Badass Creativity with Award-Winning Advertising Agency Pereira O’Dell

July 16, 2020

Meet The Speakers

PJ Pereira

co-founder and creative chairman of the innovative advertising agency

Listen to the podcast

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

PJ Pereira talks about what brands and creative agencies should consider when selling on an online marketplace like Amazon
Where should the branding activities of an organization start, and who should lead the process?
Tactics brands can use to ensure that their creative vision translates to tangible selling points
PJ’s advice on how to create compelling advertising messages
PJ explains what it means to “put yourself in front of someone who can kick your ass in business”
How brands can create awareness for their products without interrupting a customer’s shopping experience
Examples of brands that have successfully used cultural events to connect with consumers
PJ discusses his upcoming book, which combines kung fu with AI

In this episode…

On social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok, it is common practice to see advertisements run as users watch videos. According to advertising expert PJ Pereira, these types of ads not only interrupt a consumer’s experience, but they also lack the lasting effects of truly successful ad campaigns.

On the other hand, many Amazon ads are almost invisible to users, and few shoppers ever actually notice them. So how can brands successfully create awareness for their products on this platform without being too invasive? Pj’s advice: get creative.

PJ Pereira, co-founder and creative chairman of Pereira O’Dell, joins Eric Stopper in this week’s episode of Buy Box Experts to talk about how to successfully boost your ad campaigns with a bit of creativity. PJ shares his tactics for creating compelling advertising messages, raising awareness for a product without being invasive, and using cultural events to connect with consumers. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

Buy Box Experts applies decades of e-commerce experience to successfully manage their clients’ marketplace accounts. The Buy Box account managers specialize in combining an understanding of their clients’ business fundamentals and their in-depth expertise in the Amazon Marketplace.

The team works with marketplace technicians using a system of processes, proprietary software, and extensive channel experience to ensure your Amazon presence captures the opportunity in the marketplace–not only producing greater revenue and profits but also reducing or eliminating your business’ workload.

Buy Box Experts prides itself on being one of the few agencies with an SMB (small to medium-sized business) division and an Enterprise division. Buy Box does not commingle clients among divisions as each has unique needs and requirements for proper account management.

Learn more about Buy Box Experts at BuyBoxExperts.com

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:09
Welcome to the Buy Box Experts podcast. We bring to light the unique opportunities brands face in today’s e-commerce world.

Eric Stopper 0:18
Welcome to the Buy Box Experts podcast This is Eric Stopper. Today’s episode is brought to you by Buy Box Experts. Buy Box Experts take ambitious brands and make them unbeatable times or hard right now and I know that you are thinking about all kinds of horrible outcomes that could befall your business because of the recent developments with the virus. But come and talk to us Amazon is humming along and we would really like to help you out there. If you’ve never sold there before but you do have physical products you might want to take advantage of, go to buyboxexperts.com, click on the free analysis button and you’ll be connected with me or a member of my team.

Today I am pleased to be joined by PJ Pereira, the executive creative chairman and co-founder of Pereira O’Dell. He’s an Emmy winner, best-selling writer, and a double black belt in kung fu and a black belt in karate. His agency is credited with the creation of the first ever social film, “The Insight Experience”, which he made for Intel and Toshiba back in 2011. And their list of awards for creative works in writing is staggering. PJ is a proud Brazilian-American and a prolific member and accredited pioneer of the advertising and entertainment world. He is a best selling novelist and is currently working on a new book that combines kung fu and AI. PJ, welcome to the show.

PJ Pereira 1:37
Glad to be here.

Eric Stopper 1:39
So I want to set the stage for you. Most of our listeners have an Amazon focus and tune in because they want to hear from experts on how to build a better online business both on and off of Amazon. So I want to talk about creative and branding work in the context of selling on Amazon. We’re kind of in this new age of e-commerce. And so just just kind of as a general question, what would you urge brands and creative agencies to consider when selling their products in a marketplace like Amazon?

