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Is Innovation Shaping Storytelling Or Vice Versa? · The Interline Podcast

• speaker-0: was was a lifesaver again. So people were rushing into the metaverse just because they don't have anything else to do probably and they were hoping to unlock the new channel of communication for their brands. With AI is completely different because maybe last year brands would like to approach AI to be the first or trying to leverage on the PR ability or or or or the fact that AI was an hype. Now it's just a commodity to do something that they usually do on a different So photo, video, CGI, but maybe leveraging on the characteristic both in terms of quality and terms of time and speed and budget of generative AI. speaker-1: Hey, and welcome to the Interline Podcast. Now, I might be biased here because I studied literature and I'm in the beers, quote unquote, when it comes to writing and talking all the time. But I've said before that fashion is a storyteller's game. And I think that's becoming more and more true over time. I think it's becoming truer because there's just so much damn content out there that it takes real talent and real craft to stand out. But I especially think it's truer than ever because there are so many different surfaces where storytelling can happen. Anywhere a customer engages with a brand or a product, that's part of a story. It might be a tiny micro chapter for the brand, but it's heavily deterministic for the person on the other end. It shapes how they feel, how they act, and it certainly shapes where they spend time, attention, and money. For fashion companies, that expansion of opportunities for narrative is obviously super exciting, but it's also really testing the limits of what companies can do in-house. If they want to offer Baseline unity of experience and brand identity across web, mobile, social, AI, AR, XR, 3D, and so on. And then they want to stack unprecedented personalization on top of that. It's a big ask for content teams that were accustomed to dealing with just a few channels, and teams whose experience definitely predates the explosion of content creation potential, both good and bad, that generative AI has brought with it. To help get a handle on all this, Today I'm bringing on Francesco Bernabe, who is the CEO at MonoGrid. MonoGrid builds itself as a global creative innovation studio, and it works on precisely these kinds of storytelling questions for a client base of luxury brands. Francesco is an interesting guy because he can talk not just about activations and campaigns in the Monogrid portfolio, but also how the content landscape's changing, how the level of brand's own tech maturity is or isn't. evolving alongside the march of tech. And he can talk about what it looks like to make decisions that aren't always driven by maximum exposure or virality and that push the frontier of storytelling in other ways. Even if you're not in luxury, I think you'll find what he has to say pretty interesting. So let's roll. Okay, Francesco Bernabe, welcome to the Entire Podcast. speaker-0: Ben, welcome. speaker-1: So there's a couple of things we like to start every show with. one is the day-to-day, and the other is the definition. So let's start with the first one. Mono Grid, as I understand it, is about 60 people, creative studio with international offices, and you work almost exclusively with fashion luxury brands on experiences that span the web, AI, spatial computing, physical installations, and gaming, which is a lot. There's a lot of different technical surfaces there. Which we're gonna get into, but there's also a lot in terms of I imagine the logistics of overseeing that many people in that kind of portfolio. So walk me through what a typical work day looks like for you. How much of your work is still hands on and how much is business running and orchestration and direction? speaker-0: Absolutely, absolutely. That is actually a really good question that came to my mind every single day where I should focus myself the most now in in running the company, more on the day to day stuff and and and zone project or on this vision and strategy and and the long term ⁓ work now on on the company. So my day basically is divided between ⁓ let's say thirty percent of recurring meeting that helps me guide and and and and catch up with ⁓ the people in the company that are in charge of specific verticals like marketing, operations, sales, or or creative. I do run the creative team by myself now. All the other teams are ⁓ let's say in the jurisdiction of ⁓ of other people that report directly to to me. So thirty percent of my time is on following up. those ⁓ main verticals. 30, 40 percent forty percent of the time is on hands-on on the project, especially creative pitches and and kickoff meetings or client presentation. So I do oversee the the beginning, early stage of the project or of the pitch, both from a creative and production perspective. ⁓ and and then I attend mostly of the client's meeting by by myself when I can and where where I can. The rest of the time is basically a tr troubleshooting. So having s so many people, so many projects ⁓ consider that we handle something around around a hundred and fifty projects a year and almost two hundred ⁓ decks and presentation pitches ⁓ etcetera so is is a lot many things can go wrong in the day in the day to day work ⁓ And and so yes, I I I keep myself ⁓ let's say twenty percent of my time as as a a period of time where I can be flexible and solving problems or focusing on on different different stuff. Yeah. speaker-1: Okay. Now I'm gonna stretch the definition of the word definition a bit because I want I want you to tell me what you think it means for a brand to tell a successful story today. So something that stands out in a sea of sameness, something that holds people for the duration, because we're at a time where