Brand Storytelling That Actually Works With Emmy-Winning Producer Dani Dufresne

Dani Dufresne is an Emmy Award-winning executive producer and the Founder of The Auxiliary Co, which provides executive production, consulting, and creative project management for top agencies and brands. With over two decades of experience spanning broadcast, digital, experiential, and branded content, she has led high-impact campaigns for major brands, including Nike, Apple, Google, and Sephora. Dani also serves as an agency leadership consultant, helping creative agencies navigate growth, sales, and operations.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:16] Why most branded video strategies are broken
[5:39] Dani Dufresne’s transition from a theater kid to an Emmy Award-winning producer and the Founder of The Auxiliary Co
[10:49] The problem The Aux Co solves for agencies and how Dani shaped her business model
[18:57] Why branded content fails and how to align strategies
[24:49] How brands can justify creative investments and measure marketing effectiveness
[29:03] The long-term risks of going viral and why depth matters more than reach
[34:22] Tips for building a community rather than an audience
[40:10] What is killing high-performing creative?
[52:27] How Dani saved a Hulu activation project with real-time improvisation and creative problem-solving
[1:00:02] Dani’s encounter with Ice Cube
[1:07:24] Dani talks about creating space for herself as a mother and executive producer

In this episode…

Many brands struggle to create content that truly connects, let alone converts. In a fragmented digital landscape dominated by short-term thinking and data overload, creative work is often diluted, reactive, and forgettable. How can marketers craft branded content that captures attention, earns trust, and builds a lasting community?

Emmy Award-winning executive producer Dani Dufresne urges brands to stop chasing trends and start building deeper relationships through clear, bold, and emotionally resonant storytelling. Integrating media strategy earlier in the process and investing in long-term thinking can dramatically improve creative outcomes. Dani emphasizes thoughtful execution, creative bravery, and audience empathy as the keys to developing a sustainable, long-term creative strategy.

In this week’s episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris chats with Dani Dufresne, Founder and Executive Producer of The Auxiliary Co, about how to produce branded content that converts. Dani shares how misaligned incentives break creative, why building slow beats burning fast, and what brands can learn from influencers and legacy agencies.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

"Marketing is just making things that are remarkable, and that doesn’t have to be being brand-new."
"Never make any decision out of fear… You’re just creating that reality versus creating a positive reality."
"It’s all about putting your product in people’s hands where they love it so much they share."
"You don’t need to over-serve. The more trust there is, the better work that gets created."
"You have no long-term brand if your audience doesn’t know your brand story or connect."

Action Steps

Integrate media strategy early in the creative process: Aligning media and creative from the beginning ensures content reaches the right audience in the right context. This coordination boosts impact, cohesion, and overall campaign effectiveness.
Focus on long-term brand storytelling: Building a consistent narrative helps audiences understand what your brand stands for and builds lasting loyalty. Short-term wins rarely translate to sustained engagement or growth.
Encourage creative teams to pitch bold ideas: Giving creatives the freedom to pitch without immediate constraints leads to fresher, more impactful campaigns. Some of the most successful work begins as ambitious, unfiltered concepts.
Prioritize emotional resonance over data points alone: While metrics matter, storytelling that moves people creates lasting impressions and word-of-mouth momentum. Human connection outperforms trend-chasing in the long run.
Build community, not just an audience: Facilitating real-world engagement and shared values fosters a deeper relationship with your customers. This community-centered approach leads to advocacy, trust, and stronger brand equity.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:02

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders, sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show.

William Harris 0:13

Hey everyone. I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million and beyond as you up arrow your business and your personal life. Today's guest is an Emmy Award winning executive producer, a creative force behind some of the boldest branded storytelling on the internet, and the founder of The Aux Co Dani Dufresne started out as a theater kid with a camcorder. She's now one of the sharpest voices in advertising and content known for building high impact creative teams, pushing clients past their comfort zones and producing stories that don't just look good, they work. She's worked with brands like Bose, Marriott, Nike, blending community culture and conversion into experiences that feel less like ads and more like movements. Today, we're talking about what makes great branded content actually convert, why most creative work dies before it lives, and how to lead teams that build magic without the bloat. We'll also talk about chasing Emmys, wrangling Ice Cube, and why the next great frontier for storytelling might be powered by AI but still led by heart. If you've ever tried to make content that doesn't just win awards, but wins attention, wins trust and wins hearts. This one's for you. Dani Dufresne, welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast.

Dani Dufresne 1:24

Hello. I'm excited to be here.

William Harris 1:27

I am excited also I want to announce to Melinda Jackson, thank you, Melinda Jackson, for putting us in touch. I always love it when people find really good guests to be on the show. And so thank you, Melinda. Thank you. The last quick interruption before we get into the really good stuff is the sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that IPO. You can learn more on our website at Elumynt Comm, which is spelled Elumynt.com, that said on to the good stuff. Okay, Dani , you once told me that if YouTube owns TV, why not make a documentary? So let's start there. What's broken in the way most brands think about video, and how do you flip that?

Dani Dufresne 2:17

I think that what used to be really clear as far as where their audience would be, how to reach them. The more that social has grown, the more blurred that has become. It's and every brand's marketing budgets are really just having to get diffused and filtered through all of these various buckets. And it feels like they can't tell the same brand message across the board in all of those places. And so they end up sort of putting money more where they think it's gonna get them return. But in the long run, it ends up actually like diluting their brand, audience and their community, with the with, you know, with the buyer and the consumers. So I I'm hoping that we'll kind of be able to go back now to storytelling, like really creating content that your consumers want to sit with. They want they they choose to sit there and watch it for more than two minutes. They it doesn't have to have logos everywhere and CO branding everywhere. It's just telling stories that they want to hear. Or it's even, in a lot of cases, getting them off of their phone and out of their house, living the life that your brand stands for. I mean, that's a great way to build community there.

William Harris 3:29

I love to tell people, whenever somebody asks me, how long should my ad be? Right? 15, second, six, second, 32nd and I'm like, make it two hours, if it's good. The example that I give is like The Lego Movie and even the Barbie movie right where it's like, these are advertisements to a point, but they're advertisements that we're willing to pay for and go and sit and watch for an hour and a half, two hours, because we genuinely enjoy the content. And to your point, there isn't a right a length of an ad if you're able to tell a story and capture the attention

Dani Dufresne 4:00

exactly. I also think the same applies to I need to see the logo in the first five seconds. Or like, of course, if you ask people, you know, can you tell what this is? Or like, they're gonna have, you know, they're gonna have an opinion about that. But I think the best content, I don't know if you saw the most recent Adidas Oasis content out of Adidas UK. No, this video, it's gorgeous for one and it's like concert video, and it's just very, you know, 90s and early aughts Oasis, and you don't even like they don't show the Adidas brand at all. You never see the full logo on anything. You just see little glimmers of stripes, like in shadow, and it's enough to where you're hooked you want to like, and it's the fact that they're not over serving it. I think that's the problem we've gotten to, where brands are trying everything instead, because they they are, like, a little bit scared to try the stuff that might take longer. You know. But build but, you know, work out better in the long run. And so they want to do this low hanging fruit of just throwing stuff. Oh, we know they'll click it. We know they'll click it, okay, but when you're creating content built for a flashy, trendy audience, then they will move on to the next flashy, trendy thing after your product, and they won't stick around and you're not helping them build that community that they want?

William Harris 5:21

Yeah, building the community is key. I want to pull back a little bit, because I think this helps to start tying in where we're going to go with this. You've told me that you started off as a theater kid, you moved into Emmy, award winning producer, the founder. What What kind of ties in all of those chapters.

