Max Pollack on the Future of Experiential Creativity

Justin Levinson (00:10)

‍Hey everybody, welcome to the Agency Side Podcast. My name is Justin Levinson. And today I'm here with Max Pollock, co-founder and managing partner of Matt. Max has spent over decade shaping the intersection of brand, culture, and experience, leading standout work for brands like Puma, Calvin Klein, Kiss, and Reebok, to name a few. He's also helped produce Netflix's Fire, the greatest party that never happened, and is now driving Matt's next chapter with Hero, an immersive creative space at Rockefeller Center. Thanks so much for being here today, Max.

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Max Pollack (00:38)

Thanks for having me, Justin.

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Justin Levinson (00:40)

Yeah.

Cool. Well, to start things off, maybe you can just explain for a novice out there what exactly you guys do at

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Max Pollack (00:47)

Matt is a creative company based in New York. And we really kind of see ourselves at this, you know, kind of converging point between entertainment and advertising. So we primarily work with brands to kind of build these kind of holistic brand worlds that connect content, experience, all rooted in culture, all kind of, you know, about storytelling and really how do you build connection and fandom.

instead of traditional advertising. How do you kind of get people excited? How do you kind of get people caring about what you're doing as a company? ⁓ And then, you know, kind of bringing that to the world and integrated, you know, through 60 ideas. We started in music, we started in entertainment and being a promoter and kind of building our own IP. And that kind of, you know, we moved, we still do some of that, but we really moved to the primary business being that kind of, you know, service brand agency.

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Justin Levinson (01:39)

Awesome. And how to get get into this particular space, like maybe you give us a little bit about your background.

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Max Pollack (01:46)

Yeah, I would say like, well, I'll, I'll go, I'll take it all the way back. You know, I was always obsessed with music. was always obsessed. Like that's what I was always into. That's what I was wanting to do. I thought, ⁓ it was definitely not going to be a musician per se, but, you know, I, I really loved just that as my kind of, you know, passion, love language. And, that kind of kind of took shape and form, you know, in high school and college by.

organizing events, like doing concerts. It was started out as like doing the little after parties for our school plays, which were, you know, high school bangers. grew up in New York. So it was kind of like Chinatown lofts and weird karate studios and things like that with, you know, jungle juice and a DJ. And then as I got into college, you know, doing more legit artists and kind of bringing hip hop and indie music to an electronic to kind of, you know, where I went to school, which was up in New Hampshire. Shouldn't get a lot of that. You know, that kind of.

That's kind of like, was my thing I always loved and I had no idea what the fuck I wanted to do, but that was what I love to do. ⁓ and then I took this course my senior year and it's like, you know, this is kind of, guess, advocating a little bit for the, for the college experience. Cause it kind of came out of nowhere and it was called design thinking. It was an engineering course, ⁓ stopped by this great professor named professor Roby, Peter Roby, ⁓ at Dartmouth. It was all about like basically like creative design and design thinking and

kind of creative agency one-on-one, which I didn't really understand as an industry, honestly, like obviously I knew there was advertising in the world, but I didn't know what the creative agency did. and it was really studying like the IDEO principles and design principles. And it was just this great project work and super interesting research and just creating things. And I was like, I love this. Like, this is, this is amazing. Like, how is this something I can do? And so I kind of like took that and ended up kind of moving back to New York and

doing an internship at a, at an advertising agency, like a small one called poke. ⁓ and that was like, you know, I really loved it. And I was like, I like this kind of work, but I'm still passionate about music. so I ended up leading poke for a real job, ⁓ and music PR. I was terrible at it. I was an assistant. got fired within three months. I started working at Saks Avenue selling clothes, to like hustle and do my how to make it an America impression and kind of like started doing the concert stuff on the side with my business partner.

Brett, who's still in my business partner. And that just kind of built up authentically. And in the beginning, we always wanted, at least I always wanted to bring together this kind of music stuff and this community building and concerts and experience with, you know, how to bring this kind of design thinking to light and how to kind of work with brands and kind of do more creative, creative kind of design objectives. So kind of started out with those two passions, really music, and then this new thing of design thinking and kind of creative project work.

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Justin Levinson (04:39)

That's cool. I saw you went to school in Dartmouth. was looking at your LinkedIn page and I'm actually located in Vermont, so I'm not too far from Dartmouth. Very familiar with it. Beautiful, beautiful area. What was your first break, you know, doing this, you know, really getting, this would be a job. I mean, how did that kind of come to be?

