AI, Creativity, and Production at Scale

Kate Morrison (00:00)
How do you explain AI to consumers and how do you make it useful to consumers? Right? There’s so much potential built into what AI can do, but it’s sort of trying to figure out like, okay, where do you start? How do you educate people? What is the thing we want it to do?

Orlando Wood (00:27)
All right, well thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.

Kate Morrison (00:31)
Congratulations on your podcast. I have always wanted to have a podcast so I’m really excited that I have not done anything about that but you have and that I can be a guest on your podcast.

Orlando Wood (00:42)
Please don’t launch it too soon, because yours will be far better than mine. And give me at least a couple weeks to get some traction before you destroy the podcast market.

Kate Morrison (00:54)
No, no, no, no, but I think it’s fun. It’s always interesting. I I like listening to podcasts.

Orlando Wood (00:58)
I’m sure this is not what the world needs, but I did start kind of, it came about because I just started thinking about kind of creative systems and things like that. And I think I told you, I always loved that Josh Lyman quote in the West Wing of, “I don’t want to be the guy. I want to be the guy, the guy counts on.” And I feel like that’s so many of us in the creative industries, kind of that’s where we come from, is wanting sweet creatives to rely on us for stuff.

Kate Morrison (01:27)
Yeah, you build the roads for the creative process. So it’s interesting. And people use them all the time. And sometimes you’re acknowledged for that. And sometimes you’re not. And people for sure notice when there are no roads. But it’s not always easy to figure out or I think understanding and getting attribution for that is

difficult, right? Because you also, you are also in a place where I very much believe that.

Production is in service of a creative vision that somebody needs to have and you can elevate the creative vision. But that was the part that was always like magical. And, I wish my brain had it. It doesn’t. I can see systems and I can see operations much easier. like, that’s there’s 74 permutations coming out of this. And this is how it can happen. But the fact that you just told me like, you know, A rhombus is a square on its side and, whatever else you’re like, whoa, I didn’t see the world that way. It just looked like a square to me. So, you know, I think that’s interesting. I think where those partnerships are really successful, you clearly

see it elevate the work because there’s a very strong yin and yang to it but I think you need that initial spark for sure.

Orlando Wood (02:39)
Well, let me kind of introduce you properly. You know, you are, I’m really excited that we’re gonna have this chat. You’re the Global Head of Production for Products and Services for Google, which covers all manner of things from devices through to AI and Gemini. And you recently had the big Super Bowl commercial, which was great. But can you kind of give me just the history of your path, you know, from, I mean, when we first met, you were a polysci major at Georgetown.

graduating a year early because you’re just that clever. And then, you know, obviously through Amsterdam and you’ve had a really interesting path through to production from starting as business affairs and paralegal and things like that. Could you just take me just a short history of your career?

Kate Morrison (03:28)
I moved to Amsterdam and

there was a job posting at an ad agency, I had applied for all sorts of jobs. Like maybe I can be like an assistant on this thing or maybe I could do this. And there was a job for a business affairs assistant and advertising agency called 180. And a business affairs assistant basically is somebody who can have, you know, reads a decent amount of contracts, understands business to some extent, but I mean, really as assistant level position.

And it was a job. I’d worked at a bank. I had worked at a law firm. I had done some previous work at like I had summer internship at Gucci doing visual design. So I actually had a sort of trifecta that like to the extent that anyone is qualified for any job at 22 was fairly qualified to be a business affairs assistant. And there was

guy called Peter Cline who was the head of production who hired me and a woman named Chris Barron, who was the head of business affairs and they were like, what is this odd American girl doing in Amsterdam who’s been to Georgetown worked at a law firm like sure, we should hire her for 28,000 euros a year. And they did and that was amazing. And I mean, when you go for making nine euros a week, handing out flyers outside of the Anne Frank Haus is trying to pitch people on a comedy show. Like, you know,

You realize that things are, you know, it was a great, it was a great win. And so my first job in advertising was, 180 had just won the global Adidas business. It was a tiny company. I was employee number 66 and all 66 people were no longer at the company. And I trafficked this amazing Adidas commercial or Adidas campaign called Impossible is Nothing, which was all about human potential.

And I realized that being in this environment of advertising, which was a mix of art and commerce, was like, wait, this was the place where both sides of my sort of brain and soul could be fed.

