Today we’re joined by Philip Edsel, a Creative Director with a background spanning across the e-commerce, advertising, professional sports, and tech industries. Edsel has led global ad campaigns from conception to creation, working with brands like Nike, Reebok, Red Bull, MTV, and Filson.

In this podcast episode, Philip talks about his journey to becoming a creative director and the importance of taking risks in the creative industry. We also chat about his work with Austin FC and Ladder, and how he uses Seth Goden’s concept of the "Purple Cow'' to stand out and drive success. 

Guest Bio:

Philip Edsel is an artist first and foremost, regardless of medium: a writer, a musician, a photographer, and a director. His visual work is inspired by classical art, modern design, and potential energy capturing empowered people in motion, across fashion, fitness, and portraiture.

As a creative director, Edsel has led global ad campaigns from conception to creation but is also no stranger to the day-to-day implementation of content. His ultimate goal is to make good art and encourage other artists to do the same.

Social Media

• Edsel’s LinkedIn
• Edsel’s Instagram
• Edsel.works
• edselphoto.com

Additional Resources

• Paul Graham's essay "How to Do Great Work"
• Seth Godin's book "Purple Cow"
• Ladder Fitness App

Related Reading

• https://www.rev.com/blog/media-and-entertainment/how-to-build-a-big-film-audience-with-a-small-team
• https://www.rev.com/blog/media-and-entertainment/accessibility-in-film
• https://www.rev.com/blog/marketing/content-creation-tools 
• https://www.rev.com/blog/subtitles-blog/benefits-of-subtitles-for-trailers

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The Rough Draft is produced by Rev, and releases a new episode every two weeks on Thursday. Subscribe now to stay up to date with the newest episodes, and be sure to check out rev.com/podcasts for more content.

- Matthew McConaughey in his green suit.

- Yeah, exactly, McConaughey

in his green suit.

Well, McConaughey does

what McConaughey wants.

So, you know, y'all have seen

500% growth in 2023.

- One of the things I think you need

as a creative director is confidence.

You are kind of using

that as like, you know,

the front door to getting

to tell more story.

- We have gotten deadly at speaking

the language of our users.

- What would you say was like, probably

your riskiest bet that you made?

- There's really no right or wrong answer.

The challenge is like, did it work?

- I'm Colton Holmes, and today,

I'm your host on The Rough Draft.

In this episode, I sit

down with Philip Edsel,

a creative director with

a background spanning

across e-commerce, advertising,

professional sports and tech industries.

Edsel has led global ad campaigns

from conception to creation,

working with brands like Nike, Reebok,

Red Bull, MTV, and Filson,

just to name a few.

In this episode, we talk about his journey

to becoming a creative director

and the importance of taking risks

in the creative industry.

We also chat specifically about his work

with Austin FC and Ladder and how he uses

Seth Godin's concept of the "Purple Cow"

to stand out and drive success.

All right.

Here's my conversation with Philip Edsel.

(upbeat music)

So your journey to becoming

a creative director

has been an extensive one is maybe,

the term I would use,

between a writing major

in college to a digital marketer

to then a photographer,

commercial photographer,

and then to a director and

now, creative director.

Is that right?

Did I miss anything there?

- I was in a band for around seven years.

- Okay, band, I did miss that one.

- Yeah, I mean, I was

only a Rolling Stone,

no big deal.

- Yeah, okay.

- No, I'm messing with you.

Yeah, I would call it, a

complicated and somewhat

circuitous route to becoming

a creative director.

- Okay.

- But we're here.

- Yeah, yeah.

So I just want to take

a minute and let you

explain what exactly a

creative director is.

I think, you know, people

might have different

definitions of what that is and maybe,

the definition has gotten skewed as like,

I don't know, maybe, as

online media has become

more and more of a thing,

but I'd love for you to take a second

and just define that for us.

- Sure.

Yeah, I think it's just whatever you

wanna put in your Instagram bio.

No, I think it's funny, everyone kind

of claims that title, I

think there's obviously,

a traditional career

path and a traditional

role of creative director,

which is kind of found

generally, in advertising.

