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male speaker: from catalogingthe internet to mapping the earth and space, google setsa very high standard for innovation and imagination. its advertising platform is asterling example of that. it's ubiquitous, and all of usprobably are using it as part of our operations. so andy actually has an equallyimpressive background. he's contributed to some ofthe most important brands, including nike, apple,and ibm.

and with that, please join meand the argyle cmo leadership forum and markmonitor inwelcoming andy berndt. andy berndt: andy berndt isn'tactually two people. this is tom carroll. he's president-- is that correct? tbwa worldwide. there were two options here-- for me to drag on for a halfan hour personally

or chat with tom. so i took plan b. so we'll justbe chatting instead of talking, and if anyone has anyquestions, please interrupt. chat away. tom carroll: well, i'll justintroduce myself first. tbwa is the sixth largestglobal advertising network in the world. for those of you in the us,you know us better as tbwa\chiat\day.

our client list globally isnissan, apple, adidas, which i used to call adidas untili got the account. now i call it adidas, which ishow you call it if you're german, and the rest ofthe world calls it. absolut vodka, sonyplaystation. so we're a pretty bigglobal network. our brand name isn't as wellknown as some of the others simply because we're a networkof a lot of creative agencies from around the world,but we're

kind of smashed together. that became tbwa worldwide. so that's who i am, and i'veknown him forever because he's a big name in the advertisingbusiness, and then he flipped and went to the clientside on us. andy berndt: we should startby talking about that. if everyone leaves with justone message from me being here, it's that google is notstarting an ad agency. [laughter]

andy berndt: and i'm goingto make sure to say i'm not an ad agency. so our sales people can getback to selling and not running around telling peoplethat we're not an ad agency. i'll explain a little bitabout what i'm doing. but just to set the recordstraight, we're not going to compete with agencies, we'renot going to have clients outside of google. we are a internal creative andmarketing resource at google

to manage the brand. and our only client is google. so if that allays some fears,i hope it does just to start things out. tom carroll: shouldi trust him? andy berndt: that's why i wantedtom here, so he could corroborate. tom carroll: i think that what'sinteresting from the agency standpoint--

of course when google firstcame out, there was a huge panic in the advertisingindustry. they're going to come andtake our business away. and the truth of it ismaybe parts of it. they'll be involved in it thatwe traditionally used to be, purely on the agency side,things that are easily automated it used tobe done by hand, things of that nature. but google is more of a partnerto the agency world,

should be for you peopleas well, for the whole client community. the way we look at google iswe're in this constant state of perpetual beta. like all of you, we have tons ofdata, we don't know what to do with the data. but the reality is, is in theadvertising world, we've always operated off data. when you bought television, youbought print, granted the

data wasn't as preciseas you can be online. but it's still data. and the thing that we'vetried to do is-- i feel it's deja vu today. in 1999, everybodywanted a website. you had to have a website. i had the drambuie clientcall me up. we have to have a website. i didn't think a website wasgoing to sell more drambuie.

i thought getting out, goingto a bar was going to sell more drambuie. but we had to have a website. it's kind of the same waynow in our world. everybody's in a panicabout digital. what's our digital strategy, andi knew we should have had more digital. everything is digital. there is no such thing astraditional and digital.

all things are digital, and ithink the thing that we try to do with our clients, whetherit's a health care client or it's an automotive client,stop this separation of digital and traditional. it's all digital. and it's ridiculous totalk any other way. apple, which is one of ourlargest clients, what we did with apple, we actually pulledit out of the agency in los angeles, and moved it across thestreet and created what we

call a media arts lab. and the reason we did that wasfirst, apple obviously is on the forefront of technology. so they were the easiest clientand brand to pull out of a separate group. but the real purpose was to stopthis conversation about traditional and digital. it's kind of like salesand marketing. you're either like thisor you're not.

