Brian Cobb, Creative Director at Opengear, shares his thoughts on how AI tools can streamline the creative process. We go beyond the social media “sound bites” about the evils of ChatGPT and DALL-E (!) to talk about real world applications in marketing design.
What are some ways that AI can be integrated into existing tools and processes that Creatives and Designers currently use? [04:45]
How can we tap into the power of AI to optimize the higher-level thinking, and automate some of the repetitive tasks to free up more time for creativity? What does this mean for the concept of an Organizing Idea? [10:12]
It looks as though Adobe are taking a thoughtful approach, releasing a beta version of Firefly and incorporating AI tools into the Cloud Experience Suite. They focus on “Creators First” – offering their tools as a “Creative Copilot” – and are being careful to consider copyright issues, and respecting their core audience of professional designers and creators. [15:18]
Brian’s varied career has taken him through a number of agency roles, and in-house or corporate marketing roles. He compares the skill sets and mindset needed for each, and talks about the constant need to be “selling” during the agency creative process. [23:52]
And of course, Brian shares his favorite cocktail: a Dark and Stormy made the traditional way. [34:20]
To connect with Brian, visit his website at BrianCobbCreative.com, or look him up on LinkedIn.
Brian mentioned some websites and other resources for creative inspiration:
https://theinspirationgrid.com
https://www.thisiscolossal.com
https://www.luerzersarchive.com
https://www.mmm-online.com/home
The Book of Gossage https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1109060
Ogilvy on Advertising https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/641601
Timestamps:
0:02:19
Brian describes his Professional journey post-military, with experience in multiple agencies and in-house roles
0:04:45
Exploring the Impact of AI on Creative Roles
0:08:33
Discussing the Benefits of AI in Creative Processes
0:15:42
Adobe Creative Suite: Keeping the Core Audience in Mind
0:19:14
Discussion of Adobe's Content Authenticity Initiative and Its Impact on Creators
0:24:25
The Dynamics of Selling Creative Work in an Agency Setting
0:31:06
How Brian Stays Up-to-Date with Marketing Trends
0:34:20
Brian’s drink of choice – the Dark and Stormy
Brian Cobb, Creative Director at Opengear, shares his thoughts on how AI tools can streamline the creative process. We go beyond the social media “sound bites” about the evils of ChatGPT and DALL-E (!) to talk about real world applications in marketing design.
What are some ways that AI can be integrated into existing tools and processes that Creatives and Designers currently use? [04:45]
How can we tap into the power of AI to optimize the higher-level thinking, and automate some of the repetitive tasks to free up more time for creativity? What does this mean for the concept of an Organizing Idea? [10:12]
It looks as though Adobe are taking a thoughtful approach, releasing a beta version of Firefly and incorporating AI tools into the Cloud Experience Suite. They focus on “Creators First” – offering their tools as a “Creative Copilot” – and are being careful to consider copyright issues, and respecting their core audience of professional designers and creators. [15:18]
Brian’s varied career has taken him through a number of agency roles, and in-house or corporate marketing roles. He compares the skill sets and mindset needed for each, and talks about the constant need to be “selling” during the agency creative process. [23:52]
And of course, Brian shares his favorite cocktail: a Dark and Stormy made the traditional way. [34:20]
To connect with Brian, visit his website at BrianCobbCreative.com, or look him up on LinkedIn.
Brian mentioned some websites and other resources for creative inspiration:
https://theinspirationgrid.com
https://www.thisiscolossal.com
https://www.luerzersarchive.com
https://www.mmm-online.com/home
The Book of Gossage https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1109060
Ogilvy on Advertising https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/641601
Timestamps:
0:02:19
Brian describes his Professional journey post-military, with experience in multiple agencies and in-house roles
0:04:45
Exploring the Impact of AI on Creative Roles
0:08:33
Discussing the Benefits of AI in Creative Processes
0:15:42
Adobe Creative Suite: Keeping the Core Audience in Mind
0:19:14
Discussion of Adobe's Content Authenticity Initiative and Its Impact on Creators
0:24:25
The Dynamics of Selling Creative Work in an Agency Setting
0:31:06
How Brian Stays Up-to-Date with Marketing Trends
0:34:20
Brian’s drink of choice – the Dark and Stormy
Steve Cummins (00:37):
Today I'm joined by Brian Cobb, who's a really top-notch creative director who I've been lucky enough to work with actually at a couple of companies. I'm really thrilled that Brian's agreed to be on the marketing mix, because over the years, Brian has been my go-to on finding a unique creative angle, or just finding a better way to approach something. Actually, not only in creativity, but tools and processes, how to get things done effectively. So today we'll be digging into Brian's varied background. He's worked in both agencies and corporate roles, which I find interesting. And also talking about how the rapid improvement in AI tools that we've been seeing, how that can really help out creatives in that day-to-day work. So, Brian, thanks for joining me.
