Sustaining Creativity Podcast
Sustaining Creativity Podcast
Building Creativity with Hogan Shrum
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Creativity through the lens of the Co-founder of Pippa
"Creativity is a nurturing activity that is also a developed skill."
I’m a serial entrepreneur. I’ve owned and run an advertising / marketing agency for 10 years (20 years in the industry) that is still going strong and continues to grow. I’m an investor and advisor for a business accelerator out of Austin, TX called SKU (the largest CPG brand accelerator in the US). And last year I co-founded PIPPA, an AI-powered animation platform that helps people turn ideas, scripts, voices, photos, and characters into studio-quality videos (using licensed art styles from human artists who earn income on every image and second of animation produced on the platform). My professional background is in marketing, brand strategy, experiential marketing, content, partnerships, and startup growth, so I tend to see PIPPA not only as a technology product, but as a storytelling and creative-access platform.
https://www.instagram.com/gopippa/
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Welcome to the Sustaining Creativity Podcast. I'm your host, Mari Riesberg. Over the past several years, I've combined my degrees in acting and somatic psychology to share my sustaining creativity techniques with performers. And now I've decided to share it with a bigger audience that includes you. I believe we are all creative, and this podcast is all about that. I'll be interviewing people from all backgrounds, ages, and creativity experiences to show just how creative we all are. Today I'll be chatting with Hogan Schrum, co-founder of Pippa. Please enjoy Hogan Schrum. Welcome to the Sustaining Creativity Podcast. Today I'm chatting with Hogan Schrumm, co-founder of Pippa. Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Mari. Glad to be here.
MariI am so excited to chat about creativity with you. But before we get there, why don't you take a couple of minutes and let our listeners know a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Yes. So I like you said, I'm the co-founder of Pippa, which is an AI content generation platform that's doing things a little bit differently. But my background has primarily been throughout my career on the agency side. I own and operate a marketing agency that focuses on experiential marketing and content and social media, primarily for brands in the CPG space. So snacks, beverages, things like that. And been doing that for 20 plus years. And that evolved obviously into my discovery of what my partner, business partner at Pippo was working on in the very early days and ended up starting another company. So life is busy.
MariIt sounds busy. My goodness. There was a word that you said experiential.
SPEAKER_00Experiential, yes.
MariThat struck me as a curious word to use in the snack and beverage marketing world. I'm so curious. How did that come about?
SPEAKER_00It's simpler than you think, actually. Um so what that means, so you know, experiential marketing in general is just, you know, think about it as in real life, for the most part, in real life marketing at like events or you know, guerrilla street teams, things like that. So when it when that's applied to brands in the CPG space, it almost always means it's sampling driven, right? So you know, you you have a brand that sponsors a large festival and they have an experience that is both, you know, created around to fit within the festival environment, right? But also tell help tell the brand story beyond the sample. So we want people to try the product, but we also want to immerse people in what the brand's all about. And that can be through gamification, uh, really any kind of experience, if you will. That a simplest example could be I always use like Pepsi used to be the sponsor of the Super Bowl. And if you anytime the Super Bowl goes to any given city, there's like 10 days of leading up to the Super Bowl where they have a big NFL football-inspired festival, right? Um, and so you'd go there and Pepsi would have a huge, like hundred foot by hundred foot setup where you could, of course, try whatever Pepsi product they were promoting that year, but it would also have like football-themed games and things like that.
MariI see.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
MariThat makes more sense because I was like, experiential in my mind comes to like, you know, a therapeutic thing, but I love it.
SPEAKER_00Or like if you're or if you're like a water brand that sponsors Coachella and it's super hot up there. Your your your experience is like a cooling zone, but it also has their water.
