Myles Pollard’s Most Valuable Perspective
MVP Episode 5 | A podcast by State of Social & Dear Storyteller
In this week’s episode of MVP, Aussie actor and director Myles Pollard joins Dear Storyteller GM Mike Drysdale for an exploration into the ideas he shared at State of Social. They discuss the parallels between the marketing and acting disciplines, focusing on the way we might be able to communicate more effectively by learning how to feel comfortable in uncomfortable situations.
The McLeod’s Daughters star goes on to explain his belief that humans gravitate towards fallibility, and mistakes can be endearing depending on how you react to them. He brings this point home with a story about ‘the one that got away’; an audition for Lord of The Rings. He then delivers his own quasi-tourism pitch for Western Australia, revealing his beguiling ability to communicate in a powerful and persuasive way.
Finally, Mike discovers some fascinating insights during the quickfire question round, uncovering Myles’s admiration for Barack Obama’s public speaking, the way he forged his path within the communication space, and his love of the classic Swatch.This episode reveals the unique understanding Myles has for both the acting and marketing worlds, and highlights the way public speaking skills can be used to cut through the noise and communicate a message quickly and effectively.
Read the transcript below or click to listen on your preferred streaming service.
Mike:
Hello and welcome to MVP, The Marketer’s Most Valuable Perspective, a podcast by Dear Storyteller and State of Social. We are recording live at Optus Stadium. You can see it in the background. I do that every episode. You’re probably tired of it by now, but there we go. It’s a special one, State of Social 2022. We are about to – for the next 20 minutes – dive into the most valuable perspectives of none other than the one and only Mr. Myles Pollard. It’s not every day that I get to speak to a movie star and an Aussie icon, so thank you for being here, Myles. Welcome to the show.
Myles Pollard:
Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it.
Mike Drysdale:
You are about to speak about persuasion to the State of Social attendees today, something I know from personal experience is so tantamount to everything that happens in business and marketing. And Myles, I’m about to drop a bomb on you. As someone with an acting background myself, who then gravitated towards marketing, I’m personally fascinated by how you found yourself here; teaching these specific skills to this particular audience. Could you tell us a bit of the background about that?
Myles Pollard:
Yeah, for sure. It’s something you are familiar with as well, as a performer, as an artist, as an actor. There’s a lot of crossover skills. You find yourself as an actor selling a project on radio, on television. You might find yourself on The Morning Show or the Today show at six in the morning. A cup of coffee often isn’t enough. Breakfast radio’s really fast – lots of really strong expectations in terms of what you’re expected to deliver in terms of messaging, marketing for the show you’re in, for the play you’re in, for the film you’re in. But at the same time, you’ve got this heightened environment.
Breakfast radio is the hardest, because there’s an expectation that you have to be funny and entertaining as well. They’re speaking and they’re entertaining the whole time, and you are having to find the opportunistic moment to slip in with some of the information that you need to deliver. So I think that side of the industry is a university degree performance, really. I can see where the crossover is in this marketing communication space. People have limited attention spans, minimal time, and there’s a lot of competition in terms of what’s being sold. So you’ve got to break through. You’ve got to cut through. And I think actors are pretty good at consolidating messages and connecting with messages authentically and quickly.
Mike Drysdale:
Yes. Finding a way to drop it and make it real for you. I guess the lingo in the acting world would be substitution. If you don’t personally connect to a message, you find a way to bring it to something more personal in your life.
Myles Pollard:
That’s it – and it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to be passionate. Especially in this day and age where everything’s so micromanaged, it’s so polished. You were talking before about finding concepts and ideas in the marketing world that don’t look like marketing – they don’t look like an advert – because people have cottoned on. People are saturated with information, so the skillset of being able to consolidate a message quickly and authentically is very powerful. Powerful in politics too.
Mike Drysdale:
Absolutely. Well, I think what you’re saying a little bit is that you were indoctrinated into the world of marketing through acting because of that need to promote your work, get things off the ground, hustle, be on radio, and things like that. What about indoctrinating marketers into the world of acting? How has that gone so far for you? What are some of your key thoughts, feelings, and philosophies around that heading into a talk like today?
Myles Pollard:
Well, I think the starting point is, there are a few fallacies out there that performers and actors are really confident; and we’re not. Archetypically, we’re quite shy, we’re reflective, we’re emotionally reactive. We get triggered easily. We’re encouraged to do that, so we’re shy archetypically. So for me, sitting down here with you with a microphone in front of me and two cameras, that’s not a comfortable situation.
