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EPISODE 7 - Jan. 15th | Julia Groves - (British Airways) | Otter.ai

EPISODE 7 - Jan. 15th | Julia Groves - (British Airways)

Kyle Shannon1h

Kyle Shannon

00:04

In a short stretch of time, from the mid 90s, to the early 2000s, a relatively small group of people started playing around with this thing called the World Wide Web, they had the audacity to think they just might change the world. This project introduces you to the big players from those hallowed days, and let them tell you what it was like and how you should have been there.

Kyle Shannon

00:29

Alright, Episode Seven. Today we have Julia groves. She is a rock star from the other side of the pond. She was co founder of British Airways, she worked@agency.com and she's amazing. We also have some special guests who will be joining Julia ritesh. Dude, Happy

Ritesh Patel

00:47

Friday.

Kyle Shannon

00:50

You know, I gotta say, i, you and i essentially only get to talk when we do these shows. But like doing these shows has made me unreasonably happy. Like just like, if for no other reason, like it's it's backfilling my fading memories, you know, that these conversations are just amazing. So

Ritesh Patel

01:09

they really are. It's, you know, what's that? I went back again, and just watch the, the Craig and Jeff one. It is amazing, you know, the things that entrepreneurs did back then. And that feeling that everybody had about, hey, there's something big here. We should do something right.

Kyle Shannon

01:27

We got to do this. We got to do this. Exactly. All right.

Ritesh Patel

01:30

We got we got somebody very interesting. Today, a client,

Kyle Shannon

01:33

we have a client, this is our first client from agency calm. And, you know, I think she wished she would have been earlier in the guest lineup. This client, she's she's a very important one. Yeah. Before we get to Julia, we have to do our housekeeping. I called it house cleaning last time, but I'm old, you can forgive me. We knew what you meant. So so what you should do if you're watching this, you can find back episodes and all details about the show upcoming guests that you should have.com. So go to youtube.com if you want to learn more about this experiment ritesh and I are on. Also, if you're watching the show, you can comment ritesh can see your comments. He will not read them, we can pull them on screen so you can Heckle Julia as is appropriate. And then finally, and this is super important. We want to be influencers. We are at 97 subscribers on the YouTube channel. We need three more to get our own URL three, come on people.

Ritesh Patel

02:30

Somebody likes us out there. I mean, even if you don't like us, just give us the damn URL. That's all we leave

Kyle Shannon

02:38

right now. And click on the subscribe button. Thank you. Okay, enough. I've had enough comedy jokes. Let's let's bring on the guest of honor, shall we? We shall.

Ritesh Patel

02:52

And there is Judah, you've muted a kind. Oh, that's appropriate. That's very

Julia Groves

03:01

nice. clients, clients. I mean, that's literally why

Kyle Shannon

03:08

I actually think former client is more accurate.

Julia Groves

03:13

Ooh. Hello, how are you? This is just mental. I have no idea what I'm doing. But it's

Ritesh Patel

03:26

good hands. You're in good hands. This is just a quick history. This started over a couple of gin and tonics and us going, we're getting old. We should capture some of the stories and Kyle said, Yeah, you should have been there. I would like Kyle. Know how Kyle is right when you give him an idea. That was it within the weekend. We had a site up we are going he's got an influencer background because he wants to be an influencer. Now.

Kyle Shannon

03:56

Are you impressed with my lit up?

Julia Groves

03:57

Am I not so good. Guys, can we go back there though? It was so I know. Right? I want to be there not I don't want to you know,

Ritesh Patel

04:08

it's just COVID. What a time. That's where we should start. Yeah, it's 10. misfits at agency show up in London one day, I think right. What I

Kyle Shannon

04:20

want to do before we bring on some calm folks is I would actually like to hear because I don't know this history is I would love to hear so. So by the time we met you, you had somehow finagle yourself into the position of I guess head of digital for this global brand and I think you're only 27 now so you had to be like 12

Julia Groves

04:42

finagle things you know right up my skill set. LinkedIn, you'll see you know, finagle is that

Kyle Shannon

04:47

Yeah, so I will begin How did you get it?

Julia Groves

04:52

So I applied for British Airways and I went I came over on the boat from our Ireland to England, and I met cider and the Happy Mondays and dungarees and nightclubs. I work initially just to be clear in that way because of the cultural adjustment that was involved in being you have. So that went so badly that I left the university in question with something called a Desmond. Desmond Tutu. So in the UK, nobody serious gets a tutu and a degree that's not cool. I had applied for British Airways and they didn't take Desmond's and they rejected me. Whoa, right. Wow. So then I waited in MBA, so I could apply again and come back. And then I got in kind of to be a second time, you see, Nobody puts baby in the corner. So I finally got into the unwind, because I wanted to fly everywhere. And I got a job in the advertising department. And we went out with a sad cheese, and we smoked more blue light portfolios under our arms, and we drank

Ritesh Patel

06:08

those crews hanging out at the Dogon dock in Soho on a Friday afternoon. Well, you

Julia Groves

06:13

know, golden Square was the place to be back in the day. But there were people there who looked like we lit no boys. And there was a lot of I'm sorry, but a lot of gray hair and wisdom. And you know, we tried that 1984 and it didn't work then and it won't work not well.

Kyle Shannon

06:36

Wasn't British Airways, like recently come out of being It was a government entity, and then it had gone private. And when

Julia Groves

06:44

you think I am?

