Building Brand Gravity Podcast

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:30:12
Speaker 1
There is such a tendency in business, and I guess life as well, to think of things as linear. One thing follows the next, which proceeds on to the next thing. And this is certainly true of how we tend in our society today to think about careers. The ideal career path always seems to be that imagine every diagonal line driving ever upward and very straight path.

00:00:30:14 - 00:00:47:17
Speaker 1
Yet I think we all know that that is not really how it works in careers, and it's certainly not how it works in life. It's more of a journey. It can be circuitous. It can be surprising sometimes, and that things are not always a straight or obvious path. And that's one reason I'm really looking forward to speaking with my next guest.

00:00:47:21 - 00:01:20:23
Speaker 1
On building brand gravity Marta. Rocio Newhart. She's a senior and seasoned communications leader. She speaks eloquently about the benefits of moving horizontally as well vertically across your career. And she certainly exemplifies that. If you look at her resume to take a leap between sectors and subject matters, that broadens your experience and your impact, and to cultivate a mindset, especially from the context of communications that embraces the totality of the business and the fact that she's started her career literally.

00:01:20:23 - 00:01:47:18
Speaker 1
Selling airplanes is a wonderful example of how she has the business mindset. So I particularly appreciated her thoughts on how communications professionals need to recenter their role in revenue generation and really be a partner to the business. So we got talking about a range of other issues too, like the danger of getting mired in a crisis after crisis mindset, the volatility of the world today, how we're thinking about inclusion as well as diversity and equity.

00:01:47:20 - 00:02:07:07
Speaker 1
And just her thoughts on that role as a communications professional, as a key, you know, stakeholder alongside other C-suite professionals. So keep listening. And if you enjoy what you hear, please like and share and information.

00:02:07:09 - 00:02:36:10
Speaker 2
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.

00:02:36:12 - 00:02:48:19
Speaker 1
Welcome to Building Brand Gravity. This is an Xn. I'm CEO at CNS Business Communications, and I'm delighted to be joined by a powerhouse communications executive. Marta Runkle. Newhart. Welcome, Marta.

00:02:48:21 - 00:02:50:17
Speaker 3
Hi there. And thanks for having me.

00:02:50:22 - 00:03:11:06
Speaker 1
I'm so glad you could be here. You know, as you've seen by the name, this podcast is a lot about what it is that brings people into your orbit, whether you're a brand or an organization, communications professional or marketer. And one of the things that's always interesting to start with, for me is the arc of someone's career. You have had a really varied career.

00:03:11:10 - 00:03:32:17
Speaker 1
A lot of it has been as a communications leader, which, by the way, is a very multifaceted job. I think as many of our listeners know and you certainly know, but you also started your career in an interesting way for a comms person. Not always common. And I might ask you to start there. I know at Boeing you told me you started literally selling airplanes, based in China.

00:03:32:19 - 00:03:37:10
Speaker 1
Tell me about that. And and how did you then make the pivot to communications?

00:03:37:12 - 00:04:09:07
Speaker 3
It was a really fun time. You know, it was a time when there were there was a lot of competition in Asia, especially for selling the big airplanes. We call them twin aisle airplanes, like six sevens for sevens, triple sevens, and now 780 sevens. And at the time, if you were the manufacturer, there was only two. If you were the manufacturer who had the predominant airplane in one of the airlines fleets, you could push out the competitor.

00:04:09:13 - 00:04:36:20
Speaker 3
It was a really interesting time. It taught me about strategy. It taught me about thinking about how are you going to usurp and push out the competition. This is something we do in corporate America every day. But when you grow up in an organization thinking about business, thinking about the commercialization, thinking about the things that advance your company in a way that rad's real value, real relevance and revenue.

00:04:36:22 - 00:04:55:22
Speaker 3
And then I went into communications. So I took that mindset with me. It was really funny because when I started in communications, I had one person say to me, well, that's great, you can sell airplanes. And you brought in so much revenue for the company, but can you write a press release? So, you know, you think about that and you think about that.

00:04:55:22 - 00:05:18:22
Speaker 3
Was their mindset, right? What made it such an insecure risk route was that coming into the organization with that business mindset, I brought that in. Do you really need a press release? That was my thinking. Are we doing things here that are really driving the revenue of the company and the bottom line and the brand? You talk a lot about brand.

00:05:19:00 - 00:05:42:08
Speaker 3
And so coming into it in that way really kind of raised some eyebrows. But I think it also changed people's thinking at the same time, which was fun. That was a lot of fun. There were there you though to it too, because people like to get comfortable in the way they do things. And so when you come in and you change it up, you're like, wait a minute, what is this all about?

00:05:42:08 - 00:05:57:11
Speaker 3
What is this? And so, especially in a very old organization, a tenured organization. And so I had a lot of fun doing that. And I think it really helped change the scope of what we went on to do in the future.

00:05:57:13 - 00:06:22:13
Speaker 1
I want to dig into this because it was you've told me this before, and it and I think it's so extraordinarily important for us to reflect on this, which is this question of the role of communications. And it can be integrated marketing communications, corporate communications. There's a lot of different slices and layers to this world, right. That role at being at the heart of revenue generation, because I do think there's a disconnect there in the mindset.

00:06:22:15 - 00:06:37:20
Speaker 1
And so how is it that you see that corporate communications or communications overall are or should be at the heart of revenue generation, but also see themselves in that way because there's there's the practical aspects of it, but there's also the mindset, right?

00:06:37:22 - 00:06:55:04
Speaker 3
Yeah, the mindset is a big one. I'm glad you brought that up, because the mindset that you bring into any organization you're going into, that's where you're going to spend your time. And as a leader, if that's where you spend your time, that's your focus. And so your people are going to continually look at where you're spending your time.

00:06:55:06 - 00:07:30:23
Speaker 3
Now, if you think about it from the perspective of we are a major part of the C-suite, we are a major part of how the company grows, how the company evolves, how the company competes. These are not normal mindset thinking issues for CFOs or even chief marketing and co officers. But that's what it's about. If you're doing something that's not adding equity to the brand, which is money, if you're doing something that's not adding to the bottom line, again, that's money.

00:07:31:01 - 00:07:52:21
Speaker 3
And if you're doing something that's not adding to revenue, you better all of these things. Again, this all comes back to money. Then you're doing things that aren't advancing your company. And companies right now are going through a lot of different activities. There's a lot of M&A starting to pick back up again. There's a lot of M&A going on.

00:07:52:23 - 00:08:10:05
Speaker 3
So how does the role of the brand play in that? Very much so. If your brand has a lot of equity it means it's worth a lot of money. And if it's worth a lot of money you're going to drive a higher sales price. When you sell the company when you do an M&A event. And so those things really matter.

00:08:10:07 - 00:08:36:15
Speaker 3
And when we think about the mindset of the CEO. So I'm on the board of page. And we just released a study that we had put together. And our findings of the expansion of the role of the Co and Steve, your colleague interviewed a couple of folks I think about six weeks ago on this. Yeah. So and they did a great job by the way, that thinking is really good.

00:08:36:21 - 00:08:56:19
Speaker 3
It's really shown how the role is evolved. We're not to the point yet where we're sitting there thinking about how what we're doing is advancing the bottom line. And contributing to the business. We're not there yet. And the reason we're not there yet is how I started this conversation, where you spend your time as a leader. That's where your people will.

00:08:56:21 - 00:09:20:04
Speaker 3
So if you spend your time thinking about that, how you're going to add equity to the brand and how you're going to increase the value of the company and how you're going to help build revenue, drive revenue and EBITDA. Your employees are going to, too. So there it really starts with us. It really starts with us helping not only our people think about that, but spending time doing that ourselves.

00:09:20:05 - 00:09:23:19
Speaker 3
It's all about relevance and it's all about adding value.

00:09:24:01 - 00:10:02:01
Speaker 1
It's great that you brought up the CCL report from page, and for those who don't know, it's a premier organization for chief communications officers and others at that level and agency heads. And it's a great report. I think what's interesting when you talk about this is for the value of that equity of the brand, and also the other kind of hard metrics that communications can bring to the table and contribute to one disconnect I think I've seen over the years, I think we all have is the difficulty of some senior executives in touching and feeling what brand value is, you know, what is the value of that equity or damage to the reputation.

00:10:02:03 - 00:10:21:23
Speaker 1
Those things have felt squishy. And obviously there's been a lot of things launched over the years by various entities to try to put a dollar amount to it. But I think it's profound what you're saying, because the equity in the brand and its reputation, its growth, its participation in different conversations that are happening, driving the market driving opinion is really critical.

00:10:22:03 - 00:10:31:14
Speaker 1
How have you worked to bridge that gap between what might be the measures the CFO or CEO typically look at, and then the ways in which brand equity is driven?

00:10:31:16 - 00:10:55:11
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think it's all about how our roles have been perceived in the past. So how does a CEO and a CFO perceive our role? Some see it as the way it used to be in some see it. There's a way they do today. The best CEOs and CFOs see it as the way it could be, and that's where adding value to the brand really comes in.

00:10:55:13 - 00:11:17:21
Speaker 3
It's an educational process because there's not a lot of CEOs and CFOs that really understand this in the future. Let's take the brand Westinghouse. So Westinghouse brought me in to rebrand the company. We were even looking at an Edison public offering. We were looking at a sale at the time, were looking at a lot of different business activities.

00:11:17:23 - 00:11:49:17
Speaker 3
And I looked at the brand and I thought, boy, there's nothing more iconic than this brand. If you think about. Yeah, if you think about that, what are the top five brands and I don't know, Hitachi, Apple or something. And Westinghouse has got to be somewhere in that mix. And so it was really about getting them to think about how this is, driver, not only to your bottom line, but how you can have a financial value on a non-financial asset.

00:11:49:17 - 00:12:22:03
Speaker 3
So how is that? It's the value. Hold on the balance sheet. So when we go out and talk about the brand and we talk about what it does and what it brings to customers, we have to be very precise about that. We have to manage that in a way that's not misunderstood, that's easy to understand. And we articulate in a way that's memorable because if we don't make it memorable, then whoever is the recipient or has an experience with the brand is going to make up their own, their own way.

00:12:22:03 - 00:12:35:19
Speaker 3
And you don't want that. You want it to be come from you. So here's where it gets tricky, because in a lot of older companies, they do things. And you'll hear this because we've always done them that way.

00:12:35:20 - 00:12:38:00
Speaker 1
Isn't that true of so many places.

00:12:38:05 - 00:13:01:11
Speaker 3
Yeah. Isn't it. And so that is that doesn't necessarily mean I won't change. It means we don't know what else to do. So if you come in and you help them understand, if you do X, Y, and Z with the brand, you're actually going to grow the value of it. And we as leaders have to do that. And this comes back to that business mindset.

00:13:01:13 - 00:13:24:06
Speaker 3
You know people say, well you need to have business acumen to be co or CMO. It's way beyond that. You have to contribute to the business to be in those roles and have that seat at the table. And so when it comes to the brand, this may be your highest, nonphysical asset that you can add value to.

00:13:24:08 - 00:13:51:01
Speaker 3
And you have to think about it very, very carefully. You know, sometimes and I think people articulate their brand story in a very prescribed or sterile way because they just want to show the facts right. But you can turn the facts into a story that's very memorable. And I and I always think about when we were kids, when our parents read a stories at night, they didn't read us press releases and they didn't read us spreadsheets.

00:13:51:01 - 00:14:20:01
Speaker 3
They read us stories and tell us a story that we can remember. Tell us something about your brand that everybody can remember, and then you start really adding equity, and then keep your people aligned on moving forward in that direction. Because your brand can't be everything to everybody. And this is where it comes down to thinking about where you're going to show up, how you're going to show up as a company and why.

00:14:20:05 - 00:14:39:11
Speaker 3
And, you know, over the last 2 or 3 years, a lot of companies have struggled with this. They've let their personal emotions get in the way of where they should be positioning their brands. It's a tricky tightrope, but I think it's really something that a lot of leaders in our space should really be spending more time on.

00:14:39:13 - 00:14:55:17
Speaker 1
I want to follow up on that one before I go back to some of the question about mindset, because just this week, Harvard announced some new guidelines about what they will and won't speak about and really trying to read that. Yeah, I think it's something we've all been watching. And, you know, I, I'm not a rocket and glass houses person.

00:14:55:17 - 00:15:17:01
Speaker 1
You know, the these kinds of crises can happen in any organization. And I don't like to, you know, I can have my opinions on missteps or good steps. You know, I've been a counselor in this field for 31 years, but I think I'd love to follow up on what you're saying, because I do think there's been a lot of reevaluation recently, just given the nature of the environment out in the world.

00:15:17:01 - 00:15:32:00
Speaker 1
And, you know, we have elections happening all over the world. The US is coming later this year. It's something as an organizational leader, I'm thinking about a lot. How do we stay in community with one another through hard conversations? What what is it I want to ask of my own team? And then what is it that we hope to counsel our clients?

00:15:32:00 - 00:15:45:11
Speaker 1
But what is your thought about how it's changing right now, and how folks are rethinking that toolkit and what it is that they should and shouldn't speak out on? I mean, how do they even go around the process of discerning that from your perspective?

00:15:45:16 - 00:16:20:17
Speaker 3
Yeah, and I think it's a really good thing that they are rethinking that, because just as people and businesses evolve, so does our approach to them. And that has to continually evolve. And the best leaders will make sure that evolves, especially with your stakeholder subgroup. I think we've seen a lot, particularly in Western countries. I'll take the U.S., for example, where some things can be happening in another part of the world, but we have people here who who feel very strongly about it.

00:16:20:19 - 00:16:41:20
Speaker 3
And we can't forget that even if your company isn't doing business in a part of the world, that's affected by the wars that are going on right now, your people may be because you've got global employees, you've got people, especially in the US, you've got immigrants here who feel strongly about what's happening. And you've got to really think that through.

00:16:41:22 - 00:17:12:20
Speaker 3
Here's where I think the distinction comes in. As leaders, we have to separate sometimes how we feel about a subject and how the company should be reacting, contributing or resolving it. And you've got to think about those three things, because if you're not thinking about those three things, you're reacting even from your own personal viewpoint, the best leaders and the best business people can separate those two doesn't mean you don't care.

00:17:13:00 - 00:17:33:07
Speaker 3
Of course you care. You care what's happening around the world, and you especially care what's happening today. But you've got to think about the role you're putting your company into versus how you feel about it. And you probably have experienced the same with some of your clients. They have a hard time separating that, and it becomes very emotional.

00:17:33:07 - 00:18:04:18
Speaker 3
It becomes a very important to them to take a stand. Your company, on the other hand, takes a stand where it's really meaningful to the values of the company, and it's consistent with what you've done in the past. Otherwise, you know, I hate to tell people, if you put out a statement that says you're in favor or you're not in favor, and you really haven't commented on this before, and you really don't know how it ties to your values or your customer or your stakeholders, it's not going to go well.

00:18:04:20 - 00:18:27:14
Speaker 3
It's really not going to go well. And you may think you're doing the right honorable thing, but you're really confusing your stakeholder set and keeping your employees will get confused by that. And they may try to make up their own mindset about where they should be thinking about it. And they will, and they will just be consistent. Don't feel like you have to be out there.

00:18:27:20 - 00:18:55:14
Speaker 3
We saw a lot of this in in the at the time of the George Floyd murder. We saw a lot of companies just piling on, putting a word out, putting this out, and making a stance. You know, a lot of that's good. A lot of it's good. But be a part of the resolution and the solution and how the the stakeholders are thinking about it and how you can contribute to that long term.

00:18:55:16 - 00:18:59:18
Speaker 3
I just parachute in and say something and parachute out. They're going to see through.

00:18:59:21 - 00:19:23:01
Speaker 1
Here because I do think that's that's the very next. You get a much more negative reaction, you know, when when you're seen as inauthentic. I think one thing you're reminded me of is how hard it is, for leaders within corporations today, whether they're comms folks or other executives, to gauge the volume and, and nature of the sentiment they're hearing because of the nature of media today.

00:19:23:02 - 00:19:38:14
Speaker 1
You know, I remember hearing Domino's, their marketing lead talk a number of years ago about a social media crisis. There was a food tampering issue at one of their stores. It was this video is kind of gross. It was around online, you know, people messing with the pizza. We'll just leave it at that. Google it, folks. You'll find it.

00:19:38:14 - 00:19:54:13
Speaker 1
But, they said at the time, the K really came down like the wrath of God about that because this is food safety, right? But the marketing manager said something that I never will forget, which is we didn't know if we were putting out a candle with a fire hose because it was very hard in social media.

00:19:54:13 - 00:20:25:20
Speaker 1
But I think it's true today to have your internal stakeholders, your employees, different groups of them, external stakeholders. What is the volume and the intensity of the sentiment and how to sort through that? It's hard. And that's why I, I do feel communications leaders who live in the nuance, you know, we I tend to feel the best comms leaders are not just binary thinkers, you know, it's people who really understand shades of gray and understand how to live in uncertainty and say, I don't know yet if this is going to spiral in this way.

00:20:25:20 - 00:20:32:15
Speaker 1
I don't know, but these are not all the voices, and we need to be measured, I don't know, does that resonate with you at all? It's an interesting question.

00:20:32:17 - 00:20:50:08
Speaker 3
It does, because if you put a candle out with a hose, that's better than putting it out with a torch, you know, or because you're just going to ignite it thing I would say about the domino situation is, as any company, it's not one and done. It's not one and done. You've got to continue to be out there.

00:20:50:08 - 00:21:12:01
Speaker 3
You've got to continue to talk about it. If food safety is the biggest thing for you, talk about it. Talk about what you're doing. Don't just have great pizza. Now we live in an environment where that's that's not enough. We've got five generations in the workplace, and there's some of them that think really differently about this. It really matters to them.

00:21:12:05 - 00:21:32:12
Speaker 3
So we have to really think about where and how and why we're actually coming out on an issue. And it's not just about really thinking about the reputation of our company. We can think about the reputation of our company and protect it, and that's part of the job. But sometimes it goes beyond that. And I think that's what Domino's was trying to do.

00:21:32:14 - 00:21:55:14
Speaker 3
Domino's was trying to protect their reputation. Well, there's a lot of companies today that are doing that quite well. You know, if you if you look at what Toyota is doing today, remember five years ago Toyota and Volkswagen were all over the news. Toyota probably more so now they're doing things that really make you think about how that brand has changed things.

00:21:55:14 - 00:22:26:09
Speaker 3
And they never stop talking about it. There's other places too. I think caterpillar is a good one and probably, the John Deere. There's a couple other major corporations. They don't stop talking about it. They're out there saying, okay, here's what's important to us, and we're going to continue to talk about it. Cargill, others on food sourcing and how we keep all sources of food are available to all people, not just to a different segments of society.

00:22:26:09 - 00:22:53:17
Speaker 3
And so these are these are brands that are really admirable. Why do I bring them up? They don't have a magic formula, but they're doing things that are continually adding to the equity. So we we were on this path a minute ago of really talking about the financial value of a non-financial asset. It's really important if you're thinking about having and continuing to have a major role in the growth of your company, you've got to have that perspective.

00:22:53:19 - 00:23:18:05
Speaker 1
You know, one thing that is, is interesting about the way your career has evolved, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, both for yourself, but also for those coming into the field. You have moved to many different sectors. Like, first of all, you had a non-linear path in terms of oh, I'm in sales now. I'm moving into communications and bringing all of that knowledge with you in a very to me, in a very mindful way.

00:23:18:05 - 00:23:35:20
Speaker 1
That's one thing, Marty always strike me as someone who steps back and says, what is happening here? This is interesting. Well, you know, to be mindful about it and intentional. The other thing you've done, those you've moved from sector to sector, you've worked in medical devices. You've worked in the energy field, you've worked in advanced manufacturing, you know, and aviation.

00:23:35:20 - 00:23:50:22
Speaker 1
And and you said something to me when we were catching up recently about it's not just about, vertical growth, it's also horizontal movement. What are your thoughts about that? Because I think your career is such a good example of that philosophy now.

00:23:50:22 - 00:24:13:09
Speaker 3
Thank you. I think I think that if you, well, certainly in my case, it was about moving from one function to another and then making it additive. So at the time I was thinking and they were very persuasive too. So I have to give them credit for that. At Boeing they were very persuasive. They said, you know, look, you're a good storyteller.

