Scott Bishoff on AI Media Strategy and Entertainment Marketing

Ben Lambert sits down with entertainment marketing veteran Scott Bishoff to explore what decades across agencies, brands, publishers, and entertainment have taught him about media, leadership, and where AI fits into the future of marketing. Scott shares why curiosity remains the industry's most valuable skill, how automation should free people to think-not replace strategic thinking-and why entertainment marketers face unique challenges in a world where culture, content, and consumer behavior evolve faster than ever.

Highlights

• Why curiosity-not technical skills-is the trait every great marketer needs
• How AI should automate execution while elevating strategy and storytelling
• What agency, client, and sales roles each teach about building better marketers
• Why entertainment marketing demands different measurement than other industries
• Scott's prediction for how content consumption will radically change over the next decade

TRANSCRIPT

Ben Lambert
Welcome everybody to another episode of Breaking Through Mayhem. I'm extremely excited today to have my friend Scott Bischoff joining me. Scott, how are you today?
Scott Bishoff
I'm good, thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Ben Lambert
Yes, this is one that I'm very excited for us to dive in and you and I have talked a lot over the last few weeks getting ready for this and I think it's going to be a fun one for the people but just so everybody can get introduced a little bit, we'd love for you to give a quick intro of who you are and a little bit about your background before we get in.

Scott Bishoff
Sure, yeah, so I've been doing this for, god, the number keeps going, 20, 25 years, more than that. Yeah, always in media. Really my first job out of college, I dabbled as a sales assistant for a local newspaper for a hot second but kind of came straight into media and yeah, I've been doing, I've worked on all sides of the business.

I did sales for a brief moment which we could talk about my ill-fated sales career. Most of my career has been agency side. I've had a couple client jobs.

I'm currently consulting for and doing a few different things but primarily, you know, working on the client side at a movie studio. You know, been mainly focused on entertainment for the last, oh, I don't know, you know, 15 years or so across movies, video games, streaming, you know, pretty much most of my career. I've done a little bit of CPG.

I worked on Pepsi for a while, you know, 15 some odd years ago but always been entertainment. I love the pace of it, you know, it's, you know, good, bad, or indifferent, you're done and you move on to a new audience, a new project which is always kind of fun and I've been fortunate enough, you know, I joke I'm old enough to have started in traditional media because there was no digital media when I started but then, obviously, the work is in digital for a long time so I've been able to kind of see the full gamut of everything we do.

Ben Lambert
So, yeah, excited to be chatting with you. That's awesome. Yeah, I think, you know, your background is really, really cool to think through and, you know, somebody that also started on the more traditional media side and has, you know, evolved into some of the newer channels, if you will.

You know, I think what's really cool is you've experienced both the agency brand side, platform vendor sales side, and, you know, seen it all which makes it very unique. I mean, there are people, obviously, that stay one side their whole career, others that, you know, the agency, the sales is the standard, if you will, that a lot of people follow but would be very curious for you to, you know, give kind of some of the true nuanced differences and I think there was a lot of similarities that people don't always pay attention to but through this kind of your feedback and thoughts on the true differences and what's led you to, you know, where you are now and, you know, why you're so excited about what you're working on these days.

Scott Bishoff
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest similarity between all three before we get into differences is really, you know, the idea of at the end of the day, you have to understand what the business goals are of everybody involved in, I hate to use the word transaction, but the transaction, right? I mean, I think that's where I've always seen, you know, maybe agencies struggle a little bit more is and certainly as the agency world has changed, and they become more consultants than buying agents, if you will, than anything else. But really, regardless of what side of the table you're on, you have to understand what is the business goal of everybody, right?

I think something that's really helped me having been in sales briefly is, I understand what the salespersons are trying to achieve, right? I mean, obviously, if the business goals of the client are being met that everyone theoretically is going to win, but, you know, sort of understanding how do we all kind of come together to do that is, is, is something that that's kind of a three line, I think the flip side is the difference is, you know, I kind of always look at, you know, when I was on the client side, and now I'm on the client side, again, you're going to go a little bit more service level, but across a lot of things, right. So I've been fortunate enough on the client side to be involved in marketing and publicity and creative.

And even though it's not my day to day job, I have to understand sort of how that all works together. But the flip side is sometimes when I'm on the client side, I feel a little disconnected from the media world, right? I'm not going as deep, I'm not having the same depth of conversation, I'm not exposed to as much, you know, when I was at an agency, even though I worked on an entertainment account, I get to hear what the auto clients are doing, I get to hear what the CPG side is doing.

