Shobha Sairam: [00:00:00] Interestingly with the priests and the sex workers, they were actually more than willing to just jump right into it, and these people were dying to talk about it.

Chris Kocek: Welcome to any insights yet the podcast that explores the intersection of strategy, inspiration, and branding. I'm Chris Kocek. On today's episode, we explore some tricky subjects with Shobha Sairam Chief Strategy Officer at 22 Squared, an independent, award-winning ad agency based out of New York. For over two decades, Shobha has worked on a wide variety of brands at a number of agencies, including Leo Burnett, Mother, Deutsche, and The Community among others.

Her strategic work has led to research on a number of sensitive and challenging subjects, including sexual wellness, banking, and the American dream. So how does Shobha get people to reveal their deepest, most [00:01:00] intimate secrets around difficult and taboo topics? Maybe it's because she's lived and worked on three different continents and she's just instinctively in touch with the human condition.

That definitely plays a role. I think another important part though is the elegant way she reframes questions and the nuance she finds in people's stories. That's what leads to those aha moments that have helped Shobha chart new paths for KY, Sour Patch Kids, Heineken, PepsiCo., Baskin Robbins and more.

And since I always love to ask “what if?” questions as a way of getting closer to an insight, I was excited to hear how Shobha’s creative briefs at 22 Squared have “what if?” at the center of the brief. Before we get to all that though, let's find out what exactly sex workers and priests have in common.

When you worked on KY Brand.

What was one of the most interesting or unusual questions you asked people about sex during your research? [00:02:00] 

Shobha Sairam: Everything we asked people during our research was interesting, and the research itself was super interesting, only because we talked to everyone, not just your average single person who's having sex or couples who are having sex, you know, be they straight or gay. We talked to priests who were not having sex. We talked to prostitutes who were having sex, but for money. Our whole sort of objective was to really become subject matter experts in sex, but the only way to do that was to talk to the experts themselves. The simplest question that we asked them, which turned out to actually be the most evocative question, was just why?

“Why do you have sex?” or “Why do you not have sex?” And what came out from that question was what I think surprised all of us. You know, we all thought people would say the usual, 'cause it's fun, for the joy of it, because it's pleasurable or who doesn't like sex. And what we ended up getting [00:03:00] was actually super deep.

So we got everything from “I have sex out of guilt,” “I have sex out of obligation,” “I have sex because I'm worried that if I don't have sex with my husband, somebody else will.” So it was so interesting because the responses ranged the gamut of everything except, really, the act of sex. When we drilled down deeper and we were like, well what do you hope to get, whether it's guilt or whether it's, you know, manipulation that's driving you or whether it's even doing it for money, and they didn't use this word, but the place we got to was sex isn't just routine, you know, part of your life, like physical, sort of physical pleasure. Sex was about intimacy because it was always this act between two people that came from a different place, you know, it was sort of the expression of something emotional that would [00:04:00] either connect you to the person or not connect you to the person, but it made you feel a certain way about yourself, about the situation you were in and the person that you were doing it with. So, it sort of helped us really move the conversations around the brand, like in terms of thinking about how we set up the foundations, because KY Brand started with Ky Jelly and it was all sort of very functional.

It's considered a medical device. It's a problem/solution brand. If you look at what KY Jelly did and even some of the other innovations, it was all about solving a problem, and that was sort of the wrong place for the brand to live in at that time. So, the strategy sort of evolved around elevating that and making the conversation not about something being problematic with sex and KY being the solution, but elevating the conversation to “there's a role KY can play in culture,” and that's about enhancing intimacy between [00:05:00] whoever chooses to have sex. No judgment on why they do or why they don't, but there is a moment where you come into play where you can actually elevate the experience. 

Chris Kocek: That's super interesting because I think most brands think about problem/solution, right?

They're always like, this is the problem, we're the solution, we're the hero. And what I'm hearing you say is that for the brand to rise beyond the level of the product. To be something in the culture, it has to tap into a deeper or bigger emotion than just the functionality.

Shobha Sairam: Hundred percent. And sometimes the emotion isn't what you expect because we thought, you know, like the easy place to go is KY is all about the joy of sex.