And I loved it. And so from there, I was deep in the business affairs world for a few years. Then as business affairs worked really closely with production there, that’s a model that I hugely believe in. I think that should be a very, very, very strong partnership. Business affairs was also taught there to be like, how do you find the yes in the wall of no?

which I think is a huge piece of it. And then as I got closer, I realized I wanted to be more on the production side of it, to be more hand in hand with the creative making the decisions of how things come to life. So I petitioned Peter Cline who had hired me off the street. He fortunately at the time had a back injury and I think was on a fairly significant amount of valium. So I asked him if I could move from being a business affairs assistant to a production assistant and…

He agreed and so I moved into a production track there in Amsterdam and then the business continued to grow and we won a big piece of Sony business in the US. So they opened up an office in LA and I moved to the LA office. And I spent about seven years working at 180 and under Peter’s guidance and in that ecosystem, which it was a very production forward, it’s a very creative production environment. And then at that point you sort of like, I was a producer. I had like,

a skill set and I knew how to do it. I think the next challenge for me was then like that notion of like, of like leaving the nest of like, can I go do this elsewhere in the world? And so.

Orlando Wood (06:59)
Amsterdam’s a very unique environment for that actually, because I think by virtue of the fact that just hiring somebody new requires flying them in, moving them in, whatever else, there is this notion of, if somebody’s good here, maybe we can move them here. And you’re right, that nest mentality where you’re very supported is a uniquely Amsterdam quality. And like you had,

Pete Cline moving you from business affairs to production. I had Tom Dunlap at Wieden+Kennedy move me from the editing room to production. And I think that lateral movement is very rare at a lot of other places where there’s a constant stream of people who specifically want to go into a department and it’s easier to hire rather than trusting. Because if you move someone over, you also create a void, don’t you?

Kate Morrison (07:51)
I think I sometimes wonder and you know if size and scale plays a part of it too right like you’re at these smaller companies you have proximity to these leaders and people with expertise and experience and you work with them and they look out for you I mean he was really just looking out for me you know Tom was looking out for you and saying like wait if this is where you want to go how do you how do we support you doing that

And build the potential in it and you know it’s interesting and I argue John Patroulis is another huge mentor and champion of mine as the person who made me from being an Executive Producer to a Head of Production right and that’s a shift because you go.

You know, from having, you know, you always have a boss, but at the same time, you know, it’s like, you’re the leader of the whole team as opposed to being a part of the team. And that, that job structure and that change is, significant. And I think having people who believe in your ability to make the turn and then support you once you do. It’s really critical. Cause the reality is, you know, your day one of being a leader is not, you’re not a great leader and there’s a lot to learn there, you know? And then it was interesting for me. So I went from, you know,

180 LA up to San Francisco and then I moved to New York as an executive producer. I ended up at BBH and moved into that, Head of Production role at BBH. And you know, once you, I remember the first time someone came in and asked me for a raise and I was like, wait, you just do that? Like people just come into your office and just ask you for a raise? And you know, I had never done anything of the sort. I had always like prepared a dossier and like, you know, every single thing that I had like accomplished in a year.

It was a really hard emotional conversation for me. It still is. And I hate that in myself, but you know, and I really prepare for it. And I have learned to like psych myself up because my sort of default nature is just to be so grateful for anything. And when somebody just came into my office and was like, I’ve been doing a lot of work. I’ve been working overtime. I really think I deserve a raise or I’m probably going to go start looking for another job. I was like.

That’s it? Like, that’s like, you just like, there’s no like, there’s no like,

Orlando Wood (09:55)
I didn’t see you taking deep breaths outside of my office before.

Kate Morrison (10:00)
I’ve been doing it all wrong the whole time. so you start to learn like muscles of like how to adapt or how to guide or how to see that conversation going so that you don’t end up being caught off guard. And then, you know, for me, it was interesting to grow into that position at BBH and then to say, okay, well, when I moved to 72 and Sunny in LA.

Orlando Wood (10:03)
Yeah.

