Patrick Duffy: Harnessing the power of unpolished creativity

00:02

Good morning, good afternoon,  good evening.  Wherever and whenever you're listening to us, welcome to The Nugget, where we are digging for business gold for leaders, founders, and generally anyone in business.  This episode we're joined by a creative leader who's had, like many of our guests, an incredibly varied career which touches  many different sectors. He's been in design, zines,

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entertainment and advertising and has worked with and alongside some of the most exciting companies in the world like Airbnb, and Dice.  We welcome Patrick Duffy to the podcast.  Thank you very much. Very glad to be here. Patrick, first, I'd love to hear about your journey because it's been a really interesting one and you've tackled a lot of different roles for a lot of very different companies. So  can you take us on a little whistle stop tour?  Of course. Yeah. uh

00:53

Well, I guess, I mean, I'm always looking for the next challenge. I mean, I'm sure any creative leader would say the same thing, but I'm always interested in finding something that I'm not quite sure how to do and then trying to figure out how to do it. So when I look back at my career now, and now that it's 20, 26 something years in, I can see these kind of points, almost these eras where maybe five or six years in, I'll be like, okay, now I want to learn this. Okay, now I want to learn that. So I think that's why it's jumped around so much.

01:22

So yeah, I studied design. I went to art college. I guess when I was a child, I always liked looking at the insides of cassettes that I would buy, albums I would buy, retracing the covers if I really liked them. I remember I was always a big fan of 808 State in the early 90s. And they always had what I always really loved these kind of quite simple, quite technical looking design sleeves. That was one of the first albums that I bought. And so I would kind of try and retrace these.

01:51

these beautifully designed covers.  that led me to  studying at art college in Middlesbrough for two years.  I came from a very traditional working class,  single parent family in the Northeast and couldn't quite see how you can make any money out of art.  And I thought, well, I need to get a job and you can't get a job being an artist. So  yeah, so graphic design seemed like the next best thing really. um So then went on to Ravensbourne  to study visual communication there.

02:19

was very happy to be there. um And I think the course, it was interesting because it was  led,  initially at least, for the first year or so in a very traditional way.  We weren't allowed any access to computers.  It was very much like, if you're going to do a post, you have to hand render  every bit of type on it.  So we had to really learn a of like a respect, I guess, for  type, for composition, for those kind of essential elements of  design.  And I guess I just assumed, like most of my...

02:46

colleagues at university that would go and get a job in a design agency, which I did. I worked for a little design agency called Explosive for a while.  I had bigger ambitions. I wanted to work at the  big places.  And I guess my first pivot was when um I went to work at Sleeves Nation,  which was a magazine for anyone who doesn't remember it as a magazine in the early 2000s or late 90s, early 2000s.  Kind of there was like  the face, there was dazed,  there was ID obviously.

03:14

and Sleaze was kind of like the number four runt of the litter.  And I had no experience in magazine design,  but a friend of mine knew somebody who worked there, they were looking for a designer. And then before I knew it, I was working there and I assumed that there would be a whole team of people to help me understand magazine design and art direction.  And there wasn't, because everyone had been fired. So it was kind of just me and some other quite inexperienced people at that time.  So that, guess, was the first example of me having to go, okay, well, I just need to figure it out then, I guess.  And kind of just doing it as I was going along.

03:44

Those first four five issues, they definitely weren't the standout in terms of creative, in terms of design of my career. But I think, you you learn a lot from just being in those high pressure situations and having to just figure it out. There's a magazine, so you can't be late. You have to get everything done by the deadline no matter what. yeah, it was a bit of a trial by fire. And then Scott King came in as creative director. So he'd been like a name ID.

04:13

He was a bit of a kind of a, I guess, a rebellious name, you know, within the world of kind of like art and design. He was starting to make a bit of a name for himself as an artist as well. And he came along and kind of revolutionized Sleaze. And that was really the kind of the glory years of the magazine. And we worked together, I guess, as the art department. So it was magazine design for a bit for me, but then I knew that wasn't really my thing. So then most people just were advising me, well, you just go and get a job as an art design agency. I was like, no, I think I'll just start my own.

04:42

So um I left and I just started working on my own and just kind of knocked on all the doors of all the record labels that I knew,  got contacts from people that I knew at Sleaze, photographers and stylists and so on.  I went to Warner's and Sony and 679 and like all of the independent ones. And  yeah, eventually managed to get my own list of clients  and built up a little  studio which eventually was called No Days Off.  The music thing initially was great because it was exciting. You got to work with musicians and music's a big part of my life.