That was not what we were getting from people in these conversations. It felt almost too superficial to go from problem/solution to the joy of sex. It needed to feel a little more meaningful, for what people needed. 

Chris Kocek: So how do you check your bias [00:06:00] at the door? If you go in, you say, Hey, we think it's gonna be about the joy of sex.

Is there anything that you do to kind of set those biases aside and say, okay, I just gotta be open to whatever people are gonna say. And does that also frame the way you think about your questions? 

Shobha Sairam: Yes and no. I think you always have to have a hypothesis. Going into research. 'cause it does sort of help you frame the questions, but equally you've to be open to the hypotheses being proved wrong or you know, being taken onto a different sort of playing field.

The best moderators kind of follow the flow, sort of like you're doing with the podcast, you know what I mean? Like, you have some questions, you think it's gonna go a certain way, but the best moderators, I think, listen, don't judge, and just go and see where the conversation takes them. Everyone has biases, but you know, you don't have to be of their community, but you have to act like you are for their [00:07:00] community or truly be by their side.

Chris Kocek: I can imagine that when talking to people about sex, especially strangers in focus groups or in all of the interviews you talked about, that can be a little bit daunting. It's not something that you usually start a conversation with. How did you deal with the discomfort, if there was any, of talking to strangers about such an intimate topic like sex or their sexual habits or their feelings about sex?

Shobha Sairam: It depended on who we were talking to. You know, obviously if we were talking to couples or, you know, I hate to say normal people, but not priests, not sex workers, just the average Joe on the street, we would kind of ease into it using relationship cues, you know, are you single, are you dating? Like, things like that.

Interestingly, with the priests and the sex workers, they'd kind of self opted into some of this study because we'd screened for them. So they were actually more than willing to just jump [00:08:00] right into it, and the interesting thing that I found was that it felt like these people were dying to talk about it.

Nobody'd actually asked them how they felt, why they were doing it. It was almost like they'd just like held it all up in a box for so long and they were just so relieved that somebody wanted to kind of hear their perspective or hear them vent or hear them talk about it, that it kind of almost became this weird environment of both therapy and community.

So it was sort of like you came in as strangers, but you left knowing the most intimate details of each other's lives and psyches and all of that. So, that category is one of the most interesting ones to work on if you truly get into the depth of what drives people. It was great. 

Chris Kocek: Did people give you, in the beginning, surface level answers that you kind of sensed were like, [00:09:00] uh, you know, I think there's probably something deeper here, and if so, what did you do to try to get them to let their guard down? 

Shobha Sairam: It didn't feel like people were shy or hesitant. I have seen, I have been in focus groups where people don't really wanna talk about, you know, whether it's healthcare or like finances, I think people are a little more circumspect about what they say and how they say it, but it was really bizarre, like this brand, in this category, defied all my expectations in terms of where I thought the conversation was gonna go, how I thought people were gonna engage with the questions. I mean, it got to a point where we didn't even have to ask questions 'cause they were so, just so free with their answers. 

Chris Kocek: Now, this was a, a little while ago, you mentioned it, that you did this research.

Do you feel like, from what you've seen, 'cause you're very active in social media, your agency works a lot on social media campaigns. Is there a difference that you notice between [00:10:00] back then and now in terms of doing research around the topic of sex? 

Shobha Sairam: Hundred percent. I mean, everything has changed, you know, technology has changed, generations have changed.

We're working on another project for a sexual wellness brand, and it is night and day. The emotional nature of the responses we got when we worked on KY, say, it was, I think at this point, 10, 12 years ago, maybe, are completely different from the conversations we're having or hearing on social media now. 

What we're finding is that everything has moved from sort of this notion of sexual health intimacy, we called it, to give it an emotional, overarching kind of theme. It's all gone to sort of this area of sexual wellness and sexual empowerment. So, it's really sort of gone from being an internal thing that you do [00:11:00] to try and make yourself feel better about something in the best of ways or the worst of ways.

To something that you do to actually express your own power, express your individuality, and it's kind of amazing, like how open in particular the older Gen Z kids are on social media in terms of the way they talk about it, in terms of the way they literally put brands front and center and say, these products are great.