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Max Pollack (04:56)

Yeah. So we had done one hip hop party that was like, you know, it was fun, but it was kind of like, whatever. And then through the college stuff, this booking agent that I had worked with in college reached out to like, you know, it's like a blast in New York people. I was like, we're doing this French music label kitsune club night tour and we're looking for promoters. And I hit up right. was like, yo, this would be great. Like this is like.

our kind of thing is cool. It's like French, you know, it's like, it's, know, it's a little fashion adjacent, um, which was kind of, know, we were downtown. So was kind of, that was kind of the vibe. And so we just threw an offer together, like completely randomly. Didn't really think we were going to get the actual show because we were 22, 23 years old. Um, but we got it and, we had this great venue called good units, which used to be underneath the Hudson hotel. And we just kind of like.

filmed it, he like brought a sponsor in like, you know, like Brett had a little more experience and then work with some brands and production, doing production stuff. So we kind of collaborated on it we just put together a great show. The, the owner of the company came through, um, and he really like had a great time. said, you guys did a great job. And a week later they called us and said, can you guys basically do this for us across the country? Like we want to bring these club nights all over the world, like all over the, all over the U S and North America. Can you guys kind of be our

our liaisons, they paid us like a thousand bucks a month to do that. ⁓ which was, you know, that started, that started us. It was like enough money to be like, we're going to start doing this. mean, I still sold clothes at Saks Avenue on the side and all that stuff. Yeah. ⁓ you know, it was, it was enough to like, we're doing this thing together. And, ⁓ we have this really great brand that is giving us some leeway to do things. And we're able to use that to meet a bunch of people and, know, do all kinds of work, which was really exciting.

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Justin Levinson (06:55)

And were you able to do this work with just you and your partner or did you need other people on board at that?

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Max Pollack (07:00)

That was just us at that time. Yeah, that was, that was just us. Yeah. Obviously when we were producing something, I mean, even producing things, we pretty much did everything, but we would hire people like AV people and stuff like that. But it was very much, yeah, we were, we were doing.

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Justin Levinson (07:13)

That's great. When did it come to a point where you started to build out a team? How many people are at Matt currently?

A lot of people, that's quite a journey. I'm sure to get there.

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Max Pollack (07:25)

Yeah. ⁓ so that first show is like 2012, 2011, maybe, ⁓ with Kitsune and then we started doing that and we were doing that for, we worked on for five years. ⁓ even when we got, you more sizable, but, ⁓ so we, we started working out of our third business partner, Matt Roween's loft.

in like 2013, he had come to some of our shows. We'd started doing like music festivals as well, small scale ones, but, he really liked what we were doing. He had like started an agency, which I actually applied to be an intern in when I graduated college. Like, so he had like, had experience, but he left that business and now was just working as an artist. And so we worked with him on one of our festivals art. So he did like the poster art for this festival. called Full Moon. ⁓

That was the first time we worked together. And then we just started working out at his loft, us kind of doing his thing, us doing our thing. He was kind of starting to think about going into the agency business again in some way. And we kind of like were helping each other, but kind of separately. And like literally like he was, that's what we're here. We were over here and like we're in the same room. And then this opportunity came into pitch Sing Habir and we like collaborated on the, on the pitch all together. And we were called mad at that time.

his company that we kind of were helping him with was called finish. And so we brought together with Matt finish. And that was like us collaborating and we didn't get that, but then we ended up working with this cider brand that was coming to America and that was like our first client. And that like led to, we needed to hire people to help do that. So that was when we actually, we got insurance and then we had some junior full-time people.

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Justin Levinson (09:12)

Great. And are you guys all based in New York? Or do you have people that work outside of this state as well?

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Max Pollack (09:17)

And we're mostly based in New York. have some people in LA, LA is big market. So we have some people there and we have a little studio actually in Mexico city, ⁓ which has always been kind of like, we've always just been going there forever. So it's a great creative hub.

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Justin Levinson (09:32)

Yeah, that's great. Cool. So I guess in terms of like getting into a lot of these big projects that I talked about in the introduction, how did sort of everything snowball into more work coming in and landing bigger projects? it, you know, just sort of like putting out great work leading to more great work or were you kind of out there pounding the pavement, trying to bring in jobs? How did that sort of that success?

