Challenges of the C-Suite with Martin Lindstrom, Episode 25

Hello everyone. Welcome to CB Bowman Live. And you know, today we do Challenges of the C-Suite and I have to tell you a secret. You know, I always tell you a secret. I am so nervous interviewing Martin. He's like my idol. And so I'm going to totally fluff this up and I hope that you help me out here. Right? Send in some questions. Make me look— Okay, so Martin Lindstrom is the iconic brand. So now, of course, the camera is gonna play with us, technology, just to challenge me a little bit more. Hey, so listen, um, let's just jump right in. You know, this is a casual conversation like you're sitting in your living room. So those of you that want to have a glass of water, glass of wine, some tea, go for it. And while we're laughing, you're gonna learn a lot. So have your pencil in one hand and your glass in the other hand. Okay, so let's rock it out, Martin. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

CB, what a pleasure it is. I have to say that you are one of the most iconic and charming and passionate and engaging and human people I have known ever. I mean, it's amazing. You just have this charisma going straight through the wires. So, uh, thank you for having me on your show.

Oh, thank you. Now you can't see I'm blushing, but I am blushing. Martin, for the one person out there that doesn't know you, tell us about yourself.

Well, listen, there's not a lot to say. I'm, um, I'm just an ordinary guy, I guess, in the end of the day. But I work with, with brands a little bit. Um, let me tell you a story which probably is reflecting my personality a little bit. Um, When I was young, when I was 6 and a half years old, my mom and my dad was sitting at the kitchen table. And my dad, he was very disturbed because he had problems at work. And he said to me, son, what should I do? And all respect to him, he asked his kids. So I said, quit working. Of course, you know, I had no concerns in life. So my dad looked at me, he said, you know what? That's a good idea. So what should we do? Let's sail around the world. So he said, that's a wonderful idea, but I have one condition. You have to earn the money so we can get food on the table. I said, no problem at all. So we did an agreement on a napkin, as you do, with a signature on it. And I called Lego. And at Lego, I got them to sponsor me. God knows how I did it. And I had them sponsor me a range of different boxes of Lego. And the boxes had one little mission because I wanted to create a kind of jewelry. So a small Lego man with a necklace around. And then I wanted to have a Lego man for each of the countries we were sailing to so I could sell them when we would get to the harbors across the world. So I got thousands of Lego bricks from Lego. I built all these Lego men in advance, and then we jumped on the boat and we sailed through the canals first down to Paris. Fuxian. And, you know, I had to do business here, so there was no food on the table. I kind of figured out, so I went up to the Latin Quarter. Now, if you've ever been to Paris, you'll know there's something called the Latin Quarter. That's where they sell all these antique books. And I was looking at this amazing volume of traffic going back and forth with all these tourists, and I thought to myself, wow, if I could get all this traffic, they'll buy my LEGO men. So I stood there at the corner and waited it But for about a day, I think. And then I realized these Parisians, you know, they're a little bit lazy. So they go to lunch at 12 o'clock noon and then they come back at 2:30 in the afternoon. So I stood there for a day or two. And then the day after, I went up to one of the guys, the one who had the most traffic. And I said to him, why don't I continue operating your shop while you're closing down? So you'll earn money while you're having lunch. And then I can use it as well to sell my Lego men. And he was a wonderful guy. I think he felt a bit sorry for me standing with all my Lego men? So he said absolutely in French, and I answered back in Danish. And then I had all my Lego men standing there, and I sold out every single one of the 300 Lego men within a week. I gave him his money, I got my money, and then we continued selling around the world. And that was the first time I learned about traffic, about building your brand, and later on how to respect and understand cultures.

And how old were you?

6 and a half. Don't ask me how I did it. I have no idea.

I am absolutely speechless. I mean, where was I at 6 and a half? Drawing in my coloring book.

Well, all due respect for that, I'm sure I was doing that as well.

Oh my God, you are So inspirational. That is an outrageous story. I love it. I love it. So now I want to go to your books. Which was the first book you wrote?

Well, the first book I wrote was actually in 1994. And it happened because LEGO later on reached out to me. And I've had a lifelong relationship with the company. And they reached out to me in 1994 and said to me, They wanted me to do that global branding strategy. Back then I was 24. I'm 51 now. And I thought a lot about it. I have to say, I thought about it for about half a year. And then I came back with my strategy. Now I'm a guy of simplicity. I think Winston Churchill supposedly once said, I wanted to write a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time. So I thought a lot about my strategy. It was only 4 words long. basically said, quit the plastic and go digital. Now, if you remember history very well, you'll know that in 1994, that was the year where the World Wide Web was invented, right? So what I basically did was I pushed LEGO to get into the digital space. And their response was that I was fired. I lost my job. They thought it was the most ridiculous strategy ever. So it took them about a year to realize that perhaps there was something into it. And in the meantime, I sat down and wrote my first book called Brand Building on the Internet, which is the first book ever in the world to talk about how to build brands online. And that was really my first book. So long story short, it was in 1994.

Well, you know, Andrew Novak just wrote in from Paris. He's a member of our MG100. And he said, hi, CB. Hi, Martin. Martin, please adopt me. And my answer to you is no, I'm first. So, okay, second book now. What was next?

