Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. To me, data isn't just numbers. Data is
Speaker 1: also words. We struck a relationship with Twitter to be
Speaker 1: actually the first one to anonymously connect tweets to purchasers.
Speaker 1: What I learned is that there are words that people
Speaker 1: use in social media that can tell you whether they're
Speaker 1: going to go to a film six months for that
Speaker 1: film comes out. It is astonishing. I'm Bob Pittman and
Speaker 1: welcome to Math and Magic. On each episode, I chat
Speaker 1: with someone I truly admire to explore their stories from
Speaker 1: the frontiers of marketing, and we're going to cover everything
Speaker 1: from the math of marketing all the way to the
Speaker 1: magic of marketing, which of course the creative side of
Speaker 1: the business. On this episode, we've got someone who covers
Speaker 1: the range in a very unexpected way, which will come
Speaker 1: to in a second. Just a note to listeners, this
Speaker 1: episode was recorded in early March two thousand nineteen, before
Speaker 1: the Fox Disney merger. I can't wait to introduce you
Speaker 1: to today's guest. We're sitting here today with the genius
Speaker 1: of marketing, Julie Reager. Some know her from her perch
Speaker 1: Higah Top industry as president chief Data Strategist and had
Speaker 1: a media at twenties century Fox. Did I get that right?
Speaker 1: You got it right? Okay? And that sounds like to
Speaker 1: some people are listening, I'm sure that that's a mathematician.
Speaker 1: But wrong, really wrong. I've known Julie for a while
Speaker 1: of the business. With her, we've done some exciting stuff
Speaker 1: which we will talk a little bit about today from
Speaker 1: the common stories. But she is one of the most
Speaker 1: out of the box thinkers I know, which is surprising
Speaker 1: with the title like chief data strategist, and she also
Speaker 1: has a whole other dimension. I'll give you a little
Speaker 1: preview as the ghost photographer, but will come to that.
Speaker 1: She's a native of Oklahoma, made her way to l
Speaker 1: A the Dallas in San Francisco, state champion golfer when
Speaker 1: she was younger. You still play golf. I'm going to
Speaker 1: disappoint you know, really, I have so many other things
Speaker 1: to do. There's so many things, Okay, Julie. We're gonna
Speaker 1: start with one of our favorite features, which is you
Speaker 1: in sixty seconds, So here we go. Do you prefer
Speaker 1: cats or dogs, both, beaches or mountains, mountains, pancakes or waffles?
Speaker 1: All of the above logan or Deadpool, Deadpool Sunrise or
Speaker 1: Sunsets Sunset Oklahoma or California, California. Sorry, Arnold Palmer or
Speaker 1: Tiger Woods Arnold Palmers love that? Okay? Okay, now it's
Speaker 1: gonna get a little harder. Would eat for breakfast? Vegan
Speaker 1: protein shake? Topic you can talk about forever? The spiritual world, okay?
Speaker 1: The other side. Smartest person you know that one's so
Speaker 1: hard at the list. I have to say one of
Speaker 1: the smartest people. Note it is actually Stacy Snyder because
Speaker 1: she's creative and intelligent. Yes, childhood hero Nancy Lopez. First job?
Speaker 1: How's a cashier at the quick stop? Two in Mima, Oklahoma?
Speaker 1: Do you ever go back to visit occasionally? Favorite TV
Speaker 1: show ever ever? Mm hmm. I gotta say The Golden
Speaker 1: Girls historical idol Joan of arc most overlooked actor. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's so hard in this business. Rebel Wilson.
Speaker 1: I just love her and I hope she's listening. Best
Speaker 1: place the photograph of ghost my backyard quote to live by. Oh,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you ready, we treat people how we
Speaker 1: feel about ourselves. Where did that quote come from? Me?
Speaker 1: I like it. We'll write that down. That's a good
Speaker 1: bumper sticker. It is a good bumper sticker movie that
Speaker 1: should be required viewing hidden figures. Who would play you
Speaker 1: in a biopick? I hope it would be Tiffany Hattish
Speaker 1: because I love her and she's really funny, but I
Speaker 1: don't think she'd take the gig. Spirit Animal, black Panther.
Speaker 1: Black Panther actually protects us from the underworld. Thank you. Then,
Speaker 1: what did you want to be when you were growing up?
Speaker 1: A professional golfer? And here you are not playing golf.
Speaker 1: Let's get started. Let's go to the beginning. What was
Speaker 1: it like growing up? Paint the picture a little bit
Speaker 1: of growing up in Oklahoma. It seems like a long
Speaker 1: way from California. It is a really long way. You
Speaker 1: don't have the best way to describe what growing up
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma was like is that my closest friends in
Speaker 1: the world today are friends from there. It was like
Speaker 1: growing up in a family of sixteen thousand and you
Speaker 1: still say in contact with them, Yes, absolutely do share value,
Speaker 1: share past, share ideas, share love. What is it? There
Speaker 1: is nothing in this world that can replace history, and
Speaker 1: sometimes of that history, are you ready? Is from another lifetime?
Speaker 1: And I am convinced. I came back to this one
Speaker 1: with a group of people that we've been cruising around
Speaker 1: the world for thousands of years together. Boom. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: glad I finally found you here because I've been missing
Speaker 1: you for the last million years. Exactly where have you been?
Speaker 1: I know I'm here now. Your mom was an accountant,
Speaker 1: your dad was in the military. You followed a radically
Speaker 1: different path. What do you think put you on this
Speaker 1: path than what was their influence? Probably the biggest influence
Speaker 1: was my mother, Actually not probably, it was most definitely
Speaker 1: my mother. My mother was a feminist before it was cool,
Speaker 1: and she has always believed that everyone was equal and
Speaker 1: brought me up that way and told me over and
Speaker 1: over and over again, you can be anything you want.
Speaker 1: What she gave me was a very giant canvas. And
Speaker 1: I think that's probably the most powerful thing, the biggest
Speaker 1: influence that I had. I don't think it really matters
Speaker 1: where you grow up. I mean, I think that's very
Speaker 1: limiting for people. If you step back and if you
Speaker 1: look at your yourself and look at the world and think,
Speaker 1: I don't have to be one thing. I don't I know,
Speaker 1: you don't I don't have to be one thing. I
Speaker 1: can so go hillbilly on you, though. I mean I'll
Speaker 1: go I'll go southern and just a minute if you
Speaker 1: want me to. But I can go girl from Oklahoma
Speaker 1: that sounds like she's not very smart. I can do
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. But I'm not just from Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: I'm also not just a lesbian. I am also not
Speaker 1: just a nerd. I'm also not just a writer. I
Speaker 1: am all of it. I am everything, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter where I come from. You're star golfer, Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, how did you get to be a star
Speaker 1: golfer at an early age in Oklahoma? Not a lot
Speaker 1: of grass on the greens there. I suspect we have
Speaker 1: two things in Oklahoma. We have athletes and cattle. So
Speaker 1: athletics is a big thing in that state. I mean
Speaker 1: it is from football to football. You know. I grew
Speaker 1: up in this little town and and it's kind of
Speaker 1: a crappy town in all fairness, this little crappy town.