But there's a creative

director at Tiffany's,

actually, Tiffany & Co,

I think it's Ruba Lee.

And she had a really great summation of

what a creative director is,

and she described it as a conductor

or, you know, conductor of an orchestra.

The idea is that you're

basically the person

that's sort of overseeing the combination

of a lot of different modalities

and industries and craft and, you know,

seeing a lot of different styles

of creative come together in hopefully,

a cohesive campaign.

So having a background in music and design

and copywriting and photography and video,

all that sort of stuff comes into play

and why the traditional role

of creative director generally takes years

and years to kind of work your way into.

But I kind of found my way kind of

through the back door,

but it feels like a lot

of the marketing roles these days kind of

have broken traditional norms

and are getting there by, you know,

sort of starting as a creative

and then working your way up.

- Yeah, yeah, and I

think that kind of speaks

into what I really wanna chat about today,

which is this idea of

being like a contrarian

in the creative industry.

And whenever you and I got to chat

a couple days ago,

that's where we just kept

going back to is like

being this contrarian

and like the safe bet is the risky bet

whereas like the safe bet is really

the unsafe bet and the risky bet is really

in reality, the safe bet in this industry

and really probably in most cases.

And so I'd love for you

to just kind of chat

about where that idea comes from,

where you got that inspiration.

- Yeah, yeah, we were talking about

"Purple Cow," I think I brought up,

which is an incredible book by Seth Godin.

And that was a book that I read early

on in my marketing career

and really was influential for me.

The premise of the book

is essentially that

we've all seen a million cows.

Cows aren't really that special,

but if you were driving down the road

and you saw a purple cow, you know,

you might stop, you might pull over,

you might want a photo with that cow,

you might wanna buy the cow.

- Yeah.

- And that's like the opening illustration

of the book and the idea is that

as a marketer, creating

products that are different

will always be more beneficial to you.

And thinking about things in a way

that's different will always be more

beneficial to you.

And ultimately, it comes

the idea that, you know,

the playing it safe, the

safe route is actually

a riskier decision in the long run

because there's just less success there.

You end up looking like everyone else.

You end up doing the

same thing as everyone

else and you don't stand out.

Versus taking a risk is actually the safer

bet in a creative field or, you know,

in really any field.

- Yeah.

- Creating a product,

whatever that looks like

because you have the

opportunity to stand out

and to do something

different and to be original.

- What are some some

tactical ways that you

see yourself implementing

that into your work?

Whether that's processes or tools?

- I'll answer that in two ways, maybe,

like the sort of the overarching thing

that I think about and then

like my actual process.

- Yeah.

- I remember years ago, I was driving down

the highway and I

remember having this like

sort of epiphany that

like, you know, when you

graduate from college...

I was in a band for seven years,

I was like a freelance photographer

for seven years, I'm like hustling to like

build a career and it was

like starting to work.

But what I realized was

like doing all these

different things in writing

and music and design

and photography that like,

I just had ideas.

- Yeah.

- Like I can't do math to save my life,

but I can look at a blank piece of paper

and have an idea.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And that is like a

really, really valuable

skill and I kind of had this epiphany

that like, I'm gonna be okay.

Like, I'll be able to make a career

because no matter what I do,

I'm going to be an idea person.

Like, that's sort of my natural setting.

- Yeah.

- And that was like

really encouraging for me

as an artist and I feel like other artists

don't necessarily think about that a lot

of, like, if you can

be an original thinker,

that's an incredibly

valuable skill to have.

'Cause not a lot of people are like that.

- Yeah.

- Even people in marketing,

they think about,

you know, spreadsheets and whatever.

- Yeah.

- But Paul Graham has

a really great article

called, "How To Do Great Work."

And in that he talks

about original thinkers.

And his analogy, I think is

original thinkers are like angle grinders

throwing off sparks.

Like they are people that are doing work

and then as they're doing work,

just like ideas are just kind of popping

into their head and coming.

- Yeah.

- And I love that analogy

and that's how I think

about original thinkers and thinking like,

you know, this purple cow mentality.