Well, second book for me happened when I realized that things can't continue being online. So I realized we had to work with off and online. So I developed a term called clicks and mortar, which really is the idea about online and offline, which later on, by the way, was adopted by Charles Schwab and Mark Thompson. But the book was really about how we have to have a fine balance between our 2 lives. So that came out in, I think, in 1999. And then I wrote a book called Brand Child, and Brand Child was based on the largest study back then among kids, where I wanted to understand kids' influence on parents' purchase behavior. It was a partnership we did with Millward Brown, which is a British semi-global research company. I think we interviewed 14,000 kids around the world, and what was extraordinary about that book was many things. I think one of them were that I learned a very profound insight. And it was that kids' influence on parents' purchase behavior was enormous, much bigger than we ever thought. And back then, and this is, I think, in 2003, we learned that 54% of all car purchases in families were decided by the kids, not by the adults.

What? Yeah.

And that was in 2003. It gives you a sense of how profound it is. Even bank choices. I mean, some of the most extraordinary decisions like, you know, doctors and stuff like that had a much bigger influence by the kids than we ever thought. Um, I also really— I asked a question back then, and this is way before the Kardashians and all that stuff. I asked, what would you rather be, rich or famous? And I remember the kids wanted to be rich. And if you do the study today, it's by far being more famous. Um, and I also invented a term back then called, um, texting.

No.

Which is kind of the idea of that you're sending messages, SMS messages, right? So that was back then. A lot of other interesting— I did 2 predictions which were very interesting. One prediction in Brand Child was that in the future there will be a concept where every kid on planet Earth will have their own personal online brochure that will post all the messages and photos on it. It will be their branding catalog to brand themselves to the world and secure popularity. And I think 2 years later, Facebook was invented. So that was really Brand Child. And then I wrote Brand Sense, which was my next book about the impact of our senses.

And first, I want to talk about your Brand Child because I didn't realize it back then, but when I was in branding and marketing at General Foods, Post cereals used your information. Because we were looking at, you know, we worked with psychographics and demographics back then, and we realized that cereal was not a decision that was made by the parent. It was made by the child. And so we started focusing our brands more on children, aside from the children's cereals. Uh, one of the things we started looking at is what colors do children like?

Yeah.

And that sort of spread in various departments in General Foods. And one was frozen foods, which I also worked on. Birdseye frozen foods. So it was because in order to get children to eat vegetables.

Yeah, exactly.

What were the parents going to buy? And the children were selecting based upon the design and the color of the package. So we were using your philosophy back then and I didn't know it.

Wow. Well, it's, it's, it's fascinating because, um, you know, everything we talk about now can— is like a hammer. You can either use it to hammer someone in the head or you can use it to hang up a beautiful painting. And I do believe that with all the techniques I've developed over the years, that of course, sadly, you can use it in, in both ways. One, one of the more positive ways, in my opinion, was when Charlie Bell, which is a Late Charlie Bell, the former, former, former, former CEO of McDonald's, reached out to me and asked me if I could help him reinvent the Happy Meal. And I said to him, yeah, I'd love to if I can make it healthy. And Charlie, he was a nice man. So he said to me, absolutely. So my goal was really to create a Happy Meal, which was so powerful that I would make kids eat broccoli at the age of 6. And so we created a narrative and the narrative was that broccoli was the bushes in the forest. The cucumber was the murder weapon. The tomato was the blood. And we had these amazing narratives going on. We teamed up with Shrek and we rolled it out first, a pilot in Germany, and the kids loved it. And the parents, they said, my gosh, little Peter's never been eating broccoli before. How did he do it? And the franchisees loved it because the premium price was much higher. So I went to Oak Brook, which was a headquarter back then outside Chicago for McDonald's, and I showed it to them. And I learned new— one new word here. They said to me, it's interesting. And I thought, yes, they love it. So I went back to Europe and I was waiting for this whole rollout to happen. And 2 years later, The new Happy Meal came out and it had an old cardboard house. It had a useful burger with sugar on it. It had the French fries, a cola, and now with an apple.

And well, there was a step forward, and I remember that change. At least it got them to vegetables, uh, fruits kind of thing. Yeah, but, but I want to tell you the translation for it's interesting in the South, people of my color say, isn't that special? That's equal to, oh, that's interesting. So now you have—

And I heard another one that is, bless your heart.

Yes, yes, that is from the South.

I'm collecting.

I love it. So now go ahead, continue on.