Dani Dufresne 5:39

I love entertainment. I fell in love with movies, very old Hollywood movies and theater as a little girl, and was obsessed with the red pack and Gone With the Wind and just everything old Hollywood. And when I went to film school, I was sort of taken aback by, you know, I'm not one to sit in a theater and watch a silent film that's just, you know, a Fellini's eye getting razor bladed, like the classic stuff you learn in middle school, because it's, it's, you know, it's artistic. There's reasons why parts of it are entertaining and parts aren't. I'm drawn to stuff that entertains and touches you, whether it's the highest form of the argument or not. It doesn't have to be super complicated to do that. And I think what I fell in love with in film school was the idea of storytelling and breaking it down to its individual elements. Being able to tell a story in a single frame or a single image, and everything else is built around that. If you can't take, like the bulk of your idea and put it in one image, then you don't really have an idea that's strong

William Harris 6:45

boy, that's that's difficult to do. I mean, there's a book that I've read and I'm going to draw a blank on the exact name, but it's something like a swim in the rain in the pond, but it's a breakdown of short stories. And what I really appreciate that is there's people who are really good at writing short stories, try to figure out how they can write the absolute shortest story possible. And I think to your point where it's like, how can you distill this, this idea into the simplest visual possible? If you can do that, then you've got something. Is that kind of what you're saying? Yeah,

Dani Dufresne 7:15

you can build around it. I mean, it's the same as the old adage that there's only 27 stories that can ever be told, and everything is just an iteration of those stories. Pretty Woman is just a version of Cinderella, and there's, you know, fish out of water, and all of the various you're not reinventing human existence and storytelling. You're just using small pieces of a puzzle like you would in a play, or, you know, a single frame of film, and looking at it, I can tell what the mood is. I can tell, is it a happy movie? Is it a sad movie? What is the person in it feeling? What should I be feeling? And all of that. When you have creatives that can tap into that and then are able to expand into it, it hooks the audience that much more. And I think that there's, you know, really good storytellers and advertising. It's just now I think we've gotten away from that being the most important thing. And I think we're and we're going back to it, I think at the end of the day, like you cannot, but you have no long term brand if you don't have an audience that knows your brand story or connects your brand, knows what it stands for. And I think that that is plays a part. You can do it, you know, just with audio, you can do it visually, you can do it with moving objects. And I love that idea of it. And quickly, when I moved into, you know, having a job in the commercial world and advertising us, I didn't even think of that as an option around filmmaking, and it just clicked with me. I thought really, like a lot of people would say, Oh, you're selling out. It's consumerism. No, this is I think there's a way to make it be both. I think there's a way to entertain people and sell your products at the same time.

William Harris 8:56

Philip Jackson runs future commerce, and one of the phrases that he repeats over and over again is commerce, is culture, and I love it, and I never thought about it that way. But if you go back even 1000s of years, it's like a lot of culture was defined by the commerce that we had, right? And so to your point, that is one of the more important aspects of the culture that we have is the commerce that we're in, encouraging, discouraging, influencing in some way?

Dani Dufresne 9:22

Yeah, and even, I think the you know, the rise of influencers is is all based around community, right? People are connect to someone online, and it's not that they're all about that influencer. It's about this community of people. They're all watching that person with. And I think we have had a lot of brands with the ability for anything to be possible comes a lot of shit thrown in every single direction right to see what works. And I think that there, you know you could do that to a certain extent, but at some point you have to commit to your long term strategy of your brand and be willing to, like go the long haul, because you. Like, it's worth it in the end, but it does take a little bit longer. Like, think about it that way, to your point, if why the brands that are going to come and go are the ones that are taking what the world is doing and being just trying to be a part of that, versus making the conversation and, you know, standing for something, and be like being there with them, but like pushing them in a new way, like you don't have to be the same as everyone else, or you're just gonna get, you know, you're gonna fade into the background,

William Harris 10:30

right? Yeah, exactly. It just becomes vanilla in the world of a lot of other possibilities. So what problem were you solving for starting The Aux Co what would you say? This is the problem that we need to solve. I had once I

Dani Dufresne 10:49

was on the advertising side for a while and at larger holding company agencies, I was realizing that the focus was going away from the creative bar and making really quality work, to the P and L, to, what can we do in house? To, you know, getting things to be cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, which I understand is a, you know, that, you know, with the invention of new technology, we can make things cheaper. But it was really more at the detriment to creative and so I was feeling like, Where are all of the independent creatives going? Because they're not allowed to really flourish in most agencies, because most things they're getting are a no or the other agency does that, or that's gonna, you know, eat up too much money, or we don't want to pitch that. And I we're sort of seeing these agencies pop up that didn't they wanted to keep their overhead low to avoid that problem, right? We have all these holding companies merging to become the monster of advertising agencies, but the their their revenue is still dropping, and they're having where the places where they are cutting the most cost are creative, the time that takes to develop something cost it takes to produce something themselves. And they're going for again, the easy, like low hanging fruit that they can point back to some data point that they've also sold their clients. So I kind of wanted to get I kind of wanted to get out of that. And as I saw these new agencies pop up, I thought that was perfect. What they need is a EP that can bring them everything that they don't need full time services for so they can every idea that they have. They know who to call and say, How do I build this or make this? Or what other ways can we do this and really empowering them to be able to have those bold ideas for the clients.

William Harris 12:44

Yeah, that's so important. There's so many things that I feel like just get watered down without having something like someone like that in your corner, something that I heard you say before that's kind of stuck with me was you don't need to know what you want your business to be, but you need to know what you want it to not be. And I might have butchered the quote, but it was something to that effect, and I love that like so what were your big nos? What were the things you're like? This is a no when I knew

Dani Dufresne 13:12

I wanted to leave the agency. I was at Weber shamrock at the time when I knew I wanted to leave, I knew I did not want to be a freelance producer, and I knew I did not want to be a production company. The problems there being, when you're freelance, you're just sort of bouncing around from office to office. They pay you to sit in a corner. They pay your full rate to just sit there and really maybe choose 20 to 30% of you, um, and you don't get to, you know, be a part of the Career Development or really bring much to the table other than just doing what they say. And on the production company side, I had been on that side for a while with post and production, and I love production companies, but I find that the best production companies are those that have a strong point of view or a niche, or we do sports really well, or we do cars really well. And I did not want to constantly be doing the same thing. I did not want to have a roster of directors who I was trying to sell them more than sell a service. I wanted to be able to give what I loved so much about agency life was being able to give whatever the craziest idea let's build a double dare Style Set, like a food to have during a live halftime show for Tums and like, Great, awesome. Whereas normally, when you're a production company, you can only do the stuff that you know how to do. So you're gonna sell that stuff. You're gonna sell things. Things are gonna all look the way that you do stuff. You're not gonna take every new project and brief from a new approach, which is what I loved so much about being at agencies. So I've just really applied that to my company as it's grown, because I've seen that's been the number one service that, you know, everyone kind of needs. It's not only the production operations of how much does this cost, how long will it take, but also, how can we approach this that maybe we haven't thought about is. Is, is a video the best version of this? Or should we do an event? Or should we what kind of media should we look at? And because I've been involved in all of that, I'm able to bring that production point of view with those items earlier on in the process, versus, you know, a lot of agencies are used to ideating something, selling it in and then just sort of saying here, production company, we'll hire you. You make this, and at that point, there's not a lot that can be done or changed. It may still not be the best version of it, because there's no one on your in house team that's going to be like, I don't know if that works. You know, they're just going to kind of go with it, and the production company is going to have their own point of view of how they want to execute it, and they may not know yours and have your you know same vision. I think what was the most interesting was that, as I was at agencies, the amount of time I had to spend training creatives, like younger creatives, on how to translate a creative idea into like production, because that's just not something that's taught at a lot of the design schools, sure. And if you think about it, is as this huge game of telephone and production sits at the bottom of, you know, at the end. They just, because it's so clear to you in your head, what it is does not mean it's clear to everyone else, sure, and you may have an idea that's completely different than the clients. And so a lot of what I found, lot of what I found myself doing as an agency producer, and still do is translating in between the two groups, or sometimes three when you add in clients, and making sure that everyone is just crystal clear on what the idea is, and problem solving. And I think as a more fractional EP across all the kinds of production that allows me to do that and work with really inspiring creatives too, that I've just very lucky to be able to work with.

William Harris 16:50

It feels like to me, you're saying something that resonates with me, at least, which is you want to be, you want to create art, right? Like you want this to be something that's a masterpiece, not just a giclee. I think about like, you know, Rembrandt versus Andy Warhol and like, geniuses, both geniuses, both very artistic, but it's like, maybe the production house typically, like you said, they're, maybe they're getting to a point where they're like, hey, well, we can do this same four color, you know, thing here that we did with Mod, we could do this with we could do this with Elvis, you know, like, now I don't want something that's exactly like or similar to something else. You're like, I want something that's completely out of the box, completely new, that's just us, and that's what you're able to like, fill in the gap for.