And so it's, you know, you go a little bit deeper in media, even though you might not have the same breadth. And I think for me, that's what's been what I'd like to think is valuable about my career is now I understand the depth of media, but I also understand how it sort of interplays with everything else, which I think is an area that sometimes agencies lose a little bit of if they're not responsible for this. So I would say that's probably the biggest difference is sort of the depth of media versus kind of everything else.

You know, I think the other difference that I noticed is just, you know, the understanding that people have about measurement in particular, right? And you guys obviously spent a lot of time in there, like on the agency side, there's such a depth of understanding of measurement, but it can sometimes be hard to focus that on the specific business goals of the client, where on the client side, again, I'm not spending my entire day dealing with measurement, like maybe I did on the agency, but you have a little bit of a stronger sense of, okay, how does this apply specifically to my business? And what are the other levers that could be factoring to that, right? I sometimes think that on the client side, I have a much better understanding of why something's happening, not because the agency doesn't know it, it's just that they don't get the exposure like I do to some of those other levers that we're pulling.

Ben Lambert
Yeah, it's a really great point on a couple of those right there on like the learnings and the advanced knowledge that, you know, we see the agencies have done, you know, it's a really big value to being at an agency of getting exposed to so many different vendors and so many different, you know, verticals at the agency and learning so much where, you know, when you're at a vendor, you're solely focused on what you're doing. And yes, you're paying attention to industry trends, or when you're at a brand, it's, you know, what are we doing?

How are we paying attention to culture in real time? And how are we doing it where an agency does get kind of that value, but there's also challenges with both. And I know one of the things that you and I have talked a lot about is, you know, the learnings and the educations and how, you know, when we were on the agency side, we, you know, there's a lot of emphasis on that.

And, and something that has instilled in us to allow us to grow into the roles that we are now, but how important that is for the future of making sure that, you know, the education is still there to allow people to thrive and grow.

Scott Bishoff
Yeah. I'm going to get on my soapbox early in this conversation, but yeah, I, you know, one of the, my biggest regrets about the way our business has evolved, you know, there's a lot of good about it, right? The technology, the advancement of automation, the digital certainly, but one of my biggest regrets about all that is it's, in my opinion, it's forced us to ask our younger and incoming generations to move so quickly into that space of automation and just doing that.

We no longer have the ability and the time to spend learning the thinking, right? I mean, I think back to my early career and most of my first year or two in media was really just understanding to, you know, how to think about things, how to be curious about things. I would literally sit in my boss's office for hours every day and just listen to her talk to clients, right.

Cause we weren't really emailing much yet. Right. So we're still on the phone.

You know, no video calls, but you know, how to talk to clients, how to think about things, you know, and we don't offer that. We don't have that luxury anymore. Right.

I mean, I, I, I talk about this a lot with, with, you know, like when I used to go to the agency side with HR teams there, you know, sometimes people are like, I don't understand, you know, people come in out of college and their assistant planners, and they think they're ready to be promoted after three months. And that would never happen 20 years ago. And my response is always, well, the things we ask them to do are so much easier to master today than it was 20 years ago.

Right. Like it took me a long time to master, even learn, if you have a master, how to think, how to speak to clients, how to, how to be curious and do all that. That was my job for the first year or two, whereas the new generation they come in, it's like, all right, you're going to do budget sheets.

You're going to do Prisma, hands-on keyboard. It's not that hard to master that or learn that. I mean, it's hard to master it, but so really quick, you know, if I'm someone coming in today, I'm like, well, yeah, I, I know how to do budget sheet, like what's next.

And so I, we just lost that ability to help people think and analyze. And again, I, you know, I used to say all the time, if someone was coming into our business, I would recommend they start on the agency side, just because I think you get that sort of quicker depth of understanding and you see how it all works together. But lately I've sort of thought about that and said, well, maybe the opposite is true.

Maybe going on the client side, where you have a little bit more time to slow down and think, and you know, for better, for worse, you're not as focused on the work product, right. Cause you have an agency to do some of that for you. That thinking, I always tell people, like people are like, what do you look for when you hire someone?

The number one thing is curiosity, right? I can teach them a lot. What you, what I struggle to teach someone is to look at a number or a learning or an insight and go, well, that doesn't look right.