our biggest issue with ourclients is everybody take a deep breath and let'sstop panicking. i'm not saying throw moneyat things digital. just, you got to test.no you don't. you have to be smart, you haveto read the data, and then you have to kind of go through thisperfect storm which is going on in the world ofmarketing right now, which is all of this stuff coming at thesame time and not knowing what to do with it.

and it's as much the people withthe steadiest hands are going to be the ones whowin, like anything. andy berndt: i thinktom's right. i think that at least the waywe're looking at things is that this is not a zero sumgame, that all boats rise. the more media come together,the more people are using things to complementeach other. i've asked people who wereperhaps around if this happened when print arrived?

did this happen whenoutdoor arrived? did this happen whenradio arrived? did this happen inall these things? obviously, the web happenedfaster, but the point is, the more the merrier interms of tools. i was on a subway this morning,and there was a poster for an hbo programcalled in treatment. and i thought, at the bottom ofthe poster, there was this little thing that said,on hbo, on demand,

online, and on the go. so you could see it on tv, youcould order it on demand, you could watch it on the web, oryou could download it to your ipod, watch as you go. and i thought, here'straditional media-- subway outdoor-- brilliantly placed, because inthe subway, you can't actually make eye contact with anyone,so you have to read these posters, right?

and it's a show about being intherapy with ads in manhattan where everyone's in therapy. so it's a brilliant featof putting all these things together. i haven't actually googled ityet, but i'm betting if i did that i would get the rightsearch results, because they've probably coveredthat base. and they have a good sensealready how that show will do simply because ofsearch traffic.

and these are the things thatkind of come together to make these ecosystems. and someadvertisers are really embracing this at a sortof experimental level. and i think that's been thebiggest shock to me coming to google, is that googleis a giant lab. it doesn't have a fundamentallycorporate structure, it has a fundamentally scientific culture. and so everything gets tried.

in fact, sometimes the thinking happens after the doing. and it's odd because that's whatmy parents accused me of doing in high school, and itwas not a good thing to do before you think. but i think that spirit isreally useful, and i think the marketers who are doing bestare sort of trying sort of beta all over the place. see what happens andbuild on that.

there's a huge advantage in thesoftware business because that's the fundamental sort ofcreation and distribution model of lay it out there andimprove it constantly. it's a little bit different ifyou're making a hard good that you have to ship. doing incremental improvementsin cars is more difficult. but i think in terms ofmarketing, those people who are experimenting witheverything working together have a huge advantage.

part of what i want to doultimately in my group is create a forum where creativepeople can actually interface with google to help understandwhat google is doing across the board. so take their ideas and makethem bigger, or more digital, or more interestingfor their clients. i found when i was runningogilvy in new york that some of the creative people whoreally sort of owned a lot of the thought leadership forbig brands came out of a

traditional space, and werereluctant to kind of jump the divide into digital. and a lot of people who were thebest at digital were less involved in the narrativeof the brand. so that split sort ofworsened over time. that's a generalization,that's not categorically true at all. but i think sort of mendingthose back together so the people who are really goodat brand stories, brand

narrative, the emotional sortof pillars of a brand, but feeling at home with things likeyoutube, feeling at home in those areas where, again, youjust don't have control. so i hope that's one of theultimate goals down the road. i need to have a few more peoplethan i have now to actually conduct that. i've got my hands full. in fact, every day, i realizemore things that make my hands more full.

tom carroll: it's the biggestissue of the advertising industry is collaboration. that's reason why we yanked allthe apple people out and put them in one place. for the first eight months, thebiggest issue we had was vocabulary, because thetraditional people and the digital people and themedia people, no one spoke the same language. and these were people who kneweach other for a long time.

