 If you go back to marriage in the 40s, you did not get a diamond ring. The market was created, customer behaviour was changed, but you cannot get a gate without a diamond ring. Hello, John. Thanks for joining us. I did want to dig a little bit, maybe into sustainability first, because I think it probably sits in that space of purpose, which is kind of often a recurring theme. I'm always interested in organisations that have a purpose at the heart, but also how do you galvanise the whole organisation behind a purpose? Yes, I mean, EY is purpose-building a better working world and it's been a huge galvanising driving force. If you look at our overall growth, if you look at our people engagement, having a strong purpose is very powerful. We've got the data behind it to show its effect. I think it also ensures then that you're doing all the right things at the right time. So sustainability clearly is a massive issue alongside other things, social equity, all of the critical drivers of change essential to the world. I think sustainability, we went out about three years ago with a strong commitment from ourselves, but also building partnerships around the world in terms of how to effect change. We talk about value-led sustainability, the fact that at a business level, there's an imperative to do it for future generations, otherwise we will not have a planet to surf. Equally, future competitive advantage is going to come from those organisations that actually embrace it because we know from, I don't think we need the stats, we know from our own EY data, close to 70% of consumers are saying they want brands and businesses to do more. So it's a driver of future growth in the business as well as it will have to shift the way society operates. I guess it feels like it's something that's not just the sole responsibility of the marketing team, like it has to impact the whole business. How do you kind of spread it through the organisation? Yes, I mean, it's a good question about marketing. What's marketing's role? And I was at the WFA event a couple of few weeks ago where the question was posed, do you change the company or do you reframe the way customers think about it? And it was an interesting debate. I wish I'd asked that question. It was a great question. And, you know, in advocating for consumer change, there's a fantastic lady from Oxford, the sustainability practice, who said if you go back to marriage in the 40s, you did not give a diamond ring. You then go, a market was created, the customer behaviour was changed, that you cannot get engaged with that diamond. And if you apply that to sustainability, you go, how can marketers reframe the choices you make? How can you actually start making people make better choices? So there's undoubtedly an issue. Having said that, organisations, businesses have to create new solutions, new packaging solutions, new ways of engaging. And then you can go very macro around it, which is how do you chase value? What's future value? What's growth in the future? Is it the circular economy? I don't know if you've heard about the doughnut economics. Yes. Around moving from growth to thriving. So, you know, it's an end-to-end systemic shift in the world. And we kind of say it's everybody's business, OK? In the boardroom it's atop and it's going to come from the bottom up. Picking up on it, it's kind of connected. I sort of remember November 2022. I was mining my own business. Next thing, I'm on this thing called ChatGBT. And like, generative AI is the only thing that seems to be talked about. But I'm assuming, obviously, as EY, this is not a new thing to you as an organisation. AI is not new. You know, we spend, you know, millions have been invested in using AI across pretty much all of our services, all of our solutions. So AI is not the new thing. In fact, AI has been for many years. What is transformative is gen AI. It's a game changer. It's described to me from our chief technology officer. You're going from a predictive model that says this happens there to something that's actually, you know, you don't know always the answer, OK? And so it's a game changer. It's not a fad. I think, you know, it's not here this year and gone tomorrow. I think, you know, what we know is it's going to affect pretty much every business and every function within a business is going to change. Exponential transformation. So what do you do with that in every part of the business? And then I think the bit that we feel very strongly, which does go back to purpose is around human impact. And so when you have a strong purpose like building a better working world, you kind of go, how do we put humans at the center of this? It's a big part of our consulting practice. We know that we've done some research, actually, which says if you put humans at the center of transformation, real people at the center of it, your outcomes are better and your transformation is more successful. So I think, you know, fundamentally trust, you know, exponential transformation and then human impact is somewhere where we've all got to navigate through to. It's interesting that that picks up on, I guess, a theme or a conversation of having people around Genital AI where it is the idea and the human aspect is the idea that it's, if we start to look at it as a tool for humans, then actually suddenly there's the fear disawares and it's something that you can use. Yeah, I mean, fundamentally, you know, it is about augmenting. And yes, there is fear and clearly, you know, there is a need for regulation. There is a need to actually, you know, sort the copyright issues out, you know, all of those are real issues which will be sorted, I hope, fast, but it is about augmenting. You know, either at an efficiency level where you go from a talent point of view, you can actually be freed up to do some interesting part as opposed to not. And then, you know, in some ways, democratizing creativity isn't a bad thing. The creative economy, throwing it out there, you can have us all an amazing presentation today by a brand where they have actually thrown their brand out using Genital AI, people have created images and they've reused that content. So I think it's, you know, on a good day, this is going to unleash new ways of engaging, which is exciting. Clearly, there's a downside that has to be managed through. Now, partly connected to AI, and it'll make sense in a second, but I've always been at admirers professionally of your advertising and the line, better questions. And the reason I kind of bring it