PJ Pereira 2:10
so as you’re as you’re talking, I spent so much time in my life in a ring or a cage or the max kind of fighting that it’s hard to find metaphors that don’t involve some kind of martial arts element to it. So I think for me, when you think about the Amazon experience, you have to think of that as like, this is the moment of truth in the fighters life is the moment you go there you gotta fight the opponent they have been training for, and you have to look at that. There’s a lot that is going to be done there. But the fight is actually won or lost, with all the training leading to that. So the training for the moment of truth is how strong and powerful your brand is and how desired your product is. Once you get to that point you have no time to, to discuss or try to convince anyone of much time to have a few seconds to lead to that Buy button. So at that time, the work needs to be done already. Right. So if you think like a fighter on that Amazon fight, you have the big fight, you have to do the things you have to perform in that environment. But before that you have to have really trained and really get yourself ready to make the decision easy. It’s like yeah, there’s no other choice. I need I want and I want to now

Eric Stopper 3:40
I’m gonna ride this metaphor as hard as I can because I mean, I like it. I’ve been a Western boxer and muy Thai practitioner for about 12 years. And so this is right up my alley. So brands, I mean, if we’re talking about training, right, jump roping, dieting, extra, you know, actually getting in and fighting, doing sparring sessions, there’s a long list of of training tasks that are required to get somebody to the point where they’re ready to fight in the gym. What are some of these things for businesses that you know, what are the training activities that somebody needs to be performing before they actually land on an Amazon listing?

PJ Pereira 4:17
And you need to get your, your, your reputation as a company in the right place, and people care about who you’re buying from, and they’re caring more and more. So that’s a really important part of it. They also care about the product of the year they’re looking at and how and what they say about you as a consumer. If you’re, if you’re a seat on the street, carry a specific book or wherever your specific shirts or specific sneakers, whatever you’re bringing whatever you have in your hand, he’s going to say something about you. That matters for them as well. And the emotion disposition that people have towards any brand in any product is also going to influence the way that your views are going to show up. If people are likely to, if they liked you emotionally feel positive about you. They’re going to take it much easier on the mistakes from the things that they see from you that they may not have great experience but you know, it’s gonna be fine. So it’s the same thing that they know how much they liked you before the product, they may lose one star may lose three stars based on that feeling alone. So I think that your reputation as a company, what a product says about you, a product or a brand says about you and the overall feeling that you have towards the combination of days and it are three things that you really need to work on to make sure that you’re ready for that moment of truth.

Eric Stopper 5:56
These these all sound like just, you know, branding activities that everybody should be thinking about wearing Where does the beating heart of this branding initiative or is that supposed to come from inside of an organization? Is that a CEO thing? Is that a design by committee where everybody’s sitting at the same table and says, okay, like, this is how we want to be perceived. Where should some of this start?

PJ Pereira 6:16
It’s a great, great question. I have never seen any vision established by a committee. A vision may be multiplied by a group of people may be amplified by a group of people. But there’s four visions to be established, to be corrected, to be made. You need someone at some point you’re gonna need to raise your hand and say, I know the answer and this is the answer and this is what we need to do. And say that and and put that out of the world with enough power that everyone else around it is going to want to follow. montu is going to want to join I think In any creative expression, whether it’s in, in artistic activities or commercial activities, they need a vision. There’s no creativity without vision. And vision requires someone to make that cause like, I think that’s it, and convincing everyone to join. And I think both crafting division and convincing division are about division are two very important parts of this as well because you need to multiply, but you need that that single mindedness that that perspective that comes from what if that comes from the founder of the company, if it comes from the engineer who designed it for the for the product for the first time where it comes from an ad, an ad agency, it does not matter as long as there is that vision? The vision is what carries is not the visionary. It’s a vision that matters.

Eric Stopper 7:50
And yeah, and it sounds like the vision can be birthed right and then someone’s gotta sell it and the person who birthed it You’d probably be one of the people that’s consistently selling into the company that you think that’s fair to say. So if the engineer comes up with it, they are always like, yes, yes. Like, we’re always going this direction. Or maybe they shift that’s the marketing department or they shifted to the CEO. What do you think?

