 Let's welcome Mr. James Curley, J.C., who's the president and CEO of Gibson Brands, the iconic guitar company based in Music City, USA, and Natural Tennessee. Well, J.C. joined Gibson on November 1, 2018, and along with his team has made significant progress in restoring Gibson as a global leader in the music industry. Over the years, J.C. has built a reputation as a brand-building expert and has crafted uniquely tailored solutions for a variety of other well-known consumer good companies including Levi's, Keen Footwear, and Solomon Sports NA. So, thank you so much, J.C., for joining us. It is so great to have you. I just request you to unmute yourself. Firstly, I believe this is your first engagement in the Indian subcontinent via virtual platform. J.C., I'd just like you to unmute yourself, please. Hey, good morning, or good evening. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be connecting with India friends and hopefully future friends. I've been there many times. I wish I could be there in person. But yeah, for us here at Gibson, it's potentially one of the newest exciting markets, for sure. Absolutely, and J.C., we're so happy to have you join us, and especially early in the morning right there in USA. Thank you so much, and I really wish we could give you a standing ovation and welcome you with all the fanfare possible, but this is what the constraint of the virtual space is. I hope the warmth is felt on the screen for you, and I'd like to pass it over to you. Absolutely. Thank you so much, J.C. Well, sure. Well, I appreciate the opportunity in this kind of crazy year we're in in 2020. It's great to connect with people, and I think even this, for me, I was energized by the opportunity to come and speak and see if we can come live from Nashville and hit the folks in India. So great. Well, good. Well, what I thought I'd do maybe is switch over to a little presentation that I prepared. But before that, a friend of a good friend of mine signed even India said, Hey, J.C., how about if it's early morning and late evening, can you just maybe play one song? Because, you know, you've got a guitar and you're in Nashville. So I thought if it's cool with you, I'd just open up with a little song to get everybody going. Maybe appropriate for this year. You can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. Good morning from Nashville. So let's talk about brand. J.C., you took me back to my college days back in St. Zebra's. We used to have our own, you know, a band and it just took me back. So thank you so much once again for joining us. I'd leave it up to you. Absolutely. And afterwards, if there's time, we can take a few questions and follow up. If you have any questions as well. Absolutely. Thank you. Okay, let's see if we can share this screen. Can you see that? No, J.C., not yet. We're just, we're still waiting for your screen share. If you could, you don't have to put it on full screen mode is what my team has been directing me to communicate. How's that? Ladies and gentlemen, we have J.C. and India Brand Contlay right now. And as you can see, yes, we can see it right now. Over to you, J.C., thank you. Thanks. So often when we talk about brands, we think about business and consumers and markets and categories and competitive advantage, but let's just maybe go back a few hundred years and talk about something that might be relevant to business. But at the same time, it might get you thinking about you and your brands for the future. So if you think about brands, one of the most important things we have to do with a brand is to create momentum around a brand. But how do you get momentum? Where does it come from? How do you know when you have it? Well, most importantly, when you get it, how do you keep it? Well, let's go back 400 years ago and look at physics. Physics is pretty simple. And the three laws of motion come to mind from 400 years ago. What's the first law of motion? An object at rest tends to stay at rest until you apply force, i.e., if you do nothing, nothing happens. The second law of motion says force equals mass times acceleration. What it basically means is momentum is determined by how big you are and how fast you can go. Those are two pretty good laws of motion for a brand. If you do nothing, nothing happens. And by the way, force and momentum equals how big you are and how fast you can go. But then the third law of motion kicks in. And it goes like this. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. That's called competition. That's called forces. Potentially in 2020, it's called a global pandemic. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. So just think about that in the context of how you can turn each of those moments of your brand into momentum. So maybe just before we get started, a little bit about me. Who am I? Where do I come from? Why do I do what I do? Very quickly. This is my grandfather, George Curley. He was a Royal Canadian Mounted Police, immigrated from the United Kingdom in the early 1900s to Canada. And then this is my father, General Curley on the USS Intrepid. He was a military officer, general in the military. This is my mother, a free spirit from Canada. Nova Scotia to be specific. Guitar playing, Levi's wearing. Think about that. And then somewhere in the middle between the general and my mom, you get a guy like me. But just in case anything goes really wrong, I also have an identical twin brother. So sometimes we get confused around the world. That's John. I'm James. I have three passports. I was born in the United States. I have a Canadian passport. I spent about a third of my life in Canada and a third of my life in Europe and a citizen of the United Kingdom as well. And then finally, I like to have a lot of fun. I don't take myself too serious, but I take what I do and I take my role