I wonder why, you know, I always use this. Anyone who's ever worked for me is listening to this is going to be chuckling and rolling their eyes, but I always have this conversation with them of like, I don't care as much if you have the answer, but I really care as you have the question, like I'll help with the answer. People that have been doing this a long time.

Like if you look at a number and it doesn't look right, don't get so focused on, you know, what I do wrong with the formula. Focus on like, well, that number doesn't look right. Why might that be?

I used to have a client who hated that we use formulas in our documents, in our Excels because she's like, it forces people to not be able to calculate things and understand the math behind it. So like, for me, it's really about like curiosity and how are we as an industry fostering that in our younger generations? I don't think we do a good job of it right now.

Ben Lambert
It's, you made so many great points there. I love the, I've always been a firm believer and I think design started there starting on the agency side. But I, I really agree with the point of, if you start on the client side, learning your point, the business and the why a little bit more, because the agencies, there's a lot of just, you know, we've, we've got, we've got these deadlines, we've got to hit these numbers, we've got to do this.

And it's, it's a lot of rinse and repeat and, you know, trying to, to stay, stay afloat with a lot of it. And it, it can be, can be challenging, but I think that's where to, you know, the word, and, you know, it took us, we're 11 minutes in and here it comes, AI, where AI really, you know, can be a really great tool when used properly and, you know, where it can help with that curiosity. Cause it's like, you know, it spits out the answer.

Well, well, why is it right? What's it actually saying? Why is it saying this?

Can, can really be helpful. And, you know, I've, you know, used it a lot across all different, you know, rings of my day-to-day and use it directionally or use it as the source of truth. How do you use it?

But it can really help with a lot of, a lot of that of the why, but you've also got to know what to look for. And, you know, I think that's where, where the blindness can come in. But there is kind of how, you know, you as, you know, you went to general growth before, before the internet was when you, you know, you started and now we've got AI that does so much how you're thinking about that within the realm of this conversation of, of using AI.

Scott Bishoff
Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it's the old joke about AI of like, you know, I don't need AI to, you know, help me be more creative. I needed to do the dishes and then, you know, take out the trash.

So I have time to be more creative. And the problem is people, you know, we're using it for the wrong stuff. I think it's the same thing in our business, right?

Like we need to, and again, early days. And, and I, you know, certainly been more on the client consulting side of the agency side for most of the last year with, with AI growing. But to me, it's like, how do we use it to automate the things that are not contributing to the thinking and the strategy, right?

Like that's what I want it for. Like, I think, you know, I still want my agency or the people I'm working with to be using their brains for the strategy and the partner selection and whatever. Let's use AI for negotiation, right?

Let's use AI for, for automating, you know, rotation, tracking Excel sheets. Let's use a, like, let's strip that away. Cause there's no, there's no, the way I look at it is there's no value add in the agency is bringing me in terms of their, you know, how quickly they do a rotation traffic, you know, or, or do like anyone can do that.

There's not a real advantage to what the advantage to me is the thinking and the strategy, the insights, right? So how do we, you know, that's sort of where I'd like to see it go is, is let's use AI to automate this stuff that doesn't take a lot of thought so that we can spend the time thinking about it, right. Cleaning data and dashboards and visualizations and things like that.

Like, I'd like to see you use more for that. I also think that, you know, it, for me, it's about how do we enhance the ability to tell stories, right? I mean, I think that's something that I've always been really focused on in my career.

And I, you know, I was fortunate enough to start media at a time when, you know, you still have a lot of media and creative agencies that were combined, right at, you know, I spent many years in OMD and I worked on a couple of accounts with Chiat. And I think that was such a valuable experience in my life and my career is understanding the creative side and how it all works together. You know, so much so that I had a job for a couple of years where I literally was the media person embedded on the creative team to help kind of connect those two things.

And I think what I've seen with that is that, you know, understanding holistically has helped me tell a better story, right? I always tell people on my teams, like we're salespeople too, right? When I'm on the agency side, because I need a media plan to a client, my goal is to sell that in some fashion, right?

And being able to tell a story is just as valuable as understanding the media part of it, right? And so I think that's where, I'm sure AI can help with that, but what I'd rather have people, you know, thinking about that. I always joke with my teams, like, you know, pretend you're trying to explain to your mom or your dad or your grandparents who are like, wait, what are you doing again?

You make commercials? No, no, no. If you can explain your media plan to them, that's that you're doing a job, right?

