Building Brand Gravity Podcast

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:27:06
Speaker 1
Hello building brand gravity listeners. In today's special episode, we're actually going to revisit our December discussion on the year in AI for 2023, the year that truly showcased the rapid evolution and impact of artificial intelligence in various spheres. If you recall, last December, we marveled at the accelerating pace of AI advancements, a trend that continues to shape our digital and real world interactions profoundly.

00:00:27:07 - 00:00:53:10
Speaker 1
In fact, cloud key takeaway was that creativity need not be stifled by AI. Rather, it can be augmented as we move further into 2024. This blend of human ingenuity and artificial intelligence has only grown more seamless, opening new avenues for creative problem solving across industries. We also discussed the role of generative AI as a tool for enhancing human interactions, particularly in challenging scenarios such as compensation negotiation.

00:00:53:12 - 00:01:16:12
Speaker 1
This application remains incredibly relevant as more professionals adapt to AI to simulate and prepare for important conversations, and in the realm of communications and public relations, our wheelhouse, of course, AI's capacity for data analysis and insight generation was a hot topic in this area, seeing substantial growth, demonstrating AI's potential to link communication efforts directly to strategic business outcomes.

00:01:16:14 - 00:01:43:18
Speaker 1
A trend that continues to gain momentum. A few other exciting developments from the AI frontier that came online since our last conversation. One that I'm really excited about. Multimodal AI, has taken a significant leap forward, becoming now more viable and integrated with consumer products. Look no further than the meta and Ray-Ban sunglasses that have just, seen their first upgrade integrating multimodal AI into their software.

00:01:43:20 - 00:02:09:10
Speaker 1
Our creative professionals have access now to saw AI, which is a video AI platform. So now it's emerged as a groundbreaking tool for videographers and motion designers, which enhance how they, at least they claim in part stories light. And lastly, this is a newer one. But the eraser platform is now revolutionizing the way software developers and UX of our peers are mapping our customer journeys, making it simpler, more intuitive.

00:02:09:12 - 00:02:29:17
Speaker 1
We'll see if that actually comes to bear time. And so as we look ahead, the landscape that they AI remains dynamic, ever evolving. And although this conversation that you're about to listen to happened in December, I really think that everything said here still feels relevant and prescient now. I hope you enjoy with.

00:02:29:19 - 00:02:58:15
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.

00:02:58:17 - 00:03:19:05
Speaker 3
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Building Brand Gravity. My name is Anne Green. I'm a principal and managing director here at CNS Business Communications and soon to be CEO here at the agency. And I am very excited to be curating a conversation with the wonderful Kyle Turner, who is our digital growth director. Kyle, welcome.

00:03:19:11 - 00:03:21:10
Speaker 1
Hello. Hello. Glad to be here.

00:03:21:12 - 00:03:28:11
Speaker 3
Hello. Hello. So, Kyle, we're here to talk about the year in generative AI. It has been a year.

00:03:28:14 - 00:03:29:05
Speaker 1
It has.

00:03:29:06 - 00:04:02:07
Speaker 3
And I would say it feels like a hundred years since the moniker chat GPT first exploded into our consciousness. Just last November 2020. Now, kudos to those who already knew all about it long before. I know you're out there. But for most of society, it was last November, and it's kind of amazing to live through a moment, when a new tech utterly captures all aspects of our imagination and really simultaneously shifts conversations everywhere in business, world, tech, world, academia.

00:04:02:07 - 00:04:23:12
Speaker 3
And also, like your mom is asking you about it. So, you know, Kyle, I'm sure you're having lots of conversations with family members too. And as we close out 2023 and the reason we wanted to talk today is the big question for me is, as longtime integrated marketing communications practitioner and a counselor and an organizational leader, where are we now and then?

00:04:23:12 - 00:04:47:15
Speaker 3
Where is this going and how fast? So I would venture to guess that there's about 16 million podcasts of this kind looking at Chennai at the end of the year, and Kyle and I do not have the energy nor the time to recap every advance that's happened in generative AI in 2023. But I think our goal today is to like take one another's temperature on where AI is now.

00:04:47:17 - 00:05:07:11
Speaker 3
The big advances run down how our industry, integrated marketing, communications and all of its forms has started to learn and adapt and incorporate it and and talk a little bit about what we see, what's coming for the year ahead, including, I think, Kyle, you said what is best and what is not best. So does that sound good to you, Kyle?

00:05:07:13 - 00:05:09:18
Speaker 1
I'm excited to get into that for sure.

00:05:09:19 - 00:05:24:06
Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly. So just to start it off, Kyle, first question for you. What's one of the big technological advances in Chennai from 2023 that really made you stop in your tracks or get interested?

00:05:24:08 - 00:05:45:17
Speaker 1
Yeah, I, I've been seen a lot, in this space as as I'm sure you have. To me, what stopped me in my tracks, I saw earlier this year cycle of one of my one of our colleagues here, a an AI model was used to spot pancreatic cancer and high risk individuals up to three years before diagnosis.

00:05:45:19 - 00:06:08:03
Speaker 1
Now, this follows, a similar story I saw maybe about four years ago of an AI model using, being used to, to spot, brain cancer using blood samples. So what does that say to me? It's we're we're at the precipice of, I think, some really interesting and life changing and in some ways, probably life affirming ways.

00:06:08:05 - 00:06:34:07
Speaker 1
That I think I can start to change the way that we do medicine. This kind of predictive stuff, which we'll probably get into later a few times, is where I find the most excitement. I think as a cancer survivor, especially, you could make the argument that despite the research and the dollars that have been poured into the cancer spaces, we're only now maybe less like 4 or 5 years, starting to see some real sea change in the way that cancer is treated, diagnosed.

00:06:34:09 - 00:06:46:04
Speaker 1
And I think I represent, just yet another way that we can get to diagnoses faster and hopefully give more people a chance to to live a life that they want.

00:06:46:06 - 00:07:12:16
Speaker 3
Yeah, it's interesting you said that because having had former clients working in the cancer space like Memorial Sloan Kettering, there was so much talk about IBM Watson in the early days and maybe overhype of what its capabilities would be in the cancer space and when it didn't immediately deliver on the dream that, you know, where we saw out there, there was almost like this huge skepticism and to say, oh, look, it's overhyped.

00:07:12:16 - 00:07:34:13
Speaker 3
It doesn't work. Meanwhile, I think the truer thing was those are some of the early tests and learnings. Very early of AI in that space. Obviously IBM has Watson X now. They're very advanced in this area. But it's it is interesting to see now. And we've you and I have been around long enough. I certainly have to see a lot of tech cycles.

00:07:34:15 - 00:07:53:08
Speaker 3
There's stuff that in the early blushes is not going to fully make it. And people kind of say, but then it's, it's cooking along the whole way. So I think that's an exciting one. I mean, I think for me, the thing that blew me away this year is not maybe any one advance. It's just the speed of it all.

00:07:53:10 - 00:08:26:01
Speaker 3
And how listening to even deep experts, who have been in the development realm of AI for many years, talk about how much exponentially faster this is coming now than they had seen before. And also just, it is, as I said earlier, really wild to be both a human being and a professional around and awake and alert and mindful when the lightning bolt hits and everybody says, I don't know what to make of this, but it feels so different and powerful.

00:08:26:01 - 00:08:45:22
Speaker 3
So I think I think that's a really, really, really big one. You know, in terms of so we talked about sort of the big picture like, what's that thing that really stopped us in our tracks. But there's a lot of milestones and breakthroughs happening that have started to certainly affect our industry. You know, I'll start on that one.

00:08:45:22 - 00:09:08:21
Speaker 3
For me, it's watching. I baked in everywhere, you know, very, very quickly. We went from the large language models, you know, and OpenAI made a very deliberate decision to release that to the public. And it's actually really interesting to see the coverage behind the scenes after that whole insanity. That's kind of getting more into how the soup was made there and why OpenAI decided to release ChatGPT when it did.

00:09:08:23 - 00:09:25:20
Speaker 3
But we knew very early on that it needed to be baked into enterprise products that were already using. And the speed with which that's happening has been really, really striking me. What has struck you on some of that front in terms of actual milestones and things being released this year? You know.

00:09:25:22 - 00:09:48:07
Speaker 1
When you said that the speed is is striking you? I wanted to ask, why you were surprised about that, and I only ask because of this. I remember reading long ago when I used to work in media planning and buying. I saw a chart. I'm sure you've seen it too. That shows the speed at which different technological advancements hit 1 million users.

00:09:48:09 - 00:10:13:06
Speaker 1
I think by the time you get to Facebook, that happened in like a week, you know, starting with like radio, which took, you know, five, ten years. You know, Moore's Law, isn't it? Is it Moore's law that dictates like change accelerates with change? I think I've been I've been on this, this boat in for so long. I've been waiting for, to see the practical uses of generative AI.

00:10:13:08 - 00:10:48:07
Speaker 1
And I guess that's what's, exciting me the most. You know, you say, striking to. I am starting to be a lot more interested or a lot less interested. I start there with the projections of what I could be way more interested with the like, practical day to day uses of it. Now, I've told you this, the more that I use platforms like Dall-E or GPT four or cloud or whatever it is, the more creative ways I think of using it, and I think that also speaks to the ways that journey is changing right now.

00:10:48:07 - 00:11:19:01
Speaker 1
To your point about speed, I think since Sam, especially since like somebody like Sam Altman has been kind of empowered, by, the staff at OpenAI, I, I only think that I mean, it's going to continue to accelerate at this point. And we're going to have to get smarter, much faster about the ways in which we protect our ethics when using this stuff, because it's it's, I think the practical uses are going to expand just as financially as the technology itself is.

00:11:19:03 - 00:11:38:21
Speaker 3
Yeah. You're so right. And I think you're right to, to ask me that question and like, why I should be surprised at how fast things develop. The curve, like if I think about one of the last seismic shifts, which is really the, the right to web, the meaning WordPress, Typepad, I don't need to code the web is open to me.

00:11:38:23 - 00:12:19:13
Speaker 3
Web one. Yeah. And then social media, that arc of adoption of of process change, of societal change happened at a certain speed. This one's coming even faster. I think something you just said. Kyle and I had a session internally yesterday here at Sheehan's with many, many of our colleagues just to talk about the state of Chennai, what we're seeing, what it's baked into now, what our roadmap is, etc. but we had a lot of fun with prompts in the chat, prompts for the human beings, not for the AI, and we are asking folks to share some of the use as they do at work or at home.

00:12:19:15 - 00:12:38:00
Speaker 3
And you're right, Kyle, like the diversity and creativity and in some cases, the total randomness. But you're like, seriously, you thought to do that? That's so random, but it's so smart that I was kind of stunned. And it was funny in the chat to see other of our colleagues being like, whoa, I never thought of all these things.

00:12:38:00 - 00:12:58:17
Speaker 3
So that to me, I think, something came to my mind. It's like you light a sparkler, you know, at 4th of July and all these sparks start to fly off of it. That's what it felt like watching the chat, like all this creativity and energy, that just seems to feed on itself. And maybe that sounds a little bit like the experience you're having.

00:12:58:19 - 00:13:20:05
Speaker 1
Oh. Oh, for sure. I think it like, kind of crystallized for me. I started using it a while ago, maybe a couple weeks ago to, help me draft and and this is it's wild to even admit this, but I asked it to help me draft a, conversation with my five year old because our zones are changing here.

00:13:20:06 - 00:13:43:13
Speaker 1
So his school that he's in now is not going to be a school he will be able to attend without, you know, some alternate, some, extenuating circumstances next year. So I asked, ChatGPT GPT four specifically, like, give me the draft of a conversation. That explains to a five year old why he has to change schools in a year from school he doesn't like, or he that he likes a lot.

00:13:43:15 - 00:14:14:12
Speaker 1
And I thought that the way that this thing framed up a conversation like this was fascinating to me. Like, not something I would have thought of doing six months ago, however, and this is why I'm being specific about signing GPT for GPT four, the more advanced version of, the OpenAI Gpt3. So it is a little smarter, a lot smarter, honestly, about, picking up on cues and understanding prompts than 3.5 words.

00:14:14:14 - 00:14:39:12
Speaker 1
It was fascinating. I thought that the way that it framed this up, obviously in the perspective of the parent, it trained it up as, a situation on a playground. This these are, these are ways in which I had not thought of using it, but helping you navigate, real human interactions, not replacing them, but kind of giving you a way to frame your mind around potentially difficult conversations.

00:14:39:12 - 00:15:03:12
Speaker 1
I think. Sounds it sounds maybe dystopic in some ways, but to me it is almost therapeutic. It gives you a way to kind of get your thoughts out, help you organize them, and then perhaps come up with a more productive way, a camera conversation that perhaps may have been harder to have previously kind of primes you for that.

00:15:03:14 - 00:15:36:04
Speaker 3
That's such a fascinating example. And so that's just another thing of like, wow, you know, just see, experiment, see what it does. It reminds me, you know, in the discussion with our colleagues yesterday, a big theme came out which is helping you think about things in a fresh way, or maybe coming at it from a different corner. And if you look at DeepMind and their experiments with AlphaGo, you know, which built on what IBM did with chess earlier, you had this question of could a machine ever beat, you know, the elite go players around the world and everybody knows the story now?

00:15:36:04 - 00:15:59:10
Speaker 3
It did because it tried to move that just was so atypical that that a player that was decades and generations of human knowledge, that wasn't the way a master would play the game. And it's it's that reminds me, that's like it's taking a conversation that you as a parent, we usually approach in like a variety of ways and bringing it into a totally different context.

00:15:59:12 - 00:16:19:15
Speaker 3
To bring it into our industry, the marcom industry. I feel like in talking to many agencies and many colleagues and many client side folks over the course of the year, because it's such a top. I mean, all of us are talking about it all the time. How are you using it? What are you doing? The real theme right now of this year is experimentation to implementation.

00:16:19:15 - 00:16:42:13
Speaker 3
And I use implementation loosely because it's not as fully realized in many ways as it will be. I mean, that's that's obvious right now, but people are trying to put the rubber on the road in terms of how are we going to use this. So if you look back at 2023, Kyle, what are some of the early implementations you've been seeing in our industry or contexts that have been interesting to you?

00:16:42:15 - 00:17:15:00
Speaker 1
Well, you know, I think we're still at the nascent stages of what's possible in PR, PR and comms. For Gen I, I see the most readily, applicable ways to use gen AI is, would be in data and analytics. I think the more that you are leveraging data to make decisions, the more help you will likely need to interpret that data, especially now as we are getting access to more and more information.

00:17:15:02 - 00:17:42:16
Speaker 1
The one of the ways that we are or that certainly that I am trying to leverage any AI is to help with, social media analysis is to help with, sentiment analysis. I think most of these tools are a lot smarter than, tools like net based were. And that when they were using early versions of AI to kind of help, or machine learning to kind of help understand how sentiment, is, coming through and people's commentary on social media.

00:17:42:18 - 00:18:23:16
Speaker 1
We're in a much smarter place now. And though we may be still at the early stages of what's possible in data, generally in PR comms, I do think that genie AI gives us an opportunity to, to catch up, to other, industries like, you know, marketing and media buying and playing around data for decades, basically. And so now we're I think, you know, I can see a situation where maybe we throw in, a few examples, a few articles that highlight a client's crises from, you know, let's say a five year period and then use, an AI model to help kind of predict what crises may come up based on a PR,

00:18:23:16 - 00:18:53:20
Speaker 1
an article, an advancement, news, a newsworthy item that our clients talk to us about so that we can start to understand a little bit better how the past maybe influences our future actions. And I think you can use that same exact philosophy for content creation as well. I kind of just understanding what what you should be able to reasonably predict about a person's reaction to a piece of content just based on how they reacted to other pieces of content before.

00:18:53:20 - 00:19:11:12
Speaker 1
I mean, I think obviously we're still very early on in that, but to mark to the point that we were making earlier, the more that we start to use this stuff, the more creative we we think of using it. And I think this is just one of those ways, the data, the data side of this, I think, is what really, really excites me.

00:19:11:12 - 00:19:15:01
Speaker 1
And I think that's where a lot of smart organizations are starting to leverage it now.

00:19:15:03 - 00:19:43:11
Speaker 3
Yeah. And it's interesting, I think back over the course of my career, and it's always been exciting to watch the convergence of major trends and themes. So I early in my career, I got to watch the early advent of mobile phone working in wireless, and then the early advent of the transformation of the financial services industry into online, and then some of the really interesting technologies that were in the physical world, like contactless, you know, like tapping to get into the subway.

00:19:43:13 - 00:20:06:18
Speaker 3
One of the earliest examples of that was in Singapore, in the Singapore Metro system. And then suddenly you had this. All can come together into the mobile phone. You need it. IPhone, you need it, the financial services industry to come to a certain point, you needed certain other technologies like RFID and others. But when you converge together, suddenly you have mobile wallet and tap to pay and an Apple Pay and etc. etc..

00:20:06:20 - 00:20:16:21
Speaker 3
Right now what you just said, we are at a convergence point of all the discussion that's been had about big data. Remember when that was the term big data and then.

00:20:16:21 - 00:20:18:18
Speaker 1
Data takes me back.

00:20:18:20 - 00:20:40:21
Speaker 3
Exactly. Big lakes and and you know, pools of data that everybody was talking about as if that was the answer. No, that is actually the problem. I have this data. What do I do to derive value? Then we heard about machine learning. How will that help us. And then we hear about predictive analysis. Well predictive. That sounds exciting.

00:20:40:21 - 00:21:02:21
Speaker 3
How does that work. Now we're seeing the convergence of all of this. And clearly there are many professionals and industries that have been deeper into this, as you said, that have already been unlocking this. But I think now it's the proliferation of of it across enterprises and even into the consumer realm that's so exciting. And yeah, I agree with you.

00:21:02:21 - 00:21:10:03
Speaker 3
That's that's going to unlock value in ways for our clients and for ourselves that we've only thought about in the past and hoped for.

00:21:10:08 - 00:21:37:20
Speaker 1
As, as a leader, of a company with, you know, 100, 150, 200 plus people. How do you realistically think about implementation of some of these using some of these use cases as examples? I mean, could you sit and in a place where you're kind of getting a 30,000ft view of the the goings on in the operations of DNS, but you've also got to think of like practical on the ground implementation too.

