00;00;02;23 - 00;00;18;24
VO
Welcome to Dig In, the podcast brought to you by Dig Insights. Each week Jess Gaedeke chats with world class brand professionals to bring you the story behind the story of some of the most breakthrough innovations, marketing tactics, and campaigns.

00;00;18;27 - 00;00;38;08
Jess
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Dig In podcast. I'm Jess Gaedeke and today we're going to take a little lap through luxury town with Patrick Douville, Global Brand Manager, Lifestyle and Luxury at Hyatt Hotels. Patrick, I am really excited for you to be here because this is a really cool space to talk about. So thank you for joining us today.

00;00;38;15 - 00;00;40;26
Patrick
Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm excited as well.

00;00;40;29 - 00;00;44;11
Jess
So tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and your background to get started.

00;00;44;15 - 00;01;08;09
Patrick
100%. I'm a French Canadian guy. I'm based in Toronto. I became a father about a year ago. My wife and I and my son, we're based in Toronto. Career wise, I started off in sponsorship and events marketing. Marketing was always something I knew that I wanted to explore from the get go. So that's what I studied in school.

00;01;08;11 - 00;01;34;13
Patrick
So I started off working in the telco space, so worked at Bell, and then more specifically on the Virgin brand, which Bell has the rights to in Canada. So worked a lot in sponsorship and events, moved over to advertising, and then from there I went on to work at Nike Canada in brand marketing for four years and I'm about to hit my two year mark at Hyatt working on lifestyle and luxury brands in a global capacity at this point.

00;01;34;14 - 00;01;39;06
Jess
Nice, really fun brands that's part of your repertoire. I'm sure you've learned a lot across.

00;01;39;07 - 00;01;59;04
Patrick
Yeah, I mean, maybe it's weird, but it was always important for me to work at brands that I deemed to be cool outside of kind of my my day to day work. That's something that I've always felt that gives me that extra boost of energy when working on projects. If it's something that I am passionate about it outside of my work.

00;01;59;06 - 00;02;07;15
Patrick
So I always pursued brands that I was linked to and that I had a personal passion for. And I found that that's served me well up until this point.

00;02;07;17 - 00;02;10;03
Jess
Yeah, it feels less like work when you're working on something that feels like that.

00;02;10;06 - 00;02;12;21
Patrick
Exactly. Yeah. And it feels a little bit more natural.

00;02;12;24 - 00;02;23;23
Jess
Yeah, very cool. I'm going to get going with an impromptu question just to get things going. I saved this one for you because I think you might have a good answer for this. What celebrity do most people say you look like.

00;02;23;27 - 00;02;44;12
Patrick
Well, growing up, I used to, I had curly blond hair and people, this was like early 2000s, people said I looked like Justin Timberlake. And I was so deeply offended by that. I thought it was people, everyone was teasing me. And then in hindsight, I don't think that was the case. So that's probably one on the more complimentary side.

00;02;44;14 - 00;02;58;14
Patrick
I've gotten others that I don't necessarily agree with, but yeah, I've definitely gotten him. I don't know about it anymore, but I mean, he's okay. JT was one that came up quite a bit, but I'm okay with that.

00;02;58;17 - 00;03;06;13
Jess
That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, the blond curly hair looks to be gone, but you're, you know, you're still holding your own, so I'm sure there's a great resemblance there.

00;03;06;16 - 00;03;09;25
Patrick
I don't have the hairline to support that anymore.

00;03;09;28 - 00;03;34;15
Jess
Well, let's dig in. So our listeners, they crave inspiration from leaders like you. And the best way to inspire, I believe, is to tell a story. So I'd love to hear the story behind something that you were integral in developing at Hyatt, and that is the Culture Lives Here program for the Thompson brand in particular. So tell us a little bit about that program and what inspired that idea.

00;03;34;15 - 00;03;35;16
Jess
Where did it originate?

00;03;35;19 - 00;03;57;03
Patrick
So when I joined the Hyatt team, I knew that I was going to be specifically working on our lifestyle and luxury brand. So under the Hyatt portfolio, there's 28 brands. We work specifically on seven, and we deem those to be the cool and fun ones. And Thompson was one that I was already familiar with and I was excited to dive into it.