Then you can explain to people understand. And then, so I think with AI is what, how can it help us with those things, right? How can it help us do the automation stuff kicked out of our plate, but then also maybe how can it help us tell a story a little bit, but everything in between, I think if you're not using your brain to do that, AI aided or not, that's where you're going to start to see separation between the people that are going to advance in this career, right?

There's a, you know, gentleman I worked with in my last agency who always used to say, and I've heard this other people as well. AI is not going to take our jobs. People that know how to harness the power of AI are going to take our jobs.

Eventually AI will probably take it too, but we'll get there. And that's what I think, what I, what I'm hoping to see is more of like, who can harness the power of it? Who can use it to automate things to free up our time to do the stuff that really matters?

Ben Lambert
Yeah, I a hundred percent agree. And it's obviously something we talk about a lot at Insightly around how we're using AI to gather all the insights and analysis, especially, you know, the question that I have for you is working across all the different brands that you have, but also now, you know, primarily in the entertainment space where the speed to insight and, you know, the speed to information is so much more important for entertainment brands with, you know, short bursts campaigns, you know, and leveraging AI to help to accelerate that. So, you know, the 24, 48 hour window of a, of a release, you're able to get that information out. And, you know, so how, you know, are you thinking about leveraging AI differently or challenging teams to leverage AI for that and kind of how you're thinking about culture and real-time moments and real-time marketing as well in that realm?

Scott Bishoff
Yeah. I mean, the, one of the hardest things I always say about entertainment is that it's one of the few categories where you're going to spend the bulk of your money before your product is actually out there and available. Right.

And yeah, there's, you know, ticket pre-sales for movies and things like that, but by and large, you're, you're marketing a product that is not available yet. And so when you think about what that means for the signals of measurement and understanding how, you know, what's working, what's not working, or if anything's working, quite frankly, that's a different challenge, right. Then when I maybe worked on Pepsi in my past, I worked on a video game where we would spend some of our money before it was out, but then a lot of our money went to that.

And so I think that's something that we're thinking a lot about. And I'm talking to people all the time about is how can AI help with that, you know, creating better signals, you know, correlations between certain proxy metrics and certain, you know, actual business metrics and things like that without the luxury of sort of being able to see that in real time. You know, that's a big thing for me.

I think on the culture side, it's a little bit harder, right? I mean, AI is, is, is only going to be able to do so much, you know, there's, there's still, you know, we always talk about art versus science and certainly in this day and age, people want more science than art, but you know, in the movie business and in the entertainment business, there's still this idea of cultural relevance and how do you break through, you know, how do we make one impression feel like 10, garner people's attention. You know, I've seen some amazing campaigns over the past couple of weeks for a bunch of movies, stuff I'm working on, stuff other people are working on. And it, you know, it's still the stuff that gets me excited.

And I think the stuff that consumers get excited about, again, AI might enhance that, but it's not, it's not driving that, right. It isn't yet at the point where it can really, I think, identify what's going to break through. You know, it, I think what it, what to me, what measurement and AI and all the different buzzwords, you know, really do bring to the table when it comes to culture is the idea of taking a little bit of risk out of it, right.

Helping to understand what the, what the metric should be, what the cost should be, you know, how to sort of build around it. I think that's where I've seen some, you know, some interesting things come about. And also the flip side, I mean, I've been exposed to a lot of, you know, companies and technology over the past six to 12 months that are starting to, it's kind of like the old school SEO, SEM world of like, you know, how can I understand better how my brand is showing up in AI and, and almost like an old school search kind of mentality.

But then it's also along those same lines, starting to be a little bit easier to understand, okay, well, where is that information being sourced from, right? How do I kind of game the system a little bit, right? I mean, as advertisers, we're always trying to figure that out, right?

How do we, how do we gain the system? How do we show up in new places? How do we take advantage of, you know, the Senate committee would say, how do we ruin, ruin the next thing that, you know, people, consumers try to outrun us and we're like, no, no, no, I got you.

I know where you are. And so I think that, but that to me is, is, you know, probably the thing that's most interesting about AI is this danger, if you will, of at what point do we lose control over culture? At what point do we lose control over dictating sort of, you know, how that's going to show up, right?

Search for better or worse, didn't have a mind of its own necessarily like AI does. And so that is what's interesting to me is, is who's going to be the definition of culture in the next five or 10 years. And what does that mean for marketing or how I show up?