Use it like, I mean, they are the biggest advocates in this category, which never used to be the case. People would not come forward to kind of openly, publicly proclaim their love for any kind of sexual wellness brand. That has completely changed. It's the people have taken over and this generation is just unafraid to let loose in all the ways.

Chris Kocek: And you mentioned Gen Z, and I'm gonna share a quick story that connects to all this, [00:12:00] but, so the American dream might seem like a total non sequitur, but the American dream, I remember, people always talk about the American dream, especially around election time, and I find that depending on who you're talking to, right? If you were talking to boomers, their idea of the American dream is gonna be very different than what the Gen Z version of the American dream is. With the research that you're doing right now with the sexual wellness brand you're working on, do you find that maybe there's a word, or there's a phrase or an idea that both boomers and Gen Z are talking about, 'cause in the news, you hear about boomers having sex all the time now. 

Shobha Sairam: Yeah. 

Chris Kocek: In retirement homes and you know, lots of places. 

Shobha Sairam: Yeah. That was always a thing, by the way, that was always a thing, 'cause with KY, that was where a big chunk of our business came from, was retirement homes.

Chris Kocek: Really? 

Shobha Sairam: That was 15 years ago, so that's always been a thing. 

Chris Kocek: So, is there a concept, a [00:13:00] word, an idea that you find both generations are using. Boomers and Gen Z or Boomers and Millennials, but the way that they think about it, the way they define it, is so incredibly different, the same way that the American dream is vastly different for different generations.

Shobha Sairam: You know, uh, to be honest, like I think the brands that we're working on we're not really doing as much research with boomers just because the growth audiences are Gen Z and millennial, and the innovations that we're seeing in the space are sort of centered around specific insights around how this audience uses toys and games or engages with brands on social.

So, I'm not sure I would say there is an overlap in behavior necessarily, but culturally, I do think there is something interesting happening that I think Gen Z started, but it sort of taken [00:14:00] on, and it's quite pervasive, I think it's infiltrating, definitely Gen X, maybe the boomers, and it's this sense of the American dream was always built on the premise of work hard, play hard, like you do what's right, and then you have your house and the family of your dreams, and then you retire with your grandkids and everything's great.

All that is sort of being challenged on every level. I think Gen Z has really questioned whether this notion of work hard, play hard is what life or the American dream should be about. Whether it's their whole quiet quitting or I'm gonna be a digital nomad and just freelance and you know, live in Italy and it's okay if I don't have a job.

That sort of spirit, I should say, I feel like is infiltrating older generations. I just read something the other day about Gen X now kind of questioning the need to keep working till you are 65 or [00:15:00] 67 or you know, whatever the retirement age is, and that I think is the influence of the Gen Z spirit in culture.

So, I don't know if this is a clean link between the Gen Z and the Boomer sexual wellness question, but I think there's no question that there's an awareness in general in culture about “What is it that gives you joy in life?”, “What is it that you wanna focus on?”, “What is it that you, when you look back and you're 85 years old, what do you regret?”

You do the things that you know you will never regret. So, I do think that's something interesting, taking shape there, I don't know if I've crystallized it yet, 'cause we haven't had this sort of conversation with every cohort to kind of really drill it down, but it is something that keeps coming up up.

So maybe it's just like the freedom to live as generic as it may sound, it's really like work less, play more, it's not work hard, play hard, you know? 

Chris Kocek: Hmm, that's interesting. Work less, [00:16:00] play more. I just wrote down too, I mean, no regrets, and there's an all or nothing quality these days, like if I can't get everything I want, then I'm not playing.

So it's interesting how things change from one generation to another. Now, we've been talking about sex a lot, but are there any other brands that you've worked on that have also been challenging from a research standpoint because of the subject matter you mentioned earlier? People can be a little guarded with personal finance conversations or, with other topics.

Does anything come to mind for you, about certain topics, like that? 

Shobha Sairam: Yeah, you know, I've worked on some cell phone providers in the past, will not name names, and some insurance companies, and the challenge with those categories, for example, is people only talk about you because it's a bad thing. No one ever raves about an amazing conversation you had for two hours and everything [00:17:00] worked just fine.

