Episode 7
Canceled Flight (ep 07)
Is Boeing living up to their brand strategy of "leading on safety"? On the latest Strange Coordinates, Topher Burns and Robert Balog are taking to the skies with the first B2B brand we've covered on the show.
For more about our ad agency territorial and how we help brands find their place in the world check out our website weareterritorial.com and follow us on LinkedIn.
Show art & design by Chris Allen
Editing by Steph George
Marketing by Billy Silverman
Episode music by Blue Dot Sessions
Transcript
Welcome to Strange Coordinates, the show where we use brands as roadmaps
Speaker:to arrive at surprising places.
Speaker:I'm Topher Burns.
Speaker:I'm Robert Balog Topher and I founded an ad agency.
Speaker:called territorial, uh, where what we do is we help brands
Speaker:find their place in the world.
Speaker:And the way we do that, um, is we look at how things like history and culture,
Speaker:what's happening now, what's happened in the past, where consumers are and what
Speaker:their desires are all layer on top of each other and collide to reveal insights
Speaker:about what's cool about being human.
Speaker:On this show, one of us gives the other a brand, that person has to trek off
Speaker:into the wilderness and come back with the story they find most compelling.
Speaker:It's basically using Branza's compass points to discover
Speaker:more about the world around us.
Speaker:so today, um, it was my job to give you the task of going out and
Speaker:researching a world famous brand.
Speaker:Um, and the brand that I chose for you was Boeing.
Speaker:Hmm?
Speaker:So, first impressions, what did you feel?
Speaker:What was going on inside your brain when, when that, when that hit?
Speaker:Well, you know what?
Speaker:I actually started thinking like, I really want to know
Speaker:what my dad thinks about this.
Speaker:My dad, retired pilot, uh, in the Air Force, Um, also, uh, retired engineer.
Speaker:So, he was, uh, sort of, software engineer in the world of national
Speaker:defense for quite some time.
Speaker:So he didn't like design planes, but I think he gets the sort of workplace
Speaker:culture, the overall approach, um, as well as kind of understanding sort of like
Speaker:the world of aeronautics very, very well.
Speaker:So I have a few notes from Retired Pilot, Retired Engineer, that I thought
Speaker:would be a great place to start,
Speaker:okay.
Speaker:Um, just to kind of level
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, uh, You know, we were talking about Boeing and like, we all know a
Speaker:lot of the basics of the news, like, and whether you know the specifics, I
Speaker:think everybody knows,, like, things aren't going so well for them, right?
Speaker:Like things, things aren't great.
Speaker:Um, that said, my, uh, like really basic question to him, and I'll pose
Speaker:the same to you, Robert, is just like, would you, would you fly in a Boeing?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:first kind of person.
Speaker:I don't know why I think I would, even before all this stuff, I, I've always
Speaker:kind of have been, um, because there was just a, there was a, before the
Speaker:doors came off, there was a spate of 737 issues and those are the workhorses of
Speaker:a lot of the domestic, um, uh, paths.
Speaker:And it just never made me feel comfortable.
Speaker:So, um, but, I know as a person who understands that there is, there
Speaker:are statistical improbabilities and flying in general, when it comes to
Speaker:accidents, I would be foolish to be like, I'm not going to fly a Boeing.
Speaker:You know, that just a number of accidents versus the number
Speaker:of flights is absurdly tiny.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:so do you ever, like when you say you're an Airbus person, you just mean, you're
Speaker:kind of like, oh, that seems cooler,
Speaker:No, I mean
Speaker:like you don't select your flights based on, I want to be on an Airbus.
Speaker:Well, I partially select my airline on that.
Speaker:Like, Delta is, Delta uses mostly Airbus.
Speaker:At least for the, the legs that I fly on a regular basis.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, so, yeah, a little bit.
Speaker:Um, you know.
Speaker:Um, I mean that's, I think that's interesting.
Speaker:Um, my dad's response was like, Look, it's safer than getting
Speaker:behind the wheel of a car.
Speaker:Always.
Speaker:Which is totally true.
Speaker:And all about almost everything in life that we fear.
Speaker:Um, it's like, yeah, well you, you drive, um, so fair.
Speaker:My dad also has a pilot perspective.
Speaker:And so he's like, well, there's a lot of experienced pilots behind the wheel.
Speaker:Uh, they're going to make, make sure you get to where you need to go.
Speaker:And that's fair.
Speaker:Um, but then he did follow that up by saying like, well, listen, I
Speaker:wouldn't take the starliner to space.
Speaker:Um, and that really highlighted for me.
Speaker:something, you know, he's like, he's like, things just seem like
Speaker:they're going in the wrong direction.
Speaker:And for a company that, um, has this really long heritage history
Speaker:of safety and engineering, you know, consistency, um, for the latest
Speaker:news, like if you, if you Google, Google News Search, Boeing right now.
Speaker:You're gonna find that they've like just stranded two American pilots in
Speaker:space for another six months because they created the Boeing Starliner
Speaker:and that can't be trusted by NASA to bring their You know astronauts home
Speaker:from the International Space Station.
Speaker:So He kind of underscores this thing that's just like, it's hard,
Speaker:it's hard for me to focus on brand when the company is kind of like
Speaker:so busy trashing their own brand
Speaker:Mm, right.
Speaker:What this really made me think is that there's, This is a cool
Speaker:opportunity to actually dial in and like, what is a brand supposed to do?
Speaker:And how does it work?
Speaker:Just at a super functional level.
Speaker:And we may have cracked the door open a little bit to this thinking on our last
Speaker:episode where you started poking some existential questions into our discussion
Speaker:of MGM to be like, what's really a brand.
Speaker:I'm going to take it from, uh, that was like an existential level.
Speaker:I'm going to go be like, What does a brand do functionally?
Speaker:Um, because I actually think that Boeing is sort of at that place where
Speaker:they really need to ask themselves what's their brand doing for them?
Speaker:What are they doing for their brand?
Speaker:There's a lot of work to be done here, so it feels like a really nice
Speaker:moment in the life of this brand to be able to kinda like interrogate those
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think, um, you're doing a thing by, uh, by proceeding this way that my
Speaker:family has asked for, for me, for as long as I've had this career, which
Speaker:is like, really, what is it you do?