I think that's a little scary, quite frankly, but that's something where I don't know that we've completely unlocked that, but I've seen a, like I said, over the past six months or so, a lot more companies kind of starting to move in that space of like, no, no, no, I'm going to help you understand how you have that presence there. And then the question is, well, is that then a false culture or is it, or, you know, but again, that's not that different than SEM and what we've done in the past. So it's not that it's new, but it does scare you a little bit of like, you know, if I can game the system that much, then culture becomes less culture and more almost manufactured, which is, which is scary.

Ben Lambert
Yeah. And consumers to your point will catch on pretty quickly. And it's where, you know, the term we always like to use is authenticity.

And so, you know, just being in culture, just creating culture, but being authentic is truly what, what separates humans from machines. You know, if we, if we want to call it that and, you know, both in the business world, as well as then in the, in the brand world. And, you know, you look at some of these events and big temple moments that have happened, you know, for entertainment award season is always big and you've got the big game and, you know, March madness, and, you know, we've got the NBA finals coming up and, you know, these kind of big culture moments that, you know, mean something to certain brands and certain people and certain consumers, but not to everybody. And so, you know, then when you think about it, you know, going back to like the entertainment world, each title, each show, each kind of star that's going to be part of it. So there's, you know, it's not as much about, you know, the brand as it is, you know, about the, the kind of individual there.

And, you know, so I think that's where the, in my world, the word authenticity really comes into play and is meaningful. Yeah.

Scott Bishoff
Well, I think it's absolutely. And I also think it's, you know, the, the idea of shared experiences, right? I mean, you think about what has driven culture for so long.

It's the, the ability for consumers to all experience something relatively at the same time and in the same manner. And then that's fuel for culture, right? Whether it's all watching a show on, you know, the old school must see TV, right.

We're all going to watch Friends on Thursday. Again, I'm really aging myself here, but right. You know, Friends on Thursday night, I can talk about a Friday morning.

We're all going to watch the Superbowl and we're all going to do this. And it's interesting, right? Because that starts to erode over time because now we don't all watch things at the same pace.

If you can binge it versus not, or, you know, we, we, you know, we, we save something for later or we don't, you know, don't experience it at the same time. And so it's interesting because that can, can shift culture a little bit, right. In the sense of like, if that, if we lose that shared experience and it, you know, it's why, I mean, you mentioned sports, it's why sports becomes one of the last bastions in a lot of ways of that, because you're not, you're not going to record, you know, tonight's Spurs-Knicks game and watch it a week from now.

Like who's doing that, right. Whereas I'm going to watch a television program a week after someone else does. And so that is one of the reasons why you start to see this return to, you know, real life experiences driving culture, because it's the one thing that you sort of can dictate it's all going to happen at the same time.

Right. And so, you know, I think for us in the entertainment world, we think a lot about that, right. Because yes, our content in and of itself is cultural and shared experience, but the way we market is by leveraging and borrowing equity from other culturally relevant and shared experiences.

And so, you know, we have to be thinking about that. And I don't know that, you know, AI is going to harness that quite yet. You know, again, it's, it's working its way towards that, but yeah.

And I think the other thing to take a little bit of a different direction here is, you know, I have two kids, both in college. And so I see the world through their eyes a lot. I give them a shout out, but I highly doubt they're going to listen to dad talk about his work for an hour.

Ben Lambert
We're not going to get into the, uh, the Indiana/Purdue rivalry on this podcast.

Scott Bishoff
Oh, that's right. We, we, no, no, no, no. Listen, as a Bruin here, I got nothing to add to any of these conversations, although we are in the, uh, by the time people listen to this, it'll be over, but we are in the men's golf national championship in a few hours, uh, talking about golf.

Um, but, but I, you know, what's interesting to me is, you know, we talk about what's culturally relevant or we talk about, you know, even when we talk about AI, like what are consumers willing or not willing to, to accept. And I think that's where I try to stay quote unquote young, right? Because it's like via of, you know, premium content, right?

I grew up in an era where premium content, it was professionally produced on television, Thursday night, eight o'clock, whatever. And nowadays, I mean, you know, again, we've seen this onslaught, right? We're just, we're coming off a weekend, a box office where backrooms did, you know, 80 plus million dollars where obsession is rising for the third consecutive week.

And these are movies made by YouTubers and, and right. You know, I, depending on who's saying the word YouTuber, it could be a derogatory term or not. It is changing the game of, of content development, but, but really also changing the game of marketing, right?