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Max Pollack (10:32)

I mean, think a lot of our success that we're still kind of honestly reaping the benefits from was really in like us creating our own moments, our own IP, our own experiences. That's like, think what created this kind of cult following and fandom around the brand that we had built. And a lot of the people that then came to those kinds of experiences or ⁓ parties or festivals.

And it was something different. was just something, you know, it was like this kind of more creative take on that and bringing in really interesting art and design and just like we really cared about it. And that kind of built the fandom. And a lot of those fans were people who worked at, you know, companies and people started hearing about it and wanting us to help them kind of reach this audience that we had, you know, garnered. And so I think that kind of created this outsize kind of like business development engine, honestly.

I mean, we were doing things really scrappy in the beginning, which, you know, worked to our advantage. I'd say like one big moment for us was like, ended up becoming one of Snapchat's first creative agency partners. And that was just because like we were shooting content on like Marthrees and like creating all this digital content for Facebook back in the day when like ad agencies wouldn't touch it. Cause they're like, oh, that's small. That's like $15,000. Why are we able to do that?

But the, mean, we could do that and make a ton of money. Like we were just, you know, hiring, you know, young kids and shooting it. And we had like an editor in house and we were just, we were just making things fast and easy. And so we got these like inroads in with some legitimate big brands like Samsung and Snapchat to do that kind of work. And, know, that stuff, you know, as we continue to grow and do the work scaled up, obviously agencies started to get the wise to that, but kind of got a little lucky with the timing there and we're able to kind of do things.

at a time when there wasn't a lot of competition, I'd say.

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Justin Levinson (12:31)

Yeah. To do that. Do you have any favorite, ⁓ you know, top of career events or any, or anything you could share with us that sort of like your, your favorite of all time?

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Max Pollack (12:44)

There's the, yeah, there's a lot, ⁓ our own stuff. I would say that we did this one. We have this festival called black, which was basically this, like, this meeting point between electronic music and kind of experiential art and lighting design. And we, you know, we, turned into a pretty big, like 6,000 person kind of festival multi-day kind of thing. And this one year of 10 years ago in 2015.

We had this incredible lineup. we had like Virgil Abloh was DJing and did an art installation. We had Casaflosteam playing. We had John Hopkins playing. Just like great, great lineup and really exciting kind of visual artists as well. And then, ⁓ two things happened. There was like, the police started cracking down on warehouses. So it's like, this doesn't happen anymore. You can't do a warehouse thing anymore. Even, even though everything's legal. ⁓ just like the SLA wouldn't permit it. There were some like blowups that happened over Halloween.

And then the week before the event, the, at the Klan massacre happened in Paris. And so it was like these two things happening because of those two things, didn't get our liquor license. And we were also like terrified to do the, to do the experience. And we decided to do it for anyway, we just, we didn't serve alcohol and we threw this like massive, massive event in downtown Brooklyn. And it was great. It was like one of the, it was the best event we ever did. Because it kind of had this like very.

a raw spirit because of what had happened. And also we didn't have the liquor license and kind of made it a free for all. And people still like stop me to this day and be like, was, you know, that was like a thing that like really inspired me. So that, that's stuff that I love. mean, there's something that's just like out there and a little bit, you know, riskier and different that inspires people to think about creative work differently. That's, that's the ultimate goal. So that was one of them that really like hit it for me on the

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Justin Levinson (14:34)

Yeah.

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Max Pollack (14:42)

on our own kind of operated stuff. And on the, on the brand side, the PUM global campaign was huge. I mean, that was really the opportunity to work with like global CEO, global CMO, travel all over the world and kind of shoot this huge, you know, moment that I thought had a really good strategy to it. So that was a big one. We also worked on Jay-Z's cannabis brand called Monogram, which was, you know,

Being able to work with childhood heroes like Jay-Z and kind of, and Hike Williams directed the spot that we did and did the photography. That was also a career highlight for sure.

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Justin Levinson (15:25)

Do you, do you go to all the events? you, are you hands on still with everything in the company or do you kind of, how does that work?

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Max Pollack (15:33)

To extent, to an extent, I would say we generally will have me and Matt will kind of like, net our president who started last year, we'll kind of, we'll have our specific projects that we're managing from a high level. on those, yeah, I mean, still, still pretty involved in it.

