Building Brand Gravity Podcast

Anne 0:00
Hello and welcome to building brand gravity. My name is Anne green. I'm CEO at the GNS Integrated Marketing Communications Group, and it's such a treat today because I get to talk to a very, very old friend. I guess we're getting older now, Eric, so, but we're also old friends, both Eric I'll and we go back to college days, but the conversation we're going to have today is very much core to my work as an organizational leader, and something that Eric's been involved in for a long time. But Eric, welcome.

Eryc 0:29
Thanks. Anne. I'm so excited to do this. This is going to be fun.

ANNE 0:33
Yeah, so I know a lot about you, and it's been fun catching up, but tell our listeners a little bit about your background and the work that you do today, and that'll be a good entree into the conversation we're going to have, which has a lot to do with the idea of engagement and the pros of it and the challenges of it too. Yeah,

Eryc 0:51
Absolutely, yeah. So yeah. So today, what I do is I help heart driven leaders, heart led leaders, to cultivate more human centric workplaces, so that people can become the best version of themselves and we can get better results. And I do that primarily now through speaking and writing and advising. So that's pretty much what I'm doing. I got here through, as many of us, a very circuitous route, but I began really my career working in General Electric, so huge multinational corporation back in the Jack Welch days, back in the both highs and lows of the Jack Welch days. And through that, I really got to develop a lot of different skills. We were encouraged to work in multiple different parts of the business during that time. They invested very heavily in employee development at the time. So for my early career, that was really valuable. So I got to get involved in things like six sigma, which was really key, because I got interested in all of this sort of data driven Statistical Process Improvement, and then realized that none of it mattered if you didn't manage the people side of things. So then I got really interested in the in the people side, in things like change management and through that employee engagement, workplace culture, leadership development. So that's how I ended up here doing what I'm doing today. And

ANNE 2:10
It's it's so funny because my earliest work at Burson Marsteller, one of my first clients was GE Appliances. So you and I have a strange intersection there, also during the Jack Welsh days, the roaring days of the nine days. So I have a and the idea of the process improvement philosophies around six sigma. You know, it's something that you don't hear talked about a lot today, but it's certainly something I remember from my past.

Eryc 2:34
Yeah, it was, it was sort of a religion at the time, GE, and it was believed to be the way and, and I think, you know, time has shown that that's a it's a pretty industrial kind of mindset. It's not to say that there aren't things to be learned from it, but it's, but it works in industrial businesses like appliances, and it's harder to make work in a business like yours or not.

ANNE 2:57
Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's interesting. So before we get into sort of your view and what you've been bringing to the table in your speaking and also writing, I know you just recently published a book that I've been taking a look at called stop engaging employees, which is a very provocative title. I enjoy that. What are the different areas within employee engagement? How have you seen the idea and the practice of employee engagement sort of change over time, and it really only came into the fore as a language and a practice only within the past couple decades. I feel like, Yeah,

Eryc 3:31
That's right, yeah, yeah. It comes out of it's come to life in, really our working lives. It started off in the early 90s, this whole notion of of employee engagement, and there was language used at the time to talk about people being harnessed to their work and and some of that still remains in the way that we talk about employee engagement. But I think, you know, yeah, definitely prior to the 90s, the notion of of, really what employees are experiencing at work at all was really not really relevant to the to the business conversation. And I think in the 90s it became, and really, through the through the early 2000s very much about how do we get people to do stuff right? And as you know, like that is a key part of managing a business, is sometimes people have to do stuff they don't want to do. And how do we accomplish that but, but I think the idea of employee engagement has shifted a bit from from how do we get people to do stuff to how do we make this a positive experience for everyone? And I think where I'm trying to push it as even further, which is to say that the whole purpose of work is for us to become the best versions of ourselves and to flourish as humans, and that's why organizations exist. So I'm trying to push us even further in that human centric direction and start stop looking at it as something that's something we do to people.

ANNE 4:55
Yeah, I was really intrigued in some of your writing when you and I had a catch up conversation and prep. Conversation for this conversation, you talked about having a bit of a personal epiphany, and there's so much discussion about what is the outcome of what we're trying to do in business, both as individuals and collective, as organizations. So I have that double consciousness. I am a worker and I am an organizational leader, right? So I'm trying to look at it from both sides. But for many years, the idea of stake, of shareholder value, was the outcome of business, or, you know, maybe obviously revenue, profit and things like that. But what Tell me a little bit about the epiphany you had regarding what the actual end goal might be of the work we do?

Eryc 5:35
Yeah, so, so I think, I think what you're talking about is really important, right? Because I think just to get us there, so we talk about Milton Friedman, and that was the the purpose of the organization is to maximize shareholder value. That was, that was sort of taken out of context, but also he meant it. And then we get to, you know, I think it was 2018 if the Business Roundtable comes out and says, actually, the purpose of a business is to maximize outcomes for all of its stakeholders. So that means communities and suppliers and employees and customers, right and and that shift was pre pandemic. I think, as you and I discussed, like during the pandemic, things shifted even more. And I think there was a there was a real awakening for a lot of folks, myself included, about what the role of work is, what the role of my job is, and and how I think about my contribution there. So that's where we got to this really abysmal term, quiet, quitting, right? Which was, which was really just a way of trying to understand that people were recalibrating the role that their job had in their lives, how much space it occupied, because, because for a lot of us, and again, speaking from a position of privilege, where I could work from here in my home, a lot of us were able to reevaluate and and think about how much we were willing to give, how much we were getting, and think about that mutually beneficial relationship between employer and employee. So I think that shifted, and for me, personally, a part of that shift was really realizing, you know, you and I have liberal arts backgrounds, philosophy is sort of in us. And I like to sort of think about the philosophy of business, and I was and I was really thinking about the fact that we going way back sociologically, we organized as groups of humans to be able to accomplish more, and frankly, just live longer. And so organizations exist to serve us, and we don't exist to serve organizations. That's not to say that there's not a role in our lives for being of service, but that, you know, I think this mindset shift of people come to work every day to serve the organization, I think, is really key for leaders, right? And I'm sure you have experience with this of saying, No, that's not true, because they're actually whole people with whole lives behind and ahead of them, and and I need to sort of find ways for this work experience that we're having together to be a part of that.

ANNE 8:10
Yeah I love this. It's a really interesting question of, like, the business flourishing, organizational flourishing, and also human flourishing, yeah? And that question, I mean, we this is not to be a detour, and something we can talk more about that there's also much more question about mental health and wellness and engagement in the workplace in ways that would be inconceivable when we had both graduated college and enter the workforce, especially into those kinds of organizations, just absolutely not on the table. But I wanted to, want to put a pin in that, because I want to this quiet quitting phrase, and I feel a little triggered by it, because 2021, was quite an intense year, I think for anybody, whether you're a worker, manager, organizational leader, and in, you know, we I work in the media, so I recognize that trends have to have names. You know, I have great respect for the press in this country, and it's roiling and messy and chaotic at times, but boy, sometimes people get their teeth into a trend and they just won't let it go. And I think a lot of us are trying to understand great resignation, one thing, quiet, quitting another. But what does this actually mean? And I really enjoyed, and I want you to unpack it a little bit more that the name quiet quitting was really a misnomer for what was actually happening. How do you see of what that dynamic actually was at that time?

Eryc 9:31
Yeah, and I think that's really, it's really insightful of you to home in on that, because I do think that there's, it's, it's easy to grasp onto that, as you say, just as it's easy to grasp onto notions of generations, which we can talk about later, but these terms really matter, and the words that we choose matter, and quiet quitting was a way of sort of, I think blaming people of putting the putting the onus on the people in the, frankly, with the least amount of power in any organization. Or in society and saying, Oh, they're they're quietly not doing their jobs, and sort of shaming. And I think what I encountered an article, and I wish I could remember the name of the author to give proper credit, but Sloan Management Review article in which the author referred to it as calibrated contribution, and I found that term really helpful, actually, right? Because it's about calibration, right? It's not about just stopping doing something. It's about saying, what's the right level of me to give to this effort, and that's going to vary by the person, by the situation, by the organization, by the mission, and so. So I think this idea of how we calibrate our contribution to our jobs, and I've I always like to distinguish between jobs and work, because I think that those are those can get messy. And I think a job, the thing that we do to pay our bills, is a different thing from our work, which, which may be something like our purpose. And I think calibrating how much we give of ourselves to our jobs is really key to that, to our mental health, to our physical health. And I think obviously what we have to recognize too is that there's such an interdependence here that we know that what we experience in the workplace doesn't just sort of stay in the workplace, right, and so and vice versa. That's right, exactly. And so if we're if we're burning out in our work, in our jobs, then what impact is that having on our on our friends, our families, our loved ones, our neighbors, our communities. That really matters too. So I think that this idea of calibration really becomes a sort of social imperative.

ANNE 11:42
Yeah, you know, I do want to pick on up on something you just said, and you can let me know if you have an opinion on it, which is these just dialogs about generations in the workforce. And right now, at my firm, and at many firms, we have four generations. We have boomers, millennials, Gen Xers, don't forget us. We're still here. And also Gen Z, I laugh because there are many articles that just ignore us. We're smaller generation. What can you do? But you know, I've been around enough long enough, and you have to, and I'm particularly interested from your lens, given the kinds of work you've done in, you know, organizational leadership, employee engagement and things like that, over the years. But there are these ongoing discussions and debates about what can be attributed to a generation and then versus, like, what might be a life stage, or what might be some other kind of dynamic that's at play between groups and communities of people within an organization. What is your take on where generational thinking is helpful and where it might not be helpful?

Eryc 12:40
Yeah, yeah. Thank you for, thank you for the nuanced question. Because I think that that's the key to this, is nuance, right? And I think, I think that there's, it's generations are a useful shortcut, right there. There's certainly that we can, we can use it as a shortcut for a group of people who were born around a certain period of time and may have a certain shared experience. And that's especially helpful when you have, you know, something major that happens in a in a period of time, you can say, Oh, these people went through that thing. And I think that that can be really useful. You know, I think if you look at, if we're going to look at Gen Z, for example, these are, these are folks who were, in some cases, in high school during the peak of the pandemic. What did that experience do to them? What lasting impacts is that going to have for them? That's important and that's helpful, but like any shortcut, if we don't recognize that it's a shortcut and that shortcuts have limitations, then we're in danger. I think of stereotyping, caricaturing, and we go down, we go down a path of, I think, potentially fascistic path of saying, you know, this this is better, this is worse kind of thing. And so I think, I think the important thing is to balance out the generational shortcut with the individual human so, you know, I think, like you and I were born around the same time, we experienced a lot of the same things. Growing up, we were children of 12 years of the Reagan Bush administration. And you know, what did that mean for us? How has that impacted us? It that's that is true, but you and I also grew up in very different circumstances, and we that matters too. So you know what I think, and I think you'll agree that this, that the sociological findings are that things like, like socio economic status, and unfortunately, in this country, race, have way bigger of an impact than when you were born. And then I think also, if we, if we're to take an idea like Like generations and make it and take it global, it starts to really fall apart quickly, because the experiences I might have had growing up in India would be very different from the experiences I had growing up in the US at the same time.

ANNE 14:57
So it's great to pick apart these constructs, especially. To blow it out like that and say, like, Where does this actually hold? And I think you're right. The idea of a shortcut, I do think, to understand each other in a workplace, whether it's management looking at a wider staff, or the staff looking at management. We're trying to use these shortcuts to understand each other and also create explanations for things because and this will get into the core of I'd love to start talking a little bit about some of the core premises of the book that that you put out this year, which is why we're talking today, because I caught my attention and I checked it out, and it's aligned with a lot of the things I'm thinking about. But it's not easy being in a human community to begin with, and then when it's in a business setting and there's work and compensation involved, and different levels of hierarchy. I mean, it's like, it sounds like no duh, but this stuff is complicated, yes, and I've had a long time joke I've shared with members of my management team for many years, which is, you will be talking about X, Y issue, and I'll just say it's the humans. If it wasn't for the humans, it'll be easy, which means all of us. It doesn't mean them, it doesn't mean us. And I always say there's no us versus them, and that's true internally to me too, but this is why I think there's so much energy around this question of engagement and what it means to be a worker, and what is that relationship. So you titled your book very directly, stop engaging employees, and the subtitle is, start making work more human. Start by explaining that title to me.

Eryc 16:24
Yeah, yeah. Thank you so, so, you know, and I admit that part of the purpose is, is to provoke, to get the wait. What do you mean? Stop engaging in books now. So, so I think you know, just, just to clear it up, is employee engagement important? It absolutely is. What I meant to say with stop engaging employees, is that it's not something we do to someone that I always say. I don't believe we can make someone be engaged any more than we can make someone fall in love with us. And if you try to make someone fall in love with you, it's creepy. And so I think, I think similarly, trying to make someone become engaged, because I, you know, I define engagement as this emotional connection and commitment, and I think, you know, and I recognize, like a lot of your audiences, are communicators. And sometimes that word engagement can mean something different to communicators. Often it means we want people to actually read and understand a message that we're sending right. But I think the idea of being emotionally connected and committed to what I'm doing is what I think about when I think about engagement. And so that's not something you can do to me. What you can do as a leader, and I think you know this well, is cultivate the conditions in which that's more likely. So the metaphor I always like to use is that leadership is a lot more like gardening than it is like carpentry. So you know the carpenter mindset, which is what a lot of folks get taught in business school, which is that you can design and build a workplace culture is not how humans work, right? But what you can do is practice consistently over time a key set of disciplines, like a gardener does to create the conditions in which it's more likely that people are going to flourish and become, become engaged, develop that condition of engagement. So stopping engaging employees is really about stop stopping to seeing it, doing something we do to someone, but also that start making work more human. Piece which goes, which goes hand in hand. It's really also about, how do we think about individual human dignity in these, often profit driven, hierarchical, as you mentioned, organizations, how do we preserve dignity for all in that process?

ANNE 18:37
So I think that's a big part of what that's about as well. It's great. You know, it's funny in business development was sometimes people talk about gardening or versus hunting. You know the cultivation piece, which is really about, again, cultivating human connection, versus, like, I want to sell something to you now, but the carpentry piece reminded me of the the old phrase, um, you can say it many different ways, but if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? And it's and that does feel like that rigidity or that structure that organizations can sometimes have. It's like, I need to put everybody in this very specific place and kind of hammer it all into place. And it's hard, it's hard to avoid that, but it's an interesting concept that you're getting to the heart of, which is engagement is something we do with versus to Am I understanding that correct exactly your perspective?

Eryc 19:26
Yeah, that's exactly I think. I think we are all together cultivating engaging workplaces. We all want that feeling of emotional connection and commitment and excitement about what we're doing, but we're all creating that together. It's not something that you as a leader, design and build and then plug humans into all those humans contribute.

ANNE 19:45
Yeah, it's true. And you know what? One of the things I was thinking about a lot is that organizational leadership and a relationship between organization and employees is both very collective and. Yet also very individual. So I feel this dynamic tension very strongly in my role and have so leaders want and need to engage with each person as the individual human being they are, or they should want to, at least I do, but they also necessarily need to regard the full staff or the full organism as a collective entity. And sometimes the needs of the many are not aligned with the needs of the one. You know, there's ups and downs and business cycles. Sometimes there's hard times or easier times. How do you think about that tension point between the collective and the individual, and that relationship between organizations and staff?

Eryc 20:36
Oh, gosh, I've been thinking about that a lot lately, because I've been thinking about it at the sort of larger sociological context of the that tension between independence and interdependence and yeah, you know, we are, we are both of those. We are both individuals having individual experiences. No one else knows what's going on in this messed up brain right now, right? But at the same time, we accomplish nothing solitarily, right? We, we are all interconnected and interdependent, and so I think, within an organization, I think that shows up exactly as you say, as this tension. You know, when I look at things like performance management systems and that sort of thing, they're all very individualistic, right? We're evaluating this individuals and this individual employees performance over time, and we're trying to isolate that somehow from the interactions that they have with their colleagues and co workers. And that's really hard to do, especially as organizations are more and more creating value through collaboration, right? Like what you accomplish in your in your business only happens among people. It doesn't happen because one person does one thing, and so I think this tension is very real, and there's a couple of different things that I think about that are implications of this. So on the one hand, I think there is the individual who has their own unique needs and aspirations and fears and motivations, and they're unique to them, and they have their own sort of life behind and ahead of them, and they come to work with all of that and and then we want them to, we want to create the conditions in which they become engaged with what we're all trying to do together. And sometimes that happens, and sometimes it doesn't. And I think this is something that I've been that I've been having a conversation with leaders a lot, which is that I think we've developed this notion that for someone to disengage is inherently bad, and sometimes it's just the way it's going to go, that if, if, if, what you want me to engage with is something that I don't find engaging, it might be better for us not to work together. And that's that's a human centric outcome as well. So I don't think the goal is for everyone in the organization to be engaged necessarily. Because I think over time, as the clarity of the mission develops, as we get clearer on what's important to us and what we're trying to accomplish together, there are going to be some of us that are going to say, yeah, that's not really aligned with where I'm headed as an individual. And so that's how I think about that, that independence, interdependence within the context of an organization. But I do think it's, it's, it's not simple, and I think it's, it's necessary, you know, I want to, I want to sort of acknowledge that, that these, the categorization, the affinitization, coming back to like generations, for example, is necessary and helpful. And so I think within the organization, I think when we talk about, you know, segmentation, or personas, right, or avatars we are, we are kind of creating these fictions, and they're necessary and helpful. And I think within the organization, that's part of how we how we reconcile individual and and collective experience, is by sort of figuring out what who are we, and what are we up to together. And you mentioned this earlier, that there is no us them, it's all us. And I think that's so critical in an organization to have that big, broad sense of when we say we we mean us all, you're touching on some really important things.