00:24:13:10 - 00:24:31:19
Speaker 3
We want this here. We want this combined with the business impact, and we want that to sort of rub off on our people. So remember what I said earlier? It was funny coming into the organization and someone said, yeah, it's great that you can make all this money, but can you write a press release? And my response to that was, do we need a press release?

00:24:31:20 - 00:24:34:05
Speaker 3
You know, so we got to think about things differently.

00:24:34:05 - 00:24:41:07
Speaker 1
Mada why would you say such a thing? And I mean, people have been trying to kill the press release for decades. It still persists anyway.

00:24:41:09 - 00:25:09:12
Speaker 3
That's right. Yeah. And so I think it's just about stepping back and really thinking what's needed. And you hear people talk about lifelong learning. This is something that but sign me up. I'm in lifelong learning, being curious, really trying to understand what's new and to your point, nuanced about a business or about a company, and how can we be directly involved in that?

00:25:09:12 - 00:25:30:12
Speaker 3
And so, you know, I really have always been that way. You know, I come from I come from a family that, didn't have any privilege, that didn't have a lot. And so we had to think creatively about what we did have, about the resources we had and how we were going to distribute those. So you could say, you know, corporations have budgets.

00:25:30:12 - 00:26:02:13
Speaker 3
Yeah, we had a budget. It was pretty small. We had to think about how we were going to spend that and what we're going to do with that money. So that mindset really informed how I thought about different jobs, not necessarily about the stability I needed, that there was no question. But where did it make sense to take a risk, or did it make sense to jump off from being in sales to going into communications to really, going that route that really was additive to my career.

00:26:02:13 - 00:26:23:00
Speaker 3
And I had people telling me, don't do that. Don't don't go that way. Stay here, stay in sales. You know, communications wasn't highly thought of at the time. You know, the only thing was and they weren't allowed to show their real value. And when an organization could show they're really a real value at it, all bets are off.

00:26:23:02 - 00:26:46:14
Speaker 3
The other saying, you know, when we talk about, for example, mute so we can climb up the ladder and each one can be additive, that's something that you want to do. You want to make sure that if you're if you're a climber, that each step you take is additive to the next, don't just take one because it's in the industry you're in and it's comfortable and you know you can do it.

00:26:46:15 - 00:27:17:16
Speaker 3
Why? Why change that? Why do something different? Well, you probably make some more money, but is that enough? And then thinking about it horizontally, taking steps in different industries, in different verticals and learning how they work. And, you know, I think communications experts have skills will travel. There's no question you have skills that can really go into any function.

00:27:17:18 - 00:27:43:05
Speaker 3
So if you think about that in terms of the verticals that I've been in, aerospace, medical devices, multi industrial specialty metals and in energy, you think about how bringing those skills along into each one of those industries can help change it and can help them think differently. You know, a good analogy would be Silicon Valley. So Silicon Valley is always, you know, we call it high tech.

00:27:43:05 - 00:28:03:16
Speaker 3
We call it these rooms, these terms to talk about it. They think very entrepreneurial. And so you have a lot of CEOs that jump from company to company. Some of them are serial CEOs. Some of them are serial entrepreneurs. But they jump from company to company with one mindset how am I going to grow it? How am I going to make it bigger?

00:28:03:16 - 00:28:25:16
Speaker 3
And then what's my exit strategy? It going to be if you think about your career that that way, not necessarily what your exit strategy is going to be, but how you're going to grow for is on to Lee. I'll tell you, it really worked for me because the experience of these different industries made me think about companies much differently.

00:28:25:18 - 00:28:47:21
Speaker 3
They typically make money the same way they typically go to market differently, and they typically engage their stakeholders differently depending on their comfort level or what they're trying to achieve. So you see all the learning that you can get from that if you go horizontally and then don't forget to take your steps upward up the ladder. Those are really important.

00:28:47:21 - 00:29:00:18
Speaker 3
But those sideways horizontal steps and by the way, those relationships as you move horizontally, to me, they've been the most important in my entire career. Don't lose sight of those. Those are really good ones.

00:29:00:20 - 00:29:18:11
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's interesting because so often I feel in life and not just in business, people get pigeonholed. You know, it's like people want to put you what's the box, Sharon? And I've seen that, you know, I've been on the agency side my whole career. So it is. And by the way, I agree with you. This field in general, the learning that you do is unbelievable.

00:29:18:13 - 00:29:42:07
Speaker 1
And then I've discovered topics and things through clients. I never knew about it, never thought I'd be interested in. And it's just you if you embrace that. It's such a wonderful career. But it is interesting how so often there's a sense in like agency is a look at maybe a and a candidate and say, oh, but they've done this and that, but they haven't done this, you know, and it's, it's it's just a human nature to pigeonhole people.

00:29:42:07 - 00:29:52:00
Speaker 1
And that's can be that can be neutral or can be actually really, really negative. But how do you advise people to avoid that trap, you know, and how did you avoid that yourself?

00:29:52:02 - 00:30:18:13
Speaker 3
When are you talking about categories. So if your mind wants to categorize things because it's easier, right. And so you think about a, let's say a bus driver, you think about what are the skills a bus driver has and it's easier for you to categorize them. And I think a lot of times people will categorize commas in chaos because it's easier, oh, this is what they do.

00:30:18:13 - 00:30:38:06
Speaker 3
This is what they bring to the table. The best thing you can do is think outside of that box if that's what you want. Do you want them to think about you in the old stereotypical way and show up that way, and that's what you'll get. It'll be comfortable for them. It will hold your career back and probably not going to be very satisfied.

00:30:38:06 - 00:31:02:18
Speaker 3
You're going to get frustrated because every time these you try to push out of that box and hit your head against it, or the side they're going to push you back in. So how you show up matters. How you educate people on what your capabilities are, how what you bring to the table, how you practice in the C-suite as a member of a team that's driving a business.

00:31:02:20 - 00:31:26:20
Speaker 3
It's not always about what your function is, and that's what I love about what we do is because we don't have to show up that way. Now, that's easy for me to say, right? Because it takes a lot of courage. But the opposite of that is just pure frustration, because you're always going to be held to that standard over there of that category that they want you to be in.

00:31:26:22 - 00:31:48:17
Speaker 3
Here's the thing, too, is it doesn't help your people who doesn't want to help their team grow, evolve, get bigger. I always tell them, build a resume. You know, what we're doing is resume building because we're going to do things very unconventional here. And at first employees are like, wait a minute, what language is she talking? What is she talking about?

00:31:48:17 - 00:32:13:08
Speaker 3
What what did we just inherit here? And, after they start singing after a few months that they're getting called not to write, just a press release, but called for. Hey, you know, Joe, what do you what do you recommend? I'm going to market with this new product. We want to bring you in on the team and advise us, you know, what's the best way for us to really position the market?

00:32:13:12 - 00:32:38:19
Speaker 3
That's very different. Those are two very different things. And when you get that phone call of the second request right now, your resume building your resume building in a way that's going to help not only career, but how you feel about how you show up to work every day. And that's what we as leaders. Sometimes we don't really fulfill that because we're comfortable in the way we're always seeing.

00:32:38:21 - 00:33:01:20
Speaker 3
And progress is really about going in the right direction. And it's not just about movement and cranking out a lot of information and content and all those things. It's about going in the right direction. So as leaders, you got to figure out what's your right direction. Where are you taking the team? Make sure they know so that they can continue to build on that.

00:33:01:22 - 00:33:04:05
Speaker 3
But switching direction is hard.

00:33:04:07 - 00:33:30:21
Speaker 1
Some of what you're talking about, it's really what we hope to be in communications, which is counselors and partners. Right? Not just oh, what is the news? Okay, I will as you said, I will write announcement call media. And that is unfortunately a lot of the dynamic that I've seen over the years. You know, we've all experienced and but a lot of it has to do with how you're showing up and then how you're dealing with what's coming at you, how you're, you know, bringing yourself to the table as a, as a peer.

00:33:30:23 - 00:33:32:23
Speaker 1
You know, I think that's really important.

00:33:33:01 - 00:33:51:08
Speaker 3
And you change stereotypes. Right. And so when you change the stereotypes, not only does it help you think about that entire team that you're leading. And if you're in a underrepresented of group, think about how you're changing the world for them.

00:33:51:10 - 00:34:12:11
Speaker 1
And it's interesting because I know in terms of your intersectionality, you've been the only one, in some cases in many of your jobs as a Latina, as a as a senior woman. And, and that opportunity to bring others along and to kind of open minds about it. What are your thoughts about that journey, that piece of your journey and how you're able to make an impact today?

00:34:12:13 - 00:34:30:17
Speaker 3
You know, when I was younger, I took my husband's name. That's where New Heart comes from. It's my husband's name, and it's, a well-known name. It's not a common name, but it's a well-known name. And so it worked very well for me. And I got advice early in my career that said, you know what? This whole like nothing.

00:34:30:17 - 00:34:56:11
Speaker 3
You know, this whole Latina dad case that's haciendo. What? Let's just call you Martin. New hearts fact. You know, we could even call Yamada. Let's just call you Martin Newhart. You know, that sort of thing. And it's interesting because it it sort of suppressed a part of who I was in a way that I didn't realize was really coming to a head.

00:34:56:11 - 00:35:22:04
Speaker 3
I joined about four years ago at the Latino Corporate Directors Association. And and you'll love this. I went into one of their first convenings, and here is a room full of Latinos. And I walked in and just took a big, deep breath. And the CEO said, you're at home now. These are your people. You're at home. And I said, this is more diverse than my cousin's wedding.

00:35:22:07 - 00:35:56:17
Speaker 3
I've never been in a room like this, and it just felt so comfortable. And I continued to spend a lot of time with this organization to advance Latinos on boards and to have representation on boards, because we are 20% of the U.S. population. And that matters because we are the fastest minority group growing in the US. And so when you talk about intersectionality and where it is and how you show up, you know, so easy to be yourself, it's so easy to be yourself and no one's going to criticize you.

00:35:56:17 - 00:36:23:12
Speaker 3
I hope for being yourself because that is where you can add the most value. And all of us are in one category when it comes to corporate America, and that category is advancing business, being competitive and moving the organization forward. Now, how you come to that strategy hopefully is in different ways. We can get the most value out of those eight seats around the table.

00:36:23:16 - 00:36:45:15
Speaker 3
There's not very many. And so to get the most out of that, you've got to bring a perspective that they may not have thought of and you've got to have the courage to do that. It's not always easy, but I learned that I got more respect in a room full of mostly males and people that weren't from my ethnicity.

00:36:45:17 - 00:36:57:03
Speaker 3
When I did show them a way that would add to the value of strategy and then the advancement of the company wasn't always popular. But I got more respect for doing that.

00:36:57:05 - 00:37:18:23
Speaker 1
And you're more in the conversation that they need to be having. You know, it's interesting too, because this piece about how you show up authentically and when, when is it easy, when is it hard? You know, we sometimes in corporate world you bring your whole self to work, which is not always possible or easy for everyone, but it's so powerful when you can remove those frictions and allow people to show up.

00:37:18:23 - 00:37:44:09
Speaker 1
And I've been thinking a lot about some of the cultural pushback around areas like diversity, equity and inclusion, some of which is kind of, I think, easy part chance people are taking for various reasons, you know, a little a little bit cynical about some of those things. But, you know, one of the things that I think about a lot is what does it really mean to have an inclusive environment, which to me, from a business leader perspective, it means removing that friction so that people's ideas can flow.

00:37:44:09 - 00:38:06:14
Speaker 1
So you can have divergent thinking, so you can bring out the best in people so you can move faster. So you're not having people stuck on what did that mean. And do they want me here? And you know, and I think it's I think it's important that we spend time being really nuanced and thoughtful about what we mean when we use terms like this and to, to lean into understanding inclusion in new ways.

00:38:06:14 - 00:38:07:18
Speaker 1
I don't know, do you have thoughts on that?

00:38:07:18 - 00:38:35:06
Speaker 3
Yeah. I think, that's why you and I get along so well and because we think alike and that people just want to be seen and heard, people just want to know that what they can contribute has some meaning. It's really that simple. And, you know, as CEOs and see CEOs and we have to think about that because we're in the center of an organization where everyone listens to us.

00:38:35:08 - 00:39:05:01
Speaker 3
What are we doing to listen to our people? How are we spending the time with them so that they feel that and actually appreciate that we're getting the best out of them? Who doesn't want to go to a job every day where you don't have that dynamic? You know, people in the medical field really feel like they're really changing lives, saving lives, making people healthier and so they can see and feel it every day.

00:39:05:02 - 00:39:36:01
Speaker 3
To your point, is more nuanced in what we do and no matter what we call it, DNI and I know some companies are changing what they call it. Some companies are rethinking how they implement it. There's the data is overwhelming, and the data has never changed. And the data shows that when you have a highly functioning, fully complete leadership team, your company performs upwards of 20 to 30% stronger than your competitors.

00:39:36:03 - 00:40:03:07
Speaker 3
So if you want to just look at the data, which is important, that's where it really matters. And then you also want to make sure that your leadership team in your board reflects the demographics of your customer. And we're starting to get into that. We're starting to make those changes. You're starting to see different people on boards that you didn't used to see 15, 20 years ago, even five years ago.

00:40:03:11 - 00:40:26:03
Speaker 3
And so that part is evolving slowly, but it's evolving. And that's the good news. And these companies are going to benefit from it. And the CEOs that really push for that, they're going to be much more successful, especially the new CEOs, because sometimes CEOs come into the job and they just keep the leadership team that's there because it's comfortable.

00:40:26:07 - 00:40:39:19
Speaker 3
Things work well, why not? But when you start making changes, your customers are not only noticing, they're reacting in a much more positive way because they can see that you value them more.

00:40:39:21 - 00:41:05:15
Speaker 1
And it reminds me, you know, the old phrase representation matters and it really, really does. And that's that's a quick phrase, but it has a lot of depth to it. You know, one of the things I wanted to ask you about, and I think it has to do, again, with sort of mindset and how comes is centered and also having the best minds at the table to to deal with a very volatile world is the kind of uncertainty we're managing through the kind of volatility we're facing.

00:41:05:17 - 00:41:27:09
Speaker 1
And with the comms area and brand and the C-suite overall, there's a real danger in getting mired in crisis mindset as a crisis after crisis after crisis. Right. And you and I talked briefly about this, but I'd love to share your thoughts on how do you balance that and needing to do it. I mean, they must be dealt with and it has to be the best.

00:41:27:09 - 00:41:47:02
Speaker 1
You have to bring the best thinking every time. And it's sometimes it's a marathon, not a sprint, right? So it's not easy. But at the same time there's proactive strategy and there's the things you still hope to advance. So how do you how do you think about balancing those two things that I'm in the mindset, I've got my head down in it, but I also have to have my eyes up and look ahead.

00:41:47:04 - 00:42:13:15
Speaker 3
You know, and the fortune 100 companies I've worked in any day can be a crisis. You know, some are smaller than others and, you know, some affect, the sales for some effect, the legal team, some effect, the comms team, some effect, different parts of the organization, but they all affect the comms team. They do. They do because you got to help manage it.

00:42:13:17 - 00:42:44:23
Speaker 3
The thing to really think about there and, and I really enjoyed that conversation that we had about it was because there's something happening every day on many levels. If you look at any of these geopolitical, companies in the fortune 100, they are involved in any of the issues going on across the world today, we have upwards of 60 to 70 democratic elections going on around the world today that are going to shift markets and that we have to think about.

00:42:45:01 - 00:43:13:14
Speaker 3
And so that's the long term view. And I bring that up because Crisises every day when you spend so much time on them and rethinking them, and how are we going to react to them. That's where you're, you're you should spend some of your time, but not the majority. So it's that taking a step back again and thinking about what are the major issues, the black swan events that are going to happen to your company, that you got to really prepare for?

00:43:13:15 - 00:43:40:07
Speaker 3
Hopefully they don't happen, but we all learned through the pandemic, major things can happen that none of us prepare for. So now we're starting to rethink that. We're starting to rethink about what are other big black swan events that we should prepare for. And when you create a strategy and a map for when those happen and how you're going to work through it, hopefully it collects dust.

00:43:40:09 - 00:44:03:00
Speaker 3
But, you know, the recent history shown us that they won't. It's likely that you're going to use them. So if you have that map that shows how all of the functions, how all of the organizations, how everyone in the company is going to manage through this crisis and they understand it. Your stakeholders are going to be so comfortable.

00:44:03:02 - 00:44:29:09
Speaker 3
Oh, and really got that handled. We don't have to worry about those guys. That's why there are partners, because they're going to help us manage through this. That's what they do. It takes planning. So we talk about strategy. We talk about planning. We talk about mapping. You got to do those things on steroids because especially at bigger companies where these things can really shift markets.

00:44:29:11 - 00:44:48:01
Speaker 3
And it's hard to get the, the the boat back on track once it's off of track. That's where it really matters. You got to be a leader in that. And we've talked about courage earlier. You've got to have the courage to stand in front of your leadership team and say, here are the big black swan events I think are going to happen.

00:44:48:03 - 00:45:09:23
Speaker 3
These are the risks and a lot of these companies and have a department that actually looks at risks very frequently, and you've got to be able to show the leadership team how they might think about these and how it's going to affect the business. Now, there's going to be a lot of CEOs out there that say, wait a minute, that's not my job.

00:45:09:23 - 00:45:36:18
Speaker 3
I'm not going to do that. Yeah, it is your job because you're going to have to manage it when it happens. And they're all going to look to you. Now, what are we going to do about this? Not just what are we going to say publicly or internally, but how are we going to manage this? So if you if you come back and you do that mapping and you do that strategy in a scenario based planning, you're going to be much better prepared.

00:45:36:19 - 00:45:59:06
Speaker 3
And you know what? You've also just done. You've changed the perception of your organization. You guys are really strategic. And so these actions mean more than just managing the company reputation. Your stakeholders are going to talk to your CEO, and they're going to commit more to your company because they know when these things happen, you guys are prepared.

00:45:59:08 - 00:46:16:17
Speaker 3
It's not going to be like what we saw earlier this year, where you've got major universities that don't know how to react to something or even manage something that affects their student body, it's going to be different. And the alumni.

00:46:16:19 - 00:46:35:08
Speaker 1
And the alumni bodies and as you said, erodes trust. You know, these are complex issues, but that sense of whether an entity is prepared or not. And I love what you said earlier, that not just what we're going to say. What are we going to do, because we have to have a seat at that table that's so important.

00:46:35:10 - 00:46:51:14
Speaker 1
Mark, as we wrap up today, you know, the title of this podcast is Building Brand Gravity. You know, attracting people into your orbit. What right now in culture or books or travel, what has you in it's gravity. What are you excited about right now to share before we say.

00:46:51:14 - 00:47:16:04
Speaker 3
Goodbye, I'm excited about how we think about our function differently. We're starting to push the envelope about what we're doing. I would like to blow that envelope wide open. I'm excited about it because being on the board a page, I'm able to push that thinking. I'm also very excited about being on a publicly traded board. It will be announced in a week.

00:47:16:09 - 00:47:19:20
Speaker 1
That's so exciting! I can't wait to hear this news. I'll be watching.

00:47:19:20 - 00:47:40:05
Speaker 3
We're going through proxy season, as you know, and so that's got to finalize and then we'll go from there. I want to show our community that we are not just close, we are business leaders. We contribute to the bottom line of the business, and we can be on boards if that's the path you want to take. I'm excited about those things.

00:47:40:07 - 00:47:48:05
Speaker 1
Well that's amazing, Martha, thank you again for your time today. Thanks for your friendship and all you contribute to the industry. And thanks for, thanks for being on the podcast.

00:47:48:05 - 00:47:50:12
Speaker 3
Thanks again. It was a lot of fun.

00:47:50:14 - 00:48:15:20
Speaker 1
Chance to talk to Marta Runkle new heart about such a big range of topics, but all related to that role of the communications leader and executive, and where they need to be positioned within a company. And a lot of it has to do with her own mindset. How do we as communications professionals, especially the most seniors, chief communications officers and others, how do we understand that we must be at the heart?