people's attention spans are maybe the ficklest they've ever been. So define successful brand storytelling for me. speaker-0: Right. So first of all we need to I think to diversify between which kind of brands we are talking we're talking about because for example, let let's stay in the fashion luxury segment, but small brands, medium small brands needs to f most focus on perseverance and consistency, I would say in the storytelling. So I think we they don't have to judge the results of a a specific project that they're doing, but on the medium or long term, how the combination of many different projects perform in the in in the storytelling that they are doing with ⁓ with the audience. And of course you can do that with consistency. So consistency both on the same channel and the same tone of voice and the same way of communicating. So and this is fundamental because if you do something which is out of the box ⁓ in terms of platform or in terms of ⁓ storytelling or tone of voice, you cannot measure it the how it performs properly because you you don't know if you are intercepting a new audience or you you or you did make maybe a small ⁓ mistake in in the process that can ⁓ change completely the perception that you have about data and about the the results. On the same time, big brands, they must have consistency as well, but they need a must cover many and different touch points. So it means that for example, if if you do a game, you're doing a game once a year, maybe you're not doing a game every single every single week as you do content production for social media or for your e commerce. So the way that ⁓ you measure the the the results is not on the specific ⁓ activation. I mean it can be, but this is just a part of the ⁓ a piece of the puzzle, but it's on the the long term ⁓ communication. ⁓ w we have an hopefully we're gonna talk about ⁓ a few examples today about projects that were part of a big ecosystem of communication. So you're not judging the single piece, you're judging the entire campaign. ⁓ And then of course the result is the the ⁓ the ⁓ the sum of every single piece that you are ⁓ that you are doing. speaker-1: Okay, perfect. Good answer. ⁓ And I think tied to some of what we've just talked about, when we will get into the work, but I want to ask something kind of a bit foundational about the work. And that's something I've noticed, which is a lot of the projects you work on, not all of them, but most, they tend to be brand owned and controlled rather than being reliant on third party platforms, gatekeepers, or intermediaries. Now, you mentioned games. Obviously a a Roblox experience needs Roblox to exist as a precondition. It's not going to happen without it. But It seems like the majority of what you work on lives on brands' own channels, you know, whether that's websites, store windows, dedicated devices, installations out in the real world. I want to know where that choice from comes from. Is that driven by the long-standing sort of high-end luxury desire to control the brand's own narrative? That's something I taught to Francesco Bottogiero from Brunello Cuccinelli about recently. Or is it more of a rec recognition that people don't really have a whole lot of trust in platforms right now. And if brands want their narratives to endure, then throwing them into that content show and maybe doesn't feel like the correct way to do it. I'm I'm just keen to know why it is that your clients seem to want to own a lot of this and where that comes from. speaker-0: So again here we need to understand if you're talking about luxury, if you're talking about fashion, if you're talking about small, medium brands or big brands, but in general, let's say luxury must build the communication ⁓ channel to their clients on the brand owned, I would say, channel first and then diversify on the others. So ⁓ as you mentioned f of course if if you wanna do a game and you wanna do on Roblox, you need to be on Roblox and would be crazy To develop a a Roblox or a Fortnite or a Minecraft kind of experience or your own platform channel. I mean, it would be ⁓ super expensive, super time consuming, and of course, you will not intercept the people that are usually already on that platform that you choose. So I think the brand must diversify quite a bit. And if we are talking about luxury, of course, they want and they need to have people on their own channel. Because if you buy Gucci, you don't want to buy Gucci. You wanna buy a Gucci in a Gucci flagship store. You don't wanna buy Gucci on a department store. I mean you can, but it's not the same kind of experience, you know? So with digital touch points, I think it's exactly the same. To elevate to be as premium as possible, you need to own your channel of communication at first. But then of course you need to be smart on leveraging on the other platform that allows you to maybe reach people that you will not reach on your own. Because of course, driving people attention to your own channel is super ⁓ expensive, time consuming, and ⁓ requires a lot of consistency and resources. You know, if you do game and you're expecting the traffic that you usually have on on a Roblox experience, you need to spend a lot of money and and keep the game alive for months, even years. And this is something that is not sustainable not from a resource and economical perspective. So diversifying probably I think is the best way. And then there is another key aspect of this that People that live on a specific platforms are used to engage with the mechanics of that platform in a seamless way. Recreating that kind of knowledge is really, really complicated. Imagine ⁓ I don't know, Super Mario, you know how to play Super Mario or a Super Mario like game, recreating an a new brand user experience from scratch and hoping that Everybody that is joining your platform will already know how to play that specific game or to