as a CEO, certainly of Gibson and previous brands. Really seriously. And that's just me and my wife at a concert a couple of years ago. So what have I done and how have I done it? I want to take you a little bit of a journey that started maybe 20, 25 years ago for me, but certain intersections came in my career. But certainly the opportunity I had with brands, big, small, known and unknown for me was an amazing journey of how you can actually reimagine, re-envision a brand for the future. Let's go back to the early nineties. My first real job out of college. Best job ever. How can you go wrong working for M&M Mars? I mean, all your life you say, wow, if you could have all the candy you wanted, what would you do? Well, guess what? You get to go to M&M Mars. But it was a really interesting time at M&M Mars. I'd moved from Canada to the United Kingdom. And it was in that world of global branding. The early nineties was about brand extensions and global branding. And certain products were called different things around the world. And I think organizations and brands and companies knew inherently that they had to create a global brand dynamic and then maybe find ways to engage locally. So, you know, in the early nineties, you could say, hey, Mars was a candy company. But then we made a pivot. And I was part of a team that looked at candy, not just as candy, but thought, how can we take the brand Snickers around the world and make it truly a global brand? And we did this. We became the official snack food of the Olympics. That was in 1992, a big move for Mars, but it also really helped bring the Snickers brand to go global and connect with countries around the world. And all of a sudden, you reframe it from being this candy company to an official snack food of the Olympics. And you start thinking about the share of snack foods, which is a much bigger market, a much bigger opportunity than just candy. And think of all the other dynamics around it. If it's good enough for an athlete in the Olympics, wow, it could be good enough for everyone. That was back in the nineties. That was about a five year run at M&M's. And then I got the chance to join the team at Solomon French based company started in basically in 1947 by George Solomon. And it was essentially a ski company coming into into the nineties as well. And at one point Solomon said, we can either be the best ski company or could we be more? And so it was the ski company, but then realized it could actually play a role in freedom action sports. And so I was at Solomon for almost 12 years. And during that time, we went from being a ski company to this freedom action sports brand, this mountain sports brand. And really it was about thinking about share of the mountain, not just share of the ski market. And all of a sudden Solomon got into apparel, they got into trail running. They went to the cities with different deals that even started making surfboards. And that was really to feed the freedom action sports brand and not just think about a ski company, but what's the share of the mountain or share of action sports. So reframing the opportunity is an interesting way to look at it. And then started with this young company called Keen Footwear. And Keen Footwear started with a simple challenge that can a can a sandal protect your toes. And if it could, would it matter? And so it wasn't just a sandal. And when I joined there as the CEO, the company had just started and we really started reframing it, not as a sandal, but as this hybrid shoe for someone who wants to live a hybrid life. And a hybrid shoe is basically two things coming together to give you something. You didn't really know you needed, but when you got it, you couldn't live without it. And it was a toe protected sandal. It protected your toes, but it was breathable at the same time. And so therefore it became a hybrid shoe. This was around the time that people were driving hybrid cars and this whole sustainability movement was coming. So, well, who lives a hybrid life? It's someone who wants to create play and care. And so you go from this sort of a sandal category to hybrid shoe and you start thinking about share of shoe solutions, whether it's protection, whether it's comfort, whether it's durability, whether it's breathability. Here's a very versatile shoe. So that's my maybe probably 20 years combined starting at Mars doing that for five years and then ending up as the president CEO of Solomon for North America and then the president CEO of Keen. And then came a big challenge. Around 2012, I got introduced and connected to the good folks at Levi's. And Levi's is interesting. It's a hundred and almost over 140 year old branded invented the blue jeans, but not that long ago it sort of took that leadership for granted. And basically it was always a great jeans company and it was always the worldwide leader in jeans, but it had to think differently. It had to do more. So I was part of a team about six or seven years ago that was tasked to how do you leverage the iconic past but kind of lean into the future of Levi's. And you get there and it was essentially a blue jean company, which is not a bad thing. But then we started reimagining Levi's as a leading lifestyle brand. And when you make that move from just a category leader into a leader that touches more parts of individuals' lives, you make that move from exactly what Levi says is you can wear other jeans, but you live in your Levi's and that was something during my tenure. We really brought to life and the whole company embraced this notion of not just share of jeans, but what about share of closet? Think about it. Levi's what touches a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, a jacket. It could be a scarf. It could be shoes. It could be footwear. Anything that sort of rounds out that