Crafting Emotional Connections Using Creativity, Data & AI

[00:00:00] Tessa Burg: Hello and welcome to another episode of Leader Generation, brought to you by Mod Op. I’m your host, Tessa Burg, and today I am joined by our EVPs of Creative Innovation. Matt Bretz and Gary Goodman both come to us as veterans in the games and entertainment space, and we’re really excited to learn more about their careers, the their journey here to Mod Op and what’s changing in games and entertainment that our clients should know about. Matt and Gary, thanks so much for being here. I’m excited to dive into this conversation.

[00:00:33] Gary Goodman: Us too.

[00:00:35] Tessa Burg: I can feel the enthusiasm. That did not sound

[00:00:37] Gary Goodman: No, we’re here. We’re into it. Yes.

[00:00:41] Tessa Burg: So you have been in this space for a really long time. Let’s start, Gary, tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey here to Mata.

[00:00:49] Gary Goodman: Sure. Um, so I spent, well, I spent the first 10 years of my career in the film industry and I worked in feature development at the end, uh, of, of that journey Learning, you know, reading a million scripts, learning how to sell an idea, learning how to, uh, get a film made. It was a great experience. But, um. My, my passions lie lay elsewhere.

[00:01:16] Gary Goodman: And I, I joined a company called Ayzenberg, which I then spent 24 years of my career at. Um, and  Ayzenberg, was specialized in gaming. And that’s where I realized I really enjoyed it. I was a gamer at heart and the things that I learned, um. In terms of just being able to simplify an idea really is at the heart of advertising.

[00:01:37] Gary Goodman: If you can simplify an idea and tell somebody in the simplest and you know, shortest amount of words, what that is and get them excited about it. And convince them that, uh, you’re passionate about it, then you, you basically are doing advertising. So, uh, I found out I was good at it and, uh, ultimately in that journey I met Matt Bretz, who we will hear from him in a sec.

[00:01:58] Gary Goodman: And we became partners for 10 years. Uh, and we were the CCOs of, of, uh,  Ayzenberg, until recently. And, uh, maybe I’ll just stop it there and I’ll hand it over to Matt.

[00:02:10] Tessa Burg: Yeah. Matt, tell us a little bit about yourself.

[00:02:13] Matt Bretz: Well, I started out as a maker primarily. I came up in music and live entertainment and, uh, was a performer.

[00:02:20] Matt Bretz: I’m actually in LA Confidential. If you want to go and have a look. I’m the cop that books the prisoners. Uh, and you know, I, I, as an, as an entertainer, I, I really developed a skillset that involved making all kinds of things. I knew how to run electronics and shoot videos and, and build sets for shows and things like that. Wire sound.

[00:02:41] Matt Bretz: And so, um, I became very useful to advertising agencies and as a, um, entertainer, we called that our day job. So I started working in advertising as a day job and then rapidly realized that if I could write and direct long-form entertainment content, I could travel that path inside of advertising.

[00:03:01] Matt Bretz: So I started out at a company called. Uh, The Cimarron Group, which is no longer with us unfortunately, but was a pillar of entertainment marketing in Hollywood, and I was their jack of all trades who just made things happen, uh, which was more of a producing role. But over the time that I was there, I started to write some of the things that I was making happen, and then eventually I moved to a similar agency, although instead of being.

[00:03:25] Matt Bretz: Solely owned, like The Cimarron Group. It was owned by DDB, owned by Omnicom, and that agency was called The Ant Farm. And there I traveled from being a Creative Director, acknowledging that I was kind of writing and directing and being the principal person, you know, thinking about. How the creative expression was put forth, uh, to being an EVP with my own, uh, line, uh, of business and, uh, and P&L.

