Episode Transcript
Rob Broadfoot 0:19
Alright, Episode 54. Everybody, we’re back. Mr. Rob.
We’re back.
Don Mock 0:23
Rob’s back. So Spring has sprung here in Atlanta. It’s beautiful outside right now. What are we doing in this state-of-the-art podcast recording studio? We hould be outside, enjoying spring.
Rob Broadfoot 0:34
We need to broadcast outside.
Don Mock 0:36
Yeah, we’re gonna start doing remote podcasts…
Rob Broadfoot 0:38
Cue the bird chirping noises.
Don Mock 0:40
….before it gets- Aren’t there noises on our thing? Oh, that’s not one of them.
Rob Broadfoot 0:47
Well, they’re somewhere in there.
Don Mock 0:48
They’re somewhere in there. So spring is springing and got us thinking about springing of ideas, dare I say! As my family likes to point out. The concept of inspiration and spring-springing inspiration. Thought it’s be fun to talk about, hey, any weird, wacky, zany ideas? Have any of our ideas come from strange places? Or inspiration from unusual places, maybe. Could be the title of this podcast. We’ve talked a little bit about creativity, how do we come up with ideas, things like that. Well, do we have any interesting anecdotes about coming up with ideas? Has anything sort of happened, or even the cliche, like, Oh, my God, the notepad on the bedside table! You know what I mean, wake up in the middle of night and scribble down the most amazing idea ever, that type of thing.
Rob Broadfoot 1:39
Yeah, I don’t know that I have any specific examples that come to mind. But for me, when we threw out the idea of talking about this, I immediately went to the thought that a lot of times what we’re trying to do when we’re thinking about conceptual stuff for ads, or whatever else. You know, I think the best and most successful campaigns and ideas are always rooted in a human truth.
Don Mock 2:08
Okay.
Rob Broadfoot 2:09
Right?
Don Mock 2:09
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 2:11
If you can tap into a human truth, that’s when your audience… I don’t care who the audience is, but whomever the audience is, can go “Oh, I know that. I relate to that.”
Don Mock 2:21
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 2:21
That oftentimes is sort of the the hallmark of I think, effective work. It is sort of the human truth. So if you think about that idea, human truths happen everywhere all the time.
Don Mock 2:35
Yeah. One could argue that Seinfeld based his entire career on this, right? Just observational humor.
Sure. And it is it’s it’s those life observations, for me, that often inspire ideas, you know, and where they come from.
Yeah, I love that. That’s cool.
Rob Broadfoot 2:52
I think I was saying to you the other day that we’re doing a lot of really fun conceptual work right now, on some neat clients and projects and industries. For me, I always, I take my dog to the park and throw the frisbee every day after work, weather permitting, obviously.
Don Mock 3:08
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 3:09
I will today because as you mentioned, it’s beautiful outside.
Don Mock 3:11
Yeah. Is that your moment of Zen after work?
Rob Broadfoot 3:14
Yep. 100%.
Don Mock 3:15
Yeah, that’s your chill time. Alright.
Rob Broadfoot 3:17
100%. And funny enough, my dog’s a border collie named Lulu. She’s a working dog.
Don Mock 3:24
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 3:25
When we go out and throw the frisbee, it’s incredible. She is 100% focused on what she’s doing.
Don Mock 3:32
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 3:33
I don’t go to dog parks. That’s a me thing. But I do go to a park where sometimes there are a few other dogs.
Don Mock 3:39
Okay. Yep.
Rob Broadfoot 3:40
And I don’t care what those other dogs are doing. If the kids are playing basketball on the playground, whatever. She has no interest in anything else. She has this incredible focus and singular focus on the Frisbee and all she wants to do is catch the Frisbee and bring it back to me.
Don Mock 3:55
Okay, now what about when other dogs are there?
Rob Broadfoot 3:57
She doesn’t care.
Don Mock 3:57
She doesn’t care about other dogs?
Rob Broadfoot 3:59
Will not acknowledge them, unless they try and encroach on the Frisbee.
Don Mock 4:05
Well, that’s what I was gonna say. My follow up question was, hey, if another dog comes over into the Frisbee, Frisbee zone, right, she’ll break character, right?