Brian Cobb (01:23):
Hey, great to be here, Steve. Thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward to our conversation and hopefully I can keep it interesting.
Steve Cummins (01:32):
I have no doubt that you can keep it interesting. All right. So why don't we kick off. Let's hear a bit about your background and your marketing journey that's got you to where you are today.
Brian Cobb (01:44):
All right, fantastic. It's good that you describe it as a journey because it's certaInly long and winding. I got a couple different things in my background that a lot of creatives don't have. I have some prior time in the military and a lot of blue collar work, which some people have that too. But I got to see things from a few sides, particularly in the graphics industry, working in factories where we screen printed things like socks for Kmart to my time in the military, where I came in at the end of Desert Storm and also served in the the Bosnian conflict
(02:17):
My first taste of agency life, at SAIC, they had a portion called integrated marketing which was all client based, no in-house stuff. And it was a good learning ground in terms of what you're trying to achieve, which mostly I find is the shaping of perception. Whether you're selling something or whether you're trying to influence legislation or whether they're trying to publish a book, you're trying to shape perception, which is a big part of it.
(02:48):
I bounced around a few other places ended up working first for an agency in pharma called Inclinix. And I realized that I was going to have to constantly be in a learning mode to keep up, not just from a creative standpoint, not just looking for inspiration, but really understanding the tools I was working with, the vendors I was working with, that helped me create the things for these clients and getting a much more broad perspective of what it took to exist in the creative realm. And it's not just the things that you learn in school, it's a constant learning curve, and you've got to try to stay ahead of it.
(03:26):
After my time at Inclinix, I ended up working for, for Saatchi and Saatchi the Healthcare advertising portion of it called Maxcess Managed Markets. And again, different varying clients, different goals, all profit base, all profit motive. That's where I really got the big picture of how vast advertising was from that. From that point I ended up actually working at an agency-like place which was in the incentive travel market. It was a great time to be able to sort of bridge those two worlds, continuing in the digital space and working in print as well. To now currently working in an in-house role for about five years. And while a lot of the same skills and abilities apply, they're used in different ways and they're not always applicable in the same way that they would be in an agency setting. And that's part of what we'll discuss today. So I believe I'm still adapting and hopefully I'll continue to do that.
Steve Cummins (04:43):
You have to, right? If you don't adapt, you die.
(04:45):
Good stuff. So let's dive into our first topic here, which is AI. So there's obviously been a lot of hubbub around AI and in the media recently. Honestly, I think most of it is not about AI, it's about ChatGPT. And so a lot of it has been very shallow, right? It's either been, people doing these party tricks of, "Hey, look at this clever thing, or this scary thing" that that ChatGPT did, or, you know, the scaremongering of, "hey, you know, this is going to take everybody's jobs". But I think the reality for AI and marketing is that we should be looking at it in terms of how is it going to improve productivity? How's it going to make things more efficient? You know it's not AI for AI's sake, but it's, what are the tools that that can come out of it?
(05:39):
So I'm really interested to hear your perspective of how AI could really impact the creative role. I guess if you kick off and give me your thoughts on, from a creative director's point of view, where you think AI's going to take us,
Brian Cobb (05:57):
So, while I am an Adobe proponent, I try to be media agnostic. So I've experimented with ChatGPT and some of the generative image makers like DALL-E and Midjourney. and they're very powerful tools. I think the thing that is most unique with this new offering Adobe has, called Firefly, it's still in a beta version right now. I have actually not gotten a chance to experiment with it, only just read up on it, and I'm a longtime Adobe proponent and user. It is actually letting you create things like vector graphics and things that you could create within the Adobe suite of products, but alter them with the AI prompts. Not just create new images, but take things that you may have already created, either digitally or you scanned in, and be able to alter those yourself, which is sort of extending the tool rather than just being the tool itself.
