A Brief Talk About Value With Gen

11/02/2023 - London-ing

Gen Kobayashi is at the top of his field, a Chief Strategy Officer at Weber Shandwick whose insights and experiences of working with big brands to make big things happen, are quite incredible.

Much like myself, Gen also suffers from that thing called being a human, but that did allow for some interesting talking points when I was fortunate enough to pick his brain about entering the creative industry of advertisements and marketing-ness.

He really does have an incredible insight into the way the advertising world - or 'Adland's' for people who prefer shortening things and then having to go back and resay it a couple of times whilst explaining it to the plebs much like myself who didn't really understand it the first two times - really works and functions. He's worked on a plethora of challenging projects and briefs and worked with a bunch of different humans from a bunch of different places, who have also worked on a bunch of different things with a bunch of different humans. You get the point. Anyway, Gen really knows strategy for brands, both big and small, so when he released an article pointing out the dangers facing modern value-based consumerism, I knew I had to pick his brain on it.

Gen's a man who knows what works, he knows what works, because, more importantly, he knows what doesn't work. In our brief chat over a Microsoft Teams call we quickly got into the thick of what it means to be a strategist in Adlands, and what sort of things people should really be focusing on nowadays in the strange world of not-so-far-off war and not-so-long-ago global pandemic-ing. He talked about the s the changes in skills required by people entering the industry, how COVID and the ensuing lockdowns changed buying habits and rewrote the rule book on social advertising. He challenged my thoughts on just why I wanted to get involved in the creative and Adland industries.

We ended up talking books and value, how so much of modern UKer's are too financially stressed to buy big and just 'keep calm and carry on' anymore. We went down a rabbit hole of the dangers facing big fashion, just what it might mean for the younger generations, who are more focused on the honest intrinsic value and environmental impact of goods, products and services. He gave some amazing recommendations for book's, including 'Why Does the Pedlar Sing?' by Paul Feldwick, and 'A Masterclass in Brand Planning' by Stephen King, which, I'm sure you would have guessed is not by 'that' Stephen King.

It was great to get a fresh perspective on what threats are facing the so-called too-big-to-fail brands of the world, who might just find that foundational business model doesn't suit the modern buyer, and it may take them falling all the way down in order to build their way back to where they once stood in market share and owned media space.

I really appreciated our talk and would love to discuss more of his experiences of working in Adlands and the clients he's helped drive into new markets, and ones he's helped gain greater market shares and social profits.