Speaker 1: And we had a golf course. We had a country
Speaker 1: club actually, and it was thirty five dollars to join.
Speaker 1: You can't join twenty for our fitness. For what my
Speaker 1: mom paid for us to join the country club. So
Speaker 1: I just picked up a club. I held it like
Speaker 1: a baseball bat, and I was hitting it further and
Speaker 1: better than most adults. The first time I picked up
Speaker 1: a club, I was seven years old. I had three clubs.
Speaker 1: I had a seven of five and a nine iron.
Speaker 1: No putter, not then eventually got one. Kim in works, right,
Speaker 1: when did you tell yourself no to golf? And when
Speaker 1: did you say yes to media? Oh? Gosh, in Chicago
Speaker 1: in if you must know the place in the date,
Speaker 1: because I remember, I was an internship at Cats Communications.
Speaker 1: Cat I saw your eyes just then. I worked for
Speaker 1: this wonderful woman named Maryland Moss, and I loved it.
Speaker 1: I loved advertising. I loved media. I loved the challenge
Speaker 1: of it. And you know, golf was one of those
Speaker 1: things that you know, you've been playing since you were
Speaker 1: seven and in nineteen would I say eighty eight, I
Speaker 1: was a hair from I was around twenty. That's like
Speaker 1: a you can be a cop for that long and
Speaker 1: retire after that. You know, It's like there's government jobs
Speaker 1: that are shorter length in the time I played golf,
Speaker 1: so I think it was just my cycle. I was done.
Speaker 1: How did you get from that moment? So here you
Speaker 1: are today. I transferred to SMU and Dallas because it
Speaker 1: felt like a better education for me. So I went
Speaker 1: from University of Oklahoma, which was a full golf scholarship,
Speaker 1: and then I felt like I really needed to actually
Speaker 1: learn learn something new and not just how to play golf.
Speaker 1: So went to s m U and my senior year
Speaker 1: at s m U, Laniar Timberland, who formerly Bozell Dallas
Speaker 1: was named after, was a professor. They kind of plucked
Speaker 1: me out of the class in the early nineties when
Speaker 1: we had an ad recession, when they were, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty five people lined up for shitty job. They gave
Speaker 1: me that shitty job and that's how that started. And
Speaker 1: the shitty job was was insistent media planner at Bozel
Speaker 1: Dallas and I was working on J. C. Penney. God
Speaker 1: rested soul And did you think you had died and
Speaker 1: gone to heaven with that job? Oh my god. I
Speaker 1: didn't even ask how much it paid when they called
Speaker 1: me to offer me the job. I didn't care how much?
Speaker 1: Did it? One? Six thousand bones, sixteen thousand bucks. I
Speaker 1: used to go and eat lunch at Sam's warehouse, I
Speaker 1: ate samples for a good year and then from there
Speaker 1: where then I met my now wife, Suzanne. We've been
Speaker 1: together twenty six years, congratulations, Thank you. And we decided
Speaker 1: that we need to live a little freer and have
Speaker 1: some liberations. So we moved to San Francisco and had
Speaker 1: the time of our lives. It was so much fun.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. And I worked at that agencies. I
Speaker 1: worked at a small shop called Winkler McManus, I worked
Speaker 1: at foot Cone of Building, and then I ended up
Speaker 1: running the Hewlett Packard business globally for about it maybe
Speaker 1: a decade sounds about right. That was quite an undertaking.
Speaker 1: I don't think I slept for a day. And and
Speaker 1: the go go years of Hewlett Packard, oh in the
Speaker 1: Carly years, the big spending years. Those were fun. And
Speaker 1: then that brought me to Los Angeles, where I pitched
Speaker 1: the twenty century Fox business, actually on behalf of the agency.
Speaker 1: And very quickly, like within a year, my client had
Speaker 1: decided to move on and went back to the research
Speaker 1: side of things, and they asked me to join, so
Speaker 1: I did, and then here I sit with you. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's pretty amazing. It's a great journey. Right, and what
Speaker 1: do you think in your parents are in your background
Speaker 1: put you on this path. They didn't even know what
Speaker 1: the data strategist was in those days, so they didn't.
Speaker 1: I think what's so interesting about my job is that
Speaker 1: I am the worst technical person to grace the earth.
Speaker 1: I miss clickers, I miss dials. Like what I would
Speaker 1: do for an oven that just had a dial, I
Speaker 1: would give like limbs for I think my gift to
Speaker 1: the business world, to the entertainment industry, even when I
Speaker 1: work at AD Agencies, was more of a vision and
Speaker 1: a strategist. There are plenty of people who their gift
Speaker 1: is being an expert at like writing code, analyzing you know,
Speaker 1: tedious number. My job started out as a vision and
Speaker 1: I think that the visionary part again came from my mother.
Speaker 1: I also think we come into this world with jobs
Speaker 1: to do and with gifts we already have that have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with our parents. Jim Gianopolis, who is
Speaker 1: a former chair person of Fox that I love very much,
Speaker 1: said to me the day he left. You know what, Joels,
Speaker 1: I've loved working with you. I am a little surprised.
Speaker 1: I have to confess that you can operate so well
Speaker 1: in the corporate world. So I was kind of like, okay,
Speaker 1: by where's this going. What's this man gonna say to me?
Speaker 1: And he said, because you're an iconoclast, and he goes
Speaker 1: and we need them. They just have a hard time
Speaker 1: working in a business structure. So the first thing I
Speaker 1: do is I look up iconoclass because I had no
Speaker 1: earthly idea what it meant. That's where Oklahoma comes in.
Speaker 1: We didn't have a very good educational system, and I'm
Speaker 1: from Mississippi. We looked up to people from oklahow It's true.
Speaker 1: The only jokes I have are actually Nebraska jokes. Like
Speaker 1: that's all I got, That's all I learned. I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you one what does the end stand for?