Well, listen, I think what I learned from that was that I can walk around with all my theories using the power of narratives and colors to make kids eat healthy. But I do think the reality is you also need to get the organization with you. And I think here's the issue with everything we do in communication and marketing. It's extraordinarily powerful because perception is stronger than reality. I mean, I don't need to tell you, he had a previous precedent, which were all about perception, right? And I'm just saying, right? So I think the end of the day, what I've learned is that this is powerful stuff. I think probably the most profound story I have, which is reflecting the impact of this work of mine, was when I many years later wrote another book called Biology, B-U-Y-O-L-O-G-Y. Which were based on the largest neuroscience study in the world, where we scanned 2,000 consumers' brains using fMRI. And the reason why I wanted to do this study, because back then the concept of neuromarketing didn't exist. So I created that term. And the reason why I thought it was so fascinating was because I realized during the Brand Sense book that I couldn't which was another book where I started to use the senses as a powerful tool to communicate. But I realized you can't ask people about a taste because people can't even describe things anymore. So I thought, why don't you just scan the brain? It would be much smarter. So we started to do this. And just before, I asked myself, what would be the most profound impact I can have on this planet in terms of what I would discover? And my mom was a heavy smoker back then. She was smoking some 40 cigarettes every day. It was horrible. And I tried to persuade you to quit smoking and I did all sorts of tricks and I had a bet with her. I would give her 10,000 crowns, was about $2,000 after, you know, if she could quit for a year and guess what she did. And then the day after she started again and it was just complete failures. So I thought with myself, why can't I do reverse communication? Why can't I persuade you to do nothing, or to go opposite, to stop doing things, just as I can persuade you to do things. So we started this project. And one of the things I realized through the neuroscience work was that the health warning on the cigarette packs— so the general health warning, which you still have on the cigarette pack in the United States— that actually had a reverse effect. In fact, it encouraged smokers to smoke even more. And it was a very, very controversial finding. I worked with GlaxoSmithKline, which had the See Smoking Program cigarette, and I worked with governments in Canada, in Australia, with the EU, and a range of other countries, and in the US. And it showed up that actually it was true. So as a consequence of that, we started to remove the health warnings on cigarette packs, and we started to make the cigarette packs white, completely white, just very simple. And if you are jumping on a plane after COVID-19 and you travel to Canada, Australia, or Asia, or Europe, you will notice that there's nothing on the cigarette packs today. Today they're completely white, which is a consequence of that book. No, here's the sad news. My mom died. She passed away because of smoking. But I remember the day she died that I also thought with myself at that stage, already 30 million people had saved their lives because of that book and because of those insights, which we later on calculated had had a profound impact on making people quit smoking. So I think what I've learned out of our work, this discipline, is you can use it, you can use everything for the better. You can change lives. And I fundamentally believe that books are changing lives. So when I'm writing a book, I'm not just writing it for the sake of selling it. I'm writing it to change the world a little bit. And I think Biology Among Many of My Books actually have changed the world a little bit, right?

Yes, yes. So, you know, with these white packages of cigarettes, is the brand name on it or nothing?

No, no. Well, the brand name is actually on it, but it's in a, um, sterile version. So it's in Helvetica, and it doesn't matter if it's Camel or it's Marlboro. And this is what's so fascinating, CB, that One of the observations we learned from our lab study in Oxford that was done in Oxford was that when I exposed smokers, let's say Marlboro smokers, for, let's say, a cowboy or whatever, which by the way were fake symbols we used, these symbols were some we made up in the lab. So it had never been shown in an ad before or anything. And when I showed Camel smokers for Camels and all these symbols, which Camel owns as a brand, what I was really surprised about was an area in the brain called the nucleus accumbens, which is the craving spot. And one of the things we discovered was that the craving spot is— and I hope it's okay if I'm swearing.

We're in the living room talking, right?

Ah, so the, the, the, the, The craving spot is what I call the no bullshit zone. You can't lie, right? If you are hungry for chocolate, for smoking, for gambling, by the way, for a range of different things, then the nucleus accumbens will be in activation. So when we scanned the Camel and the Marlboro smokers and looked into the nucleus accumbens, here's what we learned. We learned that when a Camel smoker were exposed for Camel symbols, the nucleus accumbens lit up.

Wow.

like a fireball.

Yeah.

But when we exposed them for Marlboro symbolics, nothing happened. So our brain at a subconscious level would select what it should be triggered by and not. And we as human beings at our conscious level in our brains will not even have a clue about it. Um, and that was a very profound impact because it basically taught me and confirmed for me one of my very classic theories, which is what I call the Smash Your Brand Theory. So the Smash Your Brand Theory, it's based on the observations of the Coca-Cola bottle, which were invented in 1915. And the briefing was to develop a bottle so smart that if you drop it on the floor and it smashes into thousands of pieces, you can still pick up one piece of glass. And I call that device for a smashable. And a smashable can really be everything. It can be a color, think about the blue box from Tiffany. It can be a sound. It can be, you know, D'oh from Simpsons. It can be a pattern. Think about Louis Vuitton or Burberry. It can be a swipe. Think about Apple, the iPhone. It can be a tactile sensation. It could be really everything. And that theory, which actually I came up with almost 25 years ago. That theory I lost in a court case in Australia because Murdoch had copied a magazine which were exactly the same look and feel as another magazine. He just called it a slightly different name. And the opponents used me as an expert witness to explain that actually Murdoch had copied that magazine. And I lost the case because the the expert people said, well, listen, you don't have any scientific evidence. So I had that in the back of my head for 10 years. And then I combined that with the cigarette smoking theory. And I finally confirmed that the smash your brand theory, so the smashables actually are more powerful than a logo. So a smell is more powerful than a logo. And all these touchpoints are more powerful. And that's the reason why You today don't need to see the Disney logo, just the Mickey Mouse ears or the Apple iPhone without the logo. You recognize it anyway because they're all based on that smash your brand theory. And we learned from my neuroscience study in 2008 that in fact, it has a much stronger and much more profound impact if you talk subconsciously to people. And that whole theory was the reason why when I redesigned the cigarette packs, across the world that I put in a generic font. And because then I would not steal subconscious brand equity from a brand, which we learned from that study actually made you smoke more. I was basically mixing up people. I'm confusing the brain at a subconscious level. So people really didn't get the craving anymore. And that's the reason why already, I mean, some 15 years ago, 10 years ago, I would say 30 million people had quit smoking because of that theory. Right. So yeah, it's fun stuff.

