Episode Transcript
Don Mock 0:19
We’re back, baby. Episode 121, there are no famous 121’s out there but wasn’t Dominique Wilkins number 21?
Rob Broadfoot 0:27
He was 21.
Don Mock 0:28
Yeah, there you go. 21 Atlanta. Famous Atlanta Hawk.
Rob Broadfoot 0:31
Atlanta Hawk Dominique, and he was not only a phenomenal player, but just a good guy,
Don Mock 0:38
Good dude.
Rob Broadfoot 0:38
Yeah, he just does a lot of a lot of good things.
Don Mock 0:41
Does he still do the Does he still broadcast hawks camps? I think he does.
Rob Broadfoot 0:46
He probably does but I don’t listen to or watch enough basketball to know the answer to that
Don Mock 0:50
I think if we go long enough, I think that he will end up being Atlanta’s Babe Ruth. And here’s what I mean by that.
Rob Broadfoot 0:59
Is there a statue of him already?
Don Mock 1:01
Well, no, well, no, well, here’s what I mean, is there a statue I think there is
Rob Broadfoot 1:04
I feel like there is, I feel like there’s, there’s a bronze. Yeah, there’s a bronze.
Don Mock 1:06
But Boston was famous for trading Babe Ruth, And then they had the Curse of the Bambino, right? And never won the World Series for like, you know, almost 100 years or whatever, right? The Hawks, the poor hawks, I mean, they’ve never that. The farthest they’ve gotten is the Eastern Conference Finals. That was a few years ago, but they’ve never won the Finals, right? And I think it’s going to end up being the curse of Dominique Wilkins. Like, you know, you traded him away, traded him, you know, you know, I don’t know was he was Prime. I mean, he was, he was at the back, like, he
Rob Broadfoot 1:38
I think he was over he may have been on the downslope,
Don Mock 1:41
But still, like, didn’t get much in return. Like, it’s just bad luck
Rob Broadfoot 1:46
I don’t know how many seasons he played for the Hawks I mean, he was here for a while.
Don Mock 1:48
Yeah, it was awesome. So the curse of, there’s no good Rhyme Time, yeah? But anyway, 121 here’s what I think we should talk about today. Rob, this is a weird one. It’s kind of fun. What are things that we wouldn’t work on, right? Not necessarily, like an ethics thing, you know, but like, could be, hey, are there brands, or are there categories or other things that we actually wouldn’t work on, you know? And yeah, agencies pass on things for a variety of reasons, yeah, but is there any type of client out there, or any type of category that we wouldn’t that we’d be like hard pass, you know, immediate, immediate,
Rob Broadfoot 2:28
I would say yes, yeah. I mean, we’ve talked a lot about things we enjoy working on, so it is interesting to flip the script,
Don Mock 2:35
yeah, exactly,
Rob Broadfoot 2:35
to talk about things that we wouldn’t work on. And I’ll start with an anecdote. So oftentimes we’re We obviously work most often direct client, but a lot of times agencies will hire us as just sort of creative guns on projects. And this was one of those particular instances where I got a call, and the call started with, hey, we want to involve you guys in some work, but I need to know if there, if you would be opposed to this category or not. Okay? And my very first response was, and I know this person pretty well, have for a long time, so I could be kind of silly. And I said, Well, it’s either cigarettes or something to do with sex, yeah, and there’s only one of those that I won’t work on. And so that was my response, yeah. So after the chuckles came up, it was no, it’s actually neither, And the category was drum roll, cultivated meat, cultivated meat. And so for those not in the know, what is cultivated meat? Cultivated meat is effectively meat that they can call meat or chicken, because it’s made from stem cells.
Don Mock 3:49
Yes, it’s lab grown meat,
Rob Broadfoot 3:51
Lab grown meat that’s made from actual stem cells, from actual animals.
Don Mock 3:55
Yeah, so cultivated cells from the animal themselves, and then they replicate them, here’shere’s a slab of meat, yeah, I guess is formed like
Rob Broadfoot 4:06
It’s grown just like meat grows only it’s not grown on an animal.