In terms of my process,

I'm sure everyone has ideas differently.

I'm sure there are plenty of people that,

you know, just daydream, you know,

and all of a sudden,

like the muse takes over

and, you know, delivers

them some sort of idea.

That's not necessarily my process.

I'm a little bit more type A,

but my process is kind of the combination

of collecting, I remember like throughout

my career as a songwriter,

I would just like write

down little phrases

I thought were cool

words, interesting words,

interesting phrases that I was reading.

Literally, you know, in everything

that I would see, I would

just like write down

in a notebook and I had everywhere.

So when it came time to write,

the thoughts that I was having,

I could like reference

and bring in cool ideas

and sort of like call,

you know, creativity

into something that was original

and unique, like in its own right.

But like had a lot of, you know,

sort of pulled pieces.

And that's how I think about ideas now

is like, I'm constantly

looking for inspiration

and like saving inspiration

and seeing different

things across different

industries that I think are really cool.

Whether that's like, "Oh, that's a really

dope camera angle," or like, "That's

really cool shot," or,

"This is a really cool

effect," or like whatever it is.

And then when it comes

time to do my thing,

I'm pulling in these different ideas

that weren't relevant to

my idea, but you know,

sort of get a new life

or get a breath of fresh air.

And so my process is,

I first and foremost,

like if I really want to have good ideas,

I think creators need time and space

and they don't give themselves that a lot.

We go to look for inspiration first.

We're like, on Instagram,

we're on Pinterest,

we're, you know, doing things instead

of just like allowing ourselves to think.

And so for me that's

like probably number one place is shower,

like white noise, I don't

have a phone near me.

Nothing else is distracting me

and I can just like

actually think about stuff.

- Yeah.

- I also, I do my best work and even like

when I go workout, I have my best workouts

when I listen to one song on repeat

because I kind of forget,

like you find the vibe

and then like I kind of forget

that the song is happening.

- Yeah.

- 'Cause it's just like becomes sort

of pattern.

- Yeah, like a drone

in the background.

- Yeah, exactly, a drone.

And so that really helps me just like kind

of zone out so any sort

of like white noise

or anything that just like allows my brain

to like kind of

shut out everything else

helps me think a lot.

And then from there I'm like,

once I can like have ideas, I'm starting

to pull things that I've like referenced

and it all starts to come together.

And, you know, ideas evolve over time

when you start something, you know,

you don't really have any boundaries.

And then as you try to fit it into a box,

you get more guidelines and then

it evolves and whatever.

But that's kind of how I start.

- Yeah, that's really good.

For me, I picked up

fly fishing in the last

few years and like, just going out.

- Oh, I'm sure that's amazing, yeah.

- Being in a part of, you know, Austin,

that not a lot of people go and just

like sit in the water and, you know-

- Like do the same thing over and over.

- And it just becomes mindless

and your brain gets to start just like

thinking of other things.

- Yeah, in that same

essay from Paul Graham

"How To Do Great Work," he talks about

this idea of indirect thinking.

And two things I think are interesting.

One is like, you can solve problems

by indirect thinking

in ways that you can't

solve it by frontal attack.

- Yeah.

- Like you can try to force yourself

to like solve a problem,

but like that never really goes very well.

- Yeah.

- But if you can find,

you know, an activity

or a space where you can be creative,

like sometimes not

thinking about something,

but kind of thinking about it

is like more effective.

He also mentions though that in order

to be able to do that,

you have to be doing work.

Like your work and the

thoughts about your work

have to be able to feed that

sort of like subconscious.

- Yeah.

- Because if you just like, are like,

"Oh, I'm gonna go daydream," but

- Right.

- you have nothing feeding it.

- Yeah.

- Then there there are no ideas.

- Just shuts down.

- Yeah, it just shuts down.

- Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.

This is a Paul Graham essay.

- Paul Graham, yeah.

I'll link it somewhere.

- Yeah, yeah, we'll put

it in the show notes.

- Cool.

- So you're at Ladder.