ANNE 24:07
I think that I see a lot of leaders struggling with, and it's the post pandemic. Are we post now? I don't know if we are not, but let's call it post pandemic. I feel that it's the pandemic. Really put got the highlighter out, and just like highlighted everything in bright, bright, bright color, which is, what the heck does it mean to be engaged, and how does one signal or perform? That is it, and how it looks different for different people. And I'll give you another example. So you take an institution that I volunteer for, that you know, well as well our alma mater, we both went to the same college, and one of the discussions we were having about volunteering is that love for an institution might look different for different people. For some love might be critique. As an I care about this place, so I actually want to speak out and make it better for us. Others love may look like, I love it. I'm this is great, like, I'm all in, and it's and I feel that over time, it was that kind of, I don't want to diminish it by saying, rah, rah. Like, if it's authentic, it's, you know, I'm a very hyped person. I'm very enthusiastic. I get very into things. So when I really care about something, I'm into it, right? But, yeah, it's a lot easier to see engagement through that lens than someone who a a may just perform their engagement in different way, like may not be the one who wants to join everything, may need more time to recharge their battery, doesn't want to come to all the things. Or it could be someone who's like, I want us to do better. I care about this place enough to want to do better. Do you feel that? And I feel people really trying to understand this more now to say what, especially in a hybrid environment or remote environment, what does engagement look like, and can it look different for different people? Do you have opinions on this? Because to me, I think it's a really important set of questions.

Eryc 25:59
Yeah, it really, it really is. And I think, I think the way that you've stated it is is so respectful of that, that spectrum of what does exist and what and what engagement might look like. And I love the idea of, how am I performing my engagement? I think that's a really good way to describe it. Because I think, I think that the the the tendency is to say an engaged employee looks like this, and if, and if a person doesn't look like this, then they're not engaged. And and there's sort of good reasons why we go there, right? We do. It is something that we want to keep track of. It's, it's often a KPI in the organization to keep track of employee engagement scores and what have you. And so we are trying to, trying to establish some kind of standard or measurement of what, what it means to be engaged. But I think engaged can look a lot of different ways. And so I think this gets into, I think, really complex areas. So, you know, there have been experiments over the years with with sort of how to deal with this. One of the most interesting experiments, I think, is started at Best Buy. It was called the results only work environment, R, R, O, W, E, and it was essentially this effort to say, We don't care when you work, how you work, what you do, as long as you get the results that we've agreed to. And so it was this attempt to offer folks flexibility, autonomy, to to create just enough structure based on just the outcomes the results, and sort of not worry about trying to manage the rest. And that was an interesting attempt, and it didn't really work out. It was a worthy experiment, for sure. It didn't work out for a number of reasons, and I'm not qualified to digest it all, but I will say that one of the things that was really a limitation there was that it actually does matter how we do our work. It does matter how we get things done to most organizations right? That there are that we have a certain set of values. We have a certain set of of ethics, whether those are imposed upon us or come from within that we want to operate under. And so how we get things done actually does matter, and that results only can end up looking like the ends justify the means kind of approach to work, which is, of course, not the goal, but it's either, you know, unintended consequences are kind of the name of the game. So, so I think that when I think about this idea of of who is engaged and who isn't. So I have a really interesting, weird kind of setup. I am both an independent, you know, consultant and speaker, and I also have a part time job. I work for an employer, and working for that employer, I love what I do. I get to do great work. I get to help people, help people, which is really what I'm all about, and I get to do that all day the organization, I sometimes agree with, and I sometimes don't, and I sometimes feel more or less harnessed to the organization, to use that old word, but my level of engagement shows up in how I show up with clients, how the work that I get done, and how I interact with my colleagues, and so it can, it can be tricky to try to say, is that person engaged or not just from sort of observation of energy. And I think part of, part of trying to be an inclusive workplace is trying to recognize too that that people can show up in a lot of different ways, and we don't know what the internal state is.

ANNE 29:26
Yeah, no, I think that's a really interesting observations and helpful to just think through you, as you said earlier, calibrating. How are Cali people calibrating work and life? For years, this phrase work life balance has, I think, been such a joke, you know, let's call it what it is. I mean, don't mean to be rude, but the idea, as you said, Eric, Words matter. So work life balance implies there is a perfection, that there's a balance. Balance means that you found the point where it's going to be fixed and stay you. Will stay perfectly balanced there. And we all know that that's not how life is or work is. And so the idea that there may be a calibration relative to your enjoyment of your work, or the bonding or the alignment with the organization, or what's happening in your life, I mean, I think these are very realistic and thoughtful things that leaders need to understand and and be open to and continue to contemplate. Because I also don't find it to be a fixed medium. I think it's shifting all the time. Individuals are shifting. We as people are evolving all the time. I mean, would you agree with that? It's, it's changes constantly.

Eryc 30:36
Well, I think that's exactly what you what, what I love about what you just hit on, which is that, is that these are, these are ongoing actions. And so I actually used to, used to write and speak quite a bit about work life balance, but I would always say it's a verb, it's not a state of being, yeah, that we are work life balancing all the time, right? That's, that's kind of how things work. You know, if you're on a balance beam, you know that you're constantly making micro adjustments right to stay balanced. And I think that's what we're actually doing when we're trying to maintain work life balance. We don't maintain it at all. We're just sort of constantly adjustments. We're actively doing it right and so and I think that's also, you know, acknowledging the sort of macro environment in which organizations are operating today, which is, you know, as people like to say, VUCA, right? Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. I like to add to that emergent that there are outcomes that come out of organizations that we didn't even know were coming, right? So, so operating in that environment versus operating in a stable, predictable environment of maybe 50 100 years ago, it's just going to look different. And so so there is a nimbleness, an activeness, to how we all are trying to navigate these things, and that means we can show up differently every day. Yeah,

ANNE 32:02
it's funny. I we, I was just speaking about my least favorite acronym, VUCA, earlier today in a town hall meeting. So now I can call it VUCA E, the emergent I like that. No, it's, we're in a VUCA world. It's, it's the VUCA world. We just live in it. I think that's very true, and it that has huge implications for organizations and their workforce, as people, as a community, lack of that constant instability, or the question, the uncertainty, you know, it infuses the atmosphere. So in your book, you have a number of ease. Was it six E's, Yep, yeah. But tell me a little bit about I mean, obviously I encourage folks to check you out. Find you look, find the book. I think there's a lot of good thinking in here, as they're hearing already. But what are some of the most critical lenses or Takeaways or pieces that you'd want to share as you summarize this work for others?

Eryc 32:57
Yeah, so I think the, and appreciate the question. I think these, these 6e are intended not to make a leader's job harder, because I, because I recognize that your job is already hard enough, but they're intended to to bring to consciousness disciplines that you're that you're weaving through, how you're doing your work and so and the most important one, I think, if I had to pick one of the six, is the first one, which is empathize, and this is what a lot of our discussion has been about today, right? Which is, which is really about understanding who people are in the workplace, what their needs and aspirations and fears and motivations are, what they're excited about, what they're scared of, and and, and understanding that at a very that individual level, is a necessary precondition to anything else we try to do to create a human centric workplace. If we don't start with understanding who our fellow humans are in the workplace, we don't stand to work together to cultivate that human centric workplace. And it's, it's very similar to, you know, when you look outside the organization and you look at understanding your clients, right, or look at understanding the recipient of a message, right, if we don't understand them, then we're just pushing things as opposed to, as opposed to doing things together. So empathize, definitely the place where I recommend starting, and it's also, it's also not as hard as I think I make it sound, because it's really just about one of the, one of the pieces of advice I give at the end of a lot of my talks is just start to adjust your speaking to listening ratio. Just start to think about that I love. I use a tool online called fathom, have you? Have you used fathom? No, I haven't. I'm not an endorsement. It's just, it's a tool that I use, and it records conversations and then generates AI notes and follow up items. Oh, yes. But another thing that it does for the person who's running it is it tells me what percentage of the time I'm speaking now, yeah. This context, I'm supposed to be speaking most of the time, and that's fine, but in a conversation, it's really useful. And I think as a leader, it would be great if we had this sort of meter to keep an eye on how much are we dominating the conversation versus how much are we listening. And again, that's not to shame anyone, but it's just really to say, like a lot of what leaders are expected to do is have the answers and and say all the things. But as we, as we start to adjust that ratio to where we're listening more, then our level of empathy goes up, which enables us to then do things like enable people to do their jobs, make sure that they're that's one of the that's one of those sixes, is enable. Make sure people have the knowledge, the tools, the skills, the resources they need to do what we're asking them to do. And the thing that I always like to say about enable is every organization wants to raise the bar, but I think we also need to raise the floor and raise the floor by just equipping people, right? Yeah. So, so that's enable and then empower. Follows that Right? Which is, which is really, how do we make sure that we're getting obstacles out of the way, removing friction, things that are preventing or making it harder for folks to do what we want them to do and to become who they want to become. So all of that with we can't do any of that if we haven't done the listening and the empathizing first, I

ANNE 36:21
love the listening piece and that tool. It'd be a very, yeah, very eye opening situation for me, especially and others. I mean, all of us who love to who are excited and love to chat and talk and have ideas, and it can come from a good place, but I love what you're saying, though, about empathy and how to build that and empathize as an active you know you could, you could have said empathy, but you said empathize. And I assume that that's very deliberate on your part, but it reminds me, you know, as we have our own process here of trying to be more inclusive, of looking at diversity and equity and inclusion and thinking about that very deeply, and not, not moving away from that at all but inclusivity, creating that sense of belonging, creating more psychological safety, I think the idea of empathy, we talk about building trust. You know, when one builds trust, you can remove friction. People don't spend as much time being like, what are they actually saying behind the words that are coming out of their mouths and wondering about things, so it's just a helpful reminder of simple ways to raise that empathy quotient and be more engaged with folks. Yeah,

Eryc 37:29
I'm glad well, and I think just just just adding to that, I think there's a couple of things that that come up for me. So a lot of times in organizations that I speak to, want their employees to be more empathetic toward their clients, right? Want to, want them to exhibit empathy for their clients. And so, you know, I get folks coming to me for advice on, how do we, how do we make our employees be more empathetic, right? And my, my first question back is, how are you showing them empathy? How are you creating this environment in which empathy is an expectation, in which trying to meet others needs is an expectation, because if it's not there internally, it's not going to show up externally either. And the other thing I want to that, I want to pick up on that you said that, you know, during the pandemic, a lot of a lot of folks were trying to figure out how they could keep tabs on employees. That makes you know that part of the shift to remote and hybrid work was was, how do we track what folks are doing? My my sister in law, literally had a had a alarm that would go off on her supervisors computer if her mouse didn't move in a 10 minute period of time. Wow. It's absurd, right? It doesn't actually demonstrate any kind of value. It was just, it was just a crutch that folks developed. And I think when we think about how do we equip and enable folks to be successful, we shift to this idea of backing them instead of tracking them, right, to really saying these people that we've invited into our organization, how do we make sure they have what they need, versus how do we? How do we really create this atmosphere of distrust, where we where we think, well, you're probably not working. So what tools can we put in place to keep track of you? So I think that that shift, and you highlighted that, but I think that that shift is really a key mindset shift that shows empathy well, and

ANNE 39:20
it reminds me, over the years, because our work career life has spanned a lot of organizational change, just going back to the idea that would have been impossible to wear jeans, you know, in the first 10 years of my career, but the.com boom kind of changed that one but one of the things that I remember saying over Time is we have to distinguish between a policy issue and a personnel issue, meaning that, okay, we're going to maybe put even before the pandemic, remote work opportunities becoming more norm, a norm certainly was for us. And the question of, okay, you get this fear, a fear based. Mindset that that can happen in business and management of well, what are people doing right? But you know one thing, and sometimes you put policies in place that are just aren't good, or they don't work, or they're not right for everybody, and you feel that the anxiety rises like you just see their issues right? So then it's a policy issue. But if you believe in the policy My My attitude is like, watch for the individual issues. And that's a personnel thing, where you're working one on one, with a person who may be struggling in their own way, or may not be a fit, or something like that. So I think those are sort of these normal push and pulls of management, especially from and that's maybe where the generations fit, where other ways of working from earlier times kind of pull at your set of norms and expectations, and it's been a real change and challenge these past five to 10 years, for sure. Yeah, absolutely

Eryc 40:48
well and that, I think you're absolutely right, because I think there is the the what we see in generations. First of all, we see age and stage right, we just see where somebody is in their life with that, but, but we also do see how society changes over time. And I think you're absolutely right. Yeah, I had a boss back in my GE days. I had a boss who was of an older generation. And every time I came with him, came to him with a, you know, having identified something that wasn't working, you know, something that was harder than it needed to be. Or he would say that's why they call it work. It's an oldie and a baddie. But it really conveys this notion that, like, well, work is hard and bad, so let's, let's, let's, let's just, let's just deal with that, right? And I think where we are now is not at that assumption at all, right? The assumption is not at all that work is hard and bad, right? It's rather that that work is a human activity. Work is something that we do as part of our expression of who we are. And I think that that is a shift that we see and we and we can look to the younger generations as bellwethers, right of the shift that is happening, it's not because of them, but they are but they are indicators.

ANNE 42:08
Well, I always joke that I try not to live in a Dilbert cartoon. Dilbert was written just like the movie Office Space under the assumption that all management is the worst, all work is terrible, all organizations are dysfunctional. I'm like, Well, it all depends on how we all show up, and we have to make a lot of choices and good choices in management. But I'm also, I try to avoid having a Dilbert lens, like on my work. I want to feel more empowered than that, but I want to switch gears for a little bit. I know you're doing a lot of keynoting, and that's exciting, and a lot of speaking, and one of the things, speaking of engagement that you're doing that's a bit different is you've told me that you're combining a couple of your passions, one of which is DJing with speaking. And as someone who does a lot of presentation and speech coaching and presentation skills, I really love that concept. So what made you think of this and what did it unlock for your audience, and combining those two modes, yeah,

Eryc 43:01
yeah, thanks for asking about that. Yeah. So, so, DJing is something that I've done for a lot of years. It was something that I that I dreamed of doing when I was younger, and then came to quite, you know, relatively late in life for being a DJ but I've been doing it for a couple decades now, and and it's something that I just, I have come to love the experience of helping to cultivate, again, an experience for people. And you know, when I can help to facilitate a party as the DJ, it's, it's incredibly rewarding. And it's, it's, I also have that same sort of sense of fulfillment when I'm speaking and I feel like the message is really connecting and helping people. And when I see a face light up, when I see an AHA happen in the room, I get that same sense of fulfillment. And so bringing those two things together was was both an attempt to to feel more whole myself, right, just to integrate myself, but also to find a way to convey these messages about leadership in a way that disrupts the way that people are used to receiving those kinds of messages, and that creates a collective experience that's different from the experience we often have when we're all sitting in a hotel ballroom together and So so what I'm doing, I call this I call this talk be a party rocking leader. And what I've done is I've gone through these six E's. We've discussed a few of the E's today. I've gone through these 6e and said, how do those show up for me as a DJ? And it turns out, a lot being being a really, being a DJ who really gets a party going requires great empathy. It requires knowing what kind of party is this? Is this a quiet after work happy hour, or is this an after hours rager? You know, what are the kinds of songs that get people on the dance floor? What are the songs that clear the dance floor, taking requests from people, noting what people are responding to? These are things that I. Great DJ does to get the party going. And as you know, these are also things that a great leader does. As a great leader does not show up and sort of inflict their mission on the organization and on the people in it. And a great DJ doesn't show up and play just the music that they want to play. So so now I'm doing this thing where I'm speaking about these, essentially these same six E's, but at the same time DJing to kind of illustrate and and create a dance party. So it's about two, two parts keynote, one part dance party. I

ANNE 45:30
would say, what's, what's the reaction from the audience or from the listeners? Because you're right. I've been in many a ballroom listening to keynotes I have given. Been the keynote in the ballroom. What's been the reaction when you've done this? Yeah,

Eryc 45:43
well, you know, the my first time doing it, I was, I was aware of what I was up against. You know, that folks had been in the room all day, actually, in a two day event, you know, they were tired. They'd been talked at for quite a bit, even though it was a pretty well run event. And to get up in this, you know, fluorescently lit hotel ballroom and try to transform it into a dance club for a minute. I knew I was, I was up against it, so I just, I just recruited the folks in the audience to be a part of it with me. So, so I got up there and I said, Look, I know where we are. I know what this room looks like. What can we do together to transform this into a into a dance club for a minute, and somebody got up and turned off the lights, and folks got up out of their seats. And to be clear, not everyone you know this is, this is not everybody's vibe, but, but the majority of the room was up out of their seats when I, when I put on the first song, before I even started speaking, I just put on a song and got folks dancing. And they were up, they formed a spontaneous conga line around the ballroom. Folks jumped up on the platform with me, you know, sort of completely violating the the sanctity of that space. And got there and were dancing with me and and when the song was over, they went back to their seats, and, you know, I started speaking, and they were with me, you know. And so the response has been overwhelmingly positive. My best, my best, and favorite piece of negative feedback was he did a great job. It just wasn't my thing. Yeah, hey, which is great, which is great, it's not for everybody.

