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How to Thrive In a Down Market
May 15, 2023 Brand Leadership Business Growth Career Growth Creative Agency Design Leadership Strategy
Guest Speaker

Shachar Aylon

Creative Director, Amazon Music AMP

From early-stage startups to global tech juggernauts, Shachar has spent over a decade working with mission-driven companies to define and evolve their brand. Through writing, design, filmmaking, photography, and creative direction he brings teams together to craft meaningful campaigns that are brimming with optimism, inspiration, and charm. Shachar’s work has been recognized by Barack Obama, the New York Times, Kobe Bryant, Ricky Martin, Cannes Lions, and the Webby Awards.

Let your creativity thrive.

There’s a market for the work you’re inspired to share, no matter what the economy looks like. In this episode of Real Creative Leadership, we’ll go deep with Shachar Aylon, Creative Director at Amazon Music AMP, who promises that putting yourself out there is a risk always worth taking. Shachar discusses how creative leadership tools — from feedback to mentorship to setting a vision — are the secrets to building the confidence a creative career requires. And don’t miss his three key ingredients for creating courageously.

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Adam Morgan
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REAL CREATIVE LEADERSHIP

Season: 4 

Episode: 2

Episode Title: How to thrive in a down market.

Guest Title:

Shachar Aylon, Creative Director, Amazon Music (Amp)

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OPENING QUOTE

“Our creativity doesn’t stop when our job ends. Whether people are just looking to make a move or maybe you are actively looking for a job, you’re still a creative person and there’s still a lot of skills from your day-to-day job that you can apply to marketing yourself. There’s so many platforms now, so many channels where you can promote not only yourself, but your thought leadership, your hobbies, your hustles, whatever that is. Someone out there in the World Wide Web wants to see it and wants to consume that.” — Shachar Aylon

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Adam Morgan:

Layoffs and market volatility are on everyone’s minds these days, and creatives aren’t immune to the impact. We’re all thinking about where are we going to go? What are we going to do? Is my company okay? But we’re also uniquely positioned to not only prepare for the uncertainty of an unstable marketplace, but to thrive. Today we are going to talk about how to thrive in an uncertain marketplace. 

I’m joined by Shachar Aylon, a multi-talented creative who has spent more than a decade evolving brands through his expertise in photography, writing, filmmaking, and design. Shachar is currently creative director for AMP at Amazon Music. Throughout his career, he has often focused on the mission behind the brand through social impact campaigns for Lyft and Intel to rebranding Pixar to center inclusion. Shachar, welcome to the show.

Shachar Aylon:

Hey Adam, thanks for having me. I’m excited to chat.

Adam Morgan:

Yeah, we’re excited to have you here on Real Creative Leadership. And before we get into today’s heavy topic of how we thrive in a down economy, I know our listeners are eager to hear about you a little bit more. So if you want to give us a little bit of insight about your career and your background, and then we can jump into the topic.

Shachar Aylon:

Yeah, So as you mentioned, my name is Shachar, it means sunrise or dawn in Hebrew. I’m a creative director, a multidisciplinary one with a background in writing, design and photography. And like you mentioned, I’m currently a creative director at a music startup called AMP, A-M-P, at Amazon Music. I’ve spent half of my career at agencies like 72 and Sunny, Saatchi and Saatchi, collected some shiny awards along the way. And then half of my experience has been spent in-house. I made that transition when it was in the early days, lots of my efforts and energy were spent on building teams, figuring out the processes. Who do we actually need in in-house teams and branding, positioning the companies. Figuring out how we inject that human touch to tech companies. That is a gap I saw throughout my career, throughout my work, where tech companies struggled to look, sound or act human. So that’s really something I focus on in my work and with my teams.

Adam Morgan:

Oh, awesome. Well, clearly you’ve done a lot and you’ve had a good career with a lot of paths, a lot of opportunities, a lot of different roles, which I think is really interesting for today’s conversation because we’re going to be talking about how you find those opportunities. And clearly you’ve made the jumps to find those opportunities. So what do you look for, as you’ve made this interesting career path for yourself, what are you looking for in those opportunities?

Shachar Aylon:

Yeah, this is a topic that is very interesting to me, both on an individual level as a creative leader, but also when you look at our industry as a whole. And I’d like to touch upon both of them. I’d love your take on it too, Adam. I know on an individual level, when I looked at kind of early stages in my career, I focused a lot on, I’ll call it the shiny stuff. Can I get awards? What accounts the agency is working on. How would it look on my resume? And very quickly in my career I realized that what I should be focusing on instead is the people, the teams. So much of my experience in the workplace is informed by my boss, by my manager, by the team I work around. And I’ve even noticed it with students I teach or colleagues who actually went after the agency that kind of produced that shiny new project by the time they arrived at the agency, that creative director that came up with an idea, already left to another agency.