so the thing we did in the firsteight months was define a vocabulary, because there wereabout nine definitions of digital, there were ninedefinitions of interactive, there were nine definitions-- so in the media arts lab,these words mean this. and it may seem trite,but it's not. these are all verybright people. and i think that what andywas saying is true about traditional people being able togo one way and going to the

other side. it's really weird. we have a candy client and we dofantastic creative for it. and one commercial got 13million hits on youtube, downloads of the commercial. and 245 parodies. kids taking the commercial anddoing a parody off of a spot that was on television. the minute we lowered the waiton the television, on tv,

share went down. so it was like, wait a second,we have an internet youtube captured audience hit. and the minute we loweredour grps on television, share went down. so is that a digital hit? without a doubt. can you get off television? not yet.

so it's just that kind ofbalance and understanding. we had a car launch, where itwas the best, most integrated thing that we've done todate for a car launch. and we had every aspect ofthe media mix right. we had youtube stuff, wehad digital, we had direct, we had viral. we had everything, except wehad a bad creative idea. and it really didn't matterhow well our plan was. we didn't have a goodcreative idea.

so it just fell flat. and i think that at the endof the day, why are we afraid of google? it's still going to comedown to the idea. it's still going to comedown to the creative. it's still going to come downto the execution, and that doesn't matter whether it's inpharmaceutical or cars or adidas or apple. it's going to come downto the creative idea.

do you have an insight? have you written thestory properly? then you can figure outhow to deliver it. and that's where the fun isright now, is sometimes it's going to be brand who's goingto determine how you deliver the ideas and how theconsumer-brand relationship is. sometimes it's goingto be the consumer who's developing that.

but it's all happeningright now and it's actually a lot of fun. i wish i was 25, because i thinki would understand more. but it's actually fun to comein the room and watch the dynamic, because it's powerfulif you get it right. but i continue to say the samething, if there's one thing i've learned, it's take a deepbreath, we'll figure it out. start from what you know andyou'll write the story. no one has the secret.

no one knows somethingwe all don't know. that's what i [unintelligible]come in the room and i'd feel like people feel, geez, god,i don't know the idea. nobody has it down yet. we have pieces of it and thestory's being written. but we'll get there. andy berndt: i'm always curioushow people are feeling about all this evolution. and i'd certainly rather talkto queries, quite frankly,

about how things are going andhow people are feeling, particularly at the cmo level. in my old job, i spent a lotof time with cmos and i'm curious as to how people arefeeling about the change rate and the evolution andgoogle's role in it. so i'm happy to talk to that. i'd actually rather talk toquestions if anybody has-- i can learn a lot more, andeveryone else here, it would probably be more relevantin the spirit of

responding to queries. any questions? very kind of you. audience: question for you. what is the creative web? what is that within google? andy berndt: ok. it always goes backto this question. this will take me a year, ithink, to get past this.

so very specifically,we'll own the brand, the google brand. and i know it's an odd misnomerto call it the creative lab. but quite frankly, i think,what we wanted to do was-- there's a huge quan factor atgoogle, obviously, right? and i think what we're doingis thinking about the brand with also sort of a qualitativeapproach. and i don't think as muchqual has been there.

it's interesting because icalled one of my friends when they first came to me and talkedto me about this job. and i said i really need someoneto set me straight, give this to me straight. so i called the person who ifelt would be sort of most cynical and sarcastic and jadedabout everything, but also brilliant. and these people areusually british. so i explained the job, and hesaid well, i don't get it.

they've become like the mostpowerful brand ever in the history of the universe and theydidn't need any help from anybody like you. what could you possibly do? and these people are reallyuseful, i have to tell you. it was then, actually, that isaid that i had to absolutely take this job. but i think that there's a lotof sort prescience at the top at google, and sort ofself-awareness of

where the brand is. and even though that brandinghas not been sort of a focus, it's all been about doingand making things and defending the user. and no one there would eversay this, but it's been a radical focus on the consumer. like those terms don't exist forthe most part at google. but i think our role will belooking at the brand going forward, and figuring out as thecontext changes, as google

