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Matthew Burns:
So welcome back to another Crumbs for Giants. I am here with somebody you guys haven’t seen yet. This is Mick Torbay, another Wizard of a partner of ours, and he has a really awesome nickname, and that is Tough Love Torbay.

Mick Torbay:
Like all good nicknames, it was assigned to me. It wasn’t something that I chose on my own. I would’ve chosen one much better than that.

Matthew Burns:
You probably would’ve chosen one much better than that. But Mick is kind of… Well, he’s an extraordinary writer, a powerful wordsmith, and the master of emotion in writing. But the real thing that Mick has gotten to a science is what it is to understand how to meet somebody where they’re at, and then give them those details in a very kind and loving way. Which is why we call him Tough Love Torbay. [laughing]

Mick Torbay:
Are you sure? I’m going to accept it, but I mean…

Matthew Burns:
It’s always kind and loving, but you always mean it with kind and loving intent.

Mick Torbay:
What I say to my family is that I only yell at the people I love. So if I’m yelling at you, it must mean that I truly, truly care for you.

Matthew Burns:
See, there you go. That’s what it is. So anyway, he has very strong opinions on a couple of things that we all have very strong opinions on within the Wizard of Ads Group. But one of those things that I want to talk to you guys about today is the legal department actually makes… I’m going to let you just run with this because this is something you actually care about.

Mick Torbay:
Well, I mean, I suggested this topic because something came up literally this week with a client of mine, and I wrote a particular ad, and in this case, it wasn’t even the client that wanted to run it past the legal department. It was the production company.

And so they started saying, “Hey, we ran this by legal, and we think we just need to change it a little bit.” And I was like, “I’m sorry. Do you think I came to you asking for help with my scripts? Because I don’t remember doing that. ” Last I checked, I write the scripts, you hold the camera in the right position and make the lights make everything look pretty, and the rest of us worry about that.

But the fundamental problem that I had with this particular thing is that as soon as you say, “Well, we’re going to run this by legal.” It’s like, “Well, let me just stop you right there.” What they’re going to say is no. The legal department will always try to protect you. They’re coming from a good position. They’re not bad people, but they are trying to protect you from any possible exposure. And the safest thing to do in any situation when you’re doing something that might rattle someone’s cage is to say, “Well, just don’t do that.”

The problem, of course, is that that means that the legal department will drag you towards the median. They’ll drag you towards the middle. They’ll take your commercials, your marketing, your anything, frankly, it’s not just marketing, and they will try to make it as bland and innocuous as possible because that is the way to avoid them going to court. And that’s all they’re trying to do.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, absolutely.

Mick Torbay:
But the the point is that’s the exact antithesis of what marketing is supposed to do. Marketing is supposed to disrupt. It’s supposed to bother people. It’s supposed to shake them up. They’re supposed to say, “Whoa, did I just hear what I thought I just heard?” Yes. Yes, you did. And now you’re going to remember it because it was weird. So there’s this constant push and pull of people who want to save you from ruin, but saving you from ruin means, but for goodness sake, don’t do anything that might be noticed by anyone.

Matthew Burns:
Okay. So we’re talking legal department here, and you started off with it wasn’t actually the legal department, this was the production house. Sometimes it’s your aunt, Millie, when you told her this idea of this really cool thing. I’m going to put in the comments, guys, and I’m going to put a link to a video that Mick did called the leader versus the community. And this is what we’re talking about, really, in a nutshell.

Mick Torbay:
The legal department is just another member of the committee.

Matthew Burns:
That’s exactly what it is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we’ve gone through this a couple of times. You and I were writing for a campaign for a roofing company, and the name of that company was the same name as the local football team. And there were things that the legal department was really afraid of. Actually, the production house had the same idea. The production house was really afraid of us using certain lines. And we had already thought through all that and found our way that we were going to make that work. And it’s always the trying to save you from yourself because, for some reason, people don’t think that you’re smart enough to do some of the math in your head. So if the legal department typically just says no, it’s kind of like asking for money from the accountant. “No, no, no, we can’t afford to do stuff like that.