Speaker 1: On the Nebraska helmet? What knowledge? So I think we'll
Speaker 1: get a couple of calls. I think you guys, I
Speaker 1: think you guys all sen need a laugh track? Is
Speaker 1: there a story? This is how you found and fell
Speaker 1: in love with data? There is What was so attractive
Speaker 1: to me about data was what we learned about what
Speaker 1: our customers were thinking and feeling had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with what we actually thought. So it actually proved to
Speaker 1: me how wrong we were. And that's how I fell
Speaker 1: in love. We made this movie called Love Simon, and
Speaker 1: you know, we're the first major motion picture company to
Speaker 1: have a wide release of like a teenage gay boy
Speaker 1: and his struggles, and we were like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: could we get moms to go to this? And so
Speaker 1: I went to the creative team and said, hey, do
Speaker 1: you guys mind making like a forty five second spot
Speaker 1: for me so I can go in and see if
Speaker 1: we can attract you know, moms that might want to
Speaker 1: come to this movie. So they did that and the
Speaker 1: spot was called Dear Mom, very clever with our titles,
Speaker 1: And what we found was actually that moms saw this
Speaker 1: topic of sexuality equal to sex because I saw a
Speaker 1: lot of R rated movies that came up, and then
Speaker 1: I looked on social and saw that they were viewing
Speaker 1: at three times their normal rate, but they were commenting
Speaker 1: at a third of their normal rate. And I said, oh,
Speaker 1: this is too taboo. So let's not go spend the
Speaker 1: company's money here, because that was a story that it
Speaker 1: told us. So I can tell stories from their stories
Speaker 1: because I love storytelling. The first thing I tell used
Speaker 1: to tell my class at USC when I taught one
Speaker 1: is if you look at your computer or your phone.
Speaker 1: I'm going to dock you a great But the second
Speaker 1: thing that I said to them was I do this
Speaker 1: because I believe storytellers do for the soul what doctors
Speaker 1: do for the physical body. So I believe in storytelling.
Speaker 1: I believe in the ones you make up. I believe
Speaker 1: in the ones that are real. I believe in telling
Speaker 1: stories about our customers through their behaviors, through what they
Speaker 1: try to tell us. And that's how I fell in
Speaker 1: love with data is that it was just another source
Speaker 1: for me to tell stories from. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: I've always been drawn to you is because you don't
Speaker 1: follow the trends. You follow the consumer, which allowed you
Speaker 1: to back up and say, that's what's really going on
Speaker 1: and let's figure it out. When I first started this
Speaker 1: with Stacy, I was fearful that creative executives would see
Speaker 1: me walk down the hall and run and hide because like,
Speaker 1: there's the data nerd, and she's going to try to
Speaker 1: tell me what to do. Can I tell you the
Speaker 1: first people that lined up in front of my office
Speaker 1: when this stuff started to take off, they were the
Speaker 1: creative executives. They're like, Okay, I have this project can
Speaker 1: you help me understand what it can look like? What's
Speaker 1: our greatest potential? Where our weaknesses with this? It was them?
Speaker 1: And what about directors? Did they it into this as
Speaker 1: well or do they want to stay away from it?
Speaker 1: And you just tell them how to market it. I've
Speaker 1: dealt with more producers. Mainly what I do with them
Speaker 1: is help understand customers likes and dislikes. I can go
Speaker 1: look at a franchise and say, you might think this
Speaker 1: is who as part of this franchise, but it's actually
Speaker 1: this kind of person, you know, plan of the apes.
Speaker 1: There is a particular type of person that loves that movie,
Speaker 1: and it's not who you think it is. And the
Speaker 1: funny thing it is, it's people who like movies like Tarzan,
Speaker 1: King Kong, and ant Man, because here's what they all
Speaker 1: have in common. Is there all retro sci fi? Retro
Speaker 1: sci fi is not real genre. It turns out it
Speaker 1: is though, huh, but it is in my world. I
Speaker 1: would take, you know, the six genres, seven genres that
Speaker 1: we have, and I would turn it into probably two
Speaker 1: hundred because I think that's how nuanced we are. And
Speaker 1: do you take two D four hundred? Eventually? I think
Speaker 1: that it should go to four hundred. We are complex
Speaker 1: creatures and we can't always identify why we do things.
Speaker 1: But when we can look at your data, we can
Speaker 1: start to figure out some wise. What did you learn
Speaker 1: about how to market The Greatest Showman with Hugh Jackman.
Speaker 1: I've learned my best lessons when I've made mistakes. So
Speaker 1: with the Greatest Showman, we have Hugh Jackman, who we
Speaker 1: all love and brilliant. And what happened is that when
Speaker 1: we released our first trailer, we actually used one of
Speaker 1: the tools that my data science team built called Nightcrawler.
Speaker 1: What we found is those that were watching the trailer
Speaker 1: the movies that they had bought tickets to, we're not
Speaker 1: what we thought they were. We thought they were. You know,
Speaker 1: this was like a musical, right What we thought it
Speaker 1: would be would be things like lame Is because he
Speaker 1: was in it. You know, we thought it would be
Speaker 1: La La Land because it was a musical and it
Speaker 1: was recent. It wasn't. It was Cinderella certainly Pitched Perfect
Speaker 1: was in there. It was Beauting the Beast, it was
Speaker 1: hidden figures. The ones who loved our movie from the
Speaker 1: beginning were those that loved stories of underdogs, This is
Speaker 1: a story of how narrow we can be in the
Speaker 1: industry and actually how complex our customers are. We had
Speaker 1: to adjust our messaging. We cannot go and spend the
Speaker 1: good company money chasing after ans. It's not really going
Speaker 1: to go. We need to spend it after those that
Speaker 1: have already shown interest. And this is the type of
Speaker 1: person that it is. And so we ended up, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to shift. We clearly didn't open the movie
Speaker 1: to big box, but we started shifting towards the end,
Speaker 1: which I like to think helped us. And the beauty
Speaker 1: about data is that we went back in to do
Speaker 1: a look back, and when we first looked at those
Speaker 1: that watched the trailer, we went and compared those that
Speaker 1: bought tickets to our movie and then what tickets they
Speaker 1: had bought in the past. So it's the pre in
Speaker 1: the post and the post, it's the same list of
Speaker 1: movies that showed up. It was Beauty and the Beast,
Speaker 1: it was Cinderella, it was a Wonder, it was hidden figures.
Speaker 1: It was also pitched perfect, and so you changed creative
Speaker 1: in the direct along that take. How quickly can a
Speaker 1: company like Fox move? Oh, Fox can be fast. It's
Speaker 1: part of the DNA of Fox. Fox can be very
Speaker 1: quickly more with Julie Reager right after the break, Welcome
Speaker 1: back to math and magic. We're here with Julie Reager.
Speaker 1: You supposedly have a proprietary data set that gives you
Speaker 1: studio insights to million movie goers. Right, and they're named
Speaker 1: after Marvel characters. They are X men characters x men. Okay,
Speaker 1: and now you have an AI named Merlin. Yes, because
Speaker 1: I like wizards. Oh, I like this, and you get
Speaker 1: to name them. I do. See. That's the beauty you
Speaker 1: create something. It's like if you're a builder, right, you
Speaker 1: buy a piece of land, you put a road, and
Speaker 1: you gotta name the road. I got to name the
Speaker 1: road one of them. One of the most exciting meetings
Speaker 1: I've had is I was in a meeting with you
Speaker 1: and we were talking about my heart. Do you want
Speaker 1: to know what I said to you? Would you tell me?
