Podcasts
August 22, 2022

Is This Thing On? Ep. 8 with EVP & CMO Jeff Hook of Seminole Hard Rock

Ever wondered how a CMO of a global brand maintains a consistent brand story in over 70 countries? Listen to our latest episode of Is This Thing On? where our Managing Director Andrew Noel and EVP & CMO of Seminole Hard Rock Jeff Hook discuss how Hard Rock properties became iconic destinations, its multilayered business model, and building Unity – a loyalty platform that ties together 140 million guest experiences – and more.

GALE

A Business Agency

This episode of Is This Thing On? features our Managing Director Andrew Noel and EVP & CMO of Seminole Hard Rock Jeff Hook discussing the iconic brand’s growth, challenges, and maintaining a consistent global brand story. Throughout the podcast they cover:

  • How Hard Rock properties became iconic destinations
  • The company’s multilayered business model
  • Building Unity – a loyalty platform that ties together 140 million guest experiences
  • And much more! 

We’ve included the full transcript of the conversation below for easy reading, and please make sure to have a listen on Amazon, Apple Podcasts, Audible, iHeart, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever else you get your podcasts!

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Is this thing on?

Speaker 2 (00:06):

Welcome to Is This Thing On? An audio series from GALE exploring marketing, life and random thoughts with business leaders from around the globe. On this episode, GALE managing director Andrew Noel speaks with the executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Seminole Hard Rock Jeff Hook. Let's join the conversation.

Andrew Noel (00:28):

For me, when we started working together, I had an impression of Hard Rock and I think many people do. And that might be driven by the T-shirts you see in Cancun, T-shirts or you've been to one of your great restaurants, but I think when I first met you, you told me a little bit about the history of Hard Rock and it was fabulous. So why don't we start there? Jeff, tell us about where we started from.

Jeff Hook (00:58):

Yeah. Happy to. So, first of all, I'm glad to be with you guys today. Hopefully, we won't bore anybody who's listening to us today. What's amazing about the Hard Rock brand and I got to tell you, I've been with this brand now for 14 years and it continues to astonish me, in terms of just how powerful it continues to grow to be. I think when I first started here, oh, there was something like 130 venues in 45 countries and the business has more than doubled since I've been here and the partnerships and the relationships that we've created since I've been here, it is just truly iconic, which is how we think about this company, but it didn't start that way, right?

It started with these two guys in London who wanted to create the first classless restaurant and a hamburger joint. And so, they took this old Rolls Royce dealership and they couldn't get a lease longer in the six months because nobody believed in their business model and they said, “We're going to serve hamburgers.” Right? The American food to folks in Great Britain and what’s unbelievable is all the stories that have created the brand. So the way that we think about the brand, as you said a minute ago, there are things like memorabilia on the walls, right? There's the T-shirt and things like that. And it didn’t start that way. It started out as these two guys who wanted to create a classless restaurant, and they did. And before long, The Stones were in there, Eric Clapton was in there, The Beatles were in there. The Who were in there. And they started with these mottos: “Love all, serve all.” “All is one.” “Take time to be kind” and “Save the planet.”

So again, a classless restaurant, you got a guy come in named Eric Clapton who says, “Hey, somebody’s sitting at the stool that I like to sit at. Would you ask them to move?” And knowing what these mottos are and what this restaurant stood for, what do you think Isaac Tigrett, one of the founders told him? He said, “No. You’re no better than anybody else here.” So Clapton stomps off, as the story goes, I may not be getting this 100% correct, right? But the way I understand it, he leaves and about a week or two later, he sends in his guitar, this red guitar, which was our first piece of memorabilia, eight years after the property opened in 1971. And he said, “Would you mind hanging this over the stool where I like to sit? And that way, nobody has to ask anybody to leave, but maybe somebody sees me walk in and they know that’s my favorite stool, they’ll get up.”

So a week goes by and Pete Townsend sends in his guitar and says, “Would you mind hanging this in my favorite seat?” And today, there”s 84,000 pieces of memorabilia that all started back in the 1970s with an Eric Clapton guitar. So that’s just an amazing story. In the brand world, Andrew, one of the things I love is stories. So if you ever read about Starbucks, right? And how Howard Schultz got started. Because I guess he started and he had a few Starbucks or he was working at Starbucks, right? And he didn't yet own it. And then, he took his trip over to Italy and he traveled around Italy and he loved what was happening in Italy, in terms of how they embraced going to these coffee shops. And he said, “Boy, wouldn’t it be cool if I could create something like that at Starbucks?” Or perhaps his first ... If you recall, he started his own company for a little bit.