Kate Morrison (10:20)
as the Head of Production, that’s an interesting job because you go in as the boss of the team or the team leader, but you don’t have the same baked in credibility, right? Like when you move from an EP and you’re there and it’s kind of like, oh, well, there’s a vacancy on the left and there’s an expectation that you build and you kind of earned. And I feel like I’ve always been a person who I think very similar to you in a lot of ways. It’s like,

I earn my credibility best when I do it sort of shoulder to shoulder in the trenches, if that makes sense. So earning credibility when you come in sort of dropped on everybody’s head is a very different game and it’s an interesting, so there’s a lot to learn in that too. And then moving from there where I was there for four or five years and I loved it. I’m a huge believer in that company. But Google called to bring me

to see if I was interested in a role in the, what was the devices and services team. It’s now platforms and devices. It’s just like all of Google’s hardware devices. So the Pixel phone, the earbuds, et cetera, the Nest products.

you know, there’s an aspect of when I was interested to move And, Google is so enormous. And the scale is so huge. And the reach is so huge that that is just like an interesting for somebody who loves to solve problems and solve complicated problems. It’s like, there’s like infinity potential here, you know, and the reality is, also Google has a phone product called the Pixel

which is trying to go up against your iPhone, which is like the most beloved brand, you know, and has done marketing so incredibly well. So there’s a sort of David and Goliath aspect to it. You know, certainly, but like nobody really…

Orlando Wood (12:07)
Any other conversation, Google is Goliath.

Kate Morrison (12:09)
So it’s like this really it was a challenge to me on a lot of different fronts that both sort of, think, you know, creatively, operationally and intellectually really exciting. And it’s been, you know, a sort of chaotic and tumble dryery 2 and a half years, but it’s, it’s fun. And then it’s exciting. And all of the reasons that I came here are still the reasons that are here. So it’s interesting to evolve and keep evolving.

Orlando Wood (12:38)
So that’s interesting because there are very few producers, I know a lot of producers who have moved agency side to production company side, very few who have moved client side. What do think the major learning is from that?

Kate Morrison (12:54)
I think there’s a couple of things. I think scale is relevant here. I think a lot of companies, do you need a producer full time? Do you have enough marketing to do? That was always like when I was looking at going client side, it was like, is there gonna be enough for me to do that’s gonna keep this interesting?

I think when you become a Head of Production, one of the things that you learn to do is you kind of gear shift in 30 minute intervals, right? And you’re like, we’re doing this problem, we’re doing that. And you’re used to having a lot of balls in the air. And I really enjoyed that. And I think when you have a company that does one or two significant marketing beats a year, which may meet all of your goals and be the right thing for you to do, I don’t necessarily know that you need a me on staff.

to be honest with you, know, like what is the marketing model that makes sense for you? And then I think there’s a question of like, what’s your approach to marketing, right? We look at it as like how much of it is in-house studio, how much of it is agency led, what’s that relationship with the marketer? So I think there are a number of different factors that drive

the scale of it, I will say I think tech in part because I think the products are complicated and evolving so quickly has leaned into having a lot of tech companies if you look at Meta, Pinterest and Adobe, Apple clearly, a built in creative layer that is very close to the product. And that creative layer is like brand, brand strategy.

Creative and production. Production also in these environments tends to operationalize a lot of the creative into the rest of the org and the org can be quite complicated but the product certainly on the Google side it is innovating and changing at such a rate that if you are not eat, sleep, breathing it all the time it’s really hard to keep up. I mean even in our agency partnerships. One of the things we’re really looking to do is how do we create more

meaningful, more embedded relationships with very specific humans, you know, at these agencies to say like, okay, you’re our person, you’re going to embed with us, you’re going to understand this stuff as well as we do. Because it is, I mean, it’s changing minute to minute, you know, and the AI of it all is certainly pushing that. So

you need somebody to really ride the wave with you because you’re in there and sometimes it goes better and faster than you expected and that creates chaos. And sometimes the thing that was the dream is like, actually it turns out that the significantly more complicated and as we found it into dog food or beta testing, it hasn’t come off. So we need to pivot. And, you know, I think that may be a why from a structural

alignment reality, you see so much of these sort of in-house creative teams on the big tech world.

Orlando Wood (15:56)
The AI of it all, as you say, I imagine obviously, you know, Google runs, one of the, one of the leading language models out there. The first model Gemini, stated to be, natively multimodal. I mean, I would imagine, so much of, of what we do is helping companies kind of progress in their AI use cases and, create workflows and, and agents and things like that. I guess my question is one would presume that

a company that’s creating that sort of technology is rolling it out incredibly quickly in all of their departments and workflows and things like that. How does that look when you’re in there? How does that work? Is it coming faster in your workday than it might be anywhere else?