00;03;57;06 - 00;04;28;18
Patrick
And one of the key, I guess, moments in my career is when I realized that brands have the responsibility of elevating and amplifying the work of creatives. That's something that I kind of tapped into the last few years and Thompson was the right brand to be doing that. I have a phenomenal boss who she had already done a lot of the groundwork to get this started the year before I joined, and I got to kind of, she handed me the keys for the most part.

00;04;28;18 - 00;04;52;12
Patrick
So the idea behind it and there was one iteration before I joined was there's an awareness opportunity for us with the brand where we can benefit from the cosign of certain people in the community that we like to refer to as culture shifters. They're the people who are always ahead of the curve. They're kind of making the decisions and setting the rules that the rest of society will play by in the near future.

00;04;52;15 - 00;05;13;06
Patrick
And we want to associate ourselves with those people and not only associate ourselves, but be kind of a safe haven for them. So we want to seamlessly integrate their everyday lifestyle so that it becomes almost a no brainer that wherever they're traveling to, whoever they're meeting with, that Thompson is their home base, and it's where they can have a meeting.

00;05;13;08 - 00;05;50;27
Patrick
That's where naturally they'll be staying. So we wanted to tap into that and see how we could kind of merge the worlds of storytelling mixed with that cosign idea. So what we started with was an insight for, for last year's programing, and it was from a creative who ended up being one of our culture shifters and it was, creatives tend to work in siloed environments and it can be very fulfilling work, but they rarely have the opportunity to hit an intersection point with someone from a different realm or a different world.

00;05;50;29 - 00;06;06;10
Patrick
And when those moments do happen, it often results in just something greater than the sum of its parts. So we took that as an insight. And I'm someone who wholeheartedly believes that insight based marketing is always the right approach.

00;06;06;12 - 00;06;06;17
Jess
Preach.

00;06;06;17 - 00;06;13;15
Patrick
So we wanted to run with something that came from who we wanted to be connected with. It wasn't something that we just made up.

00;06;13;17 - 00;06;37;21
Patrick
And so kind of going off that insight, we wanted to, we knew we wanted to highlight our properties. We wanted to connect in cities that are both kind of a natural fit for these types of individuals, but also look at some that might be more up and coming and create something that was able to bring people from their worlds into ours and vice versa.

00;06;37;21 - 00;07;02;25
Patrick
So what we ended up doing was we landed on four cities for last year. It was New York, L.A., Atlanta and Austin, and we identified two culture shifters in each city. For the most part, they didn't know each other at all. Some of them were familiar, but they all had what we deemed to be complementing skill sets. Most people would look at it and say they're just not from the same worlds.

00;07;02;27 - 00;07;28;29
Patrick
But we really believed that if paired together they would find common ground and kind of push their creativity and their output to the next level. So for example, in New York, we had a creative director with a Broadway actor, so I can I can mention names too. Josef Adamu and Daniel J. Watts. In L.A. we had Maud Arnold, who's a choreographer, philanthropist, tap dancer.

00;07;28;29 - 00;07;55;25
Patrick
She does it all, with Joshua Steen, who is a filmmaker. In Austin, we had Adrian Quesada from the Black Pumas. So a phenomenal musician and Loreal Sarkisian, who is an incredible stylist based in Austin. And then in Atlanta, we had Cam Kirk. At this point, I think it's fair to say, a world renowned photographer has really made a name for himself as the official photographer of the hip hop and rap worlds.

00;07;55;28 - 00;08;22;16
Patrick
And Tunde Balogun, who is the president and one of the co-founders of LVRN, which is a recording label that puts out some of the best R&B and hip hop artists. So we were able to pair them together. So in New York, Josef and Daniel worked together to put on a live performance at Thompson Central Park that was anchored in the thought of black joy and and all these chapters on, I love what Daniel said,

00;08;22;16 - 00;08;49;04
Patrick
He's like, “Joy is something that's come out at an incredible cost, but that needs to be celebrated.” So the two of them worked on that piece. In L.A. Maud and Josh created a short film about dance and finding your joy in L.A. In Austin, we had a live walkway like a fashion show, and that was scored by Adrian and I think it was a seven piece band.