Dani Dufresne 17:29

Yeah, it's also a matter of, you know, having everyone's best interest and being able to sell them on the best way about that. That isn't what they're saying they want, right? So we need the logo here, or we this word, this wording has to be here, whatever, right? That the client's gonna want, that I know the creatives don't want. And then if you ask the production company, they want the least they want the most amount of art and the least amount of you know rightly so everyone wants, everyone wants it to be beautiful. Everyone just has a different opinion of how to get it there. And I think a lot of the more that you can educate your clients, the brands, everyone across the board, about how production works, and just reiterate like you don't need to over serve, and then the more trust there is that, the better work that gets created. And I think that takes a lot of time, and it takes sort of speaking multiple languages, knowing, like, well, I know that what you're asking me for is this, but the reason you want it is that. So what is another solution that everyone that where everyone wins, but it's not this, you know, way that you want to go about it that isn't good, that's gonna maybe, like, diminish the creative or not negative. You know what everyone wants it to be. It's a lot of that

William Harris 18:45

along those lines. Then let's talk about, like, how the best work actually gets done. What's the biggest reason why branded content fails? Like, and how do you do it differently?

Dani Dufresne 18:57

Unfortunately, I feel at least that one of the biggest reasons that branded content fails is not having the media strategy as closely tied to the creative development and having pieces there really integrated. Because the number one, it's not just a matter of what they're going to be seeing on a screen. It's where that what screen are they seeing it on? How are they interacting with it? Are there also placements in these places that we could make custom and really make pop because of that, versus waiting to the last minute and just, oh, we'll just stick it everywhere that we normally do, and at that point, creative can't change anything. Creative can't, you know, come up with interesting things. I mean, I've done billboards where we have changed the billboard every few days because we've pretended that bytes were being taken out of it with, like, photo, perfect imagery. And then, you know, this very similarly, on phones, it when a bite, it looked like a bite was being taken out and your phone was being cracked. Or, you know, you're using out of home media in a very timed way to where it's. Breaking out of the noise. And I think people are used to just swipe this away, swipe this away, swipe this away. And the goal is to get them to stop and pay attention. And I think that unfortunately, that is some a place that I don't see a lot of integration. I'm typically trying to bring people on early. I do think that with good branded content, especially longer form or series, working with, you know, editorial partnerships, press partnerships, looking at or just, or just audience brand partnerships in general, I think that the more and more It's, it becomes, you know, I'm this kind of lifestyle brand, and so is this brand. What can we do together? Which, in reality, is no different than when you're giving an influencer $200,000 but you're getting a lot more for it, in my opinion, in the long run. And you know, I think a lot of these more interesting creative agencies that are popping up, these smaller agencies, are coming to the table with those sort of ideas, like, you know, things that aren't a, you know, a one off six month thing, things that take years to develop, and I think, not being afraid of that, and also letting all the messaging sort of come together. It's not just this department came up with this idea that nothing feels cohesive or matches at all. And that's part of like focusing more on a short term versus really, like allowing yourself to build out a long term strategy.

William Harris 21:32

Yeah, it makes a difference when things feel like they were done with intent and that they were done together. What are what about data like? Where does data fall into this when you think about, let's just say, a lot of what we do on the performance side, because that's where I run, right? I run on the performance side. Everything is data. Data almost is the only thing that we look at. And we sometimes get, we get sidetracked by small, iterative changes, instead of focusing on bigger storytelling things. There's a balance there, though, right? And so like, how much can data play into the brand side versus how much do you have to say, No, shut up. We're not going to look at that data for right now, because this is what we need to do. Like, where do you find that balance?

Dani Dufresne 22:16

I like to have this practice. It's common within documentary filmmaking, but it can be done with anything, where you can anything where you can tell the same story, both sides, with the same exact imagery and the same exact everything you could do. A lot of the ways you could do that with data, too. I think that it's not that data. I think that the the more that you scrutinize data, the more that you can read anything you want into it, right? And I have a more like that's something that I why I wish media was more of a part of the creative development strategy, and why, when it is integrated with larger editorial partnerships or PR partnerships, it does become its own bigger thing, and it's a more successful campaign. Um, but I think it's because you have people, in the long run, they're taking clicks and interpreting in that everything they know about a person, and that's not possible. And you know, a like or a save costs someone nothing like that is not a huge indicator of if someone's gonna buy that product. And I think maybe there. I think that if the two groups could work together more to help each other understand why those sides are important. I think that data is super important when it comes to how an audience is in like viewing something, how they're experiencing it. What key messaging Do they really like that? Doesn't mean they need to hear that exact sentence all the time. Sometimes it, maybe it. Sometimes it means maybe they need to hear a different sentence you don't like. I think that that's where you have people hop from rebranding agency to strategy agency to this, to this, to this. And there's just no cohesion, because everyone has their own point of view.

William Harris 23:59

Sure, I had Preston Rutherford on here, who was one of the founders and CMO of Chubbies shorts, and I love oath, yeah, so do I. Right? Like I got a early pair, I want to say back in 2013 and they were still pretty young at the time. And one of the things he talks about is how brand marketing actually should be performative. That a lot of times, you know, companies go into with this wrong mindset is it's a big cost, and they're not sure if they're gonna be able to measure it. And it's like to a point, there should be ways that you can measure this in some way to say this definitively was better for your brand. This is better for the company. What are ways that you're looking at that when you run something, to be able to say, if somebody's like, Hey, we're ready to do this, but we don't know if we could justify the cost. How? How do they get around that?

Dani Dufresne 24:49

Typically, if that's a response I'm getting, it's because, well, it's from one small section of the brand marketing team that has one small goal, right? Like, we want to roll. Out this particular sponsorship or partnership with Starbucks, or whatever it is, right? It's a very small ask. The issue is they have all of these other channels talking other things and noise that's overlapping it that it's more of a, yeah, your budget for this small thing may be nothing, but how can we look at everything you have and integrate this in better ways? Maybe, like, it's not necessarily that agencies or production companies need to figure out ways to make things cheaper. It's that, I think that where these people come up with these marketing budgets is not based in any sort of reality. And there's not anyone on that side saying, Well, if we actually, if this isn't this, initiatives, budget, initiative, initiatives, budget, let's see where we can, you know, have cohesion. Let's see where these can come together. Maybe, are there better ways to use this money? I do a lot of that, like breaking down, sure, you know, and I because it's, it's like, I'm not gonna have it's not worth doing. If you're not going to make sure it's reaching your audience, you're just throwing this money. I'd rather you give it to some other campaign, like, do something else with it. And it's, I think that when you are a brand manager in house, like, a lot of what you're doing is just saying, it's just checking a box, right? Like, yes, I did this thing, and I could point to this thing that says it did all right. And so they want to go after the stuff where there is data that points exactly to how it well and is better to track, but the same time. But that is the stuff that is it that doesn't tell the biggest picture, tells, tells the most story. So I think we have a lot of we have a lot of that kind of budget happening where the idea of what things cost is not accurate, and then the divvying it up between things is not very accurate. I mean, in the long run, I do not personally think that giving an influencer a million dollars is worth, what you're gonna get back from that very, very, very rarely at this point, they can make their own brand, making whatever you make, and go do it themselves.

William Harris 27:07

You know who some of them are? Yeah,

Dani Dufresne 27:11

that you do with that million dollars to better engage the audience that you already have and build it like a lot more.

William Harris 27:19

Yeah, it reminds me, I always think a lot of in terms of relationships, human relationships, and the biggest one that I could think of is my marriage to my wife. And so that's one that I reference a lot, because I feel like a lot of people can relate to those types of things. But if it just comes down to data that you can measure, it's like saying, like, yep, we went on date night. Check, kiss my wife, good morning check, right? And it's like, that's not very romantic. That's not going to lead towards truly a good marriage. In the same way that's like, Hey, I've got my checklist. I did it. I create. We needed to do brand check. I did that. Okay? I reached X amount of people check versus actually doing something that's going to sweep them off their feet and make them say, wow. And you might not always be able to say, here's the ROI on that, but it's there's more of a gut feeling, and I think that's something that's missed sometimes when we're looking too closely at performance, it's

Dani Dufresne 28:09

all about the tried and true Rule of, like, is it remarkable? Marketing is just making things that are remarkable, and that doesn't have to be being brand new, that doesn't have to be being something no one else is. It's just showcasing how you are remarkable and how you're the people that use your product to remark and tell that story over and over again, in a million different ways, in a way that people want to watch and engage with they will be, you know, a customer for life.