Or no one ever raves about having an insurance when nothing goes wrong. So, like sometimes, I think in those categories, it can be really hard to find what's good, you know, like what is good. And so you have to listen, you have to dig, and there's a little bit of a, I hate to say plenary BS filter, you have to put on things to be like, okay, but if you turn the weakness into a strength, then what could it be?

Those are, I think, in general, not necessarily just hard in terms of research, but those are difficult categories because people are just distrustful, skeptical, inclined to dislike, more than inclined to just, have fun with it. 

Chris Kocek: Yeah. I mean, in previous conversations you and I have talked about behavioral truths, you know, and how to get to those.

And when I worked at BBDO, New York, a long time ago, our department was called behavioral planning, and the idea was that, you know, if you [00:18:00] study people's behaviors, past behaviors, that's a more likely predictor of their future behaviors. First is just saying, “what would you do if?” Right? “Or how do you feel about x?” In your work, especially around social media, do you feel like social media has become a good place, or is it a bad place to discover those behavioral truths? 

Shobha Sairam: Um, I think it's a great place in some ways, you know, because I think in many ways it's real time, think, feel, do. People are just putting it out there. And sometimes what you do have to filter for is how much of it is exaggeration.

But, it is interesting when it comes to brands or engaging with brands, I don't think people are putting less than the truth out there, you know? So, whether they're planning a purchase, their actual, you know, purchase and their experience of the purchase and their review of the purchase, it's all there for you to kind of dig into and read into it what you will.

But, [00:19:00] I think there's, I mean, who am I to question BBDO’s behavioral planning, but, the linearity between past behavioral truths to future behavioral truths misses one thing. It misses the consequence of past behavior on future behavior, and I also think it misses the impulse behavior cues, you know, the impulse triggers.

I mean, humans are notoriously difficult to predict. I think you can only provide triggers and try and shape their behavior in a certain way, but communications alone isn't gonna do that. And I think, you know, a lot, we can talk about comms planning. Comms planning plays a huge role in kind of trying to shape that behavior.

But I'm not sure we could ever fully predict, you know, like it takes one little thing and you think the whole world is gonna do one thing, and they kind of flip and go do the [00:20:00] other thing. It's interesting, we live in a very interesting moment in time for our industry and for the world. 

Chris Kocek: You mentioned the impulse and that that can surprise you.

Is there something you've done recently in the past month, three months, that surprised even you, you did something that was perhaps a little bit impulsive and you're like, huh, I never do that, that was surprising? 

Shobha Sairam: I think I do it all the time and I hate myself for it, and it's always these stupid Instagram purchases, like it's always the 10th eyeliner that I did not need, that it's a brand I've never heard of.

It's some crazy weird brand that just somehow managed to show me something and say something to me that just made me think this was better than anything out there. More than ever, e-commerce on social is sort of driven by those moments, you know, like we talk a lot [00:21:00] about this paid social, there's organic social or social agility, we like to call it, being on time with culture. So if something happens in culture on social media, you as a brand enter the conversation if you have the right to do so in terms of what you stand for, et cetera, and you get in the conversation, all of those things sort of add up to creating some kind of impulse moment, I think.

But I'm a terrible example 'cause I'm very impulsive, so it's not, nothing surprises me. 

Chris Kocek: That happened with me with some, some kind of Ziploc standup pouch bags. 

Shobha Sairam: Yeah. 

Chris Kocek: It was the most impressive kind of infomercial, I mean, it was like two or three minutes long, maybe longer, and they just hit on all of these things.

I was like, yes, that's me, that's my problem. Then after I bought them, I didn't actually use them nearly as much as I thought I was going to. But for that three minutes I was in a trance.

Shobha Sairam: Half the products you buy [00:22:00] online don't really live up to the expectations, and you would think, I've been trained to not do that anymore, but somehow they always, they get you. 

Chris Kocek: That's interesting, we'll have to do a deeper study on your most recent impulse purchases. Okay, so, on the subject of insights and truth, I often say that, you know, an insight is not the same thing as a truth, that a truth is something that can lead to a bigger insight. But I'm always interested in examples of truths that then become reframed.