(06:56):
You're able to take your set of design principles and all those things you've learned and apply them, and then you have something within that toolset to make it a little bit easier, to make it a little bit faster. A new way to manipulate it, if you will. Whereas, you know, Midjourney, DALL-E and those are basically scouring the web for all those images for the machine learning. And you can type, you know, pretty much anything you want in the prompt, but if you want to skew it toward a certain outcome, you can say like Picasso or whoever your favorite artist is, and you'll get some kind of derivative result. But all that is a synthesis of what already exists.
(07:45):
I think that something that's probably going to be unique, hopefully about the Adobe offering, is that it's going to allow you to use the tools you're familiar with, but then to continue to manipulate the artwork that you created with the tool. For instance, if I'm designing something like a set of ads or some kind of marketing collateral, something like that, I may need a set or a subset of that in different sizes. Usually you have to go in - there's some automation to that where you can do that - but how much better would it be if I could type this in, say make this an A4 for Europe, make this whatever. Also take advantage of machine translation, especially for smaller things that wouldn't require really intimate knowledge of the language, just the basic translation, that kind of thing could be incredibly time saving particularly in the digital space.
(08:39):
Not necessarily for maybe event kind of marketing or things like that, but in the digital space, I can only imagine how much faster that would make a ton of repetitive work, which is a classic automation solution. Let's make it easy. The things are going to be repeated anyways, make it easier. But with that being said, the idea of being able to manipulate work that you've already created, just by the prompts, I find that pretty fascinating. That's getting more akin to the science fiction type of thing that I would like to see, rather than something scraping the internet and coming up with an amalgam of what is. You make something, you as a designer, you as a creative director, art director you as a copywriter get to manipulate the ideas that you're inputting.
Steve Cummins (09:31):
What you're talking about is separating the two impacts, right? So there's going to be, let's say the low level activity that, why not get a computer or an AI to do it? Automate it. You've got the higher end stuff where it's more about, "Hey, you have this very talented person, why don't you use more of their time doing the truly creative stuff?" If you are good at what you do and you are open to adapt - to your earlier point, -then life is going to be good. And this is going to improve what you're doing, I think from a marketer's perspective. What can we do differently?
Brian Cobb (10:12):
One of the things in advertising and marketing is the concept of the organizing idea, which is what everything's going to fall under, for a campaign or a big promotion, anything like that. I think that's probably better suited coming from a person, from the human mind and with some research and some intuition. Something that AI doesn't have yet and hopefully never develops. Skynet hasn't become software yet! Part of that intuition, some of that gut feelings about what you think will resonate with that organizing idea, I think that's very much a human endeavor. But once you've got that organizing idea, some of those things that fall underneath it, how to organize them, what connects to it, how you could make that web of not just connections, but web of interlocking ideas that can somehow continue to reach out to what you're originally looking for.
(11:11):
I think AI could be very powerful with that to say, "Hey, we, we know what we're going for. Here's the idea". What ties into this in ways that we didn't see. That's where the human element will remain hopefully. And I think it's where it should be, you know, if you're the high level strategic thinking, the organizing idea and the ability to form that vision around what you want this to do and with who you're talking to. And then get some help from the AI. Don't let it do everything.
Steve Cummins (11:45):
I think part of the interesting direction of that, AI models as they're developed now are effective when they're trained in a specific direction. I think that's where the real value is going to come out. Once people have said, okay, this is what I want to be able to do with AI. Now let me take the underlying model and tune it to the specific area that I'm focusing on.
Brian Cobb (12:13):
We're taking in information from wildly, wildly disparate sources and applying it to things when we're coming up with that original idea. The AI may be able to do it faster once we started somewhere, but, you know, you could take Shakespeare and a matchbook and a random sticker and a drink machine. I'm not saying it actually works that way, but, you take those things and they could form some kind of basis for an idea in your mind. Not things that would outwardly be pulled together in the AI.