Ritesh Patel

06:47

Nikki, car, she was 12. Yeah.

Julia Groves

06:54

I don't know how

Julia Groves

06:54

it was the time though. They changed on the trails. Remember, they changed the girl.

Kyle Shannon

07:00

It was one of the one of the I don't know the highlights of my time@agency.com you arranged for Newland Sorrell, who did the rebranding of Ba, you arranged for us to go do a two day full immersion thing. They presented the entire strategy. It was one of the most amazing two days like it was amazing that re-branding with the tails and the artwork and connecting the world was genius.

Julia Groves

07:26

Totally everybody loved it apart from the British people. Living the dream, and I was in the department I wanted to be and it was all idea. But I just couldn't do anything new because everybody done everything. And then there's this guy if I say the name Nick gassman

Ritesh Patel

07:46

Oh, gosh, indeed. Gosh,

Julia Groves

07:50

batsmen is a real genius behind va.com except that he's partial to a pork pie. And Scotty is, but he wouldn't necessarily eat the whole pork pie. This is for pie. And then he put it back in his pocket to get it together, and if there were any bits of fluff around it. So and he was he was a real IT person, you know? Hey, the presentation layer not relevant. Right, right. So basically, I just connected myself into gassman. And whatever he said, I said it in design speak. And everybody went for it. So yeah, that was what started

Kyle Shannon

08:32

you became the pretty face of digital.

Julia Groves

08:36

I mean, I was kind of like the marzipan. That's called him. And then I would say abc.com with the icing on the top.

Kyle Shannon

08:45

Yeah. You know, I feel we have that in common. I always felt like I was the eye candy of agency come

Julia Groves

08:53

into the challenge you on that?

Ritesh Patel

08:57

behind his back to do all the time. Yeah, no, sorry. Can I say that out loud. And then your British Airways? Yeah, no hanging out with gasma. And he's because I remember meeting him for the first time and I was scared to death. Yeah, but I think that's a sensible approach. Just Yeah. petrifying lunch was my first week at agency COVID Esther myself Mago ad, when I said we're gonna go meet the IT guys. They want to sell tickets online. Yeah, so there you are. How did you sort of say, okay, we're gonna go find somebody to help us do this.

Julia Groves

09:38

Well, it was what they were kind of a couple of steps before so so we we went out to because we've been obviously been a travel game for ages. So we went to meet Sabre. Travelocity, we went to see Microsoft. Yeah. Where there was an Expedia. I had that fight with Martha lane Fox. You remember that? Yeah. Yeah, he didn't sell our tickets for us really cheaply. market cap was bigger than mine market cap. You know, when the big sell? Yeah. Got a little bit. Brent was there so it was okay. But we did get a brochure so one of the things I remember before you guys I think we think we were online magic

Ritesh Patel

10:15

Julia Groves

10:18

matter doesn't matter and and so we came up with this website navigation and the brief was for it to be intentionally ambiguous the site Alright, that was brief Yes. But so we've kind of done some brochures the bits and pieces and they've done like the late night coding and open bracket close bracket forward slash beat whatever. And, and it was simpler back then you

Julia Groves

10:52

didn't even we didn't even have Drupal. So the way we came across you guys was then we were starting to get serious. We're starting to do booking and we we asked everyone's pitch, and abc.com or New York, right, and I work for an airline and at this point, I'm probably 27

Ritesh Patel

11:11

and the Concorde Concorde was still going so you can get

Julia Groves

11:17

tickets. I mean, why would you get it? Why wouldn't you get a US Agency? Right? Why would you? Sue these guys arrive? Right ritesh I have to tell you they look like like The Blues Brothers is like borrowed somebody's jacket and black tide. Ruth was there just looking like class, right? Like JT and Carlin, whatever. But they just looked like a real agency. And we all kind of weren't professional hitter to me, say like that, like, I'll get that jacket back out. Again, if you can. Just you know,

Kyle Shannon

11:54

I wore it on our second episode. I wore the uniform.

Ritesh Patel

11:59

We did.

Julia Groves

12:00

Completely. Everybody else. Absolutely. leagues ahead leagues.

Kyle Shannon

12:05

So let me ask you something. So this is I have mythologized something in my brain. That I don't know if it's true or not. So this is my question to you. The way I've remembered it, the way I have constructed the story in my head, when you did the RFI, or the, you know, the request for information, I think you sent it to like 40 or 43 us agencies. And I remember getting a call that said, congratulations, you know, you've been accepted. Like we're inviting you to pitch. You're the only company out of 43 companies that we selected, because you're the only agency that answered our questions in the same order that we asked them. Is that true? Am I remembering that correctly?

Julia Groves

12:53

There's no point in writing an RFP, right? With people just ignore it. They just didn't answer the question. Well, if you can't be honest, right? This is not going to go up. Aqa at all. We just went brochure where books your web brochure brochure, right. Yeah. So this conversation, as you would know, Mr. Shannon, if it doesn't start with a conversation, we're not getting anywhere our Americans?

Kyle Shannon

13:24

Yeah, well, we were and like, I felt like, for me that it was a couple of things. One, it was like, you know, I can't believe like, really, like all you do is answer questions to get in. Like, it's like, the other one was, like, I felt like if it really communicated to us early that the expectation that level of professionalism of British Airways was on another level, like a lot of the companies even the fortune 500 would work for. weren't that committed to like doing it? Right. And so like, I felt like it it really began. It was it was a hallmark for us, it was it was a shift for us, but it like we had to up our game to come up to your level and like,

Julia Groves

14:11

Yeah. Ritesh will know why that is British is to know it's tech driven. Right. We have got the structure of brains, right this that this that you know, top layer middleware bottom there, get it straight from get it done all the rest of it. And you know, we were in this like massive, what was it called? tPf. Environment retail?