05:11

and you could get  paid reasonably well back in those days.  And then little by little you started to see the budgets go down and down and down. And so then that's when we started to take on more  branding projects or web design projects or book projects, any kind of projects really.  It was one of those things, I guess, it was great until it wasn't.  We had great years.  Our accountant said to us, I remember way back in the beginning, like to put some money away, make sure you put a bunch of money away in case you have a bad year. And we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do that, we'll do that.  We were in our 20s.

05:39

And we didn't really do that. And then we did have a bad year and then things kind of came to a head. So I'd always had this thought that I wanted to try advertising because I didn't really know that much about it. Again, it was this kind of potential challenge. What would it be like if I worked in advertising? know, could I kind of take these sort of like nascent skills that I have and test them in the arena? And then this thought was kind of percolating for a while.

06:06

And when it came to the crunch with the studio, we were like, okay, well, we need to get some money from somewhere or  we're kind of doomed.  I'd just had my first child. There was a lot of pressure kind of going on in my life. And I just thought, okay, I think it's time to now just go and get a job.  Then I kind led me into advertising, worked at Fallon  for a few years, head of design, creative director there. And  again, thought, okay, well, this is my new thing then I'll be an advertising guy.  And it was great, learned a lot, didn't do a lot of great work.

06:36

And then the opportunity at Airbnb came up, a recruiter that I was really friendly with mentioned this company. And this was when Airbnb was pretty new, I guess it was 2014. I think they were founded in 2010. So it was when people, was just after the rebrand and yeah, was when they were starting to get a lot more attention as a company and as a brand. But it was still something that people were quite unfamiliar with. would mention Airbnb even to friends in London and they'd be like, oh, what's that?

07:03

which is hard to imagine now because it's so universally recognised, but  this opportunity came up.  I wasn't really sure about it because I thought, it's like home sharing. Is that really that exciting? But the thing that really drew me to Airbnb was  the background of the founders. When  I learned, when I did my research and learned that Brian and Joe  had both been to RISD and they both had  backgrounds in graphic design.

07:28

I felt like, this might be a different experience. That's not a typical kind of founder background.  And  it's obvious now, you know, to this day that they really genuinely care about design from every aspect,  experience design, user design,  everything.  So that led me to Airbnb and um I spent nearly three years there. Again, learned a lot, um made some really good work. I was really proud of the work that we made there. And it was amazing being part of a company that was growing so fast. I think it was

07:58

1200 people when I joined, was over 4000 when I left. There was never nothing to do. There was a new thing being started when I first joined, I think in my first week. I flew over to San Francisco and was handed this huge conference that Airbnb was doing, this big meeting of hosts that was happening in Paris. And I was told, okay, you're leading this now. I was like, oh great, amazing. And you just kind of pulled people in from different departments. And it was very much like...

08:25

on the hoof sort of thing, the way that it worked.  But it did kind of work.  And the energy of the company was just so positive at that time. It was kind of hard not to  get excited about it.  And yeah, and so, you know, was an amazing experience,  but I still never felt like I'd found my home  until I came to Dice. I spent some time away from Airbnb  at Grey.  Again, went back into the advertising world for a while, which is great, great company, great people, great agency.

08:53

And then someone said to me, oh, should meet this guy, Phil. He runs this company, Dice. They're looking for a creative director.  And kind of similar to the Airbnb thing, was like, I don't know, ticketing, is that going to be that exciting?  And the first time I used the product, the first time I downloaded Dice and used it to buy a ticket, I was just sold. I was like, this is magical. This is just, I've literally just tapped a few buttons and I'm going to a gig tonight.  And that's not like any other experience at that time. Even now,  you don't really get that. So.

09:20

So I was sold straight away and  when I met Phil,  we spent a lot of time talking about  not really about creative or even about brand, but  just talking about what do we care about as human beings? Why do we like  going out? Why do we go to gigs? Why do people do these things? Why does it mean so much to us? And I could tell that it was an important thing for him. It was just as important to him as it was for me.  It was an amazing, amazing time. There's no other company I don't think that would ever be like it.

