Kelly speaks to Adam Morgan, Director of Brand Marketing at Twilio, where he leads global brand strategy for one of the world’s most influential developer-first technology companies. His work focuses on making complex infrastructure brands culturally relevant by blending creativity, clarity, and storytelling at scale. He is the author of “Sorry Spock, Emotions Drive Business.”  

Your book on creative ideas came out in 2019, and you wrote in the book, ‘I want to prove that creative ideas work better.’ I wonder if you feel that the advertising and marketing industries have made any progress whatsoever since then? 

“You know, the short answer is no. And I the reason why is that there are a lot of us creative types who train our brains by people watching, reading stories, learning about story arc, just all the things that we fill our heads with that help us be more attuned to creativity and emotions. Emotions predominantly. But I think it’s just this constant flow of folks who go to school or get an MBA and just train their brain to focus on the nuances of numbers and finance and statistics. And so, it’s an endless opportunity, let’s call it, for us to help them see that emotions are not scary, and they’re not bad for business. They’re actually really good for the bottom line.” 

You also write about the rule of three, which is something very elemental in the comedy industry.  

“I’ve pitched many, many, many, many times over the years. There’s something funny about if you pitch too many ideas, like if you get up to like five, six, seven ideas, and normally people would think, that’s great. It can show that you have a lot more flexibility or ideas out there. No, all the ideas die. If you get too high, they’re all dead. And so, I’ve always just kept that mantra: if you can keep around three, maybe a fourth if it’s, you know, a reasonable audience. But almost always when you get too many ideas for the short list, they all die. So, if you try and show your work and be like, look, I came up with a hundred ideas, their brain will melt and they won’t be able to see and understand the nuance and differences, and it’ll just blur together and it’s dead. So that’s the that was the important part of that pitch session, is just keep it to a few simple ideas and that’s it.” 

Like me, you’ve been doing this for a while. How do you keep yourself creative and curious? 

“Often I’ll say on my podcast, ‘If you want to lead, you have to read.’ And so, for me it’s been a matter of reading or going back and taking courses or listening to new podcasts. To me it’s all about can I find those new nuggets of a new idea that really spark me and keep me alive. So that’s kind of how I’ve done it. And also, you know, you’re doing a podcast here, you’re getting exposed to so many different people and ideas. And that’s what it is for me. I’m into year seven of ‘Real Creative Leadership,’ and it’s just meeting creative people in all these different companies and walks of life and their ideas that just thrill me. That’s what keeps me alive.”