00:48:15:20 - 00:48:42:19
Speaker 1
Revenue generation two, that we have to sit at the table and understand the business impact we're having and be able to communicate about that and shift our mindset about what communications is meant to do and how we can be a partner to the business. She has such a powerful career trajectory, moving not just vertically but also horizontally between very different industries, from aerospace to medical device to advanced manufacturing materials and specialty metals.

00:48:42:19 - 00:49:11:05
Speaker 1
I mean really, really complex and widely varied subject matters, but always through it, making sure that those core communicate passions, skill sets that are also deeply rooted in the outcomes of the business come with her. And I loved Marta's advocacy for her teams. You know, how is that? The communications leader brings that team along and helps other people see them as partners and counselors and encourages them to show up and a really powerful way.

00:49:11:22 - 00:49:34:04
Speaker 1
We talked a little bit about also the role of things like diversity, equity and inclusion and how we understand those terms relative to how people are enabled to be more authentic in the workplace, which is not just a nice thing to have. It's actually so powerful relative to building trust and removing friction in the business and also bringing better thinking.

00:49:34:06 - 00:49:58:04
Speaker 1
So her story herself has been really powerful in that way, and she's very interested now in, supporting more Latinos and Latinas on boards, which is a journey she's on herself. So, so many exciting things for those that are advanced in their career or just starting out in communications to study a person that has had such a varied career but so intentional.

00:49:58:04 - 00:50:08:11
Speaker 1
I think when she talks about things, it's with such intentionality and mindfulness. I know that's something that I try to bring to my work, and I think I got a lot of inspiration from talking to Marta. Today.

00:50:08:16 - 00:50:37:15
Speaker 2
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 GE'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.

00:50:37:20 - 00:50:49:02
Speaker 2
If you like what you've heard, please rate the show that helps us to keep delivering the latest in industry influence. Thanks for listening. Until next time.

 

00:00:00:10 - 00:00:34:08
Speaker 3
Hello, I'm Steve Halsey, one of your host of building brand Gravity. Did you know that a lack of funding and trust in journalism are two of the top concerns of journalists? This is followed closely by concerns about disinformation. These are some of the findings of the latest industry research by Mark rack. Mark Rack is an all in one public relations management platform that was developed to help PR professionals better manage media relations, glean insights from more than a thousand journalists, and just really allow them to be more effective at what they do.

00:00:34:09 - 00:00:59:17
Speaker 3
We're joined here today by Greg Gallant, who is co-founder and CEO of Muck Rack, who's going to give us insights on these latest trends and take us into the world of media. It's going to be really exciting. We're going to be talking about how journalists works, how AI and social media are impacting what they do. And we're also going to talk about what does and doesn't work about pitching media in today's environment and much, much more so.

00:00:59:19 - 00:01:01:08
Speaker 3
Greg, welcome to the show.

00:01:01:10 - 00:01:03:15
Speaker 1
Great. Thanks, Steve. Thank you for having me on.

00:01:03:18 - 00:01:30:04
Speaker 3
Yeah, it's really exciting. You know, you've you've been quite the entrepreneur over your time launching your first company at 14 years old, starting your first podcast out of college called Venture Voice. Working with CNN with you really took me back there. What? When we used to call it citizen journalism, that was that was pretty wild. Looking at at the broader trends as as that came up, helped launch a number of technology ventures.

00:01:30:04 - 00:01:51:09
Speaker 3
One of my favorite, the Shorty Awards, you were you were behind helping create that for social media. And of course, you changed the world a little bit in 2009 when you co-founded Muck Rag, and that's gone through a lot of iterations ever since. So can you tell us a little bit about, the founding of Muck Rag, what was really kind of behind that?

00:01:51:11 - 00:02:00:12
Speaker 3
And then as part of that, how come you felt you felt has been important to publish this annual State of journalism report for many years now?

00:02:00:13 - 00:02:26:04
Speaker 1
Sure. So funny enough, it all started with podcasting. So when I started my podcast interviewing entrepreneurs about how they got started in 2005, that was like the first. Now that's a common format for a podcast. So it's the first podcast of its kind. So I thought, okay, let me experiment with this new podcast medium. Being an entrepreneur, I thought before I just talk to other entrepreneurs and learn from them.

00:02:26:04 - 00:02:55:12
Speaker 1
And I got some amazing guests on. I had read Hoffman Bachman, the founder of LinkedIn, back when LinkedIn still had just 50 employees. The founder of Yelp, I got John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, that venture, the index fund. Just some amazing people see that interview and learn from. One of the people I had on my podcast was EV Williams, who had a startup called Odeo, which is meant to be a podcast directory and discovery platform.

00:02:55:14 - 00:03:19:03
Speaker 1
Odeo never worked out, but I watched him pivot to a little side project, that he had, called Twitter. So that led me to sign up for Twitter early. I got my first name on there just at Gregory on Twitter. And so Abbott and later got at Gregory on Instagram, too, just by being the first, first one to sign up, this with that name.

00:03:19:05 - 00:03:39:22
Speaker 1
And so kind of seeing that early social media world, you know, this is around like, probably like oh six, I signed up and then, you know, by like 28, I realized, like, hey, there's no way to figure out who's worth paying attention to on social. So that led to the idea to launch the Shorty Awards, along with my co-founder, Lee Sam all.

00:03:40:00 - 00:04:00:06
Speaker 1
And then, after we saw that, the, shorty Awards were really, really took off and we got a ton of attention and press coverage in New York Times, Wall Street Journal, VC all reached out to us to cover it. That first year. So we're like, oh, that's interesting. Like, these journalists are using social media to figure out what to write about.

00:04:00:08 - 00:04:17:07
Speaker 1
They're all on social media. And there's so much generally digital data about the journalists you could use to figure out, you know, to kind of get a sense of what's going on in the world. So that all led to the idea to launch the first version of my crack in oh nine. And originally, actually, it wasn't for PR people.

00:04:17:08 - 00:04:38:13
Speaker 1
It was just for journalists. It's totally free. We launched it for journalists and over 10,000 journalists requests to get on there in the first year, because they wanted to have, profiles on the web. They wanted to have portfolios. They wanted to find each other. I was a public website, and I keep running into PR people who would all tell me, like, oh, you do my crack.

00:04:38:13 - 00:04:57:18
Speaker 1
Like, I love that website. I'm using it to figure out who I should pitch, who I should talk to, which journalist I should care about to realize, like, oh, that's interesting that it seems like every business opportunity here for this, this market is kind of starved for data to know, like, who should they be talking to? Have they been reaching out to journalists?

00:04:57:20 - 00:05:21:16
Speaker 1
So that led us to relaunch Off Rack in in 2011. We kept it all free for journalists and still is today. But then we added the whole platform for the, PR and profit communications world to be able to log in and find the right journalist to pitch, monitor the news, build reports, track the relationships, show how the journalist relationship types impact the coverage that they got.

00:05:21:18 - 00:05:24:13
Speaker 1
And, we've been on that journey ever since.

00:05:24:17 - 00:05:45:04
Speaker 3
Wow. So, so, so a German idea, some serendipity. And here you are. And and part of that is, you know, I think one of the things that really differentiates what you're doing, and a lot of that goes to the original DNA is you've just talked about of really understanding what's on journalists minds, what's in their world.

00:05:45:06 - 00:06:08:21
Speaker 3
And I'm assuming that's part of the reason why you've done this annual state of journalism, what you're seeing, and some broader trend. So maybe you could talk a little bit about what was kind of the inspiration to really putting out to the world what journalists are seeing and and before we get into this year's study, have you seen any broader trends over the number of years you've been doing your annual report?

00:06:08:23 - 00:06:14:05
Speaker 3
Any particular changes in, in the, the way that journalists work or what they're looking for?

00:06:14:10 - 00:06:36:18
Speaker 1
Yeah. So we're seeing, you know, a lot of it's interesting, like, a lot of things change, a lot of things stay the same. You know, one of the things we've found kind of consistently is that journalists are, you know, always looking for short, really tailored pitches. Whereas I think a lot of people tend to, you know, sending out really, really long pitches.

00:06:36:18 - 00:07:04:13
Speaker 1
We've seen that's something that's remained, you know, constant over the years. But then, on the flip side, too, we see there a lot of changes. It's a lot more concerned about the lack of funding and trust in journalist and, journalism with about a third, third of journalists have major concerns there. And, and then, you know, a lot of new things coming out with how they're using newer social networks, how they thinking about generative AI, etc..

00:07:04:15 - 00:07:25:06
Speaker 3
Well, and one of the things I thought was interesting in your research that a lot of times we don't really think about, at least on the, communicators side of thing is what the journalists work environment was. I mean, the, when the pandemic hit, it fundamentally changed things for a lot of us. But not but not necessarily for journalists.

00:07:25:08 - 00:07:43:16
Speaker 3
You know, I think when you look at, you know, some of the findings from your research, you know, you had more than half of journalists say they only want to go into the office sometime. Sounds fairly familiar. They're looking for hybrid work arrangements. You know, some want flexibility because they feel a little bit stuck in the office.

00:07:43:16 - 00:08:03:00
Speaker 3
And the thing that continues to be true today, as it always was, was journalism really isn't a 9 to 5 job. So before we get to talk about some of those other things, what just what are some of the challenges of the job and with your research? Why is that important? To really delve and understand what the journalists work environment is like?

00:08:03:03 - 00:08:30:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think it matters a lot, especially, you know, for a lot of days in corporate communications where it's I mean, don't get me wrong, people in corporate communications are working, working all hours, too. But, you know, the concept of being at a large company there is, you can get a feeling of a lot of stability and, you know, kind of more predictable, HR policies.

00:08:30:18 - 00:08:51:14
Speaker 1
And when you got to be in and what hours you got to work. Whereas for the journalists, it's very chaotic where they're they're jumping around jobs a lot. A lot of them are, you know, really seeing a trend towards being freelancers to and then even to your point, the ones that are out jobs, they're always switching around beats, but they're covering, they're, they're in the office a lot less.

00:08:51:14 - 00:09:15:21
Speaker 1
So I think it changes up a lot of people's, long time habits and strategies. For example, you know, we see there a lot of people who who grew up thinking, okay, I got to call it a journalist test line. And of course, I call out journalists that line between 9 to 5, they'll probably pick up now. It's like, well, they're, you know, they're working from home half the time.

00:09:15:21 - 00:09:39:02
Speaker 1
Like they're probably not going to be at that desk. Fine. So you don't have their cell phone number. Good luck. Or another we see is that people want to do the, the desk side tours where it's like, oh, hey, let me, you know, come to your office and meet you. And they might be like, well, I live in our from the office, and I only want to go in once a week, so I'm not going to come in just to meet you there.

00:09:39:02 - 00:09:50:18
Speaker 1
So, so there are a lot of elements like that or seeing, understanding, you know, where journalism is going and how journalists are working really impacts how you think about building relationships with journalists.

00:09:50:20 - 00:10:09:20
Speaker 3
Yeah, I've been I've been in this profession for, for for 30 plus years. So I guess I'm a bit of a dinosaur. And you took me back a little bit there in terms of, you know, time to call in to the reporters. I mean, I remember my first agency job when we would call reporters, tell them we were going to send something, we would send it.

00:10:09:20 - 00:10:39:06
Speaker 3
We'd wait 3 to 5 days for the mail, and then we would call and say, did you get that? Great. Let's talk about setting up interviews. And it's been it's been interesting to see how the pace of everything is compressed. I mean, news cycles have compressed, but the pace and the workloads I think was finding, I think one of the stats that you had in your research that I thought was interesting was nearly a quarter of journalists have to produce 11 or more stories a week.

00:10:39:08 - 00:11:08:02
Speaker 3
That is a lot of content that needs to be out there. And the finding also said that about 70%, I guess number 69% say the work is primarily for online publications. How does this sheer number of stories writing for digital and then back through print and others, how does that really impact the way journalists do their job, and even just the way that legacy media thinks about its format?

00:11:08:04 - 00:11:42:05
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think that that we are accelerating the content volume that is tied to journalists changes a lot, where if a journalist is making that much content, you really have to make it easy for them to to get the story done. So we've seen a lot more focus on doing things like, making sure you have all the the photography in the media, and it would go along with the story ready, because a lot of times they're not going to be able to send out their own photographer like they could in the old days or, you know, have the art department ready to do it.

00:11:42:07 - 00:12:14:23
Speaker 1
Another is organizing all the stats, of course, and other and, you know, this this is kind of an old basic but just making sure that you have your spokespeople available and really, you know, fast turnaround to get that journalist the information they need. And I think, you know, kind of along that thought process, the more you can kind of package up what the story is, the more powerful it is for, especially for a journalist with that kind of volume and I should say two, I think it's important to research within a given journalist.

00:12:15:01 - 00:12:37:07
Speaker 1
How many articles is that? Journalist. Right. By looking at their portfolio, because that dictates a lot, because there are still some journalists out there that might might be feature writers, and they do, you know, 1 or 2 stories a month. And the way you interact with that turn off is probably going to have to be completely different than how you interact with the journalist who's writing 3 or 4 stories today.

00:12:37:09 - 00:13:07:04
Speaker 3
Yeah, that that makes that makes a lot of sense. So yeah, I mean, it was interesting 64% based on your research, you know, work, more than 40 hours a week, about 36% reported layoffs or buyouts of their company. Salaries aren't the greatest in the world. So I guess, you know, I guess part of the advice is we certainly have to have some empathy because I, I've truly found that, you know, most people that do journalism as a profession have have a true love for the craft of what they're doing.

00:13:07:04 - 00:13:12:09
Speaker 3
And we need to embrace and celebrate that in our in our communications with them.

00:13:12:11 - 00:13:36:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's real sad. It's, I mean, I guess low pay in journalism isn't necessarily any anything new, I think is coming to a, you know, much more challenging environment than before in terms of layoffs and the lack of stability. So I think now more than ever, people going into journalism, it's a true calling. They're not doing it for the money.

00:13:36:08 - 00:14:03:13
Speaker 1
So I think it's a great point that it's, a good time to, you know, reflect on that. And I think, you know, obviously, some might have an adversarial relationship inherent between journalists and communicators. But I think sometimes, you know, when you're anytime you're pitching, you know, you risk the, the challenger. The risk is like thinking only about everything from your own perspective, where it's like, why aren't they getting back to me?

00:14:03:13 - 00:14:27:16
Speaker 1
They owe me a response. I sent them this thoughtful pitch, but then to remember, like, hey, they're they're juggling a million things and they're in this very unstable environment. And I think keeping that mindset and that attitude is good. Both the journalist is will be more, you know, more empathetic and more helpful. But I think also good for the pitcher to not get discouraged and not take things personally that aren't meant to be personal.

00:14:27:21 - 00:14:50:18
Speaker 3
Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. I think if we were to put a little GIF in here right now, to, to do that, I guess it would be, like Jerry Maguire. Help me help you. Right. We me be cognizant about that. But we couldn't have a podcast. We couldn't have a discussion about comms in journalism without without the without talking about AI.

00:14:50:18 - 00:15:09:15
Speaker 3
Right. Those two words, the two letters, I guess I should say are, are pretty pretty much everywhere. And I thought it was there was there were some interesting things in your research. And in a lot of ways, I think journalism, looking at the adoption from AI is similar to what we're seeing from a lot of other professionals in the communications industry.

00:15:09:15 - 00:15:43:15
Speaker 3
According to this year's Mark Rex research, about 28% of journalists report using the technology. Another 20% plan to explore its uses. And there's definitely purist out there that says no way, no how. You know, I'm going to stick to the tried and true part of it. So tell me a little bit about what you're hearing about journalists, thought about generative AI and then also the use of AI behind the scenes to kind of help put stories together and do the research.

00:15:43:17 - 00:16:05:23
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's really interesting. So, you know, I think it's always good to separate. Like, you know, there's a philosophical debate, as I did for journalism, or, you know, good for society. And then there is the practical considerations like, hey, it's here. It's one click away to anybody who is an internet connection. And what do we do about it?

00:16:05:23 - 00:16:39:19
Speaker 1
So we've seen, 20 in our survey, 28% of journalists, report using AI and 20% plan to explore, which to be honest, seems kind of low. And I imagine that number will tick up, over time, though, we do see, you know, I think when, when they say that they're, they're reading it in word, using it for writing, where 52% say they're using it for brainstorming and, similar number for research.

00:16:39:21 - 00:17:02:10
Speaker 1
So I think it's something where it's kind of like, you know, the way I think about it as analogy is like before the spreadsheet came out, if you want to run a, financial model, you had to do the math on every single cell yourself. And to do one, you know, to change one variable in a financial model, you have to spend hours, going through the rest.

00:17:02:10 - 00:17:21:00
Speaker 1
And then the spreadsheet came out. Now you can, you know, change a variable and the rest calculates in a, in, you know, a noticeable nanosecond. It can kind of similar, you know, I think with, generative AI for writing, it gives you a lot to play with where you could say, hey, I want to change the style of this.

00:17:21:00 - 00:17:50:03
Speaker 1
Take this article I wrote. Give me an idea on how I can cut it down from a thousand words. 500 words, or, help me translate it to the next language that we need to go after, or then play with 50 different headline ideas. So I think there's some element where, you know, use responsibly. And ultimately with the human reviewing it, you just get a lot of leverage on your time, which I think could be a great thing for journalists who were strapped for time and even, you know, simpler uses of AI.

00:17:50:03 - 00:18:10:05
Speaker 1
Like, I was talking to, a good friend of mine who's a journalist, and she was telling me that I got her her nights and weekends back simply because for her story, she has to do a lot of interviewing people on the phone. And she used to record it and then spend her nights and weekends manually transcribing those interviews.

00:18:10:05 - 00:18:35:11
Speaker 1
And now she has them all transcribed by AI so she doesn't have to manually transcribe it at all. She can still go back and listen to the parts she wants to quote to make sure the transcription is accurate, but not having to transcribe the whole thing just got our hours back in the day and now she can. It has a huge issue with it, have more of her personal life or spend that time, you know, working working on more stories.

00:18:35:13 - 00:18:45:22
Speaker 1
So it's yeah, there are a lot of powerful uses for it. For anyone who's in a profession that involves a lot of writing and research, which journalists definitely fall into.

00:18:46:00 - 00:19:14:10
Speaker 3
Yeah. One of the things I thought was, was surprising by your by your research. I guess it's because newsrooms are trying to figure this out. Same as, companies and college professors. But nearly 60% of the interviewees in this year's, survey report that their newsroom has no I use case policy, while only 24% have one. I mean, is that good?

00:19:14:10 - 00:19:25:23
Speaker 3
Is that bad? Does that mean we're enabling creative freedom? Does that just mean we really need to have a broader conversation about ethics of I did did that number shock you in this year's study?

00:19:26:02 - 00:19:50:07
Speaker 1
Yeah, it did surprise me. I would have thought that more newsrooms would have a policy by now. You know, to be honest, that kind of mix, I could see a cut either way, because I had definitely better, if 100% of newsrooms had a good I use policy. But I think there's also a big risk in that if you do a bad I use policy.

00:19:50:09 - 00:20:12:02
Speaker 1
It could be worse because then you, you know, respect the judgment of the journalists. And you could either be, you know, too liberal in the policy and say, I just use AI as much as possible and that it might absolves journalists of their own feeling of, you know, ethics and responsibility and that, like, hey, you should really review everything the AI puts out.

00:20:12:02 - 00:20:33:07
Speaker 1
In fact, check it and find some other, obvious things, you know, but I think there's also a risk to being too restrictive with AI, because the thing is, like, it's here, everybody else has it, and there's going to be bad actors, you know, unethical people using AI to make a ton of content on the web.

00:20:33:07 - 00:21:03:07
Speaker 1
And that's already happening. So I think the journalists aren't using AI. You know, the good journalists out there are using AI to get more leverage to put out good, accurate, responsible content. But with more the extra leverage technology can bring, then they risk falling behind. And that and the bad actors, you know, dominate the conversation. So, you know, I think like any other new technology, it can be used, you know, wisely or poorly.

00:21:03:09 - 00:21:17:19
Speaker 1
And there's kind of responsibility in every profession, in particularly journalism, to, you know, not be too slow to adapt new technologies and smart ways to advance what their profession is meant to do.