09:49

And yeah, spent seven years at Dice trying to, well, just helping them to build that brand really from scratch. That wasn't so much of a potted history, that was just the history, I think. No, that's amazing. It's great. really, really interesting to hear where you've come from and how those different things might have influenced your work today. I wondered, know, that early work in zines, do you think that's...

10:14

shaped you and  changed the way that you are as a leader and manifests itself  today somehow in the way that you work? I do, yeah. I guess I left out... um I guess I don't really talk about that much in terms of my career because it doesn't tend to fit that neatly on a CV.  yeah, guess fanzines were always something that I was interested in when I was younger. um You would see them in record shops, would see them at raves, you would just see these weird objects that someone had made,  these weird printed objects.

10:44

And I was always quite fascinated by that kind of ephemera, I guess. making this, the zine that I did with my two friends, Ian and Steve, we did a zine called Full Moon Empty Sports Bag. There's a long checkered history to why it was called that, which maybe we won't have time to go into. But we, like I said, we used to pick up these zines, we read magazines, I used to work at a magazine. We all had this kind of experience of that kind of media. And we used to DJ together, the three of us.

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And one night we came back from doing a gig, doing a show, and we were like, oh, well, you're a photographer, I'm a designer, he's a writer, we should just do our own thing. And so we did it and we printed 200 of them and it was like 16 pages, just very loosely kind of like bashed together, but in the best possible way. There's some poetry in there, there was like a gig review, some fiction, some bits and bobs of this, that and the other. And there was a bar called the Locked Tabin in Camden.

11:42

It's kind of changed management now, but it used to be run by an amazing guy called Dan Crouch, who was kind of a bit of a like, I guess, a sort of nightlife entrepreneur, if you like. used to run all these amazing venues in East London. And the lock was like one of the first ones that we all went to. And Dan helped us kind of pay for the printing of it. And he said, well, I'll just stick it in the bar and we'll see if anyone picks it up. And we obviously gave him an ad on the back page. And they all went really quickly. So then we did number two, number three, number four.

12:09

started to sell ads just to kind of cover the cost  of the printing. But  it was real labor of love and we lost, we definitely lost, I definitely lost money making it.  Because it tended to be me that kind of handled all the finances. My two friends, much as I loved them, were not as  astute in that sense, maybe let's say.  But yeah, we did it for about three years. you know, like Radio 1 interviewers once about it and the Guardian interviewers and  Dazed interviewers and ID and like, you know, all these different publications and platforms.

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spoke to us about what we were doing. yeah, uh like Pete Docherty, I guess he was our  most famous or  most notorious kind of contributor. would pretty much every issue we would send as a poem or a story or something, really good stuff.  This is obviously when he was  at his height of the sort of libertines fame.  I guess how it's influenced my  career is, yeah, it is that kind of DIY thinking. You  know, the reason that we started it, like I said, was just, well,

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We're not quite seeing what we want in these other publications. Let's just make our own that reflects what we like and the stuff that  we're interested in. um And I do think there's something really beautiful about that uh unpolished approach to creativity. That thought of just, I just want to get it from  inside this skull  onto a page as quickly as possible, at  as low cost as possible,  with as few interventions as possible.  There's something really satisfying about doing that.

13:34

And I mean, you know, like, you know, running an agency, how many hurdles  we often have to jump. And this is, you know, it's often the same in house, you know, to get an idea, you how you have a great idea. then it's months later, you're like,  why can I not get this onto a screen or onto a page or in front of somebody's eyes basically in some way.  And I think that's one of the things I really loved about doing this, doing the zine and  the other zines that I've done is  you can get that thought in front of someone's eyes pretty rapidly. Obviously that's easy now, you know, we have.

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this thing called the internet. So  there are obviously platforms for people to do that immediately.  And as much as it will make me sound like a bit of an old man, like  I do think there's something different about the tangible,  scarce, scarce nature of a printed thing. There's only so many of them and you have to be alive at a certain amount of time, otherwise you won't get it. um So yeah, I do think that will,  it wasn't supposed to inform how I work, but I do think it comes from  any of the work I've done.

14:34

certainly for companies like Dice, is probably still informed by that same kind of mentality. And by contrast, mean, Airbnb, a very, very different beast, and obviously, a bit bigger, a bit more corporate, you know, what did you learn from your time there? And how did that differ and shape the person you are today? I guess it was Airbnb, how can I say this, diplomatically, as diplomatically as possible.