Speaker 1: I actually looked at you and I said, Bob, you're
Speaker 1: a tech company. What the hell is wrong with you?
Speaker 1: You have all this great data. You're a tech company.
Speaker 1: You're both you're an entertainment audio dada, but you're a
Speaker 1: tech company. And so what did you do? So what
Speaker 1: I did. We had this little movie called Bohemian Rhapsody.
Speaker 1: You may have heard of it at a tiny movie
Speaker 1: called Bohemian Rhapsody. And what we did we had your
Speaker 1: data anonymized. I want to make sure I say this properly,
Speaker 1: so nobody no lawyers start calling either one of us anyway.
Speaker 1: So we matched folks that had downloaded your app and
Speaker 1: used your app to our movie goers. And the reason
Speaker 1: why we were comfortable with looking at your app dating
Speaker 1: is because roughly nine that those that have download and
Speaker 1: used the app also listened to Terrestrial, So I was
Speaker 1: very comfortable with that. So once we matched it in
Speaker 1: my pool, I had people that were movie goers, that
Speaker 1: had people that were movie goers and also I Heart customers.
Speaker 1: Then we created a campaign around Bohemian Rhapsody with you guys,
Speaker 1: and so we launched the trailer with you guys. You
Speaker 1: talked about magic and creativity, which I thought was so
Speaker 1: brilliant because in the film, have a feeling I'm not
Speaker 1: going to ruin anything here for any of your listeners
Speaker 1: and no spoiler alert. There was a time when the
Speaker 1: record producer who's played by Michael Myers, said, nobody's going
Speaker 1: to play a song on the radio that six minutes long.
Speaker 1: Six minutes is too long. You guys came back to us.
Speaker 1: It was just it was like magic, and said we're
Speaker 1: going to roadblock six minutes across our entire network. And
Speaker 1: once I pulled myself up off the floor and was
Speaker 1: able to utter a word, the word was genius. And
Speaker 1: we did it right before the movie launched. So what
Speaker 1: happened is the movie did all right. And then after
Speaker 1: about a month, when I got four weeks of data back,
Speaker 1: I was able to look and see who actually bought
Speaker 1: tickets to our movie. And I already had my movie
Speaker 1: Gover database, and then I had the database within the
Speaker 1: database that was movies and I heart. And what was
Speaker 1: interesting is that your customers were buying tickets twelve at
Speaker 1: a higher rate than those that were just ongoing move
Speaker 1: of goers. Is that good twelve percent? Because I promised
Speaker 1: early on I wasn't going to use the F words,
Speaker 1: so I'll say fantastic. It was fan freaking tastic. I
Speaker 1: think what everyone in this business is dying for is attribution.
Speaker 1: Dying because they just don't know if it's good money
Speaker 1: or bad money that they're spending. And I also went
Speaker 1: in to go check to see if are we just
Speaker 1: getting a music fan. I just wanted to be able
Speaker 1: to answer my own questions in my head. Was just
Speaker 1: like a fluke thing. And then I went back in
Speaker 1: and I looked at other movies that we had done
Speaker 1: with you all in the last four years, and I
Speaker 1: found the same pattern. Now Bow Rep was a tick higher,
Speaker 1: which I think is where the music might play in.
Speaker 1: We did, and the stunt was brilliant. That subsegment always
Speaker 1: came in higher than the general movie goer segment. So
Speaker 1: I was really confident in what we had done. Everybody
Speaker 1: does attribution, or they think they're doing with attributions all
Speaker 1: about digital, like I'm going to run a banner, I'm
Speaker 1: going to do a video on YouTube or whatever. My
Speaker 1: first attribution project was with you doing it with radio
Speaker 1: is a likely character. Look, we were so excited about it.
Speaker 1: One for getting someone with your kind of skill set
Speaker 1: to believe innocent take that leap. I have to congratulate
Speaker 1: you on doing the roadblock. Someone in the Los Angeles
Speaker 1: market that works here took a video of them punching
Speaker 1: between all of our radio stations in l A. And
Speaker 1: you're hitting the same song by different artists all playing
Speaker 1: their version of Bohebian Rapsy. You couldn't get away from
Speaker 1: its pretty amazing. Is amazing, right, I mean all the
Speaker 1: artists with the covers. That was so amazing is that
Speaker 1: that became into a phenomenon. And let's not forget what
Speaker 1: happened on the charts with the album, right, so many
Speaker 1: amazing things that happened. Now listen, the movie is amazing.
Speaker 1: Was the only thing that contributed to this success. The campaign?
Speaker 1: We didn't know because the movie was incredible. We had
Speaker 1: other great creative but was it at twelve for sent nudge? Heck,
Speaker 1: yeah it was. And I can tell you from my
Speaker 1: data science team because they come into me very objective,
Speaker 1: like these are the guys, and all my data scientists
Speaker 1: are guys. I bet their sock yours are incredibly organized.
Speaker 1: They come into me and they are clean slate every time,
Speaker 1: and they are factual. They come into me and say, well, Julie,
Speaker 1: here's what we found, and they say it with a
Speaker 1: straight face. And I again, so from the time I
Speaker 1: fell off the floor picked myself up with the stunt too,
Speaker 1: picking myself up off the floor with the twelve percent going,
Speaker 1: you've got to be kidding me and my wildest dreams,
Speaker 1: it would be five. It was twelve. And do you
Speaker 1: think it's because radio is really the conversation. It sounds
Speaker 1: like your friends talking about the movie. Is that that
Speaker 1: part of the brain that it sounds like I'm hearing
Speaker 1: people talk about it? I think with anything, it's never
Speaker 1: one answer, but I think that that's part of it.
Speaker 1: I think another part of it, and why I have
Speaker 1: loved radio for so long is because of again, it's
Speaker 1: the human nature. Right. So now technology has set people
Speaker 1: free to do what they want when they want, except
Speaker 1: in a car, so they are A negative word to
Speaker 1: use is trapped. I like to use the word they're surrendered.
Speaker 1: There in a car, you have to surrender. You're forced
Speaker 1: to surrender. And what better to surrender to than someone
Speaker 1: you've been listening to a good part of your life.
Speaker 1: Or you're going to hear a new story, or you're
Speaker 1: gonna be introduced to a new song, or you're going
Speaker 1: to hear about a movie maybe you hadn't heard about,
Speaker 1: or get excited about one that you haven't heard about.