And he created this thing called Third Place, right? There’s work and there’s home and there’s this third place called Starbucks, which is where you get away and it’s this almost romantic relationship with coffee, right? And so, it’s the same thing in terms of discovery for our brand. So we start out and we start sponsoring a little league soccer — we call it football, they call it soccer over there — team with these T-shirts and there were a bunch of T-shirts left over. So we bring them back to the restaurant back in 1971. And there’s, as the story goes, more people lined up for the T-shirts than they did for the hamburgers. And now you can’t go anywhere in the world, to any international airport and not see somebody with a Hard Rock T-shirt, right? They’re almost ubiquitous.

The music that we’re known for, we did 35,000 live music events last year, I believe. And that all started with Paul McCartney and Wings. They literally did their concert, their warmup concert if you will, at the Hard Rock in the UK back in 1973. It was just an impromptu concert and we’re like, “Hey, that makes a lot of sense. Let’s continue doing that.” Now we’ve got The Rolling Stones, you name it, right? The largest acts in the world have played at a Hard Rock, whether that’s a Hard Rock Live or a Cafe, right? And so, these are the stories that are truly amazing to me about the brand and how we got started and everything that everyone thinks about Hard Rock today, but how sometimes you just happen into it.

Andrew Noel (06:02):

Yeah, it just blows me away, the sheer size of the brand. And I don't think many people realize that. I think they’re starting to, which we’ll get to in a minute, but fun fact, my first trip to Mexico when I was a teenager, it was a grad trip and I’ll tell you, the most important thing in that grad trip was making sure I got a Hard Rock Cancun T-shirt. I had to have that T-shirt because they were like legendary T-shirts. I love that. Speaking of guitars, you talked about Clapton’s guitar and a few guitars in the original London location. I see you’ve got two behind you. Who signed yours in your office there?

Jeff Hook (06:47):

One of them is Florence and The Machine. And what’s interesting, we actually just had Florence and The Machine at our new opening of the Hard Rock Hotel in New York City, that just happened last year. And the other one is all the members of Styx. And I think Styx was actually, if it wasn't the first, I think it was the second concert that I ever went to because I’m a child of the 80s, but I have all kinds of memorabilia in my office. I love drums. I’m a drummer. Hopefully, I’m a halfway decent drummer and I never quite made it professional, but I love playing drums. And so, I love Rush. So I got stuff from Rush over here. I’ve got the drummer who, as you know, unfortunately, drums with one arm from Def Leppard, so I have his stuff on this wall over here. So I love being, I guess, a frustrated musician who now works for an awesome music company.

Andrew Noel (07:42):

Great brand and great taste in music. I love it. Great taste in music.

Jeff Hook (07:46):

Yeah.

Andrew Noel (07:47):

That is fantastic. So just to paint the picture, because we’re going to start talking a little bit about where the organization is going and some of the big initiatives you’re working on, but just paint the picture, in terms of real scale of the brand today and all the different operations that run under the Hard Rock flag.

Jeff Hook (08:14):

Sure, sure. So from that one restaurant that we talked about just a few minutes ago, fast forward 50 years, right? So we've been open a little bit more than 50 years, from 1971, and the business has grown tremendously. We are now in 70 plus countries. So depending on the month, because we’re always opening something, right? We just opened a casino yesterday. We opened a hotel last month. I mean, there’s just tremendous growth happening in our business, but generally speaking, it’s about 250 Hard Rock venues in a little over 70 countries. And so, that’s a pretty tremendous growth. We’ve got another 72 projects on the books over the next couple of years, that includes cafes, casinos, rock shops, standalone Hard Rock live venues, hotels, et cetera.

And so, yeah. It's been a tremendous growth, I think in terms of the number of guest visitations, right? So from one cafe in London to now last year, we did 140 million guest experiences across the globe at all of our different Hard Rocks. So, what's interesting about the Hard Rock though, is that it’s an interesting business model. So one, it's not just one kind of business, right? It's not just hotels like Marriott or casinos like Caesars or restaurants like Chipotle Mexican grill. You have all of those. We also have a very strong retail division, right? We talked about the T-shirts, well it's much more than T-shirts today. And now, we've even gone online with things like Hard Rock Casino online, Hard Rock sports betting online, and then obviously, the live music venues around the world. So, that's part of it is that you have these multiple lines of businesses, but then secondly, unlike ... I worked for another large, large gaming company for years and years and they owned 100% of everything.