interact in that specific way is really complicated. So leveraging on existing platform helps you speed up let's say the learning curve, let's say the learning process that the the the the clients or the audience have with the experience that ⁓ you are bringing to them. On the same on the same same time, if if you are on on your pre o pre own ⁓ platform you need to be consistent because you need to teach them, you know, how to interact with that specific ⁓ platform. That could be your app, that could be your website, it could be your whatever interactive experience or experience in store. So you need you need to be a little bit more long term driven. speaker-1: Yeah, that makes sense. And I think ⁓ the part about the trying to r sort of reinvent the wheel and having people turn up and understand how to interact with it. I think that's where some of the metaverse experiments and things went wrong, is that they tried to just kind of from first principles like let's just redo controls, let's redo interactivity, let's redo all of this. ⁓ and not taking account of the amount of work that goes into making platforms. smooth to interact with and the education and the grounding that comes with it. There's another thing I want to understand before we get too far into the weeds, and that's what share of your work starts from a pure creative brief with no preconceived idea of what technology is going to be the right one to deliver it, versus what proportion starts with the technology. So, you know, does the typical client come to you, and again, you can you can separate this by brand type and size as as necessary. But does the typical client come to you and say, for instance, We want a 3D experience for the web, or do they say this is the end result we think we want to accomplish and we're pretty open in terms of how you do it? speaker-0: I think it's a mix of mix of both. Sometimes the hype of a new technology or a new platform helps the brand in leveraging on the PR ability or on the shareability of that specific activation. So of course, and it it happens every single time a new technology came out and we witness many different kinds of technology from VR, AR at the early stage, AI, metaverse, etc. etc. Every single every single time that a new tech coming coming up, brands are coming to us asking for a new experience on that platform or using that specific technology because they want to be the first. At the same time, I think ⁓ on the other hand, brands came to us with with that need driven or or or or KPI driven ⁓ project that is always ⁓ the brief came always ⁓ in relation to a specific platform. So they they they are telling us, look, this is our goal. We would like to do that on the website or on a physical experience or I don't know in a gaming experience, whatever. So they are really ⁓ when they came to us with a brief they're really I would say sharp in terms of which platform they want like to cover. And I think it's also because they have pre allocated budget for every single channel, let's say of communication, but they keep us quite free in terms of how from a creative perspective what f what from a creative perspective we may do. So I think there is a mix of again, a mix of both. No, if there is a new tech, they want to be the first. If is not a new tech is a already known a platform or or technology, they are just sharing the KPIs that they what they would like to do. And we came out with a creative idea that can perform well on that specific platform. speaker-1: Okay. And ⁓ I wasn't I'm not trying to aim with kind of a gotcha or anything with that previous question, but it does feel like maybe we're in a bit of a period where fashion companies in particular might come to you with those budgets and say, I want a generative AI experience because that's that's where the hype is. And I think we'd also had a period probably where they'd have come to you or or to somebody else and say, we want to build something for the metaverse instead, because at that time that's where the funding was. I don't personally see there's a lot of equivalence between the metaverse and AI, except for the fact that they've both commanded a lot of money and attention by being shiny and new. But I'm keen to get your take. Are there any lessons that fashion can take away from the metaverse activation phase, assuming you know the attention eventually ran out there, and not take that baggage into AI or Are the same kind themes and ideas from the metaverse still alive and kicking in Roblox and Fortnite and so on? I I I I d I don't see a direct through line from metaverse to AI, but I do see that there are companies with budgets to spend on new technology for storytelling. And I kinda wanna see if there's any lessons we can learn from one to take into the other. speaker-0: Sure. So of course the metaverse hype was the lifesaver in that specific period of time. Now COVID boosted the metaverse ecosystem ⁓ because brands saw in the metaverse the only new way or the only way where they can communicate to their audience now, especially during COVID because stores were empty, shooting was was an issue, people were stuck at home, etc. So I think again, as as you mentioned, there is not a direct ⁓ connection between the two period ⁓ metaverse and and gen AI ⁓ with the metaver with the metaverse was was a lifesaver again. So people were rushing into the metaverse just because they don't have anything else to do probably and they were hoping to unlock the new channel of communication for their brands. With AI is completely different because maybe last year brands would like to approach AI to be the first or trying to leverage on the PR ability or or or or the fact that AI was an Hype. Now it's just a commodity in order to do something that you usually do on a different technique. So photo, video, CGI, but maybe leveraging on the characteristic both in terms of quality and terms