Latest / Frap Rap with GDogggggggg / Ep 5: Saneel Radia (SASaneel)
Transcript
- Rob McEvily: Welcome to Frap Rap. I'm your host, Aaron Goldman, aka G and the artist formerly known on AOL Instant Messenger as G Dog with Cake Cheese because one through seven were taken. ⁓ 25 years ago, I was an AE in an ad network called L90, and my biggest client was Starcom IP. Every Thursday I'd invite everyone in Chicago at 35 West Wacker to meet me at Cozy across the street for coffee. For each person that came, I'd do a freestyle rap about them, hence the name FrapRap. Each episode, I'd track down another OG IPer. To reminisce about the good old days and see what they're up to now. My guest today, live from the Cannes Advertising Festival of Creativity, Sunil Radia. Sunil, welcome to Frap Rap. ⁓ I can think of no more important media channel to pursue while in Cannes. Thank you for having me. This is a big get. I'm super excited ⁓ to have you on. ⁓ wanna catch up on everything, life, work, but let's for now transport back. To the IP days. Yeah. I'm excited. I've never been on a podcast where the TAM total audience is as is 60 at best. So I'm hoping for a hundred percent penetration there. Yes. Yeah. So my goal, so of course I have the org chart. And my goal is to get everyone on the org chart on the pod. Yeah. And also ⁓ make sure that my listener stream is at least as many Yeah, it's as many people that we I think we can get to like eighty listens. Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay. So ⁓ when did you first start at Stark on IP? And what was your role? I started in two thousand as a college I literally just graduated college. ⁓ I did an internship between my junior and senior year in Starcom proper. It was actually in the Hispanic Marketing Group is I think it was called then. And ⁓ I was like, That IP group looks cool, maybe I can get a job there. And then I started as whatever the bottom thing is called. ⁓ junior associate. Yeah, well, I don't know. At some point it became I C International Coordinator. ⁓ no, I I think I was I was above that. Okay. ⁓ 'cause I w had an internship before. Yeah. So you were super qualified. Yes, super qualified. Yeah. ⁓ actually what's amazing is my my advertising degree was in media. Was it UT? Did I Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, ⁓ good, I learned how to do l by hand long form media ⁓ math. Yeah, cool. Yeah. The I mean well, I mean that's so I was in advertising at the University of Illinois and you know the The textbooks, right? Like they you couldn't update ⁓ you know, but sometimes like you know, three months in digital, like everything else you learned was out of date from the entire four years of absolutely. No. ⁓ okay. So ⁓ what accounts did you work on at the beginning? And ⁓ who did you work with? Like what were some other people on ⁓ that you were Yeah, so I started ⁓ on Army, if I remember correctly. That was certainly my big my first like big client. I was on that for a long time. That was like it just been one. So we're figuring out what that was in US Army. And then after that, I worked on Miller. ⁓ so those are the two big ones. I also worked on a bunch of other like kind of help stuff, but like those are really so a couple of interesting things about those accounts. ⁓ I think in both cases, sort of like age ⁓ verification, certainly for mill like for Miller, how did that work back then? We had to like Was there like a I agree I'm 21 before I enter the site? Was that the situation? Yeah, so ⁓ I'm pretty sure that didn't even exist at the very beginning. And like I'd already started working in media before that arrived and we had to do age verification. And then I'm like, it's so weird that I remember this, but it was called like LDAC to 28 was our target. LDAC is legal drinking age customers because that just I guess made people feel smarter saying 21 to 28 or whatever the Miller budget was. and That I'm pretty sure our verification was using whatever nonsense data was available to us in the media channel, which is probably self reported at the time to say, Okay, cool, yeah, that's an adult audience. And what about for Army? Also very tight demo, right? Yeah, ⁓ but Army actually at that time, because it was a rebrand, actually had a little it was less like we're not like come join the army. It was like a lot more like inspirational, like we did a lot of storytelling or like, Hey, the Army isn't what you think it is. You get trained for all these different careers and like Look at these are like real people that have like completely had their lives transformed in in terms of