 Hi, I'm Andy Nairn. I'm one of the founders of the creative agency Lucky Generals. We're about nine years old. We've got offices in London and New York and we work with clients like Amazon and Virgin Atlantic and Yorkshire Tea and the Co-op. Thanks so much. Andy, welcome such an honour to have you on the podcast. You're a creative tour de force, an amazing head co-founder of an amazing agency and just also incredible author now. So congratulations on that and I'm guessing a fan of baked beans with a picture in your background. Yes, that's by a very talented friend of mine who's a great photographer called Patrice de Villiers. I think I nicked that offer at some point but she can make any food including baked beans look beautiful. Marvellous. Is Heinz a potential future client then? Do you know maybe this is like a sort of Darren Brown sort of exercise. I'm trying to include the Heinz market user who are watching. I'd love to get them to give me a call. Okay, Marvellous. Anyone from Heinz? Yeah. Let me know and we'll give you Andy's details after the call. But the reason why we wanted to hop on this podcast is you recently wrote an incredible book you launched earlier in the year called Go Luck Yourself. And the book is brilliant so congratulations. It shares 40 tips on how you can get more luck into your own life. And I think if anyone's listening it's what's lovely about it. I thought it's so easy to read. So if anyone's scared of reading big books don't be scared of this one. It's like the little 40 snippets are each kind of like five, ten minutes long. So it's just it was so easy to to read in little chunk size amounts and they're all those marvellous stories. So congratulations. But what made you come up with the book and sort of why now what was the influence behind it? Do you know it was probably one of these ridiculous things that some of us did in lockdown. Right at the beginning of the lockdown I had this foolish idea that I was going to have too much time on my hands. Can you imagine that? Obviously we all turned out to be working like harder than ever and it was all quite busy and hectic, wasn't it? But I sort of at the beginning of lockdown thought I'm going to have loads of time sitting around which doesn't really you know sit well with me usually so I like to be busy. And so I had this idea for a book and I sort of had this idea about writing about lock because I feel like I've been really lucky over the years and then using the book to bring some lock to some other people because obviously I was very conscious especially at the beginning of lockdown that a lot of young people a lot of people with less money you know working-class talent were having a really tough time of it. So I wrote a book about lock where all the royalties go to help an organisation called Commercial Break who help working-class talent get into the industry. So that's why I wrote it and when I wrote it. That's amazing and it's so lovely also the royalty thing and when I was reading it you also the way that you promoted and everything has been done in quite a fun way. You said that you left copies of books in different places all over the world and you even said that you left them in lucky places. Well I mean hopefully those copies have been picked up by now or they'll be very damp. What were some of the lucky places he tries? But you know this is a big part of it because I figured that you know a lot of business books are really boring aren't they including books about creativity and marketing. I mean the market themselves terribly and I kind of think well that's a great irony then we should practice what you preach. So if this book is supposed to be about creative thinking let's market it really creatively. So we did all sorts of fun things like leaving it in places like the Black Cat Cafe in London or the Horseshoe Bar in Glasgow. We sent a few copies to people with the surname of Luck in various parts of the world and who work in marketing. There's about three or four of them so we gave each one of them a book. I put 10 pound notes in a couple of copies in Waterstones and then filmed myself you know putting the money in and putting it back on the on the bookshelf and of course all that stuff is what we tell our clients to do which is like it just creates you know it costs you a tenner but it got loads of traction on social media and actually one of the nicer things that's just happened the other week was that the book won a gold award at the Creative Circle Awards you know for creativity and I don't know myself there's many books that have done that before but that's what I wanted to set out to do the book itself if it is about creativity should be creative in the way that we market it should be creative. So we did we did loads of really funny stupid silly stuff because although you know the subject is serious to some degree you know I think we should also have a bit of fun in our lives as well. Yeah and I was trying to catch because you said that you've made you've inserted a mistake into the book. Has the person won the mistake? Yeah well you know that turned out to be the bane of my life really. So I basically the idea was I like the idea of making mistakes and that sometimes mistakes are pretty lucky so I did a deliberate mistake in the book and then in the last chapter of the book I tell you you know that what I've done I've put a mistake in here if you if you can find