lifestyle dynamic, not just share of jeans but share of closet. And that's how we started setting it up. And that's how Levi started to get on a roll again. And it balanced the authenticity of what it had earned over 140-plus years but started bringing modern solutions, started delivering local solutions in markets. And I can tell you, I know that one of my friends in India who heads up Levi's specifically worked on that balance of being local and global at the same time, leveraging the authenticity and the power of the brand, but putting into some local solutions in India. And I hope Sanjeev, you're out there and I hope some of my friends at Levi's are there. But this is Sanjeev who truly understands and he's our head of India for Levi's, ours but the head of India at Levi's. And it's done an amazing job of balancing the global dynamics of Levi's and making it relevant for the Indian market. So Sanjeev, if you're out there, special shout out to you and the Levi's team. So now let's talk about a real time challenge. In my recent role about two years ago, I got a call, hey JC, would you like to join the band at Gibson? And as a musician, it was an amazing opportunity, but there was just one little problem. Last I had heard Gibson was actually bankrupt just over two years ago. And so what I want to do now in the next 15 minutes, just take you on the real-time journey of rebuilding Gibson, an authentic iconic brand, but clearly had his challenges. And I've had challenges in the past of making a brand or taking it global or reimagining the categories or taking it from a specific category into a lifestyle dynamic. But I've never had the chance nor the opportunity or the obligation to take a brand that truly was almost broken in terms of bankruptcy but bring it back to life and restore it to its iconic glory. So here's the journey. And here's what it took place. About two and a half years ago, the SOS sign went up and that's basically a very major distress signal. SOS is used in many places, but it basically stands for save our ship and the ship is sinking and we need help. So the SOS sign goes up, but rather than thinking about save our ship at Gibson, I'm thinking about how do we save our sound? How do we save our sound at Gibson? Gibson's sound is worth saving. How do you do it? Well, the starting point for any brand, whether it's new is to sort of create who do you want to be, but if you've inherited an amazing brand, how do you go back to what made it famous in the first place? How do you take consideration of the fact that at Gibson, Gibson is synonymous with creating and shaping and inspiring and supporting and inventing sound. More sound has been recorded, produced, and live through Gibson Instruments over time than any other brand. So you go back in time and say, where did it happen? How did it happen? Who are the famous musicians that helped make it happen? How did Gibson get to a stage where in 1894, it was making mandolins and then into banjos and then into guitars and then into the electric guitar era of the 50s and that was the magical era of Gibson where all of a sudden artists, musicians, amazing guitarists started showing up and then rock and roll gets invented and all these images here are capturing the essence of Gibson in music and not just rock and roll, but country music, folk music, different genres, different generations, different genders of music have been created, supported, inspired by Gibson. That's the starting point for Gibson. We actually have been doing that for 126 years so it makes the mission clear. Our mission is to continue to support, inspire, invent and create music solutions for the future. Our vision is clear. The vision at Gibson is to be the most loved, most relevant and most played music brand in the world. So with that starting point, how do you actually start putting that into motion? So let's go on a journey how to put that into motion. It starts with reframing SLS. If SLS stood for actually save our sound, what if it stood for this? The share of sound. The share of sound from Gibson that can be shared around the world from all of our guitars. To do that, we thought like a startup. Yes, we have 126 years of heritage and iconic status and music behind us, but startups are different. Startups are future focused and if you can leverage the iconic cast of Gibson and lean into the future like a startup, good things might happen. Startups are hungry. They're humble. They also think that every day matters and tomorrow matters more than yesterday and yesterday at Gibson really matters. So this notion of being the 126 year old startup was how we started to build the team, how we started to think about the future and how we started to get focused on what mattered most. Then came the hard work. You're throwing all these ideas and concepts. Protect your core. You got to take the lead. You got to be a little more patient. You have to be more accessible as a brand with your price point. Be more commercial. Stay authentic. Be innovative. Go beyond your core. Expand for more. Stay very simple, but you better be sophisticated. You have to have agility, but you need to be stable like all these kings come at you. These are all very real dynamics and challenges that all of you will face at some stage. First of all, you got to organize all these concepts so that they make sense for you. Ah, okay. What if I took that and put it this way? And now let's go on a journey of how we're starting to rebuild Gibson. And to be clear, we have a great team, the conditions for success of being in Nashville Music City, USA. The leveraging of the iconic status of Gibson is right there for us, but these are some of the balance points we have to achieve to put Gibson back into business. The first one is about listening and leading. You have to listen and you