So, you know, I'm really surprised that you lost that case because I'm going back to the days again when I was in branding where, you know, you would pass by, for example, a bakery store and you would have a fan to push out the smells and you wouldn't get to the end of the block before you turned around and said, you know, I'm just hungry. I'm hungry for something sweet.

Oh, we did a study on that. I want to tell you a story about that. We actually did a study on smell and on on sound. And my most favorite study was a wine store, a fake wine store we set up. And we only had French and German wine bottles in that entire store. And then we played very subtle French accordion music. And as we played the music, the sales of the French wine went up 77%.

Yeah.

And when we changed the sound to German music, you can imagine the German music, right? And the sales of German wine, can you believe it, went up 69%. And I was there when we did the experiment. And whenever people left the store, I asked them, so why did you buy this French wine? And people said to me, I don't know. I was just kind of in a French mood. Oh, it's just so fascinating. So we did the same study on smell. So we teamed up with a hardware store in New York City. And so selling ovens and fridges and their sales were doing really badly. And I said, well, let's infuse senses into it. So I had them all bake apple pies in the ovens and the sales went up 66% over 4 weeks just because of the smell of apple pies. And you know why, of course you get hungry. It's the craving spot, but it's also because you're tapping into what I'd call rosy memories. So the childhood memories where you actually are buying a piece of memory from when your mother was baking stuff for you, right? So yes, the senses are very powerful.

And so I'm just realizing, my God, I can't believe it didn't hit me before because my middle name is Costco. Why I can't walk by that roasted chicken without thinking You know what, maybe we should have roasted chicken for tonight. First of all, the price is ridiculously low, and then you see these wonderful chickens roasting.

Yeah.

Smell it, and you know, so you've got 2 senses going. And I'm thinking, oh God, it's wintertime, you know, um, we have roasted chicken in the summer on the barbecue. And you walk by their bakery and No.

Yeah.

Oh gosh. I have not realized that Costco is manipulating my senses into that.

Well, you know, it, it, it is very powerful stuff. And I'll give you a little, I'll tell you a little secret, which I learned later on that we don't have taste preferences. So what you like, you actually don't like. And I'll, I'll tell you the reason why. It's not true what I'm saying. I'll put it into another frame in a second. So you get the context of it, but very few people, I'm sure you included, hated coffee or hated beer the first time you tried it. Right. It was like, oh, right. Um, so why do we like it today? Well, the reason why is because when we drank it, it was the first time we said to ourselves, yes, I'm an adult. And Because I couldn't become adult, I would continue drinking it. And I would have this sense of belonging with my like-minded friends, all feeling I belong to this new tribe. So I'm elevating from one tribe to another, and that would prime the taste. It was basically locked into the taste. So when we today analyze taste, there's, I think, only 2 aspects of taste preferences. There is what we call the prime taste, which is happening through childhood, basically all of it. And then you also have things going through the womb. Um, so, um, for example, if you take carrot juice, carrot juice is one of the few tastes which are— so if you were to, if you were pregnant and you were drinking a lot of carrot juice during pregnancy, your child would love carrot juice when, um, it grew up.

Yes.

So certain tastes are going through, and that's the same, by the way, with sound. Um, so I'm not sure if you're familiar with what's called the greenhouse children, which were a theory going on in 1982 to '83. was about how you raise children by talking to them while during pregnancy.

You say, here, go back and remember that music that you play so that they—

exactly. Yeah.

How did the next race be honest?

It was extraordinarily powerful. And it actually is true, all of it, because we've done a lot of, you know, experience to understand how we affect people at different stages from a good point of view. Because if I can prime people to actually hate smoking, for example, before you were even born. No, that's pretty powerful stuff. So yes, the sensory thing, which became Brand Sense. That was a book in, I think it was 2003. And I think one of the things which I liked about the book was the Sensogram concept. So if you look at the screen right now, you'll see that the Sensogram was really an idea about mapping down our senses in all sorts of different ways. So you'll have smell here, You have a sound here. You have a touch here, taste, and sight. And what basically I was saying is that if you have a score of 1 out of 5, and 5 is the highest score, you literally would be able to map down how powerful your brand would be. So I could, for example, say, well, how powerful is— let's take Coca-Cola back in the days. Coca-Cola was really good at touch because they had the tactile bottle, right? So I would give them a 5 out of 5 here. Taste, very signature, high. Sight, very iconic logo. Smell, really bad, down here. And sound, they actually had a branded opening sound, and I want to teach the world, you know, these things. So actually, if you did the Sensogram for Coca-Cola, it would look like that. But what happened over the years when I started to talk to the folks in Atlanta was they started to dilute the brand. So first of all, on taste, they would invent the Post-it mix. And the fountain really had no— you can't taste the difference. So that would be a score of 1 out of, you know, the gas bottle was replaced with a cup, right? So that was really 0. Smell, of course, was already low. Sound, they would change the logo. There would be no signature sounds anymore. You wouldn't have an opening sound when you open the bottle, gas bottle. So that would be bad here. And sight, in fact, they started to change the color of the logos for a while as well.

Yeah.

So we actually ended up with, you could see, a very tiny fraction of the brand. And what you noticed was that, in fact, the brand was starting to collapse. So one of the things I spent a lot of time with these guys on was to get the brand back. And that's the reason why today, when you see the glass bottle, it's actually coming out of that theory, because you can't buy the glass bottle in many places in the US. But you'll notice that all TV commercials, if you see a TV commercial or you see a video, They always have a glass bottle. And that comes back to that smash your brand theory and the whole idea about how to make this brand smashable and maintain that memory in our brains. Right.