Rob Broadfoot 4:10
She’ll break character to try and scare them, heard them away from what she’s doing.
Don Mock 4:15
I’m working right now.
Rob Broadfoot 4:16
The only other quick anecdote- because you asked about other dogs- when she was a puppy, we went out there and there’s a friendly guy in the neighborhood. He’s got a dog named Shaggy.
Don Mock 4:26
Okay.
Rob Broadfoot 4:27
And Shaggy is-
Don Mock 4:27
Great name for a dog.
Rob Broadfoot 4:28
Yeah, Shaggy is built like a car battery. Thick. Yeah. and so-
Don Mock 4:33
Blocky?
Rob Broadfoot 4:33
Yeah. And he’s out there all the time. We kind of have the same schedule.
Don Mock 4:36
Okay.
Rob Broadfoot 4:37
He’s out there all the time. He’s big Atlanta United fan. So we always talk soccer. Used to talk soccer.
Don Mock 4:42
Uh-oh, where’s the story going now?
Rob Broadfoot 4:44
But he’s out there with one of those tennis ball winger.
Don Mock 4:47
Oh yeah. The plastic thing that you fling it?
Rob Broadfoot 4:49
Yeah. And Shaggy just boom boom boom, you know. Same thing. Shaggy has singular focus on the thing. Well, we were out there when Lulu was a pop. It just so happened we were kind of at opposite ends of this particular field and I threw the Frisbee simultaneously. I threw the Frisbee and he threw the ball.
Don Mock 5:07
Okay.
Rob Broadfoot 5:08
It was like slow motion, watching these two dogs, just on a collision course.
Don Mock 5:15
Okay, they’re running toward each other but they’r not looking.
Rob Broadfoot 5:18
They’re running kind of perpendicular to one another.
Don Mock 5:21
Okay. Okay.
Rob Broadfoot 5:23
Like a T bone.
Don Mock 5:24
Okay.
Rob Broadfoot 5:25
Shagg-
Don Mock 5:26
But they’re not looking at each other because they’re looking at the object in flight.
Rob Broadfoot 5:28
They’re so focused on what they’re going to get. And I mean, monster collision.
Don Mock 5:33
Oh, my Lord.
Rob Broadfoot 5:33
And Shaggy sent Lulu flying. And there’s a lot of yelping, limping
Don Mock 5:33
Arr, arr, arr, arr.
Rob Broadfoot 5:40
Yeah. and it was just This horrible, like, “I’m so sorry.” And it was like, “No, that was a crazy horrible accident.”
Don Mock 5:47
Yeah, one on a million chance right?
Rob Broadfoot 5:49
That was probably, if I had to guess… she was she was a pup pup. I would say a year ago. Maybe almost a year ago… from that day forward, if we walk to the park, and before she even walks in the little fence, if she sees Shaggy there, she will turn around and go the other way.
Don Mock 6:07
Really?
Rob Broadfoot 6:07
Yep. She totally remembers it.
Don Mock 6:09
Wow.
Rob Broadfoot 6:09
Any other dog she’s fine. But if she sees Shaggy, she tucks her tail and turns around and is like, “Nope, we’re going home.”
Don Mock 6:14
I’m in Shaggy lit her up is the problem there.
Rob Broadfoot 6:17
You know, I mean, it was a full linebacker. It was it was a nasty hit.
Don Mock 6:21
Oh, that’s crazy, man.
Rob Broadfoot 6:23
Anyway, that’s a little bit of a tangent. So whenever we’re out there, she is singularly-focused and, for whatever reason, I get in the zone, too.
Don Mock 6:33
Yeah. Yeah. I like it. I like it.
Rob Broadfoot 6:34
And that leads me to… I do a lot of my thinking and ideation there.
Don Mock 6:42
Yeah. That’s interesting.
Rob Broadfoot 6:43
That ends up being my-
Don Mock 6:45
Well, the phone’s not ringing, emails aren’t coming in. Employees aren’t coming and asking questions. The doorbell is not ringing. It’s just sort of calm. Calm zone time.
