EP 09 - Charisma, Discipline, and Trust

Sep 2

At first glance, cinema and insurance appear to be opposites. One is about spectacle, the other about protection. One promises entertainment, the other promises security.

In this Episode:

Francois Jacquemin and Neil Wirasinha compare the film and insurance industries, revealing shared lessons in risk, product development, consumer emotion, and trust in the age of AI.

Yet when you study their mechanics, the parallels are unmistakable.

Shared foundations of risk and product development

Both industries carry long development cycles, substantial investment, and a high tolerance for uncertainty. A film can take seven years to reach the screen. An insurance product requires years of design, actuarial modelling, and regulatory approval. In both cases, the risk is not abstract; it is tangible. It is financial, reputational, and deeply human. Failure is visible, costly, and often unforgiving.

The role of emotion in adoption

Success in both industries comes down to emotion. Audiences do not buy a ticket for numbers on a spreadsheet. They buy for the feeling a film creates. Clients do not purchase insurance for clauses in a contract. They purchase for the reassurance of protection. Emotion is not decoration; it is the bridge that turns a transaction into trust.

The importance of execution and discipline

Charisma can launch a film star’s career or win an executive a seat at the boardroom table. However, without discipline in preparation, rehearsal, processes, and delivery, charisma can collapse quickly. Execution is where credibility is built. Both industries remind us that promises only matter if the system behind them can carry the weight.

Technology and AI as enablers, not replacements

In both sectors, digitalisation and AI are reshaping the customer journey. In cinema, data informs audience targeting and enables campaigns to be adapted in real-time. In insurance, AI offers the potential to personalise coverage, improve service accessibility, and answer customer questions without judgment or delay. But technology is not a substitute for trust. It is a tool to serve it.

The leadership shift that matters

In film and insurance alike, leadership means more than managing numbers. It means balancing charisma with discipline, risk with opportunity, data with emotion. Above all, it means safeguarding trust. Whether you are asking someone to sit in a cinema or sign a policy, you are asking them to believe.

Timecode:

00:00 Introduction to Tom Cruise's Unique Approach

00:35 Tom Cruise: The Leader and His Team

01:01 Tom Cruise's Business Savvy and Brand Management

03:37 The Intensity and Charisma of Tom Cruise

05:25 Comparing Tom Cruise and Dwayne Johnson

08:19 Navigating the Film Industry: Meetings and Strategies

18:40 The Long Journey of Filmmaking

32:52 The Art and Science of Movie Trailers

37:08 Parallels Between the Film and Insurance Industries

47:15 The Role of Technology in Insurance

48:08 The Importance of Availability and Reassurance

50:54 AI and Customer Interaction

53:42 Challenges in the Entertainment Industry

56:49 The Economics of Movie Production

01:11:53 Community and Fan Engagement

01:18:46 Data Utilization in Insurance and Entertainment

01:32:40 The Future of AI and Human Interaction

Francois Links:

Apple Podcast

Transcript:

Tom is, he's a product, right? He's a guy that makes films, but when he joins a movie, he's unlike any movie star that you're gonna have. Because he will, he, he will. He joins very early as a producer to a movie. He'll read the script and he'll say in parts of the script, actually, I've done this before and I want to do it a different way.

And it's great 'cause he's then gonna push himself to deliver the film in a different way. Take the stunts and take the risk up a level. Yeah. But it's also things that are interesting to him. But he's surrounded, but he's been doing it for a long time. But what's his approach? He's a leader, right? So it's like, uh.

His business. So it's his own business. It's, it is Tom Cruise brand. Tom Cruise is, um, he's, he's the man. He's the man. He's the man. Well, he's the, he's the, he's the physical representation of a lot of work by a team. But he's the CEO, right? He's the guy that's on the screen. But there is a big team behind him.

And that big team have to manage a big personality. Um, I don't think Tom's incredibly demanding more than most, but for longevity, it's about quality and consistency. Right? And that's what he's got, which is remarkable. I always take my hat off to people that are throwing themselves out of airplanes and thinking about what the audiences need.

And he also won't trade being a movie star. Like he genuinely is one of the few movie stars that hasn't made television and, and those other things. He really, really respects what that is. So it's a, it is about focus. You know, what he wants. Uh, he has a side on his objective, his vision, and, uh, and he's going for it a hundred percent.

How, how does he bring the people around him to, to towards that? Uh, I think it's Tom, right? Yeah, Tom is Tom. I mean, if you, if you met him in the street, you, you would probably think he's pretty average, average guy. But because the relationship is through the screen, like everybody knows what Tom Cruise looks like, um, obviously he sounds different in different countries depending on whoever's doing the voiceover.

And, and in Japan, I have had the same voice as, as Tom Cruise. That's the only thing we have in common. Funny enough. Uh, but no, he is a pretty remarkable guy. But it's a big product. He's a big product. He doesn't take on too much when he leans in. The production companies have to really support him, but he brings in a full team the way that he's pushing himself so hard.

First of all, mentally reading the script, preparing for a project, but also delivering, delivering on the day. Execution is everything. He understands that why take six takes, right? He wants it to be perfect. He's not a one take guy, but he's rehearsal practice, right? When the cameras are rolling, he's on it and he knows the cost of production, right?

The cost of production by the minute, is probably one of the most expensive things you're ever gonna find. So when you have a movie star that really thinks about the business side of things, it makes a difference. Okay? But also he's respecting, he, he's, he's the custodian of his own brand, which a lot of stars, you know, they're, they're, they're outsourcing things to their teams to say, should I do more of this?

Less of this. But Tom, he's not on social in the same way that say, will Smith is on social. And, and I sort of respect the Tom side of things because it keeps the essence and the brand, whilst you are, everybody in the world knows who he is. It keeps that level of mystique a little bit higher, that if you want to see him go buy a ticket.

That's literally it. So he respects the business in all of those lenses, but when it comes down to promoting a film and being accessible to his fans, he's very much there. He seems pretty intense. So it is a, it is like he's a leader that takes things in their own, his in, in his own hands and, and, and drive things, uh, by convincing people that this is the right way.

And his team, of course, they, they work for him, but they still have to be convinced, right? So, and, and, and, and at the end of the day, public follow. So I guess that there is, there is something into this in his leadership style that brings him and, and, and, and, and the people into, towards the, the vision without doubt, without, he is ridiculously charismatic.

Right? And most good leaders are. Really charismatic, but listen to the teams around them. And he's that guy as well. He's, he, he is listening. He's listening. He's taking the advice. He's, he's, but he's also thinking about, he's constantly in broadcast mode. Uh, so when he's working, if that's working in front of the camera, working the machinery behind the camera, working at a a, a movie conventional, going to see the movie executive.

That's where I've had my relationships with Tom is, is really just at movie conventions. So he's always acting, but he's, he's even behind the scenes. He's acting, he's always thinking about that moment. And he's very different. I've, I've seen a lot of movie stars. In the waiting wings ready to come out onto a stage and have that conversation.

Tom's different, he's on a hundred percent of the time. I'm sure he is. It is very different when he is relaxing and, and drawing his energy from somewhere. Without a doubt he's an extrovert, but even extroverts need a break. Yeah, yeah. Um, a lot of actors are, are, are introverts and generate their energy and can play a character because that's where they draw that energy from is being that character.

He's the opposite of, he's remarkable. Genuinely remarkable. But there are others too. I mean, Dwayne Johnson is a huge movie star, right. But he's like a huge character. Like if Tom asks you a question Oh, physically huge as well. He is, I mean, in every episode he's a big guy. Yeah, he's a big guy. There's no getting away from that.

But he will, he will. And, and when I was running, uh, marketing teams and looking at digital marketing, you would talk to, he talked to Da Dwayne's team, but Dwayne would. Ultimately join those calls and say, what else can I do? Do you want me to do it slightly different for Instagram or TikTok? And he's very aware, he does have young children that probably ask him, or, you know, what are you doing here?

But he really feels that he's part of that, and he checks in. And when Dwayne asks you a question, I would say that your heart rate goes up 10% when Tom asks you a question. I think your heart rate doubles. So there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a difference in being that leader as well. I think that, you know, the industry doesn't waste Tom's time and Tom doesn't waste your time, like I say, on set.

He wants to, he's a perfectionist, but he, he puts the effort in to minimize any of that time. And that's not to say that Dwayne runs, runs over in production. He's also incredibly professional. The industry is not built of professionals like this. Some of them, the ego is. Not as controlled. And ego's a big part.

Yeah, ego's a big part of charisma, of being a leader, but ego is everywhere. I mean, you know, in boardrooms you have big egos as well, and, uh, that's something that you always have to play with. You, you, you suffer. I mean, if you're a CEO and you're chairman or other people have their own ego, then you have to, you, you have to understand that and, and be able to, to, to accept it and, and, and play with it.

You know, there's the, there's the negative ego, there's a positive ego, and, uh, sometimes it's posi, it's the same person. But then at that moment, you need to be able to weather the, the, the, the, the, the storm and, and, and, and get the new basis to, to, to, to be getting to the decision. So whether it's a, is a strategy or a a, um, a movie or something that you change in a scenario, there's a convincing element.