changes, how do you keep anemotional connection to people out there, all kinds ofdifferent audiences and how you parse those out andhow you talk to them. the creative lab is toughbecause it's [? seeing ?] now and this job may evolve. everything at google evolves,i'm learning, very quickly. but the brand isthe key thing. the second thing is reallycommunications about products and initiatives, aboutpartnerships, about big things

that would be brand defining. we'll be in charge of those. and those might be internallyhandled by us, they might be in partnership with agencies,with com planning agencies. that's sort of yetto be determined. but that's sort of our charge. audience: i would say my feelingis that of being overpowered, overwhelmed by thenumber of opportunities, and knowing where to reallyfocus dollars, resources,

attention between seo, and ppc,and all the millions of websites to advertiseon and so forth. what would be your thoughtsabout that? andy berndt: well, first,i empathize. every day, i feel like i learntwo new things and realize that i don't know another 10. i think it goes back to thatnotion of grip the wheel loosely and try thingsat small scale, because the less that--

and i think this is one thingwhere we, at google, need to do a lot of work, is sortof inviting people in to understand more aboutwhat we do. because the more time goes bythat you try less things, i think the larger the wall getsof overwhelmingness. at ogilvy, for example we hadthis sort of enforced training where we got all the seniorpeople together and literally forced them to sit in the chairand make a myspace page, make a facebook page, buyadwords, actually participate

in all those things. and as you participate, the feardrops, because they don't seem like a sort of steamrollerof chaos that's coming at you. i think that's the thing. and the good thing is, you canexperiment with a lot of these things at low cost. the flipside of that is most companies are used to the perfectand release mode. and failure is not a datapoint, it's doom.

and if there was any generalmessage i would say is that those very senior peoplewho can say, yes-- who can defend people who go andtry things, small things, and get traction and say,hey, we tried that. not working so well, let's killit off and go try this. because the fear that especiallyreally sort of innovative sort of mid-level andjunior people sense from the top about experimenting isreally killing off a lot of forward motion.

so being a champion of, hey,we tried this thing. we tried four things, threewere a failure, this was a big hit. good work, go do it again. i mean that's sort of at thecore i think of how google works, not by any grand plan,but by more of just the scientific approach of learnwhat works, don't feel that-- if something doesn't work,you've learned something instead of if something doesn'twork, you have failed

and you have, therefore, noself-worth, and you will not rise up the corporate ladder. so that's the best advicei can give. tom carroll: and i would saythat if i look across our 300-some clients, the ones inpanic are the ones in trouble. the ones who aren'tpanicking are the ones who can see clearly. and i see the differentlevels. so if you have a senior personwho doesn't understand the

digital world, he or she has anentire department in this state of panic all the timeabout, oh, we've missed the digital boat. it's what i always say to ourguys, we're not behind. but we're not ahead,so we're behind. and i don't even know what aheadmeans yet other than to keep trying and keep pushing,keep doing things like the media arts lab or keep tryingand pushing people forward. but that's the biggest qualityi look at it is panic.

when overwhelming becomespanic, nobody wins, everybody loses. take a deep breath, start-- i would argue-- i don't know, maybe i'm crazy,but start from the premise that you do know. start from what you know andbuild out from there. what's happening is everybodykeeps leaping over here going, oh, it's a new world.

no it's not, it's thesame world evolving. and i think that's thebiggest problem. senior people either set thetenor for how people approach this and work outor they don't. and i think it's human natureto be overwhelmed, but it doesn't do any good to panic. andy berndt: let meask you this. how many people in this roomhave uploaded a video to youtube, uploaded?

that's great. i mean, i actually think thatthe act of uploading a video to youtube personally is betterthan going to a four day off-site about the marketingassets of youtube. just participating, makinga facebook page-- i've made a couple of thesethings and i can't even really find out where they are now, yeti still get these emails about, i'd like to join yoursomething community. but literally leaping in tothese things and having your

people leap in is a way wheresuddenly they say, wow, i tried that and thesky didn't fall. and reducing those conversationsabout-- i'd spend some of my time sayingto people, cut it with the tv is dead thing. cut it with the old is dead. cut all that conversation,because that's sort of as narrow-minded as the flipside which says digital's a fad, right?