00;08;49;04 - 00;09;09;21
Patrick
It was it was quite impressive. And then in Atlanta, Tunde and Cam also produced a film about the history and the culture of Atlanta. So we brought everyone together in New York at the end of ‘22, just so we could all get together, kind of explain what we're working on, get them familiar and paired up and better understand each other.

00;09;09;27 - 00;09;25;10
Patrick
And then we set them on their way and we wanted to document their creative process. So we went down to each city ahead of time and we're able to capture that content and that storytelling. And then ultimately that led to a live experience at our properties in those cities.

00;09;25;12 - 00;09;43;26
Jess
That's so cool. I mean, there's so many parts to that that I'd love to dive into. But, you know, there's like this culmination of culture shifters. It's like the best combination of the real world on MTV. And like if you could create your own dinner party guest list, right? It's like, how cool is it to bring together these creative forces?

00;09;43;26 - 00;09;59;10
Jess
I just think that there's some real power and novelty in that, but also that it allowed you to activate. When you did open these properties and you're promoting them to do it in a really experiential way. It's like a lot of new marketing thinking tied into that.

00;09;59;17 - 00;10;24;21
Patrick
Yeah, and it's it's almost counterintuitive because I know a lot of the world is trying to think how we bring people from offline to online. And we were almost kind of trying to do a bit of the reverse where we wanted people to catch it, like notice it and catch wind of the work and the storytelling through their socials, but then ultimately be involved and attend something that was a live experience.

00;10;24;23 - 00;10;36;17
Patrick
And I mean, I don't think it's a secret that the hospitality industry was tremendously hard hit by COVID and everyone has this pent up need to to travel and to be together. So we wanted to tap into that as well.

00;10;36;22 - 00;10;53;15
Jess
Definitely. And, you know, when you were kind of pitching this idea internally as well, did you have to set it up in any particular way? Like this is a new framework, this is a new process, this is a new approach. Like how did you get, I guess, the conviction in the buy in to pursue something that's pretty creative and pretty revolutionary?

00;10;53;18 - 00;11;18;05
Patrick
Yeah and that's one thing that I really appreciate about my role. And again, the team that I'm on is that we get to bring some maybe nontraditional thinking to the hospitality worlds, and it's wholeheartedly embraced. Like I mentioned, I previously was at Nike. My my boss came from Apple. She led a lot of the Beats business and then W hotels before that.

00;11;18;05 - 00;11;38;08
Patrick
So we kind of have a similar mindset where we get to be able to bring some of that other world thinking to hospitality and hopefully shake things up a little bit. We like to say that everything we do is NBDB, never been done before, and that's kind of the benchmark for what we get to do as a team.

00;11;38;11 - 00;12;05;00
Patrick
And having that set upfront I think gives us a lot of creative freedom and makes us just be able to explore things because I'm someone who just I always love a good brainstorm. I always want to push an idea. I hate when things exist because they've always existed that way. So I think we're doing a good job of bringing some fresh energy to to the industry, and it's a lot of fun to do it.

00;12;05;00 - 00;12;40;02
Patrick
So to go back to your question of how was it socializing. I think we've earned a little bit of a reputation as a team that is doing things a little bit differently. So we built on what happened in the year prior, before I joined, they’d worked with three culture shifters and one event, and then we built that up and now we're in the process of finalizing what 24 looks like and how do we not necessarily make it bigger but more impactful, and how do we reach the consumers that we want to be reaching where they are, and how do we continue to just grow the brand and the recognition of the name?

00;12;40;02 - 00;13;07;16
Patrick
Because in parallel, we're growing as a company, we have new openings happening. We opened Thompson Houston just a few days ago. We have Palm Springs opening up later this year. We have Madrid, next step up we have Shanghai and some others in Europe. So we have the development growth that's happening. But at the same time, we want to make sure that our consumers are keeping up with what we're doing and we're gaining that market share.

00;13;07;18 - 00;13;16;21
Jess
Definitely. So did you face any barriers or setbacks as you kind of brought this program to market? I'm sure at some point there was some sort of stumbling block.

00;13;16;24 - 00;13;42;02
Patrick
I think what's tricky now is that there's so much content being pumped out all the time and the quality of it has gotten so elevated. And it's actually interesting to see how more of a Gen Z Gen Alpha approach to it has almost been the antithesis of that. So like the if you don't look put together, it's better. If it feels like this was just a fleeting thought and you turned your phone camera on.