it I'll give you a couple of hundred quid reward and that the amount tried in with one of the other stories in the book so it was all kind of neatly wrapped up I thought that's quite clever. Unfortunately of course what happened then is that people start besieging me with suggestions of the mistake some of which are not deliberate mistakes like they're breaking up a grammar they're pointing out other things that I've done not intentionally you know and it was it was actually sort of terrible for a couple of months because people were just picking faults at the book and I say no that's no thanks for the thanks for the advice and eventually that long story short the mistake was I just it was quite an obscure one I sort of used one the wrong Roosevelt you know president in America I referred to one I think I referred to Tedra's development it was actually FB Roosevelt in one of the things so it was quite it was quite hard to find and no one actually got that but somebody did spot an even more obscure mistake which was not deliberate but I kind of thought well it's it's such a good factual error that it was to do with that I'm going to get this the wrong way around I think the Greek he was either Greek or Roman and that was my mistake I still can't remember um poet called Ovid and somebody had this 2000 year old you know managed to spot that after 2000 years so I thought you can get the 400 quid for that mate uh I've got regular suggestions now of what all the mistakes might be in the book see it your second printing is going to be the world's most perfect book yeah it's sort of any grammatical errors will be it because I imagine there's a lot of copywriters probably by the book as well yeah it's um and you started off um actually you're you're a strategist if I'm if I remember rightly said from the thank god I got that right first reading the book and uh you there was this brilliant suggestion I think it's near the end of the book you talked about um how you can often find insights or you can often get creative ideas from from anywhere and and uh I think a lot of people always have creative blocks and you shared this marvellous story and I think it was is it David Bowie um and and he and song lyrics or was it McCartney and song lyrics or something of course I've been quite a lot of I'm interested in lots of the ways that musicians come with song lyrics so David Bowie used to get a newspaper and cut it up into little bits and then throw the bits in the air and just see what the patterns were that were created in and that might inspire you know just interesting ideas and juxtapositions like you know diamonds and dogs the word diamond you might think of diamond dogs and that word doesn't you know that expression doesn't exist diamond dogs but it sounds like quite a cool thing that was one of his albums I think that he got from just talking words up to your diamond dog or um Tom waits the blues musician he puts two radios on at the same time um with different stations and then looks for unusual clashes and collisions between you know different genres or melodies or lyrics um that sort of creates something interesting new because that's sort of all that creativity is really isn't it like taking different things and also bumping them together and create something new um so yeah I like you know I encourage people to deliberately get lots of different things in their lives and smash them together you know to create something new you can either wait for that to happen by accident or like Bowie and waits you can sort of always do it deliberately yeah I think it must have been one of the Beatles the story maybe I think you did mention those ones in the book there was also one I think with the Beatles where they look at the the lyrics or you you were saying that you are you looked at the lyrics and you were trying to like those things yeah it was Paul McCartney so he um he dreamt the tune to um yesterday and um he woke up this amazing tune and he was worried that he was going to forget the tune if he didn't have some lyrics so he was desperately looking around for something to write um the song about and there was nothing there was enough tour bus I think and the only thing he saw was some different breakfast so he started writing these terrible lyrics I mean the worst lyrics of all time and he was like um scrambled eggs oh my baby how I love your legs but not as much as scrambled eggs you know really really terrible desperate lyrics and but he kept that that kept the tune in his head and and that remained the song for about six months I think it was he would sing this scrambled eggs song until I think John Lennon told him if you don't um if you don't stop playing that fucking scrambled egg song where that's us no more sort of thing so um he so then he went back to writing sort of proper lyrics but I thought that was a good lesson and you know sometimes you just need to collide things like in that in this case a great tune and and some rubbish about eggs smash them together and see where it takes you um to get yourself started you can always go back afterwards and edit and get to a better place and and I often use that as a sort of a cure for writer's block if I'm lost for something you know can't think of a strategy or a creative thought or whatever an idea for an article just write about anything and then you can work it all out afterwards so in the book I sort of take the