You know, it's absolutely true what you keep saying, because I started to see the bottle in stores and I don't remember if it was Costco and it came in this little case, like when you, back in the day when you got it in this wood crate and I have to tell you this personal story. My mom— I hated coffee my entire life. My mom would have it every single morning. I would smell the coffee. And my mom since passed. And my husband, my new husband, loves coffee. And now I wake up to the smell of coffee. And every morning my mom pops into my head.

It's Just—

and now I've started to drink iced coffee.

And the next step is Irish coffee. You know that.

So you're so correct on how our members' minds are triggered. You know, the smell to the past and to the present. You know, I, I talk— I remember being in a meeting with a CEO of a bakery store during COVID a bakery chain. And he said, gee, you know, one of the things we missed, we didn't see this coming, that our customers— and this was in Italy— started coming into the store, the bakery shops, and trying to get flour and baking soda and milk during COVID Yeah. He couldn't understand it. Well, he never looked at the psychographics that said back in the day when your mom used to bake for you to make you feel better, right? And so that smell of that fresh-baked apple pie— you couldn't really get to the stores to buy bakery products during COVID So if you could Stack up on all the ingredients and bake them yourself for your family. So as a result, I know here in the United States you couldn't find flour, you couldn't find milk, you couldn't find baking soda because everybody was going back to their parents and their grandparents to baking during a time of illness. And so—

I mean, I spoke to one of our clients in the US, which is one of the larger food distribution companies, and they are responsible for basically all the independent retail stores and grocery stores in the US. And when we look at people's purchase behavior in the US, the majority of people are behaving as we did in the '60s now in terms of the brands they're buying and in terms of the product categories they are buying.

Yeah.

And that's the reason why your Kraft Heinz is doing well right now, because people are really buying what we call comfort food. You know, everything about that. Um, but it, it also— and I mean, some visionary folks have been really good in this. I mean, one of them, uh, what was, was Walt Disney. When Walt Disney was with his brother creating Main Street USA in Disneyland in California, uh, he actually went back in the history books and identified the time in our life where we had few, no crime, and had no wars, and identified a a certain period, and then they replicated all the colors and the design of the houses from exactly that period of time. And as you will notice when you go to Main Street USA, that all the houses are around 34% smaller than the original houses. So when you walk down Main Street USA, his idea and vision was that people should feel at home and safe and feel uncomfortable when they would leave the theme park. Now, this is a theory happening in the '50s, which is pretty extraordinary about being so visionary. But I'm saying all this because everything we do, I mean, 85% of what we do, you and I do every day, is happening in our subconscious mind. Only 15% is rational. We think we're very rational, but yet we still fall in love, right? CB, we still knock on wood. We still press hard on the remote control when it's flat for batteries. And all these things is a direct reflection of that we kind of want to fool ourselves that we are so rational because that's the trend in our society. But actually nothing could be further from the truth.

Martin, you know, I could talk to you all day, all year, but I want to jump to something. So I always ask my guests, what do they feel are the top challenges that they see in the C-suite today? But I want to, in your case, tie this into your new book, The Ministry of Common Sense. I am so excited to hear how you can tie— I know you will do this— the challenges in the C-suite to your book, The Ministry of Common Sense. Because I was in your class. And it was a powerful class. So I'm turning the floor over to you to answer that question.

Thank you. Well, I want to give you a little bit of a backstory, all of you watching and listening, that we live in a very peculiar time right now in our life. And one of the downsides of what's happening now is that we slowly are losing the grip around the concept of empathy. Empathy is the ability to put yourself in the shoes of another person and feel what that person is feeling. Now, the reason why that's happening is because of multiple reasons. One of them is social media. Social media is based on this self-fulfilling bubble, which is confirming or affirming what my views are. So I'm really not exposed for other views. It is computer gaming, which is confirming everything I want to do and always matching the levels to it. It's 280 characters on Twitter where I have no time, no time and no patience to listen to nuances or the real context. Everything is black and white and yes and no. So what's happening in our world is, as you know, we're slowly losing Empathy. And a study by the University of Michigan shows that the empathy levels over the last 30 years has dropped dramatically. In fact, the study conducted over 30 years among 14,000 college students showed that empathy levels over the last decade alone has dropped some 48%. So this is a very important—

I'm going to come back to that because I want to tie that into the social Okay.