[00:03:54] Matt Bretz: And, uh, after another eight years there, I moved to  Ayzenberg, and it was the best move I ever made before the move to Mod Op, uh, because I met Gary. And Gary has been an amazing partner. Uh, and I say that because we are, uh, we discovered over the 10 years that we spent together there. That we were very much a yin to each other’s yang, and we have very, ultimately very similar creative tastes. Although, we like different things, uh, here and there, but we off, uh, the path that we take to get to expressing those tastes is very different. And so it’s easy for us to nurture, uh, a large organization because if one of us can’t connect with somebody than the other one probably can. Uh, and together we, you know, a, along that path, I also got into video games.

[00:04:43] Matt Bretz: Because actually no one else in the places like Cimarron and Ant Farm at the beginning really wanted to the, you know, the, the big video game publishers were asking, Hey, could you make stuff for us? That was like movie advertising. And a lot of the movie advertising people that I worked with were thinking, uh, you know, Hey, I, I, that’s below me.

[00:05:02] Matt Bretz: And I said, I’ll do it. And so 20 plus years later, uh, it was, that was a, a wise choice too. And that’s how I ended up in the business.

[00:05:11] Tessa Burg: Every time I interview someone from Mod Op who started their career in LA, their background is so much cooler than mine. You know, like it’s, it’s very different.

[00:05:23] Matt Bretz: Untrue.

[00:05:24] Tessa Burg: Oh, I worked in entertainment.

[00:05:25] Tessa Burg: Oh, I was in a movie. You can see me in this shot. I have an IMDB page, and it’s here in good old Cleveland, Ohio. We don’t have the same exposure to all the glitz and the glam, but something that I found really interesting. When we were at the Game Developers Conference, the challenges that game and entertainment marketers face were very similar to the ones that we see with our B2C and B2B clients.

[00:05:53] Tessa Burg: And especially, I’ve spent a lot of time, well, I’ve spent a lot of time in both, but most recently in B2B, and everyone’s very data-driven. Very smart. And pairing that with this hyper creativity and this ability to imagine. I’m wondering, and Matt, let’s start with you this time. In your experience, how have you seen this industry evolve and change as you’ve worked in it?

[00:06:22] Matt Bretz: Well, first of all, I think you’re very right about the similarities, although sometimes they may not be so obvious to, uh, to folks. So I’ll call some of them out. You know, one of the things that we, that I learned early on from a great mentor of mine, a woman named Marty Mueller, who was, um, the Walt Disney, uh, parks, uh, global VP of advertising for many years.

[00:06:44] Matt Bretz: I came up under her and was doing a lot of work with her was the power of eventizing a moment. And that is true and sometimes easier actually for an entertainment product than it is for a boxed product. But, uh, but either way, that is what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to create a moment for a product, uh, in which there is an emotional relationship between a product and an audience, and the audience’s beliefs and behaviors change.

[00:07:13] Matt Bretz: And they want to have that product, you know?

[00:07:16] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:16] Matt Bretz: And, uh, and so that journey has, as you point out, become more and more data-driven over the course of my career. And it’s why I sought out Mod Op, uh, at this point with, uh, Gary was because we came up in, uh, different but parallel ways. As, uh, guys whose guts were very valuable.

[00:07:38] Matt Bretz: You know, like we, we, I think we, I made my name because I made good choices based on instinct, and that’s still an important part of the pipeline for, for what we do. I. It’s still something that I try to cultivate in all of the people in our creative organization, in this case, in, you know, Mod Op’s, uh, Creative SBU, that’s led by, uh, Steve O’Connell and Steve Red.

[00:08:00] Matt Bretz: Uh, another reason we came was because here are two, uh, folks at, in the creative leadership who are also really great at instinct.

[00:08:10] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:10] Matt Bretz: But, um, there’s no question that over the, um, time that we were at  Ayzenberg, over the last 10 years. Um, you know, people have become more and more suspicious in our, in industry for good reason of this kind of, uh, brand awareness KPI of did the product sell.

[00:08:30] Matt Bretz: That’s the only KPI for kind of big, uh, awareness-level creative. And the truth is who knows if it’s because of your creative. Right. You know, just, just, just the product selling, uh, isn’t enough of a validator anymore.