ANNE 47:19
Which is gonna be a percentage of the audience anyway, no matter what,

Eryc 47:23
no matter what. But I feel like what it does for the audience is it, is it not only creates, I was reminded of this term collective effervescence, right? It creates this, this experience of collective effervescence that we're all having an experience together, that's that's outside of our usual, that is outside of even what we've come to expect in the past two days in this room and and it hopefully, my hope, is that it then enables people to not only just take what they've heard and learn from me, but actually to remember it and start to integrate it be be more energized, to start to integrate it into their lives, because they're thinking about that, that feeling that they had when They well, and

ANNE 48:01
that feeling it brings it back to what does it mean to feel attached to work or an organization, or to feel a mission or to feel a part of something, to enjoy moments with colleagues, whether they're virtual or right in front of you? I mean, I think that's a beautiful way to put it, to kind of come full circle. But I'll ask you my final question of the podcast, which I always like to ask. So it's called building brand gravity, core theme. So what is a business or brand or some aspect of culture that has you in its gravity right now? Eric,

Eryc 48:34
oh, gosh, it's a great question. Wow. We might have to do some editing here, because that's okay. I'm ill prepared. I think, I think one thing that I'm that I'm really excited about right now is is actually relating to DJing. So there's a, there's a, there's a company out there actually don't know who the parent company is, but they own a couple of different DJ sort of equipment companies, and part of what they're trying to do is really democratize DJing. So they're creating DJ controllers and things that are really meant for people who just want to do it as a hobby. And obviously I do it as more than a hobby, but I love that what they are doing is saying everyone can be a DJ, and we're going to equip you to DJ in your living room, to DJ in your bedroom, to DJ for your friends you know, at your little New Year's Eve party, in your in your apartment. And and I just, I love so they called Newmark and and what, what they do really speaks to me, because it's really, it's really enabling people and empowering people to pursue a thing that they may have thought was out of reach.

ANNE 49:45
I love it. I love it. That's a great answer. Well, Eric Isle, thank you so much for joining us on building brain gravity. I appreciate your time today. Thanks,

Eryc 49:52
Anne. This has been really fun, and let's talk soon. All right. You.

ANNE 0:04
Hi there. This is Ann green. I’m CEO G&S business communications. Welcome to a special episode of building brand gravity. It’s our first ask me anything, and I’m going to be answering some questions that we received from listeners and also that were curated by our team in response to episodes that I’ve hosted across the second season of our podcast. And I’m very excited to be joined by our producer, John LeMay. Hey John, who’s going to help me address these questions. How are you today?

Jon 0:54
I’m doing well. How are you happy to be here?

ANNE 0:57
I’m very good. I’m very good. So yeah, so it’s our mailbag. Let’s get to it.

Jon 1:03
So we have a handful of questions that have been submitted. Some of them have to do with particular episodes from the past season, or particular guests and conversations that you’ve had. And then some have to do with kind of, more like big picture, you know, recurring questions that have, that have come up, or topics that have come up, or things about you and your career. So if you’re ready to get started, we can do that.

ANNE 1:42
Let’s do it. Go ahead. Fire it off. First question.

Jon 1:46
All right, so in July, you had a conversation with Peter Goodritz, who is the Global Director of Business and Marketing Communications at Dow, and that conversation involved the necessity of multi stakeholder engagement and solving complex issues in areas like energy, climate or waste reduction. And we received this question, "How are you seeing the impact of multi<span style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span> stakeholder engagement in leadership across industries?"

ANNE 2:15
Yeah, that’s a great that that issue of multi stakeholder engagement, that’s a lot of words, like a lot of multi syllable words. But to me, I think it just respects the fact that our landscape is so much more interconnected now. You think about all the stakeholders of a brand or an issue or a company. Back in the day, you know, not that many years ago, things were a bit more siloed and disconnected. And the other thing I would say is that internal communications, like which is your own employees, your own people, your own organization, was a little bit divorced, at times, from external communications. And I’ve very much felt over the years in this field, because it’s been over 30 years now, that internal communications was often not seen as as important as external and now to me, thinking about engagement from a multi stakeholder way, the world is small. It’s very connected. Interconnected. News travels fast, and I think a lot of people have realized first and foremost, that your internal audience is your employee. It’s like I talk about a drop falling in a pond, and the rings radiating outward. The first ring after that drop in the pond falls are your own people, and it radiates outward from there. So what’s internal is often external too. So to me, it’s more connections, less silos, shared responsibility of looking across that whole stakeholder landscape, no matter where people are, and also recognizing that internal audiences are as critical, if not more critical than those external stakeholders.

Jon 4:26
So a follow up to that when it comes to multi stakeholder engagement, what are some common pitfalls to avoid, particularly when addressing big areas or big issues like climate change or waste reduction,

ANNE 4:38
Yeah and I know those are big issues that Peter and his team at Dow are looking at all the time. Climate change being a very multifaceted one. The pitfalls for me in this world of stakeholder engagement is assuming but not knowing your audiences. Audiences are not monoliths. We see that demonstrated for us every day. It’s complex how people react. What they think they’re more than whatever name they’re given on a spreadsheet. You know, they can’t be really reduced in that way. So I also think another sidebar to that is, in this world of information overflow, especially in social media or all these channels of communications, it can be easy to receive certain communications that feel very intense or very big, but they’re actually quite small or narrow. So you’re hearing something that sounds like, you know, a fire, but it’s maybe a candle, but you you need to dig into it to know so really, respecting the idea that you need to dig deep with your audiences. You need to do real research. You need to get out there in the field and meet and know people and not assume, because with something as multi layered and multi faceted, to say, climate change or waste reduction, or any of the really huge issues that we’re facing as a global community, there’s going to be so many perspectives. It’s really like a prism, and you need to keep turning that so you can see all the faces of it.

Jon 6:03
And then last follow up question on this, there is pressure for organizations and leaders to speak to so many things in the public sphere today, but not all are relevant or appropriate. How do organizations make these kinds of judgments?

ANNE 6:16
Yeah, that’s a great follow up and that that came through in the conversation with Peter, but in other places too, I feel Marta, I know, and we might talk about her in a moment. Marta Ranko, new heart. I know we talked about that as well, that it’s such an important truth, although it sounds like very surface, this idea of go back to your values as a company, and if you don’t really understand what they are and how they manifest in terms of external communications. You got to get clear on that. There’s many organizations. Of course, they have values and they’re stated, but it’s a different thing to have a list of values and then understand how when there are difficult, sometimes contentious issues out in the marketplace that affect various of your stakeholders in different ways, often opposing ways. Is very different to understand how those values translate into when you do or do not speak. So each company you know and we happen to be an agency, so we advise clients on this, but we have to look at it ourselves too. Every organization has to really reflect on that and say, How am I consistent and what we want to speak to, how are our values tied to a given issue and how it impacts our stakeholders, and when should we be really confident in speaking out and using our voice? And then, when should we maybe this is not our story, and maybe it’s time for us to be quiet, but you need a consistent set of questions, an assessment tool, a rubric of some kind, so you can be consistent, and you need to get folks in leadership talking about this so there’s agreement before stuff is out there, and there’s a pressure to speak and that because that’s when people get in trouble, when they feel this pressure to say something and they put it out there, but it’s not really rooted in what they do as an organization, or who they are

Jon 7:58
great and then obviously, with this particular question, or any of the questions we’re gonna we’re gonna talk about, people should feel free to go back and listen to, you know, Peter’s episode if you want to hear more about this, and kind of hear the, you know, where the question, the question came from. So shifting gears, our next question. So you had a conversation with Marta Ron keou new heart, and that covered how chief communications roles are evolving to be ever more integral and matrix leadership positions and there that involves responsibilities across many facets of organizations, including driving revenue and aligning with corporate growth strategies. You know, in addition to more traditional responsibilities, question is, how have you as a communications professional, seen your own evolution into a business leader and the impact you’ve seen of comms over these additional concerns, like revenue?

ANNE 8:51
Yeah, it’s funny how I’m going back to what I said in an earlier question about multi stakeholder environment, which is the idea of connection versus being disconnected and siloed. And, you know, when I entered the field in the early 90s, there was a sense of communications, not for all companies. I knew some companies that really put it at the C suite level, at the table, you know, with executives. But there was a time that communications was more almost like a service function, like, oh, well, you know, these are the people that put out the press release or tell them afterwards what it is we want to say, and they go say it that is very disconnected from the core of the business. And I think for me, what I’ve seen over the course of my career, and I’ve certainly felt it as a business leader, is the deeper and deeper and deeper connection with what is really driving the business, what, and that includes revenue, sales, and the connection with marketing and comms and that whole piece. Now for me, I’m an agency leader, so I’m both running a business, but also serving clients. So I’ve been able to understand that connection to the heart of the business, the business. Subjectives, the outcomes, how those businesses are performing, how integrated marketing and communications tactics tie into that. I’ve seen it for many, many industries, many, many companies, but I’ve also had to look at it for my own companies. You know that I’m a partner in but it’s a good evolution, and I feel like communications leaders are more at the center of that discussion than they have been in the past, which is great.

Jon 10:24
Why do you think there is still this disconnect at times in seeing communications as being a part of the revenue generating activities of an of an organization? And would you say that some of this is self inflicted, or does it come from somewhere else?

ANNE 10:38
You know, one of the things Marta talked about in the episode, it was a really excellent episode for those who are interested in leading in these areas. You know, she came out of before she really focused in communications, she was at Boeing in a sales role, you know, selling jet airplanes in China. So she really knew the business from the inside out, from the start of her career. But you know, she talked a lot about, and this resonated for me, how are you how are we spending our time? And do we understand how the time we are spending is generating equity, building equity in the organization? She talked about, the example of mergers and acquisitions, the role of communications to build a reputation and equity in the brand of that organization has real monetary value in a merger acquisition situation, in terms of increasing the value of that entity or increasing the power and stature in order to acquire so that’s just one example of where it can be tough for people To say, Well, what is brand worth? There’s been innumerable efforts to put a calculation against, you know, brand equity, etc, reputation. Some of these things feel loose and hard to define, and they will be. They’re more qualitative. They’re not the same as a, you know, a sales made that’s captured on a spreadsheet. But I do love Marta’s idea about we have to be very clear about activities that build equity, and talk about how that equity is being built, because that equity translates into capital in different ways, and that can also help communications leaders and even agencies and others understand, wow, we’re doing all these activities, but some of them feel more central to the business outcomes of the organization than others, and more important to the reputation of the organization and the equity of the organization. This is building brand gravity, the gravity of that brand, than others, and that’s a good litmus test to say we should be doing more of this and less of that, if you know what I mean.

Jon 13:10
That is true. Yes, yeah, both are better for worse, but I actually am the one who has to, has to sit with all of this. There you go. So in our second episode of this past season, and you sat down with Natalie Nixon, who is the creativity strategist and CEO of figure eight thinking, and you discussed as the episode is titled, the idea that, yes, we are all creative. You touched specifically on being a translator of perspectives to foster collaboration. So could you share advice on how to effectively navigate and merge different creative lenses within a team?

ANNE 13:44
That’s a big question. First of all, I love the episode with Natalie. Natalie Nixon is such a force, and she’s out there, you know, writing and speaking and sharing so many different perspectives on unlocking creativity and innovation and understanding ourselves differently in those ways. So I think it’s really fun episode. I know it was one that a lot of people enjoyed. So check it out. As you said, when we talked about being a translator, it was something I brought up with Natalie, which is that I’ve had the joy of working in a really integrated way across my career. So when I was at a smaller agency. Years ago, I started at a huge agency, one of the largest in the world at the time, that was naturally integrated creative and all the pieces digital came online, advertising, communications, and then at a smaller firm, we also had a creative shop from the beginning, because our founders were very invested in that. So what I got to do is work very closely my whole career with those in the you know, very specifically in the creative field, you know, graphic designers and creative directors, etc, and those who are what we call G&amp;S, market communicators, but those who are communication specialists, often interfacing very deeply with clients, owning those client relationships along with their creative counterparts. Yes, and what I found is that people just have different lenses. And part of the success of working in a truly integrated way, which is a lot easier to say than to do, is to understand how you have to translate one perspective from the other. And I would always, I would always talk to people about when you are a creative professional, say, a graphic designer, and there’s an assignment in front of you. It’s literally a blank page, and it’s actually interesting to see how our teams are using AI now to kind of CO create and ideate together and bring something to that blank, blank page, and use technology merge with human creativity. But they’re wrestling with a blank page, a blank slide, you know, a blank canvas. Now they don’t know how long it’s going to take, right in those early moments, because they’ve got to create it. Meanwhile, you have very intense account people who are very type A as we I was one of them, I get it, who want to know when’s it going to be done. This is my timeline. Here’s the deadline. And so part of that translation is understanding that there is a magic to the creative process that requires some freedom and breath and lack of knowing and exploration, and then you get to the point where you’re like, Okay, now I see where I’m going to make this deadline, right? And so that’s what I feel, is the translation. Part of our role as communicators, and in an integrated setting is to help translate between those different disciplines and different views, but know that that process, that of creativity, takes time and space

Jon 16:31
on a personal level. How do you, as the CEO of G&amp;S Integrated Marketing Communications Group, how do you find room for creativity in your day to day life?

ANNE 16:42
It’s a good question, and talking to Natalie really made me reflect on that. You know, growing up, I was always a singer, and my husband is a professional musician, he’s a drummer, so I have a very obvious form of creativity surrounding me at home, but in a more corporate setting. And the work I do, you could sometimes feel sort of penned in by the must do, like I must do this, and I must do that, and I have a to do list, right? So for me, creativity comes in a couple different ways. One is constantly learning and absorbing information. I have just a voracious desire to accumulate knowledge and learn things. High culture, low culture, technical stuff, fluffy stuff, like whatever it is, and engaging that and connecting those dots, and looking at something in one side and something that seems really alien, and finding the relationship, the symbiotic nature of those topics, and connecting the dots, which I bring, then bring to my work and my clients that feels immensely creative. And then also for me, the act of communication, and I do a lot of presentation skills training, speech coaching, media training. So for me, this act of communicating with another person and understanding how I create something between us, or I create an understanding in them that doesn’t exist now. Or I build something that has emotion to it and creates that connection is immensely creative, and I really, really love that part of what I do.

Jon 18:09
So last question on this note, you and Natalie also discussed that everyone is creative, but that this involves this interplay between play and process, or as Natalie phrases, it wonder and rigor. So how can leaders practically create space for both wonder and rigor, play and process in high pressure corporate environments?

ANNE 18:30
Isn’t that a great pair wonder and rigor? I love the words. I love even saying them. But the reason I love this, this idea that Natalie has put out in the world, and the way that she frames it, is that wonder is on an equal footing, is rigor. You know, they they both have a space, right? Because I think that in corporate settings, again, whether it’s one of our many, many client sectors, or an organization like ours, or any number of others out there. You know, I’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of organizations across my career, and so many different people in different roles, but there tends to be a focus on the rigor, on the discipline, on the Get It Done, on the timeline, on the What are you trying to achieve? I do think in connecting with the fact that everyone is and can be creative and can unlock more of that themselves. You need to create space for curiosity. And I think that’s embedded in what Natalie’s talking about, the wonder of something, the exploration, curiosity, exploration, play, discovery, mistake making, you know, dead ends. You try a dead end, but then suddenly, maybe a door opens in it in a place you didn’t expect. So. And that’s an interesting question relative to AI, because this question now that causes a lot of angst, I think, especially for those who are focused in communications, is on that is this issue of. Authorship. And you know whether Claude or chat GPT or pick any of the large language models, Gemini as they’re manifesting now, their ability to create content, you know, and to create and I think what’s interesting about the written piece is that oftentimes it’s that iteration and editing and discovery you go through that you actually don’t know what you want to write when you start and you find it by writing it. So this is what is particularly interesting to me about human creativity and machine creativity and how they’re merging. Because there’s two different ways to it. One, I give you a prompt and we iterate. The other, especially in the human side, it’s like I find it by doing it and doing it and editing it and failing and creating it so and I don’t think those are in opposition. I think they’re we’re gonna see more and more, but that’s why I love this idea of wonder and rigor.

