PARAMOUNT GLOBAL - Christian Kurz (SVP, Streaming Research/ Insights). How does streaming really work? Understanding business models; marketing challenges & opportunities; how to make inroads in the industry.

Christian  talks through how streaming business models work, how research and insights informs the process, his path into the industry and advice for agencies. 

Brought to you by Syno International  https://www.synoint.com/     For discounts on initial projects contact Jokke Nurminen at jnu@synoint.com

 In this episode we cover:

• Christian's difficulties with English
•  How consumer insights inform streaming strategy at Paramount Global
• Differences between TV and streaming KPIs
• Distribution business models
• Supporting ad sales
• Recent innovations
• Advice for young people coming into the industry
• Advice for agencies
• Quickfire round

And Christian's media recommendation

EMILY MAITLIS:   McTAGGART LECTURE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue3ouzsqpzE

All episodes available at https://www.insightplatforms.com/podcasts/

Suggestions, thoughts etc to futureviewpod@gmail.com

Chapters

• 3:23 Current role & remit at Paramount Global
• 7:42 Key metrics for streaming vs TV
• 9:26 Measuring impact on subscription/ retention
• 12:35 Paramount+ and Pluto
• 15:42 Distribution business models
• 20:06 Helping support ad sales
• 25:57 Recent evolutions in research
• 30:50 Advice for people starting our their careers
• 34:41 Advice for agencies
• 39:26 Quickfire round

Transcript

Christian Kurz: But part of it is also because the objective is actually different. Because, yes, I need somebody, I would like viewers to watch a show. I think that's great and that's admirable, but really, our marketing efforts don't go to get viewership onto a show, they get towards putting people into the platform.

Henry Piney: Welcome to Future View. That is the brilliant Christian Kurtz SVP global streaming research at Paramount Global. Now, if you want to understand how streaming really works, how the shows you watch get chosen, how the parties get paid, how streamers use marketing to bring in audiences, how the research process works, whether large screen advertising really works, this is the episode for you.

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Henry Piney: And now on to the interview with Christian. So Christian, a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

Christian Kurz: Thank you for having me.

Henry Piney: Lovely to see you again. Thank you for dinner, by the way, last time I saw you in New York, which was delicious and spoiling as always.

Christian Kurz: We do our best.

Henry Piney: Thank you. Thank you. So there's lots to talk about, but if it's okay, I wanted to start with just a little bit of an icebreaker and try to dig in a bit and try to find not necessarily your deepest, darkest secret, but something that most people wouldn't know about you.

Christian Kurz: As you know, and as some other people know, I'm originally Austrian and I've now lived in the US. For eleven ish years plus. That might be one thing that some people don't know. But really the interesting thing to me is that at some point in high school, I almost failed English. I was told by my English teacher that this is never going to work. And I feel like I'm doing pretty okay in English right now.

Henry Piney: You are doing pretty okay. You do have a slightly dodgy American accent, if you don't mind me saying so.

Christian Kurz: Yes, it's a funky mirage of an accent. Yeah.

Henry Piney: Have you written back to your high school teacher?

Christian Kurz: Not actually but that's a good idea. I should do that.

Henry Piney: You probably should do. So how many other languages do you speak then?

Christian Kurz: Really? Just German and English and a tiny bit of Italian. But don't test me on that one.

Henry Piney: Okay. Won't test you on that one. So, moving on to your current position at Paramount, obviously recently rebranded from CBS Viacom, you had various roles, but what is the current role in Compass?

Christian Kurz: So I currently head up our research and insights for the streaming business. Paramount Global is like every other media company, divided into multiple trenches. We have a theatrical studio, Paramount Pictures. We have a publishing company, Simon Schuster. We have cable TV companies. We have linear, free to air TV company. And then we have the vertical that is streaming, which primarily encompasses Paramount plus the SWAT streaming service, and then Pluto TV, which is our fast streaming service. And what I had up is really the research and insights for both of those services globally. So us and internationally, as well as also keeping a finger on the pulse of the streaming market as a whole and helping form the strategy around our streaming business in general. And I say research and insights specifically because I do not currently deal with data and analytics. So first party data, our measurement of our services is happening in a Bi team. We're really the first party talk to the consumer, add the why to the what that we might get from Bi. That's really what our focus is as a team.