Speaker 1: And our business we talked to her on their personalities
Speaker 1: and we say, you know you're somebody's best friend riding
Speaker 1: in that empty seat with them every day to work,
Speaker 1: and the greatest talent we have turned out to be
Speaker 1: a very interesting friend. And they also talked about what's
Speaker 1: happening in your city in that moment in time, in
Speaker 1: that moment, and you're part of that, because what we
Speaker 1: all long to be is a part of something, whether
Speaker 1: we want to be a part of a family, want
Speaker 1: to be a part of a community, you want to
Speaker 1: be a part of the city. Like that's we have
Speaker 1: pride in our local football teams or college teams, like
Speaker 1: it's that pride of that connection. And I think your
Speaker 1: talent gives them another layer of connection, and we all
Speaker 1: desperately want to be connected, to be a part. I
Speaker 1: have a quick story for you. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I've ever told you. For about four years I taught
Speaker 1: entertainment marketing at USC During my tenure, I you know,
Speaker 1: ran the gamut of talking about various parts of marketing
Speaker 1: with them. I said, oh, you guys must only listen
Speaker 1: to you know, Spotify or Pandora. Can I tell you?
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, but we listened mostly to the radio.
Speaker 1: I go, really like, I was shocked. I go, you
Speaker 1: do They're like yeah, And I said, well why and
Speaker 1: they said, because I can listen to that stuff anytime,
Speaker 1: but when I'm like driving offices, is l a right.
Speaker 1: So we live in our cars and they're like, when
Speaker 1: I'm going somewhere, it's like I'm out in the world
Speaker 1: and I want to feel a part of that world.
Speaker 1: These are college students that are telling me, is that
Speaker 1: every put up your hand who listens to the radio live,
Speaker 1: Every single hand went up into the air, and that's
Speaker 1: when it dawned on. It's when it clicked with me.
Speaker 1: And it's something that data can't ever tell you because
Speaker 1: we want to rationalize either in or out of data.
Speaker 1: Radio is that thing that connects everyone from thirteen to
Speaker 1: eight plus. It's that one thing where social animals, going
Speaker 1: back to human nature and my music collections, want to
Speaker 1: want to be by myself. I want to sort of
Speaker 1: be in my zone. The radio is what's going on
Speaker 1: in the world, and we can't stay away from it
Speaker 1: too long. It's interesting you find all this from the
Speaker 1: other angle, and obviously we look at it in depth
Speaker 1: and a lot. It's interesting in research studies show often
Speaker 1: hear save where you hear about that, um it was
Speaker 1: either a friend or on the radio. They've confused it
Speaker 1: and it's in that same part of their brain we
Speaker 1: talked about the car. It's interesting what alexas doing now
Speaker 1: is opening up the home to us again. Homes used
Speaker 1: to have a clock radio and now it is down
Speaker 1: to about. But suddenly the new clock radio is Alexa
Speaker 1: and to find me this surge in the home, and
Speaker 1: I think people thought, are they're gonna listen to their music?
Speaker 1: Turns out the number one use some Alexa's a MFM
Speaker 1: radio for the same reasons exactly. I want somebody to
Speaker 1: keep me company while I'm brushing my teeth in the morning,
Speaker 1: while I'm doing some work around the house, or by
Speaker 1: the way, go to the cash register. The person working
Speaker 1: the cash red shirt the convenience store. They're listening to radio.
Speaker 1: They are well listen enough hyping of us, I know,
Speaker 1: but I think it's crucial to talk about this stuff
Speaker 1: because it is about you know, we're not a number.
Speaker 1: We're human. Most people looking from the outside who don't
Speaker 1: know you personally would think you're a math person. Let
Speaker 1: me hit one of your high profile magic moments. What
Speaker 1: did you do with the New York Times for the
Speaker 1: book The back in two thousand thirteen for Legendary. Oh
Speaker 1: that was that was a great moment. That was a
Speaker 1: great moment. So we made this little movie based on
Speaker 1: a novel called The Book Thief written by Marcus Uzac.
Speaker 1: It was about this young girl set in the Nazi
Speaker 1: time in Germany. She couldn't read. Really, the heart of
Speaker 1: what the movie was was the power of words. I
Speaker 1: kept thinking, I remember seeing in a room, going how
Speaker 1: do you communicate to folks? How powerful words are? I
Speaker 1: came to the conclusion in that moment that the way
Speaker 1: you teach somebody the power of something as you actually
Speaker 1: take it away. So I went and talked to the
Speaker 1: New York Times. Actually true story is, actually talked to
Speaker 1: l a Times, and they wanted to charge so much
Speaker 1: money from my idea, and they actually wanted to try
Speaker 1: to hold it over my head and take it from me.
Speaker 1: I'm just telling you that was a nasty moment. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't apologize to the a lot of Times because
Speaker 1: I'm still bitter. So I took it to the New
Speaker 1: York Times, really thinking they would say no to the
Speaker 1: idea of having blank pages and literally blank, No, this
Speaker 1: is an advertisement on it. None of that they loved
Speaker 1: it so much because I think that's who they are.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like in the radio business taking a
Speaker 1: voice away, right, It's like taking words away from a journalist.
Speaker 1: So they did it. This was two thousand and thirteen,
Speaker 1: maybe it's almost six years ago. Things didn't go really
Speaker 1: viral like they do now, Like things didn't catch on
Speaker 1: that moment when people were opening up their newspaper and
Speaker 1: seeing it. They started to tweet about it right about it.
Speaker 1: And what's crazy is that it is now in curriculums
Speaker 1: and colleges around the world about having an idea that
Speaker 1: is deeper than surface. Right, that's not just a superficial
Speaker 1: like get somebody's attention, like it had purpose to it.
Speaker 1: So that's actually really cool is that it's actually gone
Speaker 1: down and a little bit of history. We had a
Speaker 1: lot of history. Let me hit a few Let's go
Speaker 1: to the science side of marketing here for a few minutes.
Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about how you analyze conversations on
Speaker 1: Twitter and what have you learned to me. Data isn't
Speaker 1: just numbers. Data is also words. When you want to
Speaker 1: understand what a customer is and what they think and
Speaker 1: what they feel, you're not going to get it just
Speaker 1: based on purchase data numbers ones and zeros. You're gonna
Speaker 1: get it based on the language that they use and
Speaker 1: how they communicate. We struck a relationship with Twitter to
Speaker 1: be actually the first one to anonymously connect tweets to purchasers.
Speaker 1: What I learned is that there are words that people
Speaker 1: use in social media that can tell you whether or
Speaker 1: not they're going to go to a film six months
Speaker 1: for that film comes out. It is astonishing. There's like
Speaker 1: a bag of words that people use, and there's another
Speaker 1: bag of words that people use and they're not going.
Speaker 1: There seems to be some consistency. I brought in a
Speaker 1: brilliant woman named Dr Pam Rutledge who has her PhD
Speaker 1: and media psychology, who helps us understand all of this.