And so you were mentioning that, you know,

y'all have seen 500% growth in 2023

and you attributed that to your

short form video strategy

that you implemented.

I'd love to just hear a

little bit about where

that came from and how that is even,

you know, the risky bet among safe bets.

- Yeah, absolutely, it was a risky bet

for a number of reasons.

One is, every big brand

in the world runs ads

or does performance marketing

in traditional, you know,

marketplaces or platforms or just even

on Instagram itself,

like Meta or Facebook.

And we as a startup can't really compete

with their budgets, you know?

- Yeah.

- And so we thought, "Okay, we need

a growth lever,

what's the one that we feel like we can

figure out relatively quickly,

easily, and affordably?"

And TikTok just overwhelmingly was like,

this is the fastest

growing app in the world.

And there aren't a ton of huge brands on

there that are really pursuing it.

Feels like there's a huge opportunity

as somebody with a background in video,

like shooting on an iPhone, editing

on an iPhone is like the easiest thing

in the world for me and I could go from

concept to execution, like immediately.

I think that's one of

the really cool things

about sort of this creator economy

and where social media is now is,

yeah, it doesn't have the production value

of, you know, this

podcast or a lot of things

that you see on TV, but

it just is so immediate and

it's also just very transparent.

Like on TikTok,

the more you try to use

fancy marketing language

or like good copywriting,

the worse your content performs

and the more you just speak like a human,

the better your content performs.

Like our CEO in particular

like literally read

through thousands and thousands

and thousands of app store reviews.

And this is before like,

you could just plug this

into ChatGPT and like

it would've just told you all this stuff.

Which, like, that would've

been really helpful.

But he pulled out keywords and then

he organized all the reviews by themes

and then like, we would look at what words

were they using most

frequently and whatever.

And so like we have

gotten deadly at speaking

the language of our users

and basically speaking

the same language back to them.

So like, they don't need to do any

translating in their head of like,

"Oh, this is the marketing speak

that you guys are using, maybe,

this would be good for X, Y, Z."

It's like, literally

we're just saying things

like, you know, people

would say on TikTok.

And so that was just like really, really

effective at communicating

with our audience.

But again, that's not base setting

for how people think about marketing.

They think about let's

do some big brand shoot,

let's run ads on Facebook

or TV or whatever,

and let's like, have a copywriter write

like a really cool script, you know,

instead of like, "Hey, let's shoot this

on the iPhone, let's use a creator,

somebody that's at the gym and like,

let's just use the words

that they would use."

- Yeah, what are like

maybe some experimenting

that y'all did as y'all were, you know,

generating this new

team and this idea as it

was formulating maybe some things

that y'all took some

bets on that didn't work,

but maybe, led you to a bet that did work?

Like what was some iteration

and experiments that y'all did?

- Yeah, I mean, we started everything with

like, okay, we wanna be experts at this.

We wanna learn.

- Yeah.

So there at the time

there were like maybe,

two people that had sort

of courses on TikTok,

and we were like, "All right,

we feel like they're experts, we'll try

to learn as much as we can."

We also, we're doing it ourselves,

like just trying to

figure it out as we went.

And on the creative

side, we had a coach that

wasn't on TikTok, but

she was like explosive

on Instagram and she

was a CrossFit athlete.

She was just like the perfect demo

to be on TikTok and she was like,

"Yeah, you can take all my content

and just like do whatever

you want with there.

I don't have time to

build a TikTok audience,

but I would love for you to do it."

And I was like, "Perfect, I would love

to just like test this."

- Yeah.

- So started testing it,

and I think like within

a month or maybe, three

months, she had like

a few hundred thousand followers.

- So you took her stuff from Instagram

and created an account for her on TikTok-

- Created an account for her

as like she's posting it.

But like, I was handling all the content.

Basically just like creating off ideas,

I saw we're working on the platform

and it was like the

perfect opportunity to test

the theory.

- Yeah.

- And it was just like

immediately explosive.

Like, I remember the

first time we had a post

that was just like going crazy viral,

Greg, the CEO and I were just texting

each other like, "Are you seeing this?