And, uh, the convincing element is, um, what you bring on the table. You need to convince the other. There's the, the, um, there, there's, there's what the other is going to, to, to, to bounce back to you. And, uh, if the emotions are too high, then you get nowhere. So I find that always interesting. There's a moment in, in board meetings or probably in those moments it's exactly, wait, it's changing.

It's changing the mood. This from no, no. Two people fighting against each other to, okay, let's, let's make it work and, and, and finding a different basis. Usually it's, from my perspective, is a different basis, not the same basis as the one that triggered the crisis. It's, it's, I mean, the cultures within the film, organ, the film world, and those closed meetings where you are meeting with a producer or a movie star, or a movie star producer, and also the faculty of your own business.

So the movie business. Beating Heart and Soul is in Los Angeles. All the major studios are in Los Angeles. When you look at, when I look at the roles that I have had in, in different businesses, and I think about the longest serving part of my career at Universal Pictures, 20 years of my life, um, you think about the energy, it's complex, right?

They're complex, big businesses, but a lot of the decisions, to your point, a lot of those decisions stem from a filmmaker meeting a moment, a meeting of, uh, of a, of, of typically a US set of senior executives and, uh, a movie star producer. And you might be there as part of the international, uh, team, uh, as, as a part player to that.

The, the, the feelings that you have in the rumor, you've gotta get pretty comfortable, pretty quickly with That's a movie star. Yeah. Right. That's a movie star. That's a really important producer. And you also get to see your US colleagues operating at the highest level because it's common. More commonplace for them.

Doesn't mean they don't get nervous, but equally their job is to try and convince the creatives, the producer and the actors Yeah. To actually help them in the journey of marketing the movie, distributing the movie, helping with the partnerships for America. They're very much focused on America. And over time, that then changed into how do we become a good global team, hence the inclusion of some international folks in the room.

So that's, so those rooms are really important now, as, as, as, as one of the handful of people that's traveled to the la meets to meet with those folks. And you are sat in the room. You can't be a passenger, right? Yeah. 'cause if you think about not just the, the carbon footprints of getting there, or even the moment to bask in the glory or the, the light of being in those meetings, you are nervous.

Why are you nervous? Well, first of all, movie studios have, like any complex business, your energies are focused probably in three ways, most likely three ways. First of all, as a department head that I was, I'm managing upwards to that LA based pseudo executive that have been around for, for a long time, and I've been around for 20 years.

They've been around for longer, and they've, they've seen so many different iterations of. Of, of movies and scenarios, you are always managing upwards. They're the same people that are on the email chains that when you are asking for more marketing budget or here's a challenge, or here's a problem that they're trying to solve.

So you are not really yourself, the most natural version of yourself, right? In a room like that where you are thinking, these are people I manage up to, to become an actor, you kind of have to, you kind of have to really think about what's the performance of, what do I need to do? What's the, the fewest, smartest words that I can choose?

And that's a bit of a challenge for me. I'm not gonna lie, because I take into the room the other relationships that I have, uh, in the job that I'm, I'm holding, right? So think about the, the, the energy also going downwards to the teams that I'm leading. The team would've put so much work in for me to be at those meetings.

So the preparation of, uh, of comparative movies or things that Instagram's doing, or tiktoks doing, or any of the data digital trends that we want to try and talk about. Or maybe let's not do another intro for a cinema chain. Let's do something that TikTok I've never seen before. And you are holding that idea in your head and you think, well, I can't let my team down, so I've gotta represent it.

Well, not only representing it well for your team, but also managing outwards. Right? From when you are in that meeting, you are managing outwards from the teams that you are leading, that are not your direct reports. These are the people that are in the 50 international markets that have to release the movie.

Yeah. So you're thinking, how do I respond and respect them and make sure that we can create enough focus on us. To help with that. And, and that could be the agencies or it could be the marketing director of South Korea or Japan, or, or Mexico. Very different cultural needs. So as you are proposing your question, and nothing's really pre-prepared for these meetings with filmmakers, it's quite open space.

It's not prepared. It's not prepared. There is a degree of staging, but actually it's a creative industry. Yes, of course it's a business, but creators want to also, so you need to improvise. You do. You do. Okay. And, and you're thinking you may have some, some, some notions of some ideas you would like to ask, but you've gotta wait for the moment and as soon as the conversation starts to head towards the direction, yeah, it might not be a perfect fit, but a fit that's an semi awkward fit is better than no fit.

Yeah. Imagine not making that opportunity, taking that question. Asking something. I think it's really important that you can lean in and, and take the risk. Creatives have to take a risk. And, and in those wholly unnatural situations where you are sat with the president of a studio, they're, they're board that's very impressive.

And filmmakers and, and you are a guy that's come in from London, jet lagged, you know, sort of three hours of sleep. You've gotta take the risk because, you know, it means you can start that relationship and you know, you can ask a question. I, and it is always good to ask a question, not make a statement.

Imagine traveling that far to then go and make a statement that you make poorly, it's a question is a much easier route in because it starts a conversation. Yeah. And you keep the card a bit closer to your chest. I'm very meeting when I was, uh, it's, it's the beginning. I was in Munich for, for Alliance and, uh, I'd been a CEO for six years, but.

You know, a regional local CEO is totally different when you have a board member and the stake are much higher than your simple, your team, right? So, um, and we're developing a, a global strategy for steering employee benefit. And we went in a room, there was several board members, and there was the adversaries.

You know, so if you, if you go in there, there's always this, um, you, you have, if you, if you have a team of people, uh, in whichever level it is, you tend to have people who have different views, different angle. Uh, there has to be, of course, have to be behind a vision, but they have to be different. And they, if they always agree, then there is no competition between ideas and it's flop basically.

You can get it right, but you can get it wrong. But if the competition between ideas and between people, as long as it's healthy, it's actually, uh, it, it can grow forward. And, uh, the, the, this was the, the case there, the room was people, which are the, the board of the holding. So there was. The, the, the people were different, different views, different angles, different responsibilities.

And uh, when the subject came, the subject I was working for came on the, on, on, on, on the table. Uh, we were prepared. We, we had a team of people on our side, but on the other side, they were prepared as well. And they were on the opposite side, let's say. Not necessarily completely anti the idea, but they didn't want to have the steering in the way that we proposed.

So they came with their point and the argument. And what we needed to do is to get out of that meeting with a positive outcome, which was, uh, which was, uh, which happened by the way. So, but everybody played a different role. I was playing the guy who was, uh, the, the project manager to, to implement it, to, to develop and the strategy and get the compromise.

Um, my, my boss was there more like the, uh. The bumper, I would say. And I found that amazing because there was a, a, a moment in time where a, a gentleman with a, the highest responsibility took, took actually a step back from the table circled around the table and start writing on the, on, on, on, on the board to make, to be the mediator.

Yeah. And at the end of the day, if every, everybody has his role and it works to, to come back to your point earlier, you can't just step back. You can't chicken, chicken out of this one. No. You gotta wrap that. You have, you have to, to be there, you have to be very clear and you can't be too long. If you're too long, you just put them asleep or they say is a, is a joker or whatever it is.

But the strategy has to be clearly understood. And if you know your place, the others will team up with you to get to do to the optimal result, which is uh, which is something interesting. I think that's really making sure, I mean time management in a meeting like that, because it is. I've been there, right?

Where somebody has an idea and, and then it perpetuates into something else. But there's a point in time that the airtime becomes stale Airtime. Yeah. And you've gotta respect, I think when you're in a meeting, a complex meeting, you've gotta respect the airtime that you've gone in. You've had the opportunity to say your piece, support a project, um, but also be open-minded enough to support somebody else's thoughts as well, but also criticize thoughts.

I think, I think to your point, competition, right? There's only, there's only so much. Resource, money, time, effort, all of those things. And you have to really lean in and get to the right ones. Yeah. And, and, and resilience, right? Because when you're working on movies, you, it's a seven year process at times.

That's, that's what's amazing. You know, I, I thought insurance was long term process because we, we insure a person for one year in, in medical health insurance, let's say. Yeah. Or, or disability or, so you insure for a period of one year, then you can, you know, change the contract or do so, um, and, and then a person can be, can be sick for one year and then you pay for three, four years.

So I thought it was long, like, you know, cycles are long, but seven years, my god, it's crazy. I mean. Here's the thing. It's such a creative industry that a filmmaker that has, has decided to make this movie. And, and, and it's not a simple decision to say, decided to make this movie. They've been thinking about it with lots of things going on in their minds of When's the right time?

How would I do this? And, and, and so they've, they've lived with it themselves for maybe five or six years. Oh my God. And then they, and then they push it towards, here's a treatment, here's the initial idea on a, on a, on a very short read that they might share with a very close circle of producers, friends that say, I really like that.

And then what, if so and so was in it, how would this work? And so it shapes up into, into a script. That script, depending on how it turns out, they have to go and pitch it. Like any business. Yeah. They go and pitch it. They pitch it to movie studios, they pitch it to streamers. Movie makers typically want to go to studios just because it's the art of watching a movie in a cinema.

You know, no distractions. The phone is away. That is the perfect way to see a movie. It's not the reality of how most films are consumed today, but it's, it's the reality. I'll come back on that later. Right? Yeah. Good, good. But it's, but it's a really big thing that they have to really, so they might live with it for three or four years.