have to lead. So we listened to so many what we call our fans who said, Gibson, the quality isn't where it needs to be. Hey, your prices are too high. Hey, I can't get service one. We can look at social media before I even started. I probably read 10,000 lines across social media about what Gibson could do better. So I was equipped by listening and then it's not just enough to listen. You have to then turn around and take the lead on those issues. So immediately the number one thing we did was focused on quality. If you have a brand reputation that doesn't match what you promise in terms of quality, the chances of you succeeding go down significantly. So we put tremendous focus on the quality of our guitars and then started shaping all the dynamics around it. We listened and we started to lead. We went back to our core. One of the challenges that Gibson has expanded way beyond its core to get into consumer electronics and it got into lifestyle plays and it got into all these other categories and it basically, the core of what Gibson stood for and stands for today is about guitars and they were not given the attention they deserve. So it's really important to come and first of all, focus on what made you famous in the first place, our awesome guitars. And then you can start thinking about more, more solutions. You can actually think about more accessories. You can think about more categories. But we're now in a position where we've rebuilt our core guitar range over the last two years and not just because I say it, but because our fans are saying, wow, some of the best guitars ever coming out of Gibson and Epiphone, by the way. And we're in a position now where we can start thinking about not just protecting and building on our core, but expanding for more. This is an important one, I think in today's world too, where I heard some of the conversation from the prior session, talking about what are some of the breakthroughs in digital and how can you think about it. I think one of the most obvious breakthroughs in digital is that it's just simple. It's delivered in a simple way. It's delivered in a compelling way. It's usually delivered in with fewer words and more images. That's what we're seeing. But behind that simplicity of delivery is a very sophisticated platform. So at Gibson, what we said is, hey, we make guitars, we work with wood, we work with electronics, and we work with our hands. And so how can we stay simple and true to what that is, but do it in a sophisticated way. The balance of craftsmanship and innovation and automation. The balance of innovation and sound or it could be innovation and color or in wood selection or the future of wood. So keeping it simple, but behind the scenes being sophisticated is a really important concept, I think, for rebuilding a brand. This notion of being authentic and agile, I think authenticity is all about saying, okay, be authentic, be true to your roots, but that doesn't mean you need to be stuck in the past. And that was a really, really good lesson I learned at Levi's was that so many people said, oh, let's go back to the good old days, and then yet he's got this new generation of fans saying, let's go to a better place in the future. How do you balance authenticity from the past with agility for the future? This is an artist named Dave Grohl. He's from the Foo Fighters. He was originally in Nirvana, but he's one of those most authentic artists, but he's always looking at new ways to connect, whether that's through media, whether that's through collaborations, whether that's through bringing live events that no one had seen before, or engaging in the community in places where you might not see him on the front cover, but he's got that authenticity and this agility to think differently for the future. Really important for a brand. This notion of being in control, but being collaborative, I think we're in a much more open world of branding now where collaborations, the obvious and not so obvious are taking place, but to get to the place where you can really collaborate, you have to be in control of your own brand and control of who you are and control of your DNA of your brand and be very clear when you enter into a collaboration. A successful collaboration is not just one plus one equals two. It should be one plus one equals 10. Take the power of two brands, the creative power, the commercial power, and bring them together. If both brands are in relative control and collaborate on a vision beyond what their collective fans thought was possible, good things tend to happen. You've seen some great collaborations and you've probably seen some not so great collaborations. I think what separates them is that you're truly in control of what you want to do for your brand and you put it in balance with another brand, good things tend to happen. It doesn't just have to be brands. It can be individuals. It can be a designer. It can be a musician and artist coming in and collaborating with you as well. This was a good learning for us at Gibson, too. It's one of the founders of Keen Footwear taught me this lesson many years ago. He goes, JC, what are you doing to plan to be successful? What if the brand is more successful than you think? Can you handle it in terms of just pure capacity and can you maintain the quality levels? Understanding two years ago, we had no idea the past was not an indicator of the future in terms of the business, the number of guitars we had to make every year. We really didn't have a feel for what the future demand was going to be. Once we started building the collection, once we started reconnecting with artists, once we started getting some energy around the brand, we realized we had to ramp up our capacity very, very quickly and at the same time balance that quality dynamic that every one of our