So the CEO says do this and everybody’s just scared to get fired and we all do this, right? In our company, it’s a little bit different, right? We have businesses that we own 100%. We have businesses that we’re equity partners in, where we’re 50/50 or something like that. We have businesses where we are franchise partners, right? And so, it’s different in an environment where you have franchised casinos, owned casinos, partner casinos. Franchised restaurants, owned restaurants, right? And franchised hotels to really move a big ship, because you’ve got to get buy-in, you’ve got to get consensus about those things that are important to the company and people willing to support them.

Andrew Noel (11:00):

So when you think about that model, two challenges as the head of the brand, regardless of the ownership model, you still have the Hard Rock brand at the forefront of all of that, right? And so, tell us a little bit how you think about the complexity of managing A, a brand that is global, B, a brand that has different ownership structures and C, a brand that spans experiences from a franchised restaurant overseas to a owned property like the Guitar Hotel in Hollywood, Florida and everything in between. How do you think about keeping that brand consistent and what it means to your guests?

Jeff Hook (11:52):

Sure. I think you nailed it, right? There has to be brand consistency. There has to be these 140 million guest experiences across the brand that they all add up to a brand story that’s consistent, not divergent. We’ve all seen the movie called, what was it? The Founder, where you show up at one of the McDonald’s and somebody’s trying to sell chicken wings, right? That’s the worst case scenario. I’ll tell you, the good news is, and we do these brand studies often, we have, what I would say, is a very consistent experience across our company. And a lot of that is because we’ve got folks who are really apostolic, if you will, about the brand and what we deliver. I think we do a great job indoctrinating our team members, 50,000 of them across the world, into the brand and what they’re delivering.

I think that when you have, just as we do, we still have our very first employee, Rita Gilligan, right? She started back in 1971. She was the first employee. She has been awarded the Member of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth, based on her service at the cafe in London. And she goes around to these properties now, she's no longer serving tables in London and she goes around to all these different openings and she’s the person there indoctrinating the employees, right? To say, “Hey, look what you’ve joined here.” And it’s just, that's the type of company that I think all these folks embrace and say, “I don’t want to let this company down. I don’t want to let Rita down.” Right? “I don’t want to let the founders down. I want to continue to tell this story about Hard Rock and I want to be one of the brand ambassadors.”

And so, there’s that. And then certainly, we have a tremendous compliance department, right? That we’re going around everywhere. We have mystery shoppers, right? We have all those types of things that you would have as a big, big company. You’d like to think about yourself as a small company, but we’re in 70 countries with 50,000 employees. And so, we have those things, but I’ll tell you, when you look at results, where three years in a row at JD Powers in the hotel, right? We were number one there, right? When you look at Forbes and you say, we are consistently one of the best large employers and the best places to work for diversity and the best places to work for women and the best places to work for new graduates, right? I think we’ve got a great selection of employees who believe in the brand, who are indoctrinated into the brand and then, to the extent every now and then, maybe the experience gets a little bit off, because we’re sure sometimes that can happen, that we have the right systems in place to make sure that we get those things fixed fairly quickly.

And then, when you look at the customer feedback, what I would tell you is this is a brand that is truly an emotional brand for our customers. This is an irrational decision, right? This is something that people are really connected to. There are folks who’ve literally tried to visit every single Hard Rock worldwide. They collect the pins. Like you said, they collect the T-shirt. I don’t know if we’ve got folks tattooing our brand yet on their arm like Harley Davidson, but that’s the next level.

Andrew Noel (15:12):

Yeah. I love it. And you feel that when you go to your properties. I mean, let’s be honest, you’re not going to a Hard Rock venue if you’re looking for a low energy affair, right? It has a certain energy about it. A vibe, but it’s not an over the top vibe. It’s a very comfortable vibe, but it definitely has an energy to it. You feel it when you’re in your venues. One of the things, Jeff, it was easy, from our perspective as an outsider looking in, to see an opportunity that we saw with you roughly two and a half, three years ago, to build something that would connect all of these amazing properties, amazing experiences, amazing venues together in the form of a rewards or a construct that allowed someone to enjoy your venues all over the world and be rewarded for doing that. From an outsider’s view, that seemed quite logical, but from your perspective, what was the thing that really tipped the scales to say, ”Yep, we’re going to dive into this very complicated program. It’s something that we need to do.”