Speaker:What, what is it you spend your time doing?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And the problem is, every time we describe that.
Speaker:we tell people they just don't remember, which is fundamentally
Speaker:a failure of branding.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Fair.
Speaker:So I don't know that I'm going to like help us overcome that
Speaker:and carry the entire industry.
Speaker:But I think at least we can sort of underscore some of the basic,
Speaker:like fundamentals of the thing.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:I'm excited for this.
Speaker:This is amazing.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So we're going to do it in three little pieces.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:Uh, three parts.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:logo.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So, most people think of a logo when you think of a brand.
Speaker:and the two things are very well entwined, as you and I know.
Speaker:But obviously not.
Speaker:The logo isn't the entirety of the brand, um, but it's a great place to start.
Speaker:And the reason I want to start with the logo for, uh, Boeing is
Speaker:it actually, really fascinatingly, their current logo today tells
Speaker:the story of the entire company.
Speaker:Ah,
Speaker:It is all baked into
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:So the very first logo of Boeing that you can't see in its current iteration
Speaker:now at all, but is fascinating, was what they called the Totem.
Speaker:And it was Boeing stacked vertically, and it has little wings coming out
Speaker:the top around the B and the O.
Speaker:And what that signified was not just air travel, but also
Speaker:the fact that it was flying.
Speaker:a company born in the Pacific
Speaker:hmm.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So, born in Seattle, um, and they kind of celebrated the
Speaker:Seattle roots with that logo.
Speaker:The logo did not last, um, but the, as the company grew, um, they decided to get
Speaker:real about getting a logo around 1945.
Speaker:and what they did is they created what you still see as what we
Speaker:refer to as like the word mark.
Speaker:The, the actual Writing of the letters B O E I N G.
Speaker:Um, and engineers came up with that.
Speaker:So, it wasn't like they brought in like a celebrated designer or anything like that.
Speaker:Um, just the engineers in their office, sort of like some, some guys were
Speaker:draftsmen and they came up with this.
Speaker:They call it Stratotype.
Speaker:Ooh, does it have its own typeface?
Speaker:I don't know if it has its own full typeface, but they talk about
Speaker:it as being done in Stratotype.
Speaker:They do not use Stratotype, as far as I could tell, in any other
Speaker:places in how they communicate.
Speaker:But some people might not know, but most companies, especially heritage
Speaker:companies, kind of when they have their own hand done lettering and stuff like
Speaker:that, they tend to give it a name.
Speaker:And that's why I think it's kind of cool that Engineer is the
Speaker:one that created the wordmark.
Speaker:Um.
Speaker:It's very distinctive in terms of it has a lot of velocity to it.
Speaker:It's a hard lean.
Speaker:Um, so that's, that piece was invented in 1945 and that served as
Speaker:the brand for a really long time.
Speaker:Then Boeing went through a series of acquisitions, um, and
Speaker:mergers and stuff like that.
Speaker:Um, it, it's reminiscent of the MGM conversation we had yesterday, or
Speaker:last, um, last episode, where, um, you know, there's a lot of like, things
Speaker:come in, things go out, et cetera.
Speaker:anyway, they're going, they, they got through that, but they felt like
Speaker:they needed to grow, so what they started doing is buying up a bunch
Speaker:of other, like, engineering focused aeronautical companies, and that's what
Speaker:led them to purchase McDonnell Douglas.
Speaker:Uh, McDonnell Douglas was not doing so well, but they had done a lot of, like,
Speaker:designing of a variety of different things, and, those products are what
Speaker:created the McDonnell Douglas logo.
Speaker:It said McDonnell Douglas and some lettering, and then, um, there's
Speaker:a few different shapes around it.
Speaker:There's a circle.
Speaker:There's a, like, sort of curvy thing, and then there's like a little bit
Speaker:of like a triangle, delta thing.
Speaker:Those, in and of themselves, have their own heritage.
Speaker:McDonnell Douglas didn't used to be together.
Speaker:There used to be McDonnell and Douglas.
Speaker:So, first there was Douglas.
Speaker:And Douglas, uh, the people who, they, they made, planes.
Speaker:early on, and they were the first company to make planes
Speaker:that circumnavigated the globe.
Speaker:hence the circle.
Speaker:their logo was the circle with a little spinny thing around it being like,
Speaker:we're the ones that made it around this.
Speaker:Um, when Douglas merged with McDonnell to make McDonnell Douglas, and
Speaker:then they went into, uh, the more, tactically aggressive, world of
Speaker:aeronautics, meaning making missiles, um, they wanted to show like, hey,
Speaker:not only do we make planes, the little delta, um, but we also make missiles.
Speaker:So the curvy thing that used to be, we circumnavigate the globe
Speaker:became the trajectory of the missile that is being fired.
Speaker:So you have this shape of the circle curve, uh, and then the delta, um, and
Speaker:then, The curve had a missile on it, but then when, uh, Boeing bought McDonnell
Speaker:Douglas, they took the Douglas, they took the McDonnell part of it, and then
Speaker:so they simplified all those shapes.
Speaker:So you have the circle, the swoop, and the little delta, and they just
Speaker:put it on the end of Boeing, because now Boeing does all those things.
Speaker:So, it kind of is this like Frankenstein of a Frankenstein that shows like
Speaker:all these component little pieces that go into creating what is now,
Speaker:believe it or not, The United States largest exporter by dollar value.
Speaker:You're kidding.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:They, are they still the parent company of McDonald Douglas?
Speaker:They just subsumed them.
Speaker:So yeah, like the McDonnell Douglas stuff sits under the
Speaker:larger Boeing corporate structure.
Speaker:Cause I'm, that means they supply militaries, they supply domestic and
Speaker:they've supplied foreign airlines.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There's a lot, there's a lot there.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So it's interesting because In this one little logo, if you start to pick
Speaker:it apart, um, you start to discover a 100 plus year history of the company
Speaker:all kind of like bound up in these little symbols and design choices.
Speaker:so I, it, I think it's kind of fascinating to see how that, that stuff
Speaker:still kind of like communicates with
Speaker:Yeah, totally.
Speaker:Okay, so logo, that's first piece.