fans expects. In the last two years, we've built up our capacity in every one of our factories here in Nashville. In Bozeman, Montana, we have a factory in Qingdao for our Epiphone brand and then we have some other partners around the world that make guitars for us. So now we're on a capacity increase, but at the same time, we've put more quality standards in place and we're getting the balance right on that. And you've seen the brands that try to go too fast, the quality erodes, and all of a sudden they find themselves in a big problem and sometimes that quality reputation, once it goes the wrong way, it's really hard to get back on the right track. This balance of being cultural and commercial, I think a lot of us in marketing or in brands and you tend to think like, oh, well, you don't want to over-commercialize it and sometimes the creative forces want to contain that creativity to just a certain audience because it's like, hey, that's for the cool kids, but it's okay to understand how to culturally connect in the market but also understand the commercial opportunities you're presenting for your brand as well. This was taken out of Star's Born, a movie two years ago. It's actually been many, there's been three of these movies over the last 50 years but this was the most recent one and every scene in this movie featured a Gibson guitar and that was the main guitar that was being played and when I joined, just as this movie came out, I remember coming to Gibson saying, hey, that was awesome. The last thing I did before I left California to come to Nashville was my wife and I saw Star's Born. It was so cool to see Gibson guitars being used. It was awesome. I said, so where's the Star's Born guitar collection and what's going to happen to that? They said, what do you mean? I said, well, it's the biggest movie and it's the biggest song and our guitars are front and center and this is marketing and how are we going to make sure we leverage that? We didn't. It's a good lesson. Once your brand has momentum in the obvious and not so obvious places, you can take, you know, positive, constructive, commercial advantage of that and ultimately at the end of the day, the reason you want brand momentum and band engagement is to get actually some of the commercial results that's called growth. This notion of being patient and aggressive, I think that's one of the biggest life lessons I've learned and if I could see a show of hands, I would say, okay, who here has made a decision too fast in their life and they regretted it? Then I would say, who here has made a decision way too late? You knew you needed to make it months ago or a year ago but you didn't make it because you thought it was going to get better or you hoped it was going to get better and it didn't, all of us, right? So understanding when to be patient and just take your time and sequence things the right way but then when you have a window of opportunity it might not come at you in the way that you expect in some annual budget or annual plan that feels right for us, let's do this. So balancing the notion of patients getting information and sequencing ideas and being able to be aggressive in terms of when you see an opportunity getting that right is really important for today's, you know, not just business but also for brand leaders. This is one being iconic and innovative and this is always a challenge because people say, well, okay, what does that mean? It says, well, like if you've built something over time but how do you still continue to reimagine the future? So I want to show you a quick clip. You might have heard of Gibson guitars and you might have heard of the Les Paul Gibson guitar. It's the most famous guitar we make. It's the best-selling guitar in the world, the Les Paul from Gibson and Les Paul was a real person. Orville Gibson was a real person but Les Paul was an innovator. People think, oh, he was just a musician from the 50s but he actually was an innovator and today you hear about looping and if you're in music, you know that you can create sound and loop it through digital and keep hitting it. If you think about, you know, different artists that have been looping it's amazing to see what's happening. People think it's a modern dynamic. Well, I'm going to show you a quick clip of Les Paul, the real Les Paul who invented many things but this is how he is iconic in who he is with the Gibson Les Paul but how he was innovative and this was more than 30, 40 years ago. I know what you're wondering and I'd like to start the thing off right. I want to explain to you what I have on my guitar that invented many years ago and I'm very proud of it. It's this little black box that I have on my guitar here. It's called the Les Paulverizer You can't buy it at Radio Shack or Sears or anything like that. This is my own invention but with it I can take my one guitar and I can multiply it into an orchestra. Van Halen is worried sick over my little black box. I'd like to start first by showing you how it works. I'll start with one guitar live like this. Throw that switch and you'll hear it back. I add a part to that and you'll hear two guitars. That's three guitars out of work. Now watch this one. It's four now. Here goes the drummer. They're worried sick over my little black box. I could keep it up all night. I'm going to ask the band to join me. Let's do this. Think about a couple years ago. Last year the Grammys Ed Sheeran looping and everyone I remember my 18 year old son and my 15 year old daughter saying dad you got to see this cool thing. Ed Sheeran did this thing called looping and he played it and then it would play again and he was a one man band and I said, well, is that new? They said, yeah, we've never seen it before. Well, it was invented 30, 40 years ago by Les Paul. So balancing this iconic status