Jon 21:22
Yeah, I love that. I love that idea of wonder and rigor, and feel like it’s really applicable to people in, you know, various various industries. So moving on to a new, new topic. So recently, you interviewed Howard handler, who is the president of 313, presents in Detroit, and he’s also had key roles across plenty of different industries. He spoke about this idea of relationships being treasures, and he advised us that we should view and treat them as such. You also spoke advice from your father about not traveling, quote, too light in your life. So what does this mean to you, and how should this apply to younger professionals in the field?

ANNE 22:00
Oh, the coward conversation was another I just love talk about treasures. That’s a relationship that I’ve had for many years. You know, came through business setting a client relationship, but somebody who really understands what it means to keep a network and to build people up and stay connected and and also a really exciting role in Detroit now, having all these amazing venues and seeing being part of that incredible energy that Detroit has right now. But Howard talked about relationships as treasures, which I really that lit me up such a beautiful way to think about it. And it did remind me of something my father, Norman green, had said about, you know, Anne Elizabeth, don’t travel too light in your life, meaning, don’t leave relationships behind. Try to stay connected to people. And I was so worried growing up that I would, I just, for some reason, I felt like it was a prophecy or a warning, that somehow I would. And what I’ve discovered over time, and it really relates to things one feels that they have to do as an adult, which is like network and stay connected. But to me, it was more about the joy of knowing that I have stayed connected to people in my life I care about and that that I’m also really excited to meet more people and create relationships with them. So I think that for younger professionals in the field, what’s interesting is that we are in this hybrid landscape now, where, you know pre COVID, there were a lot of structures in place, like being in office, more, more chance to travel, being in person, more, some of that has come back, right? But we all know that it’s not what it was before. And so for younger professionals, they’re going to have to be more, I think, intentional and thoughtful about maintaining relationships, building them, but also staying connected and saying, How is it that I prioritize this and make sure that I touch base with people and I figure out those you can’t stay in touch with everyone by figuring out those relationships that matter, and especially in the business sense. How do they identify? Wow, I’ve really enjoyed working with this person or that person. I want to make a decision to try to follow along with them and be in touch from time to time. It’s going to have to be more intentional now, and I will say, as Howard said, it’s something to be treasured. When you get to later stages in your career, it becomes quite special. So kind

Jon 24:23
of on that note. So we live in a world of continuous networking. So how do you find authenticity and how you maintain connections with those that you’ve met or worked with, while you’re also like addressing the immediate needs that each day presents?

ANNE 24:40
Yeah, authentic. And authenticity is those very tricky concepts that can feel hollow sometimes, if it’s overused, but it’s also very, very real, which is, how do you bring yourself to these interactions? I think, for me, and this is really how I see. Working now is just finding the joy and connecting with other people, really enjoying that kind of letting my letting it go. And you know, there are times when you’re tired and you don’t want to interact, and you’re just like, I’m not really fit for human consumption. And friends of mine know that I’ll joke about like, end of the week. I’m like, I just I’m not fit for humans, but I think that taking it away from I have to perform authenticity. I have to be a networker. I have to do something. I have to, like, create some or make a sale or make a connection, or get whatever it is in the world that I live in. Can you get it back to the enjoyment of learning about other people, asking them questions, connecting with them and also seeing if you can be of service to them. Is there something you can do to help, or can you share a story or a smile or support them in some way that makes things better for them and that brings you enjoyment that, to me, is the heart of it all. Yeah,

Jon 25:59
makes sense. So we’re going to shift gears into sort of more general questions that aren’t necessarily tied to specific episodes, but once again, definitely encourage people to go back and listen to all the episodes that we’ve we’ve talked about so far. So you’ve mentioned in a couple different episodes, I think that you have sort of an unconventional path to communications and marketing. How did that experience prepare you for being the CEO of an agency? Yeah,

ANNE 26:29
it’s a it’s a good question. I was definitely the liberal arts young person and did not see myself as a business person in high school or college, but wanted work experience, and so that’s when it was really an internship that brought me into integrated marketing communications at Burson Marsteller, which, through many iterations, is now known just as Burson, named after the legendary Harold Burson who I would see in the elevator. It was really overwhelming, you know, an amazing, lovely man, and I got to know him and a lot of other people who helped build that firm in the 70s and 80s into the powerhouse it was when I joined. So that’s a legacy I’m proud of. But I think for me, right now, there’s a lot of articles about and just insights and discussions about this world today, the level of volatility, of uncertainty, some people talk about permits, permacrisis. It’s a lot and a lot of things that one might have counted on in a business context. It’s just very different now, and sometimes it’s hard to gage, is it completely different? Are there just aspects of it? They’re different, but it does feel different. And I think for me personally, I can’t speak for others in my role, but for me personally, my path, which was very much about zooming out to the big picture and and, as I said, being very curious about many, many, many, many things, and being a learner, and just being interested in collecting data and talking to people and layering learning and learning and learning that’s you need that wide view right now, and I’m, I’m, you know, the CEO, but I have seven partners, and we have many other leaders here who are really engaged. But we have to zoom out and see the big picture of what’s happening in the world, in society and in fields that may or may not directly impact our clients every day. And that helps me connect the dots. We have to be curious about technology. We have to throw ourselves into new things. We have to not get too caught up in the hype and yet not ignore the hype either. So this, to me, is a very much that kind of broad mindset that you get from an education that lets you be a little bit broader and connect the dots and get excited about learning on a macro level. So I think that that would summarize, you know, how I prepared myself for this role, to the extent that I did

Jon 28:49
That makes sense and as a liberal arts kid myself, it very much resonates, resonates with me. So in a few episodes from both this season and last season, you’ve spoke with some guests such as Howard Pyle Kyle Turner, Kim sample and Mark McLennan about AI and the impact that it’s going to have on brands in the near future. Gonna try that again? Yep. So in a couple episodes from both this season and last season, you talked with guests like Howard Pyle, Kyle, Turner, Kim sample and Mark McLennan about AI and the impact that it’s going to have on brands in the near future across disciplines. You’ve talked about both the ethical and practical perspectives and considerations in this area. So how are you using AI as an agency leader, and what are you impressed with or not impressed with when it comes to the tools that are currently available?

ANNE 29:45
Yeah, absolutely. Ai everyone’s favorite topic. I just spoke on this recently at an industry panel. And you know, for me, I really want to invite everybody to be thinking about it at a very ground level in terms of, how is it changing day to day, work? How is it being built into our tools, both personal and business? Then at that mid level, which is like, what are those purposeful pilots? How do we start to be very intentional about how we’re using it for us and our clients? And then at that 100,000 foot level, which is, what does it mean to be human? What is augmented intelligence? What is authorship? IP, you know, all that stuff. So for me, I’m thinking about it at all those levels, in terms of how I’m using AI, you know, I’m looking deeply at a lot of different applications and testing them, you know, from playing with different large language models to seeing how Microsoft has baked, you know, is baking and continuing to evolve co pilot within the Microsoft 365 environment, to how, you know Gemini, Google, Gemini is appearing in search, and just how I’m using search. You know, how much am I using those AI results that Gemini is aggregating at the top of a search page, versus how much am I drilling down into traditional search results? And how does it feel? And what is the sourcing? And the other thing I’m trying to do is look at the tools and really ask myself, what are the killer apps for me? And what I mean by that is, killer app was a nomenclature kind of of the rise of the iPhone and the mobile world, and it’s those apps that’s a killer app, right? The app that, you know, runs away with popularity. But my first killer app was in the 80s with IBM clone, you know, DOS based computers, which I was very skeptical about, until I realized there was something called spell check. And when I saw that there was spell check, I was like, I need a computer now. And it’s the same thing with Google Maps, when they added live traffic data to the map, that that spurred a lot of people to get a phone, finally. So these are the kinds of moments where you where the your personal life or your business life, and the application and the utility of it really light up. So what I’m trying to do is find those killer apps for me that help me work smarter, not harder, and also things that are going to help me ideate, because we have to, per our discussion about creativity, you need the wonder and the rigor. So I think that AI, especially if we’re treating it like an agent, not a tool, and we’re iterating back and forth with the large language models, asking questions, exploring, that’s the kind of way in which we can, you know, figure out how to unlock our own creativity through augmented intelligence. So those are some of the ways understanding it, looking deeply at those killer apps, and understanding what applications our people are using and that they should be using.

Jon 32:36
Makes sense. So we have two more questions. So when you talk about the importance of human connections with brands, especially in the world of B to B. What is it that good brands do to connect better on a human level?

ANNE 32:49
Yeah, and it’s interesting. Obviously, there’s always a sense that business to consumer brands have an edge in connecting versus business to business brands. We do a lot of work. We just B to C work too, but we do a lot of work in the B to B space. I think that it goes back to something I mentioned earlier in the episode regarding really knowing your audiences, really knowing them, not assuming things, but using research and talking and being on the ground and getting more connected and trying not to shortcut that knowledge, because it’s the knowledge of what who those stakeholders are, not a monolith, not just a fancy name that somebody in marketing gave them like for their demographic, but to try to dig deeper and say, what are the threads and the interests and the desires and the concerns that really fuel these individuals as people, as well as buyers of services or clients customers. And I think that that is what is the foundation for good brand connection, because that helps then inform strategies and channels that are going to be meaningful and not just more noise. Because I tell you, the other thing about AI is it is pumping a lot of noise into the ecosystem. There’s been a lot of coverage about, you know, we can market at scale now, and you can have a whole bunch of what some people are calling AI slop, created to push out via email, push out on the web, etc. So it’s only going to get noisier. That means a deeper knowledge and more care about the channels and the tactics used is going to be more critical than ever to connect on. You know, as you ask that human level

Jon 34:27
makes sense. And last question is, in a general sense, what should brands focus on in their communications through the year’s end? And what do you think is most important for any brand to share widely.

ANNE 34:41
Yeah, you know, it’s, I think the first thing that comes to mind to me is just the ongoing volatility and intensity of the landscape. And that’s true. If it’s B to B, B to C is distracting. It’s overwhelming. The news cycle is very intense. There’s things happening domestically, globally. Absolutely, there’s weather events, there’s it’s just a lot, you know, recently had an election, etc. That’s just a lot of noise. And then there’s a lot of pressure about what is valuable, you know, and AI, or technology, or, you know, and what people should be paying attention to. So I do think there’s a lot of folks that are tired and overwhelmed and information overload. So I think recognizing that the landscape is going to remain volatile, and it’s going to be a difficult up and down kind of news cycle for a long time to come is important. I think it’s really important, first and foremost, end of year, but throughout is to stay very close, first and foremost, to your own people as an organization, really take the temperature and understand where they’re at and how they’re feeling is going to be a proxy for how the customer is feeling often, you know, how are they able to describe Do they feel the value in what they’re doing? Do they understand the value of what they’re selling or offering the services, and how are they translating that through? And I think, you know, trying to be as transparent as you can be, to the extent you can be, and really keeping your eye and your team’s eye, not just in the trench of today. It’s like you’re down in the trenches of today, but how do you lift your eyes up and out toward that next horizon? That’s a little bit of a magic trick, but I think that’s what we’re going to have to keep doing as leaders in whatever industry we’re in. You know, stay close to your people. Understand the landscape is volatile and noisy. Try to be transparent and keep your eyes not just down at today, but also up at tomorrow.

Jon 36:38
I love all that. I love all that. So that brings us to the end of our slated questions.

ANNE 36:44
Well, this is a lot of fun. I’m glad we could do it. We always want people to share questions and comments. And as you said earlier, John, there’s a lot of great episodes here. I love revisiting them, you know, check them out. If there’s more information that people want, you know, reach out, let us know, but a great place to start is by going back and revisiting some of those episodes.

Jon 37:05
Yeah, agreed, yeah. And I thought, you know, I think you tapped into a lot of the really great insights and topics that were covered in those episodes, but also we forge into some, some new territory that is more more timely than ever. So awesome job on that front.

ANNE 37:18
Great. Well, thank you, John, I appreciate it.

Jon 37:21
Thank you.<span style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span>

00;00;07;00 – 00;00;32;05
Steve
One of the keys to being a successful communicator is to really get into the DNA of the business. To understand the business of the business. Join us as we talk with Professor Matt Regas, PhD, and Ron Kulp, who’s a fellow with Prsa. They are both on the public relations faculty at the College of Communication at DePaul University in Chicago, USA.

00;00;32;07 – 00;01;00;03
Steve
We’re going to cover a range of topics, such as how young professionals need to expand their news diet and how that helps them. The importance of mid-career professionals understand financing sheets, quarterly reports, all of those things, and how senior leaders need to understand that they can’t do it alone. So how do they foster business acumen and an understanding of the business among their team?

00;01;00;05 – 00;01;29;00
Steve
We’ll talk about entrepreneurial mindsets. We’ll talk about entrepreneurial mindsets. And we will talk about having communications be part of the fundamental DNA of the business. Join us on the next episode of Building Brand Gravity. Thank you for joining the latest episode of Building Brand Gravity, where we talk about the key issues, trends, and topics that are top of mind among senior communicators, branding experts, and marketing professionals.

00;01;29;01 – 00;01;58;11
Steve
I’m Steve Halsey, one of your host. Today’s episode is called Building Business Acumen for PR professionals. From entry level to CCL. And I’m so excited today to have two of the preeminent minds in the industry Professor Matthew Regas, PhD. Ron Kulp, who’s a fellow with Prsa. And he’s a professional in residence. Both are currently on the public relations faculty in the College of Communication at DePaul University.

00;01;58;13 – 00;02;22;24
Steve
That’s located in Chicago, USA. If you don’t know that, and they’re really helping develop that next generation of communication leaders, they’re also both members of the Paige Society. It’s a community of the world’s leading communicator, who’s focused on creating community among senior communicators to improve business and society. Matt and Ron, welcome to the podcast.

00;02;22;26 – 00;02;24;05
Ron
It’s great to be here, Steve.

00;02;24;10 – 00;02;25;23
Matt
Thanks for having us, Steve.

00;02;25;25 – 00;02;54;23
Steve
Yeah, you two are quite the dynamic duo and coauthors of several books. I’m sure many of our listeners have, have read those at different points in time. Business acumen for strategic communicators of primer. There’s business essentials for strategic communicators creating shared value for the organization and its stakeholders. You’ve also if that wasn’t enough, you co-edited Mastering Business and Strategic Communicator or First Strategic Communicators.

00;02;54;23 – 00;03;18;18
Steve
So insights and advice for the C-suite of leading brands. So these books are used by a lot of colleges and universities classrooms. I can also tell you from an agency perspective, we use them for professional development and our agency in-house with clients. So you two are definitely on the leading edge of the profession. And we’re here today to talk about, look, I’ve got a copy right here.

00;03;18;20 – 00;03;36;01
Steve
Business acumen for strategic communicators. Workbook, your latest work. Guys, maybe you could start by sharing a little bit of what inspired you to write this latest book and to put it actually in a workbook format for communicators at various stages of their careers.

00;03;36;04 – 00;04;06;22
Ron
I’ll jump in. I’ll jump in to start. Matt, the thanks again. Steve. The the, whole idea, these business acumen books originated some 15 years ago when I joined the faculty at and DePaul met, came into my office one day and said, what do you think about this idea that we’re going to help improve the business acumen of students and young professionals?

00;04;06;24 – 00;04;42;09
Ron
And before we finish the sentence, I said, I’m in. Well, literally no. There are four books later. We’re now into the workbook. And the workbook, quite frankly, came out of discussions with academics in some agency heads and CEOs after the last book, Business Acumen came out that that they said, we need tools that will allow us to work with our teams to up their game with business acumen and business knowledge.

00;04;42;12 – 00;05;14;02
Ron

And so we decided that maybe a workbook would be handy. At first we were doing a lot of workshops and we were, you know, going around the country doing this on one off occasions with corporations and and other universities. But we just couldn’t extend, you know, our, our reach any further, by making more visits. So what we decided to do was time for a workbook that can really make this accessible to a broader audience.

00;05;14;05 – 00;05;36;25
Steve
And and, professor, I guess, what about what about from your standpoint? I mean, you’re you’re really deep in the classroom all the way through, like graduate programs. So, so, so so why now? What have you seen that that’s that’s really saying, hey, now’s the time to not just double down based on your books, but like, triple down and quadruple down on business acumen for comms.

00;05;36;27 – 00;06;11;14
Matt
Yeah. You know, the funny thing is, is we had we had the trilogy, and that was nice and easy. We had three of them. Then we went for four and were like, is it a quartet? If you’ve got four books, what is this? What is this called exactly? I would just build upon, you know what what what Ron said this book is really about active learning, you know, and, and, we’ve all heard that, that wise adage of, you know, give a person a fish, you feed them for a day, teach a person to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime.

00;06;11;14 – 00;06;29;21
Matt
And so that is really this book, right, is to give you the hands on learning experience so that you can actually then kind of fish for yourselves when it comes to corporate communications, content and analysis. And that brings us, that brings us to this, this latest work.