15:02

There's a reason I guess I'm not there anymore. It's an amazing brand. Obviously, I still use it. Most people still use it to this day. And my friend, Teo, who I mentioned, we used to work together at No Days Off. She's the VP of design now. So she's leading all those incredible updates that are happening. She leads all of that work. So I don't know. It makes me feel good that there's still a connection, I guess, to No Days Off and what we did before. So a huge amount of respect from me for that brand.

15:31

I never really felt at home and I think that kind of more independent spirit or that more alternative spirit, maybe that's the best way to put it. It never really quite gelled 100 % with the culture of Airbnb. So I think I tried my best to bring my way of thinking and my way of working into what was a pretty new creative department at that time. And sometimes it worked.

15:57

Sometimes it was great, we launched big campaigns, global campaigns, did small local stuff  and sometimes it was great. I  feel like I helped to introduce a new way, at that time at least,  a new way of looking at photography,  a new way of thinking about how to solve problems creatively.  And even though didn't have a huge amount of experience in advertising, I was the only one  with any real experience of that world and so that helped to inform.

16:21

Be creative with some of those early campaigns. Again, it was a great learning experience.  feel like all my experience prior to Dice was learning. Not that wasn't learning when I was at Dice, but  that was more like, I can take all of this, including everything I've done myself and stuff I've done in the corporate world, and now bring it to bear and do something great. um So yeah, I think Airbnb was a great opportunity, but just not for someone like me. um Not to do their best work. I good work, but not my best work.

16:49

I mean, it certainly felt like with DICE when you were there, and I'd to sort of dive into a bit deeper because it feels like your input there was pretty significant to the success of the company. And I wondered, could you talk a little bit more about what your exact remit was and what you think matched so well with what they were doing and where you were at the time? So when I had that first conversation with Phil,

17:16

And this is before we really talked about the specifics of the job. We were just hanging out and see if we got on.  He was very clear that it wasn't just about creating a brand identity, but the reason they were looking for someone to come in-house as opposed to bringing that to an agency was  it wasn't just the brand identity. It  was everything really to do with the brand. And so that included defining a mission,  trying to figure out what the values of the company, how they could be articulated.

17:46

What is the purpose of the company?  What's our tone of voice? All of those things that could,  they are part of a branding exercise, they're like a full scale brand exercise, I guess.  Nothing existed other than the logo at that time. um So  the remit was kind of  big. It was a lot bigger than I was used to.  I'd worked on brand identity projects before, obviously,  but not to that kind of scale. And it's the kind of thing now, if  I was to look at it, I'd think, oh, that probably means a brand strategist.

18:15

I probably need someone in marketing. I probably need someone with that kind of knowledge.  I guess because the opportunity seemed so interesting and the guy I was talking to seemed so interesting,  all of it just felt so right. just thought,  I can just figure it out. um And again, that's  hubris, obviously,  maybe a little bit of arrogance still, but I just thought, I can do this.  How hard can it be? um So the remit was like, let's figure it all out. um

18:44

And it took a while, you know, it definitely took a couple of false starts and missteps before we got to something that felt right. But  what was great about  that company was  you were allowed to make mistakes.  It was kind of understood having that kind of product mindset, I guess, that not everything's going to work. And in fact, we kind of built that into our  kind of values, our set of values that it was understood that like we have to try everything and not everything. So therefore not everything will work.  So. um

19:12

My kind of attempts, or our early attempts to build that brand  were close but not quite. um whenever I would talk to Phil about it, we'd be like, OK, it's cool. This works. This bit's OK.  That's not quite so good. So let's go again and let's go again until we get it right. um So yeah, the remit was  kind of everything, I guess.  And  the brand character for Dice is so, strong. And I wondered.

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you mentioned that you didn't have a strategist, but was that really intentional? Or did it sort of happen more organically through trial and error? Or you know, how did the character itself come about?  The fan has to give them their full name.  How did that come about? It's funny, actually, we've still got these little inflatable models  of the fan that we made for like a promotional thing. And now my two year old is obsessed with them.  She dresses them up, we had different shoes on the other day, and we're kind of playing with them.

20:07

Anyway,  how did that come about?  I guess this was, um we had a  very early attempt at creating a brand, didn't really work.  We went again, but we didn't change the logo. The logo, the old logo, the kind of diamond with DICE written inside it.  People were very attached to it inside the company and myself and there was  my head of design, Stuart Walker.  We'd worked before Airbnb and he was the first person I thought of to bring into DICE because I just thought he's...