00;13;42;04 - 00;14;06;26
Patrick
So it's kind of finding a balance of that from a brand perspective. But generally the quality of content has gotten better. So I think what was a challenge was how do we convey a good, accurate story without this becoming like, Hey, we're going to make a movie about everyone. So always balancing like the production of it and understanding what's the message that we're trying to get across.

00;14;06;26 - 00;14;30;22
Patrick
So I think that was probably the trickiest part is ideally we would have followed around each of these culture shifters for a week, but that's not feasible. So it's like how, how can we demonstrate the creative collaboration that's happening and get that across over footage, over quotes and storytelling and how can we make that come to life?

00;14;30;22 - 00;14;37;00
Patrick
Because the bar for content is just so high now that you have to be able to find that sweet spot.

00;14;37;04 - 00;14;52;28
Jess
I bet that was distracting at times and sort of a slippery slope of wanting to just go down the production route and keep, you know, kind of tracking their progress where you probably had to continuously bring yourself back to how is this going to impact the perception of the brand and the success of the property?

00;14;54;09 - 00;15;22;09
Patrick
100%. And one thing that we did this time that was different is we engaged a social first agency to help us with the planning, the production, the the strategy for how this rolled out, because it's you're always stuck in this world of like, hey, do we do beautiful long form 16:9 content or do we do something that is quick and it's 7 seconds and people are engaged and you're getting that traction.

00;15;22;09 - 00;15;47;01
Patrick
So there's always that struggle internally, both internally within a team and internally just myself being like, What do we want to hit? But it helps having that outside perspective as we went into it. And of course ton of learnings and how we're going to evolve it. But it's always just a balance of like how much, how much budget do we have for this, how much time do we have for this?

00;15;47;03 - 00;15;58;07
Patrick
How much commitment did we agree with our culture shifters? Because it's not fair either to, once you have a contract in place, you can't go like, well, we're going to add this to it and we add that to it. That's just not being a good partner.

00;15;58;09 - 00;16;01;27
Jess
Yeah, they got stuff to do out there in the world. So you got to let them get back to it.

00;16;01;27 - 00;16;22;18
Patrick
And that was the thing is like we chose these people because of how much they were accomplishing. So that also inherently means that they're busy. So the scheduling around that and being able to get everything to lineup was a challenge within itself. But I'm happy to say that we did make it to the finish line with everything that we wanted and we got everyone on board.

00;16;22;18 - 00;16;27;25
Patrick
But when you're trying to document busy people, it's going to be tricky.

00;16;27;28 - 00;16;33;13
Jess
So what's your biggest takeaway? This is a really cool program you put out there. What's your biggest takeaway from that experience?

00;16;33;15 - 00;16;58;26
Patrick
I think that there's always there's definitely a hunger for storytelling. And I know that that probably originated because we were forced into it in 2020. And I think that's where I had a big unlock, like I mentioned as a marketer, I realized the power that we had to just activate these individuals that are doing amazing things and have stories to tell.

00;16;58;28 - 00;17;32;27
Patrick
But sometimes they just need that extra support and sometimes, often it's mutually beneficial. But to elevate and amplify these stories, and I think that's what makes the big difference. And it was always rewarding when you would see people who would normally maybe not be that big into following a hospitality brand on social, but thanks to this, we're brought into the stratosphere of it and see that it's something that resonated with them and ultimately were able to increase just consideration and conversion as well.

00;17;32;27 - 00;18;05;00
Patrick
But at the level that we're working on, it's awareness, right? So we want to be able to do that. But stories will always have a place, whether they're just quotes that inspire or whether they're just motivational for the next in line. I think that's a big piece of it. And that came up as a consistent theme through all of the storytelling was when given the chance to explain why they do what they do, that these culture shifters were often saying that I don't want the next generation to make the same mistakes that I had to go through to get here.

00;18;05;02 - 00;18;16;22
Patrick
So there's always that sense of the proverbial elevator being sent back down. But I think that's where the sense of community comes through. So being able to tell those stories I think is powerful and necessary.

00;18;16;28 - 00;18;36;06
Jess
So that is a really memorable and important example of how bringing an authentic human voice to things and you mentioned, you know, people that might not have sort of followed a hospitality brand, but now you've got something that's so compelling and so human based. I guess it's a great example of leveraging storytelling and your marketing.