of time and speed and and budget of of generative AI. The metaverse experience or or gaming experience in in general are not in hype anymore, but are still a big piece of the puzzle now for for an omnichannel a truly omnichannel. communication for for a brand. Let's say consider that there are three billion gamers globally and sixteen percent of them are daily users. So it means a half a million of people are actually playing Roblox, Minecraft or Steam or Fortnite every single day. To give to give you a comparison, there are f five billion people, so ten ten times more active on the social media. So of course the gaming ⁓ let's say Metaverse for me, Metaverse and gaming are the same thing because basically are digital platform where people can interact with the others and do stuff on on a digital level. So basically d the same thing. And it's still ten percent of what brands can achieve on on the social media. So is a is a big part of it. So I think that ⁓ after the hype of the metaverse now gaming experience or immersive experiences are ⁓ becoming a piece of the puzzle basically of of the commun of the communication. AI at the sa at the same time is becoming more a commodity rather than ⁓ a new thing or a ⁓ a crazy thing to to try out and and do. speaker-1: Yeah. And I think that what we've found is as the models become commodified, that's where the differentiation comes from the experiences and the applications you can build on top of them. That's that's very much the sort of phase that we're at. Let's talk specifically then a bit more about what you're doing with AI. Because I feel like y the your AI work, like a lot of people's, probably fits into two buckets. There are projects that involve generative AI as a way to create visual interest. or to test new workflows and push creative frontiers, but where the end results could, at least in theory, have been done with CG, digital art, film, like other there are other avenues to create the work. The Carl Lagerfeld work you did, the Max Mara project, they're maybe the most recent examples that come to mind for me that fit into that bucket. Then you've got the ones that can definitionally only exist because they're based on a generative foundation. The Gucci La Familia experience that you worked on as a prime example there. That relies on fuzzy natural language interface that would have been basically impossible to do any other way, or at least incredibly time consuming or impractical to have as a series of scripted dialogue trees. Because it it's based on conversations with characters and those characters need to have agency, they need to respond to the semantics and the way that the user is interacting with them. How do you see this balance of work shaken out over time? Where some amount is AI as a novelty or as a way to t kind of test the state of the art, and some amount is experiences that are only possible because of AI. speaker-0: Yeah, so with with Gen AI probably we already reach the again, as I mentioned before, is is a commodity now. So brands are used to know that certain things can be done in AI, certain things can be done on a traditional, let's say, content production techniques, et cetera. So it it helps it help us to elevate the quality of the final output and is actually becoming something that is always present in every single bit of communication that brands are doing. Not only from a visual perspective, but also from text and and sound, et cetera. So this becoming again, for me is exactly the same thing when stock photography or digital photography arrives. So the average quality of the content actually increased drastically because of that specific tech or because of that specific platform. Is that exactly what happened with Gen AI, generative AI nowadays? On the other hand, I think we are really at the beginning of what AI can do for experiential activities for fashion luxury, but in general every single brand. Because if it's really easy to understand how generative AI for content production works, I would like to do this image. I can do it with CGI with tradition photography going on location or I can do in generative AI. So I I choose which is the best tool to use. And this is easy because I already know which is my final output With generative AI applied to inter interactive experiences is completely different because you're you now have the blank canvas to build whatever you want. And that's arrived the tricky part because you need to invent something new rather than try to replicate something that you used to do with other techniques ⁓ in the past. No. So I think the the the game will be in the next in the next few years. So how brands will integrate AI, generative AI into to new kind of experiences or already existing experiences boosting, especially the personalization of the experience through AI. Because I think the key aspect with Gucci, La Familia, for example, that you mentioned, is that that exact this is a game experience that everybody was used to see now in the past, especially from Gucci. The the only difference which is the biggest difference is the fact the the experience was completely brand new for every single user. Because it was generative. So every time a new person arrives and and interacts with your piece of content, the result that came out is different. And that I think and is personalized based on the single person. So I think that is the key aspect of how to shape the future, let's say, of these kind of experiences using generative AI, because we are going into a hyper personalization phase that wasn't possible to do just six months ago. speaker-1: That feels like it opens up a a new avenue for brand risk. Like some of that when you think about that probabilistic side of things where everybody's getting a different outcome. Presumably there's a lot of work that goes into steering the language models so that they stay on brand and