Kate Morrison (16:49)
think yes, I mean, we get access to the internal, like the development phase is called dog fooding. And you can, it’s like you eat your own dog food and it’s sort of like, it’s not, like a little bit messy, but you work through it. I believe is the origin of that term. And you, so you have essentially early beta access to these. And I think one of the things that we have found is certainly on a, I think there’s a research and scientific

level of AI where Google is clearly a thought leader and you’re partnering with universities and medical laboratories, etc to pioneer space there. And there’s significant breakthroughs there. And I think people are very clear and becoming clearer how AI can assist research at that level. I think one of the things on the devices that…

platforms and devices world is How do you explain AI to consumers and how do you make it useful to consumers? Right? There’s so much potential built into what AI can do, but it’s sort of trying to figure out like, okay, where do you start? How do you educate people? What is the thing we want it to do?

Like we get it on our phones and you got the

technological capability on your phone, but really what’s the thing that the person’s gonna do with that capability, right? So Gemini, which is now multimodal can read your IKEA furniture instructions so you can have a conversation about like, what’s the next step? And you don’t have to be constantly running over to your directions. Like that’s a pretty good use case for that thing.

We spent a lot of time saying like, okay, what are the use cases? What are the on ramps? How do you change people? Because really what I think AI has the potential to do and this agentive AI, which I think is has the potential to be hugely revolutionary for all of us is how do you change the interaction model with how people relate to their phones or their devices, what they think they can do and help them evolve that, right? So part of our Superbowl

campaign and then the work we did in Q4 leading up to that last year, which was a campaign called Now We’re Talking, which is, know, Gemini Live has an ability to speak to interact kind of like partner with you to problem solve in a way that regular search doesn’t. Like, can you talk to me about

what the cost of hotels is for this weekend in Rome, Paris or Milan and try to compare it. It has an ability to search multiple things at once and pull you information in a synthesized way that regular search does not do. But that’s a huge behavior change for a consumer to long press and talk to search.

at some point people get the penny drop moment. And once they start doing it, you’re like, this works and this is easy.

Orlando Wood (19:48)
Well, it’s that great quote somebody said, I can’t remember exactly who, but it was that, I want AI to do my dishes and laundry so that I have time to write poetry and make art. I don’t want it writing my poetry and making my art and leaving me to do the dishes and laundry.

Kate Morrison (20:08)
Yeah, although we do have it write lots of songs for our family. That’s like a, also another great use. If you haven’t had AI write a poem or a song about someone you love or, a good friend with like a few key bullet points, I strongly recommend you do.

Orlando Wood (20:27)
That’s a fun use case. Is your workflow on a daily basis running a sophisticated marketing and production and creative apparatus has that changed? Like is Google changing your day with its technology in terms of the way you show up as, as a producer.

Kate Morrison (20:53)
I think it’s starting to more and more. So we have some of the Gemini workspace integrations for sure in writing things and that I actually, I mean, I enjoy writing. So I tend to write, I have it, I will have it reword or reangle or reposition a lot of my writing. We use the integration into Sheets,

So on a sort of tool side we’re

getting there. And then I think in terms of a creative side, we’re starting to see that come in a little bit more in terms of like, we’re just getting on the tip of like, okay, how do we use this for storyboarding? How do we use this for shot creation? How do we use this for content creation to start to like proof out the ideas of what we’re trying to do. So we have that’s kind of like on the pipeline side of it, I think in terms of some of our output, we are running

tests and models in terms of places like DR and customization where it’s like, okay, can we deliver an asset toolkit essentially to an AI combinator that will then be able to generate headlines and formats and versions of creative that can be

served to consumers based on their journey. So, you know, it basically creates a custom configuration of so you are 16 assets of phone renders and copy and text and it can kind of

recreate those and then also for resizing and repurposing. Those are probably the places in the pipeline that I think for us are starting to optimize a little bit in our localization and transcreation processes as well to streamline them.

I would expect for us in the next 12 to 18 months to be using those probably quite robustly and systematically

Orlando Wood (22:48)
What are some of the unique tools? Or are you guys building things internally? Like Flawless, for example, mouth dubs, so you can get a localized thing, but get the actual actor’s mouth moving so you don’t have to be subtitling quite so much. Are you using off-the-shelf tools like that? Are you kind of building things internally? How does that work?