Speaker:Piece number two, target market.
Speaker:Oh,
Speaker:So something that you brought up on our previous episode is you said, you know,
Speaker:we haven't really talked about B2B brands.
Speaker:And that is true.
Speaker:We haven't.
Speaker:Um, so I'm glad we're doing this, but I think this brand serves
Speaker:as a little bit of an exception.
Speaker:Uh huh.
Speaker:Because what I think is fascinating, the more I thought about it and the
Speaker:more I dug into it, is that over the past ten, but really like past
Speaker:couple years, Boeing, whether it likes it or not, has become a B2C
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:you, uh,
Speaker:why you asked me that question at the top of the conversation?
Speaker:yeah, you proved it a little bit.
Speaker:bear trap.
Speaker:We laid there a little bit of
Speaker:I, I, I put out bait and I see if, you know, you come and,
Speaker:uh, stick your nose in it.
Speaker:Um, the, the thing that happened is because of the crisis that Boeing
Speaker:went through with all the safety challenges that they've been having,
Speaker:all the, all those things, um, They have become a brand that consumers
Speaker:actually have to care about.
Speaker:So in a world where there's B2B and B2C, and for those of you for whom, um, we
Speaker:should unpack our lame jargon a little bit more, um, B2B just being business to
Speaker:business, B2C being business to consumer.
Speaker:Most business to business, companies aren't thought of as necessarily being
Speaker:investing as much in their brand because traditionally the thinking goes that
Speaker:the reason businesses decide to buy from other businesses is all dollars and cents.
Speaker:Um, and it's all about, you know, like the, the rational.
Speaker:Um, and so it doesn't matter what you call a thing.
Speaker:If it's the best product, people will buy it.
Speaker:And to some degree that's true, but Um, this space is maturing and there are a
Speaker:lot of reasons to think about, um, B2B as being something that still needs to be
Speaker:able to communicate values and et cetera.
Speaker:Um, B2B doesn't really like living in a B2C world if they want to be
Speaker:able to communicate on things like I was saying, like dollars, like
Speaker:the numbers, uh, that supply chain, whatever those things might be.
Speaker:but, you know, People have to care if they're like, wait, do these planes
Speaker:serve like, uh, a danger to me?
Speaker:Like, should I be, should I be getting in a plane?
Speaker:Uh, like, gosh, 300 plus people have died on a Boeing in recent memory and far more
Speaker:people have been terrified by being on planes where things haven't gone well.
Speaker:And two astronauts up in space are, uh, right now cursing the fact that
Speaker:they chose to take a trip up there.
Speaker:And I'm going, so like, should I, um, so we're, we're kind of in this
Speaker:world where like suddenly a company that is not adept at communicating
Speaker:with consumers is having to do so.
Speaker:Yeah, it's really unique because you're not, uh, I'm as a, I'm
Speaker:not a consumer of airplanes.
Speaker:I'm not going out and buying an airplane from Boeing, but I am living
Speaker:in relationship to that brand in a very, very immediate way that, um, is, is
Speaker:different than when I buy a pair of shoes.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:in some ways it's the same.
Speaker:What we have, we also haven't talked about the fact that The B to B to B
Speaker:to C, B to B and B to C's divide is in many ways often confusing because
Speaker:every business is filled with people.
Speaker:So if you're selling from one business to another business, you're selling
Speaker:to a human and then there's the, then there's the B to B to C, which is kind
Speaker:of like sort of what Boeing is, is the intermediated industries where there's
Speaker:a person in the middle who sells you something that the business sold to them.
Speaker:Yes, and that's, um, that actually, because I started digging into this
Speaker:more like brands that you know, have to switch really quickly from
Speaker:being B to C, B to B and figuring out how to speak to consumers.
Speaker:It's a really difficult pivot that needs to be made.
Speaker:And it's always a crisis that pushes them forward into that.
Speaker:Um, a lot of times food, like food safety issues can trigger this.
Speaker:So when there's like a, um, know, have you ever gotten a text from
Speaker:your mom saying like, did you buy anything from Trader Joe's in the
Speaker:past year that had broccoli in it?
Speaker:Uh, it's like stuff like that that they're like, wait, this one factory
Speaker:that processes broccoli had a listeria outbreak and you need to be really,
Speaker:you know, and so those are the times when we as consumers actually have
Speaker:to do our own research and dig into the guts of this, like, very messy
Speaker:commercial system that brands usually paper over and we just get the B to C
Speaker:side, but then we have to like dig into them and learn about the B to B stuff.
Speaker:in order to protect ourselves and not die screaming, plummeting from the sky
Speaker:or, you know, uh, sick from listeria.
Speaker:did that got dark?
Speaker:I mean, you know, I'm actually, we will get to,
Speaker:to that very dark moment later too.
Speaker:Um, but just to put forward, I was challenged myself like, okay, is
Speaker:it always, is it always crises, crises, it is always crisscross, uh,
Speaker:applesauce that forces, uh, Brands to move from B to B to B to C.
Speaker:There are a few exceptions where there's kind of like that branching from a world
Speaker:of like communicating within an industry to communicating to your end consumer.
Speaker:One that I thought of that is still obviously a crisis, but is maybe less, um,
Speaker:The choice is less bad for the industry.
Speaker:the brands themselves.
Speaker:Um, do you remember the like whole
Speaker:like world of signaling by which vaccine you got
Speaker:Oh, yeah, totally.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So there was like, are you a Moderna person?
Speaker:Are you a Pfizer person?
Speaker:Are you a Johnson Johnson person?
Speaker:Where did you, where did you go?
Speaker:Moderna.
Speaker:We were, we were Moderna all the way, the whole time.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I think it started by, it started accidentally.
Speaker:And then we just leaned into it.
Speaker:We got our boosters all and all that stuff.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You're like, I want to coordinate.
Speaker:exactly.
Speaker:I think I maybe just to be a contrarian, uh, went Pfizer,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:but like no one went Johnson and Johnson, right?
Speaker:Like there wasn't anybody out there being like repping the, the Johnson and Johnson,
Speaker:No, it was like they, yeah, because there was one benefit was, I think
Speaker:it had, it was, it was a one shot.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And the, but the drawback was there were advanced, they were like side effects.