Like, this is insane.

Like I just refreshed and it was like

10,000 more views."

And that's the crazy thing

about those platforms

and what feels like some

of the last arbitrage...

or at least like right now where we are

in culture and society and tech

and social media, like

the arbitrage right now

is like virality.

- Yeah.

- Because you can get such outsized,

you know, attention and views on things

that you don't have to pay for,

if you can get it to go viral.

- Yeah, huge ROI.

- Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, huge ROI, 'cause you probably spent,

you know, whatever, 10

minutes on this iPhone

video that's now blowing up.

- Right.

- So that was really exciting to us.

And proving the concept was really huge.

And we quickly realized that as a brand

to work on TikTok, like brands don't work

on TikTok because you don't like know

the audience is on

TikTok to follow brands.

Like generally, brands

have gotten a lot better

at it, but like at least two years ago,

no one wants to follow brand,

they wanna follow people

and personalities.

- Yeah.

- And so we quickly realized

like we need a face for this account.

It's definitely not me,

but we need to hire a creator

that can be the face of Ladder on TikTok.

- Yeah.

- And that was enormously

successful for us.

And then we were like, "Okay,

how do we scale that?

How do we get more creators?

How do we engage more audiences?"

And that sort of thing.

So we just kinda grew from there.

- And I mean, you and

I were chatting about

this a little bit before we started

about how you are kind of using that

as like you know, the

front door to getting

to tell more story.

- Yeah.

- Like as a storyteller.

- Sure.

- Like what does that look like?

- Yeah, I think that's a great question.

Just to quickly, not to harp on TikTok

the whole time, but like,

the reason it's the fastest growing app

in the world, or at least

was, it may still be,

is because of its discovery algorithm.

It was unlike anything

that had ever existed

before, Instagram Reels

have now like obviously,

ripped it off and are trying to do

the same thing, but there

was no other platform

that took your content and immediately

put in front of new people.

And then if it like got some sort

of engagement or met some sort of metric,

who knows what that is, it would put

in front of more new people.

- Yeah.

- So the opportunity then

wasn't to speak to your followers.

Like on Instagram, you

would post something

and it would go to some small percentage

of your increasingly small percentage

of your followers.

- Yeah.

- TikTok is like, I'm gonna show this

to brand new people,

and then if that works, we will show it

to a wider audience of brand new people.

- Yeah.

- So it's just a billboard.

It's like constantly just getting

in front of new people.

- Yeah.

- So the equation there is like,

how can I make the best billboard?

It's not like, how can

I tell the best story

about my brand or like really try to,

you know, communicate all these insane

product features that

we've built into the app

that no other app has.

Like, that's cool, but like,

that's not a good billboard.

- Yeah.

- And so we were like, "Okay,

what gets the most attention?"

What's the best billboard

that we can then pull them into the app?

And then like thankfully,

we have a product

that's unbelievable, that has incredible

retention that people are obsessed with.

So it's not like we're selling them on

some bill of goods.

It's like we're actually getting them

into a product that is like unbelievable.

And then from there we can

tell a different story.

So we did a campaign

last month or maybe,

a month and a half ago

called, "The Process is the Point,"

and we flew all over the

country in four days.

We went from coast to coast

documenting five

different members all over

the country that are avid Ladder users

on different teams with different coaches,

different training styles

and different personas.

One was a single mom,

one is a police officer

who is like one of the only active police

officers that has had a kidney transplant.

One is a survivor of Hodgkin's lymphoma.

And then, you know, we had an amputee

that is on a bodybuilding team in Dallas.

And like we just went all over the country

to document these people.

And I had this script

written that was like,

again, not a great billboard for TikTok,

but was a very inspiring,

motivating script

about why do we do this every day?

Like, why do we show up every day?

And like, why would you just check the box

on today when you know

the clock just starts over on tomorrow?

Like you gotta do it all

over again, you know.

And the whole thing obviously comes down

to the idea that like

the process is the point.

That's why we do it.

- Unless you don't have to do it tomorrow,

you get to do it tomorrow.