Don Mock 4:11
Yeah, exactly. So there’s no animal cruelty.
Rob Broadfoot 4:13
There’s no animal cruelty. And, you know, a big part of the industry is and we learned this going through the process, which kind of tells you our thoughts on it. We did end up working on it. But the the the idea is that, from a from a macro perspective, we we are going to run out of food. Yeah, right. I mean, the planet is growing and at such a rate that there will come a time where we run out of food,
Speaker 1 4:13
yeah, we keep multiplying and keep taking resources. And pretty soon, yeah, I mean, we already joke, like, how many farm animals outnumber, you know, humans on the planet, right?
Rob Broadfoot 4:52
So, yeah. So that’s at the sort of the macro level. And then yeah, you drill down into just the ethical nature of animal cruelty and all this kind of things like that. Um. Yeah. And so it was an interesting question, because a I don’t know anything about that industry. I mean, I guess I knew it existed, but I’ve never spent an ounce of thought on it until I was posed that question.
Don Mock 5:11
It’s kinda scisci fi, you know, it’s like, in the future, eat a pill.
Rob Broadfoot 5:16
And it’s kind of, kind of odd. And yeah, and I remember, I so I got the call, and I kind of thought about it, and then I actually called you,
Don Mock 5:24
yes, you did.
Rob Broadfoot 5:24
And was like, Hey, I got a weird one for you. How do you feel about this? And I think just, you know, to keep it short and simple, we kind of agreed that we didn’t really have an ethical opposition to this. I would absolutely try a piece of lab grown chicken, or lab grown filet, yeah, without any prejudice, really, yeah. And so we decided to go ahead and move forward on the business. But it is interesting because a lot of people disagree with it, yeah. Florida has already already banned.
Don Mock 5:54
It already banned. It preemptively banned.
Rob Broadfoot 5:56
And there are several states, primarily in the southeastern region of the United States. And a surprise to no one, where they are following suit. I think West Virginia and a few other states are following suit to try and ban it. Now, a lot of that obviously has to do with lobbying.
Don Mock 6:10
Yes, you stole my thunder. That’s what I was gonna say
Rob Broadfoot 6:13
Yeah, there’s obviously a big lobby against that, from cattle ranchers, yeah, everything else, you know, all the meat manufacturers, yeah, however, all of the big meat and chicken manufacturers are all invested in this, because they have to be,
Don Mock 6:27
Yeah,Yeah exactly,
Rob Broadfoot 6:27
just like anything else, they have to diversify. And, you know, there’s, there are a few different company, I’m going down the weeds, but they’re, you know, there are three or four large there are a lot of companies trying to do this. There are three or four big players that have kind of emerged and are leading the charge on this
Don Mock 6:45
Yeah and this isn’t going away. I don’t think because there
Rob Broadfoot 6:48
No, no, it will happen.
Don Mock 6:49
Yeah, there have already been levels of FDA approvals and clearance. I mean, things have already gone through like it’s happening. I mean, this train is rolling. You know, it’s a matter of how fast people are going to jump on this train and then how readily available they’ll be.
Rob Broadfoot 7:02
Marijuana will be federally legal, pretty soon, but it’s taken a while, so this is not dissimilar to that. I would say yeah, it’s gonna happen in terms of adoption, but there’s, yeah, it’s an interesting thing. Somebody is going to be first to market to do it. And, yeah, you know, it’ll change the face of,
Don Mock 7:23
Yeah, here’s what’s interesting to me, is that even though it’s not plucked off of a living animal, right? One of the things we learned is that you are allowed to call it meat because it is from cultivated cells, correct, right? Unlike, as you had mentioned, the lobbying, unlike milk, right? Milk kind of gave away the farm pun intended, right on they didn’t challenge when everybody else started calling their products milk, almond milk, soy milk, coconut milk, yeah, all that stuff like that. None of that is milk, right, you know. But the, you know, the train left the station on that one, and you can’t stuff that back in right? There is a lot of, like, artificial, you know, the Impossible Burger, and sort of those cauliflower based meats and chicken nuggets and whatever that. And the poultry industry, a lot, you know, they’re, they’re trying their best to be like, Hey, you can’t call it chicken. If there’s no chicken, there’s no chicken. Yeah, yeah, right. Which, which actually makes sense when you think about it, right?