Steve Cummins (12:55):
If you, as a creative director would come up with this great concept for a campaign or for the organizing idea, and came to me and talked about it and I said, you know, Brian, I don't get it. Then you would explain to me why I should get it. But how you came up with the idea, you know, what the pieces were that brought into it. And AI is not going to say, "well, I'll tell you what Steve, let me have another run at this. What I did was I looked at this database and..." it's not going to be able to. So much of the creative process is that back and forth between us. My background is typically on the product side of marketing, right? So, I would generally be bringing in either the product side of it or the corporate strategy side of it. You have the creative part of it. You might have, as you say, a copywriter that's starting now to think, :we can hang some, some headlines or taglines off of this". Is AI doing all that internally and then just spits out. "Hey, here's your answer."
Brian Cobb (13:55):
That's a very good point. It's not going to show you the rationale behind the thought. You, the human being, could be linking things that are completely disparate. But if I'm able to explain a rationale, that may connect with our audience or it may shape the perception in the way that we want it to be shaped. Right. You're not going to be able to go back and say, what were you thinking here? And that's the sort of the face value aspect of it. Unlike "this is what I typed in. This is what you returned. Must be good."
(14:24):
That's how much trust you only give the AI versus the person who has the training and the experience in it.
Steve Cummins (14:35):
I may have been a little damaged over the years because I worked for somebody once who used to say I don't like it. I can't tell you what I don't like about it, but I don't like it.
Brian Cobb (14:51):
We used to that Bring me Another Rock. Nope, not that one. Nope, not that one. No, not that one. I'll know it when I see it.
(15:03):
That's the beauty of that in advertising, you can be charged for each time that, comes back. When you're in-house, well we might be doing this for a while. T
Steve Cummins (15:11):
At some point agencies says, you know what? You don't want us to keep billing you for this. So that's another one that comes in.
(15:18):
So when we first started talking about this, I said, ah, I think this AI stuff's going to be really interesting. And you said, "Adobe's already doing it, Steve". So, I went and looked at what Adobe was doing; and I know you're far more familiar with than this, but it's just some interesting things I found when I was looking at how they're talking about it, right? So they have this, this tagline or headline of 'Creators First'.
(15:42):
You can see when you read through their copy, they are obviously being very careful because their market is creators, right? And they also have this phrase, that it should be used as your creative co-pilot, which I also thought was interesting. So it ties into that idea you were talking of, how do we help your creative process? And they list out three things. They say it enhances the creative process, gives creators practical advantages and sets the standard for responsible AI. And so from what you've seen of Adobe's approach to it, is there anything that sort of hits you in the face as, wow, this is the killer app that's going to make life so much easier.
Brian Cobb (16:26):
So I haven't experienced the beta, just reading about it in various trade publication, trade websites too. I don't know if it's going to be the killer app. It's very creative, friendly, and they're the building block of some of the first software that really allowed folks who were illustrators and art directors and designers to work with all this stuff and get these great outcomes when they were coming from an analog background to using this stuff. And I think they're keeping their core audience in mind. But it's that principle that I was talking about. When I was trained, the foundation of design was actually being able to draw, being able to come up with the thumbnails for the ideas, things like that, right?
(17:18):
I'm not saying everything has to start there, but from that aspect, they're saying, you're still in control here. This is just another tool, another way to use a tool as opposed to this is going to do everything for you. Insert the prompt and you get what you get, you'll have something to choose from. It'll iterate a couple times and it'll be like magic. Well, yeah, people are going to get better at writing those prompts, but are they going to feel like they're actually creating anything?
(17:51):
I was actually featured in American Illustration Annual a couple of years ago number 40. I haven't provided any new work recently, but they have a policy, they don't accept any AI generated work, right? They only want work from the creators. Now it can be digital, they're not saying that, but they need it to have been created by a human being. Both the thought and the execution. That may shift over time, but right now there's this expectation that the creator is actually involved in creating it. Not just a prompt, but having the initial idea.