Rob Broadfoot 6:57
Calm and just sort of focused. For whatever reason, that seems to be the time, which doesn’t really answer the question. But the idea for me is, stuff happens everywhere. I try to just be aware of people and how they operate and funny stories and things that happen. And oftentimes these weird, quirky things their way into an idea.
Don Mock 6:57
So here’s a question for you then. Hey, we’re flinging the Frisbee. We’re rocking out. Ee come up with, “Oh, that’s an interesting thought” for a certain campaign or concept or platform or whatever-
Rob Broadfoot 7:29
Say it into my phone.
Don Mock 7:30
Is that what you do? Okay, yeah, because I was gonna ask-
Rob Broadfoot 7:32
I do a voice memo.
Don Mock 7:33
You do a voice memo? Okay. Interesting. I had no idea. How long have we worked together? I had no idea. That’s crazy.
Rob Broadfoot 7:37
I’ll pull up, do a voice memo.
Don Mock 7:39
Okay, that’s interesting. Have you ever lost anything from not writing it down?
Rob Broadfoot 7:44
I’ve had ideas-
Don Mock 7:46
Ideas vaporize.
Rob Broadfoot 7:47
Ideas where in the middle of the night I come up with something, I don’t write it down and in the morning, I know I had something but I can’t… but then to me, if I can’t remember it.
Don Mock 7:56
It’s not that great.
Rob Broadfoot 7:57
It’s not that great.
Don Mock 7:58
Yeah, even though the topic today is Ideas from Unusual Places, I will say, I agree with you that the brain is always kind of on. Even when it’s off, it’s on, right? I mean, you’re out to lunch, or the dinner, or whatever, you’re always kind of percolating in the back. Thinking about strategy and things like that. Not necessarily design-wise, not necessarily execution, but just taking in inspiration, I guess, from different places. But I don’t have the movie-esque, oh my god, I wake up in the middle of the night and scribble down on an idea. and that’s it. Or run to the computer at strange places or things like that. I think, a nice, warm cup of coffee, right thing in the early in the morning, right?
Rob Broadfoot 8:49
Sure. Yeah.
Don Mock 8:49
Over the course of the career, I’ve kind of trained my brain on when I do different parts of my job while at different parts of the day.
Rob Broadfoot 8:57
Yeah.
Don Mock 8:58
Because just like you we do different things. We have a job title, obviously. But the day is broken down into different responsibilities of what we do, right?
Rob Broadfoot 9:08
Yeah.
Don Mock 9:09
Inspiration is definitely different than execution, for example. And it’s like, okay, well, hey, 4:59 on a Friday is not the greatest- I mean, just being totally transparent, even clients listening to this. That is not the time you’re going to come up with an absolutely amazing revolutionary idea.
Rob Broadfoot 9:27
Generally speaking, no.
Don Mock 9:29
It’s just the seasonality to the day, to the week, to how it works.
Rob Broadfoot 9:33
Yeah.
Don Mock 9:34
I mean, I have had a few, “oh my god, I gotta write these things down.” Or like, “Oh, my God, I was watching TV and I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote something.” Varying degrees of success over the course of the career. Everything from man, I can’t read my own writing. What did I write down? I’ve literally had those moments, to like, Huh? Yeah, man, I thought that was a great idea yesterday, and now I don’t think that’s really that great of an idea. You know what I mean? Like after it’s kind of set in a little bit. So I still have those inspirations. I’ve shared the story about the Nurses for Africa logo and like that boom. I mean, that’s a lightning bolt and then doodle it out and we’re done here, everybody. But in terms of inspiration, I think there’s always a little hamster wheel turning in the back of the machine. Even if you’re at the aquarium, even if you’re at a sporting event, I think that… I don’t view that as a curse at all. That’s a blessing. I mean, in terms of how we sort of visualize and see the world. Kind of processing, to your point, human behavior. I mean, we’ve said that people… no one wants to be sold, but everyone will listen to a story.
Rob Broadfoot 10:44
Right, right. You got to tell stories.
Don Mock 10:46
Yeah. So if we figure out how to tell that story appropriately, it’ll be received in a positive fashion.
Rob Broadfoot 10:52
Yeah, and I think also, too, with your specific skill set and what you excel at is design work. That requires a computer. That requires you to sit in front of the computer.