Ritesh Patel

14:38

Yes, yeah. Like

Julia Groves

14:41

this car that was going at 60 miles an hour or something is what you described to us. And so I think the we were really lucky in the industry because we didn't have any physical product right? So don't forget there was no Amazon don't have this crap was there nobody could do deliveries was the big issue for everything. Yes, you Nothing to deliver when

Ritesh Patel

15:03

it's out still. I mean, there was a time when travel agents were printing tickets and still delivering them to their customers.

Kyle Shannon

15:09

All right, messenger. Yeah. messaging that.

Julia Groves

15:14

Yeah, we were. So just to be clear for the radio, we're so far ahead of Expedia. Right,

Ritesh Patel

15:19

way,

Julia Groves

15:21

way, way, way, way ahead. But you remember the first time we did it, right, because we had that back end, the tPf. back end. And we wanted to look at doing the tickets. Yep. And, and there was no way they were going to let us play with the TPS. I have no idea.

Ritesh Patel

15:37

Well,

Kyle Shannon

15:41

yeah, we want to sell tickets, but you can't have access to our back end. Yeah.

Julia Groves

15:46

Some people would stop at that point.

Ritesh Patel

15:49

I remember coming back to New York and talking to the tech team, Ralph Seaman said, You You promised them What? I said I didn't promise it.

Kyle Shannon

16:04

I think it is time. I think it is time let's let's, let's open this party up.

Ritesh Patel

16:09

Okay.

Julia Groves

16:13

Remember that? The team without consulting the team? Right? Because Do you remember the argument we had about account managers? Does anybody remember that? How do I feel about account managers?

Kyle Shannon

16:36

Oh, they didn't do anything?

Julia Groves

16:41

No, because in my experience, they have really long legs and they try and sell you things. Right, and they're hanging around looking for a husband. What do we call the reproducers? Do you remember is like pretty? And he was he was like, we're making a movie here. It's like, okay, let's make a movie. We're forming teams Weren't we are on projects, and they were sort of going away. I think we called I think we changed the call of the producer.

Ritesh Patel

17:13

Yeah. What do you think? I remember. meeting you and Kay, when I first joined, just joined agency, actually, there was some, I think of South by Southwest, maybe even where I ran into the

Julia Groves

17:28

Southwest was an existence back.

Ritesh Patel

17:32

I don't know, I know. When you were like, Oh, yeah, we work on British Airways. I'm like, Oh, wow. Yeah. Cool. And then I joined and I had to go with you to London? And

Julia Groves

17:43

yes, yes. So.

Kyle Shannon

17:45

So Esther. Margaret, why don't you quickly introduce yourselves and and and what you did? And then we can we can sort of talk about those early days.

Esther Han

17:54

Sure. I'm Esther Han. And I, in the context of this conversation, managed globally, the, the British Airways team, so I was living the double life commuting to London we had, actually because British Airways was such a leading edge client for agency Comm. We were you guys were leveraging offices all over. So but but the big teams were in London in New York. And that was my role.

Margot Hyun

18:26

Great. Yeah. Hey, everyone. So I think I joined maybe a week or two after ritesh? Because Yeah,

Ritesh Patel

18:33

we were both newbies. That's right.

Margot Hyun

18:35

I remember you were there. And I was actually working with British Airways from the Interbrand side. So I remember meeting manager. And we were the branding agency for the new rebranding of British airways.com. And just a little turf wars, like, you know, we were recommending a certain design and the digital or, like, you can't do that. But, um, so we had the two agencies, and I remember thinking, I think I rather be on this side. A little bit more fun. It was a little bit staid, it was you know, we but I did actually go to London and meet some of the British Airways folks, not you jewels, but you know, from the inner brand branding point, and then went over, and I was actually hired to go to London and manage the London team. And, and rightly, you know, Esther, you said it, we had, like, the poor guys from Paris, who got called every single day. I mean, there was someone like stingy or someone like in the frogs, you know, yeah, it's just like I did living in the US you just don't understand that until it you know, it's there constantly. And then remember those, those cute kids from Paris who were like And I used it same thing go back to New York every couple weeks and used to love when the New York team will when they pulled me back, they flew me first class. The corporate team only flew me business class.

Esther Han

20:18

times. Very hard.

Margot Hyun

20:22

Actually, sorry.

Kyle Shannon

20:24

Yeah. So what do you mean Julia? What do you remember of, you know, the the sort of early like, I suppose once we get past, you know, we did the pitch, we ended up winning the business, but What do you remember about the early days of the relationship with the team?

Julia Groves

20:39

Oh, my God. Well, there was a fair amount of negotiation. Can I get paid for this shit? I mean, am I waiting? I'm worried to Chan, to put enough in the retainer, so that I can come over every Thursday, we would go out on Thursday night, I

Ritesh Patel

21:01

think. That was not in the first episode, with any boondoggles being added into

Julia Groves

21:15

let's just make sure we haven't. And we used to go and then I would arrive at like massive jetlag, and absolutely, like, Okay, let's go without. Oh, sir. It's not I've got to do it. But I like that face plan. So it was massive. I remember crawling under desks, like, remember that? Yeah.