Steve Cummins (18:37):
That actually leads into the other part of the Adobe model, which I find interesting. They've created, or they're part of, this Content Authenticity Initiative. And part of it was, which you pointed out to me, was with Firefly - which I think is kind of like their DALL-E or Midjourney version. They have trained it only on their own stock library, public domain, and I think open licensed materials. So they haven't just scraped the internet. They talk about how they're working on a model to be able to compensate royalty holders or copyright holders. And then there's also this thing about 'do not train' tags, right? So you could tag your work so that it doesn't get pulled into other models.
(19:34):
To your point about them supporting the creators, this is their other part of saying, "Hey, we're on your side". We're not trying to create something that rips you off. We're actually trying to build this in such a way that you still get compensated. It's very clear if it's original work versus derivative work. So they've obviously put a lot of thought into it. Two things. How does that sit with you and then do you think that's going to protect them or are other people just going to come out and find ways around it?
Brian Cobb (20:07):
I think there is some protections in that. So when, when Midjourney and ChatGPT really started taking off, this is particularly generative AI though, as for the image you're making, I'm talking about right now. People started writing many apps for the sole purpose of exclusion. Clearly Adobe was paying attention when they incorporated this into their suite of products. And yeah, it will resonate. You made two really good points. One of the big parts, the big pieces of heartburn for the generative stuff for image making is some of the scraping that's done. If I typed in - there's some very famous fantasy artists like Boris Vallejo - you could do something like that in his style and they get no money for that work. There's no licensee, there's no anything. And even if the image isn't exactly like what they would've painted, it's very clearly drawn from that influence, particularly if that's part of the prompt.
Steve Cummins (21:05):
Right. Cause the prompt actually says in the style of artist's name,
Brian Cobb (21:09):
Right. And so, that's happened actually quite a lot. That's not obviously fair use because now there's something that someone may associate with them. That you could easily take that stuff and, and push it out as something else. Or say, this is a Boris Vallejo work. Not that that's what happened, but they're going to take something similar to what it took this person years of training and experience together and be able to create this. Then all of a sudden it's like, well, I just type the prompt in and I can make it that easy and you're not going to get a dime for it. So Adobe's thinking is pretty good. They're also protecting themselves in that the stock image images they create, they acquired the rights to those to be able to use them.
(21:54):
And if you're part of the Creative Suite plan and you're a part of Adobe stock, you're paying for to license those images individually as well, or however many you use. So they're kind of keeping it all in the family, as it were. So if it's just making a synthesis of all those things that they already own, that's pretty fair. And it means someone has been compensated for the original creation of it, and you're also paying to license that new image that was created. And interestingly enough, some AI is actually being incorporated into Shutterstock too, in which I believe that they're doing that with just their own sets of images. I believe that one's still in beta as well. And I have experimented with that one. It'll be interesting to see how it evolves, but I think anytime that you err on the side of the person who's actually making the original content it's probably the better side to be on. And it looks like that's what Adobe's trying to do.
Steve Cummins (22:53):
Yeah, I think it's a really good point. You want to back the originators of any of this stuff because if, if you stop supporting the creative side of it, then creativity's going to stop in 2024. And then everything's going to be derivative after that. And you need the big companies like Adobe and, and Shutterstock and those folks really supporting it.
(23:19):
My last comment on this subject. The one thing that really pains me. You're talking about it from a creative director's perspective. I hear people describing themselves as 'Prompt engineers', and since engineering is my background, it really pains me. Okay, so you spent a week working out how to fool an AI model into giving you the answers, and now you're an engineer. But that probably says far more about me than about the people doing it.
(23:52):
Moving on, you've talked a little bit as we've gone through about the agency versus corporate part of it. A couple of things that I'd be interested to dig in on. I know one thing you've talked to me in the past quite a lot about is in an agency there's a lot more selling, right? Because you sometimes you have to sell it internally to the account manager, and then there's the client, and then there's the... I don't want to give too much away. Maybe you can talk about the dynamics there.