00:21:37:20 - 00:21:45:04
Speaker 1
So where do you find the, the threads that allow you to anchor some of this more conceptual thought into like real, tangible action.

00:21:45:06 - 00:22:10:05
Speaker 3
As an organization leader, but also a practitioner? You know, I'm still an active counselor and media and presentation trainer and practitioner. I feel it's incumbent upon us to think at multiple levels at one time. We need to think 100,000ft as in, what does this mean to society? How will this change how we live? What does this mean to be human?

00:22:10:10 - 00:22:36:05
Speaker 3
What does it mean about authorship? How do we understand the ethical dimensions of how humans will interact with this unbelievably powerful technology? And can an agency like ours survive into the future? That sounds dystopic, but I mean that very seriously. What will our business look like? What will our services look like? How do we bring the best of ourselves, augmented by technology, to be the best partners and counselors?

00:22:36:05 - 00:22:57:17
Speaker 3
So that's 100,000ft level. But then you're right. I have to zoom down onto the ground to say, how do we actually operationalize this? And some of the things you and I are involved involved in. Kyle, with our Chennai team here, it's going to be very much about the big picture. But then also what are the use cases? How do we separate them into pillars?

00:22:57:17 - 00:23:18:18
Speaker 3
What are the pilot tests? How are people are reducing it? What are the ethical guidelines we need to put around this? Based on my work with the PR Council and how do we both experiment and support business model? So, you know, I don't know if you have any reactions to that, but I think it requires all of us to be very elastic and flexible in our thinking.

00:23:19:00 - 00:23:21:06
Speaker 3
Go big and then zoom in.

00:23:21:08 - 00:23:56:12
Speaker 1
I do I mean, you know, we're we're about to get into a conversation about the industry adapting to some of these, these changes. And, you know, I don't want to spend too much time, navel gazing. However, I do think that, you know, kind of pursuant to the title of, this podcast, I think the, the brand gravity around our agency and probably about or around a lot of legacy agencies will probably need to shift and probably, you know, it's worth it to think of the ways in which we may be need to adjust how we brand ourselves.

00:23:56:12 - 00:24:21:03
Speaker 1
I think everything you're talking about makes total sense. And, you know, having dedicated people here that you've picked to be at the forefront of this experimentation and having and give them like actual tangible tasks is paramount here. But I even think the way that we talk about this agency, as we start to blend some of this technology into our day to day, I think that's really going to be what's necessary.

00:24:21:05 - 00:24:30:18
Speaker 1
For most organizations, really, ourselves included, you know, as we start to change and adapt to some of these, some of these new techs and new ways of doing things.

00:24:30:20 - 00:24:57:10
Speaker 3
Yeah. And part of it will be I'm not doing the same thing that I did 30 years ago when I came into integrated marketing communications at a very large agency, Burson-Marsteller. And of course, yes, my role is different. I'm not entry level now, but nobody and this is the funny example, but there's a billion of these. Nobody is putting out press clips and measuring column inches and pasting them onto a piece of paper.

00:24:57:12 - 00:25:38:02
Speaker 3
That sounds absurd now, but the reason I say that is jobs changed agency capabilities change, client needs change, client organizations change. Sometimes that change is fast and really painful and disruptive. Other times it's such a slow arc that suddenly you wake up and say, My God, how much our lives have changed? I think if we can pivot into what we expect to come in the next year or so, and what you know, very practically, but I'll say the bigger picture, I think that what I'm going to be watching both as a practitioner, as a colleague, and as a client counselor and as a leader is where is the change going to be fast

00:25:38:02 - 00:25:55:13
Speaker 3
and where is it? Will be a more steady, organic arc where, hey, it's just getting baked in. Oh, we're unfolding capabilities. Oh, we can work faster versus wow, we really need to shift what people are doing. Like we need to make that decision tomorrow or today. We need this tool, this platform. And I think you're right, Kyle.

00:25:55:13 - 00:26:18:04
Speaker 3
It's it takes a lot of intention of thought about. And also, what is it that client organizations will need? One of the most fascinating things I've watched over the years is which capability is live, where and who feels they need them. Who is that that brought web development, in-house agency or client side? And then when was it farmed out against partners who are specialized?

00:26:18:06 - 00:26:36:08
Speaker 3
How many people are on internally on a social media team? How many are doing content internally at a client? Where are they using an agency for that? Where do we begin and end? There's a million answers to that question, but I think part of it for us is also understanding where the human begins and ends, where the machine begins and ends.

00:26:36:10 - 00:27:08:15
Speaker 1
Conversation that came up in in the townhall we were doing yesterday. Listen, I think most people when taught when when you talk to them about this, I think will probably have a somewhat fearful reaction at worst, cautious one at best. I think there's probably merit to a blend of those two, sentiments, honestly. However, I'll say this the fact that we and other agencies like this are starting to explore and sign on pilots and partnerships, I think that shows some of that thinking is being shared.

00:27:08:15 - 00:27:25:23
Speaker 1
You know, caution is justified to an extent. I think no one really knows what the next five, ten years are going to look like when it comes to, jobs, especially in the comms industry. You know, you I've seen a couple of studies. I will not try to cite them here. Just Google them. But I've seen a couple studies.

00:27:26:01 - 00:27:55:14
Speaker 1
Yeah, I can see kind of a couple of studies that talk about the industry's most that are probably going to be most affected by generative AI preponderance, PR, comms, marketing, writing, like all that stuff. I mean, it's near the top of the list and all of them. Not surprising. I think all that just means, though, is that the ways in which we think about how to use this stuff, and these advancements, I think you you have to you have to, to your point, move both with caution and with intention.

00:27:55:16 - 00:28:17:15
Speaker 1
But you also have to be curious enough. I love the for the phrase curiosity. I think curiosity is one of the more redeeming characteristics anyone can have. You got to be curious enough to actually try some of this stuff yourself. To my point earlier, identify the ways in which you're using it that could spark more esoteric ways of using generative AI.

00:28:17:17 - 00:28:26:04
Speaker 1
And then use that as a guide to maybe on a larger scale, what you can implement and what actually, maybe you need to take more time to do.

00:28:26:06 - 00:28:49:00
Speaker 3
Yeah. Part of what I'd love to spark in myself and others is the joy of this exploration and experimentation, while being really clear eyed about cautions and and and concerns and also possible very difficult futures. If we as a society and as human beings don't stay attentive to that. I think we are at our best in this field.

00:28:49:00 - 00:29:14:12
Speaker 3
Counselors, thought partners, innovators, we are called on because we're not in the day to day, every day with each of our client organizations, their talent and they're situated in the business that they're in. We stand at a crossroads of many industries, and that's supposed to be our goal and our role. And we can never lose sight of that.

00:29:14:12 - 00:29:39:07
Speaker 3
And it's not a defensive posture at all. It's actually a really celebratory one, because it does celebrate curiosity and intellectual rigor and being open and cross pollination in multiple industries. And what are we learning? But we have to remember that our value is to bring that spark back to those who are contracting with us, you know, spending their, you know, valuable capital to bring us in as partners.

00:29:39:07 - 00:30:08:06
Speaker 3
So if I look ahead to the future, you know, let's both think for a minute about what are we most excited about over the next like one, two, three years? I'm pretty excited about AI everywhere. I'm very excited about it being baked in in all kinds. I mean, there's such an explosion of development and creativity on the technology front, especially as these platforms open source or allow folks to, you know, create off of them.

00:30:08:08 - 00:30:34:15
Speaker 3
And also as the larger entities allow enterprises to sort of create their own large language models and, and, you know, predictive models, etc.. So that's exciting. So that mass integration, and I'm also really excited in the next year about really leaning into the places that we can make ourselves more efficient and creative, where things were a little bit rote before.

00:30:34:15 - 00:30:55:13
Speaker 3
It's always hard. You get the most amazing, talented young people who come in and you're like, hey, there's this stuff that you have to do that is a little bit rote, but if we can make that more strategic and fun and interesting and faster and smarter, that they can then add value to places where that human instinct is there.

00:30:55:13 - 00:30:59:04
Speaker 3
I think that's amazing. Mean, what are some of the things that you're excited about?

00:30:59:06 - 00:31:12:21
Speaker 1
I mean, you heard me talk about this at the beginning of the podcast, and it's been this way for a while, but I really think that the biggest and most interesting advancements are probably going to be in medicine.

00:31:12:22 - 00:31:19:14
Speaker 3
I want I hope that's the case, Kyle, I really do. I mean, that's that's an amazing opportunity.

00:31:19:16 - 00:31:48:15
Speaker 1
I mean, I think the diagnostic abilities of AI are probably its strongest suit, its ability to, digest, find connections, build on, identify trends that are probably often missed by humans. I think that creates so much potential for being able to find diseases, being able to diagnose people early and to my point earlier, give them, a better chance of living.

00:31:48:17 - 00:32:19:00
Speaker 1
I think the, the, the less kind of, I guess, life changing examples that I can say, I, I love the ability, to create images. I think the Creative Spaces is obviously handwritten a little bit, because of this and for good reason. You know, a lot of what the writers and directors, and, the actors have been fighting over is about ownership of IP and how things like generative AI models are being fed.

00:32:19:02 - 00:32:44:02
Speaker 1
However, I see it as a potential for expanded imagination. I recently used Dall-E to give me an idea for, a tattoo, and I'm not expecting to walk into a tattoo parlor with this exact thing. In fact, Dall-E has a weird thing where if you if you. I gave it my son's name, but it kept misspelling it weirdly.

00:32:44:07 - 00:32:47:19
Speaker 1
Add letters, remove letters, combine letters.

00:32:47:21 - 00:32:53:16
Speaker 3
Just keep. It's keeping us on our toes. It's making sure that we don't understand what the hell is going on.

00:32:53:19 - 00:33:19:08
Speaker 1
Yes, exactly. But I had I had that idea of, you know, my son's name emerging from the water for years and really couldn't properly articulate how it should look. But this gives me at least a starting point that I can talk to an artist about to actually make it something real, something tangible, something moat, a motive for me.

00:33:19:10 - 00:33:37:01
Speaker 1
And I think that's where a lot of I think smart creators are using it just as an inspiration engine, like, oh, let me just spit this idea out and see what it comes back with. And then maybe I can take that and tweak it and change it just because I now have a physical representation of something. I was just thinking.

00:33:37:03 - 00:34:09:19
Speaker 3
I think that's really powerful. Our creative team and even folks beyond our formal creative team who are exercising their own creativity, we have people asking us to do so many different things, but our creative team is really leaning into this and understanding its edges and boundaries and pushing those edges and blank page brainstorming. And also, you know, the enterprise piece, the baked in piece when platforms like Adobe bakes, some of this capability right into the tools are already using that just as a game changer, right?

00:34:09:19 - 00:34:41:11
Speaker 3
So, you know, simple things like, hey, there's a photograph with two people and I need only one of them, and I'm going to have I erase them and fix the background and seconds. What used to take some careful work over maybe an hour or so to really get it right. That is the kind of removal of friction and speed that then allows each individual for each professional to bring even more of themselves to what we do, you know, and that that to me is really, really exciting.

00:34:41:11 - 00:35:07:21
Speaker 3
I think that brings me to the places as a counselor where we need to exercise, thoughtfulness, caution, advice. I'm still I used to work with ask cap years ago, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and I was very involved with digital copyright issues in the early days of Creative Commons and post Napster. And, you know, this world now is supercharged.

00:35:07:21 - 00:35:45:20
Speaker 3
Some of the issues, like the rights of creators, the the proliferation and digital of IP ownership payments. I think we as agency people need to keep intellectual property law, protection of creators, protection of people's images, and also authentic representations of things. Deepfakes, misinformation is definitely a concern to me. I think you'd be completely Pollyanna and blind not to be concerned about, as you said, what are the choices that individual people or groups are going to make on how to use technology that is this powerful?

00:35:45:21 - 00:36:04:20
Speaker 3
So as we come into an election year, as we try to advise our clients and ourselves on what the proper uses, I want to make sure that we're looking at this through an ethical lens, and that we never lose in our excitement, that we also never lose the other side of the coin, which is what's a responsible and intentional use of this technology.

00:36:04:20 - 00:36:07:05
Speaker 3
I mean, what's what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I.

00:36:07:06 - 00:36:34:00
Speaker 1
You know, I, I when I think about policy, it is always really, really nuanced thoughts for me only because everyone whenever you write a new policy, especially for a policy, is something that nobody understands 100%. And that is constantly changing. I think we're probably still dealing with some of this with social media, actually. I mean, it requires a certain level of understanding.

00:36:34:00 - 00:36:56:05
Speaker 1
And I think when I think about, you know, I know we'll get into the future, a little bit. But when I think about the future, I think about the ways in which people are going to try to regulate AI and whether or not the regulations are going to do more harm than good. As far as our ability to understand how best to use it with intention.

00:36:56:07 - 00:37:23:02
Speaker 1
Like, and I, I, I don't know that like I'm making some wild assumptions here obviously, but I do think that there's enough, evidence in the ways that policy has been written for social media that we, you know, you run the risk of not including, like, nuanced thought into how we leverage AI. If you kind of are not just quick to advance it, but also quick to overregulate it.

00:37:23:04 - 00:37:50:07
Speaker 1
You know, I don't want to sound like a deregulation like, maybe here, but I, I, I'm just I'm just bullish on, on advancement. And I think that the more you have people or a more diverse array of people who are willing to experiment with it, much like I said about more creative ways to use it, I think you come up with more creative, and more nuanced ways to manage how to ethically use it.

00:37:50:07 - 00:38:21:07
Speaker 1
And I don't think any policy can stay stagnant. I think even hours at genius, which is a good one, I think, we'll probably need to change next year as, this technology becomes more ubiquitous and it changes itself, and we're going to have to find different ways to think about what experimentation looks like and get more comfortable with how things that we maybe have felt comfortable doing as humans can either be come either obsolete or heavily augmented.

00:38:21:09 - 00:38:28:05
Speaker 1
Our our humanity can be augmented using some of the the creativity that this might unlock people.

00:38:28:07 - 00:38:59:15
Speaker 3
I think you're very right. The way I would phrase it is that regulation in this space is likely to lag. That's why it's incumbent upon us as counselors, to our clients and experts in our field, to create both the environment for experimentation, pushing, opening up, transforming how we work, but also understanding what we think are the proper guardrails and what we feel is an ethical lens on the application of generative AI.

00:38:59:17 - 00:39:16:22
Speaker 3
I think that's going to be very, very important. What's what's your advice for Markham's and PR professionals to stay ahead and just we we cover as a whole integrated marketing communications landscape. So what are you most hoping that even our own colleagues do in the future?

00:39:17:00 - 00:39:54:16
Speaker 1
I mean, honestly, I think experimentation is key. I think getting and getting access to and using the most advanced versions, the advanced models, you know, I think a lot of people still use, GPT three and 3.5, and that is kind of their baseline, baseline of knowledge for what I kind of is. And when you actually look at GPT four, even even prior to an extent and some of the other platforms that are exist that are coming into, coming online now, it's way more advanced.

00:39:54:18 - 00:40:30:11
Speaker 1
You know, it's way smarter, it's way easier to kind of get at some useful, responses. You know, I've, I've even started using GPT four as like a de facto replacement for Google. Right now, you know, if you if you write your prompts the right way, you can get a detailed answer on anything, and way more detailed than what you would get from Google, because Google's just a collection, like a list of websites as opposed to an articulation and explanation of why something is with citations, which is what you would get from, ChatGPT.

00:40:30:13 - 00:41:01:16
Speaker 1
So I would just encourage people in the industry to experiment with it, not just in prompt writing, not just in research, but in the ways that you can more, readily, show off tone and voice. You can ask AI to help you. And, I that's probably what the thesis of a, maybe a press release of a blog post of a white paper is to make sure that your, your ideas are actually coalescing into something useful.

00:41:01:18 - 00:41:24:15
Speaker 1
And I think that just the some of the things that I was talking about earlier with crisis prediction, I think I just thought of this like one way that you could, I could conceivably think of, using AI right now is to take an article about a crisis and maybe start playing with your post to see if there was a way this crisis could have been predicted.

00:41:24:15 - 00:41:38:11
Speaker 1
Like, what ways could a crisis like this be prevented? And then maybe start building content off of those ideas? I mean, but that only comes with experimentation, right? And like, I think you have to just start playing with it.

00:41:38:12 - 00:42:06:15
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. And I would my advice to colleagues in our industry and really beyond experimentation, but then also really lean into what we are talented at in this industry, which is critical and discern and thinking. What is the source? Can we go back and verify something in a world where AI is still, suffering from hallucinations and it will get better over time?

00:42:06:17 - 00:42:24:03
Speaker 3
How do we ask ourselves, how do I know this is right? You know, what do I think about this? And also really lean into the collaboration. And you talked about augmented humanity. I love hearing people talk about what that could be in the future. And I think it goes in a lot of different directions, including in the physical world.

00:42:24:05 - 00:42:44:03
Speaker 3
But how do you take your skill as a writer who can iterate on different drafts? Who don't you don't make as human as a human being? The first thing you write isn't the final draft. Usually you're going to iterate and you're going to learn something, and what you intend to to write may not be what the final product ends up being.

00:42:44:05 - 00:43:06:06
Speaker 3
So how do you use AI in the machine, for lack of a better word, to help you iterate and use and lead into an open up more space for what makes us truly human? So to finish off today, because this conversation, as we said, could go on forever at this point, on these topics, there's a lot of prognosticating out there, Kyle.

00:43:06:06 - 00:43:39:20
Speaker 3
There's a lot of people have a lot of things to say, and I guess we're two of them as well. So I think we should call what is the pronounced situation that's B.S. and what is not B.S.. I think that's a good way to end. So I'll start with one thing that I think is a little bit of B.S., which is what I'm calling the the utopic dystopic binary, meaning it's either all awesome or, it's all the matrix and it's all AI robot, and they're going to destroy humanity, right?

00:43:39:22 - 00:44:05:21
Speaker 3
So my feeling about people who have prognosticate about our industry over the years, as in the press releases that all agencies are going down, there's never going to be any, you know, stockbrokers again. You know, I've heard too many of these over the years. What I usually find is that the binary is the zero sum. Thinking is B.S. the truth is usually in the middle, and usually what will happen is we will bring the best and worst of ourselves to it.