PJ Pereira 8:15
Yeah, I think it’s an important practicality of it. It’s not, it’s only true from a conceptual standpoint. If a vision is there for the whole time, and we, culturally, the company can preserve it and fight to preserve it, it’s great. But the problem is that we are individuals, the most ambitious individuals also want to leave their mark. So they want to change what has been done in the past. So that tends to lead to a lot of great ideas dying just because there’s another generation taking over and wanting to leave their mark in one change. And but I don’t think it needs to be, it’s less about the level of that. person but more about how you create a system to preserve that because once you have a vision stable enough that everyone can can elaborate on that, that then then you can do it so and that’s why you need some specialists working on it because they can, they can help establish something of help establish a vision that has longevity, but an idea like just do it has been out in the world forever. And every time it’s done, it’s different. And it’s so powerful, right? The power of dreams that Honda has, it’s a very powerful idea that has been there forever. You know, I remember one of my favorite bands of all time is is an is an is a campaign that ran in the UK for home the diesel engine is a big animation with a little song that is stanking and with bunnies and butterflies about can hate the good What is What happens if we embrace hate? and hate becomes that power that that helps us to redesign something. And actually, that idea came from a discussion of the engineers of a Honda. And one of them said, I hate the diesel engine. And then his boss said, therefore, you’re going to design it. Yeah. Wow. He inspires new ideas as well. But that’s all based on these ideas of the power of dreams. And sometimes a negative dream. The dream of getting rid of something you hate can lead to awesome products and innovation as well. So if you can understand the essence of those visions of that perspective, and find a way to leave your mark on the most current execution of it, you’re not only doing a better service for the brand of the company that you represent, but you’re also showing more maturity. In showing your power on your craft and what you do as a creative person as a marketing person, because continuity is a very important thing, although we’re talking about we’re coming up with different ideas and finding the thread that connects the past and the future is an essential talent that we need to preserve.

Eric Stopper 11:21
And it sounds incredibly difficult to the whole hyperbolized pain right like this, this idea of hate. I think if anybody in an organization sees that something is wrong, and you’ve and you’ve tried to stand up in the past and try to create a change, you haven’t stood tall enough. You haven’t you haven’t hyperbolized it you haven’t. You haven’t made your case to really change that vision. And your and your customers will see it when you do. I talk with brands every single day and it seems like you know, if I asked them about the vision for their company, the average Amazon seller doesn’t really have one a lot of the time or if they do have one. It’s like oh, you Yeah, you know, we blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s like some statement that they can barely read off. And so I think I think that’s really compelling. In terms of translating that vision into creative elements. I think that people struggle

Unknown Speaker 12:18
really heavily with this, right?

Eric Stopper 12:20
We have this grand vision, we have this emotion that we want to achieve. But then when we hire a creative agency, and they build something for us based off of our description, sometimes we don’t like it, right? What kind of ways can we? What kind of tactics can we use to make sure that the vision gets translated to actual tangible artifacts of that vision that we can use to sell to our customers?

PJ Pereira 12:46
This is the $10 billion question, right? Like how do you get

people with creative intentions and ambitions to align and collaborate and execute? Yeah. Yeah, right so for me, it all comes down to finding a way to get everyone in the room agreeing with that central vision and if like, you know, there’s some things that we are not going to change and these are the agree on what’s not going to change in a granule while you’re going to do next because there are two possible big mistakes that you can they can make when you get ambitious creative people in the room. One is let’s redo everything that has been done because nothing that is not coming from our mouth is worth speaking. Right. It’s worth listening to.