lyrics to yesterday and then imagine coming up with lots of different strategies to a brand um just using the um the lyrics to yesterday but you can do it with anything really it was amazing when I was listening to it and um I mean how long just out of interest how long did it take you just for that little bit when you were thinking of strategic insights for writing that bit was that quite quick for you or was that something that would take a while because I you know the point of the exercise is not to really demand a huge amount of quality it's about quantity and speed right you know and what you can do and I tried to make a point of I think yesterday was two and a half minutes long so in two and a half minutes you can probably come up with 20 different strategies you know a lot of them might be rubbish but um there'll be a couple of good ones in there you know yet the first line that yesterday is you know yesterday's that's heritage isn't it so there's a heritage strategy you're off to the races already you've got one in the very first word you know all my trouble seems so far away well that's all about problem solution maybe there's like a rational thing now at least it looks if they're here to stay well maybe whereas here that's like a provenance strategy so you know very quickly you can get into the groove of generating loads of different thoughts and then just like Paul McCartney with the eggs you can go back afterwards and say well that's making a sense that's rubbish but you'll still you at least you're working from 20 crap ideas then rather than a blank sheet of paper so right no it's incredible i if anyone hasn't bought the book yet you need to buy it immediately even if just for that alone plus obviously you'll feel marvelous because you're going to be helping more disadvantaged people get into the creative industry which is which is lovely is that a the charity that you're supporting is that something that that you started or is that something something that you found it's just some it's a group of people that we had worked with successfully before i really like like the people who run it they've got very good i think they've got a really good hold on the issue that i mean they've been doing it for a long time and they they're trying to do it for real rather than a kind of a pretend these are performative way like you know there's a lot of i guess if i'm being cynical there's a lot of organizations on at the moment that kind of make it look as if they're doing something good but maybe it's not really actually making much of a difference but but what i liked about them is they were very honest so for instance one of the things that they started doing was rather than helping young working-class talent get into the industry they sort of put that on hold for a bit because what they found was that they were getting people in and then they were getting booted out the other end too quickly you know because they weren't fitting in this is right what diversity is one thing but if people come in and then don't feel included then it's a bit pointless all you're doing is like a revolving door sort of thing so they so they put a halt on that just i was admirable you know because i guess the you know that takes a little bit of honesty to say well that's not working and then really what they focused on more was then how do you how do you make people feel included so that you're ready to accept new recruits if you if you see what i mean so yeah they're just like a really good and i would recommend anyone who's kind of interested in trying to up their game in that field to give them a show that's commercial break commercial break yeah that's right i must uh i'll get in touch with you afterwards i wonder if there's something we can do with them as well yeah please try and help um and then you i've got so many notes here i don't know where to start um i mean i guess like what what was some of the some of it what was some of the um i mean i remember there was another story that you told in the book that i really enjoyed which was jeff bezos it looks like you do amazon work for uh for the agency as well which is amazing congratulations um did he get to meet jeff and and is that how you found out about these lucky boots that he has i've never met jeff the rest of my dad the team have i don't really um i can't claim fame to personally work on amazon i did in the early years but um i'm not working for a while but um he's been very involved in you know until recently obviously he's left now but and until recently he was you know really quite involved certainly in the um in the bigger campaigns like the superbowl campaign and in fact our first campaign of the superbowl featured him in the ad it's quite a big risk really when you think but i mean it's a big risk there for them to give the superbowl brief to some small agency in london um and then it was probably a big risk for us to suggest putting the boss in the campaign and then slightly take the piss out of the company as well but they were great the client were brilliant because they appreciated that you know really especially the superbowl when people want to be entertained um you don't want to come across as all boastful and corporate and say how wonderful you know the the Alexa product is even though it is but you know no one wants to hear that they probably rather see you um be a bit more self-deprecating and take the piss