00:44:05:21 - 00:44:30:09
Speaker 1
That's right. I mean, you're spot on. I don't think you can go to extreme in either direction. Because that leaves you way open to missing a lot of really interesting, nuanced things. So I agree with your total bias. What's best for me, is, is I think you've heard a lot of people say this, the fear of human obsolescence, by, by AI.

00:44:30:09 - 00:44:58:23
Speaker 1
Now, do I think that there is some very obvious, negative outcomes that are possible with generative AI gone unchecked? Of course, I'd be foolish not to. However, my thinking is, and this has been repeated ad nauseum by a lot, a lot of people who are a lot smarter than I am. The most likely scenario is that people who don't use AI are going to be replaced, just like, with any new technology.

00:44:59:01 - 00:45:28:19
Speaker 1
The the people who learn it, who adapt to it, who integrate it into their day to day experience often accelerate either professionally, socially, whatever. Have you, at a much faster rate than those who don't? Not to say that that it's possible, but I certainly don't believe that human obsolescence is on the horizon. What I do think is that the world that we know, the world that we're comfortable with now, that's probably gone forever, but it will just give rise to a new comfort.

00:45:28:19 - 00:45:33:15
Speaker 1
A new what, you know, a new normal, which we should all be familiar with after Covid. Honestly.

00:45:33:17 - 00:45:57:07
Speaker 3
I think that's a really. Yeah, it's true. We're having to go through a lot of change and embracing it and being open to it. So final advice, learn self educate, experiment. And we're going to keep going on that I know here. And and hopefully I just love learning. So for me it's an exciting time to be leading or an organization, but also still doing the tasks that we love to do.

00:45:57:09 - 00:46:06:19
Speaker 3
So Kyle, thank you. And we really appreciate those who tuned in. This is building brand gravity and we will see you back for our next set of episodes in 2024.

00:46:06:21 - 00:46:08:16
Speaker 1
Right on for a great year guys.

00:46:08:18 - 00:46:37:17
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 GTS 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.

00:46:37:22 - 00:46:49:07
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.

 

00:00:00:09 - 00:00:22:21
Speaker 3
Hello and welcome to Building Brand Gravity. This is an green. I'm a principal and managing director at Sheerness Business Communications. And for this episode, I am delighted to be interviewing a friend and colleague, Luke Lambert, who is the CEO, president and CEO of CDNs currently and will soon be retiring. So Luke, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us today.

00:00:23:00 - 00:00:29:18
Speaker 1
Thanks. And it's great to be talking to the soon to be CEO at North.

00:00:29:19 - 00:00:53:17
Speaker 3
That's right. We're going to do a little trading places here. We knew this year was going to go fast and it's coming upon us. So it just seemed like a wonderful opportunity to get a chance to reflect on your years in the industry, not just to be announced, but as a leader within marketing communications as a whole. So I guess the one thing I'd start with is where I start with a lot of interview us, which is tell us about, you know, the years that you've been president and CEO.

00:00:53:17 - 00:00:57:06
Speaker 3
Achaeans. How long has it been now that you've been in the CEO role in particular?

00:00:57:11 - 00:01:04:03
Speaker 1
I've been in the CEO role 11 years now, and, at guess for 27.

00:01:04:05 - 00:01:22:16
Speaker 3
Yeah. That's amazing. That's amazing. So as you come to this end of the chapter of your agency leadership, it's always interesting to know how people became a leader in the first place. So how did to start to move into organizational leadership within an agency, in addition to the client work that you were doing for so many years?

00:01:22:18 - 00:01:46:15
Speaker 1
Yeah. Great question. I think it all started. I was just really in a fortunate position to realize and experience leadership responsibilities early in my career, really on the agency side, it was in the in those first couple of years, and that was really for a couple of reasons. One is it all starts with client service. I had some pretty strong client relationships and a lot of strong support from my clients.

00:01:46:15 - 00:02:16:18
Speaker 1
And then, you know, opportunities just present themselves and and you find yourself able to jump in to fill in a leadership position or a gap when those opportunities open up. So it's a great question because I don't think there's it's not a one size fits all answer. Those those early moments for me, when I reflect on it or really kind of define my desire to look for and aspire to leadership roles throughout my career outside of the agency world, too.

00:02:16:18 - 00:02:43:09
Speaker 1
And, and, and I think, you know, I could ask you the same question. I don't think you or I had a roadmap on how to become a president or CEO of an organization. I just think it happens naturally over time, over a long time with really strong, you know, internal support and external support. It could be your peers, your your colleagues, your clients, people who encourage you, you know, show trust in you and, and count on you.

00:02:43:09 - 00:02:49:04
Speaker 1
And I think that's when, you know, you know, leadership's for you. And that's where a lot of confidence is gained.

00:02:49:04 - 00:03:06:08
Speaker 3
I think it is interesting how I think when I was younger, I looked at those in leadership positions and figured that they had planned to be there, that that was some, you know, and some certainly that's the case for many people. I joke that I'm more of an accidental CEO because it's just something I allow it to evolve over time.

00:03:06:08 - 00:03:10:15
Speaker 3
But you're right. You have opportunities and you keep taking them and you get excited about it.

00:03:10:15 - 00:03:11:11
Speaker 1
Yes.

00:03:11:13 - 00:03:28:16
Speaker 3
You get excited about as hard as it can be. You get excited about what it means to work with people in that way. I think what's funny is when you start to do something right, you don't have the benefit of hindsight, which you have later. I used to joke with folks that sometimes it's like looking through a piece of Swiss cheese.

00:03:28:16 - 00:03:47:00
Speaker 3
You can see a hole and a hole, but you cannot see the big picture. So if you think about that stage of your life when you were starting to take on more organizational leadership, wherever in your trajectory you you want to reflect on, what do you know now that you wish you had understood better earlier?

00:03:47:02 - 00:04:08:08
Speaker 1
Yeah. You know, maybe not a typical response, and I would think, but I think probably the biggest learning for me over time that I wish I knew earlier on when I first became a leader is just how close my connection needed to be with the financial discipline within the organization. Let's face it, we started out as communicators, right?

00:04:08:08 - 00:04:39:07
Speaker 1
I was a PR journalism major, so it's not something you'd think about necessarily when you first become a leader. But that link is so critical to your success early on as a leader. But of course, it naturally increases quite a bit in importance over time. And, you know, I know you feel the same way. And I have just been so fortunate to have been aligned with, you know, wonderful CFOs and CEOs who provide me, you know, with data and trends and counsel.

00:04:39:07 - 00:04:55:13
Speaker 1
And I think more important than all of that, honestly, is, is perspective, to critical decision making. So I know you probably feel the same way. And I think we're working harder than ever to to help young leaders understand the business of, we call it the business of gaffes.

00:04:55:15 - 00:05:20:08
Speaker 3
Yeah. There's so many things you bring to mind. I know over the years I've worked with many growing leaders and those who came out more of a humanities or communications or marketing track. There's sometimes a self narrative that comes out that can be quite defeating, which is, well, we don't do math. We don't know the finances. And it's kind of like, well, you're leading a very large account, therefore you do do math and you will do math.

00:05:20:08 - 00:05:45:13
Speaker 3
And it was it was almost more of a let's step back and understand the story we're telling about ourselves to ourselves, and that we have to own our expertise more. We don't have to come up having a CPA, you know, like our colleague, our CFO South or or others, but we have to own that. And I remember my father very early in my career, encouraging me to take a class with the American Management Association called finance for Non Financial Professionals.

00:05:45:14 - 00:06:04:12
Speaker 3
Now, interestingly, that was so early in my career, it was a little too early, so it was hard for me to absorb all of those concepts at that time. But it did give me a foundation and also it made me recognize I have a responsibility, like you said, to really engage in that and to own it and to say, you know, we don't have to be as a CEO, as a president.

00:06:04:12 - 00:06:06:15
Speaker 3
You don't have to be everything to all people, right?

00:06:06:20 - 00:06:08:02
Speaker 1
Leadership is a team sport.

00:06:08:06 - 00:06:31:02
Speaker 3
It sure is. I mean, talking about a team sport, this is a really complex industry. There's so many pieces that are both unique and challenging, but also important in terms of that agency leadership for younger, aspiring agency leaders trying to learn how to run this kind of business or even understand how it operates so they feel more a part of it day to day versus things happening to them.

00:06:31:02 - 00:06:39:19
Speaker 3
They're more of an agent in it. What are some of those aspects of agency business or running an agency that you think are really important for them to reflect on?

00:06:39:21 - 00:07:13:08
Speaker 1
Yeah. You know, I think most of our aspiring and young leaders are feeling this today. But I know one thing we've all learned is that change in this industry came pretty fast over the past ten years. I'm not making it sound like it was just in the past. You know, this has been happening for a while, and the whole tenure of this industry, that's pretty quick pace when you look at the full integration, you know, in our industry, beyond PR, to include everything in that we're living today, data analytics, digital marketing, creative media.

00:07:13:10 - 00:07:36:06
Speaker 1
And then and you know, way better than me because I've seen you tackle this topic. I you know, what are the opportunities, short term opportunities as part of the long term implications of AI and all those things, managing that change at the speed at which we're doing it is complicated. So I think to your question, you know, what's my take away for aspiring leaders?

00:07:36:08 - 00:08:00:04
Speaker 1
I think we have a lot of leaders that are forward looking, and that's wonderful. But I think forward looking leaders also really need to understand. And I can say this based on my own experience and my own risks and mistakes made, is to, yes, plan and build for the future. It's critical, but never lose sight of what your clients want from you today.

00:08:00:05 - 00:08:20:02
Speaker 1
So if you swing too far in one direction in this business, it can be really easy to lose focus on what's our number one priority and the agency? Well, it's clients, so you can lose focus on servicing their needs. It's important to do both service and needs and innovate at the same time. Really?

00:08:20:07 - 00:08:46:21
Speaker 3
Yeah. It's such an interesting dynamic tension. We've been talking about it here. Even from a business perspective. You need to keep investing in innovation, but you also need to be minding the bottom line. And I think that there's an analog to what you said there, which is you need to push forward and keep bringing fresh ideas and fresh thinking and say, this is where the ball could go, or the puck and the old, you know, adage, but also be really mindful of the bottom line for clients today.

00:08:46:23 - 00:09:04:02
Speaker 3
And I think that inside the agency and outside the agency, we have to be thinking that way. I mean, speaking of change, right? You're right. You're completely right. I joke, you know, with some long time colleagues and leaders throughout the industry, that's like, is this the craziest time to run an agency? Or was it, you know, five years ago?

00:09:04:02 - 00:09:32:21
Speaker 3
Is that tomorrow? I mean, the world as a whole, the geopolitical issues, you know, change in technology, people management post pandemic. It's just like the list goes on and on and on. So let's roll the clock back to when we started our career. I started and full disclosure in 92 as an intern 93. So I'm 30 years. I love to hear first, before we talk about notable changes like situate us and like when you started working in comms, you came out of college.

00:09:32:21 - 00:09:34:15
Speaker 3
What year was it? Where were you working?

00:09:34:18 - 00:09:58:11
Speaker 1
Yeah, it was it was 1986. And and I joined a firm a little smaller than they are now. Guess. And, that was a lot of people don't know that I was with jeans for just a couple of years and was, you know, gained some wonderful agency experience and, and then left and I was gone for about nine years and I went to the corporate side.

00:09:58:13 - 00:10:27:12
Speaker 1
I worked in the technology industry and stayed in public relations, but also morphed into an advertising role as well, and then went to the consulting business as well to consulting so that, at a multi-regional accounting and consulting firm. And so I've seen change happen in, in multiple industries, whether it be consolidation or technology. And it's been, the breadth of experience I'm very thankful for.

00:10:27:13 - 00:10:58:18
Speaker 3
That's amazing. And I think I've been agency the whole time. I remember Kim Sample of the PR Council once calling herself an agency animal. So I guess that strikes me too. So I think it's wonderful that you had a view on both sides of the aisle, so to speak. So when you think about this arc of change and there's so many to speak of, what are some of the changes in our field specifically, let's say integrated marketing communications, and all of it spokes off the hub of the wheel that have been most striking to you as you look back.

00:10:58:18 - 00:11:30:19
Speaker 1
Yeah, that you hit on some of it and and it's the whole enchilada, I think. And because I'm going to repeat a little bit what you just said, it's that pace of change when you look at the impact of technology, data and innovation in our industry. That's been incredible to watch. But in recent years, as you mentioned, there's, you know, whether it be larger environmental, social, geopolitical, trends around the world to me, I don't know, maybe I'm just more in a reflective mood these days, but the world seems smaller than ever.

00:11:30:19 - 00:12:08:01
Speaker 1
And this year in particular, so I know I can safely say, because we talk about this in our industry, that our clients, CEOs and and CEOs have more on their plates than ever. And you put that against the backdrop of, you know, distrust in government distrust and media misinformation in general. I feel like the stakes are higher. The pressure on our clients is is is greater than ever to find their voice, to find balance, to find balance internally and externally so that they can maintain trust with, you know, obviously their customers, but also their employees.

00:12:08:03 - 00:12:33:01
Speaker 1
So this is not a new dynamic. It's you and I talked about this. The industry is probably the most significant dynamic. We've been talking about as industry leaders for some time now. But it's just gets more and more complicated. I think about just the past year, you know, now businesses, you know, have to face criticism. They're on the receiving end of it from our own political parties, both on, on the right and the left.

00:12:33:03 - 00:12:38:01
Speaker 1
And just in case we needed more pressure as business leaders, it's pretty fascinating.

00:12:38:03 - 00:13:08:22
Speaker 3
Yeah, it is. And it does feel there's always been volatility, uncertainty. I joke that sometimes professional services a little bit like whack a mole because it's very it's a very few times that the models are all under the under. There are popping up popping up. You know you don't have spaces very often. But for our clients and wells ourselves, there do seem to be a broader portfolio of things that can pop up out of the blue and really change the game in many ways, and force you to truly reevaluate and make some hard pivots, or make our clients make some hard pivots.

00:13:08:22 - 00:13:27:13
Speaker 3
So I would agree with you. You know, it's hard again, without distance to look back and say, yes, that is different, but it does feel more intense. And it does feel like every day, you know, who knows what may come. Be ready. And that resilience is critical on the other side of the coin, over the arc of both of our careers.

00:13:27:13 - 00:13:42:13
Speaker 3
I know there's things that feel very similar, that there's a consistent thread from the beginning to now. What what are some of those threads for you that as much as our industry and the business world and the world have changed things that feel very consistent to you and what we do?

00:13:42:15 - 00:14:06:08
Speaker 1
Yeah. Something else I've been reflecting on a lot. I was in Chicago last week and asked this question, and it's really an easier question. I think, in, in that that's client service, the client service business itself. The formula for success, I think is remarkably similar from when I started in 1986. It's so simple that I don't even think we talk about it very often.

00:14:06:12 - 00:14:29:11
Speaker 1
And that's just to build trust, to build trust with your employees and build trust with your clients and then and deliver results and deliver value, add value as a strategic partner. That always has been, and I think always will be the key to lasting success. So now getting there today because of everything we've talked about is more complicated.

00:14:29:13 - 00:14:50:20
Speaker 1
But that's not really a complaint because when you when you step back and look at this, honestly, we should be pretty happy that today compared to 1986, look at the huge arsenal of integrated and digital marketing tools at our disposal so that we can deliver, you know, way more targeted, efficient, effective campaigns than ever before. I think you do.

00:14:50:20 - 00:14:51:11
Speaker 1
Great.

00:14:51:13 - 00:15:15:17
Speaker 3
Oh, 100%. And that question of what is client service excellence? How do we manifest it today? And you know that excellence, it's really the experience we're creating for everyone, not just our clients, but our people. For anyone who visits us, how we bring our very best work, how we push ourselves. Part of that is how we cultivate longtime team members and all their knowledge, but also welcoming new folks and their energy.

00:15:15:17 - 00:15:39:16
Speaker 3
And it's that beautiful cycle, you know, that for generations in our agency workforce right now, which is which is pretty amazing. And that's actually a good pivot. The idea of trust and how that's the foundation of everything to that question of our most precious asset, which is our own people and the culture that we built around them. I think that is we would all agree, the heart of any entity like ours.

00:15:39:16 - 00:15:58:19
Speaker 3
You know, if our world is the culture and the people who come together. So culture is one of those big terms, often said, but often not well defined. You know, people talk about it as if they know what they're talking about. And, you know, sometimes I say, what is a good culture? Everything all at once, like the movie.

00:15:58:20 - 00:16:19:04
Speaker 3
Right? But to you, if you think about the component parts of culture at an agency like she and ask that really cares about our people. Yeah, not to say others don't, but really care and want each day to ask ourselves how can we be the best we can be for our clients and our people? What are some of the component parts of culture for you?

00:16:19:06 - 00:16:43:02
Speaker 1
Great question. I think first, I'd say our midsize as an agency has always been an advantage, frankly, in building, a caring and collaborative culture. It's meant so much to me. I know how much it means to you. You live and breathe it every day. But the key components. Good point. I think it starts with important values. Like building trust.

00:16:43:04 - 00:17:18:14
Speaker 1
For us, embracing inclusion, winning together, having fun while you're doing all that. That is what creates a culture. And I think that help that has helped define our culture and it over the past six months since I've announced my departure, I've, I've been very fortunate to hear from former colleagues, existing colleagues about our caring culture and, and how much it's had an impact on, current employees, but more importantly, former colleagues who have gone on to other careers and leadership positions.

00:17:18:14 - 00:17:39:06
Speaker 1
And they remark how how much that's had our culture has had a lasting impact on them. So I think it's really important to pay attention to culture shifts. It changes. It's not something you can just say our culture is caring. It's something that you need to have checks and balances on, really an annual basis. And you've opened my eyes to that.

00:17:39:06 - 00:17:54:06
Speaker 1
And, you and our, our chief people, officer K, through what's more than, more than others in terms of just how important it is, you can build a culture over time, but you can hurt it in a short period of time if you don't pay attention to it.