Jeff Hook (16:33):

Yeah. So first of all, we thank you, Andrew, right? For your help. There’s a little plug for you, brother.

Andrew Noel (16:41):

We appreciate that.

Jeff Hook (16:43):

But what I would say is, it’s something that’s certainly been tried before. And years and years ago, folks in the brand department said, “We want to create this loyalty program.” And they actually created one called Hard Rock Rewards, that we still have to this day and that works for all the non gaming Hard Rocks. In fact, you could go into a casino, like the one that my office is in here in the Guitar Hotel in Hollywood, Florida, where we have a Hard Rock Cafe downstairs, and you could use that Hard Rock Rewards card in the cafe. The difference is you can’t take a card and go hand it to a table games dealer or put it in a slot machine and get rewarded and recognized for your play there. And so, that has been a challenge. That was one that, years ago for whatever reason, the group said, “We don't want to tackle that one, because it is a giant challenge.” Right?

And I think we all either drank too much Kool-Aid or something a few years ago and said, “Let's dive in.” It’s certainly been something that Jim Allen, who’s the chairman of Hard Rock International, has been pushing for a while. It was one of those things that he gave me on my first day on the job, “We’re going to make this happen and, by God, we’re going to make this happen.” Right? Hell or high water. And I’ll tell you, where I would say we are certainly almost done, in terms of developing all of the product to launch. And now, we’re in the launch phase and by the end of this month, we’ll have over half of all the Hard Rocks globally launched into our new, what we call, Unity.

It’s the loyalty platform that ... It’s not only a loyalty platform that ties, if you will, the 140 million guest experiences together, but it’s also one that is trying to be just as robust and competitive in the hotel space as it is in the cafe space or dining space and the casino space. And that was the challenge, right? You almost have three different loyalty programs in one and that work across all of our lines of business. And frankly, I think we’ve done a great job, Andrew, with your help and other folks who I think have been working around the clock for the last, roughly two and a half years, to deliver it.

Andrew Noel (19:07):

And for those that may not understand why this is complicated, I mean, I think this is interesting. So explain why it is so complicated when you’re trying to think of a rewards mechanism between a cafe visitor and a loyal casino guest.

Jeff Hook (19:31):

Sure, sure. So listen, and there are folks in this world that make billions of dollars a year and folks in this world who make tens of thousands of dollars a year, right? And so, we have all of them, right? It’s not uncommon to go downstairs into a high limit pit and see somebody betting 20, 25,000, $30,000 a hand on blackjack. And at the same time, there’s somebody in the cafe who just spent $11.95 on the new Messi Burger, right? And so, how do you say I want a reward and recognize each of them, based on their loyalty to our brand? And that certainly was a challenge. And the way that we, I think, thought about that, and I think we’ve done a fairly decent job of doing it, was to say, “Listen, if you’re a good customer in the cafe, you’re never going to reach even one decent bet in the casino, but that’s okay.”

Right? Because we’re going to make you feel like a great customer across our brand, based on your value in each of our verticals, whether it’s the cafe or the hotel, or what have you. And some of the ways that we do that is through what we call priceless experiences, right? Things like front of the line pass when there’s a hundred people in line to get into the New York cafe. Listen, that may not have cost us anything, but that’s priceless for me if I was in the back of the line, right? I mean, that makes real sense. Things like where you get to park your car, whether or not you have access to certain things that are fairly low or no cost. Those are all the types of things, and we see this across other loyalty programs as well, where you’re able to deliver things that have real value.

I mean, think about getting on the plane first, right? What in the hell does that do? “Oh, I guess I can make sure I get my luggage up on top.” Right? That could be a priceless experience when you get on a plane. And so, those are the ways that we tried to attack it and I think we’ve done a great job, certainly based off the feedback that we’ve gotten from talking to customers about what we’ve created so far. I do think that we’ve done a great job saying you, customer who eats a $11.95 Messi Burger, but comes enough times to where we feel like we should reward you with your loyalty, we’re going to take care of you just like we’re going to take care of the guy who’s betting $25,000 a hand.

Now, listen, he might have a little bit bigger suite when he stays with us, right? And certainly, he might have his own parking space, but in each of our experiences, we’re going to take care of our customers.