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Justin Levinson (15:53)

It's interesting that, that you were telling me about that project when, when all the things kind of seem like they could have gone the wrong way with liquor license, all these different things. I'm always curious, you know, in the experiential space, it's like in these events, like you really, you have to be probably prepared for anything, right? Because you really, anything can kind of happen. You got to be able to kind of turn on the dime and figure something out if need be. Am I right in thinking that?

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Max Pollack (16:17)

Experiential is definitely like, it's definitely for like crazy people who like either like me who like need like the highest level of cortisol to feel stress or, you know, just like thrive off that like momentum of being in a moment because like it's basically being like live in 360, you know, like being live TV, right? It's crazy because you know, everything's getting shot, but with an experience you see everything. So it's everything's live and, you know, always on. So.

or everything's on. yeah, it's, you know, something always goes wrong. Um, lot of things will consistently go wrong. So a lot of it is just like, all right, how are we going to roll with this? How are we going to like turn it? How are we going to make that change work? Um, but like, you know, the end of the day, and I think this is what, you know, people, like a lot of this little things, obviously, you know, we really care about all the little things and kind of obsessed with that kind of stuff.

But there's a bigger power that happens at experiences, which is just kind of this like, you know, just like this almost spiritual connectedness and seeing something in the energy in the room, you know, being shared that kind of like conquers all the like little bullshit to be honest. So I think you kind of have this like really nice, like, you know, render filter across the experience of just people's, you know, joy and people's kind of energy, you know, inside it. So yeah, I mean,

It's, one of the most rewarding things because you get to see the fruits of your labor, like in real life in person. It's not like, oh, well we got an award, you know, six months later, but like you see that like in the moment before, you know, you close the door. So, you know, I think, I think people, think a lot of people are obsessed with that and people really kind of love that, but it's, it's totally crazy.

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Justin Levinson (18:04)

Yeah, it sounds really cool. How do you see technology changing? know it would like generative AI and all kinds of things have really come in full swing. Is that playing a big part in what's going on at Matt right now?

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Max Pollack (18:18)

For sure. you know, I think the way we're thinking about, mean, it's, would say we're constantly thinking about it. We're constantly thinking about it and it's always kind of being reframed in different ways. ⁓ you know, for us, it's really, it's a complete new set of tools that can do so much interesting work. And we have a couple, like, we have like an AI artist on staff who's incredible. have, ⁓

creative technologist, kind of digital director who's really person it who's been doing it for a long time and just really helping. Educate the rest of our team on it. So I think first and foremost, I think it's, it's like a new tool set and we're, we're just trying to crack that. We've, we've obviously also tried to create some proprietary workflows through it. I don't think it's really there yet to like really like drive that whole like business transformation. I mean, it will be soon, but like, it's just not there yet and getting a lot of people to like, you know, I think there was.

There's just like a big, you know, there's an adoption curve. It's a little bit like slower than the hype curve, but it is transformative and like post-production and some of our workflows. And I think it's gonna be really exciting. you know, experience is, you know, core to our company and you do other things as well. But I think it's really gonna increase the value of experience. And I think it's going to change how brands think about their dollars ⁓ in such that.

probably some of the digital content and the stuff that's like, you know, the, the kind of meat potatoes I need to do this as a brand can start to get automated a little bit more. ⁓ obviously craft will always be there at the highest level, but I think a lot, think, so I think that like the optimist in me, I'm an optimist, but the optimism to me is going to be like, they're going to take that dollars and it's going to move towards not necessarily advertising, but how do we kind of build platforms that connect with humans and make us feel.

You know, how does it connect us and create fandom and affinity? I think that's going to be done through the stuff that we do, which is experiences. It's about these more interesting, you know, entertainment kind of platforms, docs, you know, things that are really emotionally driven. I don't think that is going to be completely dominated by AI or taken over by AI anytime soon. I actually think the tools of AI will allow us to create experiences that are more crafted and more, you know, really tailored to the individual.

which I think is going be really exciting.

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Justin Levinson (20:39)

That's cool. How did you find these folks on your team that are AI focused and sort of helping organize all that?