20:36

you'd just be perfect, he would really understand this company. And we hated the logo, we wanted to get rid of it instantly, as any good designer would do, but it was hard to get people in the company to not like it. So we didn't try and change it with the kind of brand refresh that we did in 2015, 16. But then when we went again, we like, okay, we've got to change the logo. So the little character, the fan came about because we...

21:02

We  knew that we wanted something to represent fans, something to represent the audience, the people that use dyes, the people that go to shows and go to clubs. That's really the lifeblood. It was the lifeblood of any ticketing company, but you wouldn't necessarily know it from looking at their brands.  And we'd always tried to bring the fans into all aspects of the brand, from the photography to the videography to even the kind of patterns we were using at the time.  But we wanted something, some symbol to represent these  people, our audience.

21:31

And we went through hundreds and hundreds of iterations of shapes and faces and things that, you know, characters. And it was one day I was going down to see my partners. We were going to visit my partner's parents and my son Gene was sitting next to me and I had my sketchbook and I was just constantly doodling these things. And it just seemed so obvious it suddenly hit me. was like, oh, well, there's a diamond shape already. There's this kind of diamond shape. Why don't I just give it legs and give it two eyes?

21:57

I was like, oh, that kind of works. And I showed it to Jane on the training. I was like, what do think of this? He's like, yeah, that's cool. It's like a little guy. I was like, yeah, that's cool. And I took a picture of it and sent it to Stuart. I think this is it. He's like, yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's the one. So yeah, it kind of came about through lots and lots of trial and error, but we knew we wanted a thing that represented this, these people that were so important to the company. And the thing that really made that work for me was the eyes. When I first drew it, had these

22:27

I'm not an illustrator.  So the eyes were just these big kind of empty white eyes. It looked like someone who'd had quite a big night out.  And then we thought, well, we wanted to move. We need to move if this is going to work and needs to move. So we spoke to Animate, worked with Animate on just  creating a really simple kind of  intro animation, just having it walk on. And that was it.  But when we working with them, I was like, oh, it should be looking up. It should be looking ever so slightly up and to the right.

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as if it's looking up at the stage. If you're a fan, you're always looking slightly at an elevated  position towards the artist. And for me, when that angle came in, was like, oh yeah, that's what makes it work. Because they're obviously there waiting for the show to start. um So yeah, that was kind of where it came from.  Everything at Dice really did come back to the fans. Our only customer is the fan. That was our of,  what do we call it, our golden rule.  Again, when we doing this  values exercise.

23:25

That came up as kind of the golden rule that we would always have to try and remind ourselves that it's easier to get distracted by partnerships,  easier to get distracted by the  financial side of things, but we have to remember that it's all about the fans. So  yeah, I guess it just came  from that really.  And when we were trying, we were like, oh, we should give it a name. Let's give it a cute name.  And we were trying to think of names and it was just all of them just sounded silly. And then I was like, I think it should just be the fan. It's just the fan.  So then that kind of like became what it was.

23:55

Yeah, it's lovely now, like, you know, people still  say to me, I really love that little thing. I love that little guy. And yeah,  it's nice to know that it had a very simple, again, a very DIY kind of genesis of just like scribble, scribble. Yeah, yeah, I think that's it. Okay, let's use that.  So yeah, that's how it all came about. The rest of the creative that you guys did for Dice was,  was also pretty off the wall and  pretty bonkers some of it. I mean,  where did that come from? And how did you go through?

24:23

creative process to produce some of that stuff? Well, mean, we did. The campaign, I guess, that most people remember is the Weirdly Easy campaign. although there was quite a few parts to that, really, it's the puppets that everyone remembers, it's the little kind of crazy puppets that are basically variations of that fan character. So where it came from? Well, guess practically it came from the fact that we needed... There was a moment in time in 2023 when...

24:53

Other entities out there were essentially trying to eat our lunch, especially in New York, which was our biggest market. were other operators trying to move in and  sign up other venues. There's a lot of, I'm not going to say backstabbing, but there's a lot of behind closed doors dealing, if you like, that goes on in ticketing that isn't  necessarily above board. But it happens. People try to steal other people's venues and stuff like that.