out of yourselves and how ubiquitous you are and maybe even take the piss out of the boss um so that's what we did we had this great um story where we imagined what would happen if Alexa lost her voice um and of course Jeff Bezos is walking around saying hey how is this even possible um and and his aides all assuring that they were on it but you know that they were gonna make it work but you could tell that they were really worried that they weren't gonna be able to make it work and we had all these celebrities filling in for anyway the the point was it was kind of a it was a very interesting use of uh of of the most expensive advertising real estate in the world you know that's 15 million dollars a spot just just for the media time sort of thing and to spend it on effectively showing your product not working and taking the piss out of the company is pretty um you know brave I guess um in in commercial terms for them but it worked brilliantly it was the American public voted it the best and their favorite um Superbowl ad out of all of them that year which is the first time well it's the only time that British companies ever um achieved that honor and since then we've had a couple of second places in a third place so that formula of just being self-deprecating and acknowledging your flaws is actually often quite a really good way to sort of make people like you more than if you just say how brilliant you are and I think that seems to be becoming more true today than it perhaps was in the past as well I think it's sort of also often helps show that you're a bit more genuine in a way because none of us are perfect out of interest how on earth did you get the Amazon account like how does that happen how does a London agency get a sort of a Superbowl ad for an Amazon thing is that is that just a normal pitch thing or did you find them up and it was after a year and we um do you know it was quite it was very interesting this because we were only about a year old so we're quite tiny it was quite ridiculous and actually Amazon weren't at that stage I mean they're now probably it's not the biggest advertiser in the world in the top couple um but back then they didn't really spend any money on advertising and necessarily um you know believe in it because of course the company had been so successful without it um so anyway we've got a call and we couldn't believe it while Amazon you know because even back then they were pretty huge we're coming in to see us and we were a bit worried that we were um too small um because at that stage we were only about 15 you know people or something like that and so we we started going around the rest of our office block asking people could you sit in our offices for a little while just to make us look a bit bigger and fill the place up a bit because we've got all these empty desks and I always remember we got some people from a I think a double glazing or window cleaning that was a window cleaning and could you just sit there we'll pay you you know a lot of money just to sit around for a couple of years felt great and they had all these jumpers on you know like fleeces saying you know ZXY windows but around our way we kind of thought that's probably just like urban chic you know it probably just looks like they're being cool you know for like a thousand to find these jumpers so so all these blocks sitting around who are window cleaners and then when but when we got into the um the the meeting and we were thinking all right great we feel a bit big they were sort of a bit disappointed about you know I thought we thought you'd be smaller and and they meant what they said was um we were really looking we're really looking for a small team because we've also we're huge we don't need numbers we'd rather work with small groups of tightly committed people and they have this rule called the pizza rule the two pizza rule that the Jeff Bezos thing a few um yeah so you need to put a team on two pizzas and if the fate the team can't be fed on two pizzas then um you have to split the team up and get a smaller team so so we probably shot ourselves in the foot so um uh we managed to get it anyway despite our so that just shows you should never try and cheat like that um and we did tell them about it after us and they thought it was quite funny that we'd been trying to be okay but really what they wanted was small so we got there and hilarious I mean because you started the agency in was it 2013 2014 so it's really not that old when it comes to think of it coming up to your 10th anniversary and how did you come up with the the names it's here there's three three of you right who started this there's three of us um do you know what that was pretty lucky as well like a lot of these things and and again so until about three days before launch we had a completely different name I won't go into it because it's a it's a long story but we we had registered the um a completely different name I still get things from hmrc you know in connection with this previous coming to pain in the neck actually um but um uh something happened like a news story that then without being too cryptic made that name um inappropriate I mean actually maybe I should say so the name was house on fire that's what we were going to call ourselves right and the logic being we the three of us we've worked together for years me Helen and Danny we get on like a house on fire we want to work with