00;18;36;06 - 00;19;03;13
Patrick
Of course, and just to add to that, I'd say like hospitality or the brands I get to work on are good example where I might meet someone who isn't aware of one of those brands, but as soon as I have just a moment of their time to explain what it is, they're all about it. So it's fun to be able to be a brand steward for a product, the brand that has the ability to just kind of get people excited.

00;19;03;16 - 00;19;35;20
Patrick
And I don't think it's a stretch to say that people love to travel, generally speaking, and it's something that if you were to look back at your life and like those special moments, they often involve travel. And I think that again, with the pandemic behind us, just that pent up need for for those experiences and those moments, it's actually exciting and rewarding to work on something as it's ramping back up as people are prioritizing it and being able to work on these brands that deserve that shine and making sure they get it.

00;19;35;22 - 00;19;44;11
Jess
Well, picture, 20 years from now, you're telling your son about how you stewarded a major hotel brand at a time when people were, you know, getting back out there. That's pretty cool.

00;19;44;14 - 00;19;45;21
Patrick
100%. Absolutely.

00;19;45;25 - 00;19;46;27
Jess
Lots of stories to tell.

00;19;46;28 - 00;19;48;12
Patrick
Yes, lots of stories.

00;19;48;18 - 00;20;00;22
Jess
So let's turn to you as a thought leader. I know you're a leader in your organization and in your industry, certainly. So I'd love to know one of your most passionate opinions about the state of marketing today.

00;20;00;25 - 00;20;24;15
Patrick
I think that marketing is at an awkward stage right now. I compare it to our teenage years and I think it's cyclical and I think a lot of this links back to the technology that we are using. I remember being in high school and there was this weird period of time where I would either want to download something, but I couldn't put it on a floppy disk because those held nothing.

00;20;24;18 - 00;20;45;20
Patrick
I didn't really have access to a thumb drive or they were very expensive. So we went to this phase of like we put stuff on CDs, but only certain players would play it and it was just very clunky, like you had no efficient way of getting documents or data or content from one place to the other. And I think we've come a long way since then.

00;20;45;20 - 00;21;06;24
Patrick
But I feel that we're almost on that cusp once again, where technology is clunky for what we need. Even like I spend most of my days on Zoom calls and I know that we're going to look back at Zoom calls and say, Man, this was flat. There's this is I jokingly call it the the pong of whatever this is.

00;21;06;24 - 00;21;32;23
Patrick
It's it does the job. But we're gonna look back on it and realize how much more immersive it could have been or will become. I think that a lot of the tools that we have access to now are starting to become more powerful. I know OpenAI just announced this week that I know it's not fully rolled out, but like their text to video editor, I think that will be very impactful.

00;21;32;25 - 00;21;51;04
Patrick
The arrival of tools like GPT4, like these are all things that are starting to permeate into our worlds. And I think this wave of it has a lot more of a moral and societal dilemma than it did when I talk about the thumb drives and the CDs.

00;21;51;08 - 00;21;52;18
Jess
Yeah and the floppy disk era.

00;21;52;20 - 00;22;15;26
Patrick
Because now you see these videos of people wearing their apple headsets and driving and like, it's exciting, it's concerning. It's all those things that we don't quite know yet. But I think that when it comes to marketing, a lot of our tools are still restricted. We talk about like we put something out on social, we want people to see that and hopefully dive into the bigger story.

00;22;15;28 - 00;22;38;00
Patrick
Where does that live? Like, is it still a microsite? Is it a splash page? I know Instagram for a minute had Guides, which I thought was a great tool where you had almost these PDF type documents on your page. They discontinued that at the end of last year. So I think we're still trying to figure out what the behavior is, but there isn't that one home base anymore.

00;22;38;01 - 00;23;03;13
Patrick
There isn't that default place to go to look at things. Personally, I started using TikTok as a search engine because oftentimes if I'm looking for something and it depends in the moment, if it's something I just saw in a sports game and I want to see what happened, I'll go to Twitter. I have trouble calling it X, but I'll go to X and I'll see like in real time people reacting to that. If I want to,

00;23;03;15 - 00;23;27;01
Patrick
If I'm traveling to a new city, I'll go to TikTok and I'll get a hey here are the top five restaurants or here's 48 hours in Mexico City or whatever it may look like. So we have certain tools that I think are becoming more natural for us to use, but I still find that we're kind of just awkward in how we navigate them, and I'm excited to see where that takes us.

