corporate words which aren't exciting, talking in terms of maintaining a pressure and building a system, which allows us to contribute towards it for me, makes the work a lot more exciting and actually gives us a focus which makes it kind of tangible and, you know, electric.
Tom Ollerton 19:42
So who do you think do you think does the pressure well?
Unknown Speaker 19:48
I think that there's there's brands who have distinct focus on a kind of ruthless pursuit of bringing, this is probably the wrong word that sounds a bit Savage, but like, nonetheless a pursuit and a true understanding of who they are, where they come from. And I find that it's mostly mostly brands, which have founders who are still in control, because I did think about it a little while, recently, when we were doing a tear down of a bunch of different brands who we felt were important inspirations when, because you have to remember well, it's worth noting that as a brand, manager, brand, director, brand leader of some sort, you know, most of our job is actually evangelizing the work that we've pulled together in order to get others to want to contribute to to so so actually, whilst you know, we do spend some time writing a lot of most of the work, it's actually trying to work people to get them excited about it as well. And so yeah, we recently did a bit of a tear down to try and understand what other brands out there could we use as references to help others understand well, that this is what good looks like. And like I say, I think that there's, there's a UK cycling brand called Rafa, who I think do an incredibly good job of presenting a consistent and exciting compelling brand experience universe that you want to be a part of, it's magnetic kind of draws you in, and doesn't appear to kind of drop the ball ever, you know, they, the their consistency is really, really compelling. Whether they win no matter where they are, whether that be on YouTube, whether it be in the you know, product films, or whether they be in their logbooks, it's consistent and actually going even bigger than that, you get brands like Nike, and I suspect that, you know, it's, it's, it's probably boring and annoying to hear, you know, Nike being name checked again. But nonetheless, I felt so schooled by Nike, when you know, spent a short time working with those guys. They have that consistency, that determination and that fierce point of view, which is led by a founders point of view, which I think is is he creates that infectious infectiousness. So, so yeah, I think that rap is a really good example. You know, some street wear brands, I think, as well, like, you know, you look at the work of supreme have done over the years to build that pressure around, you know, every single time they open their mouths, it just is like a vacuum, it just pulls in light. And that is that is due to their kind of diligence of, of knowing exactly who they are, what they stand for, and not really straying from that.
Tom Ollerton 22:36
Unfortunately, we're at the end of the podcast now. So Rob, if someone wants to get in touch with you, for DJ gigs, or for more chat about pressure, or coding or design or CRO where all the other things you can do, how would you like them to get in touch with me?
Rob Bullough 22:53
LinkedIn is the only social network, which I have. So probably the best way to do it,
Tom Ollerton 22:59
and what makes what makes a really good LinkedIn outreach to you.
Unknown Speaker 23:05
I suppose somebody wants to send me an email. And I think their subject line was I don't know what it was saying back buy me a coffee. And the way they worded it is brilliant. So I suppose humor is probably the best way to do it. Them telling me they're gonna like maximize my reach, and like dial up and give me a bajillion hits. It's probably not it. But I'm showing the Euro human being and you've got something to offer, it's probably probably going to do.
Tom Ollerton 23:35
Well, that's great advice. Thank you so much your time.
Rob Bullough 23:38
Yeah, no worries. My pleasure. Thank you, Tom.
Tom Ollerton 23:45
Hi, just before you go, I'd really appreciate it. If you could take the time to write a review of the shiny new object podcast on Apple podcasts or iTunes, whatever it's called these days, or whichever podcast provider you use. We're on any podcast. So it would go a long way for us to if you could just share the Word and give us a bit of support on those channels, such as be fantastic. If you haven't got time, that's also cool. And yeah, if you could tell your colleagues about the podcast and also, if possible, don't forget to subscribe. And I'd love to hear your feedback. If you'd like to speak on the podcast or be a guest or you think I'm asking the wrong questions. Anything I'd be super interested to hear what you think so please email me at Tom at automated creative dotnet. That's t o m art. I'm not gonna bother spelling it. Anyway, you'll work it out. Thanks so much.
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