00;06;29;24 – 00;06;45;01
Steve
Well, and what I think what I think is interesting is, you know, a lot of people that have gone through journalism, communications, PR that the joke is, hey, I went that route because I want to be creative and tell stories, but I don’t want to get in. I don’t want to do math. I don’t want to get in numbers.

00;06;45;01 – 00;07;11;27
Steve
I don’t want to see spreadsheets. But you’re saying, hey, actually, to be successful and to be more creative, you’ve got to understand the numbers. You got to create this spreadsheet. You’ve got to understand those things that create value. So I guess over the next half hour or so, that’s kind of where I want to put my questions with you guys is really you know, understanding that foundational element that that business acumen isn’t something that is a nice to have.

00;07;12;00 – 00;07;37;28
Steve
I mean, it is a must have, you know, for any, any communicator to have an impact. And so let’s start by talking about the different stages of you, of, people. So you think about students or entry level PR professionals. They need to develop this fundamental understanding of business acumen and business fluency. But, you know, to a, to a, to a young student, to a junior, a business acumen.

00;07;37;28 – 00;07;55;10
Steve
And that can seem like a really like out there concept. So so Ron, maybe you can talk a little bit about why is it important for those starting their careers to understand that business acumen is an essential skill for being a good communicator?

00;07;55;12 – 00;08;43;21
Ron
Yeah, those starting out, especially in an agency environment, they’re so busy doing tactical execution of events and projects and news releases and the like that they don’t have the opportunity necessarily to say, well, how does this translate into making the business successful? And it’s when you can move into that’s phase and and have the business knowledge to communicate that, hey, you know, if we do this, maybe it’s going to help us better communicate the message because we’re now as the person who’s responsible for tactical execution of a project, we’re looking at it from the perspective is, how is this going to drive business?

00;08;43;23 – 00;09;27;07
Ron
And that is what’s been missing for years. When we talk to see CEOs and agency heads in preparation for, I think, our second book universally, they came back in the old days, ten years ago, writing was the number one requirement desired by these folks for the staffs they hired. Well, writing is still very important, but it today they’re telling us, and they’re hiring people who have more strategic view and they hire business IQ because they know that good writers make good thinkers.

00;09;27;07 – 00;09;30;25
Ron
But good thinkers also need to understand the business.

00;09;30;27 – 00;09;52;04
Steve

Yeah, I think I think that is it. That is an important thing. And the way I think about it is everything ultimately has a ladder up to what is that business strategy? What is that business goal otherwise, you know, why are you doing that? And if you start with an understanding of what the business is trying to achieve, even how you think about KPIs becomes a very different.

00;09;52;04 – 00;10;20;08
Steve
Right? Like you said, it becomes less tactical and really about how are we trying to to correlate what we’re doing to achieving those business outcomes. So so, Matt, from from your perspective, when you’re talking to your students about career trajectories, right? Because, I mean, if even at undergraduate and graduate, they’re thinking, hey, you know, I want to be a senior leader at an agency someday, I want to be a CEO someday.

00;10;20;10 – 00;10;31;27
Steve
So what specific skills do you talk to them about? What specific skills from the workbook can give early career professionals an edge and stand out in the job market?

00;10;32;00 – 00;11;01;01
Matt
You know, it’s interesting when you think about and and, Ron, those astute from the classroom, when you think about Gen Z, you know, our our current students now for the most part undergrad and also and also some of our graduates, I would argue the entrepreneurial mindset is really critical. And that mindset can help you succeed in, in, you know, a large agency or a midsize agency.

00;11;01;04 – 00;11;27;08
Matt
But a lot of our students, you know, Steve, also want to, they think they might want to work for a boutique agency or start their own thing, or freelance or have a side hustle. And so it’s like, okay, great. We want to support you in that. But to do that, you’ve got to understand the dollars and cents and you’ve got to understand the business of the business, whether it’s at a large scale or a smaller scale.

00;11;27;11 – 00;12;02;10
Matt
And I think we know that a lot of those principles are similar. So I really think the, the entrepreneurial mindset, you know, is is valuable whether you’re in-house on a large, you know, comms team or you’re, you’re an entrepreneur inside of an agency and you’re developing new business and new practice areas and new, solutions. And so I think that this new book, again, helps you practice how to go fishing and how to learn these different pieces.

00;12;02;10 – 00;12;35;26
Matt
And I would say from a tactical piece, it’s almost like learning a chessboard. Right. And so when you’re a junior person, you know, you’re focused on learning how one piece generally trade moves on the chessboard, but there’s a lot of value. And even as a younger person earlier in your career, to understand that big picture of how all the pieces you know, how how the Queen moves on the board and understand sort of that larger strategy because you can then create more value, that classic seek first to understand, to be understood.

00;12;35;29 – 00;12;39;26
Matt
You know, there’s a there’s a lot of truth, to that classic adage.

00;12;39;29 – 00;13;11;23
Steve
But I like I like that concept of the chessboard and understanding the rules of the game. So you understand, even if where I’m at, I can only move this far. This is how everything is moving around me. And I’m not asking you guys to give away the secret sauce, but for some of those listening to our podcast who may be in the earlier stage of their career, can you can you just give a flavor of some of the exercises or some of the things in the workbook that that they can go through to help understand that chess board and the rules of the game?

00;13;11;25 – 00;13;51;20
Matt
I’ll, I’ll kick things off and now I would say, before you’re even doing the exercises for a young professional, it’s about expanding your news diet. So if you want to understand the language and thinking of business, you need to build habits to where you get exposed to the different terminology and the different concepts. And so, knowing about pop culture and sports and hopefully public affairs, it’s always going to be really important, but also carve out time to where your, reading something like JD.com, or CNBC.com or a Business Insider.

00;13;51;23 – 00;14;02;26
Matt
And that’s going to give you then foundationally as you dive into then the exercises that’s going to then build familiarity I think and, and curiosity. Right.

00;14;02;28 – 00;14;28;29
Steve
Yeah, I think, I think that’s interesting expanding your news diet but but even expanding, where you want to create news. Right. And and this feels like it was ten years ago, but it was probably like three years ago. I think one of the most interesting examples was I found myself raising my son home on a Sunday morning because DJ Marshmello was going to drop his new album in Fortnite.

00;14;29;02 – 00;14;54;23
Steve
And, you know, for me, just thinking, oh my gosh, from a truly omnichannel communications professor, perspective, I mean, to think that how I’m going to drop an album is I’m going to create a concert in a virtual game that people can create avatars. And it was it was it was amazing way to think differently. But that was achieving a very good business, objective.

00;14;54;26 – 00;15;28;02
Steve
So I want to transition a little bit to thinking about, I’m going to kick this back to you, right. Thinking about kind of taking that transition from tactical to strategic. Right. So when we’re getting to a little bit more of our mid-level PR professionals, you know, they’re trying to think about how do I translate some of these tactical outputs, how do I become more of, strategic advisor role in their their most cases aren’t going to be working directly with the C-suite, but they’re going to be working with senior managers of business, senior managers of communications.

00;15;28;05 – 00;15;50;23
Steve
If you’re in-house, that’s when you really start seeing a lot of the inner organizational connections starting to come in. So maybe you can you can address for us, for mid-level professionals who are often just moving into those managerial roles, how does business acumen help them start contributing more strategically to their organizations?

00;15;50;25 – 00;16;13;11
Ron
You know, for the junior, staff member, I think the big thing that we as their managers need to do is to let them know, you know, the okay, do you understand why we’re doing this project? Very often we give them an assignment, they take it, they’re like order takers. They salute and leave and come back and give us something.

00;16;13;11 – 00;16;44;23
Ron
And we’re then scratching our heads as their manager is saying, this really doesn’t hit what we’re trying to do, and we don’t take the time to say, well, let me tell you why we’re initiating it at this moment, what the goals are for the business, and really bring them in to more knowledge about how what we’re doing helps drive results for the company.

00;16;44;26 – 00;17;14;18
Ron
And when you strike that, you’ve struck gold with not only junior talent, but the mid level talent. There’s often in the same boat. But I think a lot of times, especially junior talent, because they’re doing so many other things, especially in an agency, they may be working with 7 or 8 clients that they feel it’s too overwhelming. So we have to do is break it, as we have in the book, break it into segments that make it comfortable for them.

00;17;14;22 – 00;17;36;03
Ron
If they just start out with something like, what is the bottom line? We hear it all the time, but we also know that a lot of young people say, I have no idea what they mean when they say that. That’s something that said between my boss and peers of his or hers. So we have to make sure that we make it comfortable for them.

00;17;36;05 – 00;18;06;20
Ron
And then the senior leaders have to make sure that their mid-level talent is really getting up to speed with these terms. We did an agency workshop, a recently where the person in charge of the programs said, oh, we don’t have to go into all those details. I know my team knows this information. So Matt says to me, what do you think?

00;18;06;23 – 00;18;31;06
Ron
Do you think they really know it? I said, I don’t think they do, just based on my own personal experience. At both corporate and agency jobs. So we took a risk and we kind of ignored the, the, the direction and we started with the basics. Wouldn’t you know that when we surveyed the group they didn’t know the things that their boss thought bosses thought they should know.

00;18;31;09 – 00;18;57;17
Ron
So it’s all making it as approachable as could be and to bring people inside the tent. If you’re a senior person, you have all that information. How do you share it, and how do you make sure that your team understands how that business is in business and how they make money, and how this all translates into success for the enterprise?

00;18;57;25 – 00;19;27;12
Steve
Yeah, I think that’s I think that’s really important how you tie everything together. And they can understand sequentially how it fits together. And, and Matt, in our discussions, you know, you’ve talked a lot in the past about the importance of building those relationships across departments. But part of that is critical is having the critical skill set to be able to have the conversation with finance, to have the conversation with operations, to have that conversation with legal.

00;19;27;14 – 00;19;46;23
Steve
So maybe you can share a little bit, like what insights do you have for when people get to that mid level? What are the things they need to think about in creating those connections? And even the language they choose to not just demonstrate the basics, but demonstrate more of a fluency in, business acumen.

00;19;46;26 – 00;20;21;28
Matt
Yeah. You know what? That’s a that’s a great question, Steve. And actually, that’s in part what inspired our edited book, our Mastering Business for Strategic Communicators, which is really about, it’s, it’s current or former CEOs explaining and then how they work effectively. Collaborate across different departments and functions, whether that be legal HR, corporate corporate strategy, finance, and then and then we have sidebars, which was a fair amount of work to put together for members.

00;20;22;00 – 00;20;52;05
Matt
Then you know, the CFO or Co is then Chro is sharing their experience of how commerce adds value or doesn’t or could do, better. So I think maybe a starting point is, make career folks being very intentional about not staying, within our traditional lanes, you know, of who we might naturally interface the most with, particularly as a mid-level, professional.

00;20;52;08 – 00;21;32;00
Matt
But consciously, you know, I’m reminded by, a great example, a friend, a friend of ours, I think, you know, Lisa Berger, as well, Steven, she shared an example when she was with Navistar, you know, for many years. So industrial transportation company, and she talked about purposely she would park, you know, there’s there’s the office in the front and the white collar workers, and then you’ve got your production and your engineers in the back and she would purposely enter every day from the back of the factory and go through so she’d have opportunities to build relationships with front line, employees.

00;21;32;03 – 00;22;02;07
Matt
Right. And got out so that she can help them look around corners and see what is really in and build that trust. And, and, relationships. And so I think that intentionality of actually consciously getting out of your classic rhythm, that’s easy to stay within, particularly within large organizations, and actually start figuring out who are the folks that have what I, Warren and I think of as hearts of teachers.

00;22;02;09 – 00;22;26;08
Matt
Right. That are we we’ve met these people. They do exist in all of these different functions that you can get comfortable with, then bouncing ideas off of them. And they they’re not just dismissive. Right. But they’ve got that heart of teachers now having to run something by you. What do you think about this or particularly like financial or accounting concept and that you can bounce things back and forth.

00;22;26;08 – 00;22;50;27
Matt
Because our goal a lot of times is to take complex stuff and make it relatable and understandable. But it’s very hard to do so, as we know when we don’t fully understand what we’re, communicating. So I think that intentionality of always networking, building relationships, finding those hearts of teacher pros and other functions outside of comms is critical.

00;22;50;29 – 00;23;12;18
Steve
Yeah. I mean, that that intentionality, I think is key. I love that example that you shared of, you know, coming in from the back of the factory. And I would also, you know, recommend to any of our communications leaders out there any opportunity you have, particularly for your mid-level, to let them go out and do some right along with your sales team.

00;23;12;20 – 00;23;37;10
Steve
You know, I was fortunate, earlier in my career with a number of clients to actually get out in the field and do ride alongs and actually see how the discussions happen. And like we said, there’s a lot of complexity that needs to be boiled down. But understand what that sales environment is like, what that was the view of the brand is like how you need to, like get that communications to the appropriate level.

00;23;37;10 – 00;24;01;24
Steve
I think is is key. So, so so some great advice there. Now, Ron, I want to turn a little bit. You guys spent a lot of time in the book talking about understanding quarterly earnings and financial statements. So as we think about those in like the mid career level, when it where this starts really seeming to make a little bit more sense when they’re starting to get a little bit more access to the C-suite.

00;24;01;26 – 00;24;13;02
Steve
What, what advice or what counsel do you have regarding, financial reports and quarterly earnings calls for those in the mid-level?

00;24;13;04 – 00;24;48;04
Ron
I can start out by saying, don’t do it the way I did. You know, I spent the first, first, 12 years of my career as a reporter and then working in the government in New York. And quite frankly, unfortunately, Business Essentials weren’t part of either of those jobs. So when I joined Eli Lilly and Company, I was there maybe two weeks in, my boss comes in and says, oh, the person who usually does the earnings release has just gone over to another company, Merck.

00;24;48;06 – 00;25;11;00
Ron
And so we need somebody to write the report. So go up and meet with the CFO. So I go up with my reporter’s notebook, which are still carrying, and I’m taking notes furiously. I have no idea what he’s saying. And I come back, I come back and I said, I think I’m in trouble. And and so my boss.

00;25;11;00 – 00;25;45;16
Ron
So what do you need to know? And I said, like, what are earnings? And I was serious. So he, he trips me over to the director of, of Investor relations who takes me under his wing. Bob Draper is forever my hero and we take it from the top and he is my tutor on everything. Regarding earnings releases, I learned so much in that experience, and even though I probably went through 24 drafts back then, we were a through we we did the alphabet.

00;25;45;18 – 00;26;13;17
Ron
We started with a and if we’re lucky by Z, we have a final draft of the release. So we finished the release, sent it to the CFO, the CFO and the CEO for approval. Not because of what I did, but because I was a communicator. And I listened well to Bob Draper from Investor Relations. We put together a darn good earnings release, and it was a career changer.

00;26;13;20 – 00;27;00;19
Ron
Next thing you know, the CEO says, you know, the guy who left also had responsibility for the end report. So let’s give the new kid the annual report. Now I’m in deeper than I ever thought I could be. That was a career defining moment. It appeared on my resumé. It also was a job responsibility for every role corporate role I had after leaving Lily, because it jumps up the page as something that, if you understand the business of the business and you can do an annual report and an earnings release, then you understand the business.

00;27;00;22 – 00;27;25;25
Ron
And like I said, it was a defining moment. It’ll be the defining moment for other mid career people who want to find ways. And one of those ways of doing it is raise your hand and say, could I sit in on one of the sessions where it’s Guy? Writing the press release on earnings is talking to management about how how it’s put together.

00;27;25;28 – 00;27;40;19
Ron
And then, of course, listen to the earnings calls. You learned so much through that. Again, first of every listener earnings call was the one I was asked to put together after that, that press release. So hands on is nothing like it.

00;27;40;22 – 00;28;10;14
Steve
Yeah I thought, I thought for me what was was, was interesting was for, for a large public company. I wrote their annual report for a number of years. And what I found interesting about it, when you think about, where things sit in the corporate world, was my ID badge was sponsored by the CFO. So, like, when we were scouting locations and places to shoot, you know, the images and everything that we’re going to do to bring the theme to life.

00;28;10;14 – 00;28;32;07
Steve
It became a joke when I would travel with senior managers to see what rooms I could access that they couldn’t, and the fact that I could access rooms because I was sponsored by the CFO, that, you know, a leaders in the company couldn’t was, was really speaks to the importance of understanding, that that the language of it.

00;28;32;07 – 00;29;00;10
Steve
But then also as Matt, as we talked about is having those connections. So so let’s then switch to senior stage career, right. You’ve got that seat at the table, you’re a CEO, you’re a senior agency, had counseling on the earnings reports. All of these type of things. How does business acumen change at that point and how does it allow what’s required to be seen as more of an equal partner?

00;29;00;10 – 00;29;13;19
Steve
I mean, you guys have interviewed a ton of key CEOs. Where does it where does it pivot? Where does it change once that Co is has that seat at the table and wants to be that partner in the decision making?