brands you know people that we get on with like house on fire and hire people you know we just like having a good time we think having fun in your working life is important all that kind of stuff um so we're perfect that's great house on fire and then there was a terrible house fire which you know a number of children died in and then we started thinking yeah that this is going to happen often enough for this to be a horrible thing to be you know to be associated with every time you google us you're going to be met with these horrible images so um so we part of that but then we had a real panic for you know we had two days to launch and we didn't have a name now and it was an old school band from Danny uh who he'd always uh wanted to call a band uh when he was a teenager um Lucky Generals and I think his band mates chose something else so this is his chance to sort of call a band uh Lucky Generals and he did and we we've never looked back it's been one of the luckiest things happened to us really the name's been great for us oh that's amazing and what was the lucky coincidence that bought the three of you together uh well I had worked with Helen for a long long time I mean I first worked with her like almost 30 years ago and really for the last 20 years I've worked with her non-stop so um and then Danny we we met 15 years ago so all three of us we just got on really well like you know like a house on fire and I feel like that is lucky in you know a lot of people want to start up agencies but don't meet the right people or the planets don't all align at the same time you know I've met I've spoken to loads of people who'd be brilliant amazing sort of founders of agencies but the things just haven't worked out because you need to all three want to do it or four or whatever it is you need to um all want to have to do it at the same time you know everything's going to match up with your families and you know all that kind of stuff lifestyles life stages children and for us it all just everything just fell into place and we really I think you get these chances to when you get those chances you should go for them um and we figured out that if it's a disaster it'll you know we'll still get a job you know somewhere you know we're not going to be utterable so fuck it we might as well just short and go for it what were the different skill sets so you you bought the strategy sort of side to things so i'm strategy Helen is account handling I guess you call it and that is a creative I think you know we are we're all very sort of um you know I think we we overlap quite a lot as well that's amazing oh bravo um yeah and you know I mean the you mentioned lots of work in the book as well and I know you know the there's a fantastic story about York City and and doing things proper and I mean those ads so so good um I don't know whether you want to share something around that they just before you do the other thing which I thought was fantastic um was you recently launched a new uh virgin ad was that correct um so virgin Atlantic big airline uh and they've they've had these wonderful uniforms for a long time when I know recently um they've been sort of trying to promote that they're more inclusive and uh also quite edgy I think in in a way like when you watch watch their ads they're always quite fun and and going against the stereotypes and the traditional social norms um but yeah the the new ad that you've launched for them is incredible as well so bravo I'll link to some of these ads afterwards but yeah I wonder whether you want to share because it's in the book in particular like the a bit of that Yorkshire tea thing is it's absolutely fascinating so Yorkshire tea again I can't claim any personal glory but we have you know I suppose one of the things you do when you've got an agency as you set up an amazing team of other people who work on these things and what they um what they found or what we found was when so we we sort of won that piece of business without and the client told us this afterwards you didn't really necessarily win the pitch um but you you you gave us an inkling of you know you know we sort of felt these are the guys to sort of back and to to work with and they'll get their adventure so that was great that was uh somebody taking a chance on us um and then so then we were really motivated to get it right you know because we really sort of thought we have to repay this chap um and what what we sort of noticed was that so they had this idea which they talked about in the past about doing things proper I mean it's a Yorkshire phrase you know and they are at that stage they were number three in the marketplace um and and we sort of figured the only thing about proper doing things proper is that it can be a bit boring like if you get into the details of all the amazing quality stories of the types of leaves we choose or the plantations we get our teas from or the processes we get a get a it's a bit it is a bit boring I mean they do all that and it is amazing but only if you work in the tea that's really sort of thing so we just thought we like that idea proper but how do we make it more interesting for the mass market and then when we were going up and down to Harrogate where they're based the team sort of noticed that you know it's it's not just the tea that they do proper it's like everything they just they always talk about the receptionist just being super nice and