William Harris 28:37

You You hinted at this with influencers, and so I kind of run around with this little bit, but you talked about how influencers can just go create their own brand, and a lot of them have. Mr. Beast has done it right? A lot of people have done this, but I want to talk about this idea of building slow versus burning fast. A lot of new brands obsess over going viral, but you've actually seen how it can destroy a brand. Why do you think depth is more important than reach?

Dani Dufresne 29:03

It's about building long term trust and viability and a stronger audience. Like I said earlier, I think if you're going just for flashy, trendy Poppy, then they're going to leave you just as soon as somebody else can copy what you're doing, most of what you're buying on TikTok Shop is, you know, dupes of the same thing. You don't even know if that's what you're really buying. That should not be your goal. The you know, marketing is the most important marketing you can do is get people to tell other people about your product, not not as you being the one doing. And I think that the only way to the best way to guarantee that is by building strong, stronger and slower with consumers that feel like they've discovered you. They've, oh my gosh, no one's heard of this. And I love it. It works so great. This is the story about them. I mean, bear Bradley, right. You have two older women with all of these patterns, and it was very. Like interest. They have a really amazing history and story. That's a cool story to tell, or Bombus with, you know, the way they give back, even, you know, to the point you are the I'm sure that Chubbies has a really good, good story, but they, you know, but there, every time you see an image from that brand, every time you see a piece of content for them, it's telling. You can tell who, what the brand is. You can tell right away where it's coming from, because they've taken that time to build it, to build that strong audience and to connect to them. Of course, there's ways that you can be engaged in the current day to day news and conversation, and I think that's ways that you can use your, you know, Twitter, x or whatnot, very well, and be doing those things and stunts. But I think in the long run, it's all about putting your product in people's hands, or service or whatever, with with people to where they love it so much they are telling all of their friends that is much. And that's community, which only happens when you but it is the longer sell. And I think that there's a lot of people that start companies and they are just trying to think about, you know, they have a five year plan of selling it, yeah, and sure, but I'm not a fan of that. No, neither

William Harris 31:17

am I speaking of dupes. Have you seen what's going on with Lululemon and Costco. Apparently, Costco has stuff that is so remarkably close to Lululemon that Lululemon is suing them. It's absolutely wild. And it's like, it's like, $100 versus $10 and everybody's like, this is actually a really big win for Costco. This isn't working out very favor for Lululemon. But back to,

Dani Dufresne 31:41

it's also, I don't know a lot of women that shop at Lululemon that are also like, making sure that they can divert to the clothing section of Costco. So why not let them have the like, why not use it as a partnership and say, oh, let's do a pop up with like, let's do a, you know, a product partnership with Costco like, that makes more sense. That's a great idea, because a lot of women, a lot of women in Costco are wearing yoga pants.

William Harris 32:04

Sure, very true. I want to go back to this idea, though, of burning fast. You know, building slower, burning fast. You brought up some good points that I like. You know, prime energy drink is one that I feel like we saw. They built fast, and it crashed for them, and it didn't work out the way that they would have liked to. I always compare this to the idea of cancer cells. Cancer cells grow remarkably fast, but it's not healthy, and we see how it ends up becoming rejected and things like that. And I'd say that the similar thing happens to companies, where, to your point, there's a there's a significant growth point of resiliency, where you're building off of really good, strong, loyal customer base that can continue to sustain, and that ends up accelerating even more down the line, versus this quick burn, you know, on a TikTok viral sensation at first. I think

Dani Dufresne 32:54

a lot of it comes down to ego, right? I think to to be a good marketer, to be a brand that's willing to go the distance. It can't be desperation to sell yourself, because you have no confidence in yourself that you're gonna be there, right? It's knowing that you don't have anything to prove because you are the best whatever product it is that you make, and you're gonna stick it out and go the long run for that. The big flashy is, well, like we need to prove, prove, prove, and sell, sell, sell. And a lot of times that involves big viral, viral, flashy things, but also like telling a bunch of different versions of your brand story to see what sticks to the point where everyone ends up very confused, and you don't have, in the long run, you've you've spent more time trying to know what everyone wants to hear from you and wants you to be that you you. There's no substance once people actually get in, and so they leave. And you know, the community, the brand, the audience, whatever. And I think that is that's a strategy, if all you want to do is play a business the way that you would play the stock market, right? And like, I just want to, like, get Gamestop up really high, so everyone will buy it from me. If I just want to sell something, you know, prove I have an audience, and then sell it like crypto. Then cool, you can do that. It's just that is not brand building.

William Harris 34:16

So what are the tips for building community instead of just an audience,

Dani Dufresne 34:22

community is people, people to people, right? So it's, you can take it as far back as Tupperware parties, if you really want to be. I mean, those that is how, like, that is a entity of how marketing started, um, getting out there with the people park, you know, partnering with local organizations or parks, or what, you know, whatever it is, where your audience hangs out, and help them be a part of the lifestyle that you represent. I think that's a huge way to do it, and it be in all the places where they are, whether that's, you know, Reddit or substack. And of course, everyone's on Instagram and Tiktok, but at this point, like. Yeah, that doesn't make you interesting. And I think you know you have to either go about be where everyone else is, but be there, like, in a different way, or go be, you know, where your audience is and no one else is right. Like, I think that's how you know it's no different than when people started selling advertising on podcasts. No one was doing that for a while, and there's an audience there now. And I think all of these things, and even the engagement numbers going so far down in social this year, I think is from this drive that people want to be in communities. People want to meet like minded people. You're seeing like all of these women's groups, and there's like the New York dad club, and you know, all of these cool things start up because we just miss connection, especially after the last, like, four years. And that is, you know, it's a longer, harder sell, and it takes a long term plan that you can't like, get halfway through and bail on. You have to commit to the whole plan and know that it will like, if you're that there will be follow through. Like it the most I see this happen so long where it, of course, it takes more than one quarter for a good strategy to work. You can't abandon it just because you know one there's one quarter that it's not clicking yet. You can turn little things here and there if you need to, but you've not. You don't have enough data to learn what you needed to learn from it. Also, you haven't given it time. The stronger stories like take the longer time to build. It's kind of when, like, when there's a really good show out there that everyone's, like, obsessed with all of a sudden, and you start watching it thinking everyone says is the best and like, they're like, oh, but like, the sixth episode is where it gets like, really, have to stick with it. And I think that's all just a part of storytelling and community. And like, the long, long term strategies that I think have been abandoned, versus this, this video will have a new strategy, and then this campaign will have a new like, what that's not creating any kind of cohesion. And I think there's brands that have been around a long time and can do that, where they can play because everyone's going to buy Coca Cola or whatever, no matter what, versus these up and coming brands who see that and thinks that it's the way to go, like they think that's the only option,

William Harris 37:16

you have to basically have conviction that this is the story. Go after it and know that you'll see the data, but it's going to take a lot longer than your quarterly reports are going to show. Yeah,

Dani Dufresne 37:27

it comes down to not making decisions out of fear and like, it's the same as, like, dating or anything else, right? People can sense desperation, and a lot of that comes up very desperate, and it's off putting, and it might just because you get one viral thing. I mean, if you have to spend, you know, or if you have to get 2 million views to make $200 then you have a bad strategy.

William Harris 37:53

Yeah, yeah. What's, uh, what's the danger of optimizing too soon then? So, whether it's messaging or media, like, if we get into this kind of leading towards, what you're saying is the danger, and maybe I'm going to put this in here, what I hear the danger is that confusion. You've changed it now nobody knows what it is, and so you only have so much opportunity to share in somebody's mind. Is that the biggest danger?