Speaker:Or
Speaker:And I
Speaker:think like less protection, like I think cause they did the egg
Speaker:method or, you know what I mean?
Speaker:Like I forget exactly what it was.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, another one that's more, even more pleasant, um, and less troubling
Speaker:is In the world of tech, NVIDIA is a really fascinating brand, because
Speaker:just in the same way that like you, Robert, as a person who flies, uh,
Speaker:don't buy planes, you also, as maybe a person who consumes air, AI services,
Speaker:or a person who maybe gained games from time to time, I'm not sure.
Speaker:But you will use, you don't buy a microchip, but you
Speaker:use things that have them.
Speaker:Um, NVIDIA has sort of found itself in the very enviable position of sort
Speaker:of being seated at the center of very trendy and hot industries when it
Speaker:comes to things like gaming and AI.
Speaker:And so, knowing that your game console has NVIDIA, that your, um,
Speaker:AI services are powered with NVIDIA.
Speaker:Um, those types of things, um, do communicate something to a more
Speaker:educated market about, um, you know, how high quality your services are.
Speaker:in the interesting thing.
Speaker:about where this nets out that, uh, whether they liked it or not, um, Boeing
Speaker:was facing down a world where on kayak you could search travel and filter out
Speaker:any legs of travel that had Boeing.
Speaker:So you could just be like, I'm not going to get on a Boeing plane.
Speaker:That's so harsh.
Speaker:so, you know, when that, once that features on there suddenly.
Speaker:Um, you are in a really, you know, like in, in that moment, it's not
Speaker:like Boeing makes less money from that transaction, but every airline
Speaker:that is getting filtered out of that consumer choice moment is pissed that
Speaker:Boeing has made them miss out on that.
Speaker:So that's, that's where it ends up affecting
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Totally.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Amazing.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So we've talked about logo.
Speaker:We've talked about target market.
Speaker:I want to go into another, uh, for a third point.
Speaker:I want to go into another, uh, component here of basic brand
Speaker:stuff called brand strategy.
Speaker:Ooh.
Speaker:Brand strategy.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And you know, not to toot my own horn as kind of a,
Speaker:like more
Speaker:Let's do it.
Speaker:strategy component of our partnership.
Speaker:Um, but you know, cool.
Speaker:What I think is interesting is that for folks who aren't in, the world
Speaker:of conversations where you're talking with somebody about selling them
Speaker:some advertising services, some brand services, strategy often gets kind of
Speaker:put into basically the like chopping block of the negotiations and they
Speaker:totally get it, you know, um, and there's lots of times where We slimmed
Speaker:down what we're doing on a strategy side, but I think this is a good moment
Speaker:to kind of like touch base on like how important brand strategy actually can be.
Speaker:Because the more I dug into brand strategy for Boeing, The more I felt like
Speaker:it showed us the rest of the picture.
Speaker:So I feel like the logo is giving us the history.
Speaker:And the B2B slash B2C is sort of giving the setting of like the audience
Speaker:that they need to communicate with.
Speaker:The brand strategy of Boeing really fleshes out the rest of the picture that
Speaker:tells you what's going on in their world.
Speaker:And I actually found some really great pictures.
Speaker:documents that like unpack some of like the Boeing brand strategy.
Speaker:And I'm going to cherry pick some pieces from there that really
Speaker:highlight just like, Oh, wow.
Speaker:Like either I know why they're doing what they're doing now, or they say
Speaker:they want to do this, but it's clear that they really don't care about it
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, so.
Speaker:At its highest, if I had to just be like, what is the point of brand strategy?
Speaker:It's like the DNA of the brand, right?
Speaker:It's like just codifying what it is that you are, um, It gives
Speaker:you the instructions for how to behave, how to look, how to act.
Speaker:It's like the difference between genotype and phenotype, right?
Speaker:Like, genotype is your genes look this way, phenotype is like you as an
Speaker:organism are expressed this way, and the reason you're expressed this way is
Speaker:as much environmental as genetic, but it's kind of a, so the, the genotype
Speaker:is the like, DNA of the brand and the phenotype is like what the, the
Speaker:brand that you encounter in the wild.
Speaker:And I realized that I started actually in like a more understandable place
Speaker:and then brought us to bio 202.
Speaker:right to the, like, a whole, we've, we've basically, we've talked about industrial
Speaker:policy, we've talked about militarization, we've now gone into biology.
Speaker:This is, this is jam packed, Tovar.
Speaker:yeah, and I like didn't make the thing more easy to understand.
Speaker:So, you know, retracted.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:our listener.
Speaker:They can follow us on this journey.
Speaker:Yeah, they know what we're
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:Um, so, um, the document, a brand strategy document is just going to have all the
Speaker:like little pieces, like, who are we?
Speaker:What do we say?
Speaker:Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:There are a lot of different ways to describe those things
Speaker:and systems and everybody's got their own little structure.
Speaker:And you and I talk about that a lot, how it's like, you can
Speaker:put it in different shapes, you can use different words for it.
Speaker:But at the end of the day.
Speaker:you can put it into
Speaker:You can stack it, you can take it, yeah.
Speaker:what is that from?
Speaker:Oh my
Speaker:I don't know, I could like, I feel like there's the beginning of a song
Speaker:an S a nineties toy of some
Speaker:Yeah, oh, stack it, bop it, twist it.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, it's the Simon Says thing.
Speaker:Yeah, okay, cool.
Speaker:So we can do that with our brand strategy pyramids in the future.
Speaker:Um, whether it's a keyhole or a heart or a, or a triangle, um, you gotta have that.
Speaker:If it doesn't enable you to know who you are and how to act in a given
Speaker:scenario, then it's not a good strategy.
Speaker:And if it helps you do that, then put it in whatever shape you want.
Speaker:Let your freak flag fly.
Speaker:yeah,
Speaker:So, when I dug into the Boeing strategy, um, They have this component that's
Speaker:like brand values on their website.
Speaker:they weirdly, related to this sort of like bop it, twist it, stack it thing.
Speaker:Um, they break out, their brand values into two things that
Speaker:to me sound exactly the same.
Speaker:Um, one chunk is how we operate and the other chunk is how we act.