Mick Torbay:
Let’s just start with no and then see how persuasive you are to change my mind.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly.

Mick Torbay:
In the same way as the legal department.

Matthew Burns:
So then how do we help business owners and marketers alike avoid having to have, or not even avoid having the conversation, but how do we help them have the conversation with legal, with accounting, with the committee so that it helps them to get to that edgy, disruptive place? How do we do that?

Mick Torbay:
Well, I think what we need to do is we need to say to our legal department,” Don’t forget you work for me. “And what I mean by that is the legal department is used to being asked,’ Can we do this? The legal department’s saying no, or here’s a way that you can do it that will be safer, ‘and everybody just follows them along. And what we need to do with our legal department is we have to, rather than just take that first blush, that first glance, that first take from them, we have to say, before we give up on a good idea… Because if you simply listen to them at first glance, you’re going to give up on every good idea that you’re ever going to have. So rather than do that, say to your legal department, “Okay, let’s assume we’re going to do this anyway. What is my exposure? How bad is it going to be?”

And I’ll go back to the example that I gave earlier because what it was that I was presenting to my client was a very, actually not even that controversial in my opinion, an idea of doing a commercial about mean tweets. So these are people who have tweeted mean things about my client and their commercials,

And I wanted to use the actual screen names of the people who did the mean tweets. And the reason why I wanted to use the actual screen name is that it’s real. If we just say, “Oh, someone on Twitter said this,” that’s not real, and therefore the mean tweet could have been written by the writer’s room rather than an actual person. So you don’t take it as seriously. It’s not that mean if I wrote it, whereas this is something that was actually written by somebody else.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. It loses authenticity if you take out the name.

Mick Torbay:
Yeah. Roy would call this a reality hook because you can look it up. You can absolutely go to Reddit and say, Randy with an extra Y308 said this nasty thing about my client. And so I wanted to … And I also think screen names are funny when spoken because no one ever says them on that.

Matthew Burns:
Hey, Randyy308.

Mick Torbay:
How are you? Randy with an extra Y308. Thank you very much for your tweet. Oh, and here’s a response to that from nobody, nooneever69 who says such and such. “And you could look it up, and they really are there. And the only thing we changed is that we took out the curse words. But the legal people said,” Well, let’s just take out the screen names because then nobody can say, Oh, you violated my privacy. “Well, I don’t think you have any privacy when you put your stuff up on the internet. Well, but people could see my screen name, and they know who they are. Well, then why do you have a screen name that identifies who you are and then put things up on the internet and then tell me you don’t want people to know that? It’s a public forum. Yeah, exactly. If anybody can go to Reddit or Twitter or X or whatever it is and just see it, I’d say you don’t really have any privacy.

That’s number one. Number two, for you to sue somebody, you have to be able to say that this thing that the other person did hurt you, and you have to put a number on it. So if I essentially read the tweet that Randy with an extra Y308 said on Reddit, Randy with an extra Y308 has to go to his lawyer and say,” I lost $40,000 because they read my tweet a lot.

Matthew Burns:
They pointed out the thing that I did.

Mick Torbay:
So they pointed out this thing that I put on a public forum and broadcast to literally the world.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, exactly.

Mick Torbay:
And so take this a bit far, don’t just say no, tell me why or why not, and what is the realistic problem? Now, one of the things your legal department is going to remind you of is that anybody can sue anyone for anything. I can sue Matthew for having glasses I don’t like, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to win any money.

Matthew Burns:
No, you’re just wasting time.

Mick Torbay:
He might they have to go to court and say, this is ridiculous. I suppose it’s possible, but what is the likelihood? Let’s start talking statistics. How much money are they likely to win from us repeating something that you said?