Henry Piney: I see. So if I play it back a little bit, you can see what the ratings are, if that's the correct terminology in streaming. Probably.

Christian Kurz: Isn't the correct terminology equivalent to that.

Henry Piney: Equipment, which I assume you also don't share with anybody because streamers don't. But that's a different subject in itself. But then you are looking at it, you're going, well, what's happening here? And why are we getting good ratings, good numbers for this show or this show?

Christian Kurz: And a lot actually, we also do a lot of the pre work, right? So we do a lot of content work that in the hope and intention to predict what is going to happen on the platform when that actually hits the platform. So it's a lot of pre and then it's a lot of additional analysis.

Henry Piney: Yes, that was actually the question I was going to ask is whether you were involved in that type of area of trying to predict as far as you can what's going to work. And I'm sure it varies enormously by country as well, kind of being kind of a global role. Without giving away any state secrets for Paramount Global, how do you broadly go about that from a research perspective and what sorts of methodologies do you use?

Christian Kurz: Relatively standard, but before I get into that, yes, it's the short answer. We are involved in that and really the way that we break our work down is the way that the streaming business, or at least our streaming business, is breaking itself down, which is there is content, right? You need to show something. There is product, as in we need a platform where this thing is being consumed. There is marketing because this is now a direct to consumer business largely, which means we need to engage with, connect with the consumer and bring them into the platform. And then the fourth vertical within my team is basically strategy and landscape type things. So we're involved in every piece of the business as a whole. And in the content piece specifically, which you just asked about, it is applying very similar methodologies to every other traditional piece of content research from theatrical to television to anything else. Which means it is synopsis testing, content receptivity when there is part a glimmer on the horizon of a show all the way through to episode testing. And we use all of those insights to then, well A to benchmark, but also to help inform our marketing prioritization how much money should we be spending on this title, how big can it be? And then also, of course, tying it back to right, how did it do in the end? That is still a big construction side at the moment because Paramount plus in the US is about a year and a half old. So the data of it isn't quite as robust yet as we'd like it to be. So we're working on implementing some of some more rigorous ties back together where we can.

Henry Piney: So I'd imagine that must be changing a lot given the current environment in terms of you may have had certain predictive signals which were relatively reliable or had a relatively high correlation back in the days of simple or linear. But now you're having to scramble around. I'm sure you're not scrambling, I'm sure you're gliding probably towards the solution here. But you're having to really look at where are the predictors and what are the indicators around this new world.

Christian Kurz: Yeah, we have to think differently. And part of that is because it's a different competitive environment than it was 510 years ago in general, right, regardless of where in the industry you are. But part of it is also because the objective is actually different. Because yes, I need somebody, I would like viewers to watch a show. I think that's great and that's admirable. But really our marketing efforts don't go to get viewership onto a show, they get towards putting people into the platform. Our primary focus for any off AR marketing is to get people into the platform, into the service, quite frankly, because the people who are already in the service, we have a better marketing channel to speak to, we know who they are, we can talk to them in a different way, so we don't need to use that marketing channel for that. And that also changes a little bit the questioning and the purpose of content testing because, yes, I need people to like the show, but really, I need people to like the show so much that they are willing to sign up for a new streaming service for that show. And that tweaks the way you think about some of the approaches of research a little bit as well.

Henry Piney: Yeah, I could very much see that and for those listening who aren't deep into research, but give me for a second because I just want to double click on something, zoom into some of the detail and zoom back out again, not least to understand a bit better the streaming landscape. But I'd also imagine it must be very difficult methodologically to try to isolate the impact of any one piece of content, any one show, on subscription intention or even when they're on the channel, subscription retention. So how do you start to think about that type of issue?