Speaker:huh,
Speaker:I, I couldn't intuit from reading the list of those things how they
Speaker:were different from each other.
Speaker:Um, they felt like two clusters of things that maybe at one point were really
Speaker:important to keep separate and at this point they just are kind of vestigially
Speaker:m
Speaker:divided from each other for reasons that didn't
Speaker:Maybe there really should be no error between how you operate and how you act.
Speaker:Like, maybe that might be some of the problem
Speaker:Yeah, maybe so.
Speaker:So
Speaker:uh, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:It could be a beginning of a problem.
Speaker:Um, so the very first thing in the list, once they explain, like, here's our
Speaker:values and here's, this is how we operate.
Speaker:Then the first thing is lead on safety.
Speaker:right.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Well, let's just, maybe we move on to the second one because that's,
Speaker:that's too, that's too wide open.
Speaker:That's an easy
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I know that one was self evident too.
Speaker:I was like, all right, well.
Speaker:Next.
Speaker:Um, the, they have a line that says crush bureaucracy.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And I think that is so fascinating because, um, what my dad mentioned,
Speaker:as sort of like his first off the top.
Speaker:impression of Boeing is super, super relevant.
Speaker:When, um, Boeing absorbed, bought, acquired McDonnell Douglas.
Speaker:McDonnell Douglas wasn't doing that great on the engineering side, but
Speaker:they were doing really well in terms of like the financial instruments
Speaker:and applications that they were.
Speaker:structure they were creating to the company.
Speaker:So when the two companies merged, it kind of created this battle royale where
Speaker:the engineering culture was fighting kind of like the finance culture.
Speaker:And so you had like financial engineers versus like aerospace engineers.
Speaker:But like you can imagine in a corporate setting, which camp
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:The financial.
Speaker:Yeah, so you have all these, like, Wall Street sharks who, eventually end up
Speaker:getting a hold of this massive, massive company that is spanned into defense
Speaker:contracting, um, you know, commercial aeronautics, all of these things, and then
Speaker:their extant supply chains with creating all of those things, like enormous things.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:These Wall Street guys have a hold of this huge amount of capital and
Speaker:power to push around, such that, like, even if you read European
Speaker:articles, um, which I did do as I just disappeared down this hole, about, like,
Speaker:how deep we go for you, listener.
Speaker:European articles, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker:Can you imagine?
Speaker:all
Speaker:Of all things, European articles.
Speaker:Mm
Speaker:the perception in Europe, and this could be colored a little bit by, um,
Speaker:you know, the, like, the fact that Airbus is based in Europe, but the
Speaker:perception in Europe is that, um, Boeing is not only too big to fail at the U.
Speaker:S.
Speaker:level, but it's potentially too big to fail as a company at the global level.
Speaker:Like, it just can't fail because actually it is globally significant.
Speaker:Um, so, in that space, I think the phrase Crush bureaucracy is a really interesting
Speaker:one that would be very valuable to me if I am a Wall Street executive who
Speaker:is really interested in speeding times of delivery, finding efficiencies.
Speaker:I might look at things that are, um, you know, duplicates in a
Speaker:supply chain that are there just create redundancies and say, Hey,
Speaker:Our things are plenty safe enough.
Speaker:We have a culture of safety.
Speaker:We already, you can see it.
Speaker:It's number one says lead on safety.
Speaker:So done, please make this faster.
Speaker:Let's break off our component pieces.
Speaker:Let's create incentives that aren't exactly all about safety
Speaker:at every level of the supply
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:Uh
Speaker:I looked at crush bureaucracy in their little corporate values.
Speaker:And I thought, I feel like that was used to fire a lot of aerospace
Speaker:huh.
Speaker:And if you think about what that would, how an engineer would, an
Speaker:aerospace engineer would look at that and how they would approach a value
Speaker:like that, um, which would be, you know, those, those structures that
Speaker:get in the way of making a thing.
Speaker:more safe, uh, perform better, more sound structurally, those things
Speaker:that like are there to increase, um, you know, to, to like slow
Speaker:Reliability.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:super interesting.
Speaker:Next topic, they talk about a, creating a just culture and they capitalize it.
Speaker:Um, capital J, capital C, just culture.
Speaker:and they use that in a sentence that is about basically whistleblowers, which
Speaker:is a very sensitive subject for Boeing.
Speaker:Um, That led, you know, one of the things that put Boeing in the news
Speaker:was basically the like Boeing version of Epstein didn't kill himself, which
Speaker:is that the whistleblower, um, as a, as a, just a consumer of news.
Speaker:When I heard that, like this whistleblower who is just about to be deposed was found,
Speaker:uh, dead by gunshot in a parking lot.
Speaker:I mean, I was definitely like, pfft, they, they, they might
Speaker:not have wanted him to talk.
Speaker:Um, the interesting thing about all of that is the more I dug into
Speaker:it, uh, he was not, like, one.
Speaker:standing against, he's not a silkwood figure, one of hundreds.
Speaker:He was one of hundreds of whistleblowers against Boeing.
Speaker:And so, does that mean that, um, Boeing didn't have a role to play even
Speaker:if he did actually commit suicide?
Speaker:In terms of like, the amount of pressure that they put on him, his family, his
Speaker:future, like, you know, the, I can't imagine that this entire system that
Speaker:people have described as Too big to fail was like gonna go down easy or
Speaker:be really especially kind to him in a lawsuit at the same time You know It
Speaker:contextualized, once, once it seemed like it was like, oh yeah, well, you know, if
Speaker:you've got hundreds of whistleblowers, like, are a few of them gonna die?
Speaker:Even just like natural causes?
Speaker:Like, yeah.
Speaker:Um, so it kind of contextualized the whistleblowing thing
Speaker:as like a line item to me.
Speaker:But I just thought it was like really interesting that, Boeing wanted to kind
Speaker:of like mention their just culture.
Speaker:And the fact that they capitalized it makes me think that there's a whole
Speaker:internal sort of like, whatever.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's interesting that, and I'm sure there are there more?
Speaker:There More of these.
Speaker:Uh, yeah, we got a few
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Well, I, what I'm thinking of as we're going through this is that, um, it's
Speaker:often in B2B companies where internal values get externalized to the audience.