friendly like really good receptionist and really good the way they answer the phones and really good you know just the way that you're treated up the everything about the whole company was just done really properly and they figured well that's pretty telling because if it's a place where everything's done proper and that's the line in the end so I've chose we made the line where everything's done proper then if they if they treat the interviews or the the whole music or the couriers or the the leaving speeches if you if they treat them as brilliantly as that then just imagine how much effort they'll put into the tea we started doing we started featuring all these mundane tasks and then to make it more interesting we got real people you know amazing celebrities from Yorkshire to bring those tasks to life so let's have Patrick Stewart doing the leaving speech was the most recent one or Sean being doing this company pep talk the HR conversation or Parkinson doing interviews for jobs and so on so everything just being elevated to the nth degree being done properly and it's taking them from you know number three in the marketplace to number one and it's just they're dream client that the nicest people and but very serious commercially as well and very ambitious so you know what's not to like yeah I'd imagine I love the lateral thinking and it's also interesting that obviously it it it's not it's not saying it's not it's not literally talking about the tea it's sort of it's all the stuff around it which then I I love that in advertising when that happens as opposed to it just being straight you know this is yeah yeah I mean Bravo and it must be quite risky for them to make that you know was it hard for you to sell that in because we're not going to talk about your tears or we're going to talk about all the things around your tea and that's generally like the lovely old tea they were very supportive and very encouraging and also about the whole Yorkshire thing because it's sort of I think some other clients might have felt they wanted to you know their position was that they were number three and a more of a regional player and they wanted to become national so it's sort of counterintuitive to really dial up the Yorkshire thing with Yorkshire celebrity isn't doing things proper and all that but they really understood that really we were selling Yorkshire as a sort of a spirit you know it's an attitude that even if you're not from Yorkshire in fact actually that when we launched it the biggest uplift in sales was from Lancashire so I thought that was a real mark of success that we're getting people to drink Yorkshire tea I mean God that that is absolutely mind-blowing sort of thing so yeah it's it's you need that partnership between a great client you know it's the same with Amazon or Yorkshire tea or Virgin you know you need to have a bit of a double out I guess and it's a it's that lovely thing that you know seems to be a sort of string through the book as well so saying it's it's often you know success in life is not necessarily how smart and clever you are it is about leaving room for all these these wonderful wonderful moments and how you can create more of those wonderful lucky moments yourself I think you give the example near the start of the book of an exercise that you did on on lucky people versus unlucky people reading a newspaper spotting images it was a thing done by a professor Richard Wiseman an authority on the psychology of luck so I sort of included a bit in the book and he does this experiment where he splits people up and lucky people and unlucky people what people you know people would you describe yourself as lucky or unlucky and then gets them to read a newspaper and the people who say that they're lucky he asks everyone to count the number of photographs in the newspaper and the people who say that they're lucky do it in a couple of seconds literally a couple of seconds and the people who say that they're unlucky take quite a few minutes so quite a big difference and the reason is that he puts a little notice on page two of the newspaper saying hey there's 45 or whatever it is 45 photographs in this newspaper just tell the guy in the door and take your money and go home and what he finds is that people who think they're lucky really a lot of the time all that really means is they're good at sort of spotting opportunities around them that are not on the brief you know really but allow them to take shortcuts through life you know they can notice opportunity when it's waving at them across the street whereas sometimes people when they say they're unlucky there's sort of people that are sort of focused and heads down concentrating on the task that they've been given in this case to count photographs and he so he teaches individuals to get better at you know opening their eyes to stuff going on around them in their lives but I think the same applies to organizations because a lot of the time we're so focused on our own sector or the advertising brief that we've been set or the you know the task that we we we've stopped looking at the window and being inspired by nature or sport or you know outside world or culture and all that amazing stuff that's probably more likely to come up with more interesting ideas and so yeah I sort of try and encourage organizations to apply the same principle of you know trying to unfocus a little bit on the brief and and