Some Future Day

Marc Beckman: [00:00:00] [00:01:00] All right, everyone. Welcome to [00:02:00] this very special episode of Some Future Day. we're going to cover a very exciting topic today, specifically branding and advertising, marketing, and the concept of agents of change. And joining me today is a very, very special guest. Sam Sohaili, who's my business partner, the founder of DMA United, the executive creative director of DMA United, and a brother to me.
Sam, welcome to Some Future Day.
Sam Sohaili: Thank you for having me and it's not lost on me that I'm not the first guest on this podcast, but uh, I lost track. Am I number 20? Where do I fall on the uh, on the roster here?
Marc Beckman: Sam, you're in, we're in the 40s now.
We're in the
40s. We were holding back for you.
Sam Sohaili: that's, that's where I sit on the totem pole, Mark. I'm well, very well aware of that now.
Marc Beckman: Sam, people don't know how you and I met. I remember when, um, one of the first meetings we had, I know [00:03:00] you came to my office, but then soon thereafter, I went to your office as, just a straight up advertising agency. At the time, it was called Ink and Company. And I remember visiting you in the meatpacking district, and it was like so different back then.
do you remember what, what the meatpacking district in Manhattan was like? Those days.
Sam Sohaili: Um, I, I remembered crystal clear and what it was like compared to what Manhattan is like today. I, that's not even an equivalent. Um, the, the full spectrum of what you expect Manhattan and kind of new energy to exist is what that was. There was literally meat hanging on the sidewalks. Um, the trucks would arrive at four in the morning.
That's the, that was the magic hour in the meatpacking district. And the transvestite prostitutes were kind of finishing up their shift around that time. to one street to the left where I lived in the West village was this beautiful kind of. This is a very residential street and one block this way was the meat packing district where [00:04:00] meat and transvestites and um, there was this one bar called Florent, which was a kind of a late night hangout.
Um, so it was very much kind of the epicenter of what kind of a raunchy New York experience would be like. And I had a loft space where the office was there and that's where you and I met.
Marc Beckman: There's a lot of energy in that loft space. I remember going over there and seeing, you had multiple floors, I think it was like a triplex, and were there some like models that we worked with back in the day that lived in the building too?
Sam Sohaili: Yeah, this was one of the um, the development company called Rock Rose took a warehouse. For And I guess now that you think about it, basically all of the west side was warehouses that are now these amazing offices and residentials, and they were one of the first companies that did that. And it attracted kind of a hipster crew, which is how I became aware of it.
And everything from photographers to models, there was a bunch of creatives in the building, just anybody who was open for unusual spaces. And it was a very long, narrow entry into a big warehouse space that then spiraled staircase [00:05:00] up to a, onto a, onto a roof. And, you know, back then I was like, well, this is what New York experience is going to be like for everyone and for all time.
And, um, I think that unit now would be, I can't even imagine what it would be these days, but it was back in the early 90s, it was affordable when I first moved in.
Marc Beckman: So it's interesting, you originally, um, moved, I imagine, from, if I get your trajectory incorrect. step in, but I think you went, if I go backwards, it was, New York City, Miami before that. before that, uh, you were working in Europe in Milan, correct?
Sam Sohaili: I'm going to go chronologically correct. I in Miami. I basically defected business school because being taught things didn't really work with my mind. I defected and went to Miami and started a magazine with some friends. as they say, necessity is the mother of invention.
So we met a ex Marine who'd taken all of his inheritance and bought Macs. This is in 1988 I'm [00:06:00] talking about. So we taught ourselves how to do desktop publishing on a Mac. And we did our magazine, if you can call it that, at the kind of burgeoning Miami Beach scene. We were there doing magazine for that culture.
And that basically fed me into New York. I came to New York and started working at a magazine and that fed me into a job in Italy. So for the first three years of the nineties, I was in Milan. Um, and then I came back to New York in late 93 and started the business then.
Marc Beckman: What were the, um, skill sets that you think you learned in Milan? Were you focused on the luxury sector? I know you did some interesting things in Milan specifically. What do you think you took away from that experience?
Sam Sohaili: The publication I was working for was denim focused, um, and so they created a trade publication for denim, Sportswear International was their name. In the U. S. they had both a trade publication and a consumer facing called In Fashion. And so I really call that finishing school, um, for two reasons. [00:07:00] One, when you're on, uh, issue number 14 and you have to come up with new ideas of selling denim or presenting denim in a new way, it really makes you kind of think about the integration of how culture and an idea have to coexist.
Um, because, you know, once you've done the Western denim and once you've done the motorcycle denim and once you've kind of done the cliches, then what's left? And so part of it was how do we keep presenting denim in new ways? The other thing that I kind of really took away from that time that's really I think helped us in the marketing world is the focus of a message in a short, concise period of time and being able to communicate quickly, assuming that the audience doesn't care about what you're saying.
You have to quickly get to the point. Um, so kind of the poignancy of messaging and then taking an idea that may has maybe have been seen many times by many other people in other ways. And kind of breathing fresh life into it. I think both I came away with, not [00:08:00] just from the Milan experience, but from all of the magazine world, kind of the idea of editorialization of, of content and being able to connect to an audience specifically that way.
Marc Beckman: You, do you think today's audience is really, um, living off of soundbites? They only have the ability to take in a nugget of content at a time? But
Sam Sohaili: Well, I think, I think if, if anything, that's become acid fueled now, I, I remember when Us Weekly, and I'm going back to, at some point magazine Us Weekly came out in the nineties and I started using that term in meetings. Oh, it's the Us Weekly version of your idea. It's the Us Weekly version of it. Because.
It all came to me like, oh, you picked up that piece of information from the caption and you moved on. And At that point, there was no digital version of it. Now it is only digital versions of this caption and of the one headline. And it's actually kind of amazing to me to watch the amount of opinions people form based on this short nugget of information without [00:09:00] context and without the larger story.
And maybe that's fed well into the marketing world that you and I live at. And it's made us be able to kind of say a lot with a few words because that's what the audience is expecting to take away. But yeah, to answer your question, not only did that take hold, it's become the only way we absorb information now.
I mean, look at young people and the speed within which they're swiping through their content. Um, sometimes look at them like, did you get the last 30 things that you looked at, that you're moving on to the next 30 things, do you understand what you're looking at, and it doesn't matter, um, if the headline sticks, it sticks if it doesn't move on.
Marc Beckman: do you think the, um, culture back when you were in, working in Milan was similar? It was just a different medium? So like when you talk about youth culture today and they're swiping, obviously you're talking about social media or some kind of an app, but going back to Milan where you learned to take in that condensed level of content.
Well, you were, you were, um, taught to give out a condensed, [00:10:00] biteable type of, content. Do you think that audience was basically the same, but it's just, you know, they're using a different medium today?
Sam Sohaili: The way, the way I look at that world is, we used to get information that went through an editor. Um, and I'm using that word very specifically because that word, I use that word in the magazine world, in the publishing world. An editor's job is to go in the world and look at a series of information. Let's say it's automotive, let's say it's jeans to my point earlier, let's say it's electronics.
Their job is to go look at all that information and come back to you and say, here's what you need to know within the frames of my research. That editing job has now become, is in everyone's pocket, right? We no longer feel like we need an editor, and that the information that perhaps we're seeing that's algorithm driven and has been edited by a computer program for us now feels like it's the edited content.
And so, these silos we find ourselves in, whether it's [00:11:00] musical genres, or politics, or kind of any topic. it might feel like it's been edited, but basically the job of editing, that's what I think dramatically changed. I think we're still into, we still want what's new, what's the cool thing I should know about, what's the piece of information I want to act on.
But the act of it, the information going through a filter and then coming to you, that's been taken away. And I think we could spend the next two days talking about whether that change Is a good thing or maybe not such a good thing. I could make cases where it's actually a wonderful thing. the world I grew up in, there were very narrow lanes within which you could dress and that's how the expectation was to dress.