Dani Dufresne 38:15

Yeah. And also, I think, like, you're going to have your overall audience, right? The overall person that people that you're marketing to, and then you're gonna have sub categories of that, and treating all of the sub not taking the time to figure out what the sub categories are, to communicate to them properly, and just taking one full on and then alienating the others. That is a lot of what happens when you're in there, turning knobs too much, you know, like flipping through the channels too fast, just because you think there's a commercial. Like, you have to have the patience to see what's working, see what's not but also, like, listen to your audience and, you know, get be part of the conversation. Be part of, you know, get the product in their hands. Hear what's wrong. You know what they like or don't like about it, and expand your mind a little bit. I think that that's why ego can't be a part of it.

William Harris 39:07

Sure, yeah, we always talk about the hippo, the highest paid person in office, and it's like you have to ignore the hippo sometimes, right? Because they've got their own idea. But more often than not, that person is no longer the ideal customer, and so you kind of have to go that person is

Dani Dufresne 39:21

also the creative director and the brand owner, and they want to change the logo right at the very last second before it goes out to packaging because they don't like what you've done. Like, this is going to happen because, just as with the same as like, like, your in house team is not always the best people to do the work for you. Like, you need to be able to, like, see outside of yourself. And I think the only like ego has to be taken out of the way, you know, even with creatives, I think, like, sometimes, you know, with ego and with ideas, because at the end, it's none of it is about anything other than what the brand stands for, and that has nothing to do with any

William Harris 39:58

one person. Let's. Talk about what's broke with creative today, specifically, like what's killing good creative,

Dani Dufresne 40:10

just there is no lack of creative time, I would say time. This idea that just because something is possible in a week, just because it's possible to hire some influencers and get some content made and messaging, that does not mean that it's it should be done that way, if we're not taking the time to it takes time to make that long term strategy. How does this lead up to that? Obviously, there's, you know, stunt and fun stuff you can do, you know, in real time, but I think it's making sure that everything isn't going true north, because they're changing agencies. They're changing strategies all the time, and you have these huge creative agencies that you know they have, their teams are too big to move quickly, so they the bigger ideas instantly get put to the back, instantly your nose, because that's really going to take too long to do anything with. You know, when you have, you know, very, very high up creatives and very, very low creatives, and no one in between. Just that, there's not a lot of training and culture about how to get the process going. So, you know, you have the expectation of, we just say yes to everything the client asks us for, whether it's the best version of the idea or not. And these, you know, I can plug in this media thing or this influencer buy and kind of just give them what they want. And it's very little in creative hours of billing, it's very little of my time, and it's gonna, you know, check off the box. And I think coming up with creative ideas, or even brands being okay with working with teams that push back on what they're asking for. Like, let's figure out if this is the thing that you actually want. What is the ask you are seeing more and more brands do this. Bose does this, and some other brands, which is, I think, is a great idea. They hire agencies just for ideas like, you're not we don't even know what we're gonna make. We just want you to bring us five big ass ideas like, just No, no, no, brief, no, anything, just, and that is brave. That's what everyone needs, because then they could see how things are, you know, fitting into the rest of their ecosystem. But even CMOS, I don't think have enough, like enough 10,000 foot vision of their full marketing strategy. They think they do, but it's hard when you are seeing stuff go all over the place. I mean, now you're even seeing agencies. I think today it was announced it was an agency that's going to help one of its clients find a new CMO. I love that because they know what it actually is needed. They're not getting someone coming in who has a point of view that isn't in line with everything else.

William Harris 42:58

Yeah, you know, you know, you talked about how they're not being even, you know, when I when I first asked you that question, it's like, what's wrong with it? You're like, there just isn't any. There are some brands, though, that have pushed the envelope and have failed miserably. And I think of Jaguar being one recently, it's like, they really pushed the envelope. They really went that was creative. It was very creative. It was very different from anything else in car commercials, etc, didn't work out for them. Then you talked about this idea. It's like, okay, what Bose is saying? Give us five great ideas, and let's figure this out. How do we how do we become more creative as teams? And I'll tell you. One of the things that I think, that I see in issue with in creativity is, you know, you've got back to back meetings and you've got this 50 minute block. He's like, great. That's the 15 minutes I'm going to be creative. It just doesn't work that way. It can't schedule creativity to be within 15 minute time three. But I think sometimes we're just over overly busy and we can't get creative. But, but let's just go back to this Jaguar issue. What did they not do that they could have done, like, how would you approach this differently to still come up with something wildly creative, but wildly creative that would have performed?

Dani Dufresne 44:08

In my mind, it's sort of like Jaguar, instead of doing the thing where they're like, someone bring us all these ideas, right? They said we think that we have a stale branch, and we think we need to rebrand because of XYZ reasons, right? Maybe they were told that by a rebranding agency and not like but that doesn't ladder up when you are a legacy brand. Isn't that the number one rule? You don't like shit all over your legacy and especially making change. There's other changes you can make that would have solved the same problems that they were trying to, like, solve and be, you know, more you know, have more equity, have more audience, have, you know, be more approachable as a brand. There are other things they could have done, other than changing, like flushing their whole brand on the toilet and taking away everything that gave it value. And yeah, if you they had. Done the thing that Bose does, and gotten a bunch of big ideas. Somebody could have pitched that, and then they would have somebody smart would have been like, no, like, it's not that it's a terrible idea, it's that there's other ways to make those adjustments. Then we just have to do something completely different. I mean, there's, I appreciate their bravery, but that is my mind, there's a lot of people that were going and shaking their heads that were not raising their hands, saying, like, this is a terrible

William Harris 45:28

idea. That was a Go big or go home moment. Unfortunately, it wasn't the right one. But well, and I

Dani Dufresne 45:33

think a lot of the reasons that creatives don't have it's not just time, it's exposure. When creatives are so busy at these, you know, bigger shops that can only they can only sustain themselves if they have 15,000 clients and everyone is working at 200% capacity. How are they having time to be exposed to new artists or new campaigns or new directors that take different approaches? How are they able to see things differently, that sparks an idea for them to do something else. And that is what, you know, a lot of these smaller agencies are able to do, and take the time to do, you know, I kind of say the same thing within a brand of taking the time to build slow and not try and be huge. I think agencies are the same way Stay, stay to be what you need, like small or medium or whatever as you need. But if you are getting so big that you can no longer function your primary service of like, innovative, creative, then move out of the way for people who can. And that's fine. Um, I'm just like, I have been in that position so many times working with holding companies and agencies that like the more that they are ingrained into that machine, the lower the work goes. And it's not that they don't have very well meaning people within it. It just gets harder. The red there's more red tape. The process is longer, and you know, they're just being judged at the end of the day by their P L, which what does it matter if you're hiring outside freelancers or outside experts in a certain thing to do that thing, versus having in if it's the same cost, or in the long runs, actually cheaper, and you're getting better work? Why does it matter? Just because it makes your p and l look better? Sure, I will never understand it. So that's a lot of the creative breakdown, in my opinion.

William Harris 47:25

You well, okay, and you're hinting at the flip side of this, of going ahead and being creative. The flip side is death by committee. And how do we how do we protect an idea from getting watered down then too?