00;29;13;21 – 00;29;42;15
Matt
Yeah. It’s it’s so interesting right. Because we continue to see nail service speaking. You were talking about CFO just now Steve of of reporting structures and you know for a while it was do large corporations have cost okay. We’re established there now. It is co taking on additional roles and responsibilities. We’re calling that Co plus. And so now we’re at this point where we’ve got the seat at the table.

00;29;42;17 – 00;30;06;16
Matt
And it’s like okay see CEO and comms team. What are you going to do with it. Because the other thing that we all know, I you know, this conversation also takes part with Investor relations officers. They all feel they deserve a seat at the table. There’s there’s this, mushrooming of sea level positions, and they can’t all sit around happily around that table.

00;30;06;16 – 00;30;34;14
Matt
And so I think we’re at this interesting phase of what do we now do, really, as counsel or an advisor to demonstrate our value and our worth to, to, to live up to, this elevated role for our function. And, you know, I think one thing that Ron and I have seen is our function talks a lot about whether it’s agency or in-house, about learning and development of our teams.

00;30;34;16 – 00;30;57;05
Matt
But then when you look at the data, it’s not as encouraging. Always have how much we are truly spending to help level up, not just, you know, the top person. That’s great, but the success of the top person, a lot of it’s going to rest on the quality of their team and the skill set and knowledge of their team to help support them as a counselor and advisor.

00;30;57;08 – 00;31;26;15
Matt
And so I think every everyone listening today, I would challenge them that you’re actually doubling down on your learning and development, programs and giving. You know, we talked earlier in this call about the junior folks and the mid-level folks. Make sure that you’re investing in them, and not just giving lip service, but you’re putting real dollars and cents behind opportunities to help them grow so they can help you, be more successful in your roles as senior leaders.

00;31;26;17 – 00;31;46;23
Steve
So, Ron, how about from your perspective, having sat at some of those senior, most, most positions, how did that kind of influence what you wanted to talk about in this book for those senior communications leaders just to make sure they’re they’re thinking about key topics, key issues, key training for their staff.

00;31;47;00 – 00;32;16;28
Ron
I think it really struck me in the last couple of corporate jobs where the CEO actually anoints you, you are responsible for this because very often it’s not said. They assume and some Coes automatically move in. Many of them now have MBAs and other, experience that, that equip them to have a seat at the table and be considered a business leader.

00;32;17;01 – 00;33;09;10
Ron
Well, the rest of us had kind of earned that seat. And then the light bulbs went off. When I learned that I can’t do it alone. I’ve got this big team, big corporate team of people, and I need to break this down and make sure that there is somebody assigned to every major business unit who understands the business of that business, and all of a sudden, the business unit heads were coming to me and saying, can you free up time for Jay, Jan or Paul, or Ted to sit in on my weekly meetings because we as an organization value his input and he’s going to learn or she’s going to learn more from

00;33;09;10 – 00;33;44;14
Ron
having been there. So all of a sudden we moved some of the mid-career talent into what I consider pretty senior roles with some very big, sizable business units. And the business unit head was happy that they had somebody who was really in communications and understood what they were trying to achieve, and then that trickled down to the people, then that they came back and they had to say to the junior staff, here’s what we need to do and why.

00;33;44;16 – 00;34;11;29
Ron
So it was game changing for organizations all over the country. The realized that I just can’t keep it to myself. And aren’t I good that I in the in the turn to a person for every major strategic business decision spread that knowledge and you become more successful through what your team is doing.

00;34;12;01 – 00;34;58;08
Steve
Yeah. That’s, that is that is great advice Matt I’m going to give you this nice easy softball question around acronyms ESG and D DNI. You guys in your book you delve into ESG and DNI reporting as we know it is changing. It almost seems like daily you know, from you know, I would say, you know, being somebody based here in New York, you know, from the municipal level to the county level to the state level, to the federal level to, you know, you have the EU looking at, you know, multiple changes and ESG and materiality assessment and sustainability and all of that.

00;34;58;10 – 00;35;28;22
Steve
And then you also have the cultural overlay. So you’ve got like regulatory reporting, you’ve got cultural overlay. You guys delve into that in the book. What advice do you have. And can you talk a little bit about how communicators need to think about ESG and DNI reporting? In a world that’s in heavy flux on these areas and in a world where I don’t really see people running away from the activities more so than the terms.

00;35;28;27 – 00;35;32;11
Steve
So but nice. Easy one for you, Matt.

00;35;32;13 – 00;35;56;07
Matt
I thought this was an easy one, Steve. But I guess you were as you were unpacking it, I’m like, no, seriously, it’s it’s, it’s an excellent question. And it couldn’t be more in the moment right now. Right. So, you know, it seems like each week now we’re seeing a different company in different ways.

00;35;56;07 – 00;36;27;05
Matt
Let’s say, adapt to what they’re what they’re going to at least publicly do around Dei, and ESG. You know, it’s interesting, I think many listeners and I think the three of us are familiar with survey data. The American public shows, like you said, the actual acronyms DTI and ESG, perhaps lower levels of support than when actually specifically programs are explained.

00;36;27;05 – 00;36;50;06
Matt
Do you support sustainability? Do you support diversity? Here’s how we’re doing. So as an organization, we know that that gets higher levels of, support. And we know that some organizations seem to think the solution to that is we’re not going to call it ESG. We’re going to call it sustainability, or we’re going to call it, impact.

00;36;50;09 – 00;37;19;08
Matt
Whatever that solution, whatever that decision might be, we do know that as communicators, our job is going to be to really explain these programs and the specifics of them and to tie it increasingly, what we’re seeing to, the business and business outcomes and business benefits, even if I think all of this would agree that it’s the right thing to do, right to support Dei in ESG.

00;37;19;10 – 00;37;50;25
Matt
But in the larger, the larger world that we are operating in, I think socio politically, many of us can agree that if we’re a financially oriented stakeholder, if we can see how these things help ladder up and support, superior business and financial outcomes, that would seem to me to be the less disputable and something that, wherever we might fall in the political spectrum that we could, get behind.

00;37;50;25 – 00;38;05;17
Matt
And so I think that this has made it, I think the communicator in the construction even more important, when it comes to navigating, as we know, a very, complex landscape around ESG.

00;38;05;22 – 00;38;33;20
Steve
Yeah. And I and I think as, you know, as you talk about that and kind of what I see out there, you know, it’s very much about, like you said, how do we connect it to the business, who we are, what is the authentic purpose of your enterprise? And I think with that, if you start with that as the foundation, then how you tell that story and the metrics you use to tell that story, I think that’s when you get that authentic level of things.

00;38;33;20 – 00;38;59;22
Steve
I think part of the challenge, and, you know, it was a conversation I had with the senior co, a couple of years ago who was basically saying, you know, what issues and topics do you have the right to really talk about that? You’re credible talking about it’s not saying you don’t value all these things, but what are those things that as a company, does it make sense for you to report on, to talk about?

00;38;59;22 – 00;39;31;02
Steve
And how does that tie ultimately from what we’re talking about here? What is that business strategy? What is that business acumen? So, you know, Professor Regas, you made me think of something I didn’t think about before, but that ability to translate your ESG or your Dei initiative reporting results is in itself a form of business acumen. That’s that’s really critical for professionals develop overall and then within the ecosystem of their respective companies and brands.

00;39;31;05 – 00;39;54;29
Steve
So, you know, things are not static, right. And, and and even since, since, you know, you guys wrote this book, you know, there’s little things a few elections happening in the world. All of these things mean that what we have to do is be continuous learners. Right. And that business acumen isn’t something, hey, I take a course, I get the check mark.

00;39;54;29 – 00;40;25;28
Steve
I am good to go because there’s always new regulations, there’s always new pressure, there’s different Supreme Court regulations. If they’re in the US, there’s all these things that factor. So Ron, you talk a lot about personal growth and like legacy. So when you think about business acumen is something that evolves over time. What advice do you have to communicators and what challenge do you have to them to continually develop their skill set, no matter where they said.

00;40;26;01 – 00;40;51;00
Ron
I think, you know, if you look at it as newcomers, the, the young people starting out in the profession, I don’t want them to become overwhelmed at the thought because it seems far more complicated. Even if you look at our glossary, almost 600 terms, that that they’re probably about 30 that they really need to know about.

00;40;51;03 – 00;41;18;26
Ron
So I want them to figure out how they can know the businesses they’re working for and, and how business overall might operate. So I usually start out by saying, if you do nothing else, pull up the front page. The Wall Street Journal, read the left hand column What’s News, and just scan it and you will find out what is going on within the company.

00;41;18;26 – 00;41;47;19
Ron
I had one CEO that constantly challenged me in meetings where he say, well, did you see that? What what? The news was here about Pfizer today? And I was a deer in headlights. Well, I knew what he was doing. He was reading the Wall Street Journal because he had the luxury of having a driver, and I didn’t, but so I got up earlier and I read the What’s News column, and I went to the, the index in the journal and, and the times.

00;41;47;21 – 00;42;14;07
Ron
And I read what is being said about my company and or our competition. So you always stay on top of the news. Pretty easy to do when you come to a term then that you don’t understand. Circle. And I guarantee you it’s in our in our glossary. Look it up. We have a simple explanation of what that term is so you can learn it sort of by osmosis.

00;42;14;13 – 00;42;50;05
Ron
So is that B for the newcomers. Then in the mid career level we kind of touched on it earlier. I say network, network network. And I don’t mean externally looking for a new job. I mean internally with the organization. People who are making the business happen, the finance team, the legal team and others. And you’ll be surprised if you ask them to go to coffee or somebody at your peer level within that organization, the word of mouth spreads that this is a different kind of communicator.

00;42;50;08 – 00;43;29;23
Ron
He or she is really interested in our business. So I and I kept getting invited to staff meetings. And I didn’t have time, but I went because I learned so much about what was going on. And then I was able to share a communications perspective that often was not realized. So the mid term, the mid career, people really need to just get involved in the organization and, and and really become a business partner at whatever level that they’re permitted to rise to and then close.

00;43;29;26 – 00;43;58;28
Ron
They just need to train their teams to be true business partners. And it’s kind of an overwhelming thought, and we hope that’s what the book kind of addresses and is certainly our workshops and the feedback we’ve gotten over the years has been positive to the fact that, gee, we thought they knew more than they knew because they did deliver what I needed, but they had no idea how much pain was involved in getting there.

00;43;59;01 – 00;44;18;21
Ron
And so the more you help your team understand and how business operates and the expectations of business on the communications team, that that’s kind of the whole package of what a leader can do to bring everyone up in the organization to have a greater knowledge.

00;44;18;28 – 00;44;42;14
Steve
Yeah, I think that that idea that you’re talking about a being a true business partner, a true business advisor is is key. Professor, I guess I’m going to give you kind of the closing opportunity here. Ron, just talked about the need to get into the DNA of the business. That’s my term, not not his. But you basically want to get in the DNA of that business.

00;44;42;16 – 00;45;09;27
Steve
You were talking about expanding your news diet. Similar to what Ron was saying. You can’t do it yourself. You talked about intentionality. You talked about an entrepreneurial mindset. You talked about it, entrepreneurialism, mindset with it within a corporation. So from your standpoint, what what advice do you have for our listeners other than go out and buy the book and do the workshop?

00;45;10;00 – 00;45;22;11
Steve
What, what what advice do you have, for everybody in terms of just really pulling through this business acumen and being a better business partner, a better strategic communicator?

00;45;22;13 – 00;45;45;19

Matt
Well, you know, you know what? And Ron and I have had this conversation many times, we are in one of the best businesses in the world in communication. Because if you’re a curious person that, I don’t have in this office, but I have an another office, a, Curious George, and I think that that’s the right mindset.

00;45;45;22 – 00;46;06;15
Matt
So always be curious and continual learning. And Ron and I are spoiled a bit, Steve, that we actually get paid to learn and to help others learn. And that’s one of the most rewarding things that keeps me. And I know Ron charged up, and keeps us doing these books, you know, for books and in in ten years.

00;46;06;18 – 00;46;28;11
Matt
And so I think if you can embrace this and we’re going to have to in the, in the, in the years ahead, be open to what we don’t know. And don’t be afraid of that and embrace kind of that unknown and and we’re in that I revolution right now and I and I just installed Gemini into my G suite.

00;46;28;13 – 00;47;06;15
Matt
And I’m trying to figure out what does this mean, what can I, what can I do with this? And, and and honestly, I resisted that for a little bit because it’s easy to get set into your ways and not want to change processes and ways of thinking. But whether it’s a topic like business acumen or data and analytics or Di or I as long as we embrace curiosity and lifelong learning and being open to what we don’t know and wanting to keep having that explorer mentality, this is one of the best fields that you could possibly be in.

00;47;06;18 – 00;47;20;26
Matt
And we do now have that seat at the table and we can affect serious change. But we’ve got to be intellectually curious and truly embrace being okay that we don’t know, but we’re going to explore and figure it out.

00;47;20;28 – 00;47;53;24
Steve
And I think you’re right. I mean, this this industry is anything but, expected and staid and it’s constantly evolving, which is which is what I think is so exciting. And, and also, I think as we talk about here, and, and as you talk about everything in your book about the business acumen where things come in is really understanding, like you said, that curiosity for data, for context, for strategy, for relationships, those are all fair for very key things, for individuals to bring together.

00;47;53;24 – 00;48;13;25
Steve
And then like you said, we can’t be static. We can’t allow ourselves to do that. We’ve always got to be learning and kind of tying it back to, you know, the theme of this podcast building brand gravity. I’m a firm believer that everything we do either attracts somebody to our brand or repels them from our brand. So let’s get smart.

00;48;13;25 – 00;48;35;01
Steve
Let’s do those things and make sure we’re pulling people to our brands in the right way. So, Professor Regus, Ron, thank you so much for joining me here today. For all our listeners, I want to make sure you follow them on LinkedIn. They always have, great things to say and perspectives. You can also buy individual copies of this.

00;48;35;01 – 00;49;02;19
Steve
I’ve got mine right here. Business acumen for Strategic Communicators, the workbook on Amazon or, if you’re looking for a bulk order for your classroom or for your team, you can reach out to Matt or Ron directly or their publisher, Emerald Publishing. Guys, thank you so much for joining us today. So much sage advice. And for all our listeners, tune in next time for our next episode of Building Brand Gravity.

00;49;02;19 – 00;49;04;03
Steve
Thank you for listening.

00;49;04;05 – 00;49;08;23
Matt
Steve, thanks for being a friend of this journey for so long now. We really appreciate it.

00;49;08;26 – 00;49;10;16
Ron
Thank you Steve. My pleasure.

00;49;10;19 – 00;49;11;25
Steve
My pleasure. Guys.

00;49;11;27 – 00;49;40;26
Speaker 4
We are Gans Business Communications. We are a team of media strategists, storytellers and engagement experts who meet you at the intersection of business and communications. To learn more, visit s communications.com. You’re listening to Building Brand Gravity Attracting People into Your Orbit, a business communications podcast. Keep connected with us by subscribing to the show in your favorite podcast player.

00;49;41;02 – 00;49;50;12
Speaker 4
If you like what you’ve heard, please rate the show that helps us to keep delivering the latest industry influence. Thanks for listening. Until next time.

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:35:09
Anne
So what does the concept of brand mean to you? It's such an often used word, but it's got a pretty deep set of meanings. And one thing that's always interesting to me is how the concept of a brand evolves over the course of your career. If you happen to work in these types of fields, which is why it's been really exciting for me to have the chance to talk to an old friend and old colleague, Howard Handler, and I'm excited to share this conversation with you today.

00:00:35:11 - 00:00:57:15
Anne
We talk about the incredible arc of his career and what it meant to go from working with a Quaker Oats Company to suddenly working with Lorne Michaels and marketing Saturday Night Live and all the properties of Broadway Video and a million things after that, including Virgin Mobile, where I met him, and on and on to working at an incredible entertainment company in Detroit today.

00:00:57:17 - 00:01:21:01
Anne
But there's a lot of lessons he has to share. And one of the central ones, as he put it, is relationships are everything. They are treasures. And you're going to hear that come through really strongly in this conversation. So sit back and listen. And if you enjoy what you're here, share it with another friend. Thank you.

00:01:21:03 - 00:01:50:08
Speaker
You are listening to building Brand Gravity Attracting People into your Orbit. A business communications podcast. This is a show for communications pros across industries looking to gain an inside view into industry influence. You're about to hear a conversation with leading industry professionals talking about the importance of building business impact through sound brand strategy. Let's get into the show.

00:01:50:10 - 00:02:12:01
Anne
Hello, and welcome to Building Brand Gravity. I'm Anne Green, CEO at TNS Business Communications, and my guest and I first met back in 2003 when he joined my then client, Virgin Mobile USA, not long after its launch. And I have to say, I was a bit obsessed with his resume at the time. He was coming from senior brand and marketing roles at major players like Broadway Video.

00:02:12:03 - 00:02:35:06
Anne
That's Lorne Michaels company. For those who don't know, Viacom and NFL. And it kind of it kind of made me nervous to meet him, admittedly, but that immediately fell away. He's laughing already. As soon as I experienced his warmth and his energy and his infectious, positive spirit. The client agency relationship can be tense at times, but he treats everyone like a core member of the team and like family.