00:17:54:08 - 00:18:15:10
Speaker 3
Yeah. It's such a good point. You know, this question of trust again, maybe there's financial analogy of putting money in the bank and you incrementally save and incrementally save and you build up that equity and capital. I mean, we often talk about brand equity. This is a common metaphor in this area. Trust is a currency. I think these are very apt metaphors.

00:18:15:12 - 00:18:36:18
Speaker 3
But you can cash it out real fast, you know, and and it's an interesting thing too, because I think this is beyond our industry just to this issue of management and employees or management versus employees, which is often it seems like it's pitted against each other. But, you know, I think those of us in organizational leadership, it just has to be table stakes that many employees look at.

00:18:36:18 - 00:18:53:22
Speaker 3
Management is trust but verify. You need to build up that equity. But you have to know, too, that there's going to be a skepticism, even in the best culture. And I think that, you know, one of my themes this year is hold less tightly, like be less invested in certain things. And I feel like we don't have to hold tightly to this thing of, well, why don't you trust me?

00:18:53:22 - 00:19:01:20
Speaker 3
You don't. You know what we're doing. It's like more like, will it trust but verify and let us keep proving it to every day. And it's it's not easy, but I think it's important. You know.

00:19:02:00 - 00:19:04:07
Speaker 1
You've helped me on that with that outlook.

00:19:04:13 - 00:19:05:21
Speaker 3
Well. And vice versa.

00:19:06:02 - 00:19:06:15
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:19:06:17 - 00:19:34:04
Speaker 3
Vice versa. Yeah. I mean this is something really remarkable about when someone reaches a milestone where they're going to retire or change, turn a page. That's where you really start to feel the energy that they've built up around them over the years. And you know, I won't embarrass you too much. I'll go on to other questions, but the kind of energy and warmth around your leadership, there's that old saying of people, forget what you say and what you do, but they don't forget how you made them feel.

00:19:34:06 - 00:19:58:18
Speaker 3
And I think that's a very apt quote with you, Luke, because one of the things that can be so hard with leaders is, feeling like you're distant from them or you can't connect with them. And you really, I think, made the culture here the fact that all of our leaders are here to be connected with, you know, is that important to you personally to to be open and approachable and to have people to be able to interact with you just as a person?

00:19:58:21 - 00:20:20:19
Speaker 1
Oh, it is 100%, but it's part of who I am. It's, just connecting with people on an individual level and, and, showing you care, showing them you're in the trenches with them. Because we all have been and been through many moments over the course of our career where you are in the trenches and it's all hands on deck.

00:20:20:19 - 00:20:36:08
Speaker 1
And I think that that attitude should be applied throughout your entire career. And I think the biggest compliment I've always, always gotten is, you know, you'd never ask anybody to do something that you wouldn't do yourself or with them.

00:20:36:13 - 00:21:05:01
Speaker 3
Could not agree more. And isn't that the heart of client service, too? You know, it's it's really a mirror. It reflects back and forth. So I talked about the generations. I find it very funny in society, in the business world, there's always this sort of like generation, this generation that you're like this, you're like that. You know, I experienced that coming into Burson-Marsteller in the early 90s, where everyone was trying to dissect generation X, and they're slackers and they don't seem to be interested.

00:21:05:01 - 00:21:25:20
Speaker 3
I'm like, I don't know. All my friends and I are working 1000 hours trying to survive in New York, but we've got boomers, we've got Gen Xers, we've got millennials, we've got Gen ers. Soon we'll have another cohort coming up. There's all this talk about the difference between and some of it is age and life stage. But what do you see as consistent or the through lines of our teams across generations.

00:21:25:20 - 00:21:31:12
Speaker 3
What feels consistent to you in terms of how everyone is showing up for the work we do.

00:21:31:14 - 00:21:55:21
Speaker 1
In Brian, I love your observation on the generations, and I know I think we subscribe to the same line of thinking here, because I've never been a fan of generational labels. I think they've been a lot of fun over the course of my career to talk about you, to see them and segmentation presentations from that standpoint. But the whole premise behind it is to make an assumption about a really, really large group of people.

00:21:55:23 - 00:22:22:00
Speaker 1
And and yet, as you just asked me a minute ago, the premise that I subscribe to as a leader and as a person is to not do that, rather find out what what makes individuals tick, you know, what experiences have shaped their lives and, and more than anything, gain their respect, by building relationships, especially without barriers to, you know, your role or title.

00:22:22:02 - 00:22:49:17
Speaker 1
And, I think when you approach leadership that way with employees, they're all in with you. And it's amazing how hard people work that join gangs. I mean, they are all in. And this year in particular, this has been a year of, you know, all kinds of twists and turns and ups and downs. And our people have been all in from day one helping us address challenges, tackle their client work with pride, looking to win together.

00:22:49:21 - 00:22:52:05
Speaker 1
It's just amazing to me to watch.

00:22:52:08 - 00:23:14:02
Speaker 3
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. No, and we'll miss you being a part of it. This actually, you're talking about all the individuals that make up this company and all their bringing of themselves. And I think that it's really important we talk about something that's been a true passion of yours and not just optics, you know, not just surface, but really much deeper.

00:23:14:04 - 00:23:38:11
Speaker 3
We've had a chance to talk about this a lot, which is what it means to really engage in these words diversity and inclusion and equity and belonging in a corporate setting as part of a larger society that has structures and systems in place that have not been very examined over the years, that really make it a very difficult, very negative experience for many of the people in our society.

00:23:38:11 - 00:24:01:14
Speaker 3
And how we come to terms with that. And obviously there's a lot of issues and attitudes and politics around this. But you know what I'd love to understand, as you've put a lot of personal time and also capital like personal capital, business capital and financial capital of the company into these efforts. What do DNI efforts mean to you and an agency context like ours?

00:24:01:16 - 00:24:23:22
Speaker 1
Well, it's a really good question. You know, I've always started and you know this. And from day one, I can remember, you know, what our when our our initiatives started in 2015, I've always started with, with the business premise that and this is, this is what it means to me. I mean, we are running a business and I've never I never lose sight of that.

00:24:23:23 - 00:24:48:19
Speaker 1
I'm an agency or and leader of an organization doesn't matter what kind of organization. So if you're going to embark on something like a DNI initiative, you have to clearly state to your organization that we're doing this because we want to create a better, you know, more understanding, more inclusive culture at the organization and why you get right to the why.

00:24:48:19 - 00:25:13:00
Speaker 1
And because diversity of thought, diversity of experience is of our workforce. What does it do? It makes us more creative and makes us more competitive. And if if we are, we're probably going to win more as a result. And I think for me, and this is where I take so much of it personally. Two, it will help us better understand the world around us, which we could all use a helping hand that right now.

00:25:13:02 - 00:25:21:17
Speaker 1
So it's when you sum it up in a from a business premise, it's pretty powerful and it's hard to not sign up for that.

00:25:21:19 - 00:25:50:15
Speaker 3
I think that's so important to reroute it and the why and what it does. You know, I talk about the business as a tapestry, and it's not like there's a thread over here that's and I it's really how it weaves into everything, makes us better businesspeople, makes us better managers, makes us more trusting, lets us fly, takes friction out of the system, improves our communities, gives new opportunity, fires us up, gets us out of our silos, of our own experience.

00:25:50:17 - 00:26:08:21
Speaker 3
But I think you're right, especially in these days where there's pressure, like you said, outside pressure on organizations that's more politically driven. Or maybe I think it's even more mercenary of people, you know, trying to position themselves. It can be hard for folks that way to, to stay connect it to it. And I think that y really helps.

00:26:08:21 - 00:26:23:04
Speaker 3
But in terms of, your insights. So as we've worked to sort of a move this long and manifested and, and keep making progress, what are some of the insights you've taken away from that work, both the hard things and the things that we've celebrated?

00:26:23:10 - 00:26:50:05
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think well, the first insight was hit the business premise right away. And we just we just talked about that. So I won't I won't repeat that. But yeah, I think the thing we learned early on, I've been really blessed to have some amazing, people to lean on in our industry. Cheryl Battles, Rochelle Ford, more recently, Carmella Glover, Joanne and and and Kate are chief people.

00:26:50:05 - 00:27:15:23
Speaker 1
Officer. And I remember Rochelle telling me you need to start by truly understood before you embark on initiative around diversity, equity, inclusion, start by understanding your current culture. Because if you don't do that homework, it's going to be impossible to create a welcoming and productive place where open that dialog about DNI. Resonates from from within the organization.

00:27:15:23 - 00:27:41:02
Speaker 1
And that's just so critical. And then I'd say the other thing is you have your ups and downs. And so when progress is not going the way you want, I think it's important to, much like we do, client satisfaction and performance evaluations, do an annual employee engagement survey so that you can each year understand how you're doing in this area.

00:27:41:04 - 00:27:49:04
Speaker 1
Oh, from a culture standpoint, but from a DNI perspective as well. So those are just two insights that come to mind. First and foremost.

00:27:49:06 - 00:28:05:23
Speaker 3
Oh, I love those. You know, I would add to it representation really does matter. So the numbers really do matter. And you can't lose sight of those. But you have to go hand in hand with the inclusion piece of what does it mean to create a space that people want to stay and feel seen? And how do you build trust?

00:28:05:23 - 00:28:32:06
Speaker 3
And again, I strongly feel that means we just become better managers and better at people integration overall, right? No matter what your intersections of identity are. But yes, I'm excited will be embarking on a real push around inclusive leadership driven by Marshal Andy Williams. As you know, our VP of DNI and Kate, through with our partner and head of Air and our task force has been involved in it.

00:28:32:06 - 00:28:49:17
Speaker 3
And I just I think it's going to build on so much of what you've envisioned for this. Luke and, and trying to help us have those breakthroughs where we'd have staff say, oh, well, I did these great trainings on implicit bias, but how do I actually bring this into my life? Well, inclusive leadership. I think that this program is going to help.

00:28:49:17 - 00:28:53:17
Speaker 3
So we will keep you informed as the years go by.

00:28:53:17 - 00:29:17:12
Speaker 1
Yeah, I can't wait, I can't wait. And and kudos to you. And I think about when we started this effort in 2015 and we made some headway. And I was so proud of that. And then was really learned early on that that's low hanging fruit. But today as I lead the organization, we're in such a fortunate position, you know, with a seven pillar agency task force.

00:29:17:12 - 00:29:40:14
Speaker 1
We are so much more engaged across the organization and that is what matters. That's what really counts. And I think it's the best practices that you're putting into place, new innovation that you're putting into place. You know, I think because of that engagement stall like that, that happens. And we hear a lot about and or I despise the word fatigue.

00:29:40:20 - 00:30:05:20
Speaker 1
Yeah. It just can't happen. And the beauty of the program that we've developed and that you drive is that if you fall short on a metric, there's other metrics you can celebrate. And in other words, you're always moving the ball forward and you have to be moving forward. We always say you have to have your foot on the gas, but it's really you have to have multiple initiatives moving forward to measure success.

00:30:05:22 - 00:30:11:11
Speaker 3
Now, I so agree, and you can't be disheartened, but you have to hold yourself accountable and say, okay, so what do we do here?

00:30:11:17 - 00:30:12:05
Speaker 1
Right.

00:30:12:07 - 00:30:39:07
Speaker 3
So I hate to acknowledge it, but you're departing too soon. But I just really have so enjoyed our five years of working as colleagues and the many years I knew you before that and would run up to you at the PR Council meetings and say hi. So what are some pieces of advice or counsel you want to leave the firm with and, and the industry as a whole, as, as you move on to whatever the next exciting thing you're going to be doing.

00:30:39:12 - 00:31:06:16
Speaker 1
Well, thanks. And, you you've been too kind this year. But, you know, there's I think you and I talked a lot about this over the last six months. But to my colleagues, I think there's a reminder that that this leadership transition, me leaving presents a really natural and wonderful opportunity, at the agency, to fuel new energy, to fuel new thinking, provide more leadership opportunities throughout the organization.

00:31:06:18 - 00:31:36:16
Speaker 1
And I think the team, the whole team needs to capitalize on it so that it can benefit all employees. It can create and store growth. And I think that's what this is all about. And I think this is something I know you're going to agree with this. It's sometimes lost in industry. And I want to say just our industry, but industry in general where executive turnover often feels really abrupt and where perhaps communications is less focused on and immediate opportunities that that the change provides.

00:31:36:16 - 00:32:08:04
Speaker 1
And I think we've got a great opportunity to focus on, those things and what new things will, will stir. And then for the industry to what an amazing industry, you know, how do you how do you impart words of wisdom to some of the most sophisticated and collaborative minds, really, in any in any industry? I know I'm going to continue to lean on my friends at page, for instance, because they provided such a deep reservoir for me of knowledge, ideas, and friendships.

00:32:08:06 - 00:32:39:18
Speaker 1
But I guess if I if I had to humbly give some advice, I'd say from a 10,000ft view, I'd say remind all my colleagues to continue to rise above the divide and the conflict that defines you, to really so much narrative out there today. And remember that each of us are in really unique positions and industry to listen to listen to our clients, to help hear the disparate voices that are out there and help opinions come together to find common ground.

00:32:39:20 - 00:33:10:23
Speaker 1
And I think that's pretty lofty, right? But I don't think we should underestimate the power of that. And just yesterday I saw something a colleague, you know, and I've known for many, many years. Feldman and because it seems like such a tall order, what I just said. Right. But I think about the effort that he's undertaking right now, which he he's called the dialog project, which is, you know, pretty simple purpose is to explore what role business can play to reduce polarization in our country today.

00:33:11:00 - 00:33:29:06
Speaker 1
And Bob Bob says this, and I know we all agree that today this is a pretty acute issue and that where every issue that arises in the news becomes a third rail issue, and that doesn't always have to be the case. But that's that's where we are today. And I didn't know this. I'm probably a little behind the ball on this one.

00:33:29:06 - 00:33:55:11
Speaker 1
But he's taken this, the dialog project to the future school of business at Duke and where students, business students, future business leaders are going to have the opportunity to discuss diverse viewpoints, business issues, and so that so they learn to be able to have dialog where where divide doesn't have to turn into third rail issues. And I think that just underscores that.

00:33:55:12 - 00:34:00:04
Speaker 1
What I'm talking about, about how much promise there is in our industry and what our leaders can do.

00:34:00:05 - 00:34:26:19
Speaker 3
That's amazing. And I, I couldn't agree more. I'd posted on LinkedIn yesterday about another agency leader who had just wanted to send me a book, like an inspirational thing that she felt I would enjoy, and I was just reflecting on the generosity of leaders in our sector and not just agency folks, but also the corporate side too. But you certainly exemplify that generosity of leadership, Luke, especially this whole year where you and I, I've kind of been doing the seesaw, you know, as you get ready to retire.

00:34:26:21 - 00:34:37:23
Speaker 3
So I just want to thank you and thank you for taking the time to talk to me today. I hope folks inside our agency, an Outsider Agency, finds it interesting. And I will certainly be staying in touch with you over time.

00:34:38:01 - 00:34:41:11
Speaker 1
I look forward to it. Thanks. And and I'm glad we got to do this.

00:34:41:15 - 00:34:42:19
Speaker 3
All right. Thank you Luke.

00:34:43:00 - 00:34:44:16
Speaker 1
Thank you.

00:34:44:18 - 00:35:13:16
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 us. 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.

00:35:13:21 - 00:35:25:07
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.

 

00:00:01:07 - 00:00:21:08
Speaker 2
Welcome to another episode of Building Brand Gravity. I'm Kyle Turner, digital growth and analytics director here at Genius Business Communications and I'm very, very excited to warmly welcome the marketing insights and Innovation Manager for Syngenta US. Rosalyn Moore, who spent about 20 years at Syngenta, as well as I know.

00:00:21:08 - 00:00:25:06
Speaker 3
I must have started when I was a baby.

00:00:25:08 - 00:00:52:11
Speaker 2
A Rosalind. You know, you and I have had, conversations. We've partnered, a few times in the past. You've obviously partnered with the agency, to nest for a while. I wanted to talk to you, though, about some things that have been top of mind for me over the last several months, really. And really, the, the concept of digital, as a, as a space as a, as a marketing tool.

00:00:52:12 - 00:01:24:19
Speaker 2
I've been thinking myself about what, you know, digital marketing means to kind of what digital is like. Doesn't even make sense to refer to it as like, a separate practice. You've been working in digital now, especially at Syngenta, for pretty much your entire time there. And I think that what has been of interest to me is specifically what digital transformation, what digital marketing might mean for an agriculture company, one that is probably viewed as fairly austere.

00:01:24:21 - 00:01:46:11
Speaker 2
You know, obviously agriculture runs through the fabric of everything that kind of happens in this country. We have a pretty big agriculture industry here. But, you know, digital marketing is still fairly new, I think for the entire space. And not only do I kind of want to get your insight about that, but kind of get your insight about, like, kind of growing up in this industry.

00:01:46:12 - 00:02:08:15
Speaker 2
You know, you started for those who don't know. Roger storey started as, electrical engineer, which is nuts to me. And then. Right, right. And then they kind of found yourself in digital marketing. So I think first things first, before we kind of get into the meat of this conversation, I want to give you a chance to kind of introduce yourself to our audience and kind of let them know what you're how your story started.

00:02:08:15 - 00:02:10:23
Speaker 2
And how you found yourself where you are now.

00:02:11:00 - 00:02:38:14
Speaker 3
Yeah. So again, like you said, my name is Rosalyn Moore, and I like where you started it, how you took it back to my undergrad. Electrical engineering is where I got my start. And it's a funny story because actually, it's the same time I was introduced to the ad space. And that's because my now husband, then high school sweetheart actually was going to college.

00:02:38:16 - 00:02:59:18
Speaker 3
His major was agricultural business. And I got to tell you, as soon as he told me that was his major, I don't know if people remember our old shows like little House on the Prairie. Of course. But it was one of these shows where you saw farmers struggling to just make it in and all of the uncertainties in their world.

00:02:59:18 - 00:03:28:04
Speaker 3
And, like the likelihood that we are getting married has just decreased. And I heard what he, what he was trying to do. And so it's funny. Fast forward. Yes, I started off in rhetoric engineering, but he was already working for one of Syngenta legacy companies. And when the mergers happened, we found ourselves in Greensboro, North Carolina, and I went back to school for a marketing degree.