Rob Broadfoot 8:21
Of course
Don Mock 8:21
However this you can they are, it is meat. That’s what’s so weird about this whole thing. To me.
Rob Broadfoot 8:26
It’s an odd one.
Don Mock 8:27
It is meat. You can call it meat. It is meat. It is cultured animal cells that are grown in the meat. You know, it’s just without the cruelty and all the and all the byproduct and potentially even, like, harmful aspect of the environment, right? If the labs, you know, can manage it without, you know, extraneous like energy outputs, things like that, right? So, yeah, that’s an odd one. And we both said, Yeah, let’s give it shot.
Rob Broadfoot 8:52
We wille’ll give it a shot.
Have we ever disagreed on, on pitching something or going after something?
I don’t think so.
Don Mock 8:58
I don’t think so either.
Rob Broadfoot 8:59
I don’t think so. I mean, we’ve had some strange ones along the way where we’re both like I don’t know
Don Mock 9:04
Oh, facial fitness. Do you remember that?
Rob Broadfoot 9:06
Oh, yeah, no, I absolutely remember facial fitness bad shark tank ideas in need of marketing that you know are bad ideas and are never gonna they’re gonna be lemons, So to answer that. I would say, No, I don’t think there’s anything that you and I haven’t seen eye to eye on whether or not we would take it on or not take it on.
Don Mock 9:10
Sure, sure.
Rob Broadfoot 9:30
But I think about, you know, it’s interesting to think about, because cigarettes, right? Tobacco. I mean, I would say no,
Don Mock 9:41
You would? Interesting Okay. I’d say yes.
Rob Broadfoot 9:48
There we go, our first, our first disagreement there
Don Mock 9:51
it’s hard to make a blanket statement without knowing everything. But I think that unlike the 90s, for example, right where we clearly havehave Joe Camel. We clearly have Marlboro points. I mean, we clearly have this, like
Rob Broadfoot 10:03
marketing to kids.
Don Mock 10:05
A lot of people are still smoking in all these places, and we are marketing to kids, and we are trying to get people hooked on the cancer train. You know what? I mean, there’s a big, you know, I think my answer then would be a resounding, no, we’re absolutely not doing that right. But now, I think because the General’s warnings, because everything’s so locked down. Because there is such a, at least here in the States, you know, there’s such a divide of young people versus, you know, to me, it doesn’t feel, it feels like it’s very boxed in, like, like tobacco products. Everyone knows they’re bad for you. It’s not like five out of five doctors recommend Camel cigarettes, you know. So it feels like this very kind of closed off adult corner of the world that I don’t have a but again, that’s just me.
Rob Broadfoot 10:47
Let me ask you a question why do you think all the vape come in all these great fun flavors, Blueberry, raspberry? Why do you think that is?
Don Mock 10:54
Well, because the same reason that jewel, you know, lost every single lawsuit and went belly up,
Rob Broadfoot 11:00
Because they’re targeting kids.
Don Mock 11:00
So they’re targeting kids absolutely.
Rob Broadfoot 11:02
So I don’t know, for me, and maybe it is just a hangover from cigarettes
Don Mock 11:10
I mean, where does Marlboro like advertise?
Rob Broadfoot 11:13
in West Virginia, in Kentucky. Well, do theythey still do billboards?
Don Mock 11:19
Because, remember, it used to be the Winston Cup. I mean, they used to be the title sponsor of, like, multiple sporting events and the Virginia Slims, like tennis tournament.
I don’t know what they can do or can’t do anymore, yeah. I mean, you don’t see the marble man anymore.
No, no, he died.
Rob Broadfoot 11:29
Yeah, he died of lung cancer. So I don’t know. I mean, for me, I think my gut reaction, I don’t, I don’t know that I can do that. And part of that, part of that also is to just, you know, me having kids and the age that they are. Now, here’s where I’m a total hypocrite.