25:17

Other people were kind of moving in and we felt like as a company, we're like, okay, we need to make some sort of statement that establishes why we're different, how we're different. um And so there was this,  the positioning  that we came up with as a team was we are the alternative. It was all about being an alternative.  And this word alternative just really stuck out for me. I guess it resonated with me because again, going back to that kind of zine culture, like alternative cultures, whether that's hip hop or...

25:46

techno, kind of rave scene,  or indie music, whatever, I've always been drawn personally to those kind of worlds,  to the  slightly weird corners of the room where, you know, like all the weirdos hang out  is usually where I am.  So yeah, that kind of word really stuck out for me.  And Stuart and I, again, like Stuart was such a great partner,  because he really understands that world too. He's like heavy into like the techno scene.

26:10

And we'd always been talking about how like, it'd be cool if we could just do some weird stuff, know, just like stuff that is not  like  quirky, but actually genuinely like a bit weird and a bit like, oh, that's a bit strange.  We were both big fans as a lot of people in  the creative industries were, guess, of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared when it was like that weird little internet series and  stuff like that really spoke to us, I guess. um Anyway, so this brief came along, we're like, well, we've got this alternative kind of like creative territory.

26:40

this is our chance. um And it was Stuart really who kind of um helped to of craft the brief, which  I think is such an important part of getting to a great idea is, have you got the brief right? Is everyone on the same page? Does everyone agree?  He was asking the question, like, what's so different about Dice basically? He challenged us to answer that question. And it is the fact that it's easy.  You know, that really just comes down to that. It's just way easier to  go in, buy a ticket and suddenly you're going to a shop.

27:06

So that's where Weirdly Easy came from. It's this idea of bringing this alternative mindset, this idea that we do things in a different way, and it's super easy bringing those two things together.  And I think, you know,  what was great about that campaign, I think, was  many things I really love about it. But the thing I was most proud of was  it was a really small team that did it.  There was five of us working on that campaign.  And that's not a lot of people, you know, for something that people still talk about now.

27:36

There was a small team of designers, there was myself and Stuart, like creatively leading it,  and a producer. And that was kind of it.  And it was  a pretty low budget thing as well.  But the YouTube, like the viewing rates were like crazy for something that had such a little  amount of money behind it.  People were like, it was obvious that people were watching it all the way through as an ad because they wanted to get to the end of it, you know, which is, guess, is a real mark of success.  So yeah, I think, you know, it's great to be in an environment where

28:06

you're allowed to do things like that.  Dice is a great environment for that kind of thing. And I really, I feel like,  I just feel like we need more of that kind of  unusual, weird, what's going on, why is this thing doing this? I think we just need more of that in  our industry, whether it's in branding or  whether it's in like creative, know,  advertising, whatever.  I think that there's plenty of quirky stuff out there and there's plenty of really good stuff out there, but I just don't think good is...

28:33

is good enough anymore. just think there's already enough good stuff out there. There's already enough good design, good branding. You see another company brand exercising, they're yeah, it's really good. And then you've forgotten it. So I just think going into that extreme edge or going to that unusual corner and doing something that's a bit like, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? I think we kind of need that in order to, well, first of all, entertain people and make what we're doing memorable. So yeah, that's my belief.

29:04

And you guys must have hit a pretty big pivot point when the pandemic hit because obviously, pretty much all of your business would have dried up. So I was interested to hear how  the company dealt with that and  what alternative streams of revenue and you know, how it affected the company,  how you kind of weathered that. Yeah, the pandemic obviously  was not great for anyone working in live entertainment.  I  it wasn't great for the world, but  it was.

29:30

It was troubling. So I'd just come back from  me and my partner had just come back from a trip to Mexico.  And when we landed, that's when all the supermarket shelves were empty.  We left and everything was great. And we came back and everything was  gone.  So obviously I went straight back to work and Phil and I had a meeting to talk about what we're going to do next.  And I think it was amazing. Again, I've always got nothing but good things to say about about dice. But  what was amazing was that no one panicked.

29:59

No one seemed like this is the end of the world, even though, like you said, no one could go out to gigs anymore. So revenue just literally dried up.  I think the way that  the leadership  was thinking was, well, where's the opportunity? How can we  find something good out of this?  We did pivot, as some  other companies did,  to streaming.  So we went  into live streaming and we  found that there was actually, weirdly, a market.