their skills, how they behave. Like it was actually surprisingly not as performance driven as you would think. Certainly that's a huge part of it, but there was a lot of like brand storytelling back then as part of this new Go army message. Yeah, just yeah. Those are probably fun accounts to work on. I mean, as opposed to like some of the hardcore DR account where it's just like running banners and tracking conversions. Yeah, I you know, they they I mean I had fun. I mean, all my time at IP was great. I worked a hundred hours a week for short. In fact, every week I worked over a hundred hours. I had to print out my hourly sheet and then circle it and explain to Suzanne, my boss, why I had worked so much. ⁓ And each each week I kind of managed to resist just being like, Hey, Suzanne, it's because I have too much fucking work. Yeah. Here's an idea. Hire somebody. Yeah. It's like, wait, why did it justify all your hours? It's like, that's how this works. Well, and and sure enough, over time the group grew. Yes. So take us through the progression. ⁓ where what ⁓ 'cause cause you at some point, ⁓ I think it was Marshall who used the expression like the the land of the misfit kids. Like at some point you sort of moved down to the bottom of the org chart where like new rows and functions were created. So like take us through that. Yeah, well it you mean like for me in the return? Yeah. ⁓ mine my my I mean, my journey was super weird, right? I like I I feel like I got promoted kind of fast, you know, like I was working a lot. ⁓ it was actually I love of course some I bet Marshall's podcast. He says he invented that phrase about landing listed toys. It's a reshotism by the way. ⁓ no, he has so yeah, give attribute. Okay, and so I know that motherfucker giving credit for things, right? I can't e I I'm first thing I'm gonna do is listen to his thought and hear all the things he made up. So it ⁓ fun fact it actually ⁓ we this week in Cannes, we are releasing the first episode. So we've got a few in the can. Okay. ⁓ like in a good, you know, production ⁓ crew, we wanted to make sure like this was gonna be a real thing and we actually had like some commits before we push it publicly. So now we will be live. Yeah. ⁓ and I believe the exact quote he said was 99% of everything maybe sort of came from Rashad. Yeah. So he said he was very, you know, confident in it. And then he sort of fine it. Well, Rashad's gift was always like, he like, you know, you go to a meeting with Rashad, everyone leaves inspired. They him. And this is still happening today, by the way. That's what's amazing about Rashad is staying power. And then like, you know, the client's like, ⁓ my God, this guy's a genius. And he says, like, kind his like, fortune cookie, like very smart, but like what does it really mean? And then he's like, okay, now Sunil will follow up. And then he leaves the room. And it's like, cool. I he has like I I understood about 60% of that too. But let's get into the specifics of how we're gonna plan media now. You know, it's like everyone's job was that, I feel like. Yeah. ⁓ on the job thing, just to get back to your question. So I kind of did the usual, like I moved up through the the stages, but I then went ⁓ and did play, the video game thing, right? And so that was a That was that you and Harris? Yeah it was Harris and PJ were the main kind of like leaders. Then myself and Mike McCarthy were like the two junior partners, so to speak. ⁓ and then after that I got a actually not even after that, while I was waiting for that to happen, Rashad's like, hey, could you just run this thing called the broadband upfront? And we're gonna go around and myself and Dan Bootcher had to go around and raise money to get people to commit like an upfront style to running pre-roll video. It was literally called the broadband upfront because it was like leveraging it as a model and broadband being we can finally stream things. And so I spent a year on that little project before I could do the video game thing. Then I came back ⁓ when I was ⁓ doing all the denu stuff. So it was like kind of like a weird evolution of multiple were shot. And remind us what Danu was and why it was so annoyingly spelled with an O at the end. Because you wanted to say Danuo. Denuo, totally. Yeah. ⁓ Danu rhymes with Pooh was always how I Christian Kugel would ⁓ introduce it in meetings. ⁓ it was called Danu, and this is actually exactly how holding companies name things. They were like, Rashad had some ideas for names, Tim had some ideas for names, PJ did, we all did. And ultimately it was like ⁓ a lawyer sends us a list