Speaker:Like I don't oftentimes think about what the internal
Speaker:values are of, let's say Nike,
Speaker:Mm
Speaker:when all of a sudden there's a crisis in terms of their supply
Speaker:chain where they're thinking
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:Sweatshop
Speaker:sweatshops, but on a day to day basis as a consumer, I'm not really exposed,
Speaker:nor am I looking for like, well, how are those employees doing going
Speaker:about their business inside of Nike?
Speaker:But it is very, very common in B2B companies to actually externalize,
Speaker:like how are we doing what we do inside of our organization?
Speaker:And that becomes a very meaningful thing for buyers.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:That's an interesting, um, segue to this next one that I want to talk about,
Speaker:actually, because it's a cool, that's a great point that like the B2B companies
Speaker:don't do the work of sort of translating external values to customers because they
Speaker:just kind of are like the way, the things we do are basically what you're buying.
Speaker:Um, they name check, um, diversity specifically.
Speaker:Um, and the reason that's interesting is because when a lot of the.
Speaker:Terrible headlines were peaking about the doors blowing off and stuff like that.
Speaker:Um, something that, like, there's a lot of, um, uh, People use the Boeing
Speaker:crisis as a lot of like case studies.
Speaker:Um, so you can go into like, um, PR software, um, and they'll be like,
Speaker:using Boeing as a case study to talk about like your crisis and what maps it.
Speaker:And one of the things that put through a peak on a peak in terms of like negative
Speaker:news and like made things worse was when, um, Elon Musk blamed DEI initiatives
Speaker:for why, uh, Boeing was, uh, Yeah.
Speaker:Um, so, uh, this was maybe the moment where I was like, okay, good for you, boy.
Speaker:Like, I'm really, I'm very pleased that in a world where there's a lot of,
Speaker:um, flight from and fear of claiming things like diversity specifically,
Speaker:I am glad that that's still on
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:because I could have easily scrubbed it and,
Speaker:People have allied that and lighted that in a lot of different ways.
Speaker:You know, like, used different terms or, like, encapsulated diversity
Speaker:in something, like, larger about the types of, like, workforce that
Speaker:you work with and stuff like that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, on their list, they do say, and they say lead on and safety is the first one
Speaker:and then sustainability is the last one.
Speaker:So they're doing about as good on the first desk as they are on the second.
Speaker:Um, 11 percent of the entire emissions that, uh, the earth sort of exudes into
Speaker:the atmosphere, uh, come from air travel.
Speaker:So it's kind of like, uh, you know.
Speaker:when BP is like, we're leading on sustainability, and it's like, well,
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:don't think you've thought about that at all, or being at all honest
Speaker:Well, it's also the fact like, you know, you, you're, you have to lead
Speaker:because you do make the biggest impact.
Speaker:So like,
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:You literally are leading.
Speaker:anything you do will make so much more of an impact than anything an
Speaker:individual does because you have so much of an oversized, uh, impact
Speaker:on the, the environment in general.
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Um, they have a line, that says earn stakeholder trust and preference, which is
Speaker:a very corporate way to talk about, like, you've got a lot of work to do to like
Speaker:start people getting back on your side, especially like you, your airline company,
Speaker:uh, clients, um, to, to buy your stuff.
Speaker:Um, there is nothing remotely human or emotive about this Boeing set of values.
Speaker:So, they say safety, but really, The way that they describe it, even, is
Speaker:just like, it's not about the value of human life or freedom from fear.
Speaker:Um, it's about not making a mistake.
Speaker:It is a, it is a mechanical, like expression of how they create a thing.
Speaker:And nowhere does that live more into how you can see how Boeing truly feels and
Speaker:operates than in a court fight that they had in Illinois about the Ethiopia flight.
Speaker:314 people died on that flight.
Speaker:And, they were in sort of negotiations about how to remunerate the families
Speaker:and loved ones of the people who died.
Speaker:And that ended up in court in Illinois.
Speaker:And Boeing ended up taking a position that they should not have to pay a
Speaker:pain and suffering addendum to the, uh, sort of casualties and to the fees they
Speaker:were paying out because At hypersonic speeds, it is not provable that
Speaker:humans experience pain and suffering.
Speaker:Sorry.
Speaker:to get this out of my head next time I fly, and I'm gonna blame you.
Speaker:I'll be cursing you, Topher.
Speaker:Why did we ever do this podcast, I will say.
Speaker:You came up with it.
Speaker:so that was an interesting, that's an interesting, I mean it's both kind of like
Speaker:soothing, but at the same time grotesque.
Speaker:I think what's, what I think is so fascinating about this is because they
Speaker:don't have a culture that in any way brought them to say Maybe we shouldn't
Speaker:go stand in court put forward the argument that people plummeting to
Speaker:their deaths on one of our aircraft didn't experience pain and suffering.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Because that is the most callous, horrible way to treat and speak
Speaker:about the deaths of human beings.
Speaker:It's I, I think there's like a, you can see them say like, well, scientifically
Speaker:speaking and legally speaking, there's definitely an argument here to be made
Speaker:that we could save the amount of millions that we would pay out in damages, um,
Speaker:because you know, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:But nowhere in their values is there anything that they even thought to include
Speaker:in their Like why we exist and what we believe that would lead them to ask
Speaker:anybody in leadership or give credence to anybody in the company that would say
Speaker:this is the position we want to take.
Speaker:We want to stand up in a court of law, swear on a Bible and say that
Speaker:these people who we killed did not experience pain and suffering as wild to
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I, I will say that I am strangely feeling less, um, file about
Speaker:this than, than you are.
Speaker:And I think, yeah, slightly.
Speaker:And I think it's
Speaker:Take me there!
Speaker:well, one is that, um, well, I just assumed it was kind of a legal idea put
Speaker:forth by lawyers and not necessarily by the company, but I also could see a world
Speaker:in which if your roots are in aeronautics and your roots are in, you know, sending
Speaker:test pilots at the, at ridiculous speeds.
Speaker:And if you have that heritage, that sense of like approaching danger
Speaker:and death from a very kind of like statistical scientific perspective seems
Speaker:it could be ingrained in the culture.