Some directors live with it for seven or eight years. And then once a studio says, great, we are thinking about do it making this movie, they will ask their internal teams a green light, uh, team, so to speak, to run the numbers. So first of all, they'll listen to the story. Hey, we like this story, really like it, but we're gonna run the numbers.

And the numbers are what films are similar to it. So you start to build out the risk cases. Yeah. And you kind of call the base case. This is the most likely outcome. And you put a, a set of film titles that are four or five film titles that feel like this is probably the outcome. Uh, and, and you put those titles together because you want to understand how much they cost to make, how much are they going to make?

Who are the movie stars? What's the, what's the global appeal? Does it have more appeal in America? Does it have more appeal in Europe? Or, you know, China was a factor at points as well. And then of course, you have to think about like, good risk assessment. You gotta think about what's the upside. So what's the high cases?

What if it works out amazing? How much could we make? And not that it's a greed mindset. They normally are a set of films that you go, if this really works out, not virally works out and catches a moment, but planned growth and upside, what does that look like? And then you've gotta look at the downside as well.

What if it doesn't work out right? What if it really, you know, it comes out of production and it doesn't meet the requirements of what we wanted? What's the worst way that this film works out? Or what are the degrees of that, that downside. So there's lots of risk taking in there. So a studio then takes the film, right?

You've done the risk model. You, you sign up to, right. Here's the business plan. Hold on a moment here. Yeah. I'm the insurer. You're, you're, you're the creative guy. And what, for the last three minutes, you just describe how an insurance product is being developed. It's not far off. Right? Yeah. There's an idea.

There's some data. You run the numbers, you do a risk assessment. You look at the population, there's upside, there's downside. How much capital do you have to put up or what works, what doesn't work? Do you, don't you have to put capital because there's also some models where each could be self-sustainable and the business plan afterwards, I guess you have target market.

Exactly. You know, you, you, you underwrite your, your, your, your segments. You do, you do. It's, let's not forget the movie business is a business and everybody, not everybody, there's a large proportion of people that think it's lights, camera, action, glamor, and it is a passion thing. Don't get me wrong, out of the different people that can work on a movie, and I mean the, the real broad sense of people in production, people in operations, people in finance, people in marketing, the one thing that binds those people together is they are film fans, right?

So, so you do get people that really love film that are part of film. And you can tell a real film fan versus like a casual film fan, is when you ask somebody what's your favorite film? They will never give you an answer of a single film. They'll say, kind of depends how I'm feeling. I can give you a list of 10, maybe 20.

So that's when you know you've got film people. So throughout the whole process of risk assessing if we should make this film or not, it then goes through a process of once it's signed off and it's greenlit at a scenario, that's when the production budget gets released. Okay? That's when the process really starts to make an, and production is the most.

Like daily charge on a film because you might be shooting for six weeks, uh, in multiple locations, which means the pre shooting of that film might take six months. The actual shoot of that movie in a very compressed world is like maybe three months or four months, and then some reshoots, and then it goes into post-production.

This is the hard job of any content creator is, well, that's a long story. 'cause films are long. It's like, what's the shortest version? What's the, but also what's the most compelling version of that movie? So it then goes into post-production. Okay. Where special effects are added, other attributes are added.

And then towards the very end of that journey, which already from when they said, let's go make this movie. This could be a year and a half later, or 12 months later. So you choose the right time to launch it. Yeah. So then you have to pick what's the right release date for this movie and a lot of production.

Happens thinking about the right release date when you're in the summer months, when you're in school holidays, there's lots of up, you know, lots of opportunity. When you head into the end of November, Thanksgiving, there's Christmas, uh, holidays still to play out across international markets. So they're the high points.

Yeah. And then you hit low points, right? Where you don't date a, like, you wouldn't date a horror movie, uh, in, in, in the middle of the summer because audiences want big blockbuster, wildly entertaining films. Most horror films are scheduled round Halloween, the darker months as well. So it makes sense. Mm mm So, exactly.

So you've gotta, you've gotta, you've gotta make sure that the production process and the post-production process allows you to meet the needs of when you're releasing the movie. Yeah. You speak about rollout, I mean, in insurances like rollout, you just, you know, go through all the, the process of product development, um, and uh, then it goes through.

Um, well, let's, let's say in, in a, in a big group. Yeah. So a local product will be, will be developed by the, the, the local companies. So it's, it's, it's like a, um, a top down, maybe in the country, but both bottom up for, for, for the, the group perspective. And then, uh, they get, they get to have the product approved and that happens at the center.

So it's a bit like your green light team? Yes. Um, and is, is done by various people. Does it, does it mean the, the compliance, the risk requirement? Does it mean the standard? What, what does the group want to cover? What does, doesn't the group want to cover? Um, then, uh, there's the profitability element. All the scenarios.

Yes. And then comes the moment where you say, okay, green light, but it's not the green light light. There is a, a, you know, there's few staging posts along the way, I'm sure. Then, then, then, then, then you need to, to, to, to implement it at local level, you know, and although a lot of things have already happened in identifying whether it's fits in the process, uh, in the system, do you need a new system, uh, or a new element, a new development, uh, access to that development.

We spoke, you spoke about competition for resources earlier in, um, in, in, in, in, in, in, in that situation, if there has to be a development, it's a, it's also a different budget. So it's the technical or the it or digital budget that need to be granted as well. So it's not only about product, it just the whole machinery fit within this, uh, this, this, this, this, this streamline.

That's pretty, they're pretty impressive machines though, right? And the rollout. Yeah. Yeah. The roll, the rollout's so critical and, and the rollout, I would say for a movie. Because a lot of the process that has taken place, we've found the direct, we've found, we've found the talent, we've got the movies in production.

At no point yet has the, the team that's taking it to market has really been included because it's all been metrics based, you know, uh, dollar based, what's the income, what's the, what's the outcome when you take it to those local teams. And that's why we have these film conferences where you bring in a movie star and you make them feel as inclusive as possible.

They've been part, because you said earlier, they like the movies, so they Exactly. The emotions needs to be there. Right. This is the reason they've, and it's hard work, right? Working in the entertainment business, it's really hard. So for them, it's great for them to feel part of it. But it's not on every movie.

So often when the movie is either nearing state of, you know, ready for the market, or we share it with them always in English, it's, it's rarely translated because you, you wait until they say, let's translate it. So you show them the first cut of the film, or at the second cut of the film, and you wait for their reaction, and you're looking for two reactions.

First of all, did they like it? Like what's their actual emotional response to it? And different people react differently. The, you know, a Japanese general manager will share his thoughts in a different way to a Mexican general manager or whatever that might be. Um, but once you step away from the emotional side of, oh, I loved it, right?

You then ask them the, the, the, the one question, what's it gonna make in your market? Right. That is the moment that will either validate the scenario that you, you you created, or it doesn't validate it. And it can either the, the number they, they decide it's gonna make X million at the box office in our country, and it's always in dollars.

So sometimes the dollar fluctuation can make a difference. Um, but typically they have to sign up to a number that's managed by a head office team and it's, I feel bad for them. Right, because this film has not been made for your country and you're being put under, under pressure. Exactly. So to love it, like it was homegrown in Mexico when actually it was more made for the European market.

That's, uh, funny insurance. There's, there's some similarities there I can see. Um, but it's, it's people business. I mean, we, we, yeah. You know, we, we cover, um, all my career. I covered people. So not, not things. Yeah, people. So whether it's life, investment, uh, health, uh, disability or accident, it is always very emotional things for, for, for people.

Because if you are sick, you know, your health can't get more emotional than that. You know, if you are healthy, yeah. You know, you, you, you can, you can be doing stupid things or even unhealthy or, or, or, you know, eat too much or wrong or, or take too much risk. But when something's happening to you, then it's super emotional.

And, uh, well, I guess you, you mentioned earlier about the, the, you know, the emotion, you know, so, and, and because it's people business, because it's, it's covering people, the pe the, the, the, the distribution. So where, how, because insurance is not. It's not bold, it is sold. You bring that product to people and, and I can see a bit that in the movie as well, right?

But you bring something and, and, and the intermediary, they need to feel they can sell that they can, they need to have the ability to trans transfer that emotion to their client to say, look, you need to buy this product because it's going to help you somehow. And, and there's a trust element that is, and trust is based, is based on, on an emotion.

Do I trust that guy? Do I trust that product? I'm sure in your am I going to pay lots of money to get that coverage and to get nothing for the next year or two and trust that something's going to happen. Trust is a huge thing in your industry. I would say that it's bigger than the movie game, obviously, because what's the risk to the consumer?

You pay. On average, $15 or 10 pounds in the UK or, uh, prices are going up across Europe, but the risk isn't so big. But actually it's also the time that you are taking to get there. So, so, so trust's a big element, but also for the movie machine, right? So if I'm thinking about the general manager that's now watched the first cut of this film and has to think, oh, who am I gonna sell this to?

Yeah. They have to think really. They normally will do it in collaboration with their sales team and their marketing team. Yeah. And often they will get a chance to watch the film with them, the movie with them, and they will say, well, who can we sell it to? Is it, is it the older audience, the younger audience?

What's the, what are the different segments of that? And then isn't that the same everywhere? Of course. Just, um, let me rephrase this. If a film is being developed, there's been some focus group that say, okay, we're gonna target this audience. So you're saying that once the film has been, you know, all all edited and in, in, in the final product, it could be something else.