Don Mock 11:51
We work on booze?
Rob Broadfoot 11:52
We work on a lot of booze. Yeah, yeah. Which is worse, I don’t know. Man, it’s a toss up, yeah, I’m not afraid to sound like,
Don Mock 12:04
well, and we’ve worked on, you know, marijuana products, you know, or CBD.
Rob Broadfoot 12:08
I find CBD and marijuana probably less harmful than either tobacco or alcohol in my personal opinion
Don Mock 12:16
I don’t disagree with that at all. Yeah, I’m with you on that. The one thing we have passed on is political stuff, and we have been approached by politics. I’ve always said no, regardless of party, just No, it’s and it doesn’t. Most of the initial response to no is because it’s always crash and burn timing, and they’re never, I shouldn’t say never, but like, no one’s set up for success in a situation with what we’ve been approached with in the past. So it has nothing to do with left or right or whatever. It’s like, Hey, we’ve got this, like, it’s always, you know, a last minute emergency, you know, like, this is not going to be, this is not going to be fun to work on or successful
Rob Broadfoot 12:17
Well, let me ask you this question, if we were approached to develop a campaign for let’s call it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a presidential candidate or what level it is. Doesn’t matter a governor, okay, whatever. And it was, and it was something that that we aligned on in our beliefs, right? And we had ample time to develop the identity, the campaign frame, like the whole thing, would you turn it away?
Don Mock 13:00
I mean, I am 80% on the Yes, turn it away. It would take a lot for me to
Rob Broadfoot 13:06
because you’re because you’ve you would feel like you’re planning a flag in the ground?
Don Mock 13:41
I think so, yeah, I think you just get lumped in with, with that. You know that you get, you get you get put in that wash and you don’t control that, right? And there’s, there’s so many other forces around, especially with how charged everything is from a political environment now, right? It’s just you’re lumped in with that category, whether you want to be or not, yeah. So, I mean, my gut would say, even if I was a believer, you know, like, oh, I met this person and they’re awesome, yeah, I believe that they’re trying to do good in the world. And, you know, from XYZ perspective, I’d probably still pass. I mean, there is a chance that I that I do it, yeah?
Rob Broadfoot 14:16
I mean, it’s, again, a blanket statement is tough to make, right? Yeah, yeah, I just hate politics, with a passion so I would, it’s, I don’t know how, I don’t know how good I would be at it. I just get, you know, I loathe it so much.
Don Mock 14:34
Yeah, it’s, it’s not, I mean, that would probably be my least favorite category to consider working within right? I mean, because you have extreme timelines, you have hours well,
Rob Broadfoot 14:46
and you know that a big part of it’s going to be smear stuff, yeah, yeah. It just is. It’s going to be negative. It’s just,
Don Mock 14:53
I mean, years, years ago, I remember interviewing, we were hiring at this agency. I was out, and we were interviewing, and a guy came in and he. You know, worked at a political shop, yeah? And it was like, here’s every mailer under the sun, about this, that, and whatever. And it was like, you know, you’re two years out of school, and literally, your whole book is just negative political like, oh,
Rob Broadfoot 15:15
spammy and crappy and gross, you know? But I think it’s different if you were to say, like, oh, like, the team behind, like, Obama’s hope, you know, and the image, and that whole thing, right? The artist did that, and the whole all that stuff. Like, to me, that’s different. It’s different if it’s, Hey, we need an identity for a candidate or something, and not the, like, tactical deployment of the actual campaign,
Don Mock 15:38
yeah, well, pentagram did Hillary’s brand pentagram MichaelMichael Beirut did that, you know, and he and it was, you know, it was for those that don’t remember, was the H with the crossbar, was the arrow, but the arrow was red, and he was pointing to the right, and everybody went cuckoo, pants on that. Yeah, he had to defend that stuff like that. But I think, to your point, he didn’t do, like, the ongoing political
Rob Broadfoot 16:01
Right That’s just the identity
Don Mock 16:02
He was just like, we developed the basis of your look and feel for your campaign.
Rob Broadfoot 16:07
I think mechanism did Biden’s they did some aspect of that anyway. But yeah, I wouldn’t be inclined to work on political stuff.