What I’m trying to help marketers with, is the idea that it’s okay to be uncomfortable. It’s okay to find this environment uncomfortable. How do you become comfortable in that uncomfortable environment so that you can deliver messages really confidently and clearly and influence people? And there’s a whole process – just a technical process, it’s not too abstract or bohemian – it’s actually quite scientific, to be able to get yourself into a comfortable position so that you can perform in that moment. That’s what I want to try and impart to some of these marketing people.
Mike Drysdale:
I love that. Adam Ferrier had a point yesterday when he was talking – a marketer from Thinkerbell over in the East Coast. He said, and he says this in his book, that weakness is often a better tool for positioning your business than strength; because if somebody is perfect and capable and just consistent the entire way through it, with no chinks in the armour, they can come across as kind of cold and unapproachable. Whereas if you have a mistake, it can actually make you more likeable in a way.
Myles Pollard:
Completely. Fallibility is human, and no one cares if you make a mistake, if you don’t care. But what we tend to do habitually is the brain, inner monologue, the way we think, you’ve got an inner monologue going on at the moment. It’s like, who’s coming up next? How much battery time have I got in the cameras? When’s my session? We’re thinking the whole time. But sometimes that inner monologue can self-sabotage – you can become crippled by some of these negative feelings. So if you feel you made a mistake, what people tend to do – the layman at least – is showcase that mistake, put up a few red flags, either physically or emotionally, to tell the audience that you made a mistake and that you’re apologetic. But in the acting world, we learn very quickly to filter; to be able to not show some of that so that you can continue with your messaging. People still see the fallibility, they see the mistake, they see you stutter, they see you searching for the next idea, the whole bit.
Mike Drysdale:
Sometimes it’s that ability to make it ‘part of it’; make the mistake part of the world. Last year here at State of Social Workshop, there was a slide that I presented on worldview where before we dubbed the presentation, Clare Reid and I had sat down and she’d said, “You need to take out a lot of this text. You know it. You don’t need it up there. Don’t read it.”
Took out all the text on this slide, and we got to it and I just blanked. And I was like, “Huh, that’s fine. Don’t worry, we’ll come back to it.” We came back to it at the end. Nobody was talking about the worldview slide. It was fine. They had a great time.
Myles Pollard:
The world will keep turning, and people can relate to it, because it reminds them of their own humanness.
Mike Drysdale:
Myles, you’ve been described in the past as someone who brings an incredibly positive energy with them into a room. I’ve no idea if that’s something that you feel like you’ve learned how to teach; but that idea of presence and that idea of energy, I feel is incredibly important when it becomes to building relationships with other humans quickly, which is so much of what I believe persuasion is about. Are there any conscious ways in which you’ve been able to train yourself to control the energy that you bring into a room?
Myles Pollard:
Yeah, I think so. For someone like me, who for most of my life, I wasn’t as open minded – and, I don’t know, selfless – as I’d like to have been, I think the skills of being able to take your attention off yourself and actually be really interested in what people have to say, have the capability to actively listen, find it interesting and not be concerned with what you are not doing has taken me quite a long time to develop. But as soon as I’ve learned that, it’s really powerful; especially for someone like me. I’m quite shy, archetypically. I’m quite reserved and reflective.
Being able to technically observe and look for changes – and I learned this as a filmmaker in the editing process – you watch how they cut a film together, or a TV show or an advertising campaign, it’s on the changes. It’s not on the constant. It’s when someone reacts or someone shifts; it’s the pivot that’s interesting. So for me, and I’ll be talking about this in my workshop today; if you observe changes in people – like you smiled, you nodded, and your behavior’s changing, now you’re feeling a little self-conscious – now you went to your thing, so I’m now not thinking of me. I’m thinking of you.
Mike Drysdale:
He’s good. Ladies and gentlemen, he’s good.
Myles Pollard:
And that’s it. It’s a really simple tactic, but it’s a tactic, not just in terms of being able to engage people or you called it presence, but it’s about helping you stay present and stay connected with what’s happening in the moment. Because it’s in the moment – that’s where the gold happens. I’m getting shivers now thinking about it, because I know intrinsically that it’s the mistakes – the things that you can’t predict that happen in the moment – that are exciting, not just creatively or imaginatively or socially, politically. It’s the unattainable, it’s the chaos, that’s interesting.