Matthew Burns:
Exactly. Well, here’s the other thing, too. Specifically for this example, Mick, there are much bigger entities like, well, Jimmy Kimmel, who just got taken off the air, but any of the talk show hosts have all played this game. They’ve all lived in this world, and the legal departments of much bigger companies have said, “Yeah, you know what? It’s okay. Just go do it.”

Mick Torbay:
And if you’re going to sue somebody, do you want to sue a heating and air conditioning company in Southwest Texas, or do you want to sue the National Broadcasting Corporation? Who do you think is going to have the most money to spend? And by the way, mean tweets, which I didn’t invent. I mean, I think that was Kimmel who did that.

Matthew Burns:
I actually think it was.

Mick Torbay:
Yeah. He put the screen names up. Why? Yes. Because the screen names are funny, and it proves that it’s real. So the legal department doesn’t think they’re doing much when they say, “Just take out the screen names, and then you’re fine.” And what they’re not used to hearing is, “Yes, but your meddling has made my commercial less funny. It’s made it less interesting. It’s made it less worth watching. You’ve made it just a little bit worse.” Less impact. And that’s not acceptable.

Matthew Burns:
Well, it’s not acceptable. And what I don’t like about it is that it’s less impactful. It’s actually not going to do the job that it’s meant to do. That’s exactly it. It’s going to go counter to what it was meant to do, which was to show that this is really happening in the world and we’re just responding to it. It’s going to make it seem like this is made up and that we’re just trying to block against something that could be nefarious and mystical and mysterious when, no, no, this is all out there. You can go find it, go find it for yourself if you want to. And most people, here’s the best part, most people aren’t even going to spend the time because it’s not worth their time to go and investigate it. They’re going to do nothing with that information.

Mick Torbay:
You’re probably not going to see it. I mean, what’s the likelihood that Randy with an extra Y308 is going to actually be watching TV and see it? Frankly, if he does see it, he’s probably going to call his neighbors and tell them to watch TV because he’s on the air. I mean, the likelihood of him saying, “I lost my job because Randy with an extra Y308 said something nasty about this air conditioning company.” I don’t think his boss is going to fire him. I don’t think he’s losing any money. I don’t think anything bad is going to happen. Let’s just leave the commercial as is. And don’t forget, I’m the guy who wrote a commercial that put a person’s first and last name in it. Someone who wrote an email saying something really, really horrible. And I made a commercial with his first name referencing his email.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. Listen, okay. So, Mick, thank you. I appreciate that. This is exactly what we’re talking about, guys. Don’t dumb down your marketing. I think that’s the way that the real true lesson here is don’t dumb down the market.

Mick Torbay:
Don’t let the committee, by the death of a thousand cuts, just slightly make your ad not as good.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Well, listen, I appreciate you. Again, I’m going to be putting down in the comments, guys, the link to go watch Mick’s Rant on the committee versus the leader, leader versus the committee.

Mick Torbay:
And Ellie, I’ll let you stay there, too.

Matthew Burns:
And he’s probably going to say a couple of things. Something he says in there that he didn’t say here, but I love the way he says it; it really matters. Guys, real matters in marketing and advertising. So remember that. And finally, I always shout out The Wizard Academy when we’re doing our podcast here.

Mick Torbay:
Come take a course.

Matthew Burns:
It’ll make you smart. You have to take a course because we all did, and look what we do now. You want to be like Mick and me.

Mick Torbay:
And we don’t make money from you going there.

Matthew Burns:
We do not make fun. No, they are an official sponsor. Actually, I talked to Daniel Whittington, and he’s going to be- Really? He’s going to be on the show at some point, too, which is going to be a lot of fun. Okay. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Would you do another one with me at some time?

Mick Torbay:
I would be delighted to do another one of these. I’ll even wear the same shirt.

Matthew Burns:
Well, there you go. I appreciate you for that. All right, guys, thank you. We’ll see you guys on the next episode.

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