Kasper Sierslev: The Social Media ZITE-geist

Our interview of Kasper Sierslev for “The Creative Influencer” podcast is available today for download on iTunes, Spotify, and premier platforms everywhere.

Kasper is a marketing expert with over 20 years of experience working in-house, including as the head of creative at a large logistics shipping company. He has also built in-house creative agencies at several FORTUNE 500 companies and recently co-founded his own agency, ZITE.

Kasper discusses how creativity is increasingly moving in-house for brands and their marketing, with more companies bringing creative work in-house rather than relying solely on external agencies, because of their direct connections to their product and customers. He is the author of the book “Incredible: Under the Hood of In-House Creativity.”

Kasper discusses the advantages of various platforms: effectiveness of LinkedIn for thought leadership, TikTok for certain products, and the potential for longer-form content on platforms like TikTok.

And when the discussion turns to A.I., Kasper believes that artificial intelligence will help creativity by raising the “bottom” and inspiring new ideas, but that human curation and selection of the best ideas will remain crucial.

Notable Quotes

"It's really difficult to create a hundred bad ideas in a row, so we need to keep going." (15:06)

"If an idea is great with a bad drawing on a wall, then it will also be great later." (20:49)

Kicker Quotes

"It's hard to create in a row." (16:01)

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A transcript of the episode follows:

Jon Pfeiffer:
I am joined today by Kaspar Sierslev. Welcome to the podcast.

Kasper Sierslev:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So we were talking before we started the recording. Where are you physically right now?

Kasper Sierslev:
Right now I'm in, I would say sunny, but it's actually really dark. Copenhagen, Denmark, Scandinavia, up north Europe where it's cold, rainy, dark right now.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Well, I'm in Malibu, so we have the polar opposites.

Kasper Sierslev:
Yeah, yeah.

Jon Pfeiffer:
You are a marketer. Yes. I'm sorry. Known for especially in-house marketing. And you just wrote a book that came out a couple of weeks ago called

Kasper Sierslev:
"Incredible Under the Hood of In-House Creativity."

Jon Pfeiffer:
And it is, give us a summary.

Kasper Sierslev:
So let me go a few years back. So I've been working with in-house marketing for, I don't know, 15 years or something like that, starting out being the head of creative at Maersk, which is a big logistics shipping company. Some people know it, some people don't. And then working in-house, building in-house creative agencies at two or three companies before we started our own company. And what I've seen for the last 10 years I would say is that creativity is increasingly moving. And I thought I would write a book about how to work with creativity in-house because traditionally in-house has more been like a cost saving experience or something like that. Long introduction to the book. But that's what it's all about. It's tips and tricks on how to teach people to be more creative, but also why we need to be creative. And then finally, it's like a three section book, how to measure, how to prove and so on.

Jon Pfeiffer:
And we'll come back to the creative part of it because really an interesting topic, but why do you believe more marketing is moving in-house?

Kasper Sierslev:
So actually I think there's been, in my experience there's been like three waves of in-house. The first one was really when people realized instead of going for agencies to do low complexity production work, like setting up brochures and doing sales collateral and so on. And that's probably started in the sixties or seventies or something like that. And then when we got social media, that's what I call the second wave when people starting to move content in-house because you need to so much content. And the latest one I think is at least five, six years old since it started. I looked at some of the great award shows and I can see that for in 2010, there are only 2% at the Cannes Lions Award, which is the world championship of creativity and advertising creativity. And now it's about 20% or 18% that comes from in-house agencies. And it's big companies like Heinz, Coca-Cola, apple, that are bringing creativity. And I think it's because when you sit, you have greater access to the knowledge who you know the product better. You can actually observe customer relations better than you can do at an external agency. So I think that's one of the reasons at least.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So have there been studies on if people are really more creative in-house versus an agency?