that's not a thoughtful way tothink about what's happening. it's the more tools, the moretoys in the sandbox, the better all gets. tom carroll: i can tellyou what not to do. our chief digital officer sendsme before christmas, send out a note-- we have 11,000 employees aroundthe world-- and have everybody join facebook. don't.

my email is a mess, and i getthem from countries and they write in their languagelike i know every language on the planet. and my email is justso overwhelming. but i like the spiritof the idea. let's get everybody on facebookin the company. it's the same thingandy just said. i love whatever her thoughtwas, i just wish she had kept me off it.

it is ridiculous, but it's areally great effect because people are talking and playingand they're creating these little communitiesaround facebook. it's just a fun tool. i don't know what will come ofit, but it sent the right message i think to the companyjust to say try, just get comfortable with it. and the chairman of our companyis a very traditional french guy.

if he doesn't stop sending mewall, super wall stuff-- it's like he's a child. andy berndt: we have a greatemail product that could help you filter out that stuff. any other questions? audience: i think the problem isthat we go ahead and try a lot of marketing things, butif the organization isn't aligned with marketing,then that's where it starts to fall apart.

i think the beauty of googleis the fact that the whole entire organization hasthat same philosophy-- let's try everything, andthe organization shifts. not so at other places. what are your thoughtson that? andy berndt: yeah, the best wayto go at that is i think some way to immerse people inwhat's possible, because again, i think it's a big-- i've been in a couple ofmeetings where people from

google who are from other sortof new media-oriented places make a speech about something. and it is so confusingthat the most senior people in the room-- and i can feel myself even doingthis-- just nod because it'll either make it stop, orthey feel like i don't want to ask a question because will i bethe person in the room who looks like i don't understandthe future, right? and because i come from thecreative side, we have this

special pass to ask really dumbquestions all the time. so i say wait a second,i don't get that. can you say that insmaller words? and usually there's like twoor three of those steps. and by the time you get to thesmallest, simplest things, then everyone at thetable goes, oh, ok, that makes sense. and i think that's a huge deal,because i think a lot of people who aren't comfortablein the space retreat from

those conversations andspecifically push them away. because we don't present themin a way that gives them a doorway to understandand participate. and that's been a little of thegeneralized arrogance of the-- first let me tell youhow you're outdated and obsolete, ok? then let me explainwhat i'm doing. and that's not really a veryclever way to embrace someone in a conversation.

and i think that's part of whatmy job is to actually explain some of the motivationsand the things that google is doing in a waythat everyone gets to participate in, not just sort ofmaybe a power user base or people who are already there. tom carroll: it's likeraising kids. you can either discipline themwhen they're younger, or you can pay for their therapywhen they get older. it's the same thing.

i'm no different thananybody else. i got caught not saying-- ohgod, i'll just pretend i understand. or i'll say, i need to talkto the guys at google. and then i can't wait until-- saying i need to talk to theguys at google is your way out of any conversation, becauseit still is. well, i was talking to the guysat google the other day. and then all of a sudden,he knows something.

the truth is, you just haveto stop and say, i don't lots of people just pretendand i think the minute you admit you have a problem--it's like drinking-- and then you just stop and yousay, you know what, i don't and every time somebody sayssomething, i'll say, i don't understand a word you said. it's kind of a rule. i do it all the time. i'll say, do you understandwhat he just said?

explain it me. explain what he just said. i can catch people in everymeeting not understanding what somebody else-- because you justhave to take the time, go through the discipline, commonlanguage, and do it for yourself, and start today. today's the first day of therest of your digital life. audience: hi, my name isisabelle hen-wollmarker from the history channel.