on model and and you're not jailbreaking them and so on. Just give me a little bit of insight into how brands should think about how much risk exposure there is there and the work that's involved in offsetting it. speaker-0: I think I I think it's a matter of going step by step, work and work with someone that really know how to use the tool in order to carve the direction in the w in the way that you want and avoiding big mistake or or big error. ⁓ let's say if you see every touch point of a fashion luxury brand that y you may write down which is the ideal experience for a user, but you don't have the control of it. at every single step, you know, because you you can say to all your sales assistants all over the world, do this and that, but then you you're not there as a brand to control every single word that they're saying or every single thing that they're doing with the clients. With Gen AI is basically the same. The o the the only things that is different that you can create boundaries that you cannot create or well, you can create, but it's not so easy to create in real life. So I think if you go a step by step and and and do a lot of also it it's nice with AI that you can do beta testing pretty easily or A B testing pretty easily compared to what you may do in real life or with other platforms. And actually on social media you can do A B testing. With AI you can do A, B, C, D, E, A, blah blah, blah, testing because you can generate, you know, fifty different versions of of of the same campaign or the same experience and then see which w we're performing. ⁓ the best compared to the other, et cetera, et cetera. So I think I think it's a really ⁓ try and learn ⁓ approach ⁓ with AI, but if you do s little step and and you build up on what you ⁓ understood on the previous one, I think could be really, really interesting for brands to to use this kind of technology for sure. speaker-1: I'm also curious to see how you and your clients approach the question of where to deploy. So we've talked about platforms versus own channels. I think and now I want to talk about kind of device and the where an experience lands in and a ra in somebody's hands or around them. And I kind of want to understand how much of that's driven by wanting the biggest audience and how much comes from pushing the frontiers and testing the waters. So my mind goes to the you've done work with Gucci and Bulgari on Vision Pro experiences and they they feel like the best case studies because if you If those had been web deployments, they could have reached many, many more people and been easier to create because all of the infrastructure is already there, all of the user interface paradigms and everything we've talked about are already proven. And the audience is just much bigger. There are far more people with a web browser than there are people with the Vision Pro, better documented tech stack, and so on. The Vision Pro gives you narrower reach, but also a more distinctive and unique end result. Walk me through how those decisions get made, where the choice is between do we want something unique for a small number of people or do we want something that's bigger? And and I've kinda I kinda wanna understand where they happen in the process. speaker-0: Right, right. So I think b the two brands have different genesis and different briefs and and different reasons to ⁓ to happen. So the Apple Vision Pro for Gucci was as they always do, let's be the first in trying out a new platform ⁓ at the best way possible and and try to learn by doing what we may do on this platform that we know that now is for a limited amount of people, but in the future would be a mass ⁓ device. So we and and we build up a project that is actually divided by a chapter and is basically becoming a kind of a new platform for the brand where every few months we updated the app with a new with a new chapter. So basically it it it is a way of building up the relationship with the limited audience that you have as you mentioned of course there are just few ⁓ thousands of devices ⁓ around compared to ⁓ the audience that can reach a website. But the experience is really, really premium and it's really, really, really t again, almost tailor made because people can decide what to do. And in a website, of course, the experience nowadays is quite passive because you you you go to a website to solve you one of your problems or you're looking for a bag, you go to a website, you browse the bags that you like, you choose the color, you choose the size and you in you purchase. With Apple Vision Pro is more being able of step in the world of a brand that you are fan of and discover more. You cannot buy anything in the Apple Vision Pro Gucci app, for n neither on the Gulgary one. But is is like to step in a store and experience the brand in in a really premium and interactive way. And that is the only device that can allow you to do that. And this is for Gucci. And if you see the the app we basically create chapter For experiences that the brand is doing, but they're not available for everybody. So is ⁓ is is a is a door to step in the world of Gucci through ⁓ the kind of a behind-the-scene door, ⁓ be really there, really inside the brand experiences, but on a different in a different way. On the other way, on the other way with Bulgaria, I think it's different because. The Apple Vision Pro is an evolution of an ⁓ experience that we are we did for them in VR for an exhibition that they did in in China. And basically the Apple Vision Pro became kind of the next step of bringing that same experience design to be ⁓ a part of an exhibition for the customers in in the flagship stores and in the stores to complete the user journey in the store. Because when you when you buy almost a million pieces of jewelry, you don't Tap in with with your credit card and you leave. There is a certain time that needs to be respected and