00:03:28:04 - 00:03:54:12
Speaker 3
Fast forward some more, and I didn't necessarily choose the egg industry. I chose Syngenta. I chose Syngenta as an awesome company. I knew a lot about the company. Obviously my husband was working there as well. I came in through procurement, ended up getting into market research, which is where I really fell in love with not just the industry, but the people in the industry.

00:03:54:12 - 00:04:10:01
Speaker 3
And I got the understanding that exactly what you said earlier is digital, even the right term to use. I would sit in meetings and every time you hear something like at that time we would say internet marketing or, you know, the.

00:04:10:03 - 00:04:14:10
Speaker 2
Oh, yeah, I remember the crazy ways we were referring to it back then.

00:04:14:12 - 00:04:36:10
Speaker 3
Yeah. Internet marketing manager. But when you hear digital and I'm sitting in a meeting, it's like I always pop up like, okay, it's my turn to talk. And it's not at all when you're talking about the ad industry, it's almost this misnomer that the industry is so behind. Right? There's no technological advances. And that couldn't be further from the truth.

00:04:36:12 - 00:05:07:04
Speaker 3
From a marketing perspective, you might see some differences based on the target audience you're trying to reach. Sure, you look at the level of technology and innovation that is happening in this space. It's actually quite amazing. And so where I had this thought of, you know, little House on the Prairie and someone out there, you know, with the animal pool in the, you know, pool, pool and something behind to, to, really get out there and clean the fields.

00:05:07:06 - 00:05:44:20
Speaker 3
That's, that's not where we are anymore. And so as you watch the advancements, and all that technological advancement around, it's offered more opportunity for us from a marketing perspective, for digital marketers to get in front of the growers, to get in front of the farmer. So depending on who you're targeting in the ag industry, if you're going from business to business and that other business is the grower, the farmer, their lives have changed tremendously because of all the technology and the advancement in this space.

00:05:44:20 - 00:06:08:06
Speaker 3
And so they're sitting in equipment now that they might have more screens. And you have, you know, in your car. So if you can relate it to something like a, the cars that we have today thinking about people in, different industries, everybody can relate to having a car. And you look at, you know, years ago in the car, you know, you might have had the radio or even push buttons that make it go to different station.

00:06:08:06 - 00:06:09:16
Speaker 3
You know, you look now.

00:06:09:16 - 00:06:10:18
Speaker 2
Push buttons,

00:06:10:20 - 00:06:34:05
Speaker 3
That might pre-date you. But you, you look now, and that's for the radio. Not to start the car. Right. But you look. You look now. And, I mean, you've got backup cameras. You got cameras in the front. You've got things that can protect you from going into one lane or the other lane. This same type of advancements been happening in the ad industry.

00:06:34:05 - 00:06:54:05
Speaker 3
And so now, you know, when you know, they're out in the field and they're in their their equipment before that meant you can't talk to them. In my market research days, it's like, well, it's it's harvest time. You know, we we're not going to be able to have any interviews. Well, now it's like, oh, know that's another screen the mobile phones create.

00:06:54:08 - 00:07:26:16
Speaker 3
So much opportunity for us to still then be able to reach them. So again, when you talk about digital marketing in digital, you have to be very specific about what we're talking about when you are in the ad industry. And so yes, typically you wouldn't be doing I mean, I, I look at my kids, I've got teenagers that, you know, every new channel that comes out, you know, when Snapchat came out, it was like, oh, you know, you want snap, you know, or you are just read.

00:07:26:16 - 00:08:05:21
Speaker 3
Now, you know, Twitter's the new Twitter. They do it. They're adopting all those different things at a different rate. Right. But if who I'm trying to reach isn't there, then I don't need to be there either. Right. This isn't what you're doing. And to your point, I mean, as I've moved, through and grew up in this industry, not only have I learned a lot about what's happening around it, but I almost feel like it's my duty to ensure that those of us who have not grown up on a farm do not understand all the industry.

00:08:05:23 - 00:08:35:03
Speaker 3
Get a little bit of a peek to this is an an amazing, innovative space. And at the end of the day, like I said, I didn't choose it, but I've chosen to stay in the industry mainly because I'm excited about the challenge. I mean, we're trying to feed 8 billion people, right? Like that's a huge number, a huge challenge, and everybody can relate to you have to eat.

00:08:35:08 - 00:08:58:09
Speaker 3
So how do we do that knowing that you're going to have less like, how do you do that with less people even, staying in the field, you know, so that challenge has been what I think excites me and keeps me in the industry. But by no means that I say, Agriculture. That's the spot for me, you know, it was.

00:08:58:10 - 00:09:01:02
Speaker 2
That's where.

00:09:01:04 - 00:09:37:01
Speaker 2
So you mentioned something actually kind of interesting that I wanted to to hook on two things really. You noted that people kind of assume certain things about this audience, farmers, growers, retailers, even about how, digitally savvy they may be. And you, you mentioned that that's kind of a little bit of a misnomer. You you've kind of highlighted a few examples of where, growers, at farmers in general are way more connected than they've ever been before.

00:09:37:03 - 00:09:56:15
Speaker 2
I guess, well, taking that into context, like, how would you actually describe both the digital transformation stage that agriculture as an industry is in, while also describing the specific stage that digital marketing for agriculture might be in from your perspective?

00:09:56:19 - 00:10:19:21
Speaker 3
So it's different. And I would say the marketing trail's the other the rest of the advancement. Right? I feel like everything else around the digital transformation in the industry is what's enabling, digital marketers to be able to do more. And so again.

00:10:19:23 - 00:10:25:09
Speaker 2
So, like the marketing is not like the, like the not driving the change, but rather the change within the industry.

00:10:25:09 - 00:10:57:02
Speaker 3
For marketing that, obviously things like the pandemic has helped. I mean, you think about it and and again, it's always going to depend where you sit in the industry. So somebody else could come on the same industry and speak a little bit differently about it based on who your true consumer is. And so for us, if you're talking about the grower or for for us, you know, Syngenta, everybody knows probably that we, we really work through them with our channel in service of the growers.

00:10:57:02 - 00:11:13:13
Speaker 3
So we are marketing a lot to our retailers and empowering them. And so retailers were a little bit different. You got people that might be then sitting behind the desk a little bit and you could get to them, versus when you think about somebody out on the farm, what do you think you've got? You're in a rural area.

00:11:13:16 - 00:11:40:18
Speaker 3
What does that mean? Sometimes your internet connectivity isn't going to be there sometimes. And again, this is where phones have help. But there have been areas that I've, gone in that you found don't really work. Right. And so that that starts to limit what a digital marketer can do to reach, that grower. But at the same time, these are people that all their time is in, in that one space where you get where you don't have connectivity.

00:11:41:00 - 00:12:09:00
Speaker 3
And connectivity has gotten so much better over the years that, I mean, as these things are happening and as you've got the different technological advances around them, that's freed up more time, right, for them to experience other things. So if I take something like this is not controversial, but social media, this was always one of the big things that early on we were pushing to, you know, we gotta have a presence on social media.

00:12:09:02 - 00:12:30:23
Speaker 3
But then the question was, is our audience on social media? Well, they weren't initially on social media, just like I'm sure if I asked you where you're parents on social media when you first got on social media, they weren't you. You got to look at the age gap right there. The average age right now, I think is like 67 or something.

00:12:30:23 - 00:12:43:19
Speaker 3
So in that, in that range, and so you look at what any other 67 year old which by the way, that is not old seasons, not old, but 60s.

00:12:43:21 - 00:12:45:07
Speaker 2
I like the way you put that seasoned.

00:12:45:07 - 00:13:14:05
Speaker 3
Yes. But you look at you look at, what anybody in that age demographic, what are they, what are they doing? Well, that's not you're not marketing to them the same way you're marketing to your 20 year old right out of college, right? They're showing up in different places and spaces. And so again, being able to understand who your audience is and market appropriately.

00:13:14:07 - 00:13:35:10
Speaker 3
I would then go back to that, the question you asked. Again, I'm looking at what's happening around them that's freeing them up to be in some different spaces where today I need to be there because they're there. But other channels, from a digital marketing perspective, I might need to get my toes wet in it because they might be there tomorrow.

00:13:35:15 - 00:14:01:22
Speaker 3
The reason that they are there may not be that they're wanting to be marketed to. It might be yes, they they've now jumped on, you know everybody's know using YouTube because like yeah I want to see, you know, these different videos how tos, how to do things that are needed for my business. On Facebook, they may be there, but it had nothing to do with business.

00:14:01:22 - 00:14:23:22
Speaker 3
It had everything to do with family, right? Where a lot of us had initially gone there. And so as marketers, you're savvy enough to know, oh, they there they are. They're coming. Let me see if I can hit them with, a little bit of information. And how did they receive that, and did they like to receive that in that forum, or was that a missed.

00:14:24:02 - 00:15:06:12
Speaker 3
And sometimes it was too. So, you know, like this isn't there's another medium that's going to allow us to be more effective. So that doesn't mean that, oh, then, you know, we're so far behind. It just means that this is the medium that works. And so instead of being creative and going to a bunch of different digital marketing channels, you might be need to be creative and ensure that that same email that you're doing is now cutting through the clutter of everybody else, because we've made it that innovative, that, you know, in your face, engaging that somebody wants to spend what time they do have in front of the screen looking at your information.

00:15:06:12 - 00:15:39:14
Speaker 3
So again, I still think that what's happening around has helped influence how fast digital marketing can grow. And I would say that in the last few years, I think it's grown probably exponentially. Right. The things that you can do to the point where I, I work with some other people, that touch the industry and other industries and, and I hear them saying, I'm working a lot the same way from a paid media perspective, from a, you know, a little bit different organic.

00:15:39:14 - 00:15:52:18
Speaker 3
Right? But, you know, it's it's using a lot of the same principles and approach that they do in other industries, because at the end of the day, it's all people. It's all people, for sure.

00:15:52:20 - 00:16:23:23
Speaker 2
I've I've always been interested in the challenges that you're talking about because I feel like agriculture as a as a market is a is a really paradigmatic microcosm for what B2B marketing is like in general, especially in the digital space. It's a way more discerning, often a lot smaller group of people that you have to show and prove, usefulness, effectiveness to.

00:16:24:01 - 00:16:46:15
Speaker 2
So when I'm thinking of what digital marketing even looks like for the agriculture sector, I'm thinking of ways that we can effectively change the information or how we distribute the information to people and kind of what we show people. I think for me, I, I've often been curious, having kind of worked with you on some digital marketing strategies before.

00:16:46:17 - 00:17:22:02
Speaker 2
And I know the agency has worked with, Syngenta more broadly on some digital marketing strategies in the past as well. And currently, when when you're looking at that partnership between your agency and kind of the marketplace you're serving to talk to, where do you find like the the biggest obstacles when it comes to implementing some of the more innovative techniques in digital marketing, where you maybe have an opportunity to try something but are not 100% certain about what the effectiveness would look like.

00:17:22:02 - 00:17:28:20
Speaker 2
Like, how are you tracking that? How are you articulating that value? How are you showing that value?

00:17:28:22 - 00:18:05:15
Speaker 3
Yeah, that that's that's it's it's tough. Right? I mean, and it's it's tough period. As marketers, to sometimes show here's that value. You know here's what I did quantifying. You know I the industry like many others is a is very much a relationship industry. And like I like to tell people, when I'm out in and with our commercial units and talking to our reps, those that are directly face to face interfacing with, be it our retailers are or our our farmers when they're doing that.

00:18:05:17 - 00:18:41:08
Speaker 3
I cannot say that any of those touchpoints, right. That we provide it was the one that changed that person's mind and said, yes, I want the sale. But but I can say that based on years of research, you know, we know that it takes several touch points to get someone aligned with your company. And I know that as a wrap, when you've got all these people that you've got to get out and talk to, you may not possibly be able to get to that person.

00:18:41:13 - 00:19:07:03
Speaker 3
Seven times, eight times. So how can we do that if it's going to take that many times of talking to that person to get them aligned to your company, to your product? Well, that's where marketing can help. And so I want to make sure that somebody has heard about our new products before. Our rep has ever even gone there to talk to that person you want and be that through your retailer.

00:19:07:03 - 00:19:30:05
Speaker 3
So you've educated them or be that directly to the grower, because you shown up in different spaces where they weren't even expecting you to show up on a, you know, the TV station that they're watching. And all of a sudden, you know, your key break in, it's talking about Syngenta, whatever that is. We're raising that awareness. Right. And so when you think about how do we how do we get there?

00:19:30:05 - 00:19:53:03
Speaker 3
And it's easier to prove we raise that awareness. When you hear the rep saying, yeah, I talked to them and they had already seen a commercial or they heard something on the radio or, you know, whatever that is. Where to your point, when you're working with the agency, you know, a lot of times you want to move past your billboards, right?

00:19:53:03 - 00:20:12:18
Speaker 3
The billboards are still effective. You want to move past your your direct mail, but direct mail is still effective. You want to move past some of these things that were more traditional. But when we find some of it still effective, we don't want to move too quick. Right? You want to still be doing what's effective, but then trying new things.

00:20:12:18 - 00:20:39:03
Speaker 3
And so when the agency relationship is working, just right, you get just enough push to try and do these other things that allow us to differentiate ourselves in the industry. And when you're asking to try your pilot, you know, you don't you don't, you know, risk everything on this new technique that I can't tell you is really going to work or not.

00:20:39:08 - 00:21:01:09
Speaker 3
I give you some proof points. We we get out there and we test it out. In some ways, the thing I love about digital marketing is you can measure it right. And and I can look to see did we get engagement? Did we do did people open the email? Did people, click on the link? Did they spend some time looking at the information?

00:21:01:11 - 00:21:26:23
Speaker 3
You can see that stuff. And so the more that we can prove that out, it helps you build your business case to go to the next thing. But to your point where you see some of the challenges, sometimes we'll get there too fast, and sometimes you have people that we can get so excited about. That shiny new technique, that shiny new tactic that, oh my God, this is so cool.

00:21:27:04 - 00:21:47:01
Speaker 3
We can get lost in the cool factor and forget what's the objective, who are we really trying to reach? And so finding that balance is sometimes hard. But if you didn't experience some of that tension, I'd say we weren't doing it right. Or the relationship even with the agency when it wouldn't be right.

00:21:47:03 - 00:22:18:06
Speaker 2
I couldn't agree more. I think one of the most valuable things that an agency can do for its client base is to have an unflinching honesty, especially in an area that requires so much experimentation for the simple fact is that we have probably more access than we've ever had before. On ways to affect Lee, show the value of any program we do.

00:22:18:08 - 00:22:45:12
Speaker 2
I think to your point. So you mentioned certain traditional advertising and marketing tactics continuing to work in a field like agriculture for some very good reason. I think some very obvious reasons, honestly. I think I've always thought, though, that in areas like this, you know, maybe some of the more niche areas that a lot of B2B clients tend to service, where you can find a lot of, stronger relationships with digital teams, digital agencies.

00:22:45:12 - 00:23:08:05
Speaker 2
What have you is isn't the measurement of some of these tactics like seeing where any upticks in search volume, any upticks in conversation volume, any upticks in website traffic, website engagement, etc. are whether or not those are being connected to some of those, some of those tactics, you know, so to that end result, like I'll pass it to you.

00:23:08:06 - 00:23:33:14
Speaker 2
Where where are you seeing the best opportunity and, and maybe even the best tool set that exists for like, digital innovations that could significantly impact the way that market digital marketing is done in a field like agriculture or other fields. That might be a little bit more, slow to adopt, let's say.

00:23:33:16 - 00:24:14:02
Speaker 3
Yeah. Okay. So, I it not necessarily any one tool, but I'm just going to tell you the whole artificial intelligence space is real. Oh my gosh. You look at what's capable and and I mean, you know, you start with something like ChatGPT right in and looking at, wait a minute, I can create content. I can, I can now create images, I can speak to something and create the image that I needed to put in an ad.

00:24:14:02 - 00:24:16:14
Speaker 3
I can, you know it, I can.

00:24:16:15 - 00:24:17:14
Speaker 2
I can get.

00:24:17:14 - 00:24:44:01
Speaker 3
It together. But I don't know that. Well, I'll tell you, it has been an infamy. Kyle, I, I have to see it. Right when I first started getting invited to some of the different your conferences or your, meetings or companies wanting to come in and talk about what they can do. I've seen on a lot of our tools that we have the data and analytics or even, you know, we are marketing cloud users.

00:24:44:03 - 00:25:28:14
Speaker 3
You look at the Einstein, Salesforce brought up and it's like, okay, first go round at some of that. And I'm like, as insightful as I was looking for, like, matter of fact, this one helpful it all right. But now you start to see it's coming together. And so, you know, early on what was a little bit of a turn off is now quite the opposite, because things that I've spent lots of time trying to get data out of tools to be able to analyze and just answer questions like, what is the best time to be sending emails to our, you know, to our audience or people really engaging?

00:25:28:17 - 00:26:11:08
Speaker 3
Are we sending them too much, not enough things that we had to do to try to answer that question before? Seriously, just as you're getting the answer, boom. Now all of a sudden Einstein does work. This is telling me this information. And so when you look at what artificial intelligence can do in all the spaces and go back to what we first talked about, how we're able to advance digital marketing so much more because of all the other advanced as well as artificial intelligence, starts to have a play in all these different spaces, not just because I work in data as well, but I say so much starts and ends with our data.

00:26:11:12 - 00:26:42:03
Speaker 3
And so you imagine now that instead of us having to spend so much time getting all the data in one place right, trying to spend so much time solving problems, that soon will be yesterday's problems. We can now do this with a click of a button. Yeah, it's still gonna take some time to get us there, but the amount of insights we can get and then be able to crack the window, I mean, sky's the limit.

00:26:42:03 - 00:27:06:17
Speaker 3
You want to talk about personalization? And wanting to make sure that if I'm trying to get to Kyle, I not only know how to reach Kyle, I know what Kyle prefers. I'm going to show up in a way that Kyle's like, well, was really knows me. I mean, to do that, it's almost the cliche, right? We want to show up at the right time right place, with the right content, all those things.