Christian Kurz: So retention is a lot harder actually than acquisition and that is. Rightly or wrongly. I don't know. But there is a relative industry agreement that essentially the title. Or the show or whatever it is. Piece of content. That is the first thing that you watch on the platform largely gets credit for bringing you in in the first place because the measurement is a bit more granular than in other places. I know what you do when you get to the platform. If you come in through digital marketing channels, I even know what the ad was that you have seen. Right, so you can create a waterfall of if somebody clicks on an ad for Show X and that makes them sign up, then really that show should be credited with it. If they haven't clicked on it and they come in some other way, what did they watch as the first program or as a second or the third? Right. And our Bi Team has a very sophisticated models around what gets credit. So for the acquisition, it's relatively straightforward in that way, partly because there's just an industry agreement that that's how people look at it. The retention is different because hopefully you watch a lot of different things and therefore, how do you distribute credit to those titles and how do you therefore measure the value of a piece of content? That's a much more difficult thing that I think a lot of companies are still playing around with.

Henry Piney: Yeah, I could very much see that. So I suppose in terms of acquisition, it's almost a version of Last Touch attribution. I'm probably slightly misusing the phrase.

Christian Kurz: I know it's a version of that. Yeah, for sure. And again, be that right or wrong. Right. But that's how it's done. Yeah.

Henry Piney: And then once they're on the platform, you're dealing with some very complex, multitouch attribution type of modeling, which will probably be a very, very detailed, geeky podcast in its own right. If we were to start to talk.

Christian Kurz: About that and on top of that, I mean, that's the other thing. Like last touch Attribution for content. Yes. We also, of course do a whole lot of brand marketing that is not in the digital world where therefore the Attribution doesn't run that way and that flows through a much more traditional research funnel with brand awareness and consideration and intent and all those types of things. And that plays part of that role as well.

Henry Piney: Okay, I can see that. So zooming right back out and forgive my ignorance here, as usual, but could you just say from a US perspective to begin with what's on Paramount Plus and what's on Pluto?

Christian Kurz: It's actually good that you make the country distinction because that is one of the differences, of course that content rights are very, very different where you look at countries and that's not just true for us. So Paramount Plus, we have really, really a mountain of entertainment is what the tagline is as well as live sports and breaking news. Then there is sport where there is a portion of the NFL. The Paramount spot in the US is becoming the home of English language soccer. And then we also have a number of other sports. There's a bit of golf there's, a bit of other various things in there. And then we get to the entertainment where we have theatrical features, paramount Pictures as well as others, a large library of features that's going through there. 

And then on top of that, of course, we have streaming originals, both movies as well as TV series. Really. Our Parent Plus original series are some of the big hooks that we have. So there's 1883, which is a spin off or an origin story for Yellowstone. There is Halo, which is one of the big ones that's been running recently. And there is many, many, many upcoming shows that have been announced that I'm very, very excited about including, for example, Greece, the Rise of the Pink Ladies. One show that I'm really looking forward to which is coming next year. Pluto is a very different service. You go in there, you have a normal electronic programming guide like you are familiar with from every table box of yesterday and you select among a very large but still limited choice of channels and you select what to watch there. There's a lot of channels that are thematic. There's a lot of channels that are single property channels but it makes the choice much easier. The content there is very simply just a little bit older. It is just a little bit more nostalgic. We like to call it familiar content. You will not today find any new original content on Pluto. Yes, we're showcasing some of the Paramount Plus originals there as a marketing initiative and some of the Showtime ones. But it is primarily a service for content that you are already familiar with.

