Welcome to another Method Breakdown, today featuring Karl Lieberman. At the time of this release, Karl is the Global Chief Creative Officer at Wieden+Kennedy. As a creative and creative director, he has made iconic work for brands like P&G, Nike, Delta Airlines, McDonalds, Dos Equis, and AB InBev.
Here’s what we cover in this episode:
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:07 Selected Work
07:56 Good Briefs Are Like Buckets
09:00 Know Who You’re Talking To
09:56 Research on Etsy & eBay
10:50 Find Something You Relate To
12:11 Have Opinions on Everything
13:14 Lines for the Most Interesting Man
15:25 Client Input —in Dos Equis
16:55 On Not Getting Angry
17:49 Chase What Sounds Real
18:59 The Process of Writing
20:19 On Writing Taglines
21:00 The Power of Headlines
22:10 On Manifestos
23:43 On Being Resilient
24:35 On Deadlines
25:36 On Writing P&G’s Moms
27:06 The Ending in Never Walk Alone
28:13 On the Tone of P&G’s Moms
30:02 On Sharing Early Edits
30:25 On Director’s Treatments
31:45 Keep the Vision Aligned
33:20 When to Go Full Craft Mode
34:01 Craft Is Not Beauty
35:14 On Craft Vs Point of View
36:09 On Creative Direction
37:13 On Creative Feedback
38:36 Right/Wrong Vs Good/Bad
40:02 On Deciding Between Ideas
40:46 On Many Teams on Projects
42:26 Karl’s Favorite Creatives
42:59 Being the Right Kind of Boss
44:10 On Watching People Grow Up
44:51 On Presenting Creative Ideas
46:38 On Sharing Stuff Early
47:39 On Pitch Decks
49:29 How Much Work to Present
50:25 Excitement Alignment
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Transcript
Below is an automatically generated transcript from the video. Minor mistakes can occasionally slip in.
Chapter 1. Good Briefs Are Like Buckets
The briefs I like the most are more about spaces and places to work in, like really simple things. Like that “Dos Equis” was about interesting and “P&G” was about moms. When you get a brief that’s just like more like a bucket, that’s what I feel most comfortable with. “P&G,” proud sponsor of Moms. The logic for it has a lot behind it, but the ultimate thing is they’re like, “Can you do something about moms during the Olympics?” And you’re like, “Yeah, yeah, absolutely.”
Chapter 2. Know Who You’re Talking To
Honestly, the one thing that is the most important leaving a brief is like knowing who you’re talking to. And then either that’s an audience that really resonates with you or an audience you have to kind of find a way for it to resonate with you or that you have to get familiar with. But like you have to be having a conversation with someone. That is the key to doing great work is that it’s basically two people. Dan, I used to say this, it was just like, “Great work is a conversation between two people that other people will be interested in listening in on.” I’ve always loved that. And I think that’s so true. And so when you walk out of a brief and it’s like, “Oh, so it’s for people who, they’re cat people. They love cats.” You’re like, “Okay, I know cat people. My sister’s a cat person. I had a cat.” I get, I know that space, so then I’m gonna know how to have a conversation. So I think that’s always the most important thing in a brief is like, it’s really clear who you’re talking to and it’s really clear what you’re gonna be talking to them about. That’s a great brief.
Chapter 3. Research on Etsy and eBay
When we get a new brand, I love going onto two places, eBay and Etsy. And like, if you search vintage blank on eBay, it’s fascinating the stuff that people sell and have kept and see value in. It’s also like a really interesting like walk down the historical path of a brand. So like eBay is an awesome research place. And then Etsy is crazy because Etsy does have some vintage items and things like that. But then Etsy has a lot of people’s own interpretations of the thing. So like, you know, laser carved signs, t-shirts, memes and all that stuff lives on there. So that’s always really interesting to see like, okay, if it’s like Tang, what are people into about Tang? Like, are they selling vintage packaging on eBay? Are they making their own like Tang shirts? Are they done? And like a lot of time, those two spaces are to kind of inspire everything.
Chapter 4. Find Something You Relate To
The thing that’s been really fortunate for me over the years is I’m always, I’m usually working on stuff that like I relate to or that’s like important to me. Like it’s been like beer, cars, sports, you know, food. Where we rarely ever get a brief where it’s not something that myself or a lot of people have a lot to say about. And if it is, usually I feel like our planners come around putting the brand, maybe you don’t have a lot to say about, but you put it in a space where you have a ton to say about. So like for Old Spice, it was really interesting. Cause like, I probably don’t have a ton to say about deodorant, but when it ends up about being like masculinity and adolescence and like manliness, that’s like, oh right, you could write about that for days. So I think I haven’t had the challenge where if someone was gave me something that it was either a product I didn’t really have any opinions on or a space that I didn’t have any opinions on. Like if it, I’m trying to think of a thing, if it was like, well I’m bald. So like if it was like, we need you to write about conditioner. I might not have like a ton to say about conditioner and that might be a little hard, but even then I’d probably have a lot to say about how I can’t use conditioner. And how frustrating it is that when people complain about having to condition their hair, I’m like, you know, I would fucking love have to condition my hair. So I don’t know. As long as you’re just like writing about real stuff, I don’t know if you really need tricks, I guess.
Chapter 5. On Having Opinions on Everything
I think the whole thing is just having an opinion about everything. If your opinion is that this thing sucks, it’s just as valid as if you think it’s great. Like you can have an opinion about something and think it’s absurd. When Brandon Henderson and I got Dos Equis, the thing was that young men will choose a beer that they think makes them look interesting. And we just thought that was kind of absurd. We’re like, a beer can’t make you interesting. That’s ridiculous. And we were having a hard time coming up with stuff, but then we were like, oh, what if we just completely bought this premise? And we’re like, this beer makes you interesting. And like, and if you drank a lot of this beer, you’d be really interesting. And so who like the spokesperson needs to be the most interesting person in the world. Because of course they are the most Dos Equis person in the world. And so we just like went with that and just like accepted this premise we disagreed with and kind of made fun of it the whole time.
Chapter 6. “The Most Interesting Man in the World”
What we ended up doing was we wrote about stuff that we hated about ourselves and had him do the opposite. And that became kind of easy, right? Because if you’re hard on yourself, there’s a lot of things you don’t like about yourself. And so the way we got to him being interesting was that he just wasn’t like us. And once you sort of crack that, we could write for days. Like I remember one of the lines, I think Brandon wrote, it was funny, it was like, no matter how much he takes out of the ATM his balance never changes. Because we were really broke, you know? We were always like, they’ve got to find a $5 one. Cause I’ve only got like, I’ve only got like $17 left.