[00:08:45] Matt Bretz: And so at Mod Op, you know, I found that you, frankly, and your team and the Innovations Group had built a set of tools that would allow us to really determine the nuances of why the product is selling, who it’s selling to, when it’s selling, and when it’s not. When to toggle from a brand awareness play to a straight conversion play. All of that is represented by a shockingly huge amount of data that’s become available to us also over the last decade.

[00:09:18] Matt Bretz: You know, frankly, uh, the only way to process all that data is using some form of AI. And so, you know, I’ve seen the whole industry reach this point where we are now, which is, yeah, we all know that AI is here slash coming. And yes, we all have massive amounts of data to help us, but we still are at the baby steps of how to, uh, innovate machines that will help us parse process and use the right inputs at the right time to, uh, to kind of supercharge human instinct.

[00:09:59] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm. I think you’re exactly right. It’s to supercharge human instinct, but it also requires your human instinct to make those decisions. I feel like there is a tendency to see a new piece of technology, to see an app and want that to solve your problem as opposed to what I’ve really enjoyed working with the two of you and your experience in this space is really hearing.

[00:10:26] Tessa Burg: From our games and entertainment clients, what are their big challenges? How are they already solving those today? We have some of the smartest clients I’ve ever met, and with our, with the tools that we can bring is really to enable that instinct and be there with them to elevate strategy, to elevate things that they quite frankly want to do more in the creative space.

[00:10:52] Tessa Burg: Gary, I’m similar. If you have anything to add in terms of. You know, the shifts that you’ve seen in games and entertainment marketing as data and AI have introduced themselves to the landscape?

[00:11:06] Gary Goodman: Well, I, I, I was gonna come at it from a, I agree with everything Matt said. I was gonna come at it from a little different angle, which is, you know, if you watch Mad Men, which is like, if people aren’t in advertising, they go, well, that seems so great. You know, you come in with a, you know, here’s your audience and you come in with a one piece of artwork with a headline, and maybe there’s a television commercial and, but usually you sell it. With this one piece of artwork with the headline, you know.

[00:11:31] Matt Bretz: And there’s a martini. There’s a martini in there, right?

[00:11:33] Tessa Burg: Yeah.

[00:11:34] Gary Goodman: A couple of art, you know, but it’s like, you know, it, it was, uh, it’s toasted was the first episode, you know, and it, like, that was the whole Lucky Strike campaign was it’s toasted, and they, they made, it lasted for, it’s still on there. That’s, that’s how you sell that.

[00:11:48] Gary Goodman: What changed in our careers, uh, from when we first started in this, was it really was gaming was a. You need a, a piece of, of key art to make a box for retail. You need a website and you need a, a trailer to announce it and some sort of TV commercial at launch. And then there’s gonna be a media buy on tv and that’s how you launched a game.

[00:12:10] Gary Goodman: Um, you now fast forward 20 something years and the audience is everywhere. They’re everywhere. And I tell you where they’re not mostly is tv. And they’re not buying a retail product at Best Buy or Walmart or wherever. Um, they’re downloading it, streaming it, and, uh, for free, they’re getting it on their phones.

[00:12:31] Gary Goodman: And you know, it, the gaming industry has become so hard to find your audience with so much competition in your audience is everywhere. But they’re not in a place, you know, you can get ’em exactly. So you have to try a lot of different things and data. The data, um, revolution and what we can do with it now is really helping us find where those people might be, give us the best shot of getting to them and give us the best shot of telling them the story they might want to hear based on all of the things that we can infer about them before we go after trying to reach them.

[00:13:07] Gary Goodman: So, you know, you can tell the story 500 different ways, but there’s certain ways that we will, you know, we’ll perk up to the right audience. And so using data, technology, AI to help us find those clusters of data as we’re doing our research to find the commonalities between people and make sure that as we’re telling our story, we’re telling a story that’s meaningful to that audience. So that’s really a bigger change than like blast a huge TV commercial out with a massive spend, spend most of your budget on it, and through the sheer volume of a media buy, you’re gonna reach your people.