Kasper Sierslev:
No. So we do our own study and then it's pretty much counting. So I don't believe people are more creative. I think that would be a mistake. I think in reality, I think people would be probably more creative externally because they work with a lot of different clients. So in the broader perspective, they work with more clients, more different problems that they can actually combine and learn from where when you're sitting in-house, you get that tunnel vision and you only work with the same problems. But some of the things that we see is that sometimes you need that in-house agency look, knowing the product better, especially when the product is complicated or the market conditions are complicated like selling B2B or we sometimes talk B two, B2C or something like that longer journey where you need to convince people and you need to understand the entire value chain, then it makes sense. And I think creativity is such a broad term. So now I'm trying to narrow it down, but in reality it could be a lot of different things. It could be creative in terms of being fast, for instance, or being to the right narrow audience. That could also be a creative approach.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So just in general, if someone were to come to you, let me rephrase that. If a college student were to come to you and say, I want to have a creative career, what advice would you give them?

Kasper Sierslev:
So I would say go to an agency as a starting point because I think you learn faster there. That's being said. I was just at a conference a couple of weeks ago in London talking about in-house and people say it's like counting dog years. When you build an in-house agency because you produce so much, the timelines are way shorter. We do a big study, we surveyed approximately a thousand people across us, uk, Europe, and of course Nordics where I'm from in the spring. And we could see that in-house agencies they get approximately 250 to 500 briefs every year. Where external agencies, they work with 50 briefs probably in general. And of course it's comparing apples to bananas or something like that. So a brief is not a brief, but still we can see that in-house agencies are, they're working with more briefs every day. But if I was a college student and I wanted to go out, I would go out and try to work with some of the best right now and try to do as much, get some much experience under the skin. But what we see, no, sorry. No, go ahead.

Jon Pfeiffer:
No, go ahead.

Kasper Sierslev:
What we see now is that a lot of experienced creative people coming from agencies are actually looking to go in-house because it's more relaxed work environment. You also get sometimes more time to do better creative work and you get to work more broad. So in agencies, you normally work on the campaign, the small, the big idea, but not really expanding out to all the corners, so to speak of that where you can create all the different variations, all the different touch points, and actually fold out the campaign across media.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So I believe it was in 2020 that you released the book moving? If I have my timeline,

Kasper Sierslev:
I think that's probably correct.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Well, lemme rephrase that. Amazon

Kasper Sierslev:
Corona. I had a lot of time on my hands. Yeah, yeah.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So did everybody. If you are a brand and you're thinking, gosh, this agency experience hasn't been working well for me, I want to bring in my marketing, especially my digital marketing. How do you start that?

Kasper Sierslev:
So there are actually two ways of doing it. So the traditional one is start by the low complexity things. That's what we've been seeing for the last 40 years almost. That's bringing in graphic designers, copywriters and so on. But in recent years there's been a transition working too much paid media, so doing the social media, the media buying and so on. And what we are experiencing in our company right now is a kind of mix where we can look at our own data because we are can test and hypothesis on something, have an idea of this might work and we can do it in small scale, we can adjust and we can learn from that. So really a mixture of media buying creative people who are ready to test and learn and make mistakes in a smaller scale. And then people who can actually buy and adjust and scale. So I would probably look to media buying and some mid-level creativity like content, social media.

Jon Pfeiffer:
When you're in-house and you're looking now at digital platforms, which platforms do you believe are the most effective?

Kasper Sierslev:
It really depends on what you're selling. So for us it's definitely LinkedIn. So that's thought leadership and it's old fashioned, even though the platform is kind of behind all the other platforms in terms of working with it. If I were to sell probably any other things, I would probably look towards TikTok. That's what we are seeing right now. It works really well. But see, the social media platforms like Instagram is also working fine for a lot of our clients.

Jon Pfeiffer:
So actually I'm bouncing around a little bit, but I'm kind of listening to what you're saying. In the TikTok in the United States, there is an upcoming ban of TikTok. I know we see if that really goes into effect or not. What's happening to TikTok in Europe?