Mike Drysdale:
That’s so fascinating. I remember this story back in drama school where they talked about this sort of horrible rendition of the Scottish Play. We’re not in a theatre, so Macbeth is being rehearsed and all of the performances were so canned. And then all of a sudden in the middle of this rehearsal, the actor playing Macbeth froze and then went, “Fuck!” And everyone looked around. The director said, “That was the most interesting thing that happened today, because you were really in the moment. There were real stakes.” I think that idea of turning your attention off of yourself and onto somebody else – being in the here and now, not worrying about the future, not worrying about the past – is so important to communication. I think you’re right on.
Myles Pollard:
Thanks, Mike.
Mike Drysdale:
Awesome. I’m going to ask two more questions specific to you, and then we’re going to jump into our quick-fire questions. Perth has a pretty good pedigree when it comes to producing talented actors, and obviously your contribution to that is no exception; McLeod’s Daughters, X-Men, Looking for Grace, Jasper Jones. You’re a Perthian who has spread his wings, got out, seen the world, and then you’ve come back. I was just wondering if you could share with us a little bit about our home, what you love about it, and why you came back.
Myles Pollard:
Yeah, sure. Born and bred in WA, born in Perth, lived up in the northwest; towns like Karratha, Port Hedland, Onslow, Wyndham, little town called Miling. Son of two teachers. There’s something about the landscape and the geography that shapes you. It’s Darwinism – you become your landscape, almost. And we are such a big state, such a beautiful state, and such a raw state, rugged and unpolished. It’s dangerous but it’s beautiful at the same time. I think historically Western Australians had to leave home to go and see the world. It’s a long way to go. At least at the start of my career, you needed to travel to Melbourne or to Sydney to start a career.
So there’s something inherent about our adventurous spirit; our need to cross the Nullarbor, to go and see the world and to make something of us. I think I love that. I love this state. I think it’s so irreverent. I think that’s a really big part of my nature. It’s just knockabout; I don’t think it tolerates fools as much as many other places do in the world. I’ve got a brother I love dearly – he’s coming over actually with his family in September – and he’s lived in New York and California and all over the world, and it’s just a different vibe. Different places have different cultural fabrics, and Perth is unique in that sense, whether it’s a big country town, whether it lacks a little bit of sophistication, I don’t know. But I know one thing, it’s real.
Mike Drysdale:
I love that. Tourism WA, if you’re listening, next campaign, lock it in.
Myles Pollard:
It sounded like a campaign, didn’t it?
Mike Drysdale:
No, it was eloquent. You talked about actors being able to distil ideas into a nice microcosm. That was beautiful. Okay, my last question before we jump into the quick-fires. Myles, I’m not going to lie, this is a little bit of a stitch-up.
Myles Pollard:
Okay, here we go. Look out.
Mike Drysdale:
But I know you’ve just spoken about irreverence, and you’re a pretty good-natured guy, so I was wondering if you could tell us the story of the audition for Lord of the Rings.
Myles Pollard:
Oh God, that is something. Oh no.
Mike Drysdale:
How close you got, and if that moment sticks with you, and if you learnt anything from it.
Myles Pollard:
Oh Lord, I have this conversation with my wife all the time. I’m going to write a book, my memoirs. Chapter one will be on coming second. It’ll be the one that got away. But look, you live and learn by your mistakes. I auditioned for Faramir, actually, which was cast by David Wenham, and I didn’t know much about it, but I did a great audition. Went off and did some work with Bell Shakespeare, travelling around touring Australia, doing an Indigenous version of Romeo and Juliet – Indigenous family, white family – feeling pretty cocky when I got out of NIDA. I was pretty confident, pretty narcissistic, pretty egocentric. All of it just felt the world was my oyster, and it was it inevitable that I would be off to Hollywood; all these sorts of thoughts.
