George Clooney is best known for being an award-win­ning actor, direc­tor and pro­duc­er, and a cham­pi­on of human­i­tar­i­an caus­es. You may also remem­ber he was a celebri­ty spokesper­son for Nespres­so, help­ing the brand rack up more than 50 mil­lion YouTube views, and he launched his own tequi­la brand, Casami­gos. So what can brands learn from Clooney about mar­ket­ing?

Adobe CMO Ann Lewnes sat down with Clooney last week at the Adobe Sum­mit. While the new­ly­wed and not­ed prankster’s resume might be a lit­tle light when it comes to full-time mar­ket­ing roles, he nev­er­the­less knows a thing or two about con­tent and dis­tri­b­u­tion. Here are eight mar­ket­ing insights from Clooney that are rel­e­vant to mar­keters.

1. Content Creation

At this point in his career, Clooney can pret­ty much do what­ev­er he wants. But he con­ced­ed the process of choos­ing his next project typ­i­cal­ly includes a bit of guess­work as he strives to make the kind of movies he him­self would like to see. “Most of your career, you’re just pick­ing a job,” Clooney said. “You don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have choic­es when you’re younger, so you want to do stuff that inter­ests you, that you would like to see.” George Clooney’s Mar­ket­ing Insight: Don’t con­tribute to con­tent pol­lu­tion. Exe­cute the kind of brand ini­tia­tives you’d want as a con­sumer.

2. Relevance & Success

Clooney said he tends to look toward the future rather than rest­ing on his lau­rels – and what­ev­er project is next is typ­i­cal­ly what he’s most inter­est­ed in at any giv­en moment. “Suc­cess is a weird thing and it’s sub­jec­tive,” Clooney said. “Every­one looks around and won­ders if they’re suc­cess­ful, if that’s what they want­ed, but you have to keep plug­ging away and not mea­sure it. You have to just keep work­ing.” George Clooney’s Mar­ket­ing Insight: Dis­rupt or be dis­rupt­ed. If you aren’t look­ing at what’s next, you’re at risk of becom­ing the next Black­ber­ry, Kodak, or Block­buster.

3. Twitter

If Clooney joined Twit­ter, it’s a safe bet he’d quick­ly rival the fol­low­ers counts of Katy Per­ry, Justin Bieber, Tay­lor Swift, and Barack Oba­ma, but he doesn’t see a good fit for the Clooney brand. “I think that if you’re well known, there is only a down­side for it … you can get in a lot of trou­ble,” Clooney said. “I’m at home and watch­ing TV and have had a few drinks and I’m on Twit­ter and say, ‘Fuck that guy!’ and I fall asleep and wake up and there’s 5 bil­lion peo­ple say­ing, ‘Fuck you!’” He also point­ed to addi­tion­al risks from social faux pas, like the hash­tag #susanal­bumpar­ty to pro­mote singer Susan Boyle’s 2012 album. “I feel like I would get in trou­ble,” Clooney said. George Clooney’s Mar­ket­ing Insight: Don’t drink and tweet. And triple-check your hash­tags.

4. Measurement

Even though Clooney isn’t tweet­ing, he still thinks social has some redeem­ing qual­i­ties. That includes facil­i­tat­ing self-expres­sion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and con­nec­tions, but it remains a dou­ble-edged sword. Like, say, when it comes to cast­ing. “I have had actress­es come in to read…and I say, ‘I like these two,’ and the cast­ing direc­tor says, ‘Well she has 500,000 fol­low­ers and she has 40,000.’” While Clooney said he is in a unique posi­tion and can cast who­ev­er he wants if that hap­pens to be the actor with the small­er fol­low­ing, some direc­tors have no choice but to go with who­ev­er has the biggest social audi­ence, which, he said, miss­es the point. “Kim Kar­dashi­an would be Meryl Streep if Twit­ter feeds mat­tered,” he said. George Clooney’s Mar­ket­ing Insight: Social stats are van­i­ty met­rics. Good con­tent is mea­sured by more.

5. Distribution

Tech­nol­o­gy enables con­tent to trav­el much fur­ther than ever before – and not just in film and TV. “I think that what’s hap­pened is great,” Clooney said. “For a long time, shows like ‘The Sopra­nos’ real­ly changed [con­tent]. Now look at what­ev­er is made for Net­flix – the qual­i­ty is so much bet­ter than most of the films you see in terms of pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty and sto­ry­telling … they have the abil­i­ty to tell a sto­ry over 10 episodes.” This, in turn, opens up “a mil­lion avenues,” which Clooney said gives actors more oppor­tu­ni­ties, which means “five times more work for actors as a result … [which is] all good news.” George Clooney’s Mar­ket­ing Insight: Con­tent oppor­tu­ni­ties are every­where – and only increas­ing. But don’t lose sight of qual­i­ty.

6. Quality Storytelling

This has also spurred the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of con­tent in which sto­ry­telling has a much wider array of poten­tial sources, includ­ing sto­ry­tellers in new geo­graph­ic loca­tions. “There’s noth­ing but good when sto­ry­telling has new avenues,” Clooney said. What’s more, now the review­ers are also the view­ers, which forces the mar­ket to pro­duce bet­ter con­tent over­all if it wants to be seen. Clooney not­ed tra­di­tion­al review­ers are still nec­es­sary in some instances to help spur view­ers to see small­er movies like “Good Night, and Good Luck”. How­ev­er, it’s much eas­i­er now for big­ger bud­get films to get called out if qual­i­ty is sub­par. “In the old days, you could steal a week­end,” Clooney said. “With a big trail­er and pro­mo­tion, you could try to steal the week­end because no one could rat you out and you could make a lot of mon­ey on open­ing week­end.” George Clooney’s Mar­ket­ing Insight: No one can get away with bad con­tent any­more, so don’t try.

7. Moments

As a sea of fans pho­tographed him from the aisle, Clooney not­ed that often when he meets fans in per­son, they are so focused on cap­tur­ing the moments on their mobile devices that they fail to actu­al­ly expe­ri­ence what is play­ing out before them. “I feel we’re in a world at times in which we’re liv­ing our lives through this,” Clooney said, point­ing to his phone. “You can’t real­ly say that we met [if you’re shak­ing my hand while film­ing it].” George Clooney’s Mar­ket­ing Insight: There are count­less moments to cap­ture atten­tion and engage fans, which includes real-life moments, too.

8. Patience

In detail­ing pranks he has pulled on the likes of his “Ocean’s Eleven” co-star Brad Pitt and “Spin City” actor Richard Kind, Clooney said some­times “you just have to plant a seed and wait.” To wit: Clooney said he found a hor­ri­bly gaudy paint­ing some­one was throw­ing away on the curb once and took it home, not sure what he was going to do with it. He then spent the next five years telling Kind he was tak­ing art class­es and pop­ping into art stores while they were out togeth­er in order to alleged­ly buy paint­brush­es and the like. Clooney said he final­ly signed the ugly curb­side paint­ing and gave it to Kind for his 50th birth­day, telling him it was the first paint­ing his art teacher was real­ly proud of. Kind hung the faux Clooney in his home for years before Clooney final­ly spilled the beans on “The Tonight Show”. George Clooney’s Mar­ket­ing Insight: Some­times the right idea takes time to exe­cute.