Unless you were never doing it just

to check the box.

You are doing it for your kids,

for your confidence,

for the moment you get to say,

I showed up today.

And the exhaustion, the sweat,

the hassle,

those are all bags of honor, baby.

Those are all part of the plan

and the process

is

the point.

- (indistinct).

- And we released this campaign

and like for the first time ever,

we saw, if you read the

comments on those posts,

like the members are in

the comments being like,

"I feel so seen, like this is exactly

why I do Ladder."

Like, "This is exactly why I show up."

Like, "This is exactly

why I fit my workout

in after I put my kids to bed,"

and all this other stuff.

And it was just like it was speaking

to the exact user of Ladder, you know,

and it was like so spot on to

their motivation.

And so it's not something that we would

necessarily use for performance

or like acquisition on the brand side,

but it's one of those brand affinity

plays that like creates

so much just like loyalty and buy-in.

And so that's the

opportunity to tell a story.

And like the cool thing is, is all

of our teams have team chats where

they're all talking.

We have a Ladder announcements channel,

which goes to all, you know,

a hundred thousand members on Ladder.

We sent that video out in that campaign

to all those members.

We sent it in all the team chats

and like the conversations

that were happening

around that were just incredible.

So those are the type of stories

and opportunities we can tell,

but we can't tell those stories

until they've gotten into the app

and experienced it.

- Yeah, yeah.

So as creative director and thinking about

all of your experience of, you know,

writer, musician,

photographer, director, all of those

and all of those things,

like how do you think

that's contributed to your success

and how you've been able to take this risk

and maybe, even how your CEO like trusted

you to take this risk and how it's become

fruitful for you guys?

- One of the things I think you need

as a creative director is confidence.

And, you know, as a

creative, you don't always

have it or, you know,

you maybe feel like a little bit

of imposter syndrome or whatever it is.

I feel like you know, my personality type,

you know, I've had a decent

amount of confidence,

but in creative director roles, especially

with when I was at Austin FC

and we were doing things like stadium

signage and billboards

and all these random

mediums that I'd never done before.

- Yeah.

- You have to be able to make decisions

that there's really no correct answer to.

Like, you have to, you know,

to be able to explain why you made

those decisions, especially to, you know,

higher up or executives or whatever,

but there's really no

right or wrong answer.

The challenge is like, did it work?

You know, and so as a creative

and a creative director,

especially thinking about campaigns that

take decent budgets and you know,

a long amount of time to plan,

you have to feel pretty confident

in the decisions that you're making.

And it's just experience,

like having experience

as a musician and

as a writer and a photographer,

and working on just so many different,

you know, vast array of projects

over, you know, 10 plus years, 15 years,

just gives you more

confidence when you have

to make a decision in a field

or a project that you

have never done before

or been in before that

it's the right decision.

So I at least, have something to go off of

or a reasoning behind why I make those

decisions creatively.

- Yeah.

- Even if they're sort of

in, you know, gray space.

- Yeah.

I mean, as a creative director, you kinda

have to have a holistic view of

all of those mediums, right?

And even thinking about Austin FC,

whenever you got to, you know,

develop that brand and help, you know,

push the creative there, which I get

to see all the time going to the games.

Like it seems like that

might be this picture

of this culminating,

you know, career journey

that you've had and I

feel like you probably

got to pull a little bit from each

one of those experiences of photography,

of, you know, music, of writing,

like all kind of

culminating into this one.

- Definitely, yeah, that was

definitely the biggest challenge so far

because it was across every medium

and it was honestly the most analog

like creative role I've ever had because-

- And also, building a brand that is like

trying to tap into the creativity

of the Austin culture too, right?

- Yeah.

- It's like twofold, right?

- Yeah, and getting seen by 20,000 people

and, you know, physically

every single week

in a stadium, you know, it's like,

it's gotta live up

- Yeah.

- to more than just

like an Instagram post.

- Right.

- So that was definitely a challenge

and it was really cool.

It definitely was the culmination in a lot

of ways, but also, it

was a lot of new stuff.