up in the AI, because obviously how we interact with the genital AI models is that we have to ask questions of it and make suggestions. So it feels like somehow you saw this coming. Yeah, I mean, I wish I could say I saw better questions in AI when first creating the Better Questions campaign. But, you know, fundamentally, in fact, I was on a call yesterday with our global head of talent and he said, isn't this the moment around better questions to double down on it? I said, absolutely, because the prompt, the way you ask a question will get a radically different answer. So we're all going to actually have to get even more skilled around the better question. And so, you know, in some ways, we've had the better the question, the better the answer, the better the world works. It's probably the better the question, the better the prompt, the better the outcome. So I think it's come a page. In fact, we just did a very interesting, it was published in Harvard between an MIT professor, Hal Grigason, who's written about the power of questions and we've collaborated on various things. And our chief technology officer, who basically, it was all about inquiry and how questions and AI are going to be deeply entwined in the future. So your question is great to hear about the advertising, but actually in a profound way, better questions is sort of come out, in some ways, come of age. I used to talk to junior strategists about the power of asking why. And like every time you ask why and you get deeper and deeper and it's the most simplest of questions, but yeah, it unlocks absolutely. It is, because most of us want to say what the answer is very quickly. In fact, Hal Grigason's got this thing about the questionverse where he forces you not to speak other than listen to the other person's question. There's only the questions you can do before you get to solving it. So drawing on that, I'm thinking about kind of a world powered by or driven by AI data and how we collect it, how we use it. I'm always fascinated about kind of how organizations are utilizing data. I mean, look, data is a primary source of what we do at EY. I think along with the data becomes all the protections and how we are responsible about it. I think as you know, one of the biggest challenges with sort of the open version of Generator AI is you're putting out your content into the world. So there will be a degree of complete open source and then people building their own platforms within using it so that you can actually protect your own data. So yeah, I mean, all of the old truths about data being the liquid gold or the liquid oil of the future, it absolutely is right. Exactly. The one thing I always wonder though is there a tension between sort of data and creativity? How do you kind of have the two live together? It's an interesting question. I raised it earlier saying I still think there's a data creativity gap in terms of understanding how to take the data and the insight and how that may lead to a creative solution. And I think for now, if you look at creativity being about making connections between different inputs, whether it's a data piece, whether it's a societal issue, your brand, somewhere the connection points to the need to a creative solution. That's the imagination. The data somehow can spark a thought. But to this day, that next leap is still a human activity. And I think where AI will play a very powerful role, it's almost like a fast brainstorming. Certainly for now, who knows in the future, but for now it's a radically fast way of brainstorming ideas around and then the human mind can take it to the next level. Well, picking up on the theme of humans. I'm missing my very tenuous link here. But you're a B2B advertiser. And so when you think about audiences, you obviously think about your audience who are very particular business lens. But I always find that there is a reality between there's people as business people and people as just humans. So how do you kind of go about thinking about your audience and finding opportunities to engage them? Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. Because I work at UI, I'm now seen as a B2B marketer. I mean, most of my life is consumer. And I often say the reason I probably was able to add new value into the system is because I don't think there's a separation. I think it's human to human, right? So B2B is human to human. And therefore, like anything, you are connecting with someone's emotions. So what's the value exchange? So if you look at it as a top level, a better question where your audience can't get to the answer is adding value. So if you think about the value exchange, the human beings, and by the way, we're all emotion, if there's a lot of data that says B2B is a far more emotive decision. If you pick a packet of detergent, if you get it wrong, it's okay. If you pick the wrong partner, your career is at stake, right? So it's a very, very powerfully emotive decision. So human to human is the way I look at it. And I don't see a separate... There are tactics that are different between B2C and B2B. But in terms of the way you think, so what's the insight behind the audience? What value can I create to them in the exchange? It's sort of like a... I like that human to human because B2B becomes kind of B2B to me, like the holistic me and my ambitions and all that. Yeah, that emotion and decision, right? It's wrapped up in hulkery. Your hulkery, your livelihood, your family. Looking forward to the next two years, or even beyond, what are you excited about or maybe even nervous about? I have to say I'm excited by AI because it's a big meaty challenge, okay? It's complex. It's got legal frameworks, societal issues. It's got implications for people's roles at work. I mean, it's a profound shift. And having said that, I think probably people on the whole that go into marketing or advertising or any form of creative industry actually love meaty big problems to work through. And so I think that's exciting. It's a bit like sustainability, right? We need to do it. And I actually think this industry, this collection of people, actually holds a massive part of the answer. So in some ways it's a moment in time where you go creatively, the world needs us more than ever. And that's fun. I love that perspective of this idea that actually the problems, you run through the problem because that's where innovation lies and grows. Yeah, exactly. But it's not without its challenges for the world. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks a lot.