00;23;27;03 - 00;23;37;05
Patrick
And I think it'll be somewhere fun, entertaining, impressive. Again, probably a little scary, but I think we're just on the cusp of what's next.

00;23;37;08 - 00;23;48;15
Jess
So you mentioned TikTok as a search engine. You mentioned some of these other things like text to video stuff. So what are some of the new tools or approaches or things that you're leveraging in your workday?

00;23;48;17 - 00;24;09;17
Patrick
I would say that ChatGPT or GPT4, whichever version you use, has been very eye opening for me. I'm always someone that I would always characterize myself as an early adopter, and I have a lot of friends who are and I love having a good group chat with people who are like minded and who are bringing me stuff before I found out about it.

00;24;09;20 - 00;24;47;06
Patrick
I've always been someone who's very passionate about pop culture and what's happening in the now, so that definitely applies to tech. So I would say in my day to day I use ChatGPT on the regular. if I want to like what normally would have been someone proofreading something before I sent it out. I have someone available 24/7 so I'll use it for emails, I'll use it if I need to tweak any copywriting, if I need to come up with a plan and I want to be able to like a structure for a deck and then even personally, like travel. With a new baby, like hey, what are some food ideas, meal prepping, grocery

00;24;47;06 - 00;25;06;27
Patrick
shopping. There are all of these things that when people say that it will eliminate jobs, I think in the long run it's likely on some level. But what I truly believe is that people who refuse to become better and kind of step up their day to day with these tools, those are the people that will lose their jobs.

00;25;06;27 - 00;25;28;09
Patrick
So I'd rather be among the first to adopt something and see how I can integrate it into my daily life to level up my work and to part of it is because I want to and part of it is because I know that if I don't, I'll be left behind at some point. So it's a bit of like a carrot and the stick as a motivator.

00;25;28;09 - 00;25;45;12
Patrick
But I think it's something that is important. And I mean, again, it's a slippery slope where we're going, but for now it's helpful and I think that people need to start using these tools to better the work that they do.

00;25;45;14 - 00;26;04;03
Jess
So I love that that you're an early adopter. You also have this sort of fear of missing out if you're not the one that's kind of on the bleeding edge of it. And I think that is really important as a marketer because marketers are the ones that push the envelope. So I love hearing that and I think that will inspire a lot of our listeners that are from marketing for sure.

00;26;04;10 - 00;26;08;02
Jess
So do you have a hot take on the future of the hospitality industry?

00;26;08;06 - 00;26;27;01
Patrick
I think and I think we're already seeing it. Growing up, travel was a momentous occasion that your whole year led up to and that's also a factor of just the way schools are set up and you have your summer break. But I found that even when I was starting off, my career was like, all right, where's our trip this year?

00;26;27;01 - 00;26;43;25
Patrick
Like, where is it that we're going to save up all year and we're going to go away for two weeks? And I think we're moving away from that for a few reasons. I think some of them are just that like the idea of just having two weeks off a year doesn't sit well with the majority of people.

00;26;43;25 - 00;27;14;01
Patrick
I think hustle culture is dying, which I'm totally fine with. But I think from a hospitality standpoint, I think travel is going to continue to just seamlessly integrate our daily lives. We're seeing a lot more of, Hey, I have to be in the city for work. I'm going to arrive early, I'm going to spend the weekend. My significant other is going to come with me and we're going to extend a lot of just like little trips, little moments that add up because it's hard, right?

00;27;14;01 - 00;27;37;07
Patrick
If you're going, hey, it's it's September 1st. My vacation is booked for June. I think we're very I think we're people that like to be kind of we're reward motivated. And I had a boss once who told me she's like, I never come back from a trip without my next one booked. And I think that is going to become, yeah, a very smart lady,

00;27;37;07 - 00;28;05;25
Patrick
I think that's going to become the norm. And I think I'm already seeing it where people are just all over the place all the time. I think the ability to work remotely, which I benefit from, I am appreciative and I am a champion of. I think that that will also continue to unlock those moments. Someone on our team, actually, he is based in New York, a friend of his sublet an apartment in Mexico City for a month and a half.