00:02:35:08 - 00:03:03:05
Anne
So he went on to lead other marketing roles at illustrious brands like EMI and MSG and Major League Soccer. That's the last time we saw each other in person was when you were at MLS, and then, in 2019, he returned to his native Michigan to take the president role at 313 presents, which is Detroit's premier live entertainment company, overseeing six venues from the Fox Theater, Comerica Park, Little Caesars Arena, Pine Knob and more.

00:03:03:07 - 00:03:23:15
Anne
And then, if you think about that timing, he immediately had to manage do that little thing you may recall, called the pandemic. Remember that everybody. And happily though, now 2024 seems like it's been a hell of a year for three, one three from helping to plan and host portions of the NFL draft to staging like a mind boggling array of shows of all kinds.

00:03:23:15 - 00:03:27:00
Anne
So Howard Handler, it's excellent to welcome you, my friend.

00:03:27:02 - 00:03:29:09
Howard
I'm so psyched to be together with you.

00:03:29:11 - 00:03:42:08
Anne
I know it's been a while. It's been a while. So what's it like having that career arc? When you think about the arc of your career, it's a big question. And what comes to mind in terms of kind of where it started from where it is today?

00:03:42:13 - 00:04:12:00
Howard
Well, it's always easier to connect the dots looking backwards. I never had any notion of, you know, how I would get from point A to point B for me, it was always, you know, kind of 3 to 5 year horizon, I guess that's that's what I was able to think about. But I'm I'm really proud of of what I've accomplished.

00:04:12:02 - 00:04:21:20
Howard
And, and mostly it's been about fun and, and building things and working with great people.

00:04:21:22 - 00:04:40:17
Anne
So before and I like that idea, I'll come back to that 3 to 5 years, because it's so hard in this world today to even think about planning farther than that. This world is so crazy all the time. But tell before we get into more about your world. For those that aren't as familiar with 313, just tell them a little bit about your gig today because it's such an exciting one.

00:04:40:17 - 00:04:41:16
Anne
I feel like.

00:04:41:17 - 00:05:32:16
Howard
Well, 313 is an integrated venue promoter with a pretty large footprint. Our mission is to provide access to amazing entertainment and to live moments inspired by the soul of Detroit. So we're we're here to tickle people's funny, you know, funny bone and and pleasure spot and send some good vibes into the world. It is amazing, especially post-Covid, turning around and looking at what happens to an audience as well as looking at what's happening on a stage.

00:05:32:18 - 00:06:12:08
Howard
And, and it's just really fun to be in the business of entertaining people. Our six venues exist in downtown Detroit and, around southeastern Michigan. A good part of what we do represents an economic engine to the city of Detroit. And that's really important because Detroit is a renaissance city, and it was a big part of the reason why I came home is I wanted to dive in and be a part of this rebirth and, renewal.

00:06:12:10 - 00:06:17:05
Howard
It's been really exciting. But yeah, it's good. It's a little bit of a flavor.

00:06:17:07 - 00:06:36:18
Anne
Yeah, it's it was interesting, you know, knowing you as I did from the East Coast when we were working with Virgin Mobile and you were mostly on the East Coast. And in all of those jobs, it was kind of amazing to notice that you'd gone back to Michigan. And I. I've told Howard this before, but I was born in Toledo, Ohio, and that's where most of my mom's family is from.

00:06:36:18 - 00:06:59:15
Anne
So I'm there quite often and just down Interstate 75 from Detroit. And so Detroit has always been big in my imagination, Toledo being a much smaller city. So I definitely want to get into the we're going to talk a little bit about other parts of your career, but I'm going to circle back because, Detroit, there's a lot to talk about there, especially with what you guys have been up to and a lot to think about relative to it being its own brand in a way.

00:06:59:17 - 00:07:13:05
Anne
But how did you how did you even embark on the sort of marketing field you went after undergrad, went and got your MBA? You know, what inspired you to do that? And you know what? What kind of got you kicked off in the beginning?

00:07:13:08 - 00:07:48:07
Howard
Well, I, I studied economics and history as an undergrad. And when it came time to think about what came next, what was going to come next in the midst of my senior year, I was honestly a bit terrified at the prospect of, you know, entering the real world. And I wanted to be in school for a little bit longer and trying to figure things out.

00:07:48:09 - 00:08:32:06
Howard
So I kind of talked my way into business school. I was first rejected. Well, I was rejected by northwestern, Dartmouth, as well as Michigan. And, you know, even back in those times, they wanted people to get into the working world before they came back to get, an MBA. But I told this story about how I wanted to get an MBA because I wanted to be in the food business, and that was going to really help elevate my thinking and teach skills.

00:08:32:06 - 00:09:29:16
Howard
And they bought it. Now, I did legitimately have a great interest in the food business, and that would be the first job that I that I took out of business school, you know, working for the Quaker Oats Company, which laid an incredible foundation. But I think more broadly, marketing and and the path that I chose was based on growing up in front of the television, listening to every single band that that I could get exposed to, going to live concert and just really loving, you know, music and pop culture and comedy and, and and I just never had any notion growing up in Detroit in the 60s and 70s, that people could actually

00:09:29:16 - 00:09:59:08
Howard
have jobs that somehow related to those things. You know, there was nobody in show business in Detroit. I mean, you know, there were probably a few, but for the most part, that just kind of seemed like this, this other world. And, you know, I'm obviously dating myself even by saying the 60s and 70s, but it's like, you know, the world was was a lot flatter and smaller back in those days.

00:09:59:08 - 00:10:23:16
Howard
We didn't have access to the internet and every single bit of information or knowledge at our fingertips. And so you had to learn things by talking to other people and doing research and, and, you know, letting your world unfold, as opposed to, you know, everything was was possible all at once.

00:10:23:18 - 00:10:51:23
Anne
Yeah. It's funny what you're saying that because the time period you're talking about, you know, Motown hadn't become quite the machine it became later, you know, and where suddenly entertainment was there in the Motor City, too, in that same way. But you reminded me, too, about the fact that there's so much, when I do, when I go back to my alma mater and talk about marketing, branding, advertising comes right and that is more of a liberal arts liberal arts institution.

00:10:52:01 - 00:11:13:09
Anne
There's so many aspects of the careers that you and I have had that's kind of invisible. Like sometimes cultural will pop up like Mad Men will become a thing or Samantha on Sex and the city. It's like Oprah, right? But it's interesting, like your sense of now looking back to say, what were those aspects of culture that got you excited about, wow, could I be in that world?

00:11:13:11 - 00:11:35:18
Anne
But I love also this story about the rejections, because I feel like when you're doing the college thing or graduate school or first job, everything seems so important. And then the farther you get in your career, the more everyone's like, doesn't even know where you went to school or what happened. So I think it's really cool to talk about the rejections and also the story you told to say, I belong here.

00:11:35:18 - 00:12:05:03
Anne
You know, it's really interesting. So you talked about Pepsi, and as I said, when I first met you, I was kind of clamored by Broadway video, SNL, you know, like, you know, and all these, these other pieces that got my attention when I saw or heard about your resume because this was pre LinkedIn as well. But you did start really in that classic consumer packaged goods brand manager space, which is work I've done in my past too.

00:12:05:03 - 00:12:11:05
Anne
What were the lessons you took away there like that? Must have been such a crash course in the most classic forms of marketing.

00:12:11:07 - 00:12:41:05
Howard
Yeah, it was definitely boot camp. As, as as a marketer, as a as a as a general manager, it was it was just an absolute blast. I actually did an internship at the Quaker Oats Company in Chicago in between my first year and second year of business school. And it's funny, we talked about rejection. I went to New York.

00:12:41:06 - 00:13:10:08
Howard
I had a girlfriend there at the time. I thought, like, I'm going to go to work for General Foods for Pepsi, which did not on the Quaker Oats Company until, you know, much later. And I had every door slammed in my face. So many no's. And it was funny because I bumped into my uncle, who's from Chicago in New York on Central Park South.

00:13:10:08 - 00:13:42:20
Howard
It was so crazy. And he was like, why don't you look in Chicago and do a research and, you know, check out the Quaker Oats Company. And and that just seemed really interesting to me, because he had some terrific brands. And they had three internships. And I talked to, somebody that went to the University of Michigan, and he told me the person to talk to.

00:13:42:22 - 00:14:09:02
Howard
And at first the person was like, well, you know, it's nice to talk to you, but we're not taking any of our interns from the University of Michigan. And, you know, so I talk my way into that situation. But, you know, I ended up obviously going back there full time after I was done with business school. I felt like I learned everything about running a consumer business.

00:14:09:04 - 00:14:50:14
Howard
I learned about all the different P's of, you know, pricing and promotion and, I mean, I learned about, well, distribution flights. I learned how to work with, advertising agencies and create ads and, and measuring business and, and our sales and importantly, I learned how to think about the entire PNL. That was one of the coolest things about brand management is that they gave you a ton of responsibility at an early age.

00:14:50:16 - 00:15:20:12
Howard
You worked in teams, so there were training wheels for sure, and there were layers of management to kind of protect, things. But it's like by the time I was 28 years old, I was running a $70 million business. And yes, kind of mind blowing, but, you know, you're working with other people who, you know, were really hungry and really ambitious and, you know, went to good schools.

00:15:20:12 - 00:15:56:01
Howard
And so there was a kind of a natural competition. The bar was really high. I remember, you know, the first time I got exposed to people who didn't make the cut, got fired. So it was, you know, reasonably stressful. But it was a blast. I mean, we were all kind of the same life stage we're working with, like, cat and crunch and kibbles and bits and, you know, like cereal and and granola bars and all this stuff.

00:15:56:01 - 00:16:36:01
Howard
And for us, that was a connection to pop culture. I got to travel around and, and, you know, start to see, you know, the rest of the country. And, and it was just amazing how steep the learning curve was. And just, you know what what I was able to understand. Well, what's interesting is I felt like a lot of those lessons dawned on me later in my career, you know, that that you look back on your foundation, and you taking things from it.

00:16:36:02 - 00:16:38:00
Howard
That was also very valuable.

00:16:38:02 - 00:17:00:20
Anne
Yeah, it's the hindsight is 2020. The thing is real. You know, these clichés are real for a reason. But I'm so it's interesting like twice already, you talked about where you've had to kind of talk yourself into something, not yourself, but other people. You're literally talking yourself into a space. Which reminds me of storytelling. It's like, how do people create their own narrative about what's important?

00:17:00:20 - 00:17:22:17
Anne
And it's also a form of advertising and marketing. What where did you get that skill? I mean, you, I know you and you are incredible. The way you can talk with people and connect with people and make really human connection with them. But what are some aspects that you've seen in yourself that you were able to sell yourself at those critical moments, kind of open doors that were closed at the time?

00:17:22:19 - 00:17:58:23
Howard
I guess I guess for me, and again, like you gain self-awareness is you get, you know, a little bit, a little bit older, but I feel like I just, I leave with passion and enthusiasm and, and and my energy. I really just tried hard to be as persuasive as possible. My, you know, my dad, one of the great heroic figures in my life, was, was a lawyer.

00:17:59:01 - 00:18:35:10
Howard
And so, you know, breaking down an argument, being logical, being thoughtful, being a good communicator, I think, or things that, you know, hopefully, I just take it from him. My dad just turned 90 in June. It's pretty amazing. But I do think that that if you really want something, you know, you figure out a way to sell and and be persuasive and and it doesn't always work, you know?

00:18:35:13 - 00:19:04:15
Howard
So. So getting a door slammed in your face, doesn't feel good. But there's something to learn from that. And and, you know, do you have a certain amount of tenacity? Are you willing to, to be persistent? And, I don't know, I just I think a lot of those things help. Help me. You know, get to where I needed to be.

00:19:04:15 - 00:19:36:17
Howard
I did I don't I don't feel like I have, like, an imposter syndrome. But I always did, fancying myself as a little bit of an overachiever. I grew up with some people, and it's like one of those funny old things, but it's like, I remember a couple of my friends didn't have to study so hard or at all, and they could just get a and, and I knew that I was the type of person that I had to do my homework.

00:19:36:17 - 00:19:52:07
Howard
I had to work really hard, and I, and I, you know, I was never ashamed of that. I was like, I will outwork you. You know, so that persistence and, and tenacity and work ethic were probably part of it as well.

00:19:52:12 - 00:20:11:22
Anne
So powerful. You remind me of the enthusiasm, you know, speaking of culture, Lin-Manuel Miranda, you know, obviously a brilliant Broadway guy. He jokes about having no chill. You know, that he was like, just so enthusiastic about stuff. And that always struck me because I'm certainly a bit like that to where it's like, I'm just really into things very enthusiastic.

00:20:12:00 - 00:20:27:22
Anne
I always want to do more and I felt that from you in terms of just that, like I talked about that infectious energy and the ability, you know, they talk in business about followership, about getting people to follow you. And do you feel like that kind of enthusiasm, optimism or engagement helps in that?

00:20:28:00 - 00:21:01:00
Howard
I mean, it can be attraction for sure. You know, if you are a manager, you have to motivate other people. And, and so, you know, the again, it comes back to some form of selling. But getting people to believe and I don't know, I mean, it, it was, it was something that, that my late father in law used to, you know, kind of, tease me about a little bit.

00:21:01:02 - 00:21:42:02
Howard
You know, he, he said, what, one time, you know, because it's like, you know, the brand manager for Quaker Chewy granola bars and light cereal and those were, like, the most important thing. And then it's about Saturday Night Live, and it's the church lady and hunts and Frauds and Wayne's World. And he said, you know, man, he said, you know, if if you were the president of the PTL network, for for those that need the historical background, that's the praise the Lord network.

00:21:42:02 - 00:21:54:21
Howard
He's like, I could sell that. Which, you know, I, I took it as a bit of a backhanded compliment. So that was okay. But yeah, I mean, you know.

00:21:54:23 - 00:22:17:01
Anne
When my dad worked for Nabisco, I was I was kind of told the Keebler elves were the devil. So, you know, you gotta love the brand that you're with, right? I mean, you can you and you got it. You got to ride for your brands. Speaking of, you know, SNL and you were working with Lorne and Broadway Video at a time where what a legendary era.

00:22:17:02 - 00:22:37:20
Anne
I mean, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Chris Farley, the beautiful Phil Hartman, Adam Sandler, I mean, it just went to Meadows. It goes on and on with and Wayne's World about to come out. I think right around the time you were moving on. But was that such a hard left turn from consumer packaged goods, like, was that how did you end up there?

00:22:37:20 - 00:22:42:12
Anne
And was that a little bit like, wow, I have to reset my brand in this completely different environment?

00:22:42:14 - 00:23:14:15
Howard
Well, it was it was a pretty big change. And I guess I, I did really and truly love being at the Quaker Oats Company and being this consumer marketing guy. But along the way, my, my world, my network started to expand. And I actually did meet people who were in the entertainment business and created some pretty deep relationships.

00:23:14:15 - 00:23:39:02
Howard
And one of those people, a guy named Eric Ellenbogen, was like, you must be in show business. And I was like, yeah, you know, I set this goal for myself. He he wanted me to go right away. Just skip Quaker and go right into the entertainment business. And, and I was like, you know, I set this goal for myself.

00:23:39:04 - 00:24:03:05
Howard
I really want to be a brand manager. That's going to take me a few years. I want to get as much as I can out of this experience. I was committed to to going to Chicago. You know, kid from Detroit. Chicago was the big city, really, really fun, vibrant city. I got to Chicago, in the fall of 85.

00:24:03:07 - 00:24:34:12
Howard
Okay. The bears won the Super Bowl, you know, in January of 86. I mean, that was a pretty exciting time to be in Chicago, but, the bears. But, and I would have a full circle experience that's now with Bill Swirsky, super fans, the bills, the Bulls, the bears. But, you know, Eric ultimately was somebody that I built a relationship with.

00:24:34:14 - 00:25:12:22
Howard
Over time, he would go from being a Hollywood producer to being the head of Broadway Video. And so there was a time when he said, okay, I got the job for you. You're going to be the VP of marketing at Broadway Video. And, and I was a brand manager at that point. I did not really get too excited about the additional, you know, layers and steps on on the ladder at a big company like the Quaker Oats Company.

00:25:12:22 - 00:25:45:01
Howard
And I was like, wow. Broadway video this is Laura michael's little independent production company. Eric and Lauren had assembled this really core crew of really talented people, and they would all go on to do, some pretty incredible things. I had absolutely no idea what the VP of marketing for Broadway Video would, would be responsible for, but I was like, I'm game, let's take the plunge.

00:25:45:03 - 00:26:08:07
Howard
My wife, Wendy and I were at that stage of life were like, hey, why not? Let's let's take our shot. We didn't have kids. We didn't have much of a mortgage. It didn't seem like there was any downside. And so we picked up and moved to New York. And you know, it was like dragging a desk into an empty office.