Eric Stopper 13:37
not designed for your syndrome. Yeah,

PJ Pereira 13:39
yeah, yeah. And there’s the other side of that. It’s like yeah, I’m holding something so precious that I just need to buy it. I don’t need to push it, I need to preserve it. There’s a balance on how to create that and attainment. You see that a lot. There’s a lot of movies that are sequels. They suck, but there’s some there are one Before you know I talked to my friends in the entertainment especially the ones on TV that work with TV, they say that they didn’t get power advertising work that if we do something just campaign these absolutely brilliant the next year they have to redo everything from scratch and nothing holds. There’s not a the idea of seasons in advertising, kind of what the hell is that?

Unknown Speaker 14:25
fatigue, right

PJ Pereira 14:26
ad fatigue, find something different, something amazing. Do a second season that takes that energy and pushes us forward. But we can’t feel like you know, we have to reinvent everything every time. But I’m telling you the secret there’s a lot of times these days not invented here syndrome means that it’s someone trying to show work. It’s like okay, I’m going to redo it because it’s my way to to leave my mark if it comes to security. I think if you’re talking to people they’re mature enough to have done days that nothing understand, you know, The value of of the past in terms of propelling the future, I think you can find the right balance and what is what comes from the past that can put you in a better place for the future because authenticity and realness and honesty matters a lot for consumers. So the more you can grab and leverage from your past, the better and the more solid your statements are going to be.

Eric Stopper 15:24
So that I want to roll into some kind of another idea specific to Amazon on that note. So Amazon has started allowing sellers to use video and their advertisements and listings. And there are basically three types of videos. The first one is like an infomercial style. It has zero legacy. It’s like here’s the information about the product, you know, do you want it or not? And then there’s the product feature benefit almost like just like a highlight video where someone’s hands are used. In the product or maybe there’s a smiling face in it. And then there’s the brands that take it to the next level where it’s a production right and there’s and there’s almost a storyline we’re talking about like a 32nd video at max. There’s a storyline , there’s a clear protagonist, there’s a resolution at the end and the product takes the spotlight. I’m the kind of question that I have here is, is, is that third option, always the right way to go? I feel like people sometimes feel like they’re spending too much time advertising for like one product, when they should just do a whole bunch of just good enough advertisements to push more products. What do you what do you think on this in terms of selling on a marketplace like Amazon,

PJ Pereira 16:47
I think that you need to, to understand that you need to step out from your role as a seller and put yourself Back on the shoes of the buyer to get it once you get that it’s like it’s actually not that complicated. I saw these quotes and others that I can’t even remember who he was. I kind of lost track of it. But the guy said, Yeah, I bought my car. I bought my Alfa Romeo because of an ad. And it’s like, okay, yeah, that’s that’s kind of pretty straight. And then he said, because of an ad that I bought when I was 14, and I’m 45 Whoa. So ads and stories and all those things have different ways of messing with us and kind of getting ideas and stuffing targets in our brains and they take some time to percolate and, and blossom and sometimes it’s like you have that desire.

It takes years for you to be able to Teresa level that can afford that or you feel like you can buy this because your life allows the president’s approval. watercolor or a child, and I think you need to challenge yourself. The challenge here is timing. Right? What is the story? What is the story that we need to tell in any circumstance that is going to lead to a buy, click at some point. And the ideal, an ideal scenario is a general situation, when you’re far away.

You need to convince someone to dream when you’re far away from that moment of that user session on the marketplace, right? You have to create something that is strong enough that is going to survive all the crazy meetings and, and the news and everything that like days later, when you’re in front of Amazon. That feeling is still there.

You know, it’s like when you watch inception, and they talk about these ideas that are so small that you almost don’t notice but they stay in the back of your mind forever. You need to find a way to argue a text message that will stay with you. But it’s small enough that the world is going to play life is going to go back and forth. And you’re going to keep it because it’s not going to find so much of your brain space, right? But once, once you’re there, at that moment, you need to set the shortest path possible. If I could find a way to tell a two hour loan solely for someone that is going to watch it, they’re going to want a product forever. And then the last set at the marketplace tells one second story. They just go to remind every demo of those two hours if I need that, and that’s the perfect scenario.