Don Mock 16:14
That’s probably, I mean, honestly, that’s probably the only category I wouldn’t want you know. I mean, I would work in the sins, you know what? I mean, the cigarettes and the alcohol and, you know, the perceived sins, you know. I mean, we’ve never done anything adult entertainment scenario.
Rob Broadfoot 16:33
I’d be all in on that.
Don Mock 16:34
I don’t think that would
Rob Broadfoot 16:35
sex toys? You got it. Bringring it on.
Don Mock 16:38
I guess, you know. I mean, I wouldn’t have a problem well, you need a packaging for XYZ product.
Rob Broadfoot 16:42
I don’t have any kind of problem with that whatsoever.
Don Mock 16:46
If you’re out there listening to this, bring it on.
Rob Broadfoot 16:48
by definition that can’t really hurt you or kill you
Don Mock 16:53
Yeah I mean, sure.
Rob Broadfoot 16:57
right, I mean, it can be abused like anything else, but, but the product itself is not a harmful product generallyenerally speaking.
no, no, agreed, agreed, yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot, you know, ethics and design and advertising. There’s an interesting, you know, slot pot, right? I mean, how many, how many, I mean, not to air, you know, but super old dirty laundry, but, like, how many old Kellogg’s briefs that we listen through, you know? And the end result is, well, 1/3 less sugar is still way too much sugar for anyone to be eating in one breakfast. But you know, it was like, Yeah, you know. And that’s not cereal to kids don’t get me, or cigarettes to kids don’t get me wrong. But it’s like, okay, this is, really isn’t healthy.
Captain crunchcrunch is not good for you. Is just not.
Don Mock 17:45
Exactly. So,I mean, they’re, you know, those are kind of funny advertorial, you know, anecdotes, yeah. But to some people that that is where they would draw the line.
Rob Broadfoot 17:58
Okay,well, let’s, let’s, I’m gonna shift gears for a second. And it’s something topical. I watched the other day, the South Park episode, the ozempic episode, ozempic slash Lizzo episode, and that got me thinking about a it’s brilliant. Anybody who hasn’t seen it, go watch it.
Don Mock 18:17
Yeah, those guys still got it.
Rob Broadfoot 18:18
Absolutely fantastic. And but that got me thinking about drug companies and drug company advertising, right? Yeah, and, and that is an ethical play too, depending on the drug, right? And Are some of these drugs? Are they good for you? Are they bad for you? I don’t know about, I mean, some aren’t, right? But that’s another ethical one, and we’ve never really worked on
Don Mock 18:44
Pharma.
Rob Broadfoot 18:45
Pharma, yeah, we’ve done a lot of medical device stuff and things like that, but never, really, never really dove into pharma, yeah, and what’s so great about to me, about Pharma is that I love that finally along it’s kind of like somebody turning upside down the ketchup model. Because, Duh, yeah, somebody finally in the legal department just went, can we just make up a word for the name of the drug, And so now it’s all just great ozempic. It’s all just this Manjaro, it’s all these just fantastic made up words.
Don Mock 19:21
Well, there are firms out there. I mean, there I mean, they’re a big, high price that are just sitting on, you know, they have all the names already done.
Oh, yeah and the URLs bought and trademarks, yeah, absolutely.
And there’s a method to the madness. On, do you end in a consonant? Do you end in an uplifting vowel? Howow aggressive do you want this to sound
Rob Broadfoot 19:40
throw a z in there.
Don Mock 19:41
Yeah, exactly. So sometimes they’re like derivatives of the actual active ingredients, butut a lot of times they’re really not. A lot of times they’re just, it’s just whatever
Rob Broadfoot 19:51
made up, yeah, but, but I love to that on the a lot of those made up names, I mean, I can only imagine the pitch, right, and the story that they. Crowd around the made up word and why it is what it is.
Don Mock 20:04
They have such bad logos too. All of those drugs have, like, the world’s like, everything has a swoosh in it from the 90s. Yeah, they’ve got even Botox to this. I mean, Botox, everyone knows Botox. Botox logo is hard.