Speaker 1: The first movie we did it with was Logan. I mean,
Speaker 1: Logan was a success, but I could tell based on
Speaker 1: language that people that didn't buy tickets, And it was
Speaker 1: really fascinating. When you get people who are all wishy washy,
Speaker 1: and of course in our business, thinking that well we
Speaker 1: can change their mind. No, actually no you can't. You're
Speaker 1: not going to shift them. This is just kind of
Speaker 1: where they sit now. Granted this is all based on Twitter, right,
Speaker 1: and there's still more work to be done, but Twitter
Speaker 1: when it's connected to ticket purchases a really fascinating experiment.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a couple of those words are
Speaker 1: just top secret? There's a lot of them. Actually, there's
Speaker 1: a bucket of definitive words, and then there's a bucket
Speaker 1: of like wishy washy words. And the problem is what
Speaker 1: marketers have They look at the wishy washy words and
Speaker 1: they think they're definitive. Our industry, marketing, entertainment, media, all
Speaker 1: of it. We haven't bothered to invite what I have
Speaker 1: found to be the most pivotal expertise into hours, which
Speaker 1: is psychology. Because once we invited psychology into our world
Speaker 1: is when our world got big, and it's when our
Speaker 1: heads blew up, and when we started to truly understand people,
Speaker 1: and when we started to understand people is when we
Speaker 1: started making better decisions. It sounds to me like you're
Speaker 1: one of those believers that everything boils down the human nature. Oh,
Speaker 1: I very much believe in that. And if you think
Speaker 1: about what's happened in the television industry, you know, people
Speaker 1: had must see Thursday, right, like must see TV and
Speaker 1: everybody may sure they got home so they could see it.
Speaker 1: That wasn't human nature, right. It's kind of like being
Speaker 1: told where you're going to have a turkey leg tonight,
Speaker 1: and so you're like, oh, I get better have a
Speaker 1: turkeu lator, I'm not gonna eat at all. But now
Speaker 1: there's this giant buffet and you can go watch or
Speaker 1: listen to what you want when you want. That's human nature.
Speaker 1: It might be tech that enabled it, but it was
Speaker 1: human nature that made it what it is today. That's
Speaker 1: why live viewing. It's like, if you're there, great, you'll
Speaker 1: watch it, but you might want Lazagia tonight, so you
Speaker 1: can save that turkey leg for when you want it.
Speaker 1: And that's human nature. So you're saying that technology is
Speaker 1: really doing nothing except unlocking human nature. Absolutely absolutely it is.
Speaker 1: It also is unlocking some not great parts of our
Speaker 1: human nature to like, I think it's unlocking a lot
Speaker 1: of obsessiveness that we have that is built into who
Speaker 1: we are. I think it's also unlocking some rudeness, Like
Speaker 1: if I picked up my phone right now, that's rude.
Speaker 1: I mean, how many restaurants do you walk into and
Speaker 1: everybody has their phone up. I'm like, you're with a human.
Speaker 1: But I also think that it un locks hiding for people,
Speaker 1: you know, like people who get addicted to Facebook. I
Speaker 1: think it's a real problem, like there's an unhealthiness to it,
Speaker 1: and that's part of our humanness. Let me jump back
Speaker 1: to movies. You've been on the front lines a long time.
Speaker 1: What's the future movies, the theaters, streaming services. I think
Speaker 1: we're going to have fewer than we have today of
Speaker 1: films and theaters. From the time that I started working
Speaker 1: in the business till now, I think the number of
Speaker 1: new releases on weekends have doubled. I don't think the
Speaker 1: industry can I don't think the consumers can support that.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that I believe comedies and horror
Speaker 1: will always be such a massive part of our business
Speaker 1: is because when you are alone and you see something funny,
Speaker 1: you do not laugh out loud. You might just smile.
Speaker 1: But when you're in a group and there's laughter, you laugh.
Speaker 1: And what happens when we laugh is that our body
Speaker 1: chemistry changes. Our enjoyment level goes through the roof because
Speaker 1: we're releasing endorphins. That's real and horror. What happens in
Speaker 1: horror is that we grab each other, we touch each other,
Speaker 1: we are experiencing this together. I think family films because
Speaker 1: you can bring everybody to it. You know, those are
Speaker 1: things that will go on. But I just think that
Speaker 1: the volume of movies is a lot. In any given weekend,
Speaker 1: there's can be four or five movies opening easily easily.
Speaker 1: I think the future of streaming services is going to
Speaker 1: be fascinating to watch. Oh my gosh, I mean, and
Speaker 1: we have front row seats. I think there's going to
Speaker 1: be a lot of fighting with what looks like parody products.
Speaker 1: I think only a few will win. Everybody's just getting
Speaker 1: their gloves on right now. And I think that streaming
Speaker 1: is going to be fascinating to watch. So the high
Speaker 1: budget limited series hurting movies, new form of movies, how
Speaker 1: do you see it? I think that everything has hurt movies.
Speaker 1: Gaming right. Gaming is something that has taken people away
Speaker 1: from theaters. I think that TV is better than it's
Speaker 1: ever been. Game of Thrones is better than most movies
Speaker 1: you've ever seen in your life. I kind of wish
Speaker 1: they'd show it in a theater, to tell you the truth,
Speaker 1: makes you want to go buy a much bigger television
Speaker 1: and the greatest shows I've ever seen, I mean visually storytelling,
Speaker 1: so you can get the experience in home and a
Speaker 1: longer experience. Okay, future of ad agencies LOI gosh, that's
Speaker 1: a tough one. I love ad agencies where I started.
Speaker 1: I think, what's the intersection between a consulting company now
Speaker 1: like the Anderson's and ad agencies? Right? I mean, that
Speaker 1: seems to be an interesting competition that's happening. I think
Speaker 1: that neither of them have the greatest advantage, which is data,
Speaker 1: because the best data cannot be held by them. The
Speaker 1: best data can really only be held by the client.
Speaker 1: So for me, because I am disintermediated from a customer,
Speaker 1: I have to go rent that data. So when you
Speaker 1: rent a data, it's like the difference between renting and
Speaker 1: own and a home. I can't go paint the walls
Speaker 1: without asking permission. I can't go take a wall down
Speaker 1: or add a new bathroom because I'm renting the data,
Speaker 1: which in the rental agreement with data means I can't
Speaker 1: let other parties have it, including the agency. Including the agency,
Speaker 1: and I think that they all are going to struggle
Speaker 1: with that because you don't have the purchase data. So
Speaker 1: I think they're all in trouble for that. And I
Speaker 1: think they're all in trouble because the business is based
Speaker 1: on paying for head count. There needs to be some
Speaker 1: more machine learning that they can get with the media business.
Speaker 1: So you think the compensations sort of hurting their structure.