think about other stuff because because real people don't really care about the stuff that's in our briefs other stuff in life yeah it's it makes so much sense I mean what are some of the things that you know do you do you have any fame any favorite lucky tips I mean you share a lot of them I think one of them one of them and there's lots of different examples in this in the book or one one would be to start with what looks like misfortune turn misfortune good fortune you know a lot of the things when you get a brief or look like bad luck and so we skip over them because we don't want to depress ourselves we want to get to the good bit about what is the benefit of this product but actually a lot of the time if you take the worst thing about the brief and really rather than run away from it we're really trying to embrace it and and turn it on its head then that can be really powerful like it might be a taboo you know people don't want to talk about this category so rather but rather than shy away from it maybe you should run towards it and try and make something big out of it um like I think body form have done that really well with menstruation but for decades people used to just yeah away from that was a bit awkward but they've literally made a song and dance about it and you know done an opera you know an ode to Viva la vulva you know it's an amazing sort of a celebration of the taboo or it could be you know sometimes a small budget can actually be a good thing because it can force you to think more creatively or not having enough time that can actually be the thing that concentrates your mind or I think that product flaw you know it can be something that looks like a bad thing um you know like Guinness and it takes a long time before but actually good things come to those who wait you know you can a lot of the time taking the negative and turning it into positive is a really powerful way to disarm people a little bit and sort of um and get people thinking in a new and interesting light about your brand so that would be a top tip what was um what's your favorite the the I mean I think you've done this quite a bit in your own career it's turning turning sort of limits into or turning uh turning yeah limits into into the great insight like you have you have you had any personal experience of doing that with the brands that you've worked on sorry I was losing my words there a bit the very first thing we worked on was the thing um for paddy power the um irish bookies and they came to us with a brief on homophobia in in football it's a big problem and um big problem they wanted to do something about but they didn't have very much money because it was you know there's a charitable exercise for them um and so it was literally on a on a shoestring and and and so again we we embraced that and the we launched with this idea that was has now become rainbow laces where you know it was the idea of sending rainbow laces out to every single football player in the country and then encouraging everyone to put their laces on you know in social media to encourage lacing up you know nine years later that's a cultural phenomenon it's it's happened every year it's now a big part of the football calendar you know the the arch of wembley's being turned rainbow laces it's um it's it's been a storyline in coronation history um I think I think that you know it's just been a huge part of football and culture this become much more and more accepted and we're we're working on what the next iteration is for you know for katar and for the um for the 10th anniversary of that next year but the point is we if they just give us a very convention I said giving us loads of money we would probably we'd have come up with something like really boring and like a big um conventional tele campaign but sometimes when you don't have a lot of money and as I said literally in this case it was a shoestring then embrace that and really force yourself to come up with something more creative it can turn out to be a blessing in disguise I imagine that's uh it's amazing I think your yeah so so much of your work has been so incredible and I'm I'm looking forward to seeing what what comes next is there anything on the horizon I mean it there seems to be new things coming out all the time for the agency so I'd imagine it's growing from strength to strength yeah thank you there's lots coming up we love working on people like the co-op you know because they're an amazing organization it's all about you know helping the community um but I'm glad you mentioned that verge and stuff that's been a big sort of hit of this year this you know going back into their DNA this idea that you know that they see the world differently that's aligned with the version of Lanarkas you know they have always done that since day one they've been challenging the state's core but also they allow you to see the world in different light you know through travel and and so see the world differently was was what we launched in in the spring but then I think what we always try and do with our work is put actions to the words you know we don't just write about some empty corporate philosophy so in this case we wanted we worked with them to listen up the the rules on uniforms so that people can you know just choose whatever the gender is or however they define themselves they can wear whatever they want and then that we did a fashion runway on the