Because the idea of, of, you know, none of these movies put on an Avengers style or size campaign. And the reason I bring it up in the content of this conversation is this idea of what is cultural relevant, what is premium content, very different, you know, for, for my kids, they're just as likely to watch a YouTube show, a Tik Tok video, an Instagram reel, as they are an hour long drama on CBS, quite frankly, they're probably not watching that hour long drama on CBS, right? And, and even in the sports world, right?

I see it, you know, I'll go visit my son at college, you know, the, the best college in Indiana, you may have heard of, you know, I'll go visit him and I watched him and I probably shouldn't talk about online gambling since most of them aren't 21, but like, I watch how they interact with sports, right. And I watch him as friends. And again, it's, it's, it's you know, they're still watching live games, but they're watching highlights.

They're watching, you know, on YouTube videos, they're, they're gambling on it. You know, they're, they're, they're, they're playing, whether it's, you know, traditional sports betting or some of the new poly market, you know, call sheet kind of stuff. You know, I did a new business pitch a couple of months ago for a sports betting app, and I didn't realize, you know, over in Europe, a lot of sports stream on these betting apps, right?

You can watch the games themselves. And so it's all these different touch points and cultural relevance as marketers. We have to get all of that, right?

It's not enough to just buy the game anymore on TV, you know, versus my daughter, right? It's funny. I mean, I see her watch, you know, clips of stuff on Tik TOK, and she may not be watching the whole show, or she may be behind a couple episodes on euphoria.

But I can also tell you that last night, she went over a friend's house to watch the premiere of Love Island in real time, right? So it's, there still is this desire for the live real time TV, whatever you call it, although they probably streamed it on peacock versus watching on NBC or Bravo. But there's still a desire for that.

But it's all those different touch points that kind of play into it. That, I think, as a marketer, we have to understand how that it how that's being accessed, what's being paid attention to. And you need to be part of all of that, right?

You can't just be TV or just be streaming or just be social. It's, you have to understand how consumers are reacting to all that and then be part of all that.

Ben Lambert
Yeah, it's, you know, it just brought up a really great thought I had of, you know, the way everybody consumes the content that was premium before, whether it be the live TV, or, you know, sports is still that, you know, still as similar as it used to be. But there's definitely a lot of nuance to it where, you know, it's everybody's still on their phone or watching the secondary stream or whatever it may be that it is a little kind of nuance to it. But, you know, when we think about like the movies, and how the movies are still going to the movies is the way it was other than it's evolved with the reclining seats, and you've got the Lux with the, you know, the food and, and still some nuance there.

But I'm, you know, curious if that if there if you've had any thoughts on, you know, something like that, being changed to, you know, match the culture moment, even though going to the movies in itself can still be that. But if there's, you know, a way of, you know, having it, and obviously, you know, there's the direct to screen versus the in theater, you know, you can have that viewing party still, but yeah, it's, it's an interesting thought to see if that will evolve.

Scott Bishoff
Yeah, I mean, look, I again, I think that probably the biggest change that I've seen, and I say as a consumer more than a marketer in terms of movie going is the migration of the old school kind of, I know, I'm going to the movie theaters Friday night, it's just a matter of what I'm gonna see to, and I am, you know, what comes first, right, the content or the experience, right? Like, I would argue that it was, you know, years ago, it was the experience to some degree, I knew I'm going to move, that's what you did on a date, or that's what you did with your friends, like, and then it just became, what do I want to see? And that's not to say there aren't movies that drove you to movie theater, but it was very much like, are you just doing it?

Whereas in today's world, it seems like almost the opposite, right? Like going to movies is a tougher proposition, you know, and luckily, we're starting to see a rebound in certain things. But as a marker, that's always my question, like, do I have to work to get someone to even want to go see a movie before I get to see if they want to see mine or, and the same thing with streaming. Right. It's like, you know, my last job at the agency was mainly focused on original content promotion, but the streaming less on the acquisition side.

But it's like, but, but unless this is the show that's going to make them subscribe, that's work together and no different in the gaming space. Right. I worked on, you know, Activision for many years and Call of Duty was the biggest game out there.

But if you don't have an Xbox or PlayStation, not a whole lot I could do. And so I think for me, it's about how do we, not only how do we drive that experience, but whose responsibility is that, you know, is it the theater? Is it the studio?