And there was no other influences beside those because editors gave you those looks. Um, in today's world of dressing, I think there's far less Walls of how you dress and you take that across everything where you travel, how you eat, where you work, you know, kind of the world that we live at [00:12:00] today. I think that lack of filtered information has dramatically changed our society.
So that part of it, I think has very much changed. The part that has not changed is us as consumers are still seeking edited information or information that cuts to the bone. Um, I know all these things are going on, but what's the thing I need to focus on? And in a sense, that's what the algorithms are doing for us, or the influencers are doing for us.
In some cases, brands are doing for us.
Marc Beckman: So the guardrails are off. And I think that probably has to do also with, Quality of photography, not, you know, beyond editing, quality of photography, quality of music, overall the quality of content seems to have been, um, people will say democratized, but I think perhaps it's been dumbed down to a certain extent.
Do you see a public that accepts a lesser quality of content than perhaps they were getting 30 years ago when you were in Milan?
Sam Sohaili: And that's a pet peeve of mine, because the value of [00:13:00] quality, certainly in the world that we live at, has been diminished. and I can extend that into entertainment, music, in a number of ways. Let's take something that you and I are not in on a day in, day out basis. Let's say music. Um, analog days, in order for you to go from an idea to a song that then was released to people, the steps along the way required a level of skill.
And maybe the word I can use is craft. in today's world, I can pull up an app and by the end of this conversation have a fully composed song with AI voice in it, And it most likely is going to suck. It's most likely not going to have resonance. It's not going to be with us beyond the minute that I created it.
But that kind of proliferation of being able to push information out, and I use the music example, not taking it back to the advertising world example, the amount of time we would spend on the qualitative components of what we were shooting. From pre production, [00:14:00] from what does the model look like, what does the hair look like, what does the lighting look like, what does the grain look like, what does the, you know, retouching back then was quite complex, so you would have to really envision what you were shooting before you went to shoot it, because there was no Photoshop when I first started in this industry.
Um, and so the idea of fixing it in post, which is kind of a normal thing we do these days, didn't exist, and that really required for you to have forethought on where I'm going. There's where I'm starting, there's where I'm beginning. And I really have to have a complete thought. Um, flash to today. I don't think that's really the need or people aren't doing that as much anymore in particular, and you and I have experienced this over the years of, you know, 30 years of running an agency and hiring people to work for us.
I saw a huge dramatic shift from. At the beginning, people had come in who had that level of, I had to go from the beginning to the end and understand every step in between. Two, there was a moment within which I started realizing that everybody, all the young people that were coming in our office, what [00:15:00] they knew was the software.
What they understood was how the software worked, and to your point, the guardrails of the software put them in. And having to think outside of that was just not an exercise they had to go through. It was not something that they had to Learn how to do. And so I kind of felt like part of our job of bringing people in our office was the computer is a tool like an exacto knife and it's great to use, but the idea still has to exist before, during and after.
And so I noticed that change. In the production quality of imagery, which was your question, in everything, in every culture, I can talk about it endlessly, about movies, about music, the same, um, and it's really kind of affected the quality of what's out there, the volume of what's out there, and the amount of inferior products that were fed, content wise, and maybe some of us can discern and imagine when it's in the world of news and misinformation and kind of how that can impact [00:16:00] society, and are we going Intellectually, are we being informed well enough to understand the difference between what is good and bad?
Um, specifically photographic wise and image creation wise, it's very rare for me to see an image these days that I feel are, um, Uh, qualitative enough to be shown to public, per se, while our, the younger generation and those of us who are on social media all the time, we're absorbing content constantly that is not polished, that is not thought through, that is literally somebody just shot a picture and put it up there.
And, I'm not sure if there's any value in that.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, so let's talk about it for a second. Like, just out of curiosity, who do you think are like the top three, let's say, photographers? I was gonna say fashion photographers, but I defer to you. Who do you think, like, are the top three photographers that are, you know, currently working?
Sam Sohaili: Um,
Marc Beckman: Sorry to put you on the
spot
Sam Sohaili: not in the spot at all. It's interesting because, I want to put new names out [00:17:00] there. I want to say, oh, here's some young guns.
Marc Beckman: Yeah
Sam Sohaili: and there are some very good people out there, but the names that come to mind are, I'll call them the elder statesmen of this, of this
Marc Beckman: fire fire away.
Sam Sohaili: Yeah, so who were here prior to the world of COVID and were here prior to the Me Too movement and were able to You know, for whatever reason, resist all those temptations and stay with the qualitative.
So you have to put Annie Leibovitz at the top of it because she's been consistently able to create that image for a period of time. She's really in the more, more in the world of portrait, although she's done a bunch of fashion. You have to put Steven Meisel into that realm. The man's been doing it since the eighties.
And again, consistently been touching those buttons. Um, maybe Mert and Marcus are part of a younger generation. They're going to be younger than the Meisels of the
Marc Beckman: Awesome work.
Yeah
Sam Sohaili: they're still, at the top of their game. And again, those are the kind of people that are looking at an idea from beginning in detail to the end.
[00:18:00] And you can tell in the work it shows. In the work.
Marc Beckman: Well, there's no doubt about it. I see it like such a huge gap between I'm sure you would include Inez and Venoud in your mindset. Like when you look at like Mizelle or Inez and Venoud and then you drop like off the top. It's like jumping off a steep cliff when you start to look at especially most of the content that's consumed today in places like TikTok and Instagram, Shorts and Reels and beyond.
It's pretty remarkable. We did a little bit of looking back, but let's go forward a little bit into like pop culture. Right now it's like a crazy moment in time. Um, you know, people will argue as it relates to the presidential campaign that the record that President Biden or the Biden administration, Biden and Harris, have is really difficult to run on, that it's, it's abysmal to a certain degree.
perspective. And I think it's hard for Vice President Harris to separate herself from the record of this administration, right? Generally speaking, people are, are saying they have [00:19:00] problems with regards to immigration, geopolitics, inflation, fiscal issues, and beyond. I'm curious, How would you, as an agent of change, advise the Harris campaign if they hired you, to move forward and get over these types of policy issues?
What would you do if you were hired as the creative director of the Harris campaign to push against the tough policy arguments that she's connected to, um, because of her role as VP over the past three years?
Sam Sohaili: So regardless of, of the, of the party, of, of the marketing campaign. And so you're using the Harris campaign and that, that's fine. I would kind of start it where I think I start with any, any branding exercise, and I would really look at what are the buttons, the emotional cues that we need to push in the audience.
And I'm bringing that up specifically to your point, because if the record has, uh, [00:20:00] issues that may not, you might want to bring to light, your audience does have emotional buttons that can be pushed. And these are things that feel very connected to them. And they're kind of part of their makeup.
So whether it's the issue of abortion, which everybody immediately has a component, whether you're pro or con, uh, whether it's the question of immigration, any one of those buttons that, to my point earlier, I'm not really sure if people are reading beyond the headlines. And we can't expect them to read beyond our headlines.
So if I focus on those buttons that their audience needs to hear. And again, speaking about the Harris campaign, I assume it's really more turnout than it is conversion, meaning that most people are kind of divided into a camp. That percentage of conversion is really probably in those, uh, few states that are the swing states.
But if I focused on emotional buttons, and I went into the campaign and said, okay, what are the buttons that we know we're going to get traction with? There's going to be people that hate your opponent. There's going to be [00:21:00] people that are really concerned about health. Uh, there's going to be people that are really kind of concerned about democracy and what's the messaging silos that we can drive down each one of those with the assumption that we're really not going to be taken to task on the details of it. We really got to hit top line photos. We got to hit top line messaging. We got to hit top line Kind of flares in the air that they're gonna they're gonna look at the bright shiny Object more so than they're going to read the fine print underneath and with each one of those silos Let's hit the buttons that they need to be motivated on
Marc Beckman: Yeah I think
Sam Sohaili: point
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I think. it's interesting when you talk about emotion in this campaign, like, Biden, excuse me, um, Vice President Harris can certainly play into the emotional, issue of morality, right? I think it's gonna be easy to, like, put the bait out there for Trump to bite, which could be, you know, Um, you know, Trump and Vance are not morally, uh, sound, um, there's gonna be an issue, you know, the [00:22:00] Handmaid's Tale story of, um, you're gonna lose your women out there, you're gonna lose your rights, you're gonna be second class citizens, and I think they could ladder up that way to push, you know, to push against Trump, and the issue is gonna be, like, whether or not Trump bites.