and says, These are twelve pre-owned trademarks that Publicis has. Choose one. And it's like, well at least that one's in Latin. You know, it's like the other one is like, you know, the rest are called like video stream org, you know, it's like, well, none of these actually apply to what we do. The broadband out front was. What exactly did you do what did the new do? What would you say you you do yours? Yeah, so honestly, it's funny, like everyone would talk about it differently. But at the end of the day, it's like any of the kind of frontier digital media stuff, social, mobile, like you know, where companies don't yet have strategies for them. Like media is available to them, but like what do they do with the channel? How does it fit into their broader marketing strategy? What do you say or how do you act in those environments? You know, it's like we did a lot of like with some retail stuff. ⁓ but mostly social mobile was was a lot of it and then gaming obviously because that was a thing I was doing too. Yeah. And so was that your last stop within the group, Dano? ⁓ yeah, then I I left to go to run something called V B H Labs in New York and ⁓ and then weirdly BBH that was the name, sorry. Bart Bartle Hegerty. Yeah. Back like you see your media guy, so you don't know iconic creative agent. So, but apparently when it comes to naming firms, it's either like pre-O IP or the founder's name. Yeah, typically. She's a trademark and our name counts. So ⁓ yeah, so BBH Labs was like their debating unit. It was kind of like a more ⁓ I would say like a more heavily creative winning DNU in many ways. And so they really were like, we need to like up the strategy part of this. And you know, they of course they went and got the guy doing that at DNA. So it made sense. It's like how many other players were even in the space back then? ⁓ and then just to answer your question, ⁓ I promised I'm going somewhere with this. Then I got a call from Rashad out of nowhere and he's like, Are you in New York? And I was like, Yes, Rashad, I live here now. And he's like, ⁓ because I and I've recently resigned, okay, from BBH. No one knows this. And I'm starting ⁓ like this brand incubator called Fidge 15. And ⁓ and Rashad calls, he's like, I will be in New York tonight. Don't make any other plans or whatever. And then I meet with him and this guy, because he's got like, you know, tentacles everywhere, he's like, I hear you've resigned. And I'm like, how would you know that? Like I it's like I and my team doesn't know that. Like it's like me, the CEO, and the chairman know this. And then cut two later, I realized it's because BBH is being acquired by Toolbox. That's something I'm not aware of. And in diligence, this came up because Rashad had asked about it. And then weirdly, I end up kind of working for Rashad again. Like I was running Finch Fifteen, but Rashad was our executive sponsor. So so the connection ended up kind of being it was a bit of a boomerang, but yeah, full circle. ⁓ okay, and so then Finch Fifteen. Where did that leave off and and where did you pick up from Blair? Yeah, Fit 15, you it was kind of running a entity for Google Sys, ⁓ way ahead, way too far ahead, you know. ⁓ and then I went to RGA, I was global chief innovation officer there five years. ⁓ and then we founded a group of us left RGA together and founded Croto. ⁓ and literally I I I just saw this like a week ago, but ⁓ I was like going through my old notes, you know, like in like Evernote or some old thing. And ⁓ and I wrote a bunch of notes to myself when I was like becoming a founder to start my own thing. And the top one says, Don't be too early in all paths. That's like the one message where I was like, be really clear about that as it was. Yeah. And then we just sold it. ⁓ we just got acquired ⁓ in January after five years. Yeah. Congratulations. That deserves a clink of the glass. See if the mics picked this up. Yeah. Cheers. You are, you know, it's Rose o'clock here in Caes. Yeah. It's still there to be clear. It's not an exit. It's ⁓ the beginning of ⁓ another chapter. Right on. Yeah. So let's go back to that point about, you know, don't be too early. And you you your career arc, you you you've been in You've seen a lot, you've done a lot of things. What do you think what stands out about what made IP ⁓ unique? And what do you think its legacy is for the industry? Yeah, I mean, look, you can't ⁓ you can't I'd say there's three things that made it unique. ⁓ Rashad. There's just no arguing that Rashad sets the tone for everything to your point.99% of stuff was Rashad. But Rashad being surrounded