MariRight, right, right, right. Now I am understanding experiential marketing. Thank you for breaking that down. I'm curious if you could talk a little bit more about Pippa. You said it's an AI content generation company that does it a little differently.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So uh there's a lot of, let's just call it what it is. There's a lot of hate for AI out there, um, especially among content generation in particular, um, because frankly, it's been it's been and continues to be done in a very unethical way, in that you know, all of these models have been trained on art styles without the artist's permission.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Um, and there's tons of content being generated out there that is frankly stealing from artists. And, you know, one of our we have two big things that that are super important to us that we feel are really different in terms of how we're doing things. The first being that we work with artists and styles that we offer on PIPA are actually created in collaboration with the artist. And when approved by the artist, um, if they choose to make them live to our users, uh, the you the anytime the user you uh chooses their art style, it creates images, animations, etc., that artist is paid for their work. Um, so think of it as you know, we're seeing AI content generation as having its Napster moment right now, where if you think back to those days when Napster was just letting people freely steal music.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Um, and then, you know, after a couple of years, Apple realized the change in user behavior and created the 99 cent song, and the streaming music economy was born. Um, now you could argue that's probably still not ethical, and that the artist very gets very little money from streaming platforms, but we're actually paying real, real good money. Um, where you know, we see a lot of the AI content generation, uh like call it video generation platforms, say like a C dance, um are already starting to address the IP issue. Um, and so we were even ahead of that, but we see that as the inevitable future, right? AI isn't going anywhere, right? But it can be done ethically and inclusively, especially for artists. And so, yeah, not only are we giving a significant amount of our profit for every artist's style away, but we have another pool of uh 5% of our revenue that simply is pooled, regardless of the styles that are used by our users and then shared with those artists as well.
SPEAKER_01Oh, amazing.
SPEAKER_00Really, the math kind of breaks down simply as you know, once say at a user level of 250,000 users on PIPA. If an artist is, say, one of our more popular artists and they are responsible for five percent of the generations that are created on our platform, they earn around $125,000 a month.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00So there's a real opportunity here.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00In a space that's definitely being abused by a lot of other players as far as stealing artwork. So that's that's hugely important to us. And then we're also on top of all the revenue shares for artists, where we're also donating an additional 3% to art education and continuing art and design for children and youth to pursue that as their career. Um, and then the other piece that we're doing differently is and this this comes a lot from my background. Uh, you know, as an agency owner and creative person, I've my biggest issue with AI has always been you can enter prompts, you can put all these things in, but in the end, you're kind of at the mercy of what AI does for you. And as we most people have used it in one form or another at this point, and usually what you get back is not 100% of what you wanted to get out of it, right? And if you don't get it right, you're starting over and you kind of keep hoping and praying that this one's gonna work. Um and as an agency, and this is really where it starts, we can start talking about the creative side of things, you know, creativity doesn't start and end with one idea, right? And so for me, it's always been about well, look, I have an idea for something I want to create. And then when I see it, that is likely to stimulate more creative thinking. Um creativity is a building process. It's a it's in some ways in the old school fashion, it's almost a collaboration with your own mind. As you create something and you see what you've put down, whether it's written or design or painting or music, um, as it's coming together, it gives you new ideas. You build on it and it evolves and becomes something much greater than what it was when it started. And with AI, when you're when you're forced to basically come up with everything at the front end and then hope the end product gets back to you in the way you want, that creativity and really the humanity of what's behind the creation is lost. Because the only other option is, and there are tools out there for this, where you are an expert, sophisticated AI prompter that if you're creating a video, you can write five paragraphs to describe what happens in 10 seconds of a video. Right, right. In a way that AI will understand and interpret the right way. Um very, very few people have that expertise, right?
MariRight.
SPEAKER_00But there are millions, billions really, of people out there that have creative ideas that can be brought to life if they have the right tools, collaborators, etc.
SPEAKER_01I love that.
SPEAKER_00So we built PIPA to be more of a collaborator than simply an input-output tool. Where when you're creating a video, um one, it's an all-in-one platform, so you you know, it'll add it not only does you know the storyboards, it not only creates the animations, but it has a full editing studio to put it all together. It has sound, music, dialogue, voiceover, all the post-production needs you could possibly want, but it's all designed so that someone without any really any AI prompting or expertise in this area can create a completed video that's studio quality and it helps you along the way. So you can animate an individual scene, see how it came out. If you don't, if it missed some details, you don't have to start over. You can go in there and simply tell it in your own words, hey, this was great, but you know, at the end of the scene it did this, and I was really hoping it did this, or the pacing is wrong, or oh, this person, this thing didn't appear correctly, but everything else was right, and it will fix it for you, keeping everything else the same. Um, so it really makes you feel like a director.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00And so in in that collaborative process, it gives you that same opportunity to see ideas coming to life, but then evolve them and shape them and create them into something that really feels like yours.