runway and did a very small-scale little less social film last week but it's got absolutely bananas you know it's got enormous numbers on social media because people appreciate that oh that's proof that they really do see the world differently they're not just talking a good game also fashion week and fashion yeah exactly so it's a time well hopefully with the whole bunch of other things and it's in it's in culture you know people are obviously talking about this issue and and also I think we've done it in a joyful and you know a celebratory way rather than a kind of finger wagging and sort of soap boxy sort of lecture about gender differences and all that kind of stuff it's just been I think it just makes people feel easier about the thing it's sort of oh yeah okay people just being themselves you're doing their own thing what's not to like about that there's definitely a power of positivity that seems to be a theme through all of the work that you do with the agency I can't remember seeing much finger wagging it's all kind of generally very positive yeah thank you for helping make the world a brighter lighter place yeah I think we just found that people are not you know we know I've got you know three teenage or sort of thereabouts kids and anyone who's got teenagers will know that you know we are not motivated by finger wagging you know we we delude ourselves if we think that shouting and you know poking them and telling they get out of bed you know but if you coax and if you charm and you know you've got to make people feel positive about what you're asking them to do then you might have a bit more success it's amazing like I know we're running out of time so I always try and end these ones with with a sort of sharing a funny would you rather question the one which I was going to ask you is oh I don't know I got I got two different ones that I was going to ask you but I don't know which one to do um I'll do uh I'll I mean I'll share both of them and then you can choose which one to answer if that if that makes it easier um I was going to ask uh would you rather have magnified supervision or magnified super hearing or uh would you rather be able to talk with all the animals in the world or speak every single foreign language oh my god these are amazing there's still not the start of questions I thought were coming my way the magnified supervision super hearing and then animals or every language all language yeah so you can speak to every human basically on the world I mean yeah that's interesting I'm gonna say I'm gonna say super hearing I think um why do I think that I think uh I guess that you could you could then um listen to what other people saying about you that would be sort of revealing that's great things that Robbie Burns thing like I would some power the gifted gears to see ourselves as other CS types I think it's the one thing in human life that we never really get to understand um so uh it might give it might be quite a good use of a sort of self reflection and sort of uh make yourself keep keep your feet on the ground when you find out all the terrible things that people have got to see about you um you definitely need earmuffs when you go to bed though but yeah that's great and the uh and the foreign language versus uh all all animals animals uh that's um I'm gonna say animals I think it would just be be amazing to get such a different perspective we've got a cat um I'm forever trying to guess what if anything is going through this cat's head I suspect not very much but um maybe some amazing thoughts going through there that we're missing out and I hate that to be the case that we're just treating there as an idiot but um yeah so there's socrates just sitting there pundering life at the meaning of the universe and everything I think I think as we find out more about animals you know they apparently lots and they've got incredible forms of intelligence that we just don't know about yet so maybe that what are those dolphins chatting about and yeah what are the birds seeing each other and all the rest would be cool yeah I saw I saw there's a lovely documentary on cats I think on uh on netflix yes what's that absolutely yeah it's quite funny yeah it was fascinating that there's so little research on cats versus dogs and yeah I think it's because cats don't give much you know the stereotype is that dogs you know I suppose dogs don't let you know what they're thinking or what they're feeling right superimposed what they're thinking was cats just look so inscrutable don't they you can't really work out because they don't they've got I think they've got no facial muscles so they don't um make uh they don't change expressions really they just look at you just saying but that makes them more fascinating I mean that's why I'd love to know what's going on in there and it's been an amazing conversation thank you so so much for taking the time to chat and um I wish you and your agency all the very best and if anyone wants to go and buy Andy's incredible book um I mean Amazon is your client so probably first place to go is amazon.com and search for go luck yourself and uh if you want to learn more about Andy and his agency it's um is it lucky generals.com yeah that's that makes it easy fantastic um and we'll put those links in the in the in the bio but yeah thank you so so much again thank you very much it's a good especially that last little bit very funny cheers