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Max Pollack (20:46)

Yeah. So one of them was an artist that we worked with in the past and cause we were kind of doing some stuff in like the NFT, you know, cycle and Rio is, who's just artists made really great work in that space. And we were kind of working with him on some of that stuff. he was kind of in the orbit as a collaborator. then, ⁓ our director, Ry is just like a young wonder kid. like we.

connected on LinkedIn, like completely random job. But I was like, yeah, we need someone who's going to help us with like websites and like doing digital things. And then as we've kind of, you know, built together, it's been really focused more now on this kind of like AI and like innovation kind of for the company as well as for our creative team.

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Justin Levinson (21:28)

That's awesome. far as the team in terms of like collaboration, like just your tech stack as a company, what kind of tools, if you don't mind mentioning what you guys kind of use.

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Max Pollack (21:37)

So we've, we've kind of like over the last few months, we moved everything to Sigma. So all deck making all the kind of collaborative doc stuff has really been done in Sigma. It's like the fact that I, do Adobe got, got stopped from buying that. mean, must be, Oh man, that's really gonna. So if it wasn't made, we use Sigma. We're still using Adobe cloud on, on most of the things. Um, obviously like, you know, different kind of people have different workflows, but that's obviously kind of like still core.

Premiere is usually the general editing software we use. We're starting to leverage, you know, we've built some kind of like proprietary modules within a chat. So we've been kind of baiting that to kind of create different kinds of workflow stuff for our team to, you know, leverage it and, know, use it well, along with some of the like other kind of, you know, obviously mid journey, ⁓ starting to do some of the Sora and kind of, ⁓ the Google video stuff, but,

Yeah, would say the Figma transformation is probably the biggest, most obvious one over the last year.

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Justin Levinson (22:42)

Great. That's something I'm always fascinated about what tools folks are using these days. If you're somebody that, you know, if there's somebody out there that is interested in, getting into this particular space or cracking in, you know, how do you, you know, or even like working for a place like Matt, how do you, you know, for somebody who's kind of like an up and comer listening, how would they get your attention?

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Max Pollack (23:02)

email. I really, I really do try to respond to kind of like young, young, ambitious kids who are trying to get into it because especially the people who kind of like, you know, if you're a designer, like you kind of like, you know, make great work and people are going to see it and like, you're going to get a job or if you're a cutter or whatever, but like, if you're like a strat producer, you know, creative thinker who has no like, you know, you know, who's kind like, how do I do this? But

Um, I, those are the people I'm most interested in just because it's, you know, it's my story.

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Justin Levinson (23:35)

Yeah.

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Max Pollack (23:37)

I really tell people to, you know, follow their passion first and foremost. remember an alumni of Dartmouth worked at Wieden and right when I graduated, I was trying to figure out this, this, this field I'd met with him. His name is still Chang. He's a creative director. He has his own agency now. And he was like, keep doing what you're doing. The shit that you're doing, you're like your concerts and the kitsune and the, and like.

That's the stuff that's going to differentiate you, not like, you know, any kind of class or any kind of like, you know, professional thing you could add to your resume. It's really like the ability to bring ideas that kind of cut through and kind of show your, show your own flavor. So I usually tell people that and then I tell people to, you know, just. Fine. Like just find that community, that creative community. And that comes through that passion work, I think. And like, you know,

You meet people through that and you find like-minded people and like-minded people coming together, create new shit and create opportunities. And so that's really where I think is the most value. And then I always tell people just in turn, in turn to find out what you don't like, ⁓ and in turn to find out what you do like, if you're able to, even if it's like, you know, and if you got to do it at the side hustle, do it at the side hustle, but like, you know, getting that experience of being in an office and seeing how.

professionals do the thing and kind of opening up your brain to the different kinds of roles and the different kinds of companies that are doing it. ⁓ You know, it's, it's like a, it's, it's, it's an information code that you just have to kind of start to be in it, to understand it.

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Justin Levinson (25:17)

a lot of sense. Like what's the, what do you strive for in culture in terms of that, Matt? Like is there, in terms of like just like, you know, having everybody be happy and working together, what's sort of the secret sauce?