Brian Cobb (24:25):
Sure. You hit the nail in the head. From the minute you come up with the idea and you flesh it out, or multiple ideas, or the variance thereof, number one, that's a big part of agency life. It's not just one. There's not just one good idea. You're going to have to come up with a few variations. And you're going to have to sell the rationale like we talked about before. You know, what are you thinking? How's this going to reach the folks that we intend to reach? First, you're selling the idea with the folks on your immediate team. You're selling it amongst your peers, your teammates that are first making the work together. And then you're going to be pitching this internally to the client account person and giving them the rationale. And they're going to work with you to try to figure it out, to narrow it down to those ideas that you all feel that you're going to be able to go to the client with and sell them on.
(25:23):
So part of that selling process is whittling down all those quote unquote great ideas that you had, getting 'em to a form that's very presentable. You want to make 'em slick and professional. And when you present to the client, you're going to give 'em the rationale. Obviously you're going to want that first reaction to feel like it's a wow moment. Like you've hit the brief and they get exactly what you're saying, and it's going to pass through legal and there's going to be no problems. nd t's the best thing ever. So you're selling from the very beginning of it. When you're batting around the ideas, you've got to get the ones that you lock onto that you can make into something. And usually it's a broader set that you continue to narrow down, but you're not coming with just one.
(26:09):
You're going to have to have a few really good ones. There can also be too many. There can also be too many ideas and usually not all good, and that's the narrowing down stuff too. But once you get that final sign off and the go ahead it's a great feeling. At the end of the day, the truth is if your client's happy and it's selling or it's doing what it's tasked to do, then it's a success. One of the most famous ad guys in the world, David Ogilvy, said "if it doesn't sell, it's not creative". Which to his point was yeah, it's got to reach the intended audience. It's got to shape the perception. And if you're not doing that then,
Steve Cummins (27:01):
Right, this is not creative work for its own sake. This is creative work with a go, right?
Brian Cobb (27:10):
Let me pull up my vast library of random paraphrasing and quotations. Milton Glazer, very famous graphic design just passed away a couple years ago. He's done design, art direction, and basically said, "Design is not self-expression". You are doing it for someone else, you know, for the client and to sell to their audience. You may use the self-expression that you learned in order to inspire it, to create for it, but ultimately it's not your own private thing. It has to do something.
Steve Cummins (27:41):
There's so much truth to that. I've worked with a number of creatives, I've interviewed even more, and you do sometimes come across people that take it very personally, right? Yes, you should absolutely believe in the design that you're doing and you should believe in it. But if the client or the product manager, whoever comes back and says, now this isn't hitting because this, that and the other - then you've got to move on, right? You've got to adapt and adjust. And it can be very difficult if you have a creative who just truly believes in their design and isn't willing to adjust.
Brian Cobb (28:19):
I'll put the one caveat around it, which I think is true for most creative folks. The only thing that's bad about that when you're adapting, I mentioned a particular agency who were bringing these multiple ideas. It's what we call the Frankenstein of ideas where it's, "well, I really like that headline and I like this visual, but I like the color on this fourth one. Can we put 'em all together?" And the problem is no. They were tailor made to be a synthesis of those particular things and they complimented each other in a way that worked. But at the end of the day...
Steve Cummins (28:54):
I, I'm feeling very self-conscious now, Brian, because that's, that sounds exactly how I, how I work with creatives. It's like, well if you could just mix two, four, and seven and make it look like one, then life is good.
Brian Cobb (29:07):
But at the end of the day, there are ways to do that. As long as there can be compromise, when you explain why one part may not necessarily be combined. But if you like this image, there's a similar type of image that would probably go with this. There has to be a little bit of back and forth and there isn't always, and sometimes that can weaken an idea, but the audience is going to ultimately know if,... the headline sounds like it was going with a green frog and there's a red Ferrari in it! But there's a fair amount of that that happens and I think it's incumbent upon the designer or the creative person to try to figure out a way to make it work within reason but not lose the overall goal.
(29:54):
And I find that's one of the biggest parts - kind of the secondary selling of it. I'm here to help you achieve your goal. It may not always involve getting exactly what you want, but it certainly won't involve me getting exactly what I want. When you work with a good client and they can compromise, or if they have an uncompromising vision and you've been on that trail from the beginning and you lock it in, then usually you don't see those kind of changes, but they can happen.