Ritesh Patel

21:42

Yeah, exactly.

Kyle Shannon

21:48

Yeah,

Esther Han

21:48

I don't recognize that. So that is for

Julia Groves

21:51

the Sony bio. Or look, I've got some simple stickers in it. So a Chan right is like, Oh, look, you're going in first class everywhere. Let's slap some branding on this. And I should have got a discount for this. Kyle.

Margot Hyun

22:08

Let's see. Any discounts tools?

Kyle Shannon

22:12

It's all about the brand.

Ritesh Patel

22:15

Yesterday, was very good about not discounting anything.

Kyle Shannon

22:19

Yeah. No, we

Julia Groves

22:22

played some serious girls, right. Yes, sir.

Esther Han

22:25

But Jules, who was the, the procurement guy, that, that I think it took us a year to negotiate the next big retainer and, and I had never had to negotiate with procurement guy and he negotiates like oil prices. Or fuel costs are fuel. And he was trying to understand the agency model and then, you know, negotiate on margins per person. And I'm like, no, no.

Julia Groves

22:59

You're

Esther Han

23:01

really close. Like, I think about him. I'm like, Oh, this

Julia Groves

23:06

guy before Annabel. I'm trying to remember. Oh, and no knows.

Esther Han

23:11

Yeah, it was before. Annabel for annaba. Right. I

Julia Groves

23:14

mean, it is buried. Just, you know, you know, I think we got up to like, 33 countries and you know, as a mentalist. I mean, manage? I think because we were advancing fairly quickly. We stayed ahead, but um, no, I've got I've actually got screenshots of all of the designs that we went ritesh, the middleware, the genius middleware idea where we thought we'll just put this in between the website and back end. Yeah. So then we were booking right. So then Esther's happy because we're booking tickets. And, and we would what I got to do, right? Do you remember that? Nobody would put their credit card and anything over the phone, everybody.

Kyle Shannon

24:00

Always say you give it over the phone, right? They're like, Oh, yeah, I do. Yeah,

Julia Groves

24:04

we didn't change the incentive package for the call centers. So people booked online. And then they called up to pay and the guys in the call center. Just made them another booking.

Ritesh Patel

24:19

Wow.

Esther Han

24:22

Oh, you have

Ritesh Patel

24:27

an internet connection. Oh, no. Let's see. While we're waiting for Jules to come back. Lauren stanovich says hello.

Julia Groves

24:40

I think I think I'm probably in trouble with somebody now. I already killed the internet. Yeah.

Kyle Shannon

24:48

The Internet the internet didn't like you

Julia Groves

24:51

caring right.

Kyle Shannon

25:02

I want to do though I think it'd be fun. So Ruth Ruth he sent me. Here's one of the BA tickets there's Chan and column I forget columns. Last name. This was from the pitch. And let's see the cyber spy cafe powered by IBM.

Kyle Shannon

25:30

And my lovely wife Gabby, and that's Ruthie.

Kyle Shannon

25:40

Sitting in the Concorde, there's proof of the Concorde. And then look what you did to us jewels. This is chin leaping in the BA offices after that flight JTS catching up on the local London news.

Ritesh Patel

25:54

asleep on the floor.

Julia Groves

25:57

What is the deadline? I think it's changed.

Kyle Shannon

26:00

Right crazy.

Julia Groves

26:02

It looks like recent maybe tour news photos up?

Ritesh Patel

26:05

Yeah, those have been taped back together again. In America.

Kyle Shannon

26:11

Yeah.

Julia Groves

26:13

Whatever it was, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's

Kyle Shannon

26:15

a little scrapbooking going on there.

Ritesh Patel

26:18

So So Kyle, I think some memories one memory out there were two one was this whole? You know, Esther, I think I just started me and Margo, you we got to go over to meet this it guys. And they're like, okay, we want to sell tickets online. You both went you do? Ever like Well, you're the new VP of tech. How would we do this? And I don't know. And the other one was, Julie, I remember a quote that you continue to use the pitches, there would be a quote from Julia groves quite a while and it was you guys@agency.com and magicians

Kyle Shannon

26:59

Ah,

Ritesh Patel

27:01

that was a quote that was attributed to you on many a pitch there are

Julia Groves

27:05

and I didn't get a discount for that either. So

Esther Han

27:09

there are lots of so many value adds maybe you got a lot extra love.

Julia Groves

27:16

You knew what I remember also a bit later down the line is your guys IPO. Right? Your IPO cost me? What? 95,000 pounds, right? Sorry about that. Cuz you delayed it and delayed it and delayed and delayed it and the price went

Ritesh Patel

27:36

up. As a

Julia Groves

27:39

party, right. That's just like, I'm gonna get on a plane. You have an IPO in York, and you've IPO?

Ritesh Patel

27:55

100 grand.

Julia Groves

27:59

That's okay. That's right.

Ritesh Patel

28:01

I think we went out to 17. And we closed the day at 102 or something like that.

Kyle Shannon

28:07

It was 26. We were pretty sick. 12 or 14? Yeah. And Chan pulled the IPO put it put it back on. They priced it at 26. We went out at 98 was the first trade. That was Yeah, that was amazing. Learning about how that that whole scam work.