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Max Pollack (25:31)

Us

is yeah, culture is interesting because, ⁓ I think the biggest challenge to a company like ours is like everyone's got their own POV and what culture is right. Everyone like, you know, like there's three partners. There's lots of different phases of the company and obviously also doing kind of culture adjacent work. The word culture is kind of like this, like, how do you even like digest it? Right. ⁓ I think the, terms of like company culture and like.

the kind of ideals. mean, I think we're definitely, think ambition is super key. So it's, you know, as people who want to do something great and interesting, we have tenants that we, that we put out and doing great, not good is, is, is important one. I think also like culture takes risk. That's like, that's one that I think is like the most important and that's like taking risk on people who kind of fit outside the mold a lot.

those AI kind of mavens that we brought in that do not fit in a traditional structure. And we've kind of always fucked tradition. so also people who want to do things differently or who, you know, don't really kind of see themselves as outsiders. think that's been super core to who we are. it's kind of like, you know, a little bit of a motley crew. I would say those, those are the two, those are the two ones that I think are the most important for Matt. but I think it's also people who, you know,

have kind of passion, maybe adjacent to the work they're doing. So they also are building their own communities through this really great creative work. And we've, we've been fortunate to have like great young people who've come in and have gone off to do incredible shit, whether as a director or starting their own business or designer. And that's always like really fulfilling to seeing those people in the world, but still connected to at least, you know, within the orbit of who we are. So kind of building those long-term.

know, relationships is crucial.

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Justin Levinson (27:32)

Yeah. Is there any secret sauce and like keeping people like retaining people, keeping them happy, keeping them feeling.

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Max Pollack (27:38)

I'd

say the thing that's always stood out and you know, it's kind of like a, kind of like a, self-perpetuating thing, but like, if you find great, interesting people, they're going to love working with each other and the work might be hard and we might be doing too many things and there might be some burnout, but if you are inspired by the people that you're working with and you like them, that goes a long, long way. And that's not some, you know, we're always

you know, trying to figure out ways that we can maintain that kind of ambition and create, you know, some space for people to like not, you know, have their own space and be able to, you know, kind of have a sustainable work-life balance. But I really think that the community aspect of who you're surrounded with and loving those people, I think that's what's been the biggest thing that's kind of driven us forward. And I don't really have a science of how we've done that. I think it's been, again, like finding the people who

have the passion and are interesting and are doing something a little bit different and are a little bit weird, it kind of builds a little organism.

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Justin Levinson (28:40)

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Good people with other good people equals good, good stuff. So that really makes sense. Yeah. How do you like in terms of like experiential, we do a lot of work in influencer marketing, like theatrical TV streaming. So we're in lot of immersive entertainment. We're in a lot of different places. It seems to me like experiential marketing is like really hot right now. It seems like it's kind of like the thing. It's definitely hot. you, do you see, you kind of feel that as well on your end? You kind of feel like things have been really.

picking up and there's a lot more interest in what you guys bring to the table than there have been in the past.

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Max Pollack (29:15)

Yeah, I think so. mean, I think experiential's been crux to our company since the beginning. We kind of built like, again, like kind of define like tradition. were like, we don't like everyone's like focus, focus, focus. We're like, we're going to do everything. And like that's served us well over the long period. It probably, you know, slowed things down in the beginning, but over the long term, it made things more effective, um, and interesting. Um, but yeah, there's definitely like, everyone's talking about it experiential. There's definitely tailwinds. I mean,

it's become a bigger and bigger part of our business. But to me, it's, you know, it's not just experiential, it's, it's, it's an experiential mindset. It's like, how are you creating integrated experiences? How are you connecting experiences to technology now? How are you connecting experiences to larger storytelling? How are you connecting experiences to social and native social kind of storytelling? I think that is really where everything is moving. And that's what I'm really interested in. It's not just.

you know, building a big thing and tearing it down. It's like, how are we kind of creating this world that can live on, ⁓ through a myriad of different kinds of story forms. So for us, like that mentality of what an experience is all about, ⁓ and what entertainment is, ⁓ is kind of like the way forward and then being able to kind of, you know, connect all the, all the dots around it.

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Justin Levinson (30:37)

of it. Well, last little bit of time we got left here. I'd be very interested in learning ⁓ what you like to do personally outside of work. What kind of stuff makes you tick?

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Max Pollack (30:49)

I'm still, I'm still a huge music guys. And I still love when I saw Airplay on Friday night. And as we, you know, as we were talking earlier, we both have little kids, it becomes harder to do that. But like every time I go out to a show, I'm like, Oh God, I got to do this more often. It really is like, you know, soup to the soul for me. So I love that. I love reading, writing, I love cooking. I had a little mini cooking show during COVID.

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Justin Levinson (31:17)

Nice

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Max Pollack (31:18)

Which was, saw, I saw a path for me, like I'm the creator from, like I could have like, I could have just like left it all behind and just been a, you know, a single creator and killing it. But it comes harder with kids to do the hour and a half kind of like meal prep and video.