00:27:06:22 - 00:27:50:21
Speaker 3
Yeah, we want to try that. But you start looking in this stuff that, you know, in. So it is it it does excite me. I'm excited about it. And I feel like that's going to be the thing. Everybody is going to have to hone in on it in their particular area. But as we do, I think we're going to be able to do some things we've never done before, except data privacy will be the biggest hurdle in so just as we're getting to that point, you now then have to balance that, rightfully so, with people respecting people's boundaries is but I and maybe it's just because I'm a marketer.

00:27:50:23 - 00:28:23:14
Speaker 3
I enjoy when I whether it's mail that I see on my kitchen table or it's an email in my inbox, when I see that somebody has really sent something relevant to me that I actually need and was just searching for, and now you delivered the answer to me. And now you've also told me where to go to find out more, and helped helped navigate me along the path to get the item, the service I want, the product that work, whatever that is.

00:28:23:16 - 00:28:50:15
Speaker 3
That's a good thing to me. Yeah, I don't want you spying. Don't everything about my life, but where you can help facilitate that in a very respectful way, I, I just think the artificial intelligence space is going to change so much in every aspect. It's not just digital marketing. It's and it's definitely not just the ag industry, this is for sure.

00:28:50:17 - 00:29:20:00
Speaker 2
I think for sure, you know, there's there's a lot that is possible when you leverage artificial intelligence. And it's been a talking point for a lot of the episodes we've done, on this podcast and, and probably several and certainly several others. It's been a topic of conversation in boardrooms and lunch rooms, and dining rooms for me, and I think for the agency at large.

00:29:20:02 - 00:29:50:17
Speaker 2
You know, we're looking at artificial intelligence in, very meticulous and intentional and deliberate, I think way, you mentioned something that I really could not help but applaud in my head. And you were you said that data, like, everything that we get, that we do as far as innovations, as far as advancements probably begins and ends with data, I think if you start talking about data and start talking about AI, there's some interesting things that are happening within AI.

00:29:50:17 - 00:30:20:09
Speaker 2
Both of those spaces, connected and I, I, I 100% agree that it is really to me, data AI is probably going to represent the biggest, jump in, and accessibility and effectiveness for not just marketing, but probably for the outcomes that farmers, that growers, retailers, etc. are looking for. You know, I, I love some of the work that our analysts are doing in this space.

00:30:20:11 - 00:30:48:03
Speaker 2
And I like I know that Syngenta employs a host of analysts, analytics experts. And there is there anything that is kind of sparking your interest from a Syngenta perspective? Internally, anything that your competitive said or kind of the, you know, other brands that you're noticing are doing, within the digital space or within the AI space that is starting to pique your interest at this point.

00:30:48:05 - 00:31:18:23
Speaker 3
I can say, from an interest peaking, starting with, like you said, the data, the way we're able to garner some insights, right now is, is interesting, interesting to me because I know the ways with which we've had to get there to get it and are still working to get some of it. Is is tough, right?

00:31:18:23 - 00:31:48:04
Speaker 3
And so we're still very much piloting a lot, and checking to see. Is that right. And so when you ask, you know, which really piqued my interest because I was so focused on the data side, I think I was missing everything else. And when I say everything else, I say I was I was not prepared for chapter duty.

00:31:48:06 - 00:31:58:05
Speaker 3
I was I was not prepared, for being able to speak and have pictures.

00:31:58:07 - 00:31:58:10
Speaker 2
Okay.

00:31:58:12 - 00:32:01:07
Speaker 3
Which is I wasn't when.

00:32:01:07 - 00:32:04:10
Speaker 2
You say prepared, but like, what do you mean by that. Like to talk about that.

00:32:04:15 - 00:32:29:18
Speaker 3
Well, not I didn't see it, I did not that wasn't a vision. So so the people that have been working in these spaces for a while and you, you probably could say, I bet that's where this is going. I bet. But we'll be able to do more over here. I bet we I did not see that, that that wasn't where I thought the next move was.

00:32:29:23 - 00:32:42:19
Speaker 3
And so why you see me get so excited is because it's. I start wondering, no where else is it and where else is it? And how else is this going to real life? Application help me.

00:32:42:21 - 00:32:45:16
Speaker 2
Now you know it's a little bit. Yes.

00:32:45:18 - 00:33:12:07
Speaker 3
Yeah. And so I mean I think everybody goes to the, the big bang with what's going to be the big thing that happens. Now looking at even some of the, the smaller things, how does how we interact with the Microsoft products now change? How has my kid, you know, writing essays now shape? How are governmental policies going to have to change in rules in school?

00:33:12:09 - 00:33:38:05
Speaker 3
Because you now have this, you know, it's it's it's so much that we can do so much faster. It's like this next revolution. It's it's I feel like we're living through something now that, you know, look back and be like, wow, yeah. That we are not just taking a a step. Right? We're about to leap. And so I don't know if it's any one thing that gets me excited.

00:33:38:05 - 00:33:57:02
Speaker 3
It's all the little things. And then quite honestly, because I'm one of those people that I want to see it, the things that are working today, that's that's the stuff that's got me the most. But now I'm a believer enough to say, what do you want me to try? What are we what are we trying to do? Let's let's get our toes wet.

00:33:57:08 - 00:34:19:16
Speaker 3
And to your point earlier of how do you get people internally? How do you prove, when you don't have, you know, hard measurement sometimes? How do you prove that we should be working in this space? How do you prove it? You show some of these success that's already happened, some of the things that just like I didn't see it, there are others that sit around the table with me.

00:34:19:18 - 00:34:41:19
Speaker 3
They didn't see some of this that are wowed by some of this. And so when you can say this just happened, then you can start saying, okay, well, yeah, we do need to jump on that because stuff is happening at a much an adoption is happening at a much faster rate than it has in years past. And so you can make those parallels, right.

00:34:41:19 - 00:35:06:13
Speaker 3
And, and get people to at least say, yeah, let's give a try to some of that. Let's get our toes wet in some of that. And so it is, it's a, it's it's an exciting time to be a great digital marketer to be I mean it's the things that are happening now if you would have had this interview or I know some 6 or 7 years ago even, you know, it's a it's a little bit different.

00:35:06:13 - 00:35:12:06
Speaker 3
You talk about challenge, you know, it's a different conversation. You know, just a little.

00:35:12:08 - 00:35:27:08
Speaker 2
Yeah. Actually that, that that kind of brings me to, another quick question, that I had, like, are you noticing kind of a sea change as far as digital adoption within Syngenta? How do you feel like it's happening different than it was before?

00:35:27:11 - 00:35:52:23
Speaker 3
I, I feel like, you know, people are trying more. I feel like I mean, I see all around. I love when I look at even internal emails that have videos showing all. I mean, that when I see things that we do externally to get attention from our customers happening internally to internal stakeholders, that excites me. That's like, now these things are table stakes, right?

00:35:52:23 - 00:36:21:12
Speaker 3
So much so that even to your your neighbor down the hall, you're sending these advanced emails to cut through the clutter. You're you're doing things. So I, I do I just don't think it's, I don't think we're the only ones. I'm not naive enough to think that. Oh, we got it. Nobody else did. Right. I think you could probably ask this question of many people, in their offices outside of the technology company.

00:36:21:14 - 00:36:24:01
Speaker 3
Here's some of the same thing.

00:36:24:03 - 00:36:59:06
Speaker 2
Yeah, I don't disagree. I want to circle back real quick because, when we started the conversation and I kind of ticked this in in my head because I wanted to come back to it, you said that you you didn't choose like agriculture. You chose Syngenta specifically. What about Syngenta? Especially in this space, especially coming from the field you were coming from, like what attracted you there and kind of how of how has you how have you seen your own career growth like Ascend and Blossom since you've been at Syngenta?

00:36:59:10 - 00:37:22:06
Speaker 3
So it's really interesting because I started my career in Syngenta, in procurement. And what I saw with Syngenta, is they were willing to try some stuff. And so when I came in to procurement, I was on the indirect side, goods and services side, and, and I was brought in and I was hired. That was what I was going to do.

00:37:22:06 - 00:37:42:00
Speaker 3
But immediately when I came to, you know, my job role shifted a little because we were ready to launch any procurement system. And that's when I realized I was working for a global company. Right? Yeah. And I didn't quite get that before. And so, yeah, you.

00:37:42:03 - 00:37:43:10
Speaker 2
Realize just how big you are.

00:37:43:10 - 00:38:17:11
Speaker 3
You're big. Right. And so, you know, you think about it. And they told me all it'll be like 20% of your time and not a big deal. And it became a big deal. But it was just as big of a deal for me very quickly in my career. Someone in my role, I think it was like a purchasing associate or analysts might have been what the role was, but all of a sudden, the stakeholders, because of the tool that I now was managing, I've got approvers that go all the way up to the CEO.

00:38:17:16 - 00:38:41:11
Speaker 3
I got I've got, requesters that hit every area, the business, all of our, you know, and even in our plants, you know, they, I get calls because the stuff wasn't working. Right. So I get calls from, you know, people at our plants that say, I got a service person outside the door and they're not able to come in because your tool hasn't spit out a purchase order.

00:38:41:11 - 00:39:06:07
Speaker 3
Yeah. So the thing that was great for me, I've never left my technology background. Electrical engineering is where I started, but I've been able to take the technology side of me that I love and use that to solve problems. So in procurement, I very much instantly went into technology. Right. I'm working on this tool. I'm trying to solve problems.

00:39:06:13 - 00:39:27:20
Speaker 3
But then the other part of me, which I didn't get to do in college, I had told my mom, second year sophomore year. So I know I've said since I was in seventh grade, I was going to be an electrical engineer. Sorry, I was terrific. I shouldn't have said that. I know that every summer kid you've put me in in all those years was so that I could do well as an electrical engineer.

00:39:27:22 - 00:39:29:00
Speaker 3
But I'm saying.

00:39:29:02 - 00:39:31:00
Speaker 2
This is this.

00:39:31:02 - 00:39:37:03
Speaker 3
I realize I did it because somebody said I couldn't, and I wanted to show them that I could, and she's.

00:39:37:03 - 00:39:37:19
Speaker 2
Interesting.

00:39:37:19 - 00:39:59:10
Speaker 3
You got to finish this, you know? But I wanted to switch to psychology. I really loved getting to know people, getting to understand what makes you tick, how to help people develop, how to help people understand themselves better. But I couldn't pursue that. So next, best thing you have me at Syngenta. I've got that technology side of me going.

00:39:59:15 - 00:40:27:13
Speaker 3
I was introduced to global procurement. Syngenta sent me I mean, I my first some of my first global trips came because of, of work. You know, all of a sudden, you know, we're based in Basel, Switzerland. So it's like I'm in Switzerland and it was nothing for me to go to Switzerland. It's like, wow, this is amazing. So what opened up to me, because Syngenta is a global company and they develop their people, in are willing to take chances.

00:40:27:13 - 00:40:48:20
Speaker 3
I went from procurement. They then had me as like the first person doing both indirect and direct procurement. So I got to understand our material side of the business, understand how everything comes together to make our product. But then we took a shot on me, a market research. I didn't know market research, but it's where I want it to go.

00:40:49:02 - 00:41:12:01
Speaker 3
And that's the that's the way that I was able to really tap into this other side, the psychology side of me light. And so again, when you look at how my career yeah, I had my MBA, but it didn't have a lot of marketing experience. And so the fact that I was able to navigate my way through now, I will not say that it wasn't without difficulty.

00:41:12:01 - 00:41:37:00
Speaker 3
Right? It had challenges, but she had a lot of people along the way that were helping to get you there. That said, yeah, I think you could do this. I think we should try this. And and I did, and off I went. And so it's continued to kind of be like that for me. And then once I hit market research, it became market research, internet marketing.

00:41:37:02 - 00:42:03:10
Speaker 3
They had to cut some type of market research back to digital marketing and then marketing technology, CRM. I got to kind of stay all in that space. That allows me to both use my that psychology side of me that I love in the technology side and, that I love. And so Syngenta is a company that's willing to invest in their people and I think some people take that for granted.

00:42:03:15 - 00:42:24:05
Speaker 3
That's that's huge for me, for if you didn't have it before and then you have it, you realize how big of a deal that is now. And they got great benefits and all those things too. But, but now. Yeah, but now when I take a look back, I can even see within Syngenta the things that I can tout and say, this is great.

00:42:24:05 - 00:42:47:02
Speaker 3
Some of it didn't happen day one, but now I can look at all the policy changes, all the different things that have happened that I mean, people now coming out of school to Syngenta, it's a different experience than what I had. That's like I'm looking at it like, wow, you know, we've got some great things to offer. A great vacation package is great.

00:42:47:02 - 00:43:15:21
Speaker 3
I mean, just it we've come a long way and and I feel like again, Syngenta, it was the right company. And obviously I've been there for years but but, but and it's not because I have to. Right. You know and so when I say I didn't choose I didn't I chose Syngenta and I and once I got there, it really wasn't even until I think you guys might have had me do so, like, I career.

00:43:15:21 - 00:43:36:04
Speaker 3
I was talking about my career on some video. For something we were doing and I was being and you know, I didn't you didn't come from a farm. And you know what? What's your belief? You know what? What's your passion? And I mean, I'm thinking, oh my God, I'm out of almost been in tears trying to explain to this guy, right.

00:43:36:04 - 00:43:59:12
Speaker 3
Do you realize there are people today in the city you're in that don't eat like that's a big deal. And we're trying to ensure that we can help feed feed people in the future, that we can feed the growing population. But not just then we try to get back in our community to the people today that don't eat in.

00:43:59:12 - 00:44:22:04
Speaker 3
So just that type of impact is is major for me. You know, you can't go in any industry and have solve those types of problems that have that widespread impact. And so when you say, no, I didn't grow up on a farm and and I do still laugh at them, I think that's a little house on the prairie.

00:44:22:09 - 00:44:49:11
Speaker 3
I understand the challenges better. I understand the rewards better. I understand the pride better when you have. And that's your legacy. I understand that, but different people in this industry all can come together on that same thing. To know we got to eat. Yeah, somebody has to be here to ensure that for the land you got left, we're making the most out of that.

00:44:49:11 - 00:45:17:22
Speaker 3
We're we're ensuring that the crops have the most yield that they can or that doesn't happen. Right. So it's it's to me, it's an awesome industry to be in. And I love seeing how it's expanding and other areas. I mean our our digital ag team, when you when you see all the things that are happening with the drones and there's so many more people now that have a place in this industry that yesterday did not.

00:45:17:22 - 00:45:38:04
Speaker 3
And so that's where, again, when we say things like, you know, we technologically may be behind, I say it's like, no, no, no, that don't apply. Is this. Yes. That's that's not the case. You got so much more now in this industry. And I think you'll just continue to see that grow because this problem isn't going to go away.

00:45:38:06 - 00:46:06:10
Speaker 2
No. Two things. You just kind of alluded to one explicitly, one tacitly. Everything you're saying tacitly speaks speaks to purpose, you know? Right. Because it sounds like you sound like a person that has found a great and noble purpose in what it is you're doing with Syngenta, even as listen, no companies perfect. Every company has its own fair share of of challenges and hurdles it has to navigate.

00:46:06:12 - 00:46:29:21
Speaker 2
But I think you finding the purpose of what you're doing there. Syngenta I think, is not only noble, but I think it's something that most people would envy, honestly. And I think, more broadly speaking, more explicitly. You mentioned legacy when I first started in this industry. I mean, and even to a certain extent now, you can count on one hand the amount of people, like brown people that were kind of working in the same rooms as me.

00:46:29:23 - 00:46:50:20
Speaker 2
You noted that there there is more of a place for all different types of people, more so than there than there has been before. Talk to me a little bit about your experience as, working in not just AG, but in digital marketing on the whole. And whether or not you've seen kind of more people who look like you.

00:46:50:20 - 00:47:01:16
Speaker 2
Right, like you're a black woman who have kind of made their way, made their bones, made their, started to carve out a legacy for themselves in both agriculture and and digital marketing.

00:47:01:21 - 00:47:31:09
Speaker 3
Yep, I will I will preface it by saying major growth, but not enough. Right? You want to you want to see you want to see more. But I can tell you, even for me, when I was in market research, you know, I'm going to different areas that have never been before. I came to the areas and, you know, I, I can look around it it, it's not just not seeing any African-Americans.

00:47:31:09 - 00:47:41:04
Speaker 3
There may not be any women. It wasn't, you know, it's some of the different rooms of it's like, oh, well, where are we? And then when you tell me my phone was not going to work either. Like what? Wait a minute. You know this.

00:47:41:06 - 00:47:42:14
Speaker 1
I'm so.

00:47:42:16 - 00:48:22:18
Speaker 3
Like, you know, and so it's it's still very different, depending on the space that you're in. I mean, you look at growers, if you think about African-American growers, you know, that's like less than two, 2% of a grower. I mean, very small. So from a customer perspective, right. You don't have many that look like you. But then from an industry perspective, I think that diversity is coming, especially with the diversity of the different areas, different types of technology that are coming into this space that's bringing, you know, that's bringing that as well.

00:48:22:20 - 00:48:47:09
Speaker 3
But I can say when I started, even in Syngenta, you know, I was always happy to see you go, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I can, I can say that, that now it's been funny because, if you would have asked me before, I could tell you everybody, at our company, that looked that looked like me.

00:48:47:09 - 00:48:57:20
Speaker 3
I could tell you the names. I could tell you. And now I'm sometimes walk in, you know, my phone. I'm getting into the office, and it's like, oh, we don't.

00:48:57:22 - 00:49:01:05
Speaker 2
Yeah, I know that game.

00:49:01:06 - 00:49:39:10
Speaker 3
And and it's still awesome. It's awesome to see the growth in in diversity. I do still think more is needed, but I feel good about a lot of the different minority programs in, in, in things like, associations like manors, that are, that are there to not just help once you've reached the industry, but starting with the, the, students, even in high school and college and helping to attract more to the ag industry, there are people that don't know what that what that is because they did not grow up on a farm.

00:49:39:10 - 00:50:17:22
Speaker 3
But there's so much opportunity here. So I, I like what a lot of the different associations are doing. And I like what a lot of the companies are doing. These employee resource groups, where, you know, we have an African-American leadership group at Syngenta. When I went to college, we had a center for black culture. Those areas are needed to help ensure that once you bring somebody into these spaces where, yeah, they don't see many people that look like them, you've got some support to help them, to help them, you know, be able to.