Andrew Noel (22:17):

No, it was one of the things that you were adamant about. And as a advisory consulting agency, the easy answer was to let the math just ... To say, well, obviously reward our most profitable customers, if you will, but I found it impressive the way that you and your team really pushed back to try and make sure that every guest ... And going back to the root story that we started this conversation with, in London, it still shines through today and you do feel it. I don’t think it’s just lip service that you all deliver. I think it is impressive and it’s one of the reasons we love working with you. So I think it’s amazing.

Now, tell me a little bit about, and I know getting back to some difficulties in pulling this whole program together, data, data restrictions, but the ability to pull all of this data about those 140 million guest experiences together and using those in a way that elevates the guest experience.

Tell us a little bit about some of the challenges with that and just ... Yeah. Your point of view on how that’s being used today to start driving better guest experiences.

Jeff Hook (23:35):

Sure. So, first of all, we found this awesome company that has this awesome tool called Alchemy. Andrew, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it.

Andrew Noel (23:42):

Never heard of those guys.

Jeff Hook (23:48):

But we got a fairly decent partner who knows what they’re doing. Secondly, I would say, listen, it’s super challenging, right? And part of that challenge is that we don’t necessarily have common systems across all of our venues. So, as an example, we use different hotel booking or excuse me, different hotel operation management systems, right? Or lodging management systems, in our casino hotels, than we do our standalone hotels. We use different yield management systems in our casino hotels than we do in our standalone hotels. We use different point of sales systems in some of our franchises than we do in our others.

So obviously, the first thing is, in a perfect world, everybody would be on the same thing and they’re not. So you got to figure that out, right? So that’s obviously a huge issue. And then I think, secondly, we’ve got to have the right resource from our IT, from our partners like yourself, Andrew, who have a sense of how you put all this information together such that it’s consumable. And then, I think the last part is how do we use that information as we think about the experience and what we call customer journeys and how we manage that relationship with each of our customers, such that it’s relevant to these customers, right? What I found is we were working through, a lot of this is the percentage of time, the amount of time that we all spend on our phone. And it’s truly amazing. The number of smartphones in the United States is nearly 300 million. There’s only 330 million Americans. You almost have as many smartphones as guns in the United States, right?

Because I think we have over 300 million of those. But the other thing is, I think we each spend about 5.8 hours a day on our phones and we check them something like 60 times a day, right? So how do we take all of the information that we're able to understand, how do we pull in all these different disparate source systems, such that we are giving information into this central data platform, and then able to use that for CRM and deliver it, hopefully in the Palm of our customer's hand, which is where they do all of their business today and in this relevant offer for them or communication for them, at the right time? And that is, I believe, the magic behind the loyalty program.

It’s not just a loyalty program that has built-in incentives based off of the number of points that you earn, but it’s how do we reward and incentivize behavior by doing so at the right place at the right time, based off some very sophisticated math.

Andrew Noel (26:39):

Yeah.

Jeff Hook (26:39):

And by the way, Andrew, you’re in charge of helping us with that. So if we fail two years from now and we come back to this podcast, we’ll talk about a different system, a different resource.

Andrew Noel (26:49):

Yeah. I mean, I did get through first year calculus, but I’m a little worried about that if all the models were coming from me. Thankfully, we have a whole team on our end and on your team, brilliant mathematicians that are working through those sophisticated models. But the thing that is also unique about your business, that I think, unlike a lot of other different brands or a lot of different other businesses for that matter, is yours is a destination, for the most part, in venue experience.

And you think about someone planning their trip to one of your properties while they’re on premise, in vacation, in gaming. And also, I think the interesting thing that we talk about a lot is how do you optimize not only what your customer or guest is looking for, but also, you have inventory on your side that can be optimized while the guest is there. And that coming together, for example, tickets to a show that might not quite be sold out, although I know there aren’t many of those these days, or a reservation that came up at one of your premium restaurants on property. Tell us a little bit about how you think about that, because I think for the listeners, that is.... Not every business has that model and I think it’s fascinating how you work through that.

Jeff Hook (28:21):

Sure. Listen, that’s huge. I think part of that has to do with before somebody gets here, right? So let’s say that any of us, no matter where we’re going, we say we’re going to go someplace. What’s the first thing you do? You say, “Okay, where is it? How am I going to get there? Where am I going to stay?” Right? We’re not necessarily going to help you on how you’re going to get here, right? We don’t own airlines. Although, we have four planes in our arsenal for that customer we were talking about earlier that was betting, right?

Andrew Noel (28:48):

I’m waiting for my ride, Jeff. I'm waiting.