Julia Groves

28:27

roadshow, okay,

Kyle Shannon

28:28

what's the reason it took us forever is every time we got close to having the paperwork ready, the SEC would change the laws. And we would have to go back and start over. So I think we did that three times. So it took forever. I want to I want to share a story that I think talks to kind of the excellence. So so you hired us, you know, we scrambled? We did our first quarter we did whatever we did.

Ritesh Patel

28:54

I think we need to go back to when I started though. Did you start as a BA person or did you start? Ba Right.

Esther Han

29:04

Yeah. So my story is, you know, I had graduated from business school. I was in Boston, working at a agency slash consulting firm focused on the you know, kind of interactive solutions. It was called at the time, an agency.com acquired this firm. But also after two years in Boston, I really missed New York. I'm like, I need I need the dirty people that dirty streets like it's just nice here in Boston. I don't know what to do here. So I you know, told the the head of the Boston office, I think I want to move to New York. And at the time and we just had to like breathe and people were offering you jobs. Yeah. So I think I got a few offers in New York. And then the president of Boston, Florida at the time, fool Jenkins. And said something to the effect of you really shouldn't lose this. This person and I had already kind of set my sights on I think I'm gonna move on. And so I met with Chan. I don't know if I had met him in person yet. And he just like sat back.

Ritesh Patel

30:18

A little chat. Yeah. Hall

Esther Han

30:23

job for you. And, you know, the story of the British Airways account was Yeah, of course epic and iconic and, and so he's like, you want to run the the British Airways account the global British Airways Flight I was like sold. But of course, I was like, Wow, that's really interesting. And so on and so forth. So, so I joined you know, I don't remember who I took over. A lot of people said, you know, you basically took over Transworld. But I'm not sure that

Esther Han

31:02

I don't remember like doing

Esther Han

31:03

any handoffs with Ruth, but all this to say that was that was when I joined. And then so I met jewels, which is like lightning. And then Natasha, you had just hired Natasha. And that was I, I might be misremembering, but I feel like that's kind of when I joined ish, because I was new. But we were like, kind of onboarding, Tasha, and you are very smart about, she needs to be in a way trained on how to get the most out of working with an agency. So I remember, you flew her to New York, and she kind of met with everybody. So I think that's probably around the time when I joined the account. And then Margo came on, I think, soon thereafter. Because yes, of our of our prior exchange, so he had kept in touch and

Ritesh Patel

31:53

yeah, so now Margo shows up. And Margot, you went to London first. Right? She was crazy Brits.

Margot Hyun

31:59

I did. And I couldn't understand what anyone said.

Ritesh Patel

32:04

Margot Hyun

32:07

mean, what the fuck, you know, you're sitting in Rome, there's 10 people speaking. And I would literally lean over to send you like, What are they talking about? In this small room, you get like Russell's accent, remember? Then you get

Ritesh Patel

32:25

a Scottish guy had

Margot Hyun

32:29

a Newcastle accident. It was more of a adjustment than I had thought it would be. So it's learn how to speak a different language. To we were I was staying in the quarter around the corner and the King's Cross location at that time was

Julia Groves

32:48

Quintin Street.

Margot Hyun

32:50

When I was moving there, my brother in law's English, and he's like, King Street. Oh, yeah. I remember leaving the office one night and walking down the little alley past the Lincoln and I look over and there's a woman giving a blow job in the doorway of another.

Kyle Shannon

33:22

That was the beginning of that whole digital area in London like, no

Julia Groves

33:27

professional

Margot Hyun

33:32

purpose the professionals in the area.

Ritesh Patel

33:37

Always build exactly right. Oh,

Margot Hyun

33:42

that little area and our and that loved our little office with the pub, the other pub along the water along the canal. But it was just always It was such a different phenomenon for me to be in this office where people came in and you know, like, he was still drunk, and he's like, Oh, I was out all night at a rave and you're like when you're stinky.

Margot Hyun

34:14

You might still be drunk.

Margot Hyun

34:21

remember his name, but he did this quite often.

Julia Groves

34:25

Name do not remember. Yeah.

Ritesh Patel

34:28

Please tell me.

Kyle Shannon

34:31

Anything you'd like to share with the group? Jules.

Julia Groves

34:38

Let's just say that and I think we were one of the first examples of you know, a team extension. Jeremy and there was a lot of male the male thing. Yeah. Yeah, partnership, really close collaboration. And you need to you need to bond

Margot Hyun

35:00

And professional, you know?

Margot Hyun

35:03

Yeah, yeah,

Kyle Shannon

35:04

I was, I was told not bring up the off sites in Ireland in Belgium. So I don't know why.

Esther Han

35:10

Well, there was one time when we flew the whole London team to New York. And it was crazy. I mean, they went crazy. I think someone missed a flight with her name, but we're not gonna name names anyway. But they just went crazy in New York City. And then they left the next day, and somebody didn't make it. Oh, well.

Julia Groves

35:41

You know, we found we found that Ireland was wild there Ireland was we ended up in some massive kind of semi rave environment where they were doing a rock version of the fields and after dry, you know,

Kyle Shannon

36:09

I remember stumbling out of that place. And, yeah, that was nuts. But I mean, I, you know, I like, it was a pretty intense, you know, thing we were trying to accomplish? What were the tools? What were the things that we accomplished, you know, from a technical standpoint, so, you know, British Airways went from brochure where with the, but if you say purposefully, obscure interface.

Julia Groves

36:34

Ambiguous and interactive stuff you can use? That's fine. Yeah.

