So Johnny, let me ask you a first question.

What is your favorite thing about me?

Your glasses.

I was kind of hoping for something less superficial and more substantive.

Second shot, do it.

Your voice? All right, that didn't work at all. By the way,

we're keeping this in the show. Here's a question for you. You go from chief strategy officer at Droga 5, where you created the strategy function. You know, you're an integral part of

drug is being named agency of the decade, lots of agency of the years along the way,

working with some of the biggest brands and businesses in the world. And you shift. And you go into

private equity and you go to Blackstone.

So my question, with a very specific thesis in mind, I want you to share what your thesis was with our audience,

but also help us understand what Blackstone in fact understood about your thesis,

why they thought it was relevant, because as is the premise of the show, not a lot of chief executives of the world's business companies might have gotten that the way they did.

Great. Not a softball first question. Well, you know, there are no softballs here, especially since

you said nice things about my glasses. Well, I think that what Blackstone and I believed was that a brand could be a lever that could be used with greater intentionality to connect to value creation for its portfolio of companies.

And that the definition of brand within the kind of PE backed context was often limited.

So the questions that you, a common misperception of what brand is within that context.

Oh, brand is a logo or the brand is an identity.

Or maybe, oh, brand, that's a website or maybe an advertising element.

So the perception of brand within that context is often quite downstream.

When the thesis was that's a very limited definition of what brand is. Brand is essentially

an idea that can help align and organize an entire company around. and it can act as a blueprint for it to be

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