Speaker 1: I think it's killing all of them. And I think
Speaker 1: that recessions were terrible for the agencies because they just
Speaker 1: wanted to hold onto business and clients were in trouble,
Speaker 1: and they just want to pull every cost down. I
Speaker 1: don't think agencies make the money they should make in
Speaker 1: all honesty to to provide the service that they need
Speaker 1: in this fragmented world we live in. You know, back
Speaker 1: in the day when we only had the three networks,
Speaker 1: then we had the fourth network, right, and then we
Speaker 1: had MTV. You know, to buy a TV ad was
Speaker 1: a big deal because it was expensive, right, and the
Speaker 1: talent to make those there was only a small group
Speaker 1: of talented creative types to make those ads. I think
Speaker 1: what's happened, it's hurt the creative side of the ad
Speaker 1: business is that there's not enough talent to make all
Speaker 1: the ads that are necessary. Now it costs you a
Speaker 1: buck if you want to put a video on right,
Speaker 1: you can actually buy media with a dollar now, where
Speaker 1: before it was like a million, now it's a dollar.
Speaker 1: The problem is there's not enough creative executives to make
Speaker 1: great work anymore. It became the costco right where it
Speaker 1: was once a boutique. You can't fill up the costco
Speaker 1: with talent. You can't just manufacture talent. I've not heard
Speaker 1: that before, but you're right, it fits the facts. I
Speaker 1: think it's a problem with clients too, because how much
Speaker 1: bad work have you seen or heard? A lot? A lot,
Speaker 1: sadly sadly. So let's jump to TV for a minute.
Speaker 1: TV reach has dropped a lot for TV with ads
Speaker 1: in it. How is that shifting media plans? TV used
Speaker 1: to be the reach medium foundation of every body. Then
Speaker 1: we'll add all the other stuff to it. Is that changing?
Speaker 1: I think it's definitely changed, And think there's a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount out of denial from the older folks in the business.
Speaker 1: You know, when I first started, the industry itself was
Speaker 1: probably spending upwards of their budget to open a film
Speaker 1: on television. Last I looked, I think that it has
Speaker 1: fallen to probably fifty or sixty. I think when the
Speaker 1: biggest problems is that, you know, the cost of television
Speaker 1: has gotten so high as well, some of it is fantastic.
Speaker 1: There's still some really great television out there. People still
Speaker 1: love TV. They be careful. I'm not saying people don't
Speaker 1: love TV, because they do. They reaches down and it
Speaker 1: is so I think that it has a hard time
Speaker 1: finding its space. Also, they're losing talent, just how like
Speaker 1: ad agencies lost talent and I've watched them lose some
Speaker 1: great talent to go work at a Facebook. They go
Speaker 1: work at a Google, to go work at a Twitter,
Speaker 1: because it's a brighter, shinier object. Here we are doing
Speaker 1: a podcast. Some people are saying, instead of doing the
Speaker 1: TV or instead of putting the video to it, I'll
Speaker 1: just do the story without the video. We just did
Speaker 1: a podcast with ron Berg and d He's back and
Speaker 1: doing by the Way extraordinarily well. But it sort of
Speaker 1: feels like that's like the next version of the movie
Speaker 1: is there in the podcast, and that I've got everything
Speaker 1: in my head. I need to make that story come alive.
Speaker 1: So what did you learn from all of that that
Speaker 1: you brought to what you are today? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I've learned everything. I don't even know where to begin
Speaker 1: with that, Bob, that's such a magical question. I have
Speaker 1: to tell you. The best learning I've had were in
Speaker 1: the worst times, right, because it's contrasts, so it's like
Speaker 1: all the shitty stuff that happened is when I really learned.
Speaker 1: All the dumb things I've done is when I've learned.
Speaker 1: The fun parts are fun, but not the most learning,
Speaker 1: and that the best education that you get. I think
Speaker 1: probably the one thing that I really have taken away
Speaker 1: from all of it is I am fearless to do
Speaker 1: anything and everything. So what's the dumbest thing you've done? God,
Speaker 1: I've done something. Okay, like one dumb thing, and tell
Speaker 1: us what you learned from the dumb thing. Dumb things
Speaker 1: that I've done. Um, I bought a house without looking
Speaker 1: at it. That's pretty dumb. It was dumb. Oh. The
Speaker 1: best dumb one, though, was when I traveled for HP.
Speaker 1: I started taking ambient so I was traveling all around
Speaker 1: the world and I couldn't get off of the stuff.
Speaker 1: One night, Susanne and I went to go see a movie.
Speaker 1: We went to go see Where the Millers. They have
Speaker 1: an RV and They're like drug mules across Mexico. And
Speaker 1: the next morning I wake up and I have a
Speaker 1: notification on my phone this is congratulations you've won, And
Speaker 1: the text was from eBay I apparently and an ambient.
Speaker 1: Hayes bought a thirty five ft nineteen eight six airstream.
Speaker 1: You still have it? Uh No, I redid it, but
Speaker 1: actually donated it to victims of the first blaze in
Speaker 1: California up north because there were teachers that were sleeping
Speaker 1: in sporting good stores. Now that makes me look like
Speaker 1: I'm a saint. That was pretty dumb and awesome. She
Speaker 1: got an r V. It's got to be the first
Speaker 1: RV you had, right, it was the first RV and
Speaker 1: it was amazing, And I stopped taking Ambian That a
Speaker 1: two fur jumping again. Your quota is saying being a
Speaker 1: lesbian in the professional world as a gift, not a handicap.
Speaker 1: You've been very honest and very open about who and
Speaker 1: what you are. But what's been the reaction to the
Speaker 1: revelation of your psychic abilities. Yeah, it was way easier
Speaker 1: to come out as a lesbian than it was a
Speaker 1: crazy ghost photographer, slatch, psychic ish human. I will tell you.
Speaker 1: I am so lucky to be in the industry that
Speaker 1: I am, because we are the land of misfit toys.
Speaker 1: We just are. You go talk to any of them,
Speaker 1: and none of them, by the way, were like the
Speaker 1: homecoming queen and king and the you know, quarterback of
Speaker 1: the football team, and none of them were. We were
Speaker 1: all weird. The best place for me to be weird
Speaker 1: was in this industry. So let's talk about the ghost photographer.
Speaker 1: What's the journey on the recognition from you had these abilities?
Speaker 1: When did you feel like you could tell somebody else? Uh,
Speaker 1: this is going on in my head and I think
Speaker 1: I have these abilities. Mine was a journey through grief.
Speaker 1: I lost my I'm to Alzheimer's. I was absolutely positively devastated.