Kasper Sierslev:
So it's still popular. I don't think it's expanding as fast as it was a couple of years ago. So right now people are looking, what's the next thing that we, I mean that's at least the people I talked to in Scandinavia and the uk, but it's still working. I also think the demographics are getting older, more mature, but it's still extremely fast moving. That said, what I've seen in terms of content is that long form content. A couple of years back we were told you have to have the action within the first four, 2.4 short content, 2.4 seconds, then it was down to two seconds, then it's one second and so on. And that's still very much the case for TikTok. But at the moment we are seeing, I think Volvo released an ad a couple of weeks back that was three minutes long and a long story form, like a movie that went viral for instance. So at the moment, I think actually longer forms, more storytelling is, I wouldn't say on its way back, but it's just interesting right now where it's going because it's all been so snappy, so short, so superficial in a way, right?

Jon Pfeiffer:
Well you can't tell a great story in 10 seconds

Kasper Sierslev:
No's

Jon Pfeiffer:
Very a one-liner. So you were saying everybody's looking for the next thing. Any idea what the next thing is?

Kasper Sierslev:
No. And then maybe a bit, because I also teach at the Danish School of Advertising and what we are talking a lot about with all I teach one night and then we have guest teachers coming in. And what we are seeing right now is actually that since you can do everything with AI and after effects and digital things, a lot of the really great ideas are moving into the real world. So having it's kind of old fashioned, but having an experience, something that happens on the streets that people will themselves will take pictures of or share and film or something like that or talk about. So it's not really the next big thing, it's old fashioned, but it just seems to be a trend in, at least here in Scandinavia and UK to have something. And then of course you have the cheaper version of that. That's something that done with CGI that looks like it happens in the real life, but it's not a platform. It's more like a concept thing.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Put your future hat on to make some predictions here. With creativity. We're going to circle back to creativity. How much will artificial intelligence help or hurt human creativity?

Kasper Sierslev:
I think it will help, but it will definitely raise the bottom to somewhere. But we are also seeing a sea of sameness and people they buy if they're interested in something, if it stands out. So that's why I think there's a great future for creativity because you need to stand out, you need to do something that looks different. And if everybody is doing the same, writing the same in an ever changing something, well that sounds like chat, GBT words, then doing something completely different makes mistakes, spelled words wrong or something like that will probably make a difference. That said, when I teach, I always say we need to have a lot of ideas on the table in order to create great ideas. And it's really difficult to create a hundred bad ideas in a row, so we need to keep going. But with the use of,

Jon Pfeiffer:
I actually, I've never heard it put that way. I like that a lot,

Kasper Sierslev:
But I think that's a fact. When you keep going and I share my bad idea with you, you take that, maybe you make it slightly better, you put it out there or say it to me and then we have something that evolves. And with ai, of course, maybe you can do the first 40 or 50 bad ideas faster or get some inspiration to go in different directions. I don't think AI will replace the selection of which idea is great, but it can probably inspire me to do the next 50 faster or better.

Jon Pfeiffer:
No, I actually have a headline for this episode. It's hard to create in a row. I think if you didn't put that in your book, put it in your next book.

Kasper Sierslev:
I will. I think it, I'm not sure it's in there. I think it's might be. I've said it before, at

Jon Pfeiffer:
Least it's in a weird way. It's pure genius. I've not thought about that. So if you're with a group and you're brainstorming an idea for a campaign, how do you jumpstart it? How do you get the creativity flowing?

Kasper Sierslev:
So I come from a musical background where I played jazz music at a night clock when I was young and I wasn't really good. I'm still barely decent, but the rest of the musicians were good and they came in and jammed with us. So I learned all the jazz standards, so to speak, all the, and it's like 20, 30, 40 songs that you need to know and then you can pretty much get in there and the other people are doing all the solos. So what I saw was like, it's a method. So if you keep doing this, if you have that, then you can build on top of it. So what we do is really, really basic. We focus on don't get too involved in the idea, use a pen and paper or blank a marker and don't do too much. And then it's about creating those first a hundred ideas. And I normally start with saying, are there any insights we can build on something weird or something we all say, oh, I know that feeling. So that's the first step. Are there any insights into what we are doing? And I mean maybe it's observations, but it's like people who don't own a car, they always slam the door too hard. For instance, something like that that you can build on or the way that you always hammer on the button of ketchup bottle. And at one point something I would say, oh yeah, that's true. If we can build