And that's a very good topic. Yeah. So here's the issue. We are craving for empathy because empathy is also to recognize other people. It is to feel for other people. And the problem is we don't do that anymore. So when you talk about what the biggest challenge for business leaders is, it is to be empathetic. It is to be able to connect with other employees and like-minded coworkers. And how the heck do you do that on a screen like this are some of the challenges. But there's another side benefit with that. One of the things I learned when I was writing the book, The Ministry of Common Sense, was that there's a direct correlation between empathy and common sense. The more empathy you have, the more common sense you have. The less, the more nonsense you have. So it really is, is the two, those two are correlated. So I would claim that the biggest challenge business leaders have today is to maintain and build empathy. And I'll give you another reason why this is so important. If you work in a corporation today, working through Microsoft Teams, let's say, you're only one link away from working somewhere else. And if there's 2 links or 3 links, it means you're working for 2 or 3 people. It means you're a freelancer. It means that you become a personal brand. brand. And I think a lot of people have realized during COVID-19 that the loyalty from the company to you is kind of nonexistent, right? I think a lot of people have realized that that camaraderie and that sense of belonging they had in the offices kind of faded away. It's not— no one here. I think a lot of people have realized there's no private and no work anymore. It's just one big blend thing. And so as this is happening, companies increasingly are shooting themselves in the feet because what they're doing is they're saying, well, gosh, we are saving real estate here, we're saving transportation, we're saving food, whatever it is, the security and the canteen and all that stuff. So they take that money to the bottom line. What they don't do is to reinvest it into the culture and the organization. And the board sees these financial gains, you become addicted to it. So when COVID-19 is over, I'm pretty sure we will not see a situation where everyone will rush back to work. In fact, we see that trend happening both in Australia, in Taiwan, and in New Zealand, which are the only 3 countries in the world where they don't have COVID-19 at the moment. And we see that they're not going back to work the way we wanted them to do. So that means you have to build and maintain a culture from home. So how do you build empathy? How do you maintain common sense when you can't do it because empathy is falling apart? So this is the biggest challenge for CEOs. Right now.

So I'm taking notes. Um, I've heard various people say that they feel what's happening in the C-suite is specifically amongst men is the feminizing of leadership.

Yeah.

How do you sort of come to grips with leaders wanting be more empathetic and yet be recognized as being more feminine?

Well, I come from the northern part of Europe, Denmark, and, um, Denmark probably together with Sweden is probably the most equal countries in the world. Perhaps Iceland will be there. That's about it. So I'm born and raised with the idea of that you would have as many women as men on the board or CEOs. And really, there is no difference, I would say. So as a consequence, as a reflection of that, I would come with a very bold claim. People are always talking about the European man, which I'm pretty sure is defined as a person which is more feminine, is less masculine. The French are more chic, right? You have the Euro man. You have these different terms coming out. And I actually do think it has happened partly because you did not have a separation in school, you did not have a separation in the workplace and all this stuff. What has happened, however, and this is very peculiar, is that when you then look at those countries, in fact, the pendulum has become almost reversed. You would actually see that women sometimes have more power than men have. So the minority has become men, not women anymore. So that's creating a whole different dynamic because I don't need to tell you, men are good at certain things and women are good at certain things. Now, women can multitask. Men are probably good at certain other things. Women, too many women in an office is not always a good decision, right? Too many men and testosterone in a meeting room is not always a good And I think where we, what we have to come to terms with in our lives, and particularly in the United States of America right now, is that we each hold skills. And I, I'm so petrified of that. We're going down this cliché black and white type of view of as soon as you don't have a woman there, it means that, oh, you're not equal now, or the man is not there. Well, then you, you know, it becomes this very stereotype behavior. Because I think we have to get to the recognition of that we all have different skills. Let's utilize that rather than putting a label on that he's a man, he's a woman, he's Black, he's white, you know, he's gay, he's straight, whatever it is. And I think that's— I think US is struggling a great deal with that at the moment because you very quickly are cornered and put into a box.

Yes.

And then you're racist, or then you are feminist, or then you're whatever. At least you are, right? And I think we've seen various versions of that in Scandinavia and in the Nordic countries, but I think we come on the other side at the moment. But, you know, it's a very strange debate. It's very interesting at the same time. And it's a very, very touchy topic where you—

Yeah.

Both you and I, right now when I'm talking about it, I have a constant filter filtering what I'm saying. Because I know I can very quickly burn my fingers. Not because I'm evil or whatever, but because— ah, why can't you express what you want to feel?

Prime example of the cancel culture, where you—

So much, so much so. Yeah.

Speak your true north because— not because so much you may offend somebody, but somebody may Take it as offensive. Yeah. And then you just delete your entire history of contributions.

Yeah. And it, it, it's horrible. And one of the things I do when I run workshops, in particular in the US market, is that I, I call it the unbuckling moment. And I swear, I go into— we have a meeting room, we have perhaps 20 or 30 people in the workshop. We had the whole senior management there. And I very much on purpose swear a couple of times in the beginning. And you can see the fear in people's eyes straight away. And then you can see people are looking around like that and people are smiling. And I call it the unbuckling moment. It's like, whew.

I can relax. Yes.

And I think we need many more of those moments because here's what has happened in the US. We have developed safe zones in the US. I go to Hooters. There we talk about sex. I go to Disneyland, then I can be a child inside. Then I go home. Then I can go to the garage. There I can talk to my mates while watching football and say, how's your relationship going? Oh, it's horrible. Oh, look at that goal. It's amazing, isn't it? We have zones established where we jump from one zone to another, but in the space in between those zones, we can't express ourselves anymore. And it creates a straitjacket feeling where people don't feel they can breathe anymore. It creates stress and unease and, and it's just not very healthy. I have to say.

Yeah. You know, I heard that when, uh, yesterday it was yesterday I was on Clubhouse and Simon Sinek was on and they asked him the question I asked you about, uh, feminizing of leadership in a different way, but it netted out to the same thing. And he very carefully said, well, and I'm paraphrasing, please, audience, I'm not sure that we— the issue is whether or not we need more women at the top of the organization. He said, I think that the issue is we need more women thought and lead— thought and methodology, we need to have that in the boardroom. So how women think, we need to add it to the boardroom, and we need more women. So I love that. And because I think he was thinking just strictly in terms of the mind, the values, the culture, the the way that women think. And then he thought— he caught himself and he said, oh, this is going to be interpreted that I'm saying we don't need more women, we just need to tune up men. And I, I smiled to myself and I said, oh, this is a man who's watching the cancel culture.