You know, like I had never done

stadium signage or, you know, I had done

like some in-store display stuff

with a menswear brand

that I was a creative

director for and founder of before that.

But just like, it takes

it all to a whole new

level when you're...

We're gonna design a van

and we're gonna wrap it and it's gonna

be a live activation that drives

around Austin, it's called the Verde Van,

and like, what is it gonna look like?

What kind of van is it?

You know, like what does

the experience feel like?

- Yeah.

- Like that's a whole nother medium,

if you have like a

graphic design background

or a photographer background, you know.

- Yeah.

- So a lot of it was new,

but a lot of it was, you know,

really, really eyeopening.

So definitely a great experience.

- Going back to this whole theme

of like the Purple Cw

and taking risky bets,

like how did you approach that with that

mindset and how did that

lead to success there?

- Yeah, I think Austin FC

was a really interesting

project and challenge because first

and foremost, it's Austin's first ever

professional sports team.

You know, it was the newest MLS team

in the league that year,

and there really wasn't a city that was

that similar to Austin that had launched

an MLS team.

- Yeah.

- And Austin as a city is so unique.

You know, obviously, the slogan

for the city is, "Keep Austin Weird."

And so we were trying to create a team

and a brand that represented the culture.

Like that's what every sports team,

good sports team is trying to do,

it's like how do we reflect the ethos

and personality of the

people that we represent?

- Yeah.

- If you watch Rexim,

this is like something

they're awesome at.

- Yeah.

- But like that's what

every team is trying to do.

And Austin being just

such a like unique city

with such like a cultural

history of live music

and just like analog arts.

- Yeah.

- We had to like, build

that into everything

that we did, and that was

at the macro-level of like how we thought

about our activations and our slogans

and the songs that the

supporters are singing

and the rituals that happened in the game,

like the heartbeat of

Austin hitting the drum

and like all that stuff we thought about.

- And then fact, McConaughey

in his green suit.

- Yeah, exactly, there's McConaughey

in his green suit.

Well, McConaughey does

what McConaughey wants.

But also, is a great representative

and ambassador for the city.

But even on the micro-level too,

down to the very detailed like minutia of,

okay, from a design perspective,

everything we design is gonna have some

sort of analog texture.

So we're never gonna put something

on a black background.

It's gonna have like a little bit

of a grungy gritty paper texture.

Our type isn't gonna be clean type,

it's gonna be stamped

or have a little bit of a graffiti effect.

You know, our photos aren't

gonna be super clean,

you know, fast photography from the world

that I come from, it's

gonna have a little bit

of a filmy effect.

- Yeah.

- You know, it's gonna be feel a little

more analog so that sort of ethos really

permeated everything we did as a club.

And, you know, they've evolved that

and it's still built into the culture

of everything that they do.

The one interesting

challenge that I'll talk

about with Austin FC was,

when you build a brand, generally you work

with a design agency

and they give you like

your brand guidelines.

The Butler Bros in Austin did Austin FCs

original design guidelines.

They did an unbelievable job.

I wasn't a part of that

process, but I came

in like right before the team.

Like the stadium was just basically

a pit of sand, and it

was like in the middle

of COVID, but basically,

all I had to go off

of was like a PDF, which like, again,

they did an awesome job with,

but the problem with a PDF is like,

it covers three use cases of, you know,

thousands of use cases.

Like as a design agency,

you're never thinking

about like, okay, if you guys ever do...

And you just can't, you can't plan

for like when you guys do, you know,

a wrap in the stadium on a wall,

like what's that gonna

look like, you know?

So the challenge is creative director

for a brand new team

trying to do something

really ambitious in the league

and in professional sports, it was like,

okay, how do I take this

PDF and now translate

it into like, literally everything

that we do, all of our

social assets and game,

you know, all of the little LED screens,

you see that line the

field, like how does that,

you know, get translated, even like

the live score bugs on like live broadcast

where they just shows like, you know,

one to zero or whatever.

We even had like little collage effects

happening in those score bugs too.