that you inherit and then trying to find ways to be innovative is really important. I'll tell you, Levi's at Levi's a team at Levi's which I was a part of back then realized this balance was critical and started leveraging the iconic status of image clothing and really representing the iconic past and putting more attention on that but at the same time leaning into innovation and made the bold move to create the Eureka innovation lab in San Francisco where essentially things came to life whether they were sustainability solutions whether they were fit solutions whether they were design and style or collaboration solutions, the Eureka innovation lab provided a place for Levi's to truly innovate and innovated in other ways by creating our center of culture moments at Levi's stadium so think big and think bold but you also sometimes need a physical place to actually think about where do you innovate or where do people think about being in the center of culture think about sports, think about music, the big moments occur in a stadium so why should Levi's be part of that center of culture balancing your iconic status and leaning into innovation with new solutions is a critical part of brand building. Here's a more recent one too that we've all faced and I got to tell you last year, last January, February Gibson was strong, we had just come off a great year, we were set up for another great year and all of a sudden we were faced with this unknown challenge of a global pandemic known as the COVID-19 and so immediately with the team we didn't have all the answers but what we understood was we were going to go through an obstacle course and we said to ourselves let's plan for significant impact but at the same time let's prepare for future opportunity and those brands and those teams that can understand how to plan for impact but at the same time prepare for opportunity I think are stronger both through the obstacle course but also when you get out the other side and we will get out the other side you've already set up for future opportunity so what does that look like it might mean sometimes going and saying to your team, hey team we're not going to overspend in marketing for the next six months because the demand dynamics aren't there it's a noisy market and quite frankly we're concerned about the health and safety of not only our teams and our employees but also the health and safety of our community, our family our friends and quite frankly our countries so understanding how to take that approach but then at the same time thinking about opportunity that could come up where are the not so obvious intersection points the collaborations the areas of opportunity and what we saw at Gibson was in the early days there were more questions and answers but then when people realized through quarantine through isolation they had through remote working they had more time on their hands and they always wanted to learn to play an instrument and maybe a guitar or maybe they wanted to arrange their photos on their iPhone or maybe they wanted to learn to cook but what we found is that the COVID crisis has now turned into a bit of a COVID creative moment in certain areas and playing guitar is one of them so we were able to turn this obstacle course and by the way it's still very real it's still very serious and the health and safety of my team is the number one priority but at the same time what we're seeing is for creating a new generation of guitarists through the COVID creative component and right now the music industry and guitar companies are struggling to keep up with the demand but the real challenge is how do you keep the momentum of those new guitarists going so they can have a lifetime journey as a guitar player. So that's where the obstacle goes into opportunity and so the last one is really this it's a challenge to you. I think we all have experience I certainly have some I think some interesting relevant experience I've certainly enjoyed my journey following from you know M&M Mars through to Solomon days and then keen footwear Levi's and now at Gibson but I would also challenge yourself in these times and especially coming out of 2020 I think have a think about for your business your brands or even for yourself are you ready to make the pivot and perform at the same time and I would say it's kind of time to reinvent ourselves think about the future think about yourself as the 23 year old start up think about yourself as the 31 year old start up or the 44 year old start up and I think you'll find that you'll start to think a little bit differently about how to do this how do you leverage the past how do you set conditions for success in the present and then figure out how to drive the future and if you get that combination right you can start thinking about turning all of those moments that you create with your team with your brand some of them are expected some are unexpected but the challenge is how do you take all of those moments which could just be an interesting point in time or how do you actually direct those moments that matter for your brand your business or for you and turn those moments into momentum that's the challenge thank you thank you so much JC well one incredible moment this has been for having you on with us on the India brand Hauntlay where JC you were talking a lot of questions which have come from the audience but in constraint of time I'd like to take up four of the questions and parts of which you've already answered but just an interest of the viewers patiently typed it I'm going to ask a few of them the first question is that you joined the company Gibson from Levi's and it was like taking another American icon and you did speak about it that you know it needed the one which needed the turning around so how is it what the viewers would like