Yeah, yeah. And I, I don't think it's healthy because I— he is where I am on that topic. I believe that anxiety is generated when you can't express yourself, when you feel at unease and constantly on alert. I think a lot of us feel like that in our lives at the moment. And I feel we need to get over that. I think we probably be at an all-time low right now in the US when it comes to those things. And it's amplified through social media a big way. Social media is not very good in my opinion. Um, there's some benefits with it, I don't need to tell you my dad. He met his new girlfriend after my mom died through Facebook. Okay, that was good. I mean, but I mean, beside that, I want to say that there's no doubt about the reason why the democracy is in a huge crisis at the moment is because of social media. The reason why we lose empathy is because of social media. The reason why the suicide rate among kids have increased. increased 300% in the US over the last 2 years is because of social media. And we need to understand and use social media as a tool. Right now it's used as a weapon.

Mm-hmm.

And we don't know how to use it because maybe we're not born and raised with it and we don't have the right skillset. We don't know what the dangers are around the corner. So, um, it's, it's super important. And I think, you know, I don't have a phone and one of the reasons why I skipped having a phone altogether was Because I just didn't want to be part of that poisoning mindset. I just don't think it's productive. I think it's destructive, to be frank.

You know, I interviewed Dr.— and I want to just make the statement, then jump to your new book. I interviewed Dr. Tim Clark the other day, and he made a profound statement that I went, what? What? Oh, yeah. Okay. And he said that he felt that COVID-19 was the great liquefier.

Yeah.

I had to like— it's one of those statements that you have to process quickly, and you get it quickly, but then you say to yourself, what did I just get? I got it, but— and he had such a beautiful sense statement about that because we were talking about social justice and he said, sadly, this is one of the things that COVID has done, this great liquefier. And I said, tell us a little bit more about that. And he said, it's sort of stripped— and again, I'm paraphrasing— it sort of stripped away all of the fluffiness and put us all at the same level because we can all get this disease. And we can all die of this disease and there's no separation there. And so in the time of great liquefaction, it's a chance for all of us to rise together.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, and I agree with you, I think a lot of people have gotten a second chance because of this. But I also think there's another thing which has happened. I call this the, the entry point theory. So my My theory is that, as you know, in marketing speak, we have entry points. We have 7 entry points. We have when I'm moving away from home, or when I'm getting my new firstborn newborn baby, suddenly there's baby strollers everywhere. And we call that entry point. And there's 7 entry points. I will claim that for the first time ever in living memory, we have an 8th entry point, a global synchronized behavioral change. And there's a range of different things coming out of COVID-19. But I think one of the most fascinating aspects around it is that we have a whole new generation, the millennials and younger, who actually has gone into a time capsule and fast-forwarded themselves 35 years because of COVID-19. Let me explain. If you look into the brain, you'll notice there's an area called the amygdala, which is the fear spot. Fears and anxiety lives in that part of the brain. And as it is not developed among young people, you just don't have that aspect, or it's very little. That's the reason why kids don't have any fear. I'll jump, let's see what happens. And then we get older and then, oh, we shouldn't do that. I'm getting too old and I'll break my leg and, you know, all this stuff. But what's fascinating and somewhat concerning is that, of course, young people I'm invincible, nothing will happen. But they realize through COVID-19 they're not invincible. The world is not invincible. So they've jumped into a time capsule. And where you and I probably are walking around talking about bucket lists— what do I want to do when I pass away, or just before, at the age of 50 or 60 or whatever age we are— then kids, young people are doing that as well. I can't count the number of times I've spoken to 15-year-old kids talking about what's on their bucket list. So they've almost fast-forwarded 35 years. So we're going to see a new generation coming out on the other side whose behavioral patterns are going to be completely different than what you and I were, and where they probably would be more wise to some extent.

Yes, I agree.

What I found intriguing.

Okay, we've got about 6 minutes left, and I absolutely want to talk about your new book, The Ministry of Common Sense. Please tell the audience who have not seen it— and I don't know, there's no way that they haven't seen it because I've been pushing it out as part of your launch.

Thank you.

Tell us, tell the audience about what it is, because when I first heard the name, I thought, has Martin gone crazy? The Ministry of Common Sense? What is he doing here? But it is a read and a half. So tell us.

Well, I think the reality is, as we talked about before, that common sense is slowly fading away from planet Earth. I mean, I was on a plane some time ago and they— I don't know what to say. I was sitting there and they found a new way of doing entertainment systems on board on the planes now, which is really remarkable. It's called a contact tracing form. And then you can sit and entertain yourself a little bit with that one. And the first question on the contact tracing form was, have you been or are you in close proximity with anyone, or have you been over the last 12 hours? And the only thing you had to do was just to look to your right and get the name of her and her phone number for the contact tracing list, of course.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, common sense is not that common. And I realized that A lot of people are extraordinarily depressed at work. You know the studies as well as I do, around 75 to 80% of everyone actually don't like to work where they're working right now. And we know from our studies that 45% of what we do every day is tied up in bureaucracy and wasteful meetings and too long PowerPoint presentations. And it all comes back to the lack of common sense. So what I realized was, if you want to achieve something, if you want to make people happy within the organization, because remember, a brand is every touchpoint the consumer comes in contact with over the entire span of a company's life. Well, that's including people working in the organization. And if they're demotivated, I don't need to tell you, that's going to impact the world at some stage. So I realized I have to start with what I call the immune system. And unleash that straitjacket and remove the nonsense and replace it with common sense. So I wrote The Ministry of Common Sense, which is just not a funny title. It's also a real thing. We actually have real ministries of common sense running around the world in everything from Maersk, the largest shipping company in the world, to Standard Chartered, which is one of the largest banks in the world, where they literally have started up ministries and which are killing one stupidity at a time. And believe me, they are busy.