Oh, for sure. So you use, I mean, data points. I've been around the industry for a long time and, and even before I was in the industry. I mean, I, my first degree is in engineering, so I kind of really like the art of the number at times. So you, you will break a trailer. So think about a movie trailer that you see on a, on a, a brand new film that you know nothing about.

A studio when they break that trailer. It's a very, very precise art form that, first of all, even taking a movie down to that first trailer, it's taking that filmmaker's baby they carried for seven years and cut it down to something that's two minutes long that the filmmaker has to say. I'm okay with that going out there as a piece of marketing.

Yeah, right. So it's a huge emotional departure for them. And then the responsibility for the studio is, let's make sure we break this as broadly as possible on multiple platforms, ideally in cinemas, of course. So people get to see it in a darkened room as the film will be consumed. But that's a very small percentage of the number of views you get on the first trailer.

Yeah. It's normally, of course, on social media, YouTube, and, and then, you know, YouTube, thankfully on television is the same landscape, but when you, when you're thinking about mobile phones, you've gotta flip it. It's now vertical, so it crops off quite a lot of the story. So when you break the trailer, you break it against multiple audiences.

You spend a lot of money on multiple platforms. You break it and then you wait for it to go live when it goes live. And hopefully all the technical sides of getting it on platforms work well. It then becomes. Not just a marketing piece, but a research piece. So you break it against multiple audiences and then you look at how the movie, how the movie trailer performed against those audiences.

Did the old, did the older audience watch it through to completion? Was it expensive to get them to view it on YouTube and, and you have your own baseline data to say this was successful or not successful from an audience appetite point of view. And, and, and when you do that, you, you can, you can redirect exactly.

So you can do, do that. So it's not like there, there's a product and there's the way the, the media that is being used to, to to, to push the product towards the client. And then you can see the reception of the, of the client and you can adapt it. You give the audience what they want. So a movie that I worked on a a while ago, secret Life of Pets, the first trailer.

So we don't just look at how a trailer performs from the number of views or, or, uh, solely, uh, or the engagement rate in terms of did they watch it to the end? Did they watch the first 20 minute, uh, 20 seconds, sorry. But you also look at the commentary, the social commentary, and, uh, and it, and it's, it's not new.

It's been around for a while. So even Secret Life of Pets, in the very first trailer, there was a lot of social commentary around, I really love the, the poodle that's headbanging. And, and so he became part of the marketing campaign, but he plays a very small role in the movie. So when people bought their ticket, they kinda liked that There was this headbanging poodle called Leonard's, but actually it was more than that.

That was just part of the world. You give audiences what they want. Yeah, typically, and, and sometimes a movie trailer becomes its own. Collateral to break through the competitive noise around movies. When I worked on the very first 50 Shades of Gray. Yeah, that's, that's actually super important. Yeah. The very first 50 Shades of Gray, which the first trailer was the most important thing to have out there, and it was the team behind it did a master stroke.

So much so that it became newsworthy that TV channels were carrying it across the world, saying the first trailer for the first trailer, 50 shades have broken. It's been viewed over a hundred million times in the first 48 hours. These are metrics they wouldn't typically talk about, but our publicity teams would help fan the flames.

Yeah. Of how big this event is. And what did that do to the competition of other studios thinking about opening a movie over Valentine's weekend? Well, they simply pulled up their movies and move them to a new date. Yeah. Because why go into battle with something that's gonna gonna change that? Um, so yeah, the movie trailer is, is a real battle piece.

It's a statement piece. It's a great time to learn as well. It, it's, it's a very, it's very temporary though. In, in, in, in, in, in. Insurance and finances more, it's more long term. Yeah. You can launch a product, it can take a while, uh, to, to to, to take place. And, uh, but it's so much money that is pouring into marketing and brand recognition, especially for big brands.

Uh, but you know, in, in, in Luxembourg, uh, working for the, the number one local player, they do the same at local level. So the brand is extremely well known there, and it's about steady. Yes. So I don't think that they want to be 50 shade of blue or, or something like that. Um, or red. Um, they, they're much more into, into creating long-term trust.

And I, and, and, and I don't know, I don't know if it's, it is definitely wished, but what, what bridges the, the, the, the, the marketing campaign there? I think the thing you've always, every single marketing campaign. And, and let's face it, at least 50% of the spend is on media that you get feedback on. So it's social media, it's all of that digital media that you can hear what your customers are saying.

Okay. It might be less emotional than maybe a movie trailer, but it's still something, to your point, there's nothing more emotional than your, the healthcare and it and human beings think more of their families than they do of their selves. Yeah. So when you're trying to get the right healthcare for your family, you are really at your most vulnerable.

Yeah. So there is gonna be a piece of creative storytelling in that moment that really helps go, wow, I really love my family. I wanna spend more on it. You are not there going, I love my family, but I want the cheapest thing out there. Yeah. You are thinking that is not how the human brain works. You're thinking what's the most level of protection as a parent that I can give even to my dog or to my family, or to any of those things.

You have emotional things around. So I think a lot, a lot of. The digital marketing discipline is exactly the same. Tell the best story that you can, hope people react to it, but also let people share their opinion on it. And, and, and that's, that's extremely, extremely important to it with the quality team that took over all the, the client complaints or client feedback work on improving it.

Um, so the angle is somehow different. The, the angle, um, for, for insurance, I believe is, is to learn from, from, from the media and, and, and the movie industry on, on how to use and, you know, best react on client's feedback. What does that mean? We, we used to actually get the feedback literally Vibram and, and, and, and see what, you know, what did they mean.

And sometimes it was being, being changed and sometimes we didn't care about that because it was simply impossible to change all the process for, for, for, for one single request. But the vibe from it. It's, it is super important and, and, and, and, uh, if one client complains, it mean 10 behind have not received the right service.

So you were super reactive to, to adjust and, and, and, and I think that in insurance, although it was very difficult to change that until now, that, uh, with the increasing ability with the, the, the new area of AI and the ability to hyper-personalized, uh, the, uh, the contract to the client, the coverage, the client, but hopefully also the services, then listening to how the media's reacting towards client could also allow insurance company to provide the better service because all the timing and the length is different.

The client at the end of the day is what matters. Yeah. If it's a moviegoer selling a cinema ticket or somebody buying insurance, or even the stakeholders that are invested in those businesses, it's the same thing. It's exactly the same thing. Consumers are consumers at the end of the day, nobody wants to go and buy something that doesn't speak to them.

Nobody goes to buy something they're not gonna enjoy unless it's a dental plan. I don't know. But I think the, I think the similarities the, well, I'll tell you one thing, sorry, but I, I would prefer going to the movies than buying dental plan myself. Yeah, I agree. I agree. But both necessary. Well, I always say dental is necessary too, but I think there's lots of disciplines like in your world and, and, and, and probably something that the financial services and insurance could do a better job at.

And I'd love to get your view on this is what movies have done for years, which. They can transport you. They, they literally think about you as that individual consumer. So when you are watching a movie, you can be, when you are really lost in the screen, you're transformed back in time, forward in time. It gives you, you know, love and loss and all of those things.

So only plays on the emotions, even on comedies. Right. There's nothing better than going to watch a comedy in a cinema or a horror film, just because when somebody next to you is getting scared, you can pick up on it. You are looking at the screen. Yeah. But peripherals on it. So the emotional side of it is really, really cool and really important.

You hope that somebody's shouting louder than you so that you, you're Exactly, yeah. I mean, it's, I don't sit next to me in a cinema because I laugh so loudly. And I'm terrified easily, so I can, I can probably give you the next experience of movie going, but I think you, it's like the five D, there's a four D now and then it could be five D with I think so.

I think so. I'm in London, so you would have to come sit next to me in London, that's for sure. But I think the industries are all the same. At the end of the day, we're all trying to work out what's the best route to market, what's the most efficient route to market. Yeah. You know, data and transformation has changed The movie going industry, the the, and it's not just the movie going industry.

Think about the competitive set that I've got a choice. I can go to the cinema and buy a ticket or I can sit at home on my sofa. It's the same for you. It's changing A lot of how we operate is, is that information. Let's come back to that just afterwards, but I just like to answer your question. Do insurance company have to improve and, and, and make their client feel that they're special?

Yeah, I, I think they should. And there's a path they all invest zillions of. Um, of, of, of euros on this, you know, the 250 billion euros or dollars invested every year into, uh, you know, um, AI and, and, and, and digitalization. And, and, and why do they do that? Is to, to create a better service. The client is, to be more efficient, is to, uh, to be quicker for the clients, is to be able to, to develop a better product for the client.

Um, and, um, and, and, and more and more, uh, it's not only about the, the insurance product, it's is what everything is done next, before and, and, and after what we call the claim. So the, the, basically when, when, when, uh, there is a problem and that the insurer has to pay for it. But everything before, if you talk about the health insurance.

How much works need to be done into, you know, improving the health before it becomes a problem. So there is the health, there's the detection of, of, of the early detection of, uh, serious sickness or not so serious sickness that could also help into, uh, improving the, uh, the life of, of, of a person. Of course, you'd like to have a beer or maybe a french fry or, you know, but, um, isn't that better to know that you, you could have diabetes and still enjoy a little bit of it instead of having from one day to the next, you know, life changing, um, event that needs to avoid all those things.