to know right now well I think it's we're learning now but I mean the Levi's turnaround was amazing I mean you know getting a new team and the new CEO came in there and he had he really set the conditions for success there was a clear blueprint there was I think there was a cultural moment also where I think a lot of people at Levi's at the time thought the best days at Levi's were behind them not in front of them so collectively as a leadership team we said how can we reimagine the future and then and it was a really good playbook so when I came to Gibson it was really a similar playbook you got this iconic past but you knew that you could create a better future but you had to build confidence and I think the center point is having a compelling vision really a compelling vision at Gibson it was being the we want to be the most played most relevant and most loved guitar brand and when people can understand that and that mission around creating an inspiring sound because we've been doing it for 126 years I think people buy into that and then that simple notion and so you know if it if it Levi's it was all about share of closet and now we're looking at share of sound I think building that compelling vision and then the one thing we tend to forget is you know you say it once and you think people remember I think constantly weaving it into the fabric of your culture is really important and you know you start to get momentum when the culture of the organization takes over and you start hearing that same share of sound language coming from other places or the mission you're on so I think the journey for me in some ways Levi's was set me up perfectly with the playbook to understand this and I know some of my friends at Levi's are watching they're saying wow it really is similar it just happens to be in a pretty cool place called Nashville and in a cool industry called music absolutely JC also there's another question which has come in is that what would your advice be to the marketers who are dealing with unimaginable stress posed by the pandemic period what would that key advice be to them? Yeah I think the big advice which I touched on a little bit is that understanding that well three things the first advice is that nobody has all the answers so if you're sitting there thinking oh my CEO doesn't know what to do or my head of marketing is confused it's not easy none of us have been through this and if anyone has been through something like this before call me give me the playbook on this one so the number one thing is there are going to be more questions and answers number two is you can either be you know you can either be in solution mode or not and again hey protect yourself do what you need to do be accountable and stay safe and healthy but professionally be part of the solution and sometimes and this is counterintuitive if you're in marketing is like sometimes it's okay to spend less actually investing less in marketing because we can't make enough guitars so if you can come and say hey I'll take one for the team now and spend a little less and be a little careful but meantime what are you doing with your time to prepare the opportunity for the future what calls and what connections are you making for future collaborations so that in a year from now you look back and say wow not only do we get through the challenges of the pandemic but we set ourselves up for the future stronger than we might have without the pandemic that's a big challenge that's number two and number three is I think just from a experience perspective there's never been more access to information so while you're working remote or if you can't connect like you used to take up something start playing guitar start cooking start doing something creative so in 6, 12, 18 months when someone says well what did you tell me your COVID you know story of the obstacle of course if you say well it really sucked and I just couldn't do anything and we didn't know what to do or you know what I professionally engage this way and I personally took the advantage of that and you just might have a better story coming out of this despite the challenges and the realities to people's health and safety. Absolutely JC so yes it's all about preparing yourself for a stronger tomorrow and you know JC there's another question which has come in is that you're also leading on the Primal brand in the Epiphone different it is for you to lead these brands together now that's another question which is coming from the audience JC that's fun so no so just so we have the Gibson brand but we also have a brand Epiphone and Epiphone is its own authentic brand on it's actually older than Gibson it was in the 1930s and 40s a rival of Gibson it was that they were competitors and then in the 50s Gibson bought Epiphone and then and then basically Gibson is the authentic aspirational brand that we have and if you think about price points in US dollars it's a thousand dollars two thousand dollars some of these new guitars the Jimi Hendrix or the Adam the new collection are going for ten thousand dollars so Gibson is our aspirational sort of authentic brand Epiphone is our authentic accessible brand so it's three hundred dollars four hundred five hundred it's inspired by Gibson with the shapes but it's its own brand so if you think about in the car industry if you think about Porsche and Volkswagen being part of the same group but one is a more accessible price point more accessible vehicle and the other one is more premium but all designed to say give you a better driving experience well our guitars are all designed to provide solutions and by the way that vision of being most relevant most played and most loved also goes for Epiphone and a few people very few people know Paul McCartney wrote yesterday on an Epiphone guitar Oasis plays