So let's say like, if you're then running the, the campaign, the, the communications campaign for the high, for the, for the Harris, um, campaign. And, um, in your mind you want Trump to take. To bite on that, to, to, to go after that morality issue, the emotional issue, um, and he does, then how far can you take it?
Like, how would you bring it to life as it relates to a communication campaign, influencers, on the ground communications? Where would you go from there?
Sam Sohaili: So this actually connects to the work that we've done Mark because the way I think about it is Um, kind of like fishing, you got to put a lot of lines out and you're not exactly sure which one's the one that's going to bite, which is the one that's going to have the [00:23:00] big fish on it and start running.
And in a sense, and I assume this is the way they've built, is you build a war room and you're like, okay, we're going to put all these lines out. This one's about, uh, again, immigration. This one might be about serious topics. Just a few days ago, I saw them floating a new line that Trump is weird. Just that word, weird. I haven't really heard that word in politics before, but I'm like, alright, that's another, that's another line they're floating out there, right? XCXC came out with, uh, that brat message, we're gonna, we're gonna fish that line because that line's running right now. And you basically build a war room to act on whichever, whichever lead is running.
And I don't know my fishing terminology well enough to use it here. But whatever bites and runs, that's the direction that you run at. Now you've decided which lines you're putting out. So you're the one that's creating your own luck. You've created the environment that you want to exist within, but you're not sure exactly which one's going to bite and which one's going to go, but your team is ready to support whichever one is the runner, whichever [00:24:00] one's kind of going.
And the reason why I'm bringing, why I brought this up, the connection to us is We've ran a few campaigns where we've done that where we're like, okay, we're gonna do all the traditional work But then we're gonna float a few additional ideas here And let's see what's the one that that catches and what kind of comes to mind is when we're shooting the Jordache campaign with R.I.P. Brittany Murphy and She had to sit on a horse and we didn't realize until the day of the shoot because she didn't tell us that She doesn't like horses and she's scared of horses And the horse immediately felt that. And we happen to have Access Hollywood there and the horse bucked her off. Now she got bucked off and her uncle caught her, but that got caught by Access Hollywood.
All the campaign, all the photography, Patrick Demarchelier, all the quality work, all of that was on one side, her getting kicked off. And I think it happened to be the same week that Madonna fell off of a horse. So that press that got generated off of that one lead, which again, wasn't our aim, but that's became the aim as the campaign proceeded, is [00:25:00] exactly what I'm talking about is exactly how I would build a war room in a, in a press moment, uh, like this for, candidate and specifically because politics you have a very, you have a short window, you have a period of time to get that message out and then you know, we're gonna hit that November, election date, and then it stops, and then you're done, and then you're going to move into another phase. Um, and that's a little bit different than most brands. Most brands then evolve into the next message. And like, the brand stays alive. And one of these two candidates campaign is null and void at the election date.
So, it is the kind of condensed period of time, put a lot of lines in the water, and just be ready to run after the one that runs.
Marc Beckman: Sam, you spoke earlier about using artificial intelligence to create new music, to write lyrics, to create new sounds. Would you use artificial intelligence with the presidential campaign to launch a, you know, a slew of deep fakes?
Sam Sohaili: Um, I would have to double down on it, meaning that the deepfake alone, if you're putting it out for the purpose of, [00:26:00] uh, tricking people, faking people, I think eventually people will see through that and it becomes null and void. But if you create deepfakes that are intentionally deepfakes so people know that it's deepfake.
And, I mean, let's say you have your opponent singing a song that you wouldn't want them to be singing. And you know they didn't sing the song, but it'll get perhaps some level of entertainment to it. I would use it in that way. Meaning, I would use the power of the technology to make points that are maybe kind of behind the back and are not direct.
Um, have them sing that song that you don't want them to sing. Have them. Act, behave in a way they didn't want them to behave in. Um, and actually the day after Biden. well, he, he actually officially stepped down over the weekend on Sunday, but he went on, he went on the camera on, on Wednesday last week saying that he was going to not run.
The next morning, there was a deep AI fake of him basically using swear words to [00:27:00] say, I'm out of here and kind of what, what Biden would really, what he was really thinking, what he really said. And it's been funny because I've been seeing that happen more and more. Um, coaches. You hear coaches talk about their players in these videos, so we know it's fake, we know it's not real, but it's making a point and it's making me actually watch it more so than if I thought this was a complete fake video.
So, I basically would want to play along with the audience, knowing that it's a fake, as opposed to trying to make them think that they're seeing something that wasn't real.
Marc Beckman: Sam, it's interesting. This week was a big week also. Um, the Olympics started in Paris, France, and the opening ceremony was, you know, highly scrutinized. There was a lot of Christian groups were really upset with this scene that looked like it was the Last Supper of Jesus Christ. Um, and people were really up in arms.
Was that a deep fake?
Sam Sohaili: No. I mean, in what sense would I say that's a [00:28:00] deep fake?
Marc Beckman: Was that visual that we all watched all over the world real?
Sam Sohaili: I believe it was real. I, I believe that was just a French being French. Um, you know, it's funny, I think this whole opening ceremony is kind of a Rorschach test on who you are. Uh, because if you're triggered by certain visuals, then yes, you would find that very offensive because that's, uh, again, your belief system, your emotional belief system that you're stuck to.
Um, and I was having this conversation earlier today. I, I was speaking to one person who had heard this was the best opening ceremony that's ever happened. And I spoke to somebody else who thought it was the worst opening ceremony that had ever happened. And both of them were valid because both believed in it, and that was their view, that was their perspective.
So, was it the best, was it the worst? I think it's up to the beholder in this particular case. But I'll tell you the parts of it that I think they did really well. Um, and what they do deserve great points for. And, and you and I are big proponents of decentralized ideas. Kind of the, the old school [00:29:00] of, in this particular case, you have to enter the arena to see the opening ceremony.
Like, it's all contained within. And only those that who entered are able to see it. They took that idea and turned it upside down. The opening ceremony happened throughout Paris. Um, I actually just kept thinking about the production of what that took to have all those cameras and all those situations shooting all those various things, but it happened up and down the river.
any Parisian could be part of the opening ceremony. It was a decentralized opening ceremony. And I think partly technology and partly how do we do things differently and how do we push things forward. So from that perspective, and to this day, The, the, the Olympic flame that is lit is not contained inside of a stadium that only the people entering can see.
It is lofted above Paris so everyone in Paris can see the Olympic flame and the hot air balloon, which is a reference back to them. You know, the French think that they should have all the, all the accolades for being first to flight [00:30:00] because they flew hot air balloons. You know, there's kind of a thing between the Wright Brothers and hot air balloons, but they use the hot air balloon to have the, the flame visible to all the pairs.
I think that's genius. And I think that changes how we interact with each other, with, with an event. Um, and we know how experiential kind of resonates in the world of digital. And I just thought that that was a really brilliant way of doing it. The content therein obviously, um, affects different people differently, but just the overall thought I thought was brilliant.
Marc Beckman: Well, let's think about it as far as like the power of marketing. Like if, if the opening ceremony today, the modern opening ceremony is less about bringing the world together and unifying them or expressing a message of unification and hope through sport. Where we can break down the things that separate us as it relates to race, religion, uh, gender, and beyond.
and today that opening ceremony is more about building awareness, driving people [00:31:00] to conduct commerce, to watch the Olympics, to purchase Olympics goods, merch, and beyond. Um, Everyone's talking about the opening ceremony. Is it bad from a marketing perspective if half the world hated it and half the world loved it?
Does it matter, in your opinion?