Dani Dufresne 47:41

A lot of it comes back to what I was saying earlier. As far as being able to have the clearest vision of what your idea is, um, breaking it down to that one bAuxor one still, if you were to make one poster of what this idea is like, what is it? Whether it's a sentence or so I love about translating campaigns into out of out of home marketing, or into things like that, is because they have to actually think, well, is this the best version of this idea? And a lot of times you'll see creatives have an idea, and as they start to try to script that into something, they very quickly realize there is not anything there. There's not, you know, a substance there. One way I'm I see in us being able to, like, help things not get diluted or change, just just get on the same page too, which I think the rise of AI is going to help a lot with. I think having, for sure, I'm not concerned about production fully going away, because everything's going to be AI and fake. There's going to be certain assets that, you know, they can save money on creating that way, so they can put more money into other things, hopefully. But I think in the long run, it's going to help everyone have the same vision. And yes, is exactly how this is what we're agreeing on. Let's all hold hands on, jump off this cliff together, which will allow for more trust, allow for, like, better communication. And I think it's knowing that you know, able to sell the argument in of why you don't need something, why don't do this, why we do this? Why? Like, you know, when you're getting pushback on best practices, well, you know this is this needs to be outside of that. This needs to be different, unfortunately, the amount of time where everything is just loved at the beginning, right? Everyone loves everything. It's when you're on that, like fifth, fifth line, fifth yard line, and you're trying to deliver, you know, something that people get scared people get, you know, and at the same time the eight you're just tired, you're like, Fine, whatever. I'll give it to you. And I think that, you know, getting everyone speaking the same language and aligned on the same vision earlier on just helps a lot with that,

William Harris 49:41

I share your view on AI, and even personally, right, there are some things that my wife and I are working on where it's like the deck, or, you know, this built in bookcase, whatever, and it's like we can put what we have in our mind in AI design it a lot easier than what we could actually even design it. So my scribbles that I would. Draw on piece of paper. Now we can go, it's like, oh, that's what you had in mind. That's not at all what I thought we were describing. And so now we're like, oh, okay, we can get to the right idea and the right understanding, like you said, a lot better, a lot more accurately. So that way, when we move forward with ripping on a wall, we both have the same idea of what this is going to

Dani Dufresne 50:17

I mean, it's no different than you would discuss with a contractor. Or, you know, you want to be able to not only describe it perfectly, but like, visualize it, so that you're not, you're thinking about it, right? And not there's creatives that have big ideas, but the bigger and bolder the ideas, it's not like there's, you know, stock imagery for a lot of these things haven't been done before. How are you going to make that so the ability to, you know, make a crazy image, so that I know how to make it as production, and the clients know what it's going to look like, and then you can build on it that's going to just create, allow for more innovation and, like, less fear and more trust with brands, because they're going to be able to do it. And I think, you know, it's just always that game of telephone where it's like, oh, you know, we're is the dress gold or blue? Like people things in a different way. And it's hilarious, like, it's, it's crazy to me, but it's also suit, like, it's amazing how, if you think about why people see things the different, you know, different ways, even if you presented them an image, you're probably going to want to also have, like, a write up next to it, because totally different ways. And I think that's to why, like, I work with a lot of production companies that just don't know how to communicate with agencies or brands and vice versa, because they're all just speaking a different language or making assumptions. Because you're like, we don't have the capacity to sit there and, like, think. And most of the time, when you're imagining something, you're not starting from a blank scratch. You're starting with a base of something that you already have built in your head, which is completely different than what someone

William Harris 51:53

else has. Yeah, it's very easy in like, that's how things get taken out of context, misinterpreted very quickly, very easily. We see that, like you said, even with numbers, something that seems like it's just factual. This isn't even an image. We can look at same numbers and come up with different conclusions about why those numbers exist the way that they do, too. I want to talk about some examples, because I think it's fun to hear about, like, exact case studies, things like that, that you've done. What's one project that maybe almost went off the rails, but you were able to save it something you're like, Ah, this was going down a really interesting path.

Dani Dufresne 52:27

Um, we did a, I did a project, um, in partnership with Hulu, for a new show that they had premiering, where it was the show, the person the show was a like a fortune teller, a palm reader. And so they wanted to do something kind of stunty to help, you know, do some PR and then promote the show. And the idea was to have a, like the the machine from big, the movie, big,

William Harris 52:54

oh yeah, wow, with Tom Hanks, right? Yeah. I'm

Dani Dufresne 52:58

thinking of the, okay, right? The zalt are machine, yeah. So we would build a the idea was we build a custom Zoltar machine, but the like inside it is like, instead of it being that character with the hat, it's the character. It's built just to look like the character of the show. And people would come up, fortunes would come out, and then as fortunes came out, things would happen to them, like, like, you know, the fortune would come out talking about flowers. And someone would run by throwing petals on them. Love it. And it was a very big it was a big idea. And I love that I was up my alley. And not only do you learn everything about 3d molding and, you know, scanning someone's face to make like a perfect model, and what colors of, you know, paint make the skin look like everything that like goes into just making the bAuxitself, you know. And then it was bringing in, you know, stunt and improv actors to, like, work around everyone. And it just became like there was a lot of moving parts that there was, you know, I think we wanted it to end with a climactic ending of something really special. And we were having trouble casting what that would be, because we're all real people. Most of the time it was just people walking up to it that didn't know what it was. We decided we were going to put it. We had it on the promenade in Santa Monica, and we were there, like, full day. I mean, there was, it's every sometimes it's just everything you think that you can I am a he, like, I write a long list of everything's gonna go wrong before I even dive into something. And there's stuff you just don't even think about, right? Like, machines too big to fit into the holding room that we have reserved. And so the day of the thing, the director gets like, hit in the head with it while he's trying, like crazy stuff, and it's all just a part of it. I mean, that was one where it was just, like, every other week, it just felt like, what is this problem solving? But we ended up, like, last minute, finding a couple. To get engaged. So that was, like the ending. And then we had PR, PR crews come out, and the stars the show came out, and they got a huge kick out of the the machine and and all of that there. So that was really, really fun, um, and it's kind of that stuff that you don't think about, right, you know, or you add on to, I think we had, originally the idea was just that, not that anything would happen, just that we would it would just be like surprising, or that she would be inside the machine. And kind of, every time you have a find a problem, the solves. The best solutions are what push the creative for further and make the idea bigger.

William Harris 55:40

I think that's so true in so many things in life, where you see this, even with DTC brands that are getting started, a lot of times, if you think it through all the way to the end, you have eliminated the magic that's going to be there. You have to think it through enough to understand, like, Ah, here's the vague idea of where this is going to end up, but I got to see what happens along the way, and that ends up creating something that you could never have done. I forget who it was, but there was an author. Somebody was asking about, like, how do you make sure that you know your characters are really good and like that, you do a good job with writing your characters. And I don't remember who said this, but they said, basically, you write two drafts of your book. First you just write the book, you just let happen, what happens, and then the second time through, you write it as if you knew that that was what was going to happen, but it's like you weren't even sure what was gonna happen the first time through. And I like that approach, where it's like, sometimes that allows for more creative magic, and then you can come back through and make it seem as if that's what was intended to happen. Yeah.

Dani Dufresne 56:32

And I think that's the difference between like a creative producer, like a creative agency producer, and just a producer, line producer, a basic production company sometimes where the first thing that I'll do when you know when a client or a creative team brings me a new brief, is just ask a ton of questions, and they hate it. It's not, I'm not trying to poke holes and shake the tree and see what, but it's more of I'm trying to get like, I know what they think the idea is, but I'm trying to figure out what it actually is, what's gonna withstand, what's gonna withstand, like client scrutiny and production and all of this stuff, to where it's in the end, we're still all getting to the same place. Yeah,

William Harris 57:16

tell me about the monogram project. What did you learn about creative under pressure. Um, well,

Dani Dufresne 57:24

that was one where just it. It took several years because re that particular one we were, we were renovating Marcus Samuelson's kitchen and his new home in Sag Harbor, in partnership with monogram to tell, like, a bigger story about his you know him there, and customizing kitchens and building a kitchen on an island, that has to be very specific, during a renovation during COVID, that that became its own thing. I learned more about construction than I ever cared to learn. And then it really just came down to, you know, we it took so long to get the kitchen made that we had a very, very, very small window to actually shoot like the end. We wanted to shoot the end like in the spring or the fall. And it ended up being like January in Sag Harbor. Lovely. Don't recommend. And you're, you're really just trying to, like, tell them, tell the most like, interesting story, you know, from like, I'm at home goods when they're going to open, because I'm also having, I'm also the Set Decorator for this particular one. Just because we have no, there was no furniture in this house there. They had not been given enough time to actually move in, wow. So we had to stage the whole house as though they already lived there. But there's like, one store on the island. It was, it was fun. It was more like, I like, when you get to do something that feels scrappy because you're all involved totally, but it's really at the end you're shooting, you know, amazing director, an amazing team, and it just looks rich and beautiful. And I think that's why, like, it connected. You know, I'm like, sitting on the corner in, like, on the floor in the corner, holding a boom, like, it's just, was one of those really fun productions and great brands, and we, I've done a couple projects with Marcus. He's

William Harris 59:17

great. Do you have a behind the scenes photo of you in the corner holding the boom? I

Dani Dufresne 59:21

think there's one of us all in the basement, and it's like freezing cold. We're in the basement on the final night. But the final night of the final it was three episodes that we shot the dinner episode last and we as soon as we wrapped, everyone just went up. We were just eating this amazing food that Marcus and his team had made, and we just had, like, a party all night, and he was like, and he kept, he ended up keeping most of what we got for that. He's like, Oh, you've decorated my home now. Thank you.