there is a bit of kind of empty time I would say in in the store while you're doing this kind of experience because maybe you are waiting for something when you enter the store because maybe they need their your appointment is not ready yet or they need to prepare something. specific for you, or then when you when you buy and you're waiting for the product to be packed and ready for the shipment or to or to be able to take the product ac accessory, there there is an empty time. They decided to use Apple Vision Pro to fill that gap, to fill that empty time that you usually have in the store with the best and more premium VR and mixed reality experience you can possibly achieve through that specific device. Because you can do the same experience with MetaQuest three. But the device is not premium, the quality of the visual is not at the same level as the premiumness, let's say, of the of the user experience that you usually have in a Bulgaria store. So the the two experiences have two different genesis and two different approaches. speaker-1: Interesting. What does it mean from your point of view to be user centric? So y user centricity is something that you talk about a lot. When you think about all of these different surfaces, what we've just done, VR, mixed reality, web, pre existing gaming platforms, real world installations. There's a lot of different touch points and different ways for people to interact with things here. What does it mean to put the user at the center of those? speaker-0: I think every user experience in a brand ecosystem ⁓ s the goal to be as personalized as possible. I'm stepping in a store at the time that I want, in the location that I want. The sales assistant is guiding me to find the product that is the best for me. So all the experience against say a a fashion brand or any brand is about personalization of what is the best for for myself. Technology can sp speed up this process at at any level quite drastically. And I think the key the key aspect of creating a user centric experience is to leverage all technology in order to be really, really tailor made on the user characteristic and on the user behavior, on the user needs. And I think the play, the the game would be, would be there for fashion and luxury brands now, using technology in order to create in any platform, both physical or fully digital or social, whatever, the best personalized experience possible for the user. So the experience for me needs to be different compared to the ex the same experience that another person is doing with the same brand, with the same ⁓ campaign. So I think that is the the key. And of course, for example, with Genai, we we did a project where we create ⁓ based on the same campaign, 25 different outcomes. That were geolocated according to the region of Italy where you actually were seeing the content on the social media. So if I was in in Toscany, I was seeing something. If I was in Naples, I was seeing something else. Or in Milan, I was seeing something else. Because it was personalized based on the ⁓ user behavior and user need. Imagine this scale one to one. So imagine to have an experience both in a store or no e-commerce or whatever, that everything that you see is in branded. in brand, in terms is consistent with the brand in terms of storytelling and tone of voice, but it's personalized based on what I'm looking for or how I am as a as a person. And that I think is amazing now because became a more also intimate relationship between the user and and the brand because it's like to be in front of a personal assistant that knows you since many years and and is guiding you in the user experience in the best way possible based on what you you like or what you would like to do. speaker-1: Yeah. I mean, I've had some conversations recently with folks about the way that intent and memory and things are evolving across the web when it comes to the the sort of AI era. It feels like there's infrastructure and machinery and stuff there that's arguably taking us towards not just being able to offer more in the way of personalization, but actually being able to have a much more granular understanding of people's intent as well. So you can do yes, like broad brush geolocation sort of things, but you can do much more in the way of like direct intent and and people's real behaviors than would have historically been possible. speaker-0: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I I'm I'm sorry, I mean I'm making a ⁓ a quick example. I I I love blue, that is monogradic color, but I always wear ⁓ white, black or blue. And when I browse my previous preferred brand, I always filter by color or looking for blue things. Imagine that I land on the website and they already know that and they showcase me just the blue things. Is a s is a silly example, but it represents pretty well what a seamless experience maybe and a user centric experience maybe for for the customer. speaker-1: That's a great example, actually. It's good framing. we've talked about some of your projects, your philosophy, and how that relates to the technology layer underneath it. And I think the logical question for any kind of any kind of conversation I've had with agencies and platforms and so on is how digitally mature do companies need to be to take advantage of these opportunities? So let's take Roblox as an example again. You can't have an immersive experience without 3D representations of your products. You also can't have an on brand generative AI experience without having well structured data and assets and understanding of your brand properties and so on. How much of a consultative engagement is there typically in advance of the storytelling and experience building work for you? Like how when brands show up, do they show up with saying, here is our tech estate, here are all the assets, we're pretty mature in all of this, or is it a fairly mixed