I, I, I completely agree. My, the, the, the, the entertainment industry doesn't have to carry the same amount of pain. Right. And, and, and weight. Well, except for our movie that Yeah, for sure. Right. So for your industry as a whole. It's, it's a, it's not as bad as say, real estate where nobody really likes estate agents or realtors, but there is often a time that I don't know, but, but there's often a time that, you know, that people think, can I really, you know, will they really pay out?

How do, do they really care about me? Clearly the individuals in the trade and in the industry, they're not there thinking what's, what's the way of saying no in the most creative way? I don't think that's creativity in your industry, but there is, but there is a perception, a broader perce perception that might discredit the industry, which you've got to also overcome.

That's a challenge. That's a real challenge. It's, it's a huge challenge. It's, um, and, and you see that everywhere there. There's, well, I was watching a movie the other day and, you know, uh, they were just bing a bit the, the insurance world and, um. I'm afraid it, it is. Sometimes it's senior to the business because you cover people, you cover, you cover things, and, um, not everything is always covered.

Yeah. There are, you know, there are things that are covered, things that are not covered. When it's not covered, it can be a drama for the people. So it's about making sure that when it is sold to a person, a contract is sold to a person or to to, to an employer who wants to cover his employees or employees, then you have to be very, very clear about what is covered and not covered.

And when you decline a claim, you don't want to pay. You also need to be very clear about that and happens to everybody. You know, if you have an insurance, you think more or less that is covered, but you don't have all the details. So how can you be clear, you know, do you want to sit in front of your insurance agent for half an hour?

Is going to say what is covered, what is not covered? Well, of course not. I mean, who is doing that? Even the agent after 15 minutes will be bored. By, by, by. Yeah, by by saying that. For the 276 times. Although it's his job, they do a very good job in being clear, but you need to not be able to do that only once and you know, how can you make it accessible to people?

So there's the, there's the text, there is, there are the agents. There's also the question, the q and a element, which doesn't happen very often in the insurance world. Why? Because the availability of your agent. You know, if you call for the sixth time, then it's going to be, oh my god, you know, I'm fed up answering the question.

I think tech could really help that get an avatar, you know? Yeah. Like a, a movie store. Let's, you spoke about the, you know, Dwayne Johnson earlier, let's say Dwayne, explaining insurance to people, you know, if it's an avatar, you can ask him 260 times the question. Every weekend in the morning, in the evening, he's always available.

It is Dwayne's avatar and he can explain. So I think it's important to have that this, this, um, all round be available all the time. It's probably not because the insurance industry, but if you have all those social media, whichever they are, you, you just look at them. It was like cool, cool, cool. You know, coming back yesterday to to, to London.

Yeah. Uh, you know, what do I do on the taxi years is like looking at LinkedIn, looking at the Instagram and so on, and it's, it's happening all the time. So the micro moment are filled now. Before it was like you look at, you know, the weather or so, and I think. Insurance need to be there also at that, at that moment, or at least available, not necessarily be overwhelming, but be available.

The availability of the service need to be, to be, uh, that would be pretty risk. That would be pretty reassure as a customer. Right? Yeah. I would feel really reassured that, especially when you're traveling away from home and, and you're thinking, what's the, something could happen like, and you could just pull out your phone and get on your insurance app.

Yeah. Sounds strange. But we're so accustomed to having maybe 10 apps open. There's nothing wrong with having it open, right? And saying, yeah, oh, how do you get over jet lag quickly? Or what's your recommends here? And actually getting quite a human response that, of course it's gonna be generative, but it'll be quite a nice thing.

And, and also you can share your mood with it to be able to. Maybe get some advice or, or don't worry, you are covered. Even just the, the reassurance or, or, or, or, or you say, look, I'm, I'm thinking about doing this. Ah, I probably wouldn't do that 'cause you're not really covered for it. Yeah. Whatever it is. I mean, I'm not that, that I'm the entertainment guy, right.

I'm not the insurance guy. But it, but it would feel more reassuring than signing up to a service and being sent a PDF of the terms and conditions you've agreed to that sit in your inbox and you never read. And you really hope you don't have to read until the unfortunate circumstance means you do have to read it and then you read it in language.

That is probably not the language that you would use to choose to, to communicate. Yeah. And sometimes we, we just say, oh, as you could have read in the condition article, you know, so and so paragraph is, you know, it's like, uh, 14.1 0.8 C. What. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for the answer. It's not, it's not working for me.

There is no emotion in that. Yeah. So we need to bring emotion and also in our, in our, in, in, in, in talking to client, there's also 1, 1, 1 thing I'm convinced of is asking question requires courage. And if you ask question to your insurer, you, you're gonna think you're disturbed, insurer, you're going to, you, you know, oh, it's the wrong time.

Maybe there's something else. He's going to be upset because I've already asked the question. So this, the, the fact that you have, um, AI generated avatars that have this trees of ability to answer question that, you know, you don't disturb, you don't feel that there is judgment from the other part. I find that super important.

I think it is. I, I, you've gotta make the transaction of information as, as simple as possible. We've. A lot of us have grown up in a world of, you know, you get through to your insurer, right? You've called the number, you get through to your insurer, and then you know that you probably at least four keypad inputs away from talking to a human being.

Yeah. And that human being is clearly trying to collect your informa, validate who you are, collect your information, and then try and treat with you, you know, triage you in a, in a certain way. Yeah. And then exit the call because they've also got to do a number of these and be available. I had an employee that worked for me, um, ridiculously bright, um, and, and really helped my team grow in, in, in an amazing way and in a great leader that could lead a call or take on ownership of a project, but in her personal life of buying her first London property.

She was terrified of talking to estate agents and ideally would only have to do it online and use an age, you know Yeah. An AI agent in the same way that she said, I've chosen my bank because there are no human beings that work at my bank because the questions I have, you know, it would take me half an hour to get through to them and I'd be so nervous that I thought it would be like a one question thing.

Yeah. So it gives, yes, there's a, there's a, there's actually less anxiety, uh, at any time of the day to go and ask that question. Right. Yeah. Alright. That's very interesting. Good example back. Thank you. There is one thing we need to come back to. You spoke about, uh, we spoke earlier about, um, um, agents, insurance agents, and, um.

We didn't go to it, but there was, uh, insurance companies launched their own online firm because precisely this. There are some clients they don't want to speak to an agent, a broker, whether this is, is representing basically they don't want a human being. Yeah. They just want to be very quickly there.

They want a hundred percent availability at any time. Yeah. And uh, if I'm just looking at what you said earlier about, you know, the, the, the movies, Netflix. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's, you, you said, you know, at home or going to the movies, you have Netflix, but you have zillions of those. There's Disney and, you know, how do you fight with that?

You know, it's, it's, it's, Netflix is an amazing organization, but when you look at, I'm gonna start with the numbers, right? I'll start with the numbers and try and break it down because. To, to a lot of people, you're going, I'm gonna watch a movie tonight, right? So the currency is, I wanna watch a movie. So it's either pre-planned trip out to go to a cinema, or I'm gonna sell my sofa and watch a movie.

And to the consumer, they're the same product, but they are far from the same product and how they're created, right? Yeah. One, which is Netflix, it's a subscription model. Obviously over 300 million subscribers worldwide. Lowest subscription is Pakistan, where it's like a dollar five highest subscription charges, Switzerland, where it's over $30.

Um, and, and, and, and so if they have 30, uh, 300 million subscribers and they own the distribution network, they, they own the platform. And then if you look at the amount of money that they generate, including advertising services, it's round about $39 billion a year. That's what Netflix earns. Right.

Consumers don't care about that. But when you look at how a movie studio operates and there, there's a blend of, uh, major studios, mini majors, and, uh, indies. Um, they're competing for a much smaller share. They're competing actually for about $30 billion of, of box office sales versus Netflix at 39 billion.

But when you take the $30 billion and break it down, the studio doesn't earn that money. Because it doesn't own the distribution platform. Exactly. The cinema chain does. Yeah. Right. And the cinema chains are different. You can go in the uk, you can go to, so the 30 billion, they cover the income for the studio and for the cinema.

Cinema chain. Correct. That's the tickets. That's the global box office. So that could be an amazing cinema with beautiful lighting, sound and screen and great beverage options, which you have to pay more for in snacks. Right. Um, or it could be, or it could be a really aging cinema. In somewhere in Europe where, you know, there it is only open certain hours.

Oh. And no one is in a salary, you know? Exactly. It's terrible. So, so, so really when you look at that 30 billion, half of it goes to the, to to, to the platform, to the cinema and the chains, because they're typically in, they're typically in downtown locations to be part of a city center, or they're shopping malls.

Yeah. As, as, as, as venues that are more of a destination like they do Right. In Dubai nowadays it's a Exactly. So it's like commodity. It becomes a commodity It, without a doubt. So now you've got all of the studios aiming for $15 billion of, of income because half of it has gone to the cinema chain groups.

So now you've got a very competitive situation where you are all trying your best to get to $15 billion of income. Here's the problem, right? When you think about the consumer thinks, well, it's the same product if you look at how you put that cake together, right? So to speak, Netflix, average cost of of, of making a movie is less than $30 million, $35 million.