So we probably took it maybe, too far

and just spent way too much time thinking

about all this stuff.

But like that's the type of stuff

and the type of detail that really gives

like a brand, you know, an ethos

and cohesiveness too.

- Yeah, yeah.

Well, I think you did an incredible job

and it's fun to see it

- Thank you.

- every week.

What would you say was like probably

your riskiest bet that you made

like in that context that, you know,

had a really big payoff

that you were maybe,

surprised by or most proud of?

- Yeah, I think for me the riskiest bet

was actually entering the world

of creative director.

I had worked for myself for,

you know, over a decade.

- Yeah.

- I was in a band, I was, you know,

a photographer and director running

my own business.

And when I got into

photography, I thought like,

down the road creative director could be

a pretty cool role.

- Yeah.

- I have a pretty, you

know, wide background

of skills and mediums that I've worked in,

but the idea of like going to an office

every day to working for, you know,

like in a corporate structure

and working for, you know, a brand

felt like a pretty risky step just

because like I wasn't in

charge of all the shots.

And especially in pro sports too,

where like I had never been in pro sports,

didn't really know

like, you know, what all

that entailed and how intense that was

and how quick things have to turn around

and, you know, everything

that comes along with it.

But I was like, when else am I gonna get

an opportunity to be a creative director

for a pro sports team in a city

that I'm born and raised in

- Yeah.

- that I like know inside and out.

- Right, yeah.

- And so that was just like, I knew

it was a risk, but it was definitely,

you know, an unbelievable experience.

- Yeah, it's an interesting like,

perspective on this idea that we've been

talking about of like for

your work to stand out,

it needs to be different, but also,

for you to grow and to stand out,

you need to also be pushed to being

different too.

- Yeah.

- And so it's kind of like for me also,

like that's when I've grown

the most as a creative and more even just

like and my character grows like so many.

- Sure.

- There's so much growth

and maturity that comes along with doing

something new that pushes

you outside of safety.

- Yeah.

- Outside of, you know,

like this safe bet that, you know,

just pays dividends on-

- 100%, yeah, the idea of the Purple Cow

is obviously very applicable in art

and in product, like creating things,

but also in your career, in your life,

like pushing towards

like what excites you, what interests you,

and like trying to find sort of new

frontiers or like gaps.

That's again, another

thing that Paul Graham

talks about, I keep coming back to this

because it's like so dense and so good,

but like trying to find those gaps

and like being willing to like move

into those gaps knowing

that you don't know.

You know, what you don't know

and you don't know much, but like

you're willing to take a chance

has like always been so valuable

and fruitful for me.

- Yeah, yeah.

That's good.

Well, Edsel, thank you for coming

on the show today, it's been a pleasure

to get to chat with you.

For those who have been listening,

how can they connect with you online

or find your work?

- Yeah.

You can find me on Instagram at Edsel,

E-D-S-E-L, I don't really like,

have anything I'm pushing at the moment.

For five years, I did a daily

sort of like little...

This is actually inspired by Seth Godin

as well, who does the same thing.

He does like a daily newsletter.

It was like a short form commentary

on being a creative or social media

or just you know, working for yourself

as a freelancer.

I've taken a break from that.

I'm hoping one day I'll

write a book on that,

but for now, you can

just find me on Instagram

and definitely, you

know, check out Ladder.

It's the best product I've ever worked on

and the best brand I've ever worked for.

And so really excited about it.

- Awesome.

- Yeah.

- We'll put all that

in the show notes too.

- Cool.

- Edsel, thanks again.

- Yeah, thanks for having me, man.

And thank you for the purple light

to match the theme of the episode.

- Yeah, that's right.

I didn't even think of it.

- Cheers.

- Well, that's it for season one

of The Rough Draft.

We hope you've enjoyed getting a peek

into the creative minds of our guests

as much as we have.

We'll be back soon for season two,

but in the meantime, head over

to rev.com/podcasts to catch up on any

episodes you've missed

or to find resources

mentioned in any of our episodes.

Thank you for joining

us and we look forward

to seeing you again on the next season

of The Rough Draft.