MariWow. That is very different from the other platforms that are out there. And you you kind of spoke to this, but I'm curious when you think of creativity for you, what does it mean to be creative?
SPEAKER_00For me, to be creative is to essentially be able to realize any idea that you have in in whatever form that creativity needs to take shape in, and to be able to fully realize it. And for me, that's a very loaded word, right? Like realizing a creative idea is not simply writing it down on a piece of paper when you have it and then saying, oh, there it is, right? Yeah, I think you know, creativity is is like anything, it's it's nurture, it's a nurturing activity, right? Um it's a nurturing activity that is also a developed skill, right? Um I think can anyone be creative? Yes. Are there people that are better at being a creative? Yes, absolutely. Um are there people that are more committed to being creative? Yes. Like all of these things play in, right? And the idea that that to create an environment where someone has the ability to nurture and develop an idea is essential for actually realizing true creativity. Okay. Um and it could be, I mean, look, from business ideas to problem solving to art. Like basically, humans are creative species. That is what defines us and differentiates us from the rest of the animal kingdom, right? That it really is. It's the thing. You know, creativity is what led to intelligence. Like we understand the universe because we we had the ability to creatively think about things that weren't explained to us, right? By the universe.
MariYeah, that wonder and awe and ask questions and curiosity.
SPEAKER_00Curiosity, I'm glad you said that. Like curiosity is a big part of it. It's what if, right? Like, what if this happened, or what if I did it this way, or what if I saw things differently? It's but a lot of times, you know, the best creative work. That's why they say, you know, a lot of times the best creative work does not always come from one person. It's perspectives, it's being able to look at things through different lenses. It's about, but then being able to capture that in a way that's unique and tells a story. Um and the best way to tell a story is to have different perspectives. That's why they say, you know, you you say see some movies or read books where you're like, oh, it was entertaining, but there was no character development, right?
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Like you can make something that's maybe entertaining, but the creativity that lasts has layers, it has humanity in it, right? And people need to really truly be able to relate to it. And that's the struggle that AI has had and will continue to have, is that we need to figure out and optimize how we can leverage the power of AI to enable more of the human human side of creative versus having it replace, because if it's replacing, then it doesn't feel human.
MariRight. Right. Well, in your world, you know, this idea that being able to realize any idea that you have and then kind of take it into next stages or phases. Are you someone who like writes down all your ideas? Do you have brainstorming? Like, what is the idea generation experience for you?
SPEAKER_00Um it varies sometimes, and I think this is probably true for a lot of people, right? Like, sometimes I have a very clear idea. Like, oh, I want this, I want that. Sometimes it's just the what if. Ooh, like what if this happened, or what if I explored something in this area? And that's another area where we identified people are gonna come through the door at Pippa, if you will, with ideas at varying stages. You're gonna have someone that comes in with a fully written screenplay that has their exact vision completed and written down in words. You're gonna have others that are like, well, what if what if this story happened? What would happen if we discovered, you know, I'm gonna go in the weeds a little bit, but like, you know, we know more about our own universe than we know about our oceans. Yeah, right? And what what if there's an entire civilization living beneath the oceans that's blah, blah, blah, whatever. And oh, I have this crazy idea I want to explore, but that's really all I have. But I bet I could make a good video out of this. You can go into Pippa and we have a function that's like write with Pippa, where you can start with an idea and it starts creating and writing prose for you that you have the ability to then edit along the way. Where it's like, oh, let me maybe I just need a little boost, a little kickstart to what this story framework could look like. And then I can start filling in the gaps and making it my own, versus saying, Oh, nope, you can only come into PIPA and create something if you've already completed a finished script and a fully written short story or novel, right? Um, it's about creating this sort of leg up sort of one step at a time, collaborative process that can really fit anyone, uh meet them where they're at, meet creators where they're at, like at what stage, right? Um and then it takes you from there, right? Because some people may come in, maybe they're a writer, but they write short stories, they write books, they don't write films or television or media. That's a different kind of writing. Yeah, but the platform is then designed to take your short story the way you wrote it and help bring it into a script and bring it into a storyboard. And so you can say, and then we find that you know, writers, for example, that's even more creative creatively stimulating for them, even perhaps when they're in the middle of writing a story, to see it, to see it in the form of a piece of video content, to see a chapter laid out as a video can give you a sense of the momentum of the story. How is this translating in someone's imagination? Are there areas here that I could improve?