Yes, of course they have some that cost way in excess of that, and they also have some that sit way below them. Why is it cheaper than the others? It's because they, they will already turn things around with less movie stars. They're shooting using a lot more technology, a lot more ai. So when they know the distribution, they own the distribution, they own distribution.

So they know the value of putting a product through the, their own internal system. So they need to be less broad. They just do something that is totally focused for their, it can be a, yeah, it's a numbers game. Uh, so, so they will create a product that fits their store. Yeah. And some of those products need to have more investment behind in terms of production because it's used to grow subscribers and other parts of that product are there to maintain subscribers.

So they create a product that fits their shelf. So when you think about the marketing they need to do for something that's going into their own store, where they have all of these subscribers already. Their marketing costs are significantly lower. They can be as low as $2 million and stretch as high as $15 million.

Right. Because when you open Netflix, you can see the Exactly. I mean, the algorithm will choose one for you, which is different for me or for exactly whoever. I mean, they do have some hero placements of this movie's opening now, I think. Which helps, which really helps. But then for a movie studio, they're still trying to create fine art.

Yeah. Already they're fighting for less than half of what's available on the table, but they're essentially thinking, how do we make this movie be the best movie it can. Yeah. And depending on, again, a movie studio will make a a portfolio of movies. Yeah. Like any business, it has to balance the risk and make a portfolio.

But some of those movies can cost, you know, 10, 15, $20 million. If it's a genre movie, like a horror movie. Or if it's a really big blockbuster or complex movie, it can cost over $150 million. Yeah. To make that's Disney. Right. So if I, if I, if I, there is there, there are the studios and there is Netflix, but in the middle there's Disney that is as is only little Netflix.

So you can subscribe. But I personally, but they also have those super blockbuster movies that bring one to 2 billion for a release. The Avengers was them. Yeah, the Avengers. I mean they, they created that cinematic universe to exactly help launch their own products. I think they self criticize themselves as well, which is we maybe made our films too accessible.

Uh, and maybe we did too many of them because then you can't forget the fans and consumers typically it's not. It's the same person that's going to, like a film fan is about 20% of the population of a country. It's not, it is not a hundred percent. There is definitely a good proportion of people that never go to the movies, right?

There are more people that you can reach at home. So I think that you've got Disney that is a hybrid, that to part of it, Disney plus definitely serves a need. Um, but the movies, the movie making, the, the movie going model, the movie making model, uh, hasn't shifted quick enough that, that those, you know, those Avengers type movies, um, cost, you know, well in excess of a hundred million dollars to make.

Um, and then you've made the film, but then you think, well, we've got a distribution platform in Disney Plus, but let's not make it available at the same time as it being in cinemas. We have to respect the window as they call it. Yeah, it's called the window for, for income. See, it's interesting, isn't it?

How. Studios are reacting, or there's a new entrant that disturb disrupts the whole industry. And some of them will just react differently. Disney as a certain way. And they're only, the only ones. They, they, there were more in there. Amazon is also entering. They, it was different. I, I, I feel Amazon is different.

They, they weren't, uh, not at all in the movies, but you know, they have clients and they thought, oh my God, let's make things available for them. And oh my God, let's buy a studio. We have so much money we can do that. So there's plenty of different strategies to, to, to get in there, but the bottom line is there is a lot of disruption and changes in industry and, and it's about survival.

So super, super high competition. What, what I see in insurance is, uh. Is is also similar. I mean, the ecosystem is, is quite, it's probably more diverse in a sense, right? Uh, that is many, many different players. So more diverse, maybe every movie is different. So if we can take, every movie is different. You can also have something like that in the, in the ecosystem.

So you have a lot of, uh, different, I mean this regulation, there is, uh, there's a lot of things that, that create borders or it's more local in terms of, of disruption, but there's big chunk of disruption. And even insurance company, they say, okay, what do we have? I mean, there's some companies that agencies do we work with independent distribution or not.

Then independent distribution. In some countries they're very powerful. In other countries, less powerful. Um. But there is, there is a lot of movement and willingness to drive for each of the, of the, of the segment of the distribution value chain to try to, to survive and to, to keep on growing. So how, how to, how to, how to fight against that.

Insurers have said, okay, we have agents now. We, we work with brokers because we need to work with them. They're, they're also very powerful clients want to work with brokers. They have value as well in the whole ecosystem, but at the same time, they, they do that. They say, oh yeah, no, we're gonna work with independent distribution, but now we're also going to have our own direct distribution.

Yeah. Not with. And they come with new ideas and, and it's not even doing themselves. They have subsidiaries doing it. So you spoke about contradiction earlier. You know, which part of the ecosystem are we playing in? Well, we play a bit of this one a bit in this one, and you have tribes inside big groups that say, oh, we compete against each other.

And actually it, it is competition. Sometimes it's even different product or different systems. It's testing the water, see what works best. But it's about survival, isn't it? It's, it's always about trying to get its space. I think that, yeah, it's competition and survival. You know, the, the, the, the, a part of the same conversation always, I think for, for when, when you start to look at a Netflix, they're, they're in, they're in, they're so big.

They're the number one player when it comes to, comes to streaming. They're gonna have the same pressures, right. The, the shareholders and the share price denotes that they have to chase growth. Yeah. Right. And the, and, and they will have to evolve to chase that growth. The, the, the more legacy movie studios, the are still making very expensive movies.

Okay. They've managed to balance portfolios. Uh, unfortunately they're not taking as many creative risks because it's easier to make a film that sits in the same franchise or has the same tropes as a franchise as they've done before, because they can understand the risk reward model that little or better.

But, but failure's a big part of taking product out in the entertainment game. And when you fail hard, everybody sees it. And I've never known the, the podcast in the entertainment business. Probably some of the meanest podcasts I've, I've, I've ever listened to because they, they really enjoy the failure.

They rarely celebrate the successes, but they celebrate some of the failures of movies. And I've worked on movies like cats, so I really understand some of failure. Right. What movie Cats. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Good. Thank you. It made me repeat it. That's painful twice. Um, but it's, but it's really interesting that, because it's been always put up on the biggest screen.

In the headlines and a lot, and it's cultural. You know, movies are a cultural moment and a marketing campaigns are trying to convince people that don't miss out on this cultural moment. It becomes more difficult and because people want to be part of a cultural moment because it's fresh and original or it's so well done.

I mean, bond has a great legacy because it ups the stakes and ups the game each time. I, I dunno where it's gonna go to next. And as the producers have changed, and I'm not James Bond. No, I'm not the, I'm not the next one. There you go. There's the announcement of the day. Yeah. But it's, but it's a challenge.

But when you've, and people, and you've, you've a lot of engineering bias businesses, data-driven businesses, certainly got the social media platforms. Certainly talk about this culture of failure and, and fail fast and see what you've learned. It's really difficult in the entertainment space. Yeah. When you've taken seven years, five years to come up with the idea and another two or three years to get that idea into a product to then launch it and it fails.

It's pretty hard. And it's not just the filmmakers involved, it's all the people in the marketing teams and the agencies and all of those, you know, uh, adjacent businesses. They fail with you and it's hard, really hard. And I think it'd be nice for the successes to be celebrated a little bit more. Yeah. So the failures just, uh, feel just that, that little bit less abrasive.

Yeah. But failure, what's failure like in the insurance game? Um, well, failure is inherent to the game. So, um, you can, you can have, uh, a lot of growth, success and, and the bottom line is suffering. You can have an amazing product that would work perfectly in bottom line, but you don't sell one single one. Um, so there, there's, there's a lot of, uh, you know, uh, there's a lot of example, but, you know, in terms of fail fast, I think insurance has the ability to test right much better.

What works, what doesn't work. You can see, uh, an insurance company as, as with a catalog of product. You think there's maybe 10, 10, 20 products. But actually there's so many products, so many different products. Uh, and some, some of products they, they, they sold two or three times, but a vari variety, is this just like a, you know, an optional product, uh, next to another one with a different option?

Yeah, different options. So you can tweak the product little bit to change them. To make them much more, um, attractive to the market. So, and that, that's something that you work, um, with distribution focus group to, to, to see, to see that. Um, but uh, yeah, if you look at the, at the system of insurance companies, they have, um, a very few product with, you know, enormous amount of, of, of client and a long string of product with very few, very few clients, right?

So the fail fast, uh, is, is, is, is working, it's inherent to the business because it's, it's built in. So a scenario that will be tested by, by, by, uh, by the whole value chain. Um, but usually it's the product, um, department, the market management and, and or other, you know, do those more laboratory, uh, that, that, that can use that one, one very important.

Um. Laboratory or experiment area for insurance is, uh, the digital channel. So you just go and you experiment. And because there's so much money that's poured into, uh, digitalization and, uh, and AI is that, uh, this is where the, the fund is part, and you don't only work for your own digital channel, but it's also data and value that is brought to the whole company.

Because if it's not working digitally or the feedback is in a certain way, then you can have already a piece of information on why, how the product will be working for the independent distribution, like the, uh, cinema chains Yeah. Or the, the, uh, Netflix channels, like the, the agencies. And that's that I find very interesting.

And, and it's usually built in the organization. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it, it, I mean, it's all driven by a consumer's need, right? Yeah. And, uh, and people are parting with their money for that consumer need. I think there's a lot of parallels, right? So if we look at the Giants, you've got Netflix, you've got Amazon, um, and then you've got the movie studios, and of course you've got the streaming services like, you know, Disney Plus and uh, HBO, et cetera.