00:50:17:22 - 00:50:19:06
Speaker 2
Feel so alone.

00:50:19:08 - 00:50:39:12
Speaker 3
You know, you're not alone. And so I think our industry is is getting it right, much like others. And I just hope to continue to see that trend that way and that you don't just see it, but you start seeing it at all levels. More, more diversity.

00:50:39:14 - 00:51:07:17
Speaker 2
Yeah. I'm with you there. I'm going to I'm going to leave you with this final question. And it's kind of a coalescence of everything we spoke about. As, as we noted at the top, the agriculture and digital marketing in this space, they're both two areas that have seen massive growth. One is influencing the other. But obviously there's still a lot of room, a ceiling that is yet to be hit.

00:51:07:18 - 00:51:37:04
Speaker 2
Right now, you coming into this space and kind of navigating it the way that you did. Like what advice would you have for any marketing professionals? Especially in the digital sector that are looking to apply those skills in an industry that may not be traditionally associated with digital marketing or digital transformation? And what lessons, what key lessons do you think you've taken from the way that you've been able to navigate, your own journey there, through there?

00:51:37:06 - 00:52:07:21
Speaker 3
So from a marketing perspective, I'll start there and then I'll do personal. But from a marketing perspective, know your audience. Know your audience. You know, you come in, I don't care how great your skills are, how much you've done in other industries, what you think you know, you know, if you can't apply it to the audience because you don't know them, if you can't relate and speak the language because you haven't learned it, then it's going to be difficult for you.

00:52:07:21 - 00:52:32:13
Speaker 3
So as you go into any other industry, you need to know who is it that you're going to be marketing to. And then from a more personal and still professional side, who are those people that you've got to convince? You need to know your internal stakeholders just as much. What do they value? What are they looking for? What?

00:52:32:17 - 00:52:57:09
Speaker 3
So you're always able to relate back where I'm trying to go and what I'm trying to push to what's going to work for them. Third, I'd say don't be naive enough to think you can go this alone. I can remember literally, let's say a young lady came to me and said, hey, this is early on in my career, still in procurement.

00:52:57:09 - 00:53:20:12
Speaker 3
You know, we're looking to form a mentorship group for African-American women. They were like, okay, if good luck with that. You know, like, I need them. I'm good, you know, like what? And it's actually two women. And and I looked at both of their careers and I instantly looked to say, well, I don't want to be you and I don't want to be you.

00:53:20:14 - 00:53:24:16
Speaker 3
But it was very shortsighted. And thankfully, they didn't take my first.

00:53:24:16 - 00:53:25:02
Speaker 2
Interesting.

00:53:25:03 - 00:54:03:22
Speaker 3
Reaction as, okay, well, not her, you know, it. They have to explain what is it that we're trying to do in this mentorship program. And it was really about trying to ensure that I was being equipped with what I needed to understand myself, understand my strengths, understand how to navigate, understand how to be a leader. And so while in gentle offered a lot of, great development opportunities in trainings to help you with some of that, what I ended up getting from this group that coaching, that peer to peer mentorship that, hey, here's some sponsors over here for you.

00:54:03:22 - 00:54:26:17
Speaker 3
When I say I made the jump from procurement into market research, that wasn't by accident. It didn't just happen. You had people now talking about me in the right rooms, people rooting for me, people that before didn't need to know who I was. But now there have been connections that were made that I would not have been able to do on my own.

00:54:26:20 - 00:54:28:02
Speaker 2
So great are.

00:54:28:02 - 00:54:49:02
Speaker 3
Connected and and then do finally do the work. I mean, so many times, you know, you see people come in where it's like, you know, I'm owed this, give me this, and I should be paid this. And I need this. And, I mean, and this is at every level. But then what do you deliver? Where, where what's your work ethic?

00:54:49:05 - 00:55:13:16
Speaker 3
What are you bringing to the table? Make sure you show up at the table. You've done your homework yet. Add value. When you open your mouth, you know, bring that, do that and then all these other doors can start opening for you. You have people wanting to push you versus looking like, oh, well, wait a minute, have you have you sold anything yet?

00:55:13:16 - 00:55:15:07
Speaker 3
Have you? And so.

00:55:15:07 - 00:55:15:17
Speaker 2
Yes.

00:55:15:22 - 00:55:41:15
Speaker 3
So really, you know, just a little bit of humility, you know, come in knowing your work, you gotta know your worth and what you bring to the table. But don't be don't let your confidence turn into arrogance. You know, there's more that you can learn and, and ensure that you're you can humbly ask the questions of people who probably know more than you or have been in the space more than you.

00:55:41:15 - 00:55:59:13
Speaker 3
So when someone comes and says, Kyle, I think there's a great mentorship opportunity for you that you don't look at them like I'm to sure it. Right. You know, so so that not that that would ever be your problem, Kyle. But but yes, that that would be my advice.

00:55:59:15 - 00:56:28:07
Speaker 2
Hey, listen, everybody, all of us are prone to arrogance every now and then. But I like to say kind of, going with the namesake of this podcast, like, the only way, like one of the main ways you can build your own brand gravity is to not fall victim to the fallacy of expertise, you know, not assuming that you being really, really knowledgeable about something meat doesn't mean that there's nothing left for you to learn in that space, and there's no room for translation, you know.

00:56:28:07 - 00:56:28:18
Speaker 2
That's right.

00:56:28:18 - 00:56:30:01
Speaker 3
Well, said Carl Wilson.

00:56:30:02 - 00:56:41:01
Speaker 2
Yeah. Ross, listen, this was fantastic, and I loved having you here. Your energy is absolutely infectious. You know, thank you. I really.

00:56:41:03 - 00:56:42:07
Speaker 3
Thank you.

00:56:42:09 - 00:56:48:12
Speaker 2
You've been super generous with your time, and this is an awesome conversation. So thank you for joining us on building brand gravity.

00:56:48:13 - 00:56:50:08
Speaker 3
Thank you for having me.

00:56:50:10 - 00:56:54:16
Speaker 2
We'll catch you guys on the next episode. Thank you for joining us.

00:56:54:18 - 00:57:27:00
Speaker 1
You are listening to building Brand Gravity, attracting people into your orbit. A business communications podcast. Keep connected with us by subscribing to the show in your favorite podcast player. If you like what you've heard, please rate the show. That helps us to keep delivering the latest in industry influence. Thanks for listening. Until next time.

 

00:00:01:02 - 00:00:24:10
Speaker 2
Oh everyone, and welcome to Building Brand Gravity. I'm Anne Green. I am a principal and managing director here at Sheehan's Business Communications, and I'm so excited today to welcome a guest who I first heard speak at an event earlier this year, and I was so interested in everything he had to say. I reached out to ask him for a coffee, and then I said, Will you be on my podcast?

00:00:24:10 - 00:00:29:13
Speaker 2
And the rest is history. And here we are Howard Pyle. Welcome to building brand gravity.

00:00:29:15 - 00:00:33:00
Speaker 3
Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

00:00:33:02 - 00:00:52:16
Speaker 2
So Howard tell us a little bit about I'm going to let you tell your own bio your career trajectory because you've had a really interesting arc to bring you to the organization you founded today, which is Experience futures.org, which has many arms to it. But tell me a little bit about so our listeners understand your career path.

00:00:52:18 - 00:01:26:17
Speaker 3
Sure. Yeah it's it's a it's a winding road for sure. I think that I'm one of those people that my career journey really only made sense in retrospect. I've had many points in my career where people have said to me, even close friends like, what are you doing now? Like what is that? But the long and the short of it is that I've, I've been in at the intersection of digital product design, development platform brands, communications, for over 20 years.

00:01:26:17 - 00:02:03:10
Speaker 3
And I started my career as actually an engineer, and I was a developer in a design collective in Washington, DC for a long, long, long time ago, very early digital shop. And, and then I was, I went on to be, a dev lead in a communications agency, early digital shop and, and a CTO at a, at a, a CTO at, dot com and, and then went on from there and ran startups or in a mobile startup for a little while, and we got bought out by an agency network.

00:02:03:12 - 00:02:33:21
Speaker 3
And through some twists and turns, I wound up at Ogilvy, and I was a senior partner at Ogilvy, leading digital platforms for the IBM business globally during Smarter Planet and so it was this kind of interesting transition point in my career from, tech digital focused companies to suddenly being in an advertising agency, the biggest company I had ever worked at by several tens of thousands of people.

00:02:33:23 - 00:02:56:18
Speaker 3
And, and then working on IBM, which is, of course, a monster. And I had no experience working with giant organizations. I was in Ogilvy for a couple of years, three years. And then, my client at IBM got promoted, and, he asked me to step in and take his job. So I went to IBM and I ran a network of design studios.

00:02:56:20 - 00:03:31:19
Speaker 3
I ultimately transitioned and ran developer marketing for all the business units. And, and then I went to MetLife, where I ran global brand design, UX, front end platforms. Ultimately, running integrated, marketing and communications for, not like comms, but for branding and, creative campaigns and sponsorships. And we rebranded the, the company for the first time in 30 years and rolled out a global design system and rolled out new front end platforms.

00:03:31:19 - 00:04:10:10
Speaker 3
And so I had this kind of ten years in startups and ten years at big, giant, ginormous companies. And, the thing that I found was that that we were number one, we've gotten to this place where our digital lives have become too complicated. And by the way, it's super complicated within every company managing digital ecosystems, managing web and mobile properties, managing design and dev and and seeing that there was a disconnect between, the mission and purpose of a company and their business impact in digital spaces.

00:04:10:12 - 00:04:37:06
Speaker 3
Seeing that there's a big disconnect there and also seeing, the second thing is that automation and I were going to hit the front end experience layer that we're going to hit. Yeah, design, UX, communications. And so I left MetLife and I started this organization, Experience Futures. And and we're very focused on this next era of how AI is going to impact our digital lives, how it's going to impact digital accessibility.

00:04:37:08 - 00:04:54:02
Speaker 3
We focus on partnering with organizations, helping them to use AI to drive inclusivity, drive digital access, and create positive outcomes, using these new technologies. So that's the that's the kind of journey and, the high level pitch of where I am now.

00:04:54:04 - 00:05:11:22
Speaker 2
Well, I love this. And part of what interested me in talking to you and what excited me when I first heard you speak, which was really about that digital divide. And I want to dig deep with you in that in a moment. But before that, I just want to reflect on how interesting it is to hear that career arc.

00:05:11:22 - 00:05:43:05
Speaker 2
And I appreciate you taking us through it, because the intersectionality to start off and what would be very much understood as a development engineering type of career. But then to understand like where you ended up advertising, UX, consumer experience, the brand, a rebranding of an entity like MetLife, it just shows you how the arc of a career through this marketing communications brand landscape that also deeply involves technology and the experience of the customers.

00:05:43:07 - 00:05:49:13
Speaker 2
It's so intertwined. Try to me, what an incredible intersection of different perspectives.

00:05:49:15 - 00:06:12:11
Speaker 3
Yeah, well, we can say that now. Ten years ago, it would have been like you're doing right now. What do you do? Are you working for an advertising agency now? And, but but I think, I think that there is a through line there and I think it's, it's funny because there was this brief moment where I really believed the term customer experience was going to be a great kind of rally cry for how all these things come together in a company.

00:06:12:11 - 00:06:43:05
Speaker 3
And yeah, actually, my title at MetLife was, SVP of Global Customer Experience and Design and the Customer Experience part of it was constantly confusing to people like internally and externally. Some people thought it meant customer service, some people thought it meant, you know, journey analytics or NPS reporting. It's funny because there isn't really a great term in companies for the way that we engage people in digital spaces, because it's not just about product, it's not just about technology.

00:06:43:05 - 00:07:05:06
Speaker 3
It's not just communications. It's not just marketing. It's not just development. It's not just data, but somehow it's the collection of all of those things. And I think that's part of, to me, the through line is the relationship that companies have with individuals as a result of our digital era. You could actually call that brand. You could say brand is the relationship that you have with a company.

00:07:05:08 - 00:07:25:19
Speaker 3
Or you could say it's the customer experience, which is every touchpoint, every interaction. The sum of all those is your relationship with the company. And more and more that is technology plus brand plus communications plus design. So I think there's that there's there's a, there's a kind of an unnamed territory. There's a territory there that we don't actually have a great word for.

00:07:25:19 - 00:07:26:15
Speaker 3
I think.

00:07:26:17 - 00:07:56:22
Speaker 2
You know, you talked about at the end of all this and now you're at a new beginning, and it's been a few years now to launch something like Experience Futures. When you visit that website. And I encourage people to check it out, experience future story, you forefront the, the statement, the assertion of a digital divide and I think it's really important that we ask you to address this right now to to so that you can share with our listeners what does that mean to you and what is the urgency of that today?

00:07:56:23 - 00:08:15:02
Speaker 3
Yeah, sure. And thanks for that, because I think that it's to me it is it's a critical it's a critical point of discussion. And, I think as a lot of people did coming out of Covid, there's a lot of soul searching, you know, there's a lot of soul searching. Like, what does my work mean? What role do I play?

00:08:15:04 - 00:08:40:09
Speaker 3
And on a personal level, like what? What am I contributing to the world? Am I pursuing the things that I'm passionate about? And and for me, it really starts with the fact that I am not I'm not somebody that should ever have a knowledge worker or white collar job. You know, I just don't have the intellectual, capability for it.

00:08:40:09 - 00:09:12:00
Speaker 3
Not that I'm not smart, but I don't have, I don't have a set of tools that I think a lot of people are expected to have in those corporate jobs. And very specifically, I'm crushingly dyslexic, but I also have, other kind of neurodiversity challenges. I have, you know, some memory challenges. I have challenges with, you know, developing and structured reading very, very long documents.

00:09:12:00 - 00:09:48:19
Speaker 3
But but where it hits me is my ability to write and craft communications in a way that's deeply, kind of inherent in being a knowledge worker. So to me as that it's very strange to me that, I wound up in the positions that I wound up in. And there's a very simple answer as to why I was able to do that, which is I found a set of technology tools very early on that helped me normalize my abilities to be at parity with other people.

00:09:48:21 - 00:10:25:05
Speaker 3
Right. And, and that is, very privileged to have that. I'm very privileged to have that. And I think that I have quite a number of, examples of like over the years where I have created, you know, campaigns or programs or communications, but even individual emails to clients, whereas labored over the words where I've gone back and reread something 40 times and I've missed the fact that there's no verb, or I've missed the fact that I've said and twice or, you know, my run on sentences have run on sentences inside of them.

00:10:25:07 - 00:10:54:22
Speaker 3
And I think that the, you know, it's funny because I think that there is a, you know, the very simple example and there's other examples, but the simple example is I've been able to, over the years, use a combination of, you know, grammar tools and spell checker tools and, you know, like tools. It did allow me to dictate, you know, I've I've experimented with every flavor of the voice dictation going back to, you know, the 90s.

00:10:54:22 - 00:11:21:00
Speaker 3
And, I found a set of tools that worked for me and I was privileged and, fortunate to be able to have done that so that my, aptitude, my intellect could be applied to some of these problems. But for many, many other people, the ability to navigate challenges like that is not something that allows that allows them to kind of, proceed into those jobs.

00:11:21:02 - 00:11:41:18
Speaker 3
It's very it can be very challenging. And that got me really, became, I think over the years I'd been aware of it quite a bit, but it, it brought me to a set of research and some questions that I began poking into, which is what is what do we call this thing that divides people at the experience layer?

00:11:41:18 - 00:12:03:02
Speaker 3
Why is it I so I have a computer. You have a computer, you have more access than I do to the tools and services. What is that called. What do we even describe that as? And I think there is different terminology. You could apply to it. But what we what we found through the research that we did is that it's actually another layer of the digital divide.

00:12:03:02 - 00:12:14:08
Speaker 3
Yeah. And the first layer of the digital divide is this idea of having access to a computer, having access to internet access.

00:12:14:10 - 00:12:20:06
Speaker 2
Which, by the way, is where I think a lot of people I think that first layer is where a lot of people start up. Am I right about that?

00:12:20:12 - 00:12:40:23
Speaker 3
That's right. Okay. That's right. And that's and that's a, that's a very and it's natural because that's the only layer we've been really made aware of, the academics that we follow, and that we've worked with talk about a second layer of the digital divide, which is this idea of design access, content access and cognitive access.

00:12:40:23 - 00:13:09:10
Speaker 3
So the idea of if you don't understand how an interface is created, if you don't understand the language, if you can't navigate and, you know, use those tools as they were designed, then you lose access to everything that comes with digital access to jobs, access to education, access to health care, access to financial management. And so the second layer of the digital divide is actually an enormous, enormous challenge that there's not a lot of research on.

00:13:09:12 - 00:13:45:12
Speaker 3
But it's really tied to this idea of digital capital. And do I have digital capital and can I navigate in my job? Can I navigate in my finances? Can I navigate in social communities online, can I use resources that are available for me? And more and more and more, what we've found is that there is a gap in the services, the digital services that companies and governments and NGOs provide where because their sites aren't intuitive, they're aren't easy to navigate and yes, even not accessible from an Ada perspective for people with disabilities.

00:13:45:12 - 00:14:09:03
Speaker 3
But even beyond that, that people lose access to the services that they're providing. So the second layer of the digital divide is really, you know, do your websites make sense to people? Do your apps make sense to people? Do your communications make sense to people? Do they understand your language and if not, you are restricting access to essential services that they need, whether you're in the public or the private sector.

00:14:09:05 - 00:14:14:05
Speaker 3
So the digital the second layer of the digital divide is, is really the experience layer.

00:14:14:07 - 00:14:34:02
Speaker 2
Something you and I haven't even talked about. But it's coming to mind very strongly for me right now is all of the websites and really functions that are speed based, as in, I want to try to get a restaurant reservation, I want to try to get tickets. I want to try to get. You had mentioned the vaccine websites in New York City.

00:14:34:04 - 00:14:58:07
Speaker 2
It's it's a race, right. And it's like there's a clock ticking down or this ticket to a show, or this ticket to a concert or this table. It's based on how quickly both, physically but also cognitively and where the frigates my credit card. Or am I using like, Apple Pay, like how fast can I process in order to race somebody else for an outcome?