picture? speaker-0: I think I think it's a mix. And with emerging technology or new media or new trends is really I mean, it w it is amazing to work with brands that already know what to do in that realm, but it's really, really rare. Because of course it's really hard for them to organize themselves internally to be able to be up to speed on every single new trend, on every single new platform or technology. So they came to us and they asked us for kind of a consult creative consultancy in that specific field. It's nice when we build a relationship with a brand and they know where we can perform well and we know what they are looking for on that speci ⁓ bucket of of content. or experiences? So I think it's really a a a mix of of the two things. Consult creative consultancy for us it became really more important nowadays because maybe a few years ago the platform and the technology available were less. So or was a website or was an installation, that's it. Now it can be a website an installation, Apple Vision Pro or a VR mixed reality A AI, whatever. So it can be multi ⁓ Roblox or et cetera. So it can be much, much complicated for them to be prepared for every single outcome. So our job is to actually guide them in in order to use the new media or the new platform in the best way possible. Or also sometimes avoid doing something on a certain platform because probably it's not the best and smart choice to do so. No. And and and this is something that came out in the recent years because two or three years ago there wasn't this need and if if a client w were coming to us with a specific need we just solve it. ⁓ nowadays it the there's so many variables that we actually became more a consultant for them in order to guide them not only where to do stuff but also if do something or not. And I think it's a good is is a really big I mean for at least for us was a really big change. speaker-1: And over time, do you see brands so there there's obviously a proliferation of surfaces and opportunities at the moment. Over time, do you see brands starting to build out more of that expertise so that they can deliver projects like these in-house? I know you also work on RD and internal process improvements with companies, which is led by what you've learned from your own portfolio. I'm keen to know does this stuff get internalized progressively over time? Because presumably in the early days of social, it would have been the same. situation. You would have had brands say, okay, I don't fully understand the user generated content social space. I'm going to work with external providers and partners until I do, until I can upskill and I can take these things on myself. Do you see that same thing happening when it comes to AI, XR, the all of these other sort of surfaces? And how do you work with companies to kind of educate and elevate their own capabilities there? speaker-0: Yeah. It really depends which kind of technology we are talking about because o of course if it's ⁓ VR or XR, etc., they know that would be too complicated, too l too long and too expensive to structure themselves in that direction internally. So they know what is achievable, but they leverage on external partners to do to do so. External partners are always faster, especially against big corporations and b big companies, because Technology is changing every single month and and is not compatible, especially the emerging one are are not compatible with the process ⁓ and the limitation of a big company. On AI is a slightly different because people meant to think that okay, is AI ChatGPT prompt, that's it, so it's easy. So they start to hiring people internally to do the job that probably a studio can do. ⁓ the This is my personal perspective. They're probab they're gonna hit the wall pretty soon because especially also in AI in the AI field, ⁓ the technology became really, really various and complicated. So you need not just one person but a team of people that are capable of using that tool ⁓ together with the other ⁓ tools that may maybe you need to create ⁓ a content or an experience or an image. So It's good for brands to have someone internally that knows the industry or the technology a bit, but then you can you need to leverage on existing part. And it happens with us recently. One of our key team members was hired by one of our clients. But they are sick calling us to do the same project that they they did with us in the past when this person was in monogrid now and now is in is in the brand. So still they They need to know what is possible but probably it's hard to internalize everything. We we saw this happen with e commerce, for example, and brands are internalizing the e com now or in the last five years and ⁓ the e com is on hype, let's say, since twenty years now. So they they they the it took them years now to to switch and internalize the the thing. AI is one year old. So I think it's I think maybe it's too it's too soon. Well speaker-1: Let's come back in nineteen years then. We can we can have that conversation about speaker-0: Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Then they everything related to AI is really, really faster compared to any other technology in in in the past. So probably it will happen, but I I don't see it happening so quick as they are hoping to do. speaker-1: Yeah, I think you we we talked earlier about the commodification of the underlying models and everything and the need to build applications and experiences on top of them. That's still the same workflow and talent acquisition processes as any other application shift. You still need people who know how to use the tools, as you said, know how to use them in in conjunction with other tools. And you need people who can stay at the cutting edge. Like when the state of the art changes so quickly in text generation, image generation, video generation. Retrieval augmentation generation. So