So that’s kind of indicative of a larger industry trend that we can talk about too. But going back to the individual level, again, it’s kind of focusing on the people who can help me grow. It’s recognizing that I can always learn something new and always acquire new skills. So focusing on those people who can unlock that in me and my team. But if we zoom out, we’re seeing this larger industry trend where CMOs, especially in the past few years, their median tenure has been 24 to 28 months, kind of two, three years.

So imagine the C-suite level executive, the person who is supposed to set the vision for the next five, seven years of marketing, really thinking about how you’re positioning the company, is leaving after two, three years. And that really sets the tone. If I’m joining as a creative leader, and I’m set to build a team or kind of come up with a new way for the company to show up in the world, that company has changed drastically within the two years I’ve spent my time there. So my question to you is, why do you think that CMOs feel the need or execs or even creative leaders like myself feel the need that their efforts are best spent somewhere else? What happens there?

Adam Morgan:

It’s a true statement. Looking back on the last five years when I was at Adobe, a hundred percent that happened almost every year. We had a new VP of marketing and each of them had a completely different vision. One was focused on personas, one was focused more on industry, another one was focused more on demand, and it truly changed the whole makeup of our go-to-market plan and everything that we created. So it makes a huge, huge impact. So I won’t disagree with that. But then why don’t they stick around after that? That’s a hard choice. It’s the same with us. Early in my career, I jumped around from agency to agency every couple years just because that was your opportunity to get growth and try new things. But it is a problem at the top for sure. And I would say CMOs do that, but I don’t know if I’ve seen CEOs or other roles change out as often and maybe there’s some good longevity there and some good foundation.

Shachar Aylon:

That’s exactly right. According to The Wall Street Journal, CEOs have double the tenure than the CMO. So if we’re looking for CMOs at like 24 to 28 months, we’re looking at CEOs and other C-suite execs that are staying 50 months, 60 months on the job.

Adam Morgan:

And I guess that’s good. That’s good for keeping that five-year plan intact. And I don’t know, I don’t have the research here with me, but whether it’s CMOs are rising up and finding new opportunities because they’re growing so fast, and I think that happened with several of the use cases at my company—they just found newer and better opportunities. But it also could just be that it’s a rough job. More and more responsibility is being put on the CMO. More and more KPIs that they have to deliver. And so it’s a rough world to keep that going year after year.

Shachar Aylon:

Yeah. I think going back to maybe the act of courage, it’s almost like a magic trick when you see a brand stay consistent over decades. When I think about insurance companies like Geico or Progressive, the magic trick is staying set on a vision and executing it. And I think it speaks volumes when you see that it’s so easy to chase after the next shiny thing. There are new channels, there are new mediums, there are new ways to measure our work and that can increase our uncertainty or make us chase new things. And we don’t have those leaders who kind of stand up and say, hey, what we set as a vision last year? We’re going to stick to it. We believe in that enough to not chase after those shiny things.

Adam Morgan:

And I think I had the problem where my brand was changing every year, which was too often. Granted, it is pretty amazing if something lasts 10 years. But I also feel like brands evolve and stories evolve. There’s got to be some flex, but also some consistency in everything you do. But I want to go back a little bit when you were talking about beyond just the leadership changing out, but also in your career of what you were looking for. 

There’s some books I’ve talked about on the show in the past of how do you really craft a career and look ahead and think of where do I want to end up? Not necessarily what shiny object I’m chasing right now or what role happens to be open right now, but really to think deeply about what you want out of your career, and what are the gaps that you personally have and where you need to learn and what you need to grow in order to get to that final destination.

Shachar Aylon:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that’s been a great unlock in my career. I can almost connect the dots. When I look at the managers who inspired me or unlocked a new skill in my path, I can almost see the residue of it now as I’m kind of leading teams, as I’m thinking about how should I respond to this situation or how should I guide them through this challenging project? I find myself going back to examples from those managers I adored or admired.

I think it also speaks to the value of having your network, having those people who you can consult with. I think maybe you can relate too where the higher up you go, it might feel more lonely. There’s not people—

Adam Morgan:

100%.

Shachar Aylon:

Yeah, how many ECDs are in one organization? Not so many, so you kind of need to start branching off to other companies, other people in your network and see what they’re experiencing. So I found that as someone who wants to continue and grow, sometimes you’re capped internally and you kind of need to start reaching out.