MariWow. I you talk about collaboration and how Pippa has this more collaborative experience. What are some of the barriers or benefits of collaborating with an AI generator versus other people?
SPEAKER_00You know, I think in some ways they are similar. Um I think the the if you were to say there's a the downside to to AI is always going to be, at least for now in the foreseeable future, that AI is kind of designed to always take the aggregate of everything it knows and basically turns everything into averages, right? Like I think the downside of AI is it's not going to be the thing that really pushes into new new territory.
MariGot it. Right. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But what it does is and I but I think that's the whole that's the dip, that's the difference again, we go back to between true human creativity and everything else in the animal kingdom. It's uh humans have this ability to imagine something that's never happened.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Whereas AI, the closest it can get to imagining something that's never happened is to look at all the historical data and make a prediction.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Which one would argue is more of a scientific method approach versus true imagination. And so the idea again is not to replace a human creator, but to give someone a starting point to bring that human layer in without taking away those opportunities along the way to inject that sort of human-level, true imaginative imaginative thinking. Um, but a lot of people, I'd say the majority of people with creative ideas get stuck in that process. And that can even be true in collaborating with other people. Sure. Where you know you have things like groupthink, where if you're collaborating in a room long enough, and you see this a lot with say um movie franchises or television series, where there's a writer's room and there's multiple people involved. And frankly, the more people you get involved, it starts to almost have the same effect as AI, where everybody's starting to compromise. We're trying to include everyone's idea. So what happens? Right through groupthink, right? Yeah, and so in some ways, you almost reach this inevitable conclusion of that's why you know they say like the the first four seasons of that show were awesome, and then it just got formulaic and repetitive. And it was like we start getting in the middle and playing where we're playing in the safe space, right? As opposed to continually pushing new boundaries. And then you hear reviews about shows or or movie franchises or books where it's like they're good all the way through because they keep changing it up, because they keep surprising you, because they keep going in areas you didn't expect. And that's the human factor, that's true creativity, right?
MariYeah, taking that like you were saying, actual imagination that isn't the like prediction of what something is, but to really say, like, we're gonna change up everything, and no one is going to expect that.
SPEAKER_00Like if you tried to go in a direction that's like there's a 1% chance of that happening, but boy, if that happened, that would be really entertaining and really creative. Right, yeah. It's never gonna say, let's go the 1% way. It's gonna say, no, that's never gonna happen. Why would we do that?
MariRight, right. Yeah. Uh that makes sense. Well, for people who are just starting, I mean, maybe speak more to the entrepreneurial side of things who have an idea and wanting to put it out there and turn it into something, you know, like PIPA, not an AI thing, but just a business. What are the things that you wish you had known in the very beginning of starting one of the many businesses that you have created?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's a really good time you asked that question because even with Pippa, while we're, you know, we're not even a year old yet, I think when we first started developing this, the story is, you know, I met our co-founder, my co-founder through my work in the CPG space, ironically. Um he spent a lot of time at Apple, um, and then Hershey. He's had a very interesting career, he's an engineering background, very much a builder, but he's, you know, he has three kids and he would tell his kids bedtime stories and record them on his phone. And then his wife was like, You should turn them into one of those AI books. Those are really good stories. And he was bored by that idea and thought, well, what if I tried to cur turn them into a cartoon? And he built his own sort of standalone platform for himself where you could take these audio recordings and turn them into these studio quality cartoons using all these different tools that were available out there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and I saw that and I was like, man, imagine if we could put the ability to create something like this into everyone's hands, regardless of skill level, regardless of what they did. Because I grew up my first experience in the world of creative was I was a I was a movie geek when I was a kid. I I tried to write screenplays when I was in junior high. I tried to film things with my little camcorder using toys, right? Like imagined myself as the next Spielberg. And then, you know, as I got older, I got scared of not making money and turned that into an advertising career instead of going to Hollywood. Um, but when I saw this, I was like, oh my gosh, this is my dream come true. I can like, I could potentially take ideas that I have personally and turn them into little films. I can't put my head around that concept. That's amazing. Um and so I thought to myself, wow, if everybody had access to this, this would be a game changer. This is the YouTube for, you know, AI created content. Yeah. Where YouTube with combined with the smartphone, the iPhone, it democratized the ability to create video content, series, et cetera. And I thought, what if we did that for animation and content creation at a Hollywood level? And you or I, regardless of our experience, could create something at that level. That was mind-blowing to me. Yeah. And so it first evolved into, well, everyone is kind of our target customer here. Like, and that's always the kiss of death. I know that from a marketing career. If you're for everyone, you're for no one, right? Um, and so our first foray was like, look, let's just let's inspire everyone to start creating. Well, you know, we learned that that's not true. Um, one, I think in our case, right, the uh the average person, it's such a big leap to even get them to understand that this is possible.