I get a callback, so they fly me back to Sydney, and I’ve got this in the bag. I’m born for this. I’m ready for this, and I knew I did a great job. There was no question I’d done a great job. And then Peter Jackson was sitting there at the counter, at the desk in the casting office with his wife Fran, these auteurs, writers, directors, producers, having created one of the most mythic, powerful stories of our generation. And the casting agent there as well. I think it was a producer there as well. And the first thing he said to me was, “Myles, so what do you think of the books?” And I went, “Oh, I haven’t read them, mate. But look, man, I get the gig, for sure I’ll give them a crack, have a read. But I’d love to be in the project.” And I watched him just go white and look down, and I could almost see him putting a red line through my name.
And that was a very, very big lesson for me; which was ‘get out of yourself’. It took me a decade, as soon as I started filmmaking myself and started writing, directing, creating, and producing, to see the scale of these productions and what it means to someone and why they’re investing so much time. Then you want to walk in there as the actor and go, “I’ve read all three books. It’s incredible the story you’re telling. It’s an allegory. It’s going to change the way people think. It’s historic. It’s mythic.” And really prove to that person that you should be a part of this journey.
Mike Drysdale:
It’s such an incredible story, and it’s a lesson that I think a lot of actors learn. And now working with Dear Storyteller, working with the agency that I’ve worked with and doing so much stuff behind the scenes, the thing that just more and more I understood as I was on sets and then behind the camera on sets, is that every single person cares about their job just as much as you care about yours. I think so often the actors sort of think that the buck lasts with them. I just remember being on one particular set with a DoP in Sydney, where he clearly just did not care about the actors whatsoever. He was just trying to get the shot.
Myles Pollard:
That’s right.
Mike Drysdale:
It was like, that’s what it is. We all have a part to play, and I think that’s what’s special about it.
Myles Pollard:
Absolutely.
Mike Drysdale:
Thank you for sharing that with us.
Myles Pollard:
Oh, you’re welcome.
Mike Drysdale:
That was awesome. It’s an awesome story.
Myles Pollard:
There’s a few of those, trust me.
Mike Drysdale:
All right, some quick-fire questions to wrap things up. Where do you go to learn about – I’m going to open this up – business, marketing, communication, or persuasion?
Myles Pollard:
I wish I had a more sophisticated answer, but Dr. Google, pretty much. Yeah. I remember when COVID first hit and a lot of my corporate training work, and even a lot of the workshops that I run, was outsourced through the admin, and the world changed and I decided to do it myself. So I had to learn how to use Mailchimp. I had to learn how to use WordPress, databases, spreadsheets, and things like that that actors don’t know anything about. It was just self-discovery. It was getting online, it was doing workshops, it was researching, and it was trial and error. It was laborious; it was hard.
Mike Drysdale:
Any teachers that made it easy over the course or any standout resources?
Myles Pollard:
Not really. No, I feel like I’ve sort of just-
Mike Drysdale:
On that grind.
Myles Pollard:
Yeah. Gathered it intermittently. It’s something I’d like to do more of – get into that space and do some more specific learning.
Mike Drysdale:
We’ll sort you out.
Myles Pollard:
Yeah, sort me out.
Mike Drysdale:
What’s a small brand you love, and why?
Myles Pollard:
Oh, it’s not a small brand, but I love it, Kathmandu. Why? Because I just think they nail their story. I don’t know. Am I allowed to talk about them?
Mike Drysdale:
Sure, why not?
Myles Pollard:
Yeah? For me, it’s also my story. I like the adventurousness of it. I like, at least in the story of their brand, the authenticity, the durability. I like things that last. I like things that have been created to last the test of time. Yeah, I just think there’s a real adventurous spirit to that company and to that brand.
Mike Drysdale:
I love that. If you could spend four hours with any speaker, communicator, or creator in the world, who would you choose, and why? Doesn’t have to be for all time; it can just be for today.
Myles Pollard:
I’d like to speak with Barack Obama. Yeah, as a communicator, he’s incredible; really amazing. I can’t even imagine the stakes of standing there at the UN and talking in front of a hundred cameras being beamed out to a billion people, the geopolitical consequences of a speech. But the way he delivers information, the way he sits in the pause and the poise of that to breathe and to think, and the way in which he changes his range in terms of his pitch and his pace, these are all technical things. It’s just so engaging.
Mike Drysdale:
No, it’s masterful. You’re right.
Myles Pollard:
It really is. And he seems to have a really – I don’t know – some sort of moral backbone going on as well. So yeah, Barack Obama would be interesting.