00:21:17:21 - 00:21:32:08
Speaker 3
Yeah. Thinking it, thinking about policies or not, I think is interesting. And then that that got me in a little bit of a tangent when I heard you thinking so picture this cage match I reporter versus human reporter who wins and why?

00:21:32:10 - 00:21:57:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think with that, you know, I think there would be a third winner the, the human who uses AI because on one hand, you know, the AI only reporter, wouldn't have is, you know, we didn't have the judgment. We didn't have access to, all the facts. Can't, senior network and call up a source and do all that, or at least not yet.

00:21:58:00 - 00:22:16:07
Speaker 1
But, you know, do it. Do a lot of the work that that, you know, is required to do good journalism. And I think also, you know, part of what makes the journalism good is if someone trusts the person who writes it. So I think a lot of people would be suspect of what, you know, comes out from AI, even if it happened to be accurate.

00:22:16:09 - 00:22:36:19
Speaker 1
But then again, you know, the journalist who today is not using AI would be wasting a lot of reps compared to the journalists who is using AI. So just for like that very simple example, let's say, you know, you have journalists say journalists. The journalists say now has spent two hours transcribing the interviews they did this morning.

00:22:36:19 - 00:23:08:17
Speaker 1
Journalists, these already used AI to transcribe them and is writing the story. Well, you know, journalists be just journalists. They simply by having AI, you know, transcribe for them much less, you know, maybe help brainstorm some, some headline ideas or do you do some proof checking or help help them figure out which paragraph to cut. So so I think, you know, when you when you think of examples like that, it's clear that the person using AI is going to kind of beat the person not using AI.

00:23:08:18 - 00:23:28:19
Speaker 1
And there is a way they could do it, like in the example I gave where you're probably not really sacrificing any quality and accuracy. That said, you know, there's a risk you go too far using AI if you have journalists, see who is like, you know what, I'm this going, have I write the whole story? I'm going to spend ten minutes looking it over for tone, and I'm going to publish it.

00:23:28:20 - 00:24:00:09
Speaker 1
Oh, there's a good chance in Journal, see how this is something thoroughly inaccurate and they ruin their own credibility or maybe open themselves up a lot libelous lawsuits. So, you know, the I middle road where it's like, how do you leverage the technology but not go overboard with it? You know, maybe an analogy would be, if you can imagine when cars first came out, right, it's like, well, if you had the car and you had to go, you to get somewhere 50 miles away, you'll definitely beat the person with the horse or the runner.

00:24:00:11 - 00:24:18:08
Speaker 1
But you know, if you floor the car, you don't maintain it like there's a good chance or a crash on the way. And then, you know, the person on the horse or even somebody just walking will beat you because you'll be off preparing your car. So. So I think it's, you know, it's finding that right way to use the technology to get to where you want to go.

00:24:18:10 - 00:24:37:01
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think I agree with you on that. I think I think that's a really good analogy. And then going back to my very poor cage analogy, you know, the the journalist leveraging AI, jumping in with the chair is going to dominate there. But but but I do agree it's a middle ground. And it'll be interesting to see how it evolves.

00:24:37:01 - 00:25:18:06
Speaker 3
Because like you were talking about the human perspective to curate, to bring different things together, at least at this point, to understand how to capture emotion in a way that AI doesn't, I think is is going to be, really compelling that, that. And then also I think particularly, you know, with beat reporters or trade reporters, you know, there's something innate and kind of their spidey senses that they pick up, having worked so deeply in these industries, having talked to so many different, experts in the field, I think that becomes very, very hard when you get into a real granular level to do on an AI.

00:25:18:09 - 00:25:43:10
Speaker 3
You can get about 80% there, but it's a lot of times it's that final 15 to 20% that makes a difference between a good article and a great article. And I think that perspective really comes in. So part of your research also then looked at, social media use and you had that, that more than half of journalists say social media is important or very important in how they do their job.

00:25:43:11 - 00:25:50:02
Speaker 3
And X continues to dominate among journalists. Why why do you think that that's the case?

00:25:50:06 - 00:26:24:05
Speaker 1
Network impacts are really powerful. So you go somewhere where everyone else is. They you know, they're going to be there, there is some new place and you can't count on everyone being there. You you know, you don't have it. So I think there's a lot of journalists who are, dissatisfied with acts and, and, you know, it's being used, relatively, you know, we have seen a reduction in use compared to what it used to be in the days when it was called Twitter.

00:26:24:07 - 00:26:47:02
Speaker 1
But it's still by far the dominant platform. And as much as people have thought about going elsewhere, there's no clear other place to go. You know, some people have gone to Threads or Blue Sky. And but it's not clear. Like, is that the place to be? And there just aren't as many other people on there. So you write something there.

00:26:47:02 - 00:27:17:14
Speaker 1
It's not going to get as much engagement as it will on X for the most part. And I think there is, you know, a certain immediacy to acts, you know, and another thing is that other platforms like they've seen having having views on your platform from the perspective of a social network is a big headache, because had already you're going to get accused of biasing, you know, one side or the other with your algorithms and someone will post something controversial.

00:27:17:14 - 00:27:37:15
Speaker 1
And then you have to decide if you want to take it down or not. And you have to, you know, worry about a lot of advertisers who don't like the idea that, you know, something may not be brand safe. You know, it's, unfortunately, often means news. You know, X has heard a lot of news publishers on their own websites.

00:27:37:17 - 00:28:08:18
Speaker 1
Which is kind of, collateral damage. I think, unfortunately. But so, so in a way, it's like these other social networks, like winning the news game, you know, they could win it. It wouldn't serve their greater interest. Whereas X for Twitter has always been all about the news, or at least that's been a big part of it because it was first social platform to have have immediacy and and just that instant access.

00:28:08:18 - 00:28:27:05
Speaker 1
And it just has such a history there that, that I think it's to, you know, preserve it, start with that. And that's why we see an 80, 81% of journalists plan to stay on this this year. So, you know, regardless of what you think about it all, it's still so where it's all happening.

00:28:27:07 - 00:28:48:06
Speaker 3
Yeah. And I had a I have a friend of mine who, writes for the Chicago Tribune and, and, you know, she was saying, hey, you know, there's the immediate and then there's kind of the accurate. Right. And so platforms like Twitter and, you know, my point is you want to be as accurate as possible, but that allows you to get that immediacy to get out there, to start getting ahead of the story.

00:28:48:08 - 00:29:08:03
Speaker 3
But then you've got the ability as you go into the longer form of content, into the online versions, and then ultimately the features, you know, to start with a nugget of news and see how it comes out. But it's I think we've seen time and time again, I love Twitter or hate Twitter when something's happening or breaking, where do people go first?

00:29:08:03 - 00:29:27:21
Speaker 3
Right. Because that is that sense of immediacy that comes out and then the ability to build stories after that, to adjust to correct facts as needed. And that's been really interesting to look at its effect on, on, on journalism and, and that as an opportunity and your research showed other platforms, we don't want you to not feel the love.

00:29:27:21 - 00:29:45:19
Speaker 3
They go to LinkedIn, they look at other things. But I think when you were talking about, you know, the network effect and really the immediacy of the feed, I think that's that's continue to give a bit of an advantage. So why don't we switch, switch a little bit and let's talk a little bit about the other side.

00:29:45:20 - 00:30:09:14
Speaker 3
Let's talk about the corporate communicators, the agency side, how we interact. I think as we've talked so far, we've covered that journalists are really strapped. They got to put a lot of stories out. They got a lot of pressure. They're trying to figure out where all these things come, how you mined this information, and then you get the endless quiet, the sea of pitches.

00:30:09:14 - 00:30:31:21
Speaker 3
You know, many, may not even be relevant to the journalists coming in. So we're going to we're going to explore that a little bit. But there was one stat I found fascinating from this year's study. It actually surprised me. So most journalists think that PR pros are important to their success. And I thought that maybe like a plurality or something like that.

00:30:31:23 - 00:30:41:07
Speaker 3
But 70% of journalists say PR pros are either important or very important to their success. Why is that? Greg?

00:30:41:09 - 00:30:43:05
Speaker 1
And then if you have a love.

00:30:43:07 - 00:30:44:01
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00:30:44:03 - 00:31:18:23
Speaker 1
It's, Yeah, I think it's a surprising fact to a lot because journalists are always complaining about, how many pitches they get. And PR pros, but I think it is, you know, reminder that deep down, like the journalists need sources, they need to get accurate info and PR, PR pros, and they're best friends for that. And, and we see a lot of journalists do leverage the PR community, you know, both to get story ideas is often those PR people are in the rooms where decisions are getting me, and they see the, see the trends before anybody else.

00:31:19:04 - 00:31:41:11
Speaker 1
And then also the stories are coming together. If there is a PR person in the mix or someone to quickly send the headshot and the bio and the, you know, get the photo they need, or dig up the staff that they need in a way that if you're only talking to executives at a company, you know, you're going to be party number 4 or 5 rather than priority number one.

00:31:41:13 - 00:32:02:09
Speaker 1
So I think and I think that should be heartening. And that, you know, as much as a lot of people find, hey, this pitch is getting ignored or it's hard to break through. It shows that if you do your job right, you'll be viewed as a, real positive as an asset. You know, you're not just, you know, just someone who's getting in someone someone else's way.

00:32:02:11 - 00:32:08:17
Speaker 1
And so, you know, when you do it right, you can really, excel in from deep relationships.

00:32:08:18 - 00:32:32:18
Speaker 3
Yeah. And I think, again, one of the big topics that's really coming up as we talk today is like, relevant. And so, I mean, for my, for my corporate comms and, and agency, brethren, that's an exciting staff that 70% of journalists say they need us to help them do their job, to provide context, to give access to experts and those type of things.

00:32:32:20 - 00:32:59:10
Speaker 3
But yet the numbers are also high when they get spammed. If you spam a journalist, you're going to you're going to get ignored. About 49% say they, you know, respond to pitches seldom to never. So if you're not relevant, you know, don't expect the courtesy. Hey, thanks for sending me something that's completely off target. Despite low response rates, pitches still come in.

00:32:59:12 - 00:33:23:02
Speaker 3
You 46% of journalists receive six or more pitches per day. That's more than 30 pitches per week. You know, probably for some reporters, they may get 30 pitches an hour for all, for all I know. But the main reasons journalists reject pitches or don't give a response is if it's not relevant, if it's just if it's just a mass blast on something.

00:33:23:02 - 00:33:40:03
Speaker 3
So, Greg, maybe you can talk a little bit about that and then maybe that becomes a good avenue for us to talk about how you guys work at Muck Rag to help make sure that those that are using the tool are being as relevant and useful as possible to to journalists.

00:33:40:06 - 00:34:06:09
Speaker 1
Yeah, we see that, you know, when it comes to pitching, I think it's really essential to customize every single email you're sending out and look it over. When we I mean, the reason we started to crack one of them when we launched the park for the PR community, we saw at the time, you know, that, you know, I guess ten plus years ago, the the status quo is you just say, hey, I'm launching a tech product.

00:34:06:09 - 00:34:30:11
Speaker 1
Let me look at every tech journal. I'll send, you know, an email to 500,000 tech journalists. Here's a new tech product. And then, of course, you know, ten tons of it's not relevant because you're, you know, someone might write only about B2B software and you're coming out with a consumer piece of hardware. You know, you see a million other things where, you know, if you spent a second on it, that journalist would never cover it.

00:34:30:13 - 00:34:55:22
Speaker 1
So that's where we're really big on figuring out, like, hey, look, look at the what the journalist is actually written and tweeted about and otherwise created content on, and use that to figure out the right journalists to get to, contact. And then instead of pitching 500 journalists, pitch five journalists in your first round. And if you're only pitching five, you can put a tremendous amount of effort into each pitch.

00:34:55:23 - 00:35:20:22
Speaker 1
How to frame it research and the journalists connected them on social, kind of go all out there. So yeah, it's a really powerful opportunity. And then we've been excited. We've been able to add on to that with, AI now or, you know, this new feature with our mediums. So if you have a media lens, it'll suggest new journalists to add to that media list based on who's already on there.

00:35:20:23 - 00:35:38:19
Speaker 1
Kind of like if you use that. Well, going back to our earlier conversation about music, if you use Spotify, you set up a playlist and it says, hey, you know, you got some 20 songs on the playlist, here's a few more you might want to add based on these songs. So same concept. So it's like coming up with very target of this.

00:35:38:19 - 00:35:50:03
Speaker 1
But now I think with yeah, we can also help you, know, like, hey, who's maybe a couple people that you didn't think that you should start thinking about to to, to go after in a very creative way.

00:35:50:05 - 00:36:17:20
Speaker 3
Yeah. And, and I think, I think that's that's great advice. I mean, there's obviously those journalists you're going to have personal relationships with that as long as you're giving them relevant information are going to help. But but there's other there's other times when you're not going to have that existing relationship. And that relevance I think is key. And in some of your some of your research and again, I would recommend everybody go to WW Dot Muck Rackham.

00:36:17:20 - 00:36:39:21
Speaker 3
That's where you can find the latest research. Actually you can find research for multiple years. Going back guys summed up kind of what you described as the elements of the perfect pitch. So let me just give a couple of those, stats here because I, I do think it's really important for that relevance. 83% of journalists to be pitched via one on one email.

00:36:39:23 - 00:37:00:01
Speaker 3
So while you want to put stuff out there on social and all of that, it's really about that personal connection of the one on one, email as we talked earlier, it's not a 9 to 5, five day a week job. So 64% of journalists don't care which day of the week they are pitched. And 22% prefer Monday.

00:37:00:01 - 00:37:22:17
Speaker 3
But it's not like the old schedule of here's your window, here's your time, here's your day. But people don't want to be pinged at 3:00 in the morning their local time. And I stress that that media relations is often global. Don't just use a US centric, time zone view of the world. 44% want to receive pitches before noon on their time.

00:37:22:19 - 00:37:47:13
Speaker 3
They want us to be concise. 65% prefer pitches that are under 200 words and don't send wait an hour and be like, oh my gosh, Greg hasn't gotten back to me. Did he get it? Did he not get it? 51% of journalists say follow up is ideal. Really, when you're thinking about 3 to 7 days later. So to give me time to process this and come back when you're relevant, anything else?

00:37:47:13 - 00:38:05:08
Speaker 3
They're on the perfect pitch. Or again, how you guys have kind of perfected your own algorithm to help communications professionals not just find the right journalist, but kind of time their pitch track coverage. How are how are you taking all of these insights and applying them into the tool?

00:38:05:11 - 00:38:27:14
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, we've really focused on getting like the workflows just right. So figuring out like if you have a whole bunch of journalists you might want to talk to, how do you narrow it down to just the right journalists? Then how do you tailor the, the, the pitch to be perfect for each one? And that's where we really focused on having a workflow.

00:38:27:14 - 00:38:48:07
Speaker 1
So it's easy to start with your template of the facts. You know, you need to get out to everybody, but then have a view where you can see every journalist who want to pitch, customize exactly what you want to say to each person via customizing it, having access to all the context from that journal it's that you need to have, and then being able to connect that with your inbox.

00:38:48:07 - 00:39:12:22
Speaker 1
And it is another key thing that we really focus on too, is building, CRM so that you can track all those conversations and make it available only to your team in an encrypted way, which is really powerful because we find what happens, especially now in the age of remote, where if you have a in-house corporate comms team or a PR agency, everybody's busy, everyone's pitching all the time, and then, you know, it happens.

00:39:12:22 - 00:39:42:11
Speaker 1
You don't realize that you're about to pitch someone that your colleague pitched two hours ago, and it's kind of like unprofessional or, you know, you're going to pitch someone called. But it turns out your coworker knows that person really well. And if you'd only known, you'd be much better off getting a friendly intro. So by having that shared source of knowledge and CRM, we really help our customers like know like it was the Toro context on this relationship versus just thinking of each pitch in its own transaction.

00:39:42:13 - 00:39:58:15
Speaker 3
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So as you make life easier for journalists by managing the flow, bringing their spammed up, you get a lot of really good birthday presents as hey Greg, thanks for thanks for getting my pitches a little more focused. Focus to me.

00:39:58:17 - 00:40:24:14
Speaker 1
Yeah. I don't know how many of our customers know my, you know, my birthday, but but it is a treat. Whenever I go to an industry conference and I meet some people and use the software, I've got a lot of people who just say, hey, the tech we've done is giving them the their Friday back, because I used to do a ton and kind of copy and pasting and now now we do it or got summaries or promotion because they got that article that they want.

00:40:24:14 - 00:40:47:07
Speaker 1
And for me that's always the most gratifying part because I can look at we have lots of usage data, and I can look at the aggregate stats and how many tens of thousands of people are logging in every day and how active they are. But at the Denver comparisons, you know, meeting an actual human one on one where our software is helps that for me, that's always the most motivating part of the job.

00:40:47:09 - 00:41:08:18
Speaker 3
Yeah. It is it's and again, I think what's so fascinating and powerful and why you guys have seen so much growth in your model is that it's been grounded and kind of like even though it's serving the PR community, it's really grounded in journalists first kind of mindset, which I think is really important. And you talked about the workflows and the process.

00:41:08:18 - 00:41:36:21
Speaker 3
You know, maybe we can talk about AI in, in a little bit different way before we wrap here, not generative AI, but but machine learning and how you've tapped that at at Muck Rack. I mean can you can you explain for our listeners a little bit what is the nuance between machine learning and generative AI and and how does that help you continue to one better serve journalists and, PR professionals, but just continue to to innovate and evolve as Mike rack?

00:41:37:03 - 00:41:59:15
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's a great, great point. And I think it's important to, you know, go go into a language where, like AI is a very general term, it encompasses both, you know, one type of AI, machine learning, another type of AI is generative AI. And we've been using machine learning for, you know, since the inception of Mark rack.

00:41:59:17 - 00:42:25:05
Speaker 1
You know, well over a decade. We're 50 years old now, to do things like analyze articles, figure out who wrote the article, is the sentiment positive or negative? In that, you know, when the articles written and all this stuff sounds simple when you apply it. We are processing millions of articles every day. You know, some we get in structured formats from licensing deals.

00:42:25:05 - 00:42:47:10
Speaker 1
We have and, you know, some data pipes we have from publishers. But, you know, some of the content might just be, you know, some blog that started, a week ago. And we have to, you know, our AI technology needs to figure out what's going on there in a very unstructured way. So we we brought machine learning to bear for a long time to solve those problems for our customers.

00:42:47:12 - 00:43:11:17
Speaker 1
And then more recently, in the last year, we've added a lot of generative AI functionality with gospel AI. We just signed Star, AI powered word clouds this week so that customers can put together really advanced word clouds in real time and all the coverage that they're getting. And, that's where, you know, both, you know, using this combination of machine learning in some cases, generative AI.

00:43:11:19 - 00:43:18:19
Speaker 1
Another case, I think can really push this whole profession forward. And where, excited about the role we have to play in it.

00:43:18:21 - 00:43:49:08
Speaker 3
Oh, I love me a good word, cloud. I'm glad that you guys are improving that, because as simple as it sounds, if you get the algorithm right to pop things like that, it really does tell a really powerful story in terms of what you're looking at and seeing. So that's that's great. Kind of the application of machine learning and just the continued iteration that you've done since, since 2009 has been an amazing, one last question before we kind of wrap here, Greg.

00:43:49:08 - 00:44:16:15
Speaker 3
So I and I forgot to point out earlier, the research that you did was global. It's not just US based. You travel quite a lot globally, meeting with, members of the industry, members of the media. Maybe you can offer a little bit of a different perspective. Are the trends that we're seeing here in North America. Are you seeing very similar things globally, or are you hearing anything different as you, talk to communicators and journalists?

00:44:16:17 - 00:44:17:23
Speaker 3
Around the globe?

00:44:18:01 - 00:44:53:15
Speaker 1
I think the trends are global. That's, I think a lot of stuff happens first, here before at least it gets to, the UK and Europe. So sometimes you can kind of see a bit of despair, and sometimes it goes the other way too. So, I think the old, line I think is, as Matthew said it, like the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed is definitely true with journalism and PR too, that you can look to some countries and see they push further ahead with digital, whereas others there's haven't.