00:26:08:09 - 00:26:59:14
Howard
Eric had some aspirations, and Lorne articulated a bit of what, what he was willing to explore. And I was able to dive in and, and, you know, build a merchandizing business through publishing home video, for anybody that remembers VHS tapes, and, you know, that was that was my intro to introduction to Show Business and it was, you know, like cereal one day and and, you know, two inches, the driving cap and, you know, handsome Franz, the, the next day, what's, what's interesting is that nobody cared about an MBA or where I went to school or the Quaker Oats Company.

00:26:59:16 - 00:27:20:11
Howard
It was actually when I started to meet the cast and the writers, I knew just instinctively that they could have cared less about any of that. And so, it was a big hard turn. And I did have to be a really good chameleon and adjust and, and, you know, pick up the cues and it's like, what?

00:27:20:13 - 00:27:50:10
Howard
How do they speak to each other? What are they interested in? I have to do a little bit of my own diagnostic tick thing to understand, you know, what would be success? What was Eric looking for? And ultimately, my relationship became more direct with Lorne. And as anybody who's ever worked around SNL would know, he's the guy.

00:27:50:12 - 00:28:17:00
Howard
He's making any and all big decisions. He's in charge of the brand. His sensibility. And and I had to figure that out. And and it wasn't easy. I definitely, you know, ran into the wall a couple of times, but I felt like I was in an environment where, you know, I could I could learn. And if I accomplished some things along the way, they'd let me stick around.

00:28:17:02 - 00:28:39:17
Anne
And I feel like that was a time when people think back, you know, folks of different ages have to remember this is before YouTube existed. There was no lazy Sunday, you know, with Andy Samberg. And those guys kind of changed. The nature of SNL wasn't so ubiquitous. There was no social media. And but I feel like you guys were doing some of the first omnichannel stuff where you were breaking it out into different places.

00:28:39:19 - 00:28:58:12
Anne
I was also obsessed with kids in the Hall, which is something that Lorne helped with a great deal. But one of the things that really struck me, Howard, it reminds me of something you talked about your dad. My dad used to say to me when I was growing up, don't travel too light. And he meant people. He meant, don't, like, be so quick to leave people behind.

00:28:58:12 - 00:29:15:00
Anne
Like stay connected. One of my mentors, Ralph Katz, is one of the most brilliant people ever. He keeps people with him all the time. But it feels like in that relationship with Eric, you maybe ascribe to the same thing as I feel like that even the way you and I were catching up and talking about who this person, that person, what?

00:29:15:00 - 00:29:19:06
Anne
How does that phrase strike you? Not traveling too light when it comes to people in your career?

00:29:19:07 - 00:30:10:04
Howard
I love that expression. You know, for me, and I share this with my wife Wendy as well, is relationships are everything. They are treasure. And those treasures are collected and and nurtured. And, you know, if if you're lucky, they can, you know, grow and become more valuable over time. And, and, you know, I've, I've been really, really lucky in terms of the people who are willing to, to mentor me and help me see things that at the time, I couldn't see for myself or, you know, teach me some things.

00:30:10:06 - 00:30:37:18
Howard
And it's just funny over time, at a certain point, it kind of flipped. And then I became that person. And, and so the people part, you know, people part has been critical. And, you know, Lorne, Lorne Michaels is an incredibly quotable, person. But one of the, you know, one of the first things we say, you know, it's all about relationships.

00:30:37:20 - 00:31:13:19
Howard
And he was right. He was right. And, you know, it's it's it's funny because when I met Adam Sandler, nobody knew who he was. I mean, he he had obviously been a successful comic and, and show, you know, put in quite a bit of promise. Otherwise he wouldn't have made it to 30 Rock. But he was a more junior member of the cast, and was, you know, really hustling to, you know, to kind of get into sketches and to start to make a name for himself.

00:31:13:21 - 00:31:46:13
Howard
He came and played Little Caesars Arena, two years ago. And, you know, I spent some time with him and, you know, we got to have some laughs that, you know, we're not those, you know, kind of young upstarts anymore. But it's, you know, those relationships that you form for early in life, early in your career can and should be valuable to you, you know, much later in life and, you know, think about the two of us.

00:31:46:18 - 00:31:49:12
Howard
You know, we just kind of pick up where we left off.

00:31:49:14 - 00:32:10:20
Anne
Which is such a I love that relationship. So everything there I treasure, by the way, I was secretly hoping maybe a Lorne Michaels impression would pop out. So just it's just a natural thing that happens. When you think about it, I mean, this is great. And and after that, you know, there was Viacom and NFL, which was what you did right before I met you.

00:32:10:20 - 00:32:34:22
Anne
And those are huge brands, too. But I want to I want to bring us up to the Virgin Mobile era, mostly because, you know, this is podcast that's called Building Brand Gravity, all about the idea of what brings you into the gravity, into the orbit, and like, what pulls at you. And when you think about iconic brands and branding, Virgin is such a it's just massive in that way.

00:32:34:22 - 00:32:50:23
Anne
Now, I don't know how people relate to it who are much younger generations, and it's different if you're in England or in Britain versus the US, but in the time that we were working together, it's just such a juggernaut. And Richard's still out there doing his thing. Richard Branson I shouldn't have to say that for anyone but Sir Richard Branson.

00:32:50:23 - 00:33:09:01
Anne
But what was it like for you joining a Virgin brand that was just at that moment, launching like it was a new cell phone company launching in the US for the first time. So the Virgin name was on it, but it was a new brand new model, new technology, lots of headwinds. But there was the Virgin name on it.

00:33:09:01 - 00:33:12:11
Anne
What was what did that mean to you coming into that ecosystem?

00:33:12:13 - 00:33:46:21
Howard
Well, I was a fanboy. You know, Richard Branson was this heroic, aspirational figure for me because, you know, fundamentally, you know, he was a disruptor. I don't think anybody use those words, you know, use a word like that back then. I think that's a little bit more of an internet age, you know, reference. But this was a guy who shook things up and found opportunity.

00:33:46:23 - 00:34:29:07
Howard
And I remember the first time I went into a Virgin Megastore, I had never flown on Virgin Atlantic, but I kind of heard about it and knew a little bit, so I was like, wow, I can't believe that I'm going to get to represent and actually build a Virgin brand in the US. What's really interesting, and I think that, you know, it's easy, it's easy to forget, is that in the early 2000, Virgin was not a well-known brand in the United States.

00:34:29:09 - 00:34:59:02
Howard
You know, record labels, the brands of record labels, don't necessarily mean so much unless you're a real music nerd. You know, the Motown label that was a little bit different. So Virgin Records certainly have a legacy, but it wasn't what I would call a consumer brand. It had a promise and a reason for being.

00:34:59:02 - 00:35:25:10
Howard
And, you know, it was about the Rolling Stones and Lenny Kravitz and you know, the Sex Pistols. And, you had the Virgin Megastore, but there weren't a lot of those, you know, there were a handful of those. And, you know, really big cities. So like, you know, urbane, you know, kind of big city people might have heard of Virgin and Virgin Atlantic.

00:35:25:12 - 00:35:52:09
Howard
I mean, I hate to say it, but there's not a high percentage of people in the United States that even have a passport, much less, you know, travel. Now, it's probably a little bit more mainstream to travel internationally today. But again, back then, the idea of traveling to London was pretty exotic. So you had a small percentage of the population that had some awareness of the Virgin brand.

00:35:52:11 - 00:36:29:06
Howard
And with Virgin Mobile, we were trying to create a wide, almost mass consumer phenomenon with the cell phone, which didn't really have much penetration. We were trying to create, as the Brits would say, a fast moving consumer product. With a mobile phone. You know, up to that point, mobile phones were behind the glass case. You had to sign up for a contract.

00:36:29:08 - 00:37:00:12
Howard
And, you know, Richard's idea and the idea of Virgin Mobile that had gotten started a little bit earlier in the UK and and also in Singapore, was we want this to be a very familiar consumer product that's easily accessible and that has a bit of a younger sensibility and actually will be targeted towards young people because they should have cell phones.

00:37:00:12 - 00:37:36:15
Howard
Cell phones will liberate and allow for independence and everything else like that. So we really had, I guess, the building blocks of a cool brand. But it was really up to us to define it and, and, and to propagate it and to build awareness. And so the idea that we were going to create truly a national brand for Virgin was like, overwhelmingly cool and fun.

00:37:36:17 - 00:38:07:05
Howard
I mean, I pinching myself the whole time, you know, I remember the first time I met Richard, I remember, you know, flying on Virgin Atlantic, which I felt was truly the embodiment of everything that he imagined, brand experience and everything else like that. But we had the keys to the kingdom, you know, he he gave, you know, he gave a bunch of Americans, you know, a lot of responsibility.

00:38:07:05 - 00:38:08:12
Howard
Let's just say that.

00:38:08:14 - 00:38:45:09
Anne
Yeah, it's amazing to think about that time and what was built and what the market was like at that time, and those lessons that you took away. I wanted to shift back to your current role where you're president now, you're leading an organization. Has it been and you've done that more than once in your career, but what prepared you from your earlier experiences to to then take sort of the leadership role overall, you know, what do you feel like there was a good all of those different marketing experiences, as you said, even back at Quaker Oats, knowing the whole panel and the whole deal, do you feel like that prepares you well over time to

00:38:45:09 - 00:38:47:19
Anne
to take the helm at the top?

00:38:47:21 - 00:39:23:18
Howard
Yeah, I do think it was, you know, in some ways a little bit back to the future. In brand management, you are taught to think about the whole business and that you're not there to just deliver one thing sales, revenue and market share. You're there to deliver the profit. And that's something that never really left me. It's it's really interesting because there's lots of different accountability that, that marketing leaders can have.

00:39:23:20 - 00:39:52:23
Howard
Some marketing leaders are, you know, purely about Mark. And so, so the metrics that they might be responsible for relate to that, that set of, of that part of the mix. I was always a little bit more of a line marketer where I had revenue and in some cases profit. So when I was at the NFL, I oversaw marketing.

00:39:53:01 - 00:40:23:09
Howard
But I also had the publishing business and, and I had we called it direct commerce, because it's first it was catalogs, and then it was this thing called e-commerce. And we built the the NFL shop, which has turned into this ginormous business, like all things NFL. And I had the publishing business and, you know, and those were actual, you know, revenue cause profit.

00:40:23:14 - 00:41:05:06
Howard
I had to be accountable for that. When I was at Virgin, I had sales and product. And so I had different pieces of the PNL. And Dan Shulman, the CEO, good friend of both of ours, we would go on to, to be the CEO of PayPal. He felt as CEO that his role was certainly to lead the company, but he, he placed a very high priority in terms of giving us context and making sure that we could see how all the pieces connected together.

00:41:05:08 - 00:41:34:04
Howard
So, yeah, I was chief marketing officer and there was the CMO, and there was the head of technology, and there was a CFO. But as a leadership team, we were always focused on the PR, and, and it was all about like, okay, what part were you responsible for? What were you contributing to? How would you complement and and help the other people that were delivering the whole thing?

00:41:34:06 - 00:42:04:14
Howard
And so, Dan, as a, as a CEO was truly like a band leader, and we were all there to make music. But we could all see what he was doing. And so for me to become president of three one 3%, first of all, it was my goal to get back to running a whole business. I loved being a CMO, but I really I was kind of hungry on the whole business and the PR now.

00:42:04:16 - 00:42:26:00
Howard
And so it was kind of a natural transition. You know, and again, it's like it isn't a difficult transition from being a wine marketer that has to deliver real metrics to being, a president or CEO, that that has to worry about the whole, you know.

00:42:26:02 - 00:42:44:21
Anne
Those are good lessons. Those people shape their career. You know, what do you understand your accountability to be even if you're not given the PR now, how do you make those connections and feel that responsibility for it? I interviewed another person for this podcast series who talked about chief communications. Folks need to see that their businesses is the business of the business and revenue.

00:42:44:21 - 00:43:08:00
Anne
So I love that connection as we start to wind down, because you've been so generous with your time, Howard, what do you think about Brand Detroit for? So Detroit just has an outside, I think, role in a lot of people's imagination. And sometimes in the in recent decades, that's been really hard. Like Detroit has had to take so much negative baggage more than it deserved.

00:43:08:00 - 00:43:21:18
Anne
I feel like, and now it's been really energizing for me. And I know so many other people, and I don't even live there to see that sort of energy, as you said, a Renaissance city. But how do you think about Detroit as a brand and where is that brand today?

00:43:21:22 - 00:44:06:15
Howard
Well, Detroit, is a legendary brand. And anybody that that that's, you know, born here or out of town and from here is shaped by a bunch of powerful things. Detroit gave the United States for sure. And some would argue the world the car and the car was about, you know, freedom and discovery and exploration. You know, Detroit gave the world Motown, and house music and punk and like, all kinds of things.

00:44:06:15 - 00:44:31:16
Howard
And so, you know, living out of town, living in New York in particular for 30 years, it never left me in terms of, you know, what made me and where I was from. And, you know, wherever I traveled in, in the US or North America or the world, it's like, you know, where are you from? You're from Detroit.

00:44:31:16 - 00:45:14:13
Howard
And people would always be like, oh, wow, Detroit. And they would talk about, oh, I'm a car guy, or oh my god, Marvin Gaye or Iggy Pop or, you know, and so it's like, yeah, that was foundation. And, you know, this was also the place where people could get union jobs and make a living and, you know, but it all came crashing down and, and, and so part of the legacy and what we've had to deal with was the decline, the bankruptcy and your some hard times.

00:45:14:19 - 00:45:42:10
Howard
And, and, you know, for a while people were caught up in the political dysfunction, urban decay. The bankruptcy was was really, you know, the low point. But what was striking to me, and one of the reasons why it was so exciting for me to come home was there were a lot of people that were not willing to let this city go.

00:45:42:12 - 00:46:16:13
Howard
And, and people like Mike Ilitch in the early days and later on, Dan Gilbert, the Ford family, Steve Ross, Tom Gores, a bunch of people said, wait a second. This is is one of the greatest cities in America, and we believe in it. We want to build it back. And and so these last decade, decade and a half has been this incredible renaissance.

00:46:16:13 - 00:46:28:07
Howard
And you have these kind of touchstone experiences that have that and moments that have happened. I was here for the NFL draft, and that made people look at Detroit and go, wow, look at.

00:46:28:12 - 00:46:29:09
Anne
That was a big moment.

00:46:29:14 - 00:47:04:03
Howard
Yeah, look, look at the city. The city's on its way back. And then, you know, most recently the reopening of Michigan Central. And you know, the the care and and the passion and the commitment that, you know, the Ford family put into bringing this thing back. And this is what's really fun, is that is it that people lean in together and are trying to reestablish the legacy of innovation, great design music.

00:47:04:05 - 00:47:24:05
Anne
What an awesome time for you to come back. Despite the pandemic, which I know is not easy, but here you are now, just having just an incredible, you know, if people go to 313 presents website, if you're in the area, you see just an incredible array of stuff going on. Last question, Howard, what brands or parts of culture have you in their gravity right now?

00:47:24:05 - 00:47:28:04
Anne
Anything cool that that you've been paying attention to recently?

00:47:28:06 - 00:48:00:13
Howard
There's a really cool, Japanese outdoor brand called Snow Peak. I'm kind of like an outdoor wilderness athletic type, incredible design, super cool, niche and growing clothing brand that I love. Matt. Happy just did this this capsule collection with the gap that people are freaking out over the Olympics as a brand. This is back. Paris as a brand is back.

00:48:00:15 - 00:48:52:18
Howard
Kamala as a brand is is is is revitalized. I don't know, I'm I'm a brand junkie. So I'm always, you know, I'm always kind of thinking about about all this stuff. The, the cool thing about when I get to do it, three one 3%. I mean, we do about 350 shows a year across our various six venues, and we're starting to branch out is all of these artists are brands with distinct audiences and and it's just fascinating, you know, every single night who's coming to see what artists and and it's it's amazing to see an artists really build their audience and to go from one of our smaller amphitheaters to maybe the Fox Theater or

00:48:52:20 - 00:49:11:08
Howard
the Little Caesars Arena to Comerica Park. It's like, I've already seen you. I've already seen Chris Stapleton go from, you know, Pine Knob to headlining his own show at Comerica Park. It's a blast. So I'll, I'll forever be, you know, passionate about brands.

00:49:11:10 - 00:49:17:10
Anne
I love it. Well, Howard Handler, thank you so much for your time. Jay. This is an awesome conversation. I really appreciate it.

00:49:17:12 - 00:49:20:04
Howard
Thank you and loved being a part of this.

00:49:20:06 - 00:49:51:23
Speaker
We are G&S business communications. We are a team of media strategists, storytellers, and engagement experts who meet you at the intersection of business and communications. To learn more, visit GScommunications.com. You're listening to building brand gravity, attracting people into your orbit a business communications podcast. Keep connected with us by subscribing to the show in your favorite podcast player. If you like what you've heard, please rate the show.

00:49:52:04 - 00:50:00:16
Speaker
That helps us to keep delivering the latest in industry influence. Thanks for listening. Until next time.