00;28;05;25 - 00;28;24;02
Patrick
So he went and it didn't affect his workflow at all. It was just like your background has changed. So I think that having travel be a part of our everyday is something that we're just going to continue to see. And the model in which we approach it is going to shift.

00;28;24;05 - 00;28;31;04
Jess
I'm also grateful for that new reality for sure, and I'm sure as a steward of a hospitality brand, you're happy about it as well.

00;28;31;04 - 00;28;32;17
Patrick
Yes, absolutely.

00;28;32;17 - 00;28;42;01
Jess
So let's do the final dig. This is all about you as a person. You can feel free to take off your professional hat for a moment and just be the authentic Patrick, which, by the way, I think you are.

00;28;42;01 - 00;28;48;20
Patrick
Yes. I will say that the professional Patrick and personal Patrick are very similar. And I think it's a superpower.

00;28;48;21 - 00;28;54;05
Jess
Good. Well, I'm glad you got to acknowledge that. So what's the last product or service that you bought on impulse?

00;28;54;11 - 00;29;21;14
Patrick
The last thing I bought on impulse was a set of prints by Shepard Fairey. I have one here, but he dropped some last week or two weeks ago. And I think my love of sneakers, and I have a longstanding relationship with sneakers, my ability to be the first one through to click on something. And I mean, it's hard to beat the bot, but I'm pretty good at being first in line online.

00;29;21;14 - 00;29;44;16
Patrick
So when he dropped them, I was ready to go. I missed out on the one I wanted, but I ended up buying a pack that included the one I wanted. And I think for me, art is always a source of inspiration. It's something that I will always want in my life. I will prioritize it, and I think that it's something that I will never regret buying.

00;29;44;18 - 00;30;09;15
Patrick
Even besides the financial aspect of like, Hey it’s probably going to gain some value. I don't look at it necessarily through that lens, but there are certain artists that I love. There's KAWS is one of my favorite artists. I have a collection of KAWS vinyl toys, and sometimes as odd as they can, can look. Luckily, my wife has been on board for a long time, but art is something I will never regret buying on impulse.

00;30;09;17 - 00;30;27;25
Jess
Because it brings you joy. I love that. Yeah. Joy and impulse. We're probably related there. So, you know that brands have distinct personalities. You've talked about a few brands that you've worked on over the years. So think about what's a brand that you would date and maybe a brand that you would marry. And it's okay if they're the same one, but they're not always the same one.

00;30;28;00 - 00;30;59;21
Patrick
Yeah, the brand that I'm most obsessed with as of late is JACQUEMUS and it's a brand that when I first heard about it, I wasn't too familiar. And then I started noticing their online work. And if you go to their Instagram page, it's beautiful. It's everything that I feel like marketers want to do. It's like, Hey, we opened a pop up store in the Alps on a mountain or and I don't even know if some of it is,

00;30;59;21 - 00;31;33;23
Patrick
some of it is obviously AI, some of it is not. But like, hey, we transformed street cars in Paris into purses, or they have these animated floats on the ocean that inflate as a bag. And I think the product is nice, but I think their marketing is better. I'm also impressed that the founder is my age, but I think that it's such a fun, lighthearted brand that is competing in a space that has been stuffy and old for so long.

00;31;33;26 - 00;32;09;00
Patrick
And I mean, there's definitely some parallels there with the work that I'm doing because the work that we do is trying to battle that old stuffy. I always use the example of when I talk about hotels, it's like this is not the Plaza from Home Alone 2. So and I think I'm into that to you but so JACQUEMUS I think is approaching it with a luxury world with such levity and fun and joy and color that they're being noticed and they're getting attention from some of the biggest names in the world.

00;32;09;00 - 00;32;32;22
Patrick
If you go to their website right now, Bad Bunny is on the landing page. So they're able to really tap into these individuals that are moving the needle. They're changing the conversations. And I think that's necessary. So that's a brand that I take great inspiration from. And yeah, it's I mean, it sounds like I would marry them, but I probably say that that's the standout for me these days.