Eric Stopper 19:43
Where would you send somebody to develop that message? Right, what kind of resources, what kind of activities can we use as sellers to say, I mean, we’re kind of talking about just addressing and solving the pain with my product. Oh, you have This pain, my product does this to help you solve that pain. But where can we send people to refine that? You know, what kind of drills can they run, so to speak, to get to get prepared for that moment and create that really great, compelling message?

PJ Pereira 20:15
I think that it is good to bring an outsider at some point, right? Because it’s when you’re there, when you’re, when you’re assuming voting through the product, you kind of may lose sight of what really matters, what matters or how things sound for, for the audience. So it’s good to bring someone that is not there all the time that he’s not living and breathing, someone who’s for whom that product is not the only thing that matters in the world. Right. So and because that is going to be the person that is going to have creative chops and storytelling chops in game help you find what is that one element that that matters most Because the exercise is an exercise of cleaning of taking things out, out of the way, so you have that clean store to tell, again going back to fighting is that Yeah, you train for 10 years, you wear your black belt and you know all those, like different causes in Friday, for example, and just like but the things are going to be the techniques are going to win a fight, are going to be these three things that will if you do it right during that those rounds, you can when you need a coach next to you that to say you know what, for now, between now and your fight, you’re going to forget all these kind of crazy high kicks because this person is going to is a great ground fire.

If you kick them in the head, they’re going to throw in the ground that you lost. Oh, you have to drop all those techniques and focus on these three things and do them really well. Because then it can fight. Make sense, you know, so in understanding what is that story, that small thing that you need to tell is critical, isn’t it? An outsider helps a lot.

Eric Stopper 22:02
Well, let’s, let’s talk. Let’s talk a little bit more about some of these fighting analogies because back in 2008, you gave a TED talk about fighting and creativity. I loved it, go check it out. It’s on YouTube, you introduced this novel idea where, when you’re in front of people who can kick your ass, you are forced to get creative so that you can win. And I thought, Wow, that’s great. You gave a lot of good examples. You know, Bruce Lee Mike Tyson, very innovative fighters, and they had to do it kind of on the fly, right? They just kind of pulled some stuff out of their pocket, but they had trained to have the flexibility to be innovative. So I’m trying to think of this in a business sense. I want my people to, to win, to be creative and to win. And with that kind of idea, I need to put them in front of people who can kick their ass. I’m kind of wondering what it means to put yourself in front of someone who can kick your ass in business?

PJ Pereira 23:00
I think there are two parts of it. One is ambition, right? If you’re going to put yourself against someone, put yourself against someone that is worth the suffering and the blood and the sweat. Okay, go aim, I’m going to spend so much of your time with your business, aim high, right and go for a worthy victory. Right? So that is part of it. It’s like we have given ourselves the right to aim high to shoot for a big fight, not a corner fight that no one’s going to hear about sure showers a big one. And the other part of that is wherever you challenge, no matter if it’s a big or small one. You have to paint that enemy that opponents with the scariest trace that you can’t really look at the things that they have, they’re stronger and do not minimize them. Because if you understand what their strengths are against you, against you, and treat them with the utmost respect, you can beat anything. You just need to find a different way of playing the game. I think it’s like if you the example I give to my clients all the time is that if you there’s, uh, one of the most important fights of all time is Muhammad Ali rumble in the jungle. Yeah, against Frazier and he was kind of trying to get his title back. And he was probably going to lose, but he found a way to, you know, let him just play defense where he never did. He played the fence and let Frasier just kind of just get totally out of juice. And once he got out of juice, then Ali just went there to kind of finish the fight, because he saw like, that guy’s super strong, but he has one weakness that he puts all his energy in every blow. Yeah, so I’m going to train me thing I need to, I need to understand that I cannot beat him if I tried to, if I allowed him to, to play his game, so I need to get him to as quickly as possible run out of energy because until he has energy, every punch that I hit, he’s going to hit me with a stronger one. So I need to kind of protect you from going against the rope and let him do it and let the rope absorb some of it. And then I’ll take over and I’m gonna finish the fight and he did it and he won.