on like it it it's a moving frontier at the same time. speaker-0: Yeah, no, ex exactly. And then I think I think something that I saw I saw some some brands did this mistake. They basically put in charge of emerging technology or the new tech, the new media, the more junior people, but just because they are younger. Yep. ⁓ and they believe, okay, it's a gaming. You are twenty five years old. That's your department now. Sometimes it may work, sometimes it could be a disaster because it's not just knowing a technology or knowing what's is the new latest tool available on the market, but it's the key aspect is to understand how you can integrate that new tool or the new technology into your brand ecosystem in an effective way. And this is something that can be done only by people that are really experienced in both technology and the brand. Structure and the br and the brand touch points, no so speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, you need strategy, knowledge, taste, brand immersion, and everything else to layer on top of it. Finally, just to bring us back full circle, so I asked you at the beginning of the show what successful brand storytelling looks like today. Tell me what you think it looks like in two, three years. Do you think new technology, the state the evolving state of the art, is gonna change that definition? Do you think Maybe the luxury sector, the wider sector is just gonna become better at using the tools that they now have. Just walk me through what you think is happening in a couple of years from now. speaker-0: I think I think the future is the integration between physical and digital experience in in in a better way. Now we have really two different paths for the experience. Actually three. The experience that you do in the store, the experien in the physic at the physical level, the experience that you do online on a browser and the experience that you're doing on on social media. And they're really even if we talk about omni channel communication but they're really quite far away. They are not integrated so well. So I think the future and and and and this happened because we saw periods now. The hype of department store and retail, the hype of the dot com, the hype of social media. And now all the hypes, let's say in terms of platform, are probably finished and and the technology is much more integrated in every single aspect of our lives. And we are also are are expecting to be so. So I'm I'm expecting to have the technology hide it in in every piece of my experience during the day or on any single level. So I think the the game will be for brands how to implement technology in the physical experience and how to merge the two things in a more seamless way possible. And if you see how advanced the technology is in general and then you see how the technologies embedded in a physical experience is is mind blowing because it looks like something from five years ago, ten years ago. No, we're talking we're talking about in touch screen monitors in store when we have AI that can do the job of a PhD in a half an hour. So I I think there is a much a a lot of room of integration between the physical experience and and brands would like people to go on on their source because buying a a white t shirt from a luxury brand for a thousand euros or a white t shirt from a fast fashion brand for five euros online is pretty much the same experience. So online i the difference of prices is not justified, but on the physical experience it can be justified because there is a ceremony of the shopping experience, there is a place, there is many different things that can elevate the quality and the value of the product that you are buying in a luxury store rather than in the department store. So I think the key aspect would be to integrate technology more in that kind of experience because people are used to talk to CD, used to chat with Chat PT on Cloud every single day, but they are still going in the store and pick up the shoe from a shelf and that's it. So probably there would be would be the next generation, let's say, of storytelling for for the brand. speaker-1: It's gonna be interesting to see that play out. Maybe we come back around to this conversation in a couple of years and ⁓ let's see how far that integration has progressed. ⁓ Francesco, thank you so much for joining today. I enjoyed this conversation a lot. speaker-0: Thank you very much. Thank you, Ben. It was a pleasure. speaker-1: And that's the end of my conversation with Francesco. As I mentioned at the beginning, there's obviously a lot in there about what the top-flight luxury brands are doing. But I think it's important that you don't file all of that away as being only relevant if you work in luxury. One of the key things about AI in particular, and it's something we're going to keep coming back to this year, especially in our AI report, which is due in June, is it puts all of the same tools in basically everyone's hands all at once. And provided you have the token budget to use those tools to the fullest, you have access to the same. level of technical maturity as anybody else. And the same is true about most of the different surfaces that are available to storytell across and publish on. If you're a small brand, I'd personally never encourage you to build anything for the Vision Pro because the juice won't be worth the squeeze. But basically everything else, content and publishing wise, is fair game, no matter your business size. There are experts and agencies out there who are thinking about and pushing the state of the art and you can go work with them. But there's also more that you can do and learn about yourself than ever. And hopefully today's conversation has given you some guidelines for maybe where you want to focus that. Very different topic next week. For now, thanks for listening, as always, and I'll talk to you again really soon.