Epiphone, Gary Clark Jr. plays Epiphone it's been in many many artist hands over the years so that's how we balance those two and then the other side is the balance is the electric and acoustic so we have Gibson as our aspirational Epiphone as our accessible and then we're balanced with Gibson acoustics and Epiphone acoustics and then Gibson electrics and Gibson acoustic so that's how we balance that and it's working really well absolutely that's great to hear JC there is one last question though it has a lot of segments so I'll try and make it very simple for you the question is all about how do you decide when is the right time to leverage a brand's momentum you know have you come across has there been a time when you've had a false momentum moment or when you've plunged into commerce too soon and what are your learnings from that because you've come with such a rich experience and that's the question just lingering on in everyone's mind yeah I think it's a great question I'm not sure of the I have the answer exactly what time and what day did your brand get momentum but one of the things I would start with is that as leaders as business leaders as brand leaders none of us can guarantee success in the future and if you can again call me someone says I can guarantee success I wouldn't believe it but what we should be able to guarantee for our teams our brands our business our stakeholders our owners is that we as leaders can set better conditions for success and think about that it's conditions for success for your brand how are you connecting with it do you understand not just where you've been but where you want to go and so when when you think about the momentum having that vision of where you want to go is really important and being able to get others to come into it and so I would say that all of a sudden and Levi's I think was a great example where where we knew that it wasn't going to be necessarily a question of could it come back it's like who how and when you know and we made one or two big bold moves with like Levi's stadium but then one of the real keys and this is I think a good lesson is that is that Levi's was predominantly a men's brand for many many years but the unlock we recognized at Levi's was if you could really unlock a connection a lifestyle connection to women to her we understand that she makes a lot of decisions for him and for kids and for for the community so we put a big focus on her and all of a sudden not only as I believe in the women's business continues to grow ahead of the men's but it also put energy back in the men's then you started seeing momentum and so you can measure momentum by market share you can measure it by a lot of social media metrics but the true measure of momentum is is are you is your brand in the zeitgeist are people talking about you not just in the category that you compete but about being a part of their life and that truly becomes the style of one's life and in your and that becomes the lifestyle solution so I know it's a long way to try to I would say that not everything's going to work I got to tell you when we did the Levi's same it was a very big investment a lot of people weren't sure that that investment was going to really work but it turned out to work really really well I would say at Gibson I can give you a few lessons that we've learned is that you know we completely underestimated capacity and we didn't think about we just said let's start you know let's get more artists to play in that and all of a sudden we looked at and today right now we're going to look at the future of the market and we're going to look at the future of the market first so I think the biggest lesson is not about just how to plan for impact but what if you are successful do you as a market here have access to the the best tools do you have access to the budgets they're getting set in the future and you know how that game works in marketing it's usually the first or a bigger impact zone for the future so I would say that not everything works but it's almost this fail fast forward try it and we're in a world where we can try certain things and one of the things we're doing to try to mitigate future risk is in one month rate downstairs here in Nashville we're building an 8000 square foot Gibson experience it's going to be retail live stream made to measure custom shop and people think oh you're getting into retail and what you're getting into is it's a unique laboratory for us to try new categories look at price points look at naming how do we bring things to life launch new products there and we'll learn so much in our own laboratory but it's also an experience for our fans so taking the learnings of how you can actually mitigate risk and maximize opportunity why not do it live in front of your fans at the Gibson garage in Nashville so that's one way absolutely I think that's great and I'm sure you know I'd be personally looking forward to once coming down there and definitely having a look at because an experiential buy and an experiential view is always going to be surpassing anything else but JC firstly thank you so much I know we took a little extra time from you and it's early in the morning for you out there but we'd really like to thank you for joining us today absolutely thanks for the opportunity and hopefully soon I can get back there my friend Sanjeev Levi's has promised me he's got a few Harley-Davidson's and he wants to show me a little more of India so I can't wait to get there big fan of India and then and we've got some emerging artists there too our younger artists we've been supporting a lot of artists in India but I think there's more we can do as we get a little more energy in music so thanks again for the opportunity and everyone stay safe absolutely cheers JC thank you so much for joining us thank you