But there's, but when you are a leader, right, you are, you are always, there always comes a point, a tipping point in time that you are the leader. So you, you're not gonna get everything right? Yeah. And you're gonna leave some, and the cracks will appear because somebody's gonna feel underserved. And, and you see it already in the entertainment game that you've got some growth businesses that are growing incredibly.

Quick paces, uh, companies like Mobi, which is much more art house, um, but they also hold films that you really, you know, from the eighties. And the catalog is really, really well curated content. Um, and it, and it, and it starts to identify with you as, this is really a place I wanna hang out, because it just feels very tailored.

And at the same time, you've got platforms like. Crunchy role, which is Japanese anime, that act actually have a brilliant business model in how they take the entertainment vertical and move it not just about, you know, be a subscriber, but actually you can see our content and watch these ads. And you can also buy the merchandise through a, you know, through through their interface.

And for, for, for an audience like the anime audience, it is the most powerful thing that finally our community has come together. We've created something in this environment that we can all celebrate. Yeah. And okay, it won't be perfect, but it's pretty damn good. So these really unique players are starting to become far more engaging, far more powerful, and that's pretty exciting.

Um, and I think there's, and there's a premium attached to that. If you are serving an underserved need and it finally resonates, then I think there's always gonna be an opportunity that people will go. It's a shakeout period. The movie industry's had it. The, when you look at the streamers, they're not all gonna be there because they don't be able to, that lady isn't that Lady Gagas model just created her own, you know, multimillion subscriber community that is just for her and then everything's happening there and exchange as well.

So the, the community element, I find that super, super interesting and important. Oh, massively so. I mean, anything around the arts needs to have fans and it's quite funny 'cause when you look at communities and you look at fans, everybody thinks that, uh, that a fan, every fan is exactly the same. So I've been a fan since 2003 and it's really when, when you work on a, when you understand what Fanship really is, it's really exciting because actually you monetize the new fans more than you monetize the old fans, the old fans.

Have had a relationship for 10 years with your contents or whatever that might be, or that world or that experience. The new fans that are relatively new to it, it's like when you meet or you go to a new restaurant Yeah. And you become a fan of that restaurant, and it might have been around for a while, but you are going, oh, it's amazing.

And everybody you meet, you tell them it's amazing. So the power of that new fan actually is bigger than the old fan because they amplify the noise. Yeah. But you, when you become a new fan, you forget about your old restaurant where you are going to because you, you know, at some point you have to, there's so much to choose Assumption, right?

Yeah. So, uh, that does it danger. It's, it's something big Insurance group do. So community, so there's the, uh, the local community there is, uh, I mean, in Munich there's a big insurance group. They have a stadium. I mean, they, or they sponsor the stadium of. The biggest German club. Right. And, um, that's a magnitude of the, the name recognition of course, in number one, insurance branded world.

But it's, it's, it's like, it's also community, you know? It's, it's close to the people. The people of the town, of the, the region. They're proud of that club. They, you know, it's like sold out every game and even more than that. So it's, it's, it's part of, it's, it's part of the community. And if you're part of that, if you create that, that, that, that ability at, uh, uh, you know, at a scale which is extremely broad, so not only in one region or a country, but multi-country created a community maybe per segment.

You know, our movie fans would just go into that, that segment. So, so you also have the, uh, star Wars fans that they all would, you know, they, they, you know, they have tattoos and, you know, but it belongs. So, so it's, you belong to a community and, uh, they, they have part. There, there's all those, uh, there, there's a South African that's not anymore South African, I think it's vitality.

They, they, they've established basically a, a totally different model working on prevention. So it's not only about, uh, being covered in insurance, but it's being part of the community of those people who go to that gym under that program. And they have the coverage. They have the same coverage, but it's, it's much bigger than just the, the, the, the, the, the, the insurance element.

It's, and there's a sense of belonging. There's gamification, there's plenty of things that, that are part of that. I guess it's joins a bit this Japanese. It does, it does. But I find that fascinating, right? That that insurance and healthcare. Can gamify things and, and my healthcare provider is exactly that.

You know, if I do x many workouts, then my premium is reduced. And I also get benefits for healthy shopping. I mean, the amount of data points that my insurer has on me is, is, is probably more than most. Um, and it's exciting the movie industry and, and entertainment, it's kind of different because when you look at the brands that are out there, so if you look at Netflix, it's kind of a cultural brand.

If you look at, you know, if you, you know, we are both parents and when our children were younger, you would probably say, oh, there's a Disney movie. Or they would say, oh, there, and Disney comes with somewhat of a, a brand guarantee of wholesome family entertainment. It's about the only studio that has it because you don't really go, oh, there's a great universal movie, or there's a great Warner Brothers movie, or there's a great this, ah, I've confused them all the time.

Yeah, they are. And, but Disney is the only one that's managed to do that because we're. We were, they were, we were kids. It's been there such a long time. It's formed very early. They have the, they have the theme parks. Of course Universal has its theme parks too, but it's a full manifestation of it. I mean, Disney has its stores or had its stores.

They, you know, they've obviously been moved back into more digital buyers than bricks and mortar, but it's one of those brands that is, is, is known and, and to a degree, trusted, albeit some of the content that, that they produce. Now, you would kind of argue that it's not really on brand, but that's the pressure Yeah.

Of needing to have enough content for audience types. Um, that, that, that you have to persevere with. So there's so, so they, they've had to adapt as they go and they've sort of, in a way segmented communication so they can still protect the brand that is known and trusted, but also tell enough stories that your Disney, your Disney lifecycle, when you get to 18, you stop becoming a Disney fan.

Actually, they can work out a way of engaging with you continually. Yeah. We're back on it. Yeah. So there, there, there's things for the whole family. I mean, so usually it's family, but there's still all things PG 16 or things like that. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I, you know, they, they will always work out.

When I was a kid, if you were 13 and you wanted to go and see the better movies, which were normally aged 15, you had to try and remember the birth date that you would agreed with your friends outside. You weren't really asked for Id often, and then there would be a lady in the ticket office. Yeah.

Typically a lady in the tip ticket office that, that felt like she could have been somebody that works at your school and you would have, and, and they would just look at you and give you the stare of. That makes you 45 because you've forgotten the birth date that you would agreed outside. But there are, there are, there are lots of things in age.

Don't do that in insurance though. You, you don't know. I, I think that would invalidate probably Yeah, exactly. The policy, right? Yeah. Yeah. But it still happens. I mean, kids are still buying, you know, it is, it is got a bit more sophisticated, but cinemas are so understaffed that you, that it's the things that I do as a 15-year-old, of course, they, as a 13-year-old still happen.

You can't get into the, the, the higher rated movies. You go buy a ticket for the lower rated film and know that it's roughly the same time and you watch 20 minutes and slide into the other cinema. But that, I respect that. I mean, obviously I respect it because. It just shows that you love movies. We'll cut that one.

No, nobody should see that. No, we won't cut it. Um, but, but it just shows that people love movies. Yeah, no, it's Exactly. And they'll find, and they'll find a way question, they'll, they'll find a way to, to cut through what they perceive as red tape to get to it. Yeah. Hey look, another one. Um, data. Yes. So we, I mean, data has been there for a long time.

You're an engineer. I'm an engineer. We started with that even before knowing where we're gonna land. The, um, the amount of data has always been available but never used because although it was there and available, transforming it into a usable availability was, was very challenging. But, uh, for recently there's been much more ability in calculation power and the ability to mine data, uh, a much better way for.

Our industry to, to actually get something meaningful out of it. Before it was nice to have it, there were trends. We could do graphs, but now it could be meaningful. So how deep is the data you use in your industry? Oh, the data. So it really depends. So when you own your own architecture like Netflix, you, you, you have a much deeper, richer vein of data that you can see what people are watching, how long are they watching for it, do they rate the shows afterwards, what else can I serve to them?

So it can be a lot more tailored and a lot more, um, uh, customized to your needs and wants, but. The downside to Netflix is they don't spend much money in advertising, which is where the studios really benefit because they're in the advertising world of, you know, when they're spending half of their budget in digital and you can read a signal from that.

And with the right data tracking, you can see which Instagram post led to them then going on to either consume more content or ideally with more data tagging, you can actually see them get to the point of transaction. Yeah. At the cinema chain. That relationship stops when you get to the cinema chain, unless you have some sort of data agreement with that cinema chain that we can see how they've gone all the way through to transaction.

So there's a little fight for data. There's a, there's always, there's always a little bit of a, uh, of a, of a relationship required. Yeah. And, uh, and as, as, as, and, and that relationship needs to become more normal, more quickly. Yeah. Because then it means that you can get your consumer's data much more readily available.

It's so important for us, it's, uh, we worked with, uh, TPA, so it's basically the insurer is not doing all the work. It delegates part of the work of the work to a, to a servicing firm. And, um, the key for the insure is to get the data. And use the data to be able to, to see what the trends are and in the cost of whatever we cover and be able to adapt.