Henry Piney: Thank you. Actually that helps a lot as a good distinction for me. And Paramount Plus is in the US. Anyway, home of sports news and the big new stuff, Pluto, is older, familiar kind of content, thematically organized, which is one more question, possibly because I may want to dive it even further as you explain more around it to me. I just got hooked into Paramount Plus in the UK, based in the UK via sky because of Yellowstone. How does that work in terms of the business relationship? Because I'm subscribing through sky on my EBG, but obviously it's a Paramount Plus show and actually you can subscribe to Netflix and various others through it as well. So without getting into the real specifics, I don't mean in terms of percentages of who takes what, just broadly, how does it all work?

Christian Kurz: Yeah. So essentially there is the two business model, right? One is the ad funded one, which will park what I want to talk about later. And then there's the subscription element of it. And the way that it all started is direct to consumer subscription, right? So there is a website or an app where you as an individual go and pay X dollars to be part of that. Now, in order to get that in front of people, you have to enter into distribution partnerships. The simplest form of that is the Apple iOS Store or the Google Play Store, right? Any app that you spend money on, Apple and Google take a cut of it. The same is true for streaming services, right? So there is processing, all that type of stuff. That's still a relatively simple way of doing that. But then also there is what we call the allocate distribution, which means that people already have a service somewhere, somehow, and they choose a la carte to add something to it. 

The prime example of that is Amazon channels. Everybody who has an Amazon Prime subscription gets some video that shall not further be talked about, but they can then choose to add Paramount Plus to that subscription. They continue to pay Amazon, they pay the same amount as if they bought it directly, but they can now consume that within that environment or walled garden that Amazon has created for them. And then on top of that, we also have a lot of partnership agreements with what used to be cable companies, cable satellite MVPDs and sky being one of them. So that everybody who already subscribed to a particular tier of their service, and in this case the movie package automatically gets access to Paramount Plus as well. We get some payment for that. Not necessarily the full payment that we would get if you were to pay us directly. 

Of course sky takes a cut of that, but in reverse. We can now leverage the sky marketing muscle because it is in their interest to get their customers into this thing and to start using this. So that's what's called a hard bundle, which means you as a consumer do not get to make a decision on do I want Paramount Plus or not? You get to make a decision on do I want this bigger package that Paramount Plus is part of. And what that does, of course, in a distribution model is it adds a relatively large number of subscribers relatively quickly. Then you can supplement that with the direct to consumer business that we have in all of those markets. And that really allows us to supercharge our expansion strategy at times, as well as leverage the partnerships with all of those MVPDs and companies that as a company both Viacom and CBS now Paramount have been partnering with for decades. So it really is the next evolution of those relationships.

Henry Piney: I see. And so, playing it back a little bit, in relatively simple terms, I suppose you are making decisions as a business in terms of do you go direct to consumer where I see you're basically taking all the cash, or do you create partnerships whereby you almost leveraging their marketing weight, but you're getting out to a broader audience, but you're going to make less money?

Christian Kurz: Absolutely. And in essence, the answer for the vast majority of markets is both. Right. It's a combination of both. We have a direct to consumer play with a direct to consumer marketing team. And that's where a lot of that stuff happens, as well as distribution through partners.

Henry Piney: Yes, I can see that. And I imagine that the agreements, when you have distribution agreements through partners, those are a fixed number of years and then you renegotiate depending on what each party needs.

Christian Kurz: Absolutely. Very similar to how cable carriage deals used to be. Right. Like we used to sell Nickelodeon and MTV to MVPD, saying, right, for five years, you can carry those channels for XC per subscriber. And it is very, very similar to that structure.

Henry Piney: Yeah. So, Kristen, I also wanted to dive into just briefly the role of research around supporting ad sales.

Christian Kurz: The most important thing in the ad sales world is to know enough about your audience to be able to match an advertiser's desired target with, yes, I can deliver against that. And a lot of that happens through third party data and data hydration because there is only so much we are going to know about a user. Now, the beauty, by the way, of Pluto TV is that you do not need to sign up. You do not need to give me your email address, you do not need to tell me anything. You just click on it and it runs. 

