Disrupt, Be Distinctive and Don’t Fear Risks

Disrupt. Be distinctive. Do not fear risks. These were the  three key ingredients for effectiveness success revealed during our ‘Making Mischief with Tubi’ session at the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity last week.

The talk, which I chaired, involved Greg Hahn – co-founder and chief creative officer of creative agency Mischief, and Nicole Parlapiano – chief marketing officer of video streaming service Tubi.

It centred on ‘Tubi Takes Viewers Down a Super Bowl Rabbit Hole’ – a campaign by Mischief for Tubi that disrupted the 2023 Super Bowl, became a Grand Effie winner, and is one of the most effective pieces of work to come out of the US in recent years.

We discussed the importance of building trusting relationships with partners to create a safe space for daring ideas. The overarching message was that effectiveness is human – it stands and falls on the strength of our relationships. 

For Tubi and Mischief, their relationship was strengthened by their shared determination to make a mark - a starting point that encouraged them to dare to disrupt. 

Their collaboration centred around stripping fear from the equation and promoting an environment of fearlessness and fun where no one was scared of saying the wrong thing in a meeting. 

According to Greg, the brief from Tubi was simple: Get people to ask “WTF is Tubi?”, and so they set out to solve that particular challenge.

“The best solutions start with a really provocative question that causes you to do some mental judo,” Greg explained. “So, our thinking was let’s not try to out-shout the competition to be the best - let’s be the only … a place that has masses of content for you and curated by you, not premium content for the masses.” 

The discussion also emphasised the importance of honesty, confidence, and the value of relationships in taking creative risks. 

“We had to have complete trust we’d do this together … The beauty in the challenge was that we were in this together. The stakes for both were so high,” Greg continued.  

Meanwhile, Nicole highlighted that she had made it clear to everyone involved that she would protect the idea with her life, taking the risk on behalf of her team. Her reasoning was that it would be riskier for Tubi to be ignorable and spend millions on something people will walk past, than to take a risk on trying something new.

Effie Awards, from my own experience, have shown that bravery is paramount.  Many censor their work out of fear, but true effectiveness requires leaving fear outside the room. 

When it comes to creating a safe space for bold ideas, however, there’s a difference between being ‘reckless’ and taking calculated risks. It’s important to have clarity of vision and objectives rooted in robust insights. 

And what’s brave must also be simple, as Greg reminded us when he described the creative process as involving two distinct steps: what to say and how to say it. 

“We spend the majority of our time making sure we have a clear message and a simple brief. Then you can go to town. What I find with executions that don’t land is that they don’t spend enough time figuring out what they are going to say,” he said.

“An amazingly clear brief is a great place to start, then we just work out how to get there – that’s the fun part. (But) you need a client that’s willing to do that, to fight those battles and to make sure vision doesn’t get watered down or compromised through the process.”

Nicole emphasised the importance of honesty: “You have to have reverence for the truth,” she stressed. Only by confronting and honouring the truth of what your audiences or consumers feel rather than trying to spin it can make the creative resonate.