Kyle Shannon

36:41

One of the things that, that we actually pulled off that we're like, Yeah, we did that, you know, that I'm excited about, like, what do you remember of what we built?

Julia Groves

36:52

So I remember the Well, some of them are kind of tactical, some of them that are more lasting, tactically, the Aster, the Concorde. 10 point offer? Oh, yeah.

Kyle Shannon

37:05

What was that?

Julia Groves

37:06

What? What for 10 times, I mean, you would possibly want that. So then, the middleware, whatever, you would have these, and they would have sessions, right, and they start a session. And then for whatever reason, they drop out of it. Yeah. And but the session carried on. That's right. You can explain this properly, but basically, we clogged up anyway, and there was this massive volume of stuff because all the sessions we got, and then some hacker would just turn off and on and it would work again. Yeah. He could still have to work at it. So that was my home and then I thought it'd be a good idea to put my mobile phone number on the email on the website. Oh, no, I don't remember that. Everybody told me about whether they can get to it. But I think what was the obviously the first booking stuff was really exciting. Then we did and the executive club right so we have time relationship Okay, how many miles Have I got etc etc right? That's when we did ba holidays and then we did chicken

Kyle Shannon

38:20

Oh yeah.

Julia Groves

38:21

Right. Because we were kind of going I think Esther said to me Sorry about that but Julia you know what it is check in check completely right it's basically a backdrop so so those are that was really cool I remember I remember when we were doing like the club WORLD LAUNCH Chairman It was a bad and it was so bad you went in the hangar I think you got to go in the hangar Margo and saw the bed because it was top secret

Margot Hyun

38:57

I and we built the the microsite so for the photo of us getting the award so there's a picture of us onstage with an upholding the trophy microsite or experience was something like a million dollars at that point you know, like who spends a million dollars for a microsite at that time

Kyle Shannon

39:22

Jones did

Ritesh Patel

39:26

but it did include in New York so yeah,

Kyle Shannon

39:29

well

Margot Hyun

39:32

award

Julia Groves

39:38

we won a lot of awards there are so many firsts right which are

Ritesh Patel

39:44

online you know, the first one to sell tickets online. And what was it when i o esta webinar box remember

Margot Hyun

39:57

that their entries for the difference?

Ritesh Patel

40:01

Struggling

Esther Han

40:03

Yeah, that's really yeah, I forgot about that. That's, that was also a really clever initiative.

Julia Groves

40:09

Yeah. All of those languages to remember and all the different kinds. There was a whole kind of, you know, US UK member david Charlton. Oh, yeah. Oh, didn't don't tell the Americans Why? We're having our own team. And then they ended up with agency anyway. Hey, do tension right between

Kyle Shannon

40:34

you remember? Do you remember when you called us up? And you said, place? Boy. I've I've booked out the hangar. And we're going to teach everyone in ba you know what the internet is like, we're gonna remember we did you booked the hangar and we had to do this event. And I don't it was 400 people are some ridiculous amount of people. And we had to fly over and like present and all that stuff. Everyone were

Esther Han

41:00

Dale moss.

Julia Groves

41:02

Yeah.

Julia Groves

41:04

Yeah, yeah. Nobody had a clue what we were talking about. So. And we have this little whistle. It wasn't a bus. It was like a virtual sort of tour bus. And everyone is at their big fat square monitors, right? Why we're going to go to www.gov Oh, you went right to bits and pieces. And we had reynier. Remember? palindrome ever is telling us about the future, which is still at odds, right? They were just like, Oh, my God, am I go to the Goddess. So exciting. So I think it had, it had a massive, massive impact. And, and of course, the real difference in the brand is the fact that there's interactivity there. So it's not, you know, you have to substantiate you couldn't just present and say, you know, somebody said to me, it might have been you, Kyle. And if you want somebody to think you're funny, you don't tell them? You're funny, you tell them a joke. I think it was that that was that was the a&r you can claim something, you know, back in those days, they believed you because you only have three channels, you know, you're a fighter, okay. And, and then suddenly, in the orange practice up is you could say something, but you didn't deliver it in the user journey, then it was bullshit.

Kyle Shannon

42:31

It was the the distance with with the advent of the Internet, the distance between when you make a brand promise, and when you deliver it or not, is instantaneous, right? So if you say we're about customer service, and then your site is, you know, ambiguous on purpose, then you just lied, right? And your customer knows like that. So yeah, it was I think we were constantly trying to shorten the distance between what does the brand stand for? And what do you actually deliver

Julia Groves

43:00

some of the legacy ritesh is some of the sort of Dallas stuff which ash and I can just have a chat by ourselves. Oh, yeah. Let's remember, like, it used to be sort of waterfall. waterfall, right? And then was rapid applications. Look, to read to understand, and it was like frickin kind of a pamphlet would have been fine. But then of course, that is that's the but we were time boxing. Yeah. Right. Right back in 1998.

Kyle Shannon

43:39

Before you called it that, I know

Julia Groves

43:42

that I wasn't very agile, but the waterfall stuff was really problematic. And that was the other change was, you know, they used to come up with an idea, then they would research it. And then if the research said yes, then we stopped to think about how to build it. And we were like, Okay, well, let's just knock it up. See if that like. Yeah, no, it was really great. But after you were just so phenomenal, because I was still like a bit of a kid. And I had loads of faith that

Esther Han

44:12

well then because I was also just a kid.