The flip side to that is that I don't know who you are. And that makes that business quite interesting because what we now need to do is we now need to figure out who you are, what you know and what you like. And that largely relies on the same or very similar methodologies as there would be in the normal digital ad sales world. Right. There's a whole other places where you can watch video ads. It really is in a similar way where we're trying to hydrate the information that we have with information from everywhere else in the world to really build up a best or good enough picture of who you are. In the Paramount Plus world it's slightly different because you have signed up, we know who you are, we know your email address. So in that case we have a little bit of information. Ideally we have at least your age and gender and don't need to infer that from somewhere else. So we can then start positioning that around that. But the real primary focus for us is the quality of the impression. You tend to watch our content. A vast majority of our impressions happen on the TV screen. Yes, we're also available on the web, on the web and on mobile apps and on tablets. But the vast majority of impressions is on TV screen, which means you're watching us and just us and are not multitasking with lots of other things on the same screen. That is a different value of an ad than if you're scrolling through a feed and you're maybe watching a second of whatever this thing is. And that's where part of our focus is as well, is to really demonstrate the value and the impact of the apps.

Henry Piney: Okay, and so how do you do that in terms of showing that there's more value through watching on a big screen? Because I can imagine various social media apps are making another argument.

Christian Kurz: I mean, essentially it comes down to the fact that it is full screen found on and actually visible above the line. That's really the three main things. But there are a number of ways that you can look at that and the most recent interesting piece that's been done is really all around attention. How much attention does get paid to certain things? And we partner a lot with industry organizations on that. So there is the vibe the video advertising bureau in the US think Box in the UK, think TV in Australia, ThinkTV in Canada, screen force across a number of European markets who are basically industry organizations who do a lot of this type of research and we very strongly partner with them. And then there's a lot of academic partnerships as well. So that attempts the most recent attention work that I was referring is Professor Karen Nelson Field out of South Australia who's been doing a lot of that work in partnership with a lot of organizations. But it's the Byron Sharps of this world. It is that entire academic, I don't know, corner that is really helping us do some of those things. And there is ways of like eye tracking with permission where you can see, right how much attention is being paid. You can do all sorts of biometric type thing but we tend to not do a lot of that stuff on our own because it gets very expensive very quickly. So we partner with industry organizations to try and do that and then leverage those arguments.

Henry Piney: Yeah, I can certainly see that. It makes sense, doesn't it? A bigger screen, high quality picture, you should have more attention, attention should matter. But then I suppose, thinking it through the next stage, that those nasty media buyers are probably going to ask is show me that attention correlates to something else, purchase intent or ideally, actual conversion? Because that's the big argument that I suppose a lot of the apps will make is that they are a performance marketing outlet and they could show a very direct link to purchase.

Christian Kurz: Yes, they can. But that is the last touch attribution right. Yes, a Google search can lead to a sale. But what made you search for this thing in the first place? Was it maybe an ad that you saw on television? And you can make an argument or you can actually prove that while the ad for whatever travel company is playing, you can see the search volume for that name go up. And that's been cases that are out there and that have been very much proven. And I also very often reference back the new startups in the digital economy. 

So all of the Etailers that do not have physical ones like the Biometrics online without ever having seen it, and all of those types of companies, the vast majority of them, or at least the large ones, are heavily investing in TV and air quotes ads. Right? So big screen video ads, because they've seen it work, they can tie it together to their own website and their only store where you can buy these products. The main point is that and again, I use the word TV, because that's what big screen, full screen means. TV really works on both ends of the marketing funnel. It just works and really that's what makes TV. That one medium that delivers right across the funnel.

Henry Piney: Christian, you've been part of this research world in very senior positions for quite some period of time and I'll move on to that in a moment. Maybe some of your tips and thoughts for people making their way in the industry. However, in terms of different data strands that are different methodologies that are being used, what have you seen become sort of more important? Are you putting more credence in over recent years?