Kate Morrison (23:12)
We leverage a lot of our internal products first. So VO and things like that for image generation, we’re starting to play around with Gemini as well as another place where we build off of that and use that. We partner with WPP on a lot of our media creation with our media partner. And so for some of the tests, we also work through a platform called Open

which is their AI tool. So we’ll work with them on some of those sort of emerging things. We’re looking at, we test a lot of our assets that we put into market. so, you know, AI testing is a big conversation of like, how can that work? AI testing, testing in market is a pretty long, pretty, pretty lengthy, pretty expensive process, right? For us, it adds two weeks, at least to do a round of in-person testing.

And if you do that in all of our tier, we have four tier one markets. So if you do that in each market and then it comes back and if your assets don’t pass and you need to optimize them and then retest them, you’re adding a month to a production schedule. And when we know in a business where the tech is moving day by day you have six weeks to make the thing and a month of testing to fit in there is not a great, know, it doesn’t work brilliantly for you.

So, you know, AI testing theoretically could be almost instant. The problem is it’s not there yet, right? It doesn’t recognize humor. It doesn’t recognize sarcasm. It doesn’t necessarily recognize all talent or celebrity or the cultural nuances of some of it. So I think that’s the place where, we see a lot of potential in how AI could evolve the business and evolve it quite very rapidly is not

quite there yet. So things are sort of in beta that as they come out of beta, I think will, you know, create a lot of change. And to me, change creates opportunity,

Orlando Wood (25:08)
One of the biggest shifts obviously that was happening prior to COVID and then obviously accelerated aggressively during COVID was remote work, but also the move towards a lot of social marketing. And you and I had an interesting conversation a couple months ago where you said, outside of the Superbowl or a big event, I don’t really know what I would do with a 30 second TVC or a 60 second TVC. We do a lot more

you know, communications that are, outside of that traditional budget and media spend. How has that changed as you’ve moved through your career? How has that changed and how has the workflow changed around it?

Kate Morrison (25:57)
That’s a great question. I remember when I started and it was like, okay, here’s a three spot TV campaign. You’re out of home billboard and a print asset. To be honest, that was it. And then we got into like, you know, web sprites and like little animation pieces that could move. And, you know, I think now,

It’s interesting. I mean, we sit at a global team. So I’m a center of a global hub and media markets are very different globally in terms of what exists.

on our side and we have a hub and spoke model. So there’s a global team that sits centrally that I’m a part of. And then we have local market teams and our countries are tier one, tier two, tier three, tier four markets based on market opportunity and media spend. And so,

there’s product marketing, there’s lifestyle marketing, and there’s creator marketing. And so how do those things work together to create a fully fleshed out brand and then what parts of that ecosystem should be created where. okay, how do you build a system where

the product assets probably should be centralized because those are what you want them to be consistent in every market. Some version of the lifestyle content probably customized for different markets from a representation or messaging perspective should be created locally And then you have creator content where I think there’s a mix of, you know, some

global celebrity potentially or leveraging talent on a global and centralized level, but also then getting into markets where you are leveraging local talent for relevancy, for cultural context, you know,

And it’s a much more complicated ecosystem of like, okay, what are the all the moving pieces and the parts to tell a truly connected brand story at every touch point. And I think when we talk about them as surfaces and the reality with social media and, I mean, I think also just quite frankly, the proliferation of video through all the different touch points in our lives is that there are so many different surfaces.

we’ve been moving away from static out of home, but digital out of home is actually being really effective for us.

Orlando Wood (28:15)
Yeah, tech companies are incredibly good at feedback loops, aren’t they? You know, and A-B testing, and these are all kind of terms that are very tech company oriented. So I’m not surprised, I guess, that Google, when it comes to its advertising, is creating a really good feedback loop for the effectiveness of digital out of home and things like that. How are…

Is that a big change or a surprise for you? Are you guys doing that all yourself? Is that entire feedback loop Google controlled or are you still farming it out to people like WPP and how does that work with the agencies or the media companies you work with?

Kate Morrison (28:57)
So we have an internal media team called Media Lab at Google. So I will partner with them. So I have a counterpart who will speak much more eloquently and have much more data on like, OK, this is why we did this, and this is where we did this, and we’re pushing into here, and here’s why, and here’s the sort of, you know. So we get a lot of analysis. Like certainly at Google, if it’s data or analysis you’re looking for in a meeting, we can provide you with that. So.

We partner really closely with them and then they work with

WPP has a custom solution called Media Futures Group, which does our media buying. So we will partner with them on that process.