Oh, please tell the story about the remote control.

Oh yeah, well, well, as I was in there, it was Miami 2 years ago, and I wanted to watch television, so I grabbed my remote control and, um, it looked like this. I didn't steal it. Or did I? I won't tell you. And you know what? It was kind of funny because it had 6 arrows going up and down. It had A, B, C, D, E, F, whatever that means. It has 3 numerical keypads, and then it has as a bonus 2 on buttons, not 1, 2. I'm not sure how that works. If you press the second on button, the television's extra or supernatural on. Anyway, I switched on, I watched television for a while, and then I wanted to switch it off. Or rather, I tried to switch it off because this remote control has not one, but it has 2 off buttons. And when I press the first off button, the light in the room dimmed in kind of a sexy, moody way. And when I press the second off button, guess what? The air conditioning system switched off. But of course, the television was still running, right? So I had to go under the table with my butt in the air, unplug the whole thing from the wall. And that's really my story, except from 3 or 4 months later, which is so crazy. I'm sitting next to this passenger on a plane to JFK and I'm asking him, where are you from? And guess what his answer is? He's an engineer at that company, right? So I'm saying, you must be kidding. So he's saying yes. And he's explaining this and that. And I pull up my PowerPoint presentation where sort of photo of that remote control and saying, what the fuck went wrong with you guys? And this guy looks at me like a deer in the headlights, not understanding a word. I'm saying, what is the issue? What is explained? Well, in the old days we had problems. We had a Netflix department, a TiVo department. We had a recording function. We had a TV function. We had all these different functions and all these departments could not work together. And they're all fighting for the real estate, real estate on this Remote control. So I came up with a brilliant idea. The idea really was to separate everything into zones. So one zone would be for TiVo, another one would be for Netflix, and it worked perfectly, he said. And I looked at him and I said, except one thing, I don't know how to switch on your television. And this is the essence of lack of common sense that As I write in the book, when you see a bridge and there's a little crack outside the bridge, you know it's a signal for something much more profound inside. The remote control is or was that. And I think a lot of companies are struggling with that. It may be you are waiting on the line for 25 minutes and listening to greatest hits of elevator music through all the decades while being told that this call is for quality purposes. And, or it may be that you have to fill out a form. And when you finally filled out the form and one thing was wrong, you don't know what it is. You press submit and it comes back and deletes everything and says you filled it out wrong.

Yes. Right.

Or even worse, when you have to scroll down, how old are you? And I noticed you were scrolling. And scrolling, getting older, right?

Older and older.

I mean, all these things.

Tell the story about the airplane and you know the luggage, and you saw them cleaning the plane, and how you said, "Please tell that story." Well, I only have thirty seconds to tell it in.

You really catch a missing bee.

But audience, you gotta hang in for this one. Yes.

Well, the story was the Swiss International Airlines, which is a leading airline company in Europe, asked us to see if we could help. Build some brand equity into the company. So we worked on economy class to make things work better. And one of the things we did was I always merged myself into the reality of passengers. So I become a passenger, I become a cabin crew or whatever. So we sat on board on the plane and was observing everyone going in and out of the plane. Now, Swiss International Airlines had a problem. They're not on time anymore. That's a problem. You call Swiss, but you're not on time, right? So I sat there watching all the passengers disembark from the plane. And then I noticed that the cabin crew and the cleaning staff went on board on the plane. They would take the armrest up, vacuum clean the 3 seats, take it down, and go from aisle to aisle. And I said to my colleague, this is crazy. Why did they do that? So let's just try it. So I heard my colleague Crawling in above these armrests down. And I took the time, I measured the time. And then I said, let's just try it when it's up. Went in and we saved 4.5 seconds or 5 seconds per row. And then we did the math. That's 6 minutes for the entire plane. So we just said, let's just keep those armrests up after we cleaned the plane. And we saved 6 minutes of turnaround time. And immediately, Swiss jumped basically 2 numbers in being on time in Europe. And that's a very simple common sense story. The sad part is common sense is not that common in general, right?

I totally agree. Oh, Martin, I'm so sad we have to go. But listen, everybody, you know, come to the ACEC conference. You'll hear Martin. So this conference this year, it's the conference for Association of Corporate Executive Coaches. And you would think we're going to have all kinds of topics talking about how to be a better coach. Surprise! We're going to talk about understanding the mindset of your buyer. You want more clients, right? Well, then you need to understand how and why your clients buy. And Martin is going to be there to talk about that in relationship to common sense. Stay tuned. If you want to know more about the conference, DM me like the kids say. You can find me on LinkedIn too. Thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to come back on Thursday. Thursday we do our show about social justice in the workplace, and I have a surprise guest for you. Come back then. Until then, let's see, what shall I say? say this week? Have a curious week. Have common sense this week. And get Martin's book. We'll see you next week, if not on Thursday. Bye now. Thank you, Martin.

Bye.