Don Mock 11:06
Nowadays it does, yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 11:07
Nowadays it does, right. You know what I mean? Yeah, and do and move around and try this and try that. It’s so it’s not as much, dare I say- and slap me- it’s not as much conceptualization as it just active moving and doing.
Don Mock 11:25
I don’t disagree with that at all. I mean, I will a lot of times, even in my office thumbnail out what I’m about to go do.
Rob Broadfoot 11:32
Yeah. Yeah.
Don Mock 11:33
But no one on the planet understands what those thumbnails are.
Rob Broadfoot 11:37
Right.
Don Mock 11:37
Even if I literally handed it to you. It doesn’t make any sense. It looks like scribble scrabble. It doesn’t even look like you know, a thumbnail of like a storyboard or anything. It’s just me figuring out proportions, or it’s almost me training my brain of what I want to do before I want to do it.
Rob Broadfoot 11:53
It’s warming up, we’re loosenin’ it up for the bullpen.
Don Mock 11:56
Yeah, exactly.
Rob Broadfoot 11:56
I’m getting ready to pitch. But another thing, and we’ve talked about this before… we do a lot of work across a lot of different industries.
Don Mock 12:04
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 12:06
I think both of us- again, we’ve discussed this- but the idea of drawing inspiration from one industry and applying it to another.
Don Mock 12:15
Absolutely.
Rob Broadfoot 12:16
I think… again, I don’t know that I can cite specific examples, but we always go on these crazy educational journeys, be it field trips, or the deep dive learning about the client and the industry. Then I think we’re always open and receptive to taking something that we’ve learned in food service and then applying that to a video game idea, or whatever it happens to be.
Don Mock 12:41
Absolutely.
Rob Broadfoot 12:42
And that happens.
Don Mock 12:43
Well, I think that’s part of- going back to what you’re saying of brand storytellers. I mean, that’s part of human behavior.
Rob Broadfoot 12:49
Yeah.
Don Mock 12:49
Right. You do have to run that through the target audience filter of not all human behavior is the same. The buying cycle’s not the same for different products or different people or Corporation. A corporation if we’re talking to b2b. But at the end of the day, we all are people, right?
Rob Broadfoot 13:06
We’re all consumers.
Don Mock 13:07
Hopefully. I mean, the robots haven’t taken over totally yet.
Rob Broadfoot 13:09
We’re getting there, right?
Don Mock 13:10
We are totally getting there.
Rob Broadfoot 13:11
Yeah. Drake is here.
Don Mock 13:13
Yeah. Gosh, Mike, and I did a quick AI podcast. Even from that podcast, which was Gosh, this was a couple of weeks ago, till now, it’s like a totally different world. I mean, it’s completely insane. Because we were joking about how they couldn’t do hands. Forget about Chat GBT. But the illustrated version or the photorealistic version of image creation, it still had all these problems with hands. It couldn’t do fingers. The fingers on the hands were all messed up. It’s totally sorted out now.
They figured it out. Yeah, it’s the technology that moves so fast.
And now we’re into music though. You mentioned AI Drake.
Rob Broadfoot 13:51
Yeah, we’re talking about AI Drake. I mean, the record industry has got to be absolutely-
Don Mock 13:56
Losing their marbles?
Rob Broadfoot 13:57
Losing their minds right now. I mean, the fact that you that a computer can go out and generate the likeness of an artist and the song, and the video, and have it be a Top Billboard hit is terrifying.
Don Mock 14:10
Totally insane. I mean, we have had Gorillas, for example for us, was a band that was-
Rob Broadfoot 14:17
They were fabricated.
Don Mock 14:18
They were fabricated band but it was still written by human beings and performed.
Rob Broadfoot 14:21
Somebody has to make and perform the music.
Don Mock 14:24
Yeah shout out Bing for Hutsune Miku, is a is a musical artist. Right?
Rob Broadfoot 14:30
Right.
Don Mock 14:30
Still created by humans but is an anime character-
Rob Broadfoot 14:34
With a story al all that.
Don Mock 14:35
But still- again created by us- and that is the version. Now we don’t even need that anymore. Now literally, we can go alright, Hatsune Miku, just write your own songs and create your own. It’s gonna be totally insane.