Sam Sohaili: No, I actually, I don't think it matters because again, You're going to stop and look at a car crash more than you're going to stop and look at a tree, right? Um, as, as the old adage goes from the publishing world, if it bleeds, it leads. And that opening ceremony bled, right? For certain people, that was something to stop and behold and be shocked over.
So again, looking at it from that perspective, it did its job. It, it got people's attention. The, the one element you didn't mention in the list of what an opening ceremony has to do to, there's always that. The surprise, the surprise testicle. I don't know if anybody can up that. Um, but it's the element of ego.
Each country is there to kind of say, our culture is [00:32:00] valuable. We belong in the sphere of men, and this is what our calling card is. And you saw Britain do that, um, with Bond landing in the beginning. You saw China very much do that. I, I, for whatever reason, don't remember the Japanese opening ceremony, because Maybe that one didn't bleed as much as this did.
Um, but the French definitely went into it thinking we're going to make this thing bleed and we're going to push buttons. And we are kind of the center of creativity in many ways, certainly in the fashion industry and many other, many other realms. Um, and they also kind of considered themselves the fathers of democracy.
Um, they just recently went through an election and liberals beat out the conservatives, even though it didn't look like that's the way it was going to go. So to them, it was a celebration of all of that. their paganism, their openness to change, their, uh, embrace of what we might in the U. S. consider taboo, they placed themselves right there.
And look, you and I are talking about it then when if it [00:33:00] was just a normal opening ceremony, it wouldn't even be part of our thought process today.
Marc Beckman: So it's interesting. Controversial marketing campaigns are fantastic, particularly with buzz marketing. I mean, the French government was able to really capitalize on this, um, opening ceremony because of, uh, the viral piece of it. I mean, this thing really went all over the globe, into the news cycle, throughout social media, and there have been some like massive global campaigns that have even been forced to stop.
have been forced to end within the past decade or so that were controversial. Like, for example, I was thinking earlier about the Kendall Jenner Pepsi campaign, where people were really upset. They thought that Pepsi was trying to say, we could create a Um, or, or accomplish social justice or, or, or solve social justice issues with the simplicity of drinking our beverage.
and it was controversial. People like really, really got [00:34:00] crazy over that one campaign, Sam. Do you think that, , in that instance, the controversial marketing vertical was, um, uh, good for Pepsi, bad for Pepsi? Do you think they should have taken the campaign down?
Sam Sohaili: In that case, in that case, I think they had to, you know, it's fascinating, Mark, because it's a hairline, right? It's a, it's a very fine line that separates. Oh, it's to my point, if it's bleeds, it leads, or that's not something I want to interact with, and it needs to stop. I think in that particular change, the thought of sugar water creating change in that way just felt insulting to some people.
And I think in today's world, somebody's going to be insulted by something, right? I mean, we have the, uh, the bully pulpit is in everyone's pocket, and that's kind of the Uh, the initial reaction, I'm always, I was again mentioning this today, I'm always amazed at the amount of vitriol that exists in humanity, like where was all this?
And I don't know if it all existed and it existed in
Marc Beckman: There's
no respect.
Sam Sohaili: um, but now all of a sudden it's spilling out [00:35:00] into the open and that was maybe one of the first instances of an ad campaign maybe reaching kind of beyond the norm. Again I looked at it and didn't, I wasn't insulted by it, I'm like alright, see they're making a message.
again. It's coming from Pepsi. So I realized they're not literally going to be able to do They're
Marc Beckman: there's, there's no respect for, um, differing opinions these days. It's like we're really polarized and it's not just here in America. It's truly globally now. and I think it's really interesting, but the hot button seems to be over and over again. If you look at the Olympic Opening Ceremony, it is, um, religion, it's social, there are social issues, right?
It ties in religion, it tries, it ties in the transgender community, um, so that becomes a hot button. With Pepsi, social justice, right? The Kendall Jenner campaign tied into Black Lives Matter, or issues surrounding, um, what would soon be, um, Um, social justice issues of that nature. but it's funny, like, one campaign that, uh, you and I [00:36:00] were, um, very much aware of because, uh, at one point, Benetton was our client, was the United Colors of Benetton.
It was Oliviero Toscani's, infamous campaign where he used provocative images to challenge social norms and highlight, um, uh, AIDS, war and poverty. but it was almost like he was like ahead of the curve. He was spotlighting these issues with really, really provocative, dramatic issues, dramatic images.
But, um, did it, you know, again, did it matter? And. Did it sell clothing?
Sam Sohaili: well, uh, let me, let me look that through the prism of the word, the phrase used the beginning about us, which is agents of change, what that Benetton, the magazine was called Colors, what that magazine, and then later they created an Institute called Fabrica, what they were doing is changing the perceptions of the day.
At the time, kind of multicultural was not [00:37:00] something that we lived with. We didn't have that all around us. Now
Marc Beckman: I remember the book, one campaign had a black mother with a white baby and people were outraged by that
Sam Sohaili: And
Marc Beckman: part of the Benetton. Yeah.
Sam Sohaili: those, those were the shaking of the cage, as I call it, of the day. That's what rattled people's cages. Like, oh my God, you're like making me look at the world through a different way. And I think that's what a good agent of change does, right? Now, one could say that the world was headed there.
And really what we're doing is identifying where we're headed and pointing to it. Um, you know, they always use that phrase in many creative mediums of, you know, you can't be too far ahead of the curve because your audience won't follow you. And I think Benetton hit at that moment where the world was starting to accept the other in a different way.
And the world was maybe saying, maybe the way that we have been working together is not right. And then that landed in the midst of it. And I want to finish this Benetton thing with, built an [00:38:00] environment, I'll call it a college, where you could only attend if you won a scholarship to. And there weren't that many students, so like the music program had 20 or 30 students, like each one of the various disciplines had very few students.
But it became a think tank. And that think tank was also fueling the magazine. So they kind of, they walk the walk and they talk the talk. So not only did the magazine exist, but they built this think tank of these people from different disciplines. One was a sculptor, one was a musician, one was a photographer.
one was a painter, and they all came together and that fueled the magazine. So kind of the background to that, uh, what we all saw, the United Colors of Benetton, was again this environment that came together that, I, I, I can't see many people having that thought to say, I'm going to create this environment where, um, We're going to bring a lot of disparate ideas and people together and let the musician talk about politics and let the kids [00:39:00] studying the politics of the history talk about art.
And those mixes, which again, you and I talking about a polycultural world, that's the, that's the world we adore, that place really resonated with me. Um, cause I walked in and I'm like, this is brilliant. idea of just because I'm going down this lane, I don't have another thought and the other lane is irrelevant.
And also these people were kind of coming in because Benetton dubbed them as you're capable of thinking outside of whatever boxes we appeared at back then. So the campaign that you're talking about was of that thinking was part of the thinking of different people from different disciplines coming together and pushing each other's buttons and pressing against the boundaries of where we go.
And I think they were doing it at a time where we as a society was evolving. We were looking for what's beyond us.
Marc Beckman: Yeah. I mean, they had, I remember they had images of dying AIDS patients. They even pushed the, [00:40:00] um, the envelope a little bit with babies who, who, who still had their umbilical cord tied to them and the mother with, um, images of crosses in a cemetery, sort of like you were going to wear your agent of change.
hat and look at like how something like that impacts a brand. Um, there's like a fork you could take, right? We can impact the brand from a communications perspective to build brand equity, to build brand awareness, and we could impact sales, positively impact sales. Do you feel like as an agent of change, it's worth it for brands today in 2024 into 2025 to shock the conscious of the.
Consumer marketplace to build both brand awareness and sales. Is that possible?
Sam Sohaili: it is possible, but it's a far more complex question. Because to kind of just to draw the bigger picture there, we are commercial artists. We're not artists. We're here for the purpose of commerce. That is our job. So our jobs as agents of change [00:41:00] is to manifest further commerce, right? And so within that prism, We have to think about what will drive our consumer, our audience, to engage further in the brand that's beneficial to them, because that's ultimately why we're hired and that's why, that's why we exist.