in people who are like genuine pioneers. When you look back at like just the incredible first time ever things that came out of IP. It's because you have people who can understand philosophically something, but then they bring their own like very unique perspective, right? Like it's like the way Steve Governality did something is very different than the way Art Singling did something by definition. And yet both are doing pioneering things. So it's not like Rashad doesn't have a playbook at all. He's got like a philosophy and and a really like was a good craft of like what high level strategy looks like. And now he's like, You're in the wild wild west, you guys go figure it out. And I just feel like you need the right people with the right leader. And then the right culture to go and actually do all that pioneering stuff. The trust. Yeah. No one ever showed up and said, This is how we do something here. It was kind of like this is how we've done it before. What do you think about improving upon it or trying something new? It's like, I love that. In fact, it's like one of the founding principles of proto, too. It's like that's something I've always remembered about IP. It was like, it was so pioneering because we had permission to be pioneering. And the third one I'd say is, you know, in this case, it is ⁓ you asked about its legacy. It's like if you just look at the tree. I also love that we're getting like party yacht in the background. Like this is what makes this a unique podcast. ⁓ that and only having eighty possible listeners. Is the tree of people. It's like you look at it, it's like each of those people, if you if you look at the group, n you know, the people who are the younger junior ones, they all grew up and then really cared about growing other talent. So like each one is like a branch of a tree that, you know, Rashad is certainly at the trunk of in many ways. But if you look at it, all those people became great bosses for other people who became great bosses. It's kind of a great ⁓ it's one of the things I think is the legacy of all. Yeah. And and you know, back back to the culture, I mean you mentioned a hundred hours a week, so you know, and we were young kids, so so your sort of social life kind of also revolved around work. Yeah, I didn't make enough money to afford food or drinks. Your job was to like Give us food and drinks, basically. I can I can commit to like, you know, a three dollar coffee. And don't buy the squiggle. Go the free strips at the counter. Yeah. We're on a budget here. Yeah, so it was the life advice and the three dollar. No, you were generous with us. Well, but and ⁓ but you guys that you know, like f I'm sure you're still friends with a bunch of these folks. You're probably still doing fantasy football, stupid shit with these guys. I am, yes. ⁓ what do you have like and and we'll get into all protocol that's for the lightning round, but yeah, you know, what yeah, any any like fun story, fun memory, anything stands out? Could a brunette breakfast. It could have been, you know, a new business pitch, anything come to mind. Yeah, I remember ⁓ it's so funny because it's like you look back at all the things that like we were doing back then. And it really is like young people who are misfits to some degree, who work really hard and then play really hard. And so you just have like it's the level of depth of those relationships is different. Because you get to see each other in your most stressed, kind of intense moments. And then you all kind of just go and release steam together. But for me, I I have a memory ⁓ ⁓ that you know we would make all these dumb bets and everyone's drunk and we'll take little shots and like just dumb things. I'm 21, 22, 23. and I like lost a bet or I can't even remember. He has a little bit of a drunken gloy, but something happened where myself and ⁓ Bree had to change ⁓ had to change shirts. Right? Like it was like like it was like in the bar we had to like do we did like an exchange. And then that led to a bunch of dominoes That I'm pretty sure culminated in a Halloween party. That was it was like it began a tradition of like somehow like swapping clothes to dress like the other ones. Yes, I know it's And then you and I were at a Halloween party and you had to select another person at the party to dress as. And I went dressed as you. You had my lace-up jeans. Your lace-up jeans and a blue ⁓ tank top, a treel tank. We had a different one. And ⁓ and that ⁓ photo, which I thought disappeared off the face of the earth. At my proto, like this is now like, you know, I'm 46 years old when this story is