Speaker 1: Five months later lost one of our closest friends to
Speaker 1: a car accident. It just compounded grief. I am normally
Speaker 1: a pretty funny human being. I was not funny. I
Speaker 1: was sad. Met this amazing woman named Brenda Via, an
Speaker 1: amazing psychic who did a group reading for us. That
Speaker 1: moment was very pivotal change in my life. Shortly after
Speaker 1: meeting Brenda, I started seeing ghosts and photographs. That was weird.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say it. It was weird, and it was
Speaker 1: in my backyard. And I got nine thousand of them,
Speaker 1: if not more. Now I think I've lost count. So
Speaker 1: why did they come to your house? At first, I
Speaker 1: thought that I had opened a ghost portal, because we remember,
Speaker 1: movies have kind of ruined everything for all of us.
Speaker 1: We made Poltergeist, and so I'm like, a crap, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be like carry Anne, I'm dead or Caroline or
Speaker 1: whatever the hell her name was. I thought like it
Speaker 1: was going to suck our house down into I don't know,
Speaker 1: the great hell abyss. And then I later started to
Speaker 1: learn that they're just everywhere. Were some of them coming
Speaker 1: to visit me? I think, so, how could you not, like,
Speaker 1: if you're a ghost or I'm going to say the
Speaker 1: A word, even an alien. I mean, I'm sorry, people,
Speaker 1: but you read the book. It's it's in there. If
Speaker 1: you're one of them, and you're like, hey, this lesbian
Speaker 1: in this corner over here on Sherman Oaks taking pictures
Speaker 1: of ghost I want to go be in one. They
Speaker 1: must have a club or like at least like a
Speaker 1: phone tree to let him know what's going on. And
Speaker 1: I think I was like the top of that phone tree.
Speaker 1: I see ghosts everywhere. Do I see one in here? No?
Speaker 1: I don't. Just for the record, I know that's what
Speaker 1: you wanted to ask me, right, I was gonna ask
Speaker 1: with spirit animals. Spirit animals? You love that You told
Speaker 1: me I would say it was an eagle? Was my
Speaker 1: spirit animal? You called my kids, you called everyone in
Speaker 1: my family, and when I looked it up, well, yep
Speaker 1: they are. It's a weird thing, right they are. So
Speaker 1: please ask me, Julie, how do you see this? How
Speaker 1: does this happen from you? Pretend I said that. I'm
Speaker 1: going to pretend you said that, because it's a really
Speaker 1: strange thing. I get asked a lot about you know,
Speaker 1: how do you see the other side? And what I see?
Speaker 1: It's another dimension with the spirit animals, especially sometimes I
Speaker 1: can see with my eyes open. It's a best when
Speaker 1: I close because they always show up over your head.
Speaker 1: And sometimes they'll show up like I had somebody with
Speaker 1: my spirit animal, and I'm like, will hold on a second,
Speaker 1: I see a fin. I can't tell if it's a
Speaker 1: whale fin or a dolphin fin. Hold on a second.
Speaker 1: They need to show me. And it happened to have
Speaker 1: been a dolphin at that time. So I see them
Speaker 1: above people's head and they're not stagnant, they're moving. Having
Speaker 1: disabilities it changed your own sense of life, what life is,
Speaker 1: and mortality and life and death and what's on the
Speaker 1: other side. It has changed everything in all the best ways.
Speaker 1: I think it really plays into the fearlessness, right It's like,
Speaker 1: whatever happens, I'm going to be okay. But I think
Speaker 1: what has changed the most for me is now that
Speaker 1: I have these abilities, it's what I do with them,
Speaker 1: how I can help and serve other people. People have
Speaker 1: found me from my book. A couple have become friends.
Speaker 1: One has become a very close friend. And I just
Speaker 1: recently spoke to her great grandmother. I said, she had
Speaker 1: a nickname for you, but it's not a derivative of
Speaker 1: your name. It's like, there's a nickname she keeps showing
Speaker 1: me my dog. So all I can tell you is
Speaker 1: that maybe it was Pudding and she was That's what
Speaker 1: she called me, was Pudding, because that's my nickname for
Speaker 1: my dog. Your great grandmother was smart enough to show
Speaker 1: me my dog to come up with your nickname that
Speaker 1: she called you through your life isn't that crazy, that awesome,
Speaker 1: that just happened two nights ago, and for her to
Speaker 1: feel more connected is the greatest gift I think that
Speaker 1: I could ever give. If I am able to connect
Speaker 1: with someone's loved one who has passed, it's very woo woo.
Speaker 1: We remember, this is math and magic. We believe in
Speaker 1: them both. You do both. So let's go to the
Speaker 1: last questions. We go to beside you, who's the greatest mathematician?
Speaker 1: You know, there is a guy named Peter Masanagro who
Speaker 1: is the head of operam Are Marketing Science agency at
Speaker 1: who I believe is the best mathematician that I have
Speaker 1: ever met. He is Steve Jobs, Like, Wow, what is
Speaker 1: the greatest magician? Who is it? Oprah Winfrey? I think
Speaker 1: that she has turned her own life and other lives
Speaker 1: into gold because I think storytellers are the ones who
Speaker 1: actually run the world. She is a brilliant storyteller. And
Speaker 1: you're right, that is a magician. By the way. We
Speaker 1: could go on forever, but I'm gonna tell people read
Speaker 1: your book The Ghost Photographer. I had two of them
Speaker 1: on my desk and I can't tell you how many
Speaker 1: people walked in my office sort of picked up the
Speaker 1: book and thumbed through it. A couple of borrowed the book.
Speaker 1: A couple of them said, I'm getting my own book,
Speaker 1: so whatever it is, there's a great interest in it.
Speaker 1: And everybody enjoyed the book, including me. Do you need
Speaker 1: some more? Always need more? Three books is like free food,
Speaker 1: right and you had gally copy number one brilliant today.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Here's three lessons
Speaker 1: I take away from this episode with Julie Reager. One
Speaker 1: data isn't just looking at numbers. Look at the language
Speaker 1: people use around your product and the ways they communicate
Speaker 1: it for deeper insight. Two data doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: restrictive for creatives. If you frame it correctly, it should
Speaker 1: open you up to new potential ideas and spaces that
Speaker 1: aren't being explored. Three. Challenge yourself to look for the stories.
Speaker 1: It's how Julie fell in love with Dada, looking at
Speaker 1: our customers through their behaviors. Julie Reager's book is called
Speaker 1: The Ghost Photographer, Hollywood Executive's true story of discovering the
Speaker 1: real world of make believe. It's out from Simon and Schuster.
Speaker 1: Now check it out. That's it for today's episode. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening to Math and Magic, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. The show is hosted by Bob Pittman.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Sue Schillinger for booking and wrangling our
Speaker 1: wonderful talent, which is no small feat. Nikki Etre for
Speaker 1: pulling research bill plaques, and Michael as Are for their
Speaker 1: recording help, our editor, Ryan Murdoch, and of course Gayle Raoul,
Speaker 1: Eric Angel, Noel Mango and everyone who helped bring this
Speaker 1: show to your ears. Until next time, m