Um, you know, same with a pol, same with a politician. My job is to get that voter to vote. So if they do everything except vote, then I failed. Um, if they've looked at my YouTube and looked at all of my TikTok posts, but ultimately they didn't vote for me, then I failed. And that thing's very similar here.
And that if, at the end of the road, the final decision is to engage with that brand and buy deeper into that brand, and buy the brand because it's both kind of a emotional tie in an informational tie in and then it, and then it's monetary separation. Then we've kind of have to think our job in the right way where a lot of brands may not find the right traction is the noise doesn't yield sales and that's why I'm saying that's a far more complex element to get into because at the [00:42:00] end of creating that This matrix of lines in the water that we want to pull against and see which one's going to bite and run.
They all have to lead down to kind of further brand, uh, absorption and further brand integration in some way. Um, if the goal is sales, then that's gotta be the call to action. If the goal is engagement for the purpose of future. Awareness and future, um, sales or perhaps, you know, clicks or followers as it may be, whatever the goals are for that campaign, then that has to be the driver.
But it's a very, that becomes, that becomes a three dimensional chess, right? Because then it's one thing to motivate, it's another thing to motivate against the sale, to motivate against the call to
Marc Beckman: Right
Sam Sohaili: align that symphony perfectly is when you have a success.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think it's interesting. Um, you know, when you look at these controversial campaigns, some of them happen accidentally, some of them like Benetton with intent. Um, but you know, mostly people think that [00:43:00] celebrities do move the needle, right? And we certainly as an agency have done some tremendous things as it relates to celebrity marketing.
I mean, a point, a great point, um, in that case is the program that you, uh, creative directed with Taylor Swift and Sony, um, Sony electronics specifically. Um, in that instance, you really did. Build brand awareness, create emotional connection between Sony and Taylor's fan base and increased sales. You want to break down that celebrity marketing play, um, a little bit and show how that was a safe play.
No controversy and successful on both fronts, commerce and brand building.
Sam Sohaili: Yeah, so I guess let me start with the problem we were trying to solve, which is frankly unsolvable, because the world was moving away from small electronics. Our phones kind of were replacing the entire world of Sony Electronics, except for televisions. And so the campaign was, [00:44:00] The ask of us was, how can we generate interest and sales in a dying category?
Now, they didn't use that word, and we didn't go in and say it's a dying category, but the writing was on the wall. The iPhone had been out at that point. We knew what it was capable of at that point, and we could only imagine what it was going to become, and now it's exceeded it. But there were already cameras on our iPhones, and they shot amazing photos, and they were easily sendable.
So that was a problem that Sony came to us with. And the world that we created for them, the solution that we gave them was, let's add context to the interaction with your electronics. And let's not run away from kind of where everybody's at, but let's use the power of Taylor to take us there. So we looked at Taylor from a kind of very interesting perspective.
I was telling somebody this the other day that we gave her three different personas that we picked out of her. So it was the everyday girl Taylor, it was the glamour girl going to the red carpet Taylor, and it was the rock and [00:45:00] roll Taylor. Girl Taylor and within one eight hour window, we called the campaign eight hours with Taylor and within one eight hour window, we were gonna show you those three personas and we're gonna align product.
those three personas. So that the camera that was super small and slick, um, that went into the rock and roll theme, and that was the thing that fit inside of her little person. That's how she moved the world that way.
Marc Beckman: Yeah
Sam Sohaili: And the one that was a little bit bigger and could, it was connected to wifi and connect, connect to your phone.
That was the everyday girl. And again, we're placing these. So, um, I'm going to go through these, these lines for the consumer. But the idea is you're not just buying into a product, you're buying into the world that comes with it. And, you know, there's obviously nobody more powerful than her and we've all seen what Taylor's grown into.
Um, she was impressive and I totally understand why she's the biggest star in the world because she was impressive then. She's impressive now. She's always been impressive. And it's because she grasped the assignment. She came in saying, okay, what, what can I do? And they [00:46:00] were very tight with her brand, meaning that I couldn't bring in our New York fashion team to change her look.
She basically wanted her
Marc Beckman: Why
did you want to change Taylor's look?
Sam Sohaili: we did, we did. I felt that, I
Marc Beckman: so
Sam Sohaili: a little bit more fashionable. I felt that she didn't look edgy enough. All that is gone now. The girl looks amazing now. But
Marc Beckman: Yeah
Sam Sohaili: she was still kind of half Nashville, half not Nashville. And it was a little bit of both.
She was like kind of stepping out of that world into a new world. So, for example, one of the three looks, I'm still not a fan of. I'm like, God, I could have done that better, but that's what she wanted to wear, that's what they wanted to, that's what they wanted to look like. the campaign ended up being successful for those reasons, in that we did those three personas, we aligned product with them, we created storylines, storylines around each one of them.
She was great on camera, and the both the still and the video, and she spoke to, she spoke to the concept, and how we rolled it out was a variety of ways. We were not only talking to the regular consumer, we're also talking to professionals because they had also launched a super [00:47:00] professional line of what you would call SLR cameras and those cameras are still like competing with Canon on a day in day out basis.
You know, they have video built in and kind of the resolution quality. went after the professional market with Taylor. We went after the consumer, market with Taylor. We went after all sorts of kind of ancillary elements, like we did fundraisers and placed her in places where her voice mattered to them, that she was there.
And collectively, we made the products that we selected for that campaign the number one selling SKUs across all of Sony Electronics for that year. Again, because we provided context. It wasn't just somebody saying, buy this. It was somebody saying, I use this because of these reasons, and this is how it fits into my life.
And then that person in that case was a spokesperson that resonated. And that's an example of a good spokesperson integration, because I think we use them wisely. There's a lot of cases where it immediately comes off as, oh, this is [00:48:00] a hired endorser, and there's no emotional connection to the product, and you can kind of tell.
And I think in some of those cases, it can backfire using an endorser like that.
Marc Beckman: Yeah.
I think so too. I think, like, if you look at sports marketing with celebrity athletes, um, Nike, with their Just Do It campaign, has done a great job in, um, let, like, basically running that vertical, uh, with the celebrities in a consistent way over time, think in terms of The impact that Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, these types of people have had on that brand.
It's been sustainable. I'm sure you would agree. It's been incredible. Even when they get into like social justice topics like Colin Kaepernick, and they know they're going to alienate half their fan base. The stock still bumps up. It's been incredible. But then there are other sports marketing celebrity plays like David Beckham and H& M where the whole world knew about it.
But, you know, today I don't think people are really buying David Beckham underwear at H& M. I don't even know if the product [00:49:00] is available anymore. So from your perspective, what is a, uh, how would you advise a international brand as it relates to bringing in a celebrity? or a celebrity vertical. Is there a reason why sometimes short term they might get some brand awareness but it doesn't really, uh, sustain as it relates to the commercial value versus something like the Just Do It campaign where, you know, they're committed to the celebrities.
They keep rolling out these high profile best in class athletes and the brand still is, you know, the top brand on the planet.
Sam Sohaili: So it's fascinating because one could write a chart about this. There's a formula. You have a talent that has this amount of followers, this amount of, uh, uh, A positive sentiment in the market, you connect it with this brand and those values pass on to the brand and the sentiment of the brand increases and sales increase, right?
It's like a formula that we could concoct.
Marc Beckman: Sure
Sam Sohaili: I have created what we [00:50:00] call a DMA quotient where it allows us to do that. We can look at all of the elements that a personality, be it an actor, uh, entertainer, musician, whoever it may be, and we kind of. We kind of put numbers around that and try to put it and make an objective decision on who this person is and then connect them to a brand.
And very much like the world of branding, where if we all follow data and if we all follow where data leads us, we kind of end up in vanilla world. Right. And I think What gets lost in the mix of kind of looking at the data as, as one would describe it like that is surprise. Uh, are you surprising me? Am I, are you entertaining me?