I think that the truth reframed gets you much closer to an insight. A lot of times people say they have an insight when they really just have a basic human truth, or what I like to call a tired human truth. So some examples of that are parents are time poor, people like to have choices, when you're hungry, you're low on energy, but, then somebody comes along, in the case of that last one, Snickers comes along and says, it's not about being low on energy, [00:23:00] it's about when you're hungry, it fundamentally changes the way you act. When that new framework comes into existence, it becomes a springboard for a totally different direction because you start to dig deeper on, well, how does it change your act? What are some words that you use to describe the way you feel or the way that you act when you are hungry or even hangry? And that then led of course to the big Snickers campaign that's been running for well over a decade, you're not you when you're hungry. So, when you think about that as the context, what are some of your favorite examples of a truth that's been reframed that led to a fresh campaign?

Shobha Sairam: So, we had a lot of conversations in the banking category. It's always sort of the same tropes, like money buys you freedom and you live richly, and it's sort of all very lofty, and one of the things we realized was the category has always sort of assumed a level of sort of affluence. [00:24:00] Because they're really only talking to people with money.

So, money as freedom only really made sense if you had money. When we started talking to some of the more, sort of, underserved communities, when we started talking to new college graduates who didn't have rich parents and who were kind of struggling to make ends meet, there was so much more behind the scenes.

We realized that there was such a one dimensional way the banking category was kind of talking, it was not about money being freedom, it was sort of starting at the beginning and going, we heard stories like. “I was never sat down by my dad and told how to manage money and how to invest money and what the importance of money is.”

It was about financial education, but it was even more, it was sort of about this thought that actually came out of the research, which was about when you have money, you have power. We heard that a lot. We didn't hear you have freedom, we heard money [00:25:00] is power, power is always concentrated in the hands of the rich, we will never have that power and we're always gonna be behind you, no matter how far we go, we're always gonna be behind. 

So that sort of led us to the strategy was actually, I mean, I should say it was the what if, it was also the what if, it was basically, what if Varo democratized financial power?

Because inherent in that is the tension that financial power is never really in the hands of the many, and yet, if you as a bank are talking about how you have their backs and you're sort of there for them, then your ultimate mission in life should be to democratize it by sort of revealing all the truths and the unfairness of the system, and, you know, there's so many layers to it. The campaign was called, “that's money,” and it was a brilliant tagline, but it sort of reframed the notion of [00:26:00] money not being just freedom to go travel the world and live as you want and live richly and do this, that and the other, but about the small moments that are so important to this audience's lives that they would never even imagine doing.

So, it's poignant moments like a 20-year-old taking his dad out to a meal, unheard of, and the emotion behind it. Or, and this came directly out of the research, you know, someone said, “I will know I'm okay when I can fill up my gas tank, and wait for it to click without me watching the pennies go up and down and stopping.”

Chris Kocek: I remember in my twenties, filling up half a tank at a time, a lot of times, and trying to get it, you know, just a particular place because I didn't feel like I had enough money to do a full tank. Also, that phrase, “that's money” and there's a double entendre there, right? Because people will often say, “that's so money” or “that's money.”[00:27:00] 

Shobha Sairam: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. 

Chris Kocek: I love those examples, and I love the nuance that you were able to uncover in the research when people give you those real heartfelt examples of being able to take your father out to dinner. I remember actually when I got hired at BBDO New York, there was a nice restaurant somewhere in New York and I, you know, was probably there for about a few months, gotten my paycheck and used some of it to pay down my student loans, but then I went to this really nice Italian restaurant and I just decided to pay for everybody. And it was, it felt really good. It was like, oh, I'm a grownup now. 

Shobha Sairam: Yeah. I mean, it's such a feeling of accomplishment or even, you know, power and it's not power in the bad sense of the word, but it's having agency over your life or the people that matter to you.

And we heard so much of that, and I think the beauty of having those kinds of research nuggets is that the work rights itself, the [00:28:00] strategy sort of comes out of it super easily and powerfully, versus us trying to make something up. You know, it's like, what sounds clever? 