00:44:53:15 - 00:45:19:16
Speaker 1
There's much, which I think is a great, reason to travel and to run global enterprises and to connect with colleagues in other countries because they got lots of great ideas, but some ideas that may push you forward and be like, oh, they they're trying that there. We should try that here too. And from that day times we were like, oh, we're, we're, you know, trying this thing here, but we can't count on somebody in another country already being as far along with that.

00:45:19:17 - 00:45:39:07
Speaker 1
We we're going to have to slow down in that market and figure it out. So it's, obviously something I find really, really fascinating. And the funny thing about PR and journalism is that you're global, whether or not you want to be, because you might be a company that only operates in, you know, one city in the US.

00:45:39:07 - 00:46:05:09
Speaker 1
But if somebody writes about you who's basin in London or even, you know, on the other side of the world, in Australia, your next door neighbor might see that article and not come to your store, decide to come to your store because of that. So there's there's this element where you, you, you know, you know, your neighborhood coffee shop, you kind of have to worry about the global media environment because things can travel from one end of the world to another in a millisecond.

00:46:05:15 - 00:46:29:07
Speaker 3
Yeah, that is so true. So this has been an absolute fascinating discussion. I would invite all of our listeners to, to again visit Mark Rackham, where you can learn more about, the platform, and their resources. You've got all the research. I'd also encourage you to reach out to Greg. He, he travels the globe, he's talking to everybody.

00:46:29:07 - 00:47:00:02
Speaker 3
And if you find him on social media, he tends to be first name on a lot of these platforms. So, so he is, he's easy to find from that standpoint. And, you know, as we think about our discussion here today, I mean, it really starts with bringing a journalist's first point of view. Greg, as you talked about just the founding of Mark rack and what's been so powerful is starting with that journalist point of view, understanding what their workload is, what their need, what their challenge is, having a little bit of empathy.

00:47:00:04 - 00:47:32:14
Speaker 3
We had a great discussion about the cage match. I reporter versus human reporter, and I think our answer is kind of the cyborg hybrid of both is probably, you know, one of the strongest there. And, we've talked about the importance of, of X still being a big news source from the network effect. And then we talked about really, the importance of having a tailored, timely pitch that's relevant and how you can use something like Mark rack to make sure you're being really relevant.

00:47:32:16 - 00:47:40:15
Speaker 3
What did I miss, Greg? Any any final thoughts before we, close here? Any any words of advice to the comms professionals out there?

00:47:40:17 - 00:47:53:20
Speaker 1
I think that's a great, summary. I'd say just, check out the full report. Come to my frag.com, and, you can all read it for yourself. And we're always coming out with new features, so keep watching the space.

00:47:53:22 - 00:48:17:08
Speaker 3
Greg, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. I'm. I'm always, always inspired to see what it is that you're coming up next. I could talk to you for hours about, about those type of things. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. And thank you, listeners for tuning in. Drop us a line with your thoughts on today's episode, and check back soon for the latest episodes of Building Brand Gravity.

00:48:17:10 - 00:48:23:23
Speaker 3
I'm Steve Halsey, your host. Thank you for joining me. And Greg, thanks again for joining Building Brand Gravity.

00:48:24:01 - 00:48:26:06
Speaker 1
Great. Thanks to Steve Be well.

00:48:26:08 - 00:48:55:07
Speaker 2
We are gas 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 Gas communications.com. You're listening to building brand gravity, attracting people into your orbit. A gas business communications podcast. Keep connected with us by subscribing to the show in your favorite podcast player.

00:48:55:12 - 00:49:06:18
Speaker 2
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.

 

00:00:00:11 - 00:00:24:22
Speaker 2
Hi and welcome to the latest edition of Building Brand Gravity. I'm Steve Hosie, principal and chief growth officer of Gans and your host of Building Brand Gravity. With me today are two renowned communications experts. I want to first, welcome back to the show, Rob Jaco, LEC managing director of the Harris Poll. Rob is a world renowned expert on reputation, brand and insights, and he's a leader at the iconic Harris boy.

00:00:24:22 - 00:00:26:18
Speaker 2
Rob, welcome back to the show.

00:00:26:20 - 00:00:28:21
Speaker 3
Thanks for having me, Steve. Glad to be here.

00:00:29:02 - 00:00:57:10
Speaker 2
We're also joined by Elliot Mizrahi. He's VP of strategy and content for page. In that role, Elliot works with the world's top Cos agency executives, academics and other leaders supporting the C-suite. He's actively gleaning their insights, and he's using that to create compelling thought leadership content that helps today's chief communication officers navigate an ever more complex world. Elliot, welcome to building Brand Gravity.

00:00:57:12 - 00:00:58:16
Speaker 4
Thank you. Steve.

00:00:58:18 - 00:01:27:17
Speaker 2
So hey, let's get let's get started. It's going to be a great discussion today. And it's not going to be a light discussion. You know, when you think about what we're facing the world right now, the context around and the expectations of business is anything but stable. You got seismic forces of change. You got mass disruption. You got geopolitical unrest, economic headwinds, disinformation, polarization, and the need for personalization are the norm today, right.

00:01:27:19 - 00:01:54:05
Speaker 2
Just a couple small things for us to deal with. You know, and Rob can bring that into greater light in terms of what he's what they're seeing at the Harris poll. And from where Elliot sits in this environment. Today's chief communication officers are being asked to not just lead the communications function, but to help their companies, their markets and even society manage some kind of positive transformation in the face of these disruptive forces.

00:01:54:07 - 00:02:16:20
Speaker 2
So in today's podcast, we're going to explore what's on the mind of key and what the research tells us. We're going to talk about two big issues that Chief Communication officers cannot afford to ignore, and how this moment in time is going to forever change the role of the CTO. And all of this is going to be discussed within the context of how it could impact a brands gravity.

00:02:16:22 - 00:02:26:08
Speaker 2
So Elliot Page recently polled 38 member CEOs in North America, Europe and the Middle East to see what's on their mind. What did you find out?

00:02:26:13 - 00:02:44:09
Speaker 4
Well, a little bit of the history before I get to the findings, Steve. So we're a membership association for chief communication officers. And one of the things that we have been trying to do lately is have more of a voice and more of a presence in, in business conversations. And we, for the last couple of years have had a presence at Davos.

00:02:44:11 - 00:03:02:05
Speaker 4
And to prepare for that, one of the things that we wanted to do was reach out to members and get a sense for what was on their mind. I often like to think about the Co as the organizational antenna. You know, we have sight lines and views into what's happening around the organization, around the world. With stakeholders.

00:03:02:07 - 00:03:20:14
Speaker 4
And this let's close the early detectors of risk. And so, we did two things in our research. We spoke to Coes, which I'll talk about. And we also worked with Rob to speak with the public and understand what their expectations are around, issue management. And Rob will share a little bit of those findings in a moment.

00:03:20:16 - 00:03:40:16
Speaker 4
What we found when we asked, what are the things that you're thinking about? What are the risks that you see coming up in the year to come? 45% said that it was geopolitics and elections. And I don't know if you know this, about half the planet is going to be going to the polls, in democratic elections this year.

00:03:40:21 - 00:04:05:18
Speaker 4
It is an enormously consequential year for Democratic politics. And it's happening at a time that there is enormous polarization, polarization and divisiveness. And in fact, 29% of clubs said that that's their second greatest risk. The polarization, divisiveness, the eroding societal fabric. And so when I think about these two things together, I'm thinking, you see, CEOs, their job is in many ways to protect the social license to operate.

00:04:05:20 - 00:04:32:04
Speaker 4
And when you are dealing with a world that is fragmented and decisive and where constructive dialog is breaking down, it becomes more challenging to do that, to find those forms of common ground. We look at blowback from ESG and Di, things that many would agree are forms of responsible business management. But they become wrapped up in sort of political language and rhetoric and its challenge, Co's and their ability to lead their enterprises on those sorts of issues.

00:04:32:06 - 00:04:39:22
Speaker 2
So, Elliot, quick question off that. Are they are they optimistic or are they pessimistic as they think about the current situation?

00:04:40:00 - 00:05:04:15
Speaker 4
We didn't ask. So your guess would be as good as mine. But but my experience with CSOs honestly, is that considering the challenges they face day to day, they are a strangely optimistic bunch. And so I think there's a lot of opportunity that sits within these challenges and a lot of opportunity that lends itself to this unique skill set of the CCL to foster constructive dialog and find common ground.

00:05:04:17 - 00:05:22:17
Speaker 4
And I think just a lot of these two quick points, 14% felt that misinformation and disinformation were also huge risks this year. And all of that stuff goes to the heart of this earning and building and maintaining trust. On the positive side, we asked, what are the opportunities that you see for the function of coming up in the coming year?

00:05:22:19 - 00:05:56:04
Speaker 4
32% said that it was about evolution to the function itself. More personalization, more speed, more scale, a greater ability to demonstrate real, tangible value. 26% talked about AI, which anyone would agree is probably a mixed bag, but tremendous opportunity to deepen the relationships that we have with stakeholders and have a greater impact. And so I think to your point, Steve, even though these are enormous societal challenges, CSOs have greater opportunities than ever before to be positive, influential forces in their organizations and outside as well.

00:05:56:06 - 00:06:18:16
Speaker 2
And what are you seeing as you talk to them about just how this skill sets expanding? I mean, everything you covered geopolitics, AI, changing role, dealing with elections, all of these things to try and shepherd, the brands. I mean, how are they how are they keeping up with this? How are they thinking about their teams in that environment?

00:06:18:18 - 00:06:44:02
Speaker 4
Well, I would like to think that one of the ways that we do it is by participating in page events and consuming our content. But the bottom line is this I think the expectation of the CRO to have the broadest purview possible is, is really significant today. And I think that that business acumen, that understanding of world events and how they affect the enterprise, I think that's probably the most important thing that CSOs are focusing on.

00:06:44:04 - 00:06:51:23
Speaker 4
They have a really rich understanding of the context and an ability to provide valuable strategic advice.

00:06:52:01 - 00:07:14:07
Speaker 2
That's interesting. And and Rob, I know you you guys worked with him, as he said on kind of the qualitative part, part of this. But the Harris Poll also recently worked with page to field a global public opinion survey, really asking about the confidence in business. You garnered responses from more than 11,000 individuals across ten markets. What did you find out?

00:07:14:09 - 00:07:28:00
Speaker 3
Thanks, Steve. I really enjoyed, Elliot's set up. And I think the your question, Steve, about the CCF psyche. I can't hold back from from kind of jumping in, I think, you know, I, I think Elliot would agree like that a lot.

00:07:28:00 - 00:07:29:16
Speaker 4
Of course, I think the.

00:07:29:21 - 00:07:43:15
Speaker 3
Tolerance or maybe appetite for kind of complexity and maybe borderline pain is, is an impressive trait. I would I would say that because, people know what they're getting in for and they keep coming back more for more of it.

00:07:43:17 - 00:07:45:05
Speaker 4
It's a survival trait.

00:07:45:07 - 00:07:59:10
Speaker 3
But it's not just survival rate. I mean, I think a lot of people, there's a lot of people that have the opportunity to deal with it are in senior communications, roles. I mean, they could be doing a lot of different things across the business, right? And in many cases, they've opted and really selected to be running communication.

00:07:59:10 - 00:08:24:19
Speaker 3
So again, I think it's it's very certain persona that does it. And really kind of such an invaluable skill to the points that both you're making and, and really what a lot of the research that I'll talk about, indicates it's, you know, being that antenna and being that guidepost for, for, for how things are changing is, it's just so mission critical because companies today have larger blind spots and more quickly emerging blind spots than they've ever had before.

00:08:24:21 - 00:08:46:04
Speaker 3
So the the research that we did, with page and again, I will give Elliot kudos. Here he was, he was certainly kind of the instigator and and brainchild behind getting this. We've you know he he prompted this along to to really kind of sprint towards the end of last year. And it was really a brain trust of Elliot, the page team and as well as a number of page members that contributed to to the survey.

00:08:46:06 - 00:09:10:16
Speaker 3
So it covers ten global markets, kind of across the board from, from North America to Latin America to, to across Europe and Asia. A little lighter this round on, on the Middle East and Africa that we'll, we'll address that in a future with, but I think a really interesting set of insights when you're, when you're talking to over 11,000, members of the, of the global public.

00:09:10:22 - 00:09:30:02
Speaker 3
Right. And really starting to get your head around, you know, what are the issues that that matter most? And the two core questions that we focused in are and our first, what are the issues that the public expects business to, to make an impact on, which are most important? And the second one is around how confident are they that business actually can deliver positive value.

00:09:30:04 - 00:09:58:15
Speaker 3
Right. So your, and it plays very, very, well with some of those the thematics that Elliot alluded to. First I'll start with some of just, maybe a couple kind of core insights around key issues. But the, you know, the politicization and polarization is, is such an apparent trend in the, in the research. I'll talk maybe a little bit about the US, where it's maybe the, the point and the gap is particularly wide, but it's very noteworthy that you're seeing these gaps across the board.

00:09:58:17 - 00:10:14:12
Speaker 3
Right. So as you, as you're tracking some of these elections, whether they're, you know, more at the national level or more at the regional level or more at the municipal level, like there's countries like the UK where you've had certainly some, some, what people would say, some startling results in terms of people who are, who are now in Parliament.

00:10:14:14 - 00:10:45:23
Speaker 3
Right. You've I think you've had some similar trends across a number of European markets. The back to the overall data. Right. So the as you're looking at, you know, this whole idea of confidence and and importance of issues, first and foremost, the, the issues that we picked are highly salient to, to the public. And again, I put a lot of this back to, to the brain trust that helped support, over 80% of the, of the global public, on average said the 15 issues that we dug into, were highly important for, for business to, to work on.

00:10:46:03 - 00:11:04:21
Speaker 3
So all the issues within this study, some of them might be hire, some might be lower, are all very salient when it comes to to to the public. The, the, the current reality is that the, the gap between kind of importance, which call that around 80 as the global average, versus, versus confidence is, is pretty substantial.

00:11:04:21 - 00:11:18:20
Speaker 3
It's about 26 points or you're at 54, 55 in terms of looking at the level of confidence. So many issues of high importance, confidence substantially lower. So reinforcing this whole idea of, of, of a confidence gap.

00:11:19:00 - 00:11:31:04
Speaker 2
And, and and Rob just to, to, to reinforce for our listeners importance is what the audience viewed of the ranking of the issue in confidence was their confidence and how business would address that. Yeah.

00:11:31:04 - 00:11:54:05
Speaker 3
I mean, it's it's, you know, pretty pretty literally. It's, you know, when you look at each one of these issues such as, you know, economic stability and growth or income inequality or gender equality or polarization in society, to what degree would you say it's important for business to make a positive impact on it? And then secondarily, how confident are you that that business can make a positive impact on it?

00:11:54:07 - 00:12:06:20
Speaker 3
Okay, so very business centric, not just personally. Are these issues in the world important to you? But we very much brought that direct business lens on it, right. Is this something that you business should be addressing and do you believe that business can address it or not?

00:12:06:21 - 00:12:07:20
Speaker 2
Great. Thank you.

00:12:07:22 - 00:12:28:11
Speaker 3
So globally, what's what's what's noteworthy is that there there are two issues there that really stood out as kind of the, the bedrocks, for engagement. And the reason I say that is that both of these issues stood out as being both the two most important, as well as amongst the highest on confidence. Right? Those two issues are economic stability and growth.

00:12:28:16 - 00:12:56:01
Speaker 3
Right. So the degree to which you can have a positive impact on the economy and enable growth. And the second one is job creation and workforce skills development. Right? So very much around the workforce accelerating job creation, but also really looking at your workforce and the degree to which you can improve its skills. Looking forward. Both of those were, very close to 90% of the public saying very important in terms of the global public across these ten markets.

00:12:56:03 - 00:13:16:21
Speaker 3
And, there you had the confidence numbers in the low to mid 60s, right? So substantially higher than the than the average and really kind of two standout items. So those are and what was particularly noteworthy is those two issues across every market and across every key kind of demographic, but very consistently stay as the bedrock, if you will.

00:13:17:01 - 00:13:36:07
Speaker 2
That's fascinating. Giving, you know, all the changes within geographies. And, you know, Elliot was talking about all of the elections and, you know, the polarization of liberal, conservative, young, old, urban, rural, those those are definitely interesting findings that that I want to want to come back to. And and, Elliot, I want to turn to you for a little bit.

00:13:36:07 - 00:14:05:10
Speaker 2
I mean, you know, Rob is sitting there saying, hey, universally around the globe, there's these two issues, actually, there's 15 issues that that ranked pretty high, but there were two that were up near 90%. The economic stability and growth, job creation and workforce skills. So two part questions for you. And then as we get later in the podcast, what we'll come back here first, given everything Rob just covered in terms of the findings from the CEOs you talked to, how do they reconcile it all?

00:14:05:12 - 00:14:23:17
Speaker 2
And second, with so much of the day to day focus in the news, at least here in the US and a lot of Western Europe on what divides us. How can see CEOs help their companies and their key publics get aligned around their brand's core values and business outcomes in this environment?

00:14:23:19 - 00:14:51:12
Speaker 4
Yeah, Steve, on your first question, how do they do it? It is not easy. You know, one of the things that we've been tracking really closely since the beginning of 2020 is as as Covid came about, we started getting members together, to talk about what they were going through and share knowledge with each other. And it just seems like the expectations and the issues that they're dealing with, and trying to manage have grown, beyond their budgets and themes.

00:14:51:12 - 00:15:24:07
Speaker 4
And so they're spread really thin. Their remits are expanding. We find kids whose responsibilities have, come to include, brand and marketing, ESG, sustainability, in some cases, human resources culture. And so what we see is a real evolution of the nature of the function. And to be honest, Steve, I think, like, you know, any growing pains, it's been challenging for kids to, to keep up with all of these issues.

00:15:24:09 - 00:15:49:01
Speaker 4
But but what I will say, just on the kind of divisiveness, one of the things that page has said for for many, many years is when you think about the the basis of the co role, it is rooted in this idea of corporate character that every organization has character, you know, a set of values and beliefs, a unique and differentiated identity that govern everything that it is and does and says.

00:15:49:03 - 00:16:16:13
Speaker 4
And the Co's role is to define what that character is and to help align the organization around it. And sometimes that's an ongoing process of refinement when there's a really strong sense of what that is. In other cases, that could mean that there's an existential reality around the company that requires what our friend John O'Hara at Yale recently described as re founding moments, moments where you need to step back and say, this company needs to be something entirely different.

00:16:16:14 - 00:16:36:07
Speaker 4
And so building a shared belief around what is happening around the company and what needs to happen in order to move it forward is really essential. We we did a an exact magic application program with Yale based on their approach to stakeholder capitalism and and pages research on the topic. And one of the things that we talked about was assessing materiality.

00:16:36:07 - 00:17:13:08
Speaker 4
You know, companies, even though they might there might be an expectation from some stakeholders to engage on a whole host of issues, as Robbins research shows us, some of those issues are more material than others, things like economic growth and job skills. These are things that people expect of companies more than than some other issues. And so the role for the Co here is to be a unifying figure, to be at the center of, of kind of integrating various perspectives to find common ground with stakeholders and and to be a force for ensuring that that corporate character is constant and pervasive.

00:17:13:10 - 00:17:18:16
Speaker 4
And it's ever, ever in evidence and everything that a company does and says, and that's a big job.

00:17:18:18 - 00:17:47:16
Speaker 2
Yeah, that certainly is a big job. And and, Rob, I want to get get to you in a second about, you know, the impact of AI and some, some unique things you had there, but kind of reacting to what what Elliot said there as he was talking about the challenge of the Co. I thought this was really interesting in your research because Elliot was talking about those acronym ESG and, and what I thought was interesting and you may have like a broader perspective on this outside of this study.

00:17:47:18 - 00:18:09:10
Speaker 2
But what was interesting was you hear that and you see that, and it's like reflected in a lot of the financial news. Yeah, Alan Murray's thing is he's really struggling with that, you know, back and forth. But then when I look at the actual survey you have and the way you ask questions, when you break them out of the acronym, you know, how important is racial minority equity or equality?