[00:13:45] Tessa Burg: Yeah, and it’s, when we talk about the parallels with our other industries, the formula is the same.

[00:13:52] Tessa Burg: You have to understand your audience. You have to understand what motivates them and makes them tick. But how you do that has dramatically changed.

[00:14:01] Gary Goodman: And where they are, you know, you know, that’s the hardest thing is they’re everywhere, you know?

[00:14:07] Matt Bretz: You both reminded me of the other factor there is that is a similarity to many, many products, not all products. Is that, um, we have, you know, we’ve always been, um, focused on youth culture. Like we, you know, are trying to create new buyers at a very young age, um, by, uh, and, and at that point, uh, especially now, attention spans are shorter and tastes are more fickle and, and temporary.

[00:14:35] Matt Bretz: And so, uh, one of the things that we’ve kind of cut our teeth on. Is whether it’s using instinct or using data, or actually as you pointed out, Tessa, a combination of both. Always is, um, is being able to swing with the pendulum or surf the wave right on the front edge of where, uh, interest and taste, uh, lies, um, with young people.

[00:15:03] Matt Bretz: And that is critical, I think, to almost any product today.

[00:15:07] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I totally agree. We were at the Forrester B2B conference and they weren’t talking about young people. They were talking about what they call buying networks. Mm-hmm. And it was funny attending that conference after going to GDC, because we were also talking about at GDC communities and the different people who influence and establish those tastes and preferences and their.

[00:15:33] Tessa Burg: Starting to rethink, how do we get into the value set, the consideration set for someone as early as possible, and it really comes down to storytelling. And the more someone feels that emotional connection to someone at your company, to a character, to the product or service that you’re bringing. Then the more engaged they are throughout the buying journey.

[00:16:04] Tessa Burg: And that buying journey is not just the conversion, it’s the conversations I’m gonna have, it’s the exploration I’m going to do, it’s the networking. So that was one of the things that really stood out to me. It’s like, huh? The, when we talk about people being everywhere, it really is, people are in community, and those communities have many different channels.

[00:16:28] Tessa Burg: And. We can use data and technology to authentically show up when it’s the right moment because we’ve all seen it go wrong.

[00:16:39] Gary Goodman: Like, yeah. Yeah. You just, I mean, one thing I was gonna pivot a little bit on it as you were talking about the storytelling, is that because we’re in an entertainment-led, um, field. You know, by choice I mean we, we decided to chase our passions.

[00:16:53] Gary Goodman: Um, there’s storytelling, but there’s also the promise of a feeling. And video games and movies and TV shows deliver this emotional value at such a high octane boost. And our ability to understand what the promise of those feelings that this game may deliver our ability to tell a story that. Actually allows you to feel that feeling as you’re watching the advertising so that you understand when you, it makes you covet that feeling and wanna play that game.

[00:17:25] Gary Goodman: Um, and that’s a really, that’s a great, versus selling a product, you know.

[00:17:29] Matt Bretz: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:29] Gary Goodman: Your teeth will be whiter. Okay. Yeah. I kind of want that, but like, I, you know, I’m not left with a feeling unless I’ve got a really a, a, a feeling that my teeth are yellow, you know, and I’m self-conscious about it, but like, the feeling of, connecting the feeling of solving a challenge, the feeling of defeating the boss, the feeling of winning a sports, uh, event. All of those feelings are very palpable. And you know, one of the reasons we’ve been so successful is that we’ve been able to create those feelings in our advertising and marketing.

[00:17:59] Gary Goodman: On behalf of the products that we’ve been so lucky enough to, to be asked to, to work on. And I love that. So, uh, it does separate us. And then, you know, we’re always in pursuit of that. How do you generate that feeling authentically that sits at the center of what the product can promise and can people, when they see what you’re making, feel it.