You know, I think there’s an interesting, relationship that should be respected between creative and media. And that kind of goes to like, how do you have a great idea with a small budget that can have an outsized impact?

the Super Bowl is a great key marquee moment where we’ve really sort of like custom build content that might not really work as like a 15 second pre roll. Like I don’t know that that’s a great use of our Super Bowl ad. But if you have 60 or 90 second or there’s a two minute version online, that’s great.

And if you have that media and you have that attention from your viewer, like that’s a great story to tell. So I think that’s also like the time and place to be like, what is the consumer mindset when you’re presenting them the information? So, you know, that story is a very human first story, which is a great story. But it pays off really well in 60 seconds. It doesn’t pay well in 15 seconds.

Which is think also, you know, one of the

things that is complicated about our business right now is that a lot of the AI that we are talking about is complicated and attention spans are very short. And so one of these things we get into a lot of conversations is like, can you tell the story meaningfully in 15 seconds in a digital pre-roll? You know, and if not, how are you telling the story and where? Because yes, you might hit all of your metrics with only 15 second pre-roll

but the content itself may be underwhelming. So is that the brand that you’re building and how do you create an emotional relationship? And a phone is a hard thing to sell because you really only have one.

It’s different than a pair of sneakers where you’re like I can also have that pair of sneakers and so it’s really like a one-for-one trade and a lot of people just get the new iPhone. It’s not really a consideration they’re so in a funnel that you sort of need to be like there’s actually another option out there. I don’t think a lot of people even consider it

Orlando Wood (31:53)
Dan Wieden had this great quote where he said, you’re useless to me until you’ve failed big at least twice. Which I always thought was great. I think it really defined a lot of the culture at Wieden. I was wondering, can you think of any times where you’ve failed massively that you’d be willing to tell us and what you kind of learned from that?

Kate Morrison (32:12)
Was working on a huge Adidas project and I was, I think, the junior producer, sort of becoming a producer. And there was an era where televisions were square and they were kind of like, they were called 4:3 televisions because they were kind of square. And then everything moved to those sort of more rectangular, like flat screen TV that we have now, which is a 16:9 aspect ratio.

And what would happen is when you were trafficking things for TV, was like, you deliver them to TV stations. When things were squares, you delivered them in squares. And when they were rectangles, you delivered them in rectangles. And there was a moment in technology where you could deliver a thing that was called a 14:9, which was like neither, it was like an intermediary rectangle size.

Orlando Wood (32:58)
remember it well,

it was the letter box you would see on the 4:3 TV.

Kate Morrison (33:02)
Correct. And it was like not really great, but I didn’t know this and I was said to like, okay, can you just go we’ve like been working on this campaign for seven months, 20 hours a day. Can you go ship this campaign and get it out the door? And I was like, sure. And I get in there and they’re like, well, do you want to deliver in 4:3 or 16:9? I didn’t know the answer to that question. And I didn’t but I didn’t want to say that I didn’t know the answer to that question. So I said,

Well, if you deliver 14:9 it will just do both and like, you know, the optimization efficiency beast which runs so deep in me was like well, that seems like a great idea. So deliver I spent the whole day sitting there like delivering I don’t know 30 spots or something in 14:9. And then somehow I got to the creative or the next day they were like, well you delivered in 16:9 right? and I was like

And I was so tempted not to actually say that I hadn’t, that I had done this like compromised version. And I came clean on it and we had to delay, they had to push media because we had to miss the ship. Like it was like terrible. And everybody was so kind to me about it. We had to reship and spend the whole next day doing it. In 16:9 and 4:3, which it turns out was the right answer for good creative at that time.

And it was just one of those things where I think you end up in life in the situation where you know, it’s like that sort of imposter syndrome that we all talk about where you’re like, I should know the answer. I feel like I should know the answer. I don’t want to bother anyone with this question. I don’t want to admit that I don’t know the answer. And I just in doing that, like, you know, created a real problem from it was a real fuck up to be honest with you.

Kate Morrison (34:44)
And then I think the other learning on that was that everyone was so kind to me after the fuck up that it was like, wait, you, it would have been okay to ask like, what were you doing? You know, and I think also just like in terms of like good leadership, what we talked about before, like the grace of like, you didn’t know, but you know, I also should have asked.

Kate Morrison (35:06)
You know, I think owning the places where you don’t know and being willing to ask is really key. So that is the one that’s just steered into my brain of like, I will never do that again.

