Maura: Particularly in the past few months, we've been working at a heightened level of collaboration, and I actually just wanted to know your thoughts on it.

Cody: I can't really imagine doing what we do, especially the branding component, and uncovering this identity in our clients for their business without that collaborative process with them, because what we were talking about earlier, when we do these brand Matrix workshops and we ask them for their attributes, we have a list of buzzwords, and inevitably every client's gonna say those words 'cause they feel they have to... They feel like this is the lexicon of our industry, so we're gonna hit all these words, but in working closely with them and talking to them, actually about what they do, you hear it in the tone of voice and their body language, what that really means to do what those words mean? So you get beyond that layer of white noise of impact, sustainable value and sort of discover what it is they're really doing for their clients.

Maura: I can't help but think that SEO is shaping that. And they're regurgitating what they read and what they hear, which is fine, but that's also why we have someone... This is kind of just revealing our little secret sauce, but we have someone observing body language, tone, interaction between people, because those are the fine details that bring depth to words like impact, passionate, smart, intelligent, empowered... Those are all the things that we hear all the time, and they're fine, because if you can't widen your scope of what you're reading, you're just not going to... So what we have to do is win that scope sometimes for the mind... The scenes. Yeah, and I think...

Cody: I don't remember which big titan of advertising said. I think it was Ogilvy. People don't say what they think...

Maura: They don't do what they say.

Cody: They don't do what they say. So in that way, it sounds kind of simple, but how they say something and maybe why they're saying to them is so much more important...

Maura: Yeah, which I think is why it's so crucial to take the information, have people in the room that get it, not have this workshop with the CEO here and the CEO there and their leadership, and then we just hand you a document that's useless. You know, you're just gonna read it, what are you gonna come up with? So it is crucial to sit down and talk about it, talk about the relationships that you observed, and I think the more that we talk to our team about observing behavior and understanding to look beyond just what someone says and look for the real substance in a company, I think that that has delivered a really great product.

Cody: Absolutely, and one thing for me is something that I really enjoy about getting to do this with so many different classes that keeps me out of that, 'cause marketing and branding definitely has its own lexicon, SEO buzz words, and talking to so many different clients and different industries takes me out of that bubble. And I like to think that the interactions we have with our clients pulls them out of theirs in some very productive ways.