[00:18:20] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm. Matt, did you wanna add to that? You don’t have to.

[00:18:25] Matt Bretz: Well, you know, I have, it’s actually a sidebar. I had this kind of in like amazing, uh, flash when you guys were talking a few moments ago before that, ’cause I agree with everything Gary said. This is sort of a different topic, which was like identity, right.

[00:18:40] Matt Bretz: You know, we all like identity. I’m thinking I’m making this up as I go along. By the way, in the 1950s, like, you know, you were Don Draper, you know, like you, you sort of had this very monolithic. Um, self-created sense of who you were, and you just stuck by that and carried it out into the world, cut to, you know, 2025.

[00:19:03] Matt Bretz: I, we’ve what? Then we have, you know, like the 1970s, the, the me, uh, generation became, uh, you know, a cult of identity in a way, you know, where. Everyone was trying was, was Prototypically trying to celebrate their identity in a way that other people could participate in. And then you get to 2025, where I think we have legitimate communities, like you said, it’s like this journey of how we identify and so our audience identifies.

[00:19:35] Matt Bretz: Now as a community, as much as they do as an individual, and therefore you have to feed that community. Uh, you know, and I think everything that you said about the conference that you came out of is true for the video games space as well. Um, is that it’s, uh, it also makes way more important nowadays than when I began my career. Uh. Partnerships for brands.

[00:20:01] Tessa Burg: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:01] Matt Bretz: You know, thinking about as, as I stand side by side in a family of brands that have decided to partner together, how does that mirror a community of people who are interested in participating and being a part of that circular, communal identity, um, is something that we work very hard on.

[00:20:26] Tessa Burg: I love these two tracks of identity. Seeing yourself in a community evoking emotion. Are you able to give some examples of how you’ve done this or real, or how you think we can do this going forward because things are are changing. But Gary, let’s start with you. What are some example of how this comes to life?

[00:20:52] Gary Goodman: I mean, it’s really interesting. I, I, as I was listening to Matt, I, it was triggering for me, um, this word that. In our space, authenticity is the most important. Uh, our, our audiences, they’re very snarky. They, they, um, you know, we’re selling an IP that has fandom, usually centered around it. There are people that really love it.

[00:21:14] Gary Goodman: They self-identify around it. They would wear swag and hats and whatever, and they’re quick to tell anyone they meet, that they play this game or they love this game. And, um. So as we are trying to reach that audience, we have to be authentic within that space. We have to understand why. They really love it and what will get them excited and, and feeling like we fulfilled the promise of the brand.

[00:21:40] Gary Goodman: This is a really, you know, and when you’re dealing with IP that has fandom built around it, you have to be able to understand what’s at the center of the integrity of the brand, what’s at the center of it, and how do you bring that out so that people feel it’s been realized in a way that feels earned and uh, uh, and important.

[00:22:01] Gary Goodman: So, um, I, one example that comes to mind. Is that we were asked, um, this is several years ago at our old agency, but we were asked to create a, a, a film to open their, their big marketing show, which called E3. Uh, Xbox had asked us to make a film to open their show. It’s in front of a live audience, and it just so happened to be a year that they had several big IPs coming out at the same time.

[00:22:27] Gary Goodman: And that’s, that’s just, you know, luck of the draw on the calendar. And when they had Tomb Raider, they had Halo. They had. Fable, they had a Fortza game. Um, all of these massive brands all landing in the same calendar year, so they could. Pretty much, you know, like Netflix celebrates their, here’s what’s coming out Netflix, and it makes net Netflix look great.

[00:22:49] Gary Goodman: Uh, Xbox had that moment and we were asked to create a film that delivered on the promise of all those disparate brands and also elevated Xbox as the place that can bring that to their viewers. Now how do we do it? Um, we made a film that had a, a, a, an anthem that was being spoken by each of the voice talents of these characters that, that they shared, that talked about what it’s like to be a hero.