Speaker:You know, like it feels very NASA to me, you know, like, yes, if you're going to
Speaker:be the first person strapped to the, The essentially like the front of an ICBM, we
Speaker:have no idea what's going to happen, but science suggests that at those, at those
Speaker:speeds, even if it goes wrong, you're probably not going to feel anything.
Speaker:So I can kind of understand where that comes from, you know, like, uh, and
Speaker:I, and also I feel like I spend way too much time thinking about what I
Speaker:would do in the, in those minute and a half from 36, 000 feet to zero feet.
Speaker:And, uh, if there were, if there was a world in which I might not,
Speaker:uh, experience any pain, then I'm feeling like that's kind of news
Speaker:that I can sit with for a while.
Speaker:That sounds, that sounds okay.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So you don't want to hear the counter argument from the plaintiffs on this one,
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I do want to hear the counterargument unless it involves like phone
Speaker:messages and stuff like that.
Speaker:Does it involve
Speaker:It's not, it's not that personal.
Speaker:But it's basically like
Speaker:go to hell each shit?
Speaker:What?
Speaker:Like two words.
Speaker:Fuck you.
Speaker:monsters.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, it's basically a shame on you where they're just like, there's, uh,
Speaker:what that presumes is that you go from normal operation of plane to plummeting
Speaker:really, really, really, really fast.
Speaker:And there's stuff that happens in between.
Speaker:Like maybe there's a bump, maybe there's a jostle, maybe there,
Speaker:maybe then they tell people to.
Speaker:Brace themselves and enter like a, you know, like a braced position.
Speaker:Maybe the lights start
Speaker:So it's psychologically just
Speaker:go Yeah, like it's not like it's not you know, that is that is pain
Speaker:and suffering, you know what I mean?
Speaker:Before you black out from from going in because a plane doesn't just
Speaker:like go like You know what I mean?
Speaker:Like, uh, I guess there are some examples where it hasn't actually some of those,
Speaker:you know, like where, you know, it goes, but regardless, there's like a, there's
Speaker:a whole world where people understand it before they're just like complete, but
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:who knows?
Speaker:And maybe it's just the, you know, the, the calm as Hindu cows, uh, fight
Speaker:club thing with the oxygen and stuff.
Speaker:I don't want to get in the way of that fantasy for you,
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:I appreciate that.
Speaker:Yeah, I appreciate that.
Speaker:It's also like think about that.
Speaker:Like what other brand has to contemplate a world in which their brand value is
Speaker:going to be held against that eventuality.
Speaker:Do you know what I mean?
Speaker:Like that?
Speaker:That's a real challenge for a brand, you know, Yeah.
Speaker:a SAS company doesn't have to contemplate whether or not when they, when they
Speaker:say that we're collaborative, if the, if their mainframe is going to blow
Speaker:up and suddenly kill all of their customers, you know, like, so having to
Speaker:negotiate that is really interesting.
Speaker:You mentioned like the, the whole thing around driving our psych,
Speaker:our psychology in this, right?
Speaker:Like, yes, it's more, everyone says it's way more dangerous to get behind
Speaker:the wheel of a car, but if my car, could suddenly fall 30, 000 feet,
Speaker:I probably would be a little more hesitant to get behind the wheel.
Speaker:You know, it's sort of like the, there's a, there's a lot that these brands
Speaker:have to deal with that normal brands don't have to deal with a lot of.
Speaker:And yeah, we're so different.
Speaker:Like it's so difficult to physically perceive the distance, the difference
Speaker:between 25 miles an hour and 70 miles an
Speaker:hour in a car when you're like, you know, like you don't feel that that
Speaker:much different, so yeah, that's a great
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think about too much over.
Speaker:It's way, way too much.
Speaker:I'm, I feel like we brought us too close to your like scary
Speaker:places and so we can pull back
Speaker:back out.
Speaker:Let's go back to the brand house, the
Speaker:Brand house, brand basics.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:So I was feeling kind of like by the time I got to the point about like
Speaker:that, reading those court filings and stuff like that, I was feeling like
Speaker:no one at Boeing understands brand.
Speaker:They don't understand it.
Speaker:And like for better or for worse, they ended up in a place where like brand
Speaker:actually like has a ton to do, not just with their public perception,
Speaker:but their internal operating.
Speaker:And I feel like even at that level, from a B2B branding perspective, they're
Speaker:really doing a terrible, terrible job.
Speaker:But then.
Speaker:Ah, the light comes through the cloud.
Speaker:yes, and this I think is going to only serve as further condemnation of the fact
Speaker:that like they know better and they're not doing better, but it is going to help
Speaker:to wrap up everything that we've been talking about and serve as a little bit of
Speaker:like a reminder for the things that we've been, that we have covered in our basics
Speaker:of like fundamentals of brand, because I found a pamphlet that Boeing made.
Speaker:As part of their startup Boeing program, which is designed to, um, support and
Speaker:foster fledgling airlines, because you can see the business side of this.
Speaker:They're like, we need more customers.
Speaker:Like the more airlines there are, the more people buy our stuff.
Speaker:And if they like Boeing, then they'll buy our plane.
Speaker:So we might as well like help.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:and so I want to just read the quotes that I thought were interesting from this.
Speaker:And these are going to be interesting.
Speaker:There's four quotes.
Speaker:They're going to be interesting for two reasons.
Speaker:One, they actually do a good job of encapsulating very clearly fundamental
Speaker:components of branding Everybody should know and, um, if you're new
Speaker:or sort of like need a refresher, these are helpful things to remember.
Speaker:Two, you should think about these and think like, is Boeing doing
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Sweet.
Speaker:One, brand is what you say and do.
Speaker:It is the origins of your business.
Speaker:It is reinforced through the behavior of every employee and product and
Speaker:iterated in every business decision.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah, that's pretty, pretty concise and clear.
Speaker:And also maybe it's something they could stand to think about.
Speaker:Two.
Speaker:it how they operate or how they act over?
Speaker:See, that's where
Speaker:They said behavior.
Speaker:They gave themselves a loophole!
Speaker:Uh, okay.
Speaker:Two.
Speaker:Some say that you don't, quote, own your brand.
Speaker:The customer does.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:It's that, it's the impressions that your brand makes.