Orlando Wood (35:17)
Yeah, it’s always, it’s also the only real skill a producer has is know what you don’t know, know to ask the question and know where to go to get the answer.

Kate Morrison (35:26)
Totally.

I also once forgot to like have all my little Excel things add up and I like missed a row and had to make up $600,000 I think within like a $2.6 million budget because I had had the client sign off on 2.6 million so I will tell you I will never ever not double triple check a spreadsheet before it goes out like double click all the boxes in we’re good but that is

also just like, the moment when I realized just like, you know, when all your blood just feels like it goes straight to your toes, and you’re like, how did it where do we go now?

Orlando Wood (36:11)
Yeah, that’s the worst. It could have been any other line. A line for 7,000, you know.

Kate Morrison (36:18)
Yeah, miscellaneous shipping, $250. Like, no, wasn’t that guy. And they were just like, oh, man. So yeah, it’s about any of those moments that got really sort of seared into your brain. there are a couple, you know, there’s many more. But essentially,

You learn more and I hate losing and I’m really competitive, but you know, there is sort of this notion that you learn more by losing than you do by winning. And I think that there is a ton of truth in that. And I think it shapes your behavior. I think you have to be willing to sort of take the lessons, which is not always easy. don’t know. also always, there was a part of me that was always attracted to those projects

and platforms of like, how do we figure this out? This is a thing that hasn’t been done before in part, because it used sort of like all of your brain. And I think that’s so interesting. And I think, you know, there’s obviously I live in a very AI focused world. And I think one of the things that I keep coming back to as I think about how AI may evolve us and our workflows, but also just our world around us is that

You know, to me, the story, really what it comes down to that I think is like what it’s all about life is all about human potential, right? And human relationships. And ultimately, whatever AI can provide us with is never going to be as exciting to an individual human.

As a human potential and a human relationship, right? Like you look at it and like sport to me is a great encapsulation of this, right? Like sport is such an amazing platform of human potential. Like the person who didn’t think who would win who did, somebody who just won out their 100th World Cup race, you know, I mean, it’s like these amazing accomplishments of what people can achieve. Like nobody wants to see 22 robots playing soccer, don’t care. And the reason you don’t care is because

there’s a human frailty and human potential. that I think so. So to me, it’s like that is sort of the thing to tap into. And then how does AI service that to make it even more for you to have more potential, right? Like it could

essentially, like if it ends up bolstering our IQs or making us faster or whatever it ends up doing or however you harness it to work for you, you know, to me it’s most effective is when it boosts the human potential.

Orlando Wood (38:56)
Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 96. It didn’t usher in a whole new era of us watching computers play each other in chess.

Kate Morrison (39:03)
Like don’t care. Like, of course it can do that. That’s the thing it’s great at. But somebody needs to direct it. Somebody needs to curate it. Like to me, somebody needs to make decisions still, you know, like to me, those are the things that are like, what are the roles and how it changes it. But I also think there’s just a what’s exciting. So there so you know, sure AI can make content somebody still needs to shape it and mold it into the stories about humans that resonate with humans, you know, to me, that’s like the piece of it that

Ultimately, I think.

It’s easy to sort of forget in this like, wait, this is, it’s all about this, it’s all going over here. I was like, I don’t know that I ever, I don’t think supersedes it. I don’t know that we know how for that to happen.

Orlando Wood (39:47)
Yeah, well, Kate, thank you so much. This was awesome and just fun to talk to you about this stuff.

Kate Morrison (39:54)
Yeah, super fun. Thank you. Thank you

so much for having me. Lovely to chat with you this morning. Have a great rest of your day.

Orlando Wood (40:02)
You too. Thanks so much,

You too. Bye bye.

Orlando Wood (40:11)
So that was a fun conversation with my dear friend, Kate. I really enjoyed chatting with her about how AI isn’t just a tool. Hopefully at its best, it’s a way to enhance human creativity. It was great to hear her describe how Google is using it to streamline production workflows and versioning. But it stood out to me how the creative industries are gonna have to use kind of a light touch with AI.

There are no clear answers to creativity. It isn’t really math, it’s more like jazz. So it underscores how creative support teams are gonna have to engage with it while making room for creative inspiration. And that’s kind of everybody’s responsibility and always has been, that’s not gonna change. So like how can AI handle the mundane tasks so creatives can focus on what matters to them? Anyway, thank you for joining. If you made it this far, thank you.

And I hope you’ll tune in next week. Thank you.