[00:23:14] Gary Goodman: What are the challenges and, and. Are you going to, are you going to take that chance when you have to take the chance? Are you gonna rise to the challenge? That was very important. The second thing we did was we, we were able to license a Han Zimmer track from the Man of Steel soundtrack when we were first people to ever do that.

[00:23:31] Gary Goodman: Um, I. There was something about the journey of Superman and this music that Hans had created with the London Philharmonic that was just so powerful that it evoked this quality. And so everyone in the room that saw this piece, we called it characters that matter. Uh, you know, we kind of done a, like Mount Rushmore bit at the end where each of these, these iconic characters are, are as important as the heads on the Mount Rushmore, um, but to the swell of this triumphant Han Zimmer song. So we created the emotional value and delivered on the promise of these characters for a fan that went on and delivered through the year.

[00:24:07] Gary Goodman: So that’s probably my example.

[00:24:09] Matt Bretz: Yeah.

[00:24:10] Tessa Burg: I love that example. Matt, you have something to add?

[00:24:13] Matt Bretz: You know, I was thinking about it. I got a chance to think about it. Good job, Gary. Like you had no chance to think about it and you came up with a, with a zinger. And so I’m gonna rip it off and say that I just want to keep talking about Xbox a little bit.

[00:24:25] Matt Bretz: And I want to emphasize by the way that we had a big team working for Xbox. We were agency of record, uh, in social media for 10 years. Uh, so far, uh, you know, that organization has been. And Xbox was one of the great success stories early of leveraging first-party data and also third-party data, I’m sure.

[00:24:49] Matt Bretz: But on our side, as a partner to them, we, um, you know, we were, we always had to ask for what we were looking for. We didn’t have a, um, just open book, uh, you know, to their, to their data. But by asking the right questions. We were able to create market segmentation. Uh, in terms of the, our audience segmentation.

[00:25:14] Matt Bretz: I think it’s fine to tell you like in the. Teens, like that, many different types of people motivated by different ways that they played, knowing when they played, who they played with, and, um, it really powered up our ability to launch their subscription game, service. Service, which has now become the state of the industry called, uh, um, Xbox Game Pass, which is their subscription service in games, you know, very similar to what most people are familiar with through Netflix.

[00:25:45] Matt Bretz: The success of that service was directly related to being able to listen to the audience. Learn from the audience and be led by the audience and, uh, and that, uh, you know, this, I have to warn you that your show is gonna get trolled because there are gonna be lots of haters in the game industry that are gonna say Xbox is doing everything wrong.

[00:26:09] Matt Bretz: And there are definitely ways that, especially now that we’ve, uh, left the helm, Gary and I are, uh, diverged from, from things that Xbox Marketing does. For the most part, they have spent really, you know, from even before Satya at Microsoft, a couple of decades under, under Phil Spencer, just crushing it. As far as using, and this comes back to your point, uh, Tessa, in an oblique way, it’s not data for data itself.

[00:26:41] Matt Bretz: It’s data to understand humans and give humans what they want and need to sustain them, you know? Uh, and that is unique, uh, in the game space. Um, and I, and I, I’ll always be a great admirer of it and, and, and, and feel lucky to have been a part of it.

[00:27:02] Tessa Burg: I love in all of your responses, I can feel your passion for the industry and your passion for what you do.

[00:27:09] Tessa Burg: So what are you most looking forward to as we look ahead at the opportunities we have using AI, using machine learning data and different tools, what can we do to continue to really evoke these strong emotions within these audiences and connect them deeper to games? And uh, Gary, you wanna start?

[00:27:29] Gary Goodman: Sure. Yeah, I’d love to. Uh, I love that question. Thank you. Um, where do we, Matt and I have this really amazing opportunity. We, we took a little walk about after our time at Ayzenberg and we’re looking for the, the right opportunity for what we wanted to do next. And we got to some very simple things right out of the gate.