William Harris 59:48

That's great. Hey, I'm getting a phone call. It's, yeah, it's Ice Cube. I understand that you actually, at one point in time, did have Ice Cube in your contact list. I gotta know a little bit more about the story here. How do you know Ice Cube?

Dani Dufresne 1:00:02

I don't know Ice Cube. I One of my first jobs in the film industry. When I was deciding if I was gonna develop long form film, I was working for a company called Melee Entertainment, who was started by Brian Turner of Priority Records fave. I'm not sure if you're aware, he has a fascinating backstory. He wanted to have a label, and he couldn't find anyone like he just couldn't find anyone that wanted, wanted to sign this new label that no one knew. And he turned on his TV one day and saw, do you remember the California Raisins

William Harris 1:00:41

commercial? Yeah, they're dancing and stuff. Yeah, I

Dani Dufresne 1:00:45

was commissioned by like, the state of California, and no one, no one had hired that band to make albums. So he had this idea, I'm going to make the California raisin albums. No one had licensed them for that. So he did that, and they were huge hits. And then that gave his, his like, record label, the money to basically be able to sign NWA and everyone from there. So he was very influential in NWA and Ice Cube, and a lot of in that music, you know, part of the music industry growing, but it all came from him having like, what one would think is kind of a dumb idea, but not, no one would ever not think about that. Now you would like, the first thing you would do is get the music rights now, but at the time,

William Harris 1:01:34

Hey, babe, I'm gonna make a commercial. I'm gonna make a record album about raisins. It

Dani Dufresne 1:01:39

was just the characters because they had, they hadn't licensed them as characters, right? Like their own separate thing. They just made this commercial, and it was just hired studio band guys, and he went and, like, made his first millions, his first platinum record. Was that so good? And I did not know who he was, when I started working there, he had started this film production company. They had just done the film, you got served, and it was doing a lot of development deals with the music industry after he'd sold the label to Atlantic. And one day he asked me, you know, can you call, can you call Ice Cube? You know, get Ice Cube on the phone for me, you know. And I'm very new at making phone calls for industry legends at this point. And I pull up the, you know, the Rolodex, where all the numbers are, and it says, you know, Ice Cube. And then it says, like, Philip Paulo, she or, like whatever, like his real name. And I have this panic breakdown of, do I? How do you? How do you ask for someone whose name, like, do you ask for Ice Cube because I was also very like, polite. There's not a Mr. Do I say Mr. Ice Cube? Mr. Cube, like I panicked. Luckily, no one answered the phone. Oh, man, no. And before that, I was working for Pauly Shore as his intern at the Comedy Store. So I had a lot less glamorous, like interactions there where I wasn't worried about offending. You know, rap moguls,

William Harris 1:03:10

sure. So what did you like? I mean, you said nobody answered. Did you leave a voicemail? Like, what did you go with? What did you choose? Hey, Mr. Cube. This is, I said,

Dani Dufresne 1:03:20

Ice Cube. I just went Ice Cube. Yeah, it's like, that feels like

William Harris 1:03:23

you throw a yo in there, yo Ice Cube. This is Dani , no

Dani Dufresne 1:03:27

excuse me. This is just Brian Turner calling for Ice Cube, leaving a message, pardon me, pardon me. And I got better at it as I was going, but it was definitely like a world I was not used to, especially this very unassuming man that, you know, I took the job with not realizing who he was in any of that history. It's fascinating.

William Harris 1:03:47

That's really good. Okay, so you've done a lot of really big things, fun things, out of all of the campaigns that you've put together, what's one that, to you, feels like the most magical one, the one that you're like, this one, just wow.

Dani Dufresne 1:04:07

Um, I did that. I worked on the See the Real Me campaign for clean and clear back in a long time ago. Um, and the primary purpose was the idea that young girls don't feel seen. Young girls feel like they have to pretend to be something else. And there wasn't, you know, social media was really not a thing. You know, we had maybe Facebook, but it wasn't what it is. Now, I think there was vine. It just started at the time, but there wasn't this place for, oh, we're just gonna hire like these teens, you know, these teen influencers. So we cast real women, real young girls from all over the country with real stories. We researched them. We found them like we told like a transgender story and a dancing story and like, just these real girls and, you know, shot with. Them for a couple days, seemingly ordinary, right? Sometimes they'd be like, I don't think I have a cool story, and then you tell an amazing story, how we all have that capability to be amazing and to see ourselves as amazing. And I loved doing that so much, just being inspired, but also like the finding of the stories, and then getting to who these girls are, where I feel like you just can't do that now, like people wouldn't even think like that. There's not an audience there built in. So why would we take the time? I mean, and that's a campaign that takes three years to do, and I really loved doing that one. And I had a similar one with Wells Fargo, where we it was a, it was a six episode series with Wells Fargo, where we had business, business experts at a different small business all over the country, basically making over their business, giving them small business advice, giving them like, helping them improve things from like a small gym in San Francisco to a Hmong grocery store outside of St. Paul, and it was, like a full, you know, very long production, but it was really, I think, like it was the beginning of branded, longer form content and reality based of that. And I think, mainly, I wish I could go back and just re shoot that with the technology that we have now. I mean, with the cameras that we have now,

William Harris 1:06:21

there's something to be said about being able to tell, like, the Everyday Stories, right? Where they're bigger than what a lot of people realize. And I think that that's where we as human beings, we relate to them so well, because we have stories like that too. We're not necessarily influencers talking about those stories, but we have stories, and we look at these other people and it's like, hey, that's, me right there, telling the story, right?

Dani Dufresne 1:06:42

Yeah, and I don't think the, you know, having the one sentence pop up at the bottom that's like, this is a real customer, while you're just, you know, shooting people on a background, spitting out the script that you've written for them. That is not the same thing. And in a lot of times, you can do the same thing. You can do it the right way, the deeper connection way, like for a similar budget, it's not it's just about taking the time and actually thinking about it. Yeah, I want

William Harris 1:07:12

to talk a little bit more about your personal story. Who is Dani Dufresne. You're a founder. You're a mom of two. You're a creative. How do you protect space for yourself?

Dani Dufresne 1:07:24

I think space is a very important word. Um, I That means a ton of things. I think as you get older, as you become a founder, and you're doing more, I remember working for Brian, or working some of my first very like assistant jobs, and being like, he doesn't, he can't make this phone call, or he doesn't know how to, like, book his own trip, or just things that felt so like ridiculous that I would be doing for another person at the time that I completely get now, because there's only so much space in your brain. And when you have a certain goal, or you have a like, a like, this is all I need to focus on right now. Or this is what you know, what I can spend my energy and time on. You have to get rid of that other stuff. That stuff falls away, and that doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make you a forgetful person or anything. It's more of having focus and allowing yourself the space to know what's important and what's not. And I think, you know, a lot of times being Gen, one of, like, Blackberry assistants did not help me in my, like, lack of boundaries when it comes to work, um, and, you know, do you remember being able to leave your desktop at your office and go home?

William Harris 1:08:41

No, because I, like you, I started off with Blackberries too. So, like, it just pretty, like

Dani Dufresne 1:08:46

my second job, I had a Blackberry, and they knew how to use it. And I so you that that is not a good source of your energy, just because, you know, there you can solve the problem in the morning and focus on what you need to focus on now you can do, I think, like being very seeing it as a precious commodity that is limited is, you know, how I kind of think of space and Cree space can't be created with, created without moving something else out of it.