30:28

for fans who would be willing to pay money  to watch a live stream of a show. think the most memorable one for me, well, two memorable ones actually.  And both straight, for whatever reason, Australian artists.  So Nick Cave did this incredible  live stream  of just himself  and Alexandra Palace playing the piano. And it was so moving, it was so brilliant.  And we live streamed that. And Kylie Minogue,  who I'm also a big fan of.

30:54

um did a much more lively um gig, live streamed,  which was just really good fun during that quite bleak time.  But what we realized was that um if you,  and the way I think it worked,  I wasn't on the business end of things, but it was still a limited number of tickets.  Essentially it's unlimited capacity,  but if you limited the number of tickets, people who could attend, they sold better because people still wanted that scarcity. still wanted to feel like, I was watching this thing and you weren't.

31:23

You weren't there, I was.  So yeah, it felt like that what was kind of, guess,  heartening to see was that people, that appetite for going out, that appetite for those experiences was still very much there.  The revenue did drop and there's no way streaming could ever replace that.  It was interesting to see how many kind of live streaming entities kind of popped up and then vanished uh as soon as gigs came back.

31:52

But the best thing I think that happened, or the most impactful thing on our business, was that growing as a business, growing as a ticketing business means you have to sign new partners. You have to sign venues,  you have to sign festivals, promoters and so on in order to then scale.  And to do that, have to obviously have lots of conversations with somebody who's already running a business, who's already  under a lot of pressure. So  getting the time to speak to people to make those sales is quite difficult. But suddenly in the pandemic,

32:19

no one was busy. So if you're running a venue, you've got lots of time in your hands suddenly.  So that gave our sales team, our content team, opportunities to go in and make lots of deals  while people were busy to actually  have the time to explain why Dice was different, why this was the alternative that they were looking for when they didn't have to put a show on that night. So it gave us the opportunity to grow so that when the audiences came back, we were ready and we were.

32:44

were bigger. That's really what established us in New York was we had that time to out and sign those deals. Coming back to this, your kind of creative philosophy and creative process, can you tell us a little bit more about what you call the DIY mentality? Yeah, I I've done talks about this. I've talked a lot about it at work as well. Yeah, mean, kind of going back to what we were saying earlier, I guess, it's just

33:13

I guess I just get excited about making something um and I want to get it done.  I'm very impatient as well. um And so I think for me, like this idea of doing it yourself, um whether it's a fanzine, whether it's an ad campaign, I just think that can get you to a really interesting place  way quicker. And it'll probably be less polished. It almost definitely will be less crafted. I'm not really a craftsman. I think that's another thing I've learned.

33:41

much more of Swiss Army knife character when it comes to creativity or even just when it comes to like life. I'll like, oh, I'll a go at that. I'll see if I can fix that. And I'll never be the best at it, but I'm comfortable with that. But I'll give it a go and I'll probably get it done. If you want it done, you can come to me. If you want it to be perfect, you need to go to someone else. But I just found that quite exciting because I think then you can go from one project and one idea to another reasonably quickly and never get bogged down in one thing and be doing it forever.

34:10

think that's probably why I've thrived in places like DICE and you know to a certain extent Airbnb because Airbnb back then was still reasonably scrappy it was pretty it doesn't seem small but like 1500 people or whatever it was when I joined but it was fairly small for such a big operation and so you could nip around and get things done quickly and that's that's kind of like where I feel most comfortable so yeah I think and I think it probably goes back to like

34:36

not just my background in terms of my early kind of design years, but like where I grew up. I grew up in a fairly like a reasonably harsh environment, I guess, for where we are in England at least. And it was definitely a kind of environment where if you didn't do it yourself and if you didn't go out and find it yourself, you weren't going to get it. So you had to go out and get a job if you wanted to get money. No one was going to give you those kind of things. So just like

35:05

making things happen yourself was a bit of a survival mechanism really. And I think those things from  however we grew up, they stay with you. So  yeah, it tends to just be like how I approach the world, which can be incredibly frustrating for people who are either living with me, like my poor family,  or working with me because sometimes  it's not always the most helpful thing to want to get the thing done quickly. Sometimes people want to think about things, but  yeah.

35:34

That's not how I operate. Well, Patrick, thank you for your time and your  knowledge and your story  and indeed just your general creative approach to weirdness  and  getting things done, which I think is a great message to anyone out there. Thank you.