Speaker:Genotype versus phenotype.
Speaker:Genotype.
Speaker:Uh, three company purpose.
Speaker:This is more than making a profit.
Speaker:What significant difference do you want to make in the world?
Speaker:It addresses how the firm will change the world, make life better for someone,
Speaker:overcome a challenge, et cetera.
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:And then for principles and beliefs, these help set the ethical and behavioral
Speaker:parameters of the business and become actualized in the business plan and
Speaker:the day to day operations of the firm.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:This is a pretty, we should, this is, we should, um, gently borrow
Speaker:that for some conversations because I think it's a really clean structure.
Speaker:I'll, uh, I'll, I'll include the full pamphlet, I'll link to the
Speaker:full pamphlet in the show notes.
Speaker:Um, it's pretty rigorous.
Speaker:It's like four pages.
Speaker:They break down all this stuff.
Speaker:They have obviously like, you can see that it's branding done through the
Speaker:mind of an engineer because the 12 steps are inextricably linked there and very
Speaker:linear, they each build on each other.
Speaker:Uh, and like, it's all kind of like, here's how you build a brand
Speaker:in the same way you build a wing.
Speaker:Have you ever worked, um, on a, an engineer brand before
Speaker:an engineer focused brand?
Speaker:I know you have some deeper experience in that than I
Speaker:It's really, it's really fascinating.
Speaker:Um, Um, for many reasons, one is that rigor that you're talking about, like
Speaker:the, the, it's just embedded in the company and there's, there's like a,
Speaker:at times healthy skepticism for some of the woo woo that, that brand brings.
Speaker:And so you have to, you have to sharpen your game a little bit to
Speaker:present things to the engineering culture that they, in ways that they
Speaker:understand it in ways that feel like this is a useful thing because it.
Speaker:delivers X.
Speaker:It's a, you know, it, it leads to Y.
Speaker:And, um, so it's really fascinating.
Speaker:There's also just sort of like a sense of recognizing another culture of problem
Speaker:solving, you know, brand, like what we do effectively is problem solving.
Speaker:It's creative problem solving, strategic problem solving.
Speaker:We look at what's happening, uh, a company's challenges
Speaker:vis a vis their market.
Speaker:And we figure out how do we solve that problem using the tools that we have
Speaker:that verbal, visual, strategic, and engineers are problem solving companies.
Speaker:And so having that, seeing each other as like distant cousins, um, and trying to
Speaker:form a common language there is always really, really fun and fascinating.
Speaker:that's cool.
Speaker:Well, this takes me to kind of thinking forward into our next episode.
Speaker:Um, you're, you know, you're talking about engineering culture.
Speaker:And I want to live in an entirely opposite space for our next one.
Speaker:I want to take you away from the scary
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:No more, no more plummeting.
Speaker:No more plummeting, no more sort of like whistleblowers and war profiteering.
Speaker:Twelve different types of collusion.
Speaker:We're not doing any
Speaker:None of that.
Speaker:The brand that you'll be investigating for our next story is Crayola.
Speaker:favorite meal.
Speaker:Wait, uh, uh, Crayola.
Speaker:That sounds amazing.
Speaker:Um, everyone has a connection to that.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's fun.
Speaker:I, I already feel lighter.
Speaker:Topher.
Speaker:I feel
Speaker:We deserve a little
Speaker:break.
Speaker:smell the, I can smell them.
Speaker:You know,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:100%.
Speaker:is okay.
Speaker:This is great.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:I'd actually don't know anything about Crayola.
Speaker:That's the thing.
Speaker:Me neither.
Speaker:one of those companies where I'm like, Oh, it's been ubiquitous in
Speaker:my life, but I have zero idea if it has a history, how old it is.
Speaker:Did it just materialize in 1973 when I did or like what is going on?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:That's fantastic.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Well that's next time.
Speaker:So join us to have a Technicolor ride through a waxy, Fun paper wrapped
Speaker:cylinder of joy called Crayola.
Speaker:Um, you've been listening to Strange Coordinates, the show where we use
Speaker:brands to arrive at surprising places.
Speaker:Your hosts are Topher Burns, and me Robert Balog.
Speaker:To learn more about our agency's territory, we should go to our website.
Speaker:It's we are territorial.com, and, uh, join our mailing list.
Speaker:Follow us on LinkedIn, follow us on YouTube, follow us
Speaker:wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker:We've been so happy to have you on this journey through the dark
Speaker:hallways of Boeing and we we hope that everyone at Boeing comes out the
Speaker:other side shining bright and clear.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, lead us
Speaker:maybe not so much.
Speaker:Topher is not having, Topher is not offering as much goodwill,
Speaker:uh, but I feel like maybe, maybe the distance will do that for you.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, I'm flying soon, so we'll see.
Speaker:I'm definitely going to be thinking about this while I'm staring at, like, the
Speaker:Boeing logo, like, you know, how they have, like, a, like Yeah, we'll see.
Speaker:But anyway, thank you everybody for joining us.
Speaker:We'll see you soon.
Speaker:Bye now.
Speaker:After this, can we, can we do a segment on why when I was a copywriter, my
Speaker:parents shouldn't have just let the commercials play, but mute them.
Speaker:So the only part of the commercials that I actually had a direct
Speaker:role in, they didn't hear that.
Speaker:Can we do a segment on that?
Speaker:Because that was always a tough one to explain to them.
Speaker:They're like,
Speaker:Wait, wait.
Speaker:Is this a thought experiment,
Speaker:parent, no, they, they just mute commercial breaks.
Speaker:And, uh, and I was like, you know, I'm, I'm a right eye.
Speaker:Like I write ads.
Speaker:So the part that I did, if I want my ads came up, you wouldn't hear it.
Speaker:So I was just like kind of standing up for copywriters everywhere.
Speaker:Basically it was what I was trying to do.
Speaker:Well, that's what social's here to do now.
Speaker:We put captions on everything, and we're restoring dignity
Speaker:to the humble copywriter.
Speaker:right.
Speaker:That is a absolute oxymoronic statement right there.
Speaker:Humble copywriter.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:copywriter.
Speaker:Restoring well deserved plaudits to the celebrated
Speaker:There you go.
Speaker:Perfect.