William Harris 1:09:15

Yeah, you talk about what's important in being able to recognize what is it's I think, one of the hardest things for CEOs, as a general rule, to learn, especially if you're a startup CEO. Because, you know, there was a big paper that went around a while about high agency, right? If you're a high agency person, and to a point, a lot of founders are high agency people, we could do, we could do all the things, right? It's like, we're willing to do this and this and this and this, and I will solve it. I will figure out the problem. But to your point, as you continue to mature and you have more people on your team and things like that, there are certain things that it's like, I can do these things, but if I continue to do those things, then I can't do these other things now, because I don't have the time to do the things that are really important. And that's not to the benefit of the rest of your team, to your clients, to everybody

Dani Dufresne 1:09:59

you. There, you need to delegate for the purposes of not only lightening your load so that you have more to focus on those other things, but also to teach if your power doesn't come from being the person that does everything right, that just makes you more vulnerable to people like taking advantage of you, I think that it's more about saying, like, I can do all of these things. I can juggle all the things, right? You're doing all the things that you have one kid, you're like, Okay, I'm still juggling. I'm good. And then I had the second kid, I'm like, I'm using my feet now, I don't really know, keeping all the balls in the air and you're going, but it's because you're just having to, like, let people go. You know what? I don't read my email. I don't read my email if you are, if you are on my team, and if you ask me if I have read your email, I have not read your email. The purpose of having a team is that you tell me what the emails say, because I'm like, you know you're going, you're going, you're going, my time is best. Is not best spent sitting in front of my computer doing this long list of stuff. It's better spent doing this stuff, you know. And I've done all the AI hacks that I can find to try to, like, help. And I think it's finding good people, but at the same time, they only learn by doing all of those things for you and realizing what you know, what the information is, and distilling the information. And I think that it's, you know, with part of that too, is the way that I was saying earlier, with, like, social media and all of the all media being just too much. You know, we're all overloaded totally. The places where I get messages, it's like 16 different applications and things and where pop up messages here that I just stopped. Like it used to be that if you wanted to get a hold of me, You slapped me. And now I feel like even those things are like, you know, I'm treating everything the way I treat like mail in my mailbAux and I just throw it into a pilot. I never look at it, because we are just overloaded. And you have to protect your space sometimes, and I think that's okay. You just have to kind of build the tools to support however it is you want to work, because that's not what CEO brain is anyway. CEO brain is like, I need this done. And like, don't like, here's, here's why. And having that vision, being able to go towards it, and you can't let anything else weigh you down. You don't, you know it's energy can't be created. New energy can't be created. Yeah,

William Harris 1:12:23

yeah. Well, and I think that you even called out too, that you have to have set the right expectations for people too. So set that side of time aside, set the right expectations that way people know, no, I'm not going to check the email. That's not how I'm going to function. I need to save that space and time for this other

Dani Dufresne 1:12:37

thing, and being okay with that, not being realistic, right? Like, sure, between five and eight when I get, you know, on the weekdays, when I get the kids and we're doing dinner and all the stuff, like, there's no reason for me to have my laptop on or be on my phone. It's not life or death. It's not and when you do it because you think it's what someone expects of you, then you're you're also telling them that your time can be wasted and your time isn't valid. Isn't valuable, you know that they can do whatever they want with it. And I think, like that is been a long, hard lesson that I've had to kind of like teach myself, but it it's protective,

William Harris 1:13:17

yeah, what's a quote that you live by

Dani Dufresne 1:13:25

never make any decision out of fear. Why? Because what's the worst that could happen? Like you, you can answer that same question from a fear side, and all you're doing is creating that reality versus creating a positive reality. And I think it's wasted energy in the long run, it's there is no good choice or bad choice. There's luck or no luck, and it doesn't and it's not right or wrong. If something fails because you weren't lucky, it doesn't mean it was wrong choice or a bad choice. It's just the way that it happened. And it doesn't, it doesn't break down to like emotion. And I think fear is an emotion that was created for a certain purpose, but because we're not being chased by animals in the woods anymore, it gets used, you know, in a lot of other ways. And I think you can feel that feeling, you know, and know that it's probably telling you something good too, right? Like, it's scary, because this is an uncomfortable space for me to be in, but I know that, like, Good things come when you go through uncomfortable places. And so it's more of, don't take it from the what's the worst that can happen? Perspective, it's more of you know, what would I would I still buy this thing? If I wasn't worried about money, would I buy would I go on this trip if I wasn't worried about X, Y, Z, like, what would you do if you were not worried about an outcome that will always give you the right answer?

William Harris 1:14:56

I like that. You you talked about even luck playing a role in this, in her. Reminds me of a book called The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. And in it, he talks about this, I think it was a German investor, and he had this massive library of art that was just worth millions and millions and millions of dollars. And they talked about like, Well, how did he How did he invest so well in defining this like, you know, early Picassos, Rembrandts, whatever it's like, just finding all of these really good pieces. And it turns out that he it's not that he was so good at picking the right pieces to buy or the right artists that were gonna he just had so many pieces. Only 1% of his art collection was worth anything. The other 99% was it. It's just the idea that it's like, sometimes luck is kind of to your point. A lot of what we study as people who are successful, it was just making the right decisions over and over and over and over and over again. And eventually one of those ends up working out, and that's when this like, oh, how lucky you are. And it's

Dani Dufresne 1:15:58

like, well or not, abandoning the right decision when it's when you when you don't think it's showing you the the answer soon enough, I think that's, you know, sticking with it in, you know, you often hear, you know, the actor that's like, I wanted to give up, and then now I'm, you know, you know, six in my 60s, and I'm this huge, famous actor like That happens a lot like, it's more about, like, perseverance, that if there's an idea or a, you know, a thought or something that is a fire in you, that, like, you just have the desire to do this, this idea will not die. There's a reason for that, and you can always convince yourself of million reasons why something's not going to work out. And I think when it's younger, when you're younger, it's easier to take risk because you have less, like, less to risk. But at the same time, it's, you know, you only live the one life, so you can make full pivots and changes at any time. And I like that. I think it's, I mean, it's no different than, like, compound interest in investing, right? It's just very much, you know, it doesn't it's, you're not going to look at your account one day and see a huge change, you know, three weeks later. It's about making the same decision and sticking with it all the way through.

William Harris 1:17:14

Something that you have told me, that I believe you have dedicated a significant amount of your brain power towards, is quoting every episode of West Wing that you have a remarkable ability to quote West Wing.

Dani Dufresne 1:17:29

I have seen every episode of The West Wing multiple, multiple times. It's typically something that I want. It's like always in the background at least once or twice a year. It's just sort of like my my warm, cuddly blanket. Um, and now that you say that I'm not going to be able to think of

William Harris 1:17:48

a single quote, I'm not asking you to quote it, yeah, but

Dani Dufresne 1:17:51

like, I just, I love it. I think that, you know, I was very I didn't really get into it when it was first out. I got, I ended up having a friend who neither of us could afford cable, but he had all of the VHS of the West Wing,

William Harris 1:18:08

VHS like not even DVDs, you're saying VHS

Dani Dufresne 1:18:11

tapes, and we would just watch them all. And I now luckily, thank you, HBO, I can very easily watch them all on my, you know, on my TV. But I, I recently was at a friend's house, or a producer that works for me, and she worked for me for like, five years, and she was out of town and let me use her New York apartment. And I was like, looking for something. I think I was looking for coffee filters or something. And I found this, like it was Season Two. It was like, every script from season two of the West Wing in this book. And I was like, How does she not tell me that she has this like, and then my husband was flipping, and I was like, yep. And then I would say, what the next line was, you know, whatever was going to be, because it's just so

William Harris 1:18:51

good. Wow, that's so good. I love that. I love when you find something that you can connect with. It's for me, that's Psych. And so I'm that much of a nerd that I even have the psych phone case for pricing that four times. But Dani , it has been a lot of fun talking to you, learning from you, learning about you, if people wanted to work with you, if they wanted to follow you. What is the best way for them to get in touch?

Dani Dufresne 1:19:16

They can find me on LinkedIn, Dani Dufresne, or they can check out our website at theauxiliaryco.com and you can join our newsletter there as well and be up to date on all of the latest and greatest. But also feel free to email me anytime at dani@theaux.co and I'll give you a ring

William Harris 1:19:33

back. And that is spelled aux aux, just for those who are listening

Dani Dufresne 1:19:38

again, like auxiliary cable, like we just plug right in.

William Harris 1:19:42

I love that. Well, again, it's been very nice talking to you. I appreciate your time. Appreciate your wisdom, sharing that with us today. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you everyone for listening. Have a great rest your day.

Outro 1:19:54

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time and be. Sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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