00:14:58:07 - 00:15:11:03
Speaker 2
Now, the vaccine won when you shared that anecdote, and I'd love you to reshare that quote that you shared with me when you were at the Paige Spring seminar earlier this year, because that literally hit me like a lightning bolt.

00:15:11:04 - 00:15:32:23
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, that was a that was a big moment. So, so in New York City during Covid, the both access to testing and access to the vaccines, was released on the state and city run websites. And listen, I don't know the teams that made them and I'm sure they were under an incredible amount of pressure, but they were terrible.

00:15:32:23 - 00:16:20:07
Speaker 3
They were terrible, terrible sites. They were difficult to navigate. They probably got thrown up in a matter of days. Which makes sense because their priority was speed to market, getting it out to people. But what happened was people couldn't literally couldn't navigate those websites. And it was particularly pronounced on the vaccine finder websites. It was this kind of touching moment that happened where when the vaccine sites came out, people on Facebook and on Reddit were were banding together and saying, you know, someone that's older that can't navigate these websites, which, by the way, the it was supposed to be that the most, at risk communities got the vaccines first.

00:16:20:07 - 00:16:24:18
Speaker 3
People who are older, at risk, right? Living, living in nursing homes.

00:16:24:20 - 00:16:25:09
Speaker 2
I remember, but.

00:16:25:09 - 00:16:46:05
Speaker 3
They literally couldn't navigate the website. So it's kind of touching. People were like, well, if you know someone that needs help navigating this website, you know will help them. An older person, but it's a statement of failure. It's a statement of absolute failure of a public service, in a system that's meant to be accessible by a certain audience.

00:16:46:07 - 00:17:02:06
Speaker 3
And, it didn't work. So there was this quote, writing about that situation. There was a quote in the New York Times, that said, when you set up a system that's a race between 25 year olds and 85 year olds, that's not a race, that's elder abuse.

00:17:02:11 - 00:17:04:07
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think that's powerful.

00:17:04:09 - 00:17:25:19
Speaker 3
Yeah, it's a really powerful. It's a really powerful statement. And I think that the and by the way, this is what's really interesting is in my roles at MetLife, at IBM and startups that I work with, the idea of accessibility often means, are you going to get in trouble for Ada compliance or not?

00:17:25:20 - 00:17:27:16
Speaker 2
Yes. That is such a good point.

00:17:27:16 - 00:17:53:14
Speaker 3
Yeah. And this is a very, very like this is probably the most important thing to to kind of dismantle Ada. Compliance is the only lever that we have around accessibility and inclusion in digital spaces. Right. And and the lever is does it work for people that have a certain type of disability. And it uses certain type of assistive technologies?

00:17:53:16 - 00:18:15:12
Speaker 3
And the only punishment is public lawsuits. So there's people who go around just sue companies for Ada, you know, Ada violations. So it's seen organizationally in a lot of places as a checkbox. I can't tell you how many times I've built a product or design system, and the only funding for accessibility is at the very end, if there's a problem.

00:18:15:14 - 00:18:45:18
Speaker 3
Right. It's never meant to be something that you. So so these vaccine sites, they may have been technically accessible, but they were unusable by at risk communities. So when you think about what's the expanded definition of inclusion there. Well it's it's not just Ada accessibility. It's people that are older people from lower socioeconomic, households that maybe are mobile only users in those sites only worked on desktop computers.

00:18:45:20 - 00:19:15:01
Speaker 3
It's people with neurodiversity. And yes, of course, people with, you know, that are living with disabilities. So the idea is that it's a much, much, much larger population that we have to design for to be inclusive. And I think and our position is that inclusivity is bigger than accessibility. And we find accessibility in the design community to be a labyrinth of confusion, you know, and, this is a big challenge.

00:19:15:03 - 00:19:39:03
Speaker 2
I think this is so profound because first of all, there's and I want to get back to this opening the aperture more on what is inclusion. But the first thing I would observe is that I spent a lot of my career really interested in ethics relative to the communications industry. And as you know, there are things like ethics training that are very much viewed as a checkbox.

00:19:39:05 - 00:20:02:19
Speaker 2
When you treat it that way, it becomes something that's like, I got to deal with that stupid thing, and people treat it that way with anti-harassment training too, of course. But to me, moving through the world, through your life, through your business life with an ethical lens, you know, a set of tools that helps you make some assessments opens your eyes to a whole new world.

00:20:02:20 - 00:20:31:02
Speaker 2
And having discussions with people that are much more dynamic about what is ethics, where is that existing, how do we use it? Which will be, by the way, very relevant when we start to talk about AI more. I find people to be very limited. And so to go to the question of, say, diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, one of the things we've been interrogating a chance with our own DNI task force is how do we understand where we're limiting or putting ourselves in a box about what inclusion means?

00:20:31:03 - 00:20:53:19
Speaker 2
How do we understand ability, disability and accessibility differently? And I think listening to people like you, Howard, it reminds us we are all different. Like use storytelling about your own set of skills and your own cognition. You know, I used to work with Richard Branson. I understand how talented my father was, severely dyslexic, how talented people can be.

00:20:53:19 - 00:21:15:13
Speaker 2
But what tools you need. But I think that cracks open a whole new world for us of understanding what inclusion can mean. Because if we are lucky enough to age as individuals, our ability will change. Our ability to navigate the world is not going to be the same. And you, you coined the term and maybe this is a good way to connect the dots here with experience futures.

00:21:15:13 - 00:21:25:21
Speaker 2
You talk about human experience. Is that your way of putting your arms around these issues and also talking about that earlier challenge. You have a what's the language for this.

00:21:25:23 - 00:21:58:20
Speaker 3
So so I think that the the, the, the simple statement is that if you look at human experience and you look at the idea that we need to design around the individual, whether there are customer or they're an employee, you need to understand their needs. The past 15 years have been really focused on the idea of creating these collaborative workshops, design thinking sessions, you know, these these very kind of like workshops with representative users.

00:21:58:22 - 00:22:30:11
Speaker 3
And then from that building, one experience that's supposed to work for most people. And I think what we've learned is that there is no such thing as most people in digital spaces. You know, my my abilities based on my dyslexia, you know, my mom's abilities based on, you know, her age, my, my partner's ability based on her visual impairment, you know, so there's a, everyone has a set of unique needs at this point.

00:22:30:11 - 00:22:55:20
Speaker 3
It's just truth. It's it's there's data to back that up. So if you think about using workshops and design thinking sessions and collaborate spaces, although it can be very powerful from a relationship development and a alignment of thinking perspective, the actual use cases that you can create, the products, the experiences, the actual output that you create from that is actually really limited.

00:22:55:22 - 00:23:26:13
Speaker 3
And oh, by the way, you got to get everybody in person. And oh, by the way, you may not be able to get representative users in. Oh, by the way, eight different agencies are all selling you design thinking exercises. And what we have to evolve to is a place where understanding what the user needs, understanding what design and content works for them, can then be delivered to that individual based on who they are, what they need, what we know about them, and the only way to solve that is to automate the experience.

00:23:26:15 - 00:23:57:20
Speaker 3
So we actually feel and this is kind of our our big, you know, our big revolutionary statement. We actually believe that we need to design intentionally positive use cases for AI and automation in general in the world. For us, the focus is designing how I can solve inclusion in digital spaces, not make accessibility better, not think, make things more inclusive, but literally solve the inclusion problem like that should be our ambition.

00:23:57:22 - 00:24:26:06
Speaker 3
And so as an organization, our goal is we're kind of like the the nonprofit side of what we do, or kind of like a B2B nonprofit. We help organizations, and we have a goal of working with organizations, that serve health care, finance, education, government, legal for older users, for users with living with disabilities, neurodiversity, socio economic challenges.

00:24:26:08 - 00:24:56:07
Speaker 3
If you think about the the top players in each of those spaces and we could if we can use AI to help transform the inclusion in digital spaces that they provide, we can impact digital access for a billion people by 2030. So that's our that's our big audacious goal is that we believe that through partnerships, through the use of AI, through the use of automation, we can transform the digital lives and the digital capital for a billion people by 2030.

00:24:56:07 - 00:25:21:00
Speaker 3
And that's so that's what we're deeply focused on. So. So where does I come into it? Well, I comes into it because it's too much to design for, you know, five different use cases for individual needs for one digital product, say, a website or a mobile app. Most teams, most companies just can't afford to do it. They don't have the resources.

00:25:21:00 - 00:25:43:01
Speaker 3
They don't have the time. They don't have the engineering capacity. They don't have the designers. They don't have the they just don't have the luxury. Every design, organization and experience organization I've ever run has had waves of reduction. It's just been wave after wave after wave of reduction my entire career. And the mantra in corporate America has become do more with less.

00:25:43:01 - 00:25:44:05
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely.

00:25:44:07 - 00:26:17:07
Speaker 3
And so if that's true, yet we need to have individualized experiences for for our own unique abilities. That's a paradox. Less resources, less expertise, less funding, shorter timelines, more use cases, more permutations, more variation. We have to automate. So how do we use AI to solve the problem of delivering for individual need? And that's our that's our grand mission.

00:26:17:09 - 00:26:17:22
Speaker 2
That's so.

00:26:17:22 - 00:26:47:17
Speaker 3
Powered. And we yeah. And we've, we have we have strategies both on the nonprofit side and we have a software platform that we're creating to help with that. But in the end, we need to be we need to be looking at the technologies that we're creating, not just as, as trend trend lines or opportunities or things that we need to, you know, get on top of in order to stay current.

00:26:47:19 - 00:27:18:06
Speaker 3
We also need to look at them, as kind of vehicles of our personal ethics and beliefs. And I actually believe that I take this kind of radical stance that I actually don't think there's such a thing as ethical. I, I think that organizations and people need to be ethical. And I think that that's the really grand challenge is how do you design your technology and your use of technology to match your ethics, and how do you become intentional about what you're using those technologies for?

00:27:18:06 - 00:27:45:22
Speaker 2
I couldn't love those questions more. When you and I corresponded about that, you know, I remember watching the advent of social media. Web one, web two. You know, you and I've talked about some of this, my feeling about this is that there are things that are more and less comfortable for humans, like an Excel spreadsheet does not cause existential angst, but social media has because it's a complex set of personal and business.

00:27:46:00 - 00:28:10:12
Speaker 2
But the fact is, is that all of this is human generated. You know, until we have truly self generative AI that becomes truly intelligent in whatever way we wanted to find that, you know, and whatever that is in the future. You know, we humans are involved. And so I can be a, reach toward utopian or it can be the garbage fire that other things are, too.

00:28:10:12 - 00:28:49:07
Speaker 2
And I do think that that goes back to that individual ethical lens and how is it that we it's not something that's necessarily happening to us. We have to make active choices around it. I remember when one of the founders of virtual reality, I think it was Jaron Lanier, wrote his famous book, You Are Not a Gadget like he was trying to raise some red flags about these things, which is that there are active choices being made here about our interactions with mobile devices, with algorithms, with social media, with websites, etc. and I feel like you're raising a similar thing, that there are active choices that we have to make about how we're going to

00:28:49:07 - 00:28:55:03
Speaker 2
apply AI to this challenge of mass personalization.

00:28:55:05 - 00:29:19:10
Speaker 3
Yeah, that's a really good question. And, you know, actually, it's it's interesting that you mentioned, Jaron Lanier. I, there's an article that he wrote in The New Yorker, a few months back called There Is No AI, which I think is really powerful. And part of the premise is that what we're experiencing right now isn't actually AI.

00:29:19:10 - 00:29:42:11
Speaker 3
And in the community that I'm a part of, the the technologists and the engineers that I work with, there is a there is a dialog that, yes, we're calling it AI. It's a label, but it's not actually intelligence. It's not intelligence. What we're interacting with is incredibly large volumes of data with very sophisticated, statistical algorithms finding patterns.

00:29:42:11 - 00:30:09:20
Speaker 3
So when you type in something to ChatGPT, it's not actually thinking and responding to you. It is using predictive analytics and statistics to be able to predict what the right response is based on the large amount of data that it's been trained on. So one of the biggest problems is, I actually wrote a brief for, for, for, for for a mentor, who's on the number of corporate boards, about how to think about this moment in AI.

00:30:09:20 - 00:30:34:15
Speaker 3
And the key point was the most important thing for a board member for a C-suite executive, for leaders of all stripes in this moment on AI is understanding and being clear on the use cases that you're trying to solve is still the most important thing. And that's something that doesn't require technical expertise. It's what are we trying to solve?

00:30:34:15 - 00:30:57:03
Speaker 3
What is the business problem we're trying to solve? What is the, what is the use case where we're envisioning? And then in addition to that, you have a set of responsibilities. And, and I'm going to avoid using the word ethics here because I think that that's where you would normally say it. But let me say all this without saying the word ethics.

00:30:57:05 - 00:31:25:15
Speaker 3
Once I have an idea of what I might apply AI to, I need to understand ensure there's a feasibility analysis of is it possible, is it feasible? Does it work? But I have a responsibility to ask myself and my organization and my peers a number of questions. Is it going to harm anyone, and if so, how are there any unintended consequence sets that might arise from using this tool?

00:31:25:17 - 00:31:52:05
Speaker 3
Am I disempowering individuals from essential decision making in their lives? For example, am I am I taking their choice away around critical health care intervention or something financial that might impact their family? Am I protecting their privacy? Am I making judgments or generalizations about who they are in a way that may impact them in a negative way?

00:31:52:07 - 00:32:13:06
Speaker 3
There's more, and I think that, but the idea is that there is a lot to do with AI without being technical or even before you get into the technology or what is it going to do. But I think we see this at the beginning of every hype cycle right? People want technology to be installed and they want it to be used.

00:32:13:06 - 00:32:51:05
Speaker 3
But the truth is, is that it will die away except in the places where it has business value or other types of impact. Yeah. And so I think the most important thing for anyone to do that's either a user of AI personally or in their organization or participating in this, is to double down on what problem we trying to solve, what impact does it have on the organization or articles, what impact does it have on the people and does it align with our social impact goals, our mission, our values, our ethics or Dei strategies and policies, our beliefs about our customers?

00:32:51:05 - 00:32:56:17
Speaker 3
The impact we want to have on the world. Those are the things that need to be asked and addressed.

00:32:56:19 - 00:33:20:06
Speaker 2
I think what you've said, Howard, is so clarifying those questions that you shared with that, that mentor about, what are the first things we should be for fronting before we get caught up in the shiny object? But, I mean, there there's so much here. And I you know, I'm going to really encourage people to listen to this conversation because I think it's helping me clarify some pieces, too.

00:33:20:08 - 00:33:36:20
Speaker 2
Before we wrap up today, because I know I've kept you a long time, what are some of the things that you're excited about now? We talk about the gravity of brands with this podcast. And and there's a gravity to certain things. Could be music. All right. I know that you're you know, I've been a musician very engaged in that world over the years.

00:33:36:20 - 00:33:41:02
Speaker 2
But what are the things that you're excited about right now that you'd like to share?

00:33:41:04 - 00:34:06:02
Speaker 3
Well, I mean, I'm excited about I'm excited about this moment of transformation in in our in our culture and in humanity. We are at a point where, I mean, technology is the story of humanity, you know, the defining nature of us versus, well, every other animal on the planet is our use of technology. So therefore it is fundamentally human.

00:34:06:04 - 00:34:29:06
Speaker 3
The thing that I'm excited about is that we are accelerating fast. And I think that there is it's easy to be concerned about it, but it's also important to look at the optimism in that, which is that we have tools that will empower individuals in ways that that we can't even imagine right now. So the thing I'm excited about is there has been an explosion even in the past six months.

00:34:29:08 - 00:34:52:03
Speaker 3
Forget whether I is AI or not. Forget what it does or doesn't do well. The fact is that it has been an explosion of invention. People using tools that couldn't use tools before suddenly launching companies based on them. I mean, 2 or 3000 new AI companies have launched in the past six months. I mean, it's unbelievable tough time to be in the AI company business.

00:34:52:03 - 00:35:17:12
Speaker 3
But the, but but I think that the, the what that means to me is that it's sparked people's imaginations of how to solve problems and empower people or create new, you know, whether it's commercial or not, create new, ways of integrating tools with our lives. And that to me is exciting. Like, I'm excited about that macro arc.

00:35:17:14 - 00:35:38:06
Speaker 3
And I think that's, I think that's a it's a powerful moment. It's a powerful moment for humanity. And it's so it's exciting to be it's exciting to be a participant scary. But it's exciting and I, I'm, I'm intentionally I'm I'm what I would say is I'm aggressively optimistic. Meaning I'm going to be optimistic. Goddamn it. You know, and I love it.

00:35:38:08 - 00:35:46:05
Speaker 3
I'm going to I'm going to make the things that I believe in happen, as opposed to just worry about the things that I don't want to have happen. So I'm excited about that.

00:35:46:07 - 00:36:11:05
Speaker 2
I think that's a wonderful way of thinking about it, because, again, we have to be part of creating what we want to see. And that sounds like very high falutin. But I also talk about the folks in our own agency. You know, we're engaging with clients and others in the world all the time. We have to look at this moment as a moment of experimentation, of play, but also of caution and thoughtfulness.

00:36:11:05 - 00:36:31:10
Speaker 2
And part of being counselors is to understand both sides of these coins that, you know, humans are coming up with. And I do love the discussion, but it's not really I and I totally get and respect that. And I think it's important, too. I always like to respect the nuance, but at the same time, I love that message of optimism and I want to share that too.

00:36:31:10 - 00:36:43:03
Speaker 2
But Howard, it's been so awesome as always to talk to you. I'm excited to share the conversations we've been having with hopefully a broader audience. And thank you so much again for joining us today on building Brand Gravity.

00:36:43:05 - 00:36:46:14
Speaker 3
Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure.

00:36:46:16 - 00:37:17:14
Speaker 1
You are listening to building brand gravity, attracting people into your Orbit AG Business Communications podcast. Keep connected with us by subscribing to the show in your favorite podcast player. If you like what you've heard, please rate the show that helps us to keep delivering the latest in industry influence. Thanks for listening. Until next time.