MariYeah.
SPEAKER_00That when they see the content that average people create on Pippa, they're in no way assuming that that they can do that.
unknownSure.
SPEAKER_00And the ability to explain that to them is a long road because it's all very new technology.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but then we found you know, the real value in Pippa, especially now and at the beginning, is for those that are already creating content but need to scale it or need it to be repeatable and need it to be consistent. And so you you think about you know, content agencies, content studios, brands that have a very specific look and style that want to be able to create advertising content, brand storytelling, um, content creators on social media who develop series that are needing to release one, two short content pieces a week.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's it's expensive, it's time consuming, resource heavy. Um, and with where technology's at now, you and within Pippa, this is something that also differentiates us like you know, you have a cast and a library of all of your assets that once you create them, you can keep them and then reuse them so that if you have a series that you're producing once a week that's a cartoon with the same characters over and over, they're all stored forever. And so you can you're not having to start from scratch every time. So people can now turn out more consistent content and focus more on the writing, focus more on the direction as opposed to some of the other things that were heavy lifts, right? Um, and so I I think going back to your question, it's you know, take the time to understand the true value that you offer and the timing of that value. Because do I still believe in the longer-term future that this democratizes creativity for everyone? Absolutely. But what does the path to that really look like? Right? That happens when time more time and exposure has happened for the average person that may not be using this now to discover and learn what this is capable of by having those that are a little more familiar use it and show off what they can do at a higher volume. So it's it's understand even though you may have a dream of what it could be, what is it now and how do you get there? Not not starting with the dream and chasing it without a plan. Right.
MariYou gotta get the plan, the steps to get there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, and it's it's a creative process, it's storytelling, it's the same thing. Like when I when I make a video that's three minutes long, if I'm not going after the right audience and hooking them in the first 20 seconds, they're not gonna watch the rest of it. Right. You have to take people on a journey to achieve the ultimate.
MariMakes sense. Well, Hogan, this has been such a treat getting to chat with you. I have one last question. What does it feel like in your body to be creative?
SPEAKER_00It's the greatest stimulant drug in the world. I love it. I I absolutely, nothing to me is is more rewarding than, and it's not the outcome for me. What and this is something I learned even more so in building and now having PIPA. It's the process is the fun part. I have way more fun making them than I do watching them when they're done.
SPEAKER_01Do you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00It's like when you if you've got like I I paint, I play music. Um, like it's that the zone that you get in when you're creating something that literally turns off the world. The one safe space where you can be completely unencumbered by the stressors of the outside world.
MariYeah, I I know that one. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00That that that's that's it for me. I love it. That's the ultimate drug.
MariThat's amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to join me. If people want to learn more about the work you have out in the world, Pippa, the other projects, how could they go about doing that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'd say start with uh go to our website gopippa.ai, g-o-p-i-p-pa-a.ai. We also have the Pippa app on the uh Apple and Google Play Stores. So you can download that. I you know, I will say the best experience is to use it on the web because that's when you can get into all the different tools and features that Pippa has to offer. But I'd say give it a try. You know, start with an idea and see how that can come to life. And I'll tell you, once you once you create your first one and you see what's possible, it's it's hard not to go back.
MariI love it. Well, I will put links in show notes so people have easy access. And thank you again for taking the time to chat with me. I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. Thanks for listening to the Sustaining Creativity Podcast. We'd love to keep in touch, so follow us on Facebook and Instagram. We are at Sustaining Creativity. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Tag your friends and family so they can listen too. We'd love to hear from you, so leave your reviews, comments, and questions. Check out our website, sustainingcreativity.com, for upcoming offerings and creativity coaching. Tune in Tuesdays for our next episode. And remember, with creativity, anything's possible.