If you haven’t ever had a chance to see it, the Democratic Conference in 2004, before he was even announced as running for president, that speech where he says, “There is no blue America, there is no red America, there is the United States of America,” it’s one of the best speeches I’ve ever seen in my life. He does everything that you’re talking about there, and the other thing that I love about Barack’s style is the way that he weaves his story into a larger narrative as well. Amazing.
Myles Pollard:
Brilliant, brilliant.
Mike Drysdale:
Okay, last couple of questions. I’m going to go with this one. Is there an emerging customer behaviour that you think will be highly influential over the next decade? Now, I know that this might not be your area of expertise, but even if it is a communication behaviour, if it’s a style of presenting or if it’s something that you are seeing in your space that you think will be influential, an early trend you’re picking up.
Myles Pollard:
Yeah, I think the nature of the economy and the world economy and labour supplies, all these sorts of things – geopolitical – what’s happening in the world, and inflationary pressures and all that. I think what’s going to happen is that consumerism is going to transform. I think people are much more aware of the pitfalls of globalisation and consumerism. I don’t think we were up until about five years ago, when we have no manufacturing and suddenly we’re cornered. Our economy is cornered because we are beholden to other markets, and suddenly we’re held to ransom because of whatever’s happening politically in other countries.
So how that translates to a consumer – I think my belief, my hope anyway – is at least that people will demand more from their products. I think products will get more expensive, but also already happening with food, with fuel prices and the like, but buying something that’s quality that’s well. My mom has a washing machine – a Maytag bought in America, I think it was 35 years ago – and it still goes. It was built to last. I remember as a kid having to take the tyres off and the rims off my BMX and clean them and change the gears. That was a part of the process of owning something. You owned it to last.
Mike Drysdale:
So not designing to phase out.
Myles Pollard:
That’s right. So what are companies going to be selling? I think durability, authenticity.
Mike Drysdale:
And the right to repair, that movement as well, right?
Myles Pollard:
Well, look what’s happening with Apple. When there was all these legislation changes about where people can get their Apple phone fixed, and you voided your contract if you got it fixed by someone else, I think that whole legislative thing will affect it as well.
Mike Drysdale:
I love that. Love that. Okay, last question. When you think of the term “prized possession,” what’s the first branded thing that comes to mind? And while you’re thinking about that, the follow-up is, do you remember a specific ad or piece of marketing that convinced you to buy it?
Myles Pollard:
Wow, that’s a really good question. A prized possession that I bought as a kid or any time.
Mike Drysdale:
Anytime, but a branded one.
Myles Pollard:
Why did I buy it? I remember buying a Swatch. Remember the Swatches in the eighties? Did someone else mention that?
Mike Drysdale:
No.
Myles Pollard:
No? Okay. And it was transparent and you could see the mechanisms. Maybe it’s because my grandfather was a watchmaker. Actually, I remember him giving me a watch too, which was an old analogue watch with a leather band. So maybe I’d picked up something there through him and that relationship. I remember when the Swatches came out. Something about watches, the digital interfaces came out too; but having that revolutionary design where you could see everything in there, how it works, how it ticks, as a showpiece it’s sort of celebrating the mechanics and its efficiency as an aesthetic on its own. I think that lasted with me.
Mike Drysdale:
I think Swatch needs another campaign as well there – made by Myles.
Myles Pollard:
Do they still have Swatches?
Mike Drysdale:
I don’t know. They’ve got to bring them back.
Myles Pollard:
Yeah, completely.
Mike Drysdale:
Myles, this has been an awesome chat. I really appreciate you taking the time to have a sit-down and a talk with us. As I said, doesn’t happen every day. We do have this gift for you.
Myles Pollard:
It’s a Swatch.
Mike Drysdale:
The Dear Storyteller game, The Concept, which we’ve just released. I’ll tell you a little bit more about it off camera.
Myles Pollard:
Thank you, Mike.
Mike Drysdale:
Is there any way in which our audience can keep up with you and what you’re up to and any projects that you’re working on?
Myles Pollard:
Yeah, sure. They can get onto mylespollard.com.au. I’m doing some work with the Advertising Council too, some workshops. We’ve got some workshops coming up here in Perth, and also running them in Sydney and Melbourne, the Eastern States. So yeah, check out my website.
Mike Drysdale:
Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of MVP, The Marketer’s Most Valuable Perspective. Give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We hope you’ve enjoyed this chat, and we’ll see you next time.