Am I getting something that I, I didn't think I needed and I got to buy into? David Beckham doing underwear is kind of expected, right? Who else would do underwear? The guy's always got his shirt off. He's a hot guy. That's the guy that would be doing underwear. And I, and I think he'd even appeared in, you know, [00:51:00] various underwear campaigns for other brands.
Maybe the surprise wasn't there. Maybe it was too straight down the middle. Maybe it was too obvious. Um, and, and so the idea of the data is wonderful and it could, Easily be there to support our premise, but at the end of the day, is it fun? Is it exciting? Is it providing something that I didn't think I needed and I need, that's the element, the, the, the cherry on the top that maybe makes the whole thing come together that.
That may be otherwise wouldn't. So, and I think that branding in very much the same way in that If I was developing a brand for someone and we did all our kind of traditional search that we do and look at consumer behavior and looked at what the competitors are doing and look at what the retailers are doing in that space and kind of looked at the history and project what the future of it is other brand is doing the same thing.
So every brand will end up in the exact same place if we all focus on running down data alone. So [00:52:00] that element at the back end of it, after you have the data and say, okay, I see the playing field, but how do I do something a little bit differently here? Um, and I can kind of equate that to sports and that every athlete that's on, let's say a European field.
is equally good at those skills. Every tennis player that's on the U. S. tour is equally good. That little extra bit, the bit that's the surprise, the bit that's the zig against the zag, the bit that's the spark, the, the polycultural spark, as you and I call it. That's, that's the little extra flavor that I think shoots something over from oh, we just did the standard element to it becomes a cultural movement and something that we can all believe in.
Um, back taking it back to the Harris campaign, they couldn't have called XCX and said do that for me. Like
Marc Beckman: Oh, we're back in the presidential campaign now?
Sam Sohaili: I just took us back there just to give you
Marc Beckman: All
right, I like it. I like it.
[00:53:00] Yeah
Sam Sohaili: that can work that way. They can't identify that person to do that. It works because she organically did something and they ran that thread.
Now, I realize that's not a big campaign, but that sense of surprise that, oh, these two things shouldn't go together. Um, and it's something, again, I wholeheartedly believe in. It's the surprise factor has to be there. The, oh, I'm entertained by, I got to pay attention to this because it doesn't fit in my, in my In my shelf, on my mind, of the various things that I've experienced before, that element, I believe, has to be in it as well.
Marc Beckman: Sam, you know what's fascinating about celebrity marketing? It's an area that you and I actually, I don't think we ever spoke about this topic. Um, every time we bring in a high profile celebrity for one of our clients, one issue that we're confronted with is morals and ethics. Does the celebrity share the core values, not just with the brand, but what the public would like?
Are they wholesome? Are they You know, good looking, et cetera. But
Sam Sohaili: Kanye for your campaign, I'm sure,
Marc Beckman: [00:54:00] well, you know, it's interesting though. Like what happens? I was thinking as I was preparing for our conversation today, I was thinking about Michael Jackson and Pepsi and everybody thinks about when Michael Jackson worked with Pepsi, he was like, without a doubt, the most famous human being maybe ever to live on this planet.
Um, remember there was like that. Incident onset where he was burned. I think there was a, uh, his hair went on fire. But something that also happened is this. Years later, there were crazy accusations about him as it relates to, uh, children and beyond, as you know, right? Pedophile, that kind of stuff. The brand at that point in time was so far away from Michael Jackson.
They weren't, they hadn't worked with him for so, for so long, but in the cultural, um, uh, like zeitgeist. The two together, Michael Jackson and Pepsi, were always embedded together. What happens to a [00:55:00] brand that is connected to a celebrity and years after they work together, years after they collaborate, something comes out about that celebrity that's just, like, controversial, salacious, um, you know, below the standards that society would like?
Like, do you think that hurt Pepsi? Um, and have we seen anything like it again since Michael Jackson? I'm talking about like years and years after the relationship, not in real time, like Kanye, you mentioned Kanye, like that was like a real time debacle, right? Kanye was just like ridiculous and just like exploded every corporate relationship he had.
But years later, Michael Jackson, the information came out about Michael Jackson, right?
Sam Sohaili: both Michael Jackson and Kanye, I think I can connect to this point, in that, considered a positive or negative, but the torrent of information that we are now being fed, every day, in every way. I think dulls all issues to a degree, [00:56:00]
if you caught recently, Adidas quietly relaunched Yeezy. They made a public announcement, we're walking away from Yeezy, we're walking away from the billion a year.
And then, all of a sudden, Yeezy's back in the market and nobody's saying anything. Um, Will Smith's movie came out this summer. Seems to be okay. Seems to be back in the marketplace. Um, Michael Jackson, the documentary came out with the child accusers, basically letting us know that he was not who we thought he was.
And, you know, for those months, for those weeks, it was an issue that you stopped hearing Michael Jackson's music. But slowly again, the torrent of information kind of washes that away to a degree. So I'm not saying that's good or bad. I don't really have a on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it does allow brands the flexibility of not having to worry to a degree because I don't think Adidas right now is hurting from the Kanye affiliation, um, as one would [00:57:00] thought they would have.
You would think a lot of people would stop buying their product, but I don't think it happened.
Marc Beckman: Is it, is it the end of cancel culture?
Sam Sohaili: I, I think it's the, well, cancel culture is always going to exist for some group of people. Um, what beer was it? Was it Bud Light that had the issue?
Marc Beckman: Yeah
I was thinking about that earlier in our conversation, right? Their sales actually went backwards. They got destroyed, right?
Sam Sohaili: they're now
Marc Beckman: I don't remember
Sam Sohaili: there, obviously, with a very pro America
Marc Beckman: Bud Light yeah
Sam Sohaili: that's all like flags waving and, and I get it, you know, they want to get their market share back. But I think things have a way of kind of going away, which maybe speaks to how important of an issue it was to begin with.
Obviously, Michael Jackson, what he did to these children, if true, was horrific. Does that affect his music? Does that affect how we feel about his music? I'm sure for some it does. But the man still created these all time classics and both can be true. He can be a horrific person in one side and the music that he created was also [00:58:00] great.
we just have to learn as adults to live with both of these things can coexist together.
Marc Beckman: So Sam, as a change agent, do you think or would you advise a brand with a tarnished image and poor sales to leverage a high profile celebrity to resurrect? or resuscitate their brand's image.
Sam Sohaili: Think of, um, think of a celebrity endorsement or an interaction with a personality like steroids. It will take you from point A to point B faster. Um, you gotta know what your point B is. Like, where am I headed? And if you know where you're headed, and if you're strategically on that, then absolutely yes. A celebrity will amplify that message quicker and accelerate your pace to go from point A to point B.
you don't have your point B focused on, then you can run, then your ship can run ashore and you can run into all sorts of troubles. But yeah, I think you [00:59:00] absolutely can still use a celebrity if it's on target and if it's driving. Towards a strategic goal.
Marc Beckman: Sam, can immersive technology and emerging technologies also serve that purpose? Can new technologies like artificial intelligence, spatial computing, take a brand to the next level? Hyperinflate the brand's awareness in the way that you're talking about for celebrities?
Sam Sohaili: I'm going to say yes and no to that, because if I think of those new innovations as a tool, um, in the same way, a phone's a tool, a computer's a tool. The internet's a tool. If I look at AI as a tool, then that tool is a quite powerful tool that will, that will deliver me to where I need to go to faster and more efficiently.
Um, perhaps in, in higher fidelity than I could otherwise at a lower expense. But without the destination, same answer to the other question, without the destination of how to use those tools, [01:00:00] um, the case example I gave earlier, where would I want to do a deep fake for any brand right now? Um, no, but I would like to do a deepfake where the audience is in on the deepfake, then yes, I want to go there.
I do want to take the audience on a journey, take them on that layered messaging on that journey. So I think it absolutely can, if you have your direction already selected, and you
Marc Beckman: So
that's kind of interesting when you talk about taking the journey. With the audience, I think spatial computing, we're on the cusp of a world where, you know, the next generation. Gen Z, for example, will have the ability to use spatial computing outdoors in the public. I'll be able to walk down Fifth Avenue and, um, within my site, I'll have customized communications that are special to me with music that I like.