Steve Cummins (30:27):
To wrap up this whole agency versus corporate. My background has all been corporate, but I've worked with a lot of agencies obviously. So the advantage of corporate is you tend to have worked with that design team or that creative team for a while. So, with any luck, you have created a good rapport and you know how to work together. And I think when I've worked with agencies, I've always preferred working with smaller agencies because it tends to be the same creative team. You can almost treat them as an in-house creative team because you know how to have those discussions and back and forth.
(31:06):
One of the reasons that I've, I have enjoyed working with you in the past is when, when we are collaborating on something... I think one of the first pieces of work we did was a logo - and you didn't just go away and sketch up something nice that, looked pretty or whatever. You went and you looked at, "what are the current logo trends". I can't even remember what it was, but you had some reference document that you went to, to help build it. So maybe you can talk about how do you keep up with the trends in marketing.
Brian Cobb (31:48):
In terms of staying current, read a lot of all kinds of different things. Not just books about design, not just design websites. Because inspiration can come from anywhere. I'm a member of a few organizations like American Institute Graphic Arts as well as some ad clubs. So there's collaboration, there's the chances to speak with others, even if it's just online - post covid here - things are different, maybe not as many meetings. Also keep up with the websites for those things, even if you're not a part of it. Particularly AIGA, theirs is a website called Design Observer. A lot of big time creatives are involved with that. I subscribe to Communication Arts which has social media presence. They've been around a long time. They're sort of the granddaddy of this stuff and they bring a lot of stuff to the forefront. In terms of websites, I'm kind of all over the place and I have probably 50, 60 websites.
(32:56):
One of the big ones I go to is Inspiration Grid, one called This is Colossal, which just an art site. But you'll see the web of Connections all through those and you can go to plenty of other places from there. And they appeal not just to the creative, there's artistic things, there's advertising, there's marketing aspects, there's illustration, photography, all those types of things. And always, always, always practice and continue to learn about the tools as they change. Again, I'm a big Adobe proponent, but I do use Figma. I have used ChatGPT. I've say fooled around with Midjourney and various other products that are either web-based or app-based. Experiment with them, find out some of them do things better or faster or may suit a different need than you thought your basic set of tools did. And if you don't continue to look at that, you're going to be behind that.
Steve Cummins (33:58):
And I think that's it. Be and be using them before you need them, right. So that you're aware of what they are
Brian Cobb (34:03):
Yes, be using them before you need them. And to be fair to all involved, sometimes you find out they're bad right away. "Well, I had to give it a shot, but my old standby works better for this particular thing."
Steve Cummins (34:16):
I'll put some links to some of those websites in the show notes.
(34:20):
So this is the Marketing Mix and when I asked you to be on here, I think I described it as, "it's just like if you and I were having a, a chat about marketing over a cocktail". So the big question of the podcast - "What is your go-to cocktail? What, when you've had a bad day in, in the office, if you ever have a bad day, what do you want to go home and mix for yourself,
Brian Cobb (34:46):
I love a Dark and stormy. Made with Gosling's Rum and Barritt's Ginger beer. On the rocks. Fantastic stuff.
Steve Cummins (35:01):
I was thinking that as a Naval drink and I know you're Air Force so you don't feel guilty?
Brian Cobb (35:11):
I don't feel guilty! If it was, "we'll just gimme a pure Air Force answer," I would've told you whatever rot-gut whiskey I could think of
Steve Cummins (35:18):
That sounds about right!
(35:19):
One last question. If people want to get in touch with you, or find out more about you. What's the best place for them to connect with you?
Brian Cobb (35:31):
They can actually go to my website BrianCobbCreative.com
Steve Cummins (35:38):
I'll put the link to that and I'll also put the link to your LinkedIn profile there as well so people can track you down. W
(35:47):
Thanks very much Brian. It's been, as I expected, a very interesting discussion. We got into areas of AI that I was not expecting to. So I very much appreciate that and look forward to having a another chat again soon, maybe over a Dark and Stormy.
Brian Cobb (36:05):
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on, Steve. It's been a pleasure talking to you and I look forward to seeing the marketing mix grow.
(36:05):