Christian Kurz: Yeah, I mean, particularly over recent years. I would be amiss remiss if I didn't talk a little bit about the pandemic and it has very little to do with the new data, new approach type things. It is really quite traditional. But what we absolutely have seen and learnt over the last few years when everybody had to move from any kind of inperson research to not in person research, is that particularly in the qualitative world, remote research absolutely works. And I'm sure it worked before, but it wasn't used anywhere near to the volume that it is today. And we have certainly, particularly in the qualitative world, found significantly more benefits.

Henry Piney: Interesting. So what are those benefits?

Christian Kurz: The biggest one is geography. If I put focus groups together, I have to put them in a single location and by default that means I have a geographic skewed. If I do this virtually, I can have somebody in Korea and in the UK on at the same time if I can make it work for time zones. And I think that is really, really one of the big benefits. It also very simply allows us, if you talk about a US perspective, to go into the middle of the country in a much, much easier way and therefore not be biased by the coast as much. So it's a lot of that. And even with kids, where the one area where you would still question that as well, zoom School has actually done a great service to research.

Kids are absolutely familiar with sitting in front of a screen and talking to somebody through that screen. So it's worked really, really well in the qual world and then also in the quant world, what we have really started to do is figure out ways and we that's not us, it's like the industry figure out ways of using biometrics or near biometric measurement in quantitative settings through a webcam. There's a lot of facial coding, there's a lot of eye tracking, there's a lot of those types of things. I can now just record their eyes while they're watching this thing at home in front of their computer. And I don't actually have that biased respondent turning something manually. Right? So there's a lot of those innovations that existed before, but just haven't been anywhere near as mainstream that I think have made our life a lot easier. Actually, I'm not doing all screenings anymore. Right. It is really all about the consumer consuming in their own home, getting a relatively accurate reaction and response. And very often we actually get much more honest responses from people in their comfortable setting as well.

Henry Piney: Yeah, I can certainly see that. Just a quick question on the call side of it. I can imagine one of the arguments for physical in person is that you get a better feel for the responses and the temperature of the room and that type of thing. What's your view on that?

Christian Kurz: It's really. Really interesting because this is one thing where I was very skeptical. Let's put it that way. Because I like in principle. Being in a back room and actually getting that feel for the room. What the difference is. Or I've largely noticed the difference being that while you don't necessarily get the feel of the room. You see the person's face so much more clearly than you would ever do in a focus group room. Right? Like you sit in the background, like who just. Said that. Was that the person in the back, right? Is that Mike? And what's his age again? What's the background? And now I have all of that information at my fingertips and I basically zoom in on their face. So while, yes, you're losing the body language to a degree, you are much more getting much more out of the expression, out of their face and their responses. And you can tell when somebody's bored, you can tell when somebody is disagreeing with somebody else. And you wouldn't necessarily be able to do that in a traditional setting.

Henry Piney: Really, really interesting. Again, I can drill in further, but I'm conscious of time and we should probably move on a little bit. I did just want to touch on your career a bit and any lessons out of that. I mean, you've had a really amazing career and all these Marky brands. There's warner Brothers Disney. It's basically everybody's at Discovery viacom CBS. You've now become Paramount Global.

Henry Piney: So just briefly, Christian, how did you.

Henry Piney: Make your way in that world? What advice would you give to young practitioners making their way as to what they should consider?

Christian Kurz: Yeah, so, for one, I never thought I would be a senior person in the research world. I always thought that I would be in the media industry. And I think that to me is a really interesting difference because right, I'm doing both. Yes. But I very much see myself as a media person rather than a research person. Okay. I sometimes ask that question in interviews. Not that there's a correct answer, but if you were not doing media research, would you do research for unilever or would you do marketing or content for a media company? And that's a really interesting way to think about what it is you want to do. 