happening, right? Last year made an appearance in our end of we do something called Proto-Wrapped, right? It just like the dumb kind of party with like memories in it. And they did flashbacks to everyone young, and somehow that image was in our end of your party. And everyone's like, What is that? I was like, This is really tough to explain. I'm dressed as Aaron Goldman, who is like a guy, you know, that I know. And it's like, how do you explain the lace up jeans and a teal tank top as a person who only wears black or white clothes? ⁓ all right, we'll have to put the pick in the show notes. ⁓ that's the thing we do and the frap rep on. ⁓ I remember a story about you, and I may not have my facts straight, and you may not forgive me for sharing it, but Okay, that's fine. ⁓ it was maybe a south by southwest and you might have been out late one night and had to catch an early plane, and you might have packed in a hurry ⁓ and or in a ⁓ and then you got to ⁓ your destination, opened your suitcase, and I don't remember, it's either That suitcase was only socks or was only underwear? It was only socks. Okay. Yeah. So first of all, I love that you gave me even more credit because it w going to South by sounds like I'm adult enough to be heading to a work event. No, back then, myself, G Ham, Vogel, Courtney Lee, like a group of us, we would go, this guy Matt Davis, who worked at Stockholm, who you definitely know and are good friends with, we would go to Mardi Gras. So it was like, ⁓ it's spring break, even though we all have jobs now. And we would take like a week or multiple days off. And we'd road trip to Mardi Gras. Again, struck my P is based in Chicago for the ⁓ three listeners that aren't IPers. and we drove we drive to Mardi Gras and I remember we had this whole thing and I got there and I was like, yeah, it's like we went out too late because it was like the last night before Mardi Gras. And I get there and I only have socks. Literally, it's like I just brought socks and that's it. And it's like, what did drum city old packboss have? But you know what? I mean, at least your feet were protected on Bourbon Street. Yeah, yeah, totally seriously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ incredible. All right. So now it's time for the apartment crawl. ⁓ which in our unlike the actual apartment crawl, we'd like go around to ⁓ let's take the yacht around. I like this. Let's jump at these other yachts. ⁓ it's yes. We ⁓ we d we have budget to be on the yacht, not actually move the ⁓ got it, got it. So we have to be we're in stationary position. ⁓ But so this is our our lightning round. Of course, it's an homage to when we go around to ⁓ everyone's apartment, sort of one at a time. Instead of ⁓ red solo cups for this edition, we've got our ⁓ fancy glasses of resetting. ⁓ so we'll cheers it here. There it is. And ⁓ we'll insert our ⁓ hype apartment crawl music. Okay. And this is just, you know, first thing that comes to mind. Okay. ⁓ and this one should be easy, and this will actually end up being the name of the episode. ⁓ okay. ⁓ so what was your AOL instant messenger handle? S.A. Senial that everyone pronounced SASENL. But you know, like a little not quite eight, but you know, double letters, but it was actually meant San Antonio Sineal. And everyone just said Sau Sineel. Yeah. And then I'm sure at some point once like SAS became an acronym. There was like the wait, software is a senile, which I think would be cool and scary. That's right. My future in AI, by the way. ⁓ all right. ⁓ first boss at IP. Suzanne Mikoff. Favorite client? Debbie Zenter. If you could have worked on any client other than the ones you were on. Who did you have in view of? ⁓ at that time, because I was twenty one years old, Playboy. I all I wanted to do is to work on that Playboy account. And instead I got to at Mardi Gras get to go to the Playboy house. And I thought that was like I was like, I have the greatest job in the world as I make one dollar and twelve cents. ⁓ Phil Jackis, a rep. Remember Jack? By the way, what a great name. ⁓ yeah, and also to work for Playboy Playboy is built built for it. Yeah, he made that up when he applied. ⁓ all right, speaking of reps, present company excluded. Who was your favorite vendor? ⁓ I'm not gonna answer it by vendor, I'm gonna mention mention it by person, if that's okay. I'd say Michelle Ball or Rob Wolver. Yes. One of those two? Yeah. Rob is, you know, one of my best friends now. Shadow. Yeah, and Michelle Ball is a person I love and I feel like we pick up from scratch every time I ⁓ see her. Incredible. ⁓ all right, how about a hot