Personalities and celebrities that I like. Storytelling that's customized to [01:01:00] me. In some cases, they can be brands that I love. In some cases, they can feature storylines that evolve over time and not within, you know, a box like a television set or a screen in a movie theater, like just parts of Fifth Avenue will come to life on the outdoors.
Is that a moment where we're going to see a total disruption in traditional advertising? And will everything go into that type of immersive spatial computing like experience?
Sam Sohaili: I'm not sure if it's disruption. It's going to be in addition to the existing world that we have because I think some, some elements of it are going to remain with us. Like, I think the phone in some way, shape or form will remain with us. So that's not going to change because I don't think we can add dimensionality to that, to that, uh, for with our, with our present technology, we can't.
But going to the agents of change thought part of being agents of change is. we're using it from the context of we have to change our clients. Our goal is to direct them in or direct change for them in a way that's going to resonate with their [01:02:00] audience better. But we also have to be accepting of change in the market.
And as a kind of an absorber of information, which I think is kind of a requisite for this job, I am absolutely jazzed about this. This is phenomenal. Like what, what could it become? What are, it's endless of
Marc Beckman: What will it
Sam Sohaili: be. And you know, just today, what it can become is crazy. What it can become 10, 20 years from now for our children's generation is kind of boggling the mind.
And it's fascinating. It's exciting.
Marc Beckman: So will it nullify certain mediums, Sam? Like, you know, you look at the magazine, you spoke about your history in Milan working with, you know, an incredible print publication. Will we need print campaigns anymore? Will we need them? Books anymore. Will everything just be 3D immersive VR sound? Um, like do we need to look at a flat image of our heroes anymore?
Sam Sohaili: I want to talk about print second. I want to talk about what I think it will move out of the way. [01:03:00] I don't think VR is going to stand a chance against spatial computing. I don't think you're going to want to go into a VR world once you enter spatial computing, which offers you AR, VR, and whatever R we haven't yet invented.
And that is kind of exponentially open. So I think VR is going to be a byproduct of like Gen 1 of what that world was. is different. And I'm not really sure why. And I tell you this because I came from the print world. I lived in that universe. Um, but we've been working on a number of book projects over the last few years.
And there is something about the scroll of a large printed book that sits on the table that somehow feels valid. It validates an idea. It validates a concept. It's now a form of decor to lay around the house in some way. So it's not the, I need my information from it. It's the, it's like a trophy in some, in some way.
So I think it's position has evolved and I assume [01:04:00] far less books are being bought and sold today than there were 30 years ago, but it's position changed. Um, but there's still some validity to it. Um, one of the, one of the publishers we've worked with, Asselin, I recently walked into a little boutique they opened up on Madison Avenue uptown in New York.
And there are a few books in there, but it's really just a environment to hang out in. Um, Prosper Asselin has brought in his statues that he's curated from around the world. It's very posh. It's kind of like a gentleman's club that you sit down in. It is not a bookstore in the traditional sense of the bookstore.
And I think that's where books kind of evolved to. It's now the, the trophy that I can lay around my house and, and point to. And that, I think that room kind of speaks to it. I think it might've been like eight books in the room and the rest of it was like, you There's a bartender and there's a coffee person and there is a, what I would call them, like a maitre d that kind of can sit down with you and kind of guide you through things.
So books [01:05:00] are kind of a different thing.
Marc Beckman: it's interesting, Chris, the um, asline store environment that you're talking about really does feature. The evolution of in store marketing, right? It's more about the experience. In that case, it's about the luxury consumer. You've been working on some really cool books lately. I think we're about to launch a new book with Rizzoli surrounding never before told stories of Bob Marley.
You did a beautiful book with regards to Jean Michel Basquiat, an absolutely gorgeous book. Um, but one of the biggest pieces you've ever worked on is the story of Nelson Mandela with Nelson Mandela's family. What was it like working for years, um, with Nelson Mandela's oldest living child to tell the story of this very important human, Madiba?
Sam Sohaili: perspective. That's the first word that comes to mind of what changed. through that process, you know, you kind of have your. You, you, you create your vision of the world and you're like, that's what the world is and [01:06:00] you kind of like, then you move forward and that's your perception of good and bad and right and wrong. And I got into that exercise and, you know, Mandela is, you know, thought of as a deity, right?
Um, but Mandela was a terrorist. And I ask us, is that a good thing or a bad thing? He was terrorizing against the people that were oppressing his people. So in that case, maybe it was justified depending on how you look at it. Um, but not only was he a terrorist, he trained to be a terrorist. He, he went around Africa training for that and then brought that training back to South Africa and deservedly so, his people were being oppressed.
But it really made me think of things differently. Um, he befriended people like Gaddafi. he befriended Castro. And these were his close, uh, I don't want to call them confidants, but they had relationships with each other. And the way his family positioned [01:07:00] it to me was, they are your, and actually Mandela said this on a interview on American television as well.
He said, your enemy is not my enemy. And that perspective would not have come to me without having spent two years. A, in depth with the story of Mandela, but hearing the family stories and hearing them tell me these stories. Um, another kind of a dichotomy in the world of Mandela, as his daughter, who I work with in this book, very clearly kind of spoke about throughout the book, is that he cared very much about family and had no time for family.
Before he was sent to prison for 26 years, he didn't have time for family because he was an activist. For He was learning how to bring terrorism to South Africa. He was learning how to be a political operative. He was learning how to organize. He was, he spent all of his time and energy on that. So he very much wanted to be a family man, but had no time for it.
[01:08:00] And then being in prison for all those years, he had no time for it. So, you know, he's the father of a nation, but really not the father that he could have been to his family because he got sent that way. So perspective. The whole experience really gave me perspective and, you know, as a parent, as a citizen, as a believer in whatever it is that one thinks, that one categorizes, I believe in this and I'm not going to believe in that going forward.
What that project made me think about was, whatever it is that you think you believe in, there's another perspective on it that you should be aware of. And that helped me grow in many ways. So I'm really grateful for that experience.
Marc Beckman: but sometimes, um, there are just facts, and the facts don't lie, they speak for themselves, so when you talk about Gaddafi and Castro, even though Madiba's perspective Where that those were his allies and friends. The truth is they were horrible people. They repressed individuals. They took away human rights.
They killed their own [01:09:00] citizens. They took those people's freedom away. Um, and, and the same thing with regards to terrorism. Acts of terrorism, when you're killing innocents, those are never good things. When babies and children are being killed, it's never a good thing. Um, period. I think it's just, it's really just black and white.
I'm curious in working with Maki Mandela, from your perspective, what was the most surprising thing about her personally? what did you love about Maki that you didn't expect, um, to love going into this project?
Sam Sohaili: Um, it, it was, it was far more real than, I mean, we knew her, we had worked with her,
Marc Beckman: Yeah
Sam Sohaili: her, this is the telling of her father and her family's story from her perspective. Um, so it was very intimate. And what I'm saying realness in that she didn't come to it with, I need to put this man up on a pedestal.
And I'm going to put our family on a pedestal and I'm going to convince the world that he needs [01:10:00] to be worshiped. It was actually the exact opposite, which was the surprising elements and all this for me. Um, the humbleness to be able to say the reality of what it was. Everything I just told you about is all I learned from Maki.
I learned what her father was up to before he went to prison. I learned about that. He wasn't the best father because he just wasn't there. He was too busy with the country. And.
Marc Beckman: Everybody would assume Madiba was an amazing father, but you're saying it's actually the opposite.
Sam Sohaili: didn't have the time. He wasn't there. And then for all those years, all the kids were growing up. He was not there. He was in prison. He just wasn't there for them.
Marc Beckman: Didn't he elect at one point? They, they offered for him to be freed and he decided to stay in prison in the name of, um, beating apartheid
Sam Sohaili: the
Marc Beckman: racism.