Adam Morgan:

Well, let’s talk about that now. Today’s episode is all about how do you thrive in a down economy, so people are concerned with layoffs, people are concerned with budget cuts and all these other problems that are happening in the macroeconomic environment. So, we talked earlier about how you’re excited because there’s still opportunities. So, talk to me about what makes you bullish in this environment that we have today?

Shachar Aylon:

Yeah. So first of all, I think it’s worth acknowledging this is a hard time. If anybody’s listening to it who has experienced some sort of layoff restructure, some sort of volatility, know that you’re not alone. 

We’re in a time where there are budget cuts, uncertainty, remote work. Remote work was introduced to us just three years ago—that’s still a challenge for some teams. We know that creativity thrives when the environment encourages outside of the box thinking, risk taking, trying new things.

So, it’s almost like these two things stand in opposition from one another, where there’s a lot of uncertainty, and yet to be creative, to be bold, you need to try something new or take that risk. So that also, to me, presents the opportunity, the upside, where you can make something phenomenal, the reward for a big risk.

We know as creatives also that when everybody zigs, you zag. We know that if everybody’s playing it safe, this is now your golden opportunity to cut through the noise and do something completely different. This is the moment where brands are built, companies are being transformed, and new winners emerge. We’re seeing it all the time.

So going back to my earlier point, I remember consulting with one of my mentors, a previous manager I had at Lyft. He said, “If you do a good campaign, you might win some awards. It might look good on your resume, but if you transform a business, if you manage to really make an impact for the company, you become a legend.” I truly believe that if you use this opportunity to think in a transformative way, you’re on a different level.

Adam Morgan:

That’s so interesting. Maybe even digging back into when you were talking about how careers are made or there’s opportunity in this down economy, I think back on what are the true skills of a creative person? I mean, for those of us who have had a lot of experience in coming up with ideas or pushing for new concepts or whatever, it’s true that you explore a lot of ideas.

You don’t just go for the first idea, the low-hanging fruit, you have to keep pushing and pushing to find ideas, versus where I think a lot of people in business are used to getting one idea and just get stuck on it and keep beating on it, right?

There’s just so many different ways to look at your career and where you’re going to learn, and so maybe that is also a big plus side to being a creative is being able to generate new options and look at all those options, rather than just being frozen in this path of like, “Oh, I only have one chance at this thing and that’s it.” 

But you also said something earlier that was interesting. You said “courageous.” So let’s talk about that for a minute. So, how can we be more courageous creatively? How can we, not just in our work, but in our careers, be more courageous?

Shachar Aylon:

Mm-hmm. I want to start with an example, a project I recently worked on a few years ago, and then we can examine some of the key ingredients I believe are essential to make courageous work or creative ideas that feel courageous. So this was back in 2019, I was working at Lyft. If you remember, there was a huge debate in culture and the news among policymakers around immigration. That was a hot topic. It still is a hot topic.

Lyft built their brand, built their company doing the right thing. Time and time again they showed up to communities and really did things that felt impactful and went beyond just kind of revenue or money. So, we created a small task force to examine that idea of immigration and what is our stance as a company around that, and whether we should even make a stand around immigration.

So this small team, myself included, we did some research and we found that over 50% of our drivers, Lyft drivers are immigrants or from immigrant families, so any policy that is being passed on a legislative level or discussions in the community are directly impacting the people who are literally driving the business. So, that was our opportunity to make a case why Lyft should invest in it.

We came up with this beautiful idea, it’s called “America’s An Idea.” It was launched on the 4th of July and basically redefined what America means in 2019. A lot has changed and our definition of Americana and the white picket fence has also changed. Immigration and immigrants have such a big role now in American culture.

So, we released it. We told all these beautiful, amazing stories about our drivers who are also immigrants and how they’re contributing to different communities, and we racked up a record level of donations. The project was a success, but it was a scary project to work on, right?

Adam Morgan:

Yeah.

Shachar Aylon:

You’re trying to convince all these C-suite executives to forget about the logo for a second, to forget about the bottom line and think about a larger issue and kind of insert yourself in this very heated debate. I think there were a few key ingredients that allowed us not only to make a case for it and launch this successful project, but also to facilitate that courageous thinking within the team.

So one of the things I mentioned, and I truly believe in it, is small teams. I’m sure you’ve experienced it, where there’s just too many cooks in the kitchen. But what I found is the syndrome I call Too Many Smart People in One Room, where the groupthink, the collective ends up kind of shaving off the odd edges, the rough parts of idea that make it actually unique and special and different or maybe even courageous. It’s easier to point out what could go wrong than imagine what if it actually works? What if actually we can swing it? So, I think one key ingredient for courageous ideas is small teams.