Jeff Hook (28:51):

But when you think about where you’re going to stay, hopefully Hard Rock, if we’re in the city where you’re going, whether that’s a casino or just a standalone hotel, we’re in the consideration set, and you say, “Listen, I’m going to stay there.” And many folks, although recently, one of the things we learned in New York was, people used to book months out, now they’re booking two weeks out. It’s really interesting, right? But you’ve got a little bit of time between the time you book a hotel room and the time you get there and that’s something that we think about as an opportunity, right? What are these amazing amenities that we have that could really make your experience better? Whether that’s a world class spa in Punta Cana or a world class steakhouse at our New York hotel, or a show, to your point, right?

Whether it’s on or off property at one of our venues. And so, that has to do with itinerary planning, right? How do we make this experience the most robust using those assets that we either offer ourselves or have partnerships with? And that’s something that I think, to your point, you actually would do that in your hand, right? That’s not necessarily an experience. You’re not necessarily walking up to a desk. We can offer all that up, right? In a Unity app to our customers, through either push notifications or email, contact, et cetera.

Andrew Noel (30:17):

All right. Well, let’s close here on, on just let’s get personal just for two minutes. And we’ll wrap this thing up.

Jeff Hook (30:25):

Sure.

Andrew Noel (30:26):

What’s on your iPod right now? What are you listening to?

Jeff Hook (30:30):

So one of my favorite bands is Matchbox Twenty and I don’t know why I like those guys. I just love those guys. And so, I’ve been just listening to them a lot. So it’s not cool. It’s not Twenty One Pilots or some new cool band. I like them too, but right now, I’m just listening to those guys for some reason. How about yourself, Andrew?

Andrew Noel (30:51):

Oh, boy. Right now, I'm working through the new Arcade Fire album, which I did not give it a proper listen to when it came out, oh, about three or four weeks ago, but my routine is every Friday on Apple, they drop all the new releases. So I try and ... My wife and I love going to shows. We’re looking forward to going to shows in your venue and every Friday, we give a listen to what new is coming out. But that new Arcade Fire, it’s one of those albums takes two listens, but it is fantastic. Okay, last question here. We’re going to run out of time. This has been ... We could keep talking for a long time, I know, but what is the thing that is giving you the most trouble right now? If you could snap your finger and make it go away, what would the thing be?

Jeff Hook (31:51):

I'm going to say, whether it’s one word or two words, I don’t even know, this is how much trouble it is for me, the Metaverse. I’ve got to put my arms around that damn thing and it’s one of those things where you say, is it really 5 trillion or is it like the metric system that we were all going to when I was in kindergarten here and we still haven’t done it yet? So that’s one that’s truly fascinating to me, Andrew. Maybe you’ll help us as we try to figure that thing out. I know there’s a lot of folks trying to think about it and what is it and how valuable is it? Where should we play in it? Blah, blah, blah, but that’s probably going to be the bane of my existence for the next few years.

Andrew Noel (32:28):

Yeah. I don't think you’re alone there. I think everyone’s still trying to wrap their head around what exactly it’s going to be. We know it’s going to be something and we know it’s going to be a big something, but we will continue to navigate those waters together, Jeff. Listen, I appreciate you.

Jeff Hook (32:43):

Andrew, one more second. Give me one more second here.

Andrew Noel (32:45):

Yeah.

Jeff Hook (32:45):

And then, you can edit it out, right? But ...

Andrew Noel (32:47):

We’ll edit.

Jeff Hook (32:48):

I'll never forget, in 1992 or 1993, one of those two, I had just gotten out of college. I'm working for an advertising agency and if you can believe this, my client was a yellow pages company. You guys even know what the yellow pages is? And they have these guys called ad planners at agencies and in theory, part of their job is to know what’s happening in the future. And I’ll never forget him coming to me and saying, “There’s this thing called the World Wide Web and it’s going to put your client out of business.” And I’m like, “You’re full of crap. That’s never going to happen.” And right now, as I’m thinking about the Metaverse, I hearken back to that day when this guy came to me and said, “There's this thing called the World Wide Web and it’s going to put your client out of business.” And I’m like, “Man, I know that day is here for the Metaverse. I’ve just got to figure out what the hell to do.”

Speaker 2 (33:42):

This has been Is This Thing On? The GALE audio series. For more information about this or any other episode in the series, visit gale.agency/ideas. And to learn about GALE and how we can help you with your marketing efforts, visit www.galepartners.com. On behalf of the entire team at GALE, thanks for listening.