So I fell into research. I'm very happy here and I've done it for over 20 years now, but I was always going to be in television. So much so that 200 years ago, at some point, when you still sent job applications by post in a letter, I sent letters out to basically every company that had TV in its name for an internship application. And I'm sure that I applied to at least one or two TV repair shops at the time because I didn't know what they were or doing. But that aside, I do think it's about trying to figure out what it is you want, and I've said this a lot, is that you do not understand an industry until you are in that industry. And what that means is that if you are trying to start out in either media, television, streaming, radio, or in research, get a foothold inside that company. And if that is the receptionist, it does not matter because as soon as you're in that company, you can then get an understanding for how do things work, how do they connect to each other. And that your first. Your first two jobs are really then going to help you to figure out where you really want to be within that industry. And I don't think it is a realistic expectation of anybody who is in university or graduating university for them to know exactly what it is they're going to do because most often they don't even know what jobs exist that do what they are interested in. Right? I mean marketing is a very, very big field. There are so many different aspects of that. But I couldn't boil it down to one thing and I think that really is all what it is. It's figure out what you're interested in, start early to try and get an understanding of it and then find a way in not even necessarily into the exact place where you want to be, but to really just be in there and get an inside perspective.

Henry Piney: I think it's great advice and if I break it down a little bit of thinking about it but I'm such a research geek because I'm going to think of like an X axis and a Y axis all of a sudden. But it's almost that decide do you love the field or whatever, it's like stats, data analytics. Are you more of like a core researcher is maybe on one axis and you really data science, whatever it might be and you want to do that and you're relatively industry agnostic? Or is it that you love TV or movies or streaming or music or whatever it happens to be? Whatever happens to be?

Christian Kurz: No, but I think that's exactly the point. Right? So what is it that you are passionate about? And that can absolutely be more than one thing, right? But then that's what internships are for, right? Try it out, see where you are and if you like it, keep doing it.

Henry Piney: And I guess that applies whether it's agency or client side. But jumping onto agencies for a moment, what makes a good agency? What are the characteristics that you look for?

Christian Kurz: What makes a good partner is really a good thought partner and if you start working with a new agency it's never going to be perfect. There's always going to be a learning curve and we just have to be aware and accept that. That also means that there are projects that I do not put a new agency on because I don't have the time to build that relationship and we need to meet results much more quickly. Right. And on top of that we're also then for certain projects we're buying in expertise. Like there is an expert agency in, I don't know, theme park research and whenever we did that years ago, then I would find that agency to partner with to do that work because everybody else we've been working on with content testing is going to know as much as I do. So sometimes you look for expertise, sometimes you look for speed but constantly I look for partnership. I've been told by many people that I'm a difficult client and I doubt that christians largely that is because I have very high expectations and I have high expectations of things being delivered to our standards. Right? If we did it ourselves, what would it look like? And I expect that same level. I really look at agencies largely as an extension of our team, which means that we have constant conversation, constant interaction. We are not going out there to brief an agency then let them go and do the project and two months later come back and give us a PowerPoint. 

That is not how we operate. We have weekly conversations about every project because I need to be able to present that project. I need to know everything there is about that project if I am to defend it to our senior management. Right? And the same goes for my team. So we are much more closely embedded than a lot of other clients and that then comes to the partnership. Sometimes the objective of a project changes while we're doing the project. I expect flexibility to do that. I also though very very much expect an agency to know in advance what its cost and project structure is. There is nothing more annoying than halfway through a project having a conversation with an agency that says this is great, we just didn't budget for that and asking for more money. That's just not okay. Know who you are talking to and actually sell yourself. Tell me what you have that the next person doesn't and how that helps me. It doesn't help me. If all you're doing is asking me what my priorities are, that's not helpful. So it's tell me what you can deliver and know what you're good at as well. There are agents that are good at all. There are good at quote there are agents that are good at something very specific. That's great. But that's what I need to know because that's what helps me make the distinction of where to send my request for proposal, my brief and really helps me then make a decision later on.