Eric Stopper 25:28
I want to distill this into a few actionable things for the sellers, right? So when you are creating a listing, whether that’s on Amazon or your website or even an ad, you should understand all of your competitors strengths and weaknesses and and like and like PJ saying, Don’t minimize them. And if you treat them as this big, scary thing, you will be able to innovate your way around. then, you will be able to position your product a lot better, you’ll be able to view the pricing through a different lens and try to understand. Okay, am I offering more value for the same amount of money? Am I offering less value for more money, and you’ll be able to build a really, really compelling offer for anything that you’re selling if you will just be slightly hyperbolized and be aware of your competitors’ strengths. I think that’s that’s great PJ,

PJ Pereira 26:27
exactly, then then you can focus on the few things that can allow him to win that fight. In that fight is it the moment by clicking Buy is the last part of all these training sessions when you put everything to work?

Eric Stopper 26:46
Yeah, it only takes one punch. Do you know what your last punches were? Do you know what part of your product, what messaging within your product or your ad is that last punch? I would urge everyone to figure that out.

PJ Pereira 26:58
Yeah, I think it’s Yeah, it’s fine. It’s all about finding that opening, right? Do you train, you prepare, you have the strategy, but sometimes you go there and your opponent makes a mistake and you go, and sometimes it’s important to think about it. Not someone or that company on your main competitor, says something stupid in the press. And then if you can go there say, yeah, that’s weird. We don’t agree with that. And that will people buy it’s not. It’s not what you’re planning, the competitive nature of commerce, as well as fighting requires you to have a plan but also play in real time and be alert to the opportunities that that that Yeah,

Eric Stopper 27:40
absolutely. I. I want to switch gears here for a second and I want to talk specifically about ads. Amazon ads are nearly invisible. There are very few people who are actually aware of the little sponsored tag that boosts stuff up to the top of a list of products and they’re not quite as interruptive as YouTube ads or even Snapchat or tik tok ads, they’re kind of incognito. You talk about how interrupting people’s entertainment to watch an ad is an utterly stupid idea. And I’m inclined to agree. But how can you bring awareness for your product without vying for some of that interrupting attention?

PJ Pereira 28:21
It’s funny My my, when I was living in San Francisco I woke up one day with my bed shaking, and like it’s an earthquake, right? It’s kind of opened my eyes and my son was like two inches from my face. And he told me, Dad, you gotta get out of these advertising things like Why? Because the ad sucks going on. It’s kind of funny because he grew up with on demand content he didn’t wasn’t even posting too many ads. So what happened like that day was the day that YouTube launched videos of ads inside of videos. It was the first time in his life that he saw a piece of code that he was Kind of watching and enjoying being paused to, to hear an ad and then continue. If we’re trying to sell that to an advertiser that has never seen an ad before to say, I have a great idea for you, we’re going to take a movie or show that someone is watching. We’re going to pause, I’m going to sell it, kind of make our pitch and then you’re going to deliver back to you, you’re going to say, why would I be associated with such a horrible experience? Yet, the world is going back and is trying to force itself back to it. interruption advertising is a horrible idea. It may be one of the best ones, we have to fund some operations. But from a user experience, perspective, is bad and I don’t want to be associated with that. So the trick here for me is understanding that if you’re creating something to sell a product or brand, you have the obligation to make the money that that blade is investing worth every cent but you can also look at that from the other side. The seconds that consumers are spending on it needs to be worth every cent every second as well. If you look at that, from a return on investment standpoint, the investments of money that the brand is putting in need to have a great return. And these X amount of time that consumers are putting a need to have a greater return as well. If you’re known as a brand, that every time you speak to your consumers, you give them a great use of their time, they will want to listen to you. Red Bull is a great example. Right? Everything that Red Bull does is entertainment, right? So we need to start to separate what is an ad from what event to entertainment, because those things are becoming for consumers. They’re the same, the same thing. They are time that they spend hearing a story. So in a certain way, a sneaker manufacturer, a car manufacturer and The creators of an HBO series are doing, they’re competing, they’re competing for people’s time. And one’s going to compete for an entire season of time. One is going to compete for five seconds or 20 seconds of the time, but it’s still competition for time.