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Justin Levinson (31:35)

Yeah, music is a music is a huge part of my life too, but I it's become more of a hobby as I've gotten has gotten a little bit older, but I am a big music fan. you have it? What's your, are kind of your favorite? I mean, maybe like listen to

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Max Pollack (31:49)

I'm like all over the place. I will say like my like new shit cuz I feel like you should I get I've been getting a little like disconnected from the new ship but I've been like for some reason this year I'm like pretty plugged in I really love nurse by time like like he is I think incredible and like just like this interesting Interesting creative who kind of I saw recently play but I've been a big guy for for a few years now and I'm gonna butcher his name

But, um, my brother's name is Elias. And then I found this guy, Elias Roedenfeldt, who I really like as well. He's been putting out a couple of albums, been working with Dean Blunt. So I'm kind of, I'm getting into this kind of like, I think live is, I think live is going to come back. I mean, I think it's already back. you know, the biggest bands right now, like Keith's and stuff are like,

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Justin Levinson (32:36)

was just going to say, you on the geese train? took the word down.

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Max Pollack (32:39)

I

haven't fully gotten on the geese train, but I know I will.

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Justin Levinson (32:44)

All my friends have been like sending me like Levenson, got to check this out. This is the best rock band of this generation and Brooklyn. But I mean, I think it's cool too. I've been watching some of the, the videos online. and I mean, it's just kind of cool to see like people playing instruments and like big crowds of excited people. And there, there definitely is like an energy to them. Like I was listening to them and I was like, you know, I didn't like, you're not like, at least for me, I'm not like.

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Max Pollack (32:51)

Everyone sing. incredible.

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Justin Levinson (33:14)

Whistling the hook like right after I hear the song, but I know that if I listen to it more I'm gonna like get it You know what I mean? I think it's one of those like it's an app It's like an album like it'll grow on you kind of thing. So

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Max Pollack (33:25)

I fully agree. Yeah. I mean, I've like the live thing. I think it's great. Like the rock stuff. Well, it is. There's like a punch and like, I'm putting out my, I'm going to put out my playlist through Matt soon so you can check out my 2025 stuff.

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Justin Levinson (33:39)

That's great. And what type of books are you interested in reading? you fiction, nonfiction guy?

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Max Pollack (33:43)

I'm a fiction guy. I'm a fiction guy. I go through phases. really, I prefer, I mean, I'll always like switch it up, but you know, fiction is definitely more of my happy spot. And I'll kind of take on like a total mix of classic and new stuff and challenging, you know, over stuff and all other places.

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Justin Levinson (34:06)

Any favorite shows? Favorite color? Favorite food?

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Max Pollack (34:10)

Green hamburgers, I've kept true to that for the last, know, I mean shows like Penguin I thought was the best show last year, Severance I've been, I'm finally on season two, so now I'm like deep in the Severance game, I'm a little late, but. ⁓

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Justin Levinson (34:25)

I'm deep into Star Trek, Strange New Worlds. really up. Yeah. I'm a Trekkie. So that one's like bringing me back. Yeah. I don't know. I'm into it. I'm nerd ass that stuff. It's got me hooked. Cool man. Well, I appreciate you hopping on and chatting with us and offering your insights, telling us about everything that's going on in math. For sure. Yeah. You guys have been popping up on LinkedIn a lot and I've been seeing stuff you guys have been doing.

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Max Pollack (34:28)

Really?

⁓ I never checked.

Yeah, what was the, if you mind me asking, what was the kind of reason, like what was the, what was the, what a battle was interesting for you as you know, you're in the space. Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (35:00)

Yeah,

well, I mean, I'm always really interested in experiential agencies. ⁓ And we know our recruiting firm works with a lot of them. So I'm always like snooping around and like looking at like, you know, who's hot and what kind of projects are going on. And yeah, you guys stood out, got me interested and I wanted to talk to you and was able to today. So I really appreciate that.

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Max Pollack (35:18)

Well, I appreciate you reaching out. Thanks for the chat.

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Justin Levinson (35:21)

Awesome, man. Cool. Well, hopefully we can have a part two in the future. But yeah, have a great rest of your week. right, man. Bye.

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Max Pollack (35:27)

Thank you so much.