Within that team, we also had an incredible sense of ownership. There was one writer, there was one designer, one creative director, one account manager, one producer, so it didn’t feel like anybody’s stepping on each other’s toes. We felt like one team. And then we were very transparent. Throughout the process, we tried to highlight to the executives what is the risk of doing this? Instead of sugarcoating it like, “It’s going to go great,” and also transparent with other teams like, “Hey, this is what we’re doing. We’re not going to keep it behind closed doors. We want you to be involved in the process and we want you to feel a sense of ownership of it as well.” I think those three key ingredients really encourage people to be more courageous.

Adam Morgan:

Yeah, that’s awesome. When someone makes a courageous move, it’s like, “Whoa, they’re just so bold and they’re just so crazy.” Looking back, I’ve heard this about a lot of entrepreneurs where successful entrepreneurs aren’t super risky. It’s just very calculated risk. When hearing that story, I hear, okay, you went and did some research first. 

You really felt like if you don’t make a stand, it’s going to cause even bigger problems, and people probably had no idea about that stat, and so everyone’s just seeing you as very courageous. But that’s one other element—not to just have small teams and be authentic, but have a calculated risk. You know it’s going to be risky and just be ready for that and do your homework as best you can, and so maybe let’s apply that to creatives in their own work. When do they know? When is the right time to do it? Do I do some research or do you just go out and test the water? I don’t know. I’d love to hear from you. If you’re giving advice to someone, whether it’s doing a bold project or doing some bold move with their career, what’s the right time?

Shachar Aylon:

Yeah, it’s exactly what you mentioned, Adam. Those ideas that might feel risky at times actually don’t feel risky at all when you have a rock solid brief, and I’d say that’s the time when you can take the leap. When you have a justification to the why, why are we doing this thing, this project, this campaign, this rebrand, whatever that is, if we know why we’re choosing this path over another, a lot of times, those risky ideas don’t feel risky at all because again, we can go back and look at it. 

One example that comes to mind is Old Spice. Obviously, everybody young who’s listening to this knows Old Spice. They’ve probably seen the commercials, but I found the story of how they got to where they got, fascinating. I was part of an online course with Jason Bagley. He’s ECD from Wieden + Kennedy, and he was basically in charge with his team to reinvigorate Old Spice. 

Back then, nobody even considered Old Spice. He had this task of walking into Procter & Gamble, megacorp, so many people, the opposite of a small team, and presenting to them how to make Old Spice relevant to young teenage boys, basically. What they did, even before presenting ideas, before even talking about creative, they showed a five-minute film of what goes inside the brain of a teenage boy. The TV shows, the memes, the culture, the social media. It was like this mashup of video bonanza, of things that just passed through a teenager’s mind. You can imagine after seeing that video, following that up with that wacky work we’ve seen from Old Spice actually makes sense. Suddenly, it fits within that mindset. 

That’s how an elite team from Wieden sold Old Spice and convinced them to actually take that risk. That’s on the company level on how you can do it from a creative standpoint, but I think also as a leader, there’s a role for you as a leader to encourage that courageous thinking or to encourage your teams to take a creative risk. It might sound counterintuitive, but I think your job is to encourage your team to fail. 

We know that not everything is going to work. If we’re going to point fingers at them, blame them, or hold them accountable to everything they do, then they’re going to play it safe. They’re not going to want to take that leap. They’re not going to want to take that risk. It’s up to us to find that right altitude, that right level of almost acceptance of failure. It’s okay to try something. If I said to the CMO like, “Hey, I want my teams to fail,” they might be like, “Whoa, you’re taking it too far, Shachar.” But I think within our teams, there is a lot of room for experimentation and trying new things and actually celebrating those mistakes sometimes.

Adam Morgan:

Well, if what I’m hearing is right, in the story from Jason Bagley of Old Spice, what they did in order to do something courageous and sell a big creative idea is to set the stage. They really just set the environment and the audience and set the stage. In a different scenario where you’re not pitching an idea, but you’re trying to set up a department or a team or even yourself, you have to set the stage, which makes sure there’s an environment where they feel comfortable trying new things and not feeling like they’re going to get crushed for trying something like that. What are other things that you do as a creative leader to set the stage and build that prime environment?

Shachar Aylon:

So beyond making sure that they have permission to take risks, that they can thrive, I would say that teams need to know . . . you almost need to be the north star, the lighthouse, for teams. Especially in a field like creative, there’s a lot of subjectivity involved. If I think about feedback, for example, this is a daily thing we do with our teams every day. We give feedback on the work, we give notes, changes. More often than not, we focus on what needs to be fixed or what needs to change.