Is it the whatever it is, but you know, again, like we see it more and more people will go to the movies if there's an experience or content they're interested in, right. And I think the movie theaters themselves are trying to figure that out. Right.

Is it better food? Is it more variety of food? Is it a bowling alley and an escape room right outside?

Is it the recliners? Like, what is it people want from that experience? But at the end of the day, yeah, the content still has to be a big part of that, but that's, I kind of go back to what I said earlier about, you know, the back rooms and the, the, the obsessions of it all.

Like, you know, this is content that originated in a lot of ways on the internet, right? Like it, it was born out of that. Um, you know, there's a movie earlier this year, Iron Lung that was, was also the same kind of thing.

Again, it's, it doesn't always matter where it originates or, or where it starts or who started it. I think that, you know, that to me is where AI is going to make such a change. It's the democratization of content, but I would argue we've been seeing that for years.

Right. I mean, the, the explosion of streamers made it so that we just needed more content in the marketplace, right? Like whether movies, series, documentaries, whatever it is, like before AI even came around and made it easy for anyone to do that, you know, overnight, almost seemingly we had 2-3x, the amount of content that was needed.

Right. You saw that sort of manifest in different ways, right? The explosion of international content, you know, some of the best content I've watched on Netflix or shows from Spain or from Israel or from, uh, you know, uh, South America, whatever.

And so that became sort of the first idea of this. Like we need content from everywhere. And then we're like, oh, well, consumers will respond to that.

How do we do more of that? And so now, of course, we've all seen the video out of China with, you know, AI actors, it looks like a real scene from a movie and my question for my kids all the time is, do you care? Right.

I think we probably are a little bit overly sensitive. The idea of, oh, people don't want the content to come from AI. Well, what's, I mean, we've been doing CGI for years, right?

Like what's the difference in a lot of ways. So, and again, you see with kids, right. And it reminds me of 10 years ago where we were like, oh, nobody wants to watch content on their phone.

Well, no, we have a whole generation. That's okay with that. Same kind of era now.

Nobody wants to watch it. Well, no, we have people that, that, and again, maybe there's different things they're open to. Right.

You know, maybe they're more open to recreate a cool explosion, action scene in AI, but I don't want, you know, two actors having a heartfelt conversation to be AI, you know, again, well, maybe that's a little bit of a nuance, but I think at this point people are open to it and we just have to remember as the, you know, older generation doing this, whether it's marketing, content creation, whatever it is.

Like, well, no, like that's, people are open to that. It's just, you know, they want probably some transparency in it, but they're, they're not opposed to it. And sometimes we have to remember who the, who the audience is and what their appetite is.

Yeah, absolutely.

Ben Lambert
Um, well, as we wrap up, I've got, um, one or two final questions for you that, um, I think will, will, will be some, some good stuff to leave with the viewers and the first one is, you know, again, back to kind of the original sentiment of you've, you've experienced all sides and have some great advice and, and wisdom to share, what would be kind of the biggest piece of, of advice that you would share with either your younger self or somebody that's just getting into, into the industry? Um, now I know we touched on it a little bit, but really, you know, what, what would be the biggest piece that you're, you're bringing people with?

Scott Bishoff
I mean, it's a little cliche to say, but it is, I'm gonna go back to, I said at the beginning of like the curiosity, like take advantage of being curious about everything, including the people and, and, and, you know, that you're working with and, and, you know, just take advantage of, of, of what, you know, I'll get on my soapbox a little bit, you know, you and I talked about this before, like all the people that are going to Cannes, right, it's just like everyone's going to Cannes except for me for some reason, but you know, and then people come back or from Possible and it's like, oh, you know, the, the, the experiences I got, the conversations in the hallway late at night, you can't replicate that and I always get so frustrated when I hear that. Cause I'm like, well, you can replicate it. You just have to work at it.

Right? Like if you're willing to give up a week of your time to get a Casnnes, why not make that same time available when you're back in LA or New York or Chicago for that younger generation? So what I would say to the younger generation is force that, force that in there, right?

If someone comes back from Cannes and says that, that hallway, you know, that late night conversation over drinks at the hotel made such a difference be like, then I want that experience, right? And maybe not in the South of France, but like, I want to go out to drink with you at home and replicate that because I think we, I struggle, I make fun of it on LinkedIn, if people follow me, they know like all these conferences, whatever. But the frustration in me is if they truly are that valuable, right?