00;32;32;24 - 00;32;36;18
Jess
So it sounds like you would go on a lot of different dates and different locations with that brand.

00;32;36;20 - 00;32;38;25
Patrick
I would hope so.

00;32;38;27 - 00;32;40;19
Jess
Do you have a different one for what you would marry?

00;32;40;19 - 00;33;11;08
Patrick
It's funny how like there were always the staples growing up, the Apples and the Nike's of the worlds and I think those are all those are still good answers, but I think there are just some companies now that are doing things that are really disruptive. And I always admire a company that comes in doing something and not necessarily disruptive for disruption sake, but who are bringing something to the table that is helpful, is necessary, is innovative.

00;33;11;10 - 00;33;33;21
Patrick
I know we talked about OpenAI, but that's another company that I think I mean, they're just geniuses. But it's been a while since there's been something that has affected all of all of our capabilities in a way that has just kind of moved the needle forward across the board. So I think that's another company that I admire, but for different reasons, right?

00;33;33;22 - 00;33;47;12
Patrick
I don't think OpenAI’s marketing department, their product is their marketing department. So it's different. But I think the common thread between the two are just being fresh and innovative.

00;33;47;14 - 00;33;54;24
Jess
Well, what keeps you inspired at work? You've covered a lot of it, but if you were just to summarize what sort of gets you excited every day that you're sitting down at your desk?

00;33;55;11 - 00;34;19;29
Patrick
I think for one is I mentioned earlier that I've always been a fan of pop culture. I think I have this perpetual desire to create something that has a lasting impression, that a lasting impact. I want to be able to create things that will stand the test of time or people will reference as great work in marketing.

00;34;20;02 - 00;34;45;22
Patrick
And I think that not everything that I do hits that threshold, but it's that desire to achieve that level I think will keep me motivated forever, even on projects where I feel like this has been very impactful and this has been best in class or something that can set a new bar, I think it then becomes like, Well, how do I, how do I do it again?

00;34;45;22 - 00;35;08;09
Patrick
How do we do it differently? How do we do it in a way that is more connected to the world we live in now? So I think that's what keeps me motivated in terms of what keeps me inspired. Travel has always been what keeps me inspired. I think seeing the world is the greatest gift that you could ever be given or gift to yourself.

00;35;08;11 - 00;35;29;00
Patrick
People say that like travel is the only thing that you spend money on and you're richer for it. And I think that that will always be true. I was raised by two parents that validated or valued travel tremendously, and my whole family's been that way. And I think now becoming dad, my son took 14 flights in his first year and that's a point of pride for me.

00;35;29;00 - 00;35;54;28
Patrick
So we took him to Australia, we took him to Los Angeles like things that we had set out as a before we became parents, we had determined that we were going to continue living our lifestyle and he was going to join that and we thought that was best for him and being able to actually bring that to life in his first year of life has been really rewarding, knowing that we we stuck to what we committed to.

00;35;55;00 - 00;36;21;12
Patrick
And I know he won't remember these trips, but I actually think that at a foundational level, they are shaping who we will he will be. And and that's what we want to continue doing his whole life is just getting him uncomfortable. I've a friend who refers to it as keeping them agitated. So and agitates us too, right. And we even do like last weekend we did a staycation at the Park Hyatt in Toronto.

00;36;21;15 - 00;36;37;17
Patrick
It's a nice break for us, but also it keeps him on his toes. And he's not always in his room, but he sleeps just the same in this travel setup. And we've streamlined a lot of things. So I think travel will always be a priority for us and I'm glad that it is now.

00;36;37;17 - 00;36;52;29
Jess
That's awesome and truly, this conversation has been inspiring. It's been thought provoking. I think it's going to give folks some different things to think about when they are on their next travel experience and be on the lookout for some of these great things that you've been a part of. So thank you so much for being part of our conversation today.

00;36;52;29 - 00;36;55;05
Jess
It's been really, really a cool, cool chat.

00;36;55;06 - 00;36;58;27
Patrick
Well, thank you. I really appreciate the time and the energy and I'm grateful to be here.

00;36;59;02 - 00;37;01;05
Jess
Thanks, guys. Until next time.

00;37;01;07 - 00;37;08;17
VO
Like what you heard? Share the inspiration or head to diginsights.com to learn more about what we do.