could you share a little bitabout your vision for the brand, the google brand? i know it's organizing theworld's information. is that still the same? what's your perspective? andy berndt: that's aninteresting question because google's very much still afounder-driven, leader-driven place, right? so i don't think my job is somuch to create a vision for

this brand as it is tounderstand both the text and the subtext of where the peoplewho drive the company are coming from. and then at sometimes translatethat for a wider audience, right? and generally speaking, ifpeople have experience with this, but engineers are notcrazy about marketing people, and often for good reason. and so sort of taking these sortof sound bites and these

pieces of dna from where thecompany's coming from, like organize the world'sinformation, for example. it's a really interestingthing. organize the world's informationis the ultimate hack if you're a computer personor you're an engineer. it is sort of the largest goalor display of ability. and part of the engineeringcommunity runs on these masterful exchange displays ofwow, look what i did here. look at this thing.

or this thing did this butthen we added this. it's an amazing,creative space. and i think that organizingthe world's information started as organizing theworld's information and then was added, and makeit more useful and accessible for everyone. but the core aspect behind thatis a sort of quixotic, bold, almost moon-shot typeof spirit that's at the center of google.

and it's less competitive thanit is sort of aspirational. but that needs a lotof communication. that needs a lotof explanation. that needs translation to peoplewho may not participate at the center of that activity,but still live in the ecosystem that thatcommunity touches. so the vision for the brand, ithink, is in organizing the world's information and makingit universally accessible and useful for everyone.

i think how that is done and howit's communicated so that the spirit comes across as wellas the effects, just the sort of market effects andthose things, is my job. so the vision for the brand isto keep reminding people what it is that they love aboutthe notion of google. and the notion of google isreally emotionally more about sort of big, bold endeavorsto try things. it's not about concretemarkets, it's not about those things.

that's not at the centerof the brand. but as it gets bigger and if youhire this many people like on a regular basis and peopleare the center of a brand, employees, it gets harder andharder for that core message to live outside. so i don't know if that's somuch a vision, and i've only been there three months andi'm still working on it. and it could changeat any moment. but that's kind of my focus.

audience: you spoke aboutbringing the group together for apple, bringing the peoplewith the narrative, bringing the people with the digitalexperience together, defining. is this a trend? google's now starting thecreative lab, dell, da vinci. can you talk more about that andthen what are the reasons why this is a trend-- is it a trend that's emergingand why, and what do you think of the benefits, the reasonsfor doing that?

tom carroll: it comes rightof what andy said. we look at google as a tool. and it's a tool forcreative people. we just don't see it asan intimidating thing. lee clow is a guy thatwe both know. he's a creative director. he's probably the best creativedirector on the planet in the last 20 years. and he's 63 years old.

he's ecstatic about google andthe whole digital world, because all it's done is open upa palette for more things, for more ways to be creative. we were kind of limitedto television, outdoor, and print. it was fun while it lasted. but now that you've got about20 new ways to engage people and be creative and to do that,you've got to bring people together and you've gotto sit down in the room and

say what's possible. we have this asthmadrug for a client and we did this website. and it's for kids where they geton the web and they learn how to use their inhalersthrough this game, this digital game that's like webkinzor something else. these are 26-year-oldkids who got it. when you get that inthe hands of-- you get that idea at the tableand then you get that in the

hands of somebody who knows thecategories who's older, a little better, and the wholething comes together, and you see this whole brand recreatingitself, being far more engaging, far easieraccess, far deeper connection with clients. it's just getting everybodyat the table. whenever you close spaces-- i don't care what kind ofbusiness you're in-- everytime i've seen it is the more youclose space between people,

the better off you are. and you just have to force it. that separation is what's beenholding all this back and creating all that anxietythat that gentleman's worried about. andy berndt: i think we'vebeen given the hook. tom carroll: we're done. we're going to goback, make ads. andy berndt: well, thankyou very much.

tom carroll: thank you.