Rob Broadfoot 20:18
I don’t even know. I can’t picture it in my head.
Don Mock 20:20
Nobody cares because nobody cares, because it’s it you get your little prescription thing. There’s no logos on that. It’s got CVS logo or Walgreens or whatever, you know. But the more that they leapfrog doctors and go to consumers, right? Yeah, and then say, hey, ask your doctor for, you know, ozempic or whatever, yeah, you know, they do develop consumer brands for all these things, yeah. So, yeah, it’s, it’s, yeah, that’s, I mean, that’s its own weird ball of waxes, pharma stuff. I mean, just the legal requirements, you know? I mean, I think they all looked at cigarettes and was like, Okay, now, yeah, that’s why every ad has a whole nother ad with just a legal one.
Rob Broadfoot 20:56
I just love the every single one has to say, do not take this if you’re allergic to it.
Don Mock 21:02
I know. I know.
Rob Broadfoot 21:03
Yeah, now, and that’s ignoring even the long listlist of side effects that theythey then go through for 30 seconds.
Don Mock 21:09
It will kill you.
Rob Broadfoot 21:10
Yeah this will kill you.
Don Mock 21:11
Yeah, absolutely. But it’s yeah, it’s don’t take Xarelto if allergic. If you’re allergic, yeah, yeah. We, we’ve, we’ve leaped over gas with oily discharge and gone straight to every single thing will kill you.
Rob Broadfoot 21:25
Everything will kill you, yeah
Don Mock 21:28
I mean, there’s, you know, that’s a whole nother ethicalness of, you know, you know promising, right? Promising people, you know end results, right? Without having to do the work, I guess so, yeah, I mean that being said, I would work on pharmaceutical stuff. That’s just not our we’ve never really
Rob Broadfoot 21:47
We’veWe’ve not leaned into that.
Don Mock 21:48
We haven’t leaned into that. We’re, you know, we’ve got a tremendous amount of experience on repairing the body, yeah, you know, with either the hardware shop or using your own body,
Rob Broadfoot 21:57
when I think with, I think with something like pharma, it’s so detailed and so just riddled with compliance issues and everything else that you really have to know what you’re doing. And that’s why you have shops that just specialize in that’s allthey they do. Because there is a, there is a, yeah, an incredible knowledge base that comes along with
Don Mock 22:17
so it sounds like pretty much politics as of right now is the only thing that we both
Rob Broadfoot 22:22
yeah, politics, I think we’d both be like, we’re a little divided on cigarettes, yeah, or vapes, or, I guess, tobacco products. Zen, are you gonna dip? Okay, if somebody Copenhagen calls,
Don Mock 22:33
I’d be fine with it. But I mean, we potentially did have an opportunity in that path didn’t manifest though.
Rob Broadfoot 22:38
We did?
Don Mock 22:39
yeah, yeah, you are forgetting, Zen. There was a potential for Zen.
Rob Broadfoot 22:44
There was a potential for Zen?
Don Mock 22:45
Yeah, it didn’t, didn’t, it didn’t come to pass. So maybe I should’nt be saying that out loud. I don’t know,
Rob Broadfoot 22:50
Doesn’tDoesn’t matter.
Don Mock 22:51
Yeah, that’s on the internet. It’ll be there forever. So yeah, well, here’s what we need. We need somebody to write in and with a crazy, wacky, broad, you know, project for us see if we can do it
Rob Broadfoot 23:03
Yeah Bring us your questionable, ethical, scandalous products, and see what we say
Don Mock 23:12
Yeah and we will make a magical success from those things. So, all right, where can everybody find us Rob?
Rob Broadfoot 23:19
You can find us on the internets, of course, at www.mocktheagency.com, and we’re all over the socials. We’re not hard to find @mocktheagency And I’m gonna let people guess where they can find us there. I’m not gonna tell them.
Don Mock 23:28
Okay, it’s too many, too many socials.
Rob Broadfoot 23:31
They’re gonna have to use theiryour brains.
Don Mock 23:32
All right.Thanks, everybody.
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