Rob Broadfoot 14:49
The example I told you- we’re totally going off on a tangent- but that’s okay.
Don Mock 14:52
No but that’s AI inspiration, created from- we want to tie it into inspiration- we have fed everything into the database, for lack of a better term. Now the machines are taking that as inspiration and building upon that.
Rob Broadfoot 15:07
The example that freaked me out the most was the other day and it was on the-
Don Mock 15:11
The 60 minutes thing?
Rob Broadfoot 15:12
The 60 minutes thing. The example was they they punched in this great sort of legendary short story that’s six words. And the story goes “for sale, infant shoes, never worn.”
Don Mock 15:26
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 15:27
That’s the whole story.
Don Mock 15:28
Six words.
Rob Broadfoot 15:29
It’s either infant shoes, or newborn shoes, one of the two. But that’s the story. It’s just sort of this famous, wonderfully written six-word short story that implies a lot. So they punch that into the AI, and within five seconds, they asked it to write the story.
Don Mock 15:46
Write the backstory?
Rob Broadfoot 15:48
Write the story, and the thing spit out in like five seconds. IT wrote out the whole and it was like, “Oh, well, you know, Joel and Sarah couldn’t had a baby. But there were complications. I mean it-
Don Mock 16:00
Oh, my God.
Rob Broadfoot 16:00
It totally wrote- like goosebumps- the story. And that is, where did it come from?
Don Mock 16:08
Yeah. Well, there’s stories too, I think of the President of Google, how the artificial intelligence has now written its own language or something, right? Isn’t there something along those lines?
Rob Broadfoot 16:18
It learned a foreign language. But this, again, was part of that 60 minutes thing.
Don Mock 16:23
Okay.
Rob Broadfoot 16:24
It learned a foreign language, but they hadn’t trained it, how to learn a foreign language.
Don Mock 16:28
Okay. So it just developed a skill on it’s own?
Rob Broadfoot 16:31
It developed a skill set. Learned it’s own language. So yeah, we’re all we’re all in trouble.
Don Mock 16:36
Totally insane.
Rob Broadfoot 16:37
I think his point was the technology, just as a warning. The technology is moving so fast, that humanity can’t keep up with it.
Don Mock 16:49
Yeah
Rob Broadfoot 16:49
We don’t understand it. We can’t keep up with it. And yeah, the robots are gonna take-
Don Mock 16:52
By the time we actually understand what’s happening, it’ll be too late.
Rob Broadfoot 16:55
Way too late.
Don Mock 16:56
Yeah, the robots will have seized control. So yeah, that is one hell of a tangent. I will say that, but I think that it does tie back into inspiration.
Rob Broadfoot 17:05
Where do ideas come from?
Don Mock 17:07
Yeah, well, there’s something… I mean, inspiration in general of, you have all the great Isaac Asimov science fiction stories from the 50s, and Ray Bradbury, and all that. Just considered famous, whatever. That inspires the Jetsons in the 1960s cartoon, and then that inspires, you know, like, science fiction. Mike and I talked about Star Wars the other day. That look towards the future does inspire the present, and then sort of that pathway to get there. I think AI, obviously, is part of that. Maybe that’s inspiration more as a broader term outside of just necessarily what we do. The drive of humanity moving forward. Is it a positive? I don’t know. I mean, maybe that’s not a positive moving forward. But But yeah, inspiration.
Rob Broadfoot 17:59
At the end of the day, people, ideas are everywhere. Youjust gotta be awake and open and receptive to finding them in the universe.
Don Mock 18:07
Where can the people drop us their inspirational thoughts, Mr. Rob?
Rob Broadfoot 18:11
I have an idea. You can visit MOCKtheAgency.com.
Don Mock 18:15
There you go. One place.
Rob Broadfoot 18:16
Another idea is you could go to the socials and find us @mocktheagency there as well.
Don Mock 18:22
Absolutely.
Rob Broadfoot 18:22
We always invite feedback and positive thoughts and good ideas.
Don Mock 18:27
Totally.
Rob Broadfoot 18:27
Bring it on. We’ll talk to you next.
Don Mock 18:29
All right, thanks everybody.
Comments are closed.