So you change the product, you put limitations or you increase the price, or you reduce the price, which because of, you know, inflation usually is, doesn't happen. Usually it's trying to go up, but also it allows an insurance company to take action to prevent, as we, we spoke earlier, or to negotiate or, or to limit the cost of some, some reparation or medical process, procedure also, or mutualize them.

Anyway. There's plenty of techniques that that can happen. Yeah. But it only works when you get the data and, and, and, and, and you work either with a third party administrator or if you're a big group, you have your subsidiaries. Putting all the data together and is always a challenge when you manage that you have a competitive advantage over the others because you know what's going on.

And being able to, to create proper assessment of those data. So much data before we're happy. When you see, you know, oh, there's that, that company that have 5,000 people in that location, they always go to an hospital, which is, uh, you know, very close, but the hospital a bit farther, has better healthcare and is, is cheaper.

So you try to diver that. Yeah. Rather negotiate with the hospital to say, well, you keep on getting all clients, or, you know, our employees is your clients, but we, we, we have a better price and you need to stop charging the ludicrous amount of money. Or we send them somewhere. Yeah. And then incentivization to do that.

That was like 10 years ago. But now you can start using the data to actually improve the health of those workers. Of course, the hospital stuff is, is done and so on. But start, start taking different action, which brings us closer to the client, have maybe a sentiment of community. Yeah. But creating something which is, um, helps to avoid that there is a, a claim happening.

Um, so I find that the, the more we are able to use data, the more we are gonna drive towards, uh, a much extended servicing from the insurance world. And I don't know if that's the same in media. I think it's, it's, it's exactly the same as what the issues are in the, in the entertainment sector. That that data and the processing power of that data is really important.

That, that, you know. Uh, valuing data and understanding which data is important, which is what is a primary signal? What is a signal that feels like the others, but maybe doesn't point to an outcome. A lot of it in the past has been navigating because of the limited processing power. They were always studies over a period of time, how do we do this?

You know, is that the same signal? There's always a need, especially when you're working through, uh, an intermediary, like a media agency, a digital media agency. They will often add a series of metrics. So many metrics to your business. Yeah, because it's, and it's not because they're trying to distract you from the job you are trying to do, it's because individually you've got some very bright people trying to answer a series of questions of how can we sell a ticket more effectively?

But. Just by asking that one question, the interpretation of that question or the biases of that question to the three or four people that are, are trying to answer it in their way might mean that you, you end up coming back with a serious amount of data that quite a lot of, whilst it's complimentary, it's like, well, which of the three things that really make a difference?

What's the, it's, oh, we've got 21 pieces. It's like, okay, well let's simplify this down. The question was this. Yeah. If these, if these signals are genuinely unique, business driving signals, fantastic. If these are, you know, complimentary signals, let's remove them. That's when processing was at a lower level.

Now, the processing. It can be significantly higher. Yes. You have to write the prompts to make sure that they're valid and understood. And the key ones you can run the trend analysis quicker and, and, and, and really look for any of those changes and trends. So it's gonna be super exciting. I think that it's, it, it will be exciting.

It's gonna put more pressure, I suppose, on a media agency to to, to prove to a client they understand the business because agencies have always been an extension of the client's workforce. Yeah. Because the clients can't go and ask for more headcount. So you end up having more people in your agency team and offsetting it into the marketing budget.

Right? Yeah. So there, there've been a parallel, uh, team member, but it won't take long for the right technology partners to partner up with clients to say actually the way that you run your business. And it might not be the major, uh, the major. Consulting groups, the four big consulting groups. It might be something a bit smaller, it might be something that can be a little bit more tailored.

It's gonna be difficult for clients to build that capability in house. They would normally like to look at a service or a product. Yeah. And then trial it for a little while and, and then take it to, to, to full to, to full utility. But I think the most important thing is it's about the utility. And I think that clients all want to understand their customer better.

What, what they like and what they don't like. And, and it's, it's, the things they don't like are probably really important because it's about then adapting the product to make sure that they have a better relationship with it. So you have to also be very, very precise with the data. You know, that, uh, if, um, if you analyze a big set of data and insurance, I'm just taking that because it's, you know, you have it, it's this, the data that you select will be, uh, to train your model will, will be a small set.

So there will be bias in it, and then you will add data and you need to access to more and so on and new development. And you now you can access more data, so, et cetera. But you can't, if if, if you, if you get it wrong, you know, and it's the bias, it will just completely flow your model. So you endanger your own profitability.

Mm-hmm. Or your own, uh, product line, or even your company. Although, you know, I think that since there is level three lines of defense, there's gonna be lots of people in there involved looking at this. So let's not put everything against it, but it could suck up a lot of resources for a no result or wrong result, which we don't want that.

So precision is also important. Yeah. So, but I understand it. It's, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. It's exactly the same thing. And I think. If you look at all the social media platforms that are out there and all the data that you can pull from those, I sort of said that movie studios, when they break a trade or any part of a campaign, if it's digital investment, then they, they can draw back a number of signals from that, from the audience or whatever that might be.

But it's trying to rationalize that down into how does that help this movie right now? Yeah. And also, what's the learning that we can take into the next movie? And that's where the dividend really plays out. And it's gonna be, and it's gonna be more compressed. Yeah. So it means that they can, they can learn from some of those mistakes a little bit quicker or even offset some of those mistakes a little bit quicker.

Obviously audiences across the world are similar and very different all at the same time. Yeah. And taste and censorship and culture, it's, it, it can play. A huge role. So it's about making sure that the data and those biases, um, you know, are respected or, or, or protocols are set out so that data can, cons, can be consumed.

The, the worst way that it happens is that those models are run in the US looking at the US consumer, when actually the play is, is, is a, is a multicultural, you know, it's a multi territory thing. Even within a market, even within a, in a country like the US where you've got, it's not a singular culture.

There's multiple cultures. And so it's about how do you, how do you set out those models? They know that in the US we don't know that here, but the US thinks that the rest of the world is mono as well, right? Yes. So, uh, I think it's super important to understand the difference in culture and, you know, in the based in Luxembourg.

We have Germany and France next to, to, to us and, and, uh, Luxembourg speaks, uh, Luxembourgish. So it's a mix of French, but it's very, very Germanic language. But there's French in it as well. And the law is written in French, in Luxembourg, but the culture is bit more Germanic. So you see it's, it's a bit between countries, but if you say from Luxembourg in Germany, you're Luxembourg, but you're still part of the, okay.

Yeah. And, and the same for France because, you know, but try to sell from, you know, France and, and Germany culturally in, in, in the business actually very, very different. They found that the German and Spanish in, in the business there, or the people I worked with, because I need to be careful. I don't want to profile anything here, but you know, that there, there are so many similarities into, into the, the way they approach the business.

They, they actually work in the, in, during the day to day, and. It's the case for workers, for our team members. It's the case for the clients. It's the case for the distribution. They don't work the same. I mean, distribution is, is between those two countries that can example. It's it's miles away, miles away from each other.

But I think, here's the thing, right? You, you are an experience guy that's been in the industry for a long time, and I think we can all look at trends around data, data provisioning, data processing, and of course they're really, really important. But the majority of the stakeholders in a senior business are human beings and understanding how to navigate those cultural moments.

Is something that you learn, and I don't think it's something that can be driven outta a single country, but really being international and, and understanding the, you know, in, in Latin America, when somebody says, how's it, you know, you ask where the problems are, there's no problems. Everything's fine. When you, and you listen to really the texture of how they're saying, everything's fine, and then you can highlight an issue again.

Yeah. Oh yeah. That has been troublesome. Yeah. So, so you'll never get a hard, this is terrible. In other markets, you will get a very, you know, in Scandinavian markets, they'll be very abrupt with you and tell you, oh yeah, things are not working out. But I think as a, as a leader and an international leader, it's really important that for yourself in.

In those sectors that people have and also the, the people beneath you in adjacent can say, wow, there's a lot of wisdom there. And I think that's one of the things as we go through disruption and digitalization, I think people are always looking for a leader that can, that's, that's been there and can navigate, you know, calm waters and stormy waters.

Work, work together there. Yeah, I think that's it. That's, that's the creating a team that is able to do that. But understanding the, uh, the environment and, and this awareness is, is, is so, is so critical. And in that sense, to conclude on, on the ai, AI is there to help us. It's not to replace us, it's to, it's to create an additional element or additional elements that will help us navigate the environment.

That's, uh, I do believe that. Oh, I agree. I agree. I think it's. It will help us achieve a, a number of things that certainly even in the en entertainment business that we just didn't have the time. Because you're working on three or four films at the same time and, and, and, and agencies and people that have your data sets.

It can take six months to get a meeting and to talk about it, when actually you can surface the information that much quicker and, and make change while there's a chance to make a change to make some more money. Or there's a great set of learning for the next project that actually feels not too dissimilar.

So I think it's, it's a really good empowering piece. Um, but, you know, I also think that the narratives around it need to be a bit more friendly and less weaponized at times. Yeah. 'cause sometimes I think that there are certain aspects that, that, that can antiquate or exclude people and, but I think those models just need is the beginning a bit more.

Time is a Exactly. It's very much the infancy, but the key that emotion remain. Oh, absolutely. And trust in it, you know. Then both industries will, uh, will survive.

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Francois Jacquemin

EP 09 - Charisma, Discipline, and Trust

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EP 08 - AI in Insurance: A Symbiosis of Mutual Growth