Julia Groves

44:20

Long As You were like two centimeters in front of the neck. That was the

Kyle Shannon

44:30

that was the secret to that. Yeah. How much

Ritesh Patel

44:36

did you spend in the UK? I

Margot Hyun

44:38

can't remember how long. I was there for almost a year. And I lived in this LinkedIn. So I lived

Ritesh Patel

44:47

like one way you work from all the prostitutes, and

Julia Groves

44:53

I live in Washington still. So just Yeah,

Margot Hyun

44:56

I was. I was at the angle and you know, these were the prostitutes down the street. And, you know, I, it's one of those things where I thought I would get to know London and I did ride a bike around and almost get killed 900 times but you know, it was it was one of those times in places where, you know, we, if we sound old when we say this, I could only have appreciated all that.

Julia Groves

45:25

Like, I can't I don't know if we're ready for that.

Margot Hyun

45:29

And try to think you know, is that is there a phenomenon like that today? You know, with all the especially, I mean, I work 10 gently with like the AI team and the virtual reality team. And you're like, what are you doing on Lego? What

Ritesh Patel

45:43

do you do now? So give us a quick,

Margot Hyun

45:46

boring, boring, boring, boring, I'm at Facebook, and I work on payments. Okay, I work on both crypto and fiat currency payments for Facebook. But the real cool kids are the AR VR kids, right? Like,

Kyle Shannon

46:07

you can do an AR, you know, an augmented reality little payment system, you can swipe

Margot Hyun

46:17

right, where your little Oculus gear and you're like ready to go to level 95. But you just need to put in 1299 How do you do that? Got a solution for you. But you know, it is this element of when when we're in those times, we actually know how special it is. And yeah, we are playing this, like pivotal role at that time. I mean, I was just thinking about the London Eye and we had that you know, webcam there and and just how we leverage some dudes webcam two pointed towards the London Eye. And we had the British Airways webcam, but it was some dudes.

Margot Hyun

47:02

I just do.

Ritesh Patel

47:05

It was invented, right. We were inventing nothing. Crazy style.

Margot Hyun

47:11

We how do we realize that? So you know, many gray hairs later? I want to know that like today we're doing things and it's just a special without always having to look back. But those days were good. And yeah. So you know, I think that's my challenge. Kyle, you're talking about like, new things and excellence? Well, when you're in it, you see the flaws, you see the pimples and you don't necessarily see kind of all the beauty that we're producing. Yeah, it's only later when you have that when you're more pimples. You realize like, that was actually a good time. You know, you're right, because I mean, I

Ritesh Patel

47:47

still I had a call two weeks ago when I described the webinar box to somebody because they're struggling with global content. And they were like, Wow, that's a great idea. Yeah. 1996 dude. Yeah.

Kyle Shannon

48:04

I mean, I, you know, it's part of the reason I'm doing this show is that i i do think it was a singular time. I think one of the things that I hear consistently is people, and we just had the reunion in New York right before the pandemic and like, one of the themes of Yes. Oh,

Kyle Shannon

48:28

God, she wasn't invited. But like, one of the themes was like, everyone's been trying to recreate, you know, what was special about that time, you know, since that time, and I think parts part of that time was it really was a singular time in history. I think there's little pieces of it now. But if you think, you know, you, you instantly go from the world not being connected to the world being connected. Like that's only going to happen once. And he happened to be there at the beginning of that. So I, you know, I felt, you know, super lucky all the time, because I, I was I knew I had missed the PC revolution with, you know, Bill Gates. One came along, I was like, Ooh, this is one of those. So, I think I think it was a pretty singular time.

Julia Groves

49:17

Here there was there were tests. I didn't remember being scared of anything. No. afterwards. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Esther Han

49:29

Practice such an eclectic bouquet of people. You know, they were just writer cab drivers like Ark trained architects who said, I want to do information architecture. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, it was just so fascinating and constant,

Ritesh Patel

49:48

Katarina.

Julia Groves

49:51

I mean, everybody had done like everything. It was just,

Esther Han

49:55

it really can create like that sort of magic when you've got that kind of You know, variety and diversity. And I'm sure maybe there's industry sectors that still kind of have that but not a surge. And with like, just

Julia Groves

50:10

everyone, everyone,

Ritesh Patel

50:12

what are you doing? What are you up to? Before we get to so

Esther Han

50:16

and actually I part of my story relates back to VA. So I've been at Consumer Reports for just over three years, and I'm helping them build a new division or business taking sort of all the cutting room data that they have and their expertise and kind of repackaging it for non consumer audiences, because there are no more as a b2c. But I got the job partially because I had been at my last company for like 15 years, and I had really been thinking about for quite a few years, I really need to leave because if I don't leave now, I'm going to be here for 30 years, and I'll regret it. I remember having a drink with you about Yes. And I was like, ritesh, what's going on going on in the world, like, so I was networking and trying to kind of connect with people. And I was at dinner. Actually, on the Upper West Side, it's worth noting that I don't actually spend time, you know, much time on the Upper West Side. And at dinner, and all sudden, I see this face, come into mine. And she's like, and it was Katie Krinsky, because remember she had this bucket. Yep. So Kate was with who was a project manager, right? I mean, in the middle of nowhere, and I was like, Kate, my customer, what do you guys do in here, you here on holiday? And their, their ex pats? They both live in the city? So of course, like we have reconnected Yeah, there, but it's husband works at Consumer Reports. And so it is a nice little, you know, after 20 years, kind of just still the bonds of the BA team have they're

Ritesh Patel

52:14

so cool.