Eric Stopper 31:19
I want to ask you about something specific that you told me where we don’t have very many opportunities to talk with consumers, and that brands are being forced to create their own attention grabbing cultural events. That was the quote that I found from you. What kind of examples Can you give of brands that have done that extremely well? Because I am Red Bull. Would those be considered cultural events?

PJ Pereira 31:45
Yeah, I think so. When? When Red Bull got someone to jump from a space Oh my goodness. That was a big event, when Nike organized the event to see if people could break the unbreakable record. Then the marathon they did get him for one second. That was a big event. Right? When Intel saw that you’re telling winning Toshiba did a film that mixed Hollywood with social media and created a film that people could participate in and co-star with Topher Grace, that was a cultural event. These things could be smaller to be vague, right? But they are, they are moments that are worth the time that people are going to spend, they’re worth spreading, worth telling is kind of thing that you’re going to tell your friends that you should kind of check it out. Now create some virality at the end of the day, it comes to, can we get anyone to say check it out, you should check this out. That should be the goal. If it’s only good for the brand, in a world that is getting increasingly on demand, you’re going to lose because buying time is no longer a certainty when I started in the advertising business, we could count that we could buy attention to buy people’s attention. But then one very generic thing happened. The people are selling that attention. And the people who actually owned that attention got dissociated. Now we, as consumers own our own attention, we can choose exactly we’re going to identify and no one’s going to share my frickin attention. I’m the owner of it. And I’m going to decide where I’m going to spend every second of my life. And I think this buyer’s crisis is going to make it even worse because we have to value housing over time more than ever.

Eric Stopper 33:35
I couldn’t agree more. We’re running out of time here and I want to talk about your book. You can, can you tell me a little bit about the premise combining kung fu with AI?

PJ Pereira 33:47
Yes, I always like to just create two worlds that feel like they have no business together. So right. The book that I’m working on right now has one character that is a girl in China that does Tai Chi, but she wants to be like a female Bruce Lee that inspires women to fight as well to learn how to protect themselves. So she moves to the Bay Area, and she starts to interact with her, she gets acquainted and she gets recruited actually by two scientists that work with AI. And in neuroscience they’re working on ways to connect brains to create a super brain so we can be ready to fight AI because it one thing that I learned on kind of work on a project with Verner Hertzog on doing a big documentary called Lo and Behold, about the power of the internet and the dangers of this connected world. And one of the things that we saw a scientist they’re saying kind of computer sciences and yeah, we don’t know if AI is ever going to reach the scale that we that we afraid and we don’t even know he hadn’t yet he may be there and we don’t know the problem with AI as a as the mythical Is that the villain that we all talk about is that it’s infinitely scalable in theory, and our brains are more powerful than it right now. But it’s not scalable. So the moment that they reach our level we can so this is a story of a scientist in a fighter trying to learn from each other, to find a way to scale our brains to be able to fight AI once the threat is really there.

Eric Stopper 35:28
It’s really fascinating. I mean, when’s the when’s the release date on that?

PJ Pereira 35:34
I just got signed a deal with an agent last week. And we’re going to start to talk to the publisher, maybe maybe like, later this year, early next year.

Eric Stopper 35:48
Awesome. Congratulations. That’s a big step. Um, I want to send people to you. Any brands that want to work with Pereira O’Dell? Um, where should I send them, I see there’s a contact page on your On the website,

PJ Pereira 36:01
yeah, the web, the website has all the information that you need. And that’s pereiraodell.com is the best place to start.

Eric Stopper 36:09
Perfect. Well, then I will include that in the show notes. PJ. Thank you so much.

PJ Pereira 36:12
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Outro 36:15
Thanks for listening to the Buy Box Experts podcast. Be sure to click subscribe, check us out on the web, and we’ll see you next time.