00:18:09:10 - 00:18:33:05
Speaker 2
That's at like 78% income inequality, like 81%. You're seeing a lot of these things, gender equality at like 77%. What was interesting to me is when you break them out of the acronym, how high they actually score and importance. But then there's a mix on confidence, and I just wasn't sure if you had any perspective on people's viewpoint.

00:18:33:05 - 00:18:42:14
Speaker 2
Once you break it out of the acronym, it seems like they generally support, you know, these big concepts that businesses share is basically challenge to manage.

00:18:42:16 - 00:19:01:20
Speaker 3
Yeah. I think you're, you're very squarely getting to one of that, one of the biggest risks kind of across the board, I'd say, especially if you're sitting in a US boardroom right now, one of the biggest risks of reputational risks, which again, I think right now are higher on the board agenda than they've ever been, is very much around this kind of polarization and politicization of issues.

00:19:01:22 - 00:19:26:08
Speaker 3
One of the things that's become very apparent is, if you have a term, and one of your terms is like three different things, that are very kind of none of which really indicate any sort of a benefit, but are just kind of functional descriptions. The, the level of jargon is substantial and the ability for, for people to turn that term into whatever they want it to be is, is quite high.

00:19:26:10 - 00:19:46:23
Speaker 3
Right? And in contrast to that, to, to the point you're getting at, Steve, and I think you can get even more detailed is as you look at a lot of the underlying elements, if you ask, you know, the public or other stakeholders, right. Is it important for for companies to have a positive impact on the environment or not, a negative impact on the environment to to improve the communities where, where, where they where they work and operate and their employees live?

00:19:47:01 - 00:20:09:06
Speaker 3
To have very strong governance practices. Yeah. Overwhelming yeses. Right. But along those issues, they're there certainly, you know, if you if you laddered up to something called ESG or other terms like DNI, they've they for sure, like most people don't even understand what those things mean. Right. But there's people that have told them that they're they're horrible and they're like the end of capitalism, they're the end of civilization, etc..

00:20:09:08 - 00:20:30:22
Speaker 3
But so you turn it from kind of a concrete conversation on what we're doing to showcase progress, to kind of very much a philosophical jargony, highly heated emotional debate. Right. So, yeah, the specifics matter when you look at it, when you look within the research, even on those issues. Right. I think it's particularly noteworthy.

00:20:30:22 - 00:20:58:15
Speaker 3
We look at the data split a lot of the different ways, like for example, by age, by political leaning, by urban and by urban city, like urban rural. You see, you do see some pretty substantial differences. Right? So but on in terms of importance, you have a lot more consistency. You know, the confidence numbers do do differ substantially if you're looking at, for example, globally liberal versus more conservative in the US, very specifically Democrat versus, versus Republican.

00:20:58:17 - 00:21:14:07
Speaker 3
But also to the point you're getting at, Steve, none of those numbers, they didn't dropped like 20% importance or something. Right? So I think one of the biggest takeaways, you know, and one of the one of the big privileges of working with page and especially on this project, is we've had a chance to talk with a lot of page members in different countries on this.

00:21:14:07 - 00:21:35:23
Speaker 3
Right. And one of the main takeaways is not, oh, like, we should just stay silent on everything except those two issues. That's not the case, right? It's more so saying we need to start with those two issues. If we don't reinforce our credibility and our competence on those things and jump over to other issues, then people might question where our priorities are and like, are we actually good at the foundation of what we do or not?

00:21:36:01 - 00:22:01:16
Speaker 3
Right? Versus if we're able to move off those very quickly and ideally showcase through our business, through our hiring, how we're actually improving a lot of these issues and being very specific that that progress. There's a huge opportunity. Right. So and that's I think that's one of the things that when we look at the, you know, CSOs, especially over the last 2 or 3 years, you know, there's for sure been coming out of many boards, an emphasis on like, we really shouldn't just talk about any of these things, right.

00:22:01:16 - 00:22:16:02
Speaker 3
Versus, you know, what most of most of the research would indicate is we just need to be much more specific about what we're saying, right? If this is something we really believe in, how are we showing that we're actually that we've made progress on it versus just talking about it being something that is broadly important?

00:22:16:06 - 00:22:35:05
Speaker 2
So. So, Elliot, in the conversations you're having with, chief communication officers around the globe, is is that what you're hearing? That that they're really looking at? How do we illustrate and isolate these key issues? Start a little bit at the common ground and then get into more specifics in terms of what the what the brand is doing?

00:22:35:07 - 00:22:58:17
Speaker 4
I think what I would say is, we're starting to see more methodical approaches to deciding whether and how to engage on these issues. You know, there was, I think, you know, around the time of George Floyd in, in the, you know, 18 months after, it felt like there was just an expectation that if there was, there was an issue companies needed to have a position and to be vocal on it.

00:22:58:18 - 00:23:27:15
Speaker 4
That that was just the new norm. And I think since, a couple of, instances where that's gone awry, companies have been understand to be more judicious about it. What we see Co's doing is being more methodical about interpreting the relevance of an issue. Both the relevance of an issue to the organization and its stakeholders, but also the relevance of the organization with stakeholders to the issue and whether or not there really is a place and an impact that they can have.

00:23:27:15 - 00:23:56:09
Speaker 4
And so I think it's not a question of, you know, trying to do less or kind of duck your head. It's, it's a question of having a really reliable, repeatable, consistent process of making decisions about what is our posture on these different issues, what actions can we take to make progress on those issues. And we see CEOs stepping up to use data and input from various stakeholders to make better decisions along those lines.

00:23:56:11 - 00:24:22:08
Speaker 2
Oh that's great. Now, the one thing you missed, Ali, you didn't say, I how can we have a conversation without bringing in, in the word AI? And and Rob, you know, you mentioned to me the other day that you see these two dueling trends, like one of the economic stability and two, that job creation and skills development as a huge opportunity for brands, specifically as it relates to an area like talent development.

00:24:22:10 - 00:24:49:10
Speaker 2
So given the overlay of AI, dramatic impact on seemingly, well, everything, you know, you've got, like AI, there's a myriad of you, but there's, you know, one side is is, you know, purely dystopian scenarios, you know, predicting computers are going to take over all of the Terminator. That's it. We're done. We released, you know, a AI. You have others that are out there really fearing about the loss of jobs and becoming obsolete.

00:24:49:12 - 00:25:18:19
Speaker 2
And what I find interesting. And you're seeing it daily in the business, media, is that there are roles that were highly skill, that were traditionally somewhat insulated, you know, specialties like law, like accounting, even investing that are now facing AI and, you know, are those individuals even needed anymore? And then there's another view of this that basically says, no, no, no, AI is going to be a positive game changer in productivity and innovation.

00:25:18:19 - 00:25:42:04
Speaker 2
All those rote tasks that both blue collar and white collar workers were doing, they're going to be taken care of by AI so they can focus on higher value tasks. So within that myriad of things and those often conflicting viewpoint, you know, you had kind of a viewpoint of what you saw as an uncharted opportunity for brands and corporation as it as it relates to the workforce.

00:25:42:04 - 00:25:45:00
Speaker 2
So do you mind sharing a little bit of that?

00:25:45:02 - 00:25:59:05
Speaker 3
Yeah. So I'll, I'll do two things. One is I'll point to a couple pieces of the data and then I'll pivot off that quick. Right. First the one of the first things I would say is when you're, when you're looking at AI and especially some of, in terms of the research is some of the negative impacts of it, right?

00:25:59:05 - 00:26:20:08
Speaker 3
That, I mean, the negative impacts of AI was, was one of the things that trended higher. I will say it's interesting that and this has come through in conversations we've had in places like China versus the UK versus the US. The the negative impacts conversation is also very different in different markets. Right? It is if you're living in Canada or the US or the UK, it is so prevalent, right.

00:26:20:08 - 00:26:39:09
Speaker 3
Versus in other markets like AI is more of just kind of like a, a layer that's there. And and many people have maybe more confidence being it's dealt with. I think the bigger and more important and the, and the point that you're, you're, you're laddering up to is when you look at the intersection and those two issues, we're very drawn to that.

00:26:39:09 - 00:26:59:11
Speaker 3
The second aspect of that second issue, right, which is around skills development. Right? I think it's like when one of your massive opportunities right now is, is very much around, you know, how is how does I kind of enable a culture shift, right. What are the skills that that that are required. Right. Versus just a sprint to embed as much AI as possible?

00:26:59:12 - 00:27:24:08
Speaker 3
Right. I think very quickly, like if you if you look at most companies and the the amount of dollars that they're putting into kind of developing new kind of AI programs versus overall kind of like improving skills and talent for, for the next generation. The level of investment in one versus the other is is substantial, right. So as we're looking at companies and we're looking at for, for most companies still your intellectual capital is your number one asset.

00:27:24:10 - 00:27:46:21
Speaker 3
You know, if you if you're looking for the companies that can really win on an employees are going to win in the in the marketplace. I think that and that skills piece is a massive opportunity. And across a lot of different research we're doing. But this the research here highlights it is, you know, our ability to just tell a story, about and through our employees about the future and showcase that through how our business operates is like massive.

00:27:46:23 - 00:27:58:06
Speaker 3
And it's a very human story, too. Right? I think that's one of the one of the key things that, you know, as as communicators and as storytellers, human stories work much better than, jargony technical stories.

00:27:58:08 - 00:28:11:23
Speaker 2
So Elliot, you definitely have your thoughts on AI. And as you're talking to CEOs around the globe and what Rob was really talking about, the challenges or the opportunities, what's what's the viewpoint from cos.

00:28:12:01 - 00:28:32:19
Speaker 4
You really kick the hornet's nest with me. I really could go on. I thought long and hard about what I wanted to say, just to keep it contained. There's a few things that I would say, I think certainly cos just like any function today, they are thinking really hard about how to capitalize on the advantages that I can present.

00:28:32:21 - 00:28:52:12
Speaker 4
And I've got some thoughts about how all that's going to unfold. I think maybe that's a conversation for another day, but one of the issues that relates to to to the research that Robin Harris did is there's a real concern about job displacement and this idea that AI is going to disrupt, you know, labor markets and the ability to people to work.

00:28:52:14 - 00:29:13:13
Speaker 4
I think it's more likely that I like a lot of technologies that came before it are going to transform the way that we work, but not but I think expectations will increase. So it won't be that you only need one person to do the work that five people did before is that those five people will be able to do different forms and higher value of work, and it takes time to get there.

00:29:13:15 - 00:29:29:16
Speaker 4
It reminds me of, Brittany Paxman, who's the principal at at point 600. She often uses this example of the vacuum cleaner that when it was introduced in the 50s, you know, housewives everywhere rejoiced that this is going to, you know, create so much more free time for them because it'll be so much easier to clean the house.

00:29:29:18 - 00:29:59:17
Speaker 4
But what actually ended up happening was the expectations of home cleanliness increased. And so they found themselves busier rather than less busy. And I wonder if that'll be the same here in in terms of what I think the the positive developments of AI and managing the negative potential. I think one of the things that organizations really struggle with, they struggle with always is there's so much knowledge that's locked within the community, the organization and little pockets of specializations and expertise.

00:29:59:19 - 00:30:19:17
Speaker 4
And it's really difficult to make that knowledge accessible across the entire organization. I think companies will begin to develop their own proprietary AI models that are a combination of ChatGPT plus all their own data. So no matter where you sit in the organization, you can have a chatbot and you can find the information, the data, the policy, whatever you're looking for.

00:30:19:19 - 00:30:40:23
Speaker 4
All of that stuff will be readily available. And I think that creates a huge opportunity for people to be more productive and impactful. But I think for CFOs, one of the things that's flying under the radar that I think is really important is AI is dumb. People don't realize it is a machine. It is garbage in, garbage out, and it operates on the basis of what we choose to train it on.

00:30:41:01 - 00:30:59:14
Speaker 4
And those are human decisions. That's why we see so much bias in AI. It's not me because the AI is flawed, it's how we're training it. And so, you know, there's there's this this thought experiment around the paperclip that if you told I, you know, maximize the production of paperclips, it would kill us all because it knows nothing else to maximize the production of paperclips.

00:30:59:16 - 00:31:20:22
Speaker 4
What I think schools need to do is think about this reality that you need to have a moral and ethical and a responsible adoption of AI, one that minimizes its potential for harm and maximizes its opportunity to create value. And I think a lot of that is going to come down to kids who have, you know, the reputation and brand safety as part of their remit.

00:31:21:00 - 00:31:38:09
Speaker 4
You know, nobody wants to be the company that's caught in some, you know, major kerfuffle because they didn't think through the empathic implications of AI. And so I think this is the beginning of a really long transition period where a lot of these issues will reveal themselves, and CSOs are going to have to help their organizations navigate through them.

00:31:38:11 - 00:32:02:17
Speaker 2
Well, and I think part of the challenge of that with codes is to remain innately human, right? There's certain aspects of really the communications function or the the expanding remit where it sets that that understanding of context, that understanding of emotion, that understanding of timing, you know, are very difficult to be done by the machine. So it's going to be interesting to see how those are done in tandem.

00:32:02:19 - 00:32:21:07
Speaker 3
These. All right. I just I it's going to add on to I apologize for jumping in but like the I mean it's just also the whole point that Ellie made at the beginning. Right. Scarce resources like although there's these bigger things around organizational change. If, comms teams don't get on technology and AI fast, it's a huge mess, right?

00:32:21:07 - 00:32:42:06
Speaker 3
I mean, there's just so many like, basic enablers that it provides right now. Because to that, the point I think you're making there at the end is human context and insights are still very human things, right? Like we do a lot of insights work you and we do. We use tons of AI now to accelerate processes, but you never have AI giving you the insight at the at the end of the chain.

00:32:42:07 - 00:32:48:02
Speaker 3
Right? It's always a set of humans and interpretation and context and the humans they're delivering too well.

00:32:48:04 - 00:33:25:01
Speaker 2
And what I what I think things interesting about that point, Rob, is, is I feel like the human context is constantly evolving, you know, and individually at a family level, at a community, at a at a national level, I think things are not static. And some of you know, the research, I've seen you present that ten years ago, certain attitudes and viewpoints you would have assumed would be the US context or Republican nature in terms of confidence and view on corporations are now more of a democratic viewpoint and things that ten years ago, whereas a democratic viewpoint could be a Republican viewpoint.

00:33:25:01 - 00:33:37:14
Speaker 2
So you know, that's also important as you think about what you were talking about, of those human insights, the context and emotions. We're not a static species as much as we as we as some folks might, might think we are.

00:33:37:15 - 00:33:45:13
Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly. You know, very clear. It's 180 degrees on on kind of how different political branches in the US think about business 100%.

00:33:45:13 - 00:33:52:01
Speaker 4
So I just a really quick another comment about I have either of you heard of the turkey problem. You know, that is.

00:33:52:06 - 00:33:53:19
Speaker 2
No, I've not heard of that.

00:33:53:21 - 00:34:10:23
Speaker 4
And it's maybe a little too American, but the turkey problem is the idea that if you're a turkey, you wake up every day, you get fed, you stand in the sun. Every day is wonderful. You got nothing to worry about until one day in November. That day is very different for you, and you didn't see it coming because your experience up to that point had been the same every day.

00:34:11:01 - 00:34:36:01
Speaker 4
And I think that this goes to the point about the human element, that the systems, if they're trained on all the data in the world, everything that's been written up till today, you know, they know what's known and they can maybe extrapolate and interpret. And that's really powerful. But I think human's ability to be more creative about the possibilities is always going to be an essential supplement to what, what you know, the technology can do to supplement it.

00:34:36:01 - 00:34:50:06
Speaker 4
So, you know, the turkey problem is something that's always going to be the case. And I think you see SEOs as leaders, as antennas. We've got that broad purview, and an opportunity to help the organization see more broadly than maybe historical data can show us.

00:34:50:11 - 00:35:18:15
Speaker 2
But but as you, as, as you both kind of talked about that, I guess it really struck me a lot of this really takes it to the core of the the cow's job and remit from what it's been since the codes were created, which is how do you blend the art and science. Right. And I think when you're talking about the impact of AI and these type of things, the science part of it and the ability to aggregate create new things, there's more science than ever that they have to deal with.

00:35:18:15 - 00:35:42:03
Speaker 2
But there's also the art of how do you how do you put this together in a meaningful way that is true to your brand, true to your values, true to what you're seeing with a with a landscape, you know, and you and you hope you get it right. So, you know, a couple of questions. I could I could talk to you guys for hours on these topics, but I want to kind of bring us back to a lot of what we've covered here.

00:35:42:03 - 00:36:06:18
Speaker 2
You know, Ali, you really started talking about you've got this expanding remit of chief communicator officers. Half the world, at least half of the democratic world is an election this year. You've but those that aren't Democratic doesn't mean that there's not geopolitical issues or challenges that are being created around the world. You've got technology, you've got innovation. You know, you've got the research that you guys did with the Harris Poll.

00:36:06:18 - 00:36:24:07
Speaker 2
We're really talking about economic stability, growth, job creation, workforce skills. That's an awful lot. So what closing advice this page have for chief communication officers and senior communications professionals on how to make the most out of this moment of time?

00:36:24:08 - 00:36:56:07
Speaker 4
I think if I were narrow it and this is my my advice. The first is, businesses operate in a much more multi-stakeholder environment today. And what I mean by that is the risks associated with not engaging with understanding and orienting the organization around the interests and concerns of all of their stakeholders present greater challenges, say stakeholder capitalism is a thing today because, various publics have expectations of business that they need to fulfill.

00:36:56:09 - 00:37:24:07
Speaker 4
And co those are the multi-stakeholder function. We have the broadest purview across the stakeholder universe. And so I think navigating those realities and making sure that that there's a balance across stakeholders, is really essential. And as I said earlier, there's the second piece of advice is more methodical approaches to doing that. I think communications functions today. They're synthesizing data and input and just the reality of events of the world.

00:37:24:07 - 00:37:43:13
Speaker 4
And they're able to develop a point of view about the valence of the organization for certain issues and activities, but also the valence of those activities and issues to the organization. And I think having a consistent, repeatable process that's reliable becomes really important. Because once you set a precedent, it's hard to kind of back off of that.

00:37:43:15 - 00:38:13:20
Speaker 4
The third thing I would say is, and this sounds a little airy fairy, but I mean, a genuinely, business has this kind of goes to the multi-stakeholder view. Business has a unique opportunity to make the world better. Nobody started a business purely because they wanted to make money. They started a business because they saw a problem, a way to create value, a way to make life better or lives better and the better companies can connect to that core purpose, that animating purpose, and accentuated and amplify it.

00:38:13:22 - 00:38:29:19
Speaker 4
I think the more likely it is that they will be able to build lasting, positive relationships with stakeholders. And again, CSOs are at the center of that. You think about corporate character. The purpose is often at the center of that identity of the organization. Why we get out of bed every morning and go to work to do the work that we do.

00:38:29:19 - 00:38:52:02
Speaker 4
Why employees want to stay with our companies and remain engaged in their work. It's because they feel and they see and they know that the work that we're doing is somehow making the world a better place. And for communicators, it's about telling that story, certainly, but it's about making sure that you also have that story to tell. And that's about organizational change.

00:38:52:04 - 00:39:14:13
Speaker 4
And what we see across today is the communications are, you know, the last mile, right, the 25.2 miles that come earlier in the marathon are about organize change to make sure that you are consistent on ESG, that you are consistent on issues that you are operating in, in accordance with your your values and your beliefs and your brand.

00:39:14:13 - 00:39:34:16
Speaker 4
And so, you know, Steve, I kind of go back to the top of your point, which I think is interesting around brand gravity. You know, that brand gravity is in many ways, the, the relationship, the magnetism between I have a relationship with this organization because I understand what it does. I believe in what it does. And I can see that evidence.

00:39:34:18 - 00:39:41:11
Speaker 4
And I think a lot of what they do today is about finding a way to convey that in a way that's that's clear and compelling.

00:39:41:17 - 00:40:03:21
Speaker 2
Do good, run the marathon, build brand gravity. I like that. That's that's great advice. And and Rob you know you you said you've got a really unique point that you set, my friend. And you know, the access you have to the data and to the research. But but not only that, it's like every time I go to talk to you, I don't know where in the world you're going to be.