If it truly is worth the massive amounts of money that we as an industry are, are sent, are spending to send people to these places, why are we not able to for the younger generation so that they get the same value out of the real life experiences. So I always tell people that like, take, read the newsletters, go to the think LA events, go to the conferences. You can go to talk to the people, you know, take someone out for a drink or whatever, like soak that stuff up.

Cause you know, again, you're not getting that between the hours of nine to five. Like I used to, when I started off. So just try to replicate that because again, if we're going to talk about the value of it, you know, I always joke, like if, if, if listening to Paris Hilton, Travis Kelsey, tell me how to market is really going to change my business.

Okay, sure. Well, let's go with that. But then if you're not making that available to the people actually doing the work on a daily basis, then, then either it isn't valuable or we're not doing a service to people.

So how do we, how does the younger generation kind of asked for that to be replicated let's, let's invest the same time and money and energy into that. As we do to the conferences. And I think, you know, however you can force your way into that, it's going to be valuable down the road.

Ben Lambert
Yeah, I love that. Um, great advice. The final question I have is one bold prediction.

Um, that can be industry. It could be one of your passion points. Um, just one bold prediction that you have.

And, um, just know that the day we're recording this, we probably it's going to be a little bit since this comes out. So, uh, you don't need your prediction. We'll, we'll give the viewers a little bit of the hint that we ended up reporting is the day you've gained one of the NBA funnels.

And it makes prediction probably isn't going to be the most valuable here.

Scott Bishoff
I was going to say, let's see about, I'm going to predict the Spurs in six. So by the time you're listening to this, we'll see how, uh, how smart I am. Or, or I could cheat it and be like, Vegas is going to win game one of the Stanley cup finals.

Even though that happened last night, I can see it like I'm brilliant. Um, one prediction, you know what? I, I'm going to go back to something I said earlier about, you know, when I brought up a little nugget about, but I didn't realize that, um, uh, you know, a lot of sports leagues streamed on sports betting apps overseas.

I think the prediction for me is we're going to be blown away in five or 10 years of where content is being consumed. Um, you know, whether it's sports rights being on betting apps or, you know, football no longer being available on broadcast or, or, you know, it's only streaming, whatever it is. Like, but, but there's going to be something that, you know, we're going to come back and listen to this podcast 10 years and be like, oh, we couldn't even predict that.

I think, you know, we are going to have to break ourselves of the notion that things are on television or things are on even streaming. Right. I think that's kind of a vague prediction, but it's, I actually think one of my predictions is the era of streaming is going to be over quicker than anything we've seen before.

Right. Because it's going to turn into something else so much more quickly. Right.

Um, whether that's more mobile, whether that's other types of apps, whether that's, you know, social networks. Right. You know what I mean?

We saw, and we continue to see a lot of the, the Metas and the TikToks a little dabble in that, but it's going to become the, whatever streaming is the estimate come. Right. So I know it's a little bit vague and all over the place, but that's the, that for me is a prediction is like, we're, we're going to move so quickly through how content is consumed today into what's next quicker than ever before.

I mean, TV was it for 40 years, right? And mobile has been around for 20 and the streaming now is a little bit mature and gamey, whatever, like the, the next thing is going to come so much quicker and we're not even going to, we're going to look back 10 years, be like, would you ever have thought that the NFL's rights deal is going to be with, you know, bet MGM or, or draft Kings, whatever, like, or, or, you know, the next, the next Friends or the next Stranger Things actually now on, you know, whatever the 2035 version of Quibi is or whatever it is, like, it's going to move so quickly and be so different.

And we're going to have, we're just gonna have to stay on top of it, like we've never done before.

Ben Lambert
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. That's, uh, I'm, I'm, I think I'm just as excited to come back and listen to this in 10 years as I am to, to have us in 10 years reconnect on it.

Scott Bishoff
Uh, real quick. The other prediction is within the next 10 years, I will get a Cannes. I will stop making fun of it and somehow I will show up.

No one will probably be there anymore. It's going to be like, oh, we don't do that. And I'll be like, where, where is the rosé of the yacht?

And I go, no, no, no, we moved on. We're doing, we're doing, we're doing Cannes in Montana now. That's the new Montana is the new South of France.

It is. It is.

Ben Lambert
I've heard that. Um, well, Scott, appreciate it. This has been awesome.

It's been a pleasure as always for, uh, for this episode of Breaking Through the Mayhem. Um, thank you again. Awesome, man.

Scott Bishoff
Thanks for having me.