Chris Kocek: Oh, it's so much nicer when you can latch onto something somebody said versus fabricated or come up with something.

You mentioned that part of your briefing work involved this “what if?” for this campaign, the “what if?”, and in my book, Any Insights Yet, I talk about using “what if?” as a technique for getting closer to an insight that's baked into your briefing process though, right? 

Shobha Sairam: Correct. So, our briefing process is sort of all about, you know, obviously as a planner you dig into the, “what is this?” of the world, you know, like what's going on in culture, in the competitive category, what's going on in social media, but the unlock comes from taking all of that, and flipping it to what could be, which is where the “what if?” is. It's interesting that like you’re [00:29:00] talking about the what if as an unlock to an insight, and it is, but we're almost saying the what if is all of it wrapped in one.

There's an insight in it, there's a strategy in it, and there's an idea in it. So even with that example of what if borrowed, democratized financial power inherent in that statement is the fact that financial power is not democratized. Inherent in that is the tension that democracy and financial power do not go hand in hand, and there is an idea that comes out of it. There's a movement, almost, that comes out of it. But also, the thing is, you may, these briefs, we call them, “what if briefs,” these briefs are always like, you may never fully realize that mission that the “what if?” lays out, but if you write or design or create ideas that attempt to deliver on the mission, you are gonna come up with something amazing and it's sort of [00:30:00] a journey, not a destination. 

It's been really kind of helpful for us in so many ways, like when we sit and meet with clients for the first time, you know, new business pitches, we have what we call “what if work sessions.” So there may be multiple “what ifs?” you know, there's a board within with a, “what if?” that flips the narrative of the category, there's a “what if?” that sort of changes something that may be a brand's weakness into a strength, there's different kinds of “what ifs?” that we start talking to our clients about to see where their head is, you know, what is their ambition, how comfortable do they feel in pushing for something that's truly great and distinctive and stand out.

Chris Kocek: So if somebody's dreaming really big on a “what if?” Do you ever try to reel them back in, or do you encourage, let's keep going, push that dream further, even if we can't operationalize it, what do you do if they start going way off the railroad tracks? 

Shobha Sairam: I think that the trick to it is it's not [00:31:00] blue sky “what if?” you know, it's not a, what if KY launched a fast food location? It's usually the process that we outline is here are all the “what is’s?” and like there's actually a whole brief thing goes through this, you know, what are the forces that are kind of fighting this brand or supporting this brand in culture or in category, so what is it that we either fight for or fight against? So it's still grounded in who the brand is, what the brand can stand for, so it's not, you know, completely like a random brainstorm, you still start with an inherent understanding and knowledge of the problems to be solved, but the challenge is to flip all those statements you're making into a lead for the brand.

Chris Kocek: Yeah, I mean, I just wrote down here from “what is” to “what if.” I love that structure [00:32:00] and I often give the example of the Reese's vending machine that said, what if you could trade in your unwanted holiday Halloween candy for candy that you like, and it's so grounded in that truth that people don't like all the candy they get, there are many types of candy that they wish they hadn't gotten, and it's, it is just such a brilliant play by them, uh, to do that. So, you've been in the business for a while. If you could, yeah, 

Shobha Sairam: Don't remind me. 

Chris Kocek: Slightly jaded, but still enthusiastic. 

Shobha Sairam: Yes. 

Chris Kocek: It's a complex confluence of emotions.

Shobha Sairam: Yes, it is. 

Chris Kocek: So if the current, experienced you could go back in time and give advice to your younger self when you first started out in planning, what's one thing you would tell yourself to do or not do? 

Shobha Sairam: You know, it's weird. I kind of morphed into strategy. I started weirdly in media, which I hated, but it was the only job out there.[00:33:00] 

And then, so I did that for three years in Leo Burnett. And then, I got a job at a little agency called Vigilante, which was a small, independent, creative boutique incubated by Leo at the time in New York, and I don't know if this is advice or not, but this is what worked for me, what worked for me was I was in a tiny little shop where everyone wore multiple hats.