[00:27:48] Gary Goodman: One is that, um. This time we get to build the plane and the hangar. As the world is changing technologically at a very rapid pace, we don’t have to retrofit what we’re providing to our clients. We’re going to build exactly what they need and only give them exactly what they need. And we’re gonna spend all of our energy on that.

[00:28:08] Gary Goodman: And that is a, that’s a rare opportunity to have. And having been at  Ayzenberg, for, for 25 years, you know, you can’t do that anymore. You’ve made decisions along the way that. Affect, you know, any decision affects a lot of things and the ship doesn’t turn as fast. So one is that two, uh, and I think this is.

[00:28:28] Gary Goodman: You know, we’ve had this opportunity to go in and talk to clients, knowing that the, the, the industry has evolved and a lot of of our clients have multiple agencies doing multiple things, and everyone’s a specialist and that’s great, but there’s things that slip through the cracks and our ability to go to these clients who we’ve known for many decades, some of them.

[00:28:48] Gary Goodman: Find out what is their challenge right now that they can’t solve. They, I don’t, I think Matt and I know that like to go and ask them to give us the work they’re giving to other agencies is not the right place to be because everything has changed. So we have this opportunity to go and talk to clients and have them share their pain points as opposed to, let me show you our capabilities, pick something off our menu.

[00:29:11] Gary Goodman: Which is the way it normally happens, and, and I hope we never have to do that again. And then the third thing, and I, I think this is for, for me at least personally, is the most important, is that as we reflected on our careers, we realized that that the most successful moments we had in our career paths were due to technological changes that we didn’t take credit for.

[00:29:32] Gary Goodman: These were things that were happening in the world. That changed everything and being swift problem solvers that Matt and I are, and being, and being really good at client service and understanding creative storytelling. You know, we’ve, we’ve built a career, a lifetime of, of solving these types of problems.

[00:29:51] Gary Goodman: Seeing this new technological innovation that’s in front of us that everybody is talking about, whether it’s it’s, it’s something they’re excited about or fearful of, or a little bit of both. This AI technological change is this opportunity to really think through with clients, um, how do we, how do we, how do we tackle, how do we get over this?

[00:30:13] Gary Goodman: What might be perceived as a hurdle right now? It’s gonna change your life. It’s gonna change your life for the better. We all know this, but we don’t know if that’s five years from now. Most people live day to day. They’ve got 25 unchecked boxes they gotta fill every day just to do their jobs and take care of their family or whatever that might be.

[00:30:32] Gary Goodman: And this new challenge of, of this thing that’s gonna change their life seems impossible. It seems confusing. It seems daunting. And we want to tackle that challenge. And when we started a Mod Op and we first started talking to you Tessa, we were able to see the light bulb turning on like this can happen.

[00:30:52] Gary Goodman: Like you are so quick at seeing what’s possible with data and that between our ability to talk to clients and get. Really, uh, unfiltered knowledge of where their challenges are and bring that back into Mod Op and with your team, start to figure out, well, this is how you need to look at it. Don’t be scared of it. It’s gonna, it’s gonna help you in so many ways. We wanna show you that path. This is what I think we’re most excited about. And hopefully I stayed on, on point with the question ’cause I don’t even remember what it was now.

[00:31:25] Tessa Burg: Oh yeah. No, that was perfect. And I, I agree like that’s. I get up every day and I think about how are we going to make our clients rock stars, like,

[00:31:37] Gary Goodman: Yes.

[00:31:38] Matt Bretz: Yeah.

[00:31:38] Tessa Burg: Very similar. I’ve been lucky enough to be curious about technological changes, but always in the vein of we don’t need to invent a thing. We need to create that emotional connection and elevate the people we serve. And I like living in that lane because to your point, Gary, they don’t need another tool.