Sam Sohaili: the country had already started to devolve. into pandemonium because the population no longer was open to it and the idea of Mandela, the idea of [01:11:00] being against apartheid had taken root outside of South Africa. We had had concerts now in Wembley and it had become a global topic and the government went to him, um, and I'm going to
Marc Beckman: Sun City, right? Wasn't the Sun City concert, Ain't Sun City, right?
The
Sam Sohaili: government went to him at that point and thought it'll be a great thing for us. It would be great for us from a positioning perspective if we liberate Mandela, if we let him out.
Marc Beckman: Yeah
Sam Sohaili: it was really a, a tactical move for the government to
Marc Beckman: Marketing.
Sam Sohaili: to shine a positive light on themselves.
he was astute enough to say, no, I'm not going to let you use me in that way. And I'm going to stay here until all my people are freed, which again is exactly who he is and who his voice is. But, you know, sometimes from forest fires, great forests grow. And it's one of those things I thought of as [01:12:00] a young person, that, oh, from tragedies, great things come.
His life, one could say, was tragic, all those years in prison, and kind of what he had to fight. But look what he's brought, even beyond what he did for South Africa. The fact that his idea resonated beyond South Africa, to the point that, you know, there's a few names that we hold together. We have Gandhi, Martin Luther King.
And Nelson Mandela. They all kind of sit on the same pedestal for us. And he achieved that by simply kind of staying true to who he was and was relentless to that.
Marc Beckman: Well, it's interesting that you're aligning him with MLK and Gandhi, because both of those guys were peaceful, peace oriented people. Um, you didn't throw out like Malcolm X into the. Mandela
alignments
Sam Sohaili: could, one could, but, and I don't want to come off that, that I thought Mandela was, what I'm saying, he was a terrorist. He was deemed a terrorist by the government at the time. He wasn't killing, uh, innocent children or it wasn't that definition of terrorist, [01:13:00] but he was trying to fight the government.
And the government labeled him and his organization a terrorist organization because he was fighting the government. He was trying to show people that he was working with. How do we take down this government? How do we fight this government? So, yeah again, the dichotomy in it was fascinating to me.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, we did some cool stuff with Mandela beyond that. We did some cool collaborations with the family, with Kith, which is arguably the coolest street brand retailer on the planet. we did some other collaborations too. I think as an agent of change, we've used that weapon. Um, collaborations for our clients over and over again.
We did it with Gucci. We've done it with Pepsi. We've done it even with the NBA All Star, Russell Westbrook. How did you like when we activated Karl Lagerfeld and Puma? Was that an important collaboration in your eyes?
Sam Sohaili: Yeah. I mean, Carl, uh, who we're all going to forever miss. he had that childlike [01:14:00] wonder. And I was touching on it a few minutes ago where he can look at any situation and it was new to him. he was able to bring fresh thinking to it. And there wasn't this sense of, Oh, I've already done that. And or that brand is beneath me.
This playful nature of him stayed with him throughout his entire career, which is why he is and who he was able to touch Chanel and touch Puma at the same time. At the end of products he created with Puma were absolutely, they'd look like Karl Lagerfeld design and they absolutely looked
Marc Beckman: Yeah, for sure.
Sam Sohaili: And, and again, it was that playfulness that he brought to everything that he did that I thought really kind of shone through
Marc Beckman: He took risks. I feel like we need more risk takers. I was looking, Sam. It's like, I think the 20th anniversary since Karl collaborated with H&M, which at the time was really groundbreaking. as an agent of change, how do you think, uh, collaborations will evolve? How would you recommend a brand uses collaborations as a marketing tactic, um, in 2025, in [01:15:00] 2026?
Sam Sohaili: So you and I have been doing it a long time and we've also been saying for a good number of years that it is no longer unexpected that you're doing a collaboration. Collaboration to me is not traditional marketing.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, we really did, we really did invent it,
Sam Sohaili: I mean, we have to go
Marc Beckman: you know it's
crazy. We can only talk to you about this. It's like wild, right?
Sam Sohaili: We had to go out there and convince people that it's not a bad thing. I mean, I think us, think Halston had done some things years before. And I think it was Halston and JCPenney that were in the seventies or whatever years those were.
And that fell flat and that whole idea fell dormant. It just all fell apart. And it really wasn't being used. And you and I were working for Fashion Week at the time in New York. Um, CFDA, 7th on 6th. And sitting at the center of all of these fashion brands and all of these non endemic to fashion brands interacting, it kind of like really popped in both of our minds that this is happening and nobody's [01:16:00] put like a structure around it and say, let us make this happen for you legitimately.
Um And I remember like Mercedes was the sponsor of Fashion Week and they'd sit down with us and say, can you do for us? How do we connect fashion and back to our brand? And how do we make this work for us? And so we've been there for a long time. And to, to answer your question, I no longer think of collaborations as a Excite just the idea itself to be exciting because it is now traditional.
So what has to be exciting within the collaboration for it to function is a, is it on strategy, which is a boring thing to say, but that's literally what needs to happen. And the second part of it, which we touched on earlier, is it a surprise? Does it make me stop and look? If it doesn't make me turn my head to the right, then it's not something I need.
just did the Havaianas and Dolce collaboration. I don't know what the retail price is in a Havaianas, but it's like $50, $40, it's not very expensive. And obviously, Dolce product is far more expensive than that. [01:17:00] It's sold out within 48 hours. It gave access to Dolce Gabbana to a lot of people at the lower price point.
But it was a surprise to them. It was fun. It wasn't something I have to really give a lot of thought to. And it was a moment in time that completely sold through in the product. And it was a complete success because we created that surprise element within it. And because it resonated with the audience.
It gave them access to something.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, they're still popular. The Havaianas piece sold out, as you mentioned, Dolce & Gabbana in 48 hours. It also did tremendous with Maison Kitsuné. It was, it was really tremendous. So Sam, as, as you know, like every guest that I have on my show ends the show with me starting. A sentence and then they finish it.
um,
Sam Sohaili: now? Are we done?
Marc Beckman: this is, this is it, Sam. We're, we're, we're at the end. So I got, I got to ask you though, like most of my guests, I ask them if they're willing to participate, but I'm not asking you that. I'm just telling you, we're doing this right now.
Sam Sohaili: I'm participating. I'm [01:18:00] ready.
Marc Beckman: all right, in some future day, brand marketers will consider a change agent will be beneficial for their brand.
How? In some future day, brand marketers, CMOs will use change agents to improve their brand by
Sam Sohaili: Finding new ways of connecting with audiences. Finding ways that did not exist the month previous, and maybe they will find as unusual or maybe they will find as risky. Um, but we constantly have to find new ways of telling the same stories, interestingly enough. We, we tell similar stories of heartbreak, of love, of longing, Um, kind of the stories since the days of Shakespeare are all within us, and we find new ways of telling those stories and new ways of integrating the stories.
So that's what a change agent's got to bring to your brand, are new ways of communicating your stories to your audience.
Marc Beckman: Sam, you've literally been with me on the show [01:19:00] now for an hour and 20 minutes, and I'm going to speak with you 6 million more times this evening. However, is there anything that you'd like to add before we, um, end this episode? Is there anything we've missed? I know there's a lot more that we could cover, but is there anything you'd like to throw in?
Sam Sohaili: Well, I just want to thank you for allowing me to be your 42nd guest on, uh,
Marc Beckman: I think it might be 43rd,
actually
Sam Sohaili: guest. I'll be
Marc Beckman: Or 44th, maybe.
Sam Sohaili: I'll take 44.
Marc Beckman: Or 45th.
Sam Sohaili: Thank you for allowing me to be your guest and I'm proud of you, man. This is great that you find time to do this on top of everything else that I know you do on your day in day out job, so I'm proud of you.
I'll
Marc Beckman: I love you, Sam. You are the best as it relates to being a change agent. You are the best as it relates to being innovative. You have quality vision and superior design capabilities that are unparalleled and I love you. Thank you so much for being on Some Future Day.
Sam Sohaili: come back on some future day.
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