take on AI and advertising? It's getting dirty. A hot take on AI and advertising. I think that's why anyone listens to this fucking ⁓ This is this is what we call the ⁓ AEO GEO portion, because when the transcript goes up by ⁓ I see, got it. Yeah, you need some of that. Okay. Actually, I'm really glad you asked me about the future of AI and advertising. ⁓ I think that as ⁓ you have a group of people constantly talking about how the human has become more important, ⁓ you have ⁓ in ⁓ all the evidence in the world that AI is definitively replacing multiple in a way that we're just gonna gloss over. and having been through a bunch of innovation cycles, there's no arguing that it's happening today and will continue to get worse as it relates to employment. And then inevitably unlock Laymour Jobs and hold on the title. It's might be what up. Here, here. ⁓ from your lifts to EdTech God's ears. Yep. Shout on. I might have some. I'm collecting my wristbands. I some. ⁓ yeah, these are potential sponsors for this. and ⁓ I so we're gonna move into the Frap Rap portion. You probably should apologize in the rears. I I realized and I always remembered and loved this about you. I I think you and I are probably like the fastest talkers in advertising. Yeah, yeah. And so like people like to listen to podcasts at like one point five. Now I'm all my podcast are you going 1.25 up here. People are gonna have to style us back. Yeah. Actually, can we call the episode 0.75? That's like, yeah. Actually, that would be a very that'd actually be a great entire show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ so ⁓ for the frap wrap round, we've got our trusty marker and note cards here. Okay. I'm writing down what? Just three keywords that I'll incorporate into my wrap. Okay. ⁓ by the rules of Harry Mack, ⁓ no fruits and no colors. ⁓ Okay. Yes, I will see if you're you can you can hide it and that but you'll show it up one at a time, I'll work it in, then you show me the next one. Okay, got it. ⁓ and so this of course while you're thinking, I'll ⁓ remind folks, ⁓ this was, you know, back in the day of Cozy. I would do my freestyle rap for each person that came. So ⁓ you'd come in, you get your cup of coffee, you get your ⁓ strip of of the fresh bread, and then you would get a wrap ⁓ from yours truly. And so ⁓ for this version of it, rather than me like rapping about what you're ⁓ you are giving me some good material. I could just go off of your you know clothes and the glasses and the beautiful salt and pepper. But instead you get to pick the words. And ⁓ we'll drop the beatbox ⁓ in the back. Our ⁓ crack production staff has come up with a nice little backing track. Mm I'm gonna change mine. ⁓ boy. All right. Don't overthink it. Well I made it hard on purpose and then it's like that's just me. ⁓ okay. All right. What do we start with? Give me one to start with. Incel. Incel. All right. And I'm gonna flip these as you're going, right? When I hear it? Yeah. Okay. Exactly right. All right. Check it, check it. A G in the place to be. We're in canon, everybody is going insane in the brain. When we think about IP, we're going back to the old days, got the glory, got the story. I'm here with my Ansenil. You know he's gone far. You know he's gotta drive in his car from the West Coast down to the east. A man's a beast, and he cannot compete with anything he said before. On the dance floor, we gonna break it on down with that funky sound. I done hit, I done gel. I done like it with my incel because you know when I go down, I'm gonna get there. I'm gonna make that word, I'm gonna make that verb, I'm gonna drop another noun and point to it four. We gonna slow it down, slow the beat, the rap gets slow, it's stomp your feet. You might wanna say it's one point three, no no, point seven five. You know I'm still alive. Let's bring it back up, let's start to raise our cup, put your hands up in the air. Wave ⁓ around, I'm like it just don't care. We're taking it back to the old school, cause we owe fools, who's so cool. If you wanna get down, I'm gonna show you the way. Whoop. There it is. Let me hear you say whoop, and the record skips a little. You might call it a schism. It's just a Rashad ism. Ninety-nine percent of the all of the credit goes to him, the other fractional attribution. Thank you, Sunil. Appreciate you. This is awesome. What a great idea. Thank you for doing And ⁓ we'll see on the next episode of Frap Rap. Cheers. You're listening to the Media Ocean Podcast Network. For more of our shows, visit www.mediaocean.com/slash podcasts. Welcome to Between Two Humans. My name is Fern.