There was no real hierarchy, everyone would kind of shape the brief together, shape the idea together, it helped me figure out why strategy was important and what role it played, maybe better than I would've learned if I, you know, gone into a traditional sort of strategy department in a big agency. Not to say one is better than the other, but it sort of helped me become better with the creative product because I was so closely tied to it, and then eventually when I went to Mother, it was the same thing, you [00:34:00] know, strategy and creative were two sides of the same coin. 

Now, there are so many lanes of strategy. There's, you know, creative strategists, there's comm strategists, there's digital strategists, there's the analysts, business strategists. So I think it depends on where your natural interests and your natural talent lie. I had always wanted to be a journalist and a copywriter, and I sort of, I don't know, so it weirdly fell into strategy 'cause it felt like I could still write, but I could also create, but I'm actually glad I'm a strategist now and not a writer.

Chris Kocek: Why? 

Shobha Sairam: I think I would like to write a book someday, but I'd rather write a smart positioning document and a brief than a script or a one-liner, because I can infuse that kind of narrative or one-liners into the strategy document, and it also feels like, it gives me a little more agency [00:35:00] into where we wanna push the overall brand narrative and culture rather than delivering on something that someone hands to me.

Chris Kocek: All right. We're at our speed round now. Are you ready for this? 

Shobha Sairam: Yeah. 

Chris Kocek: Okay. Is there a brand whose work you admire or that you think to yourself? I wish I'd come up with that. 

Shobha Sairam: There are so many, but the one that I'm consistently, I think, amazed by is Oatly, you know, obviously a challenger brand, the anti-milk, all of that stuff. I think they're at a bare minimum, their communication basically goes up against milk and basically it's like, okay, we'll take it from here, but, not sure if you saw recently, you know, obviously they've been doing really well in launching in different countries globally. They recently, they launched in Paris.

Chris Kocek: Very controversial. Yes. 

Shobha Sairam: I loved it. Like, are you talking about the murals?

Chris Kocek: Mmm-hm

Shobha Sairam: Yes. Loved it, because one of the things that [00:36:00] makes our job fun is to do something that most people would think is not doable. It's easy to come up with clever lines that show up on a billboard or partner with an influencer to have a great social media campaign or like all of that stuff, but to kind of have an idea that's mildly subversive is something that I'm always jealous of. Always. It's our one, it's our chance for us to be artists, not just advertisers, and that's something that I always aspire to be. 

Chris Kocek: Yeah, and the controversy around it creates that debate, which is one of the things I'm always encouraging brands to do.

Look, you're not gonna be for everybody, some people are gonna love this move, some people are gonna hate this move. Whether that's good or bad, it creates conversation and if people are talking about you, you're in the press, you know, this idea that there's no such thing as bad press, it gets you top of mind.

So it's uh, it's a [00:37:00] very interesting, uh, approach they've taken. 

Shobha Sairam: Yeah. 

Chris Kocek: What is the most recent good book you've read? 

Shobha Sairam: It's called The Sword and the Scimitar. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's um, by John Owl. It's a giant, it's this, it's like 500, 600 pages. It's the story of a little boy in Malta, I think it's set, you know, centuries ago, who gets kidnapped by these pirates from Turkey, and it's sort of the story of his journey. He goes from Malta to the Sultan's palace and sort of his life just takes on a whole other, you know, he becomes a slave and then he becomes a ship owner and like, snd then ultimately he comes back to Malta. I love it because it's sort of this thing where he's like all his life, all he’s wanted to do is come back home and he comes back home, but home isn't home anymore.

It's a really touching tale of identity and what that means, and you know where you [00:38:00] belong and how you belong and how that can change over time, and I've lived in a few different countries, so, that kind of like, struck a chord with me, you know, like, so that's the latest, but I highly recommend, it's a great read, it's a great holiday-on-the-beach read it is just really thick, it's not a quick one. 

Chris Kocek: Yeah, I mean, my high school got raised, uh, you know, a few, I don't know how many years after I left and it was completely demolished and rebuilt and I felt this loss when I came back to where I grew up and I was like, oh my gosh, like this is where I went to high school, doesn't look anything like it did before, so those memories, obviously they didn't get fully bulldozed, but there is this power in place that when you come back to a place, you feel so many different things, and so that's, that's interesting, I'll take a look.