Kyle Shannon

52:15

So amazing. Yeah. Jules, yeah, Josie. So a maybe a little known fact, after ba you, you left and you joined agency.com, your chief marketing officer for some time. But I would love to hear from you. You know, from those early days, like, you know, what have you carried forward? What, what? I don't know, like, what did it change? Or, you know, are you still like, before we started the call, you said, you know, you just talk a lot. And eventually though here, you know, like, what's the thing that you sort of carry forward? From those days?

Julia Groves

52:52

Um, so I think it's a, you know, it's all about change, isn't it? I mean, there's just no point in leaving things the way they are. And I there's, there's a lot of stuff that the better. And I think you either feel like you're, you have agency to do that, or you're you don't. And I think it was enough of a ride and an experience that it got gave me just this boost of confidence that I thought, well, I can just get in there and I've got the right energy in the right drive and the right team, we can go in and we can so I'm just trying to change the world. like to know what's happening in the world. The problem was it kind of really spoiled me I couldn't go into a proper job again. Yeah. Like, team, right, we were kind of a couldn't go back into big corporate. Yeah, that's never gonna happen. So then I did a series of startups, or in some way all digital, all addressing sort of, you know, climate change in bits and pieces. And because you just get addicted to the kind of before and after, because we were I think we could really visibly tangibly see the change and stuff that was happening. We were kind of doing and then go, oh, look what we've done. It puts you into that kind of startup environments. I've never really been able to go back into an actual real job. I've always been in a startup. And until like just the last few years.

Kyle Shannon

54:20

Yeah, yeah. I consider myself fully unemployable at this point.

Julia Groves

54:29

What's different, right, startups are very, very different from the rest and you have to have that risk appetite, which not everybody has, I think, you know, we were a very mixed gang, but we're also still relatively unencumbered by children and mortgages has been known. And so I just think the risk appetite was really there. And I think sometimes you can, you can lose that a bit and as you start to have more responsibilities and things, but there's not a whole lot of growing up going on this group. Marga looks slightly grown and she took a big car, you're just you're going backwards?

Julia Groves

55:12

rigidity the really next bit, isn't it? Because I'm working in investment, then that's really exciting, because then you can be funding these visionary people who want to change the world. So that's really good.

Kyle Shannon

55:24

Well, that was I mean, I suppose that was one of the things, you know, being on the agency side, we were always sort of hustling for the next deal. But when you were a BA, I mean, you didn't have the resources of ba to be able to say, I want to do this, and you could Shepherd those resources. And

Julia Groves

55:43

they say, I used to have to go and set it aside. This is so bad, Bob, he said Robert ailing was the place to go upstairs and sit outside his office and swing my legs came out and said, they won't let me play with a database. Get him to go and tell the head of marketing that she is allowed to use the executive club database. In between all bailing me, nobody was speaking to me. every relationship so, yeah, that hasn't really changed.

Kyle Shannon

56:27

Yeah, burn the bridges burn.

Ritesh Patel

56:32

I'm going to spend some time running around with visa and a couple of places, if I remember correctly, right.

Margot Hyun

56:38

Well, you know, but the part that I think was not just going to London that go into Korea, and one of the last things that agency.com did in our expansion was, you know, they opened the Korea office with me remember, we did a joint venture in Miami, and then we did Korea, Korea. And, and really, you know, working over there for six, seven months. And I remember, the Korea team asked me to stay. And you know, such a difference from London, where at Korea, everyone had a family and I think at that time, I was maybe 30 to 33 and sitting up at dinner with the management team. Everyone had at least five kids, you know, I remember saying to them, like, Do you know any single people here What the hell would I do? My kids and literally Nick's are all like good, good smart people who did all the things

Ritesh Patel

57:43

nine degrees Yeah, they

Margot Hyun

57:45

all said no, we don't know anyone our age who's single? Wow, like so. What I do there? Yeah, it was it was that magical time of closing out you know, agency calm and being in Korea and, and that and if you guys know, one of the guys that I took to Korea with me, he married my translator, the woman who was my translator walking around Perry Perry boasts, he married the translator and they move back and they now live in you know, the US have several little children. But you know, after agency just kind of did various things I even worked at Yahoo used to be a cool kid, there was an

Julia Groves

58:32

email address. I haven't changed my email me to either somebody people have numbers in their email addresses are the guy who has a number in there.

Kyle Shannon

58:48

He was the 90th. Ritter's

Margot Hyun

58:54

I mean, these brands are I mean, British Airways is still so relevant. But the many of the brands agency.com just, you know, it is it's no longer here and who who thought, you know, Yahoo would be sort of opposite with the thought agency.com and, but but, you know, through agency, we got to work on some pretty amazing brands. We touched a lot of lot of great brands and and some are still around.

Julia Groves

59:23

We didn't get and are there any other little happy ever after stories I need to know about Are there any little agency

Kyle Shannon

59:36

on February 12. We're doing a Valentine's episode.

Esther Han

59:41

That's a great idea. affairs are included as long

Kyle Shannon

59:53

lasting relationships, but if you have some folks you want to bring on to

Kyle Shannon

01:00:03

Well listen, it's top of the hour we've got to run because we all still have day jobs we're not paying the bills with you should have been there but but Jules Thank you

Julia Groves

01:00:16

so nice.

Ritesh Patel

01:00:18

A glass of wine in person.

Julia Groves

01:00:21

Soon hey maybe thanks

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