I would like to see more often people focus on actually what is worth retaining. I’ve seen incredible results when you actually highlight what works very well in a project, even if it’s an email banner, because people remember it. People want to hear that positive feedback that reinforces their feeling that they’re creative, they’re answering the brief, they’re doing a good job, and they’ll remember it for the next project. You basically gave them a tool to implement not only on this project, but for other projects that come along the way. I think that can be very powerful.

Adam Morgan:

It is. It is. I totally agree. On giving feedback, people might say, “Oh, whatever. Everyone gets a trophy,” this whole mindset of the new generation that everyone wins. And that’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying when you’re giving feedback, it’s important to give the positive as well as the negative, because you’re learning from that, and you know what’s working and what’s not working, rather than just always what’s not working. Otherwise, you’re just guessing at what is working, so I love that. That’s great.

I think a lot of times, people feel like no matter what level you’re at, whether you’re a leader, a practitioner or someone in the middle, someone at the top, you feel like you want to prove your value, and so it’s about getting in there and showing that you know what’s going on. And you could talk about it. but there really is truth in feeling that confidence as a creative leader, that your role isn’t necessary to get in and be the one spouting off on why this design is best or why this story is written well, but to really just craft the people and make sure they’re growing and able to answer those questions. It doesn’t detract from your job, it doesn’t detract from your role as a leader. It’s just behind the scenes, which is awesome.

Shachar Aylon:

And I’d say it’s even a courageous decision. I can imagine how in a lot of organizations, especially large ones, there’s an element of showing up with a perfect result. If you’re sitting in front of a boardroom, you want to make sure that every I is dotted and every T is crossed, so I understand that knee-jerk reaction for a lot of people to micromanage that, like I want to show up to that meeting and everything should be perfect. Almost the brave decision to make here is actually, I’m going to focus less on the theatrics or the showmanship of this moment and focus more on a learning opportunity for my team.

Maybe they get to present. Maybe they get to feel the burn when something doesn’t go right by experiencing it and giving them the opportunity to be in those discussions, or actually make them better by just recognizing it and seeing it and being part of that process. 

Adam Morgan:

Yeah, that’s interesting. Well, this has been great. A lot of good advice. Maybe as we’re closing here, do you have any other final advice for people who are in this down economy looking for opportunities, looking to be courageous, looking to do something new and different?

Shachar Aylon:

Our creativity doesn’t stop when our job ends. Whether people are just looking to make a move or maybe you are actively looking for a job, you’re still a creative person and there’s still a lot of skills you can apply from your day-to-day job to marketing yourself. There’s so many platforms now, so many channels where you can promote not only yourself, but your thought leadership, your hobbies, your hustles, whatever that is. Someone out there in the World Wide Web wants to see it and wants to consume that. The more you can bring that to the forefront, I think the more people will gravitate towards that. If you build it, people will come. If you’re passionate about video and you post videos all the time, people will come to you and ask for videos. This is basically my LinkedIn feed, a bunch of people talking about what they’re great at, and it’s fun and inspiring to see all these people contributing.

Adam Morgan:

And I’d add to that, not only the more you just put yourself out there and share your voice and your talents and your things, it’s not just that the people will come asking for those projects, your career will grow from it. Your opportunities will increase, your new jobs will open up. I’m sure a lot of the crazy things that I’ve done and put out there has helped to get me new opportunities and new jobs throughout my career, for sure.

Shachar Aylon:

Yeah, I 100% agree. Don’t stop being creative just because your job ended, whether the time has ended, like it’s 5:00 PM and I close my laptop, or you’re looking for a new position.

Adam Morgan:

Well, that’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. It’s funny that we’re talking about social media because now I want you to share a little bit of how people can follow you or learn more about you. Where do you put yourself out there?

Shachar Aylon:

I tend to be active on LinkedIn. People can follow me or request an invite on LinkedIn. My name is Shachar Aylon. I have an Instagram called @chuckisinluck. That was my nickname coming to Israel. And I also run what I call Directors’ Club. It goes back to what I mentioned where at the director level and above, people can sometimes feel lonely. They need to branch out and talk to other people at the same position in different companies to hear their experiences. It’s a small forum, it’s very casual, but if anybody who’s listening is curious about Directors’ Club and wants to talk to other creative directors, share advice, insights, email me, shachar.aylon@gmail.com, and we’ll see if we can make it work.

Adam Morgan:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here on Real Creative Leadership. I appreciate all your insights and thanks for being on the show.

Shachar Aylon:

Of course. Thank you so much for having me, Adam.