Jon Pfeiffer:
That one,

Kasper Sierslev:
If we can build on that one, that's something we all, we get that. Ah, that's funny idea. So that's the first one. Are there any ideas we can build from then? We tried, normally it's putting up ideas and the first one would be are there any unique selling points? Because that's always nice to exaggerate on some way, something with the brand. And then we drew something we called the cross method, which is mixing to forcing two concepts together. So let's say we're doing McDonald's for instance, and McDonald's have free wifi now. So on one line I put up, I ask people to say all the things you remember. You can come up with McDonald's. It could be the brand assets, the colors, the golden arc, the logo, mac something. It could be the colors, it could be the products, the sandwiches, burgers, french fries and so on. So that's one line. And the other one would be the benefit. And since this was fast internet, a free internet, the other one could be wifi symbol, the, what do you call the three four?

Yeah. Or it could be something that looks like a computer or something like that. And then you would try to force these things together. So you would say take the wifi logo and force them together with french fries. And then you would have a wifi logo made out of french fries, French fries going on. Or you could open the burger box or the sandwich box. So it would look like a computer if you put it in certain angle or something like that. And people would sitting. Or you could have a guy holding the burger, it's a computer mouse or something. So forcing these things together, that would be the second one. It works really well and it kind of forces you to create new visuals that you haven't seen before.

Jon Pfeiffer:
How much of this do you do analog and how much of it do you do digitally when you're brainstorming like this?

Kasper Sierslev:
Right now we are analog, so that's pretty much maybe we prepare a bit before and ask people, but this works really well analog with black paper and so on before, because I've seen that people, they're more used to sitting behind their computer and then they get too involved in their idea. I mean you can make everything look great and like an ad if you put enough effort and AI and tools into it. But if an idea is great with a bad drawing on a wall, then it will also be great later. So I'm really, really trying to be analog and old fashioned at this stage. Next we will probably go through some kind of, I'm sorry, I'm just talking, but

Jon Pfeiffer:
No, this is fascinating stuff. Go ahead.

Kasper Sierslev:
Then we'll probably go through some kind of journey. So let's say we are doing internal communications or employer branding or something like that. Then we would start by saying, what's the journey from people coming into work in the morning? They get up in the morning, they get into the car, they have their coffee with them. Could we do something with the coffee cup? Could we do something they're listening to on the way to work? What about their parking spot? Could we do something funny on the parking spot? Could we do something in the doorways that open in the reception in the staircase when they turn on their computer or try to go through a journey. Or it could be now it's just people coming to work, the cante and the toilets. Could we do something funny with the mirrors? So when you force yourself to go into a journey like that, then places or Yeah, placements actually pop up and that sometimes sparkle new ideas to say it would be funny to do something on the mirror, on the toilet, maybe put a, I don't know, fake mustache. So when you stand in a certain, or I don't know, a medallion or something, I don't know, I'm just a funny hat. So when people are standing in front of the mirror, they see themselves as captain of the next chip or I don't know, rambling a McDonald's uniform or something. Like,

Jon Pfeiffer:
I actually hate to stop you having a good time here, but I try to keep the episodes at about 20 minutes.

Kasper Sierslev:
I'm sorry, I'm just rambling.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Now someone who wants to buy your book. Where can they find it?

Kasper Sierslev:
It's on Amazon, so it's pretty easy. It's called “Incredible: Under the Hood of In-House Creativity.”

Jon Pfeiffer:
And if they want to find you on the internet, where would they go?

Kasper Sierslev:
They would look for my last name because that's only me and my father and my two sons call that. So they would probably find me first. It's Sierslev.

Jon Pfeiffer:
Thank you.