00:40:03:21 - 00:40:23:10
Speaker 2
Middle East, Europe. I mean, you're getting that kind text and and that real time counsel with CEOs using all that insights at the Harrisburg Lanes as your counseling coaches around the world as you're listening to them. What's your advice to CEOs on the path ahead?

00:40:23:12 - 00:40:49:16
Speaker 3
Three things. So the first and foremost, the the most successful companies that that either we work with or that that we've been able to to analytically model, they, they balance two things extremely well. Right. And that's, a the ambition of the company. Right. So its growth prospects, its vision, its products, with its character. Right. It's very much around kind of the culture or the ethics, the citizenship behind it.

00:40:49:18 - 00:41:07:10
Speaker 3
And you need to have both of those elements. So if you if you're a company that's only ambition, no character you're going to be there's going to be a lot of potholes. It's going to be a bumpy ride. Right. Even if you make some money, flip side is if you're a company, that's all character, you know, very low ambition or the ambition is not working.

00:41:07:10 - 00:41:32:17
Speaker 3
It's going to be very problematic. You're either not a for profit company or you're you're out of, or you're bankrupt. Right. So that's the first thing. And just even having that simple lens, you know, analytically, you want more depth, you want a lot more stakeholders, lot more markets. But that's like it's a simple framework. The second is when you're thinking about telling that story of ambition and character, you know, what are the 2 or 3 examples from your organization that really tell that story?

00:41:32:19 - 00:41:54:04
Speaker 3
Right? Where where can you see that clear intersection between what you do in your business and how you do your business? Right? And then the third thing is, the number of blind spots that we still see for companies today is remarkable, especially as companies are looking at their as you look at companies, digital footprints and the changing nature of reputational risk.

00:41:54:09 - 00:42:10:19
Speaker 3
And I'm not talking just like what's on Twitter or social media, I'm talking about like, you know, the digital landscape at large. Like if you're searching for a company, there are massive blind spots for, for, for most companies, and they're only getting bigger if people aren't addressing them. So it's this those three things together, I think are the, you know, main takeaways.

00:42:10:21 - 00:42:38:00
Speaker 2
And that's that's really, really sound advice. And what a fascinating discussion. So I want to thank Rob Jaco. Lack of the Harris Poll Elliot Mizrahi page for today's fascinating discussion. And I also want to point out the research that we're talking about is available on page.org. And, hopefully we gave you plenty of insights today that will help you create positive brand gravity for your own brands and the brands you serve.

00:42:38:01 - 00:42:52:03
Speaker 2
So tune in next time to hear more conversation and insights from tremendous leaders. And, thought leaders like Elliot and Rob. I'm Steve Halsey, thank you for joining us on this episode of Building Brand Gravity.

00:42:52:05 - 00:43:21:04
Speaker 1
We are gonna 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 GE'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.

00:43:21:09 - 00:43:32:20
Speaker 1
If you like what you've heard, please rate the show. That helps us to keep delivering the latest in industry influence. Thanks for listening. Until next time.

 

00:00:00:02 - 00:00:15:07
Speaker 2
Hello and welcome to Building Brand Gravity. I'm Anne Green, I'm CEO here at Sheerness Business Communications, and I'm delighted to be joined today by a friend and a colleague and an amazing thinker and a woman that I really admire. Natalie Nixon, welcome, Natalie.

00:00:15:09 - 00:00:18:20
Speaker 3
Hi. And thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here.

00:00:18:22 - 00:00:35:02
Speaker 2
So, Natalie, I'm not going to go through your whole bio because we're going to kind of dried out as we talk. But I think what's really intriguing to start and sort of center our conversation, is just thinking about the list of attributes and of your journey over the years. You are a dancer, you're an academic, you're a PhD.

00:00:35:07 - 00:00:56:00
Speaker 2
You are a professor. You're a speaker, you're an author, you're a design thinker. You run workshops. I mean, you've had such a broad career that we're going to get into. But one of the titles that I really love is The Creativity Whisperer, which is perfect for podcast The Creativity Whisperer. So what is that is so intriguing? What does that mean?

00:00:56:00 - 00:00:59:04
Speaker 2
And how did you come to this very intriguing moniker?

00:00:59:06 - 00:01:22:16
Speaker 3
Well, that was a moniker given to me, and I was I've been highly flattered to be called that. And I love it because it captures my goal of conjuring out from people, especially, who may not self-identify as creative, how absolutely creative their work is, their approach to their work. And it's my goal to really help people build their creative capacity.

00:01:22:16 - 00:01:49:21
Speaker 3
So, you know, often in the hallowed halls of fortune 500, fortune 100 companies is not necessarily deemed appropriate to talk about creativity. Innovation is okay, but creativity not so much. And in the early years of starting and building for great thinking, I was called in many a time to help build a culture of innovation, and I quickly discerned that we were starting in the wrong place.

00:01:49:23 - 00:02:21:01
Speaker 3
We actually needed to start with creativity. Problem, of course, was that so many people only associate creativity with artists with the field of design, and it was my perspective and something I've proven out through my research. The best and most innovative plumbers and engineers and scientists and attorneys and teachers and accountants and artists are super creative when they're, you know, I'm sure we'll get into a little bit later, but this, this, these dimensions of wonder and rigor toggling through wonder and rigor is really important.

00:02:21:04 - 00:02:25:14
Speaker 3
But but convincing people of that takes a bit of whispering.

00:02:25:16 - 00:02:47:13
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. And there's that breaking through barriers of perception I mean tell me more about that. That distinction that people have. They might think it's innovation, but they're missing the role that creativity plays. Or how have you tried to first of all, recognize that that was a tension or a dichotomy? And then how do you unpack that for people to say, hey, we got to get clear about what we're actually talking about here.

00:02:47:15 - 00:03:10:16
Speaker 3
Well, first of all, there was no very rarely within an organization, within a sector. Is there a lingua franca about innovation. And what often happens is innovation theater or innovation becomes siloed. It becomes the room or the department where people get to air quotes, hear, play with sticky notes all day. Which is a bit insulting. And that's not exactly what's going on.

00:03:10:18 - 00:03:36:09
Speaker 3
But then I had to really wrestle with with thinking to myself, okay, if I'm if I'm going to be offering a critique of the way people are currently approaching innovation, I better come up with a pretty compelling alternative. And so the way I think about innovation is that an innovation is an invention, a one off, a conceptual one off, converted into scalable value.

00:03:36:11 - 00:04:03:14
Speaker 3
So how do you go from that one off to that scalable value? That could be financial value. Social value, cultural value. The the converting factor, the conversion factor to go from that one off invention. Pretty cool. To that scalable value is creativity, is creativity that helps us to convert from that one off to that scalable value. So innovation is actually fueled by creativity.

00:04:03:14 - 00:04:15:00
Speaker 3
If we want to innovate in a sustainable and consistent manner, we have to build the creative capacity of ourselves as individuals, of our teams and of our organizations.

00:04:15:02 - 00:04:35:21
Speaker 2
It's interesting hearing you define that, because one of the questions I had for you is why creativity as a lens or an organizing principle? And it sounds like for you it's that you came to that understanding that that's a generative factor. I mean, creativity is always generative in its own ways, but am I right in thinking of it?

00:04:35:21 - 00:04:45:20
Speaker 2
That way, that that that's because of its role in sort of catalyzing something that might be an idea into something larger that that became a lens for you. Is that right?

00:04:45:22 - 00:05:20:07
Speaker 3
Well, that's exactly right. It is a catalyst. It's something that does not get, you know, creativity actually loves constraints. It loves constraints on time, on budget, on people, talent. So I never stop at the excuse of, well, we just don't have time or we don't have the people talent. That's actually awesome. And we can all reflect back into moments in our lives, our careers where it was in those moments, those chapters where we had such constraints that we were actually Uber creative.

00:05:20:09 - 00:05:28:11
Speaker 3
And so, yeah, that that idea of thinking about creativity as a catalyst is, is a real important inception point for me.

00:05:28:13 - 00:05:48:13
Speaker 2
I love the idea. I want to come back to that. Creativity is constraint a little bit later, because I think that's very important, and I think it's not. I do think there's a lot of misconceptions about what that creative space should be or is or is expected to be, especially in a corporate setting. You know, I've been agency side and the corporate communications for over 30 years now.

00:05:48:13 - 00:06:15:19
Speaker 2
And so I've seen a lot of manifestations that of, you know, we're meeting to be creative right now, which is usually the B-word. The brainstorm, which can be a much abused subject. But how did you you know, as I said, you've had a very diverse journey of your own in very creative. How did you come to the place today where you have figure it out thinking, you know, which is advisory, but also and as a speaker and as a writer and an author.

00:06:15:19 - 00:06:22:09
Speaker 2
I know you've written one book called The Creativity Leap. You're writing another. Now, you know, how did you come to this place?

00:06:22:11 - 00:06:50:12
Speaker 3
Well, it was very loopy. It's a big question. It was it was not a direct route. And to be honest with you, and I committed to following the nudge. I committed to follow my heart and the intuition. So you hinted at my diverse, loopy background of a background and cultural anthropology and the fashion industry and an education as a teacher and and as a qualitative researcher.

00:06:50:12 - 00:07:15:15
Speaker 3
And literally every single work experience I have had has converged to give me the tools, the toolkit, that's made figure thinking. And the way figure eight thinking came about was really it started as a side hustle. I was a professor at the time. I was actually a professor for 16 years. The first ten years I taught the business of fashion.

00:07:15:17 - 00:07:44:03
Speaker 3
The last six years I created and launched a strategic Design MBA program. And our goal in launching the Strategic Design MBA program was to offer the best of business school meets the best of design school. So already you see my my leaning towards hybrid thinking. We actually call it the MBA for hybrid thinkers. But by leaning towards hybrid thinking and multidisciplinary approaches.

00:07:44:05 - 00:08:06:11
Speaker 3
But I gave a TEDx Philadelphia talk in 2014 where I was proclaiming that the future of work is jazz, and here's why and how. After giving that talk, I started getting invited into companies to help them essentially do that work of figuring out how do we become more improvizational in our approaches to building services and experiences and products?

00:08:06:13 - 00:08:43:23
Speaker 3
And I was facilitating I was doing some consulting. I was I would speak here and there. I'm still a full time associate professor, and my husband John said, babe, this is becoming a thing. You should probably formalize it. And I was like, okay. So I created figure eight, thinking totally as a side hustle. Interestingly, I originally wanted to call it only figure eight, but that LLC name was taken and I'm so happy now that I tagged on the word thinking because as it turns out, a I'm a nerd, so thinking is pretty core to what I enjoy doing and how I spend a lot of my days and my time.

00:08:44:01 - 00:09:13:06
Speaker 3
But be I think one of my superpowers is my ability to help people rethink, reframe the ways that they are thinking. And the reason that matters is that if you shift your mental model that begins to shift behaviors, which ultimately shifts culture. So it all starts with how we think. And that figure eight was really to connote the iterative process, the building out and then revisiting of an idea.

00:09:13:08 - 00:09:37:12
Speaker 3
So but that's the background about how I got there. And really my, my background in fashion, is where I bring in trends and foresight work. My background and cultural anthropology gave me the and qualitative research gave me the ability to ask questions in a different way. Get the worms eye view. My role as a speaker, my my background in dance, as a teacher, comes into play hugely.

00:09:37:12 - 00:09:41:21
Speaker 3
So I'm at a really magical place in my career, in my work.

00:09:41:23 - 00:10:07:17
Speaker 2
It's a lot of points of intersection. You know, we talk about intersectionality in many different ways, you know, in the formal way. It was originally intended, but now almost more metaphorically, and the idea of hybrid thinking, we're in a hybrid world where understanding that notion of being hybrid in very practical, physical ways, as we work in different spaces, as we navigate different spaces.

00:10:07:17 - 00:10:18:06
Speaker 2
So I love that idea of bringing that hybrid model of thinking. I think that's very evocative of the space that we're in right now. You know, it's an interesting construct.

00:10:18:08 - 00:10:38:22
Speaker 3
It is right. And it's that I think we're a lot better at it than we sometimes give ourselves credit for. If we just kind of let go of the construction of how, frankly, we've been educated, you know, most of us have been educated to on the side of what is the answer? What is a solution? Not falling in love with the process.

00:10:38:22 - 00:10:44:15
Speaker 3
So hybrid thinking, hybrid work becomes an opportunity to really fall in love with the process.

00:10:44:17 - 00:11:03:16
Speaker 2
Yeah. One of my mantras as an organization leader, the people are going to get sick of hearing, and my role is that two things can be true at one time. That zero sum thinking, or especially us versus them thinking. That's that's another aspect of zero sum thinking is, is really destructive. And there are times where things are very clear.

00:11:03:18 - 00:11:27:02
Speaker 2
This is this, that, is that fantastic. But if there's nuance we live to that need to live in the nuance and there's dynamic tensions to be attended to, you know, there's going to be a push and pull and multiple things can be true at one time. And I feel like that that really speaks to what you're saying, which is we live in a world that's like that on a macro level, and not just our businesses or the nonprofits or the work that we do our lives.

00:11:27:04 - 00:11:40:09
Speaker 2
The geopolitical scene, the whole world around us is fraught with questions like that and tensions and trying to figure out, how we stay flexible in our thinking is important. I think.

00:11:40:11 - 00:12:03:19
Speaker 3
You're right. And I'm really macro and meta level. The need for flexibility and hyper thinking is is necessary. Now more than ever. We could do geopolitical issues to interpersonal concerns to, you know, just just where our various societies are growing. We need to adopt and embrace that flexibility and hybrid ness.

00:12:03:20 - 00:12:22:13
Speaker 2
So you've talked about organizations, and as you said earlier, that could be a nonprofit. It can be a fortune 50 or 500. It could be really any type of organization. I've worked with many across my career over all these years of all sizes. You talked about innovation as a potential pressure point of, oh, we're trying to break through and understand what that means.

00:12:22:13 - 00:12:37:10
Speaker 2
What are some of the other challenges or problems that organizations or individuals come to you to try to solve? Because there's a lot of different ways that I feel like the work you're doing and the thinking you bring to it can apply.

00:12:37:11 - 00:13:09:03
Speaker 3
One that's become I'm starting to see a pattern around in terms of the requests that I get is, to normalize curiosity is to help us. And I, for example, I was hired by, a major global law firm. By C-suite team there to help them shift their thinking so that curiosity doesn't, become punitive. But instead it is the beginning of discovery.

00:13:09:04 - 00:13:26:10
Speaker 3
And that was an awesome engagement, because, you know, I'm married to an attorney. John is an attorney. He does that sexy law that, Orissa tax benefits low an executive, size two font documents, etc.. He's primarily.

00:13:26:12 - 00:13:29:02
Speaker 2
70 pages. Yeah, exactly 70 pages.

00:13:29:02 - 00:13:56:05
Speaker 3
Exactly. He's primarily executive compensation attorney now, but I saw so much creativity in the way he approaches his work. There's the the wonder of like, what's the question we should be asking what do where do we need the plane to land? What is the need and the desire of the other side? And starting with that curiosity. But the rigor is knowing the law, knowing the regs.

00:13:56:05 - 00:14:19:00
Speaker 3
Right. We have we have those we have those constraints which are useful. So building a culture of curiosity is a big deal in a world and in organizations where you hired probably some A-type personalities who got to where they are because they were really good at filling in the dots, answering the question, coming up with a solution, an answer, a way of going forward.

00:14:19:05 - 00:14:54:11
Speaker 3
And then we realized that we work in markets and serve client needs that are highly ambiguous. Those are not predictive. Are constantly shifting. And so, you know, part of my training and design thinking, the value of human centered innovation and design thinking is that it really values. If you think of the Pareto rule, the 8020 rule, we should be spending 80% of our time and asking, do we even ask the right question before we go running down this rabbit hole of assumptions, which is unnerving when you've got a timeline and budget and demands.

00:14:54:11 - 00:15:31:08
Speaker 3
But if you don't flip that script of the 8020 rule, spending more time on the question framing, then you will inevitably incur all sorts of costs, tangible and intangible costs by not spending time on that. So that's one area that's been extremely exciting to me, the idea that storied law firms and pretty you know, no offense to the attorneys out there, but I have some insight by being married to one, you know, law firms try to really operate on certain levels of predictability, but to be open to the ambiguity of question framing.

00:15:31:08 - 00:16:00:10
Speaker 3
And so what I took them through was everything from, you know, what I call the taxonomy of questions, really understanding what questions are the range of questions divergent converging questions, taking them through instead of brainstorming questions, storming and really diving into generating all sorts of questions around certain parameters. And then, I love this this charge from Warren Berger, my colleague and friend Warren Burger, who's the author of a more Beautiful question.

00:16:00:15 - 00:16:32:16
Speaker 3
He calls himself a question ologist. He talks about how companies should have mission questions, not mission statements. Because if you have a mission question, right, it's much more organic. It can actually, evolve with the growth of the company. The other area that I'm helping companies with is it's it's a kind of some variation on on curiosity, but it's really about how do we see differently, how do we and a visual artist world, it's about seeing the negative space, right.

00:16:32:16 - 00:16:52:09
Speaker 3
So if you're asked to draw a vase, a vase, you don't draw the matter of the vase. You really drawing the outline of it. So you have that famous optical illusion. Is it a vase? Is is it a woman's profile? Right. That's the negative space exercise. So engaging in new ways of seeing is about being able to be much more experimental.

00:16:52:11 - 00:17:29:14
Speaker 3
It does start with asking you in different sorts of questions. It's about thinking about who we invite in on a collaboration process, because when you collaborate with people who have don't have your background, don't have your skill set, don't have your training, it opens up new ways of seeing and very exciting ways. And the third area that has been kind of a, a standard thing that I get invite to do is to build cultures of experimentation, which really starts with prototyping and not leaving prototyping to only the design team, but I've seen great prototyping happening in financial services and the health care sector.

00:17:29:16 - 00:17:44:04
Speaker 3
You can prototype services experiences in addition to products and you save so much time and money and you get buy in in the in and building and building and cultures of prototyping.

00:17:44:06 - 00:18:11:17
Speaker 2
That's really powerful. The curiosity piece I think is so critical. You know, it's something that I've always talked about. People would say even from a hiring perspective, you know, if it's a young person, and said, you know, what are you looking for? One of the first things enthusiasm is one, but intellectual curiosity is another for me. And I pair intellectual because and I want to get into your framework of wonder and rigor, because the intellectual curiosity for me sort of resonates.

00:18:11:17 - 00:18:40:06
Speaker 2
And I have a real openness to learn, but it's a directed in some way, you know, I want to dig into it. And really, that's sometimes I think you you don't need the intellectual part. You just go the curiosity piece. Right. But, in a world that is, really dynamic and they talked about it's very well discussed, the Microsoft culture shift from the last CEO to the current one, who I admire very much was from a know it all culture to a learn it all culture and that sort of energy that you're bringing.

00:18:40:06 - 00:18:59:08
Speaker 2
But but you've talked to a couple times about wonder and rigor and and I don't want to also miss and I'll get to it later of that idea of the creativity leap, which was the name of your first book. But what is Wonder and Rigor? I mean, because there is so much dynamic tension inherent in that pairing, but it's it's sort of a beautiful pairing.

00:18:59:08 - 00:19:03:07
Speaker 2
And the first time I heard it from you, I, I it really captured my imagination.

00:19:03:09 - 00:19:34:16
Speaker 3
Oh, I'm glad to hear that. I was the way I got to wonder. And rigor was actually I was doing what I call miniature ethnography. I was really interested in the question of who are the professionals who rely on their intuition? I sometimes call it pattern recognition in order to get stuff done. And my assumption, my hypothesis was, I think that first responders really rely on their intuition.

00:19:34:18 - 00:19:56:06
Speaker 3
I'm going to assume that chefs are really good at pattern recognition. And then the speedy rush rush work that they're charged to do. And I'm going to assume that I think that choreographers, dancers are also really good at pattern recognition and intuition. So that was actually what I was focused on. And I was I'm in Philadelphia, I actually happen to be from Philly.