Henry Piney: Yeah, I think that's really useful. I was going to follow up and ask what exactly you meant by a thought partner. But I think you elucidated that kind of very clearly in terms of flexibility, being committed, shaping the deliverables together, understanding that objectives kind of sometimes change. You've got to kind of work with it. I also really like the advice in terms of pitching. I mean it wasn't necessarily advice but I thought a really good question that I had from one of your competitors. I won't necessarily call them out in a positive way but we were pitching them and they said listen, you've talked about a lot of stuff here. If you were to do one project with us, one methodology, what would it be? That's a very good way of just getting to the point, but you're really confident of one thing. If we give you a shot, what's the thing you want us to do?

Christian Kurz: Yeah, no, absolutely. As an agency, you know that any one of your clients work with a portfolio of agencies, therefore you may as well play in the sweet spot for yourself. Now, for that to happen, you need to know what you're good at and I think that's really important. That is also why, by the way, we tend to work not with the super duper huge research companies that are experts at everything. Allegedly, we tend to work with the midsize companies that have enough of a team to be able to handle us because a tiny boutique agency and we work with some of those too. But when I have to think about, can I give this project to that agency? Do they have enough people to actually deliver on it? That is a different conversation. Right. We work very much with the midsize companies that are big enough to absorb the volume that we may give them, but are small enough to still be flexible and have the attention to detail and the attention to customer needs as well.

Henry Piney: Thank you, Christian. Now, I'm conscious that we are coming up on time, so I'm going to do a quick fire round and I'm just going to ask you two questions and one of them is directly related to your strengths and weaknesses. So what would your partner say? Your best and worst characteristics of well.

Christian Kurz: I've listened to some of your podcasts and I feared this question would come. So I have asked him and his very, very clear answer is that my best qualities are that I'm supportive, patient and I make a good lasagna, apparently. And my worst is that by making the lasagna, I make a big mess in the kitchen. And allegedly I snore, which I still do not believe.

Henry Piney: I'm sure you don't, do you, Christian? Wake up and deny that you're snoring.

Christian Kurz: Yes. So you said I have been proven wrong.

Henry Piney: But anyway, so as Mike actually recorded you, I said, look, you were I'm probably getting into too much detail, but I was just interested. Okay, so final question, because, again, I'm kind of conscious of time in terms of books, media, anything like that, that you should kind of recommend or that you've really, really enjoyed. In addition to the Grease prequel, the one about the Pink Ladies, which I also want to watch, by the way.

Christian Kurz: Listen, I am so excited for that show, staying true to my lane,which is audio visual media. I am actually going to talk about a lecture at this year's Edinburgh TV Festival. A couple of weeks, or a number of weeks ago, Emily Maitlis, former of BBC, now of Global Radio, gave a really, really great mentality lecture that was an outstanding analysis of media journalism and their relationship with populism across the world. These days. It is on YouTube and it is absolutely well worth watching, so I would recommend that to everyone.

Henry Piney: Well, thank you. I saw some of the coverage and I read some analysis around it, but I haven't actually watched it yet, so it's a good reminder to do that and I'll put the link up as well on the website. Christian, thank you so much. It's been utterly brilliant, as always, and fascinating. And I could probably ask you questions for hours and hours and hours, but unfortunately I don't have time. But it's been an absolute pleasure.

Christian Kurz: Well, thank you so much for having me and we will talk for hours and hours again the next time we're having dinner. Right? Thank you so much. Thanks to your listeners and I hope it was useful.

Henry Piney: Very much so.

Christian Kurz: Thank you.

Henry Piney: So much. Good insight from Christian in that chat. If you like the podcast and want to support more episodes, please follow Rate, write reviews on Apple or Spotify. Also, please feel free to send me suggestions at future viewpod@gmail.com. Thanks again to sign up for sponsoring if you want to get cost efficient customer profiling, please contact Jnu@signoin.com so that's Jnu@sr.com. Make sure you quote Future View for special di