[00:32:03] Tessa Burg: They don’t have time to learn new skills. But if we can create a solution that feels like magic, that that is sticky, that is useful, that is valuable. Um, I know it’s a, it’s a lot more fun to do because it’s kinda like the Han Zimmer song, you know? Like, I feel like you’ve made it to the mountaintop.

[00:32:23] Gary Goodman: That’s it. It’s a good one.

[00:32:26] Tessa Burg: Matt, do you have anything to add?

[00:32:27] Matt Bretz: You know, I would just extend what you guys said to our own people in, you know, our creative organization. For example, as I, I think we’re at this point with AI, particularly with the generative AI tools that are available to creatives where everything looks like a threat to creatives.

[00:32:49] Matt Bretz: Whereas I have, I am really excited. About the creative liberation that is going to come as a result of generative AI. I know I’ve many times as a maker, uh, been able to do one part of a multi-part project that I need to do, like, you know, maybe I can write the story, but I can’t also act it out and direct it and have the pyrotechnics and be the sound designer and et cetera, and so it stops dead.

[00:33:21] Matt Bretz: It never happens. Nobody ever gets to see that crazy, you know, uh, creative invention. And I think once we get back past the dark ages, this or the birth canal of this AI, uh, transformation, uh, I know that was a really, uh, uh, a. A very interesting metaphor. Um, and so once we get past the, the, uh, the potential claustrophobic quality of the, uh, the launch of the AI revolution, we’re going to find that there is an immense amount of more diverse creative output because, uh, generalists can augment their specific gaps with uh, automation and machines and, and, and bring more ideas to life.

[00:34:11] Matt Bretz: So, to me, that is, uh, I, you know, and yes, we do that for clients, but we also, like right now I’m very, as a, as a creative leader at Mod Op, I’m very focused on trying to help people to get past the threat and onto the, uh, opportunity.

[00:34:29] Gary Goodman: Yeah, I, if I could build on that for a second.

[00:34:31] Gary Goodman: Um, one of the things we’ve had great success with in our careers, uh, is to put an idea in front of a client that they can see and feel and have that emotional reaction to. And in the, in the process generally of, of bringing an idea to life. The first steps are usually on paper and it’s a script, and it, it, it, it’s very cold.

[00:34:54] Gary Goodman: And you’re asking a client to, uh, use their imagination and believe what you, you’re seeing in your head. As creatives, we see it, we know it’s gonna be good, we believe it. Um. When you’re selling it to a client, like they now have to trigger their imagination and maybe they see it or maybe they’re fearful that it’s gonna be the worst version of this thing ’cause that’s how they see it.

[00:35:15] Gary Goodman: With the AI tool sets that are available now, we can make stuff very swiftly as a proof of concept to sell an idea to a client where we’ve pulled a lot of the risk out of it. They can yeah. Watch something as a, as a, an idea. As opposed to something on paper or a paragraph, you know of, oh, here’s the idea.

[00:35:37] Gary Goodman: No, let me show you something. It’s gonna have music, it’s gonna have imagery, it, you’re gonna feel something. And because of that, you’re gonna get what we’re going after. And hopefully we can make bolder things because that fear gap is being, you know, we’ve built a bridge over it with AI.

[00:35:55] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I love that.

[00:35:57] Tessa Burg: So this has gone really fast, but we’re actually at time. So thank you both for joining us today. We, we will have to do another episode where we give some client examples and really dive deep into some of the amazing solutions that we’re launching.

[00:36:13] Tessa Burg: Uh, if you are listening and you want to be inspired, you wanna be bold, you wanna get all the feels, you can find Matt and Gary on LinkedIn, or you can connect to us through Mod Op.

[00:36:23] Tessa Burg: And all of the episodes of Leader Generation are at modop.com. That’s modop.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you both again for joining us today and we’ll be, I know we’ll be meeting and chatting again soon.

[00:36:37] Gary Goodman: Thanks, Tessa.

[00:36:38] Matt Bretz: Bye-Bye.