The sword and the Scimitar 

Shobha Sairam: Scimitar. 

Chris Kocek: Gotcha. Um, what's a movie that [00:39:00] you would watch again and again because you loved it so much. 

Shobha Sairam: Avatar. I don't usually watch movies again and again, but if I had to pick one, it would be that. I mean, I recently also watched Dune, which was amazing. I dunno, I think I like these movies that have these big sort of, they feel like they're larger than life.

They're, they're certainly not, you know, reflection of real life, but, inherent in the characters and the storyline, is a reflection of the world around us, and the good, the bad, the ugly, I think it makes it not just less boring, but it makes it easier to connect with something that may not quite be something that you thought you connected with.

Chris Kocek: Have you seen FernGully? 

Shobha Sairam: No, I haven't. 

Chris Kocek: That's the cartoon that Avatar is basically based on. 

Shobha Sairam: I know that, maybe I should watch that. 

Chris Kocek: Go watch FernGully this weekend and tell me if you [00:40:00] see just a few parallels between the storylines. 

Shobha Sairam: I will do that. I will do that. 

Chris Kocek: If you don't mind watching animation. 

Shobha Sairam: I love animation.

Chris Kocek: If you could have dinner with someone who's no longer alive and you could ask them only one question, who would that person be and what would you want to ask them? 

Shobha Sairam: Okay, this is gonna go deep. It would be Gandhi and it would be how do we turn the violence in the world today into taking on more of a nonviolent form of protest the way he did when India was fighting for independence, 'cause I just think the world has gone to crap, you know, like it's just, it's ridiculous and I wish somebody had the answer or somebody could show the way to end the violence, and I feel like we need it on every level in every country in the worst way. 

Chris Kocek: It makes me wonder whether nonviolence still works, as a [00:41:00] technique. That's a much bigger topic for another time, but it's definitely a provocative one.

Last question. What is a piece of advice someone gave you that you still remember to this day, that influences your work in strategy? 

Shobha Sairam: Yeah. This is an interesting one.

A cco I worked with once said to me “the best strategy is often the idea itself” That really stuck with me and I think a lot of times, even with, you know, some of the “what ifs?” that we write, like we think of “what ifs?” as creatively as we do strategically when we write the briefs as sort of creative thought starters, and I think, it is certainly a modern way to look at things, especially, you know, when you sort of think about how strategy as a practice is evolving, like even in the world of social, right, social strategists are not just strategists who sit around and [00:42:00] write a brief to hand off, they do it all.

They know the content they create, they write the brief, they sort of brief themselves, and I think as the world changes, that notion of strategy being also the idea in many ways is, it's not just true, I think it's becoming more and more the case. The agencies that sort of work in a really siloed fashion and take three weeks to write a brief and then three weeks for the creative, I think they're sort of missing the magic of what could be if you just like condense that all and have people understand that the strategy and the idea are two sides of the same coin, sometimes they're the same thing. 

Chris Kocek: Mm-hmm. I love that. Shobha, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.

I have learned so much from you today, I have jotted down so many notes. Money does not equal freedom, money equals power, from “what is?” to “what if?” and this overlap between the strategic [00:43:00] idea and the creative idea. 

So, thank you for sharing your insights, your wisdom with us.

Shobha Sairam: Thank you for having me.

Chris Kocek: Thanks again to our guest, Shobha Sairam. If you want to connect with Shobha, you can find her on LinkedIn where you can also find her many contributions on strategy in Muse and Adweek, as well as her thoughts on the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the world of advertising. If you're looking for even more ideas and inspiration, be sure to check out my newsletter, “Light Bulb” at chriskocek.com/newsletter.

Every Thursday I share three aha moments that are guaranteed to inspire your next project, creative briefing or campaign, or check out my latest book Any Insights Yet? Connect the dots, create new categories, transform your business. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give us five stars on your favorite podcast platform and share it with friends, family, clients, colleagues, even your enemies.

Special thanks to [00:44:00] Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios for producing this episode. And thank you to Megan Palmer for additional editing and production support. Until next time, keep looking for patterns, finding contradictions and asking “what if?” more often.