00:19:56:06 - 00:20:21:20
Speaker 3
One of my favorite dance companies was to one is full Danco, the other is ballet. But I was observing a rehearsal of ballet acts, and there's incredible amounts of wonder that that is part of any artistry to even have this very exploratory stance. If you talk to artists about their work in progress, they are so comfortable. We asked them, you know, what are you working on?

00:20:21:20 - 00:20:48:12
Speaker 3
Where is this headed? And they'll say, I don't really know. You know, they're very open to the process. So there was that part that that intuitive nudge that especially and, and, and post postmodern ballet grooves. There is a very collaborative process between the choreographer and the dancers. But then I was noticing and so and so that kind of this obviously the wonder dimension.

00:20:48:14 - 00:21:32:04
Speaker 3
But there's clearly so much discipline and practice and focus and time on task. That's also a critical dimension of that creative artistic process. And so that that observation of those rehearsals was the beginning point for me to play around with, as you rightly call it, this tension. That is the creative process. So many times when people think about creative and if they say, well, I'm not a creative type, again, air quotes because I can't sing, dance, draw, sculpt, etc. they're also thinking that creativity is they're swimming, that creativity is doing whatever I feel like, as if it's pulling something randomly out of your armpit, which it's not at all right.

00:21:32:06 - 00:22:09:10
Speaker 3
There's so much drudgery of staring at the blank page, the blank slate I've kind of got going back to the same point over and over again. It's the rigor, the focus, the discipline discipline, the skill mastery, the time on task that's also so essential. We see this in athletics as well. Right. So the best athletes spent not just years decades honing their skill, their craft so that they can really go out there and play capital P, play in the most expensive mental Improvizational creative ways.

00:22:09:10 - 00:22:30:19
Speaker 3
They have both the wonder and the rigor and the and I'll just kind of culminate this part of our conversation by, by saying that I've always loved the way the great American dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp has talked about how before you can think out of the box, you must start with a box, which I love because, so many times in corporate America, we hear.

00:22:30:19 - 00:22:42:06
Speaker 3
But we got to think out of the box, people. You do, but you gotta know the rules. You have mastery so that you can extend them, stretch them, rebound against them. We need both.

00:22:42:08 - 00:22:51:15
Speaker 2
It reminds me of what you're saying about. You have to know the question you're asking, too. Sometimes that question is the box. You know, what box are we even in right now? Yeah.

00:22:51:17 - 00:23:01:23
Speaker 3
Absolutely. Ask the question is the box. The question is the boundary. Coming up with the right question? Is the rigor right? It's so hard to do sometimes. Absolutely.

00:23:02:03 - 00:23:25:19
Speaker 2
And we're back to jazz, by the way. Everything you said obviously applies to jazz, which was your original analogy. You know, you're reminding me very much of that tension with folks who sit in the Creative Capital C department. And I've had the pleasure of working with creative team members across all disciplines for years and at our agency, with digital team and paid media and project management and our communications professionals.

00:23:25:19 - 00:23:51:09
Speaker 2
It's a really diverse, integrated group. But one thing I've always noticed with those who are in the official creative department, especially those who are artists and production designers, all kinds of folks, motion graphics, video it's very hard for those Type-A folks like myself. I've been one of them who are on sort of the comms side when there's a creative assignment given, you know, that tension of when will it fit on this timeline?

00:23:51:11 - 00:24:13:06
Speaker 2
And one of the things that I've had to talk about, being a whisperer between teams, I've tried to my my goal, I feel, is to create understanding between different lenses and perspectives. And depending on where people are seated, you know, I've, I've, I've had to say to folks, the creative teams have to work on a timeline and they know that this we're in a career, you know, in a professional business setting, a client service setting.

00:24:13:06 - 00:24:31:17
Speaker 2
But I've had to say to folks who don't have that job, you know, they don't know how long it'll take. Right now, they're on the blank page. They're on the blank side, they're on the blank canvas, literally, metaphorically and literally the blank canvas. Soon they will have to know. And if they don't, they'll have to bring in reinforcements, because sometimes you need that.

00:24:31:21 - 00:24:49:13
Speaker 2
And I, by the way, can start to be those creative reinforcements to, you know, to spark us. But, you're reminding me a lot about that, that that moment of, like, translating between, like, what is that you need to unleash that creativity. And sometimes it's the rigor of of sitting through that hard part.

00:24:49:15 - 00:25:11:04
Speaker 3
Well, you you grabbed the word that was at the tip of my tongue, which is translation. You are a translator and when you're in that role, that intermediary role, it's it's so much of our work as leaders as is to do these acts of translation, which means that you have to be incredibly hybrid, incredibly nimble, incredibly curious yourself.

00:25:11:06 - 00:25:43:11
Speaker 3
The other thing, the other, constraint that is always there to help any kind of creative process is the deadline. It's a certain point. It's got to be over, it's got to be done. And that's okay, because I think for anyone who's engaged in the effort of building a brand, of figuring out a new financial model, of figuring out how to enter a new market, of figuring out how to design a new fill in the blank, there, it's never going to be done.

00:25:43:14 - 00:25:57:08
Speaker 3
And as soon as you as soon as you make peace with yourself about that ambiguity, it's okay. This is a version of it. And then to be able to move on is super important.

00:25:57:10 - 00:26:15:09
Speaker 2
We see that I was just watching that show, Truman, about Truman Capote and the Swans. That's on now. Right. Which is an old school. It's a long term story, but it's, you know, now a mini series. But you know, it talked about Capote is sort of never finishing that second book, and it was him being caught in that moment.

00:26:15:09 - 00:26:33:18
Speaker 2
And the translation into the corporate setting or any really organizational setting is when the perfect becomes the enemy of the done, meaning that the perfect is the the somehow this twisted platonic ideal of the thing that you have in your head, but you can't get there, you know, and we're all guilty of that. We all get stuck in that.

00:26:33:18 - 00:27:02:06
Speaker 2
And I think these kinds of frameworks of something, even words that are as evocative as wonder and rigor to say we have to move between them. That's, I think, a powerful way just to help people shift the lens and say, how do I approach this differently? I mean, let's go back to the capital B word, brainstorm, because creativity, the locus of creativity often is either in the department where people are labeled creative and those are amazing professionals and they work very, very hard.

00:27:02:06 - 00:27:21:08
Speaker 2
Right. Or then we're going to be creative and course we're going to have a brainstorm. And my one of my mentors, Ralph Katz, was a trained facilitator and had brainstorm rules and was very disciplined. A lot of rigor about what did you actually have to bring to a brainstorm to generate something? And unfortunately, no surprise world like this.

00:27:21:12 - 00:27:33:19
Speaker 2
Here's a revelation. Many of them don't work well. What's your diagnosis of what's happening in those moments where we're supposed to be gathering for creativity and yet somehow they're it's not working?

00:27:33:21 - 00:28:02:06
Speaker 3
Well, I think that brainstorming is okay, as long as we don't constrict and restrict that moment to the only time when it could be happening, there needs to be some sort of metaphorical parking lot that accompany an organization, a team always has available, whether or not it's a devoted space on a whiteboard where people can continue to to share ideas.

00:28:02:08 - 00:28:28:16
Speaker 3
Whether it's slack, whether, you know, whether you got to use some kind of technological tool. But to understand that the brainstorming session is a phase of it. And ideally, brainstorming is juicier when you can brainstorm an idea with people who come from a different department, who don't arrive with the same questions conundrums, who will challenge your assumptions.

00:28:28:16 - 00:28:54:21
Speaker 3
So someone who I referenced frequently in my keynotes is Jerry Hirshberg, who used to be the head of design at Nissan, and Jerry used to always require his design teams to bring in people from finance, HR or manufacturing or sales. Didn't really matter, but but a range of people to help contribute to the process and a first for everyone.

00:28:54:21 - 00:29:20:15
Speaker 3
There's hands on the hips. None of us, when we're really honest, likes to collaborate because we think, oh my gosh, we can do this so much faster by ourselves. They do not understand what we do, etc. etc. but the good part of of of these kind of collaboration processes, processes that Jerry Hirshberg set up was that he was inviting and cognitive diversity, and he began to call this creative abrasion.

00:29:20:20 - 00:29:48:05
Speaker 3
He understood that the people would abrade against this sort of collaboration, that it would cause friction. And what he understood is that what friction yields at the end of the day is energy. So why not convert that energy into something positive? So, you know, I love that you're your friend and colleague. Katz talks about bringing all sorts of restrictions and framing things and, and narrowing in the focus.

00:29:48:05 - 00:30:11:12
Speaker 3
It's there's no one any good to say, okay, this is the topic. Let's just brainstorm. You got to have an interesting question prompt, you know, give it I have all sorts of frameworks and parameters I like to bring in to help people, winnow in on the brainstorming process. And one of those other sparks is bringing people from totally different departments to kind of gaze on the same problem that you're gazing on.

00:30:11:14 - 00:30:32:17
Speaker 2
I just think that's so magnificent, because, frankly, one of the things I'm most concerned about in any organization, mind, my clients, etc., is, breaking down silos, disrupting us versus them thinking, which, by the way, can also disrupt things like implicit bias. It can disrupt a whole bunch of files that you're running without being aware that it's like background files running on a computer.

00:30:32:19 - 00:30:49:20
Speaker 2
And the fact of like, coming together in that kind of way is very, very powerful. And I love the idea of a divergent thinking. I mean, let me go right to the question. It's an age old question, Natalie. It's a question you've heard a million times. So let's address it here. Is everyone creative and how do we even answer that question?

00:30:49:22 - 00:31:14:03
Speaker 3
My perspective is that everyone is creative, that to be human is to be hard wired, to be creative. The distinction comes in in terms of whether or not you are committing to the process of building your creative capacity. So even artists, professional artists, whatever their genre of art will admit, there are ebbs and flows in their creative capacity.

00:31:14:07 - 00:31:39:17
Speaker 3
There has to be a commitment. You know my words, my perspective is to wonder and rigor. So how do you spark the wonder? Wonder can happen by reading more fiction. Wonder can happen through travel. And I don't mean you need to invest a big budget and go on a plane and go to some far off place. I wrote an article for, the platform Chez Media about micro retreats and what you can do a walking retreat.

00:31:39:17 - 00:32:05:07
Speaker 3
You can go to a neighborhood in your town or city that you rarely go to, and be an anthropologist for the day. I recently spoke for Westfield Insurance in Cleveland, Ohio, and got there a day early and was able to visit an incredible art exhibit by believe. The artist name is Louise Maye, who died over 50,000 flowers, and it was an installation in the Grand Hall of the Cleveland Library.

00:32:05:08 - 00:32:28:14
Speaker 3
And it was an afternoon of awe and wonder. First of all, who would do something like that? And then my next question was, why not do something like that? It was just amazing. She gathered all these flowers from that, from the area. But so, so travel reading fiction, becoming a clumsy student of anything is also another way to spark wonder, become a conversation about these.

00:32:28:14 - 00:32:57:14
Speaker 3
Also way to spark rigor. And so rigor comes by, you know, stepping away from the churn of email, giving yourself dedicated, quiet time to focus. And I think designing space and time for that really matters. For rigor. I think it often helps if there's quiet, it helps if you're committed to repetition is there's some part of your world in your work that, you know, maybe it's like you commit to, you know, rigor can be scaled incrementally.

00:32:57:18 - 00:33:16:17
Speaker 3
Maybe it's, you know, I'll make sure I read one scholarly article a week that, for me, is rigorous, right? To really make sure I'm understanding the field of Xyzzy in a certain way. Maybe it's, you know, for me as a writer, it's making sure I get in 15 minutes of just brain dump getting the words out every single day.

00:33:16:17 - 00:33:30:14
Speaker 3
And sometimes I find that I have more to write. Sometimes I don't, I don't have the budget of time, but it's committing to that toggling between wonder and rigor that actually helps us to build that creative capacity.

00:33:30:15 - 00:33:56:17
Speaker 2
One of my partners here at Jans, Brian Hall, who's our president, is in our Chicago office. He's been talking a lot about continuous partial attention as a real challenge. For us as humans and as, productive workers, employees, colleagues, partners, and is also been cultivating an interest in meditation and and also how do you, how do you carve out that space to have a task?

00:33:56:17 - 00:34:18:19
Speaker 2
And I know that feeling, too, you know, as somebody who has to do a lot of, you know, strategic writing and start from a blank page and big picture thinking, it's really uncomfortable to sit yourself down and put the butt in the chair and to or to get out and think about it, but I, I personally really resonate with the idea of like, I think from my past, you know, maybe in college and such.

00:34:18:19 - 00:34:40:04
Speaker 2
I was like, I'll write it tonight before and it will be great. Right? And the the older you get, the more that I need to marinate and I see those processes of sleep or being with it and moving away from it and being back with it and moving away from it. So that iteration and repetition, sometimes going back over the first few slides over and over again or reworking them, then the rest of them come much faster.

00:34:40:04 - 00:34:44:17
Speaker 2
So I really resonate with some of those concepts that you're sharing.

00:34:44:19 - 00:34:48:23
Speaker 3
Well, what is that phrase? I love that continuing partial.

00:34:49:01 - 00:35:13:09
Speaker 2
Continuous partial partial attention. Yeah. It's been it's it's been discussed a lot in different names. But the idea that we're constantly being pulled away, every little thing, every little alert, every little social media post, the constant checking of emails, it's the interruption of flow. And, it's also the myth of multitasking. I think some brains multitask more fluidly than others.

00:35:13:09 - 00:35:35:03
Speaker 2
It's just talking about neurodivergent. So we're all quite different in cognitive diversity. But, there's something about when is it that you let the brain run more free? You know, that wonder piece and explore new things? And when is it that you need to bring it into some guardrails and some guidance? So I find that what is for you, the creativity leap?

00:35:35:03 - 00:35:40:19
Speaker 2
I know that you name the book that and it's probably many of the things you're talking about. What where did that title come from for you?

00:35:41:00 - 00:36:01:03
Speaker 3
It actually came from a brainstorming session with my editor at Barrett Koehler, where we were trying to figure out a way to capture the ideas in the book and the idea the CliffsNotes version of the book is that creativity is not a nice to have. It's a must have. Right. And I originally wanted to call the book The Creativity Gap.

00:36:01:04 - 00:36:33:16
Speaker 3
And Neil Millet, who was my editor, he's the VP of editorial at Barrett Color. He said, you know, he was kind of kindly and politely listening to me going on on about just, you know, spitballing and stuff. And he finally said, you know, I totally get what you mean by creativity gap, because my point was that there's this chasm that we need to bridge between, the uncertainty that we feel and then needing to engage in really experimental creative work and acts, especially now more than ever, he said.

00:36:33:16 - 00:36:53:08
Speaker 3
But my experience shows that a lot of time in publishing, when it when a book title has a negative word, it doesn't do as well. It's like really? He said, yeah, I think about the word gap. It kind of kind of something negative. So we kind of just went to our the. And by the way, my new favorite app ever is if you don't know, it is word Hippo.

00:36:53:10 - 00:37:17:02
Speaker 3
Love it because it's just an incredible app for that. The SA online thesaurus is brilliant. But we came, we landed on the leap, and the reason I ended up loving it is because, I mean, the first page of the book I talk about what is a leap, what's required to leap? It requires vision. It requires the need to identify some sort of barrier that you can't just walk around or step over.

00:37:17:07 - 00:37:48:16
Speaker 3
It requires this kinesthetic and energizing effort. And so the word leap is absolutely visual. And it really ties in to the effort that real commitment to creative work requires. The imagination, the vision, the, the, all of the activity that is so diverse that helps us to get not just from point A to B, from point A to X, right.

00:37:48:18 - 00:37:54:13
Speaker 3
And, you know, my background in dance also made me, have a lot of affinity for the word leap.

00:37:54:15 - 00:38:20:14
Speaker 2
I like it because it's so embodied that kinesthetic feeling, you know, that that you mentioned that the sense that it's like a whole body physical experience to do. So it's not just mental work, you know, how do we throw our you know, I'm I'm very much about I really am enthusiastic about so many things I love to learn and I, I really look for others who are want to embody things fully and bring their full self to it and all their energy to it.

00:38:20:14 - 00:38:38:07
Speaker 2
So I think that's a that's a wonderful title. Well, I've kept you a long time. I mean, as we you shared a little bit about this already, but for our listeners out there, you know, I always think of my audience as first and foremost my colleagues and then all my clients and others out there. Whoever might discover this, right.

00:38:38:09 - 00:39:01:08
Speaker 2
What are some of the things, and we talk about building brand gravity, which is about attracting, you know, stakeholders into an orbit of an idea or a brand or a person or a company. You know how how do you feel? We as individuals and organizations can cultivate creative practices that are more compelling for ourselves. You know, what are 1 or 2 final thoughts you'd leave with us as things for people to stew over?

00:39:01:09 - 00:39:24:18
Speaker 3
I think just to build on one of the last things you just said. And that is not a purely mental exercise. This idea of being of having interests, perception and perception, of being aware of where we are in space, of being where we are in our bodies. I'll just share a quick, fun fact from what I've learned about, for example, the vagus nerve, the vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in our body.

00:39:24:18 - 00:39:52:20
Speaker 3
It extends from the brain down to the heart and to the gut. And it's, there's something called intra ception that we all do. Interception is that inner awareness. I'm tired, I feel safe, I feel scared, I need to use the restroom, etc. and interception. That inner awareness is actually powered by the vagus nerve, this internal antenna. And since making and the vagus nerve is actually also attached to intuition.

00:39:52:20 - 00:40:28:15
Speaker 3
So when we think say things like my gut is telling me, it literally is because of the way, the vagus nerve is designed in our body. So, the fun fact I learned is that scientists have recently learned that something called inter receptive awareness, which they the experiment they did was to test people who were able to tap out their heartbeat, not by feeling the pulse in their wrist, but just by sitting still, hands on their lap and literally being able to discern their beating heart.

00:40:28:19 - 00:40:51:15
Speaker 3
They did it. For example, for a married couple, the woman could not do it. The husband was like, this is so easy, you can't do this. He was so aware of the beating of his heart. And the scientific research shows a direct connection between inter receptive awareness, all those little subtle quiet things that are happening internally, and rational cognition and rational decision making.

00:40:51:16 - 00:41:14:20
Speaker 3
And I love that this research study, because it shows that the connection between the intuitive and the rational and the cognitive is not it's not a fuzzy dotted line, and it's not woowoo. There's actually a direct connection between that self-awareness and tapping into that self-awareness and being able to have greater cognition and be better at strategic decision making.

00:41:14:23 - 00:41:46:10
Speaker 3
So how do we have might we get better at that? I'll go to something I referenced a few minutes ago was we should all engage in being clumsy students of anything. And and you know that for me, it's dance, it's hip hop dance, it's ballroom. When I am a clumsy student, I am full of so much wonder. And I have to commit to the rigor of knowing the dance steps, learning the choreography practice, making mistakes over and over and over, learning from my fellow students, learning from a range of teachers.

00:41:46:12 - 00:42:07:16
Speaker 3
I bring that new way of thinking, that confidence with asking questions and following my gut with being more experimental into the work at hand. So. So firing up those neural synapses as clumsy students in our past times absolutely will help us in the work at hand. That's a lot of what I'm I'm going to be talking about and writing about in my next book.

00:42:07:16 - 00:42:20:02
Speaker 3
It's it's absolutely that the, the, the work that we do when we step away from the desk, the activity, I should say that we do we step away from the desk is really essential for the actual output of productivity.

00:42:20:04 - 00:42:39:05
Speaker 2
I think that's amazing. That's a wonderful place to end, because I do think this resonates so much with the world we're living in today and some of the challenges that we're facing. So Natalie Nixon, figure eight thinking, I'm so glad you could join me today. It's always fun when we can connect. And I encourage folks, you know, follow us where you get your podcast, check us out.

00:42:39:05 - 00:42:42:17
Speaker 2
And I always welcome comments. So Natalie, thank you for being with us.

00:42:42:17 - 00:42:44:21
Speaker 3
Thank you. And this was awesome.

00:42:44:23 - 00:43:13:22
Speaker 1
We are gas 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 GE'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.

00:43:14:03 - 00:43:25:16
Speaker 1
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